The trip to the wormhole gave Steven time to explore more thoroughly the records kept on the Revenge. Even Alis, involved as she was with reprogramming the ship for the Cayth torpedoes and familiarizing herself with its systems, had barely skimmed them, although “skimming” for Alis was the human equivalent of learning by heart a couple of volumes of an encyclopedia. For every good piece of news he uncovered—a Military victory here, a Corps mishap there—he found three items of bad. One of them immediately necessitated a change of plan for the crew of the Revenge: Coramal, their destination, one of five Brigade bases and Military training facilities scattered throughout Illyri-controlled systems, and the planet on which Steven and Paul had been trained, was gone.
The Corps—or rather, as the report made clear, the Securitats—had decided that the Brigade bases were primary targets at the outbreak of the civil war. The Corps had always distrusted the conscripts that largely made up the Brigades, because they were human and under the control of the Military, but the Securitats seemed to indulge a hatred of humanity that bordered on the genocidal. In the civil war, it was pretty clear on which side the Brigades would fight. Perhaps then, thought Steven, it should have come as no surprise when the Revenge’s records revealed that Securitat assault squads had attacked the five bases almost simultaneously, and without mercy. There were, he noted, no injuries among the Brigades; all casualties were recorded as fatalities. He knew what that meant: the Securitats had killed the wounded.
The teenager closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. He remembered the staff, both Illyri and human, who had trained him on Coramal. Most had been decent, and some much more than that, among them Cairus, who had been his mentor and senior pilot trainer. Cairus had taken nothing but joy in Steven’s achievements, and had made him the pilot he was. Cairus was patient, intelligent, and a born teacher, but he had only taken on the role of pilot trainer after a skimmer crash severed his legs and damaged his spine so badly that even advanced Illyri medical technology could only manage to keep him alive, control the pain, and provide him with a hover chair so he could move around. The spinal injuries meant that he no longer had full control of his limbs, and his Chip no longer properly functioned, meaning that he could not connect with a ship’s systems. He created great pilots, he told Steven, so they would be able to do what he could do no longer. When they flew, so too did he.
And then there was Hague, the human master sergeant, who had been conscripted in the first months of the Illyri Conquest and had remained with the Brigades even after his period of conscription ended. On the day that he graduated from the flight academy, Steven asked Hague why he had stayed, even as he softened into middle age. They were each drinking an illicit beer, brewed by Hague and another sergeant, Guzman, in a closet on the base. The Illyri turned a blind eye to the hidden brewery, and it allowed the sergeants to provide a small celebration for the recruits as they passed out—sometimes literally, because the ale was so strong that it made Steven’s eyes water. He had only drunk one glass, and was already unsteady on his feet. Even Hague, who was used to it, was looking a bit glassy-eyed. It was, Hague admitted, a particularly strong batch of ale. He thought they might have been too heavy-handed with the medicinal alcohol.
“Why did I stay?” he said, in reply to Steven’s question. “I stayed because I knew more than anyone else about keeping human beings alive in the Brigades. I’m the last of my class. All the rest were killed. Only I lived.”
He took a deep draft of beer, and swayed slightly in his chair in the aftermath.
“So I could have gone home, and let the whole damn process start all over again, or I could sign on the dotted line and try to drum into the skulls of ignorant little know-nothings like you how to survive in a universe that was hell-bent on reducing them to corpses, which is what I did. So if you survive your period of conscription, you remember old Haguey, you hear? And when you’re saying your prayers at night, you thank God for sending me to kick you in the arse when you needed it.”
Hague stretched a huge paw around Steven’s shoulder and pulled him closer, breathing beer fumes all over him, but his face was deeply serious, and his eyes were those of a man who had read the names of too many dead kids.
“But most of all,” he said, “you look after the weaker ones the way I looked after you, understand? You and your brother, you’re stronger than the rest. He’s starting to realize it, but it’ll take you a bit longer, ’cause you’re that bit younger, but you’re a good ’un. I should know. I’ve seen ’em all—the good, the bad, and the dead.”
His hand pressed against Steven so firmly that he thought his shoulder might dislocate.
“But mostly,” Hague concluded, “I’ve seen the soon-to-be dead. Don’t you be adding to their number.”
He released Steven, drained his glass, and stood up. He straightened his shoulders, adjusted his sleeves, and promptly collapsed unconscious. It took Steven and three of his classmates to carry him back to his bunk. They left him sleeping happily, and did not see him again before they left Coramal.
Cairus and Hague: without them, Steven knew that he would certainly have been dead by now. The Revenge’s records indicated that the human survivors from all five bases had been taken to Krasis. Krasis was a prison world, and it housed the main contingent of the other human force within the Military: the Punishment Battalions, filled with criminals, hardened Resistance fighters, and whomever among Earth’s people the Illyri had wanted to work into the grave. Few humans survived for long in the Battalions, and Steven and Paul had been lucky to escape being placed in them.
If Cairus and Hague were still alive, they would be on Krasis, along with the rest of Brigades and whatever remained of the poor sods in the Battalions.
Steven opened his coms link.
“Alis?”
“Yes, Steven.”
“Course change. I’m about to send you the new coordinates.”
Alis spoke carefully.
“Steven, may I remind you that Paul’s orders were to make for Coramal.”
“Coramal has been destroyed. We’re going to Krasis instead.”
The pause before Alis replied went on for long enough to speak volumes.
“Krasis is a prison world,” she said.
“I know that,” said Steven. “If it wasn’t, then we wouldn’t be able to organize a breakout, would we?”
“No, I suppose not.”
Another pause, even longer than the first.
“We’re just one ship,” she said. “And three crew.”
“I know,” said Steven. By then he had left the captain’s cabin, walked half the length of the cruiser, and was standing behind Alis. She looked up at him in surprise.
“Which is why,” Steven continued, “it’s going to be the best prison break ever.”