by Dan Moren
Kovalic caught a military transport from a nearby base; an hour flight took him to the equatorial Novan continent where the School was located. He spent most of the time hunched over the console at his seat, catching up on correspondence.
The general wasn’t the only one with his own off-the-book sources. Over the years Kovalic had developed an extensive network of assets and agents around the known galaxy. A catalog of encrypted virtual dead drops accessible only to him kept the sources secure and compartmentalized.
He’d put out feelers about the Aleph Tablet to a handful of the most likely to be in the know. So far the only information he’d gotten back was the seller of the tablet: a Hanif shipping baron under investigation for some shady dealings was liquidating her private assets before they could be seized – hence the black market auction. Beyond that, though, Kovalic might as well have been asking about intel on Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster for all the response he’d gotten. Still, something about the quiet felt pointed, like the eerie calm before a storm broke loose.
Circling back around, he checked the dead-drop marked NOMAD again, a feeling of tightness in his chest. But there was still nothing waiting for him there, as there hadn’t been for weeks.
When the flier landed, Kovalic emerged into the thick, humid air of swampland. Crenshaw Airfield was about a half-hour’s drive from the school. Escorted by a young corporal driving a treaded rambler, Kovalic arrived just as the day was wrapping up, and was ushered promptly into the commandant’s office.
Colonel Jean-Paul Benton was not quite two decades Kovalic’s senior, his close-cropped hair gone entirely over to white, a stark contrast against his dark brown skin. A web of laugh lines were etched finely around his mouth. He looked up as Kovalic entered and leaned back in his chair. “Well, I’ll be. Our distinguished graduates do remember us.”
“Sir,” said Kovalic, coming to a parade rest.
After a moment, they both broke into smiles, and the colonel rose and embraced him. “Simon. Always good to see you.”
“You too, Ben.” Kovalic sank into a chair. “It’s been a while.”
“It has at that,” said Benton. “But I’m guessing this isn’t a social visit, so I’ll keep the bourbon in the drawer.”
“Afraid not. I’m here because I need a body.”
Benton rested his elbows on his desk and exhaled. “I heard about Bayern – I don’t know the details, but, well, let’s just say when we lose one of our own, it gets around. I’m sorry, Simon.”
Kovalic’s stomach clenched. “Thanks.”
“Aaron Page is going to be a hard man to replace. One of the best this program has ever seen.”
Which still hadn’t stopped him from making a damn fool mistake. Kovalic’s shoulders tightened. It was one thing to maintain the hovercar accident story for the official paperwork, but damn it, Page had been through the School. Benton had trained the man; they both deserved better.
“But I’ll do my best,” said Benton, getting to his feet. “Let me get my files. I’ll be right back.”
After a moment alone in the office, Kovalic pushed himself out of the chair and paced over to the wall. In a place otherwise so heavy on the idea of anonymity and interchangeability, it was the rare beacon of individuality: fifteen years’ worth of photographs, of each graduating class. How many of them, Kovalic wondered, were still alive out there? His eyes tracked up to one specific picture, picking out the serious young face of a newly-minted lieutenant who looked like he might try to win the war single-handedly.
“Boy, am I glad you finally lightened up a bit,” said Benton, re-entering the room with a stack of flimsies under his arm. “The whole grim reaper thing gets old, especially for a kid under thirty.”
“We all came in wanting to be badasses.”
“And now?”
“Now? Now, I think we’re just tired.” Glancing back at the wall, he studiously ignored another, more recent class picture. “Twenty years I’ve been at this – you and Tapper even longer – and what have I got to show for it? A list of dead men and women.”
Benton pressed a hand to his shoulder. “They chose the life, Simon.”
Kovalic couldn’t contain a snort. “Yeah. As if there’s ever really a choice when there’s a war on. What are you smiling at?”
The laugh lines were getting a workout. “Just an old man thinking back on time past. Come on. Sit down and we’ll go through these candidates.”
Thirty minutes later, they’d been through the admittedly-not-very-tall stack of personnel jackets. Kovalic had to admit that they were all supremely qualified, with field combat experience and a wide variety of skill sets: explosives, languages, technical expertise. But every time he opened one, he saw Aaron Page’s face as it had once appeared in one of these files. And then saw Page’s face as it had been on Bayern, when Kovalic had pulled a weapon and pointed it at him.
Page had been perfect on paper too. But something – the stress of the job, maybe – had broken him. Could any of these soldiers really be built from sterner stuff? What was to say they wouldn’t follow the same path?
He sighed as he set the flimsies down on Benton’s desk, a little harder than intended. A single sheet drifted to the floor, beneath Kovalic’s chair. Reaching down, he grabbed it and was about to return it to the pile when he saw the large, black stencil stamped across its front.
DISMISSED.
“What’s this?”
Benton peered over the desk. “Oh, one of our washouts. Which one is… ah.” His mouth twitched, the smile tinged with regret.
Kovalic pored over the page, eyes widening. “Quite the record. I’m a little surprised the School would even admit someone with this kind of history.”
“I confess, there was a favor involved. You remember John Boyland?”
“From your old unit? Sure. I met him a few times at those vet events. The cop, right?”
“Yeah, in Salaam,” said Benton. “He actually passed away a couple years back, but before that he’d asked me to keep a lookout. One of his pet projects; he always had a good eye for talent. But talent’s not everything, especially when you insist on coloring outside the lines.”
No, talent wasn’t everything, but it sure didn’t hurt. A little rough around the edges, maybe, but nothing that Kovalic couldn’t deal with. He’d whipped plenty of soldiers into shape in his career.
“Simon.” He looked up to find Benton’s eyes on him, wary. “Just… be careful. You can’t save everyone.”
“Don’t worry, Ben,” said Kovalic, the smile coming easy. “I know what I’m doing. So, where can I find this Adelaide Sayers?”
CHAPTER 3
The woman slammed the glass down on the bar, the back of her hand already wiping her mouth, and nodded to the bartender for another.
Hesitation flickered in his eyes, but he pulled the tall, thin-necked bottle off the shelf and poured another dram in the glass, the excess spilling slightly over the edge. He didn’t push it over to her.
“I think maybe you’ve had enough, soldier.”
Her mouth cracked into a brittle smile. Soldier. “That, Jonesy, is one thing I’m not. Not anymore.” She reached over and plucked the shot glass from where it sat, then tossed it back in one swift motion.
She didn’t much like tequila, she remembered, as it burned a path down her throat, but any spaceport in an ion storm.
Jonesy sighed, a ratty white cloth appearing in his dark, calloused hands as he sopped up the spillage. It vanished, along with the cloth, and the bartender leaned forward, elbows on the pitted and gouged wood.
“Getting room-spinningly drunk ain’t going to fix that.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Nope,” she agreed. Nothing is going to fix that. “But it sure as hell passes the time.” She tapped a finger next to the empty shot glass and looked at him expectantly.
With a sigh, he shook his head, then poured another glass. “Take that one for the road, Addy.”
Adelaide Sayers raised the
shot glass in salute, but the big bald man didn’t say anything, just turned and walked towards the other end of the bar.
So she’d failed out of their little school. Big deal. She ignored the hollow pit in her stomach. Wasn’t the first time someone had told her she wasn’t good enough, and probably wouldn’t be the last. It was all bullshit, anyway. Rigged. They wanted to churn out little gingerbread soldiers, all perfectly alike. Sure, they claimed they were looking for initiative, wanted them to think for themselves, but the second you took a liberty – one single little slice of individuality – they were all over you like disappointed parents. Not that she’d know.
Bullshit, she thought again, sniffing as she stared at the shot glass.
So she was done with it. Maybe they’d tossed her out, but she could have quit anyway. Time to find something else to do. She could hire on as freightline security, maybe. Or see if any of the private contractors were hiring. There were a few that might even look past her permanent record, if they were looking for the right sort of pers–
The door to the bar slammed open and a crowd filed in, raucous and jeering. Addy scowled at her tequila. The day just kept getting better and better.
“Jonesy!” shouted a voice. “A round on me.”
“Can you even afford that, Mathis?” called a woman’s voice.
“Stuff it, Kazuo!” He sidled up to the bar, and Addy caught a whiff of sweat and a familiar revolting cologne as he blithely invaded her personal space.
Blinking, Addy glanced around without turning her head. The bar had been empty aside from her, so why he’d felt the need to plop himself right here… well, actually she could guess.
“Mind?” she growled.
“Oh, sorry, Sayers,” said Mathis, affecting an air of apology. “Didn’t see you lurking there.”
She looked up at him. Fair-haired, square-jawed, she could see why everybody thought Mathis was a charmer, but somehow that charisma never reached his beady little piggish eyes.
“Fuck off.”
Mathis spread a hand on his chest, looking aghast. “Such language from a lady.” He turned towards Jonesy, who had tossed his bar rag over his shoulder and stood opposite. “A round of your finest amber for everybody in this place – even my friend Sayers here.” He rested a hand on her shoulder.
Addy tensed at the touch, shrugging the hand off. “Don’t want nothing from you, shitheel.”
The good-natured expression slid off his face. “Here I am, just trying to be nice. But I should’ve known better than to feel sorry for a washout.”
Her teeth ground together, and she placed the tequila shot delicately on the coaster in front of her. “Walk away, Mathis.”
“Come on, leave her alone,” said another voice from the crowd. Kazuo, Addy thought, but she was having trouble distinguishing it over the pounding in her ears. A figured appeared on the other side of her, at the edge of her peripheral vision.
“Nah, I want to know why this failure thinks she’s too good to share a round with us. I didn’t see her out there with us today, getting the once-over. We’re the ones heading to the big leagues, so she can stop acting so fucking superior for once.”
Addy looked up at him slowly, taking in the heavy crease of his brow, the flared nostrils, the slightly forward-pointing ears. He really does look like a pig, she thought, and in that moment, she could see nothing else.
She laughed.
Mathis’s anger boiled over and his beefy arm swung for her, but Addy wasn’t there anymore. A head shorter than the man, she’d ducked under his arm and dug her knuckle into his armpit. He grunted and she watched his eyes widen as his arm flopped like a fish on a dock.
“Hey, guys, break it up,” another voice said, seizing Addy’s arm. She didn’t know who it was, and it didn’t really matter. The grip on her arm was enough; she seized it with her opposite hand, wrenching it off of her and rotating it up and around. She heard a shout of pain, but she was already in motion, lashing out backwards with a mule kick that took one of Mathis’s knees out from under him. Still massaging his dead arm, the man’s head thunked hard into the bar.
Her vision had narrowed into a tunnel, her ears filled with a roaring of a ship’s engine on full blast. Someone grabbed her from the side, attempting to put her in a headlock; it was a woman with a milk-and-honey scent familiar from hours of sparring practice. Yadao. She had a shoulder injury that hadn’t quite healed yet, which meant that all Addy had to do was lean heavily towards her weaker right arm. She dropped into a dead weight, felt the grip give out, and hit the ground in a roll.
Somewhere, Addy vaguely registered shouting – Jonesy, maybe? – but it was virtually inaudible over the sound of her own breathing whooshing in her ears. She popped up from the ground, putting all that momentum into an uppercut that glanced hard off a chin, sending another aggressor reeling away.
From opposite sides, two separate people grabbed each of her arms in iron grips, trying to lock them at the elbows. She struggled against them, growling and trying to wrench her way free.
A face filled her vision, not the blunt-nosed Mathis, but another familiar visage. This one looked more concerned than angry, and its lips were moving, forming words that Addy couldn’t quite make out.
The ocean roaring in her ears started to ebb and her vision widened once again, enough to see that it was Kazuo and Reza who had her arms locked. The green eyes in front of her belonged to the deceptively soft features of Song, her bunkmate. And the words she was saying…
“Calm the fuck down, Addy.”
A breath huffed out of her mouth, and she felt her balance waver slightly. All at once she was reminded that she had a stomach and that it was largely full of tequila, now sloshing against her insides.
“Lemme go,” she muttered, wrenching her arms against the people who held her.
“Not until we’re sure that you’re not going to lose your shit again,” said Song, arms crossed over her chest. “Jesus. You almost broke Reza’s jaw.” She nodded to the man holding Addy’s right arm, his teeth gritted and eyes glassy.
“Shouldn’t have touched me,” said Addy.
“Probably not,” Song agreed. “But that doesn’t mean you should beat the shit out of him either.”
Anger flared in Addy’s chest. Don’t tell me what to do! She pushed it down, hard, trying to put it away, push it someplace else. “Yeah,” she managed, unable to keep the sullen tone from her voice. “Probably not.”
“Right. OK. They’re going to let you go now, and you’re going to go back to the bunk. Take it easy.” Song raised a hand. “I’ll settle up with Jonesy for you.”
Aw, crap. Jonesy. She risked a glance over her shoulder at the bald barkeep, who was staring back at her with something more akin to fear than pity. Rule one of Jonesy’s was “no fighting” – the only thing you’d ever get a ban for, the old man had said on their first week at the School.
What does it matter? You flunked out. You’re not coming back here anyway.
The anger spiked, sweeping over her like engine wash, but she fought it back once again. Her arms were released and she yanked them away, scowling at the ones who had held them, her former classmates. Emphasis on “former.” They were supposed to have her back, but they’d let her down, just like everybody else, all the way back to the parents that had died and left her on her own, barely more than a toddler.
Without another look, she stalked to the exit and kicked open the plywood screen door, stepping out into the warm summer evening of Terra Nova’s southern continent.
A cloud of gnats divebombed her, and she shooed them away with an angry snap of the wrist, but they persisted, drawn to the faint sheen of sweat now drying on her face and arms. She took a deep breath and was about to walk down the steps when something pinged her danger sense – she wasn’t alone.
Everything redlined.
“Those were some nice mov–” The voice didn’t even get to finish before Addy was already lashing out in its direction with an e
lbow.
And then she was lying on her back on the ground, staring up at the stars twinkling overhead. Her breath returned in a whoosh as she sucked it in like she’d just broken the surface of the ocean, and she tried not to groan.
“–but, as I was about to say, your discipline needs a little work.”
She rolled back onto her spine, hands up by her head, and did a kick up, springing from the ground and landing on her feet.
The man standing a few feet away from her had brown hair streaked with gray and a couple days’ worth of stubble. He raised an eyebrow in her direction.
Cocky bastard, she thought, as she drove at him, feinting with her left fist before following with a strike from her right. Just like the rest of them.
He weaved away from the feint and blocked the other strike with his palms, but Addy could tell that he was holding back. There was a faint patronizing smile on his face, like a parent play-fighting with a child.
His mistake. She spun around with the momentum of her blocked right strike, aiming her left elbow at his temple. But the elbow once again whiffed, meeting only air as he ducked under it.
A blow caught her in the sternum as she finished spinning, knocking the air out of her once again, and putting her ass back on the ground, where she lay for a moment to catch her breath.
The man stood above her, his palms up and towards her. “Take it easy, soldier.”
Easy. Take it easy. A surge of fire licked at her muscles and she nodded as if in understanding before she lashed out with a scissor kick at his ankles.
Once again, he seemed ready for it, taking a slight leap in the air to avoid being knocked off his feet. But Addy had expected that, and she turned her scissor kick into another kick up – but when she landed on her feet, she launched herself directly into the man’s torso, knocking him off his feet, and taking the fight to the ground.
Weren’t ready for that, were you? She grinned to herself as they grappled, each trying to find purchase on the other and pin them to the ground. Knees and elbows struck out in both directions, glancing off shins and arms, like a writhing mass of octopi trying to untangle themselves.
