Xeene nodded.
‘I’m still figuring Silky out,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think breaking my heart is on her agenda, nor within her power if it were.’
I’d forgotten how difficult it is to read a Wolf’s mood, all those facial expressions we take for granted covered up beneath the skin plates. Usually it doesn’t matter, not when a Wolf is shouting at you, ignoring you, or coming at you with a knife, which covered 99% of Marine-Wolf interaction.
I think she was trying to tell me something but I couldn’t pick it up, so she rolled her eyes and told me the old-fashioned way with her voice. ‘Keep her at bay. She will hurt you.’
‘She wouldn’t do that,’ I replied.
‘But she would, will, and can’t help but to get inside your heart and consume it from the inside. NJ, she is a Kurlei. It’s her nature. It’s what they do.’
What was I supposed to say to that? Wolves aren’t exactly renowned for talking drent, which makes me think Xeene knows far more about my wife’s people than I do. I knew getting mixed up with aliens was a bad idea.
I mumbled something to Xeene about taking her warning seriously and then hit the hay to think it over.
I thought a long while, cutting through tracks in my mind that were overgrown with lack of use. One of those buried paths led here, to this journal.
It feels good to write things down. A person of my years likes to see things written down in front of their face before figuring things out. Been running on instinct too long. Time to start thinking while I still can. Think I’ll journal again tomorrow.
— CHAPTER 43 —
JOURNAL ENTRY.
DAY 2.
SCOREBOARD. Me: -49. Top-ranked: Chikune, 81. My next target: Xeene: 25.
Made good progress on the scoreboard today. I’m going to make it to the top, and I’m going to treasure the looks on everyone’s faces when I do.
It’s sad that the first recruit I will overtake will be Xeene. I admire the old Wolf, but she lacks stamina and her Wolfish intelligence expresses itself as cunning, which is no use with the kind of academic learning we’ve been doing the last few days.
That training – more secrets and surveillance and encryption, with a little organizational file keeping – very useful. I got on well with Nardok the Typist again today. I very nearly told him what I’d seen that night I was caught doing drunken acrobatics on the office roof. It looks as if I’m the only one who knows there was someone else skulking around that night. This Ninja Skulk. If I ratted on the Skulk then whatever security loophole they had exploited would be closed to me too.
On the other hand, the Skulk might blow up the camp with me in it.
I talked this over with the Sarge. If I see something suspicious and do nothing, I told him, doesn’t that make me a traitor myself? Should I report this?
If I’m honest, I wanted the Sarge to justify a decision I’d already made: to report what I had seen. The Sarge was unbending on questions of following rules, and rock solid on anything about loyalty.
Instead of the Sarge, Efia answered me. Report what, Joshua? she said. What have you seen?
Not calling me ‘NJ’ stung. It meant she was disappointed in me. I’ve seen someone sneaking around, I replied, even though she already knew this.
And if they had seen you, how would they describe you? As someone sneaking around where they had no business to be, that’s how.
I hate it when people lead me through the nose to arrive at the understanding of their choice. That’s not fair, I told Efia. It’s not like I was there to betray anyone.
And yet you were acting suspiciously nonetheless. How do you know this sneaking figure is one of the bad guys?
I appealed for reinforcements. Come on, Sarge. Help me out.
You’re not in the Legion now, son. This outfit isn’t even the Human Marine Corps. We don’t really know anything about Revenge Squad and they have done nothing to earn our trust or loyalty. Which is why I yield to Lance Corporal Jalloh.
If you were in my shoes, I said, you would have shot the legs off this Ninja Skulk and damn the consequences.
I do not deny it. But I am not you. You were always more flexible in your morality, Ndeki.
There was more. If I’d given him free rein, the Sarge would have gone on forever. It’s wonderful that the Sarge is back with me again, but perhaps he’s overdone his return because he does ramble on now, and he never used to. I had to tell him politely to shut up because I was supposed to be learning the theory and practice of surveillance devices.
Just as well I did, because otherwise I might have missed when the Typist let slip that the model and deployment pattern of surveillance cameras we were studying were the ones used in the camp.
I couldn’t come out and ask the Typist how to circumvent such cameras, so I asked Shahdi instead, later on at the bar.
The bar here is called the Wreck Room, which would be amusing if I hadn’t heard that name so many times before. The influence of Holland Philby is obvious in the decor. You get to drink out of goblets shaped like skulls. I wouldn’t put it past Philby to have us drinking from the skulls of his enemies, but I did check and I’m pretty sure they’re ceramic. Bladed weapons are mounted on the walls. Swords and Marine combat blades I recognized, some knives too – but there were weird two-handed implements of war as well: glaives, hon-i-tio, X’Kar, halberd… Can’t remember the rest. Beneath each was a handwritten plate explaining what it was, where and when it came from, and why it was good at killing people. Obviously, most are replica, but the blades are real and sharp.
I asked one of the old hands whether Philby was trying to send a message by kitting out his drinking establishment with easy-grab weapons, or whether he was plain mad. She replied both were true. Holland Philby was insane, she explained, and the branch director lost no opportunity to make that clear to everyone around him. Figures. Insane people are dangerous when they’re armed, and Philby was armed with an entire branch of Revenge Squad.
It was good to talk openly with the regular employees. I want to learn everything about Revenge Squad, and there is still plenty I’m learning every day.
For example, Imelda the Hardit engineer was there all night. Given that the average Hardit will refuse to share space with non-Hardits, even at gunpoint, she seemed remarkably relaxed. A few people sent polite greetings her way, which she ignored, and she showed no interest in joining in any of the conversations. She was drinking a clear fluid, and my money was on plain water.
My gaze slipped to the table behind Imelda. Shahdi was there with her back to me. She wore her hair in dreadlocks bunched into a topknot that left stray strands dangling. Small puffs of hair bloomed on her long neck.
Without really meaning to, my eyes magnified her neck until I felt I could reach out and touch her, stroke that smooth skin and feel the tickle of her delicate hairs.
I’ve heard people boast about enjoying pleasure and pain. I’ll never understand that. Whenever I’ve enquired, the combination always seems to involve stuffing under-ripe fruit into your mouth, sealing it in with a gag, and trying not to choke or suffocate while your lover stamps on your genitals.
For me, it turns out, pleasure and pain is looking at Shahdi’s neck.
From behind, Shahdi looks just like Sanaa did when she was a cadet.
Leading Grocer Conduit caught me staring and placed herself across my field of view. She gave me grief about it being rude to stare, but I simply told her Shahdi had never worn a helmet.
Being Navy, it took her a few moments, but I think she caught the sadness in my eyes and understood what I meant.
Some of the others are throwing a protective cordon around Shahdi, and I can see why. It’s not that she is weak or lacks courage, but I think most of us veterans have the sense that we’ve stayed on the pitch after a game is over and most of the players gone home. We don’t really belong here. Stranded, I suppose, when the war ended. Shahdi is different. She’s a new player in a fresh game that we hangers on don’t properly
understand, but we want our replacements to get off to a good start before we go.
Hellfire!
Thinking in metaphor is not my thing at all but I’ve been doing it all day. I blame Silky for plugging her cable into my head and shaking it up so that now it’s full of dust, and the gears don’t align properly.
It’s had a better effect on her. Ever since she stumbled into my life, she’s clung to me like a limpet bomb. Since the cable thing, it’s as if she suddenly granted herself autonomy. She isn’t avoiding me, but she’s doing her own thing, and even seems to be making friends – a damn sight better than I’ve managed. I’m finishing this journal head down in my rack, the last thing before shuteye. Right now, I don’t even know where she is. That’s new.
Tomorrow, I’d better ask her whether we are still okay.
— CHAPTER 44 —
JOURNAL ENTRY.
DAY 6.
SCOREBOARD. Me: 49. Top-ranked: Chikune, 98. My next target: Shahdi: 63.
Chikune looked guilty today.
For that veck to feel guilty is like a Jotun being in a forgiving mood: a catastrophic breakdown in the laws of nature. Luckily for the health of the universe, as the day wore on I decided I had misinterpreted. It was fear of being found out written on his face. He was late for afternoon roll call, and I saw him sneaking back from the perimeter fence shortly before dusk. I’ll keep an eye on him.
Same with César who often appears flustered, a very un-Wolflike demeanor. I asked Silky to do her mind probe thing on him, and she reported that César was clamping down on his emotions, permanently. She couldn’t see further inside the psychically constipated Wolf.
But I could.
We were doing unarmed combat in one of the indoor training halls. It was a tryout really, the last man standing kind of thing for the instructor to see what we’d got. Forgetting I was still supposed to be sitting out the physical stuff until my wounds healed, I threw myself at César, startling him, and provoking him into an instinctive reaction that spoke volumes. He jumped out of my way onto the terrain box in front of him. Nothing odd about that, except he then proceeded to slam himself into the wall. The way he did so – front legs bunched ready to spring off – told me his instinct was to change orientation, to push off from the wall up to the ceiling and then spring down again.
There was only one place where that reaction made any sense, and it wasn’t down on a planet’s surface. He’d been grounded for years but his instinctive reactions were still honed for zero-g combat.
The reason for his size was obvious now. Beneath his alien scales, was not one of the early humans that later became infected with the parasite. In an earlier life, César must have been a Void Marine. No doubt about it. True Wolves aren’t even space adapted. Stick them in zero-g for any length of time and they bloat out with fluid retention and their bones turn to powder. I’ve never heard of one being anything other than a frozen passenger once out of orbit.
Talked with Silky this afternoon. It’s been a few days since the cable thing and it’s shaken us both up. Asked her if we were still good.
Typical alien. At first she thought I was talking some metaphysical crap about the nature of good and evil. When I explained what I meant, she beamed with delight, the emotion shining so bright from her head lugs that I wanted to wear a visor.
She replied that we were doing better than good: we were making excellent progress.
I asked where we were progressing to, but she told me not to worry my pretty little head about such matters.
Where the hell did she learn phrases like that?
More importantly, I keep thinking about Xeene’s words. I need to ask the Wolf what she knows about Kurlei.
I’m lying here in bed, tired banter all around me as we settle down for the night. Just thought of something.
Xeene, Conduit, Nolog-Ndacu, Shahdi – and of course Silky. The friends I was making here were aliens, old women, and girls little more than children. No men. Is this coincidence or change, because I generally prefer the company of men?
Every time I tell myself I don’t care, it only makes it more obvious that I do. Probably because if I am changing, I know who to blame. Someone with a head like an upside-down squid.
Anyway, I got that wrong. I have made friends with one of the experienced agents from ‘A’ Section, my ‘wet’ friend Sel-en-Sek (a former mechanic in the maritime navy). I could see in his eyes when we found time to talk in the bar that he was someone forever on the run. Not from Volk, like many others here, but running from the kind of thing you couldn’t turn and shoot back at. I’m sure he saw the same in me. We sank copious quantities of beer and talked about anything and everything other than what we were running from. And if we had any feelings about anything, they were safely locked up inside where they belonged.
Sel-en-Sek. Now there’s a guy I could grow to appreciate.
I hope I’ll be around long enough to do so. I’ve pumped Conduit, Shahdi and Nardok for help in learning how to sneak around the camp undetected. Despite my attempt to be subtle, they probably all suspect I’m up to something dodgy, but they can’t have guessed I’m going to break back into the office block because they haven’t tried to stop me.
In fact, I’m ready to go and I don’t understand why I’m hesitating. Not like me at all. I’ll sleep on it one more night.
— CHAPTER 45 —
Pride and bloodlust warmed my breast as I led my brave hoplite soldiers in pursuit of the enemy that infested our lives like plague-ridden rats. Finally, we had cornered them. They would die on the tips of our gleaming bronze spears.
But the enemy turned and drew back their tattered black coats to reveal they all bore the face of Chikune. They checked I was following and then sneered in triumph when they saw me.
It was a trap!
Only now did I notice how the Chikunes had led us into a narrow defile, ruining our ability to deploy into a phalanx formation. Masses of hidden enemy archers now revealed themselves as dark swarms covering the heights to either side of the trail. I issued orders to lock shields. We would sell our lives dearly, but as the first wave of arrows turned the sky black, I knew we would be slaughtered.
In that last moment before the arrows struck, I glanced at the hoplite at my side. Her skin was deathly pale and her veins lilac, but nonetheless her flesh looked more human than salted fish. Even her headlumps were hidden beneath a bronze helmet adorned with stylized asps.
And in my vanity and stupidity, I had led her to her death.
Mercifully, I awoke before the killing began, my heart still racing.
I was shaken but my ghosts were taking this nightmare even worse. I could feel them sprawling in my psyche, stunned by my dream.
“Never gonna happen,” I whispered to myself. “As if I would be so tactically naïve as to walk into a trap.”
The real world rushed in to replace the dream logic and I told myself that the soldiering world had moved on from the days of brass helmets bearing bright horsehair plumes. That didn’t help, though. If dreams are metaphors, then I must have the most unsubtle sub-conscious in history.
I could be walking into a trap. Yeah, roger that.
I froze. Sounds of movement came to me from the darkness of the dorm. What’s the world coming to? A fellow can’t even have psychotic nightmares without being disturbed. It was stupid o’clock in the morning; half the people there were having their own nightmares, and the other half were probably having sex. Half of them were also snoring, which was disturbing when you did the math.
The door opened to the corridor outside and I glimpsed a figure silhouetted in the frame. My artificial eyes were good enough to see inside the blackness of the silhouette. The figure was hunched over and wearing a dark cloak exactly like the enemies in my dream. He looked behind to see whether anyone was following. Just like my dream. It was Chikune. Of course it was Chikune. It was always frakking Chikune.
The door closed and the dorm returned to blackness.
> Any sane person would pull the sheets over his head and stay hidden until dawn.
I wasn’t made to be sane. I was bred to be an Assault Marine.
Maybe I was walking into a trap. But I was NJ McCall. I stole out of bed, grabbed a few items I had readied for such a scenario, and walked into it anyway.
But I didn’t ignore my dream entirely. I didn’t wake Silky. If I was about to walk into a trap, I wouldn’t take her with me.
I was going hunting. Alone.
— CHAPTER 46 —
So far as I could tell, unlike the admin block, there was no security on our blockhouse. No guards. No cameras. Nothing.
I wasn’t relying on dumb eyeballs, though, not after arming myself with the tools and techniques I’d been working on for weeks – with help from Shahdi, Conduit, and Nardok. Some of it sought more subtly than others. I’d scanned and inspected the ground level entrance and found nothing. The only form of security were blast doors so sturdy it would be simpler for any intruder to break through the armored walls.
Scratch that! A more accurate summary of the situation was that the only form of security I could detect were the doors. Didn’t mean there was nothing else there, but if there was then I was toast anyway.
But I wasn’t about to take any chances.
Not after that dream warning.
So I activated Plan B.
Other than sealed gun ports and the main entrance, Blockhouse ‘B’ had no openings to the outside on the first three levels above ground. I went up a level from our dorm to Level 1, opened a window, and climbed out into the night.
Down below I saw Chikune who had already made it down to the ground and was now scurrying away.
In case you’re wondering if I have the power of levitation, I do not. I didn’t need to. I made do with the grip enhancers that fell into my possession one time while running an errand to the stores on Level 5.
It wasn’t theft, simply the efficient allocation of scarce resources. Besides, the stores weren’t protected by armed guards tracking my every movement. Where I come from, that’s an invitation to please help yourself.
After War Page 26
