by M. ORENDA
Agree. Disagree. Doesn’t matter. He took an oath to defend the helpless, not to make their decisions for them.
“Why did you tell me this?” he asks, wishing she hadn’t, as if he can somehow get back to the moment he didn’t know.
She gazes at him, and again, it’s like she’s listening. Then she looks away, back to her windows. “Niri believes you are a hero.”
“She’s wrong.”
The woman puts her hand on the glass again, fingers stroking along its surface, a subtle smile crooking her lips. “We will see.”
Voss finds Petra sleeping under guard in one of the exam rooms, her body a slender lump under a tousled grey blanket. Her face is half-buried in the pillow, black hair a mess, lips parted. She’s managed to curl herself along the mattress, one hand extended over its edge, fingertips still stained with blood.
The space is tiny, with a solitary fluorescent light glowing above her, and the walls floating in murk. There’s a stool beside the bed, and he sits on it, realizing after a moment that he can hear her breathing.
He listens. And for a while that works, the soft intake and exhale.
A rhythm. A lifeline.
He leans forward, head bowed, hands folded between his knees. You fight those among your own kind who have no social conscience, who kill without mercy, whose lust for power overrides all obligation to life, and greater society.
He grimaces.
Petra draws breath, a whisper, almost soundless, the rise of her chest hidden by the sheet.
Images come, her hands grasping his armor, her blood leaking through torn fabric, the unconscious flutter of her eyelids as he held her.
You defend humans from other humans.
He’s numb, and the weight of years seems heavier, inescapable, and purposeless. Save Earth. Rebuild it. But rebuild it to serve who? Or what? It’s the question he should have asked the men who recruited him all those years ago, though they would have shut him down, told him to mind his fucking place.
To those who recruit, the fine print on the contracts is irrelevant because the purpose is all around, and it’s obvious. Defend civilization. Provide the conditions for things to improve. Be the one on the battlefield who represents what’s still good in us, who distinguishes the aggressors from the defenders, who preserves what infrastructure remains, who abhors unnecessary slaughter, who treats the wounded, gives food and shelter.
Get past that, get to be one of the guys who actually do the work, and there’s no time for questioning the big picture. Missions take their toll, and men become brutal, creased faces, and coarse beards, restless, and eager for combat, those strict ROEs that protect civilians sometimes a hindrance.
Rise in the ranks, and the adrenaline-fueled business of war becomes pure mathematics, ruthless when it comes to error, a science governed by the distances on maps, the speed vehicles, of aircraft, of a team moving through the rubble, the effective ranges of weapons, the rate of travel for projectiles, the time it takes to bleed out from a stomach wound.
He doesn’t remember any other way of thinking, any other version of himself. It’s automatic. There’s no switch for seeing the silver lining. No trust when it comes to what’s coming next, and maybe it’s all for the best. He sees the worst case, like all who suffer the nightmares, and the memories, who still partially exist in the places they’ve left behind.
It seems idiotic now, that he ever genuinely believed Red Filter corporations were trying to fix it, that they had some ethical solution, a miracle plan. Of course, they’re not saving humanity. They’re altering it for profit. They’re not bringing peace. They’re investing in the idea that humans aren’t capable of it. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it does.
A fucking knife in the back.
“Who beat the hell outta you?” Petra’s voice cuts through the thought, a harsh whisper. “Looks like you just got bested, though I think it’s unlikely. More of a black moment, maybe… the kind that settles on such as you.”
He looks at her, finding that she hasn’t moved, just opened her eyes, warm and glittering, moisture crystallized on her lashes. She presses her lips together, considering his silence. “You got bested, or what?”
“It’s good to see you too,” he says, forcing a soft smile for her benefit.
“They’re shipping you back in chains?” she asks. “Because I’ve got a bolt cutter, and one track left, though it coughs.”
“I’m staying here.”
She smiles at that, flushed, almost girlish. Then she catches herself and looks away, trying to bring the cynic back. “You still a colonel, or are you planning a life of Red Filter crime?”
“I’m responsible for this station now.”
Her gaze returns, her eyebrows peaked. “You impressed them with all this damage? Maybe you should have burned it to the ground, get yourself named Emperor, and erase my convictions.”
“I’m keeping you here.”
“What?”
“Something’s happened.”
“I can’t be kept places.”
“Petra---”
“I’m your prisoner now? Who---”
“Niri has been… taken over.”
Petra hesitates, her expression changing. “What are you talking about?”
“Something’s living here, in the caves. It’s native to Mars. It’s intelligent. It’s very intelligent, sentient. Niri was designed to communicate with it. She did that, and she’s not herself anymore.”
He can see the horror in her face. She cycles through emotions he can’t read, unable to speak until the anger takes over for her. “What did you let them do?” She cries. “How could you let them do it?”
She tosses her sheet and pushes off the bed to confront him, full of irrational fury, something he’s seen only when a specific nerve is touched.
Voss stands his ground, catching her before she can swing, or kick him. “Petra,” he says softly. “Stop it.”
“You let them do it. This is what they do. They take everything. They destroy everything. She’s a girl, but to those vicious murderers, she’s nothing. She’s nothing. They’ll use her, and rip her apart, fiber by fiber. They’ll kill her, and they’ll leave her body broken.”
“Hey.” He grabs her wrists but holds them gently, because she’s not talking about him. She’s not even talking about the NRM. She’s talking about the life she’s led, and the attack that left her childless, and a little black-haired girl who is always going exist as Niri in some way.
“Come back to me,” he says.
She folds inward, grabbing onto him for support, security, whatever he represents in her Copernican sphere of attractions and repulsions. He slides his arms around her, knowing what he’s about to do is ethically murky, and carries a high risk for both of them.
“She trusts you,” he continues. “She trusts me, and she trusts Logan. I need you to help me sort this. I need you to help find out if she’s still there, and if she can be brought back. I need to know what we’re dealing with inside this station, and in those caves, and in the NRM.”
Petra takes a moment to breathe, think.
He waits.
Then she nods against his shoulder. “You think she’s still there?”
“Logan thinks she is.”
“And you want to get her back?”
“Yes.”
“And defend against new attacks?”
“That too.”
“With me as what? Head of lying and thievery?”
“Chief of Procurement,” he says, holding her for longer than he needs. “Sounds better.”
“Sounds tied-down. What about my independence?”
Voss notices that she hasn’t pulled away either. “I don’t think it’s in jeopardy. Do you?”
She doesn’t answer, tucking herself in just a little tighter. “What about my crew. You going to have this entire station run by criminals making illegal money on the side?”
“Maybe.”
“Strange allianc
e.”
“History is full of those.”
She goes quiet, allowing the silence to express things she’ll never tell him.
He understands the place they’re in, and perhaps there are no real words, certainly none that he knows, but there is weightlessness to the moment, an answer to all of the sharp, broken pieces, and the purposelessness that narrows the seeable world.
“Okay,” she says. “We’re allied… again.”
She slides her hand up around his neck, raising herself so that her lips brush against his, softness after pain, pulling him down into it. He lets her hair slip through his fingers, and then traces them down her back, letting her do as she will, in the way she wills it.
Questionable captain.
God-awful spy.
Alive and breathing because he wouldn’t let her go.
It’s a moment of quiet before the storm, something she’s seizing just for this purpose, tugging him down into the narrow bed. He’s falling, and it’s easy because he’s already been here, and he knows how good it is. No awkwardness, no need to ask permission, just mutual need, mutual exertion, binding in release the way they do, her breath ragged in his ear, her hands digging into his back.
He settles afterward, drifting to sleep with his head tucked against her, and her fingers swirling circles at the back of his neck. Nothing comes, his fire bases lost in warmth, the whisper of alien voices drowned in the steady rhythm of a human heartbeat. The end of one world and the beginning of the next.