The blaster lowers a little. She believes me. She should. I told her the truth. I always do, eventually.
“Now please tell me what you’re doing here,” I say. “How’d you find me?”
Scarlett points the blaster toward one of the portholes. I turn to see the sparkle of debris out there like a billion new stars. And it makes sense. Sometimes bad things really do come in clusters, because one leads to the other. I think about the rock, which I wouldn’t have found were it not for the wreck. I think about the wreck I am, which Scarlett wouldn’t have found without the accident.
“NASA has to file a report with the Navy when there’s a wreck like that,” she says. “We’ve been looking for you for a long time. Your name finally popped up.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been looking to not be found.” I turn back to her. “Can you put the blaster away? Please? I’m not a government stooge.”
“If you’re working for their pension, you’re their stooge.”
She says this, but the blaster goes away, back in her holster. In the porthole behind her, I see the flashing lights from one of the ships. “Shit,” I say. “I’ve got to transmit some stuff.”
The blaster comes right back out, but I ignore her. She isn’t here to shoot me. I start a wireless handshake with the three ships and then begin transmitting the scan logs and radio exchanges to the black ship first. I put in a five-minute delay to transmit to O’Shea, and a twenty-minute delay for Vlad. I message Vlad privately and warn him of bandwidth issues. Scarlett watches me the entire time. The procedure takes me longer than usual using one hand. Only now does she show some concern for my physical state.
“Still beating yourself up, huh?”
“Ha,” I say. “Grav panel issues.”
She snorts like she doesn’t believe me. I fish the bounty flyer out of my waistband and hold it out it to her. “Fifty million creds,” I point out.
Scarlett laughs and waves it away. “I got a copy. And I’m worth more than that. You’re worth more than that.”
“I don’t want any part of this.”
“You think you get to choose?” Scarlett laughs. And now I can’t remember if I liked her or hated her back in the day. It was my first tour on the ground. I’ve blocked a lot of that out.
She laughs some more and shakes her head. “You don’t want any part of this. Tell your parents that. The day they screwed in the back seat of some car in Kentucky, they put you here. Right here.” She aims the blaster at the floor, like she’s indicating the beacon.
I watch as one of the ships outside peels away toward the asteroid field.
“Tennessee,” I say, correcting her.
“Whatever.”
“Yeah, well, I think I do have a choice. I came out here to get away from the war—”
“News flash,” Scarlett says, cutting me off. “The war’s coming to you, Bub. You’re on the front lines.”
“This is not the front lines,” I say. She knows this isn’t the front lines. I don’t care what my dreams tell me, what the shakes mean, the things I see and hear when I’m alone. The war isn’t here. It can’t be. This is a different war on my beacon, between just me and my demons.
“Every square inch of this galaxy is a front line,” Scarlett says. “It’s just a matter of when. But it doesn’t have to be like that—”
Not this. I think I remember now that I mostly didn’t like Scarlett. It’s the narrow eyes. The way they think they see something that isn’t there. Conspiratorial eyes. But she stands up and moves like a cat across the module and stands close enough to me that I can smell how clean she is, this little pocket of freshness in the dank and dark, and I want to kiss her. I want to grab something beautiful and hold it and weep and smother it with affection so that maybe it won’t ever leave me. And that’s when I remember that I didn’t like Scarlett Mulhenry at all. And I didn’t hate her either. I think I loved her.
“Why are you here?” I ask, and I feel like I have to shout it, but it comes out a whisper, like my nightmare voice.
“I want you to end this war,” Scarlett says.
Her eyes widen for a moment.
I can see in them.
I can see that she’s dead serious.
• 4 •
I remember kids who thought they could end wars. Hell, I remember being one of those kids. Neighborhoods have always been full of them, running around with plastic blasters and blowing the heads off Ryph, pretending we’re shooting the last shot in the war, bringing it all to a heroic end. When we’re young, every imaginary battle ends with heroics. Finales come with a bang. Then you get older, and you see that life ends in wrinkles and whimpers.
Looking at Scarlett now, as she looks at me, and her ridiculous words about ending wars hang in the air, I remember more than just the fact that I loved her once; I almost remember what it felt like. I almost feel it again. Love comes as fast as shrapnel in the trenches. It’s indiscriminate. It gets whoever’s closest. When it’s your time, it’s your time. They assign someone to the bunk beside you, and it’s like a grenade landing in your lap.
I vaguely remember what I felt like before the war took my hope, and I vaguely remember what Scarlett was like before the war did something screwy with hers.
“I don’t have room for your dreams,” I tell her. “You shouldn’t have come here. I don’t know how we’ll get you out, but I’ll help you do that. It’s a capital offense, but I’ll help you. Maybe the next trader—”
“I’m not leaving here without you,” she says. “A friend will come for me. For us both. Someone you know—”
I wave her silent and take a step back, like she really is a bomb that might go off. “Scarlett, I can’t leave here.” And then I say what I’ve known for a while but haven’t told anyone at NASA, haven’t even admitted to myself, not out loud. “I’m never leaving here,” I say. “It’s a two-year, but I’ll re-up. This is like the army, except I’ll last longer. This is where I belong.”
She looks me up and down. Frowns. Her eyes glisten. “This isn’t you,” she says.
“It is,” I tell her. And I nearly tell her my secret. My dark one. She always got the truth out of me in the past, but never without a fight. I change the subject in a hurry. Any kind of crazy is better than my kind. “So how do you think you can end this war?”
Scarlett adjusts the small pack slung over her shoulder. She pulls out a weathered paperback. Holds it up so I can see the cover.
“You’ve read this?” she asks.
The book is Salaman’s Battle. It’s part of the Frontier Saga by T.W. Rudolf. Of course I’ve read it. It’s trench pulp, and practically required reading for grunts. We pass these novels around like VD. I read the entire series until the pages turned to mud and the spines fell apart.
“Sure,” I say. I smile. “Are we going to take out the Lord hive with a planet buster like Corporal Charlie Sikes does in book twelve?” I say this with the lilt and enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old planning the next stage of the neighborhood invasion from behind Mrs. Wilkerson’s petunias.
“How much do you know much about Rudolf?” Scarlett asks, clearly not amused.
I shrug my one good shoulder. “I probably scanned the back of a book or two.” Even before she turns the tattered paperback around, I can already see T.W.’s bald head, the fatigues he’s always wearing, and that angry I-served-in-the-military-so-buy-my-book-I’ve-seen-the-real-shit scowl.
“There’s no such person,” Scarlett says. “He’s as much a fiction as his stories.”
I raise my hand like I’m in class. “So we expose the conspiracy, and the war ends!”