Captain Petty stood up. She stared at Ben-Ari for a long time, silent. Ben-Ari remained at attention, still saluting, until finally—by God, it seemed like ages—Petty returned the salute.
"At ease," the captain said. "What do you want, Ben-Ari?"
Ben-Ari, she called me. Not lieutenant. She doesn't want to acknowledge my commission, only my family—which she certainly looks down upon.
She took another deep breath. "Captain, I wanted to—"
"Call me ma'am," Captain Petty interjected. "We all know my rank."
Ben-Ari blinked, cursing herself for her accidental breach of protocol. She nodded. "Yes, ma'am," she said, feeling a little like a recruit on her first day at RASCOM. "I wanted to properly thank you for this opportunity, ma'am. You too, Major Mwarabu, sir. It's truly an honor to serve here aboard the Miyari, part of an Erebus company, and—"
"You do not serve here, Ben-Ari," said Captain Petty, returning to her seat. "You and your platoon are merely hitchhikers on the Miyari." She narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. "Did you come here to truly thank me or to kiss my ass?"
Ben-Ari curbed the instinct to take a step back. Across the room, she noticed the others glancing around uncomfortably, but they did not interject.
"Ma'am, I—" she began.
"Why is your uniform so frayed?" Petty said. "Your pocket has a hole in it. Your trousers are torn. Your boots are old. Is this how soldiers present themselves to superior officers on Earth?"
Ben-Ari stiffened. The initial shock gave way to anger. "On Earth, we don't have the same budget as the STC. If you have any spare uniforms aboard the Miyari, I—"
"You will not wear our uniforms! You are not an STC soldier, Ben-Ari." Petty rose to her feet again, face flushed. "If you survive Integration—and that is unlikely without a recommendation from me—perhaps they'll scrub the filth off you, disinfect you from fleas, and let you wear the navy blue. Until then, you are not one of us. You are nothing but cargo. Do you understand?"
Ben-Ari winced. Well, this is going well.
"Ma'am, I came here today because I felt we started on the wrong page," Ben-Ari said. "I came here to mend bridges, not to offend you."
"Offend me?" Petty laughed, a mirthless sound. "Ben-Ari, I know your type. You fought a scuffle or two on Earth. You stomped on a centipede in some desert. And now you think you can come here, into a venerable institution, into a state of the art starship that cost more than everything on your planet, and instantly act like you're one of us." Petty walked around her desk to face her. "You have no idea what is out there. You haven't yet drunk of the darkness. You faced the simplest, smallest breed of scum, the fodder they send to backwaters like Earth. The bug grunts." She snorted. "You have no idea what awaits you, do you?"
Ben-Ari met her commanding officer's gaze. She stared steadily into those buggy eyes. "I am an officer in the Human Defense Force. I fought for this force. I killed for this force. This force is my home. Whatever waits in the darkness, I will face it."
"It will kill you," said Petty.
"Then I will die," said Ben-Ari, "for my species, for my planet."
Petty narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. "I see. So you have dreams of glory. Perhaps of being a heroine. You're so certain that you'll survive Integration? But first you must earn your recommendation from me. And to do that, you will show your subservience." A strange light filled Petty's eyes. "You can start now. I want you to repeat after me: I, Lieutenant Ben-Ari . . ."
Ben-Ari frowned. "What?"
"Repeat!" Petty shouted, spraying saliva, so loud that a few of the others in the room jumped.
Ben-Ari squared her shoulders. She forced a breath in, out, in again.
In twenty days I'll be rid of her, she thought.
"I, Lieutenant Ben-Ari," she repeated.
"Am nobody," said Petty.
Ben-Ari ground her teeth. "Am nobody."
"I am worthless," said Petty. "Say it."
Finally one of the others in the room spoke. Major Mwarabu, the stern commander of the Miyari, took a step closer to Petty. "Coleen, maybe—"
"She's my concern, sir, and I will deal with her," Petty said to the major, but she kept staring at Ben-Ari. "Repeat it. I am worthless."
Ben-Ari forced another breath, trying to swallow her fury, her pride. Twenty days.
"I am worthless," she repeated.
"My only purpose is to serve my commanding officer," Petty said.
"My only purpose is to serve my commanding officer," Ben-Ari repeated, voice strained.
For my soldiers. Twenty days.
Petty's smile stretched into a cruel grin. "My family are traitors."
Ben-Ari gasped. "What—"
"Say it!" Petty said. "I know who they are. I know how your father lost the Battle of Cape Town. I know of his cowardice. Say it! My family are traitors. Say it!"
Ben-Ari could not curb her rage now. Her fists trembled at her sides. She spoke in a strained whisper. "You may humiliate me, but you will not bad-mouth my family."
"Are you disobeying an order?" said Petty, then whipped her head toward the other officers. "Sit down! All of you, sit down! This is between her and me." She looked back at Ben-Ari. "Say it, or by God you will never be part of the STC. I will see to that myself. I—"
Red lights suddenly ignited across the monitors on the walls. Beeps filled the chamber. Petty spun toward one monitor. The others—the commander, the helmsmen, and the twin sergeants—stared at other monitors. Ben-Ari narrowed her eyes, staring with them.
"It's a distress call," Ben-Ari said.
Captain Petty hit a few buttons on a monitor, and the lights vanished and the sounds died.
"Coleen," said Major Mwarabu, turning toward her. "We should chart a new course."
Petty shook her head. "No. Ignore it, Major. My father, a brigadier-general, wants us at Nightwall as soon as possible." She raised her chin and gave a smug smile when reporting her father's rank, making it clear that while Mwarabu outranked her personally, he did not outrank her father. "We continue on our present course."
Ben-Ari inhaled sharply. "Ignore it? Ma'am, that was a Priority One distress call from Corpus Mining Colony. They need immediate military assistance, and we're the only HDF ship within light-years."
Petty spun toward her, livid. "That information was classified."
"Not to me," said Ben-Ari. "I have security clearance. Yes, even me, a lowly ETC lieutenant. Ma'am, we cannot ignore a Priority One distress call. Corpus is an important azoth producer. The same material this very ship uses. They need help. It might be the scum. We're nearby, we have two hundred armed soldiers aboard this vessel, and—"
"Silence!" Petty barked. She turned toward the twins. "Sergeants, escort Lieutenant Ben-Ari to the brig. She will remain locked up until we arrive at Nightwall, and there I will personally court-martial her for disobedience. I—"
"When you court-martial me," said Ben-Ari, "you will need a higher-ranking officer in attendance. And what will that officer say, I wonder, when they hear why I disobeyed you?" Ben-Ari was in too deep now. It was too late to back down. She would fight this battle. "What will they say at Nightwall when they hear you abandoned an azoth mine, that you ignored a distress call from a human colony? What will they do when they hear—and I have witnesses here in this chamber, including the commander of this starship!—that I demanded we obey proper military protocol, and you chose to ignore it?" Ben-Ari leaned closer. "I know who your father is, Petty. That doesn't scare me."
Petty stared at her, silent, eyes bugging out and face red. Behind the captain's back, Ben-Ari swore that she could see Major Mwarabu stifle a smile. Ben-Ari was willing to bet that Mwarabu had bitten his tongue many times in the presence of this company commander he had been transporting.
"You miserable worm," Petty whispered.
Ben-Ari smiled, staring into Petty's eyes. "On this ship, ma'am, you are my commanding officer. But don't think that I will bow down to you. I will fight you. My family ha
s been fighting for generations, and we fought enemies far worse than you. I will not back down. If you antagonize me, I will make your life a living hell. You will miss the scum once I'm done with you." She bowed her head. "Ma'am."
I came here to make amends, Ben-Ari thought. I just made an enemy for life.
Captain Petty turned back toward one of the monitors. From where she stood, Ben-Ari could make out some of the words.
Mayday. Mayday. Power failing. Hundreds dead. Poison in the tunnels. Requesting military assistance.
Petty hit a few more buttons, and the last monitor died. She nodded.
"Major Mwarabu," she said, "return to the bridge. We're taking a detour. Set a course to Corpus. We'll provide our assistance." She turned to look at Ben-Ari. "And since our dear lieutenant is so eager to prove her worth, she will take the vanguard. Let our earthling friends be our canaries in the mines."
I won't die so easily, Petty, Ben-Ari thought, no matter how much you crave it. But she only said, "We will prove our worth, ma'am."
She saluted.
Petty stared at her like one stared at a rotting scum carcass. "Dismissed."
Ben-Ari left the room, shoulders squared. Once outside in the hallway, she leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and breathed heavily.
Scum on Corpus. War. Blood. Death.
"War, blood, death," she whispered. "My life. My job. My destiny."
She took another deep breath, clutched her gun for comfort, and walked down the hall toward her bunk.
CHAPTER SIX
For the first time in three months, Marco sat down to work on his novel.
The Miyari was not a large ship. Aside from the mess and gym, it was all narrow corridors, cramped bunks, ladders and narrow stairwells and crawlspaces. This was not one of the massive cruisers that could transport entire brigades across the galaxy. There were only a couple hundred people on board—the ship's small crew, along with the infantry company they were transporting—and the ship was crammed to capacity.
But Marco had found this little nook near the engines with walls that rattled and hummed, smaller than his bedroom back home. There was a dusty old coffee machine emblazoned with the words Colonel Coffee and a drawing of a smiling, mustached man sipping from a mug. There were a few drawers with plastic spoons and packets of jam, a small table, and three armchairs. The sign outside read Officer's Lounge, but given the state of the room—he found cobwebs inside—Marco doubted any officers ever used it, and so he decided to risk an hour of privacy.
There was a lot more time here on the Miyari than back at Fort Djemila. It would be almost three weeks to the frontier, even traveling through hyperspace, and there would be morning inspections, training, propaganda videos, and all the rigors of military life. But also long hours of just waiting. Just idling away the time until they reached Nightwall Outpost, the military base at the edge of humanity's sphere of influence, where he'd be integrated into the STC and sent to fight the scum in space.
But Marco hadn't been born to fight. He wasn't a warrior by nature. This had all been thrust upon him. His true calling, he had always thought, was with words. To read. To write. To tend to books, consuming, preserving, contributing to knowledge.
And so he sat with his notebook open, a pen in hand. He looked at the first page.
Loggerhead, by Marco Emery.
He had been working on the novel for two years now, had written many chapters, tossed them out, written them over again. He had never written anything longer than short stories before, and even now, after quite a lot of effort, he was only six chapters into Loggerhead. The rest was all in his mind, the entire story living inside him.
"I just need to get you out onto the page," he mumbled.
He stared at the page. A story of loss. A story of remembering. A story that linked him to who he had been, to a boy in a library, not this soldier. Not this weary, haunted man. He looked at the gun that hung at his side, looked at his hands—hands that had killed, that had held dying friends. Once these hands had tended to books, scribbled by candlelight. Once he had dreamed of being a writer. He flipped through the pages he had written, but they had been written by another person. A softer, kinder person.
I lost something here, he thought. I grew too hard. I built a shell around me, like an exoskeleton of the scum. I have to find who I was.
He didn't want to be a soldier. He was stronger now, perhaps wiser too. He had learned about loss and memory firsthand in the army, more than he ever had back home. But he didn't want to be this man with a gun. He didn't want to be a soldier on a warship, staring at a blank page, drifting away from the writer he had been.
Loggerhead. The story of a man who had lost his memory. Who had woken up on a beach, a strange world, his mind broken, able to communicate only with letters to a loggerhead turtle in the deep ocean. Once a successful doctor. Hurt. Tossed aside. Now lost on a beach, his family gone, his past life a haze. Marco wrote the first sentence he had in three months.
I don't know who I am.
He stared at the words.
He lowered his pen again, but before he could write more, the door to the lounge burst open, and two soldiers spilled in.
"I told you there's a coffee machine in here," Elvis was saying. "This ship's a whorehouse. Chicken. Good beds. Coffee too."
"Who cares?" Beast said. "Who wants to drink coffee?" He pronounced that last word as if it were mud.
"I do!" Elvis said. "Coffee is wonderful, and you're trying some, and—Oh hi, Poet. Have you seen the coffee machine?"
Marco put down his pen. He pointed at the old coffee machine behind the paper cups and tins of rations. "Colonel Coffee. I think I saw a few spiders inside."
Elvis pushed his way past boxes and spent a few moments pounding on the machine. Colonel Coffee finally spurted out brown flecks followed by a blast of black liquid and a few bubbles. Elvis took a sip, and his face wrinkled up. He spat.
"Ugh, spider juice!"
Beast took the cup, sipped, and nodded. "Not bad, actually." The beefy, bald soldier looked at Marco. "You writing your book, Poet?"
Marco nodded. "Well, sort of. I only wrote one sentence today."
"Can I read a little?" Beast reached for the notebook, flipped to the first page, and nodded while reading silently. "Not bad. Not bad. Good story." He placed down the notebook. "Of course, nobody can write as well as the Russian masters. See, it's impossible. No matter how good you write, you cannot beat them."
"I loved Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky," Marco said. "I read it two years ago. The full, unabridged version too, not the short version they have you read at school."
Beast gave him a pat on the back so powerful Marco nearly fell from his chair. "Good man! Of course, there's no beating the original Russian. You Americans always mess up the translation."
"We're Canadian, you doofus," Elvis said, wrestling with the coffee machine. "You stupid, goddamn—argh!" Elvis kicked the machine. "Fuck you, Colonel!"
"Ah, American, Canadian, same thing," said Beast.
Elvis managed to pull out a bundle of cobwebs from the machine. "That's like me saying Russians and Ukrainians are the same."
"What?" Beast fumed. "You say Russia is same as Ukraine? Ukraine is weak!"
"Calm down, big boy!" Elvis attempted to shove the giant Russian, who was easily twice his size, into a chair. "You're about to explode and crack the hull of the ship."
They sat down at the table with Marco. With a sigh, Marco closed his notebook. Writing would have to wait for another day.
"Russia must be beautiful," he said to Beast. "You must miss it."
"Miss it?" Beast shook his head. "Never been there."
"What?" Elvis gaped. "What are you talking about? Your accent! Your constant talk of the motherland!"
"Of course!" Beast said. "Russia still the motherland. My mother born there! I was born and raised in Queens, New York."
Marco rubbed his eyes. "I don't believe this. And don't tell me, the neigh
borhood bully was Ukrainian."
"He was the neighborhood bully," Elvis said, poking Beast's massive arm. "Look at the size of him. Hell, he was the neighborhood period."
"So why are you always on about Russia, Beast?" Marco said.
"Well, because Russia is great!" Beast said. "Russia is best country in world, and—" Beast bit down on his words, stared into his cup of dark liquid, and was silent for a long moment. Finally he sighed. "I was not happy in Queens."
Elvis and Marco glanced at each other, then back at Beast.
"Why not?" Elvis said. "Not enough Dostoyevsky in the libraries?"
Beast swirled the drink in his cup. "My mother raised me alone. Father left back to Russia when I was baby. I only spoke Russian until I went to school, and other kids picked on me."
"Picked on you?" Elvis said. "You're the size of a starship."
"That's why they picked on me," Beast said. "Called me Bear. I prefer Beast, actually. I was too ashamed of my size, so I never fought back, just let them bully me. Growing up with no friends, with a drunk mother, no father, no brothers . . . Well, I always dreamed that Russia was a better place. That I could have a better life there. That somewhere in the world, I belonged. But I've never been there, only heard stories."
Marco nodded thoughtfully. "Next we'll learn that Elvis is actually a fan of polka music."
"Not a chance of that, buddy," Elvis said. "I give up on coffee. Here. How about we drink some of this?" He pulled out a silver flask from his pocket. "Good Canadian whiskey. And don't say anything about Russian vodka, Beast!"
Marco's eyes widened. "How did you smuggle that on board?"
"I told you, I have sources." Elvis took a swig, then passed the flask to Marco. "For Earth, for space, and for kicking alien ass."
"I'll drink to that," Marco said, took a sip, and passed it to Beast.
They all turned to look out the small viewport, at the stars that streamed outside through the darkness.
"They're out there somewhere," Elvis said. "The scum. Those bastards who killed our friends back home. Fuck. You know the average STC soldier only has a fifty percent chance of making it home? I'm scared, guys."
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