Dove Arising (23 page)

As the lights dim, Yinha invites us to stand and sing the national anthem.

“Luna, Luna,

Once a sphere on high,

Now our home in the sky.

Survive and prosper

Take the bounty nature offers.

Oh, the Earthbound below

The truth they’ll never know.

Silver mountains, blackest seas—

Only here is mankind free.”

Lights illuminate the dome once more, and the trainees—rather, soldiers—cheer. Chills climb up my spine, as if someone’s icy fingers were tickling the vertebrae one at a time. It’s the first time I’ve sung the words and thought about their meaning, into what I will now fight to defend. We’re “free,” but from what? Not material want, heaps of which I witnessed in Shelter, or direct commands, which govern my life here.

Jupiter’s father rises and speaks in a magnified voice, his tone deep like Umbriel’s but crystalline with cunning. The General’s son may be rash, but the father is as composed as a sheet of graphite.

“Congratulations on completing training and joining the Base IV Militia. Many of you may celebrate these next two years as an opportunity to serve the Moon. A number of you dread them. But I tell you this: we live in the greatest civilization ever created by man. It is a privilege to defend it!”

Forty-seven trainees—all of us except me and Wes—hoot their approval.

“Every one of you,” he says, “should swell with honor as you ride your hover-seat to the platform and allow me to attach the private insignia to your jacket. I did the same when I was young. I never left. I continue to serve the honorable Standing Committee. My fervor led me to become general of the Base IV Militia.”

“Here we behold an excessively humble man,” Wes observes out of the side of his mouth.

Yinha calls names, starting with trainee number forty-nine, Europa Nu. Upon arriving at the platform, she tumbles out of her chair in her eagerness to shake the General’s hand and receive her adhesive insignia, a white circle of cloth with a simplified representation of an atom, complete with a nucleus and electron cloud, stitched upon it.

Somewhere in the teens, the insignia changes to the special private symbol, a bigger white circle with a benzene ring. As one ascends the Militia hierarchy, the symbols grow larger in scale, from the atom of a private to the spiral galaxy of a general. Objects, such as the sergeant’s microchip, represent things the Militia considers indispensable. Jupiter, number six, receives a violent pat on the back from his father and a yellow square labeled
CORPORAL
. Upon the patch is an animal cell—a compartmentalized blob with short cilia on its surface. As Jupiter trudges away, the General glares at his back, his eyes blaming his son for not being good enough. Beside me, Wes chuckles.

Nash, Orion, and Callisto solemnly receive their patches. The first two, to my surprise, don’t grin or laugh; I thought they would find something funny in seeing a huge, middle-aged man frowning at the people who bested his son.

“Wezn Kappa.” As Wes rides to the platform, the General continues, “Typically, second-place trainees don’t rank higher than corporal. But this cohort is unusually talented. Upon careful consideration, we have decided to award Wezn the title of sergeant.”

He produces a red diamond with a gold computer chip stitched upon it and presses it to Wes’s jacket. As Wes rides back, I notice his name stitched in small letters below the word,
SERGEANT
.

If he’s a sergeant . . .

“Our last trainee has displayed unusual physical and mental discipline, as well as leadership and bravery, in spite of being only fifteen years old. What you will hear next is unprecedented,” the General says in a monotone. Despite the obvious praise, he doesn’t seem to like me.

“After much
deliberation
”—he emphasizes the last word with a brief incline of his head—“and with a formal commission from the Standing Committee . . . We award Phaet Theta the rank of captain.”

27

DISBELIEF CLOUDS MY VISION EVEN AS MY chair lurches forward. Ecstatic, I nearly topple off; the lower half of my face smarts from smiling.

The applause deafens me. I disembark and walk toward the General on the platform. Like Jupiter, he squeezes my hand so hard that the bones chafe against cartilage.

The insignia is a squat silver dagger that reads
CAPTAIN
, with
PHAET
THETA
embroidered below. Yinha beams at me as the General attaches the badge to my chest, indicating her own with a reedy finger. Like her, I now have teaching privileges and, in wartime, command of a company of soldiers. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile.

When I return to the viewing platform, the General makes more tiresome comments about pride and patriotism. Finally, he lets the restless trainees leave. We must pack our things away; tomorrow we’ll move into new quarters in the main part of the Defense compound, and neophyte trainees will take our place in the barracks.

I don’t have much to bring, only a few sets of shirts and pants and my old white robes. I thought my load would contain more, but I realize that the things I was preparing to take aren’t material. They’re people. Nash, Eri, Orion . . . With my new title, I won’t see them often.

Nash voices my thoughts. “Training was . . . tough. And I’m sorry for being mean to you the first week. But I was glad to have you around—I’ll think about you a lot, Stripes.”

When she embraces me, she plants a sloppy kiss on my cheek that makes me feel happy and sad at the same time.

Other people come up to my cot and hug me. The finality of this farewell hits like a side jab from Wes, hammering in the reality again and again. If I ever see my friends, it will be to lead them on missions or patrol. I’ll give them direct orders and evaluate their performances. Two years from now, when they go on to Specialization or return home, I must stay in Defense.

What about the greenhouses? Finishing Primary? Finding a job in Bioengineering, as I’ve studied to do for ten years? And Umbriel—will he want to spend his life with a soldier? I’ll never have the life of quiet innovation that I’d imagined.

Ninety-nine percent of base doors are now open to me via my captain’s fingerprint, but hundreds of intangible ones are shutting tight. I
did
join Militia without thinking about the long-term repercussions. If I hadn’t left home for this place—to rescue Mom, to keep my family safe—I could still be looking at my future with a hint of happiness.

Instead, my life is on autopilot.

But there on my handscreen are 3,500 Sputniks, waiting to leap out of the family account and free Mom.

Mind fuzzy, I make my way through the twisting corridors to the Defense exit. Yinha is waiting for me. She grabs my arm.

“I need to talk to you for a few minutes. It’s important—about your new job.”

“Gotta go.” I accelerate, but Yinha’s fingers dig into my flesh. Her inconsistency hurts my head. I don’t know when she’ll act friendly or push me around like a superior, a position—stupefying, no?—she no longer holds.

“Where to? It must be important, because I’ve got urgent advice for you. Your captain duties technically started the minute you got that insignia. Thought you’d want some pointers from me before you mess up.”

I freeze. Leaving Mom in Penitentiary for a second longer than necessary pains me, but she must wait a few minutes for me to dampen Yinha’s obvious suspicion by complying.

We walk into the busy dinnertime hallways of Base IV, where the security pods spread their attention among hundreds of commuters. The clamor will muffle whatever Yinha wants to say. People stand straighter as we pass, moving out of our way when they see the patches on our jackets. We reach the Atrium in record time. Adding to the strangeness is the realization, when I peek into a civilian security mirror, that Yinha is shorter than I remembered—shorter than me, in fact.

“First of all, congratulations. Saw something in you from day one.” Yinha’s tone isn’t condescending or flat; she doesn’t even utter the word
cool
. She pulls me into the entrance of the Market Department. People are buying groceries or sitting at small circular tables, shoveling cooked food into their mouths.

“Dinner’s on me. That’s nonnegotiable.” She reaches into a refrigeration unit and snatches two packages of sushi; each piece has been molded into a star shape, with either white or black rice. Her handscreen flashes as Sputniks are deducted. I’m too shocked to object. I’ve never had sushi before; seaweed cultivation and laboratory meat formulation are notoriously costly. Will my new life be like this—having the money to casually buy luxury dinners for other people?

As we move toward the rear of Market, a dark-eyed private, at least four years older than me, emerges from a group of friends and presents me with the back of his hand.

“Captain? Can I have your autograph?”

Beside me, Yinha smirks but remains silent. One of the other boys whispers something, causing the rest to snigger into their palms.

With my forefinger, I open a blank document on the private’s handscreen and shakily scrawl my initials. Only thirty minutes have passed since my promotion, but it has been enough time for my notoriety to spread through Defense. This soldier wants to get a piece of me, before it reaches the remainder of the base. People will discuss me when I’m not around, which is bad enough, and not because I discovered or invented something useful. Base residents admire our best researchers and engineers but fear top military personnel. I don’t want to be feared.

“Thank you! I’ll keep this close to my heart.” The private inclines his head and takes off with the rest of the group, leaving my cheeks too fiery for my liking.

“Typical fan boy. He was supposed to
salute
you first. Not cool.” Still wearing a superior smile, Yinha chooses a tiny table at which we’re enveloped by noise. She opens her sushi but otherwise ignores the food. Her dark eyes rotate, scanning the vicinity for security pods and finding none. Those things wouldn’t stalk two officials with clean criminal records.

“Do you know why you’re a captain?”

“My training score?”

“You scored well, but you had only three points more than Wezn. And we employ enough captains in Militia already.”

Does Yinha consider me a threat to her position? It’s plausible, but no ill-meaning officer would buy her colleague a dinner of sushi—maybe cucumber salad.

“Who had the idea to rank me so high?”

She pulls a sour face. “The General. Jupiter’s father.”

My mouth drops open. To cover my surprise and vulnerability, I drop a piece of sushi on my tongue with the sterilized glass chopsticks. The wasabi sticking to the roll hits my eyes, which involuntarily leak tears.

Yinha continues. “Some people in the scoring panel didn’t like your little stunt during the third evaluation—steering the ship away from the enemy target against Jupiter’s direct orders. You’re lucky you got the points that you did.”

“But it was a civilian ship—”

“It would’ve been a threat to the Bases if it were really Batterer. If there had been soldiers aboard, if they were posing as civilians and later carried out an attack— Well, chaos.”

Yinha chomps on a piece of wasabi-laden sushi. Her eyes don’t water at all. “Some of them didn’t like your leadership style in the last evaluation either. Not enough valor, they said, though I argued that you displayed an unusual amount.”

“Thanks.”

“They know about your workouts with Wes, but they liked the effort, so they let those continue. There are
so
many security pods zooming around Defense, several of which filmed you. They’re even in the troops’ residences.”

Surveillance—I guess I expected that. “Are they watching me now?”

“There are at least three pods in your new apartment. I know because I counted three in mine.”

The rice from the sushi sticks in my throat.

“I don’t like being watched but, obviously, it’s for my safety and the security of the Bases.”

I make a big show of checking the time on my handscreen.

“My family’s waiting for me,” I say, telling a quarter of the truth.

“Pity.” Yinha crosses her arms and drums her fingers on her triceps. She doesn’t believe me. “Hold on a few more seconds and let me finish—cool? Listen, I don’t interact much with the higher-up commanders. But I know them. They have some larger motive for promoting you to captain—larger than putting you in an apartment with three pods to watch you—but I don’t know what it is. Be careful, Stripes.”

I don’t want to listen anymore, because she could very well be right. Disregarding my manners, shuddering at what the Militia’s “larger motive” might be and whether it has anything to do with the accusations against Mom, I stuff my mostly uneaten sushi into my empty canteen and rise from the table. “Thanks for the food. My sister would love to try sushi.”

“Be back before curfew,” Yinha says. “I need to escort you to your new home.”