CHAPTER SIX
Lem
Lem bowed her head and bit her lower lip, ducking toward the shadows as the groans of the dying met her at the entrance to the Growen transport. The metallic scent of blood blended in the air with cleaning fluid, hot steel, and men’s sweat; she stepped over the wounded, squeezing by the benches lining the walls, to sit as far back in the corner as she could. The floor shook, and rolled, and the transport lifted off.
“Zej, what the hell are you doing back there? Get over to the door, last one in guards the hatch.”
“Yes sir.” But Frank Zej—Lem—groaned inside. The projection on her face only lasted a few hours without her helmet, and Lem was notorious enough for her Frelsi work to know that the instant her disguise faded she’d meet a new friend named “big burning hole in the chest.”
Can’t escape your past, Lem grinned. It wasn’t a real grin. It was as fake as the rest of her thoughts these days.
Hush. She was sweating. Why was she sweating? She’d made it out alive without ruining too many things or killing anyone she loved. The atmosphere roared as they left it behind to plunge into the twinkling stars where space sprinkled ice crystals on the windows. Too cold to sweat. Shivering. Shivering and sweating at the same time. Bloodseas, Jei.
It felt like fear. Like fear about to explode and make her do something stupid. Nah, girl, just gotta let off a little steam. She turned to the blitzer beside her, a blitzer she liked because she knew something about him he didn’t: he’d helped kidnap her last year. “Hey, Banks.”
He turned his head. “Yeah, Zej?”
“What’d the ghost say when the waiter got his order wrong?”
“I dunno. What?”
“I was ex-spectre-ing better service.”
“Man, that’s horrible,” Banks sighed. But the corner of his mouth turned up. She’d raised his spirits. They weren’t hard to raise: in one offensive last month, when both of them had been stuck in a canyon together with a dead body for days, they’d kept each other sane by making morbid jokes at it until rescue.
And, although Banks didn’t know it, she made him laugh back then, too, when she was Lem Benzaran his prisoner instead of this pink-haired albino with an untamable five-o-clock shadow. She and Jei didn’t get along at all back then, but—
Shyte, Jei.
No, keeeeep talking. “Okay, Banks, I got a question for real now. Like a riddle.”
“Go ahead.”
“Girl discovers she’s got an evil twin. Well, not a twin exactly. But someone just like her, only cooler, stronger, better. Then she finds out her twin’s gonna eliminate, like, a million innocent people.”
“Wow, alright.”
“So girl goes to stop this twin, but she’s hidden, right—the only way to find the twin, to ask her why, to get her to stop, is to join this weird murder-cult. But they got people in the murder-cult who can read your mind, so you gotta brainwash yourself to get in.”
“Whoa.” Banks gripped his hair with both hands, literally sitting on the edge of his seat. “Like the Frelsi.”
“Sure. So here’s the question,” Zej leaned in. “How much self-brainwashing you think you could handle before you actually changed your mind?”
“Whoaaaaaa.” Banks whistled, and shook his head. “Q-psh,” he said finally, making an explosion sign with his hand by his forehead. “Your mind, man, your mind is crazy. You always make me think, Zej.”
Lem nodded. Answer the question, dammit.
He didn’t. “It’s good to have someone like you around to bring a little oddity into terrible situations, Zej.” Banks sighed, patting Lem on the shoulder. She returned a sad grin for his sake, and then they both turned to look at the floor with folded hands.
Shyte, shyte, shyte, why won’t you just answer the question? How slow did this dang transport move, anyway? Did it take that long, really, to get to Alpino? The air conditioning blowing on her face made her feel so naked. Everyone else had a helmet on, and she was the one person who actually needed one. The thin plastic sticker behind her ear, the tape holding her holographic lie in place—she wanted to touch it, to make sure—
She stopped herself. It’s still there. Messing with it might turn it off.
“Commander Diebol wants to see you when we land, Zej.”
“Yes, sir.”
She forced herself to feel elated. She’d waited months to get an opportunity alone with him, and after how she’d gotten those codes, he had to praise her.
… Unless he knew she’d lost her helmet and caused the subsequent bloodbath.
Ugh. There was no winning here.
Jei
My morning after was like a hangover, a break-up, and a funeral all took a dump on my face—like the beginning of a bar joke leading up to a drunken pun. I couldn’t sleep, so I ended up in the next day’s briefing exhausted and angry at everything from the tattered brown curtains to the orange nutrient slop that reminded me of prison.
Orange is the best kind, Lem and I used to joke.
It was a working breakfast. Commanding officers from all weapons classes and job descriptions slurped glowing goo in the weak, speckled morning light of the conference room; hushed whispers covered the creaking of the dark wooden chairs carved for various alien bodies. On the holograph-studded metal table, tentacles, fingers, and pens tapped and scribbled symbols that represented people in life and death. I was reporting on what had happened in my little corner of the battlefield, and also shadowing these geniuses to learn leadership as they dug into minutia and strategy, touching the soul of war beyond her violent body.
“I say we retaliate while they’re down on ground forces. That’s the game, beetlekissers, that’s the only game,” Sergeant Strong was saying, rubbing the horn on his nose.
My commanding officer, Colonel Win, nodded. Normally it would’ve thrilled my blood to watch these two colossal Hoernigs go back and forth, Win’s calm silence balancing Strong’s colorful moods as their flat brown amphibian faces reflected light with the intensity of mammalian sweat …
Today, meh.
Today I kept remembering my former commander, Captain Rana, and the way Lem and I bickered in front of him when he sent us on our first mission. Bloodseas, he would’ve loved to see the Paradox Order we’d created, would’ve loved the way Seria and I used the Growen forces against themselves last night. “You’re growing, growing, growing,” he would’ve said. I missed that. Missed him, and now Lem, too.
I had to know.
“I’m sorry,” I tapped Win’s shoulder, my voice low. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What’s that, cadet?” Strong snapped. “You got something you can’t say to us all?”
Win held up his bony, ridged hand. Strong laid off. “Tell you what, cadet?” Win asked.
“You knew Lem deserted. You knew it four months ago when she first left, when you started giving me the—” I held my tongue and didn’t accuse a superior officer of giving me the run-around. “Why couldn’t I know about my partner, sir?”
Win and Strong glanced at each other. Other soldiers around the table crossed their arms or sighed. “We’re not here to smooth over your lady problems or babysit your feelings, Bereens,” Strong barked. “We’re here to plan an offensive. You report on what you saw, and otherwise shut up.”
I smiled, eyes narrowed. It’s not a good thing when I smile in public. “What I saw, Sergeant, is that Lem Benzaran almost killed us all yesterday. Because no one warned me she’d defected, I gave her our perimeter entry codes, and she subsequently let in all of the Growen ground forces.”
“Strong?” a large tentacled Tridian gurgled through his robotic voice box.
“That’s an incomplete picture. Everything proceeded as planned.” Strong started to brief on how Seria and I then used Lem’s helmet to destroy the Growen ground forces; Colonel Win tapped my shoulder, and nodded his horn toward the door as he rose.
I followed him through the polymerwall. It softened as it recognized our DNA and let us pass into the whitewashed cement hallway. Other soldiers darted like lizards out of the path of Win’s broad-shouldered shadow.
Maybe here it would all make sense. Maybe here he told me I’d messed up, she was undercover, and he didn’t want to blow her cover in front of the others.
We turned another corner, pushing through a polymerwall into the office that used to belong to Captain Rana. Gone were the Wonderfrog’s lush plants and wet spray-hoses that used to hydrate him; Colonel Win needed only a simple desk, and one small wooden plaque on the wall with four Hoernig letters burnt into it. Once upon a time, before the interrogation center, I would’ve appreciated the office’s respectable simplicity.
Now the emptiness clenched my whole body. I pinned myself against the wall.
Win didn’t bother to sit down. He whirled and locked the wall as soon as it splooshed shut behind me. “I know you don’t want sympathy. I won’t pretend to give it,” he said. “We were taking orders from above. I questioned them—Strong did, too—but we were told because of your mental health history that your performance would suffer if you knew, and that her abilities posed no significant threat. You said yourself last year she couldn’t even em-push yet.”
Uh … “Sir, how did you know I said that?”
“The Paradox Project was my business for a while.”
The Paradox … Project? “I didn’t know Rana’s files were that … detailed.” I shivered, struggling to keep my attention off the empty room as my brain processed. Lem and I had started the Paradox Order privately without knowing about any secret file, just requesting missions as we saw fit; heck, I thought Command just called us “Paradox Warriors” as a joke.
Maybe Lem left when she discovered her Paradox Order had a Big Brother.
Wait. “I’m sorry, was your business, sir?” I asked.
“Before Benzaran defected the Project moved under other supervision. Your everyday military duties still fall under me. Your Paradoxes do not.”
My head spun. The room was so empty. So very, very empty. I gripped the color green close to my chest and coughed. Focus. “If I ask who supervises that … program … now, would you tell me, sir?”
“Your father.”
“The admiral?” I gripped my hair in my hands. “But we’re just cadets!”
“You don’t believe that.” Win crossed his arms with a half-grin. And he was right: I didn’t. We’d run what, fifty-six world-saving missions, since we escaped the interrogation center? And Lem wasn’t even seventeen? No wonder we’d caught the Admiral’s attention.
But …
I rubbed the back of my neck and stared at the floor.
“You look unsatisfied,” Win said.
“I can’t believe Strong’s briefing right now that you let me give Lem the codes on purpose to … what, trap the Growen? I don’t believe that’s true, and even if I did, it’s—weird.” I swallowed. “I guess I was hoping to get chewed out for blowing Lem’s cover. I don’t want this to be real.”
“Sorry to disappoint, cadet.”
I forced an exhale, still staring at my boots. My voice sounded small to me when I spoke again; I took a deep breath to force back some bass. “Why did she defect, sir?”
He didn’t answer. I looked up, and suddenly realized he looked deeply uncomfortable. His smooth, hairless brow twitched, and his lips turned down. He tapped his thick, padded fingers against his ridged knuckles like tiny drums. “Your father was the last person to talk to her,” he said. “He might know.”
I started. “Wait, the Admiral took over our account, and then Lem disappeared?”
He nodded with uneasy, narrowed eyes, as if guilty about giving me hope. “You’re wondering if your father sent her on an undercover mission I don’t know about,” he said.
“And kept it secret from me so a fight between us would legitimize her to the Growen.” I gritted my teeth. “Diebol tried something similar last year.”
“The thought’s crossed my mind.” Win admitted. “It’s just … it’s not likely, Jei. The admiral will be on Luna-Guetala next week if you’d like to ask him what happened.”
A week? What would happen to Lem within that week?
“But I assume you’re able to call your father before then,” he added.
Yeah, he assumed a lot. The last time I even thought of the Admiral as father I was splayed out delirious under torture. “Sir, who told you I’m related to the Admiral?”
“You just did. I guessed.” He stood up straight. “Let’s go.”
I followed him out of his horrid empty office with a backward glance at the illegible plaque. I didn’t have to ask Win not to spread talk about me and the Admiral: we both knew “star soldier” gossip would make the Admiral vulnerable and screw with my apparently all-important “performance.”
And blasted bloodseas, what had the old man said now that made Lem leave?
Had to be something undercover. She’d dropped her helmet for me on purpose. That’s what she’d said, right? “I knew you’d find a way.” She’d just played such a good mimic she’d almost fooled me, caught me off guard. I wouldn’t normally believe over-honest Lem could run this kind of charade, but hey, like she said, in four months, a person can change. Right?
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder, pulling me very suddenly out of my grieving denial.
“Jei,” Colonel Win said.
“Yes sir.”
“I’m sorry about what you’re going through. I can’t pretend to feel what you’re feeling, but I know if Sergeant Strong or any of my other close battle-brothers went AWOL, I’d hurt. And honestly,” he paused, and sighed. “I would have told you, if it’d been up to me. It seems heartless to play two kids off each other.”
“Thanks.” Eh, I should probably look him in the face when I said that. I did, and the sad, sympathetic smile on his porous cheeks almost made me smile, too.