Warchild

by Karin Lowachee

  Clarity in his question, like fresh air. I went to my drawers and pulled out the light and the paper ships that everyone had made before the Festival of Stars.

  He took one of the ships from me and walked out of the room, to the inidrla-na. I followed, barefoot across the wooden floor, onto the balcony. Boats shone in the distance, on the moon-jeweled sea. The horizon was a strip of blood-red, the first glance of the sun. Without looking at me he lit his paper ship; it was powdered and caught fire with a puff, giving off faint blue tendrils of smoke. He held it burning in his hand for a long moment, then cast it into the air. It danced on the faint breeze, a wild meteor, before the planet’s breath swallowed it into ashes.

  I lit my own and thought of Mukudori. My family hadn’t been soldiers but they were what I wanted most to remember. The silver disk was a warm imprint in my free hand. I remembered Evan and his shorn hair, his bruised face. I remembered Adalia crying.

  I flung the burning ship into the dawn.

  For a long time we stood there, saying nothing. I looped the ID disk around my neck and held the top of the balcony, watching the dark sea curl under the face of the moon. My heart settled but my hands were cold.

  At length I said, “Up there, in the war—is it bad?”

  Very quietly he answered, “Yes.”

  The silence walked a marathon between us. He didn’t look at me, he didn’t move closer. Eventually I went back to my room, heavy with fatigue. Even then he followed and stood by my window until the sun rose, and stayed awake while I slept.

  PART III

  * * *

  I.

  I must have heard the sound of Turundrlar’s drives change pitch in my sleep, because I awoke just before Niko’s voice came over shipwide comm, informing the crew we were out of leap velocity. I lay on my pallet, momentarily disoriented; it had been this way for the last two weeks, silent running toward the DMZ. The first leap halfway through those weeks had made me sick for the entire shift. I hadn’t been on a ship in leap in five biological years. Instead of just quietly blacking out for a few seconds, I went under for five minutes and awoke with nausea. My body still expected to feel the natural rhythms of a planet, not the artificiality of a ship’s drives, lights, air, and hours. And leaps. Some part of me felt it all familiar, but most of me wished I could wake up to sunshine, if only because it was gentle.

  “Lights, fifty.”

  They came up halfway, a dull bronze glow. The tiny cubicle in the corner seemed far away, but I climbed out of my blankets to the sink and washed the sleep from my mouth and eyes. The water on ship tasted slightly bitter, not sweet tike I was used to on planet.

  We’d spent a month on Aaian-na after Niko’s return. It wasn’t much of a training period, but more like a vacation. I had even less to do with Ash-dan, which I enjoyed, and a couple weeks into it Hadu-na and I were formally accepted into the ka’redan-na. Niko ritually wrapped me in assassin-priest whites. I had never seen him so solemn or so pleased. I was a little disappointed that he didn’t tattoo me, but if I was possibly going to work for him on the Hub side, like Hadu had predicted and Niko confirmed, I couldn’t wear a striviirc-na mark on my face.

  Hadu-na envied my position on Turundrlar with the kia’redan bae, but he got assigned to another ship that kii’redan Ash-dan had recommended him to. I eventually introduced Ter’tlo-na to Niko. I didn’t know what she told him, but Turundrlar became her assignment too. For me, being a human on his ship meant sometimes he’d send me away to reconnaissance or drop information on Hub stations—that was part of the sympathizer network—but the risk was worth it because I always had him to back me up and bring me home.

  And it was home, despite the initial displacement. My quarters were beside Niko’s, we took meals together like we did on planet, we trained and sometimes sparred in the ship’s inidrla-na, and instead of sitting together on the balcony we found moments to look at the stars from the view window in the main crew lounge. All of the striv fleet ships were based on stolen Hub designs. A little exploration brought back memories of Mukudori’s decks. And Genghis Khan’s.

  But Turundrlar wasn’t anything like a pirate ship. It was brightly lit, inherently striviirc-na in decoration, and the sounds of passing crew as I opened my hatch were all the lilts and long vowels of Aaian-na languages. And the scent was Niko’s scent.

  I headed down the corridor to the mess. I usually met Niko there for breakfast. One thing I missed from the planet was the wide variety of foods.

  In typical striviirc-na fashion, nobody said farewell on my last night on planet, but they made a colorful dinner of all my favorite foods, at least. Enas-dan didn’t shed any tears, but she trimmed my hair because, she said, I was starting to look like an uurao, all uncombed. Then Caste Master Anil-dan came to the house to speak to Niko privately, saw me in the Tree Room, and said he knew I’d serve Aaian-na well. That lit something inside me.

  Ash-dan said nothing to me. He acted polite once Niko was back. Maybe his distaste of everything EarthHub had cooled. I no longer cared. He was on planet now and I wasn’t. Everything he’d taught me I would put to use for Niko, and the rest I could forget. Ash-dan didn’t matter anymore; Niko had me trained in comps because he always intended for me to serve aboard Turundrlar with him and help the sympathizers in space—help him gather and send information to his contacts. Ter’tlo had been right; it was much better than waiting on Aaian-na for the Hub to invade. Niko needed me here, on ship.

  The deckplates dully echoed back my footsteps. Not a spot of dirt on the Warboy’s ship, though its corridors and common rooms showed more than a little travel wear. The ivory walls weren’t as glossed as they probably had been right out of the shipyard. The quiet, grim nature of its crew was testimony enough of the ship’s long-established purpose and all those who had died in service to it. Intricate designs I’d first noticed then became familiar with on Aaian-na decorated every bulkhead on Turundrlar—symbols of meditation, Niko said once. They directed your thoughts to home.

  Now he sat at a far table in the sparsely occupied mess, absently eating and staring at the patterns on the bulkhead. I walked into his sight line and he pulled himself out of whatever thoughts were occupying him, gestured to an untouched box of food on the table.

  “Thanks.” I sat and dragged the box closer to my side. We ate in silence for a few minutes until my curiosity won over. “Niko, why didn’t you tell me at first that this was going to be my assignment after I was casted?”

  He peeled a piece of fruit and stayed silent for a moment. “I wasn’t sure I wanted you on ship, Jos-na, when it was all said and done.”

  I set my cup down, tasting the sour tang of tea at the back of my throat. “Why not?”

  “Because you’re safer on Aaian-na.”

  “Yeah, but for how long? If I can do more here, with you, then—”

  “Do you mean that?” His gaze fixed on me.

  “Of course I mean it.” But I was confused by his sudden doubts.

  “You’ve been reading the Send updates, yes? EarthHub’s pushing more aggressively through the DMZ. Our fleet is spread thin just fighting them back. I even suspect pirates are trying to use parts of the DMZ as sinkholes. I can’t allow that. But I don’t know enough about the Hub’s deep spacers to know the best way to approach them. Or defeat them.” His eyes didn’t leave my face.

  “Your contacts in the Hub—?”

  “The spacecarriers are what we meet out here. They are the ones really fighting this war. They are the ones who truly know why they hate us, because we’ve met in battle.”

  Like Falcone and Markalan S’tlian.

  “But they’re also the most impenetrable. The carriers recruit their own crew and decide which orders they’re going to obey from the Hub. Do you understand, Jos-na? Some people in the Hub are afraid of those crews, or at the very least they’re suspicious of them. The link back to Hub-central from the Rim and the Dragons is farther than our link to Aaian-na. And their captains are rather more
independent.”

  Falcone had been a carrier captain. Now he was a pirate. Was it that far of a leap?

  My food sat cold on my plate.

  Pirates were encroaching toward Aaian-na too?

  “Niko, have you met Falcone out here?” I’d not read about his death in all the Send updates. And I’d never cared to ask my teacher until I found myself back in space. It was just easier to forget instead of know about him.

  “No,” Niko said. Then somewhat wryly, “I haven’t had the privilege. We suspect he’s gone into hiding because he hasn’t been harassing the Hub at all. At least not directly.”

  I played with the handle of my fork. EarthHub, pirates— Niko wanted to stave them all off. But if he couldn’t… Instinct told me he had more to say. This was all leading to something that made him hesitate.

  “I didn’t tell you about coming with me on Turundrlar,” he said, “because I didn’t know if I could ask you—I didn’t plan on not wanting—” He stopped.

  I looked up in surprise. Never before had he stumbled on himself like this. His eyes were steady and unusually bright.

  “I need you to do something for me, Jos-na.”

  I didn’t say anything. He knew my answer. I was here.

  “These carriers,” he said slowly, “are an enigma to me. Their captains and their crews. One captain and one crew in particular. This captain has a father in the EarthHub Joint Chiefs of Staff. This captain’s also given me the most trouble over the years. I need to know more about him. I need to know if peace is even possible with people like him, and if not—I need to know their weaknesses. From the inside.”

  Nothing moved within me.

  “Jos-na, I need you to be my eyes on this deep-space carrier.”

  I couldn’t move my hands, or my gaze from his face. His steady face, so controlled, asking me this thing even though his voice stayed low, so low as if any louder would make it break.

  But it wasn’t his voice breaking. It was a little place inside of me.

  “Is this what you trained me for all along?”

  He didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to let him get away with that silence, not now.

  “You trained me so you could get rid of me?”

  “No,” he said, immediate and hard. “I saved your life and gave you a home. I thought you loved it.”

  “I do. And now you want me to leave it.”

  “Jos-na, you know you’re on this ship to help me, to help the sympathizer network in the Hub. As a ka’redan.”

  “I’m here because I—” Wanted to be with you. My teacher. But I didn’t say it. “What if I don’t want to?” I said instead.

  “Would you listen to me before you made up your mind?”

  “So you can justify throwing me away?”

  “I won’t throw you away.”

  I ached from the skin inward. “We have a different meaning for those words, Nikolas-dan. Spying on a Hub carrier wouldn’t take just a week or two, like a drop-off on Austro or a meeting on Chaos. Those carriers only hit ports once every couple months, and only insystem once every few years.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But I would never trust anyone else to do this for me, to be gone that long, to be that qualified, and to be in direct regular contact with me or Ash-dan. You know the satellite codes to Aaian-na. You know Ki’hade. You know the Hub. And you’re the right age and background to get on that carrier. They actively recruit orphans.”

  “So you did your research. Did you know all this when you saved my life?”

  That hurt him. He didn’t try to hide it. He sat back and clenched his jaw.

  At the moment I didn’t give a damn. My eyes flooded. I pushed back my chair and left the mess.

  * * *

  II.

  Everywhere I walked looked the same. It was Genghis Khan and Falcone was taking me through her corridors, holding my hand, telling me that I could get things from people if all they wanted was my pretty face.

  But it wasn’t worth it. Not when the things you wanted came tarnished.

  Not when you were tarnished.

  * * *

  III.

  Niko wasn’t Falcone. He came to my quarters and asked for entrance, then stood just inside the hatch and watched me where I sat on my pallet. Like the first time, except I remembered a different pallet in a different room, one with sunlight. I remembered a different room, with beds and a compartment in the floor. I remembered faces because I had them now on a disk around my neck. Faces Niko had given back to me, when they were disappearing.

  He’d given me a lot, and asked only for one thing. Why had I thought you could get so much for nothing?

  “S’yta-na,” he said.

  I knew that word now. I pieced it together. First place of the heart, literally. Dear one.

  I couldn’t hold any words. They all danced around in my head like jittery young birds, fluttering in random flight.

  He crouched in front of me. “You know I wouldn’t have asked if it weren’t important to me. If I didn’t trust you.”

  I looked at him. He was close but didn’t touch. “I can get killed and that doesn’t bother you.”

  “Of course it bothers me. As it bothered you when I went away. But I still had to go, and I still came back. We can’t get around the fact of this war, Jos-na. Ka’redone cannot.”

  “So it’s my duty.”

  “I won’t force you. There would be no point in that.”

  “We’re heading toward Hub space now, no matter what I say.”

  He sighed slightly. “Yes. But I’m taking my time.”

  “So you assume I’ll go.”

  “I hope. Half that you will and—half that you won’t. But my hope isn’t what I need. Or what Aaian-na needs.”

  Some things are bigger than you, Jos. That was what he meant. He was the Warboy and some of his reputation was rightly earned. But why should I care about the war? Maybe what I needed was to stay alive.

  Except that wasn’t all I needed, now. I cared. I’d been trained to care. Or maybe that was something nobody could avoid. And maybe you cared more the harder you tried to avoid it.

  My thoughts were threads, tied up in knots.

  I stared at Niko’s hands because I couldn’t look at the pain in his eyes. I couldn’t look at my reflection in them.

  I said, “What do I need to know, Nikolas-dan?”

  * * *

  IV

  He de-stritified me. By layers and over slow weeks as we headed through the DMZ, he peeled away the world he’d introduced me to in the last five years. He left me bare in the aftermath, half myself and half transparent.

  I had to lose my Ki’hade inflections, which had bled even into some of my EarthHub words, so I wouldn’t get shot the moment I opened my mouth. I had to learn the Austroan way of talking, because Austro Station was going to be my refuge after Chaos, to replace Aaian-na. I watched a lot of vids of actors and politicians from Austro and mimicked them constantly. Niko was my teacher again, in this, as he gave me file after file of information, and tested me on it.

  I had to pass for a station-raised orphan. Niko prepped me completely about Austro history of the last six years, especially its social and child welfare services. I studied maps of its molecular-looking modules, which included business facilities, port and station offices, and residencies. Some of it brought back vague memories of childhood spent in the station’s junior cybetoriums and dens on layovers.

  I read about Macedon EHV-4229, the carrier I was supposed to infiltrate, and its Captain Cairo Azarcon, what little information was available on the man. His past was so tightly sealed not even a burndive into military records produced anything but the standard profile, which only included his accomplishments from the Navy Space Corps Academy and onward. I could’ve dived deeper, maybe, but that would have taken more time and energy than I had before my transfer, and more risk. Military polisyms and barriers were rampant in high-level files and nearly impossible to deconstruct or break, even for an e
xpert like Ash-dan. Or one of his students.

  Azarcon’s adoptive father was an admiral. That could’ve explained the bristling security. The other explanation, of course, was that Azarcon hunted the enemy with regular success. EarthHub didn’t want his past to be easily accessible, especially to spies.

  Which was why Niko wanted me to do what I’d agreed to do. Except nothing in me made me feel like it had really been my choice. The person who’d agreed to go wasn’t the person who prepared to leave. Everything I learned about the Hub threatened to push out the last five years, until I almost expected to meet myself when I turned a corner. Except it would be a stranger looking back.

  I cut my hair in the short style currently popular on Austro among boys my age. Niko had acquired an old military duffel and Hub-style station wear: nondescript coveralls, a sweater or two, and worn manufiber pants. Trying them on was like slipping into someone else’s skin.

  Niko came to see me at the last shift before my transfer to his Hub contact. I was packing that old duffel for the fifth time and reciting Austroan history to myself, with an Austroan accent.

  At least he didn’t ask how I felt.

  “I think that bag is as ready as it will ever be,” he said, leaning against the bulkhead near the table where the duffel rested.

  “I’m glad one of us is.”

  He put his hand on the bag, forcing me to stop fussing with it.

  I breathed out. “I’m not ready, Niko.”

  “Would you ever be?”

  “Maybe.” I’d never be ready because I’d never want to go.

  “What you’re doing is important to me. I want you to know that, Jos-na.”

  “Important to you or the war?”

  “Is there a difference? We are in this war.”

  I said quietly, “It makes a difference to me.”

  He paused for only a moment. “You’re the difference in everything I’ve done since you were nine years old.”