The Seek, page 9
part #2 of New Earth Series
‘Well then, I want to know, Mirren.’ Kyn’s voice grew very quiet. ‘How, precisely, did you have it?’
‘I would have survived.’ The girl’s eyes swept up to meet Kyn’s again, and they flashed blue fire at her.
Kyn wanted to reach over and shake the girl’s shoulders. ‘What in the hell makes you think that? You Supergirl?’
Mirren looked confused for a moment, and then Kyn remembered there was no Supergirl. Not anymore. ‘You got some invincibility shield I don’t know about?’
The girl shrugged.
Kyn slugged on, careless now of where she was headed with this, just wanting the girl to face up to what had happened, own it, feel afraid. Anything. Just not this hostile…nothingness. ‘I said,’ she repeated, slow and deadly, ‘how in hell do you know you would have survived?’
The girl smiled thinly as she raised her eyebrows. Even the weak, tiny smile lit up her dimples and Kyn thought again what a sweet repopulating prospect she would make if she’d made a different choice. ‘Because I always do,’ she said.
Incredulity coursed through Kyn. ‘So far,’ she snapped, deciding she was tired of playing Mama to this rebellious recruit. ‘Time to get a few things straight, girlfriend,’ she spat. ‘One. I don’t care what happens to you next time. I don’t care how bad you feel. I don’t care how shit your life is. You never, ever go near that club again.’
Mirren nodded, the echo of the dimples still in place. Kyn finally understood how people sometimes kill their children. But she pushed on. ‘Two. You wanna get laid, you don’t do it with any Avengers, ex-Avengers or anywhere near anywhere Avengers hang out.’
Mirren dimpled a little more and raised an eyebrow at her. ‘I’d never have pegged you for a Puritan.’
Kyn smiled thinly back. ‘I made a promise to someone that I’d keep you alive to fight. That’s what you’re here for. That’s why they picked you.’
Kyn thought about Asha — all he’d been through. He must have really seen something in the girl to send her here. With all his history.
‘Let me down, let them down, and you’ve really got no-one. You’re not here to fuck, you’re not here for comfort. You’re sure as shit not here to get yourself killed by some nut jobs out for a cheap thrill. There are way better ways to waste your life. For a start, New Earth could really use it, if you’re not interested in it.’
The girl swallowed in a way that made Kyn feel a little sick in the stomach but she was sure she could still see a trace of those dimples.
‘Three. Do not ever, ever talk back to me again. I’ve tolerated your shit today, because I figure maybe you’re working through some stuff from last night. But believe me, I’ve sent virgins to the hole for less, so do not — ever — call me anything again. Not a Puritan. Not a slavedriver. Not a bitch. You’ll want to; I swear to you that you’ll want to before our time together is done. But do it, and I’ll burn you. Do you understand?’
The girl nodded.
‘So, survivor, let’s see how you go today. I want 50 ascents.’ Kyn motioned at the steep silver climber behind her. It was wickedly smooth, and only a few tiny footholds pocked its surface. ‘Go. Now.’
‘Yes, Magister,’ Mirren said, the dimples disappearing satisfyingly as she turned and sprinted for the wall.
Kyn cracked her knuckles as she watched the injured girl scuttle up the wall like a clever spider. Her head ached and her mind swam. What was that thing her mother used to say: something about no good deed going unpunished…?
***
‘Tomorrow night we leave for Sector Five.’
The sixty-eighters stared back at her, and she studied their faces. They could be divided into roughly three groups. The ones she called the shutdowns. Nothing. It wasn’ t that they were dead inside, they just didn’t show on the outside whatever it was they were feeling. Some had come to her that way; others had adopted it as a sensible way of living after they’d started Avenger training.
The second group were curious. She could see the questions bubbling at the back of their eyes. They wanted detail. They still believed they could control whatever might happen to them. She wanted them to ask questions; that was good. But not the ones she saw scuttling back and forth across their faces. Not ones about why, and what’s there, and why are they sending us, and I thought we had two more weeks before battle missions began.
She knew it would all change. She knew in a year or two someone would come in to brief these boys, whoever was left of them, about a mission, and those who were still asking questions would start. But the questions would be entirely different. Who are we up against? Which planet, which star? What’s the objective? Tell us about the terrain. Goddamnit, she needed them there now, at that place of clever questioning. But they were still here, and nothing could bridge the gap between the two places but experience. Hard, bitter experience.
The third group just looked angry. She knew it didn’t mean they would buck. These Avengers got it. There was no choice in being an Avenger. Not in what you did, when you did it, or how you accomplished it. If you were chosen, you went. Until you couldn’t go anymore. She remembered a boy from her class; a spirited boy, telling her Magister it was slavery. And she remembered her Magister’s face as he’d raised an eyebrow at him. And your problem is…?
Kendis, with the pretty face and old eyes, was in the second group. He wanted to know more.
But she didn’t have that much to tell them.
‘There’s a group there we need to relieve. Casualties have been heavy.’ The boys blinked back at her.
‘Stop with the hard sell,’ a small but very wiry redhead she knew to be the class joker said.
She allowed a smile. ‘Okay Rexas,’ she said. ‘Let me give it to you straight then.’
Rexas swallowed hard and she could almost see him biting back the ‘that was a joke’ that danced on his tongue.
‘We’re dealing with a new threat. This is not a star we’ve been to at all in the last twelve years. But we need it.’
No-one asked but it was there in the eyes of all them — the shutdowns, the curious, the angry. Why?
She tried to keep her voice flat. ‘Because it could be The One.’
Suddenly they were all interested; their bodies on high alert, straining forward in their seats, eyes glued to hers.
Kendis was the first to break. ‘How do they know?’ The boy’s eyes were rimmed with red, and Kyn wondered if it was from tears or lack of sleep. He’d lost his friend; he’d come face-to-face with his mortality; he’d met some monsters. It could be either.
She shook her head. ‘They don’t. And none of us should get too excited. The mission is to protect the Explorers while they’re trying to work it all out.’
‘Something must have made them think — ’
Kyn cut Kendis off. ‘This is just what we do: we seek. And we keep seeking. There have been a score of The Ones. And none of them have been The One yet.’ She felt a bitter smirk creep onto her face and hated herself for her jadedness.
‘But it’s empty, right? That’s one of the features of The One? And oxygenated?’ Kendis’ face was respectful; he was different after the Hydrentians, but he was still pushing the issue; still taking it up to her. And Kyn was glad.
You could be a good fighter and not care. But the best rarely were.
Kyn shook her head. ‘Don’t believe all the things you heard in fairy tales when we still hiding out in the asteroid belts. The Seek is a good plan.’ She paused, and cleared her throat. ‘Well, it’s a plan, at least. The only one we’ve got. People want to believe it’s all going to be okay, so I dunno about the stuff you got told. But I can guess. Like it’s some galactic Garden of Eden, right?’
Eleven sets of eyes stared blankly at her, and she had to mentally kick herself. Of course, we’re all atheists now. The whole thing was kind of strange to Kyn; she was pretty much an atheist before. But after your world gets blown to bits and no omnipotent God steps in to save the day, flipping God the bird seemed like patriotic duty. To Kyn’s mind, they went a little overboard with the whole outlawing-all-the-religions thing. Nothing’s more determined to make people cling to some crazy idea than giving them the sense it might be taken from them. But hey, who was she to judge? The Council did a shitty job pretty well from what she could tell.
She started over. ‘I get it. You all got nursed on your mama’s knees, and told that somewhere out there, there’s a little blue planet just like the one we came from, just waiting for us to slide on in and settle on down. It’s full of trees and rivers, the air is pure, and the sky is blue.’
She felt her voice rising, and tried to tamp it down. ‘Well, let me tell you, I’ve been a lotsa places the last ten years and I don’t see it happening that way.’
She watched eleven sets of eyes flick away from her.
Great. Kyntura — the smasher of young men’s hope. Young men she was going to ask to die for an idea that she was telling them was a crock of shit. She steeled herself and tried again. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s some place for us. Bound to be — it’s a big universe. I’m just not so sure it’s going to be milk and honey and settle in guys, take a load off.’
She closed her eyes briefly, imaging it like she had a thousand times. ‘If it’s there, it’s only going to be ours by wrenching it from whoever owns it now. By fighting for it, piece by piece. And maybe it’s not oxygenated. And maybe the environment isn’t totally perfect.’
She tried to smile hopefully. ‘But hey, we’re clever people. We worked a whole lotta shit out in the last seventeen years, I’m sure we can deal with that too. Piece a cake.’
Kendis cleared his throat. He was sitting upright in his chair, his body wired like a tuning fork. ‘What do we know, Magister?’
This was more like it. Kyn touched the crystalair and let the pictures materialise in the space between her and her eleven charges. ‘We know some stuff,’ she said. ‘And I’m going to take you through it, sure I am. Soon enough. But first I’ve got some other news for you.’
Kyn could almost smell the room brace. Kind of sad that in their eighteen years, and then in the last few months, these boys had learned that news was seldom good.
‘We have a new team member,’ she said, quickly and flatly.
‘What do you mean?’ It was Reetor, the dark, quiet boy with the soulful eyes, who reminded her too much of Hendax — Hendax, who’d died in the same place she was about to take these boys. ‘We have a team. We don’t need anyone else.’
‘Wrong,’ Kyn said. ‘You need twelve.’
Reetor shook his head. ‘That’s not how it works. We — ’
‘That’s how it works now,’ Kyn snapped. ‘Everything is changing, Avengers,’ she said, knowing she had to find a way to prepare them for what she was about to do. ‘What are we, Avengers?’
The question reached into their collective consciousness and plucked out the correct response. The one that she had drilled into them for three months.
‘We are strong, we are adaptive, we are survivors,’ they yelled at her, their voices taking on a chant-like quality. She thought about the times she’d made them scream it as they were fighting, marching, freezing. It was closer to them than their own names; than their mothers’ faces. Carved into their brains in the heat of pain and combat.
She clucked her tongue. ‘You don’t sound it,’ she said quietly. ‘You sound like whiny babies.’
Eleven chairs scraped back as one; eleven young, strong bodies leapt to attention in front of her; eleven voices screamed it again, right into her face, their own faces full of conviction and fury. ‘We are strong, we are adaptive, we are survivors,’ they bellowed.
‘Good,’ she said quietly. ‘So sit down, survivors, and listen to me.’
They did as they were bid, their faces flushed and bodies still tense with adrenalin. She had connected them to their training — pain, sacrifice, persistence. They would listen properly now.
‘What does it mean to be adaptive?’
Reetor cleared his throat. ‘It means you shift what you do, depending on the circumstance,’ he said.
He was so clever, that one. In some other life, he would have been an academic. In this world he could have been an explorer, one of the best, in time, Kyn had no doubt. But instead he had been chosen. His long, strong body was as flexible and clever as his brain, and Avengers took precedence. They got the pick.
‘Yes it does,’ she said. ‘And we’ve been floating out here a long time now. Folks can get comfortable. Think because something has been a certain way a while, it’s gotta be that way forever. Well this shit don’t work like that.’ She paced in front of them. ‘What we need — what we need to survive — are the best. The best people, the best strategies, the best team.’
A few of them shuffled in their seats, and she could tell they were trying to see where this was going.
‘Being adaptive means sometimes you need a new plan,’ she said quietly. ‘We all know the Avenger code. The best. The best young men, right?’
They nodded.
‘Except you, Magister,’ Kendis said, his eyes shining at her.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Kyn knew where he was heading, but she wanted him to spell it out. Not from vanity. It had been a long time since Kyn’s ego had been her friend.
The boy flushed and stammered a little. ‘I meant the young men bit. The best, yes. But you’re not…a man.’
‘No shit, genius,’ the little redhead joker Rexas said. Then he stopped. ‘Are you trying to — ’
But Kyn cut him off at the pass. She held up a hand and pressed her fingertip to a small square beside her on the wall. The door to the cube opened and Mirren stepped in. She was in full Avenger red, as Kyn had dictated, and her sharp bob was tucked neatly behind her ears. She moved smoothly, no trace of nerves or anxiety, but no dimples on display either. She looked young, strong, and quite beautiful, even with the bruising around her eye. She came in and stood beside Kyn, her eyes trained precisely on the wall behind the class.
Rexas whistled slowly and Kyn stepped smartly over to his chair, tipped him out so he fell flat onto the floor, face-down, and stomped the heel of her hutanium boot into the back of his calf. She couldn’t damage him — she needed him fighting fit — but he squealed satisfyingly regardless.
Kyn placed a boot on the small of his back. ‘Do that again, Rexas,’ she said slowly. ‘And I will break your spine.’ She pushed down a little with her boot to ensure he understood that she could do it. ‘Are we clear?’
A muffled agreement came from the direction of the floor, but she didn’t remove her boot. ‘Anyone else care to share their opinion of an Avenger?’
Ten heads shook vigorously. She had fought all of them at various times, and while some of them had become good, none were in any doubt that she could — and would — take them apart if they crossed her.
‘Sixty-eighters,’ Kyn said slowly, releasing her boot from Rexas’ spine and moving back beside the girl. ‘This is Mirren; she’s your twelfth. You will treat her and protect her as your own.’
Ten sets of eyes glared mutinously at Kyn. Rexas was still groaning at her feet. ‘Yes Magister,’ they yelled as one.
But she was not convinced.
She sighed. ‘It really is extremely tiresome to have to do this,’ she said, in the tone of a schoolmarm berating her charges for chatting during class. She leaned across to the wall again and pressed her fingertip against another square, stepping back as she did. The space in front of the desks opened up to reveal a heliomat.
‘Kendis,’ she said, motioning to him. ‘Here.’ She motioned to her right side.
Kendis was at her side in a second. ‘Training kit,’ she said, pointing at both Mirren and Kendis. ‘And take your places.’ She pointed at the two red crosses marked on either side of the mat.
The two took their time disrobing, and Kyn sensed them trying to size each other up. In the tight black pants and stretchy singlets, their well-muscled forms were evident to all. Mirren’s fine white arms were heavily muscled, and Kyn wondered briefly why. What work had she and her family done before she was plucked from there to here, for this? Kyn had understood they were traders.
Mirren stood on the red cross first, her eyes levelled at a point on the opposite wall. Her eyes were a very intense blue under the purple bruise, and the singlet top showed off the swell of her large breasts. As Kendis took his place, she was sure his eyes flicked towards his opponent’s chest as well. Having fought her, Kyn knew he would be better off focusing on her arms and eyes — that was how she would take him down.
Ever since the incident with the Hydrentians, Kendis had been different. He still had that knowing sadness in his long-lashed green eyes, but he had shrugged off some of the veil of disinterest and superiority that had made him such an irritating little shit. Standing there like that, awaiting her order to go, she had a clear view of him. Not a tall boy — not much taller than Kyn — he nevertheless had some kind of impressive presence. Kyn thought again about the way he had called to mind a dancer on the day she had beaten him. She wondered how this fight would go, between these two agile young people, both with a certain grace.
The two eyed each other and the room seemed to hold its breath. A small frown creased Mirren’s brow as her eyes swept over him, and then back again. She was an observer, like Kyntura. She saw it too: the lightness in his stance, the coiled spring of his musculature. Mirren noticed things, and Kyn knew she would have noticed this.
For his part, Kendis shifted a little uneasily on his cross. Kyn didn’t doubt why. Mirren was intimidating. Beautiful, sure, and young and virile, and all the things that would turn a young man’s head. But there was a lethal quietness in her stance, and a direct courage in her stare that was even more intimidating.
Except Kendis didn’t look intimidated. He looked impressed. A frisson of something young and hot slid between the two Avengers as Kyn watched them size each other up. She almost groaned before turning to the class, who were watching her closely. ‘What do you think, sixty-eighters?’ she asked, her voice innocent. ‘Ice?’
