CHAPTER FOUR Torrance
“Man, weather like this makes me want Korean food so bad,” Min-Ji moaned as she bent to retrieve a crystal shard she’d just sheered off her tree. “I’d kill for a bowl of my mom’s kimchi-jjigae right now.”
“That sounds good. What is it?” Suvi asked, aiming her hammer precisely and striking off an impressive hunk. Unlike my green tree, hers was a pale lavender colour. Min-Ji’s was pink. We’d been working tirelessly on our trees since Major Corey had snapped at us a couple of hours ago and had been largely silent until Min-Ji had just spoken.
“It’s amazing is what it is,” Min-Ji replied. She tossed her crystal into the bin we were all using. “Like a stew basically. With pork and spicy fermented cabbage. It’s so good on a cold day.”
“I’ll take a bowl,” Suvi replied wistfully. “Along with a cup of glögi. Spiced mulled wine,” she explained before we had to ask what the Finnish word meant.
I smiled behind my neck warmer. This was a game we often played to pass the time. The game didn’t have a name, or rules, but it was something we all instinctively gravitated towards. Talking about the things we missed, the best parts of our lives back home. Living on military rations on the ship meant that the game often revolved around food.
“Maybe I’m boring, but I just want a really good burger, you know?” I said.
Min-Ji groaned in agreement.
“Fuck yeah. Burger. Kimchi-jjigae. Wine. Sounds like a perfect, balanced meal. I could eat that forever.”
“No salad?” Suvi teased.
“Hey!” Min-Ji shot back. “Aren’t you supposed to be a friend to the plants? You love them so much I figured you’d want me to eat less salad, not more. Besides, the kimchi counts. And throw some lettuce on the burger and you’re golden.”
“It’s precisely because I love the plants and study them so closely that I know how good they are for you,” Suvi laughed. Her chuckle was punctuated by the tinkling sound of her next crystal shard falling into the bin. I tried to ignore the fact that the bin was mostly full of sparkling purple and pink, with only a few bits of dark green peeking out.
“Nah, I’m sticking to my guns on this one. Salad can fuck right off,” Min-Ji said. “Meat. Kimchi. Booze. That’s all you need in life. The three essential food groups.”
The three of us broke into snorting laughter. It felt good to laugh with friends like this. As if things were almost... Normal.
I could practically taste the burger I’d mentioned. Smoky and cooked to perfection. I’d long since moved south to study and then work at the University of Toronto, but I visited my dad up in Thunder Bay whenever I could. He always got the smoker going for me as soon as I arrived. If it wasn’t burgers, it was steak, pulled pork, brisket...
My mouth watered.
So did my eyes.
The last time I’d gone to Thunder Bay was the first time I’d been there without him. The first time since he’d died. The memory was so fucking painful, a wound that wouldn’t heal, because I never got any real closure. I never got to spend time in my childhood home, his home, to say goodbye to him. I never got that chance because men dressed all in black had knocked me out, drugged me up, and dragged me away as soon as I’d gotten my key in the front door’s lock after the funeral. It had been two months since that day. One month spent travelling on the ship. One month on this planet.
Fuck.
If I didn’t get a handle on my emotions now, I’d start bawling. And crying in temperatures this low with goggles on was a recipe for disaster. The goggles would get all wet and fogged, but if I took them off, the tears would freeze in my eyelashes and on my cheeks, making my skin painful and raw. Plus, my nose would be running even more than it already was, making my neck warmer a snotty mess.
I sniffed hard, refocusing on the task at hand to try to distract myself. I braced myself against the tree with my left hand and raised my hammer high in my right. I brought the hammer down against the stony tree as hard as I could. I felt good about the movement.
Until the hammer glanced off the tree and smashed into my left wrist.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I cried, dropping the hammer. I bent over at the waist, curling around my wrist and squeezing it with my right hand.
“Shit, you OK?” Min-Ji asked. She and Suvi peeled away from their trees, but they both froze when Major Corey shouted at them.
“Back to your posts!”
“She’s hurt!” Min-Ji said, pointing at me as if Major Corey was too stupid to know who she was talking about. Which, to be fair, he might have been.
“For fuck’s sake,” Major Corey muttered. He stomped over. “If you broke something, Hayes, I swear to fucking God...”
“I didn’t,” I gritted out, straightening up. My wrist hurt like a motherfucker, and I already knew I’d have a vicious bruise there soon, but I could tell it wasn’t broken.
“Fine. Stick your hand in the snow for a bit and get back to it, then,” he said.
“No.”
Major Corey went very still. I could practically feel the shocked, concerned intake of breath coming from Suvi and Min-Ji. I was just as shocked myself. I’d never told Major Corey a flat-out no before.
“What the fuck did you just say?” he asked, deadly quiet.
“I said, ‘No.’ I need a break. Um... A toilet break.”
“Then find a tree to squat behind.”
“I can’t,” I said tightly. “I need to deal with something.”
I rolled my eyes at the confused cocking of Major Corey’s head.
“Menstruation,” I added, a terse word of explanation.
Major Corey physically recoiled.
I bit my tongue, the words almost leaving my mouth. Big bad soldier scared of a little blood.
I wasn’t even on my period. I just knew that was the one thing, other than actually breaking a bone, which would get me a short reprieve from the fieldwork to use the ship’s toilets. Between the pain in my wrist and the agony of thinking of my dad, I had to get out of here. Just for a little while.
“Fucking females,” Major Corey said under his breath. I was pretty sure I was the only one who heard that remark because I knew Min-Ji would have something to say about it if she had.
“I’m not dragging my ass all the way back to the ship for this shit,” Major Corey continued louder this time. “You’re on your own. Don’t take too long.”
“She can’t go alone!” Min-Ji cried. “It’s like a twenty-minute hike through the snow! She could get lost.”
“Let one of us go with her,” Suvi added.
“Not happening. You three have been fucking around way too much today already! Your bin’s at half of what it should be for the day!” Major Corey exploded. The sound of his angry voice sent a couple of pale pink bunny-peckers flying away in dismay. We called them bunny-peckers because, while they were generally bunny-like in shape, with long ears, their trunks furred and fluffy, they had feathered wings. Their rabbity faces ended in hard beaks used for pecking at the crystal trees, creating hollows to live and nest. They had a longer, scientific name that I couldn’t remember. Marta the xenobiologist would know it.