WHAT REMAINS Chapter 4: Big Damn Hero
Sora reluctantly followed Novak to the “ward caf,” the outer room down the circular hall; she trailed in after him with her arms folded, hiding her cybernetic hand entirely inside the folds of her old-lady sweater.
He got them there extremely on-time—years of institutional training and living in military schools meant that both Novak and Sora entered the room at 1800 hours exactly, like they were made of fucking clockwork. Punctuality meant they found themselves alone, except for a couple middle-aged doctors in white coats, along with a hospitality worker finishing a bare-bones buffet setup.
The hospitality worker had set out institutional fare. The navy, the Indoc Centers, hospitals all around Earth, the schools, the academy, the colleges, and a bunch of other Republic institutions all had the same international gloppy rota of foods, an essential menu Sora could probably recite in her sleep. Oatmeal and rice porridge at breakfast, most days. For lunch and dinner, you got soybean stews and tofu, vegetarian pancit, dumpling soups, lentil stews, college gumbo, long-simmered red beans, pea soup, mild curries, heaps of white and yellow rice, bread and gravy. They had hundreds of foods served alongside “Republic meatballs” or “Republic spam,” full of vat-grown animal protein. Add to that an incredible variety of herbs, vegetables and fruits, all pickled and chutneyed in a wild and colorful array, to contribute pops of flavor, heat, sweetness, saltiness and some sour, and even more nutrition to the mix. All the better for a battle-ready populace in a stream of existential wars.
Today featured Shit on a Shingle, that most ancient and venerable of navy grub. The Earth Republic’s version consisted of toasted rice flour bread packed out with seeds, alongside a barley and a dried mushroom gravy so thick you could stand a spoon up in it. Mushroom SOS was always served with canned green beans, canned fruit, and pickled beets as a matter of course. Sora felt pretty sure she’d eaten this off a chow line a thousand times; its familiarity made her instantly relax, soothing her fucking stegosaurus brain the moment she smelled the mushroom gravy and the earthy, vinegared tang of ruby-red beets.
“Sora and Jaesan?” one of the doctors asked. Sora found it impossible to determine the woman’s age outright—she could have been anywhere from forty to sixty. She clocked in at about 178 cm, very pretty, East Asian, wearing a pantsuit in lavender under her doctor’s coat. The doctor stood to greet them, carrying two clunky reprintable name tags. “These are for you. I’m Dr. Corrine Wang, and this is my colleague, Dr. Savin Kalgari. This program is his pilot, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
The other doctor stood, nodding to them with his hands in his pockets, before he sat again. He was mid-height, maybe 175 centimeters, with deep-set dark eyes and a thin frame, probably somewhere around forty-five. Kalgari had a pleasant smile, maybe a little cocky and rakish, though he carried a heavy coat of fatigue. He looked Mediterranean and Southeast Asian, with dark olive skin and long fingers, and Sora couldn’t help finding him strikingly handsome, despite the tiredness of his eyes, especially that shock of dark hair and a pair of glinting, humor-filled eyes. Kalgari had a distinct swagger and sense of style, wearing dark gray slacks and comfortable black flats, a light gray button-up shirt, and even a damn tie, instead of a doctor’s typical scrubs; there was a military straightness to the way he carried himself and the set of his shoulders, but Sora couldn’t tell if he’d actually served.
Sora took the name tag with her real hand and slowly applied it to her sweater—it just said SORA in washable soy ink—while Novak shook Dr. Wang’s hand.
“Ma’am. I’m Lieutenant-Co—I mean…” Novak stopped himself, starting his own introduction again. “Nice to meet you. People usually call me Jase, when they use my given name.”
“We’re so glad you could be here, Jase.” Dr. Wang spoke in a nice voice, maybe too nice, before looking at Sora. “You two were wonderfully punctual. I’ve no right to be surprised.”
Sora glowered a little. Who the fuck were these people, and who gave them the right to summon her off the Fenris and keep her locked up in a nuthouse like a prisoner for four weeks? She looked around, noting there was only one table in here today, with enough chairs for everyone in the program to sit around and be kumbaya with each other. Goddamn it.
“Come sit next to me, Sora,” Dr. Kalgari said. He had a deep voice, maybe hoping he sounded fatherly. Sora fixed the doc with a level, vacant look, assessing.
She’d been trained as a spy, and she had been both attractive and sexually active since she was fourteen; as a consequence, Sora knew immediately when a man, especially in a professional position, felt a sudden pop of attraction for her. It didn’t make any of them bad, exactly. You can’t help what makes you hard, right? Some of these guys remained extremely aware of themselves—some men outright avoided her because of it, and Sora respected the hell out of that. Some of them felt that visual pop of attraction in themselves, then got control over their brains and actions with admirable speed, and nothing came of it. She respected that too, even with the occasional tit-stare. Hey, she liked a little tit staring herself. Other guys in power made excuses to talk to her, but they never said or did anything inappropriate. Still others indulged themselves in little ways, but things never went beyond that. No shame in a little indulgence, man.
Then there were those men who indulged themselves to the point of excess, who either caught themselves—rare breed—or the guys who’d gotten so practiced at this little game that they eventually made some sort of proposition, oblique or otherwise… sometimes very much otherwise. Powerful men especially were damn comfortable indulging themselves, as Sora learned the hard way on Sirius Base. Omacatl’s very own Commander Loren was no anomaly. It depressed her how close to common he’d actually been.
Sora couldn’t resist a little curiosity. Which bucket would Dr. Kalgari volunteer himself for? She was no longer the squishy, all-meat, powerless version of herself who knew a little college judo and some security procedures with her sidearm, the Sora that Commander Loren so effortlessly threatened and pushed around on the Omacatl. She could afford a little curiosity these days, without too much risk, so long as her opponent didn’t have his own killer cybernetics.
Sitting down next to Dr. Kalgari with a short “Hi,” Sora noticed Novak settling himself in across from her, hooking his cane over his forearm. Dr. Wang turned to welcome more program participants with name tags.
“Day One, and you’re already sticking together like glue,” Dr. Kalgari said with a small smile, his voice low. “You officers all do that. The old Academy brotherhood at work.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sora spoke into the cup of water from one provided at her spot. The cups and plates here were all blunted, unbreakable alipoline, like back at institutional nursery school. “I’m just another soldier. Right, Doc?”
Dr. Kalgari’s eyes sparkled. “Very good. So… I heard you threatened one of the intake nurses. Missing your gloves, Sora?” His eyes flickered knowingly to her hidden hand, currently tucked out of sight. Sora sat with her arms folded, just the way she’d come in, with her forearm and the folds of her sweater hiding her cybernetic hand.
“Man. It’s embarrassing enough getting summoned off my ship to come be your guinea pig,” Sora told the doctor in an undertone, loud enough that Novak could hear, but not any of her fellow inmates entering the caf. “You gotta rub it in by taking my clothes and making me wear fucking slipper socks? Unreal.”
“We just want you to be comfortable for the work we have to do.” Dr. Kalgari employed a voice that told her he didn’t believe a thing he said, low and teasing, tugging a reaction out of her, his eyes studying her face and body language, way too close and knowing.
“Bullshit. Do I look comfortable?” Sora spoke in a whispered hiss. “You don’t want us to be comfortable. You wouldn’t be assigning us to hell rooms and taking away our ranks, while surrounding us with all this military crap and Praezorian War bullcrap, if you wanted us to be comfortable. You think it’s comfy to be in a bunkroom back during the war without my sidearm, while I’m being called ‘Sora’ and wearing fucking slipper socks?!”
“Interesting,” Dr. Kalgari said without emotion. “What about you, Jaesan? Comfortable?”
Novak sat motionless, staring into his glass of water. “Just following orders, sir. I’m comfortable following orders.”
His tone shook something loose in Sora, and she studied the guy. She felt weird now, realizing she had more experience with all this crap than Novak did, and that she was way more comfortable with her cybernetics and rehab and counseling than he was. He’d gone closed off, overwhelmed, like he might be drowning, and he’d just arrived.
“Hey, we allowed to get chow?” Sora asked the doctor. “Or do we have to wait for everyone to sit down?”
“Please feel free to get yourselves some dinner whenever you want, just like in the mess hall.” Kalgari lifted his hands in invitation toward the food. “I expect it’s fare you’re familiar with.”
“Don’t worry, Doc—we know our way around Shit on a Shingle night in the mess.” Sora looked at Novak and cocked her head. “Come on, man. Before the gravy goes solid on us, huh?”
Novak used his cane to stand without argument, and they linked up at the other end of the table, watching the seats fill up behind them with other patients. Sora and Novak were in the middle of the pack for age here. Sora spotted a couple younger people, maybe early twenties, probably five around their age, and three people in their late thirties or early forties. The other patients had come in as a solid group, and a lot of them were already chatting animatedly; they looked comfortable with each other, some of them exchanging Martian and Eridanian slang. One of them made a passing reference to Pixie’s Chicken and Fish, followed by an immediate explosion of excited conversation and laughter.
“Yep. Feels like the mess,” Novak said under his breath, gazing back at the group for a second. “You smell knuckle-dragger?”
“Oh yeah,” Sora agreed. “And jarhead. Lots of jarhead.”
“How much you wanna bet one of them smuggled in some of those godawful sprinkles?” Novak mused as he loaded his plate with a slice of bread and a glop of gravy, full of dried mushrooms.
Sora chuckled. Pixie’s Chicken and Fish constituted a colonial standby, one of the only decent places starfarers could get a hot meal on Mars or Epsilon Eridani, and definitely the only thing even remotely good once you got further out. They prided themselves on serving the furthest corners of the Republic, growing their food entirely in vats and hydroponics. A lot of their shit consisted of bland, tasteless protein and carbo chunkforms. Starfarers, Marsers, and various colonials flavored everything with Pixie’s vitamin-packed, alarmingly addictive sprinkles, available in a wild array of colors and flavors. Sora’s mom loved it, like a good Marser, and her grandparents made a point of taking her to Pixie’s when she visited, even getting her a goddamn kid’s meal. She couldn’t help but find it cute.
“They’re gonna have our number the moment we turn down a flavor explosion of barbeque and zesty ranch on our gravy.” Sora grinned at Novak, twitching an eyebrow.
“Please,” Novak muttered, still in a dark mood, but at least talking. “They already have our number, Kuromoto. Who the fuck do these doctors think they’re fooling? They just want to give the NCOs an excuse. Maybe force a little humility on us in the process—like getting our asses blown up and stumping around on chrome in rehab for months didn’t strip out our pride already.”
“Don’t worry about it too much,” Sora assured him, plopping a bunch of pickled beets onto her plate. Best part of Shit on a Shingle Day, as far as she was concerned. “In my experience, the NCOs drop the chips on their shoulders when you have chrome. A bunch of them just think us officers who come straight out of Academy don’t know anything about suffering or hard work; hard to say that after cybernetics and exsanguinating.”
“My goddamn NCOs pity me,” Novak muttered bitterly, scooping canned peaches onto his plate with a will. “It’s worse than when they thought I was a pissant right out of school. I can tell they try not to show it—but it’s always there, every time I pass them in the hall or in the mess. I’d almost prefer the attitude I got after Academy, back when I was a brainless airhead water polo star, thinking I was hot shit and could run with the big boys.”
Sora winced. Pity from the NCOs wasn’t an experience she shared. Cybernetic arms were commonplace, as cybernetics went; a lot of the marines regularly called Sora’s arm “awesome” or “amazing,” especially when it saved their lives. None of them—except Wyn, of course—were aware of the extent of Sora’s cybernetic architecture, nor how ugly and humiliating things could get.
“Well, I mean… getting half your body replaced with chrome isn’t something you see every day,” Sora pointed out, examining a chillbox full of drinks, before she selected a melon-flavored soymilk in a refillable pouch, like back in school. “It’s a lot less common than an arm or an eye or a hand, or a positronic headplate. Maybe can’t blame them for the shock.”
“Yeah, fair enough,” Novak murmured, pulling a coffee-flavored soymilk out and spotting her melon one. The sight made him smile suddenly. “Man, you really are just perpetually sixteen, aren’t you?”
“Fuck off, Novak,” Sora told him companionably, already sucking melon soymilk out of the pouch as they made their way back to the table.
Dr. Kalgari waited for them, and Sora could tell from the entertained sparkle in his eyes that he’d been watching their progress, along with the other patients as they filtered over to the dinner line.
“You two seem to be getting along.”
Sora and Novak glanced at each other and grunted mutually, before each returned to spreading gravy evenly over shingles of toast. Sora had spent a lot of time with Novak, especially in her sophomore and junior years of Academy, before Novak had graduated and deployed. They hadn’t often talked about all their hopes and dreams or anything—they’d just been around each other a lot, had a lot of fun and talked about stuff that bugged them or freaked them out, and played a lot of video games.
That made it feel easy to fall into an effortless level of comfort with him, so long as Sora turned her brain off and scooped up gravy. Like going right back to school… like no time had passed at all. By default, she knew what to expect from him, except when he threw around some of his new post-death crazy. She guessed he’d see some of hers too, sooner or later.
“You don’t want some shingle, Doc?” Sora asked the doctor.
“I’ll get a plate once Dr. Wang’s back at the table,” Dr. Kalgari said. “Thank you for your concern though, Sora.”
Something about the way he was so careful to use her first name, repeatedly and pointedly, made Sora feel weird and itchy inside. Usually people earned the right to call her by her first name, except her family members. Even AI chatterbots in rentals called her “Lieutenant,” and before that, she’d always been “Cadet,” or “Kuromoto.”
Her best friends had the right to call her Sora. Even Novak remained careful, despite the rules, about calling her by her family name in private conversation, and she likewise just couldn’t call him Jase, even though they’d met as toddlers and they were sharing a room. It was an Academy thing, a respect thing.
“You’re welcome, Savin.” Sora offered the fucker a fake smile—she’d noted his first name when Dr. Wang introduced him and shoved it in the back pocket of her brain, in case she needed it. The bastard laughed, deep and a little unnerving.
“Aha. I knew it would be you.” Kalgari’s eyes danced. “Earlier than expected. You’re quite precocious.”
Sora’s smile had already faded. “It would be me who did what? What’s so fucking funny?”
“The first to throw my given name back at me—there’s always one. It’s never happened the first night, though. Usually the given name usage doesn’t get to any of you until sessions begin.” He examined her with obvious satisfaction. “You’re a very proud young woman, aren’t you?”
Sora riled. “I’m just saying that if you get to call us by our first names, maybe you deserve a little of your own medicine. You earned your title, right? Well, we earned our ranks. I bet you never bled out for that pretty little white coat, did you?”
Dr. Kalgari looked, if possible, that much more like a cat that snarfed a precious pet bird. “You’ve come here for therapy. This isn’t about me, Sora—it’s about you. I’m very much looking forward to our sessions. I like a challenge.”
Novak spoke, making the nasty comeback on Sora’s lips die.
“How many experimental rounds have you done at this point, Doctor?”
“This will be the fourth.” Dr. Kalgari looked over at Novak and packed his smile away a little reluctantly, sounding professional again. Already indulging himself, Sora couldn’t help but notice.
“Do you always settle on a patient you take so much obvious pleasure in trying to break?” Novak asked with a steady green-eyed gaze. Sora felt so weird seeing those eyes again, viscerally remembering how much she’d liked them as a younger person… the way they made her remember being that younger Sora, down in her bones.
Dr. Kalgari surveyed Novak with an unreadable calm. “You’re quite the hero. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, in fact. Do you deny that Sora here is a real challenge? Don’t you take immense satisfaction in solving the challenges and puzzles in your own line of work, Jaesan?”
Novak blinked, coming to some kind of personal conclusion before looking back at his plate.
“Dr. Kalgari, I’m not getting pulled into some kind of psychological game with you.” He used what Sora immediately identified as his XO voice, low and deep, speaking from his chest, from an immovable position of authority. Hayden and Cass both had one of those, unique to each of them.
“Just putting me on notice, Jaesan?” Dr. Kalgari asked, quirking an eyebrow with undeniably intrigue. Other patients had begun to sit down with chow, clustered over at the other end of the table with Dr. Wang, so Kalgari lowered his voice for his next comment. “You’re used to having a lot of power. On a ship, you’d be able to give me NJP, send me to Confinement, put a permanent mark in my jacket. Then you could invite Sora here to the XO’s stateroom and tell her she’s safe from the creepy counselor, maybe mix her a drink, see what happens. Enjoy the fruits of power. All in a day’s work, right, Jaesan?”
Novak kept his eyes fixed on the doctor calmly but silently, his frown and rapid blinks revealing how taken aback he felt. Sora sucked down melon soymilk, hoping it would tamp down on the nausea. She couldn’t tell which of the two of them the doctor had taken aim at, how much he knew, what kind of reaction he was trying to get out of them. He seemed bent on making Novak intensely uncomfortable, though. Smug fucking asshole.
“You’re kind of a creepy prick, aren’t you?” Sora leaned back in her chair, bringing the front legs up off the floor. “Or I’m guessing you want one or both of us to think you are. You hoping he’ll do something stupid while white knighting for me? Make him an easier nut to crack, maybe? Or maybe you just want to piss me off, so you can put me on the defensive later? I know all the mind games, man; just want to know which one we’re playing.”
The doctor considered her for about ten seconds. He blinked once, then smiled, and his smile was pleasant and distant again.
“It’s perfectly valid for you to believe that, since you’ve already encountered so much manipulation in your life,” he said, sounding very different—almost kind. “I’m going to get some dinner. Can I grab either of you anything while I’m up?”
“No, sir.” Novak spoke through gritted teeth and sounded like a man cramming down a volcano of rage.
“A melon soymilk,” Sora said, instead of what she wanted to say: A bag of dicks for you to bite.
The doctor left them, giving Sora an opportunity to notice the large buffer of chairs left between them and the rest of the patients. The NCOs clustered down at the other end of the table around Dr. Wang, some of them standing to eat with plates in hand so they didn’t have to occupy all the chairs and so they could all hear one another, many laughing and smiling as they spoke animatedly and avoided the commissioned officers. They definitely knew already that she and Novak weren’t like them, given the massive plague protocol. They knew Sora and Novak were all the things NCOs usually hated about officers: kids who’d done years of military school, who had gone to Academy at Annapolis, that they were Earthers who’d played fancy Earther sports and enjoyed all the privileges of living on Earth with every comfort of the Republic, as opposed to the dangers and privations of space-based colonies.
“Sorry, man,” Sora told Novak. “Can’t tell if that was about me or you.”
“Probably both of us,” Novak said, eyeing her. “He’s got our jackets, all the reports about us, our Academy records, probably going all the way back to our secondary institutions. You were at military schools your whole life too. I know you and Teli were at Bristol. It’s easy for an Indoc guy to get records out of the military schools—it’s basically all one database.”
“Yeah, for real.” Sora finally sliced into her soaked toast covered in gravy, now it was nice and soft. “The hell was that all about, anyways? You got some history championing the female NCOs or something?”
Novak winced and looked away. “My former girlfriend was one of the Med Techs. I might have written up a senior doctor who was making her life hard before we started dating. I didn’t think I was doing it to impress her or something, but like… let’s face it, I probably was. The whole thing was inappropriate. Anyways, I got away with it anyways, like most of us do. She dumped me after a few months of dating, then she transferred off the ship, so I guess it doesn’t matter all that much. Except as an object lesson, maybe.”
Sora chased beets with her remarkably blunt fork, wondering if the thing was intentionally made this useless so no one could use it to attack their fellow patients or staff. Goddamn, I really am in the loony bin if I can’t even be trusted with a fork.
“She broke up with you? Tell me it was before April, man.”
Novak ate a couple pieces of canned peach, like he found them comforting.
“After.”
“What a bitch,” Sora said without rancor, but she meant it. “My dad came back from hyperspace a total bastard, on top of all the care he needed, and it took my mom five years and like, fifteen acts of total evil for her to break things off with him. Just saying.”
Novak chuckled, sounding surprised into amusement. “This is seriously like being back at Academy, listening to you talk, like how much you hated your dad—and that’s before the Hydra disappeared, right? Man….” He thought for a few seconds, eyes trailing Dr. Kalgari watchfully, who stood talking to some other patients now. “I don’t really blame her. We were only together for four months, and we kept it casual—she was in my chain-of-command, after all, so I didn’t want to get too serious. She says I didn’t come back the same person, and she’s right. It’s just true. No one’s fault.” The right side of his mouth twitched back into a half-smile. “I appreciate the backup though. Still wasn’t a pretty breakup.”
“Anytime,” Sora told him. It was weird how easy he was to get along with like 90% of the time, if she accepted the 10% when one of them might randomly hit a third rail and do or say something half-crazy. He seemed to have accepted the same odds and taken them in stride.
“You thought Kalgari’s shit might’ve been about you?” Novak asked. Gears turned in his eyes. “That manwhore friend of yours—he’s on the Fenris now too, isn’t he? I’m guessing he’s XO.”
Sora blinked rapidly. It had been so long since she’d heard Novak talk about Hayden that she’d downright forgotten their mutual dislike.
“You still calling Hayden a manwhore, now he’s XO on a Destroyer? Wow.” She considered punching Novak for good measure, but Hayden would probably laugh and tell Novak to get fucked if he were here—before Sora punched Novak anyways. She really needed to not get kicked out of this program though. “I’m gonna have to punch you back in our room. Just like… be ready for that.”
Novak grinned. “Fine—rules are rules, I guess,” he said pragmatically. “So is that what got you in trouble? You and Barca finally got together while you’re his direct report? That’s some self-sabotage.”
Sora’s eyebrows flew up. “Um. What? What do you mean, finally?”
Novak frowned a little impatiently. “Come on, Kuromoto. You and Hayden Barca both slept your way through every hot cadet with a pulse the whole time I knew you at Academy, and you’re both attractive, and you were inseparable. You know how many people bet drinks on you two getting together?”
Sora glared hard at him. “Hey, why did you and Kae never sleep together?”
Novak’s mouth twisted, and he frowned in confused revulsion. “What’re you talking about? He was my brother. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Oh good, so you get it then.” Sora finally gave in and picked up her last chunk of pickled beet between two of her real fingers (the other hand would probably pincer it into mush) and popped it into her mouth.
Novak sat and frowned at her for a while. “I seriously thought all that ‘he’s my brother’ crap was just a put-on. You were always slutting around together, making out with people in the same room, egging each other on, even pretending to be together for strategic purposes. I couldn’t fucking stand watching Kae make out with someone. You have to admit… it’s a weird relationship you guys have. You can’t blame people for having questions.”
“I can’t explain it, okay?” Sora shifted around, uncomfortable with the line of questioning. “I’m really sick of people asking me about this. It’s like people don’t believe me when I say no, I don’t want to sleep with one of my best friends. The whole thing freaks me out. I’m not some kind of sex-obsessed maniac bent on destroying the most important relationships in my life.”
“Okay, but then you went after Lapointe, who looks like he could be Barca’s brother, and then you downright pounced on Markoni—and we used to call him the Barcaganger, for fuck’s sake—”
“Okay, Novak, I fucking get it.” Sora rolled her eyes, heaving am impatient breath. “I was a freshman. I had issues freshman year, and dudes who looked like Hayden just made me feel kinda safe. That’s all. Go ahead and call me crazy, man.”
“Guys who look a little bit like your best friend make you feel safe?” Novak seemed to consider this, then shrugged, looking back at his plate. “Okay. That’s not hard to believe. It’s kinda cute, honestly, if a little… I dunno, surprising.” He shook his head, chancing a glance at her and smiling. “People are weird. They have weird relationships. I get it.”
“Not a single fucking person alive has ever called me cute,” Sora pointed out, but she smiled. “My little sister’s the cute one. I’m the hot one.”
“The tough one,” Novak corrected. When Sora looked at him for clarification, he went on. “You and the Barcas used to walk around Academy like nothing could touch you, like you owned the whole goddamn school. You’re the dictionary definition of confident. Most people would never think a damn thing scared you.” His expression told her he didn’t believe that, though. Again, Sora wondered what else he remembered about her, what he was picking up on. She’d obviously spent too much time with him drunk off her ass at Academy.
Basically everything makes me feel unsafe, Sora’s brain answered immediately, making her want to kick herself savagely in the gut, if that were goddamn possible.
She sat there feeling like a dumbass—and worse, like she was outside her own body, just a couple inches to the left of it. She almost didn’t know how to tell Novak how wrong it was for anyone to think her confident and unafraid, when that was exactly what she’d always wanted people to believe about her. How was she supposed to show this guy, in whatever group therapy that started tomorrow, what she really was?
“Kalgari’s not referring to Hayden.” She leaned back and pressed her crossed arms tightly against her ribs. “We’d never sleep together, not before he made it to XO, and not after either. The doc definitely knows about some stuff. That’s all I have to say about that. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll shut his ass up about it. I didn’t come here to talk about that shit.”
Novak observed her for a little while. “Kinda curious now—are you okay with that bunkroom being just the two of us?”
Sora shifted around in her seat. “I mean, I’ve got this expensive fucking arm now, and it’s not like I won’t hear you sneaking up on me with that cane, right?”
Novak offered a small smile. “Not to mention the creaking. You know… when I forget to use my oil can.”
That made Sora laugh. “Gotta keep the joints lubed. You ever need a squirt of WD-40, let me know.”
Novak fixed her with a briefly intense look, still smiling a little, like he was trying to figure out what she was driving at. He seemed out-of-practice with the basic work of talking to people, with bantering back and forth, even with the dance of flirting casually for fun.
“What’s the over-under on these people making us do some sort of ice-breaker activity?” Novak asked her lowly.
“Oh man.” Sora gave up on Kalgari coming back with that soymilk. “At least 60-40. Wanna make a break for it?”
They exchanged a look. Sora found it relieving to know that she could read him well enough already that they rose at the exact same time, grabbing their plates and utensils so they could add them to the bus bucket.
When Sora and Novak had made it halfway to the door, the group of NCOs exploded into a sudden chorus of laughter.
Don’t look back, Novak, Sora thought, but of course he stopped and did it, totally incapable of stopping himself.
A bunch of the NCOs were looking at them, some grinning, others burying laughter. One of them, a block-headed beefcake marine of a motherfucker, got the stones together to offer Novak a sort of mock salute. Then another one, some stringy, grimy middle-aged bastard, saluted while flipping the bird, before the whole group cracked up again. Drs. Wang and Kalgari just observed, doing and saying nothing.
Novak froze with a frown of confusion, looking too lost to be offended—but he tried to straighten up off his cane to protect his pride for a second, much as it probably hurt like hell. That basically tore it for Sora.
“Right back at ya, Corporal Dipshit,” she snarled at the guy who’d made the mock salute, lifting her mechanical arm and flipping him off, showing off the cybernetic fist as she did so. “You wanna come over here and tell me your fucking problem to my face?”
The guy looked like an engineer—kind of stringy, covered in ropey muscle, lines on his face beyond his years with just a little eternal grime caught in the cracks, his nails ripped to shit from stripping out bolts for a living, his hands covered in electrical burn scars. He was a venerable pile, like the old Daimajin Destroyers themselves, half adamantine sheeting, radiation in his veins.
“No, ma’am,” the engineer said, smiling sardonically. “Officers need their beauty sleep.”
More laughter and obvious disdain burst from the group, like tiny eruptions from a barely contained reactor.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sora said with mock sincerity. “Did you guys wanna play a game of cards, maybe? Watch Earth’s Got Talent and braid each other’s hair? Play Spin the Bottle and have a grand old time? That sound like fun to you? That sound comfy?”
She met the eyes of every NCO in the group. They weren’t laughing now, the energy rushing out of them like air from a balloon.
“Yeah, that’s what I fucking thought.” Sora rolled her eyes, turning halfway back to the door. “Get real—you guys don’t want us in here. Call it a favor, huh?”
One of the others caught her with a smile. This was the jarhead, so obvious she found it painful.
“I dunno, beautiful. No one said we didn’t want you to stay.” His grin widened, half maniacal and weirdly appealing in its sincerity. “I heard you’re happy to give us marines a fair shake and a helping hand. I’ve got a joystick for you to ride if you’re missing your consoles.”
Sora felt Novak snap beside her, even before he made a move. The guy had been on the edge since he’d arrived, closer to breaking clean open than even he realized. He was already surging forward with the tremendous power of his cybernetic legs and spine when Sora lunged sideways and caught him with her cybernetic arm.
Sora had never tried to stop someone who possessed an augmented spine and two cybernetic legs, installed on a door of a human frame; she didn’t account for his strength, nor Novak’s issues controlling his cybernetics, nor his pain level. The effect was that she basically clotheslined him, hitting him in the stomach instead of the neck, and sent him careening forward onto his face. He was so heavy that he took her right down with him, his newly heavy augmented ass landing on top of her cybernetic arm and making her servos scream.
She heard his cane clatter down behind them like a final kick in the nuts, before the NCOs exploded into a fresh wave of uproarious laughter.
Then the doctors were there, Dr. Wang helping to untangle Sora with gentle hands and pulling her upright, while Dr. Kalgari checked on Novak and grabbed his cane.
“Get the fuck away from me,” Novak said in an undertone to Dr. Kalgari, taking his cane from him and holding one hand to his right hip with a fixed grimace. The NCOs had quieted down quickly and ominously, muttering amongst each other.
“Thank you for stopping him,” Dr. Wang told Sora.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t do it for you,” Sora muttered, standing and immediately offering Novak a hand. “Come on, man.”
Novak shot her a glare for clotheslining him, but he grabbed her hand nevertheless like they were back in the pool during water polo, letting her lever him right up to his feet. He was shaking and a little white around the eyes, revealing a potent combo of fresh rage and pain.
“Get him back to your room,” Dr. Kalgari told Sora in a tight voice, obviously realizing Novak wouldn’t let the doctors help him. “We’ll send someone from his care team with a shot of anti-inflammatories.”
Sora turned away from the group of NCOs with a final dirty look, noticing that the jarhead seemed real goddamn proud of himself—fucking prick—before she made sure Novak had his cane to lean on, and accompanied him out the door.
They stayed silent the whole way back to their shared room, but she could feel him simmering the entire journey, ready to boil over.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Novak asked her the moment the door closed behind them.
Sora rolled her eyes and went to her bunk, flopping down on top of her blanket and staring at the underside of Ensign Wallace’s bed again, arms behind her head.
“I dunno. Figured if you kicked that marine’s spine in half, you might, like… lose your commission or something. Or go to jail maybe. And then I’d be stuck with all the NCOs by myself, and that kinda sucked.”
“We’re not friends, Kuromoto.” Novak spoke coldly, way more coldly than she ever expected out of him. He braced himself against the top bunk above his bed, a hand still pressed hard into his screwed-up hip joint. “We haven’t seen each other in seven years. I’m not your fucking water polo buddy anymore, okay? You don’t have the right to stop me from fighting with NCOs, or arguing with doctors, or getting into a brawl, or doing anything else I damn well please. You got that?”
“Oh yeah?” Sora shot at him. “And what were you gonna brawl with that beefcake marine for, huh? Calling me a slut for jarheads? Offering me a joystick to ride? Get real. If you think you get to white-knight for me, I get to clothesline your stupid ass before you kill someone.”
“You’re a commissioned officer, and he clearly knows it,” Novak spat, still cold and merciless, eyes blazing bright green and angry with humiliation. “He knows exactly who you are—of course he does. He has no goddamn right to speak to you that way, but he thinks he can get away with it because he’s anonymous, actually anonymous, which you never can be with a bunch of navy people, thanks to your dad. I hate this fucking farce. We didn’t suddenly become civilians when we walked in that door, and those NCOs didn’t grow the right to say whatever they want without consequences.”
“Consequences being what?” Sora asked, raising an eyebrow. “You pummeling him into next year? What the fuck’s gotten into your head, Novak? You think this is Academy, that you’ll just lose simulator or off-site privileges for a month? You’re not just meat and bone anymore, man. You think you can use those cybernetics to beat a jarhead senseless and get away with it?”
Novak seemed close to another explosion, probably because he hadn’t given his heady font of rage an outlet when Sora clotheslined his ass.
“I just wanted to do something!” He was almost yelling now, trying to straighten and take his hand off the bunk, and also failing. “What’re we supposed to do? Put up with that shit for four weeks? Then come back to this fucking hell room every night? That supposed to help us with something?” He looked around, angry and helpless in a way Sora recognized. “I’m supposed to go back to Titan after all this and feel better somehow?!”
Sora recognized the look of someone who couldn’t see a few days into the future, let alone a month or years… because she felt the same way. She didn’t even want to think about what she’d be like after four weeks in this room, then going back to the Fenris. She was gonna have to quarantine herself somewhere. Maybe Nell would be a merciful captain and let her sleep in the armory or a corner of the hangar, like the psychotic, dangerous piece of violent machinery she was. Would anyone notice if Sora holed up with the guns, or maybe in non-perishable storage? She could sleep on a sack of potatoes or something—that sounded about right.
Can’t stay with the marines anymore. Fuck, and there’s no way I’m sleeping in the ensign bunks. They’re this room all over again.
Then again… sometimes she got the weird feeling that every room was this room.
Before she could answer, they jumped at a polite knock on the door. It immediately opened, as if knocking were simply a matter of giving them a chance to ready themselves, and not someone actually seeking permission to enter. A nurse in teal scrubs entered, carrying a tray with a bunch of medical stuff, and he smiled briskly at both of them.
“Hi, sorry. Just bringing a shot of anti-inflammatories and corticosteroids for Jaesan.” The nurse scanned the chip in Novak’s arm—a typical part of Murphy-Meilin’s cybernetic suites. He started to set up to give him a shot with a small medical scanner on-hand to guide the needle into the joint.
“I’m fine,” Novak said under his breath. “It usually goes away with some rest.”
“Anti-inflammatories right into the joint will help you get some sleep in here, without your hip acting up,” the nurse told him kindly. “All the patients on this ward have trouble the first few nights. I’d take it, if I were you. You mind pulling your scrub pants down a little so I can examine the hip? This injection will be intra-articular.”
Before Novak could even start to look embarrassed, Sora stood from her bunk and made her way past them.
“I’ll be in the shower. Hopefully the water pressure’s not as crapsack pathetic as the Omacatl’s was.”
She shut the door to the shower room firmly, locking it behind her, having a wild thought that the nurses probably had access codes to it in case someone got up to some shit. Why did that freak her out so much? She often slipped in and used the ensign bunkroom showers on the Fenris when she knew everyone to be out, and those looked a whole hell of a lot like this one, with allowances for fittings and plumbing. Did Murphy-Meilin always have a couple officers to torture, in each round of experimental therapy? Did the officers always get this room?
Sora hesitantly undressed, wishing she didn’t feel so goddamned exposed here, every freaking moment so far; it was like being back on Sirius Base again, not sure if she’d managed flying under the radar or if someone had her under surveillance, feeling paranoid every time she entered her tiny little rented room, never allowed to contact her friends. Sora had to take stock for a second, realizing she stood there shuddering, servos were going like crazy in her arm.
Sometimes it was hard to convince her body that it was over.
Then some nasty little part of her brain reminded her: Nothing is ever over.