by Ben Weaver
“What makes you say that? After all, you’re the only one who made it down.”
“Sir, I shared the information with the rest of the squad, sir.”
“You mean you wanted to implicate them?”
“Sir, no, sir. I only wanted them to be aware of the danger and prepare for it, sir. You taught us yourself that the side with the best information usually wins.”
“But you didn’t win tonight.”
“Sir, no, sir. We were outnumbered two-to-one, sir.”
Pope steered himself front and center. “That’s right, Eighty-first, you were outnumbered. Get used to it. Now then, Mr. Beauregard? Report to Lieutenant Humpfire’s office. Mr. Halitov and Mr. Scott St. Andrew remain here. The rest of you? Dismissed.”
Eight dejected first years dragged themselves away. Jarrett squeezed the back of my neck and whispered, “Still think you can hack it?” Without waiting for an answer, he jogged after the others.
I turned into a bag of rattling bones as Pope neared me and Halitov. For a second, an odd trace of sadness seeped into the sergeant’s expression. That night I would dream of his death, a dream that would have nothing to do with what really happened, save for the end. “Gentlemen, I think it’s time we stopped living in denial.”
Halitov’s frown matched mine. “Sir?” he asked.
“You two should head over to admin.”
I froze. “Sir, are you dusting us out, sir?”
“I am.”
“Why? We didn’t do any worse than anyone else—except for Beauregard.” The edge in Halitov’s voice and the lack of a “sir” before and after his reply ignited Pope’s gaze.
“Seems like you now got a problem skinning, Mr. Halitov. That, coupled with your poor scholarship and selfishness make you a perfect candidate for dust out.”
“But sir, we had an agreement!”
While I shivered over Halitov’s insubordination, Pope charged toward the much larger man, deftly slid a leg behind Halitov’s, then tripped him to the ground. “Don’t you raise your voice to me, Private. I say you’re IDO, then you’re IDO.”
“Sir, no, sir!”
I crossed in front of Pope. “Sir, this private requests another opportunity for himself and Mr. Halitov, sir.”
“Get the fuck outta my way, gennyboy.”
Ironic that I had placed myself between them to prevent Halitov from doing something he would regret. No, my squadmate did not take a swing at Pope.
I did.
Caught him squarely in the chin with a solid jab that sent bolts of pain writhing up my arm as he tottered back, reached for his chin, then dropped like a drunk, heaving a small dust cloud.
Anyone watching us might have seen a portrait of three stunned cadets bound to the canvas of the moment; three young men, each contemplating his immediate future and waiting for one another to move but not a one daring to initiate until—
“Solid strike there, Mr. St. Andrew. First class.”
I stammered. “Sir, uh, I’m sorry, sir. Are you all right, sir?”
“Yeah, I’m all right.” He wiped his hands on his hips, then rose. “You’re aware of the penalty for striking me, are you not?”
I focused on his reddening chin. “I am, sir. IDO, sir.”
“And are you aware of the penalty for using a word like gennyboy?”
“I am, sir. IDO, sir. But that rule isn’t enforced here, or so it seems, sir.”
Pope glanced over my shoulder at Halitov, who now stood and swatted the dirt from his utilities. “Mr. Halitov, did you hear me call Mr. St. Andrew a gennyboy?”
“No, sir, I did not, sir.”
Pope drew in a long breath and closed his eyes. “I want the truth, Halitov!”
“Sir, I did hear you call him that, sir.”
“Well then, gentlemen. The situation has become interesting.” He poked me with his index finger. “I drop you for striking me”—he stabbed Halitov with the same finger—“and you IDO automatically. But then you first years turn around and report my comment, and I’m IDOing with you. This’ll work out just right. We’re all gonna take a walk to admin.”
I recoiled in confusion. “Sir, you want to drop, sir?”
Pope just stared at me.
“Well, we’re not dropping with you,” Halitov said, then tacked on a vehement “Sir.”
“We’re not?” I asked.
Halitov showed his teeth. “No one’s dropping. Far as I’m concerned, this never happened. With your permission, sir, I’d like to head back to the billet and prepare for lights-out.”
Pope swore under his breath. “You two bastards, you don’t get it. And I can’t tell you. But one day you’re gonna look back on this moment, and you’re gonna wish you had listened.” He swung back toward his airjeep. “Dismissed.”
Sharing the same puzzled look, Halitov and I saluted Pope, though he faced away, then we retrieved our gear and started for the trail back.
We didn’t realize that Pope had been trying to save us. Platoon Leader Sysvillian had not told us everything regarding the crises in the Sol and Tau Ceti systems. In fact, the war had already started, and Pope had known. As usual, we first years had been given the mushroom treatment: kept full of shit and in the dark. I guess the commandant had feared that our worrying about our families would interfere with our studies and training. But she owed us the truth, and I’ve never forgiven her for that. Pope had wanted to tell us, but the code forbade him. I still wonder what I would have done if he had.
5
During the next week, we returned only once to Whore Face for a mundane ascent without being attacked. We hiked a lot, so much that I don’t even remember how many kilometers per day. Pope introduced us to a new confidence course, one that required skins and had us at one point hurtling the knee-high laser beams of a conventional minefield. Jarrett broke a beam and launched twenty meters in what Pope called a beautiful arc. My brother timed his drop and adjusted his skin’s gravity so that it would absorb nearly all of his impact. He suffered only sprained ankles and swore off my help. Each day he seemed more cynical, more unwilling to talk. The classes bored him. He went mindlessly through the confidence courses. He distanced himself from everyone except Jane Clarion. I once saw him slip out of his bunk in the middle of the night. A glance to Clarion’s empty bunk confirmed my suspicions. My brother had stooped to the lowest of the low. I wondered if he really cared about the code, and if he really understood why we were at South Point.
One evening near week’s end, Pope divided us into two lines of five and had us lying prone on the dusty parade deck. Halitov’s boots rested on my shoulders, my boots rested on Clarion’s, and so on. The sergeant instructed us to remain in position, then climbed into his airjeep. He flew off and wheeled back to dive. The airjeep’s engine brayed like a mule on fire as he drew closer. I tried to steal a look, but the engine wash blinded me. That engine, though, I heard it so distinctly that my paranoia consumed me. Pope had finally gone insane and had decided that he would crash his airjeep into us, killing some and himself. The not knowing drove me to my feet. I wandered into the dust storm, which quickly thinned as Pope’s engine died. The sergeant emerged from the dust, eyes narrowed, index finger coming to bear. “I told you to remain in position!”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Then what are you doing?”
I considered telling him the truth. Considered it for the better part of a millisecond. “Sir, I have to use the latrine, sir.”
Hoots and guffaws rose behind me.
“That what you’re gonna tell the enemy, Mr. St. Andrew? Can you hold off on that attack until I take a leak?”
“Sir, no, sir.”
“You think this is some petty little exercise? Here’s some irony for you: your life depends upon your being able to play dead—no matter what’s going on around you. You got it?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Now we’ll do it again. And I don’t care if you piss your pants, Mr. St. Andrew. Do you read
me?”
“Sir, loud and clear, sir.”
“Fall in!”
“Sir, aye-aye, sir!”
That night, hugged by the cool gel of my rack, I stared at the billet’s ceiling and tried to think of ways to build my courage. I reasoned that I needed to learn to risk my life as freely as the others did. Why did I have so much trouble with that? Why was I always so scared?
And that’s when Halitov leaned into view, his face a waning, sweaty moon in the half-light, his eyes vanishing into their sockets as his lips came together to shush me. He clutched my throat with one hand, covered my mouth and nose with the other. “I’m not going to kill you. I’ll just take you real close ’cause that’s what you’re doing to me every time you screw up. You gotta know what it’s like not to breathe, to be closed in—I mean really closed in—and there’s no one to help. There’s just me, laughing at you, the way they laughed at me.”
With my hands locked firmly around his wrists, I tried to pull him off. Tears welled. I shuddered, tried sucking air through his fingers, gasped—
Then Haltiwanger, of all people, jumped on Halitov’s back, slung an arm under the bruiser’s chin, and got him in a headlock that lasted a surprising three seconds before Halitov ripped free and the lights snapped on.
Squad Corporal Gorbatova stood at the end of the billet, her expression remarkably serene as I struggled for breath, Halitov snapped to, and Haltiwanger sat on the floor, rubbing his arm. She called us outside and ordered Halitov and me to jog barefoot in a tight circle while she went off behind the billet with Haltiwanger.
“We get punished, and he gets laid,” Halitov spat, his breath trailing up into the frosty air.
“Who laughed at you?”
“What?”
“You said you would laugh at me the way they laughed at you. Who were they?”
“Nobody. Forget it.”
We spent twenty minutes digging a furrow until Corporal Gorbatova and Haltiwanger returned, their faces full of color. The corporal ordered us back to our gelracks, and I made sure to thank Haltiwanger before we turned in.
“For what?” he asked. “I should be thanking you. And tomorrow I’ll issue my report.” He winked and headed off to his bunk.
I fell into my own rack, my disillusionment threatening to stifle me as effectively as Halitov had. Cadets cursing, sleeping with each other, trying to kill each other, all of it made me nauseous. I had come to South Point to rise above that kind of behavior, to—as the code stated—cultivate poise and a quiet, firm demeanor; to be helpful to others and restrain them from wrongdoing; to take pride in the academy’s noble traditions and never commit an act that would compromise them. That was the kind of behavior that would help save me from my colonial roots.
What I failed to realize was that, like Pope, many of the upperclassmen knew that the war had begun, and a powerful sense of reckless abandon had already infected them. They expected that the moment they graduated they would be shipped right out to the lines and that they should savor every moment at the academy and live life as fiercely as they could. I should have recognized what was happening, but not dusting out and remaining one step ahead of Halitov consumed most of my time.
The next night, I spent the first hour of evening study period stealing looks at Dina. I ached to be with her, and I’d settle for just talking. Another half hour passed before I found the nerve to get up and pretend to walk casually toward her rack. “Hey.”
She lay sprawled out and glanced over the rim of her tablet. “Hey.”
“My eyes hurt.”
“Mine, too.” She lowered the tablet. “Sometimes you can overstudy.”
“Yeah, I know.”
She met my gaze, smiled, but it wasn’t the kind of smile I saw Clarion give Jarrett. Her grin seemed reserved, even sisterly. Damn it.
“Need something?” she asked.
“Just wondering. Want to, uh, go for a run?”
Her gaze averted. “I don’t know. I’m pretty tired.”
“All right. Maybe we can…” I headed back for my rack. “Sorry I bothered you.”
“Scott? I guess a run wouldn’t be too bad.”
I returned to her rack, proffered my hand, and helped her up. As we passed Halitov’s rack, he lowered his own tablet and smirked. I simply nodded and kept tight on Dina’s heels.
We walked in silence, me planning our entire lives together for so long that my vacant gaze must have unsettled her. “Hello? Anyone home?” she asked.
“Sorry.”
“You do that a lot,” she said, her hair gleaming in the twilight. “Where do you go?”
“I don’t know,” I lied, realizing we had already reached the perimeter of the barracks sector and now stood on a scenic lookout.
Ahead lay the towering buttes, mesas, and valleys of Virginis Canyon, the largest formation on Exeter at over nine hundred kilometers long, up to forty kilometers wide, and fifteen hundred kilometers deep. Though we faced the canyon’s most shallow, most narrow section, with crimson walls standing just a quarter klick apart and rising just two hundred meters, you had to marvel at how that ancient river had so forcefully cut through the plateau. “How ’bout we go down? Talus and scree will break it up a little.”
She nodded and led the way on a trail winding along a forty-five-degree incline. It took us about fifteen minutes to reach bottom. Pope would not have been happy with that time, but we had descended without a single slip.
I felt entombed by the great walls on either side of us, walls capped off by a sky slowly washing off to bare the stars. Boulders of every size and shape imaginable dotted the dried-up riverbed, and the smaller rubble would disrupt our footing and make our run a bit more perilous and exciting.
Dina consulted her tac. “Not too far, okay?”
“Just a couple of klicks. Take us to that second lookout. I’ve never seen this place at night.”
“It’s beautiful. Paul and I came here the night before he left. He really loves me.”
“So that’s where you were.”
“Didn’t know you were checking up on me.”
My cheeks warmed. “When is he coming back?”
“They didn’t say. Right now he’s leading a training recon on the other side of the moon. He got a temp transfer to First Battalion, Comet Company, and that’s all I know.”
“Pretty rare for a first year to become Op Commander.”
“Yeah, I know. I read on the appointment page that only once in the academy’s history was a first year recommended for the rank of corporal.”
“That was Bryant, the regimental commander.”
“Right. Pope thinks Paul might be the second. But I don’t know. He keeps telling me he can’t do it without me.”
While the colonel’s son probably deserved the honor, I’d be lying if I said I was happy for him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. You ready? This is a race.”
Her lips curled in a look so alluring that I couldn’t bear it for more than a few seconds. “Ready? Ready? Go!”
Of course she beat me off the mark because she had signaled the start, but she could outrun me either way.
We snaked through the gorge, leaping over small mounds of shattered shale and limestone. She widened the gap by ducking behind a columnlike boulder, then darted right to find a much smoother course than the one I had chosen.
Frustrated, I thought of skinning, but she would never let me live that down. So I kept on, trying to keep her in sight but eventually losing her to a gloom descending like thunderheads into the gorge.
“I beat you by exactly three minutes, fourteen seconds,” Dina said, tanking down air.
I slapped palms on my hips and fought for my own breath. “Fourteen? My tac says ten.”
We stood on the second lookout, girdled by mesas resembling the flat-topped waves of a black sea quick-frozen and coruscating with starlight. I hadn’t realized we had ventured so far from the academy grounds, now glowing diml
y on the horizon. I stood, crossed to within a meter of the cliff edge, then sat, pulling my knees into my chest. “You’d never see anything like this on my world. All we get are holo artists’ renderings. They never look like this.”
She pulled up a rocky seat next to me. “I keep telling myself I don’t have to worry about you. But I’m wrong, right?”
“I’ll probably IDO one of these days. I’ll try not to bring you down. I’m sorry, I—”
“I wasn’t talking about that. I don’t want to hurt you.”
No, I wouldn’t look at her. I had heard the old “we should just be friends” line more times than I cared to remember.
Then she touched me, traced my birthmark with her index finger.
I pulled away. “Don’t.”
“Must be hard.”
“Sometimes. Ready to head back?”
“Not yet. You know, I have a mark, too. On my hip. It’s not from epi, though. And no, I won’t show it to you.”
“One of my teachers told me that birthmarks relate to experiences of a remembered past life.”
“You talking about reincarnation?”
“Yeah. They represent a violent death in your previous life.”
“Cheerful stuff.”
“I’m sorry, I just—”
“Thought you had a chance with me?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know anything about you. I don’t even know what colo you’re from.”
“I’m from Indicity on Rexi-Calhoon. Ever been there?”
I shook my head.
“You’d like it. Far less provincial than the other colos. I mean, it’s even got a theater district.”
“Explains why you’re so, I don’t know, worldly.”
“Never been called that. Thanks.”
After a deep sigh, I groaned and pushed myself up.
“Whoa,” she uttered, nearly out of breath.
“What?”
She sprang to her feet. “There.”
In the distance, a streak of blue-green light cut straight up into the sky. Another streak followed, then a third, a fourth. They kept coming at two-second intervals to create an eerily beautiful light show. I pricked up my ears, searching for some accompanying repercussion, but detected none.