Then, suddenly, it dawned on him that the beating had paused. The sounds of a scuffle broke out around him.
Arun marshaled his strength and peered out through his right eye – his left wasn’t cooperating. Around him, facing down the Checker Squad cadets, were Madge, Zug, and Springer. Others too, just out of sight.
Arun felt tears threatening to break to the surface. He hadn’t cried for years – didn’t want to now – but he’d felt so alone. So unwanted.
He collapsed to the floor and groaned. But the vibration of running feet came loud to his ears as he heard Checker Squad run off, hurling curses at Arun as they withdrew.
Arun didn’t care. He gathered his strength as rapidly as he could and put everything he had into his dwindled power of speech. “Thank you.” He propped himself up on one elbow and looked up at his rescuers.
He’d expected smiles and concerned expressions. Instead, many of the faces of his rescuers were as cold as Checker Squad’s had been.
Madge seemed to be in charge. She stood over him, hands on hips, regarding Arun struggling on the ground as if he were something she’d puked up. “Don’t get all dewy-eyed on me, loser.” She curled her lip. “If you weren’t in my section I’d be the first in line to give you the kicking you deserve for putting us in this drent. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking I like you. And don’t give me that crap about it not being your fault that you embarrassed the colonel. I don’t give a damn whether it’s fair or not, I’m still blaming you. Do you understand?”
Arun nodded.
“Frakk you, cadet. I asked you a question. I expect a respectful answer.”
“Sorry, corporal. Yes, I understand, corporal.”
Hands reached for Arun, helped him to his feet. But they weren’t the corporal’s. Cadet Corporal Estella Majanita, the friend he’d called Madge until yesterday, turned her back and walked away.
She did not look back.
—— Chapter 14 ——
The auto-shuttle docked with the unmanned orbital defense platform. Its two passengers alighted and made their way to the platform’s observation room, the young human managing this with far more grace than his insect companion.
Arun tried to keep the hive creature in his peripheral vision. He didn’t want to acknowledge the unwanted alien by looking directly at it – him, he reminded himself. Nor did he want to look completely away in case doing so was interpreted as a gesture of weakness.
Arun’s alien masters had felt accurate timekeeping was important enough that they had augmented all human Marines with a range of time-keeping capabilities. So even though it felt like an age, he knew it took only 412 seconds before the alien broke the impasse by speaking through the voice box hanging around his neck.
“Look out the porthole,” said the alien. “Tell me what you see.”
Until that episode in the tunnel exercise, Trogs hadn’t featured much in the lives of Arun and his comrades. The giant insects were grotesque fairytale monsters whose purpose, as far as the cadets were concerned, was to be an ingredient of the most indecent kind of insults. As to why they were really here, Arun had never heard any more than wild rumor until his interview with Little Scar. And who knew what truth lay behind the words of the Jotuns?
More to the point, Arun had been raised since crèche to know whom to salute and whom he could order around. The Trogs simply did not fit into that neat order. He resented this disruption.
And that made him feel dumber than ever. He couldn’t help but feel he was a champion of humanity facing off against alien competition, and here he was second-guessing himself into knots.
It was very simple, he reminded himself. Little Scar had ordered Arun to cooperate with the Trog scribe, and the colonel was very definitely in the list of people to be obeyed.
So, after a pausing enough to show he was treating the Trog’s words as a request and not an order, Arun shrugged and pushed himself off from his perch. Thousands of hours logged in zero-g training meant the maneuver should have been as natural as walking. Not today, though. Arun’s body had taken such a pounding these past few days that he gasped in pain as he pushed off.
“Do I need to apologize for the injuries inflicted by my species?” asked the scribe.
“No, you don’t. Most of my injuries were handed out by my supposed comrades. I guess we’re a pretty aggressive species.”
“Of course,” said the insect. “That is the species trait your masters recruited you for. What they have been breeding into you ever since.”
“What do you know about what they’ve done to us?”
“Much. I request of you. Please answer my question: what do you see?”
Unsure how he’d been suckered into talking, Arun shut up and looked out the porthole.
“I can see the Serendine orbital elevator, the twin of the one that took us up from the surface. I can see flashes in a ring above the equator. I guess they’re other defense platforms and satellites.” He adjusted his sight to look farther out. “There’s a disk of gleaming silver out at one of the Lagrange points, between us and… one of the moons, I’m not sure which one.”
“Antilles.”
“Right, Antilles. I’ve only got about 4x zoom with my eyes so I can’t resolve the disk, but I reckon it’s thousands of ore cans shot there from the asteroid belt and ready for processing on the moons.”
“What about the planet? Tell me what you see below us.”
“Okay… That’s Tranquility. Nine light minutes from the sun. Two main continents: Baylshore where I live and the other one’s called Serendine–”
“No. That’s not what I mean. If you lived a hundred light years away, you could quote all those facts from a database. But you don’t. This is your home. Do not tell me facts. Tell me what you see.”
“Why?”
There was a pause before the alien replied: “Were you briefed?”
Insubordination from humans was not tolerated. The punishment would be fatal for him, and the demerits would push his battalion comrades further away from ever escaping the Cull Zone. A cadet called Mowad from the 420th had tried to dodge witnessing last year’s Cull. The result was that Mowad found herself on the wrong side of the execution squad and her battalion went from fourth place from the top of the leaderboard down to fourth from the bottom.
“Yes, yes, I was briefed.” Arun spoke hastily. “When I said why, I meant: what do you want me to describe?”
“Tell me what that view means to you.”
Arun shrugged with one shoulder. “Like I said, it’s a planet. Our planet. I suppose it’s beautiful when you stop to look for a while and really see it. I like the way the atmosphere glows as it fades into the black of space. It’s like your tongue, I guess. You don’t think about your tongue 99.9% of the time, but when you do become conscious of it, it’s actually really big, like…” He faded. Tongues were something he’d become aware of recently because he and Springer had kind of been exploring each other’s, but anything to do with sex was definitely off topic. This was the insect creature who had humiliated him. Cadet Prong. Drenting stupid name. Drenting stupid alien who’d made him look so bad and now just perched there staring at him, saying nothing, only speaking out of his stupid voice box.
“I do have a tongue,” said the alien. “If that is what bothers you. We do not consider it a taboo organ.”
“Right.”
“But I do not possess ears. I sense vibrations through my antennae.”
“Okay.”
“Nonetheless, I understand your reference. Antennae are with us from hatching through to death and our final recycling. We do not consider them 99.9% of time, as you say. But when we do they are large and awkward. At those times I do not know where to put them or how to angle them. I feel so self-conscious.”
“Yeah. Well, the planet’s like that. I’ve clocked so many hours in space doing boarding exercises, or waiting for atmos drops or TU attack exercises, that I take it all for granted.”
�
�Very good, Cadet McEwan. Please continue.”
Arun sniffed. It was a dumb exercise but not as difficult as keeping himself from punching this annoying insect. “Down below us,” he continued, “is Beta City. It’s the twin of Detroit, where I’m based, but on the other side of the world.”
“What do you feel about Beta?”
What was with all this about feelings? “It’s a dumb name. I feel contempt. No, that’s too strong. They’re still Marines down there. Mostly.”
Arun looked at the alien, but the voice box was silent, and the insect’s twin pairs of eyes seemed to be prodding him to say more.
“I guess I feel a little curious about them too,” he said. “I mean, Beta is our twin. It’s the depot base for three more Marine tac regiments and one regiment of Marine engineers. Do they train their Marines the same? Probably, though some say the Jotuns forbid the Beta regiments to even mention Earth. The rumor mill also has it that Beta has a space-rat squadron based there.”
“I apologize to interrupt, but I do not understand the term, space-rat.”
“Human spacers. Starship crew. Born out in deep space, most of them. Raised there too, mostly. That’s so frakkin’ alien. Er, no offense.”
“I still don’t understand.”
I still don’t understand. Of course you don’t. You never will because you’re an alien.
That dry mechanical voice got under Arun’s skin and shook him from mild irritation toward rage. It had been that voice that played over and over on those mocking vid recordings plastered all over the base. It was this voice and the alien behind him that had caused so much trouble.
When Arun got angry, all those combat enhancements that turned his body into a killing machine kicked in big time. Right now he needed to either blast something or run 20 miles. Sitting still wasn’t an option. So he pushed away from the porthole set into the dull white plastic wall and shot through the open hatch into the next compartment.
When they’d docked, the alien had asked him to stay and talk in the observation deck. Well, they’d done that. He had never said Arun couldn’t explore.
He emerged at speed into a cramped chamber with a central spine that fed cables into four transparent blisters set into the hull. He swung around the central spine and landed on a gunnery couch in one of the blisters. They looked like Fermi cannons, point defense weapons that could alter the laws of physics in a localized area, hopefully within the guidance system of munitions flung at the defense platform.
He stretched back and saw the Trog was still in the obs deck, struggling against the absence of gravity. Good. It can stay there for a bit.
Floating back to the cannon, he gripped the firing handles and hovered his thumbs over the firing studs, reveling in the power within his hands.
He pressed the studs.
Nothing happened.
The relief took the edge off his anger. He couldn’t sense any power feeding through into the cannons. He hadn’t really thought they were active, but he hadn’t been sure until he tried them.
Arun perched on top of the gunnery couch and waited. The couch was designed for a hexaped – a Jotun, presumably. He’d done a theoretical course on ship weapons, enough to identify the three banks of controls: firing, targeting, and turret traverse. Humans didn’t have enough limbs to operate them without doubling up. In a few weeks Blue Squad were scheduled to learn how to fire these beauties.
Strange, though, that there should be manual controls when the defense platforms were all automated.
The alien was still vulleying around in the other compartment. That was one up for the humans. Arun grinned.
Tired of waiting, he maneuvered over to the spine, surveying the controls there. The platform seemed to be on standby. He guessed that if active, he could control the main armament from here, the x-ray laser. It was a big one. Even the biggest enemy capital ship couldn’t survive a direct hit from this beast on full charge, unless they launched an ocean of ablatives to soak up the power. Problem was, any enemy would probably know that too. There were 30 orbital defense platforms such as this around Tranquility. There were also several hundred dummy platforms, but Arun doubted you could hide for long amongst the fakes. The power build up on the real platforms was so intense, an enemy would have to be blind not to spot them.
Suddenly, the Troggie scribe came tumbling through the doorway at surprising velocity. It was flailing all six limbs, absolutely the worst thing you could do to stabilize yourself in zero-g.
Without thinking, Arun pushed off to help. Just before he grabbed the alien’s limb he nearly panicked. This wasn’t a comrade he was assisting; it was an alien with no reason to love humanity. And Arun was only dressed in fatigues. He didn’t even have gloves.
Half expecting the alien limb to be bristling with spines, slime, or burning acid, Arun felt nothing unpleasant as he instinctively added his inertia to the alien’s, steering him to a stable perch on one of the gunnery couches.
The alien’s limb had felt no different from a human arm except the skin was cold, like a corpse.
“Thank you, my friend.”
The artificial voice in the box around the creature’s neck managed to sound breathless. Arun was impressed. Even the Jotuns couldn’t do that.
“But why did you journey from the observation deck to this gunnery room?” added the voice.
“Why? Why not?”
“Ah, curiosity. At appropriate stages in our life-cycle, we too are consumed with curiosity beyond reason. I myself thirst for an understanding of other species, which is why you and I are here today. You see, we are alike more than you think, young human.”
Arun laughed. He clutched at his middle and span forward as he floated, a never ending forward roll.
“Do you need assistance?” called the alien.
“No.” Arun calmed down. “Why?”
“Your barking noise. And that spinning. Are you malfunctioning?”
“It’s called laughter. It’s a sign of amusement.”
The alien froze in silence. He had hesitated like that before, and Arun began to wonder whether the big bug was consulting an implanted data store. “I understand. You have a violent way of showing amusement, which suits the violent nature of your species. When we laugh, we emit a pheromone and tilt our antennae like so.”
The Trog angled his antennae about 15 degrees to its right. Arun realized the creature had already made this gesture several times, the cheeky little skangat.
Arun shook his head. This was frakking surreal. “Look at you, Trog,” he said. “You say we’re alike but you’re an insect. You live underground in an immense social group and you can’t talk with your own voice because you haven’t got one. You make smells instead. And for frakk’s sake, you’ve got those wiggly antennae things. How can you possibly say we’re alike?”
The alien tilted its antennae about 15 degrees.
“Are you laughing at me?” Arun smacked his palm to his forehead, not quite believing what he was seeing.
“Yes, Cadet McEwan. We laugh together. It is true that we have gross physiological differences, but many of the problems faced by sentient social creatures are the same. Not only do we share similar challenges but many of their solutions too. This is vital because it leads to the possibility of cooperation between species.”
“Isn’t that what Tranquility is all about?” asked Arun. “Our Marine Corps officers are all Jotuns. You Trogs do whatever it is you do, and the Hardits do a lot of mining and maintenance work.”
“Who says that humans must have Jotun officers? Who says that inter-species cooperation must take that particular form?”
Arun had the feeling he was stumbling into a trap. But he was too unimportant to bother with such elaborate deception, so he answered, though with caution. “The White Knights. They say Jotuns must be our officers and that we humans must obey without question.”
Arun expected a response. The Trog said nothing, but it flung its antennae back to run flat along its he
ad. Whatever that meant, it sure wasn’t laughing now.
Was the Trog hinting that the slave species on Tranquility should – what? – get together to share expertise? Or was this something far more dangerous? Was the Trog proposing they should join forces and rise up against the White Knights? Arun was scared to even form such words in his mind. To speak them aloud was unthinkable.
The alien watched him and said nothing for a long time. Then asked: “Why do you obey?”
Arun’s brain replayed a memory. Something the Trog had said just after the auto shuttle had left the orbital elevator. “There are no listening devices on the defense platform,” it had said. “We may speak freely.”
Arun had been bred, upgraded, and trained to fight in space. Being in a tiny bubble of atmosphere in the vacuum had never bothered him until that moment. He suddenly felt cold, vulnerable, and desperately isolated.
Either he was a melodramatic fool dreaming of conspiracies.
Or… he’d somehow been caught up in a rebellion. A fight to win freedom from the White Knights.
Arun kept his mouth rigidly shut, refusing to answer. Neither human nor Trog spoke again, embarking on their shuttle and descending the orbital elevator in silence.
Thoughts of freedom were not just treasonous.
They were insane.
—— Chapter 15 ——
“I bet Sergeant Gupta mentions you,” said Del-Marie from the seat to Arun’s left.
“Unlikely,” answered Zug to his right.
“Shut up the pair of you,” snapped Madge from behind.
Arun let the banter wash over him, happy that his squadmates still acknowledged his existence. And after being hissed at by Colonel Little Scar, and threatened by Checker Squad, any disapproval by their new leader would be nothing.
The 27 cadets of Blue Squad were sitting behind their desks in one of hab-disk 6/14’s briefing rooms, waiting for the first official encounter with their new veteran commander.
After the craziness of the past few days, Arun was looking forward to a simple classroom lesson.
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