A slow-moving shadow swallows us from above. The shuttle is directly overhead, big and smooth and almost silent. I can’t see any logos or writing on it at all. No way is it colonial police, then. It speeds up whenever we do, and every time we turn, it follows. There’s clearly no outrunning or outmanoeuvring it. Sergei and I are unarmed. So what can we do? Keep on zig-zagging for the thirty miles to the nearest greenhouse, and hope there’s someone there to help us?
Sergei, what can we do?
I scan the desert on all sides. All I can see is sand and rocks and...mist? Mist over a forest that doesn’t belong. A policed forest. That’s it. Forget the greenhouse. The plantation is closer! We’ll be breaking the law by trespassing there, but we’ll be safer in police custody than we will in the hands of...whoever’s come out here to snatch us.
I’m about to signal for Sergei to make the right turn when a voice bellows down from the shuttle:
“You can stop running, guys. It’s all right. I’m here to help. The five hundred credits was just for starters. And I never did get that breakfast.”
Sergei and I scowl at each other and keep on racing. It doesn’t make sense for Trench Coat Man to be trailing us all the way out here. I can’t think of a single thing he’d want with us, unless it’s to erase his tracks, to make sure we never identify him to anyone.
That’s a heart-stopper right there.
He swoops low in front of us, barely giving us chance to slow down and stop before we run into his tail.
“Jim, Sergei, give me five minutes of your time. That’s all I’m asking. Five minutes, then the road’s all yours. Trust me, it’s important.”
I have to admit I’m curious. He saved my life in the café, so maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, what’s five minutes? And he claims he’s here to help. The last time he helped us, he financed the best journey we’ve ever had. Now, I can tell Sergei is bent on resuming his escape—his huge shoulders are leaning, bear-like, over the handlebars—but he’s watching to see what I do. He’s waiting for me to make the first move.
So it’s up to me.
I say we listen to what Trench Coat Man has gone to all this trouble to say.
As soon as I get off the bike, the shuttle touches down on the sand. Sergei hops off his bike and we immediately put our radsuits on and get dressed before our audience begins.
“Whatever he offers, just say no,” Sergei advises.
“Sure thing.”
“Nobody gives something for nothing. Remember that.”
“I will. But you sound like you know what he’s going to say.”
Sergei folds his arms and leans sideways against his pillion seat as the man approaches.
“Way to vanish off the map, you two. I mean I’m supposed to be pretty good at tracking down talent, but Jesus Christ.” Trench Coat Man—now Hawaiian Shirt and Smart Trousers Man—wipes his neck with a face towel he totes around like he’s a boxing coach in a ring corner.
“What do you mean by talent?” queries Sergei.
“Why, you two.” The man shrugs a rucksack off his shoulder and unmagnoes it in front of us. To my genuine surprise, he lifts out the severed head of the skivvy ’bot I tossed him that day in the café. He throws it back to me. “I’d like to recruit the two of you for a special training project I’m involved with. A career opportunity like none you’ve ever had or will ever have again. Selection is by interview, followed by a quick exam. And the deadline, I’m afraid, is today.”
Sergei almost coughs his lunch up. “You said what?”
“What kind of project?” I ask, no less appalled by the idea of having to take an exam for anything, but even more curious as to why he’d go to all this trouble to invite us.
“A unique one. Unlike anything else in the colonies. I can’t tell you where it’s based, but I can tell you that if you complete the training, you’ll get to leave Mars.”
Somewhere deep inside, those magic words unlock a door that not even Sergei knows about—a door into a room with no walls and no floor and no ceiling, only an eternity of ancient, winking stars. It’s hidden in a forgotten alley of my heart, this room. It shivers whenever I think of my mother, which isn’t often. I remember nothing about her, not her voice or her smell or the feel of her touch. She’s as formless as the dimensions of the room. A secret in my core. And the prospect of leaving Mars has just flung that door wide open, only I can’t explain why.
All I know is—I have to go with this man. I’ve earned this interview. I’m ready to take a step through that door into...wherever it leads.
Sergei’s eyeballing me with intense interest. He can tell I’m intrigued, and he doesn’t like it. I feel like saying: Don’t worry, big guy, there’s no chance I’d ever leave you. No chance in hell. You know that.
“What kind of training?” Sergei asks, probably for my benefit.
“I’m afraid that’s classified, Sergei. It’s difficult to talk about without being specific. My job is to identify certain traits in young people, traits that, shall we say, might prove useful in our project.” He nods at our repeated frowns. “I know, I know, I’m being incredibly mysterious. Let me put it this way: if you pass the interview and the entrance exam, you’ll never need to skim again. You’ll never want for anything. We’ll push you hard, but by the time you’ve finished the training you’ll have reached your full potential, whatever that may be. And there’s no telling how far you could go as a graduate. The career possibilities are almost limitless.”
My turn to ask a question. “So what traits have you identified in us?”
The corner of his mouth twitches a smile. “What traits do you think I’ve identified in you?”
I shrug. Sergei shakes his head, loosens his breather for a moment and spits onto the sand.
“Well, to say any more would be overstepping my pay-grade, but to make sure I don’t under-sell this thing, let me put it this way: most youngsters your age would do anything to be a part of this project. Anything. Some very influential people have sent their children to us. I’ll say it again, it’s like nothing else anywhere in the colonies. You’ll make new friends, you’ll get to grips with state of the art tech, you’ll learn things only a handful of people will ever learn, and you’ll get to leave Mars at the end of it.” He looks at me when he says that, as if he knows it pushed a button in me last time.
“What’s the catch?” Sergei tries to dislodge something in his teeth, using his tongue.
“The only catch is you’ll have to sign up for the full training. Unless you’re washed out, you won’t be allowed to leave the facility until you graduate. And you’ll have no contact with the outside world in that time.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because it’s top secret. We can’t let anyone else know its location.” He checks his timer—a really old and funky wristwatch with hands instead of digits. “Okay, my five minutes are up. You should know I’m extending this interview invitation to you both, but I’m afraid I can’t wait for an answer. The training begins today. I’ve spent longer tracking down the two of you than my superiors are happy with. I’ve taken a big risk even coming out here on my own after what happened last time. But I think you’re worth it. I think you might be just what we need. So go ahead, Jim, Sergei: take a few minutes to talk it over on your own, then give me your answer. Okay?”
He marches back inside his shuttle. Now that he’s given us a moment to think, I’m coming up with a thousand reasons not to trust him. He’s hiding too much. The Sheikers want to get their hands on him, which means he probably has something to do with the war, with ISPA. And the last thing I need is to join the military. Sure, it’ll take me off-world, on a one-way trip to Splattersville!
And yet...if I turn him down and it isn’t military, I might be blowing the chance of a lifetime. To do something extraordinary. Something other people my age only dream of. Something I’ll always regret if I chicken out now.
And it might be the best way to ensure
Sergei and I stay together. If there’s a better reason than that to accept, I can’t think of one.
“We should get the hell out,” he says without looking at me. “Don’t tell him anything. Don’t look back. Just take off and forget we ever saw him. He can take that as our answer.”
“Wow, wow, Sergei, just hold up.” I grab him by the wrist as he’s about to hop onto his bike. “Shouldn’t we at least talk about it?”
“You heard what he said. Training. Graduation. In other words, grid-licking freaking school. He’ll use fancy words, but they all amount to the same thing. If you’d spent any time in ISPA’s orphanages, you’d never, ever want to go back. Three square meals, four square walls, and a magno-lock on every door. I’m telling you, our lives wouldn’t be our own any more. They’d have us like this.” He closes both his huge fists and squeezes until the knuckles turn white.
I swallow.
“Saving him was the worst move we ever made,” he growls.
“But why?”
“Because now we’re on their radar, and they’ll never leave us alone.”
“But we can’t last out here forever, Sergei. I don’t want to skim for the rest of my life. What if he’s telling the truth, and this is our big chance to really kick some ass—” That’s usually the best way to appeal to the Minsk Machine, “—you know, to do something amazing. It’s what we’ve always talked about. See other worlds, maybe get rich, I don’t know.” Seeing him roll his eyes makes me even more determined to convince him. We’re running out of time, so I resort to the big guns: “Sergei, what are you?”
“Hot as hell.”
“Says who?”
He sniffs proudly. “That girl in the greenhouse yesterday—the botanist’s daughter with the—”
“Right. So what are you?”
He tries to suppress a mischievous grin, but fails spectacularly. “The Minsk Machine.”
“Made for what?”
“Kicking your—”
“Ah, ah.” I silence him with a hand over his mask. “Made for what, Sergei?”
He shouts as though he’s marching on parade up and down the Red Square in Moscow: “War, women, and the Soviet Way.” His deep belly laugh when I raise my hand to salute would ordinarily be infectious, but I’m not doing this for fun. I’m trying to make him realise what he’s missing—what we’re both missing.
“And what if going with this guy gets us closer to all those things? Do you really want to pass that up? We stay here and carry on skimming, we’ll be lucky to stay out of prison—real prison—past twenty. Remember Melekhin. And even if we never get caught, we’ll wake up one day and we’ll be ninety, and nothing will have changed. We never got to go off-world, never got rich, never did anything the Minsk Machine was meant to do.
“But if we go with this guy, we get to take his training facility by storm, steal all the hottest girls in the academy, maybe get into a few fights—okay, a lot of fights—and show those privileged snots what the Soviet Way really means. Then the galaxy’s all ours. What d’ ya say, big guy?”
It’s wiped the smile off his face, at least, which tells me I’ve made a dent.
“You’re dead set on this,” he says softly. It isn’t a question. “You really want to go with him.”
“I just think it’s better than the alternative.”
“And what if I don’t go?” He studies my reaction, so I try not to give one. It’s a guy thing, I guess. I don’t know if he can read me or not, but it wouldn’t take much to make me cry right now. He’s my big brother, my crazy uncle, my Russian cousin, my best and only friend in the world, and there’s suddenly a gap the size of a canyon between us.
For the first time since we met, I’m considering going on without him. The thought’s there; it has a shape and a face—Trench Coat Man. Chrissakes, Sergei, I know I’ll die inside, but if you make me choose between him and you... No, there is no choice. I can’t leave you, and you know it. But I’ll never get another chance like this, and maybe I’ll always hold it against you if you make me choose.
“The hottest girls in the academy, huh?” He massages his biceps, one arm at a time.
“Who’s gonna stop you?”
“True. And the training won’t last forever.”
“Nope.” I ignite inside like the night sky on Colonial Day. “We’ll ace their tests, then we’ll have the power. Do whatever we want—only we won’t be grid-licking for a living, we’ll be rock-hoppers, and we’ll see the galaxy.”
He almost smiles, then gives a strange, heavy sigh that mists his visor for much longer than usual. It’s neither happy nor sad, just meh. In Sergei-ese, that usually means he has a shift coming up, his last one in whichever resort we’re in, just before he intends for us to move on.
“So we’re taking the interview?” I’m ready to bounce around, but I won’t. Not at a time like this. Not with the man marching back to us.
“I guess so.”
“Yes?” Elated, I pretend to punch him in the gut. “You beau-tay!”
“So what’s your answer, guys?” The wind is picking up a little, the air is filling with sand, and the man has just reclaimed his old nickname. At least this is a new trench coat he’s wearing—dark green, with gold stripes down the arms.
“We’re in,” I announce.
“Good for you,” he replies, equally as meh as Sergei a moment ago, but I can tell it’s just his professional manner. The manner of adults.
“I just have one question...for now.” Sergei stands tall behind me and asks, “Does this have something to do with the war?”
The man turns up his collar to shield his neck from the swirling sand. “Yes and no. We’re not strictly speaking a part of the military, so we’re not directly involved in the war. But let me put it this way—we’re here because of the war. It’s why we’re keeping the project secret.”
“Horosho. I guess you’d better open up the cargo bay then, sir.” It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Sergei use that word, and it doesn’t suit him. But I guess we’ll both be changing in all sorts of ways before we’ve finished this training.
“Right. You two secure the bikes inside, then come and join me in the cockpit. I won’t be flying anywhere near Cydonia, so we’ll have to drop them off at another resort on the way. They’re from a franchise outlet, right?”
“Yes, sir.” My turn to try the word out for size. It’s kinda cool in a pretend sort of way.
“Then we’re good.”
He lets us in via the rear airlock ramp and immediately takes off once we’re inside. It’s dim and empty in the cargo bay. Only a couple of the blue light strips running across the ceiling work properly. Another one flickers with an irritating buzz. The old metal bulkheads are scuffed and faded, the bench seats recently (and poorly) painted white over dark red smears. It has the feel of an overused utility room in a cold corner of a slaughterhouse.
Sergei volunteers to secure our sand bikes with the magno-clamps you have to crank up from the floor. He knows I’d struggle. Hey, I am only thirteen.
The ship’s puri (decontamination) chamber is longer than usual, almost corridor length, and is a lot more advanced than the tractor guts cargo bay. It’s light-grey and padded on all sides. Three separate sensor checkpoints hit me with a cold green flash as I walk through. At the end, a digital readout confirms I’m not carrying anything infectious or hazardous to the crew’s health.
In the heart of the ship I pass through a dark, circular room with no windows. There’s a single fixed, triangular desk in the centre, with three cushioned seats arrayed around it. A tunnel-of-stars screensaver on the desktop tells me it’s a digitab. This has to be the interview and exam room, and it gives me the willies. I’ve had interviews before, for every new job, in fact, but they’ve always been informal chats in the back offices. A quick glance at our references—we have plenty of those—and a few straightforward questions, then it’s usually straight into the induction.
But this—it’s like som
ething out of an Omicron detective show. One of those interrogation rooms where they have monitoring computers that analyse breathing patterns, pupil dilation, the number of times you fart during questioning, things like that. Sergei’s right. It’s the opposite of the way we’ve lived all this time. They’ve got us right where they want us.
I continue on. There are no crew quarters that I can see, just triple bunks with shutter screens either side of the main passageway. Locked rooms as well. Are we really alone on this ship? Or are there people in those rooms, maybe even AI analysers, watching our every move, listening to our every word?
It’s starting to feel claustrophobic. In our jobs in the resorts, we can always split if we feel threatened. Here, and from now on, I guess, we’ll just have to face it.
That’s a terrifying thought right there. Having to face what I can’t control.
“Come on in, guys.” Trench Coat Man’s manually piloting the shuttle from a bucket seat attached to a gimbal arm in the ceiling. He can swing in a three-sixty arc around the cockpit if he wants. His seat-arm console’s expensive, military grade. This thing could fly itself to 100z and back and buy us souvenirs along the way if it wanted. It doesn’t need a pilot. But Trench Coat Man clearly likes to be in control. He’s old school, and I like that.
Then it hits me again. We still don’t know who he really is—his actual name, his ISPA rank. It’s about time I put that right. “Sir, what should we call you? It’s not really Mr. Herapeth, is it?”
“No, lad. It isn’t. Sergei saw through that right away, didn’t he?” He swivels round and peers behind me. “Hey, where is Sergei?”
“Clamping the bikes. It’s those old manual cranks—too heavy for me.”
“They’re automatic, kid. Nothing that old on this ship. He’s got it wrong.”
“Then why would he—” It doesn’t make sense. I wouldn’t know an automatic clamp from a hair clip, but Sergei would. He always secures the bikes in the greenhouse parking bays for us. He’s been doing it for years. He’d know they were automatic.
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