by Andy Graham
The small foyer of the barrack complex was covered in heroic posters. Most were dominated by a tall, improbably muscular soldier in full battle dress with a lightning bolt emblazoned across his chest. Captain Electric. The biggest picture showed him clutching a small child in his arms, one foot on a man’s crumpled body. Unlike the victor’s uniform, there was no blood on the fallen soldier.
The rest of the squad was waiting in full dress uniform, pressed to pin-point perfection. The leather and brass gleamed in the harsh lighting. Brooke pulled a non-existent hair off Ray’s shoulder and turned so he could check her back. Orr adjusted Nascimento’s hat, taking care not to touch the polished peak with his white-gloved hands.
Nascimento was strangely subdued. Fatigue from a day’s training wasn’t enough to keep his mouth shut; only sleep, food and women did that. Hamid’s death had hit him harder than he was going to let on. Buddied up in the early days of training, they had hit it off straight away. Hamid had got Nascimento through his tech exams. The squad were going to have to talk this out to stop it from festering. They were long overdue a visit to the Kickshaw anyway, and too many glasses of ‘cure-all, clean-all’ would do them good.
The desk sergeant and guards snapped to attention and, without a word, the legionnaires fell in behind Brooke. They pulled up short as the double doors into Hamid’s corridor swung closed behind them.
The walls were lined with people. Pressed in shoulder to shoulder stood Rivermen, the Iron Clad, the Eagles and other legions. Bulls, wolves, claws, tridents and all manner of emblems were visible on sleeves and hats. Other people dotted the lines. Specialist Master Sergeant Olivia with the curly hair from Tech-Corps, her pale cheeks wet with tears, stood between men from Hamid’s previous unit. Even cooks and cleaners from the Pastoral-Corps were there.
The four members of the squad who had been with Hamid the night of his death marched half-time through the unofficial honour guard. As custom dictated, spaces had been left around the door to the room of their fallen colleague. They stopped, marked time and pivoted. Facing them, the faintest of smiles ghosting across his face, was Captain Aalok.
Corporal Karlyne Brooke lifted her rifle, one hand level with her shoulder. She squeezed the weapon as if she were trying to wring it in two and stood immobile. Eyes shining. The dead silence of the corridor was split by the twin noises of Brooke’s rifle butt and heel hitting the floor. The sounds hung in the air before being drowned out by a thunder of boots and wood on stone. Ray fixed his gaze at a point just behind Aalok’s head and began the long silent vigil which would take them through the night to Hamid’s funeral.
A fresh round of drinks rattled on the table. Ray sank onto the bar stool, thankful to be off his feet. He’d had his dress shoes on more in the last twenty-four hours than in his entire military career. The rest of the quartet looked marginally better than he did. Brooke had a little make-up on, but the black puffy rings under the men’s eyes matched his own.
He slammed his drink down a fraction behind the others. The empty glasses were refilled by Lynn, the Kickshaw’s manager, an understanding expression on her face. The first round was free - the hanging shot, paid for by the public when they could stretch to it. The last was free after a sit-in, on the house. That wasn’t the only reason the 10th came here, but it helped. He hoped it would also do something for his back. The cut-glass feeling had come and gone again, it was more of a dull throb now. It had been sheer stubbornness that had kept him upright through the night but he had refused to be the second person to fail a sit-in. Skovsky had been the first. The taunts hadn’t lasted long. A few weeks, later the vigil had been held for him.
“How you doing?” Ray asked Nascimento.
“OK, I guess. Keep thinking if I hadn’t messed up, Hamid would still be here.“
“He did what any one of us would have. It’s done. Now we go forwards.” Ray wanted to come up with something better, something Lenka would have said. “If you spend all your life looking backwards, the only thing you get is a sore neck and a stubbed toe.”
“Dude, seriously. That count for counselling where you’re from?”
Ray laughed. “No, no alcohol involved.” He raised his glass. “Hamid was the best of us. To the Rivermen.”
“Come to bury your bones,” his friend whispered. A flicker of light across the damp table tugged at their eyes. The wall-screens came on around the room, the shifting colours spilling across the tables. “Come to bury your bones,” he said more firmly.
The dull rumble of music that was the backbone of the Kickshaw got louder. No matter that it played the same songs over and over, there was something reassuring about the garish lines and curves of the jukebox and its antique sounds. Ray paid it little attention tonight. He doubted any new tunes had been approved. He felt a pressure building up at the back of his jaw and stifled a yawn as Nascimento raised a warning finger. The chatter ratcheted up a notch. Another round of drinks arrived. Orr and Brooke were bickering about something, neither prepared to back down. Ray didn’t want to hear this today, especially in the moods they were in. A flash of colour caught his eye. He nudged Nascimento.
“Watch out.” Nascimento hopped off his stool and called out to a young woman. Her platinum hair shimmered in waves as she looked Nascimento up and down. Pretending to pick something off the floor, he showed it to her. It was the spare phone he carried just to be able to pull this trick. She shook her head and, within seconds, he was escorting her to the bar, a coy smile across her face. He gave Ray the thumbs up behind his back.
The Kickshaw was filling up with the usual mix of folk. It was known as a haunt for the legions and attracted all sorts of civilians: those chasing excitement, the peace activists wanting to make a point, the grateful and those trying to prove themselves. Ray had already talked down one confrontation. Three guys in tight T-shirts, swaggering around with their tattooed arms held away from their sides, had deliberately bumped into Orr. He’d faced them down on his own, singling out their shaven-headed, bearded leader.
The aggression that bubbled just below the surface of Orr’s skin was spitting from every pore this evening. Orr had called out the trio for training the muscles that made them look good rather than hit good, the beach muscles rather than the bash muscles. That was the point when Ray had stepped in. The ‘little guy’ had less regret and more tolerance to pain than a training dummy, according to Nascimento. Despite his own urge to hurt someone, Ray didn’t want Orr unleashed tonight. He’d just resolved the situation when Brooke came back and the beard started hitting on her. Without a word, Ray and Orr had melted into the shadows, only returning when the yelping had stopped. Since then, she and Orr had been sniping at each other over anything and everything. The current topic was food.
“We still grow ours back in the mountains.” Brooke speared the remains of her meal with a fork. “We keep the chemicals in the lab and the food in the ground.”
“So did a lot of us when I was younger. We’ve moved on since then. It’s called progress,” Orr replied. “There’s no evidence to show home-grown food is any better than normal food.”
“Ours is normal food.”
Nascimento rejoined them, a smear of lipstick on his cheek. “Rivermen, come to unleash our stones.” He tucked both phones in his pocket and high-fived Ray.
Ray pointed out the lipstick.
“Muse berry flavour,” Nascimento replied, grinning. “‘Full of fruity anti-oxidants for you and the one you love.’”
Ray laughed. Orr scowled. Brooke cracked her glass into Orr’s. “What do you know about evidence, Baris?”
“I don’t need to explain myself to you. If you don’t understand, then you’re an idiot.” His dark eyebrows were drawn down tight, left eye twitching.
“That,” said Brooke, ”is the tactic of men across the globe who see any perceived challenge as an insult to their existence. Or is it their manhood?”
“Watch it, woman.”
“No, you listen to me, man.” H
er glass cracked down on the table, sending white plumes dancing across the surface. “When you start a sentence with clichés like ‘there’s no evidence’ or ‘the evidence clearly shows’, you’d better be able to back it up. Talking about ‘the literature’ doesn’t make you sound clever either. You want to be taken seriously? Don’t bring anecdotes to an evidence fight. And in most circles, swearing at or insulting the person you’re talking to doesn’t count as evidence.”
“Works for me,” Nascimento chipped in.
“Shut it, muttondick, or I’ll paint more than your barbells next time.”
“The fuck does ‘muttondick’ mean?”
“Old, wrinkled and ugly.”
Nascimento shrugged. “Does the job well enough.”
“Drop it, Nasc,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Can’t. It’s attached. See?” He fumbled for his belt.
“You get that slug-like mushroom-cock of yours out in here and I’ll glass it and drown it in salt. As for you, Orr. Have you read ‘the literature’ or just the headlines? Are there studies that clearly say there is no evidence? If not, there may be evidence; it just may not’ve been proved yet. Absence of evidence isn’t—”
“Yeah, yeah. Old one. I know that saying.”
“Good. So if there are studies, which from what you’re saying I assume you’ve read, who wrote them? What did they stand to gain? Fame, money, notoriety, revenge?” She stabbed the table with her finger, punctuating every point. “I only ever met one man who was above reproach in Sci-Corps. Most of the rest were useless, biased or both.” Her eyes blazed with barely restrained emotion. For a moment, they seemed to drown out the thumping of the music in Ray’s ears. A cork popped. Hands shot to hips.
“What?” asked Nascimento, eyes wide. He was holding a bottle in one hand, licking the froth from the other.
The clock chimed. Three hours till curfew. The screens went off around the room. The bulbs in the chandeliers switched on, bathing them all in a stale light. Cheers sounded from another table.
“Were the studies set up well?” continued Brooke, slapping the table to get Orr’s attention out of his glass. “Was the methodology appropriate? Were the subjects suitable? Was the maths right? Were the results interpreted correctly? Or were the statistics massaged? The outcomes altered or reinterpreted? Did the scientists and ghost writers cherry-pick the bits they liked?” She paused mid-tirade and pointed a finger at Nascimento, who was struggling to control himself. “I said cherry-pick, you witless fuck, not pop.”
She rounded on Orr again. “And this is all before the media and the politicians get their grubby little fingers on it, and start churning out soundbite science which bears little resemblance to what it started out as.”
“You’re a dick, Brooke,” said Orr, scowling at her. “Our government has an army of bloody geeks making sure all this stuff is above board. You don’t know no better than them. There is no evidence. That’s a fact.”
“Show the geeks some respect, Baris. You need them more than they need you. When strength was the crucial factor between who lived and died on the battlefield, you might’ve mattered.” She shook her head. “’Cos being able to kill lots of people obviously makes you a good leader, doesn’t it? But now? Is that still relevant? How much strength does it take to press ‘enter’?”
Ray opened his mouth to rein his friends in when a man in a crumpled brown suit walked past the table, fingering something in his waistcoat pocket. He gave the limp he had a kind of dignity, a confidence at odds with his scruffy appearance. “Prothero?” he muttered. “Never seen him in here before and now twice in close succession.”
David Prothero was stopped on more than one occasion. A thin man pumped Prothero’s hand up and down. A legionnaire clapped him on the shoulder. A woman, dressed in a pink menagerie of petals and pearls, pointed a finger at him as if she wanted to run him through with it. As Prothero extricated himself from the irate woman, his gaze settled on Ray. A frown crossed his face before disappearing into the studied neutrality common to most politicians’ expressions. He nodded a greeting and headed for one of the secluded tables in the corner. A young woman was waiting for him, loose ponytail hanging over her shoulder.
As the dull thud of music swelled in the background and the sounds of off-key singing filtered through the air, Orr’s shout echoed across the bar. “You’re a dick.” The table rocked. Bar stools scraped on the floor. Nascimento seemed happy to keep their argument fuelled with a constant flow of various drinks, an impish grin on his face.
“Well, that solves everything,” replied Brooke. “Repeat things aggressively, throw in a few more insults, and everything becomes right all of a sudden.”
“No wonder they threw you out of Sci-Corps.” Orr. In a voice like a chain saw.
“I didn’t know that.” Nascimento.
“I left.” Brooke. “My choice. I pulled some strings. Got myself recommended for the Rivermen, passed the EBT, the Extended Basic Training for the 10th, and moved up. Just like you clean-bloods.” She smiled sweetly at Orr. His scowl deepened.
“Whose string did you pull, Brooke?” Ray asked, trying to fill the silence before Orr did.
Nascimento spat a mouthful of beer over the table.
“C’mon, please. From you, Franklin?” Brooke said.
“Just trying to help.”
“Do you want me to beat you so bad you need to go back to Doctor Stella?” Brooke’s lips curled around the name.
“Maybe she can teach you how to count,” Nascimento said. “There must be some kind of vaccine against stupidity by now.”
Orr was glowering at Brooke, deep lines furrowing his forehead. “Since when do you Cloud People get to serve in our legions anyway? Isn’t that against your principles?”
“Defending yourself is a universal right. We do a good line in righteous anger. It’s our number one export. Haven’t you realised that yet?” The stool clattered to the floor as she stood up. “And you should know better than to call us by that name. Do you want to measure your principles against mine, Bucket Head?”
“Don’t call me that.” Orr’s eyebrows were pulled down hard over a nose which had been broken one too many times.
“Bring it, Baris,” Brooke said. “If you don’t mind losing to a girl in public, bring it.”
Ray got to his feet. People at surrounding tables shuffled away from them. Martinez was moving closer, gripping his mop. Nascimento typed an order into the screen in the middle of the table. “Hey, c’mon. We’re here to drown old memories, not whip up new ones.”
A flap in the tabletop opened, its leaves sliding into the dark glass surface. Oversized shot glasses filled to the brim rattled to the surface. Brooke counted the glasses, her lips moving silently.
“Truce?” she asked finally.
“You know all this natural food stuff is rubbish.” Orr’s eye still twitched, but some of the tension left his stocky frame.
“Let it go, Baris,” Ray said.
“I’ll take that as a testosterone-pickled opinion supporting your ideas of what a man should be, but nothing else.”
“And this is her idea of a truce?” said Nascimento to no one. He threw his hands up in the air. “No wonder Sci-Corps wanted to get rid of her.”
“Peace,” said Orr, picking up a glass.
Nascimento started. “What did he say? Did he just swear?”
“Fuck you, Nasty.”
Nascimento wagged a finger at him. “I’ll let that one slide. This once. Now, shall we?”
The four clinked their glasses together and downed the drinks. They slammed the glasses on the table and saluted.
As the night outside darkened, the mood inside lightened. The laughter became less forced and more natural. Nascimento fished his phone out of his pocket and started his show and tell with his photo collection. Orr even bought the beard and his buddies, one of whom was still cradling his elbow, a round. He and Nasc then played their modified game of paper-scissors-stone
while Brooke told Ray about her time in Sci-Corps. Weeks spent in airless rooms staring at screens. Test tubes and forests of numbers. At the end of each assignment, they would hand the data over to the next link in the chain and rarely found out what the purpose of their task had been. She explained how she tracked some of those orders back to a professor James Lind. That’s when her clearance had been shut down.
“That’s the real reason I left,” she said. “Lind turned up one day and demanded to know who was trying to access the data.”
“You know he’s the ex-bodyball player,” Ray said.
“I’d already worked that out, thanks. On account of his name being the same and him looking the same.”
“Has Nascimento been teaching you how to make jokes?”
She punched him. “Fortunately, I wasn’t at work the day Lind came in. I could never make any real sense of the data but some of it looked wrong.”
“Skovsky.”
“This was beyond Skovsky-wrong. Some kind of weird genetic re-writing stuff.”
“Think it’s got anything to do with the code I saw? X517?”
“Don’t know, Ray. My old team leader, might.“
“Shaw?”
She smiled fondly. “Yeah, Eddie Shaw. He quit, though.”
“Great,” Ray muttered.
“Sorry.” She gave him an apologetic shrug. “Shaw covered for me when Lind came in but said I best move on. He was right. I’m better suited for the 10th than Sci-Corps.”
“You wouldn’t have had anywhere near as much fun there as here.”
“I wouldn’t be going back to my home as a 10th legionnaire, either.” She traced a finger through a puddle of beer on the table.
“I’m glad you switched,” he said hesitantly.
