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.
The way wasn’t hard to follow. All around the eroded rim of the crater, there was a path where the asteroid ground had been beaten flat by the passage of uncounted feet. But to run under the false weight of their belts was brutal, and their skinsuits, designed for the comparatively light use of greenship crews, were not intended for this kind of hard labor. Soon Pirius’s feet started to blister, and the suit chafed at his groin and armpits.
Enduring Hope managed two circuits before his legs gave way. Pirius and Cohl had to support him the rest of the course.
When their punishment run was done, Pirius, Cohl, and Hope, exhausted, their skinsuits covered in charcoal-gray asteroid grime, were shoved through a hatchway in the ground.
They found themselves in a shabby underground receiving area. Here orderlies briskly stripped them of their skinsuits, and the rest of their clothing. Uncomfortable as their skinsuits had become, they were unhappy to see these last contacts with their past disappear into the black economy of this nameless Army Rock.
Shivering, naked, they were put through a brisk barrage of showers and radiation baths. Every hair on their heads, faces, and bodies was burned off, and the top layer of skin turned into a powder that they could brush away with their fingers. Clumsy, aged bots probed at them, working at their teeth and ears and eyes. Fluid was pumped into their mouths and recta, only to spill out from both ends, humiliatingly, bringing the contents of their guts with it. After that they were subjected to a battery of injections that went on until their arms and thighs ached.
Pirius understood the need for such precautions. The human bases studded around the Front were closed communities, isolated by light-years, and tended to develop their own strains of bugs and mites. Pirius and the others could easily pick up a disabling plague from Arches, to which they might have no immunity. But despite all these injections, he suspected that a lot more care was being taken to ensure that Quin Base wasn’t infected by them.
When the cleansing was done, the three of them were led out of the receiving area. Then they were pushed out through a bulkhead hatch into a much larger chamber beyond. It was a barracks, a noisy high-roofed chamber crowded with people — and they were still naked, to Pirius’s sudden horror; the medics hadn’t given them so much as a blanket between them.
A grinning cadet, female, very young-looking, met them at the bulkhead. She wore a bright orange coverall, and she greedily eyed Cohl’s breasts, which the navigator vainly tried to cover with her hands. “Come on. I’ll show you your pit.” And she turned and led them into the big chamber.
Pirius tried not to be self-conscious, to give a lead to his crew. But of course it was impossible; he walked hunched over, his hands clamped over his genitals.
This underground habitat was basically a barracks, like the Barracks Ball at Arches. But it was much less orderly, crammed with tottering heaps of bunks that climbed from floor to rough-hewn ceiling. The air was hot and muggy, and stank of stale food and sewage.
And everywhere there were people. They crowded the alleys, they clambered on the bunks, they stared as the flyers passed. Some of them wore official-looking coveralls, like the girl who had met them, but others were bare to the waist, or wore shorts and shirts improvised from worn-out coveralls or blankets. And some of them just ran naked, as unashamed as the flyers were mortified. They ran and shouted, they wrestled on the floor, and couples and threesomes enjoyed noisy sex in the bunks, skin against glistening skin. And they all looked young, even compared to the population of Arches Base.