17
Max pulled up in his Gazelle. Rev pursed his lips but didn’t say anything. It had taken his stepdad three weeks to get it back—and six-hundred-and thirty BCs. Max hadn’t asked for Rev to repay him, but he was sending Max a quarter of his meager salary until he paid him back.
The passenger door slid open, and Rev threw his assault pack into the back seat before slipping inside.
“Thanks for picking me up. Where’s mom?”
“She’s back at the house, making dinner. Says you are going to want your favorite.”
Both men chuckled. Rev’s mom had gone on a cooking spree some years back, determined to get back to our roots. But she’d never mastered the art, not even coming close to the family’s run-of-the-mill autochef. Rev didn’t even know what his favorite was supposed to be, and who knew what he’d be getting?
Hovers crowded inside the parking lot, and his stepdad took control of the Gazelle, maneuvering it carefully as he made his way to the exit.
“This place is a madhouse. Traffic’s a bitch,” he said. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
It should be pretty obvious what was happening. Marines were restricted to the base for the duration, and except for family visitation days, which happened once every two weeks, they had no contact with friends and families beyond calls from the USO.
With two major exceptions: just before and just after deployments. The regiment’s deployment was unplanned, so Rev had a grand total of eight hours outside of the gate.
And he was lucky. The poor bastards in Direct and General Support, and of course, the Ninety-nines, were getting squat. They were too busy mounting out the regiment. For the Direct Combat Marines, once they had their own mount-out ready, they could go on town leave. And as all of the Marines and sailors in the regiment were from metro Swansea, that meant they could all go home, if they so chose.
Rev fingered the house arrest bracelet on his wrist. The regiment was not relying on anything else to keep track of them. The bracelet continually broadcast their locations, and should they not return by pumpkin time, a cop would be dispatched to escort them back to base.
With the amount of booze many of them would be imbibing, that would probably be quite a few of them. But there were always a few runners, people who thought that by wrapping foil around their house arrest bracelets, to quote one unfounded rumor, they could avoid deployment. The drunks never paid much for their transgressions, but the runners went straight to MilDes 99.
Max drove the Gazelle past the ever-present group of Angel Shits—Children of the Angels—the worshippers of the Centaurs who thought they’d come to rescue humanity and uplift them to a higher plane of existence. They were harmless, but there was always a group of them outside the main gate, promising divine retribution if humanity kept fighting their gods.
Rev’s upper lip lifted in a sneer. Before, he’d just thought of them as fringe looneys. Now, he had a different view. How could people be so stupid?
“You look . . . different,” Max said as he pulled out onto Freeman Highway and turned control back to the Gazelle.
Rev gave him a hurried glance.
Does he know I’ve been augmented?
Nothing this big could be kept secret forever, and surely there were rumors by now. And in the Guild, it was possible that his stepdad worked on a project with military implications, and that could have put him in the know.
Rev just gave a non-committal grunt.
“More of a man,” Max said. “I guess the training was pretty hard?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” Rev said in an understatement.
Eight months ago, he might have taken the opportunity to unload on Max, to complain, maybe looking for a little sympathy. But at the moment, he was satisfied to leave it at that.
“So, you’re deploying?”
The people in town knew the drill as well. With special circumstances exceptions, the Marines just didn’t get to swarm into the city unless they were coming or going.
Aside from broadcasting each Marine’s location, the bracelet was also tuned into certain keywords, recording them to check if anyone was discussing classified material. Which was stupid, he thought. What was his stepdad going to do? Rush to the Centaurs with the intel?
Well, maybe the Angel Shits would if they could, but as far as Rev knew, the idiots had no way to contact the Centaurs. But to keep the bracelet from pinging him, he just nodded. It wasn’t as if the situation wasn’t obvious, even to a non-military city like Swansea.
Not historically, at least. There had always been a reserve Marine battalion at Camp Alissa Nguyen. It wasn’t until war had broken out that the base was expanded, the recruit depot created, and the regiment stood up.
Even now, with the Marines generally restricted to base, the city still wasn’t much of a military town. If not for the fact that so many from the region had volunteered or been conscripted—and that so many sons and daughters had lost their lives serving—it might have been easy to ignore the regiment.
Rev put his mind on autopilot during the drive into town. Max was going on about how Grover, Rev’s younger half-brother, was tearing it up on the flipball field. Rev hadn’t been a bad player himself at left slot, and while he’d enjoyed playing, he’d never been driven as Grover evidently was, never pushing the offseason workouts. Idly, he wondered how he’d do on the field now. Augments aside, he was in the best physical shape of his life.
The Gazelle pulled into the parking lot, and almost before it settled on its skirts, a rocket erupted from the door.
“Rev!” the rocket screamed and blasted into his arms before he was fully out of the hover.
“Hey, Neesy!” Rev said, sweeping his little sister high off the ground. At ten, she was much bigger than the little girl who’d cried when he left for boot camp, but he had no problem holding her over his head. “Miss me?”
“Of course. What did you bring me?”
Rev laughed, then said, “I wasn’t away on vacation, Hamster. I was in training. Not much for me to get you there.”
“Oh, that’s OK. I really didn’t expect anything.”
Rev swung Neesy to his shoulder and marched up the walk.
Ms. DeCarlo-Moray from 1A slid open her window, stuck her head out, and said, “Welcome home, Marine. Your ma said you were coming back today.”
“Thanks. I won’t be here for long, though.”
“You getting ready to deploy outta here?”
Rev shrugged.
“I know, I know. You’d have to kill me if you told me,” she said with the ancient retort. “But you kick some Centaur ass, you hear me?”
“Sure will, Ms. DeCarlo-Moray.”
“You call me Mimi now, you hear?”
“She said ‘ass,’” Neesy whispered as he carried her through the door.
Rev’s mom frowned on coarse language, as she called it. Over the last eight months, well, Marines were not noted for polite speech.
“Don’t let me curse,” he subvocalized.
Which activated his AI, something he didn’t mean to do during his liberty.
<I will attempt to foresee when you might do so.>
Maybe getting to use his AI was becoming second nature to him, but he was home now for the next few hours, and he didn’t need it spying on him. He put it back to sleep.
He let Neesy bend over to activate the door, then stepped through into the apartment. An aroma of . . . something, but he didn’t know what, rushed out to envelop him.
“Hey,” Grover said from the couch where he was watching the holo, not bothering to get up.
“Is that you, honey?” his mom asked, coming around the half-wall from the kitchen. Her hands were coated in what had to be flour.
He put Neesy down before his mother hugged him. Rev felt guilty for wondering if his mom’s hands were leaving prints on his Charlies, and he felt an overwhelming desire to run to the head—toilet, he should call it here—to check it out. He’d never been that concerned about his clothes before, but eight months as a recruit and Marine had beaten it into him.
“I’m so glad to see you, son.” She released him, then held him out at arms’ length. “Oh, and so big. Mia’s going to be happy to see that.”
Rev didn’t bother to tell her he and Mia weren’t a thing. She’d been overjoyed when she heard they were dating, and if she assumed Mia was somehow waiting on him—or that he wanted her to—then it was easier just to let it go.
“I made shepherd’s pie for you, your favorite.”
Rev didn’t know what shepherd’s pie was, and it certainly wasn’t his favorite. Maybe his mom had made it once and he hadn’t said it was terrible.
The family autochef wasn’t the best, but it had a few snack programs that the base autochefs didn’t have, given that they weren’t particularly healthy, and he’d much rather have some of those than this shepherd’s pie. But once again, it was just easier to go with the flow and be thankful—and maybe, for a minute, just exist, in the place he’d originally belonged.
“Grace, give him a minute to breathe,” his stepdad said, coming through the door.
“You want to change into something more comfortable?” he asked, holding Rev’s assault pack.
Rev had brought some PT gear, intending to wear those, but he suddenly wanted to stay in his Charlies. This was the first time he’d worn them other than for inspections. His chest was bare, other than the single Raider badge, so there wasn’t much to show, but it was still a Marine uniform.
“Nah, I think I’ll keep these on,” he said, sitting down beside Grover.
“What’s that?” Grover asked, pointing at Rev’s wrist.
“My house arrest bracelet. They gotta keep tabs on me.”
“’Cause you’re a criminal?”
“Grover!” his mother said.
“What? It’s true.”
“I was exaggerating. We just call them house arrest bracelets. And we all wear them, volunteers or conscripts.”
“Cool,” Grover said, turning back to the game.
“Neesy, do you want to help mommy finish the dinner?” his mother asked.
“I want to stay with Rev.”
“It’s OK, Hamster. You go help her. I’ll be around until later this evening.
With nothing else to do at the moment, he settled in to watch the game.
* * *
Only, he didn’t stay until late evening. The dinner was a horrendous-looking mess but surprisingly not terrible, especially when he covered it with ketchup. He had a nice chat with his stepdad, and Neesy was a joy.
His mother, on the other hand, wore on him a bit, relentless in her nervous chatter. She kept going on about Mia until he finally told her he hadn’t had any contact with her since a week before he reported in. That didn’t faze her. She said that of course, he had to focus on his work, but it was just a phase, and they’d be back together soon enough.
But it wasn’t just his mother. His thoughts kept going back to Tomiko, Cricket, and the others. They were about to join the war, and here he was while Grover gave him play-by-plays of last week’s game and his mother nattered on about, well, everything. It didn’t seem right.
I belong here, but I don’t. Not really.
He kept checking the time, willing the seconds to tick by quicker, and finally, he’d had enough. He stood, holding a sleeping Neesy, and told them it was time for him to go.
His mother objected, telling him he still had three hours, and Rev flat out lied, telling her he must have misspoken when he first told her. She grumbled but seemed to accept it, her eyes bright with tears.
His stepdad furrowed his eyebrows, and Rev knew he didn’t believe him. But Max didn’t call him out and said he’d take him back. Rev mouthed a silent thank you.
As he carried the sleeping Neesy back to her room, he considered Max. He’d come into their lives when Rev was six, still old enough to remember his father. The man had been good to him, but Rev had rejected Max—always Max to his face or stepdad to others, rarely Dad—at first before slowly coming around to where now, in some ways, Rev was closer to Max than he was to his mother, much as he loved her. And he was glad Max was in their lives. With the upcoming deployment, Rev’s future was far from certain, and it gave him a sense of comfort to know that Max was there to take care of his mom, Neesy, and Grover.
Rev made his goodbyes, then got into the Gazelle.
“Thanks,” he said. “I was just—”
“I know, son.”
They drove most of the way in silence, Rev lost in his thoughts, Max quiet in the moment, a mark of respect that Rev noted. It was a generous thing, small, but welcome. The Gazelle pulled into the parking lot. There weren’t as many hovers there as when they left. Rev figured that most would wait until closer to pumpkin time.
Rev reached for the door activator when Max said, “Wait a second, Rev. Son. I wish things had worked out differently. You’d be with me in the Guild, starting your life. Not with Mia, I know.”
Rev laughed. At least Max understood that.
“But with someone. That’s what I wanted for you. But this—I know we need to fight, and that means young men and women have to shoulder the responsibility. I can’t even imagine—”
“It’s OK, Max. I understand. But I’m here now, and I’m ready.”
His stepdad gave him a long, soul-searching look.
“Are you happy, though? I mean, all things considered?”
Rev opened his mouth, ready to give some smart-alec response, but he stopped.
Am I happy? I got conscripted for a bullshit charge, ripped from my future with the Guild, and for what? To lose my freedom and become a Marine Raider whose chances of survival are pretty damn bleak?
But what else would he be doing? Toiling away as an apprentice? Was that freedom?
He could still do that. All he had to do was survive three years, and all of that would be his. In the meantime, he had a chance to do something important. He thought back to the last eight months. To the training. To Tomiko, Cricket, Yancey, Udu, Fyr, Bundy, and yes, Krissy. To Tanu and Gunny Thapa. To Staff Sergeant Montez.
Finally, he said, “I’m excited, if you can believe that. I want to prove myself. I’m scared, too. But happy? Maybe. Yes.”
He was scared of what could happen, but it was as if a weight had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders, and he realized he wouldn’t change things even if he could. If he wasn’t going to do his duty, who would?
“I’m glad to hear that, Rev.”
“Three years, Max. Then I’ll be back.”
“I hope so. Your mom hopes so. We’re scared, too.”
“Have faith.”
“It’s . . . you said you were excited to go to war. Just don’t get yourself killed, as trite as that sounds? Make sure you come back to her. To us.”
Rev was going to give the rote answer, but he paused. He knew the odds facing him, even if they were only now sinking in. He couldn’t say that, not and be honest.
“I’ll try, but I can’t promise you anything.”
His stepdad was silent for a moment, then he quietly said, “I know, son. But do your best. Do your job, but don’t be a hero.”
Rev didn’t know how to answer that. He opened the door and stepped out. Around him, other Marines were returning, kissing wives, husbands, fathers, mothers. A few held babies in their arms. The families looked pensive and worried. They knew what their loved ones were facing, too. How many of the Marines and sailors wouldn’t be coming back from this mission?
“Rev!”
He turned back and bent over to look at his stepdad.
“We’re proud of you.”
Rev straightened up. “I love you, Dad,” he said before he strode off through the dark to the gate. Words were a gift. Rev knew that now because some people never got the chance to say them.