Vanguard Word Update

2k words

***

“We could do a lot better than you,” Samiha snarled, whirling on him. Her elbow hit her locker and the door slammed shut with a bang as loud as a gunshot. “Some of us have shed blood fighting the Confederacy, and the biggest danger you’ve ever faced are predators on your farm. What experience do you have of war? Have you even killed someone?”

“I… haven’t, no,” Cadell admitted, and he could see the disdain in her eyes deepen. “But I’m not about to have some existential crisis over it. I’m here to fight for this alliance, and I’ll deal with whatever comes of that. Professionally.”

“Naïve child,” Samiha sighed. “No knowledge of Alliance history, no experience in combat, small as a hatchling. If this is how mankind treats its military, it’s no wonder they were so eager to supplement it with our technology and soldiers. Perhaps that’s why Kazlu and I are here, to tighten the copious slack.”

Cadell tried to quell the anger rising in his chest, but he could feel himself getting emotional all the same. “Well, if your military could let a massive cornhole like you into their ranks, then you’re standards aren’t much better.”

Her feathery brow furrowed, but the tinge of a smile curled her beak. He’d talked about professionalism, and yet he’d played right into her hand with that outburst, and they both knew it. He was really losing his patience with this bird.

“Enough!” Kazlu said, placing a firm hand on Samiha and stepping between them. “Samiha, these humans earned their place here, just like we did. We’re the same squad, doing the same training, and we’re all of equal rank. There’s no reason to quarrel like this.”

Cadell grinned, glad that at least one alien had come to her senses, but his smile faded when Kazlu turned on him next.

“And you, Cadell, you’re lucky the Lieutenant isn’t a Balokarid, or he would have heard this argument. You’re our Kith’sla now, our leader. Examples have to be set, wouldn’t you agree?”

He made to voice some cutting remark, but he held back, something about getting called out by an alien hitting him a lot harder than it should have.

“He’ll never be my Kith’sla,” Samiha grumbled. “If this had been a Balokarid installation, a proper individual would be chosen, and we wouldn’t be obliged to follow them just because we we’re told to.”

“Samiha I couldn’t give two shits who you follow,” Cadell began, Kazlu holding up a hand, as if expecting them to come to blows. “Call yourself the Kith’sla for all I care. But like it or not, we’re stuck together, and if we keep butting heads like this Marek’s going to throw us out right quick. You heard what he said about having replacements lined up.”

She returned her arms to their usual place, folded across her shapely chest, saying nothing.

“So unless you want to bug out, we’ve got no choice but to just accept the fact, so we can make it through this program. That’s all that matters.”

“On that, we are agreed,” Samiha said. It seemed she was over the confrontation, and she turned to her bunk, pulling one long leg up after the other as she rested on the pillows.

Kazlu shared one glance between the two of them, then departed as well. It occurred to Cadell that Hunter and Kurtis were staring at him, but he didn’t feel up for making conversation anymore, let alone eye-contact.

He should have felt elated to have been the bigger man, to have offered a compromise to the stubborn alien, yet he felt far from satisfied. He felt like he’d done nothing but kick the can down the road, and perhaps made a fool of himself in front of the others, letting himself get provoked like that.

The lights dimmed automatically, lights-out tied to the local network apparently, Cadell putting his back to Samiha as he stripped to his vest and fell into bed. This wasn’t how he thought his first day in proper military life, let alone one shared with aliens, would turn out. Samiha may have been the more experienced, but Cadell would be damned if he was about to let her get to him on day one.

Their argument had left him restless, but he eventually started to drift off, vowing to never let the alien get to him again.

Chapter 2: The Deep End

“I’m not the only one who’s not keen on this, right?” Hunter asked, fiddling with the collar of his suit, his voice taking on a static quality over the radio.

Squad eleven were stacked shoulder to padded shoulder in the tiny compartment, the ceiling just high enough that the Balokarids could stand without brushing their heads. The bulkheads were all metal panels and exposed pipelines, the signal lights bathing them in a white tone.

“Stop touching that,” Kurtis warned, reaching over to slap his glove. “You’ll break the seal. Then you’ll have something to worry about.”

The five of them were wearing pressure suits, which they had donned in the armoury a few winding corridors away from where they were standing. Cadell shared with Hunter’s inhibitions – the layers of insulation felt far too flimsy for his tastes, and the only pieces of padding was located on the forearm, around the touch-screen display where the user could tune into the radio channels and check the suit status.

He glanced up at Samiha on his right, looking over her suit, and not for the first time. The human pressure suits were identical, composed of two parts - the suit and the helmet - but the Balokarid suits were made up of three. He remembered Samiha having to step into her suit like it was a one piece, the back opened up like a zipper, but before slotting on her helmet, she and Kazlu were given two additional components. At first they looked like giant boards, but he didn’t have to wonder long about their purpose.

Their wings were easily the largest parts of their bodies, so it was obvious they required their own coverings. They were detailed, he saw, patterns that looked similar to how their actual wings appeared engraved into the material. They slotted them over their tucked wings as simply as one slots a scope onto a rail, Cadell watching in amazement as the sheathes opened up. They must be segmented, allowing the aliens to use their wings normally, but Cadell couldn’t figure a reason for it. Nobody could fly where they were going, not even birds.

Her long helmet along with the metal wings gave her the appearance of a cybernetic crow, a thing glass visor allowing her to peer out from her narrow helmet. If she or Kazlu had any reservations, they didn’t voice them.

“Elevens, stand to,” Marek voice ordered, crackling in through thei shared channel. “Last group’s about to clear off. Prepare for EVA.”

The white lights shifted to red, the pipes hissing as the room began to cycle out. Cadell turned around, looking through the reinforced glass that spanned the door to their rear. There was a pair of officers manning a control panel to the side, one of them looking up to give Cadell a thumbs-up.

“I don’t know my human acronyms,” Kazlu said from the far side. The were each standing in a row, facing the outer door. “What’s EVA mean?”

“Extra-vehicular activity,” Kurtis explained. “If you’re ditching the safety of a hull of a ship or station, that’s EVA.”

“Check your boots one last time, everyone,” Cadell said, turning one booted foot out. On one side of his ankles was a small LED, holding a green tone. When he lifted his foot off the deck, the light went red. The magnets that pulled his heel to the floor were strong, but not enough that it didn’t require strain to lift it. They could be manually locked from the display, but Cadell wasn’t sure he would be able to keep that in mind if something went wrong.

An alarm began to blare, the siren whooshing away as the outer airlock opened up, and all sound soon gushed out along with the air. Through the parting bulkhead swelled the sea of inky space, splotches of gas clouds and twinkling starlight filling the expanse.

Taking the initiative, Cadell began to walk forward, the sensation of his magnetic boots making it feel like he was walking with glue on his heels. As long as he kept one foot on the deck, he wouldn’t go floating off into the void.

The path before the airlock sloped downwards, Cadell’s brain insisting he was about to walk off a cliff and into the void, his stomach lurching as he willed himself to keep going.

As he emerged from the ramp, his squad following him out into the strange environment, a figure in a pressure suit appeared further up the slope, waving an arm in greeting.

“Hurry up, we don’t have all day, recruits!” Marek yelled, his sudden voice startling Cadell. “One foot after the other, keep pushing.”

The ramp from the airlock at least held some sense of familiarity, but as Cadell stepped out onto a smooth landscape, nausea crawled up his body from bowels to throat. The Hull streaked away in a reversed curve, so steep and smooth it was impossible to fight the feeling that he wasn’t about to slip tumble into the empty vacuum.

He felt bile creep into the back of his throat, all the muscles in his body clamming up as a wave of dizziness passed over him.

“Hey, Cadell,” Kurtis asked, a hand appearing on his shoulder. “You alri-”

He tried to hold it down, but too late, Cadell retching into his helmet, a disgusting splotch appearin on his lower left field of view. He keeled over, trying to hold back a second wave. At least all he could see now was the hull.

“Don’t stop, Private,” Marek said, shoving Kurtis aside and pulling Cadell up. “You think the enemy will be lenient just because you got a bellyache? Focus on a point ahead of you, not the sky.”

“Yes Sir!” Cadell muttered, his face flushed with embarrassment. It only got worse when he saw Samiha brush by on the other side, smirking at him through her visor.

She was having a much easier time of it, but Cadell wasn’t struggling alone. Hunter was mumbling in disapproval over the radio, and Kazlu was the lowest of each of them, playing the steady game. Marek walked them out to a small, red line a couple meters out from the ramp, where a row of metal pipes jutted from the curved floor. Wrapped around each one was a colored cable, feeding out of a couple encased reels.

“Line up and ready your harnesses,” Marek said. “I’m going to come round and give you all a tether, so you don’t go flying off like a micrometeor.”

“Micro-what now?” Hunter asked, Marek marching over and picking up a cable.

“Micrometeors,” Marek said, securing the clip on a loop on Hunter’s belt. “Bits of flying rock smaller than a grain of sand. Space is full of the buggers. If you get in the path of one, if you’re lucky it’ll just break your seal.”

“And if you’re unlucky?” Hunter prompted.

“Well, at least it’ll be quick,” Marek said. “Don’t worry, trooper, we have shuttles flying around in case you lose your grip, and the station’s got point-defence turrets that’ll shoot down any incoming projectiles. It’s perfectly safe. Or, safe as we can manage.”

Hunter didn’t look especially comforted, but Marek didn’t stick around to coddle him, moving onto Cadell next.

“Your task today is simple,” Marek said, tugging the cable tight against his waist. “There’s another airlock one hundred meters downspin, that red line on the hull will take you straight to it. As Alliance soldiers, you’ll be expected to fight the enemy in all possible environments, and that includes vacuum. It’s not a race,” he added. “in fact, I’d recommend you take your time, try and get a feel for how you might navigate this environment in a combat scenario.”

“You humans don’t mess around,” Kazlu noted, her tall frame hunched over like an agitated cat’s. “What is this, our second day on station? Or off it, I should say.”

“That’s Lieutenant to you,” Marek said. “And I did say you wouldn’t be getting special treatment. I’ll be waiting for you at the halfway point. Good luck.”

With that, he turned and marched off, his gait made odd by his magnetic boots, soon disappearing behind a sloped panel. Cadell’s perception was all wrong, and with no frame of reference it looked as though the Lieutenant crossed a vast distance in a matter of moments.