Caitlyn Morcos

by M H Questus

  Chapter 1: The Last Day

  It was cold and wet, the sound of rain on the leaves underfoot almost overpowering the noise of her own pulse pounding in her ears, and Caitlyn Morcos was being chased. Rivets of water ran through her short blonde hair, her muscles tense against the cold.

  The entire class of cadets were engaged in their final exam. Half of them had been handed stunners and told they were the hunted. Their grade would depend on how long they could evade capture.

  The other half had been handed stun rods, a decided handicap, and told they were the hunters. Their grade depended entirely on their ability to capture at least one of the hunted, who had both a head start and longer ranged weaponry.

  And then Morcos, alone, had been given nothing and told that if anyone, hunter or hunted, caught her at any point during the day, she would lose her first place position in the class list.

  “No big deal,” she muttered to herself, a stunner bolt flashing green as it sizzled through the air overhead. She ducked and zigged behind a bush then tucked and rolled past a tree before leaping down into a small gulley she knew ran along the perimeter of the academy grounds. “Just everything I’ve been working towards for years. Plus twelve months of busting my hump to get to the top of the class wiped out because I have everyone chasing me. All good.”

  She splashed into the tiny creek at the bottom of the gulley. The creek had swollen to almost twice its usual size, but that still meant it was less than a meter at the widest point and significantly less than half that deep. Still, it gave her low ground to run along and hopefully keep out of sight of the pack of cadets that had been chasing her.

  “Give it up, Morcos!” called Kristen Smith, her voice level and predatory. “If you’re thinking about doubling back to the gym, we’ve got Marksley and Hussan covering that direction!”

  Morcos kept running, not wasting her time or breath on responding. It’s a tempting thought to head in that direction, she thought, since Marksley couldn’t hit the side of a barn from three paces, but Hussan is a pretty good shot. Probably why Smith teamed them up.

  The fact that Smith’s team had stunners at all meant that she had caught at least one of the hunted already and confiscated their weapon. That didn’t surprise Morcos, though, since Smith was every bit the equal to her own skill.

  Morcos poked her head over the edge of the gulley, eyes straining to see movement in the forest. The rain continued to pour down, adding a layer of fog and mist to the darkness that made lines of sight shockingly short.

  If she continued along the ravine it would deposit her at the rear of the athletic facility, where at least two cadets waited for her. She could keep running in the direction she had been going, hoping to put more distance between herself and her pursuers.

  Or she could stop running and try to put up a fight.

  “Come on, Caitlyn, I know you’re tired of running!” shouted Smith, her voice wafting over the rain from downstream. “You let me catch you, and you only drop one spot in the lists. Second place is pretty damn good, after all.”

  Morcos judged that Smith was thirty, maybe forty meters from her. The visibility was low enough that if she was quiet and very lucky, she might be right on top of Smith before she even knew it.

  She clenched her jaw. She didn’t believe in relying on luck, and there were way too many unknowns. She just had to keep running for another four… maybe five hours.

  She pushed herself off the gulley side, leapt across the tiny stream, and was jogging through the trees a moment later. She didn’t bother looking behind her, keeping her focus entirely forwards, moving as quickly and quietly as she could.

  “This would be a lot easier,” gasped Morcos to herself, “If everyone chasing me didn’t have exactly the same training.”

  She lamented the fact she hadn’t spent more time in the forest than was strictly necessary during the program. She was pretty sure some of the other cadets would’ve explored in their off time, instead of studying like she had, and therefore might know places to hide or ambush her pursuers.

  The rain increased in intensity, going from heavy to torrential downpour. Morcos couldn’t see more than a few meters in any direction, and the sound of rolling thunder and pounding rain filled her ears. She shivered, her cadet uniform long ago drenched through, but she was warm enough from her constant jog that she could still feel her fingers.

  “You can’t run forever, Morcos!” Smith yelled, her voice soft and muffled by the rain.

  “I can’t believe you ran forever,” Smith groaned, sinking into her desk chair.

  Morcos chuckled as she ran a towel through her hair. “How long are you going to be bitter about that?”

  The two of them were in their dorm room, the simple furniture and unadorned walls that had been their home for half a year. Piles of library books littered Morcos’s desk, but otherwise the two halves of the room were almost identical: tightly made beds, neatly arranged textbooks on shelves, and bare walls.

  “I think I’m allowed to be! This is the first year in a decade that the top student wasn’t captured by somebody.” Smith pouted, tugging on a strand of her own hair that had fallen loose of her cap. “I thought I had you by the ravine, but then never got close to you again because you were too busy fleeing.”

  “Hey, the assignment was to stay alive,” Morcos pointed out, tossing her towel into the hamper and then placing her hands behind her head. She stretched on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. “It didn’t require me to prove anything more than my ability to evade everyone.”

  “Sure. Just evade 50 marshals for twelve hours in an area the size of a football field. No problem.”

  “You’re exaggerating. We’re cadets, not marshals yet…”

  “For, what, another hour?” Smith asked, glancing at the ancient digital clock she had on her desk. “Then we’re full marshals in the service. Or at least everyone who passed is.”

  “Some of the other hunted managed to get through the full test, not just me. And some of the hunters must’ve been taken out during the exercise. So there can’t have been more than a dozen people actively searching for me during that time. And the entire facility grounds are significantly—”

  “Okay, okay. You hid from only a dozen almost-marshals in a combination of buildings and parkland that’s a few square kilometers,” Smith agreed, slouching lower. “Still the first one to do it successfully in years.”

  Morcos’s smile grew. “What would you have done, Kristen?”

  “Me?” Smith blinked a few times in thought. “Probably tried to run down one of the hunted as quickly as I could, get a stunner. Then find someplace defensible, bunker down and hope that nobody found me until I could whittle down the numbers a bit.”

  Morcos nodded. “Yeah, I thought about that. I’m a good shot, I figured I could hold down a corridor or find a basement room somewhere, make it into a makeshift fort for a few hours.”

  “But you decided against it?”

  “I figured that as soon as anyone knew where I was, everyone would know where I was. And eventually I’d miss or somebody would get a lucky shot through or circumvent my defenses. I also figured that we’re trained to do that… to bunker up, protect ourselves, find force-multipliers.”

  Smith snorted. “And so running the whole time became the unexpected play? You risked randomly stumbling into somebody.”

  “I was careful,” Morcos said, closing her eyes for a moment and letting the warm feeling of satisfaction roll over her. “The rain helped. I think you were within ten meters of me a few times but couldn’t hear or see me.”

  “Well, you pulled it off. Congrats,” Smith said with a friendly nod. “I’m just glad we didn’t do our usual laundry-bet for this one.”

  “By th
e Nine, you’d be doing my laundry for the rest of the year!” Morcos snorted. “Although, again, considering that’s only another hour before the two of us head off to opposite corners of the galaxy…” Her voice trailed off.

  There was a comfortable silence in the room, the sound of the rain now divided by a thick window and ceiling.

  “Speaking of stumbling into somebody,” Smith said suddenly, sitting up a little straighter, “I ran into an old friend on my way back here after the finals.”

  “Oh? Somebody I know?”

  “I don’t think so. Jules Bellegarde, a deputy. Works as the attaché to St. Clair now. You’re familiar with St. Clair?”

  “Only by reputation. Vice-Senior Marshal for Delta, yeah?” Morcos scrunched her nose up in thought. “An old-guard marshal, if reputation holds.”

  “That’s the one. Bellegarde was grabbing some information for his boss. I just happened to see him heading back out of the academy.” Smith got a distant look on her face, focusing her attention on a memory. “We were… close. Once. He was pretty intense, but never really knew what he wanted, ya know?”

  Morcos said nothing, but tilted her head to face Smith. Her friend was smiling sadly.

  “We should probably get to the ceremony,” Smith said with a groan, slowly standing. “Man, I can’t believe you ran away from me for twelve straight hours.”

  “Really not going to give that up, are you?” Morcos swung her legs off the bed and sat up, the muscles in her body groaning in protest.

  “I’ll catch you one of these days, Morcos. Then I’ll stop complaining.”

  Chapter 2: Dinner with the In Laws

  Homer St. Clair hated travelling, hated politics, hated formal dinners, and especially hated travelling for political formal dinners. So to say he was in a foul mood was a bit of an understatement. He had stepped out of the spaceport, straight into the waiting hover, and engrossed himself in reading the reports his assistant, Jules Bellegarde, had handed him the moment the door opened.

  The hover landed. Bellegarde gave him a reassuring smile.

  “I’ll be right here when you’re done, sir.”

  “Thanks, Jules.” St. Clair took a deep breath, nodded to himself once, and then stepped out of the vehicle.

  The air outside was crisp, heavy with the smell of impending rain and freshly cut grass, the sun half hidden behind the mountains to the west. Clouds loomed on the horizon, gray and rumbling, but overhead the sky was clear.

  The house was as imposing and palatial as St. Clair remembered it from his last visit four years ago. The countless broad windows cast orange light around haphazardly while four chimneys unfurled long tendrils of white smoke. Fountains lined the walkway, lit from below in a rainbow of colours, all burbling gentle rivets of water into shallow basins surrounded by marble seating. Heavy banners, one for each of the four sectors of the Interplanetary Marshal Service and two larger ones for the Interplanetary Government, flanked the broad double doors, while uniformed constables tried their best to look regal in their dress uniforms and ignore the imminent deluge that would shortly be upon them.

  St. Clair turned up the collar on his heavy coat and strolled up to the doors, scowling at the ostentatious display of wealth and power.

  “Get it together, Homer,” he said softly to himself. “You’ve survived open battles across burning ground with more laser in the air than stars in the sky. You’ve survived four assassination attempts and conducted three against criminals who never even saw me.”

  And not one of those instances over the decades of his decorated career was he ever as nervous as he was while eating dinner with his colleagues.

  A servant smiled in a way that implied he had overheard St. Clair talking to himself but would never comment on it. “Right this way, sir.”

  St. Clair relinquished his coat and was escorted briskly to the massive double doors of the dining room. They stood open, and through the portal St. Clair could see the large circular table that sat alone in the middle of the enormous room surrounded by marble columns. It was covered in heavy blue and gold cloth and set with a dizzying array of silverware, plates, and glasses.

  Who really needs three forks and four different glasses, anyway St. Clair thought as he set his shoulders and strode proudly into the room.

  The six other people in the room all turned as one to face St. Clair as he entered. Some smiled, some narrowed eyes. The murmur of conversation died immediately, and the sound of chairs pushed across stone floors echoed through the room.

  “Ah, our final member joins us.”

  Senior Marshal Kyle Henderson strode up to St. Clair, left hand outstretched. Henderson was picture-perfect, as always, pale skin and green-tinted eyes betraying his Martian heritage. His uniform fit him like a glove, like he was born in it, every crease pressed perfectly and every fold falling in only the most flattering way.

  St. Clair smiled in spite of himself. “Eight place settings again, I see.” He clasped Henderson’s hand firmly and pumped it up and down twice.

  “We keep hoping, old friend. Don’t deny me my optimism.”

  “Homer, it’s so good to see you again,” Sylvia, Henderson’s wife, said, embracing St. Clair warmly. Of the four women in attendance, she was dressed the most plainly—a humble summer dress of earthy tones and her raven hair held in place with a simple bronze circlet, but she shone like a diamond surrounded by sand. St. Clair noticed the faint scent of cinnamon.

  “Looks like you’re finally getting accustomed to civilian life, Syl,” St. Clair said with a smile.

  Sylvia snorted and punched St. Clair gently on the shoulder. “How dare you, sir.”

  “Hey! I need that arm later.”

  “Well, if you think I’ve gone civvie, you’re getting old, Homer.” She narrowed her gaze at his salt-and-pepper beard. “Is that more gray? Why, I do believe it is!”

  “Now now, no offence was meant.” St. Clair held up his hands, but Sylvia’s smile was warm and gentle. “Last I checked I am only a year older than when last we met.”

  Silently, though, St. Clair felt the weather in his knees and in the scars that ran along his ribs and across his back. He felt older. But it wouldn’t do him any good to admit it. He was strong enough.

  He had to be.

  Like a cloud sliding in front of the sun, Vice-Senior Marshal Illiana Arbusto strode up next to Sylvia. Tall, all hard edges and somber looks, her dress uniform clung to her like a knife-sheath. “St. Clair.” She grasped his hand, her grip like a cold vise.

  “Arbusto.” He nodded at her, and then again at Illiana’s wife. Built like a carbon-copy of Illiana, though blonde instead of brunette, and dressed in a dark green gown and laden with jewelry, Greta’s smile carried as much warmth as a glacier. “Greta.”

  The two women shared a glance and strode back towards the table without a further word.

  “Fashionably late as always!” boomed Vice-Senior Marshal Chadlington Beningham, his smile and arms wide. St. Clair rushed his hand forward, and Beningham chortled as he shook it. “Better late than never, and I’m starving.”

  “I find that somewhat doubtful, Beningham,” St. Clair countered with a raised eyebrow.

  “What, this? Just solid muscle and water-weight, old man,” Beningham slapped his own side, which emitted a solid thwack. He stepped to one side and held his hand out. “My companion, Ali Harding.”

  St. Clair saw the subtle wince in her eyes as she stepped up. The woman was young, although not scandalously so, and pretty in her silks and heels, but obviously uncomfortable around such powerful people. He leaned close to her and whispered “Don’t take it personally. He does it every year.”

  She blinked up at St. Clair, slightly taken aback. “Whatever do you mean, sir?”

  “I’m going to guess… Amy?” St. Clair responded, with a glance at Beningham. “He always gets it wrong, but in a way that’s pretty close.”

  Her blushing smile confirmed it, and St. Clair shook his head as Beningham esco
rted her to their seats at the table. Every year.

  He strode over to his chair, opposite Henderson. A steward was carefully removing the place setting next to him, as theatrical an act as Beningham bringing a new companion and ‘forgetting’ her name to try and throw everyone off their game. They all stood and waited until the steward took the last fork, too small to serve any function, and retreated past the marble columns.

  “Friends, colleagues, it is so good to see everyone again.” Henderson almost sounded like he believed it. He raised a glass filled with water, a motion mirrored by the six other people in the room. “A toast, if I may.”

  The silence in the room was momentarily interrupted by the rumble of thunder, still distant but closing in.

  “To all those who gave their lives to allow us to be here. To all those that will give their lives to allow us to return here. To all those who live for a greater purpose. And for all those who die in pursuit of a better tomorrow for those left behind.”

  Henderson closed his eyes as he took a short sip, and again the motion was mirrored by everyone present.

  Everyone sat, and stewards seemed to materialize from the ether carrying trays laden with food. A whole spit-roasted boar was the centerpiece, but surrounding it was a tureen of spicy cauliflower curry, a rabbit stew heavy with potatoes and carrots, crisp coleslaw with white wine dressing, pungent fermented napa cabbage, fluffy steamed rice, and fresh flatbread still steaming and collapsing from the oven. Two of the stewards served, filling plates, while another wordlessly poured drinks from a staggering array of crystal, glass, and metal containers.

  “Kyle managed to hunt us the boar for dinner yesterday,” Sylvia said with a broad smile. “You should’ve seen the chef’s face when he dragged it into the kitchen!”

  Henderson and Sylvia shared a quick smile, his hand brushing hers briefly with genuine tenderness. St. Clair felt a flutter of something cold in his stomach, but the excellent food chased it away almost as quickly as it appeared. He gestured to a steward, who approached with a glass of whiskey.

  “Ah, so that’s why you told me to expect a vegetarian meal?” Beningham said, his mouth working around forkfuls of the roast. “You weren’t expecting a successful hunt!”