STARS. TWISTING, BURNING SWIRLS OF comets. Galaxies, supernovas, moons behind my eyes. It’s peaceful here. I want to stay here in the quiet. Floating.
Someone’s shaking me, but I can’t tell who; my eyes feel like they’re sewn shut. Thick and impossibly strong fingers grip my jaw and shove something long and spindly down my throat. I thrash. I can’t breathe. Oh God! I can’t breathe. My arms are like lead, but I will them to move and try to pull the thing from my throat. The hands are too strong. I struggle to yell, but I don’t have air. I’m using everything I have to shift the weight off, but I don’t have enough to get going. Awareness gives way to blackness.
“Vital signs. Stable. Private Tamar Blanchard. Age eighteen. Weight: seventy-five kilograms. Height: one-point-seven meters. Blood type…”
I draw in a deep breath and jerk upright. The stars are laid out above me, and up ahead I see nothing but endless fields of dimly lit kinograss, cerulean and glowing, no higher than my elbow if I stick my arm straight up. It’s been harvested recently. The same twin moons I’ve seen every night for the last twelve weeks greet me from the sky. We’re still here. Fully exposed. Not on base, or in the rescue pod, but still on the class IV planet where a sinkhole just… A tiny jolt of panic squeezes my heart. How long have I been out?
“It’s okay,” a male voice says.
I run my fingers across my face, or at least I try to. I’m in a biosuit. When did I put on a biosuit? I take a deep breath, letting myself get used to the feeling of the oxygen tube down my throat.
“It’s okay,” the voice says again, but I don’t hear it; it’s in my head. I jump backward as if I’ve been stung.
A guy squats in front of me. 712. “Fayard.”
Fay. Call me Fay. I’m sorry. I had to set up a telelink. You weren’t breathing well, and I wouldn’t be able to hear you, so I thought this would be better, he says without moving his lips, though I can hear him just fine.
“But my chip blocks teleware,” I say.
I don’t like people in my head. I’ve heard horror stories. Sometimes people forget who they are or start to believe that God is talking to them when it’s just the enemy hacking into their feed. I slide my hands over my body, taking an irrational account to make sure everything is still there. I glide my hand across my hips and groan. He would have had to take off my pants to get me into the suit.
I was training in counterintelligence. There are few things I can’t get around, he says.
“You’re a spy,” I say accusingly.
I didn’t say that. I’m a linguist, but we are military. Every person has a gift that can be a curse to someone else, he adds.
We sit in silence as the wind moves the grass in that eerie way that it does on this rock.
“Our pod crashed?” I ask, surprised. It takes a strong force for these pods to falter.
He nods.
Must have happened right after the cryosleep kicked in. I woke up just in time to see a thousand escape pods fall to the ground like some kind of hellish hailstorm. Some burned up in the atmosphere; others cracked open like eggs as soon as they hit land. I was able to switch the autopilot to manual and get us down before we met the same fate.
My “thanks” die in my throat. “How long have I been out?”
A few hours. I tried to wake you, but the disorientation had you. You fought like a demon when I tried to get you in the biosuit. I thought you might not make it, he says, his eyes filled with worry.
I dip my head, a poor excuse for gratitude, but it will have to do. I swallow, and the tube grates against my esophagus. I slide my finger across my wrist to access my controls and disable the breathing mechanism. The ropelike straw retracts and forces me to hack spit and phlegm into my suit for a full minute before I feel normal again.
Sorry about that. I couldn’t hear your vitals breakdown with the damage to your chip, and I didn’t want to take any chances. It’s hard to tell if someone is breathing through the suit.
“It’s fine. I’ll be fine. Where’s the pod?” I ask, looking around.
The pod is gone, he says.
“What?” Instinctively, I duck lower and peer into the distance, wondering if we’ve been seen.
We’re in rebel territory. I mixed up a dissolving agent as soon as we were both in the suits, he says, trying to reassure me.
I can see my eyes reflected in his, and I jump to my feet with awkward and frantic speed. It takes considerable effort to take even a few steps. The gravity on this planet is hard to acclimate to, now that we’re no longer in a biodome, and we’ve both still got the effects of cryosleep to shake off.
Slow down. It’s right here, he says, already knowing what I’m looking for.
Fay points to two small bags at his feet: one I’ve never seen before, and the other, mine. I rush over, as much as I can, and peer inside. The doll is intact. My body is whole. I realize that I owe Fayard everything, but there’s something that keeps me from the shower of gratitude my mama’s manners are begging me to give him.
“Can you hear my internal thoughts?” I ask, fully aware of his eyes on me.
Only if you would like me to. I didn’t install that kind of programming.
“But you could if you wanted to,” I reply, not sure if I entirely believe him.
I stand and throw one bag over my shoulder and hand him the other. Where are you going? he asks.
“To find somewhere to bed down. We can’t stay out here. Storm’s coming.”
He looks up at the sky as if he’s searching for something.
I’ve never seen a sky so clear, he observes.
“That’s how you know it’s about to hit,” I say. “Haven’t you ever been out in the field?”
Of course, he says, all defensive. But intelligence training is not the same as what they teach in combat units. Our agents don’t go out into the field unless they are fully prepared for all scenarios. It takes years.
I roll my eyes. This guy saved my life, that’s true, but damn it if I feel like babysitting a newb in enemy territory. Although he did dissolve the pod, so maybe he’s not completely useless.
I turn to face him and walk backward. It’s important to always keep your eyes on your team in the field, especially when your senses are muted in the suit.
“Beta-Sueron is notorious for its storms, so we’re going to need to find some shelter. If that’s the field bag from the pod, there should be a transmitter in there, but once the storm gets going, it won’t matter if it works or not. Nothing will be able to get in or out, and that’s if the rebels don’t use it to track us and kill us before we can be rescued,” I say, feeling like I’m back to my old self.
He smiles and my stomach flutters. I thought he was flirting before, but this smile is different. This one has intention in it or maybe even a promise. It makes me uneasy. I turn around and start to move a bit faster.
“How long have you been on base?” I ask.
I was late. My transfer didn’t go through properly, so I got in a few days before our fight.
“That was a week ago. Field training takes a month. You don’t… you don’t know anything about Suerone do you?” I say.
I read the in-flight magazine, if that’s what you’re asking, he says smugly.
“Do people think you’re funny?” I ask.
Some do, but I take it that this is not the time for funny, he says, and tries to put on a more serious face.
This guy annoys me. “If the storm doesn’t kill us, or the rebels don’t kill us, we still have to survive the night chill,” I reply.
He doesn’t say anything, but I can hear his next question in the silence.
“They wouldn’t put that in the manual. When the Sueronese think that colonists—that’s you and me—have touched down in their territory, they like to cue a weather bomb. It’s small-scale environmental terrorism. Basically, it triggers a drop in temperature that can freeze anything with a pulse right where it stands,” I add.
That’s a myth. It’s based on one of their old folktales about a woman with icy breath, who kills her lover after he leaves her for another, he says.
“I don’t know anything about folktales. I know war, and we are trying to win it and so are they,” I say. This life is as far from a folktale as any I’ve heard of.
There are no winners in war, just one side that suffers more than the other, Fay says.
“Or decides to end their suffering early. I guess it depends on who you’re asking. It’s not like any of us volunteered for this. We were born into it,” I say bitterly. Whose side is this guy on?
I wasn’t, he replies.
I’m surprised, but I don’t show it. I let the sound of our boots crunching through the low grass fill my aching ears. Everything aches, but I pretend that I’m feeling okay, for his benefit and mine. I notice just how low the grass has been cut where we’ve crashed. It’s not a good sign. There could be rebel camps where we can’t see them. In fact, I’m almost certain there are.
“Hmm? What?” I ask.
I said, why do you call them rebels?
I shrug. “I don’t know. It’s what my commanding officer calls them. It’s what the manuals call them. It’s what we use in training.”
Okay.
“Just okay? No, lecture on the state of the displaced Sueronese and their need for agency in the New Republic?” I reply, already anticipating his response.
He laughs. I take it you’ve heard that already..
“I have. It’s an old song. People love it, especially officers in units that don’t see combat,” I say with irritation.
I wouldn’t know. My service is mostly academic. My interaction with the enemy, as you call them, is in a hospital, in a prison, or through a monitor.
I think I see something out of the corner of my eye, but it’s just the wind bending the taller grass at the edge of the mowed field. From far away it looks like rows of long-haired men being blown backward. Nana would say it’s an omen, but I don’t see signs like she did. I don’t believe in signs.
“What do you think are the chances of us being found on this planet by an ally ship or rescue bot?” I ask. It’s a leading question. I know he doesn’t know the answer.
He shrugs, the nonchalance just dripping from his shoulders. Who can know?
“Given the time of the attack and the proximity of the outpost to the next Republican allied base and the likelihood of survivors based on the hostility rating of the reb—I’m sorry, the Sueronese, our chances of rescue are approximately three million and twenty-four thousand to one, decreasing by an additional ten or twenty thousand every Sueronese hour,” I say.
Interesting, he replies, as if I’ve just spouted the scientific names of all the visible native flora and not our imminent demise.
“My point is that out here it is us versus them, and it doesn’t matter how rich their traditions are or how beautiful their music or food culture may be. They are the enemy and we are the good guys.”
Do you feel like a good guy? he asks. I pause and take in those scrutinizing eyes and the curious half smile and know he’ll use my answer to further analyze me.
I blink hard and stumble forward as a strong feeling of déjà vu blooms across my skin.
He catches me. Our helmets clink a bit, and the pressure of his fingers against my suit seems grossly intimate. One second it feels like I’ve known him forever; the next I’m faced with a stranger and my stomach trembles with anxiety. I press my lips together and straighten myself back up to stand.
This guy is in the spy unit. He’s literally in my head. And I’ve been talking far, far too much.