by David Ryker
She rubbed her head, her eyes moving to me before they went back to Mac. We were near ten kilometers from where the transport had gone down, deep in the forest in some foothills. All around us, other campfires crackled. We’d held off as long as we could, but no Free ships were circling and the temperature was dropping with every passing minute. The day had dragged on for a long time — longer than our normal circadian rhythms dictated. Most of the soldiers, almost a hundred strong, were sleeping, curled up around their meager camps, huddled together like children.
I looked at my hands and watched them curl into fists. “We have to.”
Alice nodded. “He’s right. If we don’t, they’re all going to die. You said yourself that the Federation are just going to lay waste to the entire base.”
“Which is exactly why we should be going the other fucking way!” Mac scoffed, pointing into the trees.
He and Alice had been at loggerheads from the moment they’d met. Like two apex predators who suddenly had to share hunting territory. Alice sucked on her cheek, her knuckles white around her knee. “Well, I’m going.” She shook her head and stood up. “You do what you want. You’re the one that’s going to have to live with yourself.”
She stormed off, disappearing between the trees. Mac watched her go, and then turned to me, sighing. “You fucking rehearse that or is it just the line they’re teaching in the Academy these days?”
I shrugged and shook my head, pushing off the log I was sitting on to go after Alice. I could hear Mac swearing to Fish behind me, who’d been his usual stoic self the entire time.
I blocked it out, trying to figure out what I was going to say. Alice was up ahead on a little rise, bathed in the moonlight streaming in between the trees. I felt my chest tighten as I approached. I couldn’t call what was going to happen next. I’d cared about Alice — everything else had just been a line. I couldn’t have given two shits about the Federation, in all honesty. I was just trying to survive, and for some reason, I’d gotten it into my head that that would be a damn sight easier with Alice, and a damn sight less horrible when it happened. Now, it just seemed idiotic to rush headlong back into a fight when I had everything I was looking for already.
I stepped up next to her and looked out at the trees, glittering silver in the shine of the moons that hung overhead, one near and one far, both glowing a pale blue. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked stupidly, immediately regretting having done so.
She tsked and folded her arms, kicking at a rock on the bank. “It’s bullshit is what it is. They don’t have any goddamn honor.”
I nodded, laughing nervously. “Yeah, I know, right? I had to threaten them with reporting desertion to get them to help at all.”
She turned to me and scowled. “That’s even worse. You shouldn’t have to threaten anybody. They should all want to fight for their lives, and for the lives of the others, and for everything that the Federation stands for.”
“Which is?” I turned, asking quietly. “I grew up on a tiny spit of a dustball in the middle of nowhere.” I sighed. “Reared parentless and raised to work my entire life, never seeing the fruits of my labor. Probably dying in the same spot I’d lived in for eighty years. The Federation did that — gave me a life just to take it away. And there are so many others like me — who’ve given, and given, and given, and never got anything back.” The blonde flashed in my mind and my voice softened and broke a little. “So I don’t blame them. It’s easy for you, because you’ve got something to fight for, that thing inside you that makes it all make sense. But most of them don’t. We’re all out here, borrowing time for no reason.”
She turned and stared at me in silence for a few seconds, her mouth twitching at the corners. I couldn’t tell if it was curling up or down. “So why come at all? If they were ready to run, why did you come back? Why convince them to come back?”
I looked down and exhaled slowly. “I wanted to… I didn’t know if you were alive, and I had to know. It started off heroically, and for a second, I thought yeah, maybe I can do this. Be a soldier. Be a pilot, you know? But it wasn’t noble or brave. It was hard, and it was cruel, and I don’t know if it’s something I’m cut out for.” I still couldn’t meet her eyes.
“So you came all this way,” she said, her voice hard and cold, “and now that you’ve got a taste of blood in your mouth, you’re shying away?”
I looked up. “No. That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then explain.”
“I don’t want to kill people for no reason.”
She scoffed. “It’s not for no reason.”
Somehow it’d turned into an argument. “There doesn’t seem like a good one flying around to me. Unless I’m missing something obvious.”
“You are.” Her eyes narrowed. “We’re fighting for order, for stability. For peace.”
“And they’re fighting for freedom.” I could feel my blood rising. “They’re fighting for something they believe in. They don’t want to be under the boot of the Federation. And they don’t have another option. It’s roll over, or it’s fight back. Because the Federation aren’t giving a goddamn inch, and they’re not fucking asking, are they?”
She was seething. “You sound just like them.”
“Can you blame me?” My voice sounded incredulous in my ears and I couldn’t stop it. Everything I’d ever thought about her was spilling out and I couldn’t stop it. “It’s been easy for you. Growing up on the ship, with a family, with friends, with prospects. You don’t get it because you’ve never felt the weight of their oppression crushing you. Crushing the life out of you. You’ve never felt owned, have you?”
Her fists curled at her sides. “I grew up a prisoner, just like you. You think I had any choices? Huh? You think I could just go off and do what I pleased? No. My death warrant was signed the second I was born, just like you. And it hasn’t been easy, like you said — it’s been a damn fight. I’ve had nothing handed to me. I worked my ass off, and have for as long as I can remember. I haven’t ever had another option. It’s been this or exile, so don’t you try to fucking tell me that I’ve never felt the weight of that chain around my neck, because I do. I have, every single day since I was born.” She was shaking, her eyes glittering, jaw quivering.
The anger flooded out of me and drained away all of a sudden. I took a slow breath and met her gaze. “Then what the fuck are we arguing about?”
She grimaced and shook her head, turning away to face the moon again. “We’re arguing about whether or not you’re going to let thousands of innocent soldiers, just like me and you, who haven’t asked for this, and don’t deserve this” — she took a deep breath and then sighed — “die.”
I bit my lip.
“Because if we do nothing, they will die. And if we run, then they will die. The only way they might not is if we do something. If we get in there, and we free them. If there’s an armada incoming, they’re going to run their scans, find that there are thousands of bodies inside the base, assume they’re Free rebels, and they’re going to obliterate the entire thing. And a call from us isn’t going to do shit. So our only option is to get them out.” She nodded, confirming her plan.
I looked at her, a little enamored. All I was thinking about was running. She was thinking about everyone else. “Alright.” I said it without thinking but I didn’t regret it.
“Alright?” Her features softened in the moonlight.
“Let’s save them.” I watched her, my eyes tracing the lines of her face in the halflight. I watched them morph, slowly, into a smile, and then she nodded.
“Okay.”
We moved out at first light. When we got back to the fire, Mac was tossing twigs into it, a scowl carved into his face. He’d looked up and upon seeing the determined half smile on Alice’s face, sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He beckoned hyperbolically. “Come on then, lay it on me.”
Alice took her spot across the fire from him, holding back a smirk. “Lay what on you?” she asked
airily.
“The rousing speech to get me to want to lay down my life for the Federation.”
She laughed a little. “There’s no speech, MacAlister. It’s your choice. I’m not forcing you, but Maddox and I are going, and we’re taking everyone who wants to come with us, because if we don’t thousands of people are going to die.”
“You and Red?” He raised an eyebrow, gesturing to me.
She cast me a quick glance. “Red?”
I shook my head. “Don’t ask.”
She squinted at me for a second and then back to Mac. “Yeah, me and Red... We’re going to try.”
“And all you’ll succeed in doing is dying as well.” He snapped the twig he was holding and hurled it into the flames in a shower of sparks. I watched intently as they dueled. She wasn’t about to back down and I didn’t think Mac had the intelligence or the stamina to outwit or beat her.
“Maybe. We could die, sure. We could die right here, right now. The Free could hit us with an orbital strike as we talk.”
I watched a couple of soldiers around the nearby fires, who were listening in, cast their eyes upward. I smirked a little.
“Or,” she went on, “we could die in our sleep as a fleet of mech roll through, burning the forest to cinders. Or we could die making a run for it, fleeing to try to save our own skins. Or we could make it out, get caught by the Federation, and then be executed for desertion. Or we could die trying to save a thousand lives. We all die, MacAlister. It just boils down to how you want to go. Doing something that matters, or not.”
He chewed his cheek, looking from me to Alice and back. I shrugged at him and he swore. “For fuck sake,” he muttered, shaking his head at himself. “Alright then, let’s hear this master plan of yours. Not like I’ve never gone to sleep thinking I’m dying the next morning, anyway.”
She grinned, leaning forward. I did too. “Alright,” she said. “The BOA is a little way away, over the next rise, not far. I overheard some of the Free rebels talking about it, and we haven’t seen any ships take off yet. That means that they’re getting everything together for a mass exodus.”
“You can’t know that,” Mac cut in.
“Look, I do a lot of studying, alright? I’ve been reading recounts of the Free war since I was old enough to hold a book, and my dad used to read them to me before that—”
“You can’t learn everything from books—”
“But you can learn a lot.”
I stayed quiet. I’d been cramming as much as I could for the tests and classes, but four months of work can’t compare to a lifetime of acquired knowledge. I didn’t know shit about the Federation military before I was conscripted, and it seemed now like I still didn’t know shit, not compared to Alice and a seasoned pilot.
She continued. “And your assumption that the Federation wouldn’t come to bargain was based on what you knew. And my assumption that the Free are going to get off world all at the same time is based on what I know.” She sat back a little and narrowed her eyes, thinking about her words before she said them. “The Federation will have pulled in ships from all over the galaxy ahead of sending their destroyers, which are no doubt en route. If there are some smaller Federation vessels up there, they’re patrolling near-space, waiting for the big boys to arrive. The Free aren’t going to send a single ship up on its own. It’d get torn apart by whatever’s roving. Class two or three attack ships, maybe a couple of bombers — nothing capable of a big enough orbital strike to destroy the base, but enough to take out a fleeing Free ship. So what do they do about them?”
She paused for a second and the fire crackled. No one offered up a response.
“Well,” she went on, “the Free are going to want to make sure that they take out the Federation ships before they can get word to the fleet of what’s happening. If they don’t, then their whole plan goes to shit. So, yeah, I’d say it’s a fair bet that they’re getting everything ready and then they’re going to launch with everything they have as hard and as fast as they can. They’re going to punch a hole big enough to get out and when the fleet arrives, they’re not going to know the difference.” She finished and leaned forward, pressing on her knees with her hands.
Mac set his jaw and stared at her, weighing it up. “Say you’re right, and I’m not saying you are, but if you are — what would the plan even be? It’s not like we’ve got enough of a force to take the entire base on. They’d be thousands, at least. We’d get mown down before we got close, and then everything would go on as normal — they leave and the soldiers still die. So what’s the plan? March us all into the firing line? Overwhelm them with sheer numbers? That’s the Federation’s usual play, but newsflash, Kepler, it doesn’t fucking work.” Mac swore and then spat over his shoulder.
I swallowed, staying quiet. The blonde had said those words, almost verbatim, but I wasn’t about to chime in. I thought about her — about whether, if we did lay siege to the base somehow, she’d be there, shooting back. Whether she’d die for her cause. Whether it was right that anyone should.
“No, that isn’t my plan,” Alice sighed. “The Federation may not value lives, but I do. No, what we need to do is slip in fast and quiet, and hit them where it hurts. They’ll be crazy getting everything ready to go, so hopefully we can get close and slip inside before they know what’s happened.”
“And how do you propose we do that, exactly?” Mac arched an eyebrow, shifting from devil's advocate to downright asshole.
“Well, we’ve got a T-Series, don’t we? And an Eshellite? Masters of stealth and all that shit. He can just slip in and find us an entry point, radio back to tell us where, and voilà.” She turned her hand out, pointing to Fish.
Mac turned to the Eshellite on the log next to him and waited for an answer. Fish looked from him to Alice and back, raised his chin a little and then gargled quietly.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Mac practically yelled. “You agree with her?”
Fish gargled again.
“You’re fucking crazy, the bunch of you!”
“And after we’re in,” Alice pressed on, “we split up. Free the prisoners. Sabotage their hangar. Keep the Free there, trapped in their base, get the soldiers out, and get clear of the blast zone. After that…” She trailed off. “I don’t know. If we make it that far, we’ll figure something out.”
Mac scoffed and shook his head. “That can’t be your fucking plan. Please tell me that we’re not actually considering going through with this?”
No one came to his defense.
Alice sighed and looked at me. I smiled at her and she smiled back for a second before looking back at Mac. “Well, unless you’ve got anything better, then it’s the only plan we’ve got.”
22
I got off the training deck and realized that every single recruit was still in the exam. I was kicking myself that I’d managed to get myself killed so quickly. I wondered whether that thing was even trying to hit us, or if I had somehow managed to throw myself into the line of fire, protecting her from a shot that wasn’t even going to land. No, Jonas had thrown her off. It was going to take her apart. There was no doubt about that.
I sighed and stepped onto the plain white platform that I’d gotten off at four months earlier. I didn’t know that I’d ever see it again.
I hit the call button on one of the pillars and the train came unnervingly quickly. It wasn’t against any rules for recruits of the Mech Corps to head down to the lower decks; it just wasn’t the done thing. No one from above ventured down, and no one from below ventured up. Not that it really mattered anymore. Fourteen seconds didn’t seeming promising.
The train arrived and I stepped on, heading down.
My mind drifted on the way, and when it pulled up, I stepped off in a daze, unsure that I’d ever get on again.
I pressed through the corridors, and already the light seemed dimmer, the hallways a little less bright and shiny. I followed the sounds of voices and rowdiness with nowhere to b
e for another eleven hours.
The corridors led me toward a mess hall not dissimilar from the one up top, except this one was a lot bigger, and a lot busier. The one upstairs housed a couple hundred at most, but this one was almost the size of our training deck. The Mech Corps occupied the highest decks of the rear and middle portion of the ship. The Regular Corps occupied the bottom sections of the front section, more than five times as much as the Mechanized Corps. The rear was all hangars housing dropships, equipment, and everything else. Behind that were the engines. The front upper decks were all private quarters — the families of the officers, and the civilians. It was up there, somewhere, that Kepler had grown up, with her brothers, her father. The academy was up there too, somewhere, though getting up there was an impossibility. The ship itself was a goliath. Running circuits around the lower decks took hours. They were built in space and never ventured into gravitational fields. They were just too large — floating space stations. They had a way of making you feel tiny.
I stood in the throng of the mess and people moved like a sea. Recruits, privates, officers. It was a melee — no one separated, none of the decorum on show above. Most of the people here were all like me — colony kids, tubers, drifters — everyone who would be scooped up off the surface of every dustball passed.
I looked around and saw people rough-housing — pushing and jostling, laughing, joking, shoveling down food. These were my people. The people I’d left behind. The people I’d soon be joining. I was framed in the doorway, in my Federation gray, and no one even looked twice at me. I felt my jaw twitch. This was where I belonged, and before the day was out, this was where I’d be again.
“Trading up?” came the only familiar voice in the room.
I turned to see Everett approaching, tall and tough, her hair pinned back tight as always. She was smiling, but there was sadness in her eyes, but not for her — it was an acquiescence. A look of abject welcome.
I smiled back, mirroring it. “Guess so.”