by Nathan Dodge
Unofficially, some branches had started taking child soldiers.
As an Accommodation Center, we’d realized our vulnerabilities. As first shots occurred, our captain had taken the only option: to push us out of orbit, beyond the planet’s reach, until such time as the political environment was safe. What she hadn’t known was that we already had unwanted guests at that point. They’d waited until we were nearly a month gone from orbit, ensconced in a small pod that had clung to us like an insidious parasite, before attacking in concert with the second wave. We’d lost a small portion of the outer starboard circle and a good portion of the captain’s deck in the initial attack.
Ship Su’s records were patchy after that—perhaps due to damage to her memories, or maybe due to numerous competing privacy codes. As it stood, I was the most senior living crewmember aboard the ship.
So how had we ended up in the home center?
Ship Su would not answer. Nor would she provide me the locations of the other occupants, not even the ones on our side. There had been too many conflicting directives, so both sides had opted for total secrecy—I hadn’t even needed to order us underground.
So we had no clue who was on our side, how many combatants we faced, how long had passed with the combatants aboard, nor why they hadn’t acted yet to destroy us all—and we were both painfully aware of the ease of sabotage on a civilian ship like this. Perhaps worst of all, we had no idea how many were left on either side.
“Any chance you actually remember being an engineer?” I said hopefully to Fil.
“More all the time, but it’s patchy. I look at stuff and remember how to use it, but I’m not coming up with some brilliant technical fix. You need me to fix something simple, I can probably do that without blowing us up. I think.”
“We’ll try not to get to that point. What we need is to be able to capture someone—on either side—who knows what’s happening.”
“There’s the boy.” She gestured to the young man in the pod. “Maybe his memory’s better.”
And with that, it clicked.
“We were hurt, Fil. Someone tossed us in pods to fix us up—maybe us. They turned on whatever regenerative features there were and it worked, but then we got released because the medical unit fixed whatever our injuries were. We didn’t order Su to keep us locked up like we did the boy. Just took us a while for us to wake up.”
Fil winced as if she remembered something, raising a hand to her head. “Wait. You’re right. I think I remembered something. Su, can you summarize our last medical report?”
“Shrapnel and subsequent blood loss in the case of Executive Officer, Third Rank Mios Safir. Origin of injury unknown due to blackout status. First Engineer Filipa Trujillo had extensive cranial damage due to close-range shots in addition to losing most of the lower portion of her limbs; her pod was so severely damaged she was moved to a new one. Would you like a visual representation and further details?”
“No.”
Fil’s hand was in mine almost before I thought. I squeezed it without speaking, trying not to see the images that flickered in my head: exploded limbs, trauma packs shoved into gaping holes, and worse: no action at all.
“So we put ourselves in there,” I said. My voice was calm as the river I’d never seen, over the edge of the hills I’d been told one day I’d merit. “Probably told Su not to tell anyone that we wanted her to dump us in the home center as soon as we were fixed, but didn’t bother to hide our medical records from ourselves.”
“But we forgot to tell her it was okay to tell us if we forgot.”
“We probably thought we’d be either fine or vegetables, and it wouldn’t matter. Forgot to plan for a gray zone.”
I blinked as Fil came into focus, leaning back as my head practically vibrated with the connection.
“You okay?”
“I think my implant just kicked in. Retinal degradation, I’ve had an implant since I was … six?” Wrinkles came into view in too much detail, corners starkly illustrated, the world excessively clear. Her limp hair seemed almost childish. I knew instantly Fil would hate it.
“ChipY37, you’re overcompensating; decrease resolution,” I said, the rote words escaping before I could think of them, and the world softened to a more human viewpoint. Even so, I could see Fil had been a bit generous with our ages. She had to be nearing sixty, and glancing now at my reflection, I easily looked in my forties—though somewhere in the back of my head, I knew I was younger than I looked.
“Just got a little too high-res for a minute. It’s fine.”
“You think we can wake him up? Question him?”
“No,” I said, the word escaping before I could stop it. Fil raised a questioning eyebrow at me, and I avoided her eyes as I spoke. “He’s suffered enough.”
“Poor kid.”
“Maybe hide him again, just in case. To make sure he isn’t seen.”
She rotated him out of sight before she dimmed the light and we sat in the clinic chairs, stretching back.
“You know we’re going to have to kidnap one of those young terrorist twits if we don’t wake him,” she grumbled.
“It’s a good thing your legs are fixed,” I said.
* * *
I was irritated through the planning, annoyed as we headed out, and on the edge of fury by the time we were searching. I’d reminded Fil three times already not to shoot someone just because they didn’t look menopausal. I didn’t want my daughter, wherever the hell she was, at risk, and I couldn’t trust I’d recognize her instantly. So we were hoping for an old face, a face we could trust. But we also weren’t sure if there were any of them left, and that lead me to getting worried, which led right back to where I was.
Angry.
The door slid open and we leaned out, crouched low, checking both sides. We’d procured a couple vials of instasleep from the medical unit, but they weren’t exactly long-range weapons. The hallway was dark, still dimmed from our earlier escape. In line with our previous orders to Ship Su, the hall remained dim as we stepped out into the hallway, only the emergency strip visible. We moved to the far side of the corridor, instinctively away from the light.
I moved comfortably as my eyes adjusted instantly with the implant’s help, boosting upward of what any unaugmented human could see, but Fil was more hesitant. I slowed as much to ensure she could keep pace with me as to ensure we heard them before they heard us.
Ten minutes passed, then twenty. We had to remind ourselves to be wary, that the enemy might appear any second. They didn’t.
We headed to a second deck, then a third. We hit the fourth, where we stopped hesitating around every curve, then the engineering room, and finally, at deck five, Fil pulled me into the bar, laser-scarred and blackened. We barely spared the room a glance before we poured glasses of sparkling water and dug into our sandwiches right at the bar.
“This is weird,” Fil said.
“Maybe not,” I said, chewing. The sandwich was passable, but hardly life-altering. I abandoned my sandwich and slunk behind the counter to search for some pickles, pepper, anything to give it some flavor, digging through the steel storage unit where milk and a handful of other bar items would have been housed. I discovered a small packet of olives alongside a half-charged laser, toward the back behind a bucket of discarded shrimp that were long past edibility. I held my breath as I collected my treasures, closed the unit carefully, and tucked the weapon in my belt before I seated myself once more and dedicated myself to olive placement on my sandwich.
“They must have grouped up. We didn’t check every storage unit, every set of quarters. The ship is huge, and this has been going on for … I don’t know, but I’m guessing weeks. It would have taken time for us to heal up, even accelerated as it was.”
“So they’re entrenched,” Fil said around bites.
“Yes. And they found us because—we came out of the high-attention facility, unit 4B, right?” I asked.
“I don’t know. That stuff is still v
ague to me.”
“Well, we triggered something, obviously. So now they know there are new players, but they can’t find us yet. Or maybe they think we’re lost residents.”
“Well, they did until we ran.”
“We have to find someone.”
“Oh, hell. We have to lead them to us?”
A voice spoke behind us. “No, we found you.”
Fil and I dove behind the counter. A blast slammed over our heads and burned the bar counter. Smoke and wood ash filled the air. Through the gray I managed to find my way to a cubbyhole artfully carved in constellations and shot the leg out from under the girl through Orion’s belt with my newly found firearm.
Fil rained down curses while I hopped around the corner and dragged the screaming child in from the open door. I was lucky she was small. It closed behind her and I prayed it was more soundproof than I suspected it was. Her weapon had fallen with the shot—everyone always thinks they’ll hold on to them, but it’s funny what losing a leg will do to you.
“Hey, whaddaya know, Fil? I think I’m ex-military,” I said casually.
Fil hadn’t moved from behind the bar, a sickened look on her face visible even through the smoke. I pulled off the injured girl’s sash, ignoring the blood and her screams, slapping her arms back down almost gently before I settled in and managed a tourniquet around her upper thigh, and pushed away the severed lower portion.
“Let’s talk,” I said.
And then the door opened again and there was my daughter.
* * *
Mareka dosed the injured child and dumped her in the emergency unit, dialing in orders to heal her but also to keep her unconscious under the highest security clearance—mine, actually. She looked at me in strange, frightened glances, and I found myself unconsciously trying to wipe off the blood from my clothing, to correct the fall of my hair. The smell of piss trailed after us. I moved away from Mareka’s side in instant, shamed response.
In what seemed like an almost reflexive habit, Mareka ordered us to check for water bags before we hustled to make it back to one of the guest units. We found one in addition to the sparkling water we’d opened before we headed off to rejoin the ship’s remaining crew in the guest quarters. Because of the complexity of numerous international laws, guest units were recordless, and therefore impossible to monitor, she explained to Fil, hence their relocation in case we’d been broken in interrogation. I told Mareka I should’ve thought of it, and she blinked, and told me I had.
I was quiet the rest of the journey there. I studied her as we jogged, trying to recall her father, my childhood, anything to ground myself in. All I could find were a handful of glittering memories of Mareka, a lot of very nasty ones of a war I didn’t want to remember further, and a strong memory of boarding Ship Su for the first time some fifteen-odd years ago, world-weary and grateful for peace. That and a handful of ship regulations and layout was about it. A lifetime of accomplishments and loved ones, gone. I had a feeling I should be more bitter about it, but mostly I felt a curious weightlessness. Then again, maybe it was just the relief of seeing Mareka.
She’d gotten her father’s hair, for sure. None of my dark looks. Her locks were almost a true historic blonde, the fairness of her eyelashes proving the inheritance. Her eyes were a light brown too, different from my dark chocolate. She moved with my athleticism, though: those were my legs. I smiled to watch them eat up the corridor, let the weight I’d had on me fall away. At last, we slipped into the unit and joined a crew of some twenty-odd people.
It was almost painfully crowded, but the sudden boundless cheer, the joyful cries and Yallahs and Holy Christ and a variety of other gods invoked made it all strangely familial. A dozen hugs were given and returned even while I strained to reach my daughter just once, always slightly out of reach, and Fil managed a similarly artless dance until finally everyone quieted and Mareka started talking.
“We knew something had happened, because the Accommodation unit opened, which of course it shouldn’t have been able to, because no one was inside it, and it was locked from outside. We sent two parties, but we had a run-in.”
“Injuries?” I asked. Mareka shrugged.
“Tonni’s in Accommodation now, but just a superficial wound, limited blood loss. You must’ve been in hiding for over ten days. Supplies are almost exhausted, and the bar has been a hot spot the past few days. The water we retrieved today is all we’ve found in nearly a week, and you can see it’s barely enough for two days.”
“Why can’t we get water out of the sink? Was the ship that badly damaged?”
“We cut off the water to force their hand two weeks ago,” Mareka said after an uncomfortable silence. “You said not to give in on that. What happened with the plan? Did you reach the core?”
Fil’s eyes flickered over to mine. She didn’t have to say anything.
“There are some things we need to talk about,” I said. “And I haven’t gotten a hug yet,” I added in a lighter tone, reaching out for her and steering her away from the crowd.
It took some doing, but we finally maneuvered ourselves to a pantry-like bedroom with a door that closed. Tight as it was, the three of us flipped out the bed to sit, Mareka in the middle.
“It didn’t go well, I take it?” she finally asked.
“No,” I said gently. “The short version is we don’t know what happened, but my guess is we nearly died, screwed up the whole mission, and we dumped ourselves into med stasis in the hopes we might survive. Ship Su confirmed I had major blood loss, and Fil was shot near to pieces. My guess is Fil rescued me first, but it took a while to get me to safety. They were probably shooting at her as she dumped herself in. That’s my guess, anyhow.
“The good news is we’re here, but we don’t know what happened, and … and we’ve both got some memory issues. Me more than her, though I think I retained a little more ship-related memory than she did.”
“That’s why you didn’t remember the water,” Mareka said, and then it seemed to hit her: her mother had forgotten herself. Her mouth dropped into a hollowed O, reluctant and apologetic in one self-same gesture.
“What do you remember?” she asked.
“Enough to know I didn’t like seeing you carrying that stunner,” I said lightly.
“You didn’t like it before, either. You refused to do anything but first aid and strategy. And then I find you with that child—” She broke off.
“I was in a war when I was young,” I said. “I remember that. I remember it better than last week, actually. I was just trying to protect you, I’m sure.”
“But now you’re okay with killing children?”
“I didn’t kill her,” I said. My voice was calm, and I fought to keep it so. “And I had to protect Fil.”
Mareka had lost all color, and it was hard not to order her to lie down and yell for some water. Instead I just sat there till her cheeks had color again.
“Do you even know why we’re fighting?” she finally asked.
“Su told us. But we don’t know who’s winning.”
“We are. I think.”
“How many?” I prodded. Fil looked like she was about to say something, but bit it back as Mareka continued.
“There weren’t many left. Two in the habitable remains of the starboard blast area, another in the botanical gardens, a fourth one caught trying to break into the home center, then that woman today. We find them, stun them, dump them in stasis, no release without our approval. There might only be three left at this point, though we’re not sure. They haven’t even ripped out any critical panels—they’re hardly trying. I think they would’ve given up by now, except for their leader.”
“The very blonde woman? Young, but adult?”
“Yes,” Mareka said sharply, facing me finally. “You’ve seen her?”
“First person we bumped into. When we were in the home center—did you put them all in stasis? Because we didn’t see anyone.” She nodded, and I continued. “Well, we steppe
d out and a few minutes later she found us. We ran and hid.”
“You got lucky,” Mareka said shakily. “So now what do we do?”
“Well,” I said slowly, “I guess we finish it.”
* * *
Setting up the bait was the easy part: we were all short on water. We had three separate people waiting to be seen with water, hightailing it the second they were spotted to what we hoped they would assume was our base. The good news was our attackers were down to just two weapons. The bad news was they were lethal ones, and they were usually with whoever was hunting. The children were quick to shoot, too, unpredictable and anxious, making it hard to manage their surrenders peaceably. But limited though our supplies were, all of us were armed, albeit not lethally. Communications had been suspended, so we had to wait for their signal. But I had ensured each target had two support team members hidden alongside to protect our runners, so the trap wasn’t quite as stupid as it sounded.
Not quite.
“Wish we hadn’t put those kids out there,” Fil mumbled. I glanced over, annoyed. We were all of us waiting in a spread-out semicircle around the internal com, waiting for Ship Su to see the signal. It had been nearly an hour. It might be more, but I doubted it, based on the others’ reports. Hourly sweeps seemed to be their preference—a predictability they had never abandoned.
“Our volunteers are not children,” I said flatly. “They’re staff, and they’re adults.”
“They’re janitors and nurses and they know nothing of war,” she said, her voice mangled as she chewed the inside of her lip. “Hardly any of them are over thirty.”
“No one’s born a soldier, Fil,” I said quietly. “We all learn what we have to.” Fil seemed to want to say something further, but she hesitated too long.
“There it is,” someone said, and I saw it, too: the starboard gate lock had just registered as open. The update vanished within seconds, buried in the monotonous internal log of ship maintenance.
It had taken some parsing, but I’d realized our attackers had only known the standard commands: official emergency protocols, international codes, the most basic of hacks. What they didn’t know was how a civilian ship worked, how privacy codes would keep the little stuff invisible but could never mask the ship’s basic functions. We had turned off most of the notifications, but we hadn’t been able to block the home center’s main door from registering—a safety protocol too deeply ingrained in our structure to truly lock. That was what had reminded me. Now we’d temporarily turned off the outer gate locks that we’d enacted after their initial attack to serve as our own personal notification system. Or so we hoped.