Warchild

by Karin Lowachee

  The jets hooted when Hartman and Evan headed to the floor. Dorr said, “The sarge is kinda cute when she ain’t givin’ orders.”

  It all just went on.

  Hartman knew how to dance. Out of uniform and without a rifle in her hands (though I knew she was armed, like all of us, under her clothes), she lost what distance might have been there between her and Evan-the-former-pirate. Evan knew how to dance too. Probably something they’d taught on Shiva, for those business contacts. Falcone had liked to set tables for me with sparkling cutlery he’d stolen off some dead merchant ship. The people you could fool, the rich ones who could afford you, who liked the way you looked and liked to watch you move. You could take them for a ride, he’d said. In a lot of senses. In every sense.

  Evan and Sergeant Hartman moved against each other in waves.

  Dorr snapped his fingers in front of my eyes. When I turned to him he was grinning. He sipped his beer.

  “He bin a big help, don’t y’think?” Dorr had a way of talking through his teeth that made every word an insinuation.

  “He shouldn’t even be on station.”

  Dorr laughed, well on his way to a good hangover. “What pirate’s gonna attack a bunch of jets in plain sight?”

  “Bunch of drunk jets,” I said.

  “Death warrant,” Nathan said, and he wasn’t even a jet.

  “Some of them aren’t too bright,” I said. Or some of you.

  “What?” Dorr tilted his head at me, shouting above the music.

  “Forget it!”

  He grinned. “You know, I think Musey’s jealous of the sarge.”

  “Shut up!” I stood and slapped the drink out of his hand. “Just go to hell, sir!”

  All around the tables the music blared, but the crew fell silent.

  Dorr slowly wiped his beer-splattered hand on his pants. “I’m gonna excuse that.”

  “Yeah, go ahead. Sit there, all of you, joking about it when the bodies’re being prepped for send-off.”

  Dorr’s eyes locked on mine, dark in the inconstant bar lights. “Sit the hell down, Musey.”

  “Why? So I can get blind drunk and wake up to remember it all at the funeral? Fuck this. Fuck all of this.” I strode to the doors.

  Evan got himself off the dance floor to intercept me. “Hey!”

  “Jettison yourself, D’Silva.”

  “You gonna keep tossin’ tantrums? This won’t do you any good!”

  I turned on him. “What d’you know about it? You don’t know me.”

  “I know you’re grieving.”

  “You don’t know shit! Pointing fingers for Azarcon and dropping a sob story in his lap so you can get in good on the ship doesn’t mean you know a damn thing!”

  “I know a lot. I know you don’t wanna admit you cared about him. Did Falcone train that out of you in a year? Or was it something else?”

  Someone cut between us to get to the bar. I didn’t move. Neither did Evan. The lights played across his face like fingers.

  The music drowned everything but the most pointed words.

  I stepped closer. “What’re you doing, Evan?”

  “Taking advantage of where I am. Maybe you should too. Macedon’s a good place to be.”

  “You’d know about taking advantage. Did you take advantage on that shift? When I was asleep maybe? You perverted piece of shit!”

  He reacted like I’d struck him. I left him stunned, left the bar and lost myself in the crowd on the concourse.

  I’d walked the same corridors, once, with my hand in Falcone’s.

  Alone on a station deck, in a jet uniform, while carriers raided pirate outposts up and down and sideways wasn’t the brightest thing to do.

  I found a bench by one of the walls and sank down. I didn’t know how long I sat there, looking at nothing, but when I moved to stand, to go back to the ship, a dark-skinned woman veered from the uneven lines of people and sat beside me.

  “Got a light?” she asked, fishing out a cigret from her jacket pocket. Her hair was short now beneath a tight cap.

  My hand brushed my sidearm in reflex. But I recognized her. “No, sorry.”

  “No matter.” Her eyes cased the crowd, the line of eateries across the wide concourse, flocked about by hungry soldiers and Chaos citizens. “Niko says hello.”

  I sat back. “Yeah, I bet.”

  She looked at me. “You want to hear this or not?”

  Our last meeting had been mostly Keep doing what you’re doing. I’d given her Macedon’s schematics, what I knew from walking the ship and talking to Cleary. I’d told her my impressions about Azarcon.

  That was before a symp told me Niko had given orders to trade with pirates. Before that it had just been Evan’s word, Evan who’d spent six years with pirates. And one encounter in the deep, one strit ship and Shiva. Maybe Niko was ignorant of it.

  “Yeah, I want to hear it.”

  I kept my hand on my sidearm.

  She tugged me up and slipped her arm around my shoulders, familiar. More than familiar. “Come on, cutie.”

  I walked even as I realized it might be a trap.

  She led me to a low-scale den at the edge of the barstrip. A long way down from the Halcyon. It was dark as we threaded our way through the bar crowd, to the back doors and into a shadow-ridden corridor full of dross people drunk or high or both. Nobody would notice us here, not even my uniform.

  She ushered me into a stale-smelling room and locked the door. It took a few tries before it beeped red. I remained standing in the middle of the space, one eye to her and the other to the small bathroom door on my right. Someone could’ve been in there, though I didn’t hear anything.

  “Siddown,” she said, “this might take a while.”

  “Where’s Niko?”

  She sat on the unmade bed, reached in the side table and pulled out a finger lighter for her cig, which she still carried. After flicking it and taking a drag she pulled off her cap and scraped at her hair briefly.

  “He’s close by. You know I can’t tell you exactly where. I been shadowing you since you came off Mac.”

  “I know.”

  A stream of smoke blew up toward the ceiling and hung there in a dissipating spread. “He ain’t the one in league with the pirates, Musey.”

  I searched her face. But I didn’t know her that well and she was capable. If she was lying I wouldn’t know it. “Then who? A symp we caught named him.”

  “The symp lied, obviously,” she said flatly. “As for who—you been sending your messages to him.”

  I squinted. “Messages… Ash-dan?” That was almost as incredulous as Niko being involved.

  She raised an eyebrow and dragged on her cig.

  “That doesn’t make any sense! Why would Ash—he hates pirates, anybody this side of the DMZ.” And me, I thought. Something I had never been able to really figure out. Long after Niko and even Enas had accepted me, he had not.

  “Let’s just say his opinion about how Niko is running this war… differs.”

  “He respects his brother.”

  “Look.” She tapped her ashes away and stared up at me, the tired eyes of somebody too used to hiding. “Niko had suspicions about his brother. He didn’t tell you. Now he is. Now that you’ve confirmed that some faction of the sympathizers and the strivs is in league with Falcone and others like him.”

  “But to what end? It makes no sense.”

  “You know why you’re on that ship, cutie?”

  I looked at her hard. “Information gathering. About Azarcon. About Macedon. He must have told you.”

  “To what end?”

  I recited some of my mission objectives. “Niko thinks a peace treaty might go via Azarcon, if anybody. Azarcon’s foster father is in the admiralty, a good uplink. And from everything I’ve seen, Azarcon does his own thing and the Hub be damned. Niko knows this now. Azarcon’s also the top striv hunter in the fleet. Getting him to stop can only help us, right?”

  “Azarcon’s also
less of a warmonger and more of a… how is it you said in your report? Patron to throwaways.” She actually smiled.

  “You still haven’t answered my question.”

  “Ash,” she said, tapping her cig, “doesn’t want a treaty with the Hub.”

  “But that’s stupid. Why wouldn’t he? We’ve been fighting for so long, they’ve been keeping the strivs on Aaian-na for years. The planet can barely afford the war as it is.”

  “Well, exactly. Niko thinks Ash would rather go on an offensive for one fell swoop. That’s why the alliance with the pirates. You said they’re trading for guns and other weapons.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed. Of course Niko would never go on the offensive if it meant dealing with pirates to get enough firepower. He’d had his opportunity—even Markalan had, in his day—to raise the level of the war. Right now he wore down the Hub fleet by strike attacks on convoys, munitions depots, and military Rimstations. It kept the Hub fleet far back from the space that the Hub had allotted the strivs since the Battle of Plymouth Moon. As it stood now, if Hubcentral had its wish it would govern all the way to Aaian-na and bring the symps up on criminal charges. Niko was the only thing stopping them.

  “But Ash is letting pirates stow people behind the DMZ. We still have no idea where, either.” I hadn’t thought even Ash was so rotten to the core.

  “What else could a symp guerrilla offer a pirate like Falcone, except safe storage of people who bring in ransom creds and black market funds?”

  “But he’s betraying his own brother.”

  She didn’t answer that. Maybe she’d read about the caste wars. This sort of thing had precedent on Aaian-na. A junior member of the caste didn’t necessarily see eye to eye with a senior member, and in the way of strivs, the solution came on the sly. All the details came to light only after everything had fallen to its conclusion. And then… either the junior member was victorious in his plan, or he was assassinated by the one he’d betrayed.

  “What does he want me to do?”

  “Just what you’re doing. He’ll handle Ash. He needs solid proof before he can take action. This isn’t some fisherman’s debate, it’s high up in the caste and blows wide on all sympathizers. Right now the links don’t go all the way back to Aaian-na. Yet. Ash made it look like only a few rogue ships are working crosswise of Niko’s orders. Ash is the expert on comps, right? Nontraceable comms. So you let Niko work that end. You—you keep your eyes on Azarcon. Feel him out. He seems to have turned his attention on the pirates and less on patrolling us.” She eyed me. “That kid from your old ship. He’s been helping, you said.”

  “Yeah. And the captain’s asked me about Falcone.”

  “Good.” She nodded. “Good.”

  “I want to know more about Falcone. I’ve been in contact with Otter. Can you dig for me and leave me the information at my Austro link?”

  She sucked in the smoke and squinted at me. “We’re already hunting Falcone, cutie.”

  “I want in the full loop. Dammit, Azarcon wants that pirate. He has a vendetta. A history. It could help my position with him. Tell Niko, make it strong with him.”

  I didn’t mention that I needed all the help I could get, dealing with the captain. I wasn’t going to tell her that Evan suspected me either.

  She stubbed out the cig. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The relief at Niko’s noninvolvement in the pirate alliance made me somehow weary. I wasn’t going to see him for years, if at all. That realization hit like a high-beam paralysis pulse. When I’d left him I knew that possibility, but some part of me had always believed I would return to Aaian-na before long. It was home, after all.

  But it wasn’t.

  My hands throbbed numb.

  “So what should I tell him about how you’re doing?” the woman asked. “You look well enough.”

  I nodded, but it wasn’t my answer. “Tell him someone died. Tell him I hate it. But tell him I’m still doing my job.”

  I tried to remember why I was doing it.

  I thought of casting paper ships off balconies and the flame light dancing toward the sea.

  Little meteors for the fallen dead.

  * * *

  XLVI.

  I go back to Macedon with things in my head I have no language for. They are just hoarse sounds in a hollow drum of silence.

  PART IV

  * * *

  I.

  Falcone isn’t in hiding any longer, that’s what his allies say. Once again Iratxe and I escort our latest batch of criminals to brig, with Madison and Dorr and other teams, and the pirates brag at us about Falcone. The pirates shout at us the same old shit. They’re growing, they say, and we’re never going to defeat them and jets are nothing but colored sugar on the good-ship lollipop.

  That one’s new.

  Dorr bashes that pirate on the back of the head with the butt of his rifle before kicking him into the cell.

  “You’ll know what jets are by the end of this shift, I guarantee.”

  We lock the cells. One of the pirates presses his face to the gate and leers at Iratxe. She spits her gum at him.

  “Forget it,” I tell her. “Waste of a projectile.”

  “It was stale anyway.”

  Dorr taps my back. “Get to medical and check that wound.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bloody pirate caught me in my shoulder with a bolt. It was from a 790 and it penetrated my armor. Iratxe peers at it as we walk out. She would’ve shot the pirate before but another one kept her busy. Pirates try to do that because they know jets watch each other’s backs.

  “Clean through your shell. Those mothers’re bitches, mano!”

  “Hurts like a bitch.” I can’t move the shoulder.

  A year ago, after Kris’s death, Dorr got Iratxe transferred to our team from Sanchez’s unit (boy did he whine). Somehow she never seems to get a scratch on her. She says she’s too pretty to get shot. Dorr says bolts are just too scared of her. They see her face, turn the other way, and hit me instead.

  “You should use that face of yours to direct those bolts toward the enemy,” I tell her now. An old joke.

  She laughs and walks me to medical. As usual, Aki’s radar finds me right away and she propels me up onto one of the examination tables.

  “What’re you doing to him, Chay?”

  Iratxe slings her rifle and holds up her hands. “Not me, mano. This boy finds it all on his lonesome.”

  “I don’t go looking,” I mutter. The teasing, like some missions, has gotten pretty routine.

  Aki gives me a glance like, Right. She works my torso armor off, and the shoulders. Now it really starts to hurt.

  “I hope the pirate who did this to you is dead.”

  “He is.” I clench my teeth as she cuts my shirt and peels it back from the wound, then starts her work. It may eventually heal from her ministrations, but the advance procedures always seem to make it worse. The spray bites cold, little teeth straight through the wound to my bones.

  “Dirty lot,” Iratxe says. “I miss the good ol’ days of killing strits.”

  Comments like that remind me who I am.

  “Those days aren’t over,” I tell her. “It’s not like we’re in treaty.”

  “I wish they’d hurry it up,” Aki says while she examines the wound, her face close to my shoulder with the handheld scanner. There’s been some chatter about a peace treaty on some parts of the Send, but nothing that isn’t shouted down by diatribes.

  “Chicky, are you serious?” Iratxe hops up beside me on the table.

  Aki’s voice is slightly muffled as she works. “Of course I’m serious. Aren’t you reading the reports? The Rimstations and the ones in the Dragons’re having a real hard time and we’re running around between pirates and aliens, thanks to this Falcone jerk. It’d be a lot easier if we could get the pirates without worrying about our backs facing the DMZ.”

  She doesn’t know that the guerrilla strikes are sapping Niko’s fleet as w
ell, not to mention his planet support. He decreased his attacks on Hub space, though didn’t eliminate them entirely, and the only thing stopping the warmongers in Hubcentral from invading Aaian-na space is the increased pirate activity. Which, I know, is partly thanks to Ash. Falcone came out of hiding, it seems, to work the new alliance.

  The irony.

  Deep-space carriers do all the running around out here. Azarcon isn’t in a good mood lately about it. He thinks the pirates and all of the strits and symps are in alliance. Of course my say-so about Niko’s good character would land me out an airlock, so I say nothing. Not to Azarcon and not here.

  “Everybody’s talking about Falcone like he’s the president of the pirates,” Iratxe scoffs. “He’s not the only enemy out here. Did we all forget the Warboy? They’re working together.”

  “If they are,” Aki says, poking me some more in the name of treatment. I wince. “If they are, how come strit fleet action’s waned in the last year?”

  “Too busy shacking with the enemy,“ Iratxe says bluntly.

  At that precise moment, Evan walks in.

  “Speaking of which…” she continues.

  “Shut up,” I tell her. I feel Aki look at me but she doesn’t comment. They think I’m bedding him. A ridiculous lie. Just because he hangs around me, meets me after missions, visits me in medbay. I don’t encourage it but he isn’t put off. Crew Recreation and Morale Department, that’s where Azarcon placed him. The captain’s got a dark sense of humor. Evan helps choose what entertainment to bring on ship, when once he was the entertainment on another ship. It’s his ticket here and he doesn’t complain. Not all of the jets harass him. He cleaned up well.

  So they think I think so too.

  I have nowhere to go as he approaches.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Aki, are you done yet?”

  “Almost. Sit still.”

  My shoulder is numb now and the painkiller’s starting to make me drowsy.

  “What happened?” Evan asks, looking at me, then Iratxe.

  She stares at him. “It’s not my fault, boy.”

  “Those pirates.” I interrupt them. “We got the last of Shiva’s survivor ships. The ones we didn’t kill are in the brig now.”