Vanguard Word Update

2622 words

***

He did his business and left the bathroom, Samiha back on her stool just like before, watching him as he walked by. She obviously suspected something, but neither of them said anything, Ryan holding his cards close to his chest as he gave Samiha the barest of glances, before returning to the darts game with Tilu and the others.

***

“Your coilguns may be able to penetrate inches of solid steel, and that might sound like a good thing, but understanding the weapon’s limitations, or rather the lack of them, is essential for when you operate in environments where inches of steel is the only thing protecting you from getting spaced.”

Adamski had the team in the assembly area adjacent to the armoury, watching over the group as they laid out and pried apart their coilguns into dozens of individual pieces. Ryan’s workbench was between Dominic’s and Brindley’s, while the Balokarids were set up adjacent to them, the aliens working with a speed that almost seemed practiced, despite being surrounded by technology of human origin.

Samiha caught his eye especially as she snapped the stock of her PDW into its two halves, then proceeded to unhook the wireframe bands using just her nails. That wasn’t to say that Tilu was any less impressive, the alien dissembling her weapon into its basic frame in a record time the Captain had eagerly praised her for.

Ryan fiddled with his screwdriver as he worked at a part of the battery holster, laying out a tiny screw next to the growing pile of nuts and bolts on the workbench. There had to be thirty of the microscopical things and he hadn’t even started on the barrel yet.

“Work on the mag well first, Corporal,” Adamski chided from over Ryan’s shoulder. “Showed you and everyone else twice before.”

It was as much a task to please the Captain as it was to race the aliens, or at least it felt like it to Ryan, his heartbeat rising as Tilu and Samiha worked swiftly through the process, something about the way their feathered arms juggled all the stray bits without ever changing speed coming off as oddly mesmerizing.

Ryan cursed under his breath as his elbow banged against the bench, one of the screws falling to the floor with a clink. Adamski was on him like a hawk, standing over him as he got down on his knees. These damn screws were made to be lost, that was how small they were.

“You’re falling behind there, Corporal. The Balokarids already have their coils laid out, hurry it up! Come on!”

He didn’t have much time to give Dominic or Brindley’s progress more than the occasional glance, but it was clear the aliens were outdoing all three of them. Perhaps they’d seen the coilguns get disassembled before? They had said they’d gotten an earlier tour…

As he pried part of the stock away from the frame, he glanced over at Samiha, and soon devolved into staring. Her arms were like machines, pistoning back and forth as she plucked screws and plastic sheets, sliding the barrel out of the frame and placing everything down like they were nick knacks in a display case.

A minute later and she’d pulled the frame apart, the weapon now turned into an organized selection of small bits. Adamski walked round to inspect her work, nodding his head as he clasped his hands behind his back.

“Excellent work, recruit. You may not know how to shoot one, but you certainly know how to break one down and find what makes it tick. Maybe I should have made you squad leader. Speaking of, why don’t you go help our Corporal out?”

“He does look like he needs it,” Samiha said, turning her beak to smirk at Ryan, as if she knew he’d been watching. To say Ryan was fuming would be an understatement, the alien was cheating somehow, she had to be. How could an alien work human tech better than a human could?

She walked round the workbenches, bumping into Ryan with her feathery hip as she took his place. The feathers on her knee grazed his leg, her coat a lot more fuzzy and softer than he’d thought they’d be.

“Step aside, monkey,” Samiha muttered so only Ryan could hear.

She was so big and brawny he had no choice but to move out her way, his cheeks flushing as she took apart his weapon, using her wing to hide what she was doing. He wanted to tell her to quit it, but he couldn’t think of a way to say it without sounding like a child. He reached out to simply take the weapon out of her hands, but Adamski pointed a finger at him.

“No no, stay right there and watch, Corporal. Recruit Samiha will show you how it’s done.”

If he was embarrassed as a human before, he was embarrassed as a Corporal now. While his team worked away, Ryan had nothing to do but just stand and wait as Samiha did his work for him, hating how hot his face was getting as he was made the fool. Samiha couldn’t say anything without being overheard, but she didn’t have to, he could tell by her body language she enjoyed every second of his languish. She wasn’t even trying to show him how to disassemble the gun, giving him only half-hearted glimpses over her wing sheath, the Captain too busy inspecting Brindley’s work to notice.

That was it, he needed to get back at her, and he knew just how to do it. While he’d held back talking to anyone about what he’d saw in the bathroom in the rec centre, he didn’t feel any reservations now. Maybe once they kicked her out for being an addict, she’d learn that she couldn’t just step on his toes and expect to get away with it.

Samiha glanced over her arm to grin down at him, and her smile faltered, just a little, like she’d sensed his change in mind. He’d have her fun, but afterward? His mind was made up.

Chapter 3: Boiling Point

“Stand to, team four!” Adamski announced, his sudden arrival startling Dominic and Tilu out of their card game. “Congratulations, you’ve been randomly picked for a room inspection.”

Everyone rushed to stand attention in front of their bunks, except for Brindley, who somehow managed to snooze straight through the Captain’s arrival. Adamski walked over and gave him a less than gentle kick on the arm. “Off your ass, Private!”

Brindley jolted awake, raising a hand to wipe at his face, then reconsidering as he puffed out his chest like he was on parade. The two Balokarids stood upright on their side off the quarters, their wings tucked up against their arms. Samiha was directly adjacent to Ryan, the alien sharing a glance with Tilu, who shrugged back. Ryan wondered if they ever got inspections in the Balokar military.

Ryan watched out of his periphery as two more officers walked into the room, the golden insignias on their sleeves identifying them as Sergeants. They split up, one ramming open Ryan’s locker while the other rummaged through Samiha’s, Ryan noting the alien turn her head a little to track the man going through her stuff. She looked away when Adamski gave her a pointed look, walking between the assembled team and overlooking their uniforms.

“Iron out those sleeves, Private,” Adamski said to Dominic. “Use those combs, recruit,” he added as he appraised Tilu. Did the aliens use combs? He tried not to smile at the thought of Samiha giving herself braids after a long day of being a pain in the ass.

He could hear the Sergeant behind him tossing some of his possessions on to the floor, but he kept his eyes trained ahead, Samiha raising her brow as she sensed his cool head. He’d warned Brindley and Dominic, but held off on telling the aliens. Tilu came off as a descent woman and a friendly person, but as much as he wanted to warn her, he couldn’t afford to risk her passing the word along to Samiha. That would ruin his plan.

“Captain?” one of the Sergeants asked. It was the man next to Samiha’s locker. “Got something.”

“What is it?” Adamski asked, the Seargent holding something out to him. It was a very familiar black back tied with a string, the very same one Samiha had in the bathroom. The Captain gave the alien a look, then pulled the neck apart, frowning at whatever its contents were.

“Recruit Samiha,” Adamski said.

“Yes, sir?” she asked, clearly fighting the urge to turn around and face him.

“Mind telling me what this is?”

He presented the bag so it was in her field of view, Samiha’s amber eyes dipping to look. “It’s medication,” she answered.

“Yeah? For what?”

“I do not have an English word to translate, sir.”

Bullshit, Ryan wanted to say, and it was clear Adamksi was thinking the same thing, judging by his expression. “Never thought to let me or your squad leader know?” the Captain asked.

A flash of suspicious crossed her beak at the mention of Ryan, and she stared at him, Ryan meeting her eyes and curling one side of his lip. You set this up, her expression said, a blend of anger and confusion on her face as she struggled to form a reply.

“W-We Balokar require many such supplements. My Kith would tell you the same thing?”

“So it’s supplements now?” Adamski countered. “Seems easily translatable to me. Seargent, does recruit Tilu have any medicines as well?”

After a minute or two of inspection, the officer shook his head. “Maybe your Kith can help support your story, recruit. Let’s go have a chat with her. The rest of you,” he added as the Sergeants ushered Seela out into the hall. “Clean this mess up and report to the training ground, ask for Staff Sergeant Vao, he’ll take over until we sort this out.”

The little bag in hand, he turned his back on them, his clicking heels slowly fading into the hallway until they were gone entirely.

“The hell was in that pouch thing?” Brindley asked, directing his question to Tilu. The alien looked worried, moving over and peering down the hall in the direction the Captain had gone.

“Didn’t you hear Samiha?” Tilu replied “It was medicine.”

“Yeah?” Brindley asked. “What kind? Panadol, pain killers, or maybe something a little more… y’know, stonger?”

“She wasn’t lying,” Tilu continued, looking back over her shoulder at them. “Every Balokarid carries a pouch or two on hand, we require it, that’s what medication means, right?”

“So where’s yours?” Dominic asked.

“I gave Samiha my last one, she’d run out the other day,” Tilu explained. “We should go and support her, I didn’t like the Captain’s tone just now.”

“Are you bonkers?” Brindley asked. “We go in and interrupt a bunch of officers investigating, we’d all be in the shit.”

“We can’t just leave her alone!” Tilu replied, gesturing out of the doorway. She turned to Ryan, who’d been listening in while cleaning up his locker. “Corporal, you’re our Kith, her Kith. You just going to sit here while she’s… what, investigated? She’s done nothing wrong!”

“I’m sorry, Tilu,” he said, shaking his head. “Our hands are tied. You heard the Cap, he gave us our orders. I’m sure Samiha will be fine.” Even though this is her own fault, he neglected to add.

“I hope you are right,” Tilu sighed, walking back over to her bunk, beginning to clean up the mess the Sergeants had made.

“What’re these meds used for anyway?” Ryan asked. “You both have the same condition or something?”

“It’s not so much a condition,” Tilu replied. “Think of it like a… need, like water or food. We Balokarid require certain supplements on top of those things, compounds that can only be harvested from the homeworld.”

“But we’re entire sectors away from your planet,” Ryan said. “How’ve you got them now?”

“We brought a surplus with us when we fled the colony,” Tilu said. “We export them in large batches to the Hub from our carriers, where we grow them in hydroponic farms.”

Ryan had never heard of this additional requirement, and neither had the Captain apparently. Then again, the first aliens had only stepped foot onto the station a few months ago, he wondered what other kinds of hidden needs the Balokar had. And just why was Samiha hiding her medication anyway, if it was a necessity for every Balokarid?

He felt a pang of guilt well up inside him, had he blown Samiha’s bathroom break all out of proportion? He might have just doomed Samiha’s spot in the program under a false assumption. He felt like a scheming Confederate Board member, using cutthroat tactics to deface anyone he didn’t like.

Whether he’d been right or not to let her secret slip didn’t matter now, it was done, only time would tell if Samiha would return.

***

Ryan worked up a bit of a sweat as he jogged between the buildings, the recycled air of the station leaving a bad aftertaste in his burning lungs. The dingy light of the lampposts gave the base a gloomy atmosphere, the fading light reflecting the winding down of the day. The Hub did not have a day and night cycle in the traditional sense, but there were certain allocated times where the station’s lights would cycle into a lower setting, which was about the best the builders could do to simulate a nighttime. There were hardly any people about the base at this hour outside of the night watch, which was perfect for Ryan, he’d always been a fan of late-night jogs.

He stopped at the next corner, leaning on his knees as he panted. The strange approach of night on the station wasn’t the only thing that was off. In any Confederate base, night was the time personnel were constricted to their quarters, or at least indoors, but none of the officers had an issue with him running some late laps. As long as he showed up to where he was needed the next morning, he was free to do whatever he wanted in his spare time. He guessed this was a result of the station’s original civilian background, before people started raising arms against the Confederacy, and the Hub began to shift its focus from trade to militarization. It made the life between a civilian and a soldier almost seem to blend together.

He was about to turn around and make his way back to his quarters, when the hairs on his neck stood on end. He looked over his shoulder, the pools of light beneath the lampposts so weak it was hard to make out much in the shadows. He could hear leaves rustling in the artificial breeze, the distant echo of voices and the occasional whir of a machine turning on, but there was nothing, no one.

He turned on the spot again, nearly jumping out of his skin as a figure appeared on the path ahead. Two yellow eyes peered at him from the gloom just beyond a lamppost’s influence, like two floating orbs. As it leered into the light, he saw a hooked, dark beak, followed by a cone of rusty feathers that seemed to shimmer in the light. The stalks were standing all the way up, making Samiha looked like some kind of bristling porcupine.

“You think this is funny, monkey-boy?”

Ryan took a step back, his heart beating faster. Her voice was so low, so... menacing. He hated to admit it, but a bit of primal feat swelled up inside him as the eight-foot alien walked into the light, her feathers making her look twice as large than she usually was. The urge to run washed over him, but he forced it back, he couldn’t be scared of this alien, he was squad lead, not her.

“S-Samiha?” he said. “What are you doing here?”