[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

not that newbie would cry on his first night. We gambled on whether or not he d get rolled in the showers,
and whether or not he d tell.
I was lucky. That only happened to me once, and instinct had told me to shut my mouth. You don t get
much respect for crying to your career officer about what happened, but that one day when you unhook a
guy s rig when he s on the climbing wall and he falls, well, he knows what he did to deserve it, and he
knows better than to tell as well. I can still remember the look on Wade s face when he saw I was on top
of the wall, at the anchor point for his rope. I d let him get all the way to the top, so it was a thirty-foot
drop back to the mats when he lost his footing and the ropes didn t catch him.
 Little fucker! Wade screamed at me when they were carrying him to the med bay. A few of his
friends beat the hell out of me for it, but it was still worth it. I wasn t the one with the permanent limp.
I thought about that, and Rushton curled his fingers through mine.
 You re okay, I heard in my head.
My eyes flashed open.
Hell. Did Rushton hear that? Did this shit go both ways? Was it an echo of what he d thought before
I drifted off to sleep earlier, or was Rushton in my head right now, a sick voyeur, learning all about what
that asshole Wade did to me that time in the showers? Because I wasn t a sniveling fucking kid anymore,
and I didn t want him to think I was. That was three years ago, and I d manned up since then. I d got my
payback.
I shifted away from him as far as I could, until I hit the rails of the cot. It was narrow enough that we
were still touching anyway.
 I ll get you your dinner, Doc said, his face ghostly behind the mask of his hazmat suit.
 Hell, yes, Doc! Med bay rations! I tried to say it with my usual enthusiasm, but it fell flat.
So did Doc s laugh.
Food on Defender Three wasn t that good, but it was slightly better in the med bay. The vegetables
were steamed instead of canned, and the meat didn t come apart like a wet sponge when you poked it with
a fork. The food was one of the reasons I hung around the med bay so much. Sometimes I got to finish off
what the patients didn t.
Rushton looked at me sideways. Had I just outed myself as a bin scab? That s what we called the
ibis that foraged through the rubbish tip back home: bin scabs. Sometimes thinking of that would make me
smile. Not today. Today home wasn t a comfort. Today it was a fucking black hole pulling me in.
Doc came back a few minutes later with our trays of food. He drew up a chair and watched us eat.
 Your blood s still clear, Brady, he told me.  If there s no change by morning, you re a free man. Well,
as free as you can be in these circumstances.
Relief spread through me. Through us. Jesus, it was almost enough to put me off my dinner.  Doc, I
dunno what s happening here. It s weird shit.
I was half-afraid he d think I was crazy. I was hearing Rushton s voice in my head, for Christ s sake.
What else would he think?
Doc laid his gloved hand on my shoulder.  Tell me.
I looked at Rushton. He was tired again. I could see it in the shadows under his green eyes, but more
than that I could feel it.
I picked at a bean. It was kind of slimy.  Doc, I feel what he feels. I can hear his voice in my head. I
tried not to let my voice waver, but I couldn t help it.
Doc s eyes widened behind his plastic mask.
Don t freak out, Doc, please. If you go, I ll go too, and then where the hell will we be?
Rushton shifted, and I felt the electricity tickle when the back of his hand brushed against my wrist.
 It s temporary, he said.  It s a shared connection. My system is piggybacking on his. The downside is it
creates a sort of feedback of electrical impulses and biochemistry.
I raised my eyebrows. That was the downside? The electrical impulses and biochemistry I could
deal with. It was the frigging telepathy I didn t need.
Rushton glanced at me. A wry smile tugged quickly at the corners of his lips.
I scowled at him. Not. Fucking. Helping.
 You need Garrett to live, Doc said.  Is that right?
Rushton nodded.  Yes, sir.
 And this is only temporary? Doc asked. He narrowed his eyes.
 I think so, sir.
 Good, said Doc. He squeezed my shoulder like I was the patient.  Because this kid s going to be
my best medic, aren t you, Garrett?
 Yes, Doc, I said.
No, Doc. The Faceless are gonna kill us all.
 Good, Doc said again.  Now shut your mouths and eat your dinner, and I ll see about releasing
you in the morning. I don t want to hear another peep out of you. Got it, Garrett?
 Yes, Doc.
 Good lad, said Doc. If I d had hair, he would have ruffled it. As it was he scrubbed his gloved
hand across my buzz cut a few times. Doc s kids were all grown up, but that didn t stop him trying to treat
me like one. And it didn t stop me from secretly liking it.
But not today.
Rushton looked at me.  I can t eat all this. Do you want it?
Maybe that half smile was meant to be comforting.
Maybe he wasn t just another asshole officer after all.
Shame he was a fucking traitor.
His smile faltered, faded, and then it was like it had never happened at all.
I couldn t tell if the guilt that burrowed into my guts was his or mine.
* * * *
They waited until the middle of the night to move us. Night was arbitrary. It was always night in the
black, but the clocks were all twenty-four hour, and we still had a seven-day week. So it was technically
a Tuesday morning, at 0300 hours when they moved us, even though it looked no different from any other
moment in time on Defender Three.
Cameron Rushton was wearing a borrowed uniform with the name Coleman stitched on the pocket. It
didn t suit him. Maybe it was just the way his hair curled around the collar. He looked too different from
anyone else on Defender Three, with his long hair and his faint tan. Not that there was much chance of
running into anyone else.
Most guys were snoring in their barracks. The lights had automatically dimmed at last bell and
wouldn t come on again until 0600, when the flickering tubes would try to fool our bodies into thinking it
was a natural morning, that we were still diurnal creatures, and that all this time in the black wasn t
slowly draining the life out of every one of us. We d spent millions of years evolving on a planet with the
sun and the moon and the changing seasons, and our biology didn t cope well with the sterile, lifeless
stations we d made.  The yellow sun makes things grow strong and tall, Lucy used to sing, but I guess
the military never heard the song. Once a month we were ordered to strip off to our underwear, put on [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

  • zanotowane.pl
  • doc.pisz.pl
  • pdf.pisz.pl
  • szkla.opx.pl

    •