Thwip looked after Kevlin, then turned into the briefing room. Upchainers, uniformed and brisk, officers led by Captain Curt Sawyer, three in total, sat in a row behind a flat arc desk under a black, glossy wall boasting the geometric P2 crest.
Shit. Where’s Sentinel? Thwip stood at attention in front of the group, and stared straight ahead at the dark version of himself the wall reflected.
Everyone in the Nativity knew who the seven generals at the top of the chain of command were, and next, below, the shiver of sixteen admirals who served in different regions and offices; as top military leaders they were all public figures. The rest of the military chain remained a mystery. Command revealed little of itself to any single officer. Thwip didn’t know the chain above Commander Sentinel and her unit handler, Captain Aullust, or Captain Sawyer, who ranked lateral to them and, as head of all captains assigned to P2, served as the liaison to the elite report chain. Recruits were rankless and so technically belonged to him until Sentinel transitioned them out of roselaurels, but Thwip hadn’t seen him since his group’s first day in UTS, when he arrived to watch from the bleachers and Pilo briefly introduced him.
Captain Sawyer wore the steel glare that military officers mastered in OCS and that usually characterized younger junior captains who weren’t yet comfortable letting their records demand respect. The two officers sitting to either side of him did not offer their names or ranks and, while more relaxed, looked displeased to be present.
“Are we schoolchildren?” Captain Sawyer barked.
“No, sir,” Thwip said, confused.
“Love letters!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you deny these events?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you defend them?”
“Yes, sir. I used them to protect the safety and honor of my unit—”
“You are not in a unit, recruit!” the captain snapped.
Thwip swallowed and continued. “Yes, sir! I meant recruit group. Recruits live by the words that appear throughout the elite modules: ‘You Are Safe with Your Unit.’ Within our recruit group, that safety has been compromised. Recruit Kevlin acted dishonorably; he—”
“Do you mean, exactly as you have acted?” said the officer on the left, silencing him. She moved her fingers over the flat arc, preoccupied, and Thwip got the fuzzy sense that she might outrank Captain Sawyer. “You didn’t make a report. Recruit Kevlin made one before you arrived.”
Thwip reported the entire sequence of events, from the first suspicious training sim errors experienced by his fellow recruits to how he planned to bait the intel he needed to file an official report.
The officer to the right of Captain Sawyer leaned back in his seat, evaluative, his hands folded in front of him. “You have access to the lab. If recruit, what was it—Magi—if that recruit was indeed sabotaged last night, it says here in the recruit module logs that you were the last to review the suit she used, so that suggests to me that if there is a saboteur, it is you, and you wiped the evidence. Blaming the act on recruit Kevlin, who doesn’t have your PT skills, would be a clever offensive maneuver.”
Thwip’s empty stomach churned, he felt sick. “I was using the investigative tasks I learned here—”
“You are not tasked to test the loyalty of your recruit group.”
The officer on the left looked up at the officer on the right. “Although, since he appears to be skilled at it, he might make a fine roselaurel trainer.”
Thwip’s jaw clenched.
“It’s an interesting thought,” the man replied. “Yes, I see where you are going.”
“Tell me,” she said to Thwip, looking at him for the first time, “how is your relationship with Commander Sentinel?”
No—
“I believe it’s excellent, sir.”
Images of undiscovered planets and unexplored deep space surfaced in his mind, all unreachable without military assignment. I’ll shed my RLs and become unit-ready, only to be assigned to the RL unit. All of my missions will be close to P2. It’s a life sentence of static!
Thwip registered that he was sweating and that the room was silent. He glanced at Captain Sawyer to read his expression, but his face was still, his eyes fixed beyond Thwip. Thwip used the reflective P2 crest facing him from the wall above where the officers sat to see rearward.
In the angled, fractured folds of the crest, he saw the reflection of a tall figure leaning into the room from the corridor, suited in a black trepid suit and hardhood, face concealed. Sleek molded wings marked both sides of the elite’s hardhood; their tips protruded past the skull-shaped curve of the top.
Those weren’t horns on the SJ’s hardhood at Leto Cross—they were wings.
Wings angled toward the upchainers, and their quiet became disquiet. He turned toward Thwip, and Thwip knew he was being thoroughly scanned, from heartbeat to history.
The flat arc flashed. Captain Sawyer’s fingers tickled across its surface. He looked up at Wings, then eased his chair back from the arc.
He’s outranked. And intimidated.
Although it was unusual to do so, Wings set the top portion of his hood’s face mask to transparent. In the crest behind the officers, Thwip could see Wings’ dark-mixed eyes, making eye contact with him in the reflection.
Thwip’s heart hammered in his ears.
He turned to face the man, though he hadn’t been commanded to do so.
Wings’ hood resumed opacity, leaving Thwip faced with inscrutable solid-black hardhood as he jerked his head once in signal for Thwip to follow him outside the room, and then left soundlessly.
“A final question before you depart,” Captain Sawyer said, his tone abruptly tempered. “Who else knew about this?”
Thwip turned back to him. “No one. The honeypot was my plan alone.”
Captain Sawyer and the two officers leaned over the arc table, murmuring, but before they cleared the previous data for their joint work, Thwip read it upside down:
THIS ONE IS MINE.
Captain Sawyer looked up to see Thwip still present. “Dismissed.”
Thwip caught up to Wings in the corridor. Receiving no instruction, he followed behind, feeling small, and numbing himself to what was coming next.
At least I didn’t wash anyone else out with me. Except, hopefully, Kevlin.
Wings swiped in to a restricted section that Thwip didn’t have access to. Thwip walked behind him in silence, distracting himself from his anxious thoughts by counting his steps down the dark corridors, a focus habit he’d picked up in boot. About a kilometer later they arrived at a corridor that led toward the exterior of P2. Thwip estimated that they were near the departure modules.
Command’s downgrading me into infantry. I’ll be sent to the Red Theater. Or worse, they’re sending me home to Altrio to become a civilian.
He hoped to see one of his group members so they would know what was happening to him, so that he could pass them some signal, some last exchange. The corridors broadened through a main artery of the base, wide enough to move large companies and freight. It was currently unused and dark, and so they passed no one. Drifting after Wings’ black trepid in his near-white greys, Thwip began to feel like a ghost trailing a reaper. The close-up of the rotating hardhood and the dead pirate’s face, that precise execution—and now, a day later, following the silent executioner through dead corridors to confront his own fate: it was more than a metaphor. They veered left. The corridor narrowed gradually until they were walking single file. There were no labels, markings, or arc wall panels, and there was no light. Thwip listened for orienting sounds and heard only his nervous heartbeat.
The corridor turned right, and dead-ended. Wings touched the wall, and a seamless entryway revealed itself and unsealed. Thwip followed him into a spacious departure module, too large for the three people gathered inside. Their hoods each bore a unique symbol that his eyes strained to see in the darkness—crescents, swirls, layered wisps. Their gear was all custom. It was al
l trepid.
Two worked at the module’s arc wall, which displayed a docking countdown three minutes from zero; the other unsheathed and sheathed a gravis, checking personal weaponry. To a civilian, it would look as if the four suited officers, standing in silence and facing different ways, were unwilling to engage one another. Thwip tried to imagine what they were saying inside their private hardhood loop.
Maybe if I just explain that I used appropriate intelligence tactics, the ones they taught me—
The posture of the three changed at once. They became more alert, turned toward Wings. The slimmest turned emphatically, with palms up as though incredulous, then paced and jabbed a finger at Thwip and then at the entry. Thwip saw that the wisps on the elite’s hardhood appeared to be feathers.
Feathers wants me out of here now. Shit. It’s over.
Feathers circled Wings, gesturing angrily, then turned and paced back and forth again. The light from the arc was enough that Thwip noticed a series of fine lines grooved into Feathers’ suit at the nape.
Those are only given to black-skull units. They’ve been together for at least ten years.
Wings turned toward Thwip and spoke to him through his external hardhood aurals. “I am the commander of this unit.” Feathers stopped pacing and flanked him.
In the reflection of Wings’ hardhood, Thwip saw his own face, beardless and smooth. He looked calmer than he felt, but suitless and with his skin exposed, he knew he couldn’t defy their trepid bio scans. They would read his elevated heart rate, know he was nervous.
“Yes, sir.”
“You will not be able to communicate with anyone without explicit permission from this point forward.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That includes your trainers and your recruit group.”
My agreement with Disar. They’re washing me out, and I won’t be able to inform her. I’ll never see her again. “Yes, sir.”
“You will not speak to your family. A specialist will take media samples from you and will correspond with your primary civilian relations, maintaining cover. Everything is classified until hashed specifically otherwise. Do you understand these immediate requirements?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then repeat them back to me.”
Thwip repeated the requirements.
“You will continue to be known by your call name, and no one will know your true name. No one will know your deeds, no one will know who you are or were. Except for us. Your training has taught you that a unit is more than a team, and that our work is more than a job. You will never be out of the fight. Knowing this, do you, Thwip, consent to be in this unit?”
Thwip hesitated, confused. “This unit, sir? I don’t understand—”
“Your answer, recruit.”
I’m—what—he’s recruiting me? I have an agreement with Disar. Unit selection is mutual. If I go back into the recruit group, I don’t know what will happen. Sentinel considers this unit to be one of the best.
“Yes, sir.”
“Report to the PT lab. Await instruction.”
The Commander exited the module. Feathers followed him.
The other two returned to the arc wall. With his eyes adjusting to the low light, he could see that the swirled hood design of the one whose height drew even with his own and Wings’ was a space-eye view of a hurricane’s spiral pattern. The hood belonging to the shortest of the four held a crescent of tiny lines on each side, the details of which Thwip couldn’t make out in the dimness. Hurricanes looked over his shoulder and nodded to him.
Shit, I’m staring like some fresh-off-the-surface civilian. Thwip exited, following his orders.
An hour later he stretched out on specialized equipment that he had never seen before, in a highly classified part of the PT lab that he hadn’t known existed. Personal techs well above his access level gave him their full attention as they scanned his head and prepared to print the pieces for his set of customized trepid gear.
A dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed officer wearing a black silla suit stepped forward when the first round of scans was finished, scattering the techs to their tasks. The whites of her eyes were bright against her rare dark-black genoming. The effect was stunning. It made her look like a living shadow. Hashes across her triceps marked her as elite intelligence, but did not list her rank. She guided Thwip to an empty private office at the back of the high-clearance portion of the lab, swiped into his order agreement on the office’s arc wall.
“Swipes here.”
Thwip swiped in. Military positions had static compensation based on year, rank, and decoration, so there was nothing to negotiate. The only decision he had to make was to confirm that the allocation of his credits and death benefits would remain unchanged from what he had chosen upon entering recruit selection. Thwip reapproved his parents as his beneficiaries and accepted the agreement’s terms.
The last clause contained a contract bonus that he hadn’t seen before. “Sweetener?”
“You’ll want to answer that section.” An officer in an arrow suit with a hustling posture and light brown hair strode into the office. The shadow officer lowered her eyes briefly for the newcomer in a deferential, informal nod and exited, waiting outside.
“Sir, don’t say anything.” The officer stepped up to the arc and reviewed his progress. Her movements were confident, but her voice was purposefully quiet. Where her suit should have borne department hashes, it was instead blank. “Remember not to answer anything that doesn’t have to do with your instructions to fulfill your agreement and gear printing, and not to say anything beyond that. Don’t offer information.”
Thwip nodded once.
“Officers who accept missions tied to locations outside the Nativity’s main infrastructure zones for longer than one year receive sweeteners: an item or service they may request as a personal comfort or for personal enhancement. Novas are rarely deployed that long to anywhere they can receive excess freight, so it’s uncommon to see sweeteners on your contracts. It’s confidential, along with the rest of your information, and wouldn’t be included if it weren’t important. Don’t be modest and skip it. If the request isn’t possible, they’ll kick it back and ask for another request, but usually for elites it’s not a problem, so ask for what you truly want. I’ll handle the boarding details of your freight.”
She glanced to the shadow officer outside as though checking her perimeter for enemies, split the arc’s data and observed the time, then stepped away and waited for him to hash in his sweetener request. After he’d finished, she gestured the shadow officer to return.
“Swipes here.”
Thwip swiped out of the contract. The shadow officer swiped out after him, identifying herself as a witness, and then the blank officer did the same. They both departed in silence, and he returned to the techs. When they asked him what he wanted designed on his hardhood, the reality and finality of his new position sank in: instead of forming a unit from his recruit group in the usual way, he skipped unit selection and workup. Now he belonged to a top, experienced unit.
P2’s head tech sat down across from him over a flat arc. The skin around his eyes creased with lines at the corners, and his mussed hair showed patches of grey, as though he couldn’t be bothered to get it treated; that made him for at least eighty. The tech team arrived, waited.
What symbol should represent me for the rest of my life?
The HT leaned forward. “Perhaps something from your last mission, connected to whatever raised you out of your roselaurels? That tends to be the traditional choice.”
Thwip grinned to himself. “Could you do something with honey?”
The HT nodded, gestured him onto a trepid incline. He lay back with his hands behind his head as his lower extremities were scanned and measured, chuckling darkly at the way his fortunes had turned.
Eighteen hours later they released him in a temporary arrow suit and hood. Following instructions, he found himself alone in the same departure module as ear
lier, this time with the opposite wall open to a waiting craft. He walked through, ascending into darkness that required his hardhood to navigate.
That night he quartered with four strangers on the largest military ship in the fleet. As he fell asleep, he allowed himself to think the word forbidden to him as a recruit, the word that they had trained themselves to avoid since they’d arrived at training.
Nova. I’m a Nova.
“Don’t clutter chatter during crucials. When not sure about protocol, be polite, even downchain. Maintain secrecy at all times. What happens in the loop stays in the loop. If in doubt, create the situational report, run the diagnostic, supply the information, ask the question. Don’t assume, know. No questions yet though, not until after we’ve got you on level. After that point, ask all you need, routines, protocol, insight—there are years’ worth you’ll need to know, so it’s expected. In the meantime keep up—keep your hood on and your suit active. Do not skip out on the medica’s protocols and checks. Gear oath: respect it. Honor concept: worship it. Unit over all. That’s how Crave likes it. It’s the best way, so that’s how we all like it. If you want to suggest changes, evidence your proposals with data. Never mind the rapid-fire instruction; your SOCs will archive this, so you can review it later. Day one, here we go.”
A face appeared on Thwip’s trepid IF connection for the first time. Thwip squinted, looking low and right to see it minimized on his peripheral, since he couldn’t yet control how data was emphasized and magnified on his innerface. The name SKREGS showed briefly under the new face.
“Welcome to the Vesper, the only ship of its kind. On the outside it looks like a freighter, but the exterior can be ejected, and here we are underneath, a stealth-caliber battlesurge carrier. Nonthreatening on the outside, hooah! on the inside.” He patted the Vesper’s corridor wall. “I’m Skregs. Specialty: terrestrial warfare and ops.”
Skregs’ skin tone was a light tan, the coveted genoming color known as perfect blend, and he wore his hair tight on the sides, with a strip of longer hair down the center of his head. He was the shortest of the unit, the one with the crescents chased along the sides of his hardhood in fine detail. What Thwip hadn’t been able to see in the dark at first was that the crescents were outlined with tiny bones. The first thing he thought when he woke up this morning to see Skregs leaning over him, suited and hooded, was “Sickle Moon o’ Bones” because he didn’t yet know Skregs’ call name.
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