by Rob Boffard
He doesn’t know how long it is before the memory of what he saw on Malik’s holo comes back, but it’s as powerful as an electric shock. His eyes fly open.
“Corey?” His mom is there. “Is it the leg? If you need more meds …”
Corey makes himself calm down. The prisoner is right there – if Corey could talk to him, just for a second …
“Could I have a glass of water, Mom?” he says.
She smiles, relieved. “Uh-huh. Sure.” But halfway to her feet, she pauses, looking towards the cockpit.
“What’s wrong?” Corey asks.
Anita shakes her head. “Your dad asked me to stay here and watch him.” She nods to the prisoner. “I’ll ask Hannah to get you one.”
“No,” Corey says, trying to keep his voice level, trying to ignore the pain. “She’s busy. It’ll be OK.”
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Anita says, crossing her arms. “He almost got loose down in the bar. I don’t know if you saw it, but—”
“Hannah’s right there. If there’re any problems, I’ll just yell. He’s cuffed to the armrest anyway. Please?”
He’s pushed it too far. She’s frowning at him, suspicious now. She’s going to want to know why he needs to be alone. But then she glances towards Hannah, still patching up Jack, trying to get a piece of tape onto his busted nose, and her concern for her son wins out.
She gets up, checks the prisoner’s cuffs, leaning slightly away from him as if he’s a caged animal. “Anything happens,” she says. “He moves even a tiny bit, you yell as loud as you can.”
“I will. Promise.”
Anita walks away, moving slowly, casting worried glances back at Corey. He flashes her a small smile.
If there’s any water left in a cup down there, she’ll be back in under thirty seconds. If there isn’t, if she has to chip off some ice, he’s got a little more time. No way to tell – he’ll just have to move fast.
He turns his body slightly, ignoring the pain in his leg, facing the man opposite.
“The thrusters,” he says, keeping his voice low.
The man’s expression doesn’t change.
The meds are starting to kick in now, really kick in, the big cat backing off, leaving space for Corey’s thoughts. “On your ship. The ones above the central reactor stack. They’re ion thrusters. My brother filmed you guys. You can only see the thrusters from certain angles, but they’re there.”
He licks his lips. It hurts to talk this much, but he has to get this out, needs to.
“I read about ships all the time. I wanna fly ’em when I grow up. So I know about the thrusters – they’re classified, but there’s all these rumours, on the message boards and stuff. Plus a couple of leaked drawings. No one knows if they’re official or not, but those thrusters on your ship look just like them, so they must be. There’s no way anyone in the Colonies has them yet. They just aren’t advanced enough, and, anyway, they take crazy cash to build.”
He stops, unsure. But he’s come too far to stop now.
“You’re not Colony. You’re Frontier. You’re one of us.”
Chapter 46
A soldier’s job was simple, when you got down to it.
It consisted of three things, constantly repeated. Problem, solution, action. Problem, solution, action.
The man sitting opposite Corey on the deck of the Red Panda had found this to be true no matter what the circumstances. It was true in basic, where the problem was how to do two hundred pull-ups without passing out, and in advanced ops training, where they airlocked you into a hazard zone in a suit with twenty minutes of oxygen and told you to figure it out. And you didn’t even get to that point unless you were damn good at the solution and action part.
It had been true on Kepler-8, when a Colony drone swarm had picked them out against the terrain and started hitting them with cluster missiles. Ditto six months later, on Antares, when the squad had a limited time frame to execute an incursion into a Colony outpost, and ten klicks of exposed, low-G terrain to navigate.
It had been especially true when he told Madhu he was going to enlist, way back when.
Brigita had brought in a crop of beans from her grow dome, and he and Madhu were cleaning them at the big table in the main room. Brigita had always been so proud of those – nobody on Cassiopeia believed you could get anything to grow in the planet’s dead soil. But they hadn’t had her skill, or her persistence.
Then again, you had to have those things to make it on a Frontier outpost like Cassiopeia, and you definitely had to have it to build the world Brigita and Madhu had – especially when building a world was quite literally what they were doing. They were Frontier terraformers, slowly turning their rock into something worth living on, and ever since they’d adopted him when he was six, their little outpost had gone from seven habs to twenty.
As usual, he and Madhu were being extra careful to get the stem off each bean, both knowing without even saying it that Brigita would give them hell if they didn’t. Madhu had his sleeves rolled up, exposing his meaty arms, elbows resting on the table. Frowning beneath his beard as he considered each bean.
Usually, the main room was crowded – with a family the size of Madhu and Brigita’s, it could be hard to find space in the compact habitat. There was always someone dashing between the hot, tight rooms, a child on all fours under the table, a peal of laughter from Jocinda or Yoshiro blocking out a conversation. But he’d picked this moment carefully. Roger was tending the regulators. Ling-Xi had the kids doing maths problems on their lenses. Madhu’s brother Mhotar was sleeping. The time was right.
When he’d told Madhu what he wanted to do, the big man had paused, a just separated bean and stem in either hand, holding them there as if about to glue them back together.
“Enlist where?” Madhu had rumbled.
The question didn’t make sense. “With the Frontier?”
Before he could ask, Madhu had shifted his great bulk in his chair towards the kitchen. “Brigita? Darling, come please.”
“Busy!”
“No, come. We have something to talk about.”
He’d turned back, eyebrows raised, as if to say, You didn’t think you’d get away with just asking me, did you?
Brigita had come. She’d been chopping tofu blocks into bite-size cubes, and hadn’t had a chance to blast the white flecks off her hands with the air tap. She had her hands out in front of her, away from her tunic, listening as he told them what he wanted to do. It was a lot harder with her around, which had probably been why Madhu called her.
He wasn’t even halfway through his first sentence when she was shaking her head. “No. You’re staying. Bloody silly boy.”
“I can’t.”
“This is not a discussion.”
“It has to be.”
Madhu, his arms folded, shook his head as if trying to dislodge something from his ear. “I thought you wanted to stay here, huh?”
“No, I do, but—”
“We’re building something important.” Madhu was gathering steam, ready to plunge into his favourite subject. “There are only so many habitable planets out there, and if we don’t make more, we can forget about it. It’s a privilege to—”
“I know.”
“You don’t know a thing.” Brigita spat the words at him, suddenly furious. He couldn’t even remember seeing her angry before, let alone this angry. “You turn eighteen, you think you know what’s what. Well, let me tell you what’s what. People are dying in this war. There might be conscription on the other planets, but not here. Here, we’re safe, and you are staying whether you like it or not.”
“You told me,” Madhu said, his mouth barely moving under his beard, “that you wanted to live here. With us.”
“I do.”
“It doesn’t sound like it. And what do you do if they send you somewhere dangerous? Or what if—”
And at that, he’d done something that he’d never done before. He might not have had
problem, solution, action drilled into him yet, but it was as if he already understood it. That understanding was why, years later, they’d invite him to apply for advanced ops, why they’d send him to dungholes like Kepler-8 and Antares. It was what led him to stand up, reach over and place a single finger over Madhu and Brigita’s mouths.
Theirs was not a touching family. The house they’d built on this little way-out rock was filled with adopted children, with rough hugs and hair tousles and punches on the shoulder. Once in a while, when he’d had a little too much of Mhotar’s homemade vodka, Madhu would give Brigita a quick, almost hesitant peck on the cheek. For someone to touch them like this, with a finger gently pressed against their lips, was enough to shock them into silence.
He’d sat back down, looked them both in the eyes, and told them exactly why he’d wanted to do it.
It wasn’t just that he wanted to see what else there was beyond the cramped cluster of terraforming domes on Cassiopeia, although of course that was part of it. The war between the Frontier and the Colonies had left a lot of orphaned kids, their homes and families ripped apart. The effort to resettle them had been sketchy at best, scattering them as quickly and efficiently as possible across safe territories, with anyone who would take them.
He wasn’t naive – he’d heard plenty of horror stories. But for each one, there were two where things had worked out OK. He was among them.
He didn’t remember his birth family. When he was sixteen, Madhu and Brigita had sat him down – at the exact same table, probably in the same chairs – and told him that they could help him find out, if he wanted. They’d told the same thing to everyone they took in, and they had experience in navigating the bureaucracy, knowing just which buttons to push to get the relevant information sent out on the next supply jump. But he found that he didn’t want to know. Didn’t have the slightest desire. This was his family. This was his home.
The Frontier’s great, grinding system might not be perfect, but it had placed him here, with Madhu and Brigita and Mhotar and their enormous brood. Luck? Sure. He could easily have been sent somewhere else. But a system that could give him the life he’d had, even if it was flawed, was worth protecting. The Colonies wanted to destroy it – or, at least, take it for themselves in their victory, with all the chaos that entailed.
If they won, if they clawed back territory from the Frontier, who knows how many more horror stories there’d be, instead of more Madhus and Brigitas? He wasn’t going to let that happen. He needed to fight. He needed to repay the debt.
It took weeks to convince them. Brigita soon gave up – she’d always picked her battles, always known when she could convince her adopted children, and when she couldn’t. But not Madhu. Madhu had grilled him relentlessly, making him justify his decision in minute detail.
It was hardly surprising – Madhu was one of those people who would never let anything go, who had to cram as much knowledge into his brain as possible. He was the kind of person who’d spend hours studying a dismantled recycler, even though they had two fully trained technicians on site, and multiple spare recyclers in storage. He loved having political discussions, refusing to let up until he understood exactly why someone believed what they did.
This – the decision to enlist – was no different. He’d had to spend hours with Madhu, telling him that he had to do this – and, more importantly, convincing Madhu that he intended to come back. After the debt was paid, he’d set up in a habitat of his own, help turn the tiny planet that raised him into something that might do the same for others.
The version of him sitting on the main deck of the Red Panda is a long, long way from the kid sitting at that table. Too much has changed.
He still can’t quite bring himself to believe that the other soldiers on his ship are gone, but he’s put those thoughts away, boxed them in, walled them off until their shrieking is nothing more than a distant, muffled wail. He’s lucky to be alive. He got sloppy, in a way he wouldn’t have done when the war was still going.
No matter. The mission was to wipe out every single person and structure in this quadrant of space, and he is going to accomplish that. He has to – not just for him, but for every soldier who lost his life trying to get it done. And for Cassiopeia, which he knows he’ll never go back to.
Problem: The mission has encountered difficulties.
Solution: Fall back on training. Stay calm. Eliminate the difficulties, starting with imprisonment.
Action: Complete the mission. Kill everyone on board. Await extraction.
Because extraction was coming. It wouldn’t be long now. If he hadn’t taken control of this ship by the time it got here, they’d blow it to pieces. So: work the problem. Progress through the sequence.
He doesn’t know why it surprises him to find children here – this is a civilian craft, after all. But all the same, opening his eyes when they brought him on board and the boy being the first person he saw was … unsettling.
He’s not naive – civilian casualties have always been a problem, and while he might never have killed a juvenile directly, he was almost certainly involved in their deaths. That was how war worked. He’d long ago accepted that fact – easy to do when the alternative was a total failure to perform on a mission. This will be no different. And there is far too much at stake not to finish the mission. The boy dies, along with everyone else.
For a moment, he thinks about telling them the mission’s purpose, and almost laughs. They would never understand. They couldn’t. They’re civilians, with everything that implies. He does not have a duty to explain himself to them. Like everyone on Sigma Station, they deserve everything that’s coming to them.
All the same. Just because these people have to die doesn’t mean it should be painful. The boy’s leg injury could have been prevented – the passengers on this ship, these civilians, were clumsy. At the right time, when the difficulties have been dealt with, he’ll kill the boy himself. He would have preferred not to, but he knows he has no choice. And it’ll be Quick. Clean. Painless. He’s not cruel.
He has to admit he’s impressed that the boy figured out that he was Frontier. Hayes should have thought about disguising the thrusters, back at the base. Another example of sloppiness.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” the boy says. “It’s OK. You can tell me. It’s not like our situation’s gonna get any worse.”
The soldier considers the boy. Perhaps he can use this. They bonded before, over that ridiculous alien series, and maybe he can do it again. It won’t work like it did last time – they’ll all be on their guard now – but it’s worth a shot.
“Smart kid.”
The boy’s eyes go wide.
“I’m Corey,” he says. “Corey Livingstone. What’s your name?” The soldier pauses. All things considered, it would have been better not to know the boy’s name.
The kid’s mother is back on the main deck, holding a glass filled with ice chunks sitting in a dribble of water. She’s stopped to talk to two other passengers – the guy with the bloody nose, and the young woman who did that half-assed interrogation of him before.
The kid is bound to tell his mommy about who he, the soldier, is really fighting for. That’ll probably mean they’ll try to get more info out of him. But the big guy with the metal arm and his squeeze are nowhere to be seen, and the corporate looking asshole in the polo shirt looks like he’s had the fight knocked out of him. They were the only ones who might have tried the torture thing, so he should be OK.
Except: when Mom comes back, handing the kid the glass of water, he says nothing. Not a word.
Mom glares at him, a lioness protecting her cub. And as she does so, with her head turned in his direction, her son looks him in the eyes, and smiles. It’s the same smile he saw on any number of his brothers and sisters, when they were cooking up something they didn’t want Madhu and Brigita to know about. It’s a smile that says: we know something they don’t know.
Chapter 47
“Stop mov
ing,” Hannah says, for the fifth time.
Jack stays still for perhaps half a second before Hannah dabs his face a little too hard for his liking. He jerks away, wincing. “Stob. Id’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.” She keeps dabbing at it, down on one knee in front of him, the torn piece of fabric in her hand stiff with blood. The tape on his nose has come loose again.
What made her start helping him? It was like she needed something to do, like she couldn’t be idle for more than a minute at a time.
“Just stay put for five seconds,” she says. “Let me get the blood off.”
He stays put for four. When he jerks away, Hannah hurls the rag at his lap. “You know what? Forget it.”
“Id jus’ hurds. Dat’s all.”
“Oh, really? Your nose hurts? Well, we’ve got a kid busted up a lot worse than you. Don’t think you’re getting any nanomeds.”
“I didn’t bean – hag od.”
He gives a series of sniffs, and a fresh line of blood starts tracking down from his right nostril. But when he speaks again, his voice is a little clearer.
“I didn’t mean for the captain to—”
“You didn’t mean it? Are you serious?”
A look of pure fury crosses his face. But it only lasts a second before vanishing, and he drops his head, hands clasped in his lap.
For a few moments, neither of them move. Hannah stands, her arms crossed, watching him. Eventually, she sighs, and goes back down on her knee. “Here. The tape’s loose. Let me fix it.”
He grits his teeth, wincing as she pushes against the fractured bone, smoothing the tape down. His nostrils and upper lip are crusted with clots the colour of red wine.
“Doesn’t matter now, anyway,” she says, taking slightly sadistic delight in pushing the last bit of the tape down hard. “But if you do anything like that again …”
He nods, not looking at her.
She takes one last look at his busted nose, then sits down next to him.
“What do we do now?” Jack says.
