Rebellion in the Shadows

Arwago sent me a schedule a few days later to help monitor the video feeds. I had to keep a log of everything I saw. What I saw was a whole lot of nothing. Literally, for hours, I just watched switched between each of the monitor feeds with no movement on them at all. He even had me watch my own room. Not surprisingly, nothing happened in it since I was busy in the blue room watching the world’s most boring videos.

The most interesting part of the night was watching a set of Coordinators attach what looked like weapons onto a couple of T-550’s in the back of the hangar bay. I typed that in the log and went back to being bored.

***

The next morning, exhausted and frustrated, I headed to my Reconnaissance training class. Two more new people were there when I arrived. Arwago and Notawa’s friend, Prelle. Arwago knew how to start a fire. This didn’t surprise me in the least. There was a certain kind of person that was good at everything, and that was Arwago.

Prelle needed more help. Her young face was stuck in a frown and she struggled more than Notawa with getting the branches to ignite.

“Need help?” I asked. Today we weren’t supposed to just build a fire, but we had to build one that would produce as little smoke as possible.

“I suppose I do need help. Or instead of building this fire, I could go back to my server station and actually learn about the computers on the spaceship.” She said, then shied away. “Sorry, I am not much for the outdoors.” I stacked a few of the smaller sticks in the middle of the cold brush while her timid hands moved the bigger sticks out of the way.

“It’s fine, but you won’t catch me in front of a server. Does that make us even?”

“I guess, but doesn’t it seem a little weird? Building fires?” she asked. It was the first person to echo my thoughts aloud. Notawa came over to us. Her fire was roaring by the trees, she had missed the concept of a small smokeless dusk fire.

“Isn’t Talaya an excellent teacher? She and Kirtis are quite the team when it comes to building fires,” she said.

“It took me a while to get it too.” My palms spun the thin stick in the tiny groove for only a few seconds. The green leaf from under the groove had a small red glow in the middle. I shoved it into the brush and sticks. Prelle took over, blowing into the mess. The sound of a flame coming to life brought a smile to her face.

“See? An excellent teacher!” Notawa said when she saw the fire.

After class, I caught up with Arwago. Kirtis followed a few paces behind me without talking. Arwago smiled when he saw me.

“Hey there, it’s Pistol Talaya,” he said. I smiled back.

“You run in the morning?” I asked.

“Two miles every day at zero-four-thirty,” he said.

“Gross, want to meet me at zero-five instead?” I was hoping we could talk without drawing too much attention to it.

“Better not, too risky,” he said. A few Technicians were coming down the winding path from the main building. His tone changed.

Arwago picked up the pace and spoke over his shoulder.

“You are assigned a mentor for a reason, I suggest you use her wisdom to your advantage,” he walked more quickly leaving me and Kirtis behind.

“Gotta be more careful with shit like that,” Kirtis said when he had gone.

“Guess so,” I said.

“Notawa sent me a comm, she won’t be able to make it for lunch studying either,” he said.

“Wonder why she wasn’t in class.”

In his best Notawa impression Kirtis said, “The needs of the Flying Force are c

hanging, this is a reaction to the change.” I laughed. It had sounded exactly like her.

“You should laugh more,” he said with a lopsided smirk, “takes away from that grumpy ‘chosen one’ look.” Blood rushed to my face.

“I laugh plenty, and don’t call me that.” My calcumat rang. Tesser again. She had been pestering me with random questions constantly. Things that seemed to have no meaning, like which hand I wrote with, or my favorite color, when did I learn how to swim, and so on.

“Night op?” Kirtis asked.

“No, just Tesser with some weird stuff,” I said. My fingers typed out a quick answer to her question about foot size as our slow walk continued up the path until we were almost to the building. A few Coordinators jogged past us, preferring the dirt path down to the trees as opposed to the rubber track. Their quick pace made me feel like I was walking too slow, but it was so pleasant outside that I was in no hurry. A light breeze was drifting passed and Tau Ceti was high overhead warming my back. The weather was near perfect year round this close to the equator, without all the humidity of the jungle farther south. I looked over to my company, curious about his past.

“So, you lived in the city? Where before that?” I asked. There wasn’t a chance for him to answer, Notawa burst out the building doors.

“Good gods! Class started five minutes ago! What are you doing?” she asked. Her cheeks were red, and she was panting, but it was nothing compared to her clothes and hair. The uniform was wrinkled, and she had missed a button on her shirt. Her hair was a mop of tangles and it need of a wash.

“Sorry,” we both said, following her inside. Class was it’s usual boring string of reading. Santeeg certainly wasn’t stretching himself with any sort of ground-breaking teaching methods. I flipped through the games on my calcumat and made the mistake of exclaiming aloud after a particularly difficult level was beaten.

“Reconist, you got something to say?” Santeeg said from the front.

“No Sir, just excited about orbitals. Sir.” I said. Kirtis laughed and Santeeg glared at him. If I had laughed like that, I would have gotten extra laps for a year but Santeeg didn’t say anything to Kirtis.

“Get back to reading,” he said. The page I was on was just as boring as the one before it, and my attention wandered back to the game before long. When class was over, I caught up with Notawa to see what the plan for the night was. She was even more distracted than before..

She glanced at her wrist. “Sorry, Talaya. I have to go. Can we meet tomorrow after dinner? I have some Privy Mate stuff going on tonight.”

“More night ops?” I asked.

She looked confused for a second then said, “Night ops, yes. Don’t worry about it though. See you tomorrow at twenty-zero?” She didn’t wait for my reply before she left. Poor Notawa looked about one blink from a nervous break-down lately and it wasn’t making me anxious to rank up.

The next morning, my alarm went off at zero-four-fifteen. Arwago had told me that we shouldn’t be seen together, but I was determined to get more answers. By the time I got down there, he was already on lap two. The mile times were posted in the locker room. 5.35, one of the best mile times I had seen here other than Zarleque’s. I sprinted to catch up with him.

“Hey,” he said. His face didn’t register surprise at my appearance, he had expected me to come out here.

“You’re fast.” I was already huffing from trying to catch up.

“What do you need? Make it quick,” he said. Sweat was dripping from his elbows and chin.

“I need to know what’s going on with Zar.”

“That big guy? Your old partner, right?” he asked.

“I have his profile.” It was hard to select and swipe the file to him while we were jogging. Hell, it was hard enough to keep up with him. He projected the hologram in front of his face, without missing a step he read it.

“Zarleque Antundee? Privy Mate, bla bla bla. It says right here he was reassigned to cargo runs to the polar region.” Were his feet even touching the rubber? I kicked mine up faster to keep up.

“What cargo goes to the poles?” I asked. The story didn’t make sense.

“There’s an old base there on the Jostedal Glacier. Abandoned though I think.” He laughed once and stopped running, “Look, we can’t always assume the worst. That’s called being paranoid. His parents haven’t reported him missing and his file hasn’t been erased. He’s probably on probation for the simulator thing. I will have Tesser look into it, but we can’t waste too much time on people that aren’t in the rebellion.”

“He’s not?” I asked.

“Nope. Be careful with this, now get lost,” he said. That was easy to do, all he had to do was run his normal pace and I was left alone in his dust.

It wasn’t until I was at breakfast that I realized it was already Friday. Excitement about the coming simulation was everywhere. This one was shorter, only three hours to circle the planet a few times and land.

Notawa and Kirtis showed up to breakfast when I was almost finished. Unlike the day before, she looked like she had gotten some sleep and Kirtis was in a good mood. There was a small smile that kept creeping over his face, though he did his best to hide it.

When he noticed me looking at him, he forced it into his normal scowl. The dark blue eyes flashed, irritated at the attention.

“If you like the scars so much, I can give you a matching set,” he said.

“Please, you can’t even keep me from breaking your arm.” The thick branching marks on his cheek had never bothered me, they were as much a part of him as his blue eyes, or his sour attitude.

His face changed color, the scars were a deep purple now, a sure sign that I had taken it too far. He grabbed his plate and left. Making fun of each other was our thing, I thought and looked at Notawa with my palms up, but she just laughed.

“Don’t ask me,” she said. When she picked up her tray to leave later, I saw a large black splotch on her forearm.

“Whoa Notawa! What the hell is that?”

“Oh, ha! It’s embarrassing really, I tripped getting out of the shower. I know, what a klutz right?” she said but had pulled her sleeve down quickly to cover it.

“A bruise the size of a molecat from tripping? And on your forearm?”

“I know, so stupid. Sim day! Better head out, Kirtis doesn’t like to wait.” She took my tray too and left. Her explanation was ridiculous. Someone had obviously grabbed her arm and left a mark, that much was certain. If she thought I was going to let that go, she was as crazy as her story. I looked at the time, class was starting before I would have time to pester her for information.

The simulation room looked much the same, though there was no wet paint sign on the back wall and Kirtis was already there, waiting by the same machine I’d flown with Zarleque.

“Would you like to run preflight checks?” he asked me in a careful voice.

“Sure thing, but should we wait?” My tone was just as careful. We had to spend three hours together, and that would be miserable if he didn’t relax.

“No, let’s just start now.” As I grabbed the holo-tablet from the dash, Kirtis went to grab the helmets and suits from a Tech. When he came back, he set the gear on one of the seats and watched me run through some of the checklist

“I’m running preflight scans.” I said aloud. His lips twitched into a scowl, but he didn’t say anything. “Do you want me to stop relay? Cause if I do, that asshole will come over and yell at us.” Geokee was in the front of the room circling like some sort of beast.

“He won’t yell at me,” Kirtis said with confidence.

“What makes you so special?” He ignored my question and looked over my shoulder at the holo-tablet. He swooped around in front of me and took it away, then checked off a bunch of the list without preforming the tasks. I was content to watch him from where I stood, gaping at his ability to ignore half our training to get through the sim as fast as possible.

“You hate it that much?”

“Simulator is OK, but nothing beats real flying.” He was still looking at the holo-tablet. His eyes found mine and color flooded his face, embarrassed at his own honesty, “Let’s just get this over with,” he said turning his attention to the flight gear.

“Praise Tau,” I said with a little laugh.

I grabbed my flight suit from the seat and slipped it on over my PT gear, while Kirtis did the same. When I looked over to him, he had his arms held out to the side, three inches of suit material fell over his hands. He looked like a child trying on his father’s uniform. I couldn’t help it, I laughed again at the sight of him in something so big.

“Damn, I need to go get mine. They still have this set up for Zar,” I hadn’t heard anyone but Notawa call Zarleque by that nickname.

“Hurry up, launch in forty-five seconds.”

The word simulation popped up across the top of the screen. Whatever fluke had happened the last time we flew, it wasn’t going to happen again.

“That’s better,” he said when he was back. I leaned over to him when we were both sitting in the simulator, surrounded by holograms and screens.

“Did you hear what happened last time?” I asked in a whisper. He nodded.

“Keep it tight today, don’t want to end up like Zar,” he said.

“I didn’t even know you knew him. Do you think he’s OK?” I asked. We both got our helmets on as Geokee circled the room. He glared at me but didn’t say anything to either of us.

“We were at basic together. You really think he was reassigned? Don’t make me laugh.”

“Are you even capable of laughing? Doesn’t seem like something your purthis parents would teach you,” I said once the helmet comms started up.

“True, they only taught me how to scowl and fly silently through the night.” There wasn’t a hint of sarcasm in his voice, and I rolled my eyes in my helmet.

This time our simulation was only supposed to circle the planet three times and then return to base. There weren’t any stars on the screen at all. Space was all black and there was nothing on or around our planet. Arkii was nowhere to be seen. It was nothing even close to the view I’d seen before.

“This is boring,” I said after two hours of orbiting the same giant brown ball in the sky.

“Pretty sure it only takes 3 minutes to leave the atmosphere and then it’s just floating for hours.” He was adjusting the artificial gravity. It had worked this time, so there wasn’t even the thrill of fake weightlessness.

“Yep. Boring. Though going 3,500 miles per hour won’t be boring, even if it’s for 3 minutes.”

“15,500,” he said. I looked at him. “You have to go 15,500 miles an hour to leave the planet, do you pay attention in orbital training at all? That was literally one of the questions today,” he said.

“The gods that’s fast. That won’t be boring.” I pulled up a game on my calcumat. There was nothing else to do. Kirtis looked over.

“You really shouldn’t do that,” he said. I flicked a holographic ball into a basket and ignored him.

An hour later, the simulation was over. I removed my helmet to a mess of ruffled hair. My fingers were trying to smooth it out when Geokee came to our simulator.

“Talaya secure your helmet, you will run the simulation again,” he said.

“Are you kidding? It takes three hours.”

“Run it again!” His scream caught Kirtis’s attention from across the room. He had gone to turn in his helmet and flight suit. The top of his flight suit dangling at his waist as he walked back over.

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked. Geokee shied for a second, then pointed to me as if I was guilty of murder.

“She was playing ‘Bounty Ball VII’ for half the simulation.”

“So?” he asked.

“So, she has to run it again,” he said, stepping closer to the simulator.

“Kirtis,” a low voice from the front warned. Master Guardian was in a chair watching our interaction.

“You can go, but she has to run it again,” Geokee said, now with more confidence. Kirtis didn’t say anything but started to put his arms into the suit.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he said as he sat down.

“That should be your motto,” I said.

“Shut up,” he said as the sim started up again. Geokee was satisfied that his orders were being followed and went back to the front with Master Guardian.

The other students in the class were finishing up and leaving the room for the weekend. Only four people remained and three of them were pissed at me. After the second time running the simulation, Geokee laughed when he told me to run it a third time. Master Guardian left half way through, but Geokee stayed. He looked as smug as could be sitting in the chair Sidarc had vacated.

After the third run, he let us go. By the time I got to my bed I was so tired and hungry that I passed out on my mattress trying to decide what to order to eat.