Dino nods at the coffee cup. “Found a can in storage. Figured we could use it.”
Jack blows on the rim and touches it to his lips. Burns his tongue. “Agreed.”
“There’s plenty of food. Canned or dehydrated. Take your pick.”
Dandy stands directly across the room, leering at Jack.
“The hell is his problem?” Jack says.
“He’s alive.” There is a slight waver in his voice. He must be using a lot of energy just staying upright. He shudders and whistles.
“Jesus, Dino. You’re missing an arm. Take a seat.”
“Just wanted to test my legs. But, uh, I think you’re right.”
For once, it is Jack’s turn to help his trembling friend. The big guy holds Jack’s shoulder to support his weight. He grunts and hisses with every step. Punched the fucking hydra. It would be funny if the outcome weren’t so awful. Dino drops into one of the flight seats. He winces and swallows a moan. Jack can do nothing more. They need Dino conscious and at least partially mobile for the spacewalk. Just in case. That means minimal pain meds. His eyes roll back. He says, “Shit, man. I’m gonna have to jerk off left-handed.” A strained laugh comes out sounding like coughs.
Jack slaps Dino’s knee. “Hang in there, alright?”
Dino nods.
Jack heads to the storeroom to find some food.
The others really raided the place. Cans with syrupy residue and a nest of foil wrappers cover the floor. He selects a can of pears and a packet of dehydrated pork and slides the military can opener from his pocket. He walks it around the tin, puckering the edges. He eats slowly, savoring this cheaply mass-produced shit. It could very well be his last meal. He’s about to slide the opener back in his pocket, but stops himself. He opens his palm and studies it. A small wedge of metal, well-worn along the edges, scratched but still intact. It hardly weighs a thing. A gram maybe. He rarely had cans to open in the camp, but when he did, this little tool was a godsend. Twelve years later and he still keeps it in his pocket. Why? A compulsion. A habit formed by fear.
He tilts his hand. The opener falls to the floor, disappears among the garbage with a barely audible clink. A wave of anxiety passes over him. He shuts his eyes and wills himself not to go looking for it. You’ll starve, a little voice says. Rationally, he knows he will not starve anymore than he will die of thirst. So he runs his hands along his belt and clicks the buckle free, releasing the weight of his old canteen. Water sloshes inside. He takes one last swig and sets it on the floor. Squat metal gourde. When he leaves, he closes the door behind him. There’s something else he needs to let go of.
“Listen up,” he calls.
They stop what they’re doing and face him. He stands at the end of the hallway, feeling their eyes on him. He never wanted to be a leader. He has been thinking about Justin’s words. Why do you think we stayed? He stands there not as their captain, but as their friend.
“You’ve probably all heard by now, but there’s been a slight change of plans. Hunter will be coming with Gregorian and myself to the Homunculus. We’ll stop at the bridge where she will program a new route for Bel. She’ll put her on a timer, after which point Bel will make a grav jump into the heart of the sun. That means we need to be off this ship and to a safe distance before the timer runs out. Six hours is the maximum allotment. That should give us plenty of time.” He looks back at Hunter, finds her nodding. They’re waiting for more. A speech. A rally. He’s never been good at this. So he will tell them something else. A story about survival. He clears his throat.
Standing in front of his friends, Jack Kind finds himself slipping into a memory. A young man again, he shivers in a different room where other men await an order he cannot possibly give. They are his superiors, but they’ve passed this responsibility to him. Lead us through the gates of Hell. After this, he will never think of himself as a good man. Just a survivor.
Lana cocks her head: Are you okay?
He licks his lips. “I’ve never told this to anyone.”
Chapter 33
The officers stood near their bunks with their heads hanging. There was no way to digest the guards’ pronouncement without assessing their own humanity. Who among them could be capable of doing what they’ve been told to do? Jack, still reorienting himself after the morning beating, missed the order. He asked Capt. Wojak to explain it. And even then Jack thought he heard wrong, asked him to repeat it. Wojak shook his head and said, “That’s all there is, Chef.”
Jack laid in his bunk and rubbed the knots on his skull. This was a joke, a taunt. Soon the guards would come back and—
And what? Jack thought. Have a good laugh at everyone’s expense?
Even if it was a joke, it was deadly serious. All things are in war, just as they are hilarious and inconsequential. A group of young men “just fooling around” meant murdering a group of civilians, dragging them naked through soiled corridors and stacking them in an airlock and blasting them into space. Jack had heard of occurrences like this throughout the solar system, and they were not relegated to any one side. A man he considered a close friend in the camp, a Pvt. Gerome, had turned to him at one point and confessed that during the guerilla raids on McLaughlin Station, his squad stumbled upon a room full of elderly women and young girls and took turns with each before lighting a smoke grenade and sealing them inside. The funny part, Pvt. Gerome said, was that he’d forgotten about it until this very moment. Jack said nothing. Gerome was a harmless looking kid with a big nose and an underbite, great at scrounging from the guards. They never spoke of it again, just continued to barter until the camp was liberated. He probably went home to his family.
That was blood on someone else’s hands. This was different.
“I won’t do it,” someone said.
“I’d rather die.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m serious. It’s an option.”
“And I’m serious. Fuck you.”
“There’s gotta be a way around it.”
“I don’t understand. Why make us choose?”
“We can ration better.”
“There’s nothing to ration. That’s the point.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Me either.”
“Why make us choose?”
“To torture us.”
“They think they’re being fair.”
“Fuck that.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Someone has to.”
What they were talking about was this: Food was so scarce prisoners were dropping dead on work detail. Some were too starved to rise out of bed or wield a hammer. This was not a form of punishment. The guards were short on food, too, though they weren’t yet starving. The outpost relied on supply drops, and those drops had ended months ago. The guards wouldn’t say why, but the homemade portables in the camp said the war was picking up in the region, meaning FROST’s supplies were dwindling along with their abilities to transport them. Yet the prisoners were constructing what was supposed to become a major colony for FROST once the fighting settled down. The work could not stop. And if the food supply could not be increased, then the number of mouths had to be reduced. The guards’ solution was to make the officers choose who would be executed. And execute them. One hundred and fifty men. That was the requirement. They had 120 hours, or five standard solar days. If they failed to meet these requirements, the guards would return and kill indiscriminately, starting with the officers.