by SF Edwards
“Too bad we never ran into each other before,” he laughed.
“When was the last time you were home?” she asked with a wide smile.
“I haven’t been home since my friends and I joined up. I was supposed to go home for my little sister’s graduation a couple tridecs back, but something came up.”
“Sorry to hear that. I spent most of my enlistment near Midduwn. We only ventured out of the district a few times. I would have loved to have traveled more.”
“Well, we’ll both be doing plenty of that soon.”
Marda chuckled in response. “Too true.”
For over a hect, they talked as other cadets filtered in and took up seats around the deck. His focus was set only on Marda. Too many women he’d met of late were fake or had no direction, not Marda. As the conversation wore on, however, fatigue from waking up early took hold and he let out a yawn. Marda looked up at him, concern entering her eyes. “Did you sleep OK?”
Blazer nodded. “Yeah. I just had a bad dream.”
“A bad dream about what?” a familiar voice bellowed from the staircase behind him. Blazer turned to find his best friend, Arion, stepping onto the deck.
He sighed. He didn’t want Arion to know about the dream, sure it would lead to him overanalyze it. With a glance back at Marda, Blazer saw her stare at Arion. He understood why. Arion had a way of stealing a woman’s attention due to his good looks. The guy was huge. Standing half a head taller than Blazer, he was a mountain of muscle that made Blazer feel like an elf by comparison. He knew many women who liked that. “Not about what you’re thinking,” he managed to bite back.
“Is something wrong?” Marda asked as she looked between them.
Blazer shook his head. “No… no,” he twitched, trying to find the words to explain. “This is a Special Ops Academy and, well, in order to enter Special Ops you have to…”
She held up a hand to stop him. “I know.”
He was glad that she’d stopped him, but at the same time realized that like him, this vision of beauty before him, was a trained killer. She was no murderer, but after joining the Confederation, she must have killed another sentient in the line of duty. She was so beautiful that he didn’t want to believe that about her.
Blazer didn’t press the conversation. Very few onboard were willing to discuss what they did. Blazer threw a thumb over his shoulder at Arion. “He’s concerned about what we did to gain entry to the Special Ops Program.”
He watched her look over at Arion and read the doubt in her face before she looked back at him. “It’s just the way of the universe.”
Arion joined them a moment later with a plate filled with an omelet that was twice the size of Blazer’s. Blazer read the jealous look in her eyes when she gazed upon the omelet. “You guys have some nice autocook programs.”
Blazer held up a finger to his lips, smiling the whole time. “Don’t let it get out.”
“I see you already shared with her,” Arion commented pointing a fork at her bowl.
Blazer shrugged. “She seemed nice enough.”
She touched Blazer’s hand in thanks and it took a force of will not to flip his own over and hold hers. “Thank you,” she commented with a genuine smile. “You saved me from an unknown fate of whatever that gunk was it gave me.”
Blazer grinned before she took back her hand and he pointed back at Arion. “Anyway, Marda, this is Arion.”
Marda smiled back and extended her hand to Arion. “It’s nice to meet you. Did you and Schan serve in the Navigator’s Guild together?”
Arion accepted her hand and gave it a gracious shake. “Blazer,” Arion corrected, pointing his thumb at him.
Blazer fired a harsh look at Arion. The last thing Blazer wanted was for his childhood nickname to follow him again.
“Get used to it B. Everyone knows you by Blazer.”
Marda smiled back at Blazer and stroked his hand. “It’s OK. I know what it’s like to have something following you.”
Almost like they were waiting for their cue, two orbs emerged through the floor and took up orbit around Blazer. Blazer recognized them the instant they appeared. They were the same pair that had served with his parents on the Vaurnel and stayed with him and his sister ever since. He grimaced at their display, worried what Marda would think. To his surprise, her face lit up.
“Good dawn to you,” she said with a nod towards the orbs. Both stopped their orbits, taking up position in front of her and chittering. “Thank you! That’s very nice of you to say,” she continued.
Blazer felt like he’d just missed half of a conversation and stared back at her in wonder. “You can speak to them?”
Marda blushed. “Yes, I can. I’m a mid-level medium. With my talent I can speak to orbs and see their projections of how they looked in life.”
Blazer felt Arion rankle beside him. Frag it all, Arion hates mediums. Ever since he’d contracted a self-healer’s virus several annura earlier, he’d had a hatred of the “dead talkers” as he called them. A look of pure hatred radiated from Arion’s eyes and Blazer knew he had to deflect the conversation but his mouth ran away from him before he could think of a new topic, “They put mediums in combat units?”
She shrugged. “My grandmother was a medium too but served in the Medical Corps. I plan to follow in her wake and work to save lives. For those I can’t help, I can carry their final messages home.”
That sounds wonderful. Damn, can she say anything I don’t like?
“Can you do anything else besides talk to the dead and see them?” Arion asked, accusation hanging off each syllable.
Blazer gave a subtle shake of his head and willed the orbs to tell her to deflect the topic. The look in her eyes told him that she understood. “No,” she replied. The orbs flared in response to her lie, leaving Blazer wondering what else she could do. “All I can do is talk to them.”
Blazer swallowed hard and saw the look of disdain still on Arion’s face, the breakfast before his friend untouched since her announcement. This was his chance though. “Where did you serve?”
Marda sighed, relief evident in her face as she smiled back at Blazer. “Diplomatic Corps. I was a shuttle pilot while I worked on my pre-med degree. It’s not all that impressive. Just standard shuttles. Surface to orbit stuff mostly.”
Blazer nodded impressed. “So you’ll be in the flight program?”
“Of course! It’s a prereq for Spec Ops. What about you guys?”
Arion answered first and Blazer could tell by his tone that he wanted Marda gone. “We were in the Navigator’s Guild, buoy boys.”
“I can’t imagine you would have seen a whole lot of action that way.”
Why did she bring that up? What did the orbs tell her?
Arion’s harsh reply forced Marda back in her seat as if hit. “Well we did. I wouldn’t imagine someone in the Diplo Corps seeing much action either.”
Marda leaned forward, solemn. “It wasn’t planned, but I got caught up in the terrorist attack on Cathedral Six a couple tridecs back.”
Blazer remembered that incident and didn’t want to ask more. Knowing she was a shuttle pilot, he could guess what happened. He laid a gentle hand on hers. “I understand. It’s not always easy to talk about.”
She smiled back at him as the orbs took up a closer orbit around her. Even through her hand, Blazer could feel their warmth flowing into her and she looked up at the pair. “Thank you.” She pulled her hand away, blushing at Blazer. “But you guys, as buoy boys, did they have you near the front lines or something?”
Blazer shook his head and realized the orbs had kept their secret. That’s good, he considered. “No, it was a system pretty far from the front lines actually.”
Arion’s cup of juice slipped from his hand and bounced against the table, splashing its contents out towards Marda. Blazer reacted a moment later and slapped the cup away before it crashed back down into her bowl, but it was too late, the damage done. The juice sloshed across the table, f
looding the remains of her oatmeal before it splashed onto Marda’s baby blue tunic. “Croy Arion, what was that all about?” Blazer yelled.
“We don’t talk about Garov 18965!” he replied and with a halfhearted sigh offered Marda a napkin.
Blazer stared back at his friend, his eyes hard. I’ve had enough of this. “Arion you’re the one that keeps bringing it up. I wasn’t planning on going into the details the same way Marda didn’t when she talked about her experience.”
Blazer looked over at Marda and found her staring down at her tunic, blotting away the mess with a soaked napkin. He met her eyes for only a moment before turning to the orbs twittering away. She shook her head at Blazer then gathered up her bowl and stood. Blazer was sure that the orbs were shooing her away. “I need to clean this up. It was nice to meet you both,” she commented as she turned to leave.
Blazer held out a hand towards her but she hustled away from them. “Marda, wait! I’ll talk to you later.” The words felt hollow when he said them and he felt sure Arion had just chased her away. She disappeared into the emerging throng of cadets flowing up the stairway without a word. He turned to Arion, rage in his eyes. “What in the seven fragging layers of Sheol are you on about?”
Arion met him with cold eyes. “We agreed that we wouldn’t talk about what happened.”
“You’re the one who keeps bringing it up.”
Arion straightened, pointed his fork at Blazer. “In private only and not for the whole galaxy to hear.”
Blazer let out a frustrated sigh. I wonder if I can still catch her. No. He had to nip this issue in the bud before it festered further. Arion wasn’t just a mass of muscles, he was smart. Back home, before joining up, Arion had studied under his father to become a counselor. Later, he had decided to tread his own path. Arion could talk anyone out of a fight and get them to admit to their problems. He could remediate any issue and would have made make a great psychologist. Instead, Arion followed Blazer to become a warrior.
“You’ve been trying to psychoanalyze me ever since the incident. I will state this plain. I don’t want to talk about it. It happened and I’ve moved on,” Blazer stated with force.
Arion’s hard look melted away and Blazer recognized the counselor face he would put on to talk people out of a fight. “Blazer, you’re my best friend but you have to talk about it. After what happened, after everyone who’d died, after everyone you…” he paused and leaned in closer to keep prying ears out. “After everyone you killed.”
Blazer shook his head. He wasn’t afraid to speak up. “Your hands have blood on them too.”
“Yes, they do. But what you did…”
Blazer held up a hand and did his best not to clench it into a fist. “No! I don’t want to hear it. I met someone this cycle and I like her.”
Arion shot a look back towards the staircase where Marda had disappeared among the throng of cadets flowing in. Most were still dressed in their civilian clothes. “Yeah, she was pretty hot, but don’t you think it’s a little soon?”
Blazer turned back to the viewport for a moment as he fought back a wave of mixed emotions. “Lazith would have wanted me to move on. And you didn’t even give her a chance.” Blazer looked up at a chrono on the wall and couldn’t believe how much he and Marda had shared in a mere Hectapulse. ”She’s smart and funny and she’s, I don’t know. There’s something about her that I really connected with and you treated her like sludge.”
Arion looked out at the starscape beyond the window. “I wish this trip wasn’t so slow.”
“Arion are you still unsure about joining up?”
Arion shook his head. “No. I joined up same as you. I’m here for the duration.”
“No! You signed on to be a buoy boy so that you could serve your time and earn your Confederacy. You didn’t have to follow me to the academy. Or be a soldier.”
“I’m not following you! This is my choice, my path.”
Blazer considered his next words with care. Though Arion could talk others out of a great many things, he sometimes got defensive when the topic shifted back to himself and Blazer didn’t want to lose his oldest friend. “Arion, you and the others are like brothers to me. But, if something minor like this has us arguing, what the Sheol do you think will happen when they really start testing us at the academy?”
Arion nodded. “I know. I admit that has me a little scared. But, Blazer, while we were out there, I saw a part of you that I never knew. When you,” he looked around to make sure no one was listening, “electrocuted that being, I thought you’d lost it. I didn’t know you were capable of that.”
Blazer understood his concern since even he didn’t know the limits of his own abilities. What he had done that cycle terrified him.
“And, yeah, the academy is going to test us in ways we can’t even fathom. I don’t want to lose my best friends or have them turn into people that I don’t recognize,” Arion continued.
“All right then. We’ll make a pact. We stay true to who we are.”
Arion smiled and nodded in response.
“But Arion, you can’t keep pressing me on this. When I feel up to talking about it, I will. With the life we’ve chosen, this won’t be the last time we see and do some terrible things.”
“Blazer, I don’t trust that medium.”
Blazer sighed and stared back at Arion, dumbfounded. “I don’t believe it. You want me to talk about what happened, but for what nine, almost ten annura you have refused to talk about your hatred against mediums. What gives there?”
Arion shook his head. “I…I can’t talk about that. It hurts too much.” Arion felt at the lump in his chest, the implant that saved him from the self-healer’s virus still there.
Blazer knew that the virus had almost killed him. Arion never talked about it and Blazer never asked. “Look, I’ll make you a deal. When you decide to talk about your medium thing, I’ll talk about what happened at Garov 19865.”
Arion nodded and Blazer knew that that was the best he would get from his friend. A commotion rose through the cadets waiting for the autocooks. They both looked up to see people pointing towards the windows and, turned to watch a trio of fighters take up position outside. Their escorts had arrived.
Blazer sighed in anticipation. “Welcome to the Academy.”
UCSB DATE: 1000.141
Star System: Classified, UCSBA-13, Primary Dorm
Habits are a hard thing to break, Blazer realized. Despite his protesting muscles from the cycle of endless calisthenics, runs, marches, lectures and tests, he slipped back on his PT uniform and prepared to go out for his evening run. None of his roommates had the energy to join him, but this was less about exercise, and more to clear his head.
Blazer marveled at the view as he exited his wing of the dorms. No sky greeted him. Instead, an expanse of green filled his entire view as grass and plant life covered most of the interior surface of the colony cylinder. He’d been aboard similar colony cylinders before, but never one this small or one that had been carved out of an asteroid. He breathed in the air and smiled. It was a little humid for his taste, but it tasted clean with none of the metallic aftertaste of the recycled air on the guild ship.
“You too Vaughnt?” a voice he did not recognize at first called out.
Blazer turned out of instinct, hoping that the voice belonged to Marda. However, the inflection and accent were all wrong. They sounded more Scibean.
The view that met him confirmed his thought and he averted his eyes. One of his teammates, Chris Anit, stood before him. She waited outside the doors, stretching; dressed in only a tanned leather skirt and vest ensemble straight out of her Chamalad tribal village. He had mixed feelings about the current dress allowed on station and wasn’t sure if it would be a relief or not when everyone started wearing uniforms again. He hadn’t seen so much exposed skin on a woman outside of a bedroom in some time. “Anit, how are you doing?” he asked.
“Are you blushing?” she asked as she continued stretchin
g.
Blazer did his best not to stare at the raven-haired warrior woman. He chose to focus his attention instead on the crimson streak that ran through the middle of her braided mane.
“Sorry, you caught me by surprise. I didn’t expect to see anyone else out right now.”
Chris regarded him with a cool gaze. Blazer returned the look. It was the only look she’d given anyone on the team all cycle--closed off and emotionless. “I take a run every dawn before breakfast and then again before I crash out. I’ve been doing it for a long time. Care to join me?”
“Sure,” Blazer replied and looked back out across the grounds of the academy. “Let’s go.”
He took off at a brisk pace with the soil of the path crunching beneath his feet as they headed away from the dorm. After only a hundred metra, however, he could feel his muscles tensing. He’d pushed them too far this cycle. Looking over at Chris, he saw that she didn’t seem to have any problems. He envied that, does she have some self-healer in her?
“I’ll blend with the trees and you’ll never find me if you keep staring,” Chris sneered. To emphasize her point, her shoulder shifted color to match the trees beside her.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to stare,” he replied. She’s not bluffing either. “I’m just admiring that you can go running too.
“So what’s your impression of the Blade Force so far?” Blazer asked using the moniker their team leader, an ex-chief named Seri, had come up with for them. He liked the power and meaning behind the name.
Chris shrugged as she considered the question. “I haven’t seen any of you near enough to get a real read. I served with Seri on the Trib-Kibal and she was a Sheol of a squad leader there. We’re lucky to have her.”
Blazer nodded. Interesting, didn’t realize that.
“She’s the one who let me keep my hair so long too. She respected my heritage.”
Blazer looked at her hair. She wore it in two tails with the longer red streak running nearly to her tight rear while the rest of her stygian locks lay in a braid beneath it.
