Drew survives his night in the armored ATV, only looking moderately worse for wear after so many hours in its cramped confines. We radioed his father, Temple, last night, and he arranged our meet up with Rajcik for early morning in a heavily trafficked local tavern. With no real darkness on this planet because of the Algol system’s three stars, morning and evening, even for a canteen, make zero difference to those with business to transact.
Soltznin and Drew guard the ship while David and I meet Temple and Rajcik. Soltznin seems to have reached a point of equilibrium and just wants to get this over with as soon as possible so she can do whatever she can to regroup with the Corps. Sweep and patrol ships can always be counted on to show up eventually, and I have no doubt one or two functioning non-Admin satellites orbit Dramma Sdutti, which she’ll be able to buy access to in order to contact a local patrol and get picked up. By now, the Corps has to be investigating the
Hammer
’s destruction, and Soltznin and David shouldn’t have any trouble convincing them that they’re stranded survivors. Despite the stress of all the coming unknowns, I still maintain hope that there may have been others.
Rajcik and Temple and David and I sit at a round table in the basement of the building that houses the tavern and a few other smaller apartments. Light fixtures, covered by years of plaque from smoke and other unidentified air particulates, dangle from the exposed steel beams crossing the ceiling but do a poor job of illuminating anything. Their yellow-blue tinge makes everyone milling inside look like a jaundiced, freshly dead body. The exception is Drew’s father. Already sallow, he just looks like an animated corpse, minus the freshness.
Rajcik is dark skinned and muscular to the point of being intimidating. He sits across from David and me with rigid but relaxed alertness, the whites of his eyes, bright and clear, seeming to defy the dingy light. One hand has held on to a glass the entire time we’ve been here, about twenty minutes now, but he’s never taken a drink. I’ve had ample time to observe the layers of white scar tissue that cover his knuckles, and it’s not a stretch to imagine those hands beating men to death. A lot of men.
The surprise-that-shouldn’t-be is how quickly he’d agreed to buy our e-craft, and for our asking price, which tells me that he’s already had someone out to our landing area to assess it. That, or he thinks we’ll be easy marks and is doing what it takes to appease us before ghosting us. But maybe this isn’t the case. Even with his notoriety, he wouldn’t have lasted this long as a thief among thieves if he played everyone he dealt with. The criminal underclass has its own justice system, and even the most ruthless “businessman” isn’t above the criminal code.
And our business is nearly concluded.
“Temple,” the smuggler says, “go up and tell MacCready to pull the land trans to the front. We’ll meet you upstairs.”
Temple rises, leaning heavily on the table for support, then trudges to and up the stairs.
David is about to rise to follow when I interrupt. “One more thing,” I say to Rajcik, “I want to include as part of the purchase a selection of…let’s call it ‘personal aids.’”
The smuggler’s eyes, as dark as mineshafts, regard me with blatant cunning. After a moment, he says, “No.”
His abrupt dismissal takes me aback. Before I can clamp down on my reactions, my eyes widen the tiniest bit, not so much in surprise as in irritation. But I know better than to show any more emotion. “Okay, then no deal.”
David’s head snaps around to look at me, surprised at my declaration. Then he looks back at Rajcik. “Deal’s on. You can buy guns from someone else, Aly.”
Rajcik says nothing, but his tongue snakes out and licks his lower lip, as if savoring something. Taking this as agreement, David finishes standing and drops a hand heavily on my shoulder, a warning not to further complicate things. “You’ll want to follow us to the ship,” he tells the smuggler.
“Sit down.” Still holding the glass, still not drinking from it, he continues, as if we’d both complied without question. “No, you don’t need guns. What you two need is a job.”
“Excuse me?” I ask.
He leans back in his seat and stretches his legs out farther beneath the table, looking utterly at ease. But I don’t miss the tension in his forearms and shoulders, the way his left hand has dropped to his lap where it’s near a weapon strapped either to his calf or possibly under the tabletop. “You’re already carrying enough for self-defense. So what could you use more weapons for? Rob a few people, maybe even steal a ship—if you can fly one—but then what? Take it to the next rock and repeat the process until the Admin or Corps run you down, or some other deserter with less to lose gets the drop on you?”
“You don’t know wh—” David begins angrily.
“I know exactly what I’m talking about,
deserter
. Everyone in this room knows it.” His eyes rove from one side of the canteen to the other, blazing with intelligence and ferocity. “You don’t leave the Corps without bringing some of it with you. In your case, I’d say it’s more than you want. It’s like a deep stain, more than skin deep. It’s in your muscles, the way you walk, the way you had every head counted and threat assessed before you were a meter inside the room. You even smell like Corps. Dirty.”
“Look, asshole—”
“David, wait.” I put a hand on his wrist. “We’re not Corps.”
Rajcik’s lips stretch across his teeth, revealing their luminous whiteness, in something approximating a smile but more closely resembling the skin covering a dried-up mummy’s skull. “I didn’t say you were Corps. I said you’re deserters.”
“And you want to turn us in? Looking for a reward?”
Strangely, his eyes fall to my hand, still on David’s wrist. “Drew told me you two served together. Brother and sister.”
Momentarily confused by the subject change, I answer automatically. “Yeah.”
“You look like a good team, like you know how to fight together.”
“Answer her question,” David says. “Are you planning to turn us in?”
“Do you really think I’d tell you if I were? Come on, you both look smarter than that.” His left hand rises from beneath the table and presses flat next to the glass in his right. Like a peace offering, he finally lets go of the glass and puts that hand down, too. But there is no peace in his cold eyes.
It’s like a deep stain, more than skin deep.
Hadn’t I thought almost the same thing yesterday? I scrutinize him, looking for some indication of his intent, and my eyes wander over his face and neck. His large Adam’s apple is tattooed over by a standard 7.62 bullet case about the size of my fist, the meaningful end pointing up toward his chin. The ink is black and thick and makes the skin it covers stand out more than normal, like more scar tissue. It’s a prison tattoo, but it carries none of the false bravado that a lot of the revolving-door cons in the system flash like paper-tiger flags. Rajcik is authentic; I can see it in his cruel face and hear it in his severe voice. My brother and I may wear Corps inside and out, but something tells me the stains on Rajcik’s soul are far darker.
Which, in a strange way, makes my own dark guilt seem lighter. That comforts me.
“What kind of job?” I finally ask.
“Bigger jobs than this,” he answers. “The truth is, I rarely bother selling one-offs like yours. But this infighting happening in the Capital Military Corps is leaving security gaps, creating unique opportunities for Corps impersonators, and making it easier for me to stick a shiv between their ribs—in a manner of speaking. Your e-craft went up in value almost overnight. Make you happy?”
The question isn’t supposed to be answered, and he continues, “And one more thing. You two caught my eye, and I’m looking for new help. It’s dangerous, but I think you can handle that. The pay is twenty-five–seventy-five split on everything we unload. I take the twenty-five, and my crew splits the rest.”
“Sounds like a good reason for your crew to make sure as few as possible ever come back from a sale. Is that why you’re shorthanded?” David doesn’t bother trying to keep the contempt out of his voice.
Rajcik’s expression doesn’t change. “Smart. I knew it.”
I already know what David’s thinking, and despite my surfacing interest in Rajcik’s proposal—I’ll leave trying to decide if it’s genuine or not for later—I stick with my brother. “Not interested, Rajcik. Now, do you want to see my list, or should we go to your competition?”
Rajcik looks over my shoulder, and I read an acknowledgment in his expression. Jerking around in my seat, I notice a woman I hadn’t seen yet standing next to the stairwell, as if guarding it. I would have remembered her—the scars covering her face and part of her scalp, even the backs of her hands, are hideous, disfiguring. Her posture is vigilant, and she holds a bulky Corps-issue CCIX carbine at her side, ready to be brought into action.
I turn back, seeing that David has noticed her too, and start to rise, cursing the realization that we’ve just walked into a trap. Then Rajcik says, “Wait here. I need to speak with my colleague.”
He gets up and walks past the two of us without concern, knowing we aren’t likely to do anything rash, not with no exit points to escape through should bullets start flying. From my seat, I watch him and the scarred woman speak together, their voices low, for a few seconds. Eventually, he nods, then comes back and stands beside the table, telling us without words that our transaction is almost concluded.
Nothing in his face has changed, but like an animal, I feel the shift. He stares at us with the same unbreakable gaze, but not like a wolf deciding whether the rabbit has enough meat on its bones to be worth the chase. What’s his game? What had he and the woman been discussing?
“I’ll get you what you need,” he says. “But I don’t have it nearby. Meet me in a week. Same place. We’ll make the trade for the ship and the guns at the same time.” Not bothering to wait for our answer, he heads toward the stairs. The smoke in the air seems to seek him out, a gray-blue plume drawing around him in a wizardlike cloak.
On my feet immediately, I ask, “Don’t you want the list?”
He stops and turns. “I’ll have what you want.” Appraising us for another second, he finishes with: “If you change your minds about the job before the end of the week and want to meet sooner, contact me through Temple. And if you don’t show…not many of your kind last long out here on your own.”
The two of us stare at his retreating back as if it might be on fire. Breaking the silence, David says, “It might have been a mistake contacting him. Aly, you don’t want to get involved with him.
I
don’t want you to get involved with him.”
“You’ve always had my back, big brother.”
We exchange a heavy glance. There’s really no argument. His point is 100 percent true, but he knows my trajectory is fixed and can’t be changed. I don’t blame him for wanting to stay in the Corps; I can’t, he’s sacrificed more than anyone should have to, for me. But that odd comfort I’d felt at recognizing Rajcik’s cruelty, maybe much worse than mine could ever be, it resonates. If I’m not choosing the side of the Corps, which side am I choosing? What the smuggler is offering is a place to dig in, put the question of sides aside and maybe just live for myself alone. At least for a while. Could living in the shade of someone else’s crimes veil me from memories of my own? Part of me wants to find out. Most of me wants it to be true.
David breaks into my dark thoughts. “A week. What the hell are we going to do for a week?”
I shake my head, answering, “And what will Soltznin’s reaction be when we tell her the situation? I won’t hold my breath for a ‘well done’ or a ‘that’s fine.’”
With no reason to hurry, we stick around the tavern long enough to finish the drinks we’d ordered. Daytime on this moon vacillates between hotter than smoking lava and too hot to live, and neither of us jumps for joy at the thought of having to negotiate the sufferfest temps for that long. Even though the e-craft’s climate control will keep us comfortable, being stuck on the e-craft will get old fast.
“We need to move the ship,” he eventually says. “Stay ahead of the scavs who may try to gank it out from under us. That is, if Rajcik and his crew aren’t already in the process of doing so.”
His words jolt me, and I set my glass down with a clunk. “You’re right. Let’s go. Make sure Soltznin and the kid aren’t in any trouble.”
With a final gulp, David rises and follows me up the stairs.
Into a nest of Corps soldiers.
Seven carbine barrels point in our direction. The squad of armored troops wielding them form a half-moon near the front wall of the canteen, and I’m surprised by how intimidating they appear now that I’m not one of them. As I absorb this, the quiet inside the bar hits me; not a single civilian is left to enjoy the establishment’s fine refreshments. The Corps had cleared the place out quickly, efficiently, and silently, waiting for us.
David and I become statues, except for our hands, which we move away from our weapons ever so cautiously. We both know that drawing them would be instant death.
“That bastard,” David curses. “He turned us in.”
Soltznin appears and pushes forward from behind the formation. “If you mean that scav smuggler scumbag, he got away, Tech Sergeant. He’ll be caught eventually, but it’s you two that are the biggest problem. Now solved.”
“Soltznin! What the hell?” David says.
“You have to be crazy to think I was going to let you
mutiny
against the Corps, Erikson. You’re no better than that gunrunner. Neither of you.” Her eyes come to rest where I stand in silence, my fury paralyzing my ability for rational thought, much less speech.
“Get your hands in the air. Tech One”—she turns to the nearest soldier and flicks her Bowker in our direction—“relieve them of those arms.” As he approaches us, she continues, “Stealing and intent to sell Corps property is just the beginning of your crimes. I’m sure Central Command’s justice counselors will have a few to add to that.”
The soldier pulls the carbine from my shoulder and roughly pats me down, then yanks my arms behind me and quickzips my hands. Soltznin had been biding her time, waiting until David and I were out of range so she could reconnect with the Corps. She’d never intended to go along with our plan, that much is clear to me now. What I can’t tell is which is more enraging: her turning us in or her double-crossing David, who she knows planned to return to the Corps after helping sort me out.
David says, “Crimes? You mean like shooting another soldier aboard the
Hammer
so you could take the evacuation craft for yourself?”
Before he says another word, Soltznin, her face contorted with rage, whips the Bowker against his temple, sending him to his knees. Reflexively, I lunge, but the Corpsmember still has my arms and holds me back.
She leans over David, who raises his bleary eyes to her. “Open your mouth again, Tech Sergeant, and I’ll be your executioner as well as your savior. Understood?” He says nothing but holds her eyes with his until she turns around. “Let’s get them to the scout.”
The Tech holding my arms prods me toward the door, dislodging a crazy-sounding rage-laugh from me. The situation holds a certain sick humor. Less than forty-eight hours have passed, and I’ve gone from soldier to deserter to prisoner. It would have rounded out well if I’d taken Rajcik’s offer and become a smuggler, too. Guess I’ll never find out how well that description would have fit.
They’d brought us by
land trans directly from the colony to the red-and-green anodized Corps security scout, which sits grounded beside our smaller e-craft. Soltznin’s adopted unit had to have been told where to find the ship; the e-craft’s cloaking feature would have kept it well hidden from anyone who wasn’t specifically looking for it.
Soltznin. She must have transmitted an SOS either sometime last night when she was the only one awake on watch or as soon as David and I had left to meet Rajcik. No wonder she’d become so noncombative about the plan to sell the e-craft and go our separate ways. She’d wanted to make the road to betraying us as smooth as possible.
Trusting people
—might as well just arm a grenade and shove it down my throat. It’s faster and achieves essentially the same outcome.
The scout’s not meant to carry prisoners, so David and I have been locked into a storage room serving as a makeshift holding cell for going on two hours. The patrol unit is waiting until the troop transport ship this scout and crew are attached to returns to local orbit before we launch to join them. From there, it will be a transfer to the fleet cruiser PCA
Galatea
, which
does
have formal prisoner accommodations, and finally to one of the two Admin-governed central planets that have the military infrastructure to deal with our situation, Obal 8 or Obal 3, to stand trial. With the havoc of the Corps rebels’ insurrection, whatever passes for justice in the Ministry of Security these days is unlikely to show much leniency for David and me. The example of Ohm Lumi and half a dozen other recent missions proves it.
Soltznin’s pistol-whip hadn’t made David bleed, but a purple-and-yellow sunset bruise adorns the side of his head and cheekbone. Of the few, maybe just one, positives in the situation is that they’d freed our wrists before locking us in. I’d pounded on the door for five minutes demanding medical care for him, at least some cold pads, before David asked me to stop, the noise making his buzzing bee of a headache turn into the whole hive. It wasn’t doing any good anyway, other than letting me vent some of my fury and frustration. But now that I’m sitting here counting down minutes to our judgment, I’m realizing there is a lot more fury where that came from, and it wants nothing more than to vent in the form of a barrage of automatic fire straight into Soltznin’s smug fucking face.
With the room cleared of everything but us, David and I both sit on the floor and lean against the wall, quietly thinking over the shitstorm we’re flapping in. For fifteen minutes, I’ve been warring with myself over whether or not to point out to him just how twisted and misguided his allegiance to the Corps is, given how willing its other members are to make whipping boys of their own compatriots. Soltznin is bad enough, but she’s just one example of an epidemic of self-serving opportunists who happen to wear Corps uniforms—just like Bernthal had been, just like the
Hammer
’s commanding general had been, just like nine out of ten of them are. If being Corps means anything, it means having a thoughtless ability to take life with no remorse, especially if it benefits you. Tollhut had been right. The Corps turns people into monsters.
My remorse, it seems, has finally caught up with me. The only reason I’m here now instead of in uniform, attached to the
Galatea
’s crew and hunting down other deserters, is because my remorse at being the tool of a force with no conscience has finally turned my stomach, maybe my soul—if such a thing existed—inside out. It isn’t as if I want to die for it, though. I’m not some kind of space opera hero, or a martyr, willing to sacrifice myself for the good of the oppressed masses. Jesus Christ. No, that is not me. But if desertion comes at the price of death, I’d at least like to know my last act in life was for some purpose greater than anything I’ve done up to now, which isn’t too high a bar to set, really.