Transcendent (9781311909442) (22 page)

Tears fell from her right eye to join the
left. “How could you do this to me?” she whispered.

“To you?” He blurted out. “I didn’t do
anything to you! I helped my friends. They’re not hurting anyone.
They aren’t raiding convoys or killing people. They’re trying to
survive! They can’t turn themselves in—they’ll be killed! What else
are they supposed to do?”

Krys saw the movement but didn’t react in
time to block the slap that left his head ringing. When he blinked
the colors out of his eyes, he saw her standing several feet away
from him. He blinked again, wondering how she’d gotten off his lap
so fast. He reached up to touch the hot side of his face and then
looked at her. “You hit me!”

“You deserve it!” she shouted. “Damn it,
Krys, I—I—why did you have to do this?”

“I didn’t have any other choice.”

“Yes you did!” she spat. “You had me. I gave
you me, or at least I tried to. Is that it? Is there somebody out
there? Somebody living like a savage who you prefer?”

“Shelby, stop,” Krys pleaded. “There’s not
anybody else! It’s just—they’re my friends! Why can’t you
understand that? I can’t let them die.”

“Friends,” she snarled. “Friends are
acquaintances. People you have something in common with for a
little while. Then you move on when circumstances change. Even
social contracts don’t require treason!”

“Treason?” Krys gulped. He’d read the
postings and heard the news alerts. Anyone aiding a rebellious
activity, either directly or through failing to act, was guilty of
it. “So what, you’re going to shoot me because I’m not callous
enough to throw my friends away like a piece of fruit that’s gone
bad?”

Shelby stared at him, her chin quivering and
her hands trembling. She hugged them across her chest, the muscles
beneath her skin cording with the effort she took to control
herself. “I’m in line to be promoted to captain soon,” she said.
“That would mean a transfer to the starport. If we stopped acting
like savages and drew up a social contract, you could have come
with me. Except now I can’t let you anywhere near the starport. How
do I know you’re not feeding the terrorists information?”

“What? I’m not a terrorist!” Krys said as he
lurched to his feet. A small voice nagged in the back of his head
that he’d been prepared to become one. He’d trained with Mig,
learning how to fight and planning and preparing for it. He’d even
sacrificed himself for his friends and hoped he could find a way to
get back to them with information.

Instead, he’d turned soft. He’d found the
lure of steady food, a soft bed, and running water too much to pass
up. Having the attention and affection of the highest ranking
officer in the colony was a nice perk, too. Krys shook his head and
sighed. “I’m not a terrorist,” he said again.

“You sound disappointed.”

He shrugged. “Does it matter anymore?”

“I guess that’s up to you.”

Krys looked up at her, surprised by her
tone. She sounded like she was pleading, not accusing. “We’re so
different,” he mumbled.

She snorted and looked away. Krys followed
her eyes to her belt on the table. Being an officer, she only had a
couple of attachments for it, one of them being her sidearm. He
gasped. Was this it? Was she going to shoot him?

“Shelby,” he stammered, drawing her
attention back to him. “It doesn’t make sense, but I guess I’m more
old-fashioned than you are. I believe in friendships and in
relationships, not social contracts. What’s holding me back from
you? I’m afraid that you won’t feel the same way I do.”

She stared at him with her lips parted. She
clamped them shut and turned away, towards the table. She turned
back and stared at him. “What are you doing?” she asked.

Krys blinked. “Huh?”

“I’ve been trained to believe in things.
Educated and raised to know what’s right and what’s important!”

“Um, okay.” Krys glanced around and was
careful not to look past her towards the entrance with the kitchen
and small table. Could he get there first? And if he did, then
what? Could he shoot her if he had to? His stomach flipped,
answering for him. “I’m not a traitor. I thought I could be when I
came here, but you treated me so good and everything worked out for
me. So I stayed. Yes, I give my friends clothing and food when I
can, but that doesn’t mean I’m trying to change things. I don’t
want anyone to get hurt.”

She stiffened and stared at him. “I have to
ask you this, and I need a complete and honest answer from
you.”

Krys nodded. He had nothing left to lose and
the fact that she hadn’t shot him yet was a good sign.

“Are you Krys Evans?”

Krys laughed at the simple question. “Yes, I
am.”

She nodded. “Good. What about your friends?
You said you planned to be a traitor when you came here. Was the
plan to perform terrorism?”

“The plan? There was no plan,” he said. “I
gave myself up when I realized I couldn’t get away. I hoped to
distract your soldiers so my friends could escape. It worked. Then
I figured I’d do what I could to help them from inside for as long
as I could when you didn’t have me killed.”

She frowned. “Help them how?”

“Originally? Yes, we wanted our old lives
back. But I’ve seen enough—I know that’s not possible. Now I just
want to keep everybody safe.”

She nodded.

“Can I ask you a question?” Krys
gambled.

She stared at him and nodded.

“Maybe our society considers me an adult but
the one I grew up in probably wouldn’t. I know I’m not sure I know
what I’m doing when it comes to you, but I have to know something.
You got very upset with me. Very. You’ve been talking on and off
about social contracts for a while. Does that mean that you, um—do
you love me?”

Shelby’s eyes narrowed as he spoke and then,
when he asked his question, she winced. She looked away and wiped
her eyes with her hands before turning back to him. “For the
smartest man I know, young or not, you can be really stupid
sometimes.”

Krys nodded but felt some of the terror
squeezing his heart loosen. “So is that a good stupid or a bad
stupid?”

“Just stupid,” she said. “Do you trust
me?”

“I want to,” Krys answered. He nodded a
moment later. “I do, I guess. You’ve never done me wrong or lied to
me.”

“I haven’t done you at all,” she
muttered.

Krys frowned. “What?”

She shook her head. “If you trust me, then I
want to meet your friends. Just you and me. No soldiers. No guns.
No trackers. Just us.”

Krys blew out the breath he’d been holding.
“Do I have a choice?”

“Of course you do.”

“No, I mean, will I go to jail or be shot if
I refuse? You’re not going to let me keep helping them, are
you?”

“Not without—no,” she said, catching
herself.

Krys would have refused anyone else. Shelby
wasn’t anyone else, though. She was, well, she was Shelby. She’d
bent rules and helped him around others. If she promised him it
would just be them, he believed her. “All right. When?”

“Soon,” she said. “We don’t have much
time.”

“Why not?”

“The president’s ordered that the rebellion
be stopped,” she said. “And he’s sending reinforcements to make
sure it happens.”

“More soldiers?”

She nodded. “And more.”

“More? You mean—” Krys trailed off, not
quite certain what more there could be.

“Two armored brigades are in transit,” she
said, cutting him off. To drive the point home, she clarified,
“Roughly a hundred tanks and twice as many biomechs.”

Palla staggered into a wall of the passage
and held herself against it. In between gasps for breath, she
wheezed, “This is ridiculous!”

“You want to tag along with me, you have to
pass the BCT physical training,” Lily teased. “Besides, you were
getting a belly.”

Palla’s breath burst out of her mouth
indignantly. She looked down at her bare stomach beneath her halter
top and ran her hand across it. “I am?”

Lily raised an eyebrow. “A little bit.”

Palla pushed off from the wall. She took in
a deep breath and let it out. It helped slow her panting a little.
“Fine, let’s go.”

Lily started jogging and glanced back to see
Palla struggling to keep up. She slowed down until Palla caught
her, and then sped up enough to keep her friend red-faced and
gasping. She had to repeat the process three times until they
finished two more laps and completed the five-kilometer run.

Palla collapsed on a bench and leaned
forward to gasp for air while sweat dripped off her nose and chin.
Lily sat beside her and offered her a water pod. Palla shook her
head and sputtered, “Can’t. Breathe.”

“This will help,” Lily offered.

“Might. As. Well. Dump. It. On. Me,” Palla
suggested.

Lily frowned and glanced around. A few other
runners had passed them and were heading down the track but it was
early enough they were alone. She tipped it over the back of her
friend’s neck.

Palla gasped and then lurched to her feet.
She sputtered and shook her head while holding her arms out as
water dripped off her hands and through the grate on the floor.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked.

“You said dump it on you.”

“I didn’t mean it!” Palla whined. She looked
down at herself and rolled her eyes. “Great. Wear the white one,
you said.”

Lily followed Palla’s eyes and laughed.
Between the sweat and the water, Palla’s top and matching shorts
reminded Lily of a bathing suit more than workout clothing. “Come
on, you can make it to the showers.” Lily pointed to the women’s
locker room door across the hall.

The sound of feet striking the grating
jerked their heads to the left. Someone was running on the track.
Palla yelped and ran, not jogged, across the hall and through the
door. Lily followed behind, laughing and then drinking from the
remaining water in the pod.

“I’m going to find a way to get you for
that,” Palla said when Lily joined her at the lockers.

“I thought you were serious!”

Palla snorted.

“At least you caught your breath.”

“And almost had a heart attack!”

“You’re fine,” Lily said. “Now hurry up.
You’ve got some basic combat training to get to next.”

Palla scowled and pulled open her locker
door. She opened up the bag for her clothes and then pulled her
halter over her head. She turned to Lily, her eyebrows scrunched
together. “Hey!”

Lily was stripping off her shirt and looked
up at Palla as she added hers to the bag. “Hey what?”

“You’re naked!”

Lily blushed and shrugged it off. “That’s
what happens in the showers.”

“But you’re not freaked out?”

“I got over that. Kind of had to during my
BCT.”

“And I bet it helps that you finally grew
some boobs.”

Lily rolled her eyes and hoped the added
heat in her face didn’t give her away. She finished stowing her
dirty laundry and shut the locker door. “You coming?”

Palla trailed after her into the communal
shower room and took up a showerhead on the opposite side of the
shower station Lily chose. They pressed their buttons to engage the
water stream at nearly the same time.

“Excited?” Palla asked her after they
showered in silence and rinsed the sweat off their bodies.

“Yes,” Lily admitted.

“Nervous?”

“No, just excited,” Lily said. “Hard to
believe my first time in a real biomech will be on a
deployment.”

“I meant because of where we’re going.”
Palla said.

Lily frowned and shut her water off.
Showering was a lot quicker now that she’d had the sides of her
head depilated to keep her interface exposed. The end result was a
wide Mohawk that she styled and, when she had a chance to go out
with friends, colored. Usually the only friend she went out with
was Palla. “Oh. I haven’t thought about that much.”

“You haven’t? Wow, that’s amazing.”

Lily shrugged and moved over to one of the
drying stations. “When I was a kid, people used to be amazed at
that. I almost never worried. I just kept daydreaming about the
future.”

Palla shut her water off and walked over,
giving Lily a chance to activate the tornado that whipped around
her and sucked the water off her skin. When it finished, she waited
for Palla’s spin cycle to finish before heading out of the shower
and back to their adjoining lockers.

“Think it’ll be any different?” Palla asked.
“Real biomech versus simulator?”

“I’m sure,” Lily said as she pulled out her
uniform and began to get dressed. “At least that’s what all the
instructors keep telling me. The simulator plugs in but it’s just a
simulation.”

“At the risk of sounding silly, I’m looking
forward to seeing Venus,” Palla admitted. She smiled at Lily and
dropped her eyes. “I mean, all the forests and grass? It’s got to
be pretty beautiful, doesn’t it?”

Lily smiled back. “Depends if we get a
station on the light side or the dark side. A Venerian solar cycle
is over a hundred Earth days.”

Palla grimaced. “That’s a lot of
darkness!”

Lily shrugged. “It’s not bad if it’s all you
know. Takes some adjusting when the sun sets and rises, but then
it’s business as usual.”

Palla shook her head and sat down to pull on
her shoes. “This training is silly. For me, I mean. I’m going to be
with the command unit, not out in the field.”

“Not if my platoon goes out,” Lily said.

Palla gaped at her before she found her
voice. “What?”

Lily grinned. “If my platoon is sent out,
you come with us. You’ll be with the support staff but where I go,
you go.”

“I didn’t know that!”

“Sorry, I thought you did.”

“We need to work on our communication. And
by we, I mean you,” Palla scolded her. “I barely found out you got
promoted to captain because of your performance.”