The Heapists scraped together a small memorial for Martin. I linger in the open entrance as they light his solitary candle at the foot of the Lady. With the way her downcast eyes are painted on the sheet, it seems as though her focus is honed in on that candle — her single care is for the soul the tiny flame represents. The only person in attendance is Cassie. She stands in the bench-less room with her hand holding her bicep, her tears dripping down her chin and smacking the metal deck.
When the service ends, she exits alone.
"Miss Winters. I'm —"
She shoves past me, not stopping to listen to my pathetic apology. Brother Roy meanders around the room for a few minutes, fussing with the candle before allowing me to have the room to myself. I suffocate with the inescapable heat. There's only one candle, but it burns hotter than the fire that consumed the Sink. I drop to my knees and rest on my heels. When the chapel doors clink closed and I know I'm totally alone, I release everything I'd been holding back.
I cry.
This has been too much. Too much too fast. Seeing the kid, his shocked expression as he was cut down the middle, split in two, his entrails slithering out and dropping to the deck around the ridged claw of the Xani, was too much. I'm not used to slicing. I'm accustomed to burning. Exploding. Bullets. Falling. Smushing by concrete slabs.
Not slicing.
A violent sickness rises with each throat-clogging sob.
Martin was so young. Not a boy, but not one of the hardened adults of the URE. He was just a kid. I wonder if his mother will know what happened. If his father will light a candle on his ship as well. He was someone's child. Now he's dead.
When my shallow well of sadness dries, I wipe my face with my sleeve and stand. Brother Roy's blobby outline startles me as I perceive it through the shadows. He's been behind me all along, his own eyes as puffy and red as mine must be.
An insult rises as rancid as the bile I choke down.
Not today. We're all suffering here. Instead, I leave without another word.
If we considered McCroy the quiet type before, it's nothing compared to how he recedes after the event with the Xani. His presence is wispy thin, like words have never come from him—like silence is a natural state of his existence. McCroy's been living on mute. A few of the VIPERs and I sit in the mess hall, quietly contemplating the contents of our plastic bowls of soup, no one registering the rubbery taste of the protein cubes floating in the sand-colored liquid. Flatts slurps what's in her spoon, but not with her customary gusto. Coodi hasn't touched her bowl. Neither have I. There's an empty space between Umpire and Flatts where I didn't realize McCroy was a constant fixture at our dinner time routine. The emptiness screams louder than if his solemn face appeared to join us for our melancholy meal. I miss him.
Umpire, his unofficial guardian, says he hasn't left his rack in days—since the event.
"I'm worried about him, Boss. The kid's gone real quiet."
McCroy isn't the only one. I noticed it this morning while standing in the thick of the Marketplace with the civilians, their dagger glares scraping across my skin. News of Martin's death spread faster than noxious gas. With all the different labels I've worn in the past — traitor, Reaper, killer, barren — over my head, I've become accustomed to this treatment. What bothers me most is that my VIPERs are feeling the animosity as much as I am.
I nod and continue staring into my soup.
"They're shocked, acting like they just discovered I'm their enemy," Coodi says into her next bite, her spoon mid-air. "Like they're surprised my disguise lasted this long."
I nod again. "I know what you mean."
We bow into our soup bowls, filling the silence around Flatts' unapologetic slurps.
"Lucky for us," I pipe up, hoping to get our minds off the turn of favor, "we're about to become real galactic explorers. Our first fuel stop is next week. You ready?"
Coodi continues to eye her spoon. "Yes, Commander. All procedures have been reviewed."
"What a surprise."
The meal complete, we take our bowls to the dishwasher and drop them in his black bins. They clatter with the other piles already there. I managed to finish my plate quickly and enviously gaze at the leftovers sloshing at the bottom of my VIPERs' bowls as they discarded them. When I realize how starved my son is for nourishment despite my own sickness, I gulp down the soup. It's hot and makes me feel full. With my body pressing against my uniform so tight, I can't eat anymore despite the fact that I'm still starving. I quickly escape from my team to make it to my cabin where I can stand naked in the room, finally free of all the restraints that make me twitchy throughout the day.
The patter of a familiar gait fall in line beside me.
"Do you expect there to be any trouble on Zeno A?" Coodi asks as she appears at my side.
"I expect everything to go absolutely wrong all the time. That's my job." I snap as I slow to make it seem like I'm not trying to sprint away.
She hangs her head as she keeps my pace.
"I don't mean it that way. Sorry. I'm just frustrated."
She doesn't respond. For the rest of our journey to Commanders Country, we scoot along and embrace the silence when it joins us. I open my mouth and try to say something to repair the complimentary camaraderie, but she cuts a sharp left and abandons me to my trek home.
When she leaves me alone I realize how desolate this place feels without her presence. I don't want to spend the rest of the evening on my own yet. At this particular fork, I could continue down the middle lane, return to my cabin and wait for morning, turn left to the racks to have Coodi recite the procedures of next week's touchdown like a lullaby, or I could take the right prong of the fork and bother my favorite confidant.
I meander to Knuckles' clinic room where I know he's nose-deep in some gadget. The light in his lab glows through the gap between the metal sliding doors. He doesn't even bother acknowledging me when I invade his space for the third time in twenty-four hours.
We don't say anything for a while. I lean forward against the counter and cross my arms, resting my full body weight against the cool metal cabinets. He hates this, but it's so comfortable.
"Have a good day at work, love?" His voice drips with his usual sarcasm. But having someone ask the question is nice regardless. Even if he knows exactly what kind of day I had.
"That's not funny," I spit back. "Someone's dead."
"And you are a Xani sympathizer."
"I didn't know there was anything to sympathize with when it came to them."
"Neither did I, but that's what the locals are a titter about."
"I had no choice."
He blows air out his nose and shakes his head. "If I didn't know you better, I wouldn't believe you."
There's no real response to this. I feel like vomiting. Still.
He finally emerges from his intense focus. His hair is longer and wilder, creating a silver halo around his dark head. It almost matches his wide glasses. There's a look in his eye that makes me think he regrets the last few words that he threw into the room. "You look terrible, Lorn. This isn't healthy, all this stress."
"I'm sure I've got a day off coming up soon." I check my PAHLM. "Oh, there's one. It's in a little over a thousand days from now."
He gives me his special lowered brow over hooded eyelids look of contempt and returns to his project. "Well then maybe take a walk and get some exercise. Your seat is looking rather stretched and I'd hate for you to snap a seam. I doubt anyone has instructed you on the delicate arts of needlework. Or anything delicate for that matter."
I run my hands over my very tight BDU pants. Yes, they're tight. Very tight. As of this morning, I don't even bother closing the top button anymore. My belly protrudes over the top.
"What am I going to do? It's getting worse. I'm getting bigger and I can't stop it." I lift my shirt to show him the dangling flap.
"That has been a commonly documented symptom of pregnancy."
"What am I supposed to do?"
"When are you planning to inform General Hayomo of your condition?"
"Never."
"Yes. Very logical. Excellent strategy."
"I haven't seen her in weeks so maybe it's not as bad as you think."
Knuckles checks his PAHLM. A furtive glance across the table confirms that he's opening our joint application. The little red heart pulses rhythmically as white garbled numbers and words scroll across the blue holograph on his hand. "Congratulations. You were twenty-one weeks yesterday."
"What does that mean?"
"Your child is the size of a cantaloupe."
"What's a cantaloupe?" I don't have time for his Before Days trivia. "Never mind. I don't want to know. I have to prep our ground reconnaissance. First big fueling of the trip. Should be exciting."
Knuckles grunts in disapproval.
"What?"
"This is a stupid endeavor. You should not be the one to host these hostile missions into alien territory."
I snort out a single laugh, but only to hide how I am beginning to realize how valid his point is. "So who else goes in my place? Hayomo doesn't seem to be rushing to volunteer."
We wait in silence for the next part of our conversation to take effect.
Knuckles' attention returns to the gizmos in his hands. "How long has it been since you've heard from her?"
"Since launch."
"Does she know about the boy? Martin?'
"No idea."
"Have you tried—"
"Are you asking me if I tried reaching out to her? Are you actually about to ask me if I informed the other commanding officer of this ship that one of the passengers was sliced like deli meat by our alien saviors?" I shove off the counter. He really believes I haven't tried that a million times between the horrific events as they were happening and the minute before I walked into his presence?
A joke. He thinks I'm a joke.
I can't be around him anymore. He mumbles something before shutting me out, fully turning his attention to his busy work. Tugging my shirt back over my loose button and adjusting my plate carrier to conceal the bump, I storm from the room and head to the public access passageways.
It's not like I have a choice. I fume at his words. It's not like I have any ability to choose how I participate in this mission because I agreed to it when I fell from the vents and shoved my blood-spattered contract into Hayomo's hands. I chose this. This is what I have to do.
I clench my fist and check my PAHLM.
2201. There should still be lingering activity in the Marketplace. The civilians actively mill around the public areas until Lights-Out at 2300. I need them now. I need to check on how my partition of Earth's population is faring. I need to do my goddamn job.
In the middle of the bustle of the Marketplace, I feel the presence of the few people who meander the booths. There's nothing new to purchase, nothing special to do that they haven't already done yesterday, or the day before that. I pity them in their treadmill lives. Just a few short days from now, I'll be one of the lucky few who steps out into a new world and stretches my legs and squints into a new sun. I'll get to imprint my feet on another planet's horizon, awe at the nuances of a foreign language, and navigate unfamiliar terrain. The thought of the unknown rekindles the light I imagined was long-past snuffed inside me. How can anyone tell me I shouldn't be where I most belong?
An arm bumping up against my shoulder jostles me into the present moment. A prim woman with black hair pulled back and brown eyes alight with hatred pass. She lowers her lids to glare. The force wasn't painful, but the sudden realization that she, and so many others around her, are reflecting the same look off one another, roots me in place. The deja vu of my last lingering memories of the URE's version of this place sends me careening through time when glares were followed by fire and destruction. I hear the ghosts moan in my mind as their bones crack under the slabs of concrete raining from the ceiling. The subtle notes of fabric on fire wafts past my nose. I shake my head and return to the present where no more than twenty civilians join me in the wonky aisles.
An enemy. They think I'm an enemy.