“You gotta stop drumming your fingers, sir. Maybe you’ll win a hand once in a while.”
He nods, resigned, and shows his hand. Straight flush. I stare at the cards.
“Kind of like right now,” he says and sweeps the pot toward him.
He stands up, straightening his uniform blouse. “Thanks for the game, Capt. Nirvelli. It was refreshing to play with such skilled players.”
He turns toward me, putting on his cap. “I heard about how you patched up General Edmunds. That’s great work. Man like that could be really grateful for the effort.”
Nirvelli laughs. “You don’t know how stubborn Silk is, sir.”
I sulk, and I know it’s childish. Getting beat by this blowhard just burns me.
He nods to me. “I think sooner or later, Sergeant Silk may realize that, like this friendly card game, he doesn’t have everything figured out quite right.”
He bids farewell to all, then turns to me. “And God willing, if you make it back to Germonium, Sergeant, please give your fiancée my best.”
This day just keeps getting better. I see him coming just as I’m stepping out of the chow hall. Some private, just like all the others.
He steps in front of me and stops. I immediately know this time is different. He’s not smiling. We stare at each other.
“You Sergeant Silk?” he says. His mouth barely moves. He’s young but there’s something about him that gives me pause.
“That’s right.” I look at his name tag. I know that name.
I don’t realize what’s happened before my face slams into the steel of the floor. I taste blood and my vision goes awash in red. I don’t feel any pain until he grabs my head and slams it down again. I hear a wet snap as my nose breaks.
I’m old, but these muscles still rally when I need them. I twist over and heave the kid off my back. He falls to the floor and I’m on him before he recovers. I pin his arms with my knees, digging in hard. He grunts and I know it hurts. Good.
I wipe my face and my hand comes away covered in blood. Son of a bitch. I’m about to rip out the kid’s jaw when I see the name tag again. It hits me like a sledgehammer to the noggin.
“Atwell.”
I take my knees off his arms and he’s on top of me instantly. I feel his fists landing, I feel blood flowing but I do nothing. I hear him shouting at me, horrible things that I can’t understand. His rage is boundless, but I don’t fight back. I’ve wronged him, and I know it. Let him have his day. I can spit blood for a while.
I sit on my bed in the infirmary, cradling my broken face with a cold compress. The kid did a number on me. I’ll avoid mirrors for a few weeks.
With my one good eye, I see Nirvelli coming toward me, already smiling. He whistles. “Damn, Silk, you just get more popular every day.”
I smile. “If I’d known everyone was going to kick my ass, I’d never have come to this war.”
He sits down next to the bed, puts his feet up. “You gonna charge him? Little bastard deserves it.”
“I already forgot about it,” I say.
“What? You kidding? Some enlisted bastard hits me and I’d—”
“It was Atwell’s kid.”
He stops and stares at me. “No way.” We sit in silence a long moment, and it gets awkward.
“You don’t have to get weird,” I say. “Damn.”
“No, I mean, I get it—”
“I’m not sorry for what I did to his old man, but I’m sorry it had to affect the kid. The universe isn’t fair that way.”
He nods. “Nope, I guess not.”
He tries to change the subject, but I’m in no mood for talking. The beating I just took and seeing the name “Atwell” again has got me thinking.
Maybe I was hasty. Looking back, I don’t regret it.
I sat before his desk, looking at a silver framed picture of his wife and children. His smiling, happy family.
“We’ve reviewed your petition for cohabitation,” Major Atwell said as he stifled a yawn.
Cohabitation. An icy word for marriage. My palms were clammy and wet. I felt hot, and sweat trickled down my spine. I had waited over fifteen months for this meeting.
“This office has completed three interviews as well as neuroscanner veracity examinations on one . . .” Atwell shuffled through her file papers. “Kayla Marie Brulliard. I’m obligated to inform you that we conducted a thorough review and background investigation of every living member of her family. This is all standard procedure in these cases and is done for the good of the service member. That’s you, by the way.”
Her face filled my mind. This endless bureaucratic process was almost over. I feared the worst. Kayla was a widow with a four-year-old boy on a far-flung colony. She had no one. I had no idea what she would do if they said no. I couldn’t bear the thought.
I have security clearances. My head is supposedly full of intelligence, though anyone who knows me may argue that. As a colonist from Germonium, Kayla was considered not quite trustworthy as a citizen, not like someone from Earth. Because of that, we needed government approval to marry. So, I did what’s right and followed the rules. All colonists are viewed with some suspicion, maybe because they tend to have stronger streaks of independence. There’s little left to chance in wartime.
“Your petition to marry the colonist has been denied,” he told me, his eyes not even leaving the papers on his desk. “Markers in her veracity exams and/or her family history raised security concerns with this office. For reasons of privacy, I cannot discuss these with you. Please be informed that this decision is final and there is no avenue of appeal. You have fifteen days to terminate this relationship under penalty of job termination or incarceration.”
I sat there, paralyzed. I must have heard wrong.
“But—”
“This decision cannot be appealed, Sergeant. I’m sorry.”
“She doesn’t have anyone else.”
“This decision cannot be appealed, Sergeant.”
“So what—”
“Dismissed, Sergeant.”
I still remember Atwell’s dead and indifferent eyes. He dismissed me with a wave of his hand. This was a cold and pitiless man who cared nothing for me.
I sat there and stared at the perfect picture of his perfect family while he forever denied me the same thing. I started to crumble. The anger, bubbling inside for fifteen months, boiled over and I did what any man in love could have done.
I shoved Major Atwell into an air lock and spaced him. Maybe I was hasty. I don’t regret it, though.
I was originally sentenced to life in prison. But it turns out that good medics are scarce and in war irreplaceable. I’m really good, so I was given a choice. Prison or service in the line companies until I saved one thousand lives. Then I could go back to Kayla. It was an easy choice.
They thought that it would take me decades. I did it in less than five years.
When I dream during faster-than-light travel, it’s always about the past.
I had just proposed to Kayla. We were on her boat, a twin-sail sloop, gently bobbing up and down on the orange-tinged sea. She knows how to sail. She handles a rig like a real sailor, feeling the current in her bones. She put us perfectly on the far side of the sand bars where the ocean churned with hungry fish. We cast our rods until sunset, then grilled our catch on the bow. The perfumed scent of the sizzling filets wafted around our heads and drew in a family of hungry pipernets that hovered over us and cackled for a taste. Satiated, we tossed up bits of the tender meat to the fleshy beaks as they clacked in gratitude.
As the twin moons of Germonium rose like flames from the black horizon we reclined across the bow on a blanket, opened a bottle of sweet bourbon and I pulled the ring out of my pocket. Kayla melted and we lay embraced while turtle-shelled tungs,
blinded by the moonlight, bumped softly against the hull. The boat swayed along with the trade currents and a warm breeze hugged our bodies as we drifted off to sleep.
It was the birth of our new life, and the water was our womb. I dream often of that night of nights, and I wake up smelling the sea.
The transport decelerates rapidly, lurching out of FTL travel. My face feels hot, and my sleeve comes away damp as I wipe my forehead. My pummeled face aches and my stomach is doing somersaults, angry at me for being empty now almost twenty days. I stretch and try to shake the sleep from my head, taking a few uneasy steps. I’m not authorized to be here, but there comes a point when you’ve had enough and don’t give a damn. I’ve decided to take the bastard’s advice.
Fort Dempsey is a huge orbital hospital. We’re well behind the lines now, protected by a large chunk of Earth’s naval forces. It’s a bustling place, full of white-clothed people going back and forth, busy in their tasks. After passing through the biofilters and security checkpoints, I’m directed toward the hospital’s VIP ward where all the high-ranking officers are housed. Coming off the elevator, the cold, sterile environment of the general ward gives way to something far more welcoming. I step into another world, surrounded by soft carpeting, wood panels and crown molding. So this is how the other half recuperates.
General Edmunds has his own suite, of course. The guards by his door menace me as I approach, but wave me by with the flick of a hand. I’m expected. The door opens and I see a cluster of doctors hovering around a large plush bed. They chat away, talking on top of one another, and I know it’s because each wants to get his own insightful comment heard by the general. Everyone’s a suck-up.
The swish of the door alerts them, and they look up at me in unison. One, a dark, plump man with a goatee, hurries toward me to shoo me away.
“Let him be,” a weak voice says, and I know it’s the general. “And the rest of you, get out.”
They exit, measuring me up as they go. I give them a cocky smile and nod. Their scowls tell me I’ve hit home.
“Come here,” the voice says again, and I can hear the labored breath pushing back, “next to the bed.”
I see the general for the first time since the day I patched him up. He was probably a powerful figure before he was injured. But the thing on the bed is being held together by tubes and silicate castings. A wall of machines next to the bed hums and beeps away, pushing his lungs, pumping his blood, keeping him alive. His head is encased in some kind of helmet that hides his eyes, and I wonder how he can identify me. I edge close to the foot of the bed, hesitant.
“Stand before me, Sergeant,” he says, his liquid-filled lungs gurgling. “I believe we’re still in the service here.”
I snap to and pop him a crisp salute. His skeletal hand, tubes dangling, returns the motion with surprising dexterity.
“Somehow I thought you’d come. I understand you’ve made some mistakes,” he says. I can feel his unseen eyes piercing me, peering into dark places. “But hasn’t everyone?”
I owe you my life,” General Edmunds says in his raspy voice, “such as it is.”
He utters a strained chuckle, and I smile uneasily. We both know it’s not as bad as that. I’m sure a cloned body is being grown for him as we speak. “Just doing my job, sir.”
He nods. “Yes, I agree. And nobody ever thanked me for doing mine. But we’re soldiers, Sergeant Silk. That’s how it is.”
“I agree, sir.”
“You’ve been through it, haven’t you, Sergeant?”
“I guess you could say that, sir.”
“Five years in. Wounded?”
“A little banged up, sir.”
“You’re modest, Sergeant,” he says. “You’d never make a good officer.” He laughs, and I know that wasn’t meant as an insult.
He shifts in the bed, and I see that the sheets are soaked through with sweat. “I should never have been down on that planet, gawking around like a tourist. I’ve become the thing that I abhorred as a young officer.”
I nod, not quite understanding.
“You’ll see, Sergeant, if you stay in the service long enough and rise to a high enough rank, that it all goes to your head. The power. The privilege. You get used to being catered to. You get used to thinking of yourself as something special.”
I nodded. The ego of a general. He was right about that. Goes double for politicians.
“There I was, strolling around a war zone to ‘inspect’ the troops, sticking my nose into places I had no business in. Watching the young officers scramble to fulfill my every whim.” He laughed again and was wracked with a fit of coughing. “I thought even the enemy couldn’t touch me. Maybe the universe saw my arrogance and decided to knock me down a few notches. I deserved it.”
I shift back and forth on my feet, my eyes darting to the clock. Shocking talk from a general, no doubt, but I have no idea why I’m being forced to listen to it.
“Just as the gravity slammers were hitting, Sergeant,” he says, “my mind became very clear. Just two months from now, my daughter will be graduating from the Naval Academy, and I would’ve been dead. Dead because I was an arrogant ass. That’s all I could think.”
He’s silent for a long moment. “But now, even in my condition, I will see her graduate. I’ll be alive to see my child again. I cannot tell you how that makes me feel.”
His hand goes to his face, disappears under the helmet. I hear his voice crack. “You gave that to me, Sergeant. When you pulled me under the ground and put me back together. You gave me the greatest gift I’ve ever received.”
I shuffle a bit. “Just doing my job, sir.” I don’t know what else to say.
He huffs. “You’re known as quite the hard-ass, Silk. Oh, yes, I’ve asked around. I can’t do much from this bed, but I can read personnel files. I can talk to people.”
I straighten, getting even more uneasy.
“You know, I’m in pieces in this bed. My legs are a splatter somewhere on Luyten, and even with implants, I’ll never be the same. But I don’t begrudge you because you can walk, and I can’t.”
He breathes heavily, and I hear the phlegm down in his lungs.
“Envy will eat a man up, Sergeant. If all you want in life is rage, it’ll be easy to find. But cursing others for what they have, and you don’t, is no way to live.”
I rock back a little, his words striking near home.
He straightens, regaining a touch of military decorum. “That’s all I’ll say about that. Now, name your pleasure, Sergeant. Whatever it is, it’s yours.”
I listen, but don’t hear him. “Not necessary, sir. I—”
“Anything. I don’t care what it is. Just tell me. I will give it to you.”
“Really, sir—”
“Sergeant, you won’t walk out of here without asking me for something. And I think we both know what you want to ask.”
I stand there, dumb, fidgeting. He’s done his homework and knows me. There’s something incredibly uncomfortable about that. I just want to run out.
“You’re only five short, am I right? I think a general’s life is worth at least four credits, don’t you?” Again, he chuckles. I don’t know if he’s being sarcastic or not.
“For chrissakes, Sergeant, ask me to release you from your sentence. Ask me to let you go to your fiancée. We both know that’s what you want. Ask me and I’ll give it to you.”
I want to ask more than anything in the entire world. Every fiber in my soul wants to, but my mouth won’t make the words.
“Sergeant, ask someone else for help, for once in your life.”
I nod. Kayla’s face swims in my mind, and something breaks. I feel warm, salty tears on my lips, and I smell the sea. With all I have left, I make the words. “Help me, sir.”
He leans back, the skelet
al hand rests on his lap. The liquid lungs settle to an even rhythm. “Okay, then. The last soul you save will be your own.”
I stand on the beach and look over the ocean. Enormous dust devils dance back and forth across the horizon. The beach, with its pristine red sand, is blackened and riddled with spiderweb cracks. I look out to the sandbars, past the point where whitecaps played with Kayla’s boat, and see thundering clouds spewing blood-red rain.
The ocean is gone. The colony is a memory, blasted into the next world by weapons that stink of hot plasma and burning rubber. My eyes sting as the dust invades them. The dust bowl that was this great sea, full of life, beckons me and my digger. I want to burrow into it and forget. Go down and never come back up. Bury myself with her.
Kayla appears before me. She’s just as I remember. Her long black hair, tossed over her shoulder, flows with a harsh wind. Her smile, directed at me, makes me weak. It’s been five long years. The images in my memory don’t do her justice. Her beauty impales me on its spearhead, and my heart tears in two.
I fall into her arms and cry.
“Shhh, quiet, Thomas,” she says, stroking my head. I feel her warm breast against my cheek and squeeze her tighter. The tears come too fast.
She holds my face firm in her hands and looks into my eyes. Her gaze levels me. “What’s happened to you, Thomas? You’re so angry.”
“They took you,” I whisper, because I can’t summon more words.
“That’s over, love. Now you can help people. You can save lives.”
“I don’t care about them,” I say. “I want to stay with you.”
“You can’t, love. I’m gone. You know I am. This isn’t you, Thomas. You’re not the man I fell in love with. You have to move on. Please, for me, you have to be a good man.”
I know she’s dead. I’ve known for years, but refused to accept it. Maybe that’s why I wanted to come back here, to force myself to admit it. She was the only thing that ever made me a good man. The only reason I ever wanted to be a good man, and if I couldn’t save her, then what the hell do I care about the rest?
Writers of the Future Volume 27: The Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Page 35