Burndive

by Karin Lowachee

  Oh, so the captain liked his bit of luxury after all.

  Ryan wedged his case and guitar by the drawer tower, sipped from the bottle, and snooped the corners of his new den. So what? His father expected him to live here and be happy about it, he had a right to do what he pleased. He pawed open the black drawers and riffled through the neat stacks of clothing, the shirts and sweaters and underclothes, some of them quite fine and unexpectedly stylish, even expensive quality. More surprise. The pants and uniforms hung in a long dresser, the black battle fatigues as well as the dress suits. Ryan flicked from shoulder to shoulder, glanced at the pins and ribbons, then shut all the doors and drawers and went to the bedside table. He put the bottle down and tapped open the drawer.

  A gun and a dagger sat on top, both housed in black leather sheaths. Real leather, by the smell. Scarred, rubbed-raw leather. He wondered what kinds of people his father slept with to need these things so close. Underneath them were a locked metal box, an old slate, some info cubes, and a cam-orb. Nothing scandalous. So he sat at the edge of the bed and took out the dagger, slid it from its sheath. The hilt was smoke-colored steel and engraved with what looked like a stout horse, reared back on its hind legs with a flaring mane and sharp hooves. He checked the gun and it had the same symbol on its handle. Familiar, somehow, but he couldn’t think of where he’d ever seen it. He knew it wasn’t Macedon’s symbol.

  “Find anything?”

  Ryan nearly dropped the gun shoving it back into the bedside table. He shut the drawer and looked at his father. His heart gave a couple frantic thumps before he forced it to settle.

  “Vodka,” he said, picking up the bottle as he got to his feet. Staying by the bed since that was all the room he had.

  The captain stood just inside the open screen. His eyes slid to the bottle, then up. Not a word. He brushed past and pulled off the hooded sweater, his back to Ryan, and went to the drawer tower Ryan had just inspected and took out a uniform, plain black fatigues like a jet’s. He started to change clothes right there with the unabashed casualness of someone long used to military living.

  Ryan sat on the bed to put more room between them and looked at the wall, drinking from the bottle. His eyes watered and he blinked.

  “I’m not going to be in here very much, I have to be on bridge,” the captain said as he dressed. “I need to get us back to Chaos as soon as possible, you can figure. So I’m trusting you in my quarters. Whatever you touch, I expect it to stay where you found it. If you’re looking for drugs you won’t find any. And I suggest you don’t play with the guns. I don’t want blood on my sheets. As for the alcohol”—he rolled up his sleeves half way, tossed the used clothing over a rack on the wall, and went to the screen—“if I ever find you rolling around drunk on my deck, you’ll sleep it off in the brig. Copy that?”

  Ryan looked him in the eyes and took a deliberate swig from the bottle. Chances were nobody had ever defied him that openly. He didn’t react to it so Ryan took a second pull. “Why don’t you just put me in a spare quarters? Don’t you have diplomatic suites or something?”

  “Are you a diplomat?”

  “A spare quarters, then. Somewhere.”

  The captain said, kind of soft, “I don’t want you somewhere. I want you here.”

  Ryan looked at the screen. “Can I see Sid?”

  A pause, as if he waited for Ryan to look back at him. Ryan didn’t. Refused. The captain said, impatient now, “After dock break. Stay on the bed and strap yourself in.”

  “You say that to all your dates?”

  His father frowned at him. Ryan slid back on the sheets, up against the headboard, and finished two-thirds of the vodka. His father watched him drink it. He saw him out of the corners of his eyes.

  Come over here and take the bottle from me. Do it if you so disapprove.

  “You shouldn’t drink before a leap,” the captain said instead.

  “You didn’t tell me we were leaping.”

  “We’re going back to Chaos. How did you think we’d get there, by foot?”

  “That would be pretty pio—pio-neering of us, wouldn’t it?” He moved to set the bottle on the bedside table, but missed it. Luckily he still strangled its neck. He fumbled at the drawer with his other hand. “What’s that gun and knife anyway?”

  “Personal.” Suddenly the captain leaned near the bed and tried to pry the bottle from him.

  He pulled it out of reach. “I think it looks familiar.”

  “I think you should lie down now. I have to go soon.”

  “So? What else is new? I don’t wanna be here. Let me go home.”

  “I can’t.”

  Ryan felt the hand on his shoulder. It wouldn’t go away even when he tried to dodge. “Let me go!”

  “I need you to lie down, Ryan.” The hand went after the vodka bottle again.

  Ryan couldn’t stop him. The bottle went away. He reached for it but the captain pushed him back. Hard.

  The pillows were there. The silence formed a thick wall around his head. He hadn’t had enough sleep this shift. This year. He hadn’t had enough time to just wipe out.

  And then he was lying down with his legs stretched out, staring up at his father’s face. “Why’re you doing this to me?”

  The question seemed to surprise the captain. He paused from whatever he was doing at the side of the bed. Ryan couldn’t see and had no volition to lean and look.

  “I want you safe,” the captain said.

  Ryan looked toward the bathroom, away. “It won’t work.”

  “You’re going to be safe, Ryan.”

  Like on Earth? Like on Austro?

  A black web came over his chest.

  “What’s that?” Too late to struggle; he couldn’t move his arms. “Stop it!”

  “We’re leaping. I don’t want you tumbling about if something goes wrong.”

  It was hard to breathe. Then his father put a hand on his forehead, just lightly, sliding fingers into his hair. “Calm down. Just calm down.”

  “Let me go.”

  “I won’t.”

  He sniffed. The captain didn’t say a word. It was the drink, or the immobility, or the way his father sat with him until he could breathe, until he’d slid into the half-awake state of drunken fatigue.

  He didn’t know if he dreamed it or not, the dampness at the corners of his eyes and how his father wiped it away, gently.

  He thought he could hear the vodka slosh in his veins. Certainly it seemed to slosh in his stomach and insulate his brain. Memories battered against the fog, to be let out, to evaporate, but they swirled and cycled in his mind instead, thick eddies that flowed in on the tail end of drunken musings about the low ceiling he was forced to stare at. The ceiling that seemed determined to lower and crush his face from the nose inward. Gray, flat panels, bars of light accompanied by the sound effects of the airvents, hissing softly. It was a box of a room and his father had shut the lid.

  He remembered lying on this bed years ago. Had he been eight? Seven? He’d only seen his father twice more, at four and at twelve. The regularity of a deep-space carrier.

  Ryan looked up at the man standing in the residence foyer and thought, Daddy, and had Daddy in his head with comm images and conversations where Daddy smiled at him a lot and said he missed him and he was going to see him soon. And here he was, soon. Ryan wanted to be all grown up when he talked to Daddy so he called him Captain. He said, It’s nice to see you, Captain, like he was one of the security guards at the levs. Mommy kissed the captain and hugged him a long time, and then the captain picked him up and hugged him. He said, Put me down. He was too old to be carted around like a bag of beans.

  Mommy and the captain sat in the kitchen with drinks and talked about adult things that Ryan listened to for about five minutes before he got bored, so he tugged on the captain’s arm to show him the Battlemech Bear stuff he’d just got for Christmas. So the captain went and sat on the bedroom floor with him and listened to all the adventures of t
he great bear and said, He’s very brave. The captain met all the bear’s friends like Lizzi the Reptile Pilot, and Kit the Cat Commando, and the captain met the great bear himself in all his armor that lit up and morphed when you touched it. Then the captain said, Would you like to see some real stuff?

  What real stuff?

  A real gun and a real ship and real armor.

  Like Battlemech Bear’s armor?

  No, the captain laughed. Not quite like that. It doesn’t move around. But it looks pretty good, all black.

  Ryan looked up where his mother stood near the partition to his bedroom and said, Mommy, can I? Please?

  Mommy frowned. She said, Cairo, is that a good idea?

  The captain said, It’s my ship, Song. Nothing’s going to happen to him.

  Daddy owned a ship. That was right.

  The captain said, Let’s go, Ryan. He didn’t ask Mommy for permission. He took Ryan’s hand and led him out, and they hopped a pod and walked some more with the captain’s soljets trailing them. The captain led him right up the long steel ramp where two more soljets stood guard, tall and stiff and serious, and Ryan made faces at them as he passed to see what they would do. One of them refused to blink or even acknowledge him, which was disappointing, but the other soljet with the wicked eyes and bright blond hair—he winked and snarled, making a monster face, and Ryan laughed.

  The captain said, As you were, Private.

  The soljet wiggled his half-gloved fingers as Ryan went along with the captain through the airlocks and onto the deck. Ryan waved back, one hand, since the captain held his other.

  All the doorways and the walls were high, and everyone they passed was tall and uniformed, serious when they nodded to the captain, though most of them smiled when they looked down at Ryan.

  He’s adorable, sir, one woman said, on the lev ride going down. She had spiky dark hair and a red tattoo on her neck. Ryan pointed to it but his father pushed his hand down. The woman laughed and said, He looks like a fistful.

  He keeps me humble, the captain said.

  Ryan didn’t know what humble meant but he stepped on the captain’s boots and tilted back, stuck with a hand in the captain’s so he wouldn’t fall over, and arched his neck back to look at the spiky-haired woman upside down.

  Do you work with my father?

  She folded her arms loosely, her teeth showing white against her dark skin. She said, I do. And what’s your name?

  Ry-an Az-arcon. Just like how he said it when he wrote What’s yours?

  Ndili Hunsou. It’s nice to meet you, Ry-an. She said it like he did, and he giggled.

  The captain took his other hand and balanced him from both sides now, and when the lev door opened the captain walked him out just like that, with his feet still on the captain’s boots and his view of the world all topsy-turvy.

  Bye-bye. He raised his chin just enough to see Hunsou-with-the-red-tattoo before flopping back.

  Bye-bye, she said. And, I’ll have that report to you by the end of the shift, sir.

  That’s fine, the captain said over his shoulder. The lev door shut. The captain pulled Ryan up and over his shoulder in one smooth move and suddenly Ryan found himself looking at the deck at his father’s heels, moving as the captain walked. He yelped.

  Sir, what do you have there?

  Ryan couldn’t see who his father talked to, but it was another man. He kicked his feet. Put me down!

  The captain held on tighter and patted Ryan’s bottom. He said, It’s my loot. I raided Austro.

  Don’t look like much gain, the strange man said.

  Indeed, the captain said.

  Ryan grabbed the back of the captain’s shirt and yanked, but only got slapped on the bottom for it, not hard.

  Footsteps passed and Ryan caught a glimpse of black boots.

  Looks like you can clean the deck with it at least, sir. All that hair.

  I might try that, thank you, Commander.

  They were laughing at him. Ryan pounded on the captain’s back but the captain didn’t set him down until they came to a hatch. He bounced Ryan onto his feet, then hugged him against his chest, rubbing his back briefly.

  Ryan wasn’t really angry, it had been a fun ride, even though they wanted to use his head as a mop. He turned around as the captain poked a pad high up on the hatch, revealing a wide gray room full of robots.

  They looked like robots, but as Ryan stepped in and up to the lines of dark shapes, he saw they were empty and hung on racks. They were black bits of armor, displayed as if people stood in them, hitched securely to the wall. They were big and broad and didn’t seem to cover the entire body like Battlemech Bear’s. Some of them were dented, others crisscrossed by white scars. Some had stickers on them or painted pictures of animals, or symbols he didn’t understand. Some of the images were scary, toothy and red.

  Ryan backed up a bit until he felt his father behind him.

  They were all old armor, not like the Bear’s.

  They aren’t old, they’re just used, the captain said. They protect my soljets. Keep them alive.

  What are those pictures for?

  With the captain behind him, holding his shoulder, he stepped forward and reached up to one smooth black thigh and touched the paw print painted there in scuffed gold.

  The jets put those on, his father said. It’s like a mark, it’s theirs. They’re all different.

  They were. After a while they didn’t seem scary at all. They were like the red tattoo on that woman Hunsou’s neck. Or the tattoo on the captain’s wrist that Ryan saw when the captain reached over him and slid some of the armor back so Ryan could get a better look.

  Do you have one too? Ryan touched his father’s wrist, then the armor.

  Yes, but it’s not here.

  Can I see it?

  All right.

  They went back out, except Ryan walked this time on his own, looking up at the ceiling way above with all of its colorful pipes and strips of lights. The walls were cold when he trailed his fingers along them.

  They went in another lev and Ryan leaned against the wall with his hands behind him and watched as a couple other people, a man and a woman, came in. One was dressed like a jet, the other in gray coveralls. They nodded to the captain and looked at Ryan curiously, but didn’t say anything. The captain didn’t say anything either, just looked down at Ryan and grinned quickly, as if daring him to smile back.

  Ryan puckered his lips and didn’t smile. He could win it.

  Then the lev door opened with a clang and the captain -strode out. Ryan ran after him and glanced back before the doors shut again. The man and the woman stared after him, looking somewhat surprised, so he waved at them before chasing after his father to catch up.

  How come those two didn’t talk to you?

  The captain shrugged. They probably weren’t comfortable.

  Why?

  I haven’t really had occasion to speak to them very often. So they might be a bit intimidated.

  In-tim-i-dated.

  Scared, his father said.

  Why? Were you mean to them?

  The captain laughed. No. Do you know how many people are on my ship?

  Five hundred?

  Higher.

  Six hundred?

  The captain stopped by a hatch that looked a lot like all the others, heavy and gray, and took out his tags from inside his shirt and opened the hatch with one of them, sliding it through a little box that beeped. A tiny image of his face was on the tag, with numbers and symbols all over it front and back. He tucked it back in his shirt before Ryan could get a better look and took Ryan inside.

  Not six hundred, the captain said. Six thousand and twenty-one people live and work on this ship.

  Ryan stared up at him. That was almost as much as Austro.

  The captain laughed again and led Ryan through a tiny living room to a bedroom that was half the size of the living room. This was where his father lived, like how he and Mommy lived in the residence. But bo
th rooms here were barely the size of Ryan’s bedroom alone. It didn’t seem right that his father should live somewhere smaller than his home.

  Austro has about sixty thousand people, the captain said. It’s much larger than Macedon. Here, have a seat.

  Ryan plopped on the bed and took off his shoes and pulled his feet up, sliding back on the soft blanket. It was a big thick bed and it felt good to just lie there. He took one of the pillows since the captain didn’t have any stuffies anywhere and hugged it. It was soft and slippery but he gripped it tight and watched his father open a tall cabinet against the wall. Inside were more uniforms and the captain moved them aside and dislodged something heavier. He turned around and showed Ryan. It was a torso piece of black armor and it shone so much the lights overhead reflected in them. But it was still used, like the others, even though it was shiny. Scratches were all over it.

  You wear that?

  The captain said, Sometimes. Rarely, now.

  Ryan blinked, his cheek on the pillow. He tried to imagine his father in that, all done up like Battlemech Bear, but he couldn’t see it. His father was too tall and too skinny and he’d never seen him with a gun.

  He drifted and didn’t know where his father went in the room. Once he opened his eyes halfway, sleepy, and saw his father changing clothes. He didn’t have a shirt on. He didn’t look so skinny without his shirt and that was strange. And it was stranger, the thing on his chest. The black tattoo that Ryan couldn’t quite make out in the dim light. But it looked like some sort of animal. A smaller version was on his arm, near the inside of his elbow, above the wrist tattoo that was the tattoo of the captain’s ship. He’d seen that one lots of times. But not the animal one. Then the captain put on a shirt and he couldn’t see it anymore.

  He fell asleep again. And woke up again, a little, and the captain was beside him on the bed, reading a slate under a small circle of light. It felt later, and like bedtime, so he just rolled over and shut his eyes.

  He heard voices. Maybe it was later. It was his father on the comm, talking to Mommy back on station. He heard his mother say, Keep him until the next sleepshift.