Warchild

by Karin Lowachee

  A comp lay open facing Laceste as she sat across the desk from me. The room had that ever-present cold metal scent of recycled air. I tried not to be too obvious about looking around.

  “Musey, you seem to handle firearms quite well.”

  “I’ve had some experience, sir. Plus, I’ve been told, a certain affinity.” Enas-dan had thought so.

  “Yes.” Laceste clasped her hands on the desk and looked at me, not with hostility, but pure professionalism. Completely unreadable. “Once in a while we are fortunate to obtain that recruit who seems made to be a jet.”

  I decided I wasn’t going to say anything unless prompted. The more I opened my mouth, the more opportunity they would have to grill me.

  “Aside from your firearms ability, you’re also an instinctive fighter. I suppose as an orphan you had reason to be.”

  “Yes, sir, you can say that.”

  “How did they treat you on Austro?”

  These officers lulled you into a false sense of security then struck. I hadn’t expected anything else.

  “‘‘They,’ sir?”

  “The officials. The station itself. How was it, as a place to grow up? Especially for a shipborn youth like you are.”

  Unwavering eyes. Had I not been used to such stares I would have faltered. Her voice was not particularly aggressive but I had no doubts about the uniform she wore and the man who ultimately commanded her.

  “Austro is big and they have good programs, good people. A lot of opportunities, even for orphans or… poor people. They try to help you best they can, sir. It wasn’t a bad place to grow up. The war doesn’t really touch it.”

  “I’ll tell you now, generally we prefer recruits with a shipboard background. They adjust easier to the life of a carrier; they understand certain rules better. Do you remember a lot from your childhood aboard Mukudori?”

  I scratched the bridge of my nose briefly.

  “Honestly, I don’t remember a whole lot, sir. Images, mostly. Feelings. Flashes of things. My parents… I remember our quarters.” I stared at the corner of her desk before I realized I was doing it and dragged my eyes up to her face. If anything the reaction would seem real. In this, I was telling the truth. But I still didn’t want to give them any opportunity to run a more intensive psych eval on me.

  “Well, you certainly have been through a lot for such a young man. And kept your nose relatively clean.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, because something needed to be in that gap of silence.

  “How’re you getting along with your berthmates?”

  “Nothing to complain about, sir.”

  “Carriers are very communal places, no different in many ways from merchant ships. Or Universalist ships. I can see that you might develop into a good leader. I’d like to help you develop that side of yourself.”

  I was mildly surprised. I let it show. “Thank you, sir.”

  “That year you were aboard Genghis Khan,” she said finally.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, because she waited for a response.

  “How did you cope?”

  “Fine. Really. I barely remember the Khan.”

  “One would think it hard to forget.”

  “I was young.”

  “You still are,” she said. “Your file says you received some counseling on Austro. I’ve met my share of pirates. Some of them are quite manipulative.”

  I wanted to shift but she’d note it. “I guess they can be.”

  “Didn’t you find so?”

  “I wasn’t with them for long. I escaped.” I put just enough emphasis on the last word. “I had no intention of building a long-standing relationship with them. The fact they killed my ship kind of soured my impression, sir.”

  And you can go to hell too.

  She looked at me a long time. “Mr. Musey, I’m not asking out of idle interest. It’s our duty as well as our prerogative to understand our recruits as best as possible… and if there are any lingering issues in their pasts that ought to be dealt with before we put guns in their hands. We have a psychiatric counselor onboard as a matter of course; many of our crew find him helpful. We also have a ship chaplain, should you prefer to speak with her. In any event, being forthright about your past is part of the training. Are we clear on that?”

  I blinked halfway. “Crystal clear, sir.”

  “We’ll talk again later, then. Dismissed.”

  * * *

  XVII.

  As an operative I was off to a rotten start. I would have thought they were just naturally concerned about my year with a pirate, except Azarcon hadn’t looked on it with any degree of compassion—even though it was also clear I’d escaped. They couldn’t have overlooked that fact, and still they grilled me.

  The thought of another interview made my stomach increasingly upset. I didn’t know how I was going to last a month on this ship, much less five years. Maybe at my first opportunity I’d ask Niko to pull me out. Maybe at our next port.

  Maybe I could leave somehow, get back on Austro, if I could get past the jets.

  Coward. Niko needed me here. How could I go back to the ka’redan-na, a failure?

  I might never see Aaian-na again, if I didn’t break for it.

  I wasn’t going to break for it. Feeling sick wasn’t an excuse. Not even homesick.

  “So what’d she ask?”

  I glanced behind as Kris jogged up to follow me, as I followed the JI back to the shooting gallery.

  Conscious of the instructor, I waved a dismissive hand. “The usual. They just want to get to know us.”

  “I think we’re going to start PT once our platoon’s done interviewing. What’d the doc say about you, are you up to it or do you get to sit out?”

  “Why are you so interested?”

  He gave me a second look; I hadn’t disguised my irritation.

  “Just conversation, mano.” He held up his arms in a casual defensive gesture. “Forget it.” He strode ahead to walk abreast of the JI.

  These were the people I had to work with; I could see Niko’s disapproving face. Make an effort, Jos. At least to cast off suspicion.

  Still, I didn’t say anything.

  Kris was right; they had us familiarize with the guns until Training Platoon One had all been through the SJI mill, then they ran us around the ship. By then my ribs were just a dull fire, as Rodriguez had promised, though my surface bruises still ached. The JIs didn’t care; I would have to fight in dismal physical conditions probably more than once in my career as a jet, so it was all training.

  We took a sweating tour of the training deck, then parts of jetdeck, flight deck, and maindeck. We weren’t allowed anywhere near the command deck or engineering without escort. If we were sighted on those levels we’d be shot. And that applied for when we graduated as well. We were going to be on a year’s probation, like I’d suspected.

  “The Masochist March,” SJI Schmitt called it as the squad slowed from a jog to a fast walk on our way back to the training deck. By then my PT uni was soaked with sweat. I took no more notice of the carrier’s bulkheads, crew, compartments, or lack of colors. It was a narrow gray world for the most part. When the crew was on duty or on leave, it was a quiet world with the kind of steel emptiness I’d felt when I snuck out of quarters and roamed Mukudori on blueshifts. Sounds came from distant corridors in small echoes and when a voice came over the shipwide comm it was like a ghost’s message from some netherworld.

  SJI Schmitt ran the route with us, considerably less out of breath. I would have fared better if not for my injuries. I’d noticed a few others wincing, some bandaged on arms or showing scrapes on their faces. At least I hadn’t been singled out on the gauntlet.

  Dinner was a luxurious half hour at 1800 hours before the last segment of the day, which was bookwork in the library. It was a large room with entrances/exits from both jetdeck and training deck—the former forward and the latter aft, with the library between. We were allowed to study there, in the recruit rec center (
or RRC; the military had an acronym for everything), or practice more in the shooting gallery during off-hours if we wished. We also had access to the gym but not the sim rooms—both stood between jets and recruits, same as the library. Instead of shadowing us by squad, jets stood on fire watch at the training deck’s exits, the extent of our freedom of movement in off-hours.

  At 2000 hours we had rec time, one hour of it before lights out. I stayed in the library because it had comps. It also had few recruits, since most of them opted to fool around in the RRC. Niko would have liked this jet training. We had to read and start memorizing the training and rules manual, not to mention Macedon’s service history. I found my corner away from any others.

  The library had a wide central area with a tactical holo-capable table for working out mission specifics or training simulations. Black embedded comps ran the rim of the table and needed specific authorization codes to activate, which I didn’t have. Scattered in intervals around the central area were individual workstations, each equipped with general comps that held files on anything from Earth’s weather patterns to the latest disseminated information on the war, some lifted from the Send, others just through EHAF. The comps also had a surprising variety of literary, historical, and artistic files. A few small tables were interspersed between the workstations. Some crewmembers occupied them, talking quietly over their caffs and comps. Nobody paid me much attention.

  All the comps on Macedon were holoaccess optional but since I didn’t have my optic receptors (a nagging worry that didn’t get me anywhere) I took a manual tour around the library system files, glancing frequently to make sure nobody looked over my shoulder or even in my direction. I poked into the root nodes. Unfortunately the system files were restricted to ship intranet with no connection to Mac’s main systems. Of course. I would need to find myself at a console—perhaps one on flight deck or the jet wardroom—that would have access to Macedon’s comm ops.

  Which basically meant I’d be incommunicado for at least eight weeks.

  The files were useful for one thing, though. I keyed in Falcone’s name and did a fast search. A blurt of archive links sprang across the screen. Over a hundred under major categories. Kali. Battle of Ghenseti. Court-martial. Kalaallit Nunaat military prison on polar Earth.

  Escape.

  I poked one of those links. More names sprang up with another list of prison sentences and transcript numbers. Names with Senator, Minister, Justice, and General attached to them.

  Somehow that pirate had retained his brass contacts. And they launched a covert mission to free him from the snow and ice of Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. They let the bastard go.

  Ongoing investigation, one of the articles said. Not all of his allies had been caught yet. And he was still free.

  “I give that a ninety percent on the deviant social skills aptitude test.” Aki dragged a chair over to my workstation and sat.

  I blanked the screen with a fumbled pat. “What?”

  Her smile faltered a bit. “Our first day and you’re hiding in library instead of blowing off in the RRC.”

  “I’m not hiding. Did you see the pile of shit they dumped on us to study?”

  She shrugged. “I’m too dead tired for my brain to work in any capacity.”

  She looked it. I looked back at my black screen.

  “Anything interesting?” she continued.

  “What?”

  She laughed and gave me a look I couldn’t quite decipher. “To read.” She gestured to the comp and said wryly, “It sure looks engrossing.”

  “I was brushing up on Macedon history, but I’m done now.”

  “Yeah, she’s seen a lot of action. You can tell that just from walking the corridors. Some things paint can’t hide. Like this.” She pointed to smudges on the comp console, then leaned an elbow on the desk. “How old are you, Musey?”

  I almost asked why but figured it would be easier just to answer. “Fourteen, Austro years. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen. You seem—”

  “What?”

  She smiled a little. “Half the time older, half the time younger.”

  I shrugged. “So?”

  “Nothing. I’ll leave you alone.” She got up, set the chair back in its clamps, and headed out. I didn’t stop her.

  I was the second person back in quarters for lights out.

  Nathan Jelilian lay on his bunk reading a Battlemech Bear comicprint. He peeked over the pages when I entered.

  “Muse.”

  “Hey. Where’d you get that?” I gestured to the print. I vaguely remembered reading those adventures of the military bear in my school slate on Mukudori. Hardcopies of anything were hard to come by and at some cost.

  “You can sign it out of library. Mac’s got the whole set, mano.”

  “Serious? Why bother?”

  ‘“Cause jets are fiends for Battlemech Bear, mano.” He laughed.

  “No, I mean, why bother with print? They can just put it in file.”

  “The cap’n man has a thing for tangibles.”

  “Tangibles.”

  “Extras. Perks.” The smile grew. “I tell you, if you can survive this ship, it’s the sweetest deal around. Azarcon knows how to take care of his own.”

  “How come you know so much about him?” I leaned an elbow on the edge of his bunk. It was at a level just above my head when I stood.

  “Every deep-spacer crew talks about Mac. If you ain’t a straitlacer and wanna kick some strit butt, this is the place to be. Angel and K-Jack’re a close second.”

  I must have looked blank.

  “Archangel and Wesakechak.” He laughed. “Mano, you ain’t exactly on the up, are you?”

  “Your accent confuses me.”

  “Most find it charming.” He grinned. It reminded me of Dorr.

  I sat on the bunk, two below Jelilian, pulled off my shirt, and stowed it in my webbing. I lay back in my tank, arms behind my head.

  “So tell me about Azarcon,” I said to the bottom of the bunk above me. Jelilian gossiped about anything at the least provocation.

  “He’s a mean mister to cross. I heard he put antagonistic crew off on desolate stations. He gets that corpsman Rodriguez to remove the tat, then he sets you right on station and bye-bye. That’s if he don’t put you in brig first and forget you’re there. But that don’t happen a lot with his hand-picks. Mostly prisoners. Pirates and symps. Strits when he gets ’em.”

  “The crew seems loyal.”

  “It’s different from an insystemer. Deep spacers’re their own little cities, pretty damn self-sufficient. They gotta be, kinda. The crew knows that. Mac grows some of its own food, mano. Azarcon got his own bioengineering team aboard. I swear it pays to have a daddy in the Joint Chiefs.”

  I certainly hadn’t read that, about the food. “The military justifies that cost?”

  “Ah, they can boo all they want. When it comes down to it they got no real control of what the deep spacers do out here. Most captains, if not all of ’em, invest in stock on the side, let the crew take shares, and the creds they earn get used to personalize their ships—if you know what I mean.”

  It made me curious about the parts of the ship we weren’t allowed to see.

  “Does he have anything… specific… against pirates?”

  Jelilian laughed. “Who don’t out here? Those bastards’re the lice in the hair of the Hub.”

  The hatch opened and Aki, Kris, Iratxe, and Cleary shuffled in. Aki and Kris talked lively. Iratxe looked like she’d just had a workout. She grabbed some clean clothes from her bunk and disappeared back out again. Cleary didn’t say anything, just dived into his rack facedown and covered up, boots and all.

  “Battlemech Bear,” Kris said and leaned on Milian’s bunk. “That the latest issue?”

  “Yah, and it’s mine. Keep your grubby paws off.”

  They wrangled verbally. I had to save my questions for later. Aki peered down at me as she undressed, maybe to check if I was asleep. I
turned my face to the bulkhead. I might have heard her laugh.

  “Put away the bear and cut the lights,” she told Nathan.

  Jelilian mumbled but eventually ordered the lights out. I lay in the dark listening to them settle. Soon Iratxe hustled in and bumped her way to the bunk above me, climbed up and in. Footsteps sounded outside in the corridor seconds later, loud enough to be heard through the hatch—jets on fire watch, letting us know we had better be in our racks. The entire training deck fell to taps at precisely 2100 hours.

  I couldn’t sleep, despite physical weariness. One of the others tossed around for a bit. I heard Cleary’s soft snores across from me. The darkness was complete. No windows like my room on Aaian-na. But I’d better get used to it, and get used to sharing a living space and breathing recycled air and loving the color gray, because if I didn’t get killed first, this was where I was going to be for an indefinite amount of time.

  Niko counted on me.

  * * *

  XVIII.

  In our two training platoons, which made up a company of recruits, the routine was simple like the best brand of interrogative torture tactics: an early-shift regimen of physical exercise that always included calisthenics and marches; close-order drills; obstacle courses in one of the five simrooms; and bookwork on everything from Earth-Hub Armed Forces battles to specific scenarios jets were likely to face boarding pirate vessels or fighting on stations against invading strivs and symps.

  None of this, of course, included the off-shift hazing. With no warning one of the jets on guard demanded a recruit at close range to rattle off the first three Macedon Rules of Service: 1. The captain is God. 2. Ship safety is your own safety. 3. A brain is worth more than blind duty, but a mouth means a march out the airlock.

  In other words: Smart was good, smart-ass was not.