Ah what the heck. I don’t have to drive, let’s indulge in some ~spoilers~
Tagged by @navigatorwrongway! 🥰🥰
Though Hexx is only in the Call Sign universe right now, I tend to view a lot of “backstory” details as mostly consistent across any universe/story when I write characters.
The towering saurian looked down at Hexx, placing a hand on the trooper’s shoulder. “I have nothing I can give you besides this; an honor for those who exhibit the bravery you did here. Please accept it a symbol of my gratitude.”
He reached up to move the rebreather aside, sharply biting the tip of his thumb. He drew a design on the top edges of Hexx’s returned breastplate in blue-green blood, then held out his hand for Hexx’s helmet, which Hexx gave.
“You have my respect and admiration, Hexx,” Eret’s resonant voice intoned. He drew two sigils on the brow of Hexx’s helmet, accenting them. “May the symbols of my forebears guide and protect your path. By my blood, you have my thanks.”
Eret returned the helmet, and in a curious moment none of them anticipated he stooped to press his forehead against Hexx’s. “Take care, 《khutt’ika.》”
The saurian straightened up and regarded him at arm’s length for a moment, and then with a nod to the rest and a bid farewell he turned, striding silently off into the jungle and trees beyond.
The troopers nearest to Hexx looked at his armor. Though the lines on his breastplate sparked no recognition, the ones on his helmet warranted a double-take from nearly all of them. The angled swoops, though stylized, were unmistakable in their likeness.
“That looks…”
“Are those…?”
“Was he…?”
“… You guys are seeing this too, right?”
The jaig eyes gleamed in the saurian’s beetle-wing blood, glinting in the waning light. Baffled astonishment and disbelief was apparent on every clone’s face, half of them now staring out into the jungle where Eret had disappeared.
It was quiet for a solid minute before Barak clapped his hands together. “WELP,” he said, startling them. “Don’t have time to unpack all that.” He latched his rifle to his back and shouldered another carbine, checking his vambrace. “Sun’s setting fast. Time to move out.”
Rules: Search your WIP for the word of the week, share a snippet and tag some others!
Tagged by @navigatorwrongway! 🙏 This week’s word is kind
Call Sign
There’s a scene with Djao and some of the others working outside when something goes wrong and *lop* There goes Djao’s finger.
Barak sits between Djao and Nocturne in the infirmary, holding Djao’s arm down on the table and leaning his upper body weight into keeping it pinned. Djao’s still trying to get away.
“Why are you so fidgety about leeches?” Barak asked over his shoulder. “It’s just a little one.”
“Because I remember the parasitology course and- *gag*- can’t stand them. I’ve seen their little mouths under a microscope.”
“Well, that’s what you get for sticking things under a microscope,” Barak said. “Sometimes ignorance is bliss.”
Djao pulled and pulled and pulled, but to no avail. His boots squeaked on the polished duracrete. Nocturne had already sterilized the synthflesh joinery tissue and finished suturing the finger back into place, keeping Djao’s hand flat as it twitched. “If you keep moving, it’s going to take longer.”
“Don’t care,” Djao mumbled. “I don’t even need the finger. Take it back. I’ll make do.”
“Crash said Djao lost a finger?” Rizel’s voice came from the doorway. Djao absently kicked out again, trying to dislodge Barak.
“It would be an easy fix,” Barak said, readjusting. “If he’d stop moving.”
Crash and Veetch appeared behind Rizel, curious. “Did you fix it?”
“Not yet,” Nocturne said, annoyed. “Di’kut’s going to end up with nerve damage at best if he keeps it up.”
“Which one is it, one of the middle ones?” Rizel asked with a knowing gleam in her eye. “That’d be a shame, Jay, you need those.”
“Sure, yeah, just let the whole peanut gallery in to watch my medical episode,” Djao groused loudly. “Just line up and take a couple holos while you’re at it.”
“Is that an option?” Veetch asked. “I'll put them with the tattoo and dianoga pics.”
“Are those the kind of leeches that get bigger the longer they’re latched on?” Crash asked. “There’s some on Avaross that’ll grow for as long as they have a blood source—”
Djao screeched in anger, thrashing again. Barak and Nocturne glared.
“Not helping.”
“Sorry, Cap.”
Tagging: @autumnwoodsdreamer, @oloreaa, @fallen-knight, @jedi-valjean, and you!
Summary: A bush pilot crashes near the Outpost of Barton IV, her life crossing paths with those of Commander Mayday and his men. Only time will tell if she and the garrison will be able to survive the mountain, but until then they take things day by day, friendships and relationships being tested as they weather conflict and the elements together. Multi-chapter. (WIP)
Series Summary: Six months into Commander Mayday's assignment on Barton IV, a bush pilot crashes a cargo freighter into the mountains near the outpost. Though initially brought to the depot on suspicion of being a spy, most of the crew take an immediate liking to her, her friendships with them and relationship with Mayday developing in the time it takes for her to recover from her injuries.
While working on a means of transportation home, she and the men are challenged at every turn by wildlife attacks, raiders, malfunctioning equipment and defenses, nature and the elements and must work together in order to survive.
Falling in love while things are going well is easy. It’s facing adversity that will test if it lasts.
Barton IV was a harsh and unforgiving planet, inhospitable everywhere except beneath the ice, if you could get there. The population was about one sentient per square hectare which made for very few towns and even fewer neighbors. The Vulture’s Spine made up a large portion of the mountain range in the fifth quadrant of the northern hemisphere, named so for the constant line of peaks inhabited by ice vultures stretching and winding for hundreds of miles across the landscape. How the massive vultures found enough carrion to sustain themselves, no one knew, but locals suspected they cannibalized their own once they fell. Their feathers were as thin and razor sharp as the mountain faces made of brittle shale and hardened, subzero ice.
It was there that the Empire saw fit to plant Commander Mayday’s crew and tell them to keep watch over the supply depot, so keep watch they did. There was precious little to do besides repair equipment (damaged from the cold), maintain the fence and weaponry (faulty and unreliable because of the cold), and try to stay warm (due to the aforementioned cold). Some days it was hard to tell when it even was daytime, thick clouds and flurries eliminating any scrap of warmth or sunlight they might have had, and the longer time went on, the harder it was to differentiate between day and night anyway.
They didn’t know how long they’d been there before the freighter crashed.
Rizel cursed, trying not to panic as her starboard engine smoked and flickered with fire. She kept a tight hold of the yoke as the ship yawed right and she flinched at the approaching mountainside beyond her viewport. Somehow she skated past the first mountain peak and was kept from being crushed against the side in a fiery wreckage of durasteel and duct tape, but her luck wasn’t so good that she didn't clip the tail on the lower peak as she slipped between the spires, an action that quickly sent her in a spiral downwards. The port engine didn’t have enough upward thrust against the thin air without its twin and the blades of the starboard rotors were sputtering slower and slower as systems failed. Rizel desperately flicked through the auxiliary ignition commands, hearing the strain beneath the cowling as she did. The aircraft’s power hitched like the breath of a bordok mule with pneumonia, and as the engines sputtered she braced herself and prayed the end would at least be quick.
That kind of luck was in short supply on Barton IV though, and she readied herself for a very literal, very rocky landing.
A muted crash and muffled explosion hit the inner ravine wall, snow coming free in an instant. It jerked the aircraft into an opposite spiral and it hit the snowbank, hard, sliding down with the accompanying avalanche until she’d reached the ravine basin and came to a stop.
Rizel groaned, astonished she hadn’t died or even been knocked unconscious on impact, but as she gingerly checked her neck and the back of her head for any damage she supposed the snow in the ravine could have been fresh and loose enough to absorb the shock, a fact that made her deliriously gleeful considering how the rest of the day was going.
Aviator cap came off as she ran her fingers through her displaced braid, but she didn’t find any blood and her vision was starting to clear. She tried lifting her other arm but immediately yelped— Any movement in her shoulder sent excruciating pain through the side of her neck and chest, and her other hand came up to scrabble at the restraining belts, struggling to release the catch and take pressure off her upper chest and left shoulder.
As her restraints released she fell forward with another exclamation of pain, the dash she hit devoid of light and the nose of the rig smoking. She sat up, smelled fuel, then felt the heat.
“Maker’s montrals.” Rizel struggled upright and slung her pack over her good shoulder, searching for a hand pick; with a few good smashes against the already-busted viewscreen, Rizel broke through and started digging snow out of the way one-handed, praying she didn’t have far to go.
This time her luck held out, and as she clambered up and out of the wreckage onto loose snow she sent thanks out to whatever forces that be that she hadn’t broken both collarbones.
“Go, go, go, go, go—”
Slipping and sliding over what remained of the fuselage, the pilot made her way down with the snow in a semi-controlled slide as far as she could before the bush-craft exploded, the fuel reserve blowing a good-sized chunk in the ice. Rizel shuddered with the quaking earth, scrambling up the bare rocks on the side of the basin as the second avalanche buried the wreckage, sliding it further down the ravine before settling. The feeling of relief was short-lived as she surveyed her surroundings.
Rizel Karth was a human woman in her mid-thirties who had been, until recently, one of the only bush pilots for the Barton IV outposts that side of the range. She’d been a pilot for almost twenty years and generally had an optimistic outlook on life. Any landing you could walk away from was a good one.
Now though, her optimism was being given a run for its money as she assessed the situation. Left with one pack of belongings in the most unforgiving landscape on the planet with no backup, no viable communication, and nobody capable of finding her, she was, in a word, stranded.
Groaning again, Rizel flopped over onto the snow, her hood thankfully cushioning the back of her head. She’d forgotten that she took off her cap. Looking to one side she could see that her bag’s contents had already spilled out onto the ground up the incline behind her, and she sarcastically mouthed another thanks to the deities that may be.
Rizel sat up, retrieving her goggles and mask first. She hooked the nozzle up to her vest and warm air flooded in, immediately easing the strain of thin, cold air on her lungs. The filter was still intact, and as she pulled her cap and visor back on the snowglare cut down significantly. She stuffed her tools and belongings back into her bag, unclipping one strap’s latch and stringing it across her chest to hook onto the other strap before gingerly moving the pack to cushion and support her bent forearm. Her collarbone throbbed, sparks of sharp pain flickering through her shoulder in protest at the movement, and she knew it would only get worse as the adrenaline in her system started to wear off.
She needed to find shelter first though; proper medical assessment would have to wait.
“Looks like six klicks east, in the ravine,” Veetch said over his shoulder. “Image is fuzzy but it looks like a ship.”
“What kind?”
“Unknown sir. Never seen its like.”
Commander Mayday’s frown dug in deeper as he assessed their readouts. Barton IV wasn’t bereft of sentients, but he wasn’t aware of any with a significant starcraft presence. If even the gearhead couldn’t identify it, they could have a problem.
“Civilian?”
Barak scoffed. “Who's way out here joyriding a little thing like that in the mountains?” he asked. “I’m surprised it wasn’t shredded on the Teeth.”
“They were coming straight for us,” Veetch said. “Civilian or not, someone knew we were here. There’s no other markers to identify for a hundred miles.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Mayday said. “Could be the Empire just happened to find the best flight path locals already knew about. Void knows they’re not going to make it harder for themselves to get in or out of here.”
“Wish they’d get us out of here…”
“Barak, Hollis, you’re with me. The rest of you lock down after we’ve passed the perimeter. If we’re not back within twelve hours, Hexx is in charge.”
“Aye sir.”
“Hear that, Hexx? You just got provisionally promoted.”
“Hoo-rah.”
Mayday and the two troopers following him geared up for the hike toward the crash site, strapping on some of the lighter mountaineering gear. If they found nothing but a dead pilot and some cargo, they’d haul whatever they could scavenge back to base and call it a day. If they found evidence of hostiles, they’d dispatch with what they could and hope for the best.
That was the running mantra of the Outpost. Plan for the worst, and take the pleasant surprises as they come.
Rizel shivered against the wind, making west for the vulture hollows. There were a few smaller caves dotted along the range from the mines, but she wasn’t sure just how old said mines were. The old gaffers who drank caf at the lodge and hogged the fireplace from breakfast to midday had said they weren’t even in operation when their granddaddies’ granddads were still working, so she reckoned there to be only partial stability at best. Even if she could just get inside an adit and out of the wind, she’d fare better than having to weather the elements.
The bush pilot was a member of one of the local groups that had lived at the base of the mountains for centuries. Despite the inhospitable terrain, they had made a living working and doing whatever they could to make life a bit easier for themselves and those around them. She was the only cargo pilot who could make it between the vultures’ pass, and if it weren’t for whatever hack job the little weasel had done on her backup engines, she’d still have that title, not a wrecked aircraft and little hope for survival. The draped parka and boots kept her insulated from the worst of it, but even with the cloak pulled around her sleeping outside wasn’t an option. Two fuel bricks did not a bonfire make, and unless she could find something to improvise some tools, she’d be out of luck in four days as far as heat was concerned anyway.
“Cheap, lousy, two-bit son of a nickel-hooker…” Rizel cursed, stomping through the snow. “I’ll wring his neck when I see him. “Oh don’t you worry Mrs. Karth, I’ll take good care of it, I know you’ve got a big job to do.” It’s Miss Karth you little rat, and the next time I see you I’m going to knock you and your sabotaging cousin’s teeth in.”
Rizel huffed, double-checking her heading. The sun was starting to fall and before long it would be behind the other side of the mountains. Her torch was freshly charged, stars be thanked, but one breed of vultures was nocturnal, and she didn’t quite know whose territory she was in right now. She was off course even before the tailspin, and she didn’t recall ever seeing that particular ravine on the map.
With a sigh, Rizel stopped and dug around in her pack for her staff, jamming it into the ground and pulling up to extend it, twist it into place, and secure the catch. Latching her torch to it and digging the spiked end into the ground ahead of her, she continued on.
Mayday shivered, steadying his feet once more in the snow and sweeping a path clear for the men behind him. The squad was unsure of the exact amount of days they’d been at the outpost, but they knew it had been at least six months, and their under-armour was starting to show the wear and tear for it. Though it had been somewhat insulated at the start, they didn’t have all the resources necessary to maintain the integrity of the fabric layer beneath the blended kevlex, and with very few rec clothes that kept them warm enough to function, they’d worn the thermal body gloves more often than not. Any added layer was a blessing.
Mayday dug into the ice with his boots, hugging the side of the mountain face as the path started to narrow. Circumventing the shorter pass between their base and the crash site had been a necessary concession just to keep out of the buffeting winds. It was much higher up on the mountain anyway, and everybody on their crew had already had the joy of experiencing altitude sickness at least once. Mayday hoped it wouldn’t take longer than three hours to get to the site, but they were already approaching that threshold and still hadn’t seen any sign of the wreckage, or even any smoke, for that matter.
As luck would have it, they found something more telling.
A figure appeared in the distance, a little over forty meters away. Mayday halted the other two, motioning for them to get behind a boulder and get a look ahead as he lined up his scope for a closer look. He couldn’t tell from a distance how tall the figure was, but they walked upright with a staff in one hand. A thick hood and fur cloak obscured the rest of their appearance, save for their face; a pilot’s cap, a thin visor with no discernible eye holes, and what might have been a mountaineering or gas mask covered the entirety of their face, with a thick scarf tucked in around their neck for good measure. Mayday ran through the list of reported sentients on Barton IV but came up short of any that might breathe something other than oxygen— The mask and nozzles were unsettlingly familiar. They didn’t fit the bill for Geranites or the Kel Dor, and they certainly weren’t Ubese…
With a chill that had nothing to do with the cold, Mayday’s hands tensed. They wouldn’t have… Mayday thought, doing some mental math back to the months before their assignment to the outpost, trying to recall where Barton IV fell in the Trailing Sectors. The Republic— The Empire wouldn’t have put us that close, not that soon…
With a start, Mayday pulled his scope down, pressing the relay on his helmet’s comm: “Boys, listen carefully:” he said, keeping his voice level. “Their mask looks to be Tognath, at least partially. Do not engage unless they do. Let me do the talking.”
Barak and Hollis both jerked to look at the commander, their alarm apparent. “Commander, we— You can’t talk to them, we need to—”
“We will not engage first,” Mayday said firmly. “It’s possible they weren’t there. It hasn’t even been a year, and Barton IV is several parsecs away. There are no resources or centralized population centers on this rock.”
“Commander, Yar Togna was—”
“I. Know.” Mayday spoke tightly, his gaze never wavering from the figure beyond. He didn’t see a rifle, but he couldn’t see anything under the thick cloak. “I know. But it’s only one person. There’s no reason to assume anything.”
“Boss, they hate us,” Hollis whispered urgently. “They have no reason not to react on sight—”
“We are not,” Mayday said, louder this time. “Going to engage first.”
“It could be a trap, it could be an ambush and they’re just drawing us out— Even if they don’t do anything immediately they could- they could—”
“Barak.”
The short bark of the captain’s name snapped him back to attention. Mayday put his hand on his shoulder. “This planet is made of ice. Nobody chooses to come here, not even refugees. So far it's one pilot. And we’re not the raiders. We’re investigating. Don’t fire unless they do. Let me talk.”
“… Yes, sir,” Barak and Hollis said. Mayday nodded, and stepped out from behind the boulder to approach. His rifle was slung low and pointed down at his side, but he unclipped the holster for his blaster on the opposite thigh, just in case.
“You there,” he called, raising his voice above the wind. “Where’d you come from?”
The person in the cloak stopped, jamming their staff into the frozen ground. They raised their hand up to eye level, blocking the sun over their visor as if to get a look at them. Mayday still didn’t see anything to indicate the figure had eyes at all where he’d expect them to be. He continued forward before holding up a fist to halt Hollis and Barak behind him.
“Stay there,” he said to the stranger. “Put both hands up.”
The figure slowly moved the one hand aside, palm out, but the other remained hidden in the lumpy overcoat covering the majority of their body. “I can’t,” they called in Basic, and Mayday’s frown deepened. They sounded like a woman.
Before he could say anything she pointed to the hidden arm. “Broken bone.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Having the best day of my life,” she said dryly, still not moving. “Looking for shelter. What are you doing out here?”
He ignored her question. “What were you doing before that?”
She waved her hand in the direction of the ravine. “I’m a cargo pilot. Rig went down few hours back and spat me out.”
“Why’d you come this direction?”
“I was hoping for a nice warm cabin with three beds and options for dinner. Maybe a sauna if I’m lucky.”
“Cut the sarcasm.”
“You must be Papa Bear,” she said, amused. Mayday and his men didn’t move, but Hollis and Barak snorted quietly behind him. He still couldn’t see her face.
“… There’re some hollows in the peaks where the birds nest. Mighty cold out here, you know.”
“Birds?”
“You all not from these parts?” she asked, tipping her head to get a look around him to the other two. “The birds, the big ones. Ice vultures.”
Mayday didn’t respond immediately, but something about the woman’s frank response and self-amused line of answers told him she was telling the truth. Though her attire was concealing, up close it looked utilitarian and suited for weathering the surroundings. He wasn’t sure what kind of creature her cloak— coat?— used to be but he was envious.
“You were planning to den with the ice vultures?”
“They won’t eat you if you’re still wriggling. At least most of the time.”
“… Can I come closer and trust you’re not a threat?”
“Considering you seem to come well-heeled,” she said. “Not much I can do to stop you.”
Mayday hesitated, but signaled for his men to stand down. Carefully he came out from under the shadow of the outcropping, slinging his rifle back behind him and keeping his own hands steady on his approach. One woman with what he already believed genuinely was a broken bone was hardly cause for alarm, and nothing about her put his senses on edge.
The pilot, to her credit, stayed where she was and seemed unbothered as Mayday met her in the middle. He gestured to the cloak’s fastening on her shoulder. “May I?”
“I’m not stopping you.”
His frown deepened, but he gingerly unhooked the left side of her fur cloak.
A brief assessment told him the woman did have some notable injuries, her clothes singed and somewhat dirty. This close, he could smell the smoke and fuel through his helmet’s filter. The story of a ship crash tracked, and her left forearm lay limply on her pack, parallel with the ground and with the straps configured to give her some kind of support as a makeshift sling. Her visor was a thin band of some hard material with horizontal slits, though he wasn’t sure how she could see anything through them. The mask, though similar to the Tognaths’, hooked to a different apparatus on her cargo vest than theirs did and his worry abated. She sounded human anyway, or something close to it, and that was enough for Mayday’s overt wariness to dissipate.
She had one sidearm holstered to her thigh, but aside from a utility belt and harness and some basic tools he wouldn’t consider much of a danger if it really came down to it, she didn’t appear to be carrying anything else he felt the need to confiscate or investigate further, at least not until they were back at the depot.
“I have to take your blaster,” he said with a sigh.
“Oh do you now?” she asked, amused, and Mayday had the distinct impression she somehow had the upper hand here and had been laughing at him since the start of their conversation. “You actually an Ardennian under all that? Got another hand somewhere to shoot it with?”
Mayday suppressed the urge to smile and he tilted his helmet to the side. “It’s standard procedure more than anything. I believe you, but we have some questions we need to ask.”
She hummed, but didn’t otherwise respond. “May I?” he asked for the second time, gesturing to her holster.
“Like I said: I’m not stopping you.”
She didn’t move, and he hesitated before stooping to slip the gun from its confines and hook it to the back of his belt as he mulled over his thoughts.
He cleared his throat, covering her with the cloak again. “… We have some medical supplies back at our base,” he said finally, clasping it at the shoulder and covering her bag.
“Who exactly is “we”?” she asked, nodding to the other men.
“Soldiers of the Republic.”
“The Republic?” she asked. “Out here? The Republic’s all Core planets and trade routes. What’re you all doing out this far?”
At that Mayday did chuckle. He moved to the outside of the mountain path beside her, offering her space to take up her walking stick again. “We’ve asked ourselves that before. Come on, we’ll get you fixed up and go from there.”
The men, somewhat settled at the confirmation the woman didn’t appear to be a threat, led the way back to the supply depot, but it wasn’t long before Barak and Hollis connected their comm channel to his, silencing their helmets to talk privately.
“Commander, do you think this is a good idea? She could still be a spy.”
“Even if she really is a cargo pilot, she’ll have our location,” Barak added.
“If whatever we’re guarding was valuable intel,” Mayday said, “They wouldn’t have stuck just ten of us out here, and if the Republic, or the Empire, or whoever they are nowadays really wanted it, they’d have come got it by now. Not enough generators to power a vault, not enough databanks to fill one, too temperamental a climate to house a dish for a comm tower any bigger than our own. Therefore it’s not sensitive intelligence of any use to a spy.”
“You’re willing to risk it for one civvie? We don’t have to help her.”
“You’re willing to become the kind of man who lets innocent people die when there’s something you can do to help?”
“We don’t know that she is innocent.”
“True,” Mayday said. “But I’m not staying out here to question her. I’m sure between the eight of us we should be fine.”
Hollis didn’t respond, and after a minute he shut off his comm. Barak sighed, popping his neck and following after.
Mayday meant what he said about not being concerned about the pilot being the spy, but he also knew any kind of discord between him and his men was tricky to navigate when there were very few places in the compound to get away from one another without coming back in an even worse mood, and now he was introducing an entirely new variable into the ecosystem. Hopefully this would be sorted out in short order and they could move on with their lives.
This scene may or may not make it into the final cut of Call Sign, but it was a good warmup in characterization and dialogue.
Mildly suggestive but that’s about it
Rizel wasn’t paying attention when she went to stow her bag; the stack of actual flimsi-bound books inside the locker that wasn’t hers fell into a cluttered heap, other personal effects spilling out onto the floor in front of her. Cursing under her breath, she set her own pack aside, scooping up the pile and messily trying to sort it.
As she did, however, she couldn’t help but notice the titles and covers of most of the books.
The Bounty Hunter’s Bride. Knights of Dawnguard Manor. The Courtship of the Queen. The Marriage of Two Masters. Staver and Vasilisa. Mandalore’s Plight. Pledge of the Night Count. Serenno’s Silver Fox. The Princess and the Scoundrel. To Lure a Zeltron. Spies and Sabotage.
“Are you snooping through Barak’s stash?”
Djao appeared at her side and looked at her expectantly, leaning against the lockers. Rizel, unashamed, flipped through one of the books.
“How did he manage to smuggle all these in?” she asked. “I didn’t think you all had much in the way of personal effects.”
“I’ve found it’s best not to ask what the captain does ‘behind the scenes.’ You’re always guaranteed to hear more than what you bargained for.”
“ “Taming the Kaleesh Warlord” ?” Rizel asked with barely restrained laughter. The cover had a masked, tattooed, bare-chested Kaleesh male whose attire left little to the imagination, embracing a woman who appeared to have swooned under his affections in a rugged wilderness setting. “How are you supposed to kiss— Scratch that, how are you supposed to bed a Kaleesh? What kind of equipment are we talking about here?”
“Do you actually want to know?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
“Let’s just say their hearts aren’t the only thing they’ve got two of.”
“That’s a good one,” Barak said, appearing from behind them and reaching past her to grab his canteen. “You can borrow it if you want.”
“I’m almost morbidly curious.”
“It’s not for the faint of heart.”
“Now I’m very curious.”
“What are you guys— Oh come on.”
The three of them turned, Hollis having materialized from the ’fresher hall looking prim and disgusted. “The ‘library’ again?”
“Seems you’re familiar with Barak’s guilty pleasure?” Rizel said.
“Tch. That would imply he felt any guilt at all. Barak forced us to listen to his “findings” on Ord Mantell after he raided an abandoned kiosk.”
“Purely research,” Barak said.
“It’s undignified,” Hollis grumbled. “You’re a commanding officer.”
“What happens when you accidentally initiate the wrong courtship ritual with another species and aren’t aware of it? It’s good to be in the know.”
Djao slapped a hand over Rizel’s mouth the second she started to turn his way. “Not a word,” he said, glaring. “Don’t even ask.”
“What if I wanted to initiate a courtship ritual with a Nautolan?” Rizel teased, pulling his hand away.
“I’d have to say I’d be disappointed,” a fifth voice cut in.
The other men burst out laughing. Rizel cringed, her neck and face coloring with embarrassment.
“Commander.” Maybe if she played it cool he wouldn’t notice. “I see you’ve found your way back to the roost.”
“And I see someone’s been digging through the captain’s contraband,” Mayday said, amused. Rizel didn’t realize she still held one of the books; she shoved it into Djao’s chest without looking, forcing him to take it as he squawked in protest.
Summary: Rizel’s injuries are tended to. She and the men observe and start forming opinions of each other. Conflict is introduced and we start to see that the commander of the outpost is perfectly capable of remaining objective and focused, even when he wishes he didn’t have to be.
Veetch was the ‘youngest’ out of all of them, or at least seemed that way. Their little brother, though serious, was bright-eyed and sharp, chewing whatever that awful stim-gum was that the others couldn’t stand, and he was constantly drumming his fingers or hands on surfaces when he started to get bored, or bouncing his leg when he was agitated. Mayday would sometimes catch him tapping out a beat on his thigh plate when he was on watch. Veetch, Djao, and Crash made up the most sociable side of the squad, and the three of them plus Barak were all crowded shoulder-to-shoulder next to each other around the impromptu campfire. Veetch had wedged himself in next to Rizel, beaming like the sun and asking her questions so he could listen with rapt attention as she talked.
Rizel, to her credit, was a natural conversationalist and entertainer. She’d been telling stories for the past hour, regaling them with anecdotes from her job alongside what Mayday was certain were some impressive but almost-assuredly tall tales; every once in a while he’d catch a glimpse of mischief in her eyes as Djao listened in awe, and when she caught Mayday watching while Djao’s attention was elsewhere, she winked.
Mayday told himself he was refraining from joining them out of principle; she was still a person of interest, but even with that aside, most folks didn’t like their boss intruding on their leisure time anyway. He’d let the men have this.
Djao passed his canteen to Rizel while she talked, listening earnestly as he leaned in with his forearms on his knees. Mayday's resident jack of all trades wasn’t a pushover, but he’d always been a bit of a people-pleaser, eager and willing to help in whatever way he could. He’d accumulated a number of interests and skills over the years that he displayed a surprising amount of aptitude for despite how little time he’d had to refine them. They’d given him a chance to share and connect with people in a variety of ways, and he’d already made his way through every book, file, and scrap of intel saved on his datapads months ago; getting fresh stories and news from the outside world from somebody who paid him just as much attention while he talked was like striking aurodium for him. Gods knew the rest of them had already heard every non-fiction topic relayed to them twice over now.
Mayday was surprised to see Barak with the others, though he supposed the captain could have just been sitting in as a means of observing. Barak was the most objective and practical and wasn’t easily swayed by others’ emotions which made him a good leader and solid tactician, and he’d never struck Mayday as the type to be won over by a pretty face alone so he had to assume the captain was as bored and starved for interaction as the rest of them.
Mayday wasn’t surprised to see Crash involved. He was the loudest of those gathered, entertaining her with some of their own stories; Mayday was relieved he omitted the specifics of their locations, at least. Rizel listened intently, occasionally stoking the fire with her staff, and it appeared to Mayday that her teasing extended to all of them, nudging Crash in the ribs with her elbow as he told one of the stories from their time on Ord Mantell. Crash was also a theatric entertainer and didn't mind telling stories that came at his own expense; the more she laughed, the more eager he looked.
She may have been outnumbered, but it was clear she had command of the room: they were her captive audience and Mayday could see she was already becoming a welcome addition faster than anticipated.
All of them looked younger in the light of an actual fire, their shoulders relaxed and their postures loose. Even the wary skeptics on the outside of the group hadn’t gone far. It was hard to really tell what Hollis thought; he was always reserved so he didn’t look too different now, arms crossed with his legs stretched out in front of him at one of the terminals. Hexx was in the alcove of a galley across from Mayday, leaning back out from time to time. He was the one Mayday had concerns about, but for the time being…
Mayday couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard them laugh that much.
The commander mulled over his notes until the scent of caf accompanied a new presence at his side.
“How’d you sleep?” Mayday asked, scrolling through the pocket secretary.
Nocturne shrugged. “Slept,” he said, taking a sip and rubbing his eyes. “Hexx said there’s news?”
Mayday nodded to the fire. Nocturne finally saw the pilot and let out a low, appreciative whistle.
“Yeah, that’s about what the rest of us thought,” Mayday said.
“Didn’t think you were the type to take in strays.”
“Well, you know me. Can’t say no when the boys drag something home.”
The four men at the fire simultaneously burst out laughing again, much to the woman’s smug delight. As it died down she nudged the two troopers on either side of her, gingerly standing to her feet to stretch and work out some of the tightness in her joints— All four men stood too, Crash and Djao with hands half-raised and ready to help if needed, but it appeared Veetch beat them to it. Now unobscured by the flickering fire, Mayday and Nocturne could see the pilot reach her good arm up, stretching her back and leaning from side to side as Veetch steadied her. Once she relaxed she gave him a dazzling smile in thanks, squeezing his shoulder just long enough Mayday could see Veetch planning out their future together in his head.
Nocturne snorted softly. “What’s her story?”
“Her ship crashed in the ravine at thirteen-hundred hours,” Mayday said. “We couldn’t tell what kind it was and she was bearing this direction so we went to check it out. I’ll send you the notes.”
“Got it. What’s the call?”
Mayday watched the pilot. He’d been noting how consistent her brief looks of pain were between conversations, and they certainly didn’t seem like part of a performance meant to keep the others’ sympathy and attention. The arm not gesturing in time with the stories she told hadn’t moved from where it was propped up by her pack.
“She says she broke something; I’m inclined to think she’s telling the truth. My guess is left clavicle, but we haven't taken a look at anything.”
“… That’s at least a six-week mend,” Nocturne said carefully. “The only thing we have left that would quicken the process is the carapace knitter, if you’re willing to let her go through with the risk.”
“I’m not, which is why I won’t make a final decision until you can look her over.” Mayday looked up at him. “See if you can get anything else out of her, yeah? I don’t think she’s a spy, but Hexx and Hollis are still on the fence. If there’s any indication she’ll be a problem while she’s here, we put her in the brig and let Intelligence handle her when they show up next.”
“That’ll still be rations and utilities expended her way,” Nocturne said. “And medical supplies if you’re willing to be generous.”
“The alternative is letting the cold deal with her,” Mayday said. “Or chance her actually being a spy and getting picked up by a transport. We’re not executioners, and we don’t have the means of doing a background search, so either she stays here comfortable or she stays here uncomfortable.”
“Understood.”
Hexx joined them, jutting his thumb back to the galley. “Chow’s up. Should I make a plate for the chorus girl?”
“Why, Hexx, is that animosity I hear?” Nocturne said in mock surprise. “Hollis was supposed to make dinner, I’m sure you could have joined the campfire brigade if you needed some attention.”
“Ha, ha,” Hexx said flatly. “I don’t need to be entertained like a child.”
“Maybe the fire would have warmed up that cold shoulder of yours,” Mayday said, giving Hexx a mild look. Hexx, unamused, waved the two of them off and went back to the galley.
“He’ll come around,” Nocturne said as he downed the rest of his caf with a grimace, looking at the cup. “He just misses the twins and doesn’t like the idea of somebody else using their gear.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Mayday said.
“Want me to take her to the infirmary?”
“She soldiered through a six kilometer hike in the mountains and declined painkillers when offered. Dinner’s ready now; you can take her after.”
Dinner was a simple affair but it was a nice change of pace being able to warm their boots next to what remained of a fire. Barak caught the medic up to speed with some of the finer details of the day, but said the most telling information was what she revealed just over the hour they’d spent warming up.
Barak had seen how she engaged each of them in conversation, the topics evolving and changing seamlessly. Though he’d joined mostly to keep an eye on the Three Grenadiers and make sure they hadn’t lost the ability to remain discreet, they appeared to only be interested in personal stories about her life and the world outside rather than divulging their own.
Of the stories they told and questions she’d asked, very few of them had been related to anything Barak would consider sensitive information. The pilot was personable but seemed to understand where the boundaries were, and she listened attentively to each of the men in equal measure. She drew Veetch back in to hear him finish his thought when Crash started to talk over him to Djao, and she actively followed along with Djao’s out-of-order method of storytelling that sometimes required backtracking to give context; Rizel was sharp and had enough life experience to make connections and draw conclusions as Djao talked so he knew she was following along and he could continue.
Despite his original plan being to keep the others in check if needed, Barak found himself chuckling alongside them. He wasn’t fooled by as many of her exaggerated yarns as they were, but every time he challenged a story, she had a quick turn of phrase or some easy explanation for everything. Even when forced to admit when something was exaggerated, her explanation was just as amusing and theatrical as the rest of the story had been, prepared for any hole somebody might poke in it. Nothing caught her off guard and he idly found himself thinking that if she wasn’t a civilian, he’d almost have wanted her involved with subterfuge back with the GAR.
That thought unfortunately brought his scrutiny back into focus, knowing she could just be endearing herself to them and was as capable improvising or redirecting focus in other conversations.
It was welcome news when Hexx and Nocturne called everyone in for the meal. Even if some of the pilot's grander hunting and netting stories were exaggerated, it was clear the creatures she talked about were real. The lush flora and fauna sounded like they provided a variety of mouth-watering dishes he had to admit all sounded a lot more appealing than what they had up here.
“Find out anything useful?” Mayday asked him quietly. They stood some ways away, watching the group.
Barak mulled over his thoughts. “She says she wants to contact her brother back home and the settlement on the other side to let them know what happened and that she’d be on her way in a few weeks,” he said. “I told her no dice.”
“You think there’s still a risk if it’s encrypted?”
“What’s she going to tell them about how she survived long enough to make her way down the mountain?” Barak asked. “Them knowing she’s alive and has means of communication points attention our way even if she doesn’t give our location.”
“Is it worse if she doesn’t show up at her drop point on schedule and people come looking?”
“How many people would it take to canvas a mountain range?” Barak asked. “Do you think they’d be willing to risk the lives of a whole search party for one person with an almost-zero percent chance of survival?”
“If she’s a pillar of multiple communities, yes. I’d like to think we’d do it for ours.”
“If she is,” Barak says. “Jury’s still out on the veracity of her statements.”
“You doubt her sincerity?”
“She tells some good fishing stories.”
—
Rizel found herself spaced between several six-foot tall walls of armor and smiles yet again as she ate. She was surprised at first that they'd been willing to extend the offer of food her way, but she wouldn't complain. She'd be able to keep some of her own stores for a bit longer, at least. The same couldn't be said for her campfire fuel, but a little bribery goes a long way when one is outnumbered.
Aside from the brief moment of tension where she evidently crossed a line in asking where they came from, the soldiers were friendly and hadn't given any other open indication of wariness or hostility. They'd thawed out considerably after the commander questioned her, and the hour spent chewing the fat with four of them was a relaxing reprieve from the day's troubles as much as it was an enlightening look into who they were.
Now there were overlapping conversations on every side of the smoldering fire, bits of stories and shop talk filtering through and layering over each other. Rizel found herself caught up in a conversation with the three non-officer troopers who had kept her company before dinner started.
“So if you get to choose your names, why did you go with ‘Crash’?” she asked.
Crash groaned, the others piping up for him.
“Some of us choose them. Others get called something by their brothers for long enough the name just sticks."
“Crashed his first real flight in training. Didn’t even make it out of the hangar!”
“It is the only time I’ve ever crashed anything, too," Crash grumbled. “Stupid name just stuck.”
“Hey, high-five for Team One-Crash-Only,” Rizel said, holding her hand up.
“It'd be nice if I could move on from that being the first thing people know about me," Crash said. “No matter how good of a helmsman you are now, people only seem to remember the one time you screwed up in front of an audience.”
“Cheer up," Djao said mischievously. “You could go back to “Crush.” How's that one natborn officer you were pining for treating you these d— Hey!"
Crash shoved him off the crate, taking the spot next to Rizel for himself and ignoring Djao’s protests and attempts to take it back. Rizel politely smothered her impulse to laugh at their antics. She was starting to see how apt it was that they called each other 'brother.'
Rizel nudged Crash’s boot. “What would you change it to?” she asked. “If you could get them to call you by it?”
“Something not indicative of my failings, that’s for sure."
After dinner the medic led Rizel to the infirmary to get a look at her shoulder. Rizel was surprised that, for as large as the compound was, the infirmary still didn’t look big enough to accommodate even the eight men who were there. It might have held four cots with enough walking space between them, but she wouldn’t have gambled on it. There was a worktable with a deep sink at the back with some sparse instruments she didn’t recognize, and cabinets with limited counter space running along either side of the room. Some field supplies were very carefully packed as tightly as they could afford to be into one corner near the exam table, and the rest of the room consisted of an illuminator above the scrub station, a rack for ten cots, a stool, and one rickety space heater the medic turned on and set nearby.
The floor was just sloped enough to notice, and grimly she saw that the low point in the middle of the room terminated in a drain. She hadn’t seen a chiller for a blood bank anywhere.
“Do they anticipate you seeing much action up here?” she asked, nodding to the floor as she took a seat on the exam table. The medic spared it a glance as he gathered some supplies.
“Standard design. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”
“… Is the war really this far spread?” Rizel asked as Nocturne brought the stool and came to sit next to her. He started to line up his supplies, his sleeves already rolled up. “I know you can’t give me details, but this really is the first time I’ve heard anything about it.”
“If we’re out here, it’s considered Republic territory worth defending,” he said. “Pen light. Eyes up here so I can check for a concussion.”
“Don’t you think the others would have noticed by now?”
“Not if they’ve been distracted all night.”
Rizel smiled. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
—
Once the medic had gone through some cursory questions and checks to get a baseline, he told her he'd assess her collarbone and check for internal bleeding and other injuries, provided she was okay with removing her sweater, in addition to her tunic if it was long-sleeved or high-collared. He waited for Rizel to half-shrug before helping her maneuver out of the straps of her bag’s support before following it with her clothes. She tried to ignore the embarrassment at the medic’s proximity and assistance; it was almost as bad as the time her brother had to help her when she’d fallen halfway through the ice while fishing and had to swap half-frozen wet clothes for dry.
Down to a bandeau and trousers, she was thankful for his forethought with the heater. Rizel could tell the medic was perfectly suited for his position, practiced and capable. His voice was soothing to listen to as he talked out each step, and he retained a clinician’s eyes and hands, unfazed by her appearance. Either he didn’t care what she looked like, or he was very professional even out in the middle of nowhere.
Nocturne set to work scanning for internal injuries and checking for any significant chemical burns from the fuel before cleaning and patching the deeper cuts and scrapes that had only barely congealed. As he moved on to the more superficial wounds, his focus gave her the chance to observe him now, taking her own mental notes on the last member of the squad.
“How did you get to have this position?”
He glanced up at her, smearing a brown styptic over the parts of her hip and shoulder the restraining belt had chafed some cuts into. “Cadets all got the same training, and if you excelled in a particular area they would reassign and group you together for specialization.”
“You were that smart as a young buck they could tell you’d make a good physician?”
“Just a medic. It was mostly the fact I wasn’t nauseated by seeing the inside of people after something goes wrong, and I was good at studying and multitasking.” He deliberated over some of the other cuts before cinching some butterfly bandages over the worst and moving on. “That, and I made it a point to build up the field endurance. Book smarts don’t do you any good if you can’t haul someone back from the line of fire far enough to treat them.”
This close under the recessed halogen lighting, Rizel could really see the finer details in his features. There were enough variations in hair or armor with the rest of the men that she could tell most of them apart, but up close she could also see the subtle differences in Nocturne’s face, which wrinkles were more pronounced, which freckles and scars he had. The medic hadn’t been wearing any of the white armor when he’d come in before dinner, and the looser collar on what she assumed was a nightshirt instead of the black body glove provided a brief glimpse of what she was almost certain were curiously colorful tattoos just over his shoulder. His hair was longer than the others', but with it tied up out of the way, she’d been able to see the pale starburst scar on his temple when he turned his head even from across the more dimly lit command center.
“Is there only one of you on night shift at a time?”
“Easy, girl.”
Rizel grinned. “That’s not what I was suggesting, but a good idea’s a good idea.”
“Even if I were inclined to disregard my post, the barracks are close enough to hear them snoring, and most of them sleep pretty light.”
“Fair enough.”
Nocturne went to wash his hands and returned with a different scanner and a wrap. “Do you have other clothes?” he asked, nodding to her bag. “Those need to be cleaned before you wear them again.”
“Yes.”
“Are you native to these parts?”
“Me and everyone before me.”
“Good. We don’t have a lot of full-spectrum antibiotics to spare if you get an infection or catch a bug, so keep anything beneath bandages clean.”
Rizel fished around for her other shirt and handed it to him, still embarrassed but grateful for both his help and thankfully warm hands. Before long she sat again with her back straight so he could scan and assess her collarbone more closely. Without the support she’d had before, gravity felt like it was pulling down on her arm in an attempt to snap it off at the shoulder, and she almost wished she hadn’t declined whatever medicine the commander offered earlier. As Nocturne gently pressed his fingers and thumb on either side of the bone and worked them along the length of it to find the fracture, he noticed something.
“You’ve broken this one before?”
“How’d you know?”
Nocturne took her opposite hand and gently guided her finger over a bump on the outer side of the edge. “Bone heals thicker over a break,” he said.
“Huh. Didn’t know tha— Ow.”
“Sorry.” Nocturne looked sympathetic as he gently worked her arm so her shoulder came forward just enough that he could ensure the new break was aligned together, slowly lowering her forearm back down. “Good news is it looks like a nice clean break so it should be an easy mend. Hold here and I’ll wrap your arm to keep your shoulder in place.”
Rizel held the end of the wrap Nocturne gave her, dutifully waiting as he started to secure it around her. “It’ll probably need to be redone or adjusted each morning, or if you do something to aggravate it,” he said. “If that happens, come find me, and in a week or so it can be refitted to be less restrictive. For now it’ll keep it aligned and keep your arm next to your body with most of the weight distributed to your other shoulder. Hope you can sleep on your back.”
The companionable silence stretched as Nocturne worked, until something occurred to her.
“What happens if a bone heals wrong?” she asked. “If it doesn’t set right?”
The medic sighed, an odd sound somewhere between amusement and regret at an evident memory. “Sometimes the best way to fix it is to rebreak it and reset it, though that does depend on the bone and the break. This—” (He nodded to her collarbone) “— Would be a very dangerous rebreak if it didn’t do what it’s supposed to on the first try. I doubt that’ll happen though, if you’re laid up here for a while anyway.”
“Have you had to rebreak anything before?”
“Yes, unfortunately. Easiest was an arm, once: we were all planetside for three weeks without any air support or medevac so by the time they’d gotten the trooper back to a more experienced medic, he’d been through hell on the trip and the accelerated healing was already working on the arm despite its positioning. Luckily he was another clone— Knowing all of our anatomy and physiology has the same baseline makes it more of an exact science in that regard.”
Rizel’s eyes widened. “Accelerated healing?”
He glanced at her. “Accelerated healing was grafted into the clones' physical makeup. Perks of the job, I guess.”
“That’s terrible,” she mumbled. “They patch you back up as soon as they can so they can shove you back out in the line of fire?”
“That’s the idea.”
“It’s terrible.”
“But it is efficient,” he pointed out.
Rizel didn’t know whether to feel relieved or sad that his wry smile didn’t seem bothered by the thought of them being built to take a beating again and again every day.
“Do you know the person you were cloned from?” she asked. “Or is that a rude question to ask?”
“I didn’t know him personally,” Nocturne said. “Some consider it a mildly rude question, if only because it opens the door to more invasive questions.”
“Ah, understood. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Why do you ask?”
“… My answer is going to sound impolite now, all things considered.”
“Well now I’m curious.”
“… I was going to say he was handsome. You’re all very good-looking.”
Nocturne smiled just briefly, continuing. “Thanks. Some of us are better stewards than others.”
“What do you mean?”
“Some take a mean hit to the face. Others just make bad decisions. You saw Djao’s hair.”
“Oh it’s not that bad.”
“It really is.”
“He just needs a trim.”
“He needs to start over and just get rid of the blonde.”
“If you’ve got trimmers I could fix it up.”
“You’ll spoil him.”
Rizel was pleased that Nocturne wasn’t as stony as the aloof captain who’d sat at the fire or the other two who’d ignored her most of the night. Despite knowing him for all of an hour, the medic seemed the most giving when it came to conversation; Djao, Veetch, and Crash were entertaining but hadn’t revealed much about the station or the specifics of their pasts when she asked, whereas Nocturne seemed older and more experienced, able to be informative without having to think over everything he said. She also got the feeling he didn’t coddle people, but his frankness wasn’t harsh or uncaring. She appreciated a seasoned medical expert who managed to balance honesty and straightforward information with kindness.
“Can I ask another rude question?”
“My curiosity compels me to say yes.”
“How’d you get this?”
Nocturne glanced up as Rizel’s fingers met his temple, grazing the side of his face. He was quiet for a moment, watching where he wove the sling before he reached up and removed her hand, placing it back on the table.
“Unless you’ve sanded the paint and symbols off your armor, medics get taken out first. This,” he said, gesturing to the scar, “Was a sniper.”
Her face fell. She’d been the one asking questions though, and he wasn’t going to start sugarcoating anything now.
“Like I said. Some of us just take a mean hit to the face.”
“How’d you survive?”
“Helmet took most of the shot. They’re good for things like that.”
“… For what it’s worth, I don’t think it does your looks a disservice,” she said quietly, still looking at the scar.
“Thanks,” Nocturne said, securing the sling and standing. “But I wasn’t worried. I don’t need to be pretty to do my job.”
He offered her a hand and helped her to her feet. “Laundry facilities are the second door down from the galley. Hang them in the second receptacle and press the switch below the blue light. Yellow’s for in-progress, green’s for a finished cycle. Can you find your way back from here?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I need to clean up and sanitize things before I leave.”
Barak and Mayday oversaw the final lockups for the night, reconvening near the observation console and waiting for Nocturne. Veetch had switched out of his underarmor for his second set, layering on sleep clothes and an additional pair of thermals. Hexx wrapped up with Crash and rejoined the crew from the north hall, Djao was down to half his armor and was powering up the recycler for the cistern, and Mayday figured Hollis was already asleep: Hollis’s time management skills were second to none and precise to a degree the others found they could only hope to emulate. He made it a point to prep his end-of-day work prior to dinner when most of them were winding down, making his final checks afterwards a short affair.
With so many wings of the compound so low-trafficked, they’d eventually just closed them off and it now made short work of the comparatively minimal closeouts they had to do.
The pilot rejoined them without her sweater, one arm in a sling and the other carrying her pack, and Mayday realized he hadn’t followed up with Barak’s suggestion after the interrogation earlier that day, save for holding onto her comm device and blaster. So far, Rizel had been an uncomplicated and cooperative addition to the outpost, but if she was going to be staying in close quarters for the foreseeable future, he needed to be thorough.
He called her over to the free-moving work table, waiting until she joined him. The others milled about, talking quietly as they finished up.
“I need to know what’s in your pack before we hit the hay,” he said.
Rizel regarded him thoughtfully, humming. “From the sound of it, that wasn’t a request.”
“I don’t want to have to take it.”
“And I’d also hazard a guess that simply opening it and showing you myself is out of the question.”
Mayday held out his hand. “Please. It’s—”
“Standard procedure, yeah, I’ve heard.” Rizel handed it to him. “Not the most ideal way for you to see my unmentionables but I suppose I don’t have a choice.”
Mayday sifted through the contents of her bag with what felt like a low-grade fever on the back of his neck. He couldn't tell if she was lying just to throw him off or if she purposefully liked to mess with him, but the only clothes he found were a set of leggings and a thick pair of socks rolled up into what was probably another tunic or shirt. Her scarf, visor, cap, and gloves were already stacked with her belt, utility vest, and harness, which Barak had gone through earlier while assessing her equipment. The filter and heating elements lining the vest connected to the nozzle and corrugated tube leading to the respirator, providing warm air to breathe while heating the vest at the same time. There were a few other settings on the control panel but they didn’t know what they did.
Binocs, something that might have been a compass, an old-fashioned, holocell print-cam, a rolled tool pack, a wide-tooth comb, altitude sickness tablets, a small canister of waterproof matches and some flint, a second torch, a deck of cards, some food, a medkit… It all seemed like standard survival gear and personal effects. There was a handheld grappling gun Mayday was envious of that had a spool of about thirty meters of give, if he was reading it right, galvanized aircraft cable and wicked-looking hooks all locked in place and housed in a lightweight casing that he realized secured to her mountaineering belt.
He set aside two marlinspikes, some lockpicks, a bottle of what smelled like antiseptic, and sifted through some miscellaneous items. There were a few different tins with rough labels written in a script he didn’t recognize.
“What’s this?” He gestured with the burgundy tin.
Rizel smiled. “Smell it.”
Mayday unscrewed the lid and sniffed it: he reeled back, coughing and scrubbing at his face as his eyes watered, the vile yellowish paste a sickly sweet-sharp mix of odors, none of them pleasant. It burned all the way up through his sinuses and hit the back of his skull, the pungent sharpness akin to eating too much sabawi root in one bite.
“Concentrated pepperoxia,” Rizel laughed. “Keeps predators away. Works like smelling salts too.”
Mayday swore under his breath, trying to breathe. “You could have just told me,” he grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Why should I? You would have done it anyway if I’d told you not to.”
“Are all of these some kind of animal repellent?”
“Just that one. The green tin smells better, if you need a palate cleanser.”
“Hard pass.”
Rizel gave a self-satisfied hum as he continued pulling things out, his mood considerably more dour.
“You have trees out here?” he asked, holding up a wooden netting needle. He was so used to seeing netting fixed by automation or droids he didn’t think anybody still repaired them by hand, and eighty-seven percent of Barton IV’s surface was covered in ice. “I wouldn’t think sunlight could get to your underground caves.”
“Are you suspicious of everything?” she asked. “Or does the army not allow gift-giving holidays?”
“What are these?” he asked, ignoring her and holding up a bundle of segmented cylindrical stakes.
She winced, evidently forgetting about whatever they were until he had them. “Would you believe me if I said ground flares?"
Mayday grunted in disapproval, setting them aside next to her comlink. “You keep explosives and compressed anthracite bricks in the same bag?”
“I keep my lighter in my other pocket.”
“I’ll need that too.”
She said nothing, and for a moment Mayday thought that would be the end of things. He started to tuck the rest of her belongings back into the pack before glancing at her and holding out his hand.
“The lighter, please?”
She remained where she was. “Come and take it.”
Mayday paused. The edge to her voice was distinctly surprising. Up until right then nearly everything she’d said that day had been generally agreeable and laced with amusement, all of her retorts lighthearted teasing or jokes.
This sounded different.
“Will I have to?”
She didn’t respond. He waited, then turned to put a hand on his hip and really look at her. Her dark eyes held his with no levity this time. His gaze flicked over her: down to a tunic and trousers, there were only a scant amount of places a lighter could be, her hip pockets being two of them.
“Ma’am—”
“Miss. Do I look married to you?”
“No reason why you wouldn’t be.”
“I’m keeping the lighter.”
“Shouldn’t’ve said anything then.”
Rizel’s eyes narrowed, and despite the sling keeping her arm in place she still looked primed for a fight. The prospect made him severely uncomfortable, especially with how well the rest of the day had gone. He could see Hexx and Crash in his periphery now watching them and knew the other men weren’t far.
He sighed, holding out his hand. “Please.”
“No.”
“Rizel, please, this isn’t helping your case. If you’d had cigarras or a pipe or just the campfire fuel, it wouldn’t be an issue, but these—” He pointed to the explosives. “— Are an issue. Hand it over.”
“Come take it,” she challenged him again.
She had to know this was futile. There was some matter of pride about whatever significance this lighter held and she was willing, even with a broken bone, to defend it, but unfortunately for her, her belongings and shift of demeanor were just suspicious enough to warrant precaution.
He wasn’t going to like this.
“Last chance,” he told her again.
Rizel stared him down with a challenging look of defiance, and Mayday’s expression hardened.
“Fine.”
When Rizel made to take a step back, Mayday dragged the coarse floor mat towards himself with his boot; Rizel slipped, stumbling off balance as her back hit one of the terminals, gasping when her left shoulder made contact. It was just enough time for Mayday to close the distance in two strides, pinning her to the steel paneling with one forearm keeping both of hers trapped between them. She tried to buck him off with a snarl and nearly succeeded in dislodging him, only for him to grunt and readjust, pinning her in place with his hip. Rizel bared her teeth and glared at him, trying to wriggle free and breathing hard as he felt for her pocket. He slipped a brass lighter on a chain from it, ignoring the pang in his chest as he did, and she shoved him off once he stepped back and retreated to the makeshift table.
“Give it back,” she demanded.
“Come and take it,” he muttered.
Rizel spat a litany of what he assumed were curses at him, turning to stride across the room to where her cloak was. She wrapped it around herself with no small amount of stubborn effort and sat on a crate with her back to the wall, glaring at him all the while. Mayday sighed and collected her things together, neatly putting them back into the pack. Where before he hadn’t had a reason to think she’d act against them, he now kept the tools, pickaxe, marlinspikes, lockpicks, and the rest of the fire starters too.
As he stowed it all in a lockbox and readied to put it into overhead storage, however, he paused.
Veetch and Nocturne didn't have any armor on. Barak and Djao couldn't sleep in their breastplates for how badly the structural integrity had been compromised. Crash and Hollis were each on the lower bunks, and Hexx frequently slept with his pillow over his head to block out the sound of the generator.
Mayday looked back at Rizel.
Barak felt the shift like the drop in barometric pressure before a storm, straightening up from off the wall. “Commander?”
Mayday’s expression was unreadable as he turned to face the pilot. He crossed the room, the men parting around him as he approached her carefully. Rizel’s lip curled with disdain, staring him down.
Mayday knelt to one knee in front of her and held out his hand. “Give me your knife.”
“Excuse you?”
“Single most important tool for any survivalist,” he intoned. “You wouldn’t be out here without one. If it’s not in your bag, it’s on your person.”
“There’s one in the tool pack,” she said flatly.
“Sure. One of them.”
“That’s it.”
“Pretty inconvenient having to hunt for it.”
“Some days are like that.”
The men were frozen, watching.
“Rizel,” Mayday said levelly. “While you are here on my outpost I will only ask for two things: Follow my orders the moment they’re given, and do not lie to me. Right now you are a welcome guest— But you are a guest. So I’m only going to ask you one more time: Give me your knife.”
The pilot’s eyes were narrow, her expression as cold as the landscape outside. Mayday waited, unmoving, and the men scarcely dared to breathe, should they break whatever spell had trapped those congregated.
They knew if she had one and complied, she’d be given a measure of freedom to move about the facility of her own accord, provided one of them was within range. They’d only have reason to be on minimal guard, and they could all remain civil.
“Commander…”
“Quiet.”
If she refused and Mayday’s hunch was right, this would be a much more unpleasant confrontation, and she’d prove herself to be a suspect and potential enemy.
“She could be—”
“Quiet.”
If she refused because Mayday’s hunch was wrong, however…
“You sure you want to do this?” she asked.
There would be no way for any of them, in compliance with Mayday’s orders, to not become the enemy.
Mayday nodded.
“Search me then,” she said.
“Excuse you?”
“If you’re so convinced I’m carrying a knife,” Rizel said. “Search me and prove it. Here, you can even inspect my furs.” She stood up, Mayday with her as she unclasped the cloak. She held it out to him and turned in place, holding her good arm up. “Precious few places left to hide one. How thorough do you want to be?”
Mayday kept his reflexive grimace at bay. He didn’t like the unwavering glint in her eyes any more than he did her insinuation.
“Or will you make one of them do it?” she challenged, jerking her head to the troopers. “I’m sure none of them would mind.”
His expression didn’t change, but the rest of theirs did; Djao and Veetch looked severely uncomfortable and stepped back from the terminal closest to them as Crash’s chair swiveled to face away. Hollis had come back in at some point, he and Hexx both shifting uneasily and trying to melt into the background.
Mayday handed the cloak off for Barak to search, then looked past her.
“Nocturne?”
“… Nothing up her sleeves, Commander.”
“Nice of you to join us, Doc.” Rizel dropped her arm without looking behind her, her eyes fixed expectantly on Mayday.
After another moment of deliberation, he pulled a crate between them with his boot. “Boots off. One leg up.”
Rizel did as she was told, shivering at the cold floor before balancing with one foot on the crate. Nocturne leaned against the wall, arms tightly crossed as Barak shook out the cloak and boots, checking the pockets of the former and soles of the latter and confirming there was nothing in them. The men watched in silence from their peripheries, Mayday remaining impassive as he raised the back of her shirt to check her beltline. His gloves skimmed her hips and down either side of her straight leg with enough pressure to tell if she had anything strapped to her thigh or calf, and he hated every moment of it.
He circled in front of her and went to check the bent leg as swiftly as he could, but the moment he touched her thigh her low voice came dangerously close to the side of his face.
“Don’t get lost, Commander.”
Mayday ignored her, grinding his teeth. He stooped and skimmed his hands down her leg as swiftly as he could, finished his search, and stood.
“Thank you for cooperating.”
“Sure,” Rizel said, the challenge in her eyes meeting his. “ “Standard procedure,” isn’t it?”
Mayday’s jaw ticced. He nudged her boots back towards her, gesturing for the other men to head out. “There’s a bunk available in the barracks,” he said, nodding after them as he stowed the lockbox in the cache above the storage cabinet and locked it.
“Hard pass.”
“Suit yourself,” Mayday said. He didn’t look at her. “Nocturne will be up if you decide to go anywhere.”
The men were silent in the barracks as Mayday doffed his armor and pulled out a change of clothes, but he could feel their judgement boring into the back of his head. It would have to come out eventually if he didn’t address it himself, and it was best to keep wounds from festering.
“Out with it.”
Veetch was first, to nobody’s surprise. “Commander did you really have to do that? She wasn’t a problem the whole day until you started accusing her.”
“Prior cooperation does not guarantee a lack of long term planning,” Mayday said. He took off the second greave and moved on to his boots. “And explosives are cause for suspicion.”
“So you think she’s a spy after all?” Djao asked, crossing his arms in disapproval.
“I didn’t say she was,” Mayday said, making up the bed. “Detonations can achieve a number of goals; she could just be a zealot for all we know.”
“Why didn’t you stun her?” Hexx asked. “Seems like less trouble to search her that way.”
“I don’t have to solve every problem with a gun,” he said. “If anybody shoots her, she becomes a prisoner by default.”
“And wrestling her for the lighter when she has a busted arm doesn’t give her that impression?” Crash asked pointedly. "How is that better?"
Mayday’s expression was severe when he turned to the men, but his voice remained as controlled as ever.
“How would it have been better to stun her?” he asked quietly. “To have her know there are eight men here who could do that at any time, for any reason? How would it be better for her to wake up after that?”
All of them immediately stood down, looking away.
“Did I keep her restrained?” Mayday asked. He looked at Hollis. “Did I tell you to cuff her? Did I have Barak drag her to the brig? Did I do anything she didn’t expressly say to do, even if she framed it as a challenge?”
Mayday finished storing his gear. “I gave her every chance to cooperate because I don’t want for her to be somebody we have to keep our guard up around,” he said. “Which means establishing accountability on her part— But I don’t want her to feel like she has to keep her guard up around us either, despite the fact she’s outnumbered by eight men with blasters and a host of combat skills.” He looked at each of them, ensuring he had their attention as he spoke. “We’re soldiers, not weapons, which means we handle conflict like people first. I meant what I said when I said she’s a guest. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes sir,” came the reply in unison.
“Good. Lights out.”
The pilot had finally managed to get herself comfortable on the cot Nocturne set up for her some ways away. She’d originally seemed willing to make do with what she could find on her own; she hadn’t said a word to him before hauling some crates together for a makeshift bed, hadn’t even asked for help in moving them, and it seemed like she was going to use the cloak as both bedroll and blanket. Nocturne sighed and told her to stay put, retrieving a cot from the infirmary, in addition to a sheet and his own blanket from the barracks.
Beyond stowing her personal effects under the duraweave and curling up on the cot in her cloak, Rizel had done very little else in the wake of the confrontation. As the minutes ticked by, Nocturne felt compelled to diffuse the unspoken tension in the room.
“Don’t take it personally,” he said from his station. “We have to maintain regulation regardless of what threat level something or someone is.”
“Sure.”
“… I am sorry for how it happened, though.”
“Why are you apologizing? I’m not upset with you,” she replied. “It’s your boss who needs to be more flexible.”
“Mayday’s just following protocol and watching our backs.”
“Mayday?”
“Yes?”
“The commander?” Rizel asked, turning to look over her shoulder.
For maybe the first time that night he found that he couldn’t read her expression. “Yeah…?”
The pilot laid back down, staring at the ceiling.
“… Nocturne, be honest with me.”
“Okay…”
“Is what he did an anomaly, or is it the norm?”
“An anomaly,” Nocturne replied instantly. “… But most people usually do what he tells them to to begin with.”
“Is that so.”
Nocturne sighed, dragging a hand down his face. “Mayday always knows what he’s doing. There’ll always be a reason for the orders he gives. We’re trained to follow them regardless, but all of us here— Everyone who’s ever worked with him— We would do what he asked us to even if we weren’t soldiers. He’s not the type to give orders he wouldn’t follow himself, they’ve always been given more forethought than you think, and more often than not you’re liable to look over and see him in the middle of the same trench you are, doing the same thing he told you to do. He’s not a tyrant.”
The pilot was quiet. Eventually she turned back over to face away from him.
“Guess we’ll see, won’t we?”
Author’s Note: “The Three Grenadiers”: A historical-adventure novel written by renown Twi’lek author Xandre Samud following a small cadre of tightly-knit soldiers fighting for justice, spying on behalf of the crown, and rescuing damsels in distress. In a swashbuckling series of events set on Ryloth two-hundred years in the past, the three companions stick together through thick and thin and engage in a number of daring exploits epitomizing phrases such as “All for one and one for all,” “Faint heart never won fair lady,” and “There are few problems a grenade can’t solve.”
Summary: The pilot is escorted back and welcomed to the outpost by Mayday and his men.
Mayday comm’d the men back at base to let them know they were coming but the four of them still had to wait for the fence to come down. Beckoning for the pilot to follow, Mayday, Barak, and Hollis jogged across the fenceline and made for the compound. The woman followed.
Mayday was over twenty feet down the tunnel before he realized the pilot had fallen behind once inside, and he stopped to look back, waiting for her to catch up. “Sorry,” he said. “The rest of us are used to keeping pace with each other.”
She shook the snow off her hood as the outer door slid shut behind them, joining him. “It’s fine, I figured as much.”
The corridor wound on as they entered the western junction. “You got a name?” Mayday asked.
“Rizel,” she said. “You?”
“Commander” is good enough.”
“Oh, well, an escort from the commander himself. I feel honored.”
“It’s warmer in here than it is out there, you know.”
“Yeah, your hospitality’s got me all warm and fuzzy.”
“This is hospitable.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Commander.”
The tunnels finally led them to the central command center carved into the rough-hewn mountain rock. The ductwork hummed above them inside the cave, and the temperature changed to a somewhat tolerable degree. The frost at the top edge of Mayday’s boots started to melt, at least.
Veetch was still chewing that stim-gum when they came in and Hexx had his helmet off talking to Crash near the kill switch for the fence. Hollis took his own off and shook the snow from the back of his collar, grumbling at the chill while the others stood to acknowledge the returning party’s entrance. Barak waved off the formalities, removing his helmet and setting it to the side as they returned to their positions.
What they weren’t expecting was for the woman to doff her mask and gear too.
“Suppose this is marginally better than the vulture hollows…” she muttered, stowing her cap and visor somewhere beneath her cloak before running a hand through the top of her hair.
Mayday was grateful he was still wearing his helmet, knowing his face would have probably given away more than he wanted to admit at the moment, but it seemed the rest of his men were having similar responses, given their own expressions.
The pilot— Rizel— was… remarkably pretty. For as many people as Mayday had met on over a dozen planets in his career, she stood leagues ahead of the rest. The stutter in his heartbeat would have been cause for alarm if he'd been able to tear his focus away from the woman before him.
Thick, warm black hair braided back and framing her face. Soft brown, freckled skin and rounded features set with dark, fathomless eyes that made her look like she was still smiling even when she wasn’t. There were crisp, precise black tattoos marking her face, a series of V-shaped angles layered on her brow and cheekbones and a geometric design starting below her bottom lip, extending down her chin.
Despite knowing very little else about her at all, Mayday thought she was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen.
"Watch your step, lads, you’ll trip over those jaws,” she muttered absently, wandering forward and looking around the shadowed cave as they stared, at a loss for words. Even Barak and Hollis gaped in disbelief. She set her staff to the side and rolled her good shoulder, still wincing sharply at the movement, and Mayday felt a twinge of guilt remembering that she may very well have a broken bone that would need to be set. He wondered how many analgesics they had and if they could afford to spare any.
Before she got very far, Rizel frowned as if a thought had just occurred to her. She turned back to where they were, frozen and silent, then comically rubbed her eyes before assessing them frankly.
“Please tell me you’re not all the same age,” she said, looking them over. Mayday saw three of the men stand up straighter. “Your poor mother must’ve had her hands full even without trying to keep track of who was who.”
The stunned squad broke out into varying degrees of laughter, the ones who’d stayed back at base confused.
“We’re clones, ma’am. We all look like this.”
"It's “Miss," she said. "And yeah, that’s apparent; did they pick you all special for this outfit?”
Djao shook his head, still chuckling. Mayday could see his technician already starting to preen at her attention, running a hand through his hair and lounging in his seat. “No, really, we’re all clones. The army is.”
Rizel didn’t say anything, looking between all of them and Mayday as if waiting for the punchline.
“The war?” Veetch asked. “The Republic army?”
“You were serious?” she asked Mayday. When he nodded, she looked even more surprised. “And one side’s got an army of troops, all the same?”
“Custom made and special-ordered,” Crash said, folding his hands behind his head and leaning back in his chair. “You must not read the news much.”
“You all get couriers up here?”
“… Fair enough.”
“And… Wait, when did cloning technology advance to people? Where are you from?”
The squad stiffened, some of the levity leaving as suspicion crept up their shoulders.
“It’s a long story,” Mayday cut in easily, redirecting Rizel to follow him. The men relaxed but continued watching from their periphery, the murmurings starting up between them. Mayday might have heard Huttese but he couldn’t be sure. In all fairness, Rizel did still need to be questioned, and the men were right to be on guard. He would have had more cause for concern if they weren’t.
“Our medic is on the night shift right now so I’m afraid he won’t be available until after dinner,” he said. Bypassing the communal medical cabinet, Mayday went to the footlocker next to his station, rifling through it before returning. Rizel sat on one of the crates near the work table with the lantern, and he shook a few painkillers into his hand before coming back and offering them to her. “He should be able to look you over and set the bone, if you’re amenable.”
Rizel looked at the proffered capsules. "What's this?"
“For the pain,” he explained, nodding for her to take them.
Rizel’s eyes narrowed in the low light, and Mayday realized the hypocrisy in allowing his men to be cagey with information versus him immediately and freely offering unknown medication to her.
Mayday his helmet off, setting it aside and combing his hair back from his face. He knocked back one of the capsules with a swig of his canteen in a show of good faith, offering the second one back to her. “It’s not a sedative and it’s not addictive,” he assured her. “Blocks some sodium-dependent pathways in the nervous system outside of your brain and spinal cord, the ones that send pain signals through your cells. Take two now, you can have two more in twelve hours.”
“Why aren’t you the medic?” Rizel asked wryly.
“Less work being the commander.”
Rizel truly smiled at that, still pushing the painkiller away. “I’m a big girl. I’ll take my chances.”
“Suit yourself.” Mayday took the second capsule and set the canteen aside. “Nocturne will be up in two hours. Until then—” (And here he dragged one of the crates over one-handed and took out a palm-sized device with a stylus;) “— Do you mind if I ask a few questions?”
“Do I get a say in the matter, Commander No-Name with the blaster rifle?”
“Sure. If you don’t want to answer anything you’re free to go. We’ll even open the gate for you.”
“But?”
“But like I said,” Mayday replied, his turn to smile. “Noc works nights, which is two hours away and counting down.”
Hexx watched the commander from the console with the perimeter readouts. Everybody in some way or another was talking about the civilian; Veetch was pestering Barak and Hollis for details on their meeting, and Crash wouldn’t stop staring as Djao theorized over where she might have come from, or where an animal with fur like that of her cloak could possibly live.
There were no population centers on their maps for literal hundreds of miles. How could she have found their location this precisely, and with a vessel as ramshackle built as hers had looked? Hexx wouldn’t have classified it as a ship if not for the fact it was airborne.
Mayday’s interrogation looked thorough, but not severe. From what the other two scouts had said, they’d been braced for an ambush when the look of her gear set off alarm bells, but the commander had told them to stand down as he went to investigate, to talk, and now he’d brought an outsider back to their base, offering their medical supplies and space to stay until he planned to release her. Hexx wasn’t one to question Mayday’s authority— the commander had never given them reason to— but this just seemed odd, and Hollis had agreed. Barak was neutral about the situation, though Hexx suspected he’d changed his tune the moment the rest of them had, wanting to relax around a pretty face and amusing wit; the captain did, however, reiterate Mayday’s reasonings, and said they should remain objective and wait for further evidence either way. Though the commander’s rationale was sound, Hexx couldn’t shake the feeling that they were making a mistake.
Still, in the whole of his questioning, the commander’s sharp eyes only left the woman to jot down notes as she spoke, and he remained as guarded as he would have been with any other person of suspicion. Hexx would have listened in over the helmet’s parabolic audio sensors, if the hum of the generator hadn’t kicked on just shortly before they began.
Hexx checked his chrono. He’d fill Nocturne in once he was up, but until then he needed to find something to occupy himself with.
Rizel was still questioning her luck when the commander started questioning her. She’d barely been out on the mountain a few hours before three men had appeared out of nowhere, offering shelter, a medic, and an escort to both in exchange for information. By all accounts it didn’t make sense, and the timing seemed far too serendipitous considering the near-nonexistent probability of crossing paths with anybody in the wilds of Barton IV; nobody elected to live in the mountains, not this high up. You were bound to die in an avalanche or a fall as much as you were the snow.
Still. The men were suspicious but not hostile, and she figured they were on the same side of the war she was only just now hearing about. She didn’t like that they thought she was a spy, but this command post must not have been guarding anything important or they would have manned it with more people and taken more precautions.
Either that, or what they were guarding was very important and the best place to hide something was somewhere unassuming and inhospitable. Maybe they’d had more men at one point and whatever challenges they'd faced up there in defending the depot had taken out the rest.
If that was the case, she was going to want an expedited plan to get back down the mountain.
The commander sat across from her asking his questions, to which Rizel answered plainly with little concealment. He didn’t need to know the names of the people and towns and lodges she worked for, but she could summarize her job for him in a way that would satisfy his curiosity. The specifics of her books were irrelevant, considering they’d gone up in smoke back at the crash site, but it was a standard cargo fare anyway: drilling and mining tools, food, preserves, general supplies, some personal deliveries, medicine and sterile equipment. He seemed mostly interested in the mining tools, asking what possible natural resources Barton IV could have.
"There are a few things that can be used as fuel, some others with chemical or industrial uses I don’t know a lot about, but most of it isn’t for extracting minerals or materials. It’s used to expand the towns; infrastructure, reservoirs, things like that.”
"How so?”
Rizel shrugged, not really knowing how to explain it. “Just… Boring out the space to expand. You know, the ice caves? The towns?”
He just stared at her. Those pretty eyes were starting to be distracting.
“Have you not been to any of the settlements?”
The commander sat back with a frown, scrutinizing her. “This quadrant is devoid of sentients.”
Rizel snorted. “Look, I may have been blown off course, but there’s at least one on the other side of this mountain alone, down under the bluffs. Rakeshore Hollow. Where have you been getting supplies?”
The commander remained stock still, his face betraying nothing. “There are no settlements of any kind for a hundred miles, ma’am,” he said slowly. “Of that, we’re sure.”
“ "Miss." ” Rizel frowned, now suspicious herself. “How far down did you look?”
“The entirety of this range in the quadrant, from peak to base.”
“No, how far down, under the ice?”
His expression didn’t change, but she could sense the disconnect. “Mountain folk around here have towns and settlements quarried into the rock, somewhat like this.” She gestured to the cave. “This is… not as refined, I’d say, but you’re dug into the side of the mountain, not down under the permafrost near the magma chambers.”
“Magma chambers?”
“Where it’s warm,” she said. “I fly between locations making deliveries and picking up wares before hopskotching to the next, weather permitting or not. Good GPR can tell you where the vents are beneath the permafrost regardless of how the landscape changes with the snow. Sometimes you pick up on a salamander burrow, but for the most part you get a good enough idea where things are in relation to the mountains that you can find the rail-car shafts to set down on.”
“And if you don’t have good radar?”
Rizel shrugged. “I've never had trouble. I didn’t fly off repulsorcraft tech though— Combo of the two doesn’t mesh with the magnetite deposits in the mountains. If that’s what you were using to scout the area, it probably glitched or interfered with the radars and gave you faulty feedback.”
“If the mountains have large enough deposits of a mineral that would affect technology in a repulsorlift starship, what do you use for directional navigation?”
“Automaps still work, and we do have compasses,” Rizel said, trying not to sound condescending. “They’re not magnetic in relation to the planet’s poles; they’re tied to the moon’s positioning. The power generator in Turnagain Knik is positionally locked on the moon's receiver and keeps it in place regardless of the season or time of year. Or you can navigate by stars if you have to on the ground.”
The commander held his chin thoughtfully, intrigued. From the look of things, the men here didn’t have much working knowledge of the broader geography of Barton IV, and she had to wonder why the Republic sent them out here so ill-prepared. None of their body gloves or armor looked warm enough for long term use, and she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of any kind of overcoat or space heater, at least not in this central room. She supposed there could have been some in their quarters off in one of the other tunnels, but so far this looked like the most-frequented section of the compound, the majority of his squad congregating here. Even their boots looked insufficient.
“Any other questions, or do I get to have a turn?”
The commander smiled. Another syncopated beat stuttered through her chest unbidden, the same arrhythmia she’d felt when he’d finally taken his helmet off and first run a hand through his hair, settling in across from her.
“Just two,” he said. “Would you be able to find your crash site again if you had an escort?”
“Sure,” she said, perplexed. “But why?”
“Standard procedure,” he said, and she fixed him with an unamused expression. “If you can show us some kind of proof that you’re just a cargo pilot— a manifest or ship’s log or ledger— We’ll help you get to Rakeshore. How’s that?”
“My ship was blown to pieces and buried in snow,” Rizel said. She gestured with her left shoulder. “And I’m in no place to dig.”
“Guess we’ll have to keep you on suspicion of espionage, then,” he said lightly, seeming not at all concerned with the prospect of her being a spy.
Rizel peeked around his broad shoulder to the other men working off behind him before pointedly turning back and meeting his eye. “Considering how good-looking the company is, maybe I won’t mind sticking around.”
She was pleased to see him fighting a smile as he absently scratched his beard and tapped a few more commands into his handheld log.
“What was the second question?”
His smile faded, and he looked back to her with a gaze that pinned her in place. For as much as she’d tried not to be lulled into a false sense of security, the commander genuinely seemed like he was just there to do a job, and one that faced relatively little live fire. As far as she recalled, the Republic had always been uninterested in Barton IV, and there’d been no significant or noticeable events in recent history that would suggest they’d drawn the Core’s ire.
“Which side of the war are you on?”
“I wasn't under the impression spies were all that forthcoming,” she said, looking at him curiously. “And considering I just found out about it, I couldn’t tell you.”
The commander assessed her in silence, and she fought the urge to fidget. Where before there'd been an easy give and take between them, something in the air had shifted. This felt… different.
And it was then she realized that, though the commander appeared to her to be a good man, he took his job and position very seriously.
And he was still a soldier.
He observed her without a word, and Rizel mirrored him until he finally uncrossed his arms. “You were being honest, earlier. On the mountain.”
“No reason not to be,” Rizel said. “Either you lot kill me or the cold does. At least in here I’m out of the wind.”
Mayday gathered his things, standing. “We’re not going to kill you.”
“It’s a Life Day miracle.”
She thought she could see a hint of that smile as he put his helmet back on, something she found supreme satisfaction in as the tension and professional distance he’d put between them melted again. He left to speak with his men; Rizel still wasn’t going to drop her guard around them, but she knew how to handle herself and as far as she was concerned she was the person best-suited for weathering the outdoors if it came to it, broken collarbone notwithstanding.
As the commander walked away she couldn’t help but notice again just how well he filled out his armor compared to the rest of them. Him having his back turned allowed her a near-unimpeded view of the whole of him, thick, broad, and strong, and even if she had tried she wouldn’t have found anything to criticize, save for the fact his armor and helmet were in the way.
She hummed to herself, appreciating the view regardless. “Wouldn’t mind sharing some of that personal space, that’s for sure…”
“I have no reason to think she isn’t who she says she is,” Mayday said over the private channel, their voices muted to the outside. “With Alco and Chance gone, we technically have the rations to sustain her until she can make contact with someone, but that’s only if everyone here is in agreement. If there’s even one dissenter, I underst—”
“Oh come on, Commander,” Veetch said, nudging him. “It’s not like we get many visitors, and there hasn’t been a raid in weeks.”
“Yeah,” Crash agreed. “D’you really think we’d mind having a civvie around to liven things up?”
Mayday surveyed the men, all of them seemingly in agreement, but he needed to be sure. He took his helmet off again. “At ease.”
The rest of them followed suit. None of them appeared outright conflicted with the suggestion. Mayday’s own wariness was borne of a need to keep all of them safe and keep their morale up. Staying on task had never been an issue— The biggest challenges of the outpost were survival and cooperation while being relatively trapped indoors with few amenities. Though their supply drops from the Empire had been close to consistent, the thought of running out of food was always at the back of everyone’s minds. If they lost anything or the ships didn’t show, there was nothing to hunt, fish, trap, or forage in those parts.
Mayday’s further concern was whether or not the men were willing to accept a stranger (even an amiable one) into their midst when, whether they liked it or not, their work was their living quarters too.
Mayday assessed them more carefully, stopping halfway around the circle.
“Hexx?”
The other men glanced his way. Hexx cleared his throat.
“I’d like to know what the objective is regarding her, sir. What’s the end goal?”
“End goal is to get her back to her people. She says there’s a small town on the leeward side of the range, several days’ journey from where she estimates we are. We can send an encrypted message to the town to let them know she went down, but that she’s alive. She says there could still be salvageable cargo in the wreckage, if we were inclined to scavenge for it since there wouldn’t be a way to make her supply drop anyway, and with her injury it’s likely she won’t be fit to travel until it’s healed, unless some of us take her down.”
“What town?” Hexx asked. “This area was scouted and mapped out before we were assigned.”
“She says it’s underground, quarried into the mountain.” Mayday sighed. He knew it didn’t sound believable, but their own GPR imaging had already proven faulty and ineffective before, so the pilot’s assertion was still plausible.
“How are we supposed to get her down there? The Coyote’s still in pieces and it’s a near sixty percent grade on the best slopes. Why should we try?”
“Who are we if we don’t?” Mayday asked.
Hexx still didn’t look convinced, but Barak offered up a suggestion:
“Commander, search her pack for anything suspicious and keep her blaster and comm device. There are enough of us working in rotation to keep an eye on her even without counting the cams. She’s got to sleep at some point, and if she gets outside, we stun or shoot her before whoever she might be in contact with picks her up. We’re still maintaining the perimeter beacons.”
“Hexx?”
“… Yeah. Okay. Good enough for now.”
The sound of a match strike came from behind them. They glanced back to the pilot to see she’d provisioned herself a spot away from their equipment, but not so far out of the way it looked like she was trying to snoop or escape. In front of her was a piece of one of the compressed anthracite bricks she’d willingly shown them when she pulled it from her bag and now it was peeled apart and burning and settling in to be what looked like a very cozy, smokeless blaze. She’d also removed her hood, cloak, vest, and climbing harness and now, under the pink and green flickers of an actual fire and without a significant amount of bulky layers in the way, they could really see their guest.
“Come on, Commander,” Veetch murmured. “You can’t deny the scenery’s nice.”
Mayday huffed, looking back at the lot of them.
“All right, listen,” Mayday said, addressing the group. “If the pilot stays, we can spare the rations until her shoulder’s set and we decide what to do about taking her down or someone comes to fetch her— That’s if Nocturne confirms we have the medical supplies to spare and if he’s onboard with her staying. You boys aren’t so far gone with cabin fever you’ll fail to maintain the reputation of the GAR’s finest, will you?”
“No, sir,” came the unanimous reply, and he was pleased to see all of them, even unconsciously, standing at attention when they responded. He knew these men as well as his own heartbeat and knew that even for as coarse and jaded as they’d become watching unmoving shipping containers on the farthest reaches from that solar system’s sun, they were good men. He just hoped they could keep from making fools of themselves. He hoped he could keep from making a fool of himself.
“Good men. Let’s show some hospitality and maybe she’ll share some of that fire.”
Mayday was the commander of the 106th Battalion stationed on Yar Togna towards the end of the war, “was” being the operative word. After what he could only describe as a bloodbath between their battalion and the Tognath, he and the squad of troops he had now were reassigned briefly to Sedarik before being “temporarily” rerouted to Barton IV; the outpost was supposed to be an interim job until the 106th as a whole was to slot into a leaderless battalion on an arid planet in sector J-19, at which point they’d be tasked with negotiating a treaty with the Separatist governor for a peaceful transfer of power to one of the Empire’s appointed governors.
How that was to happen peacefully when Mayday suspected the prior commander had been KIA and hadn’t just dropped off a cliff, he didn’t know.
Barak had been with Mayday for two and a half years, him and three other captains making up the higher ranks of the battalion. Shæze was lost during a skirmish on Engatuu to droidekas, along with the rest of his company. Before they could fully recoup their losses, Mongoose was killed in action over Kyriath airspace five months later alongside an entire fifth of what remained of the 106th, and during their departure they were ambushed by guerrilla fighters in near-invisible camouflage targeting what remained of the RMSU units, taking their total number of men down to little more than two-hundred, and bereft of medical droids and supplies at that.
Nocturne had been with him since the beginning of the war, the longest-surviving medic of the original 106th. For some reason or another, Mayday and his men had run into bad luck at every turn, and it wasn’t exclusive to the battlefield: though they certainly faced more than their share of battle droids and war machines, they found themselves in some of the most unforgiving landscapes and bizarre situations the GAR had ever seen:
Equipment malfunctioned and went haywire weekly. Local fauna bypassed security, wreaking havoc on camps and making off with food and supplies. Their ship had ended up stranded in the doldrums of dead space for three weeks. More men were lost to gendue fever on Dacaro than to battles. Captain Lyric was crushed by machinery during routine maintenance back on Coruscant during shore leave, a lieutenant and three troopers with him. Fourteen men were killed in accidents and non-combat encounters within the broadening corporate sector in four days, and an array of others disappeared one by one into the misty crevices of Yar Togna, every communicator and piece of technology shorting out when they tried in vain to find them in the labyrinthine catacombs.
The fact Nocturne was as good as he was and had survived it all alongside him were some of the few strokes of good luck Mayday could count on his hands. Considering how few of Mayday’s original battalion remained, he was surprised Nocturne had both made it this far and hadn’t been reassigned somewhere else. Mayday wasn’t one to count a gift fathier’s teeth though and wasn’t about to jinx his luck or Nocturne’s by saying anything now.
The staggered losses and gatherings of men across Mayday’s career during the war had made every newly assembled command as patchwork as his armor. His crew on the outpost was made up of men from four different battalions, a motley ensemble of survivors who’d found themselves together at war’s end, all hoping this assignment would be their last.
They don’t know much about the Empire. They don’t know anything about what’s happening across the galaxy as turmoil and oppression spread. They aren’t aware of how little their lives meant to the scientists, military, and politicians that created, sold, and bought them to do one thing.
But those lives meant something to Mayday and they always had. Life would continue as it had for the past four years, with him preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.
Mayday woke so early it could almost be considered incredibly late, depending on who you were. He made up the bunk, dressed and donned his armor in silence, and left to get the readings for the day before the others got up. He needed to relieve Nocturne before his patrol and be brought up to speed before he could work on the day’s assignments and draft yet another requisition form.
Perimeter beacons had begun to show signs of degradation again that week. Three of the men would need to be put on that job which left four of them to accomplish the rest of the day’s work; Hexx and Crash had been working on the Coyote, but Hexx was the quickest at repairing the beacons and could tell when they only needed a patch job without needing fully replaced. Mayday could put Veetch on vehicle repair with Crash and know that the work would get done in good company, but with the heating leading down the southern tunnel still blowing fuses and the scrap rats eating through wires when they got turned back on, the garage was as cold as it was outside and Veetch wouldn’t be able to work for very long before needing to come back up to the command center for a break. They really needed the half-track fixed sooner rather than later; with the raids they’d had the past few months, they’d been using it to retrieve the containers the bandits kept managing to make off with before the squad picked them off and hauled the cargo back.
Djao could probably sub in for Veetch instead, but Mayday knew the ventilation repair was one that required constant monitoring in a dry, hermetically sealed environment until a section was finished to keep the stripped wires from gathering frost either in transfer or installation, so either Djao had to forgo the project entirely until the Coyote was finished, meaning the southern corridor and every room down it would be colder for longer, or he could only work in short segments and sub in for Veetch while Veetch warmed up. That meant he’d still be staggering each man’s work though, resulting in a less efficient use of everybody’s time.
Ideally he would just have Veetch on the electrical work and Djao with Crash, but Veetch wasn’t as good of an electrician as Djao and Djao wasn’t as good of a mechanic as Veetch. They weren’t bad, but both projects would still be slowed down.
Mayday sighed and rubbed his brow. That may just have to be the compromise he had to make. Either that, or he could have Hexx stay where he was with Crash and Djao could work on the sensor beacons. He was the next best at it anyway. Mayday hated to admit it, but despite the temperature outside being at minus fifteen, the proximity sensors were a higher priority than the heat right now. If the sensors and beacons were working, they could prevent further thefts, which meant the Coyote could be relabeled as a lower priority, they wouldn’t need to be outside as often anyway, and the ventilation job could move up on the task list without as many compromises.
Then again, they wouldn’t be able to do any work if they froze to death.
Nocturne came into the radionics room with a cup of caf, setting it on the desk as Mayday checked for any response from Arusha control. The booth wasn’t much bigger than the maintenance closet and was cold enough their breath fogged in front of them. Mayday didn’t look at him as he came in.
“… Are you hiding?”
“I don’t have to hide,” Mayday muttered. “I’ll be finished up shortly.”
“Uh huh.”
Mayday’s look of mild annoyance didn’t seem to faze Nocturne in the slightest.
“There’s been no response,” Mayday said, ignoring the medic’s skepticism and moving to business. “It’s been nearly three weeks.”
“The supply ship is due any day now.”
“Which means if they didn’t get the last form they’re not going to have any of the requested supplies, and they especially won’t have enough staples for what we need to restock.”
Nocturne hummed, thoughtful. Mayday scanned the supply log for the fourth time, thinking.
“How much did you use up for the pilot?”
“Not much. Broken bone was the worst of her injuries and she’s fit enough her immune system seems in good order. She says her family's from around here so we don’t have to worry about needing to inoculate her.”
“What about us?”
“We’re fine. The Cauvery’s preparatory cocktail covered everything we might run into.”
“Good.”
The silence stretched, and his brother’s palpable, unspoken reproach was starting to grate on his nerves the longer he stood there.
“… Where is she?” Mayday finally asked, picking up the caf without looking back at him.
“ ’Fresher,” Nocturne said. “She won’t do anything rash, not if there’s a guarantee of a bed and semi-hot food while she recuperates. She’s not going to be a problem, Mayday.”
“Debatable,” Mayday said, still focused on the terminal. “Even if she does nothing she could still be a problem. You weren’t there when she took her mask off, coming in. Or when she was keeping them entertained around an actual fire.”
Nocturne grinned. “Oh so you’re worried about the boys.”
“I’m concerned that it’ll be all too easy for her to ingratiate herself to them, and if she does turn out to be counterintelligence, they're more likely to be caught with their guards down.”
“You said yourself you didn’t think she was a spy when you interrogated her yesterday. She told us her people’s main industry is mining and terraforming, which would be of no use to the Republic, not when they surely have more advanced equipment by far.”
“Yeah, it’s a great cover story. If she’s just a pilot, what would she need explosives for?”
“Who knows?” Nocturne shrugged. “Maybe those rail-car shafts get iced over from time to time.”
Mayday stood, unsmiling as he gathered his datapad and pocket log. “I didn’t figure you to play devil’s advocate, Noc.”
“I’m trying to get you to take a step back and assess your choices.”
“Watching out for my squad doesn’t warrant a dressing-down from you—”
“I heard you pinned a woman half your size against the ATC console to wrestle something away from her not minutes after I set a broken bone in place and immobilized one of her arms,” Nocturne said coolly. “This is, if anything, mild compared to what I could say to you.”
“You saw what I locked up.”
“I also know she didn’t fake a broken bone.”
“I'm sure she’s plenty capable of raising hell regardless.”
Nocturne stopped him with one hand against his chest just as he was about to pass, barring him from exiting the doorway. Mayday didn’t push: despite his current irritation and overall suspicion at the circumstances, Nocturne never said anything he didn’t mean, and his unwavering honesty paired with a sense of objectivity rivaled by few meant that Nocturne was one of few people whose counsel he listened to without question. It was Nocturne’s ability to understand people that had time and again allowed him to admonish others without making it an emotional accusation.
“You need to take a step back,” Nocturne repeated quietly, watching Mayday from the side. “You’re in a bad mood because, intentionally or not, she forced you to be the kind of person you don’t like to be. You’re frustrated with the GAR, and with losing the twins, and you’re second-guessing your choice to bring a sudden upheaval of routine to the base. I know you’re watching out for the squad, but this, right now, is you looking for a target. Don’t let your worry to outweigh your judgement.”
“… You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not the one who needs an apology,” Nocturne said, letting him pass. “Mend some bridges today, if you can.”
“Why don’t you do it?” Mayday grumbled, walking with him back to the command center. “She likes you.”
“Which is why an apology from me won’t mean as much as if it’s from you. You’re the one who needs to do the mending,” Nocturne said. “What you took was justified, you’ve established law and order, now show her some diplomacy. If you give her something in exchange, you’ll seem less like a warden.”
“… Fine.”
“You said she could lead us back to the crash site, yeah?” Nocturne asked. “Which means we can make a day to search through things there and verify her story, and then we can all figure out our new routine if she’s going to be here for a while and you can go back to flirting with her to your heart’s content.”
“I did not and will do no such thing.”
“You better,” Nocturne said as they entered the command center, seeing the other men already starting to congregate. “Or somebody else will.”
Rizel quickly found that life on the outpost was more bereft of creature comforts than she realized: sanisteams were either considered a luxury by the Republic architects and engineers who designed the depot, or the station was actually meant to be entirely manned by droids. Considering the furthest settlements beyond the salt wastes near the equator had cisterns capable of supporting a decent-sized family even in that environment, she couldn’t think of a reason why they hadn’t built this place with enough water and power to at least afford the men one proper shower.
Sonic showers weren’t inefficient, they just weren’t near as pleasant. She loathed the pressure against her ears and the static buildup in her hair, and despite evidence to the contrary she always felt like her skin was still grimy afterwards.
After she had reassured Nocturne that she could manage on her own she’d gone to make use of the utilities. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised by the open layout and lack of dividing walls, but she made a mental note to figure out everybody’s else’s routine quickly to avoid any untoward run-ins. She assumed the medic’s consideration would extend to telling the others to hold off until she was done that morning, at least. When she woke up, she'd found that her clothes had been cleaned and neatly folded next to her cot. She hadn’t made it to the laundry unit before Mayday called her over the night before, and she’d forgotten about them in all that happened during the search, confrontation, and standoff. Nocturne was the only one on watch and the only one who knew she’d needed them taken care of. She made another mental note to find some way to pay him back.
Idly she inspected her sweater after she dressed and exited the showers, thumbing over some of the holes. As she was leaving, however, she ran straight into a wall of something sturdy and decidedly not part of the architecture.
Rizel gasped as she collided with one of the two men who were talking as they came through the hallway as she was coming out. One caught her by the arms, keeping her from falling back, and she looked up to see Crash and one of the soldiers she didn’t know the name of yet.
Crash seemed delighted to see her. The other did not.
“Easy there, girlie, watch your step,” Crash was saying, maneuvering her around in the narrow space so she was on the exit side going out. Her left shoulder twinged sharply and she must have made a face because Crash immediately let go, though his hand still hovered until she was steady. “Head on out now, I don’t share showers until at least the third date.”
“Oh what a shame,” Rizel said dryly from over her shoulder. “Guess I’ll have to cancel my plans and try for that first date once you’re decent again.”
Crash’s laughter echoed behind her, and she went out to join the rest of the squad assembling in the command center.
Veetch and the other one who hadn’t spoken to her were at the same communications console they’d been at when she arrived yesterday, deep in conversation with caf in hand. Djao waved from his seat, holding up an extra plate of food, and she nodded in thanks before gesturing to Nocturne with the sling. Djao stood to join her instead, bringing two cups with him. The commander was nowhere to be found.
Nocturne wrapped up his conversation with the captain before joining them back near her pack, the cot folded and tucked in between another terminal and the wall. Rizel held the end of the wrap in place, letting Nocturne start on the sling. “I suppose I have you to thank for breaking down camp for me?”
“Not me,” Nocturne said. “That was Jay.”
Djao beamed as she thanked him before she told Nocturne, “Thanks anyway, for my clothes.”
“No problem.”
“How’d you sleep?” Djao asked.
“Well enough,” she said. “Did he really mean what he said about space in the barracks?”
“Who, the commander?” Djao asked. “He cleared a space, yeah. Do you want me to move your things in?”
Rizel laughed shortly. “Oh absolutely not, I was just curious. If it’s okay with you, I’d rather stay in the center while Nocturne’s on night shift.”
“That’s doable,” Nocturne said. “It’s warmer here anyway.”
“Why don’t the rest of you sleep in here then?”
“Our bunks are built into the wall,” Djao said. “They’re marginally more comfortable than the cots long term, so… Pick your poison, I guess.”
“Was this place designed to be barely habitable on purpose?”
“They certainly spared every expense.”
Nocturne finished with the sling, making sure she was comfortable. “Unless you need anything else, I’ve got to gear up and scout the perimeter before indulging in one of those marginally more comfortable beds until this evening. Don’t get into trouble while I’m gone.”
“No promises.”
Mayday returned shortly after everybody else had gotten food. The pilot was again surrounded by a group of mostly smiling, genial men, and he was glad she at least hadn’t taken her ire out on them. He approached the group, getting her attention.
“Can I speak with you?”
The pilot’s expression dropped. As she struggled to stand on her own he heard her mutter, just loud enough for everybody to hear, What, are you going to take the butter knife too?
Several men stifled unexpected snorts and tense, choked laughter, hiding them behind coughs and stalwartly not looking at Mayday. Mayday bit his tongue to keep from saying something he’d regret as she gave him an expectant look; unamused, he gestured for her to follow him to the side so they could talk in private.
She had an airy look of dismissive amusement and though the jab irked him Mayday was somewhat grateful she wasn’t openly confrontational or afraid to speak with him. He really hadn’t wanted for the previous night to go the way it did, and Nocturne was right in that they were all going to have to get along with each other if she ended up having to stay.
He handed her what he’d been working on while the others ate. “Put your thumb here and press,” he said, indicating the recessed panel at the bottom of the handheld device.
“What’s this?”
“Long-range communicator,” he said as it lit up. “The compound is bigger than it looks and it’s easy to get lost in the halls or locked out if you hit the wrong command on a control panel.”
Her eyebrows raised. “I’m surprised you’re letting me roam unattended.”
“Consider this a probationary period. Don’t make me regret it.”
Cautiously she inspected the comm, recognizing the utility and significance in the olive branch despite her suspicion. “… How does it work?”
Mayday slid a switch up on the side and white lights with Aurebesh numbers lit up alongside the muted yellow bars. “Twelve channels,” he said, pointing to the corresponding symbols and lights in the two columns as he spoke. “First is the console in the command center. We always have somebody here, or working nearby. Whoever’s here will hear you and pick up. Ideally it’s the fastest way to get a response if you don’t need anybody specific. Second channel is a joint relay— You’ll be connected to the eight of us plus the command center unless you press them off to only include select ones. The descending order after that starts with mine in third, Nocturne’s in fourth, Barak’s is fifth, Hollis is sixth, Hexx is eighth, Crash, ninth; Djao, eleventh; Veetch in twelfth.”
“What about seven and ten?”
“They're defunct. They don’t connect to anything.”
“Which one is Hexx and which is Hollis?” Rizel asked, nodding back to the group. Several of the men had put their helmets on and were reviewing the day’s agenda. “I know I don’t like being called by my siblings’ names.”
“Hollis will always be clean-shaven,” Mayday said, nodding to him at the observation console, still with his caf. “And Hexx is over there.”
“What do they do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone’s got a job, yeah?” She wiggled the comm. “If I can choose someone specific I assume they won’t all be for social calls.”
Mayday folded his arms. “Why don’t you tell me what it is you think we do.”
She pointed to each of them in turn, counting on her fingers. “You’re the boss; the pretty one’s Nocturne, I know what he does; Barak’s your co-pilot, he’s got the silver coming in. Big guy with more of the freckles over there is a scout or tracker, something outdoorsy. Blondie with the grown-out roots is… Jay? Djao? Don’t know what he does, unless he’s usually a very sociable interrogator.” Scanning the rest of the stations, she found the last one, saying, “And the little one’s a pilot or mechanic— Kept asking about my rig.”
“Don’t let Veetch hear you call him that, it’ll hurt his feelings.”
“Well he’s certainly not the muscle of the group.”
“You’d be surprised,” Mayday said. “He’s scrappy.”
“Mmm. He smells like engine oil and is very eager to go see the crash site, so I hope I didn’t get his hopes up for no reason.”
“Got all that in less than a day, hmm? You’re not doing very well curbing the espionage allegations.”
Rizel’s glare echoed his own from earlier. “What you do is easier to pick out than your appearance when you keep the helmets on. None of your uniforms are very telling.”
She had a point; most of the paint had faded under the bleaching sun and caustic atmosphere of their previous terrestrial assignment, and their plastoid wasn’t the reinforced HT-77 armor the cold assault troopers got, which meant it had become more brittle the longer their days were spent outside. A good hit to the rock face while rappelling took chips out of shin guards and rerebraces, and more than once the raiders they fought in the pass had gouged a divot or crack into a chestplate with their pikes and the crew had to resort to patch jobs more often than Mayday liked. They were dangerously low on welding-putty; his own armor was held together in places by duraweave patches and prayers.
“Duties and responsibilities are mostly interchangeable in terms of skill,” Mayday said. “We rotate so no one is outside for long or stuck doing the worst job for weeks on end. And we won’t usually wear the helmets here at HQ unless we’re in the further parts of the compound where it’s colder. You should be able to tell who’s who, since I doubt you’ll be working on swoops or fixing weathervanes.”
“Indulge me then,” she asked. “So I can categorize which Republic secrets to sell to the highest bidder.”
Mayday didn’t find that funny at all, regardless of how much she seemed to. “Hexx is an engineer,” he grunted, going back towards the group. “And if you see Hollis then he’s not doing a very good job at his job. I’m sure process of elimination will get you there eventually.”
“Duly noted.”
“Comm also has a locator and signal, in case you get lost. Press it twice for it to flash and we’ll know it’s a distress call. Press and hold to turn it off.”
“Let me guess, tracker’s on by default?”
“That’s what the biometrics were for.”
Rizel sputtered indignantly, stopping in her tracks as Mayday continued forward. He smiled expectantly over his shoulder as she doubled her pace to catch up.
“You tricked me.”
“You’re quick. I think you’ll do okay here.”
“You could have just told me it would scan my print.”
“It’s more than just your print, I didn’t want to chance another argument, and it’s faster to have it logged as your key to get into the rooms you’ve been authorized for," he said, his turn to list justifications off on his fingers. "Can’t have the key without the comm. Besides, you did it when I asked you to anyway, why are you annoyed after the fact?”
Rizel grumbled, hooking the comm to her belt. “What’s the range?”
“Far enough.”
“That's not a quantifiable measurement.”
“Don't get lost on the side of the mountain and you won’t have reason to test its limits.”
The commander briefed the men on their assignments before sending them out: Hexx and Crash went down the southern hallway leading to the garage, Djao and Hollis were assigned to work outside fixing the beacons with Barak on watch, and Veetch was set to work between fixing the wiring for the vents and monitoring the command center and security. Mayday would be working in another part of the compound for the first half of the day, and Rizel was told to stay with Veetch close to the center. She was still in a decent amount of pain from the rocky landing the day before and wasn’t complaining, especially when Veetch was all too happy to play host inside. The dry lab was close enough he could be back quickly if there was an incoming transmission or alert to the security system, and Nocturne would return a little before midday to sleep.
“I’ll have my comm nearby,” Nocturne told her before they all dispersed. “And the barracks aren’t locked. If you need anything, if any of them give you any trouble, come get me.”
Djao was decidedly sullen and reluctant to be put on outdoor duty fixing the beacons. He slung his tool pack over his shoulder, lingering near the exit hallway with Rizel with his helmet under one arm, waiting for Hollis and Barak. Rizel watched the troopers move seamlessly around each other. They had to have been at the outpost for some time; everything had an exact place and there were clear routes that made an efficient flow of traffic, all of them knowing what needed to be done and how.
Barak pulled a long-range rifle from one of the gun lockers, shouldering it with an additional fin fixed over his right pauldron; though she didn’t recognize the make of the gun she knew recoil padding when she saw it. The captain took up an extended barrel as he passed and went on out ahead.
“Since the beacons are on the fritz, we have to worry about some of the wildlife from time-to-time,” Djao told her. “Raiders usually don’t come out in the open. We’re not sure how they’re getting in past the sensors, but Barak’s got a good eye and he’s one of the best shots. Headed up to the guard tower, lucky barve.”
“What is it the raiders are after?” she asked.
“Whatever we’ve got in the shipping containers.”
“You don’t know what it is?”
“Not our job to know.”
“You’ve got to be curious.”
“Curiosity is a dangerous attribute to have out here,” another voice cut in. Hollis passed between them, dropping an array of equipment into Djao’s arms. He looked back at Rizel as he continued down the hall. “Best to keep one’s nose in one’s own business.”
Rizel waited for Hollis to get to the end of the hall before muttering, “Minding one’s own business must not include staying out of other people’s conversations.”
“Careful with Hollis, he’s got ears like a Chadra-Fan.”
“Let’s go, Djao.”
Djao ducked his head sheepishly, putting the helmet on. “We’ll see you at midday. Give us a holler if Veetch starts to bore you.”
Veetch’s helmet remained off, though tucked under one arm. “You’ve got my link, yeah?” he asked, nodding to the comm on her belt. “Channel twelve, sweetheart. They always save the best for last.”
“I’ve got it.”
“Dry lab is down this way, second door on the right. If the light’s red it’s sealed; you can knock though, I’ll hear it. I’ll be back from time to time.”
“I’m counting on it.”
With all of the men distributed throughout the base, Rizel was left to get a good look at her surroundings. She tried each of the doors around the command center but the only lights that showed up green were the laundry unit, the ‘fresher, the barracks, and the maintenance closet. One open hallway looked to be an evacuation tunnel that might have connected to the tunnel they’d come in from the day before, and another was the hallway to the dry lab Veetch had disappeared to; the former had no other discernible entrances or exits, only some open durasteel columns and fly braces going up one side and girders along the ceiling, and the latter had some split sliding doors on the wall opposite of the lab that could have belonged to a lift, but there were no buttons or sensors to indicate a way to even open them.
All other doors and hallways branching off from central command were closed and showed up red when she tried them. She should’ve known the leash wouldn’t be long.
There was one metal ladder mounted to the wall on the side of the room with the utilities and galley that disappeared up beyond what she could see in the shadows with the lights in her eyes, and another by the generator that led to a recessed, perpendicular walkway. She could see the doors closed on either end and figured there wasn’t much of a point in trying them. Several gun lockers lined the wall near the tunnel they’d come in from which she knew would also be futile to try.
Beyond that the open command center had a number of terminals and work tables, sparsely furnished and all of it utilitarian. There was a tall wall of a number of monitors she assumed would provide different surveillance feeds of the compound, the communications console Veetch had been at when she arrived, a box-roller door letting a draft in beneath it, some tool racks, another set of gun lockers in the middle of the floor, some open lockers with mountaineering gear, the storage cabinet…
And the cache above the cabinet.
Looking around, she figured there was no harm in trying. The commander had said the comm was a key, after all.
Rizel dragged one of the heavy footlockers over, gingerly stepping up and holding the comm near the lock.
“Don’t fall.” Veetch’s voice crackled over the speaker. “That takes a code cylinder anyway.”
Rizel huffed, pulling back to glare at the light on the comm. Should have known there’d be cams somewhere, she guessed, looking around the room. She hooked it to her belt and got down again, dragging the footlocker back to where it’d been as Veetch came back in. He had an armful of sensors and cables, several partially exposed wires having been stripped, spliced, and wrapped with electrical tape and joiners as he made his way across the station towards the metal ladder.
“You know, if the commander catches you he’ll make me put you in the brig until lunch, and you’ll end up stuck being nannied by one of us for the rest of the day.”
“It’s locked anyway, why should it matter?”
“It’s less the idea that you’ll get in and more the fact you’re snooping in the first place.
“I wasn’t aware you were part tattletale droid.”
“I promise I’m much more fun.” Veetch gestured for her to follow him. “If you can hand these up to me so I only have to get into the hatch once today, I’ll take you back to the dry lab so you at least have some company until then.”
True to his word, Veetch was good company. The trooper, though he appeared to be one of the younger ones on the crew, had enough anecdotes and lived experience to tell her he’d had as storied a life as some of the veterans in her hometown, and with his vambraces removed and his sleeves rolled up, Rizel could see the evidence of a hard-working, hard-won life along his tan arms. A ground wreck, he’d said for one of the strangely angled scars. Two people could stand in back as gunners. Battle droids hit the nose of the vehicle and sent us out over it. A few blaster grazes, one friction burn from a misaligned grappling cord, some nicks and cuts from general heavy lifting. Though she’d consider him a bit leaner than the other soldiers it was likely only because he’d been living off what she assumed were carefully rationed meal kits from the army. He was still tall and strapping and capable of a good deal of work. If he’d grown up around her hometown she was sure he’d have been in high demand, and not all of it just for his evident technical talents and conversation skills.
She’d told Nocturne the night before that she thought they were attractive, and she meant it. They all had the same deep brown eyes, black hair (or mostly black hair, in a few cases), same features and general build, but with his hair cut shorter on the sides, longer and swept back on top, Veetch looked more youthful contrasted to those like the commander, the captain, and the medic. Some of them looked older by virtue of the fact they had more facial hair or gray streaks coming in, but Veetch also didn’t have near as many deep-set wrinkles, and those he did have appeared to be smile lines among faint freckles more than anything. He had the hands of a mechanic and was all too happy to talk about the less confidential work he’d done while in the military, conversational and informative without being condescending.
Veetch’s smile was genuine and warm, and his own earnest curiosity was so open and welcoming she was only half teasing when she asked if the commander had picked him to be the hospitality division for her first official day there at the compound. He listened to her as much as she listened to him, and before long she realized she’d completely forgotten her earlier annoyance at the lack of range she’d been given when it came to exploration of the compound.
Despite how the mechanic seemed to wear his heart on his sleeve, however, there was an odd look in his eyes somewhere between an earnest enthusiasm for life and the haunted shadow of someone who knew far more about the galaxy than some people should ever know. Having that suspicion didn’t unsettle her— She almost thought that if he was ever pushed to whatever distant threshold might make him snap, one solid hug would break him down.
After Rizel assured him she’d be able to climb the ladder one-handed, Veetch hooked an auto-belay line to her belt where her grappling cable usually locked in and she climbed to the platform. Veetch followed after, handing her a heavy utilitarian torch to hold while he worked.
“Now like I said,” he warned. “The scrap rats have feathered their nests with the wiring somewhere we haven’t been able to locate yet, and a lot of them end up dying from the shock of a live wire with too much juice, so if the vents aren’t going, the air gets sour until we fix it.”
“I’ll blame them all I want,” Veetch grumbled, sealing his helmet. “Hold your breath.”
Rizel waited for him to lift the access cover free, her eyes watering as he climbed inside. The puff of air that came from the sealed ductwork smelled like death and she realized now as she coughed why Veetch had put his helmet on before entering.
It took some maneuvering for him to wriggle down to the farthest end, and she sat outside holding the torch steady on her knee as he slowly worked his way back to the entrance, fixing each section with the repaired wiring as he went. Rizel had to wonder how long they’d been living there for pests to become as bad a problem as they appeared to be. Figuring Veetch didn’t want to think about the monotony of their lives, she recalled something she’d been meaning to ask them.
“Were you all part of the same unit originally, or were you each chosen specifically to come out here?” she said into the comm. “It seems like a well-balanced crew as far as jobs go, and everyone seems to get along.”
“No, some of us were from separate battalions before we were absorbed into the 106th, and some of those in the 106th were in different companies from each other, even if they were still under the commander.” His voice sounded hollow, and Rizel watched as he threaded the cables behind the sensor panels and pulled them further down the ductwork. “And then we happened to be the last men off the field after our last assignment so we were on a different transport that was supposed to rejoin the rest of them on another planet. Ended up rerouted somewhere else before being assigned here instead. We were told it was supposed to be temporary; got lucky though, I think everybody had at least one friend when we were assigned to Mayday at the last stop.”
“Always helps to see a familiar face,” she teased.
“Ha, ha.” Rizel could practically hear him roll his eyes. He tack-welded another panel back in place. “Noc’s been with Mayday since the beginning— Can’t remember if they were from the same batch or not, but he’s been with him the longest. Barak joined them about a year in as a lateral transfer and has been with him since; Hollis worked with two of the other guys off and on before, and then they joined when Barak put in the word to take on all three since he was drill leader for the guy who did demolitions. Hexx, Djao and I were all from the same unit, and we picked up Crash along the way before the four of us were reassigned about six months after that.”
“Batch?” she asked. Sound echoed down some of the corridors, the other men starting to return below.
“Oh— Group of clones that grow up together,” Veetch said. He wriggled back out of the hatch, organizing his tools. “The bioengineers would make us in groups and train us together until we were old enough they could tell if quality control was consistent in all of us.”
“You make it sound like a manufacturing line.”
“In some ways, you’re right,” he said. “Let me get down first and I’ll help you.”
Barak nodded in greeting to the both of them as Veetch finished unclipping her cable and gathered his tools together. “How was everything in here?”
“No issues.”
Barak glanced up to the platform. “… Did he make you climb up there and help him work?”
“She offered.”
“You made her climb up there one-handed?”
“She offered! She said she could do it!” Veetch insisted. “I stayed down here in case she fell, I’m not an idiot.”
“Remains to be seen,” the captain said.
“I did offer,” Rizel admitted. “Though it seems like it might be easier to repair the sections further down if you could get to them from the outside down the tunnel.”
“If we had the scaffolding, maybe.”
Veetch looked around. “Where’s the commander?”
“He can’t wrap up with the compactor until Hexx double-checks his work later today. Someone has to keep eyes on it to make sure there are no leaks.”
The day continued without issue, Rizel staying in the command center after having climbed up and down the ladder to the maintenance platform with Veetch again. She hadn’t realized how much the crash had taken out of her and Veetch assured her she didn’t have to stay or help him, so she took her now-clean sweater and sat, carefully mending some of the holes.
The three soldiers who’d been working outside all came back not long into the afternoon, shaking snow off their uniforms and packing their tools in despite Rizel recalling Veetch saying the end of the work day wasn’t for several more hours. The captain informed her that they’d gotten done earlier than anticipated, and when Djao greeted her with a smile and asked if she minded if he joined her she understood why.
“Hope Veetch didn’t give you any trouble,” he said.
“None at all,” she replied. “He’s good company.”
“Care for some more?”
Rizel could feel his hopeful smile next to her. “Why? You going to find me some?”
Djao’s smile broadened and he pulled up a seat. “I guarantee I’m more fun than he is.”
Mayday hauled back on the pipe wrench as tight as he dared before stepping back and wiping the sweat from his brow, Hexx inspecting the progress he’d made.
“Ninety percent, you said?”
“Eighty-nine, and incredibly slow at that,” Mayday said. Checking the pressure gauges one last time, he came back to stand with Hexx. “It’s acting like there’s something blocking the pipes, but every time I scan a problem section or remove a fitting, I can’t find a thing.”
Hexx circled the outside edge of the compactor, deep in thought before looking up to where the pipes extended into the ceiling and levels above. “Could be something in one of the upper levels, but the only access channel is near the reactor, so we’d have to shut all the water and power off before breaking into it.”
“Which is why I’d like to keep it as a last resort,” Mayday said with a sigh. “How long can we function with it like this before it becomes a problem?”
“We’ll be fine for a while, if you said the problem is only affecting any one area intermittently. We’ll have to monitor where and make sure water’s still moving through the rest of the pipes so they don’t freeze. Keep each of the faucets at a drip,” Hexx said. “The men do it out of habit anyway; you’ll have to tell the girl.”
“I’m sure she’s aware, but I’ll pass it along. How’s she doing up there?”
“Fine as far as I can tell,” Hexx said dismissively. He closed the electrical panel on the outside of the compactor, briefly checking the incinerator before joining Mayday on his way to the lift. “Veetch had her holding the torch while he worked.”
“… Up in the ductwork?”
“Yup.”
Mayday grumbled to himself. “I don’t understand her. He wouldn’t have made her climb up there if she hadn’t wanted to, and it’s no breath of fresh air.”
“She could be scoping the place out.”
“I don’t think she’s a spy,” Mayday admitted.
Hexx shrugged. “Then she’s not as smart as you give her credit for,” he said, “Or she really likes the attention.”
“Would you climb a thirty-foot ladder with only one arm to do work you’re not contractually obligated to do, just to flirt with someone?” Mayday asked.
“It’s as good a cover as any, if I were someone intending to get an idea of the layout.”
The lift rose noisily, Mayday mulling over his thoughts. “What is it about her that makes you suspicious?” he asked.
“Too many conveniences in her story, for me,” he said. “She crashes a ship within walking distance of the base, but survives with hardly a scratch or damage to her clothes? She has exactly what she would need to survive these conditions when we’ve been struggling to keep ourselves clothed, let alone sufficiently equipped for months? We have no recorded population centers for a thousand miles in any direction and no way to prove she’s telling the truth about settlements beneath the ice. Her ship looked archaic and even Veetch didn’t know what it was; how did it get out here this far, and why was it flying so low in the first place?”
“She did break a bone,” Mayday reasoned. “If she is local and she is an experienced pilot, she’d know what she’d need in a go-bag. We know from experience the GAR’s surveyors aren’t infallible when it comes to detecting subterranean networks, and if they were specifically looking for somewhere no one would find the cargo, none of them would have known anything about settlements dug under who knows how many feet of permafrost at the base of the mountain, and with a ship that old, it’s possible the people on this planet don’t have a lot of starcraft. It could just be a dirt-flyer and they’re not that advanced.”
“I’ve seen strategic breaks before,” Hexx said. “We didn’t actually see the crash, we saw smoke and saw it go down on the other side of the pass. You already found explosives in her bag: she could have landed and blown the ship up after, if it even is in pieces to begin with.”
“Fair point, but I still don’t think anybody could plan a clavicle break like that.”
Hexx shrugged again. “It’s your call, Mayday. If you believe her then we should be fine, shouldn’t we?”
“… I don’t think I like the way you phrased that,” Mayday said, halfway amused.
“You wouldn’t have asked my opinion if you were certain of your own,” Hexx shot back. “If we had more reliable means of recon, I’d feel better about her having the run of the base.”
“I haven’t given her “the run of the base,” Mayday said. “She has limited access right now, and we have cams in every room.”
“Yes, and it’s a good thing our tech has been so reliable while we’ve been up here.”
“All right, Sergeant Cynical, you can help scope out the crash site later this week and see what we find.” The lift doors opened and they went down the hall towards headquarters. “I’ve already told the others not to let her near any of the comm tech; Barak let her know contact with the settlement is contingent on what we find in the wreckage. I’ll see what Veetch got from her this morning, and I’ll check with DJ and Crash about anything they might’ve picked up on last night.”
“You may want to keep an eye on them,” Hexx said. “Some of them may not be objective for long.”
“Six months is a long time to be guarding something that hasn’t moved since you got here.”
“This was supposed to be an interim job— My guess is the switch to new management has gummed up the Republic’s bureaucratic inner workings.”
“Do you have any way out of here if something goes wrong?”
“Why? You have somewhere you need to be?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a hot date with a proper med center and a sauna.”
Djao chuckled, watching her work. They’d been talking for so long now she’d lost track of the time, but Hexx and the commander had returned recently so she assumed it was close to dinnertime. Conversation was as easy with him as it had been the mechanic; Djao had a wealth of knowledge covering a number of topics and no shortage of questions for what he didn’t know, and what he knew very little about was her.
“Is that hard to do?”
“Darning a sweater?” she asked. “One-handed, maybe, but I’ve done it before. Sometimes have to hold a baby and fix something at the same time, you know? You get creative.”
“… You married?”
She smiled, counting her stitches. “Are you?”
Djao huffed. “No. None of the soldiers— Well, none of us are supposed to be,” he said. “I don’t know how anyone would be. There’s no room in our lives right now and relationships with civilians are… technically prohibited.”
“Shame.”
“But the war’s over,” he said quickly, “So I imagine retiring will be an option, for those of us who want out.”
“Ah, I like the optimism,” she said. “Hold this for me?”
Djao took the crochet hook and tapestry needle from her automatically. She flipped the sweater over, looking for more snags and shivering at the chill; though it wasn’t overly cool in the command center, she didn’t have a set of thermals like they did.
“Can I ask something?”
“I’m not married.”
“No, not— Well that’s still good to hear, but I meant, could I ask a favor?”
“I guess that depends on the favor.”
“Could I have you mend a shirt for me?” he asked. Rizel looked at him curiously. “Nothing major, I just don’t have the tools or skills to do it properly. We’ve had to improvise a lot and what little we have to repair textiles is geared towards patches and tougher workwear. Underarmor, boots, things like that that don’t have to look good.”
“Hmm… What would I be getting out of it?”
“Anything. I’ll trade you.”
“How about a favor for a favor?” she asked.
“Like what?”
She jutted her chin towards the commander. “Get me my lighter back? I promise its only significance is sentimental.”
Djao’s smile faded. “… You know I can’t do that, right, angel?” he said softly.
“Oh you haven’t even tried."
“But you know I can’t ask him— He’s already made up his mind on that, I can’t go against his orders.”
“Are your powers of persuasion not that strong?” she asked, teasing. “I’m not asking you to steal it, you just seem like the one he’s most likely to give in to.”
“That would be Veetch, and not when it comes to something like this.”
“Oh come oooon, it’s better than it coming from me.”
“… Rizel.”
Rizel looked at him, any hopeful coaxing gone from his tired voice.
“Once he’s made up his mind, nothing changes it,” Djao said, “Not unless something more serious takes its place. He's… He’s right, about the explosives being something he has to treat as a threat. I’m sorry.”
“So you do think I’m some kind of saboteur,” she muttered, going back to her repairs.
“I didn’t say that,” he replied. “I’m saying until he has reason to think otherwise, he’s going to stay suspicious.”
“I don’t need the thermonite, I just want the lighter.”
“There’s a lot you can do with a spark.”
Rizel bit her tongue, stopping in the middle of a stitch and trying not to let it bother her. She didn't think it was fair that of all the things the commander insisted on keeping, it was the only thing she’d kept on her person. She would have let him have the thermonite, and she almost wouldn’t have minded him keeping the blaster, but instead she now only had herself to blame for not keeping a better handle on how she responded. Maybe if she hadn’t challenged him, maybe if she’d just told him why she wanted to keep it, he wouldn’t have had a problem, but she’d let herself get too comfortable and spoke the way she’d have spoken to anybody over it, and when he dug his heels in so had she.
Djao looked dejected as he stood. “It’s okay,” he said, dusting his pants off and turning to leave. “Forget I asked, it’s not a big deal.”
Rizel sighed as he walked away. She tied off the stitch in her sweater.
“Hey, sunshine,” she called. Djao looked over his shoulder. “Go ahead and bring it here— I’ll take a rain check on that trade.”
Djao’s smile brightened the whole side of the cavern. He jogged off to the barracks and it gave her enough time to stretch and stow her own sweater before he came back, a dark, long-sleeved knit shirt in hand.
She expected him join the others after he handed it off, but he surprised her by following the move with pulling off his gray jacket and draping it around her shoulders. Instantly she was significantly warmer, and he surprised her further by dragging the footlocker closer, still beaming and sitting next to her. Conversation went back to being light and easy, and her irritation subsided.
When Djao wrapped his jacket around the pilot’s shoulders Mayday looked away, telling himself it wasn’t envy that made his chest tighten.
