Beacon 23: The Complete Novel (12 page)

• 21 •

Cricket pounces on me as I enter the lifeboat. She holds me against the deck, massive paws on my chest, and growls and growls. Clamping down on my arm with her mouth, she squeezes like she wants to bite me. But she just holds me there, making threatening noises in her throat.

I let her have it out and scratch her neck. Relenting, she lets go, mews at me, then licks my face through my open visor.

“I know, I know,” I tell her, stroking her head, trying to calm her down. “I’m sorry. Everything’s okay. I’m sorry.”

I exude these thoughts. Cricket lowers her weight against me, as if we’re going to lie just outside the airlock and take a nap.

“Up,” I say. “We gotta go. Can’t abandon our station. Everything’s okay here.”

Better than okay. But I can’t stay. After an hour of watching Claire work, sweating in my walk suit, feeling useless and awkward, I had to beg my leave. Despite every craving in every cell of my body, I had to beg my leave.

Cricket and I head back to our beacon at half-thrust. I leave one of the displays set to the rear camera, and I watch the unblemished and new recede as I crawl across empty space toward my rundown home. Cricket is passed out on the seat beside me, her body sprawled over the armrest so that her head can reach my arm, pinning it to my seat with the weight of her exhaustion. Must’ve worn herself out pacing and fretting while I was gone. When I need to adjust the throttle, I lean across and use my left hand so I don’t disturb her. What the hell am I doing? Aiding and abetting a fugitive, and now harboring an alien. This is what happens when they give you medals for breaking the rules: you forget the rules apply to you.

Opening the airlock to my home, I smell the tiredness of the place. The clean atmo in the other beacon cleared my nostrils, and now I can smell that the air I live in isn’t foul so much as stale. The scrubbers are doing their job more admirably than I thought. Hell, they’re doing their job more admirably than
I
am.

Shedding the walk suit, I head toward the ladder. Cricket seems to read my mind and leaps for it first. She wraps her paws around a rung halfway up, lunges again, and grabs the lip. Elbows jut down as she scrambles, rear legs wheeling, tail corkscrewing. Every time she goes up a ladder, it looks like she might not make it, but she always does. I’m already climbing up behind her, the air cool on my sweaty skin, just my sleep shorts on. Cricket takes advantage of my hands being occupied at the top of the ladder and gets in a lick on my head and one on my cheek before I can ward her away.

“No lick,” I tell her, wiping my cheek. I’ve tried to train this out of her. “Never lick me again,” I say, shaking a finger at her. She sits and cocks her head to the side. “Last time. Never again. No licking. I mean it.”

Her tail swishes the steel grating. I pat her head. I swear she can read my mind, and yet somehow she doesn’t seem to hear a word I say. I scratch behind her ears and ask, “These are just for decoration, aren’t they?”

She licks my hand. I don’t know why I even try.

Up another ladder, I start the shower pod. I let it steam up inside, the water recycling over and over. When it looks like one of those cig smoking rooms in a spaceport, I crack the door and step through the fog and into the scalding hot. The death and tiredness boils off my skin. I scrub the old cells away, getting at the new me beneath. Soap and lather. I fumble for my razor and run it under the showerhead before rolling it across my face. Little patches of hair elude me. I wash my hair, then turn my back to the jet and just let the heat pound into my spine. Water so damn hot. I pee while standing there, remembering Hank from B Company who used to get angry when anyone did this. One whiff of pee in the showers, and Hank’d go ballistic, looking everywhere for the yellow stream. We’d accuse him of using this as an excuse to go around studying our dicks.

Hank was my best friend in the company—for all of the two weeks he was alive with us in the trenches. It was a long two weeks. There aren’t any rules about how long you gotta know someone to know you love them. The army taught me that. You can hate the moment you line up your barrel, and you can love the second you lower it. Back and forth like that. Oscillating grav panels. There’s no up or down to the cosmos, just a whole bunch of fucking sideways. Just people loving and hating. And no rules on how long it takes.

I turn off the shower as the heat starts to die down from boiling to mere scalding. My flesh is red. Steam rises off me as I leave the pod. Cricket is fast asleep on my bed; she wakes long enough to glance at me, to make sure she isn’t missing anything, then goes back to sleep.

I rifle through my clothes, sniffing everything. All the same degree of mildly clean. It’s only now that I see the amber light flashing over my bunk. Damn. Message on the QT. I go up the ladder two rungs at a time and check the display. Three messages from NASA asking me to report back in about the SOS.

I key in the number
55
. Then I press through three screens of warnings before the entangled particles tickle their entangled twins back in Houston. Five by five is what someone used to say back in some other time to mean that everything is okay. Not sure why this is any more efficient than just saying OK. It probably has something to do with the state of Oklahoma. All their fault. Just like it’s Germany’s fault we have to say the number nine as “niner.” Everyone causes trouble. It’s not just me.

I turn the message alarm off and walk a big circle around the command module. Then another circle. Cricket wakes up below, realizes I’m gone, and arrives at the command module with two leaps, a grunt, and some kicking. She curls up on the blanket I leave under the dash for her and watches me pace.

I shake my arms like they’re still wet, like there’s something in them I need to get out, like those nerves a soldier feels before a big push out of the trenches. What the hell is wrong with me? A trickle of water runs down my breastbone, leaking from the porous rock I wear around my neck. I wipe this away, cross to the porthole, and watch the flashing light for a while. I turn to the HF, wondering what I would say if I picked it up. I turn back to the light.

This is worse than being completely alone.

• 22 •

I dream of my company that night. My old company. B Company.

Bravo, boys.

Take a bow.

Clap Company.

The kind of clap you don’t want to receive.

They cured that shit centuries ago, but they still called us the VD crew. Very Desperate. Veterans Disabled. Vaginas & Dicks. Vapor Dust. But my favorite: Verily Dead.

You need one company set aside for the glory runs and photo-ops. That’s not us. That would be the Alpha Company boys and girls. They think they’re the shit, because they get the milk runs. Might
seem
like they get the worst targets, the toughest assignments, but they’re the targets with all the intel, the battles we know we can win. A good chess player doesn’t send out the queen unless he knows she’s gonna take a couple pawns and not take a nick. So the top scorers, the squeaky clean, the square-cut jaws, the Aces and Champs, they get sent out with the best gear and the best air support and the best artillery crews and the biggest budgets, and they always get their buggers.

Charlie Company is for those you barely trust with a gun. The swinging barrels in a crowded dropship that have you ducking so fast you throw your back out.

That leaves Bravo Company, the expendables who know what they’re doing. When you’ve gotta hit something, and you don’t know its soft spot, you clap twice for Company B.

SIR YES SIR! SIR, MOTHERFUCKING RIGHT, SIR! SIR, AIM ME AND FIRE, SIR!

We think on our boots in Company B. We fight our way, bewildered, through the confusion and the haze. We don’t make it out the other side, not all of us. But somewhere, there’s the click of a pen, a proud signature, a father’s hand on a young man’s shoulder, and we reload. That’s the sound of our collective gun cocking, the click of that pen. That’s us racking another round in the chamber. Fire that boy out, hope you hit something. If he gets three before he goes home in his own bag, then the numbers look good. That father gets his medal. No one else to wear it. Goes in a frame above the mantel, and on holidays glasses are raised. First you raise the kids, and then you raise a toast.

I see it all in my dreams; I see it every night. The shrapnel seems to come from the earth. When the kinetic missiles hit, the ground vomits hot death. An eruption of soil, a cloud of screaming metal reaching out for the unfortunate, grabbing limbs and lives with abandon.

I see the boys and girls in my dreams. The brothers and sisters. I see the mangled. I see my best friend Hank, who hated when I peed in the shower, and he’s standing there with his trousers wet, looking at me, dumbfounded, like he’d shrug at it all if he had the limbs, like the cosmos would be a funny place if that was pee all over him.

“—just need a quick hand.”

Yes, we all need a hand. Titanium. Carbon fiber. Neurologically integrated. Five hundred and twelve degrees of hot and cold sensitivity. Better than the real thing. Everyone needs a hand. And a leg. And a new colon. I have half mine. I have a goddamn semicolon. I’m naked in class, and Mrs. Phister is asking me a question about grammar. I pee myself while the kids laugh. There are shower nozzles everywhere, shooting soil and shrapnel into the classroom. Kids laughing and dying. I remember the rule for semicolons; the sentences on both sides have to be full ones. Full people. Whole. Not many of them anymore.

“You listening?”

I’m listening. I’m paying attention. I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m paying attention. I take it all in slack-jawed, assuming the guy next to me knows what he’s doing. I’ll follow him. Someone else is following me.

“Digger? Hello? Soldier, you there?”

I wake up in my sleep sack. There’s a squawk of noise from the module above me. Cricket has her head across my chest, is snoring softly. As I blink away the nightmare, she stirs and peers at me from half-lidded eyes. “Shit,” I say. “Up. Gotta get up.”

I crawl out of the bag, even as Cricket tries to stop me, her head weighing a ton, a paw on my arm. I run naked to the ladder and scramble up, banging my knee and cursing. Snatching the mic, a little breathlessly and a lot desperately, I wheeze, “Yeah— Hello? Hey. I’m here. Wassup?”

I gulp and exhale and suck in a deep breath. Then I remember to add: “Over.”

“You okay?”
Claire radios back.

“Me? Yeah.” Gulps of air. “I’m great. Whatcha need?”

“Shit. I woke you up, didn’t I? What’s the time here? I’m still on Houston time. Hell, I’m always on Houston time. You wanna check in with me in the morning? Your morning? Over.”

I could listen to her babble like this forever. I get ships passing through now and then, get to chat with traders and ore tug captains. They give me sports scores and war updates, which often sound like much the same thing. But this is someone right next door who is staying there, who goes to sleep and wakes up there. A mere hundred klicks away.

“No, I’m up,” I promise her. “How can I help?”

I’ll wear my good clothes this time. I rub my face, feeling the smooth skin. Sniff my armpit.

“I need you to give me a full sweep with your gwib. Trying to calibrate this bucket, but there’s so much debris here. Can’t clear the noise.”

Yes, the debris. That would be my fault. I did that. Sorry.

“Yeah, sure,” I say, disappointed that it’s something I can do from here. “No problem.” I go to my dash and power up the GWB for a full pulse. The lights dim a little while the massive capacitors two modules down charge up. I try to picture Claire standing over there, looking at her own console, watching and waiting. I see her in her sweatpants and tank top. Her hair in a ponytail. A few loose strands tucked behind her ear. Reddish hair. The color of rust.

“Whenever you’re ready,”
she says.

When the PULSE OK light goes green, I flip the metal toggle beneath it. There’s a sensation of vertigo, like the grav panels beneath my feet are on the fritz, but it’s just a wave of whatever makes me feel nice and numb when I rest my head against the GWB. A megadose. The light goes red for a moment and then shuts off altogether. Cricket grunts at me.

“Looks good,”
Claire radios.
“Muchas gracias. If there was a bar within spittin’ distance, I’d buy you a drink.”

I stare at the mic in my hand. I glance over at Cricket, then toward the chute and the business end of my beacon. Knowing I shouldn’t, but that I’m going to anyway, I squeeze the mic.

“I’ve got something even better,” I say.

• 23 •

Claire is waiting for me at the lock collar. The split second the outer door of my lifeboat opens, I realize that she’s gonna see me for the first time, without the helmet, with my hair way out of regs, and with my gaunt face.

Whatever she’s thinking, she manages a smile. The cramp in my cheeks is a hint for me to not smile back quite so much.

“Beacon warming present,” I say, holding out a black plastic bag.

Claire looks at it quizzically, but accepts. There’s a length of red wire twisted around the top of the bag. It’s the kind of bag our air filters come in. I’m supposed to toss them in the recycler, but Cricket loves batting them around the modules.

“If this is wine, I’m gonna want to know where you got it from,” she says.

I watch as she twists the wire off and opens the bag. Reaching inside, she pulls out the can of WD-80.

“You can never have enough,” I explain. “And I noticed the circ fan was squeaking a little the last time I was here.”

She laughs. “You’re sweet.” The words hit me like a knee to the gut.

“Yeah, well.” I point awkwardly at the can. “It’s a good year, too.”

“And this is supposed to be better than a beer?” she asks.

“Oh, no, I just wanted to bring you something. The . . . uh, follow me?”

I step past her, and she closes the airlock behind me. I take the ladder first. The pristine nature of the beacon hits me just as hard this time. The two beacons are like their occupants, I guess. One flawless. The other horribly disfigured.

Up in the command module, I duck my head inside the long tunnel that leads off to the GWB. With a swimming motion from my arms, and a good leap, I launch myself down the chute, spiraling a little so the handholds are above and below me, smooth walls to either side, my fingertips brushing the surface to keep me centered. At the other end, I hit the gravity generated by the floor of the GWB module. I turn and wait for Claire. She’s right behind me, gliding through space, upside down, so that her worried frown matches my smile.

She catches herself at the edge of the chute and aligns herself to gravity, then lowers herself like a gunner gets in her tank. The space is tight for two. With Cricket, it’s never a worry, as she tries to curl up in my lap. With Cricket, it’s comfortable. Here, it’s overtly intimate. I wonder if this is why I brought her here. Then I remember why I brought her here. I move over and sit with my back to the GWB, patting the grating beside me. “Sit,” I say. And by habit, it sounds too much like I’m talking to Cricket. “If, you know . . . you want to.”

She settles in beside me.

“I don’t know why it does this, but just rest your head back against the dome and relax. You should feel it. Like a sip of whiskey.”

We both sit there for a few breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. The unblinking stars peer in through the porthole.

“Do you feel it?” I ask.

Claire doesn’t answer at first.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “I . . . I think so.”

We sit like that for what feels like a few minutes. That’s an eternity to sit with a stranger in silence. I feel a nice numbness creep into my bones. I feel my mind relaxing, words coming to me, tumbling out between my lips like soldiers from a trench.

“Whadja do before you became a tuner?” I ask. I’m assuming she was an engineer. In maintenance or assembly. One of those egghead roles.

“Same as you,” she says, her voice a little quiet and distant. “Army. Two tours.”

This tries to register, but doesn’t quite. She’s too clean for that. Too pure.

“I enlisted after Delphi,” she adds.

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess a lot of people did. You see any action?”

Claire doesn’t answer.

I hate myself as soon as the words leave my lips. Like a general regretting his orders, watching his men run out of the trenches in the wrong direction. If she hasn’t seen action, it sounds like I’m judging her. If she has, I’m stirring up memories best left settled in the bottom of her soul.

“I was on Yata for the push,” she tells me, her voice quiet. “A Company. Second platoon.”

No way,
I think to myself.
No fucking way.

“We were pinned down for three weeks. They were bombing us to oblivion. Then this squad with a death wish pushes into the hive, threatens to blow it all to smithereens, and—” She glances over at me, gives me a long, cold look. “I’m sure you know the rest.”

Of course I do. Everyone does. But all I can think is:
Not her.
Even though I know this is no great coincidence. All of A and B companies were there for the push. For the five weeks I was Earthside, after I got out of the VA, I had people coming up and shaking my hand, thanking me, saying I saved them. And when the tears came to their eyes, I’d nod and tell them it wasn’t necessary. Just doing my job. Lie through my teeth. Tell them the same damn story. Over and over until you almost believe it.

“I wouldn’t take you for a soldier,” I whisper, my voice cracking a little. “You seem too . . . good for that.”

“Yeah,” Claire says. “Aren’t we all.”

•••

“You didn’t bring libations, but thanks for the lubrication,” she tells me, smiling, as I board the lifeboat. “I’m sure the grease’ll come in handy as I get this bucket up and running.”

“No problem,” I say.

It feels like the close of a date. Like she’s walking me to my car. A whiff of distant and forgotten normalcy drifts by. It’s like that pocket of warm water that comes out of nowhere when you’re swimming in a lake, or that ray of sunshine on a cloudy day, or that smile from that woman behind the counter at the DMV. The unexpected and bright. The startling joy.

“Hey—” she says, as I turn to go.

I turn back. Is she going to kiss me? We’re both soldiers, and sex was something that soldiers engaged in as casually as they tore into MREs. Just a thing. I don’t want it to ever be a thing like that again.

“Do you need anything?” she asks. Her brow is knitted together. Lines of worry across her face.

“Like what?”

“Well, I’ve got a few days here—” She jabs her thumb back at her beacon. “—then I’m back to Houston for a bit for a debrief. If there’s anything you need over on 23 . . .”

I laugh. “My can needs more than Houston’s got,” I say. “Besides, their engineers were up here a few months ago. Just made the place worse. Had the grav panels oscillate on me—”

“Shit. Really?”

“Oh, yeah. So don’t let them send any help my way. I’m good.”

“Okay.”

There’s something else. Something she wants to ask. Something she’s too kind to say.

“Okay,” she says again.

And I know that look. That worry. I know what she’s wondering. What she wants to say.

If you ever need anyone to talk to . . .

Like talking ever fixed anything. Like words have that power. I touch the rock around my neck, knowing I’ve got plenty who’ll listen, but none who understand.

“I’ll see ya,” I say, turning my back before I make a mess of things.

“Yeah,” Claire says, like she knows better.

It’s only after the door hisses shut that I pick up on what she said. Back to Houston in a few days. That’s all. Just that pocket of warmth in a freezing lake. Just a glancing ray of sunshine. A star that winks once, twice, then turns away. Death without the dying.