“Commissary,” Pirius asked hesitantly, “where is Earth?”
The Commissary glanced around the sky, blinking to clear his rheumy eyes. Then he pointed to a nondescript star hanging in the dark, barely visible. “There.”
Pirius looked up. For the first time the light of humanity’s original sun entered his eyes.
Chapter 7
Pirius Blue and the crew of the Claw, stranded in their own indifferent past, were taken away from Arches Base.
The transport was a heap of junk, a battered old scow whose best days were long past. They had to keep their skinsuits sealed the whole time, and the Higgs field inertial control had hiccups, making the gravity flicker queasily. You couldn’t even see out through the hull.
But then this wasn’t a Navy boat, as Enduring Hope had pointed out as they had dragged themselves aboard. Its hull was painted Army green, making it even uglier. “And,” said Hope the engineer gloomily, “everybody knows how good the Army is at running spaceships.”
Cohl wriggled on a heap of sacking, trying to get comfortable enough to sleep. “Welcome to your new timeline,” she said.
Pirius was still consumed with guilt for having landed them in this — Cohl and Hope, and their younger selves, including his own. He had no idea how he was going to find the strength to endure what was to come. He could think of nothing to say to his crew.
After two days of living in their skinsuits, two days of sucking emergency rations through straws and stretching their suits’ relief systems to their stinking limit, the scow lumbered to a landing. The ship’s inertial field switched off, plunging them into microgravity, but their training had prepared them for such things, and they all grabbed handholds before they went drifting off.
Without warning, the hull popped open, to reveal gray, trampled ground, a sky crowded with stars.
An Army private in a scuffed green skinsuit appeared at the door. He was wearing a bulky inertial- control belt. “Out,” he ordered.
Pirius led the way. He picked up his bag and loped out of the broad hatchway, letting himself drift to the ground. He looked around. He was on a Rock — a small one by the feel of its gravity. He was standing in a crater, a walled plain, its surface heavily pitted by footsteps, and broader scars where the bellies of ships had touched. The sky was crowded with massive stars, and behind that speckled veil the center of the Galaxy was a wall of light, too diffuse to cast a sharp shadow.
Cohl asked, “Where do you think we are? Those stars are dense enough for it to be a cluster.”
“Not Arches,” said Enduring Hope bleakly. “I suspect we’re a long way from there.”
“Shut up,” the Army private said without emotion. He went along their little line, handed them inertial belts like his own, and took away their bags. “You won’t be needing that shit anymore.”
Pirius knew this was likely the last they would see of their gear, all he had left of his life at Arches.
Everybody had heard the scuttlebutt that buck privates believed Navy flyers were well-off compared to them, and he had expected theft, but not to lose his kit so quickly; it was shocking, denuding. But perhaps that was the idea.
An Army officer stood before them — a captain, according to the stripes on her shoulder. Her skinsuit was battered and much repaired, and through its translucent sheen Pirius saw the gleam of metal down her left side, her leg and torso and arm. She had her hands behind her back, and her face was shadowed, but brown eyes regarded them somberly — and, Pirius saw, startled, a fleck of silver gleamed in each pupil. “Put on your belts,” she said.
Pirius snapped to attention. “Sir, I am Pilot Officer Pirius of—”
“I don’t care who you are. Put on your belts.” They hesitated for one heartbeat, and she yelled. “Do it.”
Pirius’s inertial belt was battered, and the fabric was stained dark, perhaps with blood, though the color was indistinct in the pale Galaxy light. As he snapped it on, weight clutched at him, dragging him to the asteroid dirt. It had been preset to what felt like more than a standard gravity. He reached for the clasp.
“Don’t touch that control.”
Pirius snapped back to attention.
“My name is Marta,” the captain said. “This is a base at the heart of the Quintuplet Cluster. We know it as Quin.” Pirius knew that this was indeed a long way from Arches. “Let me begin your reeducation right now. This is an Army base, and I am an Army officer. You are still Navy personnel, attached to what we call the Navy Division, but you are under my command. You will be trained for work in the Service Corps.”
Pirius’s heart sank. The Service Corps: the shit-shovellers. He said, “Sir, what will our duties—”
“Shut up.”
“Sir.”
“That is the last question I want to hear from you. It is not important what you know, only what you do. And you do only what I tell you. Is that clear?”
The three of them mumbled a reply. “Sir.”
She took a step closer to them, and Pirius saw that she walked, not stiffly, but a little unnaturally; the systems that had replaced her left side worked smoothly, but not quite as an intact human body would. “Lethe, you’re unfit.” She prodded at Enduring Hope’s belly. “I’m truly sick of having you fat wheezing flyboys dumped on me.”
She stood back. “Let’s get this straight from the start. I don’t want Navy rejects here. Nobody wants you. But here you are. The work you will be assigned will be the dirtiest of dirty jobs, and the most dangerous. I’ve no doubt you’ll foul it up, but soon you’ll die, and then you’ll be out of my hair. Until then you will do what I tell you without question or complaint.”
“Sir.”
She had a data desk in her shining left hand. “Let’s check you are who you’re supposed to be. Pirius.”
“Pilot Officer Pirius, sir.”
“You’re not a pilot anymore. Pirius.”
“Sir.”
“Cohl.”
“Sir.”
“Tuta.”
Enduring Hope didn’t reply.
Marta didn’t look up from her desk. “Tuta.”
“Sir, my name is—”
Pirius broke in. “He’s Tuta, sir.”
Marta tapped her desk. “Fine. So you’re loyal to each other. You can all share Tuta’s punishment.” She touched a control at her chest, and suddenly the pull of false gravity on Pirius climbed, reaching twice standard. “Three circuits,” she said. It turned out she meant them to run three circuits of the crater rim; Pirius guessed it would amount to ten kilometers. “Your fitness work starts here,” she said.
Pirius said, “Sir. We’ve lived in these suits for days already.”
“Four circuits,” she said evenly. And she turned her back and walked toward her transport.
Without another word Pirius turned away and began to plod toward the crater wall. Cohl and Hope fell in beside him. He saw that Hope was already sweating. Hope mouthed silently, I’m sorry.