This Shattered World (Starbound #2)(56)

He rubs one hand over his shaven scalp, the tattoos winding around his fingers seeming to shift in the low light of the back room. Not for the first time I wish I could read the characters tattooed up and down both arms—but while I remember how to speak a little of the Mandarin my mother made me learn as a kid, the written characters have long since slipped away. Molly told me once that on one arm he’d gotten passages from The Art of War and The Prince, and on the other, quotes from wise men from every corner of ancient Earth, like Confucius, Dr. King, and Gandhi. War and peace, he’d explained, when I told him he was a lunatic. Light and dark. Yin and yang.

Rebel and soldier.

Molly was big into trying to find himself in his cultural past and bought into every stereotype he could find in ancient movies and books. Probably why he liked me right away—I’m one of the few people on the base who can even pronounce his real name. He was a terra-trash orphan when he was a baby—parents brought him to a new world, died in the rough conditions, and he ended up adopted by a family on Babel. I’ve got no idea how he ended up here, in a colony largely dominated by Irish folks. He’s got no link to our shared Chinese heritage except by blood, but it never ceases to fascinate him. Whereas I couldn’t get far enough away from my mother’s teachings.

But that was before she died, and I lost that connection forever.

Molly’s still hesitating, as though he suspects a drink will fix my problems despite my protests. “What’s goin’ on?” he asks finally.

“I need you to watch for a message.” Some part of me knows it’s pointless, that there’s no message Flynn Cormac could possibly need to send me now—but the rest of me refuses to sever this last thread between us. “It’s important. I don’t know who will bring it or when, but you have to bring it to me—don’t tell anyone else.”

Molly’s brows draw in, concern deepening into a frown. “Babe, what’d you get into?”

I take a deep breath, feeling shaky now in the wake of the panic that greeted me when I first walked into the bar. “I can’t tell you, Baojia.”

There are only a few people on the base who know Molly’s real name, much less use it. It makes him pause, then nod. He gives my shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll watch for it. Get some rest, kid. Y’look like death on ice.”

I try to do as Molly suggests when I get back to my bunk. Even after showering the last of the blood and muck from my skin and putting on dry, warm clothes, I still feel covered in grime. I’m trained to sleep wherever and whenever I can get it, but despite my exhaustion, my desperate need to close my eyes against the memory of this night, I find myself staring up at the ceiling.

Maybe it’s because when I close my eyes, I see that child from the rebel base lying there, the side of its head blown away, the skin and hair around the area scorched in a way that only a military-issue Gleidel could have done. The child I killed while not inhabiting my own skin.

I roll over, desperately seeking some relief from the incessant tangle of my thoughts. If I had anyone I could call, even to have the most inane conversation imaginable, I’d do it. Towers might be a stickler for using the retransmission satellites for watching the HV, but we’ve got good, clear lines for getting messages off Avon. But we’re not designed to have friends—we’re not given the chance for it. Two years ago I would’ve called my fellow rookies, but we’re spread out across the galaxy now. I’ve got no one. Alexi was the closest thing I had. Everyone else I’ve served with is gone. Dead, or else stationed so far away, they might as well be.

Sometimes I think they isolate us on purpose. It makes me wonder what my life would’ve been like if I’d stayed at that orphanage, if I’d never gone into the military. Or if I’d managed to put aside my need for vengeance. My old captain always told me I had to find something to fight for, not just a reason to fight. If I’d listened to him, would I have had friends that lasted beyond their next reposting?

I’m not sure what brought my old captain to mind, but now I find myself wishing he were here. He had a way of making impossible things seem okay, like climbing this mountain or traversing that plain wouldn’t be so hard.

I sit up abruptly as an idea hits me hard. My captain. Flynn and I have been searching for a way to understand LaRoux Industries’ involvement. For the reason there was a LaRoux ident chip on the site of the vanished facility. How could I have been so stupid? My old captain hasn’t been on Avon for over a year, and there’s a risk—but even brainwashed by fame and fortune, I can’t believe he’d refuse to help me if I asked.

I shove my blanket away and slide into the chair. Sweeping the clutter aside with one hand, I press the palm of the other to the top of the screen. It swings open out of the desk obligingly, adjusting itself automatically to my height. The keyboard rises after it, out of the hollow below the screen. No eye-trackers here—strictly low-tech, nothing that would provide much benefit to the rebels if they got hold of it.

I start with the lines of code I need to get to a call screen. Just because my screen’s low-tech doesn’t mean you can’t do a lot with it if you know how. And the man I’m about to call is the one who made sure I learned lessons others didn’t.

I run a simple sweep for keytrackers, and once I’m sure I’m working unrecorded, I start. I key in the network address, adding in another line of code to ensure my request will route through a secure proxy, hiding my call’s point of origin. I add in privacy tags to signal an approved personal call and take myself off the base’s register—it’s not perfect, but unless someone really digs, there’ll be no trace I called at all.