Warchild

by Karin Lowachee

You always saved the things in your head until they were forced to come out. And sometimes it was too late, even then.

  I glanced up at him, at the corner. Gripped the bag. “How am I supposed to fight on an EarthHub carrier when I’ll be fighting your fleet?”

  “You’ll do as you must.”

  “Kill striviirc-na?”

  “You are a ka’redan, Jos-na. All the training, while it focuses the mind, is at heart a killing art.”

  “I don’t know, Niko. What if Macedon meets Turundrlar?”

  “We can’t grow our worries from what-ifs, Jos-na.”

  I held the duffel ties because my hands were shaking. He saw that, then looked into my face. Very slowly he put his hand over both of mine, and steadied them. “You know all that I can teach you, s’yta-na.”

  “It’s not enough.” I didn’t mean for this task alone.

  His hand was something solid, warm, and without threat.

  I didn’t want it to go. But he said, “Aaian-na was your inidrla-na. EarthHub will be your vas’tatlar.” And he released me.

  * * *

  V.

  Captain Racine of the small merchant ship Cervantes let me sit on the bridge as we headed deeper into EarthHub territory. It was a legal, registered ship whose homeport was Austro. It was also a sympathizer ship. The captain said she’d known Niko for years. She called him Bae S’tlian. I sat on the worn seat at the back of the cramped bridge with my duffel bag at my feet, half listening to the crew chattering softly to one another and the tapping of the captain’s fingers on her chair-comp. She wanted me where she could see me—not that she didn’t trust me, but simply because you could never be too careful. Posting a guard on me was somewhat too obvious.

  I’d fallen asleep those last hours aboard Turundrlar, because I knew I’d need it. Niko stayed, like I knew he would. Later, at the airlock, he kissed me on both sides of my face where my tattoos would have been if I’d been allowed to have them, and held me a long time. A crushingly long time, without regard for Captain Racine who stood in plain sight. He didn’t give any last advice or tell me good-bye, only the embrace. My head filled with his scent and my ribs felt his arms. We left each other dry-eyed. I didn’t look back and he didn’t wait to watch me go.

  Any words I might have spoken to Captain Racine lodged in my throat and stayed there. After a couple idle questions that went unanswered, she left me alone in my silence. I fingered the silver disk around my neck. Even now I felt Niko’s fingers in my hair, the pressure of his hand on my head in that comforting way that had replaced all the unwanted touches Falcone had given me.

  I thought of all the things Niko had given me. And all the things he never had and now never would.

  * * *

  VI.

  I had two fake IDs. One to show Customs upon disembarking Cervantes, which I would immediately burn up, and another to show Macedon that verified my falsified past as an orphan raised through Austro Child Welfare Services and the EarthHub War Orphan Program, Austro Division. My supposed caseworker was actually a caseworker in the ACWS—and a sympathizer. These weren’t Aaian-na symps like Niko, raised on Aaian-na and completely stritified. They were Hub symps, Hub citizens who disagreed with the government’s stance on the war and found more sympathy with the “enemy.”

  Not everybody felt the Hub had a right to dictate how far the strivs traveled toward Hub space and which moons and sectors they had to relinquish because the Hub needed the resources. Some were unconvinced by the steady Send reports and features that cycled propaganda about how badly the strits treated human POWs, how the only thing strits wanted was the destruction of human bases, stations, and ships, how the symps were traitors who were no longer even human. Some Hub citizens knew that the only thing stopping the Hub from taking over Aaian-na entirely was the Warboy, and they agreed with him. The Caste Master and the S’tlians had more than one spy in the enemy camp. But none on Macedon, yet.

  I was going to meet the caseworker briefly—it wouldn’t take more than that since we’d both been briefed thoroughly on our “common history.” Niko had timed it well, through updates from his operatives in the Hub, so that Cervantes arrived in Austro port a stationday after Macedon. Deep-space carriers only went insystem for major resupply every five sy (or stationyears). During these runs into the Rim they usually recruited, as crew were lost during skirmishes and battles. Austro had a permanent recruiting center for all branches of the armed forces, though the Navy Space Corps was by far the busiest. This was my in. Biologically I was fourteen years old; you were a legal adult at sixteen. In wartime, orphans no matter how old could enlist on any ship that would take them—most became scrub kids. But the deep spacers took anybody they deemed fit and willing to fight, and put them in gear.

  I shouldered my old duffel like a crewman prepared to spend a few days in a den, stepped by the Customs Officer after he approved my ID, and eventually integrated myself into the stream of activity on the merchant dockside. The carriers always docked at military designated locks, so the only uniforms here were maintenance and loader crews and a few merchants who used formal unis. Colors and patches of a dozen different ships swept by me as I threaded my way to the dockring’s inner doors, where my contact stood.

  The caseworker was a towering, grizzled old man, old like station cits got old, displaying his standard age on every line of his face. No time dilation deception for his sedentary self. Mr. Grish Mankar was eightyish sy and looked it despite suspended aging treatments. The washed-out appearance of his dark skin and slight yellowing of his eyes said he’d had more than one SAT. He squeezed my shoulder tight enough, though, placing his other hand on my back to guide me away from the docks, toward the concourse. I tried not to automatically shove off his touch.

  “The recruiting office is on the tenth level,” he said as we walked.

  “I know.” I’d memorized the station map. Austro was made up of ten modules, which roughly resembled flattish molecules, stacked in a basic tower design with splayed legs. It made station additions easy but to get from one leg to the other took a quick ride on a podway or a longer ride on a pedway. The legs were the docks. The offices were in the central modules with the residencies.

  I walked tense. Mankar said, “Relax,” more than once, which didn’t help. Austro, a commercial Rimstation, was the largest station this side of the Spokes (Pax Terra near Earth, in Hubcentral, was comparable) and that much humanity-teeming, colorful, and loud—was more than I’d had to deal with in five years. You simply couldn’t walk without someone brushing by you or outright bumping into you. Storefronts noisy with ads, corridor merchants and their kiosks trying to steal sales from the stores, the ever-present scents from eateries and restaurants, and the mix of civilian, polly, and military uniforms everywhere. You couldn’t alight on any one thing; it was all just a mass of sensory bombardment. Everyone walked through your personal space with no regard whatsoever. I couldn’t relax. Levs spilled and swallowed bodies up at an alarming regular rate, sending people to and from the many offices, residencies, and dens that populated the station.

  Not one striviirc-na, of course, unless you counted the recruitment holo-ad showing a handsome soljet with one foot on a fallen alien, or the cycled Send reports blaring from wallvids with updates on the war. Every once in a while a striv face flashed across the screen, a POW or a dead “war criminal.” You might have believed EarthHub was doing fine, here where the war had yet to really touch. Nothing mentioned about the stations in the Dragons, like Chaos, or other Rimstations that had suffered in blitz raids. Nothing about the ships that had lost skirmishes in the deep.

  My eyes flickered to the second tier of the concourse, the balcony and steel columns where snipers could hide. I wasn’t entirely positive someone wouldn’t see me for what I was and decide to take a potshot.

  Mankar guided me finally into one of the levs, squashed between an executive of some sort and a polly. I ignored the secured gun and nightstick at the polly’s hip, even though it
pressed against my arm. She glanced idly at my plain gray clothing, my duffel bag, and my guardian, then looked up at the chiming numbers. Mankar and I had to squeeze and excuse ourselves off the lev when our stop came up. It was a relief to walk into the cool, mostly empty corridor of the Social Services, Child Welfare wing. He led me through narrow blank hallways and past working people who hardly glanced up, into his office—a small, bare space that reminded me of a ship cabin. I glanced at the comp, the deskcomm, the shelves stuffed with holocube boxes and the occasional hardprint folder. A life spent behind a desk, under white light. A station cit’s life.

  I sat my duffel on one of the faded chairs and opened it up, tugging out a sweater. Best to change clothes in case anybody I talked to later on Macedon had glanced at me leaving Cervantes. Mankar went behind his comp and tapped away at something while I changed. At least he was that polite. I set the first ID on his desk. He took it and dropped it into a rubbish bin beside his seat, then pulled out a small vial of liquid and poured it on. The ID fizzled and smoked slightly, melted and disappeared into a vague lumpy mass.

  I popped in my optic holopoint receptors, the only way I was going to get the burntech onto Macedon. They completely scanned all belongings and your own person—so the plan was to wear the ware. With no connection to a comp the lenses created a slight ruby film over my sight, undetectable from the outside looking in, and didn’t impair it too much. Niko had told me Macedon’s comps had the same holo-access optional component, though obviously more sophisticated than the average domestic comp. I’d trained on military models, specifically EHV carrier-class Navy ware, though I hadn’t known it at the time.

  I pulled off the image disk from around my neck and tucked it into a pocket in the bag (if they couldn’t see it, it was one less thing for them to ask about), then rummaged through my belongings once more, quadruple checking that

  I had nothing incriminating in my possession. Nothing but a very few changes of clothing, typical of a station-bred orphan, a pad of paper and pencils, station-bought, since there was nothing wrong with an interest in art—supposedly a gift from Mankar, though they were from Niko. I had no weapons (they would just be confiscated), no tools other than the holopoints. Whatever else I required would have to be found on the ship somehow or dug from memory. Most everything I needed was in my head—contact codes, contact lists, report codes, satellite codes, and ship schedules.

  I looked up to find Mankar staring at me. I snapped the duffel shut, tied it off, and hefted it over my shoulder. “Anything else?”

  He seemed hesitant, even a bit amused in a sad sort of way. “You’re younger than I thought you would be.”

  I went to the door and palmed it open. “No, I’m not.”

  “Good luck, then.”

  I kept one hand in my pocket, on my Austro citizen ID, and retraced my way back to the lev, then up to the tenth level from dockmain. Nobody spared me a glance. There were advantages to large stations; people tended to blur faces, as if their survival in such crowded confines depended upon it. I thought I might have some trouble finding the recruitment rooms in the network of corridors (despite my memorization) but as I got on the coreward part of the level, a trail of holo-ads hung ghostly near the ceiling, directing you toward “your future in the EarthHub Armed Forces.”

  I followed the ads, right along with a few other fools, bypassing the open doors of planetside and station army, Rim Guard, insystem Navy and Marines—straight to the room that stood separate: deep-space carrier recruitment. It wasn’t as crowded as the others. The military reps weren’t stiff-looking, shiny officers like in the other branches. Here the black-uniformed soljets from Macedon, Wesakechak, and Archangel (the three deep spacers in dock) sat around hurling insults at one another and telling all the prospectives to go “be fruitful and multiply”—as one of the Macedon jets put it. They looked bored. Apparently most of the potential recruits weren’t even worth a scan.

  But I’d read a bit about Macedon, public records and some that weren’t. I strode to the jet’s desk, where she sat rocking back on a chair, and plopped my duffel on top. She was the one sitting so I figured she was the official recruitment officer; another Macedon patch loitered in the room, but he was flirting with an Archangel jet.

  The sergeant—Hartman, her breast patch said—gave me a pointed, blue-eyed stare. Despite her short, mussed hair that made her look like some sort of demented pixie, her gaze was confrontational and vaguely annoyed.

  “What you want, sprig?”

  “I want on Macedon,” I said, in my Austroan accent.

  “I’m sure you do.” She kept rocking back on the chair, fingers laced over her stomach. Her uniform sleeves were pushed up. As she lifted her hand to scratch her head I saw the Macedon tattoo emblazoned on her inner right wrist—a blond man’s profile in the ancient Greek style, against a sixteen-pointed black star. Nanocoded in the colors was her Macedon service number, something that couldn’t be faked. If you bore that tat and weren’t crew, you had to hope you never bumped into someone who knew better. It was a misdemeanor by law and a death warrant if you were caught by any of the real crew.

  “So where do I sign?” I kept my gaze on her face. She was a surprisingly slight build, with large eyes and equally large lips. And a scathing grin.

  “You wanna sign,” she said, as if I’d just asked to be shot. “Hey, Madi, this sprig here wants to sign on Mac.”

  The other Macedon soljet looked at me from the Archangel desk he was sitting on, and laughed.

  “Tell him to come back once his balls have dropped.”

  Sergeant Hartman said in all solemnity, “Sorry, sprig, you’re gonna have to come back once your balls’ve dropped.”

  I looked at her, looked at the comp open on the desk, and grabbed it, swinging it around so I could see the screen. Her chair tilted forward with a smack and her hand shot out, grabbed my wrist in a crushing grip.

  “Hey, mano, you don’t touch my ware.”

  “I just wanted to see the form.” And get your attention.

  She stood and shoved me back. “It don’t say nothin’ but ‘Casualty Information.’ ”

  “Your ship so bad your people die on you?”

  I had her complete attention now. I had the whole room’s attention. Her teeth showed. “Only the ones we vent.”

  I smiled. She smiled back, giving me a second, hard look.

  “I think I hear one of ’em droppin’ now,” Madi said, cupping a hand to his ear. “Small ping, but audible.”

  “Bigger ping than yours, blondie.”

  The jets from all three ships catcalled and gestured. Madi started to laugh. Hartman didn’t.

  “Let’s see your shit.”

  My heart beat fast. I kept it separate from my expression and handed her my Austro citizen ID. She looked at it, then ran it through her comp, which was turned back facing her so I couldn’t see the screen.

  “Joslyn Aaron Musey. Orphan. Fourteen years old, Austro stationyears.” The blue eyes came back to me and looked me up and down. I carefully kept my face blank and she eventually looked back at the screen. “Dead ship Mukudori. Never heard of it.”

  “It was—”

  “Six years ago. Yah, I see.”

  I became aware of the other Macedon jet, who’d slid off the Archangel desk and now stood close behind me. He was tall and I felt his breath blowing over the top of my hair. I kept still, facing Hartman. She read my fake file, silent, and something in it made her eyes change slightly.

  “Well,” she drawled finally, “seein’ as you got at least one ball, I suppose we can have a second look. Private Madison will take you aboard.”

  I was surprised they allowed me on ship so easily. “That it?”

  Now she laughed. “Nah, sprig. That the beginning.”

  * * *

  VII.

  Madi frisked me right there in the room, thoroughly, while the other jets looked on and teased. It was all I could do not to knock him on his ass. Then he did an
initial search through my duffel, appropriated it afterward, and pointed out of the room.

  “Go west, young man.”

  I was beginning to think jets were all a little crazy.

  “Be gentle with him, Madi,” Hartman called as we left.

  We headed to the module’s dockmain, down the lev and through the crowded, noisy concourse again. We passed more than one jet from Macedon who yelled at Madi or gestured in hand signs I didn’t understand. Madi didn’t talk to me, but he chattered at people he recognized, making me wait beside him like an appendage. Just before we hit the tall double doors that led out dockside, Madi grabbed my sleeve to stop me and flagged down a figure by one of the kiosks. I saw a gray-clad, nonuniformed back and a long blond ponytail. For an instant I thought, Evan, and had a picture of him and his older brother Shane strolling station decks. Evan before the pirates had shorn his hair and bruised his face.

  Madi called, “Dorr!”

  The figure turned, sighted us, and grinned. He was young, no more than twenty maybe. Or at least that was how he looked, which wasn’t exactly reliable in deep-space crew. He flipped whatever he was holding at the kiosk merchant and strolled over.

  “Yo, mano.” Grayish-green eyes flickered to me briefly. “Ain’t this one a bit young for you, Madi?”

  I wanted to scowl, but didn’t. I knew he was watching me from the corners of his eyes.

  Madi snorted. “Sarge’s pick. Stavros actually let you out?”

  “Good behavior,” Dorr said, smiling like it was a joke. His short sleeves showed off his ship tat and another one half-hidden on his upper right bicep.

  “The power of dimples,” Madi said, and Dorr laughed, showing them there high on his cheeks. They belied the actual smile, which looked like he was up to something. “O’Neil’s been looking for you,” Madi went on.

  A spark of interest lit Dorr’s eyes. “Yah? Where is he?”

  “I saw him last by Abacus.”