Warchild

by Karin Lowachee

  I shoveled in the food, barely chewing, and looked around from under my brows. The recruits took up five tables at the door end of the mess, while in the rest of the wide room other crew sat scattered, talking, laughing, and occasionally shoving one another playfully. The mess, like everywhere else on the ship, looked well used but was surprisingly spotless, free of dirt. The walls were uniformly gray and bare, except for gunmetal trim near the ceiling. The ceiling itself wasn’t very high. It was covered and smooth except for the banks of white lights.

  “Heaven won’t help you now,” Iratxe said, following my gaze.

  “Only gods we got for eight weeks’re our JIs,” Nathan Jelilian said around a mouthful of square eggs. It made him doubly hard to understand.

  “JI?”Aki asked.

  “Jet Instructors. Junior and Senior. Hard-ass over there’s Junior. Wait ’til you meet our Senior Jet Instructor.”

  Aki gulped her caff. “Oh, joy.”

  “Can’t be worse than the captain,” I muttered.

  “You met the captain?” Aki asked incredulously. Their eyes fixed on me.

  I shifted. “Didn’t you?”

  “I met el capitan,” Jelilian said, as if he were proud of it.

  “I didn’t,” Aki said. “Just that Sergeant Hartman. She told me I’d meet him after I graduated… if I graduated. How come you got to meet him?” To me.

  “I don’t know.” My stomach rolled uneasily.

  “Maybe he likes only the boys,” Iratxe said, showing teeth.

  Jelilian looked at her, serious. “I’d keep a lid on that if I were you, birdy. Nobody talks about Azarcon that way.”

  “Least not on this ship,” Kris put in.

  “Is it true?” Dread sat hard in my chest

  Jelilian turned his pale brown eyes to me. “No way, you think some of these jets would stay aboard?” He leaned in toward us as if spilling a dark secret. “My old CO said Azarcon’s an orphan of the stars himself, he knows all about kids on the wayside of things. Born deep spacer. Admiral Ashrafi adopted him after Trinity did her deep-space run. Ashrafi came back with a teenage Cap and the next thing you know he’s in the NSC Academy on Earth.” The pilot laughed. “And Hubcentral’s been rollin’ its eyes ever since.”

  Ashrafi, who was now in the EHJCS, and Niko wanted to know more about him.

  “Why’d Ashrafi adopt him? What happened to his family?”

  Jelilian shrugged. “Who knows?”

  Aki smiled. “Brass are cloned, not born, don’t you know?”

  “Is that why you want a transfer?” I asked Jelilian. “Azarcon’s okay with orphans?”

  “I wanna fly for this bad beast ’cause they know how to brand some enemy ass.” He grinned and made a sizzle sound.

  “Less talk, more eating,” Cleary said, eyes darting.

  “Recruits, fall in!”

  I was beginning to hate that man’s voice, though the others besides Jelilian looked borderline scared of it. Nathan Jelilian seemed to know more than the average recruit, off some other EarthHub ship probably. A good source of info.

  We stacked our trays and lined up again, all under the impatient eye of the JJI, then followed him out, back down a stairwell and through the cool, drab corridors once more. I longed to see some color in the gray, but the only variety was in the hair, skin, and eyes of the other recruits. Our booted steps echoed on the scuffed deckplates, not quite in unison. The JJI took us through a double set of doors marked Training Bay, into a sprawling room with multiple exits leading elsewhere; no signs indicated anything, like everywhere else on this ship.

  The room was occupied by long desks, deck-clamped metal chairs, a drop-down holoarm over a central table, and rows of comps stacked on a shelf against the wall, secured by black webbing.

  “Sit,” the JJI said.

  I gratefully sank down on the nearest seat. Chairs unclicked from their clamps and scraped as everyone found a place, the only sound. Our armed escorts took up positions by the doors and the JJI stood with his hands behind his back at the front of the room, behind the raised and folded holoarm.

  “Momentarily you are going to meet your other Jet Instructors and your Training Platoon COs. You will stand and salute when they enter. I’m Sergeant Theron and I will be one of the people responsible for your lives during this training.” And responsible for taking our lives too if we stepped out of line—that was the implicit threat. He turned a bit, perfectly on cue as one of the side doors opened and the three other JIs and Training Platoon Officers entered. We all stood and saluted like perfect soljets, then sat when one of the TPOs nodded. The apprehension in the room was thick enough to smell.

  The two Senior JIs wore all over black, even their T-shirts, and close-fitting black caps with long brims that shadowed their eyes. They were all mouth and jaw, a man and a woman. When they tilted their heads to regard the training platoon the light cut into that shadow and glanced off their eyes like sun on shrapnel. The other JJI was clad like his counterpart; the only things that differentiated him from the SJIs were his white tee and bare head. The TPOs were dressed like jets but not as casually turned out as Madi or Dorr or the others I’d seen. They were ironed so cleanly I thought their unis might crack if they moved.

  The female Senior Jet Instructor walked the width of the Training Bay and looked out over all of us, then stopped dead center, hands behind her back. Her words came at us like rifle report with just the same deadly tone of command.

  “This shift will be your last easy shift for the rest of your lives aboard Macedon—however long that will be in this war. Nine hours or more ago you signed your futures over to the toughest ship in all of EarthHub, with the toughest crew. We have the highest expectations. Some of you won’t make it. Some of you will make it only to die by the hand of the enemy.”

  I thought of Niko. He hung at the corners of my mind like light around the edges of a curtained window.

  “Over the next eight weeks it is my job and the job of my comrades to make sure you are as prepared as you can be for what you’ll face in this war against the strits and their symp allies. Because I guarantee you now, you will face them.

  “The men and women around you are your company, your crew, the equals of your own lives. This is not a competition; there are no prize winners. If you live that is your reward; when you help others to live, that is your duty. Nobody here will tolerate any degree of hotdogging, bravado that leads to careless execution of tasks, or hazing among yourselves. Be assured we hold enough authorization to boot your asses out of this bay and, if necessary, out the airlock.

  “It’s your duty to convince us that you’re worthy to take up space on our deck. Because right now, as I look out at your pitiful faces, you aren’t worth the ammo it would take to clean you from this room. Fodder for the strits, maybe, but not Macedon crew. A nod from our recruiter or the captain himself is not a ticket onto Mac. It’s limited cred. It’s bought time—time that will run out.”

  She paused. But it wasn’t the end. It was far from the end of this new world.

  * * *

  XIV.

  Senior Jet Instructor Laceste had told the truth about the shift being our easiest—and probably about everything else. After our introductions and the orientation speeches that were basically designed to alternately intimidate us and spur us on, half of us were directed to medbay for full physicals while the other half stayed in the Training Bay to write psych and aptitude tests. The JIs and jets also separated with the company; the Training Platoon Officers disappeared back to their holes, I assumed, because they didn’t hang about. I wondered that we hadn’t been introduced to our company commander, then figured that was probably a good thing. My bunkmates and I and the rest of our loose platoon headed to medical. I wasn’t looking forward to Mercurio’s presence but I wanted his treatment. Kris edged up behind me in our march.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I thought I’d been hiding my pain.

  Nathan glanced back and whisp
ered, “Ah, perk up, mate. After the prodding we get our heads shrunk!”

  “About face, Jelilian!”

  In medbay it wasn’t Mercurio who looked after me, but a whip of a kid corpsman named Rodriguez. He rolled his chair over to where I sat on one of the examination tables. The edges of a dark tattoo crawled along his neck beneath his pale gray uniform collar. He also had a snake on the back of his right hand and splayed wings on the back of his left. I stared at the intricate work. It almost rivaled a striviirc-na rank tat.

  He scanned me with the handheld, the same way Mercurio had done earlier.

  “You like?” he asked, following my gaze. He had an open smile and prepped an injet casually. “My own handiwork, y’know.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yah. If you pass the trainin’ I do your wrist.” He injetted my arm. “That’ll do ya, at least for the pain. It’s hurtin’ this bad ’cause the healants are workin’, anit? Give it an hour more and all the bruises should be gone. Magic.” He grinned again.

  “Hardly,” I said.

  “We do you up good so you go back out and get more hurts. That the circle of life, anit?” He laughed.

  I imitated his accent. “Anit.” The cultures of the galaxy had converged on this ship. Voices flowed around the room like air currents. They spoke the standard language with all the variation of their childhood homes. I hadn’t expected that, but it was familiar now, another memory brought to light. The accents were almost musical, though not as pretty as the ones I used to eavesdrop upon, lying on a sundrenched roof above lower balconies.

  Rodriguez liked my imitation of his accent; he laughed and patted my shoulder. It almost made me like him. But then he proceeded to draw my blood and run me through a gamut of tests that left me sore in a number of uncomfortable places. A benign full body scan wasn’t enough, evidently.

  At least now my ribs were numb. The JIs took us back to the Training Bay and we exchanged places with the other half of the company. The comps stayed activated but on a cleared screen; they were well-used, slightly dented, limited-access comps. Nothing that could reach Macedon’s main systems ops.

  “Answer all questions,” Senior Jet Instructor Schmitt said. Every word out of his mouth was a dictatorial statement, like the other JIs. Most everyone seemed cowed by his tone, like they were at Laceste’s, but I was only irritated. Loyalty and willing obedience didn’t come through intimidation.

  But these were Hub humans.

  I scrolled, perusing the questions first. The beginning had standard fill-in-the-blanks: name, gender, birthday, birthplace, etc. Then it went to the typical essay questions: why do you want to serve Macedon; what do you think you can contribute to Macedon… banalities I could tap out with half a brain. The middle sections were basic mathematics and physics questions and some elementary tactical and strategic scenarios. As I scrolled more, the bottom sections grew intense. The psych section asked very pointed questions about your past, your reactions to incidents in your past, your feelings. I dawdled over those. Clearly you could still wash out even at this stage, contract already signed and all. If I told too much, would they think it worth exploring or just file it in records? If I didn’t tell enough they might think it suspicious. Certainly they would compare it to what they had already dug up before even letting me on ship.

  I stuck to what Niko had briefed me on, just reworded with less professionalism. Pirate attack survivor. Time with Falcone. A little bit about what he’d done with me and then my rescue on Chaos and youth on Austro. Nothing that contradicted anything, fairly open but not too much, in case they thought it too line by line.

  I hoped it appeased the captain’s eyes. I had a feeling he’d be looking at these personally—or at least at mine.

  I saved it all and closed the comp, as I saw others who had finished do. When I glanced to my right I caught Kris Rilke’s gaze; he stared at me from the end of the table.

  Keeping my face carefully bland, I stared back. After a moment he returned to tapping at his comp.

  Had I given him something to be suspicious about, or was he just the curious type? I wanted desperately to go somewhere and be by myself.

  The other half of the company filed in some minutes later and found seats, guarded by jets. The SJIs walked about, warning the slow typers they had only a minute more to complete the forms. Then the Junior Instructors gathered up the comps and stacked them on a side table. I started to feel hungry.

  SJI Laceste yelled at us again: “Over the rest of this shift you each will be meeting with myself or SJI Schmitt for a personal interview. In the meantime, those remaining will familiarize themselves with the standard LP-150 rifle.”

  As she spoke, jets came in through one of the unmarked doors carrying the rifles and began placing one in front of each of us on the tables. They weren’t loaded—of course. They were missing their pulse charge clips entirely.

  “You will be divided into four squads. Alpha Squad here—” She indicated a table. “Bravo here. Training Platoon One. Charlie and Delta there. Training Platoon Two. Take your rifles.”

  As she read out our names we moved with scrutinized haste. They watched how we carried our weapons, how quickly we got to our places, the expressions on our faces. Me and my five bunkmates made up one-third of Bravo. Then Laceste read out the names of the first two poor souls who had to sit through an interview with her or Schmitt. The victims went into a side room while JJI Theron took up a rifle and stood in Laceste’s place.

  He showed us how to strip and assemble the rifle and named all the parts. He talked about how it was going to save our lives and how it would kill strits. He said we were going to kill the enemy with this weapon. Strits. Symps. The enemy.

  Pirates, I thought at him. You and the Khan.

  * * *

  XV.

  I pretended I didn’t know how any of the guns worked. Mostly they concentrated on the LP-150, which was the basic weapon of all the crew, but especially all the jets. We didn’t get to keep any of the weapons except the rifles. They gave us charge clips, but not real ones—sim ones that looked and weighed exactly like the real ones but could be used in the shooting galleries on soft targets (hard targets were for live fire sims). They made us strip and assemble the rifles over and over. I kept pace with the other recruits, even though I could do it with my eyes shut and in under a minute.

  The JIs took squads of us out at a time to practice shooting while the others started PT, or physical training, as they called it. I called it running. Bravo Squad went to the range first. The targets were all striviirc-na or symps. You knew they were striviirc-na because they were all white with black eyes and bared little teeth. The tattoos were muddled, the same on the symps. The symps were all ugly, frowning humans. First we practiced with standing holotargets that registered points depending on where you hit the body. The highest points were on all the killzones. Head, heart, neck.

  Theron came up to my shoulder. “You trying to read their minds, sprig? Let me assure you, these ones don’t think.”

  I almost glared at him, but stopped myself.

  “Well what’re you waiting for? There’s an enemy in your sight!”

  I braced the rifle, aimed, and fired. The shoulder of the striv registered a hit.

  “Winged him. He can still come after you.”

  I pictured Theron’s face on that target and shot him through the head.

  “Good.” He tapped the console in front of me and reset the holo. “Now do it again when it’s moving.”

  No different from what Enas-dan made me do. The targets were fake, it was a game. You just went for the high score.

  Except one day it was going to be real.

  “Dammit, boy, fire!”

  The gallery exploded with sound and harmless, bright pulse flash.

  * * *

  XVI.

  “Musey! Rilke!”

  I set my gun down on the console, stepped back, and briefly met Kris Rilke’s eyes before heading toward the JI who stood
by the shooting gallery entrance. The sound of guns and rifles going off was near deafening. Flash from the muzzles lit and went out like lightning up and down the line of recruits. Safe pulses at simulated targets. Theron walked up and down behind the recruits, barking orders or advice. Kris and I followed Junior Jet Instructor Carson back to the Training Bay where he pointed us toward seats to wait.

  “You’re good,” Kris said, “with the weapons.”

  I couldn’t tell if it was admiration or suspicion in his tone.

  “Thanks.” I hadn’t noticed how he’d fared on the range.

  “So you grew up on Austro?”

  “Yeah.” I dug my thumbnail into the brown tabletop where something had already scratched.

  “So did I. I was born there.”

  “Oh.” I felt his eyes on me. Was my accent off, did he see through me? “So what do you think about the others? Jelilian, Aki…”

  “They seem pretty okay. Jelilian might get us into trouble later, though.” He smiled.

  “Yeah, what’s his story? Where’s he transferring from?”

  “Not sure. He said he flew for a replenishment ship. Now he wants to fly APC. Fly jets around.”

  “I don’t know if I’d trust him to fly me around,” I said.

  “Apparently he’s good to even be considered for Mac. Aki’s heading into Support Services… Medical. Iratxe’s soljet like us—I assume you’re going for jet status.”

  “Yeah. What about Cleary?”

  “Hell if I know. You heard a word outta him yet?” He laughed.

  “No. True.”

  A door on our right opened and Schmitt stepped out. “Gentlemen.”

  We stood and I let Kris go first. We entered a short hallway with four doors facing each other, two on each side. Schmitt took Kris into one on the right hand and SJI Laceste stood at a leftward one.

  “Recruit Musey, come in and have a seat.”

  “Yes, sir.” I told myself I’d spoken with the Caste Master; this woman was nothing to be nervous about. I sat in an office, smaller than the captain’s but just as neat, spare, and square. The sameness of things could drive a person mad, even a merchant kid. Military ships were far more uniform than where I’d been born, and worse because they weren’t built with comfort first in mind. I supposed it was just a matter of getting used to it.