Warchild

by Karin Lowachee

  The distress might not have been valid now but Azarcon was going to take that chance. They were still trying to figure out who that merchant had been with Havurkar, and getting another sympathizer to question could prove fruitful since the distress originated from the same general coordinates of that battle. Getting any sympathizer would be a boon, no matter what.

  Do as you must, Niko had said. His words plummeted to my gut like meteors caught in a grav-well.

  Somehow Macedon had also got ahold of the symp’s IFF code—identify friend or foe—which came from transponders on all the vessels in Niko’s fleet, black boxes that traded information with other ships they encountered. EarthHub military vessels had the same things. If the transponders didn’t recognize each other, you knew you were facing an enemy. The code changed daily and I wondered who’d acquired a black box, and from whom. What prisoner or traitor had handed one over for Macedon to use?

  We were going to approach the symp as their relief, board them, and attack them. The bridge crew were immune, but everyone else (minus any children who might be there) were viable targets.

  I sat there listening to Dorr, reading my slate, memorizing the schems, and it wasn’t until he dismissed us to gear up that Kris leaned in and said,“Our first mission, Jos!”

  But it felt like I’d been doing this, reading about what symps were okay to kill, for too long already. I smelled the ship in my clothes and felt its drives in the rush of blood through my system, like an infection.

  * * *

  XXII.

  Two squads fit into the symp runner, and that was it. As we headed to our objective some of the jets reviewed the mission specs, others talked loudly about the imminent action (and were equally mocked by the veteran jets in the group), and Corporal Dorr slept. I sat across from him, between Kris and Aki, who was here as our combat medic. I didn’t say a word, tried not to think, and hoped that it would be over when I awoke. Some part of me wished it was a bad dream. The rifle in my hands, the million and one pieces of gear distributed on my body from my head to my hips, were heavy hands pushing me into my seat and against the runner’s bulkhead.

  This wasn’t going to be over anytime soon. And I had still been unable to send a message to Niko, to tell him to get me out of here—to ask him why the hell there’d been a strit ship and a Hub merchant peacefully occupying the same space. The question whirled in my head and my gut like a hurricane. I shut my eyes to fight down the nausea.

  Fingers touched my knee. I jerked away, glanced at Aki, who pulled her hand back and cast me an apologetic look.

  “Sorry. You just seemed unsteady.”

  “I’m fine.” I shifted the rifle between my knees, held the muzzle tightly.

  “We’re on schedule,” Sergeant Hartman said, adjusting the pickup in her ear. She was in contact with the cockpit. “Ready at the lock.”

  We didn’t blow the symp’s lock; they got the proper authorization from our stolen ship and opened their end themselves. As soon as the breach appeared the front row of our squad fired on the welcoming crew, mowing them down without any retaliation.

  “Go!” Dorr ordered.

  Kris and I were fifth in the attack flow. We moved in. Two bodies lay on the deck, riddled with bolt holes. A man and a woman. The woman had a tattoo on her face. The scientist caste.

  These were Aaian-na symps. Not like Cervantes.

  “Musey,” Kris snapped, and hit my arm with his elbow.

  We could’ve used paralysis pulses. Except nobody wanted to bother keeping a symp alive unless they were important enough to interrogate, or risk them waking up at our sixes.

  “Go!” Dorr shoved my back.

  I stepped over the bodies and followed Kris down the corridor. Nothing I could do. Breath stuck in my throat. The edges of my sight grew fuzzy and sweat trickled from my hair, under my helmet and eye shield.

  The weapons fire alerted the ship that we weren’t friendlies. Voices barked over comm in a language I knew, but none of the jets did. The symps were going to try to box us in.

  Hartman didn’t need to know striviirc-na to understand tactics. She separated the teams, spread us out through the small, already-injured ship in a systematic invasion, dropping traps for anyone who dared come up at our heels.

  The crew poured out of quarters, thicker and faster the closer we got to the bridge.

  I saw Dorr shoot one in the head. On my left flank. He didn’t even blink. He didn’t even wait for the body to hit the deck before he moved on.

  I saw the symps and fired, like I was trained to do. They had guns and they aimed at me because they saw a jet. I killed a man in striviirc-na clothing. The laser pulse went through his face. I’d aimed for his chest but he tried to duck, an instinctive move. I killed three other people, two women and a man, sent a grenade ahead of me that severed limbs from bodies, severed hands from arms. I left pieces of these people in my wake.

  But it wasn’t me. It was just a body moving. And they were just bodies without names.

  We moved fast, but I saw it all slow. One minute was forever breathing in, and the next minute infinity exhaled. Details of red accumulated in my memory like spent pulse packs.

  Jet voices reverberated in my head, barking orders, calling clears, a counterpoint melody to the death being played around me, the death that I caused, that I moved through as if it didn’t matter and it wasn’t a man that I murdered, or a woman, or people that I would’ve commemorated long ago with a burning paper ship. Here it didn’t matter. Here nothing mattered because I was alive and they were dead, and that was it.

  I tracked blood on the deck of that sympathizer ship, tracked it from room to room like a pirate.

  * * *

  XXIII.

  We lower jets didn’t have to debrief, that was left up to higher ranks. I went in silence back to quarters, trailed by Kris. He sat heavily on his bunk and ran a hand through his hair.

  “That was serious,” he said.

  I dumped my gear and started to gather up clean clothes to take to the shower, except I couldn’t really see what I grabbed. Shadows spilled from the edges of my sight. “It’s war, Kris. What d’you think?” But inside I shook. Inside I hadn’t stopped shaking since we got back on Macedon.

  “I know. I know. And I’ve seen vids. I’m just—” He couldn’t finish it. He didn’t know. I was his berthmate. He just wanted me around while he figured out what he was feeling.

  I couldn’t help him. I didn’t know what I was feeling.

  So I left him there. I took my kit, went to the showers, and stayed there a long time, blocking out the sound of the others talking above the water spray. Some of them bragged about how successful the mission was, how many people they’d killed, how the symps in brig were going to pay.

  I could’ve reminded the jets how one of them threw up when a grenade exploded and killed a symp, and how another one nearly shot one of us because his hands were shaking so badly.

  But I couldn’t.

  I left without speaking to anybody and almost walked right on Kris and Aki in the corridor. They stood outside the head, talking quietly.

  “Hey, Jos,” Aki said, “you all right?”

  Their eyes were red, skin a little too pale.

  “Fine.” I could barely look at them. They looked too sorry and I knew they weren’t. They’d do it again tomorrow and they’d call it a victory.

  I kept walking.

  “Jos—” Aki started, but then I heard Kris say, “Leave him alone. He’s like that.”

  As if he knew me.

  At least I got to be alone in quarters.

  I tucked my back to the wall on my bunk, cut the lights, and just lay there, thinking of too much until it all became nothing, just a constant hum. My nerves throbbed with each minute. I pretended to be asleep when Kris came in. It felt like hours later. He didn’t say anything, but moved quietly in his shift-end routine until he finally settled in his bunk. I heard his breaths until he fell so completely asleep they shallowed o
ut to nothing audible.

  I gathered the pillow under my head and pressed my face into the soft, smooth fabric. He was so deeply gone he didn’t hear a thing, didn’t stir. Nobody heard me, and in the close black of the quarters, I heard nothing else.

  * * *

  XXIV

  Dorr commed us just after reveille sounded. The man never slept, apparently. I got up wearily and hit the deskcomm, since Kris didn’t show any interest in moving.

  Dorr said Macedon was en route to Chaos Station and all the jets from the mission got to have a couple shifts of leave.

  Enjoy, he said, as if we hadn’t just slaughtered a whole ship.

  My eyes were too heavy, but I couldn’t lie around. I’d accidentally slept through the hour that I’d told myself to go and send a report. While Kris muttered and rolled over, I gathered my holopoint bottle and cube report for Niko, stuck it in my pocket, and left the q. Maybe I could sneak a few minutes at least to send a heads-up to my prearranged contact on Chaos, for our first meeting.

  You just had to put the things behind you that you couldn’t help. So by the time I stopped at the head to tap in my holo-points, I’d shoved the shadows from my mind. Do as you must. The wardroom was empty by the time I got there, but there was no guarantee for how long. I slipped behind one of the comps, flicked it on, and dived in. Sending the report would take longer and the priority now was to flag my contact. She might answer my questions, an instant reply. Communication was otherwise one-way, at least over comps. They’d only issue orders to me through my contact, face-to-face.

  Niko had handpicked her. It would be as close as I’d get to him.

  The message shot toward Chaos, ahead of Macedon, snuck under one of the carrier’s routine outgoing packets. It was a short construct, the best kind to send, just two coded words:

  Meet me.

  * * *

  XXV

  “Ain’t it great to be alive,” Madison said as our squad tramped down the lockramp onto Chaos Station’s dock. Me, Kris, Aki, Sergeant Hartman, and others who’d been on the mission, all of them loose and excited. Mission forgotten. It was all worth it because it bought us some free time. That was their attitude. Our boots echoed on the ramp. I trailed last.

  I hadn’t been back to Chaos since I ran from Falcone. Five years ago. He wasn’t here now, and even if he was, would he recognize me?

  The station looked no different. The walls were still battle-scarred from strit attacks, patched in places by sheets of metal to hide cables of wire and numerous blast holes. Blue paint partially obscured long-ago tunnel kid graffiti. The citizens were still wary, mashed together in colors and shapes you just didn’t see on military ships or even pirate ones. Maintenance and polly uniforms melded in the stream of people with civilian drab and office geometrica wear. Late blueshift workers. This wasn’t my world. When I saw these many colors and abstractions I thought of Aaian-na, the caste colors, the twining symbols, the vibrancy of a lush landscape under a hard sun. Nothing in space could rival that kind of wide, blue awareness. Stations only falsified the color on their walls.

  Like I wore a jet uniform. Unnatural skin.

  “Will Corporal Dorr join us?” Kris asked Madison, after some of the others drifted off to their own destinations. Kris was in my team. If I took off by myself for this first time it might look suspicious. Jets tended to travel in packs.

  “After he gets done with the prisoners,” Madi replied. Whatever that entailed. “So where you sprigs gonna go? This station got shitty selection, mano.”

  Hartman said, “They should try Junkie’s, it ain’t bad. Drinks’re half-decent, though still on the pissy side.”

  I said, “I’m going to the Halcyon. I read on the station menu. They said it’s got good food.” It was a medium-scale bar and den and the place I was supposed to meet my contact. Niko had briefed me on that from the get-go.

  “Food.” Madison laughed. “We need to get you drank, Musey.”

  Aki said, “I’ll go with you, Jos.”

  “Fine, whatever.” I took a step toward the concourse to signal her.

  “Kris?” she asked.

  He grinned. “No, go ahead. Me and Madi got plans.”

  Aki rolled her eyes. “I pity the females on this station.”

  Hartman smirked. “Or the pets.” She stuck a thumb in her back pocket and strutted off. “See you ladies later.”

  I took another step away. “Aki, let’s go, I’m hungry.” She’d be a good alibi, on second thought.

  Kris said, “Have fun,” in a tone of voice I couldn’t read. He smiled at me as if we had a secret.

  No point trying to understand them. I headed to the concourse. Aki quickly followed and bumped arms with me. I stiffened and she laughed.

  “Relax! We aren’t on duty, y’know. Now where’s this Halcyon, I’ve never been here before—oh, there’s an imager.” She tugged my sleeve to the holoboard and asked it to find the bar. It didn’t work.

  “I think it’s broken. Let’s just go, it can’t be that hard to find.” I headed off.

  She caught up, laughing again. “Jos, you’re always on a mission, aren’t you?”

  “What?”

  Her grin turned teasing. “You should smile more, you know. You’re cute.”

  I stared at her. “What’re you talking about? Maybe I don’t smile because I don’t feel like it. You forget what we did over on that symp runner?”

  Her eyes narrowed in irritation. “No I didn’t forget, but I’d like to. And what did you think we’d be doing on Macedon? If you don’t want to fight, then why’d you enlist?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “I don’t think you do anything on a whim, Jos.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that, so didn’t.

  She glanced at me. “We have to learn to get over it, y’know.”

  I said, “Maybe that’s the problem. Everybody just gets over it.”

  “Well, what else is there?” She looked down the corridor, away from me. As if something were my fault. “Let’s just find the bar.”

  All around us station cits moved, nervous. The sight of jets put people like that on edge, because we brought the war with us.

  We were in the den district. It was one long passage, nothing compared to Austro’s many levels. Ship crew and station citizens mingled together under pale blue lights. It made Aki’s skin sallow and her eyes tired-looking.

  I spotted a flashing sign. “There’s the Halcyon.”

  Inside the bar was a gold-lit haze, broken only by the silver reflections from the walls and platinum-colored mushroom tables sprouting from the black floor. We negotiated our way to an empty two-seat in the corner.

  “I’ll get the drinks,” Aki said loudly, gesturing to the bar. I nodded instead of trying to shout through the clanging music. I couldn’t just up and disappear with my contact.

  As Aki moved off, I glanced around. The bar was moderately occupied. Some people danced halfheartedly on a block of elevated floor. I was underage by two years but I didn’t think anybody would care in this place.

  A woman leaned on the bartop, watching Aki approach. In the deceiving lights I barely made out her features. Dark-skinned and long multibraided hair. She looked past Aki and locked eyes with me.

  I looked away. Not yet.

  Eventually Aki came back with two round glasses of amber liquid.

  “I don’t drink,” I shouted at her.

  She grinned and lifted her hair off her neck, a quick toss. The air was too warm and dense with cigret smoke. “Don’t worry, it’s not jacked with anything.”

  I sniffed at it before I sipped.

  She shook her head. “You’re so suspicious!”

  “I just don’t want to get drunk, that’s all.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t. I don’t like it.”

  “Have you even been drunk before?” Her eyebrows arched.

  I shrugged, looked over at the bar again. The br
aided woman had moved. She drifted closer to our table.

  Aki twisted in her seat a little, glancing at me. “What’re you looking at?”

  “Nothing. Just—these people. They don’t seem really into the scene, do they?”

  But she wasn’t listening. Her gaze diverted to the entrance. “Hey, there’s Corporal Dorr!”

  I darted a look and almost reached across the table to knock down her waving arm. But I couldn’t. And he came over.

  “Yo, sprigs,” he said, dragging close an empty chair and plopping down. “Anythin’ new? What’s that piss you drinkin’, Muse?”

  “I think it’s apple juice. Except it’s fizzy.” He was never going to go away. My contact found a seat nearby. “So what’d the prisoners say?”

  Dorr shrugged and lit a cigret. He was in civilian clothes, a gunmetal-gray shirt and pants, wrinkled, loose. “They were resistant nuts at first, but I cracked ’em a little. Lemme get you a real drink.”

  “No thanks. Sir.”

  “Lemme buy you a drink, Muse.” He smiled, but it was the face of someone who didn’t expect to be denied. “One for you too, Aki. You too young to be sober.”

  Aki looked like she didn’t quite know how to take that.

  He was my superior and for some reason decided to find us and not Hartman or Madison. I didn’t stop him as he waved at the bartender in a familiar way, held two fingers up in a V, and pointed to me and Aki. Then he turned back with a satisfied smirk.

  “Trust me, you need to get drunk, Jos. That sour puss of yours would curdle cheese.”

  “Sir,” I said, instead of reaching across and knocking that expression off his face.

  The drinks came. They looked like water.

  “On the mission,” Dorr said, slouching a little in his seat with one arm hanging over the back. “You stared at those bodies like you wanted to photograph ’em. That ain’t healthy.”

  I picked up the glass and sipped, so I wouldn’t have to talk. A spike went through my head, with a simultaneous fire down my throat, followed by a subtle herbal aftertaste. I coughed and sniffed, and Dorr laughed.