Marine Cadet (The Human Legion Book 1) (16 page)

“I already did.”

“Then do it again.”

“I will put my squad before Xin. I do so swear. On my honor and the honor of the Marine Corps.”

The icy tension melted a little.

Zug got out of his chair and came over to Arun. He shook his hand, bent over and kissed him on both cheeks.

Zug sometimes claimed doing this was his cultural imperative because he was French. At other times, he admitted he did this to wind people up.

This time he kissed Arun to whisper a message in his ear. “I am still your friend. Make sure it stays that way.”

At 13:00 hours, after a session at the firing range where he’d scored second best in the squad, Arun grabbed a bike from the Spineway B on Level 4 and cycled on his way to another meeting with the alien scribe.

At Helix 6 a thought struck him as he started coasting down to Detroit’s lowest depths. This was their sixth talkie-talkie session and the Troggie scribe was showing no signs of growing bored. The opposite, if anything. And that meant they weren’t going to end any time soon.

Referring to the creature as ‘The Trog’ was getting really old.

It was time Arun named his alien.

Arun laughed. He had no doubt that his Trog already had a name, but it was bound to come in the form of a smell or chemical signal. Asking for the scribe’s name would have been met with one of those condescending speeches about how humans were stunted little creatures with no sense of smell, and such a limited concept of the world around them that it was a wonder they could get from one day to the next without accidentally killing themselves.

Arun was so lost in lists of candidate names that he’d picked up more speed than he realized. When the ramp curled round into the top of Level 8, he had to swerve suddenly to avoid hitting an assault tank on its side with the grav sleds off. The team of Hardits repairing the tank hurled abuse at Arun as he sped past, narrowly avoiding hitting one of the stupid monkey-creatures who was too engrossed in an engine diagnostic screen to look up.

Before he disappeared around the bend, Arun lifted up out of the saddle and mimed farting at the Hardits. Like the Trogs, the primary sense of this other alien species was smell, so he reckoned that was the best way to communicate his feelings to the Hardits in their own language.

It was only being polite really.

Judging by the roars of rage, Arun’s message was received and understood.

Arun whistled cheerfully as he followed the tunnel round and round getting deeper with every turn. The helixes were the only route down for heavy equipment. If there was a major logistics operation going on in Helix 6, then Arun would be warned by the status map mounted on the walls at regular intervals. But today the helix was almost deserted. Being by himself for a short while was such a luxury that he decided it made up for missing the chow time that his comrades would be tucking into right now. By the time he got back, he’d only have the chance to grab a few scraps. And by then his squad would be going up the orbital elevator for an afternoon session of dropboat training. Another training session missed.

But Arun wasn’t going to let that bother him today. This was the first time he’d ever cycled to these depths. Normally he met the Trog via one of the main surface entrances of the nest, in the forest to the southeast of Detroit. Today he was going to meet through the connection between the lowest level of Detroit and the nest.

Until last week he had no idea that the human base joined up with the nest. How many more secrets were waiting to be revealed?

Arun turned his mind back to his naming task. How about
Whistler
? Arun rolled the name around his mind, trying it out. He liked the idea: whistling was something only humans could do. It didn’t sound right, though.

How about
Bike
? No. P
eddler
?

People said that bicycles were an entirely human invention, one that annoyed the Hardits in particular, given their specialism in technology and engineering. Mining human creativity was the reason Earth had been nurtured for millennia before begin fought over and eventually forced into the Trans-Species Union under the sponsorship of the White Knights. Technologically speaking, humanity was a million years or more behind the most advanced of their neighbors, but that also meant they didn’t have a million years of precedent saying what works and what does not, stifling the ability to view old problems from an entirely new angle. Or so people said. But people said a lot of things that might be complete hokum, as Gupta might say. Still, it made for a good story.

But Peddler didn’t sound right either. The name sounded like a guy he knew from Dog Company: Pedro.

Peddler. Pedro.

The connection was obscure and it was dumb. But it was dumb in a human way and that was what Arun was after. Pedro it would be.

——

“What did you call me?” The scribe spiraled both antennae, thrusting one forward and the other back. Arun recognized this as an expression of bemusement.

“I called you Pedro.”

“Why?”

“Because that is your new name.”

“But why? Why Pedro? What does it mean?”

Arun shrugged. “Why does it have to mean anything? It’s just a name. Your name.”

“You mean that Pedro is neither descriptive nor has a functional purpose, such as to denote rank or role? The name is a product of pure whimsy?”

Arun rolled his eyes. Pedro could over-complicate the simplest things. “Yeah, that’s what I just said, Pedro. It’s a frakking name. Don’t any of you overgrown bugs have names?”

Pedro touched one antenna to Arun’s shoulder. “No one in our nest has a name. We only have…
designations
, I guess you would call them. Just as you name and number the passageways and chambers of your tunnels. I cannot express how pleased this makes me. To be given a name is a great honor.”

“Hold on. If none of you guys have names. How come it’s a great honor to be given one?”

Pedro did that annoying gesture where he folded over his antennae in a loose approximation of human shoulders and then shrugged them. “Because I have decided that this is so.
My house. My frakking rules.
”

“You what? Are you quoting me?”

“I often repeat your phrases, though do not seem to recognize this.”

“Figures.”

Pedro rose on all six legs and skittered around in a circle making sudden little leaps in the air as he did. He’d explained once that this was his way of burning off dangerously high levels of excitement.

Even armed with that explanation, Arun couldn’t help but be very conscious of the excitable creature’s bulk even if it was bounding around playfully. Pedro must weigh upwards of 300 pounds. If he slipped and fell on top of Arun there would be badly broken bones, and broken Marine cadets were not worth the trouble of fixing.

Arun fiddled with the pheromone emitter dangling around his neck. Pedro had organized delivery of the emitter to Arun’s hab-disk, with a note explaining that this made him smell like a nest sibling. Without the device, the Trogs defending their nest entrance would have killed him.

He needn’t have worried. Despite the chaotic appearance of Pedro’s little dance, the alien never once lost his footing. Arun suspected that the tiniest detail of his over-excitement dance was perfectly choreographed in advance, a pattern stored in its memory ready for use. They were obsessive about the details of life these Trogs.

Pedro halted abruptly and turned to stare at Arun. “With this name, you have assigned a gender to me. Do you believe that has significance?”

“I
know
it has no significance. It’s you who are obsessed with sex.”

“I see.”

“
I see
? What in Horden’s name is that supposed to mean?”

“You say more than you know, friend McEwan. Sometimes your subconscious tells me more than you consciously say. That’s how I learn so much from you.”

“Sure. Well I’m glad to be so transparent. Tell me, Pedro, what do you want me to reveal subconsciously today?”

“Today I want to hear about a day in the life of a human Marine cadet.”

“
A day in the life
. You’ve been reading human books again, haven’t you?”

Again with the shrugging antennae.

Arun sighed. “Get me some water, will you? I have long days. Better get my throat lubed up if you want to hear about them.”

Pedro scuttled over to the water dispenser.

These sessions with Pedro had so inured Arun to the bizarre that he was only just starting to appreciate how weird this new room was. He recorded images through his eyes while Pedro was busy at the water dispenser – the same kind that was dotted around the human areas of the base. The Troggie tunnels were dark, but this room was brightly illuminated with red-tinged lamps. Arun was sitting in a swiveling sofa chair, deeply padded and covered in red faux leather. It looked brand new. Hung on the walls and ceiling were framed photographs of cadets. Arun was in most of the photos. All of Delta Section were there too. So was Xin. He wasn’t going to ask why Xin was there. He’d never mentioned her, had he?

“Do you like this chamber?”

“It’s… I don’t know. I guess it’s a good attempt to make me feel–” he glanced at Xin’s photo– “I don’t know what exactly but it makes me feel
something
.”

“Ahh. I see you like the photograph of your beloved.”

“My be-
what
?”

“Your beloved. The female you love.”

“She is not my beloved.”

“Correction. Ah, but your language is so messy. It is a minefield. This female is not one you are loving but one you wish fervently that you
shall
love in the future. You are in love but not…”

Pedro paused to regroup. Arun felt his face flush, caught precariously between anger and laughter.

“Let me rephrase,” said Pedro. “That Xin is one hot chick.”
That last sentence sounded suspiciously like it had been sampled from Arun’s voice pattern
. “I guess you’d love a piece of her action.”
So did that.

The problem about Pedro, Arun decided, was that his face was an impassive mask. He couldn’t help but feel Pedro was laughing at him from behind that mask. Whenever the conversation touched anything sensitive or awkward, Arun just wanted to punch the alien to wipe the hidden smirk off its face, even though that was a totally dumb thing to wish for, given that Pedro was physically incapable of smirking.

Arun stepped back from confrontation. It wouldn’t help. That it wouldn’t help just made Arun want to hit Pedro even more and that made him feel… feel that he’d rather Barney was there for a little advice and maybe a sedative too.

“You got those words out of movies and TV shows, didn’t you?”

“Correct.”

“Do me a favor,” he told Pedro, “don’t mention anything about girls again. You’re just annoying when you do. Anyway, if you know all this stuff, why do you need me? I sometimes think you know more about humans that I do. What’s the point of these chit-chats anyway?”

“Because…” Pedro twisted his body into something approximating an S-shape. It probably meant something profound. “Because I have read facts about humans. This is not the same as
understanding
your species. The distinction could become vital one day. Our future may present opportunities for cooperation.”

Yup! There we have it
, thought Arun.
Those stupid hints that I’m meant to be a messiah or freedom fighter or something
. He bit down on saying the words aloud, remembering that Pedro had gone to the trouble of meeting him in a mothballed orbital platform to escape the surveillance that permeated Detroit. After that first meeting, Pedro had never again hinted that there could be ways to live other than as slaves.

He laughed instead, noticing the manic edge to the sound, but why should he care if a dumb insect heard it? Depending on who you talked to, Arun was too soft, too much of a worrier, or just too much of a loser to be a proper Marine. Well, his emotions might have run wild recently, but he was no coward.

No one had ever accused him of being sensible either.

“Am I special?” Arun asked.
There, he’d said it
. And somewhere an AI would hear and record his words. “Is there something special I’m supposed to do? Is there something unique about me, Arun McEwan?”

Pedro pointed his antennae at Arun and then stood motionless and silent for a good minute. He might be a dumb insect, but he was perfectly capable of making Arun feel dumber.

“We are all unique individuals, Arun McEwan.” The insect’s artificial voice was so quiet it was barely audible.

“Unique? Horden’s Organs, you dumbchuck, you’re a
hive creature
. A drone. Uniqueness is an alien concept that you’re trying to learn from me.”

“I see I have upset you,” said the scribe. “I apologize.”

The alien wandered around for a while. The movement looked confused and aimless. It probably wasn’t, but Arun had no idea what it meant.

When he was done, Pedro clambered onto a shelf carved into one dirt wall. Dim orange lamps were directed at the shelf. Basking in the resulting heat was probably a sensual pleasure. Arun had no way of knowing for sure without asking and he wasn’t about to do that. The session had already edged too close to the borders of friendship.

“Tell me about a day in your life,” said the scribe.

“You mean like an itinerary?”

“Sure. However you want to do it is fine. Then I’ll tell you about my day. Shoot.”

“Okay. Well, we wake at midnight. That’s the end of First Sleep. We’re woken gently. Basically, a switch in our heads is turned on by our internal clocks. We might take a leak, have a slurp of drink, but basically we put on our training cap, check it’s attached properly and that we’ve inserted our suit AI chip. Then we go back to sleep.”

“This sleep-training cap – what does it teach you?”

“Well, I don’t actually know, seeing as I’m asleep at the time. I seem to know a lot of facts that I never learned in class or read in a book. I mean, we’ll be training on a new weapon and I’ll know burst radius, recoil strength, ammo variants and all that stuff, and yet I’ve never seen that kind of gun before. What else the caps do, we can only guess. Probably makes us super-brave and ultra-loyal to the White Knights.”