Secondborn (Secondborn #1)(58)

“I’ve fallen into the deep end,” a soldier murmurs near me, close enough to cast his shadow upon me. “Little fish, little fish,” he whispers, “you’re a rare one. What’s your name?”

I ignore him, gather up my armor, and try to squeeze by him. He closes the gap, his mouth looming near my neck. “Don’t swim away, little fish.”

“I have twenty minutes to report for duty.”

“I could get you tossed back into your pond, but you’ll have to do something for me first.”

“I could gut you,” I reply, the unlit hilt of my fusionblade pressed to his groin. “Back. Up.”

He does. Another soldier near us laughs. “She’s no little fish, Carrick. You hooked yourself a whale there. She’s Roselle St. Sismode.”

The soldiers trade looks. “So it is,” Carrick says. “You won’t last the day with what they have planned for you. You should take my offer. Someone else could go in your place, if you’re nice to me.”

“I’m never nice.” I leave to change in the bathroom.

When I return, Hammon is beside me in her combat uniform. The emblem on her breastplate glows with a silver-etched Tree, like mine. She has her helmet on, but her visor is up. “We’re being drafted by Protium 445. They went through our rosters and chose only the soldiers they deemed the most attractive conscripts.”

I put my helmet on. “What are they going to make us do?”

“I don’t know yet. Stay close to me, and I’ll have your back.”

I nod. We make our way to Deck 134. The moment we enter Hangar 12, a gruff soldier shoves me in the opposite direction from Hammon.

“Can we stay together?” Hammon asks him, indicating me.

“Aw, that’s so cute. They want to stay together, Tolman.”

Tolman sneers at her. “Sorry. We don’t take requests from Stone Forests. Anyway, you don’t want to go where St. Sismode is going. Trust me.” He raises his rifle and aims it at her. She backs away, her eyes on me, as we’re moved toward different airships.

The troopship I enter is almost full. Soldiers twenty or more years older than me, in blood-smeared armor with grimy faces, sit wearily on shallow seats.

“Why, if it isn’t the St. Sismode secondborn,” a soldier says as I approach him, looking for a seat. “Come to grace us with your presence, have you?” He spits at my feet as I walk past. Others follow his lead, and soon my armor is dotted with sputum. I find a seat near the front, by the pilots.

Another soldier walks up and hands me a pouch. I’m the only one who gets one. I strap it to my armor. One side of the pouch is filled with red medical-drone beacons, the other with black death-drone signals. Otherwise they look virtually the same.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

The soldier scowls at me. “You’re bailing out between the enemy’s line and our line just east of the current battlefield,” he replies, “where the fighting has already taken place. We’re going to the trenches west of your position. The fighting could shift back to you. Stay on your toes.”

“If it does, you’ll be trapped in the middle, between both of us,” a soldier beside me cackles. “Dead center.” He shoots me with air-gun fingers.

The soldier across from me chimes in. “If it was up to us”—he swings his head and looks down the line of soldiers in the unit—“you’d be fighting, not scouting for broken bodies, but there are rules now about young soldiers in combat.”

“Swords have gone soft, is what it is,” another says. He spits through the hole of his missing front tooth. “In my day, you’d be the first to die on the battlefield, you bloodsucking St. Sismode. Now you get to wipe what’s left of our asses for us when we get ’em blown off.”

“Yay for progress,” I mutter.

The soldier next to me laughs, though it sounds more like a death rattle. “You got moxie, I’ll give you that. I used to think you looked like your mother, but it’s your father you take after. Him and his Virtue-Fated cronies always did have a one-liner ready.”

Whether this man knows Father or has merely watched him on the visual screen is unclear. The fact that he thinks I’m anything like him is unnerving. I hardly know my father. “Kennet is the kind of person you don’t sit down next to unless you’re sure he hasn’t moved your chair,” I answer.

“You’re not the kind to be hollowed by a firstborn’s cuts, though, are you, girl?”

I lift my chin a notch. “The secret is to leave before their insults slice too deep. The fools on parade never notice when a secondborn escapes their carnival.”

He gives me a grunt of approval. “Maybe you’re not just a pretty visitor on her way through. We’ll have to see how you do.”

“I’m still not wiping your ass for you,” I reply, which leaves them all laughing despite themselves.

The door to the airship closes and we settle in for the journey to the front line. It’s the wee hours of the morning, and most of us haven’t gotten more than a few hours of rest. Once we’re airborne, some soldiers sleep. Snores issue from the bobbing heads around me. I’m too wired, and I don’t trust any of them enough to close my eyes.

A couple of hours into the flight, the hatch opens. Wind whistles through. The cold of the first gust makes my teeth chatter. Fear rattles through me, too, as if the hammer of some long-dead god is beating my heart for his war drum. I’ve only had one jump simulation.