One more time.
Lee whistled. “220 kilograms. Crazy.”
“I've never seen anyone get past 110,” Mara said, both eyebrows up, a smile on her face. She sat on the edge of a cardio machine, one hand on her chin as she watched me with undivided attention. “And it's not like they did that consistently. It was for hilarious dares. When everyone got to drinking.”
“I thought the machines wouldn't allow you to lift weights if there was alcohol in our system?”
“They don't. The drunk guys would challenge the sober guys. We had a lot of fun.”
The screen on my machine said permanent damage might occur if I continued, but the machine didn't understand my advanced nature. It treated me like a normal human—one who couldn't handle my physical routine—and it made inappropriate suggestions.
Which was why I ignored it.
“I need more weight,” I said as I stopped pulling and let go of the cords. The machine dropped the tension, and the warnings stopped.
I poked at the screen a little more ham-handed than I'd wanted, but that was what happened after a few hours of training. The machine buzzed and beeped. When I tried to set the weight higher than 220 kilograms, it asked for an authorization passcode.
“More weight?” Noah asked, eyes wide. “Seriously? Aren't you worn out after that?”
“I can handle more.”
Nothing would stop me from getting better. Maybe I could slack off with the gangsters and chumps on Capital Station, but not on the Star Marque.
Fuck it. If I couldn't increase the weight, I would just go longer. Maybe faster, if the damn machine would cooperate.
Quinn let her braids fall loose to her shoulders as she threw back a water pouch. Once finished, she tossed me one, too. I took a long swig as she examined me.
“Don't hurt yourself,” she said. “I'm your direct superior. It'll make me look bad.”
“My superior, huh? Who all is in our unit?”
“It's me, you, Lee, Noah, Mara, Yuan, and Advik.”
“And Endellion,” I said. “She's a starfighter, too, right?”
Quinn shook her head. “She's not in our unit.” She stood, sweat dappling her skin, highlighting her raw, athletic appearance. “We're heading out, Demarco. Stay safe.”
She motioned with a tilt of her head, and Lee sprang to her side, all smiles. Mara followed suit, just as enthusiastic. Noah lingered, watching as I grabbed the weight cords for a second run. I gave him a sidelong glance, wondering what he wanted.
He focused his gaze on the floor. “Um…”
So, he wanted to talk to me. But he floundered like a chem-addict reaching for another hit.
“Out with it,” I said. “I've got stuff to do.”
After a silent moment, he said, “I want to keep a training schedule like you do.”
I pulled the cords forward, enjoying the burn in my arms. “I don't know if you can handle it, kid.”
He stood. “I'm a lot more confident now.” He held his head high and squared his shoulders. “There's nothing I can't handle.”
I had seen better acting in pornos.
But still, he had grit, which was admirable. Training could only help him—unless he overdid himself, but the weight and cardio machines had a way of nagging people into quitting if they reached their limits. Or they'd passive-aggressively shut off.
I relaxed, but I kept tension in the cords as they pulled my arms back.
“Fine,” I said. “But I'm training twice as hard as the others.”
“I know. I've seen.”
“And confident men don't go around saying they're confident. They just are. Got it?”
Noah hung his head and nodded. He was tall—nearly my height, which was already taller than most—but Noah's slumped posture didn't do him any favors.
“Pride isn't always a bad thing,” I said as I went through another pull on the machine. I took in even breaths and continued, “It's your own source of approval. You don't need everyone else's recognition if you can learn to recognize yourself.”
“Is that the kind of stuff you learn in the dark corridors of Capital Station?”
Nope. I was making this shit up as I went. It sounded good—maybe a little too schmaltzy, but it got the point across.
“Shut up and do your training,” I said, unable to admit I was faking my way through the conversation.
Noah jumped to a machine and clicked through the settings, preparing his station for a workload he could handle. I liked that he didn't give me a hard time about everything I did. We would get along just fine.
* * *
We still had 142 days until we reached our destination.
The thought got me antsy as I flew my simulation starfighter around one of the larger asteroids—50 kilometers in diameter. I shook my head and returned my focus to the squad maneuver. It was a three-way pincer attack, starfighters coming in from different directions, meant to disorient a single enemy pilot. The plan involved flitting about and diving at the target at the same moment.
“Starboard Leader, are you ready?” Quinn asked over the comms.
“Ready,” I replied.
“Port Leader?”
“Always ready,” Yuan said.
I switched off my comms, punched the speed, and whipped around the asteroid, my attention glued to my screen. I blinked half as often when I was in the damn starfighters. My nerves got to me, and I couldn't stand the idea of dying because my eyes needed a little more moisture.
The point of practice was to sync up our movements. The target didn't even defend or react—it just sat there, like a boob on a corpse.
The other technical information, like my location in relation to the other fighters or the three-dimensional intercepts, displayed along the side of my screen, helping me calculate maneuvers and distances, but I ignored them in favor of my instincts. All I needed was a few numbers, and I grasped the distances with an intuitive understanding, even within split-second reaction windows.
Almost like I was built for this type of piloting.
My screen beeped, letting me know I had hit 6Gs.
It had taken me some time to read up on it, but apparently, starfighters and starships were powered by plasma engines. Gas was kept in a magnetic containment field, and then ionized, similar to the gas in stars. The resulting intense heat powered everything. Starfighters used it for a burst of speed—which resulted in the G-force pressure—while the starships used a form of constant acculturation that allowed the passengers to acclimate to the force, resulting in a high top-end speed but slower acceleration.
Which was fancy talk for, “little ships reached speeds instantaneously, while big ships took their time.”
And G-forces were just a measurement of the acceleration converted to pressure in comparison to Earth's gravity—1G was the equivalent pressure of gravity planetside on Earth, and 2Gs was double that. So on and so on. At least, that was what Sawyer said.
I reached our target first and fired. Yuan and Quinn reached it a second later, but the target had already been destroyed.
“I'm just too good,” I said to myself. “You guys better keep up.”
A hushed chuckle came through the speakers. I glanced around, confused, and I checked my settings. No one should have been able to hear me.
“Sawyer?” I asked in a quiet tone.
Nothing.
“I know it's you.”
“Do you always compliment yourself?” she asked, not even bothering to admit she was spying on me like an ex-lover-turned-stalker.
“Someone's got to do it,” I said, cracking a smile. “Skills like mine deserve compliments.”
“And what about your fuck-ups?”
“Those can be forgotten. No one talks about great figures in history to discuss the couple times the person died in a training simulation. Everyone talks about all their epic achievements.”
“You're a little ahead of yourself. If I ever wanted to commit suicide, I could climb to the top of
your ego and jump down to your number of epic achievements.”
“Always busting my balls, Sawyer,” I muttered as I flew my starfighter back into formation with the others.
The formation drills—while important—had all the excitement of a rotting carcass. I'd understood them the first time through, and now I completed them with muscle memory, my mind focused on a million other details. Even Noah had the formations ingrained into his reflexes. I wasn't going to complain. The low mental impact gave me time to mess with Sawyer.
“You ever talk dirty to any of the pilots over your private little communication channel?” I asked.
“No,” Sawyer said. “I've never talked dirty to anyone while they're piloting a starfighter.”
“That's a waste. You've got a nice voice. And it's right in my ear.”
“Remember that thin margin of error you have while piloting? Do you really want to be distracted while you're maneuvering through a debris field?”
“This is a simulation,” I said. “I can handle it.”
And I had been. The formations were smooth, and I was capable of multitasking.
“Endellion would be upset if I disrupted your training, even a slight amount,” Sawyer said.
“Okay, how about this? If I'm ever about to die, you whisper sweet nothings into my ear so my last few moments are pleasant.”
“Deal.”
“Yeah?” I asked, trying to hide the shock in my voice. “I was half-joking. I thought you'd never agree.”
“Well, you're just so good,” she said, thick with sarcasm, “that it'll never happen, right? You're the best starfighter around. Guys like you don't get close to death.”
Touché.
“Demarco,” Quinn said, disrupting my thoughts. “Are you ready for another squad maneuver?”
I switched my comms back to the group. “Yeah. Let's get this done.”
“And try to keep in sync with Yuan. It's not a race to the target. It's a coordinated attack.”
“Yes, Ma'am.”
Yuan connected to me in a private comms channel. I switched to hers and said, “What is it?”
“I was going slow because you're new.”
“Don't bother.”
She laughed. “I got that. But don't go thinking you need to slow down for me. Quinn wants us to be in sync, but I've been flying for years. If you want to go fast, I can go fast.”
I had barely interacted with Yuan, but already I liked her.
“Good,” I said. “I'm ready for round two.”
* * *
Only 101 days left until we reached our destination.
I entered the physical training area in the middle of our artificial night. Every deck had its own sleep schedule, so there was always someone up and ready to cover the duties of the 24/7 starship in flight, but Deck Three—my deck—was the only deck with a physical training room. Even now it was in use by enforcers from other decks getting their practice in.
Vanguard-class starships had little in terms of entertainment. The gray metal walls, grate flooring, and dim lighting made the rig a jail-like environment. The best areas were the mess hall and the recreational lounge because at least there people drank and played games, but routine killed all excitement.
Without a word to the others, I walked over to the weight machine and poked the screen. Damn thing still wouldn't let me go above 220 kilograms. I needed to find someone who could give me authorization.
“Here you are, Demarco.”
I glanced over my shoulder and spotted Lysander.
“Hey,” I said. “You're a subcommander, right? Can you override this weight machine to allow for a heavy pull? I've got goals to meet.”
Lysander frowned. “I'm not going to do that.”
“Of course you won't.”
I turned away and set the machine to the maximum. He got up close to me, and I suspected he wanted to have a conversation, but he didn't want to be polite about it. I figured he wanted me to treat him like a military commander—maybe even salute him or some other pretentious shit—but he would have to wait a while before that happened.
His hovering grated on my nerves.
“You waiting for Noah?” I asked.
“Noah won't be joining you anymore.”
“Because you told him no?”
“That's right.”
I stopped with the machine and glared at the man. “You think I'm that bad an influence?”
“I've worked as an enforcer for years. I know lowlifes when I see them.”
His statement didn't deserve a reply. I focused on my machine, hoping to jury-rig a solution. Maybe I could trick it into allowing more weight.
Lysander took a deep breath, and then exhaled. “I'm not worried about you influencing Noah's character, but he has already been to the infirmary twice to deal with injuries from your training. Noah doesn't need that.”
What?
I had never seen the kid do anything super-strenuous. We went for a long time, sure, but never anything he couldn't handle. How had he hurt himself?
“He never complained to me,” I said.
“That's because he doesn't want anyone to know.”
I narrowed my gaze. That didn't sound right. I figured Noah would have told me he was injured if it came from the machine or working too long.
“What's wrong with him?” I asked. “You treat your brother like a child. Something else is going on here.”
“I do not treat Noah like a child,” Lysander said, strained.
“One grown-ass man doesn't tell another they can't do weightlifting. That's what a parent tells their kid. You're treating him like a child. Why?”
Lysander glanced over his shoulder and looked around. Not many people walked our way, but he got closer to me nonetheless and said, “Noah has a genetic defect.”
“He doesn't look like the sick pukes I met on Capital Station.”
“We have medicine for him.”
I scratched my chin as I mulled over the new information. “So why can't he handle the physical training?”
“Membranes in his body degrade when put through stress. It causes… problems.”
“Is he suffering?” I asked.
Lysander shook his head. “Noah won't talk about it, but he's been taking more painkillers than ever.”
His gaze fell to the floor, and for a moment the man wasn't a complete overload of insufferable.
People with genetic defects had it bad. On Capital Station it was a crime to reproduce, and Midway Station had a forced-sterilization program. Every defect carried teratogens—agents that caused deformities in their children. The resulting freaks were the lowest of the low, often restricted from everything, including joining the Federation military or holding well-paying jobs. Some defects didn't have it bad in terms of physical deformities, but some were so misshapen, they might as well have been a lump of solidifying jelly.
I knew a guy with a tumor on his back so large a person could fit inside. He smuggled chems in an open sore because no one with a functioning stomach would touch it.
“Listen,” I said, ending my own mental tangents. “Just let Noah train. Obviously, he thinks he can handle it.”
Lysander glowered, his jaw clenched. “Easy for you to say. You don't give a damn about anyone. This training could have permanent repercussions for Noah.”
“Can't he get into the healing vat and be done with it?”
“The mother cells aren't compatible with genetically-defective cells,” Lysander said, heated. “When the mother cells try to replicate, they form malignant tumors instead of fresh tissue. Defects die in the healing vats.”
I hadn't known that. But it didn't change my mind.
“If you keep telling Noah he's fragile, that's all he's ever going to be,” I said.
“A guy like you wouldn't understand. You've never had to survive with an illness.”
Realization struck me. Noah and Lysander were brothers.
Lysander was a defect, too.
However, his statement didn't ring true. I had lived a weird life. Lysander didn't know me, and he was jaded from his own experiences. I wanted to argue with the man—to tell him he was wrong—but there was no point. He'd convinced himself he was weak. I wasn't going to blow smoke up his ass, or throw him a pity party, or treat him like a pet that needed protecting.
He was a man, like any other man. Everyone had their own problems, and everyone dealt with them in their own way. If he allowed his disadvantages to shape his interactions and decisions, then he had chosen to be ruled by his weaknesses.
“You've heard my opinion,” I said. “You and Noah do whatever you want.”
“Don't try to convince Noah to go against my orders.”
“I don't give a damn about anyone, remember?” I said. “I'm not going to talk to your brother. Now get out of my face. I have training to do.”
* * *
I was on the verge of going stir-crazy.
We still had 86 days left until we reached our destination.
Capital Station was a hundred—maybe a thousand—times larger than the Star Marque. Being trapped on the starship had gotten me riled, like a caged child with a sugar tap straight to the arm. Drinking had become my only solace. I tried flirting, I really had—a fuckbuddy would have been nice—but I figured Sawyer lied when she said not everyone had paired off.
Lee and Quinn clung to each other with a honeymoon passion. Mara and Yuan remained a couple. Lysander and Noah had effectively become ghosts the moment Noah had stopped training with me. And I had interacted with Advik a grand total of two times outside of training and knew next to nothing about her, besides her skill as a pilot. Whenever I did try to find her, she disappeared. I swore she avoided me on purpose.
Maybe I should have taken a week off and mingled with other groups. Someone on our rig had to be as hard-up as I was. Anyone would do. I wasn't picky.
And there should've been another genetically-modified human somewhere on the Star Marque. I wanted to meet them, and if I was lucky, we would strike it up.
Star Marque Rising Page 10
