“Ew, dude, that’s messed up.”
“I’m just sayin’.”
I waited another minute and left. Military Psychology was my least favorite class; it was less psychology in any academic sense and more of a practical guide on how to manipulate people. Marco, who always liked to imagine himself as this dark, tragic antihero, would’ve probably loved it—or at least claimed to love it—but it made me queasy. No wonder there was so much lying and backstabbing going on around here; they were teaching freaking courses on it.
“Hey,” said Fin as I passed her in a tube.
She was the last person I wanted to talk to.
“Hey.”
“That’s all I get?” she said.
I stopped, rocking backwards on my heels to meet her stare. She was standing outside another dark, locked-looking classroom, along with a handful of other cadets. “Your class looks pretty canceled to me.”
“Yeah, I know, but we’ve got a test today and a progress check on the scale-model IEDs we’re building. So, I can’t really leave if there’s even a chance Blumenthal’ll show up.”
Already riled up from my exchange with Brandon, I wanted to confront her so badly about that first night, too. Ask her about the cord marks. And about why they were hiding Zoellers. But they were more or less, with the exception of Brandon, leaving me alone and if I said anything now, they might stop. Who knew what they would do?
“I suppose not,” I finally said.
“That’s all you’re going to say?” Fin asked me. Then she turned toward Caelus’ tech, Michael Paulus, who was standing next to her and holding a scale model of his own. “And to think you guys got all worked up over this joker? He doesn’t even show up to our strategy meetings anymore.”
Chapter 43
“I’m not going to shoot anyone,” said Sebastian early the next morning in the Weapons Room.
“No, but you’ve got to keep your score up, considering how much extra Tread Room you’ll get otherwise.”
This gave him pause. Sebastian had practiced thousands of hours commanding entire divisions of soldiers, but not one being an actual soldier himself.
“It’s easy, Seb, I’m serious. You’re rushing and jerking, but you have to break each aspect down before you can start putting them together. Don’t worry about the targets, just get comfortable with the gun.” I moved toward him and adjusted his arm position. “The slide is going to recoil when the bullet exits the chamber and you’re going to get a kick. So think about it like a lever. Where are you going to get the most leverage on the stock to steady the lever?”
“High,” he said, choking up higher.
“Right. And get that middle finger above the trigger guard since you only want to have it inside when you’re going to shoot. Yeah, exactly. Okay, now bring your left hand over so the part of your fingers above the knuckle is engulfing the part below on your right—with your right thumb on top of the left one, all the way up to its lower joint. There, you got it. Now lock your left wrist.”
“Like this?”
“A little more. Good. You’re going to want to have it in place to absorb the recoil before you start shooting. Like, you don’t think about your base patterns in the Box anymore, do you?”
“No, not really.”
“Same with these. It needs to become so fluid that it’s almost like it’s a part of you.”
“Jeez, Aaron. I never knew you were such a gun guy.”
“I’m not a gun guy.”
“R-ii-ght. Says the guy who’s taken the last five minutes to tell me how to do this,” said Sebastian, gesturing with his head at the gun in his hands.
“Well, okay, but I haven’t always been.” I paused. “I did think about it, though, and . . . and I decided you were probably right about at least some part of me . . . not wanting to die on the Rim. Maybe training was my way of giving myself a chance.”
“Of course I was right,” he said, grinning, but turned somber again just as quickly. “You probably still would’ve died there, you know.”
“I know.”
“Do you think about that when they make us do the tie-ins? That that could’ve been you?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted.
“It’s not you, but it is you still here at the station. And it’s still your choice to stay.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Everything’s a choice,” he said, louder.
“Sebastian, we’ve been over this. If you want to go, then go. I’m fine here.”
“Are you? You look like you haven’t slept in days. Weeks. It’s hard to say. Wait, have you . . . have you been taking stims?”
I hesitated. “No.”
“You have, haven’t you?”
I shook my head and looked up at the ceiling, thinking about the access card to the medical supply room I’d stolen after visiting Max Zoellers. “Just a couple times. I’ve been having these vivid nightmares and . . . and had all this stuff I needed to get done for . . . well, for everything, and . . .”
“Aaron.” He looked right at me. “You gotta stop.”
“I haven’t really started. I just did it a couple times.”
“What’s it feel like?” The question came reluctantly.
“Well, your heart speeds up, obviously. You’re focused. Focused on too much. So maybe you wouldn’t call it focus, but it’s this potential, this extrasensory, tactile perception. Like air weighs less and your body’s hurtling through it.”
“Promise me you’ll stop,” said Sebastian.
“I promise.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“Look, man, I know you’re right. It’s not like I have a long-term plan involving stims—I was just so tired . . .” I closed my eyes. “So yeah. I promise.”
“Fin says that it’s hard to get your body to slow down once it’s going so fast. She says that’s the reason why people start taking Zeroes . . . to manage the ups.”
“I know. I know. I won’t do it again, I swear. It’s just—”
The lights dimmed, undimmed, and then dimmed again, wobbling in a state of semidarkness before extinguishing completely.
“Must be another nebula storm,” Sebastian said. “It’s gonna make target practice pretty tough.”
“The backup’ll kick-in in a few moments. Good thing no one’s on life support here, though.”
“That you know of,” said Sebastian, without a hint of playfulness. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the nurses have a whole wing of half-dead students tucked away in Medical somewhere to do experiments on.”
“The nurses are pretty creepy, aren’t they?” I asked, trying to sound fraternal.
“They’re sadists, along with Paters, Marquardt, and most of the SOs,” he said in almost a whisper. I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so we waited in silence while the overhead bulbs rekindled and the track lights around the bunkers flicked back one row at a time in an eerie, staggered display. He really wants to get out of here.
“Let’s get back to the grip, okay? Show it to me again.”
Sebastian hesitated, then dropped into a shooting stance.
I’d imagined this would all be a stretch for him going into it, but looking over his technique, he was actually doing really well. He listened. He asked lots of questions. He soaked up the details in a way most people didn’t bother to do. When I thought about it, I didn’t think I’d ever seen someone so concerned about getting every little thing right before. “Exactly, but ease up with your right hand since that’s what you’re going to be shooting with; if it’s too clenched you can’t react. Most of the pressure—say seventy percent—should be coming from your left hand, which is why I had you lock that wrist, yeah?”
“Like this?”
“Perfect.
“Now, your stance. In order to pivot and line up a target you haven’t seen yet, you’ll want to get your legs shoulder width apart. Knees slightly bent. Stay on the balls of your feet to give yourself options. R
emember the recoil, though, so you’re going to want to lean a little bit more forward—not too much, but yeah, you got it. Good. I want you to practice that grip a hundred times on your own, but do it at like a quarter of the pace you’d actually go so you can internalize each hand position. Separate and then combine. Draw, get the grip. Draw, get the grip. Again and again. Think of it as your arm getting used to a prosthetic.”
He practiced the stance once, twice.
“Don’t you think that we do a lot more walking now than if we didn’t have feet?” Sebastian asked.
“Yeah, what’s your point?”
“Well, is it really a good idea to make a gun an extension of your hand? If that becomes your mind-set, wouldn’t you be more likely to pull the trigger, even just subconsciously?”
I groaned, not realizing that was the second time I’d said something to that effect. “It’s just a way to think about it.”
“That’s the way it starts. Take the Link for example. At first it was just this place where researchers shared in—”
“Look, Sebastian, I’m tired. I’d love to have a philosophical conversation with you, but not now. Unless . . .” I broke into a grin. “Unless, that is, you want me to take a stim?”
He laughed and punched me in the shoulder. “Shut up!”
“Are you ready to shoot?” I asked.
“I’ve been ready for an hour.”
“Good. Now I just want you to see what happens when you don’t hold it right. Grip with one arm and fire sideways at the target.”
He did, and the gun jerked in his hand and the shots flew wide.
“Now do it the way I taught you.”
A look of almost comical concentration came across Sebastian’s face. He fired and the target lit up yellow.
“The recoils only get stronger.” I took a Pegasus rifle off the rack and squeezed a few shots off to demonstrate. “And keep in mind, it’s worse in a firefight when you’re thinking about all these other things—full of adrenaline—so it really pays to get your form down. Make sense?”
He nodded.
“So you can get a feel for what I’m talking about, I’m going to come at you hot this time,” I said.
“Really? We still have to work on—”
“Yeah, we’ve still got a lot to work on, but it won’t mean anything until you’ve been shot at. So suit up,” I said, putting on my helmet and zipping up my Palmae protective suit.
Sebastian looked skeptically down at his own. “The charges only work if you’re hit wearing this, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And how bad does it hurt to get shot at the highest setting?”
“A lot.”
“But we’re not going to set it very high today, are we?”
“No, but it’s got to hurt some, Seb, because if the experience doesn’t feel real at all, then you’re not getting any experience.” It seemed wise coming out but sounded strange afterward, clinging to my ears. Like something Master Sergeant Paters would say.
“Aaron, are you all right?”
“Oh, yeah—yeah. I’m fine, I just . . . I’m fine.”
“Should I go get you a stim so you can focus?”
I smirked. “Fuck off. That’s not even funny . . .” But a few seconds later I was drifting again, trying to defend myself from myself. There are gradients. Everything’s a gradient. You can’t just say something is one way or the other until you consider the dosage. And I’m taking a small dose.
“How do I look?” Sebastian asked as he squeezed into his helmet.
Like someone who doesn’t belong here. Like a sweet, thoughtful kid wearing a sim-combat suit. “Dangerous.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you.”
I tried to smile. “Now, the thing to remember is, the faster you take me out, the faster you’re going to stop getting shot at. Most people are so afraid of getting hit that they freeze up and then get pinned down. You don’t want to be blindly aggressive, of course, but a certain amount helps you see the field better and control the action. Now, get behind that barrier and think about your grip and stance, because once the beep goes off, that’s the last thing you’ll be paying attention to.”
I paced back the few meters to my own barrier and knelt down behind it. “Ready?” I called out.
“Almost.”
A shrill beeping sounded when I hit the button and I emerged shooting, trying to rattle him. He came out fast, like I’d told him, but reeled back behind the barrier after a couple of hopeless shots.
Every few moments I sent another charge plunking into the contours of the rubberlike barrier and took a step forward. Shot, pause, step. Shot, pause, step. After the tenth one, he resurfaced from the opposite side, shooting, missing me at first but then scoring marks on my arm and shoulder, lighting them yellow and orange, and then, finally, there was the red electric splash of a direct hit on my chest.
The shock brought me to my knees, but I was used to it and gritted my teeth until the electricity left my body. “Nice. You counted my shots, didn’t you? How’d you know it was a ten-shooter? Fleet standard is twelve.”
“I always look at the spec sheet. I can’t help myself.”
“See, like I said, you can use a lot of the same things that make you a superb tech to help you in here—you just have to get the technique down. You came out with a great stance and grip, but only lasted a split second before you got spooked. So let’s work on that next.”
“Why’d you just stay out in the open like that?” he asked.
“’Cause we were on difficulty setting one. But people do stupid things on the battlefield all of the time. We assume that our opponents are really smart and that they have these big, elaborate plans. And sometimes they do, but when you’re scared you fill in the blanks with the scariest stuff. You don’t want to underestimate anyone, but don’t pay them so much respect that you’re not able to take advantage of their screw-ups. But you know that already. Set?”
I hit the button before he could answer and started shooting him as he tripped behind the barrier, scoring green and yellow hits on his foot and hand.
“You’re cheating!” he shouted.
“Everybody here cheats,” I shouted back.
“Well, that doesn’t mean you have to. Now I have to cheat, because you did. And then so will the next person, and on and on and on. It’s like Pierre said.”
Somehow I’d rationalized it, but he was right. It was just a skirmish and I was only trying to prepare him for what he’d have to face, but it was cheating, and the same nausea I’d felt before returned with the realization. He was smart. Insightful. It came back to me that maybe the reason I hadn’t spent much time with Sebastian lately was that I was scared he was going to judge me.
His head poked up and he popped off a few quick rounds, missing me but coming close, and I darted behind my barrier, still dazed. I waited a few seconds and then spun around, firing, but he was fully obscured. I moved back, crouched, and reloaded, attempting to clear my head, trying to slip into the spaces between thoughts—weaving and dodging, hollowing out a void where I could feel calm.
I fired again around the corner, but he was still ducked down. Pausing, I heard the thud of charges thumping into the left side of the barrier, and then my arm was hit, and by the time I swung around, my head and chest were flashing with red strands of energy.
“Good job,” I said, grimacing through the pain. “That was a good flank. Good flank.”
“I was expecting it to really hurt, but . . . but it barely stung. Guess it was the adrenaline,” said Sebastian.
He followed my eyes as I looked down at the sidearm.
“You had it on the lowest setting, didn’t you?” he asked.
“I’m not trying to kill you.”
“I thought you wanted it real.”
I raised the setting a notch and shot him in the leg. “Is that real enough for you?”
“That hurt!” he cried, and then he shot me in the leg.
“More than a fair handicap.”
I shot him in the hand and then he shot me in the stomach, and we both started laughing. The charges hit our suits and then treed off in yellows, oranges, and reds, randomly dissipating across our bodies.
“Stop,” he said.
“You stop, you’re still at 3x the volts. You don’t know how good you have it.” I raised the setting again and shot him in the foot. “How about that?”
“Okay, okay! Cease fire!” he shrieked.
“That’s what I thought,” I said, laughing again, feeling more carefree than I’d felt in a long time, despite the pain. “All right, once more, and this time on difficulty level five.”
“Five? I thought we were at two going on three?”
“Whoever said we’d stair-step? That wouldn’t be a very real thing to do.”
I waited until he was behind his barrier before hitting the pad. It beeped and I came out running into a tuck and roll, firing so that he was forced to keep his head down as I worked my way around. I got his foot on my eighth shot and his head on my tenth.
As soon as the charge left the chamber, I knew something was wrong. It had a different force to it. A stone-like departure that made the slide snap back and swoon, causing Sebastian to jerk around as you’d expect with a head shot, but his suit didn’t light up red.
“Sebastian,” I called, unable to move to get closer. I tore off my helmet and mask, but I still couldn’t breathe. “Sebastian!”
An announcement rang over the speakers, but I didn’t understand it. All I could do was stand there, hands on my head. It was like my whole body was asleep and I had to wake it remotely through a fading signal.
“Sebastian!” I shouted, and then said it again, much quieter, as I approached. “Sebastian.” He was just a still shape on the ground from a distance, but when I got closer and saw him twitch, I crashed back into myself and was running again, by his side in seconds. It wasn’t until I was pulling up the face shield that I saw the bloody, quarter-sized hole in the top of his helmet, and his eyes rolled back in his head, the lids fluttering.
Lakes of Mars Page 29
