Take Back the Sky Read online

  “Because you’re clued in, right?” Ishida asserts.

  “Commander Borden isn’t,” Tak says.

  Jesus, we have to start all over again. Everyone asks pointed questions about who knows what, who’s talking to whom, whose head is most busy and why. I doubt that most of our survivors believe deeply in any of this. Trust is going to be hard to maintain—after all, we’re consorting with the enemy, one way or another, all of us, right? And some more deeply than others.

  Slowly, with jumps and starts, everyone is brought up to a kind of pause point, the closest thing to exhaustion of topic we can manage for now—which I think should have happened back on Mars, but I wasn’t making those decisions.

  Then Borden raises her hand. She’s clenching something. I remember she grabbed a shiny little piece of metal outside the second hamster cage.

  I get a sick feeling.

  “On our way back, when we passed the corpses in the cage,” she says, “I found this. It must have slipped through the mesh.” She extends a dog tag smeared with dried blood and lets it float out on its crusted chain.

  Joe pinches the tag between his fingers as it drifts his way and examines the stamped letters. It’s a newer tag, with an embedded chip, but the letters are still stamped, and that means it belonged to a Skyrine. “Jesus!” he says, and looks at me as if he’s finally had the very last of the air let out of his tires. He releases the tag and wipes his hand on his pajamas.

  I grab it next. The blood is dark and crusted but I can still read the name: MSGT Grover N. Sudbury. Master Sergeant—my rank. Grover Sudbury—the rapist bastard several of us, including DJ, Joe, Kazak, and Tak, pounded to a pulp outside Hawthorne.

  Bringing back another part of that moment in the dream, the instauration, about returning to Madigan—

  Ask Joseph Sanchez about where he went with Grover Sudbury, and why.

  I never asked. Too ridiculous.

  Tak reads the tag and recoils in genuine horror—the kind of shuddering, supernatural horror you might feel in a nightmare or as a character in a scary movie. Which suddenly we all are. This could change everything—but how?

  How does it make anything different?

  “He can’t be here,” Tak says, his voice ragged. “We stomped the shit out of him and we weren’t brought up on charges or even asked why.”

  “Kazak helped,” DJ says. “Just before we were sent to Socotra. We heard the shithead was given a dishonorable discharge. After that, he went away. Nobody saw him again.”

  Borden lets the tag and chain slowly swing between us. “Okay. You knew him. If he was no longer in the service, how did he get here?”

  “And how the fuck did he earn rank?” DJ is sensitive about promotion, having been busted down a few times.

  The others wait for a story, any story that brings them into the picture.

  Litvinov inspects the tag and asks, “Who is this?”

  “A psychopath,” Tak says. “He assaulted a sister in a scuzzy apartment he kept just outside Hawthorne, while we were in training. Probably not his first, and we did our best to correct bad attitude.”

  “Why is he here?” Ishida asks.

  “Was here,” I correct.

  “Kind of coincidental, finding his tags, don’t you think?” Jacobi asks, but nobody can put together an explanation that makes sense. Knowledge of the past does not help us get to where we are now.

  Ishida asks: “Is anybody sure this Sudbury was actually here?”

  “No,” Joe says, as if it might be more convenient.

  But now it’s Borden’s turn. She found the dog tag, she’s holding it again. She looks around at the accusing eyes. “I didn’t stash this away and bring it out now to upset everybody,” she says coldly. “One of us knows what happened to Sudbury. I think we all need to hear.”

  I look at Joe. Borden looks at Joe. Joe looks defeated, then defiant. “Goddammit,” he says. “We beat the beans out of a fellow Skyrine.”

  “He deserved it,” Tak says.

  “Yeah, but we didn’t kill him.”

  “He wasn’t just kicked out, given a dishonorable discharge?” Borden asks.

  “No,” Joe says. “He went to the MPs and IG and pressed charges. Everybody I knew was about to be court-martialed. I had some connections already, so I went to the main office at Hawthorne. Told them what happened.”

  “Told who?”

  “Our DI, as it turned out. I told him about Sudbury and what he did—to protect my squad. He took me to a side office in another building. Special Considerations, it was called. Inside, he volunteered Sudbury. Filled out papers and everything. We’d heard rumors about Guru attitudes toward sex criminals—violent offenders. Rapists. Child molesters. The rumor was, if they were reported, the Gurus and Wait Staff would make sure they were locked up. DI said only that it was rumored to be a death sentence. I didn’t care.”

  “What happened?” Borden asks.

  “Everything tidied up,” Joe says. “Sudbury went away. Nobody was brought up on charges. The DI never mentioned it again, and I never went to that building again.”

  “The Gurus took charge?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe said.

  “Didn’t know,” Borden says. “Nobody let on that Sudbury would end up here?”

  “Wherever here is, how could they?” DJ asks.

  Joe shakes his head.

  “Not just Skyrines,” Borden says. “Similar deal in the Navy. Nobody wanted to talk about it.”

  Litvinov adds, with a firm nod, “Russian perverts, too.”

  “Gays, you mean?” Jacobi asks sharply, as if leading him into a trap.

  “No. Still difficult in Russia, but not for Gurus. These were worst of cruel, vicious—sadists. Generals and colonels said they were made into Guru sausage. Never asked for more. Did not wish to know.”

  “Sausage!” Jacobi says. “Nothing wasted in this man’s army.”

  The others take the tag from Borden and pass it around. Ishida, as if morbidly fascinated, holds on to it the longest. “No guns, no knives, no weapons, right?”

  “Apparently,” Borden says.

  “Everyone fought with bare hands and teeth,” Ishida says.

  Ulyanova has been studiously avoiding entering the discussion until now. “Ugly bits of flesh. Sausage. Gurus find use.”

  “Just guessing?” Borden asks.

  Ulyanova frowns. “See it. Remember it. They were put in cage, told they would not eat until, unless, they select meanest. Gurus want … how do you say it? Like skimming cream. Why humans deserve their doom, for film and broadcast. Audience love it. In the end, Gurus leave dead to rot.”

  “Sex monsters in the fight of their unholy lives,” Ishida says. “For the director’s cut.” She clutches her metal arm with the opposite hand, knuckles white. “Almost makes you sorry for them.”

  “You didn’t see what the bastard did to our sister,” DJ says. “Got what he deserved.”

  Some of us nod in agreement, but Tak and Litvinov, Borden and Ishikawa, have this dismayed look, as if even now they can’t believe or even conceive of the depth of Guru depravity.

  The dog tag hangs between us, loose. Nobody wants to hold it. Borden doesn’t reach for it. It should just float away, like the guy it once belonged to.

  “You see why I want Gurus dead?” Ulyanova asks.

  “Aren’t you one of them now?” Ishida asks.

  Nobody defends Ulyanova, and she doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. Nobody speaks for a time. Our tight little group has definite seams on this issue. Fascinating. I’m split myself—I could have killed Sudbury and enjoyed watching him die.

  But this …

  Makes him almost equal to us. Fodder for distant eyes.

  “Might make it more convincing this is actually a Guru ship,” Tak says. “What the hell would Antags care about human deviants?”

  “What are they planning for us?” Ishikawa asks. “Same thing, different day?”

  “Fuck!�
�� DJ exclaims. “I did not need to hear that.”

  “You should ask your Bird Girl,” Jacobi says. “You can do that, for us, to put our minds at ease—can’t you?”

  “Ask Ulyanova,” Borden suggests. “She’s right here.”

  “I do not see future,” Ulyanova says, and turns sullen.

  “Well then, who the fuck does?” Ishikawa asks. “If the Antags have Gurus—”

  “We know that much,” Borden says.

  “—then what’s happening with them? Is this all going to end up interesting, part of the movie extras—or a whole new show?”

  Jacobi digs in. “What’s the equivalent of Antag sexual deviancy? Breaking eggs? Making omelets?”

  That’s too much. The tension weirdly breaks. Joe snorts. Some of the others let air out of their noses, showing amusement and disdain.

  DJ says, quietly enough, “Good question, though. Are there any cages here full of dead Antags? Or are humans just particularly nasty sons of bitches?”

  “If you haven’t noticed, we’re already in a cage,” Jacobi says. “Maybe they just have to get us mad enough and we’ll put on a show. Maybe Vinnie is a camera—or DJ! Maybe they’re filming us right now.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. It is too fucking possible, maybe even likely.

  “I’m ready for my close-up!” Jacobi says, leaning in.

  My fists clench.

  “Leave Venn alone,” Ishida says. “We have to cut the starshina some slack, too.” She returns Jacobi’s hard look with a hard look of her own. “We have no idea what it’s like to be hooked up to this shit.”

  “The bodies in that cage have only been dead a few months, not years,” Borden says.

  “They still smell,” Jacobi says.

  “Justice grinds slow,” Tak says, following his own line of thinking, which doesn’t get any response.

  “How long has ship been hiding?” Litvinov asks.

  “Does anybody know anything about this ship, other than what they’ve told us—and maybe what they’ve shown us?” Jacobi asks. “She’s our only source on some of this! Give us the rest, goddammit!”

  Ulyanova’s turned sickly pale, almost green. She looks as if she’s digging around in a toilet and finding clogs and backups of the worst sort. “You want me to know?” she asks, tears coming to her eyes. “You want me to ask Guru what the fuck about all?”

  “What do you know or feel?” DJ asks, only marginally more gentle. He and I, and Kazak, have been closest to the situation she’s in now. Can the Gurus be any stranger than bugs or Antags?

  “Is not good,” Ulyanova says, holding her hands to her head. “Is not true, not correct. And not safe.” Litvinov gathers up the wilting starshina and leads her away, weeping.

  “She is done with answers,” he says over his shoulder. Vera goes with them across the cage, and wraps Ulyanova again in her mat.

  DJ embraces himself in his arms, as Kumar had done earlier. From behind, he looks like someone is hugging him—someone invisible. We’ve all had more than enough. As if reacting to yawns in a crowded room, pretty soon we’re mostly asleep—exhausted and traumatized.

  Before Joe joins us, he plucks the dog tag from the air and pokes it through the mesh, letting it slip out to become part of the water and the shit, cleaned up, moved out. “By itself, this is useless,” he says. “We’re going to ask a lot of pointed questions before we let Ulyanova probe a Guru. If that’s what the Antags are planning.”

  I feel a twist. They’re not mentioning me, but I know.

  Kumar agrees. “Let us see what leverage we have.”

  Then they wrap up and at least pretend to join the rest. Perversely, as I grip the mesh and squeeze my eyes shut, I’m picturing how the fight went down in the second cage. How the teams formed and dissolved, sucking in victims, dispatching them, throwing them aside, then turning on one another until one or two remaining fighters simply bled out. A horrible way to go.

  Who’s showing me all this?

  Just my fucked-up imagination.

  Or maybe not.

  Sweet.

  THE SITUATION THAT PREVAILS

  So it was phrased in a silly old cartoon about a real shithead who fought in World War II and sounded like Bugs Bunny and somehow never got himself killed. The phrase is bouncing around my head as I slide in and out of stupor. We are in the situation that prevails.

  I hate sleeping in zero g. One can only hang on to wire for so long, before your fingers cramp and you let go and bounce off whatever’s nearby. If it’s another Skyrine, or Borden, they shove or kick you away, usually without even waking up.

  But in zero g, I don’t dream much—at least not here. One doesn’t dream inside a dream, right? Maybe all I’ve been living through since I left Madigan is just another Guru instauration, and when I wake up I’ll be back in my apartment in Virginia Beach, getting ready to take my car out for a squeal, maybe drive to Williamsburg for kidney pie and some old-fashioned, cozy history. Real history. Has human history ever been real? How long has this shit been going on? Looks like a long, long time. Lots of wars.

  Have to ask: Which war was the most popular, ratings-wise?

  I open my eyes and find myself looking through the mesh into Bird Girl’s four purple-rimmed peepers. She’s floating steady on the other side, watching me, just waiting, quiet inside and out—letting me enjoy my restless doze.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “Forward. All of you. All of us. Through maze and fake eye shit.” She’s getting creative with her English.

  “There’s bad attitude brewing,” I say.

  “Brewing? Like beer?”

  “Yeah, bad beer. We’re not going to put up with being lowly assholes anymore. If the starshina is valuable to you, we want equality. Knowledge. Concessions. We have memories of dead friends, too. Tell your commanders that.”

  Long fucking speech, but inside it takes just instants and there are actually fewer words. More like thought balloons filled with emojis. That’s the way it is, here in the land of deep mind-fuck. The madder one gets, the more the word balloons simplify.

  But Bird Girl and I are closely enough related both in ancestry and employment that the message is clear. And when I look back at the others, watching my interaction with the Antag, I see they’re awake and alert and have lined up in combat order. Borden and Joe and Litvinov and Jacobi are at the tip of a fighting formation, holding one another’s hands like they’re going steady. Wonder of wonders, we’re together.

  I try to find Ulyanova. There she is, in the charge of Ishida and Vera. Sisterhood of power. Cool to see, and cool to see that our starshina is neither weepy nor green.

  Bird Girl brings her four eyes back to mine.

  “I will say it,” she tells me, and then moves off back into the darkness of the squash court. I see her shadow exit the cube.

  A while later, she and three of the armored commanders return. Bird Girl says, out loud, “We join. No bad beer, right?”

  I look back at our officers.

  Joe and Borden say, simultaneously, “Agreed.”

  Litvinov says, “Agree.”

  The translator buzzes.

  The cage door opens.

  “All?” I ask.

  “All,” she says. “Keep together.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Forward. We will bring Keepers.”

  “And the connection?”

  “Connection and Keepers. They will tell us Keeper thoughts.”

  “Right,” I say. Doesn’t sound too complicated, does it? I have no idea how Ulyanova is going to respond, how she’ll involve me, or how precise and efficient she’ll be. We’re all new to this.

  HORN AND IVORY, BLOOD AND BONE

  Joe and Borden and Litvinov grip arms and share a tether, a leash, as we are led forward. Kumar is right behind them, listening as they evaluate our piss-poor options.

  “They must feel vulnerable, to agree to this,” Borden says.

 
“Duh,” Jacobi says from behind. Borden doesn’t even give her a look.

  “They’re feeling trapped, like us,” Joe says.

  DJ and I are paying more attention to Ulyanova than to our superior officers. She’s being escorted on another tether by Vera and Ishida. Her lips are creased in a kind of dotty smile, as if we’re on a country outing and she’s listening to the birdies, so charming to be here. Jesus.

  Without Ulyanova we’re useless to the Antags, and while at the moment, despite the smile, she’s strong enough to manage, to stay alert and keep up with us on the leashes as we’re dragged forward, through the usual curving corridors and then along the screw garden on the rail system—just capacious enough to carry us all …

  The strain she’s under, she could still break at any moment. What if her soul crumbles? She’s filled with Guru. Could happen, right?

  And me?

  DJ and I seem strong enough, we’ve lasted long enough, but are we reliable? Maybe I’m the main POV. I’d gladly ash-can my brain, or at least my imagination, just to be a dumb grunt again.

  “Anything left of Titan?” I ask DJ.

  “I think they’ve finished bombing. Good times down there.”

  He sounds uncertain, so I have to ask, like a kid probing to find out where the Christmas presents are hidden, “But you’re still getting something?”

  “Not really,” DJ says. “Just shrapnel from earlier overloads.”

  “Right.” DJ and I are a thin soup of residuals, peas and carrots in cooling broth.

  Kumar drops back closer. “I do not believe that anyone can connect to a Guru and live long,” he says in a low voice. “Even when they are right in front of me, talking to me, I have never found them the least accessible. They are masters of … ” He breaks off. “What is this place we are going? How much do their Gurus and the connected one—how much do they understand about the ship? The systems involved?”

  All good questions. DJ answers the first as best he can. “It’s a puzzle lock. You have to solve a code to move forward. Without the code, it’s a meat grinder.”

  “Are you sure you all saw the same situation, or the same version of that situation?” Kumar asks.