by E M Gale
‘Did I hallucinate his face changing? What the hell? Am I hallucinating their scents now? That is not good.’
I strolled back to my s . No one other than me seemed to have been injured beyond the odd scratch.
I picked up my gun and waited for the shuttle. It was easier to heal when misted, but if I concentrated I could heal whilst whole. The point of not misting was to be ready if someone attacked us whilst we waited for the shuttle. Of course, holding a gun that I was unable to aim properly and concentrating on healing was probably not all that useful either.
‘I should tell the marines that so that they don’t rely on me for anything. But then again, I don’t want anyone knowing how easily injured I am.’
“Thanks for watching my back, Clarke,” whispered Cliff. Then he sniffed. He did that a lot. It was like punctuation with him.
“Any time, and thanks for watching mine.”
He grinned at me.
‘Gargh, I have a fan. He’s far more experienced at this whole soldier thing than me. He really ought not to look up to me. I suppose him admiring the present-day Clarke would not be that odd–she is a general–but I don’t deserve that amount of respect.’
I heard the shuttle coming through the atmosphere. If anything the alertness of the troops went up, but no one was around to jump us. The shuttle landed.
“Here you are, guys,” said Connor, jumping out of the shuttle, with a lot of plastic stuff under his arm. “Bag and tag them.”
‘Eh? What? I have to help clean this mess up? Yuk.’
‘Why are we bagging and tagging them anyway? I suppose if this is a contract then you may have to show that you’ve actually killed them. But if this isn’t a contract… do military types have to prove this sort of thing?’
A few thick, transparent plastic bags with biohazard symbols on the side were shoved into my hands. They were nice enough to give us all gloves too.
‘Great. Nice. Well, the captain did say that the mercenaries got all the nasty jobs, and I have to say that this is a nasty job.’
* * *
Orcs Are Nothing Like Plants
Our shift finished, the marines headed to the bar, so I grabbed a drink or two with them, then ducked out to go and shower. Once in my quarters, I took the opportunity to mist for a much longer time until I was fully healed. Having finished that, I sat in a chair, poured out some orcian coffee and read up on vampirish.
‘This stuff is hard.’
I was deep in thought, but I noticed Rob walking up the corridor. He paused at the door to my quarters. I looked up at where I could smell he was standing. He knocked.
“Come in,” I called.
He shuffled awkwardly into the room: “Hi, Clarke. Oh, hey, it’s dark in here.”
‘Is it?’
“Mind if I turn the light on?”
‘Uh… do I have a light? The viewscreen stars provide more than enough light for me.’
I shrugged. “If I have one.”
He flicked the light on. “Hey, what you doing?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Reading, obviously.” I had the language course open on my knees.
“Ah.” He looked kinda awkward and ran his hand through his hair, spiking it up.
‘Should I offer him coffee or something?’
“You want coffee?” I asked.
He smiled gratefully, so I unfolded myself from the couch to make him some, the normal stuff. I also hid the language course notepad away.
“So, what were you reading up on?” he asked as I handed him the cup.
“I wasn’t reading up on anything, I was just reading.”
He looked confused.
“Y’know, fantasy novels,” I lied. He didn’t need to know about language courses.
He nodded his head. “Didn’t think you read things like that, Clarke. I thought it was all work with you.”
“I love the way you twist compliments round to insults.”
He looked offended.
‘OK, so I ought to have saved that line for Price. It was a little harsh to use it on Rob.’
“Sorry.” I shot him an apologetic grin. “That was unfair.”
He looked relieved and grinned at me. I led him over to the sofa and we both sat down. He awkwardly stretched his legs out under the table. I sat crosslegged; the sofa really was too low for people as tall as us to sit on it comfortably.
“So… what sort of novels?” he asked.
“Oh, sword-and-sorcery stuff.”
“I don’t really read that sort of thing. I don’t read novels much at all, actually.”
“Ah, you know, dragons, sword-fighting, magic-using priests, roguish thieves, paladinesque fighters, ancient evil, epic quests, all-encompassing wars, stuff like that.”
“Like Lord of the Rings?”
“That sort of thing, yeah.”
“There are several books like that?”
“There’s a whole genre of them, Rob! You usually have the young farm boy who turns out to be a king who has to learn magic or sword-fighting or something, and his best friend who’s usually a mage and they have to save the world, usually at great personal cost but it all ends happily. Unless someone ends up turning into a tree or something dumb like that.”
“Maybe I should read that sort of thing too: I know nothing about orcs,” he mused, in between blowing on his coffee.
“It’s fictional, I doubt it would be much use, to be honest.”
“Where’d you get it, anyway?” He drank his inferior coffee. At least I’d found out about the orcian coffee thing before I accidentally poisoned any of my friends.
“The book?”
He nodded.
“The library on Ragnarok IV.”
‘OK, so I’m not entirely lying to Rob, I did also pick a few less than useful things, like fantasy books, whilst I was there. So sue me. If I’d known, I’d have gotten more books about military tactics instead.’
“You really hit the ground running.”
That reminded me of him yelling at me for being concerned about money on Ragnarok IV. I frowned.
“I’m just practical.”
He noticed my frown and bounced up and down on the sofa, almost spilling his coffee. “That wasn’t an insult either!”
I smiled at him. “Yeah, Rob, I know.”
I was aware of Price coming up the corridor. He must have noticed Rob because he went straight past the door without even slowing. I supposed that he could have been walking up that corridor for another reason, but it would have been the first time since coming on the ship. And anyway, where would he be going? There were only staff quarters and the bridge along this part of the ship.
I shook my head to clear it.
‘I don’t want to think about Price. I don’t want to talk to him.’
Rob was looking at me strangely, so I grinned at him. I was relieved that he was there to keep violent vampires away from me. Price wasn’t the sort to risk a public scene.
“You OK?” asked Rob.
“Of course.”
“I… I’m sorry for bawling you out about your job,” he said, his eyes downcast for a moment.
I sighed. “I know, Rob, I told you off about it. I’m not mad at you, you know.”
He smiled at that.
“Though, if I may give you some general survival advice?”
“Like what?”
“Never ignore an irate seven-foot-high alien who just happens to be built like a brick shit-house.”
He laughed. “Bron wasn’t very happy, was he?”
I shook my head. “They’re all pretty miffed at you.”
“I was just worried about you. I don’t understand why you don’t leave that job.”
I glared at him. “I think that this is something we will have to agree to disagree on.”
“Maybe.” He ran a hand through his hair, spiking it all up again. “What was it like, Clarke?”
‘Eh? What?’
“What was what like?”
I looked at him suspiciously. ‘What the hell does he want me to say? Am I supposed to pretend that it was fine so he’ll leave the subject? That is obviously not something that I want to say. But if I tell him the details he’ll get all het up again.’
“You can tell me,” he said.
“What exactly do you want me to say?” I asked carefully.
“No…” He shook his head and sighed. “Listen, I won’t tell you to change jobs, I just wondered if you wanted to talk about it with someone.”
‘Well, that might be nice. I haven’t told Price anything, which is just as well; he might have thrown me off a balcony earlier than he did.’
“I suppose the mercenaries talk about it together,” mumbled Rob, looking down at his coffee. I shook my head.
“Mercenaries don’t talk to each other about soldiering. That’s why you pissed them all off. They were trying to talk about anything else, and that’s when you came over with your ‘Sod the mercenaries, they’re scum, come and play with pretty machines’ routine.”
“I didn’t say that!” he said, waving his hand in protestation.
“Might as well have done.”
He glared. “Didn’t we just agree to stop having this argument?”
“We seem to always have an argument on the go. Maybe it’s time to start up a new one.”
“What?”
I smiled. “Nothing.”
“Listen, if you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”
I stared at him.
‘Well… actually I wouldn’t mind. My diary is not much of a confidant really.’
I nodded. “OK,” I said, taking a deep breath. Rob waited. “It was horrible. And I mucked up. I made two mistakes.”
He was nodding, trying to look sympathetic.
“My gun broke and I never really bothered to learn how to put it back together properly.”
He nodded.
“But then again, I think it broke ’cos I was firing it too fast.”
“So what did you do?”
“Uh… nothing, it broke and I couldn’t fix it. I threw it away. And my second mistake, I picked a sword that was too bloody big to swing in a corridor.”
“Sword?”
“Yeah.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure that you didn’t get hit on the head after reading one too many of those swords-and-sorcery books and imagine that bit?”
“No,” I said, exasperated.
He looked incredulous.
“Hey, I thought that at first. I think I yelled, ‘You have got to be kidding me!’ when I saw the weapons room.”
“You guys really use swords?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“There’s a sound tactical reason, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We can’t use metal bullets on the ship. Too dangerous near the ship’s hull or in crowded corridors,” I surmised.
“Oh.”
“Metal swords are good to use against boarders in confined spaces, and in vacuum: they are good for breaking space suits.”
“But you said that your sword was too big.”
“Yeah, that’s ’cos I’m dumb. I ought to have taken a nice, small, silver sword instead.”
“So you have no projectile weapons at all?”
“Of course we do. We’re allowed guns, we just have to be careful when we use them. And there are crossbows too, as they won’t punch the hull, but they’re not much good against strong armour.”
“Wow, retro.” I think, despite himself, he was getting into things.
I grinned. “Heh, you think that’s retro, you should see what you guys get if we get mega-boarded.”
“What? What are you talking about?” He looked pale.
“Oh, well, y’know, if the shit really does hit the fan and the mercs aren’t enough, the civilians get polearms.”
“We have to fight?” His eyes were wide and he was leaning forward.
“Has no one told you? It’ll probably never happen, since there are so many mercenaries on the ship.”
“No one mentioned that to me!” He looked perturbed at the idea.
“Oh, well, you see, the idea is that the civilians get polearms, they all stand together in a bunch in a tight corridor and then any pirates are facing a corridor full of sharp weapons between them and the civvies.”
He nodded, taken aback.
“It makes sense. It doesn’t work well if the pirates are using ranged weapons, which they might be. But if they’re trying to avoid spacing the ship then they might be cautious. Anyway, it’s better than nothing.”
He looked stunned.
“Really, all the civvies are supposed to do is stop the pirates from getting past them so the mercs can trap them. The main thing is that a group of civilians can’t injure each other with polearms all pointed the same way and they need no special training to use them. So it makes sense that you’d use them that way on a ship, but I couldn’t get over the fact that they were eight-foot-long sharp, pointy stakes.”
“Wow, I might have to use a polearm?” said Rob. I think he was a bit behind me as I was talking rather fast at this point.
“In fact, polearms were used by peasants in the medieval ages,” I continued. “The idea being that they were cheap, easy to make, easy to use and only really effective if there were lots of them. No landowner would want to arm his peasants with anything too dangerous, or waste time training them.”
“Umm…” he interjected.
I stopped talking.
‘I think I let my eagerness overtake me a bit there.’
“You really know this stuff, Clarke,” said Rob, slightly awed, I think.
“Bullshit. I know nothing. I’m going to have to learn a lot more stuff about tactics and the like.”
He was quiet for a moment. I had no idea what he was thinking about.
“So, no funky future tech then.” He sounded disappointed.
“Not really, just a few gauss guns for in-space work. And there’s the teleporter of course.”
“The… what?”
‘Ah, he hasn’t seen it.’
“Don’t you go near it, Rob!” I said warningly, waving my index finger at him. “It works correctly and I don’t want you to fire me another two hundred years into the future!” I was aware of Anna heading up the corridor at this point.
“Oh, how does it work?”
“I don’t know, but it does have Tesla coils bunged on the top of it,” I said.
“Ooooo, can I see it?”
Anna knocked on the door.
“Come in, Anna,” I called over Rob’s shoulder. “No bloody way, Rob. I’m going to put a picture of you up by the door to that room with a warning: ‘Do not let this guy in no matter what!’”
“Aw, honestly, Clarke, I won’t touch anything! I’ll even leave the plasma wrench behind.”
“No,” I said to him. “Hi, Anna.” She was looking somewhat annoyed, though I had no idea why. “Hey, what’s up?”
“So this is where you were.” She glared first at Rob then at me.
He shrugged. “I was drinking Clarke’s good coffee.”
“Actually, that’s the bad stuff,” I muttered.
‘Oops, I hope he doesn’t ask for the good stuff. How will I explain about it being poisonous for normal humans and not for me?’
Anna frowned. “I thought you were coming to the bar…” She blushed. “With the rest of us.”
‘What is up with her?’
“Uh… well, yeah, but you told me to apologise to Clarke,” he said.
Anna put her hands on her hips and frowned. “Well, yes, apologise… not sit in the dark and drink coffee with her.”
“It’s not dark,” I said, confused.
“And you…” she started, turning towards me.
‘I what?’
“You, you… having him in your room
!”
I was completely confused. “Eh? What? What are you talking about, Anna? What’s up?”
She shook her head, obviously annoyed, but she smiled at me to cover it.
“Nothing’s up.” I knew she was lying but I couldn’t guess what was the matter. Rob was frowning at her too. I looked from him to her in confusion.
“Anna…” started Rob. He looked serious, she looked almost scared. I leant back, letting them get on with it. Rob sighed. “Forget it,” he mumbled.
‘How odd.’
They were silent.
“Well.” I slapped my hands down on my thighs and launched myself up from the low sofa. “Shall we go to the bar then?” I walked away from them, stretching my arms out. “We can stay here if you want”–I smiled–“but I’ve only coffee to offer you.”
“Why did you get a coffee machine anyway?” asked Rob. “They sell it in the canteen.”
‘Yeah, not the good stuff.’
“I like luxury. Not stupid luxury like carpet on a trade ship, why bother with that? But luxury like filter coffee. I just love the smell of it.” I grinned at them.
“Carpet’s a luxury?” said Anna. She still looked narked about something.
“Yeah, only the bar, Cleckley’s office and the captain’s office seem to have it.”
“Well, actually,” said Rob, directing a significant look at Anna, “I’m kinda happy chilling here.”
‘What the hell is he trying to tell her? What am I missing here?’
“I think we should go to the bar, don’t you, Clarke?” She looked at me, almost pleadingly. “You like bars.”
I eyed her suspiciously. “Yeeees… I do.”
“And Dr. Cleckley’s there. You like talking to Dr. Cleckley, don’t you?”
‘Um, what?’
Rob narrowed his eyes at that for some reason.
“Do I?” I asked.
‘People normally tell me I like orcs, not doctors.’
“Yes, you’re always chatting with him.”
I shrugged at that.
‘What is she trying to achieve here?’
“Well, yeees.” I frowned at her in confusion. “Anna, seriously, what’s up with you?”
Rob’s face was dark; a storm was brewing.
