“Really?” I asked.
“No,” he said, breaking into a smile and putting down his fork. “I did get a lot better at it, but no, they cut me open and put a device in my lung to make it stop. It was the best day of my life. Made me feel like a real boy.” He pulled the collar of his uniform down to reveal the top of a thin scar. “The funny thing is how arbitrary it was, you know, just how some small genetic transcription error can have such a big impact on the way people treat you. And then having seen that, felt that, you can see how much of the other stuff we do is just as arbitrary and just as thoughtless. You see it one place, you see it everywhere.”
“That’s got to be tough,” I said, my mind drifting as I peered out the glowing windows again, thinking about my own pain and how I saw and felt others’ more now because of it. Almost like it was happening to me, too.
A severer expression returned to his face as he poured me a glass of wine. “Unfortunately, this block isn’t exactly the kind of place where you can get lost in words for too long. In the beginning, I told the Blues if they’d just give me some space, I’d learn enough and work hard enough to figure out the right strategy. But you leave those people alone for a minute and suddenly there’re ten different plots to overthrow you . . . so I’m left sneaking off here in the middle of the night when they’re asleep.”
This isn’t the only place you sneak off to, I wanted to say, thinking of the biolab. I wanted to ask him about the vial he’d broken yesterday, too, but I stopped short, worried he’d speak more guardedly if he thought I was suspicious of him.
“But I suppose it’s for the best. In this one here,” he said, getting up and taking a thin volume off a shelf, “It says you don’t want to get too disconnected from the rest of your troops.”
“Good thing I’m here,” I said. “Then again, given the rate people are being injured on our block, maybe I shouldn’t be taking the risk.”
Despite the fact that I’d slipped into a more contentious tone, Caelus laughed. So warm and so friendly sounding that for a moment I thought I actually had been joking. That having seen Fin’s hand, I no longer suspected him or Taryn of doing anything.
“Aaron. It’d be one thing if we were just playing chess and people were getting hurt—then you’d have to wonder—but we’re doing dangerous things: the Weapons Room, the Mat Room, field trips—it’s all incredibly dangerous. Of course, that’s not going to stop the accusations. Makes them easier to make actually; the worse the storm, the more the confusion. But it’s true.”
“Then what’s with all those black uniforms hanging there?” I asked, eyeing a closet in the back of the room. “I’d just assumed they were more trophies from rivals.”
“That’s a pretty dark conclusion to jump to.” He shook his head. “I buy those off graduating SOs so I always have a fresh one. There’s only so much time in the day, like you said, and I’d rather not spend it doing laundry.”
“Most people just wear theirs dirty,” I said.
“Most people,” he replied. “But anyway . . . there is a silver lining to all of this. To this never-ending minefield they run us through.”
“And what’s that?”
“That safety’s just fool’s gold. You think you want it right up until the moment you’re safe, and then it’s time to take a risk again. So why even bother leaving in the first place?”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I shot back, but honestly I didn’t know what to think. Back in New London, most of the kids I knew who talked liked this were completely full of shit. A lot of aphorisms. Accessorizing with philosophy instead of actually talking about anything meaningful. But this felt different. Logical and authentic in some way, even though I didn’t agree with everything he was arguing.
“Is it? I’m playing the same game. Worse, I’ve got a target on my back.”
“A target?”
“Oh, because I’m sure you don’t know anyone planning something right now, right?”
I hesitated.
“See,” he commented, noting my reaction. “But I’m not surprised.” He sat back down and poured himself a very small glass of wine. “A little over two thousand years ago on Earth there was a Roman general named Aurelian who pieced the empire back together again after nearly a century of decline. But it didn’t end well. On his way to put down another rebellion, he caught his secretary in a small lie and, fearing punishment, the secretary created a list of lieutenants who Aurelian supposedly planned to execute for some malfeasance, forging his signature on the document. The tragedy was because Aurelian was so strict and judgmental and because the men on the list had at one time or another of course done something not completely aboveboard, the ruse was plausible. And so it worked; the listed men murdered him out of fear.”
Caelus took a sip of his wine. “The lesson is you can make a lot of enemies by being tough and fair. I get that people don’t like getting up at four a.m. to do extra drills and I get that people don’t like being called on their bullshit, so I try not to make Aurelian’s mistake by overdoing it, but still people resent me. Before you believe them, though, I just want you to think about why you feel certain things. Emotions are important, but they’re the engine, not the destination. Most get that backward.”
“So basically, you’re saying that everyone in C3 is just paranoid.”
“Your words.” He smiled a little again. “No, I just think that when we’re afraid, we start seeing our fears everywhere.”
“What about those colonists who used to be on that planet down there? They weren’t afraid enough of the storms. It’s got an Earth-like atmosphere, but that doesn’t mean it’s not deadly.”
“Lots of things are deadly, Aaron. But you don’t have to be afraid to be prudent. It’s actually harder that way. I’ve been trying to get people to use more stringent safety guidelines in the training rooms, but how are they supposed to listen when they’ve got someone like Rhys working them up into a frenzy?”
“I think he’s just watching out for people,” I said.
“Of course that’s what he says, but if you’d seen him two and a half years ago I think you’d believe the opposite. He was reckless, crude and notoriously aggressive with his sexual escapades. Using his position as sergeant to push people into things they didn’t want to do. Even now, I wouldn’t be surprised if he made a pass at you.”
That was odd; he didn’t seem even remotely gay—especially with the way he let Daries talk about Brandon. “He’s homosexual?”
“He’s everything sexual. With his ambition, you’d think he’d be more covert about it, given how homophobic Corinth Station is—there are a lot of great kids here who have to hide who they are—but that’s one of the main reasons he can get so much contraband . . . and get Brandon so well stocked with Zeroes and stims from Medical.”
“Blackmail?” I asked.
Caelus winked at me. “Those nurses are predatory. The Reds placed them there as a challenge—a razor-blade-in-the-food kind of thing. But just like actual razors, they’re tools we can use. Manipulate. Trade with. Sergeant Rhys has figured that out, but the problem is he trades things that aren’t his. I’ve been trying to stop it, but Brandon’s protecting him—since despite their occasional disagreements—he’s one of his chief beneficiaries.” Caelus leaned back and sighed. “And zeroes, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, are quite addictive.”
“So you think he’s Brandon’s dealer?” I asked, becoming increasingly enthralled.
“I know he is, and I know he’s after the captaincy, too. He would’ve made a play for it a long time ago, but Rhys knows he’s unlikeable and shrewdly waited to attach himself to someone with a little more finesse.”
“Someone like Pierre?”
“Someone like Pierre,” Caelus repeated, and then paused. “Now, Pierre’s a good guy and I hate being at odds with him, but he’s stunningly naïve. Stunningly. And he’s allowed himself to fall in with the wrong crew. Most of them were Greens together around the same time and
you know how it is with childhood friends. You’re liable to project forward their childhood innocence even when presented with evidence of their adult indiscretions.”
I thought about Marco and how he’d changed, and how long I’d given him a pass.
“Pierre believes what they tell him. He believes it because he wants to—needs to—believe it, so he doesn’t freak out about the universe not being a good place. You’ve probably had similar thoughts. I know I have. But Pierre’s the perfect front man for Rhys as a result. He’s intensely good-natured. Fair. Fun to be around. Everything Rhys isn’t. And with Pierre being injured and Brandon’s credibility problems highlighted by the very Zeroes he supplied him with, it’s the perfect opportunity for Rhys to make a play. I’ve known him too long to not see this coming.”
“What are you gonna do?”
Caelus took a deep breath. “The only thing I can do: Hang tough. Rhys has been making moves, but there’re still a lot of really quality guys in my corner: Michael Paulus, Kendall Pratt, Anastasia Barnum, Etsuji Shu. Guys who I’ve built a lot of trust with over the past couple of years.”
“What about Taryn Miller? He’s your appointed lieutenant, isn’t he?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?”
I waited expectantly while Caelus finished chewing a piece of fish in careful, refined bites. He had the blackest hair and the whitest, most delicate skin I’d ever come across. If this were my first time seeing him, I’d probably have said he looked at home amidst all these cultured, antiquated things. But given what he’d done to Pierre and how scared people were of him, that didn’t seem quite right, either.
“Taryn Miller is a sadist. The worst possible thing you could be,” Caelus said finally.
“Then why choose him?”
“I didn’t know that when I chose him. That’s the problem with those types sometimes, they’re chameleons—incredibly charming, telling you exactly what you want to hear. When Taryn first arrived he was everybody’s best friend; fearless and adventurous—someone who made you feel like you could do anything. He’s actually the one who convinced me to campaign for captain. Don’t look astonished, but I used to be shy. This place scared the shit out of me.” He paused for a few moments, seeming to remember something. “Anyway, by the time I realized what he was, he had already convinced everyone that he was the one holding my leash, keeping me from being tougher and more of a hard-ass. So . . . he will try and make himself the captain if I toss him out. I know it. But I’ve felt like if he stayed my lieutenant, it’d satisfy his ambition and I’d at least be able to keep an eye on him.”
I smiled. “Now who’s sounding naïve.”
He smiled back. “Right. But that’s where you come in.”
Chapter 38
When I got back to C3, there was a ring of people gathered around the small table in the common area. Someone had just finished shouting and more people were shouting back, a certain contempt swirling in and out of the words. I think it had always been there, too, lurking under jokes and languishing behind sad, sullen stares, but had been so blanketed by unease that it hadn’t stuck out the way it did now. People hadn’t been desperate enough, thinking the best way to stay safe was to stay quiet. Something had changed, though.
“What happened?” I asked the person nearest to the door.
“Don’t know for sure. Garrett Reiman fell off a high bunker in the Weapons Room—did a real number on his arm—and people seem to think Caelus had something to do with it,” the guy whispered back.
“He was pushed,” whispered someone else.
“I know you’re scared of him—we all are,” said Rhys from inside the circle. “But don’t you get it? What’s that fear getting you, besides picked off? We think we’re saving our own skins, but all we’re actually doing is saving them the inconvenience of a hunt. You can only reason with the reasonable. You can only compromise with people who don’t think they deserve the world. Appeasement may well have worked if it was just Paulus or Pratt, but not Taryn and definitely not Caelus, and if you can’t see that by now I reckon you deserve to be the prey you’re being molded to be.
“But you all knew that, didn’t you? There’s never been a knowledge gap, just an action gap. It’s never been a matter of intention, but a matter of fear. And that fear has made you hope if you just stay quiet and go along with things you’ll end up with a decent enough score to get into a decent enough finishing school, where you can get a decent enough score, too, to get you into a middling command post in not too much of a colonial backwater.
“But the problem is that Corinth is a closed system, a zero-sum game. Every point you get is one Caelus doesn’t. One he’s left coveting.”
Rhys saw me in the back and made eye contact. “Ambitious, violent people make terrible neighbors. You can coexist with ambitious jerks and even ambitious assholes, but you can’t coexist with someone who’s ambitious and violent. They might talk the talk. They might speak the language of due process and conciliation, but it’s nothing but insincere, calculated gamesmanship and you know it. You know you can’t expect a thug to play by the rules.
“But again, we don’t have a knowledge problem. It’s a will problem.”
As he took a breath there were cries of “Hear, hear,” but some grumbling, too.
“Come on, Rhys, you’ve been throwing rocks at a hornet’s nest. Don’t pretend like we’re getting hit without cause,” Brandon argued.
“Without cause,” sneered Fingers. “Hell, man, I’d hardly call beating him fair and square cause!”
“What about C4?”
“What about it?”
Rhys’ voice rose above the shouts. He left much to be desired as an orator—he was sardonic and overwrought and made awkward facial contortions—but despite what Caelus had said, I couldn’t help but be taken by Rhys’s seeming sincerity.
“No, that’s what we were doing before. Now we’re doing something even worse: defying with half measures, and that’s so reckless that only someone like Brandon could’ve come up with it. It’s almost like . . .” He looked around the room, smiling torturedly before continuing, “It’s almost like we’re being shepherded to a slaughter.”
“Easy there, cowboy,” Brandon said.
“Fuck you, Brando!” Rhys shouted, almost weeping with anger. And that was his problem; he was too volatile to be a statesman but too eloquent for his anger to connect. He had all the right ingredients, but they were mixed poorly. “That’s exactly the issue! Even in this critical hour you’ve got this air of nonchalance about you! This cynical, fatalistic conceit and it’s absolute poison. It’s a self-defense mechanism and I’m glad it’s working for you, but it didn’t work for Pierre and definitely didn’t work for Reiman or anyone who’s still too scared to come over. Don’t you see who this rule structure favors? When there’s no order, being a thug is rewarded. Violence is rewarded!”
Rhys spat, his scowl growing. “And it means you have to do one of two things.”
He looked at me. “Either be so turned off that you simply opt out, or . . . or you have to meet force with force. And seeing how there is no getting off the station, no opting out, there really is only one option.”
Sebastian put up his hand. “But using that logic, you’re always justified in using more violence. It would be a race to become the meanest person most willing to do anything.”
“That’s a risk,” Rhys admitted. “But it’s a risk we have to take. And it’s quite interesting to hear this objection coming from you, someone who’s been the direct beneficiary of the force that you were both unable and unwilling to exert yourself. Would you have preferred that we just let you . . .”
“What would they have done to me?” asked Sebastian.
“What do you think?” sneered Rhys.
“Uh . . .”
“That is, unless you helped them, which of course you would’ve because you’re scared and weak and helpless. You’ve had the luxury of hiding under
Aaron’s skirt but, no, you would’ve caved and ended up in C1 or C2. Caelus already has a good tech in Paulus, but you’d have been his crown jewel.”
“Hey, Rhys, there’s no need to—”
“No need to do what, Aaron? Tell the truth? I can see no one really wants to do that around here; but seriously, what’s going on with you? I gotta say, man, you’ve turned out to be a terrible disappointment. Just terrible. You make Pierre look decisive.”
“So what exactly are you proposing?” I asked, trying to stay cool.
“Well, C Block may have the championship locked up this term, but that doesn’t mean Caelus is assured to be its captain. Seeing how the Reds aren’t going to make relevant rules, let alone enforce the ones they have made, I say that responsibility falls to us. I say we try Caelus for intentionally injuring Pierre and Reiman using standard Confederation Fleet law and due process, which I think’s quite reasonable considering we’re all citizens of the Confederation here.”
“Wait, you want to what? Have a trial? That’s—”
“Pretty novel, I know. Someone’s peers actually holding them accountable for their actions. Christ. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs that that makes me an insurgent. That that makes me radical. Freaking hell, just look at yourselves and tell me if you like what you see. Are you proud of going along with something awful, standing by as your friends all end up in Medical, and anything you thought was good and just and right is smelted into vileness? Yes, I suppose that does make me a radical, but what exactly does that make you?” He was screaming now. His finger was shaking as he pointed at each of us one by one. “I know. I know, Fin, you’re better than that. Merced, Woodrow, Bluerine, Fingers. We can each be a lot of different people. Circumstance matters, but so does courage! How many more ‘accidents’ have to happen before we show ours? And by then will there even be enough of us left to matter? I’m asking you seriously. How many more accidents have to happen? McLaughlin, how many more?”
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