by J. N. Chaney
“A what?” Thorn had half-noticed the transport pop out from under the cloud cover right about the time he’d started to trek back for shift change. He thought it was the usual Blue Alliance or Collective supplier, some freighter bringing fresh blood to supplement the planet’s local labor force, the same way he’d come here.
“Visitor.” The foreman wasn’t a fan of repeating himself. The look he leveled at Thorn for having to do so twice could have boiled mud off a pipe. “It’s an ON ship.”
“Why would the Orbital Navy do a drop on this hole?”
The foreman shrugged and pointed over his shoulder at the conjoined huts that served as both housing and chow hall. “Couldn’t say, but the military don’t send pretty girls out for a common plug.” He directed a glare at Thorn. He always had a look like he’d eaten something rancid and was trying to ignore the taste, but today the foreman looked especially bad-tempered. “Once they fly out, you’d do best to find your way off planet, too.”
Thorn’s aching feet, the foreman’s stink, and the muddy sludge around him—it all fell away. Reclamation work was last resort stuff. If he couldn’t make it here, there wasn’t much to fall back on. “But mud’s all I’ve dreamed about since I was a boy. What will I do with myself if I can’t do this?” Thorn said it like a joke, pulling out a grin to back it up. The grin fit just fine. “If this is about the card game, boss—”
“Ain’t about the cards.” The foreman nodded at the huts again. “Ain’t even about the ON lady over there waiting. Something just rubs me wrong about you. I’ve never seen someone so fresh-washed mucking pipes.”
“Wait.” Thorn held up a hand. “This is about the cards, isn’t it? There’s no rule against winning.”
“Find yourself a way off-planet, Stellers,” the foreman said, expression of mild disgust unchanged. He could have been talking about the weather, the mud, or a rock in his shoe. “The sooner we’re rid of you, the better.”
Thorn watched the man slog off through the muck and started to call out, maybe offer him a rematch on the cards, double or nothing, but decided against it. Instead, he picked his way through the mud and the damp toward whatever fresh trouble might be waiting at the hut.
The foreman was right. The ON soldier was pretty. She was also smart. She’d grabbed coffee for both of them and brought it outside the chow hall doorway so the other workers wouldn’t stare, but it wasn’t until Thorn was close enough to grab the steaming tin mug that he realized he knew her. The realization hit him hard—a forced remembrance of a time that he’d tried to forget.
“Kira? Kira Wixcombe?”
He hadn’t seen her since they were both kids at the Children’s Refugee Collective, the de facto dumping ground for orphans in the early years of the war. Unwanted kids, bad food, and despair. A perfect recipe to produce people like Thorn, who fit nowhere but lived everywhere. The flotsam of war.
She flashed Thorn a smile. She still had her dimples. “How’d you know it was me?”
“We don’t get many redheads,” Thorn replied.
Kira glanced around the mud-smeared stoop of the chow hut, the utilitarian bulk of the sleeping quarters, and the soup of the flats beyond. “Doubt the hair’s what sparked your memory. Anyone could dye it this shade.”
The coffee she’d handed him had the texture of runny grits, but it was hot. Thorn took a long swallow and stared at Kira over the mug’s rim. She was the cleanest person he’d seen since he got here, and even more surprising, she was armed—a railer at her hip, the compact, powerful weapon gleaming darkly in its synthetic holster. Though small, the personal railgun would send rounds through walls, not at them. It was a menacing touch on Kira, but it didn’t detract from the pleasant sensation filling Thorn’s body. He wasn’t working in the slop, and for the moment, that was a vast improvement over his daily life.
When he lowered the mug, he shifted his grip from the handle so he could cup it in his hands and warm his fingers. “People in these camps are happy to get two squares a day. No one wastes credits on hair dye.”
“Redheads aren’t exactly rare, Thorn. Plenty of people come by it naturally.”
Kira’s eyes were still roaming the camp and mudflats. Thorn followed her gaze. From his perspective, there wasn’t a damn thing worth looking at with that level of intensity, except for maybe him, and he was the one thing Kira’s gaze wasn’t burning a hole in.
“Redheads are rare on this planet. Prevalent shade is brown,” he said. “Protective camouflage. Blends with the scenery.”
Those blue eyes stopped roaming and locked on his. Kira arched an eyebrow and waited.
“Alright.” Thorn tried out the grin that hadn’t worked on the foreman. “I read the name tag on your uniform and put two and two together. You always said you wanted to enlist.”
Kira flashed him those dimples again and then pointed at the silver bars on her collar. “I didn’t enlist. The enlisted have to work for a living. I’m an officer.”
“Look at that,” he said and then took another long pull of coffee. “Good for you. Glad someone made it out of there, I guess.”
The wind picked up. It pelted rain against the construct material of the awning that sheltered their stoop.
The pause in the conversation felt awkward. The silence needed something, so he added, “Do you like it?”
“Hmm,” she replied, staring out at the mud again.
As an answer, it wasn’t the most positive one Thorne had ever heard, but it beat the hell out of what some of the crustier ON vets on the reclamation team had said about their years in service. “I’m guessing we owe the pleasure of your visit to some policy shift between Collective and the Alliance? They’re trying to make nice and now the ON’s responsible for surveying reclamation work. That sound about right?” Thorne asked.
Kira tapped a finger against her chin, her head tilted a bit as if in thought. “Nice place you got here, Thorn.”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “You get to pick between two seasons: slush or monsoon. Lucky you to visit during slush.”
Kira took a long pull of her coffee, grimacing at the taste, and then stared down into her cup. Thorn studied her while he could. That red hair and those ice-blue eyes hadn’t changed a bit. Thorn would have known her without the name tag. Kira was impossible to forget.
But when those eyes looked back up, he saw they were chilly. Her face was a lot more closed off than when they were kids. Now, it was dark with secrets.
“I need to ask you something,” she said.
He put his grin back on and turned up the wattage. “Here we go, the woman with a plan—ask away.” Thorn reached out to clink his mug against hers.
She didn’t grin back. “Do you remember when we were kids?”
“Obviously.”
She snorted in annoyance and shook her head. “No, I don’t mean in general. I mean do you remember how you liked to read after lights-out?”
Thorn gave her a slow nod but didn’t say anything.
“Do you remember when they took your flashlight away?” Her eyes bored into his.
The mudflats and the pipeline work seemed much warmer than this short redhead in uniform next to him. Thorn looked away so he wouldn’t have to meet her stare.
“Do you remember how you made that light? It was a ball about the size of a silver dollar. You pulled it from nowhere. It floated right over your palm.”
Thorn kept his eyes fixed on his cup. Ancient history and hocus pocus weren’t where he’d expected—or wanted—their conversation to go.
“How long did it take you to recover from what the kids in the Home did to you?” Kira asked. “Have you ever tried to do it since—tried to make a light?”
Thorn dumped the dregs of his coffee into the mud that started just past the chow hall’s stoop. “As much as I’d love to reminisce, chow’s about to clear. Almost time for second shift, and I’m on doubles this week.” He stood, towering over her a bit, before meeting Kira’s upturned gaze squarely with his
own. “I’ve got congealed oil to muck unless you’re here to offer me a way out.”
The coffee churned in his stomach. It had done nothing to wake him up. Thorn’s eyes felt grainy with exhaustion.
“That’s exactly what I’m here to offer,” Kira said. Those dimples flashed, then faded. Her eyes weren’t tired. They were hungry.
“Yeah?” Thorn’s snort rang harshly in the chill air. “Where?”
“Thorn Stellers,” Kira said, standing and holding out her hand. “How would you like to join the Navy?”
2
The jump plane banked so it could start its descent. Thorn leaned into his seat as they broke through a puff of cloud into clear sky and bright sun. There was a river below and a gray scramble of buildings with a stubby landing strip a little too short for comfort. Luckily, crates like this didn’t need much of a runway to take off or land.
They hit a patch of turbulence, and Thorn’s fingers tightened on the armrests. This jumper was a shorty. It could handle standard near-Earth weather conditions as long as passengers didn’t mind bouncing. When conditions were red, it was another matter—then it was better to stay in near-orbit and wait things out.
Things were far from red, but turbulence jostle was Thorn’s least favorite part of travel, especially after the relative smoothness of space. Jump planes weren’t cut out for interstellar distances, but they were standard for planet-to-planet. In the search for work, Thorn had been on more than his fair share.
Kira snored in the seat next to him. Earlier she’d slumped loosely against his shoulder, not a sensation he minded, but when she started to drool, he repositioned her so her head was against the seat instead of him. Not that drool could damage his clothes any worse than the mud and tar of reclamation work already had.
The plane hit another rough patch. Thorne tried to force his fingers to unclench. Watching the landscape unfold below helped. Not a lot of mud down there. If he got nothing else out of volunteering for the ON, at least he’d get a shower and a chance to dry out.
Kira had dragged him from ship to ship, a bewildering glut of civilian shorties and one aging interstellar transport burg reeking of fermented cabbage and satsumas. When Thorn asked her why they were crawling along on that glorified farmers market, and why they kept changing crafts, and why the hell they didn’t just use the ON jump she’d come in to hop them back to the longer-distance ship that must have brought her, she shushed him and glanced around, as if worried someone might have overheard.
For years, distance versus maneuverability had been one of the ON’s biggest headaches. Ships bulky enough to handle an interstellar drive engine had no maneuverability when they had to fight gravity and atmospheric conditions. Some of the bigger ones were too large to land planet-side at all. Until engineers could find a better drive, ships were either marathoners or sprinters, but never both.
Kira twitched awake just before they landed, wiped the side of her face with the palm of her hand, and blinked muzzily at the sun flooding the jump’s cabin.
“You going to tell me where we’re at, or is it still a big secret?” Thorn asked her.
She yawned. “Since we made it without getting killed, I guess I can.” Kira pointed outside as the plane touched down, her gesture directed to the gray mess of buildings he’d seen from the air. “Thorn Stellers,” she said. “Welcome to Code Nebula. Home of the Magecorps MEPS and training grounds.”
“What’s an MEPS?”
Kira yawned again. “Military entrance processing station. It’s what you go through to join the ON. All of us have to do it at some point.”
“This place isn’t very big. All of the ON passes through here?”
Kira snorted. “This place? Not hardly. The ON has independent MEPS stations on a bunch of worlds. But…” She started to add something, hesitated, then finally said, “Nebula is different.”
Thorn glanced out the window again. The buildings didn’t look plotted and planned like a military installation. Nothing was crisp. This looked more like a research facility on some backwater outpost planet. “It’s different how?”
“You remember that do-it-yourself night-light you got beat up over?” Kira asked. “Only a mage can make light—spells, really. You’re going to be part of the Magecorps.” She gave him a long, measuring look, then settled on staring at his face. “If you don’t flunk out.”
They clomped down a set of silicone and aluminum airstairs—Kira with empty hands, and Thorn with the only luggage he owned. It wasn’t much: a change of clothes, a handful of hygiene items, and a kid’s book.
The book was the same one that Thorne had been reading at the Children’s Home the night he was beaten up—actually, every time he was beaten, the book was nearby, if not hidden in a pocket. When Kira had seen him stuff it into his carryall, she recognized it.
She had grabbed his wrist, a strange look on her face. “That book.”
“Brought it from home,” he’d said. “I’m not leaving it here.” And he didn’t. Bringing the book made sense. It didn’t take up much room. It would have been wasted. It’s not like the other reclamation specialists would have read it. It would have gone into the trash pit the second he lifted off planet. That book was the one constant he had, hard proof of the life he’d had before war erupted and he became an orphan. He’d heard the ON required soldiers to cut ties, but he wasn’t cutting this one.
“No, I don’t think you should leave it,” Kira had said, hand still on his wrist, although her grip had softened. “There’s something about it. Something special. Keep it with you, Thorn.”
He’d tossed her a grin—that Thorn Seller’s patented special, designed to let him just get by without revealing anything real—trying to wipe the odd look off her face, but it had lingered.
Now, standing on the tarmac of an unfamiliar world, Thorn tightened his grip on the carryall handle. It was like he could see through the bag’s canvas sides, straight through to the worn cover and yellowing pages wrapped up in his spare clothes. The book’s presence was calming. It always had been.
When he snapped back to reality, he saw Kira had already stepped off. Thorn followed, lengthening his stride a few steps to catch up. When he did, she glanced at him and said, “That building straight ahead is where you’re going. Once I hand you off, the rest is up to you.” She fought a smile, the corner of her mouth quirking and her dimples dancing between visibility and non-existence, before giving in to the grin. “Try not to worry too much about fucking up. Failure is part of training.”
“You’re coming too, right?”
Kira stopped midstride. “What?”
“Aren’t you training with me?” Thorn asked. “We’ve come this far. Might as well keep the team together.”
Kira shook her head and said almost gently, “I’m an officer, Thorn. I’ve already been through training. My job was to deliver you. Your job is to—well, you’ll see.”
When she started walking again, Thorn lagged a step behind. He told himself it was because he wanted a chance to enjoy the view.
Kira placed Thorn in the hands of a bony woman with “Narvez” on her nametape and long frown lines bracketing her mouth. She wore silver double bars on her collar like Kira did. Thorn turned an experimental grin toward her, but the woman didn’t even look at him.
“What fresh idiot you bringing me now, Wixcombe?” Narvez asked Kira.
“Well…” Kira flashed her dimples. “You always yell when I bring them to someone else.”
Thorn cleared his throat. “Them? How many people have you brought here?”
Narvez looked at him for the first time.
“Ma’am,” Thorn added.
He waited for more, but the woman stood there with her lips pressed tightly and her arms crossed, saying nothing. She had a narrow face, somewhere just short of gaunt. With her mouth thinned to a line, she was a study in slashes, like someone had taken a sharp knife to a plug of clay.
He shrugged, his grin fading. “I’m not sure I�
�”
She cut him off by thrusting her knife of a nose in his face. “You,” she said, her voice a hiss, so he had to stay where he was, nose to nose, to catch every word, “will address her as ma’am. Lieutenant Wixcombe is not your drinking buddy. You will address me as ma’am. You will address all female officers as ma’am, and if you happen to see a male of the species, and he’s wearing officer rank, you will address him as sir. Does that sound simple enough, or do I need to write it down for you?” She pulled back, an arm’s length away, and redirected her gaze to Kira. “What did you say his name was?”
“She didn’t, actually,” Thorn said, a flare of anger piercing his usual calm. “It’s Thorn. But if you want to be drinking buddies, you can call me whatever you want.” He paused just a moment before adding, “Ma’am.”
“His name is Stellers,” Kira told Narvez.
“Stellers.” Narvez said it like she’d just gotten a mouthful of something rotten. “If you’d be so kind as to follow me for swearing in and processing.” She looked him up and down, then delivered a grin of her own. “Enjoy your attitude while you’ve got it. It’s about to be fixed.”
Twenty minutes after that, Thorn sat on a metal table in a pale blue room. He was naked. Everything about the room conveyed a flesh-creeping cold—the shade of the paint, the temperature, a handful of pastel sketches that showed the inner workings of the human reproductive system from different angles, and one unusually large poster of venereal diseases identifiable by sight. The thin paper lining on the table stuck to his butt whenever he shifted. About the time he realized the room was likely a test of some kind and he was probably being watched, someone knocked on the door.
Thorn called out, “Come in.” He stood just as the door handle turned.
