We hit the hole and I was jangled out of my brooding self-doubt.
The Kid looked at me and shrugged guiltily. I had no idea what his story was. I knew he had one. Everyone does. Everyone in the Strange Company has got a tale to tell before whatever’s gonna happen… happens. He’d joined up for some reason to get away from somewhere he wasn’t wanted anymore. That was my bet. But only because I’d seen it a dozen other times. He was a bright kid who learned quick. Handsome. Women would’ve even called him beautiful. Except now he was dragging that scar he got from the hot graze where I thought he’d bought it. He had too if the look in his eyes was anything to judge by. But he was still beautiful. Handsome. Being a merc would take care of that in time. Endless hard nights, long patrols that turned you into nothing but the walking dead. Bad food more than good. Hard liquor just to kill the pain. Scars from laying wire across defenses during cold windy bitter rainy days that always seemed to require such work. Mind numb. Fingers too. That’s how you get those keeper scars. Flying hot brass burns and the occasional gunshot wound when it was funnel time. Add in some frag and spall, and he’d look like the rest of us given time. First tattoo parlor would take him right down to our level with something that meant nothing to anyone not him. Then he’d be the kinda guy young girls don’t look at anymore unless you pay ’em to. And then all they see is something else.
But looking at him shrug guiltily now about hitting the pothole in the smugglers’ trail and disturbing my personal anxiety fun coaster, good-looking and with enough future ahead of him that he could play mercenary and maybe not get hurt too bad on this one, I wanted him to stay gold. Read that in a book one time I couldn’t make sense of. Story about old Earth before we really got out there in the universe and pretended we were something to take seriously. Humanity that is. It was about kids. Bad boys. Greasers. Reminded me of the Strange Company in certain ways. Tags. Battles. Noobs and veterans. Outlaws. I can’t remember the tag of the one who was supposed to stay gold. But I remember the why. And as I looked at the Kid driving us toward our arranged meeting with destiny, I wanted him to stay gold. I looked back at Stinkeye and the rest. We were already damned for sure. But maybe the Kid wasn’t damned yet. Not fully. If there can be such a thing as halfway damned. Maybe he wasn’t all gone. Maybe this whole thing had scared him straight and he would get out of the Strange before it was too late, and he was stuck forever. Like we were now whether we chose to admit it or not.
Addicted to da juice, Stinkeye likes to crow when he’s good and drunk. Feeling like making trouble for someone on a cold and windy night when there’s no moon and no mercy. Because da action is da juice, as dey say, Little King.
I smiled at the Kid and indicated it was okay. And to just keep his eyes on the road. We had a long way to go. And a short time to do it in, as the First Sergeant always says. There would be other potholes.
Some electric feeling ran all over me. Like I was still good. Not as far gone as Stinkeye. Going, going, not totally gone yet. I still saw that some could be saved. And that made me better than the worse. Right, Orion? Nah. That’s just a lie. Even I know that. Like I said. You have to be honest about these things. Especially with yourself.
I tapped the comm for the Monarch, who was sitting right behind me. Wedged in between the door and Hustle, who was smaller than the rest of us. I’d catch him staring at her. He’s small, but ambitious. I’d seen him bag statuesque Amazons in soldier bars with nothing but determination and solid game.
“Pretend I believe… why?” I said to her over the comm. The private channel between just the both of us. “As in… why is this the most important place in the galaxy?”
“Universe, Orion. It’s the most important place in the universe. But I know you don’t believe. So. How much time until our next turn? And maybe I can convince you. If you’ll let me.”
I told her the time to the next turn. Then added another six hours on that course track before we’d begin to think about a place to stop for the night, so we were in striking distance of the rally the next day.
“Then we have some time. Maybe I can’t make you believe in something, Sergeant Orion…”
“I said just Orion.”
“Orion then. But maybe I can show you why you might want to rethink that position. We have time. Some. So I’ll just walk you through the entire history of modern post-humanity and how we got here. Then maybe you’ll understand what I’m trying to do now. What I’m trying to make right. Okay… Orion?”
“Go,” I said irritably and tried to get comfortable. My back and legs were killing me. I drank water and listened to her. Sometimes I burned a cigarette and tried to pretend what she was saying didn’t mean anything to me.
But it did.
Why?
Because everything she said explained why my life was the way it was. I was getting all the forbidden history. Straight from the mouth of a Monarch. No redactions. No blank or missing pages. No mysteries. No reminders that this kind of inquiry is not permitted by order of the Monarchs. To understand what this is like… take it back to when mankind didn’t know what the universe was
