Lakes of Mars

by Merritt Graves

  Chapter 21

  It was so cold sitting in the cockpit, floating between the past and the present, the pulses of weapons fire and the procession of recent events. I wanted to sink deeper into the latter, but so much of the depth had been shaved off during the journey from experience to memory that I was left wading, each reflection marooned and robbed of its larger context.

  Every few moments an explosion would cascade across the viewfinder, the cockpit would shudder, and my flight suit would glow, making me feel like I’d hit a warm pocket in a cold lake. Instead of jolting, it was hypnotizing. I’d close my eyes and sail across the wake, the madness out there shielding me from the madness in here.

  I wanted so much to believe that Caelus had been lying, but every time I thought I had all the uncertainty blotted out, a new patch would blossom like blood without a wound, and no matter how much I peeled back the layers I could never find the source. The believable blended into the walls while the fantastic materialized at odd intervals in its place, changing gradients as if it were pulse fire refracted from the nebula.

  The things that had been so obvious the day before seemed like distant shades of themselves now. The compression of time was disorienting. Flashes lit up my misplaced recollections, spurring emotions that felt weird and out of place, as if I were a robot cycling through all of its programming in a series of abrupt, catastrophic glitches.

  I’d thought that Pierre was a stand-up person, but I’d been wrong about so much recently that instead of bolstering my resolve the thought almost seemed to count against him. Caelus had pressed me in just the right place for my mistakes to split open again, running out onto everything I’d thought was worth hanging on to.

  I’d been about to tell Sebastian what I’d learned, but stopped at the last second, worried that spreading the uncertainty around was exactly what Caelus wanted me to do. And given that I didn’t know what to believe myself yet, I decided to hold it in until I could figure out what was really going on.

  Taryn Miller yelled into the commline, “Reiman, Yang, tighten up that formation, will you? Jesus fucking Christ, why do we even bother drilling if you’re going to shit it down your leg the second we get out here?!”

  “Calico, could I get a position update on carrier group Y?” Caelus spoke more calmly than his lieutenant. “You’d think it would be moving up to reinforce the main formation, but I feel like it’s drifting over to their flank.”

  “Confirmed, sir; it’s drifting. I now have it sliding into Grid B at coordinates 534 by 812,” Fingers reported.

  “It shouldn’t be drifting, sir. It doesn’t make any sense,” someone else said.

  There was some interrupting static and then Daries’s New American drawl broke over the commline. “Uh, this is Echo Four, and I know I shouldn’t be on the C line, but Echo leader just bit it and, uh, I just thought I’d inform you that their missiles seem to be ignoring our expendable packages well outside of the expected deviation.” There was a burst of static and then Daries returned. “Echo leader told us those were new chaff cocktails whipped up just for us, but by the look of things, sir, the ingredient list got out a little early.”

  “Who mixed the cocktails?” asked Taryn.

  “That would be Sebastian, sir,” said someone else.

  The voices had been almost white noise drifting outside my consciousness before Sebastian’s name punctured it, and I choked up on the controls.

  “Yeah, I did, but the files were saved on the secure server . . . I don’t know how—”

  “I don’t want to interrupt, guys, but Bravo’s taking flak from the Triple A. I think it might be a good idea to—”

  “Fuck Bravo,” Taryn shouted. “They get themselves in a jam, they can get themselves out of it!”

  “I told them not to go in there, sir. I told him—I told Pratt to watch Foxtrot, and if they stuck their noses in too far they’d get enveloped when those frigates swung over off G Grid, but he wouldn’t fucking listen.”

  “Fuck you, Jimenez, goddamn it! You say so many stupid fucking things that when one of them turns out to be half right you don’t get to parade it around!”

  “Sebastian, was anybody with you while you were programming the countermeasures? Did anyone come by—even if it was just for a second?” Taryn asked.

  “It was just me.”

  “Hmmmm . . .”

  “Well, mostly just me, but I guess . . . Ramie—Cadet Malone came in for a second. I think it was just to—”

  “Yeah, to bring him his goddamn dinner! I didn’t touch a thing—I fucking swear, Taryn. You know me. You know me better than th—”

  There was interrupting static and then, “This is Bravo actual—all we did was go where Fenwick and Castor dropped us in and now we’re getting hung out to dry. Blame the techs if you wanna blame someone, but you’d better punch through or else you’ll lose the whole freakin’ squadron.”

  “That’s not where Cass and I dropped them! That’s a certified lie, sir, and he knows it. He just wants his ass saved so he doesn’t get a point dock.”

  “Thanks for making us aware of your situation, Bravo. Hang in there while we try to sort you out, over.”

  “We can’t hang in there. We’re getting cut to fucking ribbons!”

  “Like I said, you’re going to need to hang in there while we sort you out,” Caelus said coolly. “Calico, is that carrier group still drifting?”

  “Roger that, Ops. Still drifting.”

  “Sir, I just want to make sure that you don’t think it was me who let that ingredient slip. I really think—”

  “I know it wasn’t you, Malone: it was me,” Caelus interrupted. “Alain’s been trying to get at my U-dev for the longest time so I finally just let him scan it, and now that they’ve dinged Bravo with that modified ordnance, they have every reason to believe the other files on there are authentic.”

  There was a pause.

  “What other files were there?” someone asked.

  “Lightwall modulation algos. The reason their carriers are drifting into a wedge is because they’re about to launch a full frontal assault.”

  “But don’t you reckon he knows that you know that he stole it from you and that he knows that the expendables were just a way of making him think that you didn’t know when you actually do know about the lightwall mods?”

  “You all follow that?” someone joked.

  “I’m counting on it, Paulus,” Caelus said crisply. “Alain thinks he can draw us into a tight defensive formation to mow down his advance, and that’s why he has those Is and Gs packed with N5 payloads. But once he’s fully committed, we’re going to swing Delta and Echo around the flanks at the last second and he won’t be able to do anything about it.”

  “Mmm, mmm, mmm, there’s not going to be any blue balls tonight, kids!”

  “Okay, you all heard the plan, but pretend you didn’t; we gotta keep playing credible. Typhoon and Shu, fall back into a defensive posture at 538 by 801 and let’s invite these shit-dicks for a roll in the hay. Echo, take it easy on those Is; we don’t want to inadvertently hit one of ’em before the trap’s sprung,” said Caelus’ other lead tech, Michael Paulus from C1. I didn’t know everyone yet, but thankfully, every time someone spoke, a name appeared on the dashboard along with the wing.

  “Belay that. Keep shooting, Echo. You won’t hit nothin’.”

  “Haha, fuck you, Brandon. I’m seeing, what . . . all of three kills so far with that squadron of F-10s Paulus let you play cap’n with.”

  “Three frigates, biatch!”

  “All resupplies. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.”

  “Hey, ladies, how about you all shut the fuck up and take a few moments to consider your nearest opponents’ likely escape vectors when they realize shit is going tits up,” said Taryn. “Do not let their units re-form. I want chaos. I want pandemonium. Sebastian, could you bake up some algos for the cruisers and carriers? I’ve got a feeling they’ll try and slink behind the Is and Gs and I want B
luerine to beeline for that vector on the downbeat. What do you think, Caelus?”

  “Do it.”

  Transfixed by the chatter, I hadn’t realized how close I’d drifted to one of the enemy ships’ anti-fighter batteries until an alert light flickered on and jets of color sprayed across the cockpit. I plunged down into a series of swooping, nauseating somersaults, feeling the Gs slam inside me and then slosh out again as if I occupied one half of a flipping hourglass. When they finally stopped, I found myself looking at the lightly plated underbelly of one of B Block’s premier warships. I toggled from guns to missiles to heavy ordnance and selected a two-second delay so I wouldn’t be engulfed upon impact, before pressing the release button again and again and again. The bombs, too close to be intercepted by the batteries, burrowed deep inside the hull before expanding into fissures, crisscrossing and connecting, folding in and out again in a series of blinding, white-orange explosions.

  “Holy mother! Bravo Fourteen just took down one of their ships of the line!”

  “Well, that one’s not going to escape.”

  “Who was that? One of the pilots from Shu’s group?”

  “No, it’s one of the new C3 Greens . . . Aaron Sheridan.”

  “Taryn, that ship kind of looks like your face now,” said Pratt from C1, sending an explosion of laughter ringing over the commline.

  I should’ve felt pride, but I was just blank. I didn’t know anybody there or what they were trying to do. For all I knew I’d just hit my own ship, yet I was still squeezing the trigger, spraying pulses into a formation of oncoming fighters.

  It was claustrophobic, the cockpit getting smaller as my disorientation and panic grew until everything converged and I closed my eyes and screamed into the switched-off commline. When I opened them again, I was astonished and confused. I found myself skating into a pocket of unoccupied space, miraculously untouched, with the exception of a few flash burns on the left wing.

  “I think you pushed ’em off the fence there, Bravo; the rest of their ships are moving into formation. It’s desperation time,” Paulus said.

  I took off my comm piece and helmet and set them on the tray table, covering my mouth with my hand.

  Chapter 22

  After the Challenge was over, I knew I should go back to C3 to try to get a few hours of sleep, but the words just kept ping-ponging back and forth in my head: Ask them about Student Ensign Zoellers.

  I started in the obvious places, the roster and the directory, but found nothing other than the name. I considered just forgetting about it, figuring it was a ploy, but it felt like when you hear something at night and you have to check under your bed and inside the closet. You just have to. I’m sure if I’d been of sounder mind I could’ve willed myself not to seek out Rhys and Brandon, but I had to see what was there.

  They weren’t at C3, but I found them and several others clustered around some tables on the far side of the Great Room.

  “Aaron! We didn’t think you were going to make it,” Daries said. “That was some shooting back there! It’s a wonder they didn’t snap you up for pilot school, but I guess they had bigger things in store.”

  “Where’d you learn to fly like that?” a kid whose name I thought was Merced asked as I sat down. “I can’t get my head around how you slipped through that Triple A shitstorm.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Seriously, where’d you learn?”

  This was the last thing I wanted to talk about, but I thought it would be even more uncomfortable to say so. “My dad taught me. He had a small shipping outfit and he used to take me along with him on some of his resupply missions to asteroid mines. Some of the rigs are really deep, and so you’re flying with . . .” I paused and tried to compose myself; my cheeks were hot and sweat was trickling down my shoulders and calves underneath my flight suit. It felt like the light from the overhead arrays was eating through my forehead, disappearing my thoughts—one by one—inside an angry, disorienting glare. “You’re flying with barely centimeters, really, on either side of you. Do that enough times and the ship starts to become an extension of you, I guess.”

  “Right . . . but your dad really let you fly on deep asteroid drops?”

  “Not at first. Not until I topped out in the Box.”

  “You topped out in the Box?”

  “Yeah, but even then . . . he shouldn’t have.”

  “Why not?” asked a cadet who’d introduced himself before the Challenge as Woodrow.

  “He just . . . I just wasn’t . . .”

  Sensing my discomfort at discussing my father, Sebastian broke in, “I didn’t know you topped out in the Box, Aaron. How long were you going to keep that secret from us?”

  “Just as long as you hid what a party animal you are. Jesus, you look like you’ve had a few—you all do.”

  “If you can’t celebrate your victories then there’ll be nothing to mourn when you’re defeated,” Brandon said.

  “Your victories, sure, but Caelus’?” asked Rhys, quite sober.

  “Don’t be a killjoy. We’re just blowing off some steam.”

  “Word is that’s not the only thing you’ve been blowing,” said Daries.

  Brandon laughed with everyone else. “That’s funny. Real funny, but—”

  “Who’s Zoellers?” I asked.

  At once everyone fell silent.

  “I’ve seen his name on the roster, but I’ve never seen him around.”

  “Why, do you know him or something?” asked Brandon.

  “Should I know him?”

  “Don’t see how you would. You got here the day he . . . ,” Woodrow said, pausing when he saw Rhys glaring at him.

  “The day he what?” I asked.

  “It’s kind of a sore subject,” said Rhys. “I’m not sure exactly why you’d be bringing it up.”

  “And I’m not sure why you’d be so evasive about it.”

  Sebastian squinted, not understanding, while Rhys frowned.

  “Dude, he was scrimmaging with Pierre and there was some kind of equipment failure with the Palmae suits and his face got busted up,” Brandon said, taking another gulp of whatever was in his glass. “It wasn’t his fault but Pierre feels terrible about it.”

  “Equipment failure?”

  “The gel bunched up and left a gap on his face or something, which is weird because it shouldn’t do that. It hasn’t ever done it before,” said Woodrow.

  I remembered the bridge of someone’s nose crunching under my fist in C2. “What part of his face?”

  “What’s with the twenty questions?” Brandon asked, putting his arm around me. “Take it easy. We’re trying to celebrate here and you’re bringing up something no one wants to talk about.”

  “What part of his face, Brandon?” I asked, ducking out of his grasp.

  “Dude, this isn’t—”

  “What part of his face?”

  “I don’t know—his nose I think, but Jesus, what’s it to you?” said Brandon, his eyes locked with mine.

  “And he’s still in Medical?”

  “Yeah, supposedly. Some kind of a psychological thing. I guess they’re keeping him for evaluation.”

  “You guess?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Brandon, angrier still.

  There was silence again as everyone waited for one of us to say something until Fingers came through the door, and Daries raised his glass and said, “To Fingers, the kind of tech that all the guys want to know and all the girls want to blow.”

  “Woop, woop!”

  “Ya gave ’em hell, Fingers.”

  There was more shouting and cheering and I was left alone again, my mind racing in circles.

  “What was that all about?” Sebastian asked under the rumble of the resumed gaiety.

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I really don’t know what I know anymore . . .” My voice trailed off. “It’s nothing, Seb. I just thought it was weird that . . . that he’d be
en in Medical for so long with only a busted nose. We’ve had worse and they’ve patched us up in a few minutes. I guess if there’s psychological stuff . . .”

  “But what made you ask about him in the first place? You said you hadn’t met him or anything.”

  “You’re the one who said we should try to find out as much as we can about everything. Right?”

  “Right, but just . . .”

  Fin put a hand on my shoulder. “Who are you two telling secrets about?”

  “You.” I intended it as a joke but said it with so little expression that I doubt it came out that way.

  “I hope nothing too bad.”

  I tried to smile. “The worst.”

  “That’s fine then. People believe bad things all the time, but the worst takes a little imagination,” she said good-naturedly. “Which very few here have.”

  “Do you?”

  “When I need it. I’m building an IED in Field Chemistry for taking down hard-shelled larvae deep inside a Verex tunnel network. You place it close enough, oriented inward, and the thing’ll blow up an entire brood of Shifters,” said Fin, sounding pleased with herself. “Or you can use it as a mine; pressure-injecting it into the mantle around a deep-earth outpost, since it packs a punch, but doesn’t create a wide enough blast radius to cause a collapse. So there’s that, but I try to be careful, too . . .”

  “How so?” Sebastian asked.

  “Think about it, genius. This is a military academy. These cats clearly have some tightly conceived parameters they want us to fit into. If you’re thinking big, there’s a lot less chance you’ll fit into something tight, no? So you should probably factor that in the next time you go sticking your nose into some place it shouldn’t be.”

  “The next time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you’re saying there was a first time?” I asked, noting the departure from the tack she’d taken at lunch when we’d first arrived, talking about the tie-ins. Had she actually been curious about our conversation then or had she just been trying to draw us out like Taryn had?