Warchild

by Karin Lowachee

  They wrenched me to my feet. My vision blackened. I tasted blood trickling out the side of my mouth.

  “You gonna fight still?” Dorr asked. My sight slowly cleared. He was obviously a higher rank than anybody here because they all seemed to defer to him. Or maybe he was just the most dangerous.

  “Erret,” the Archangel crewman said. But not to stop him.

  “Yah, comm me,” Dorr said offhandedly, without turning his eyes from me. O’Neil strolled off. This wasn’t his crew and he couldn’t care less if they beat me to death.

  “What’s his name?” Erret Dorr asked Madison.

  “Joslyn Aaron Musey.”

  “Cute. Better get him to Cap.”

  “Should we?”

  “He downed three of us, didn’t he? He’s bloody fem. Toss him to Cap.” Dorr pulled a cigret case from his pants pocket and slid out a stick. He sparked the end with his finger-band lighter and took a drag, smiling at me all the while. In my pain-ridden state I thought vaguely of Falcone and spat blood at his feet.

  He said, “Spunky.” His stare was invasive.

  I didn’t know how serious he was, but I chilled to the bone.

  Dorr laughed, looking into my face. “Take him to Cap, Madi. Before he hypes himself.”

  They dragged me bleeding and bruised back to Macedon— taking the long route, I suspected, just so I’d have to walk with the pain. Station cits and various ship crew stared but didn’t stop us or offer help. The pollies stood by the walls, hands on their sidearms and nightsticks, watching silently. They hardly ever tangled with deep-space jets. The cleanup afterward just wouldn’t be worth it.

  I glared at them as I went, flanked by lawbreakers.

  As we entered the lock all the jets but Madi fell away, disappearing down the corridors like ghosts. I shuffled beside Madison, one arm across my gut where I’d been kicked the most while he held my other arm in a crushing grip, as if I were in any condition to fight or run. I licked the side of my mouth where it stung.

  “Bruised some ribs, prolly,” Madi said brightly. “You got off easy. Nguyen wanted to kill you.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “She shouldn’t have let go her gun, though. And Sanchez, Ricci, and Bucher are gonna want your hide for puttin’ them out. Whooee, you gonna have to watch your six real close.”

  “That mean I passed?”

  “Nah.” He propelled me into the lev. “Command deck. Whether you make it on or not, they gonna come for you.”

  I stared absently at the grated lev door, listening to the hydraulics clank and growl until we jarred to a stop. I felt it in my teeth and marrow. He walked me out. If I’d had anywhere to run to on this damn station, I would have tried for it despite the pain. I didn’t want to be on this ship, with these people, and that pirate of a captain who condoned murder under the guise of recruitment. EarthHub claimed they were more civilized than the striviirc-na, but at least the strivs I knew weren’t sadists. If they took you out they did it without malicious abuse.

  Madi set me in front the captain’s hatch and buzzed. It lit green almost immediately and Madi put me inside. Azarcon watched me from behind his desk, expressionless. He nodded at Madison, who promptly left. I stood alone in front of the man, whose black eyes assessed me like a slave trader’s.

  “Where did you learn to fight?” he asked without preamble, and somehow I wasn’t at all surprised he knew the details of the gauntlet run. Dorr hadn’t come back to the ship with us.

  “The orphanage had classes, sir.” It had, given by volunteers—and symps—in the community. Supposedly I’d been an avid participant since I was nine years old. “That and… outside of the orphanage.”

  “The gun handling?”

  My ribs ached, chomping fire. “Outside of the orphanage, sir. Fell in with a bad crowd. Once upon a time, sir. They taught me.”

  “No arrests.”

  “A smart crowd, sir.”

  “So it wasn’t all legal jobs—hard work, decent pay— was it?”

  “I never killed anybody, if that’s what you’re asking, sir.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking. What other skills might you have that aren’t in this record? That Mr. Mankar might not know?”

  So he’d spoken to the caseworker. Or somebody in his crew had.

  “None, sir.”

  “None?” He shifted in his seat, folded his hands on the desk, and looked at me. A deceptively young face. How many others had taken that face for granted? “What did you do for a year on Genghis Khan?”

  I blinked, shifted my weight. I desperately needed to sit down but he didn’t offer. “What do you mean, sir?”

  “I think it was a clear enough question, Musey.”

  I wiped at the blood on my chin. “He taught me to play poker. To eat nice. To talk properly.”

  “To fire a weapon? To fight?”

  I had overplayed it. “No, sir. I was only eight.”

  “What else, Musey? Because Falcone wouldn’t have kept you for a year if all he did was socialize you. What else did he do?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Did he rape you?”

  I stared. I didn’t breathe. The corners of my sight started to black out. Azarcon didn’t blink. He waited.

  “No. Sir.” I didn’t know what that had to do with anything, besides this man’s own prurient interests. I would have launched across the desk and killed him if I didn’t think he had a gun somewhere beside him or on his person.

  “Are you going to collapse on me, Musey? Because if you do you’ll wake up on dockside.”

  “I won’t, sir.”

  “So you don’t remember what else went on when you were in Falcone’s custody.”

  “Nothing else went on, sir.”

  “Would you like to sit down, Musey?”

  It wasn’t an offer. The longer I stood under his stare, the worse I felt. “Yes, sir, I would like to sit down.”

  “Well, you may sit once you’ve answered my questions. I might even send you to my medbay. Where did you learn to fight?”

  “Sir, on station. In classes the orphanage offered. And among other orphans.”

  “Yes, I spoke to the instructor. She quite remembers you. Mr. Mankar was very clear about monitoring your progress through the years. I myself find it truly impressive you fought off a dozen of my jets, paralyzing three of them no less.”

  “It was a matter of survival, sir. On station as well as with your jets.”

  “Yes… it was. Not unlike Mukudori and Khan. Are you a survivor, Musey?”

  I blinked sweat from my eyes. “I like to think so, sir.”

  “How did you survive a year on Falcone’s ship?”

  What was this man’s agenda, other than testing me when I had physical distractions? Had he known Falcone personally, to be so interested?

  “Sir, I did what he wanted and when I saw my chance I ran.”

  “They teach rather well for free classes. I must recommend them to my jet instructors.”

  I didn’t answer. He didn’t speak for a long time.

  “We’ll talk some more later, Musey. Right now you better get those ribs checked. And that blood cleaned up before you stain my deck.”

  “Yes, sir. Am I in, sir?”

  He stood, resting hands on his desk in a manner that managed to seem both casual and intimidating. He was a tall man. The long eyes stared blackly into my own.

  “Did I say you were in, Musey?”

  “No, sir.”

  He touched his desk and the hatch opened behind me. His gaze shifted over my shoulder.

  “Take him to medbay, Private Madison. Once he’s fit, put him in the brig.”

  * * *

  IX.

  Madison laughed at me all the way to medical. “Cap must really find you interestin’ if he’s botherin’ to keep you in the brig.”

  “I’d rather he bother to let me go.”

  Madi laughed a lot but I wasn’t deceived. He propelled me through heavy double-
plex doors that opened into a wide, white trauma room. A bank of beds lined the far wall with curtain dividers. Gunmetal-gray, mobile examination equipment stood at silent attention in one corner. The overhead scans were folded up toward the ceiling, their grips rubbed raw from use. Locked cupboards, windowed private rooms, labs, and offices ran around the main area like satellites around a station, broken only by the lines of shut doors. The place smelled of sterility and clean air. Crew clad in pale gray BDUs, immaculately smooth, attended to a few griping patients on flat examination tables in the center of the room.

  A tall, white-haired man approached us. On his arms were black commander chevrons and the twin snakes patch that marked him Chief Medical Officer. The name badge said Mercuric. His gray eyes pinned me like a specimen under a scope.

  “New victim, Doc,” Madi said.

  “Put him on exam three.”

  Madi obeyed the man’s brisk tone and almost shoved me to the table. Wincing, I climbed up and sat, sagging from the relief of finally being stationary. Mercurio tilted my head and looked me over face to chest with almost rough competency. Then he lifted an injet from a mobile tray by the table and loaded it with a capsule.

  “What’s that?” My arms tightened around my body protectively.

  “Lie back.”

  “What’s in that?”

  But Madi took hold of my shoulder and pushed me back. I had no choice. I held my ribs and stared up at the flat round lights high in the ceiling. Mercurio shoved my arms away and pulled up my sweater.

  My heart jumped, then the injet kicked in, right in my stomach. An intense heat spread out from my gut to my extremities, dissipating in sharpness as it went. I took deep, painful breaths and tried to stop my heart from racing. Mercurio pulled over a portable scanner, gripped the wide handles with his eye pressed to the scope, and bent over my chest. The instrument hummed as he ran it up and down my body and over my arms and legs. The liquid he’d injetted highlighted all my innards. It was a standard procedure, now that I realized what it was.

  His head was close and the hair was dark at the roots. His hands weren’t as old as that white hair suggested. His forehead was only vaguely lined. I had to clench my fists to stop myself from shoving him away.

  Finally he straightened and pulled a slate from his gray lab coat, tapped at it briskly. Everything about him was that brisk, as if he had better things to do. He looked at me with cool eyes.

  “You’ve broken your wrist before.”

  “Yes, sir.” I pulled my sweater down and tried to sit up without aggravating my ribs. Impossible.

  He held my head in one hand. “Close your eyes.”

  I did, not liking it. He sprayed my face with something that smelled strongly of astringent and burned the cut on my mouth the same. I clenched my teeth and he dabbed at my face and sprayed something else that left a metallic taste on my tongue. My lip tingled like tiny legs were crawling over it. Bot-knitters closing the cut. He wiped my face roughly after a couple minutes and I saw the minuscule dead bots speckled on the cloth like ashes. For some reason my stomach lurched and I felt the blood drain from my face. I took several deep breaths. Mercurio gazed at me until I got over it, then he finally injetted the painkiller. Welcome relief, though Madi stared and some of the other patients in the room stared all through it, recognizing me for a stranger.

  “Put him to lie down,” Mercurio said to Madison. He wasn’t going to do anything about the bruises on the rest of my body. Maybe that was on the captain’s orders. And to me, with a detached kind of concern: “Give the ribs a rest. The painkiller has a healing agent as well; it’s best if you’re stationary.”

  I wanted to tell him that was up to the jets who’d stomped on me, but one of them stood beside me. The doctor walked off and a medic came up to fix the tray of tools. I slid down, pressing gingerly at my side, and walked where Madison directed. Quite suddenly I wanted to sleep. Maybe they’d let me in the brig. At this point I didn’t care where.

  “You’re a quiet one, ain’t you,” Madi commented as we walked. “Or is it because you’re plotting?”

  ‘Take your pick.”

  He laughed. He took me down a couple levels, to a part of the ship that seemed completely removed from any other area. Unmarked hatches lined the blank corridors. It was so quiet I couldn’t hear anything but the silence itself. With the ship in dock, not even the drives hummed. This was so deep in the innards you could probably yell all you wanted and nobody would know. Which was the point.

  Madison directed me through a triple reinforced hatch. The brig bulkheads were scarred from laser bolts and the temperature decidedly lower than where we’d just been. Ten cells stood in an L shape around one half of the room, each large enough to hold about twenty men standing, though there were only two sets of bunks in each. On the right was the security station console, presently unattended. Madi put me in the nearest cell to the hatch. The lock beeped when he shut the gate.

  “Enjoy,” he said, cut the lights, and walked out.

  * * *

  X.

  I sat in the dark, unmoving.

  Sometime later I realized my head was nodding, so I lay back on a lower bunk, under the blankets where it was warmer. The black bled into my sight until it filled my head. The only light came from the tiny red glow on the lock. I shut my eyes because it made no difference. No matter where I looked I saw Falcone.

  The dark was his ship, where ten of us had sat huddled, where I’d wormed into the protection of Evan’s arm. I tried to remember their names but only recalled Evan and Adalia and Tammy. The dull pain from my ribs numbed my thoughts. The painkiller made things bleed together. Or inconstant memory made traitors of survivors. Where were they now? Probably dead.

  Niko was a dream. Maybe I’d dreamed it all on that planet, with the sea and the trees and the strange, deadly creatures with white faces and black eyes. Niko was a cruel dream, the kind that made you want to stay forever, made your reality even worse when you awoke. I wanted to doubt that he’d cared anything for me. He’d put me here, this far away and in this kind of specific danger that he must have known would be just like after Mukudori had died.

  But I couldn’t doubt him. Instead like a masochist I ran the memories through my mind. The way he’d held me before sending me away.

  The thoughts made my eyes ache, but that was all. I knew how to step out of myself.

  I wanted to take out the optic receptors. I could feel them like a layer of skin over my corneas. They hadn’t done a thorough security scan of my body yet. The receptors were water and silicon based. They shouldn’t show up on anything but a direct intensive examination. That was what Niko said. If Macedon’s crew caught them on me I would be lost in this brig forever.

  But maybe I was lost already and they just refused to tell me.

  * * *

  XI.

  “Lights, one hundred.”

  They came up, burning through my lids. I blinked and squinted toward the brig hatch. Out of the blur materialized Erret Dorr. He came toward my gate and leaned a shoulder against it. I didn’t know how long I’d slept but my eyes felt gummy and my ribs stiff and sore. The painkiller was beginning to wear off. I forced myself to sit up, slightly bent over so my head wouldn’t bang the top bunk. All my muscles and bruises protested any sort of movement. I raised my eyes to meet Dorr’s, felt them water to combat the dryness.

  The cold air in the brig sucked moisture. I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders.

  He studied me silently, dressed in uniform. Black from neck to boots, battle dress, and a holstered sidearm, with corporal stripes on his arms above a fierce lion insignia shield. He looked like a lion himself, hair untied, long loose waves just past his shoulders, pale and bright. Everything about him put me ill at ease. I couldn’t stop thinking of Evan when I looked at him, and Evan was dead.

  And Dorr had beat me down on station. I didn’t forget that.

  He let the silence carry for quite a few minutes, then laughed that d
evil’s laugh, despite the angel’s face.

  “You don’t speak, do you? Everyone else who gets in this brig either swears to the solitary stars or pleads like a man with a monster hard-on.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  “How’re the ribs?”

  A direct question. His eyes, despite the mockery, were laser-pointed.

  “Fine.”

  “Did Merc work his voodoo on you?”

  I shrugged and studied him. He seemed unperturbed.

  “Witch doctor Mercurio. He worse than us jets.”

  He talked like a tunnel rat with a deceptive, lilting accent, but nothing was said casually.

  “You a cute fem.” His dimples showed deep.

  I was glad of the gate between us. “What do you mean ‘fem’?” It was an insult, of course, and I had my suspicions.

  He surprised me by answering straight. “The acronym. FFM. Fresh fuckin’ meat. Fem.” He smiled. “Femme.”

  “Spell “acronym,” Dorr.”

  He laughed and looked at me twice. “Musey. Muse. You’re past cute and on to entertaining.”

  “I’m more entertaining with a gun.”

  “A brain. Whoa mano.”

  “Where’re the rest of you—raping and pillaging?”

  “Nothin’ to pillage on this damn station.” Big grin.

  I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

  “So you grew up on Austro, did you?” he continued.

  Sent by Azarcon, I was sure of it. “Yeah.”

  “What was it like? I mean, after a ship.”

  I shrugged. “I was young on my ship.”

  “Austro is big. It can swallow even Mac.”

  “Stations are just big ships that don’t move.”

  He found this extremely funny. He said, “And planets are big stations with oceans and mountains?”

  I was surprised he knew those words. Most crews, and jets especially, were very shipcentric.

  “Yeah.”

  He loved that thought. He leaned his cheek on the bars and kept grinning at me. I thought then that he wasn’t much older than me, that maybe he really was his apparent age. “You ever been on a planet?” he asked.