Burndive

by Karin Lowachee

  His father hadn’t moved or flicked an expression through it all.

  Now he seemed to be thinking about it.

  “Well, I don’t have any lovers on ship,” he said finally.

  Ryan said, “Is that it?”

  “Did you want me to check off the list?”

  He wondered if his father would actually comply. “Yeah. For the record.”

  His father seemed amused, not uncomfortable. He laced his fingers behind his head and looked up at the ceiling.

  “All right. Well, like I said, I don’t have lovers on ship. I don’t completely ignore orders, especially if they come from your grandfather”—he raised an eyebrow, almost talking to himself—“although I do ignore all the dumb ones, regardless of source. You know this war has been going on for longer than you’ve been alive; if somebody didn’t push the government’s hand, what do you think your future would be like? Worse, not better. If that makes me rogue then I can live with that. Everything else the Send says… what they don’t see out here, they make up.” He lowered his arms and folded them loosely against his chest. “I think that covers it.”

  “You torture prisoners?”

  “If they need it, yes. I’m not the only one in the Hub. Surely you know our government does it.”

  Ryan clutched his glass. The ice had melted but the surface was still cold. “How can you say that—so casually?”

  “You asked for the truth.”

  “Strits torture people. Pirates torture people. So what if the govies do it? You should be better than that.”

  The captain leaned over and picked up his cup, sipped. “I don’t make it a habit, Ryan. But if someone’s got information and I know they have it, but they’re being stubborn and difficult, I’ll get it from them one way or another—in order to save lives.”

  “There’s such a thing as human decency. And laws.”

  “Rhetoric is fine when you’re in an office with a seal behind you. Out here there are practicalities.”

  One moment he thought the man was easy, and in the next it was another matter.

  Yet it all sounded so reasonable over tea, in calm voices.

  “What are the good things?” the captain continued.

  “What good things?”

  “Surely it’s not all bad on the Send.”

  Ryan sipped his icemelt. “No, I guess not.”

  “You have friends on Austro, don’t you? Surely they all don’t revile me as a treasonous rogue, and you as the treasonous rogue’s son.”

  “Didn’t you hear? I’m Austro’s hot number one bachelor. I’m just flowing with friends.”

  The captain’s face froze as if he couldn’t quite decide on a proper expression. Then he laughed. “Hot number one bachelor, huh?”

  “Don’t even.”

  His father kept laughing.

  “Please. Shut up.” It didn’t help. “I’m serious.”

  “Apparently so are they.”

  “Look, just because some—idiotic ‘poll’ says I’m popular doesn’t mean there are, like, actual genuine people out there banging down my door. People think you’re powerful, or Mom is, so they orbit me for that.” He put his foot on the edge of the table and poked a pyramid with his toe.

  His father said, “I see.”

  “Sid’s my only real friend, but even then he was ordered to be.”

  “No, he was ordered to be your bodyguard. I think he’s your friend by choice.”

  The conversation had gone off the scope of what he cared to discuss. He got up and went to the kitchen to dump his glass. Or pour another. He hesitated, thoughts in disarray. Too many choices and not one of them satisfactory.

  Retreat to the bedroom, even though that would send a clearer signal of his mental state than he cared to exhibit.

  He poured a little more of the vodka and juice, mixed it with ice to give his hands something to do for a few minutes. It also allowed him to keep his back turned.

  “Sid’s a good person,” Ryan said. “You shouldn’t be jealous of him.”

  “Why would I be jealous?”

  “Yeah, why.”

  “He does a good job. I wouldn’t want him to fail at it.”

  Which job, Ryan almost asked. My bodyguard or my surrogate father? But he couldn’t do that to Sid. He turned around and leaned against the sink. “You didn’t answer one of my points.”

  “Which one?”

  “About your files.”

  The captain set down his cup on the table, lightly. “They’re closed.”

  “Yeah, so, why?”

  His father stood, picked up his cup, and brought it to the kitchen space. He reached around Ryan to place it in the sink. Ryan purposely didn’t move. Now his father was uncomfortable, even though it barely showed. But he felt it. Up close he saw the little lines between his brows, a half-suppressed frown.

  “My past is private,” the captain said. “That’s all.”

  “Even from your family?”

  “From the Send. That’s why the files are closed. You of all people know how information gets distorted. I’d rather nothing of it was out there to feed the fire.”

  “But you can tell me. I won’t go to the Send.”

  “Do you discuss Earth?”

  Ryan blinked. He shifted away from the captain’s close proximity. “We aren’t talking about Earth. Besides, everyone knows what happened in Hong Kong.”

  “But you never talk about it, do you?” His father went back to the living space and picked up his slate. “Music off.”

  The volume-lowered track blanked to silence. Ryan missed the rhythm and frantic bass. Their voices seemed too loud now. The room too exposed.

  His father sat back on the couch without looking up. “I think you should go to bed now, Ryan.”

  It was dismissal. So when it came down to it, his father still expected him to toe the line like any crewmember.

  Toe it, before it was crossed.

  He set down his glass and retreated to the bedroom, slid in the screen. An embarrassment-fueled heat spread through his chest and he didn’t know why. All that conversation and he was left to feel as if he’d witnessed something unseemly.

  Like a bare body or an open soul.

  As soon as the beep sounded Ryan remembered he was supposed to comm Sid. The room was dark, the complete black of a place with no windows. He was lying in bed, not sleeping, and the noise made him jump. He leaned over to peer at the comm and reached to poke it, but the light was off.

  His father had picked it up outside.

  He slid off the bed and went to the screen, got it open a couple centimeters before the voices made him stop.

  “… No, sir,” Sid was saying. “They argued.”

  “About what?” his father said.

  “Sir, if I may be candid?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Sir, Ryan doesn’t get why you want Musey to train him and I confess I don’t either. We don’t know the—we don’t know him. Ryan’s been through a lot and—”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Sir, I’m not sure you are. Earth hit him hard, sir.”

  “The admiral did brief me, Sidney.”

  “Sir, please, with all due respect… the admiral didn’t see all of it. He certainly wasn’t at the embassy when it all— happened.”

  Ryan stared through the sliver of space. His father was sitting on the couch, he saw the back of his head and his shoulders. He had a hand in his hair, leaning on it. The lights were up in a dim golden glow.

  “Speak plainly, Corporal. Is there something more that I should know?”

  Sid’s voice sounded hollow and hard on the comm. “Sir, his entire life.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said I could be candid, sir.”

  “But not dramatic. Are you saying I don’t understand him? Do you think I ought to handle him with velvet gloves?”

  “You’re not really asking for my advice, sir, so I’m reluctant to really give it.”<
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  “Don’t be a smart-ass. I’m asking you a question and you damn well better answer it. You think putting him with Musey will stress him out?”

  “He’s already stressed. He hasn’t come down since we left Earth, except when he sailed. That’s why he sailed. Musey’s an unknown factor and I personally don’t get much stability from him either. Putting them together might be asking for it. Sir.”

  “Or it might knock them out of their respective head-spaces.”

  “I don’t know Musey. Maybe he’s honest. But he’s violent and I don’t want him near Ryan.”

  “Did he do something?”

  “No, sir, but I sense violence from him and I think you should leave Ryan out of it. He’s had enough of that.”

  Ryan tried to stop breathing; it came in short intakes until he clamped down. And remembered to release the edge of the screen. His fingers throbbed.

  “They both need to stop running,” the captain said.

  “Explosions stop movement,” Sid said, “but I wouldn’t recommend planting bombs on speeding freeways.”

  “Colorful analogy. But I’ve got instincts too, Corporal. And my instincts tell me that if we left Ryan on his present course, he’d find any and every excuse to remain inertial.”

  “Sir, I think you know Musey better than you know Ryan.”

  The captain’s tone was brittle and dark, each word a burnt ember. “So were there things that you should have put in your report about Earth that you didn’t, and I’m laboring under false pretenses? About my own son?”

  “Sir, reading something in a report never fully describes a situation. Or a person.”

  “You’re saying I’m blind and dumb, is that it?”

  “No, sir.” A beat. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir.”

  “Not according to you. Perhaps I should talk again to my wife. She might have a different story still.”

  “She wasn’t there either, sir.”

  Silence. A long one.

  “Sir, I don’t need the full eight weeks of training. I’d like to continue my duty as Ryan’s guard. At least for the first until he’s acclimated, sir. Your crew is rough—”

  “I know. But they have orders to leave him alone.”

  “But he can’t be alone here. Sir, that was a large part of his problem on Austro. So I’d like to still be involved. I’d like to train him instead of Musey, at least in the basic combat. Ship regs, I understand, he should be trained by someone else. But I’m more than qualified for the basics.”

  “You are one bold son of a bitch, Sidney.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I brought you along for Ryan’s sake; I’m not without compassion. I appreciate that Earth holds bad memories for you too, and perhaps you’re transferring some of your own feelings to his, but I have some experience with traumatized people. Call it my line of work. I would appreciate it if you didn’t interfere with Musey and Ryan.”

  Another beat.

  “Corporal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Am I clear, Corporal Sidney?”

  “Yes, sir. But the last thing Ryan wants is to be forced into a friendship.”

  “I’m not doing anything of the sort. I expect them to learn from each other, if they don’t kill each other. At the very least. But not if you undercut me. Am I clear, Sidney?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well. Good luck with the training.”

  The comm beeped, but this time to acknowledge a disconnect.

  Ryan drew a long slow breath as the captain ordered the lights off and settled back on the couch.

  Learn from that symp? From that kid his father treated like a second son, for who knew what reason?

  He thought about destroying the quarters.

  He thought about the gun and knife in the bedside table.

  He thought about the booze, and the Silver he no longer had.

  In the end he lay in the dark with his arms over his eyes and listened to the sound of nothing on the ship, making his mind nothing, no images, no scents, nothing but the dark and the silence until they squatted in his chest like parasites.

  A hand shook him awake. Get up, Ryan, your father’s here.

  But it was only the echo of Sid’s voice, a memory. When he opened his eyes it was the captain’s face peering down at him.

  He’d slept, finally, a sudden dark oblivion that hung onto him with claws even now that his eyes were open. He barely felt his father’s hand, just realized that it caressed his hair before he blinked and saw the captain across the room, in the bathroom with the door open, looking into the mirror.

  So maybe he’d dreamed it.

  He smelled eggs and caff. He remembered goldshifts as a child, when Daddy was in dock for a visit, and the wondrous, exotic concoctions on his plate at least twice a day.

  His father liked to cook. He’d forgotten that.

  “Are you going to wake up enough to have breakfast with me?” the captain asked as he fixed his shirt, and came out to the wide glow of the room. The bathroom light went off as he left its sensors. “To drink something at least. You can’t eat before the physical.”

  Ryan pulled himself to sit up, leaning on one hand, and rubbed his face. “What time is it?”

  “Oh-six-hundred.”

  Bloody hell, military living.

  “Ryan?”

  “Fine, fine.” His stomach gave an embarrassing grumble. Not eat? Yeah right.

  He remembered the eavesdropped conversation. He looked up at his father to get some kind of indication, or shoot a glare, but his father pushed the screen aside and went to the outer room.

  Breakfast with the parent. Like on station. Maybe his father would work while he ate and nobody would have to talk.

  He found a T-shirt that he’d tossed at the foot of the bed, tangled in sheets, tugged it on as he shuffled to the kitchen and hitched up the waist of his pants so the bottoms wouldn’t trip him. His eyesight fuzzed and slowly cleared, his blood beginning to circulate. His father sat at the island counter, elbows on top, munching on toast. No slate anywhere.

  Ryan leaned up and sat and took a sip of the orange juice so he wouldn’t have to say anything.

  “Caff’s over there.” His father gestured behind him to the zap plate where the pot sat. “Although you probably shouldn’t have it this shift.”

  “That’s fine, I’ll get it later.”

  “How do you feel?”

  He shrugged and spread his toast with lemon marmalade.

  “What does that mean?—And you aren’t supposed to eat.”

  “It means nothing. And I’m eating, so deal with it.”

  “You feel like nothing?”

  He put the knife down. “Yeah, whatever. Look, I’m barely awake. Can you analyze me later?”

  His father watched him, not touching his food now. “Did you overhear me last shift, talking to Sid?”

  “What do you think?”

  A small sigh. “I think you need to get yourself out of this self-destructive habit of—listlessness.”

  “Self-destructive. This coming from someone who fights wars for a living.”

  “Ryan—”

  “No. You know what?” His fingers were sticky from the toast. He wiped his hand on the napkin and started to fold it, press on it. “I’ll cooperate. I’ll go along with your little experiment. Hell, I’ll even be civil to Musey if that’ll make you leave me alone and not try to fix me. I’m not your bloody project.”

  “I don’t see you that way, Ryan.”

  “The hell you don’t.”

  “You’re my son.”

  Ryan stared. He tossed the uneaten toast to his plate.

  His father leaned forward. “Don’t you think I care about you?”

  “Just stop it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s stupid. It’s bloody head-shrinking shit. I don’t need it.” He grabbed up his glass and downed half of it until the tart acid burned his throat.

&nbs
p; “Ryan, I refuse to sit back and just watch you try to handle what happened to you—what you saw on Earth. And what happened in the Dojo. I’m your father and I won’t do it. I know you resent me for a lot of things, not the least of which is because I’ve barely seen you—”

  “I’m over that.”

  “I’m not going to tell you to get over it. But you’re going to get through it.”

  He gave his father a violent stare. “Is that why I’m here? Because the shrinks on Earth ‘failed’? Did someone send that to you in a report?”

  “Why did you drop out of school?”

  Here it went. “It was boring me.”

  “Are you going to give answers like that for the rest of your life?”

  “I didn’t even want to study that stuff. That was all Mom’s idea.”

  His father looked at him for so long he almost pitched his glass at him. This was too damn early in his shift to be raking over these rocks, and it just figured the captain would ambush him. He’d been ambushed the moment that sniper took a shot at him in the flash house and everyone must’ve thought it was a great new strategy to shake out what they wanted from Ryan Azarcon. Just drop things on his head, hard and fast enough until he looked up.

  Damn self-pitying shit. He didn’t even like to hear himself think.

  He got up with his plate and his empty glass.

  The captain blinked. “Where are you going?”

  “The bedroom. Out an airlock. I don’t know. Somewhere so I can eat in peace. I guess I won’t be going on station, right? I might as well stake out the safe zones on this ship, since I’ll probably die here.”

  The captain stood, his hand on the countertop. Then his tags beeped. He frowned.

  Ryan turned around and headed to the screen.

  “Sir,” a female voice said, “Captain S’tlian just commed to confirm the meeting at oh-nine-hundred. Admiral Ashrafi and Minister Taylor are on their way now to meet with you beforehand.”

  “Thanks. Comm Musey, tell him Conference A when he’s finished escorting my son.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ryan looked at the screen and put his glass on his plate so he could free a hand to push it aside.