by Karen Bao
Because trainees earn their rank by competing with one another, strength matters whether they’re on duty or not. We’ve all heard stories about the top few sabotaging one another—often with deadly outcomes.
“Militia . . .” Anka trails off.
Cygnus throws up his hands, asking me, “You sure you want to do this?”
You don’t have to be eighteen to enlist in Militia. Occasionally, seventeen-year-olds who want to Specialize early join; I’ve also heard about the rare sixteen-year-olds who desperately need money. But out of the nine trainees who died last year, seven were younger than eighteen. Seven dead, out of twelve who were under the official draft age.
What are the odds for a fifteen-year-old? Enlisting at my age has never happened on any base in all eighty-one years of Lunar history.
Costs: potential injury and death, for me. Benefits: a hundred Sputniks per week as a stipend throughout training and a small chance of ranking high and earning enough to pay Mom’s Medical bill. In objective terms, one person’s risk could bring four people’s reward.
I’m determined to carry out my plan for the people I love past reason. I resign myself to the next two years, which will be very different from how I originally envisioned them: filled with textbooks and flora and family.
That’s if I even last two years. And if I do, will all of me come away intact?
“This isn’t the place to argue.” Every few seconds, Umbriel glances over his shoulder to see if people are watching—fortunately, they simply part around us, too concerned with their own problems to care about ours.
As I walk with my family and best friend to the Phi complex, perhaps for the last time, I envy the monotony of their existence. At least they know what tomorrow will bring.
“But it’s three years too early!” Ariel sits cross-legged on his bed, left hand under his rear. Although his body beneath his green Phi robes is relaxed, his eyes are restless. “Giving up on Primary is a total waste of your brain. You could check into Shelter, take that blasted exam, and be back in class by next month.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I yawn. It’s close to my bedtime, and well past Anka’s, but my siblings and I didn’t want to reenter our apartment, where this trauma started. For now, we’re in Caeli’s home, although she has politely hinted that she’d like us to leave. It’s getting late. In the living room, Anka has fallen asleep, her head on Cygnus’s lap. The twins and I have relocated to their cramped bedroom so they can keep trying to change my mind. They’re continuing from where their parents left off. Atlas doesn’t like that I’m leaving my siblings alone in Theta 808 with only a maintenance robot for company, even if it’s better than Shelter. Caeli has agreed to feed and supervise Anka and Cygnus, as long as I compensate the Phis with a small percentage of my trainee stipend.
“Ariel’s going to miss competing with you if you leave,” Umbriel says.
In Primary, Ariel and I usually earn scores within a fraction of a point of each other, setting the curve. Our rivalry has become a running joke. Because of our families’ friendship, we study together and collaborate on group projects rather than sabotage each other. And despite our lifelong academic game of one-upmanship, Ariel’s always been honest with me.
“In all seriousness, Phaet, you could lose yourself there.” Ariel’s voice is mellow, unlike the rumble Umbriel emits when emotion strikes but petrifying all the same. “Like this girl who graduated Primary last year—I saw her slugging a little boy in the Atrium a little while ago.”
“But wasn’t she always sort of . . . emotionally unstable? Phaet’s different. Not the Beater type.” Umbriel turns to me. “But when you’re on your own, people might beat on you.”
“See, Phaet?” Ariel says. “Your plan’s going to hurt you, and everyone else too. Especially my brother, and you both know why.”
Umbriel flushes crimson beneath his tan, opening and closing his mouth like a koi as he struggles to think of a biting retort.
Ariel has ventured into taboo territory. Umbriel and I have never discussed . . . that, keeping it tacit like our other understandings. I’ve known since we were ten, just as I know the night will be cold when my kneecaps hurt during the day: after we complete Militia and Specialization, we’ll carry on as we always have—guarding each other and communicating without words—except with adult responsibilities and, someday, a family. Our plans may sound premature, but we’re lucky. Having someone to trust, even without the “chemistry” Primary girls giggle about rather than study, is more than many citizens dare hope for.
Ariel shrugs off our discomfort. “I only hope this one”—he pokes Umbriel in the ribs—“won’t up and join Militia just because you did, Phaet. He’d steal something dumb in his first week.”
Disobedience in the Militia means immediate dishonorable discharge and permanent pariah status. Consigned to society’s waste bin, Umbriel would have nowhere to go but Shelter.
Cringing, Umbriel dusts off his hands; not even Ariel knows about our secret signal. Umbriel needs to talk to me later, and I’m not looking forward to it.
“What are you two plotting now?” Ariel asks. “Listen, Phaet. If you enlist, you won’t have anyone to talk to—I mean, no one else understands this sign language you guys use. Won’t you wish Umbriel was there? And over here, he’s going to miss you like he’d miss sunshine.”
“We’ll both miss you,” Umbriel says.
“Sorry,” I tell him. “But my mind’s made up.”
“You can’t do this to us!” Umbriel exclaims.
“Or to yourself,” adds Ariel.
“I can, though.” As long as I have a chance at success in Militia, a chance at seeing the twins again after it’s over, I won’t surrender my family to dirt and disease. “I will.”
4
THE EXAMINATION ROOM SMELLS LIKE bleach and ethyl alcohol.
“Phaet Theta,” the tall twentysomething man, Medic Canopus Epsilon, reads off his handscreen. He scrolls through my stats, making assumptions about me based on my birth date, apartment number, IQ, bank balance, parental occupations, et cetera. When he presumably gets to my disciplinary history—my only misdemeanor is stargazing with Umbriel at the greenhouses after hours, long ago—he lets out a choppy laugh. “I hope you’re not that lazy anymore!”
When I don’t laugh or smile, he returns to official business, looking put off by my silence. “Fifteen years of age. Why are you joining Militia so young?”
Shrug.
Canopus raises a perfectly groomed yellow eyebrow, the color of one of Saturn’s rings; his Epsilon robes are the same shade. The white light and white walls of his office match his skin. “Well, let’s see if you’re fit to serve. Looks good so far, except for the hair.”
“Genetic,” I explain.
Mom’s grandmother, long gone now, was completely gray before she turned thirty, though Mom still has hair as black as the outer reaches of space. My great-grandma was born on Earth, in a place called China, which she left to study in the United States. During the petroleum embargo, she fled into the sky with the rest of the Lunar Bases’ founders. If she hadn’t left, she would have suffered through cataclysmic flooding, economic turmoil, and even civil war. She helped design the irrigation system for Agriculture. Mom says I would have liked her, that if she hadn’t been so old, and me so young, we would have gotten along. “Maybe she came back through you,” Mom said.
Canopus pats the examination chair. “Well, have a seat and make yourself comfortable.”
I do. I feel the cold glass backing through my robes and shiver as Canopus fastens buckles around my wrists and ankles. The chair springs into action, measuring my weight and then stretching out into a cot of sorts to take my height. When it suspends me upside down to test my inner ear fluid balance, I fight to keep nausea at bay.
A painful time later, Canopus recites my results. “Average height for a fifteen-year-old female, weight below regulation. Blood composition, heart rate, blood pressure, internal organ functi
on, eyesight, hearing, sensitivity, all normal. Muscle mass percentage relatively high.”
Pride tugs at the corners of my mouth, and Canopus smiles back. Lifting sacks of compost, hacking at wayward tree limbs with a knife, and crawling between dense crops, all while avoiding the spray nozzles in Agriculture’s ceiling, require more exertion and coordination than people imagine. My strength will serve me well in training, as much of my competition hasn’t done physical labor outside of standard conditioning classes in Primary.
“Bones of slightly porous consistency. Take vitamin D tablets during training, okay?” Canopus leans in and whispers: “Listen here—according to your body size and composition, and taking the workouts into account, you need to eat a little over two thousand, two hundred kilocalories a day to maintain your weight. But I’m going to program in four hundred extra. It’ll help.”
“Thanks,” I whisper, genuinely grateful. Maybe I can put on a few kilograms during training.
Raising his voice back to normal, Canopus finishes, “You’re all clear.”
I offer him the back of my left hand. He presses his thumb to my handscreen, waiting for it to register his fingerprint, until CLEARED FOR MILITIA appears in green letters.
“Next!” he calls.
As I exit Canopus’s office, an enormous boy with a bulbous forehead saunters in, looks my small frame up and down, and shoots me a quick smile. I return it, happy that I’ve gotten a pleasant, if not sympathetic, reaction from another member of my trainee class. As Canopus bustles about, gathering equipment, the boy uses the sweat from his palms to slick back curls the color of pecan shells. I laugh quietly—is he preening for a medical examination?
Umbriel is waiting in the lobby of the Defense Department’s Medical quarters. It’s a testament to the magnitude of the Militia that they get their own on-site hospital. “All good?”
Nod.
Although his face distorts with disappointment, he recovers quickly. “That’s great. You show them what you’ve got on Wednesday.”
Every two months, eighteen-year-olds fresh out of Primary start training in a group. The training lasts eight weeks, until the trainees are sorted into their respective units. Each base has its own Militia, but together we are known as the Lunar Forces (I wonder if the physics pun was intended). The need to unite hardly ever arises; Militias individually ward off stray attacks from Earthbound cities, collect intelligence, and police the citizenry.
The last time the Forces acted together was thirty years ago, when the Earthbound superpowers attacked Base I, resulting in the Battle of Peary.
That was when the then-Committee instituted a temporary “emergency rule” that has lasted to this day. They say they’re too busy to schedule elections.
Both my parents fought in the Battle of Peary, driving off the Earthbound for good. Mom rarely speaks of the experience, except to whisper, “What a pity,” when she thinks her children aren’t listening.
Umbriel and I wander out of Defense and into one of the wider pedestrian hallways. Everyone keeps to their right, so traffic is smooth.
“Don’t do this,” Umbriel repeats for the forty-third time this week. He’s agitated, so he strides quickly. I have to jog to keep up. “It’s not too late to drop out. Cygnus checked the reward money for each Militia rank: you’d have to get seventh or higher to make over fifteen hundred Sputniks in prize money. And that would only cover your mom’s treatment. While we’re waiting for that, four hundred a month in stipends won’t even cover your rent.”
We reach the entrance to the Education Department, and I drag Umbriel inside. Sensing our body heat, the automatic portal opens upward for us. As soon as it closes, I grab his wrists. They’re so big in my hands.
“Umbriel, stop.”
“Stop what?” He tickles my palm, but I’m in no mood to laugh.
“Stop talking. I’ll make the top seven.”
“But you’re younger, and smaller, and, er, weaker—”
I tap my right temple with a forefinger.
Most people in our three-hundred-member Primary Level Nine class only know my name because Ariel or I finish first in nearly every subject. Electromagnetism, Human Biology, Calculus, Language Composition . . . Lunar History is one of my two weak areas. It consists of tedious retellings of scientific developments, and Earth Studies is no better—dull scrutiny of the unfortunate beings we left in chaos a century ago.
Because the Earthbound are so disorganized compared to us, that last subject is a particular pain. Earth has too many micro-civilizations to count, each with different languages, governments, and parts-per-million toxicity readings. Although the wild ecology of the planet fascinates me—how does life relate to other life without human interference?—I couldn’t care less about the people. They can’t keep track of themselves; logically, I can’t either. Small wonder Ariel, whose frontal lobe processes the feelings and motivations of countless individuals with ease, always beats me at Earth Studies.
The entryway of Education is dark—it’s late, 22:00. To maintain our bodies’ circadian rhythms during the 352-hour lunar diurnal cycle, all public Departments and main hallways have their lights turned off for ten hours a day to mimic nighttime.
“Look up.” Umbriel’s arm presses me to his side.
Through the small circular window above, I glimpse hints of constellations. Gemini, the twins, glows especially bright. Unwelcome emotion bubbles from my chest up into my throat. I try to withdraw to a thoughtless space inside my head, as Mom once tried to teach me, and ignore this bodily contact and my unwelcome future in Militia.
“I won’t see you tomorrow, because I have late hours at the greenhouse. And your day off isn’t for another month.” He steps away, shoves his left hand into his roomy pants pocket, and lowers his voice to a whisper. “So . . . here goes.”
Umbriel pulls a short stalk of something green and red from his pocket. It’s a rose, one of the most expensive plants in the greenhouses because it serves no other purpose than decoration. He must have used all his tricks to smuggle it out.
I don’t understand why he brought me a flower instead of the usual pear or handful of strawberries. It’ll wilt soon, and I can’t eat it.
Then the anxiety hits. Did someone see him filch the flower? Is anyone listening through our handscreens, or observing us through security pods, objects the size of a big toe that hover soundlessly in the air?
“Phaet . . . I’ve—I’ve wanted to know something for eons. We’ve been friends since—since we were born, right? I’ve needed you for school stuff, and you’ve needed me for people stuff. . . .”
It’s true. After Dad died, I despaired of fielding sympathy, retreated inside myself, and let Umbriel deal with everyone on my behalf. I’d once been talkative, but I soon realized that words wasted my breath. Our arrangement worked so well that when girls in seventh-year Primary mocked my hair and boys yanked it on dares, Umbriel teased them back—and in severe cases, made their belongings spontaneously disappear. Soon they didn’t dare come within a meter of me.
“. . . and now things are going to be harder for both of us. So will you—will you accept this?”
I offer a cautious nod, understanding that his gift has sentimental rather than practical value. What that value is, I’m not sure.
He places the flower into my hand. One of the tiny thorns catches my thumb—Bioengineering hasn’t gotten rid of them yet. A miniature red orb rises on my fingertip, and I figure it’s payback for Umbriel stealing and killing the rose in the first place.
He sighs my name in relief. A chin digs into my forehead; the smell of unripe fruit enters my nostrils. One of Umbriel’s hands cradles my neck, while the other tugs at the small of my back. Something in the air has warped, and I don’t like it. I’ll deal with Umbriel when—if—I get out of Militia alive.
“Sorry,” I splutter, sounding like the apologetic boy from Medical who abducted Mom. I extract myself from Umbriel’s arms and turn back to the entrance, not caring
whether I’ve vexed him. Since Mom left last week, I hardly care about anything.
Umbriel walks me home, all the way to my white cylinder room. When he’s out of sight, my fingers uncoil from the short rose stem. As the flower falls to my desk, another thorn scratches my palm.
5
I HOLD MY SIBLINGS TIGHT, ONE IN EACH arm. Anka can’t seem to grab enough of me, while Cygnus squirms, his wiry arm hanging over my shoulder. Since he turned ten, Mom has had to ask him to hug me. He’s squeamish when he thinks things are “corny” or “girly.”
In contrast, Anka cries freely, pounding her fists against my back in sadness or anger—maybe both.
Cygnus holds the tears in like me. “I’ll make sure Anka gets to class all right, and I won’t play too many sim-games, and if anything gets weird, I’ll run over to Umbriel or Caeli like you told me. . . .”
I squeeze him tighter, and the display of affection finally becomes excessive. He wriggles free.
“It’s 6:45.” Anka wipes tears away as if she’s mad at them for being there. “You should go.”
These two will be fine on their own. At least, I hope so. I hug them again, so that in the absence of loving words, they know how much I care.
For Mom, I remind myself.
My biceps give a spasm of resistance before I let go of my brother and sister.
Our training begins with a review of Lunar history, intended to excite us but accomplishing the opposite.
“A hundred years ago, Earth was in chaos,” an instructor drones, reading from her handscreen. She’s young, unlike the two men standing behind her, but by her carriage I know she abandoned girlhood long ago. Her eyes are long and angled like mine; her face, nose, and lips narrow, as if someone shaped them with a razor. According to my handscreen, she’s Captain Yinha Rho; she holds the minimum rank needed to instruct trainees, and in a full-scale combat situation, she could command up to two hundred soldiers. I’ll always have to remember that she’s more powerful than she looks.