Doubt crept into the back of his mind as her siblings took positions behind her, looking equally as tiny and insignificant, especially against Stempton and his entourage. What if I’m wrong about them? What if they’re just little kids?
“This is going to be a slaughter,” Hoch snickered.
Using his datapad, Cam split up the camera angles so he could see the game and both Jetta and Stempton’s faces as the match unfolded.
She’s nervous, he observed, watching as she worked the console with shaky hands. She’s still new at this.
He looked up her stats again. With a dozen or so games under her belt, she wasn’t a complete novice, but she hadn’t played any cadets with real battle experience or ranking, enough to test any reasonable skill.
She’s going to have to really step up.
As the game initiated, a score of battleships, fighters, ground units, a warship and base of operations materialized in blue on Jetta’s side, facing off against Stempton’s red fleet within the globe.
“Little launnie in the gutter,
No one loves a rat,
Your momma’s smoking jihja
And your daddy’s getting whacked.”
He’s going for it, Cam thought, kneading the deformity on his right hand as Stempton sang the Fiorahian slum song just loud enough for Jetta to hear.
Fuming, Jetta tensed her grips on the controls, paying less and less attention to the game, and more to Stempton’s taunts as he continued singing:
“Little launnie in the gutter,
Broke and full of woe,
Float downstream away from me
To the Block where you will show.”
She’s going to kill him. Cam had never seen such anger, especially from a tiny young girl. Rage lit her green eyes and pinched her brow as Stempton went into the third verse:
“Four and twelve you might have gotten
If your face was not so rotten,
Hurry up and die already
So this all can be forgotten.”
He’s sweeping her, Cam thought, looking at the scoreboard. Now up by seventy-five points, Jetta would have a hard time catching up, let alone beating Stempton—unless she pulled something drastic.
As Stempton’s forces cut into her fighters, speakers booming with explosions, Cam changed the camera angles on his datapad so that he could watch all three siblings at once. Gnawing on his lower lip, Cam watched their faces, the intensity shifting, as if another battle—one that couldn’t be as easily observed—was being fought amongst the three.
“This is a joke,” Hoch said.
“Chakking launnies. Worthless,” Walli chimed in.
Do it, Jetta. Cam zoomed in on her face, watching as her eyes flitted back and forth between the game and Stempton. Don’t hold back.
The corners of her mouth ticked upward. The subtle change in her composure didn’t register for Cam all at once, not until he saw her grips relax on the controls, and the smile settle across her face.
“Come on, Stempton,” she whispered. “Make this easy for me and maybe they’ll ice you out so you can go back to Mummy and Daddy. Don’t you miss them? Or do you think they forgot about you?”
Stempton tensed. In a miscalculated move, he sent two of his ground units into her line of fire.
“Chak,” Walli muttered.
Jetta’s smile broadened as a group of observers massed around their game and Stempton’s cronies fell silent.
“Jeez, Stempton—it’s not like a Crexan with a Deadskin Mummy is going to get very far anyway. You’re human. You’re weak. You’ve polluted the Crexan bloodline.”
And there it is. Cam sat back in his chair, watching from afar as the rest of the game unfolded. Where he thought he should feel satisfaction came only chills as Jetta tore Stempton to pieces, capitalizing on his missteps, using his own weakness against him. In less than thirty minutes, the unknown girl from Fiorah, the street rat who shouldn’t have survived her own world, let alone found her way into an elite military academy, beat an older, and far better reputed, cadet.
And Cam knew that she shouldn’t. Not the way she fumbled at first, or the way she could barely keep her squadrons together at the beginning of the game. Not unless she somehow gained years of experience in a flash. Not unless—
“Good game,” Jahx offered as Stempton’s face flushed with rage and embarrassment. Without a word, he left, Hoch, Walli, and his other cronies following behind him, trying to console their fallen leader.
Don’t do that, Jahx, Cam huffed. You can’t always make peace with these assinos.
Cam tried to zoom in on Jetta, to continue to observe her reaction, but as the crowd dispersed and the other kids went back to their games, she didn’t stay long—not with her siblings dragging her away from the gaming area.
Cam watched from a distance as the trio moved to the stadium seating to his right, keeping to themselves as the rest of the room continued their wars.
What are you saying? He tried to pick up them up again on a different audio feed, but the triplets had moved out of range of any of the public devices he could tap into. Squinting, he tried to make out their conversation as the shifting colors of azure, gold, and crimson lit their faces.
“I know what you’re going to say,” he gleaned Jetta speaking to her siblings. But they didn’t respond. At least not out loud. Instead, Jaeia and Jahx sat beside her, seemingly watching the battles on the main floor, concern pinching up their brows.
If he’d seen them talking, their changing expressions would have made more sense to him, but he couldn’t rationalize their visible mood changes as Jetta’s cheeks reddened with frustration, and the other two, particularly Jaeia, looked increasingly troubled, as if she wanted to reach some kind of peace.
A nearly impossible game won, a wordless conversation afterward. Not enough evidence, not yet—but something that couldn’t be ignored.
Did you see that? Cam wondered, glancing up again at the domed cameras.
As Jetta stormed out of the gaming arena, Jaeia rushing to catch up to her, their brother lagged behind. When Jahx attempted to talk to a few of the other kids hanging out in the stands, they moved away, laughing at the launnie who tried to engage them.
Those assinos, he thought.
Cam wanted to hide, to pretend like he didn’t meet eyes with Jahx from across the benches, but he couldn’t—not when his face lit up, and he walked over to his bench.
“Hey,” Jahx said, coming around and sitting next to him. “Did you see the game?”
“Yeah. Wow,” Cam said. Clumsily, he shut off his datapad while trying not to sound as awkward and exposed as he felt. “Can’t believe Jetta pulled that off.”
Jahx sighed, rubbing his forehead with his hands. “She’s tougher than she looks.”
“She looks tough enough,” Cam said, half-laughing. “She looks like she wants to take this entire Academy down.”
Jahx didn’t make any arguments against his statement. Instead, he rested his elbows on his knees, and his chin in his hands. “She does what she has to do.”
I understand that, Cam thought. As a long silence passed between them, his mind wandered back to Cerka, to old school days in over-crowded classrooms and family dinners of canned beans and whatever vegetable or meat their mother could get at a bargain. Caught in the moment, he asked: “What do you think you’d be doing right now, if things were different?”
Jahx quirked an eyebrow. “Like, if there wasn’t a war?”
Despite knowing the risks of asking such questions, some part of him persisted. “Yeah.”
The black-haired boy twirled a curl of hair at the nape of his neck and looked off in the distance. “Playing rock dice with Jetta in our pretend fort.”
“Rock dice?”
“Yeah, it’s a game we made up. It’s really fun.”
The rest of the gaming arena fading from his attention, Cam whispered: “What else?”
“Reading books with Jaeia and Aunt Lohien. Helping
Galm fix stuff around the apartment. Maybe try to find an air conditioner in the dump, repair that.”
“Yeah, I heard Fiorah’s hot.”
Jahx laughed. “Like a furnace. What about you?”
Cam looked out across the arena, at the other children, trying to remember what it felt like back home. “I don’t know. I can’t remember what it’s like to be a kid anymore.”
He jumped as Jahx placed a hand on his forearm. “I know.”
The warmth of his fingers, even through the fabric of his uniform jacket, made him relax again, and his thoughts loosened. “I’d be with my family,” he said, voice just above a whisper as his mind projected himself into better times. “I’d play hide and seek with the twins. I’d try and convince my dad to let me take a drag off his pipe. I’d help my mom hang up the wash out the window and listen to her gossip about the neighbors. I’d…”
He couldn’t stop himself, even as he sensed himself in dangerous territory. “…I’d play games with Kara. I’d pester her as she tried to talk to her boyfriend on the phone. I’d make up stories in my head and tell her them by the fireplace. I’d be happy.”
“Happy,” Jahx repeated, letting the word sit between them a moment. Blue eyes filled with tears. “Those sound like very happy things.”
Cam straightened up in his seat, cracking his knuckles on both hands. “Impossible things. At least now.”
Jahx, still turned away, replied just above a whisper. “What’s there to hope for, if those things are gone?”
Cam didn’t understand. “But you still have your sisters.”
A shadow crossed his face. “You just saw what this place is doing to Jetta. To all three of us.”
Troubled secrets sluiced through his mind, reviving old guilts and dark promises. “I know. But you do what you have to do.”
He wanted to add no tomorrows, but another memory resurfaced, soothing his jaded response. “Kara would have told you to hold out.”
“Huh?”
“My older sister. She was always hopeful something good was right around the corner; that all this gorsh-shit was worth it for whatever better days lay ahead.”
“Oh, I remember. That song,” Jahx said, “Blue Sky Tomorrows, right?”
“Yep. She’d be singing it to you right now, whether you wanted her to or not.”
Jahx giggled as his face transformed again, and his smile returned. As he started to say something, his sleeve beeped twice, and he sighed. “Alright, gotta go.”
“One of your sisters?”
“Both of them,” he said, standing up and stretching.
“Double nagging. I can’t imagine.”
Jahx chuckled. “Yeah, they tend to gang up on me. Hey, how’s your hand?”
Cam automatically shielded it under his opposite hand. “Fine.”
“I was worried.”
Really? He sucked in his lower lip, trying not to sound flustered. “It’s fine. No big deal.”
“Did you get to take the biochem final?”
Kneading the bony knob on the back of his hand, Cam muttered off a quick, “yeah. It’s fine.”
“I’m sure you did great,” Jahx said. “Well, see you, Cam.”
“Bye, Jahx.”
After the black-haired boy had gone, Cam sat alone in the stands, unable to reopen his datapad or watch any more of the games. Something unnerved him, something that instilled a restless energy in his bones. Finally, after his first Endgame match appeared on his sleeve and he decided no more could be gained sticking around the arena, he got up and left, glancing up at the ceiling cameras one last time as he left.
Don’t worry, Rogman, he thought, imagining the Commandant’s mustached face and darkened eyes. You’re about to see what I’m really capable of.
***
S. Nelson, 1700, console 121-A.
The name looped over and over again in mind as he sat alone in the mess hall with a tray full of food growing cold on the table in front of him. He’d never met the boy, only seen him in passing in the halls or when their meals coincided. Nothing particular stood out about Nelson; average height for a humanoid, light blonde hair, hazel eyes. A handsome face. Per his profile, he’d completed a full year at the Academy, with good grades—
But no combat training.
Not like Cam.
He spotted Nelson dumping the remains of his tray in the garbage, laughing with two other cadets as they exited the mess hall. Leaving his tray at the table, Cam got up and followed them, joining them on the lift as the others inputted their destinations.
“See ya,” Nelson waved as the other two cadets got off at one of the gaming rooms.
“Hey, where are you going?” Nelson asked, turning to Cam as the lift picked up again, taking them toward the barracks. The boy’s smile vanished the second he gave more than a passing glance at Cam’s face.
“What the hell, mate?” he said as Cam bashed his fist against the control panel, stopping the lift midway down the empty corridor. Cam stepped forward on the flat bed of the lift so that the starlight from the slatted windows hit his face.
“Holy chak…” Nelson muttered, backing up against the railing.
Cam hadn’t looked at himself. Not that he ever really took the time to look himself in the mirror before the training accident. But now he saw the wretchedness of his scars and deformities as Nelson’s eyes widened, and the boy brought up his hands in front of him.
Good, Cam thought, hardening his gaze. Be afraid.
“Come on, mate—I’ve done you no wrong. What’s this about?”
“The match at 1700. Don’t show up.”
Nelson scoffed. “What? The Endgame?” Disbelief, then anger crossed his face. “You’re that psycho, Ferros, aren’t you?”
Cam rolled up his sleeves to confirm everything Nelson heard. “Don’t show up.”
“I’m not going to let a newbie intimidate me,” Nelson said, still backed up against the railing.
A whirring caught Cam’s attention. At the opposite end of the corridor, a lift approached carrying four or five other cadets. Instead of backing down, to avoid any kind of attention, he intended to capitalize on the moment.
In his mind, he worked out the scenario: Grabbing Nelson by the collar and sleeve and throwing him into the other lift full of kids. That demonstration of brutality, of willingness to defy all authority and rules, to hurt more than just his immediate opponent would be enough to deter future fights. And keep Rogman from icing him just yet.
But as he grabbed Nelson’s collar and sleeve, shifting his weight on his toes and preparing for the throw, blue eyes flashed in his line of sight.
(You don’t have to.)
The thought, echoing from across a distance he never realized, fixed him in place. In that split second, the internal walls he’d erected, the ones that fortified him from all his pain, all that he feared, vanished, and his sister’s favorite song hummed across his mind: “Just hold out, my love…”
“Get off me, psycho!”
An elbow smacked him square in the temple. Reacting before his mind could catch up, he switched stances, bringing up his knee into the boy’s crotch. Doubled over, Nelson grunted and reached out one arm to defend himself as Cam pulled him to the bed of the lift.
“Whoa!” someone exclaimed as the other lift passed by.
Cam looked up in time to see Jahx and his sisters aboard, the three of them turning to watch with the other kids as they whizzed down the corridor.
I didn’t want him to see that, he thought.
“Stay down,” Cam said, keeping his foot on Nelson’s back as the boy tried to get up. “Don’t show to the game tonight, got it?”
“Chak you, Ferros.”
But as Cam thought to finish the job, two guards appeared at the end of the corridor, shockwands in hand.
Grabbing Nelson by the armpit, he hoisted the boy up and waved to the guards.
“This isn’t over,” Nelson said.
“It is if you want to wake u
p tomorrow,” Cam replied. “Don’t think a little time in detention won’t stop me.”
The soldiers turned away as Nelson waved them off. Wiping the blood from his nose, Nelson avoided Cam’s gaze as he straightened up again. “I’m not losing to a newbie.”
“If we don’t play, it’s no contest. No points lost for either of us.”
Nelson eyed him, then looked down again, blood smeared across his upper lip. “You’re going to get yours, Ferros.”
“Yeah, some day,” he said, typing in the barracks as a destination for the lift. The anti-grav transport took off again, down the corridor toward the guards and the kids milling around before the evening gaming sessions.
Nelson jumped off the lift before it stopped in front of the first barrack, stumbling away as fast as possible. Thinking of Jahx, of the fact that he and his sisters witnessed his act, he tried to counter the guilt crawling through his belly with the rationalization that it only furthered his ultimate agenda. “…But not today.”
***
Nelson didn’t show up to the match. Cam waited in the stands to make sure the boy didn’t get any bold ideas, and after a half hour past their scheduled battle, he thought to leave.
But that’s when Jaeia made her move.
“Cam,” she shouted.
He hadn’t seen her in the shadows, sitting behind a mixed group of cadets in the upper level of the benches. Popping up, she hurried down the stairs, skipping the last few to catch up to him as he tried to get up and go.
“Watch it, launnie!” someone shouted as she dodged around another girl walking up the steps.
“Cam, wait,” she said, running in the aisle in front of him, stopping him in his tracks.
“What?”
“Can we talk?”
“Why?” he said, half-shouting over the electronic noises from the games.
“Please,” she said, putting up both her hands to halt him again. “It’s important.”
Rolling his eyes, he didn’t say no as she dragged him up to the observation booth at the top of the stairs. Normally accessed by teachers and senior-level students to analyze bigger matches, the semi-enclosed box at the top of the stairs stood empty, computer consoles near the gigantic window inert, swiveling chairs unoccupied. As soon as Cam stepped inside the booth, the black-acoustic dampening tiles muffled the game noise from below.
Blue Sky Tomorrows Page 23