Exultant

Pirius snapped to attention. “Sir, I am Pilot Officer Pirius of—”

“I don’t care who you are. Put on your belts.” They hesitated for one heartbeat, and she yelled. “Do it.”

Pirius’s inertial belt was battered, and the fabric was stained dark, perhaps with blood, though the color was indistinct in the pale Galaxy light. As he snapped it on, weight clutched at him, dragging him to the asteroid dirt. It had been preset to what felt like more than a standard gravity. He reached for the clasp.

“Don’t touch that control.”

Pirius snapped back to attention.

“My name is Marta,” the captain said. “This is a base at the heart of the Quintuplet Cluster. We know it as Quin.” Pirius knew that this was indeed a long way from Arches. “Let me begin your reeducation right now. This is an Army base, and I am an Army officer. You are still Navy perso

Pirius’s heart sank. The Service Corps: the shit-shovellers. He said, “Sir, what will our duties—”

“Shut up.”

“Sir.”

“That is the last question I want to hear from you. It is not important what you know, only what you do. And you do only what I tell you. Is that clear?”

The three of them mumbled a reply. “Sir.”

She took a step closer to them, and Pirius saw that she walked, not stiffly, but a little u

She stood back. “Let’s get this straight from the start. I don’t want Navy rejects here. Nobody wants you. But here you are. The work you will be assigned will be the dirtiest of dirty jobs, and the most dangerous. I’ve no doubt you’ll foul it up, but soon you’ll die, and then you’ll be out of my hair. Until then you will do what I tell you without question or complaint.”

“Sir.”

She had a data desk in her shining left hand. “Let’s check you are who you’re supposed to be. Pirius.”

“Pilot Officer Pirius, sir.”

“You’re not a pilot anymore. Pirius.”

“Sir.”

“Cohl.”

“Sir.”

“Tuta.”

Enduring Hope didn’t reply.

Marta didn’t look up from her desk. “Tuta.”

“Sir, my name is—”

Pirius broke in. “He’s Tuta, sir.”

Marta tapped her desk. “Fine. So you’re loyal to each other. You can all share Tuta’s punishment.” She touched a control at her chest, and suddenly the pull of false gravity on Pirius climbed, reaching twice standard. “Three circuits,” she said. It turned out she meant them to run three circuits of the crater rim; Pirius guessed it would amount to ten kilometers. “Your fitness work starts here,” she said.

Pirius said, “Sir. We’ve lived in these suits for days already.”

“Four circuits,” she said evenly. And she turned her back and walked toward her transport.

Without another word Pirius turned away and began to plod toward the crater wall. Cohl and Hope fell in beside him. He saw that Hope was already sweating. Hope mouthed silently, I’m sorry.

The way wasn’t hard to follow. All around the eroded rim of the crater, there was a path where the asteroid ground had been beaten flat by the passage of uncounted feet. But to run under the false weight of their belts was brutal, and their skinsuits, designed for the comparatively light use of greenship crews, were not intended for this kind of hard labor. Soon Pirius’s feet started to blister, and the suit chafed at his groin and armpits.

Enduring Hope managed two circuits before his legs gave way. Pirius and Cohl had to support him the rest of the course.

When their punishment run was done, Pirius, Cohl, and Hope, exhausted, their skinsuits covered in charcoal-gray asteroid grime, were shoved through a hatchway in the ground.

They found themselves in a shabby underground receiving area. Here orderlies briskly stripped them of their skinsuits, and the rest of their clothing. Uncomfortable as their skinsuits had become, they were unhappy to see these last contacts with their past disappear into the black economy of this nameless Army Rock.

Shivering, naked, they were put through a brisk barrage of showers and radiation baths. Every hair on their heads, faces, and bodies was burned off, and the top layer of skin turned into a powder that they could brush away with their fingers. Clumsy, aged bots probed at them, working at their teeth and ears and eyes. Fluid was pumped into their mouths and recta, only to spill out from both ends, humiliatingly, bringing the contents of their guts with it. After that they were subjected to a battery of injections that went on until their arms and thighs ached.

Pirius understood the need for such precautions. The human bases studded around the Front were closed communities, isolated by light-years, and tended to develop their own strains of bugs and mites. Pirius and the others could easily pick up a disabling plague from Arches, to which they might have no immunity. But despite all these injections, he suspected that a lot more care was being taken to ensure that Quin Base wasn’t infected by them.

When the cleansing was done, the three of them were led out of the receiving area. Then they were pushed out through a bulkhead hatch into a much larger chamber beyond. It was a barracks, a noisy high-roofed chamber crowded with people — and they were still naked, to Pirius’s sudden horror; the medics hadn’t given them so much as a blanket between them.

A gri

Pirius tried not to be self-conscious, to give a lead to his crew. But of course it was impossible; he walked hunched over, his hands clamped over his genitals.

This underground habitat was basically a barracks, like the Barracks Ball at Arches. But it was much less orderly, crammed with tottering heaps of bunks that climbed from floor to rough-hewn ceiling. The air was hot and muggy, and stank of stale food and sewage.

And everywhere there were people. They crowded the alleys, they clambered on the bunks, they stared as the flyers passed. Some of them wore official-looking coveralls, like the girl who had met them, but others were bare to the waist, or wore shorts and shirts improvised from worn-out coveralls or blankets. And some of them just ran naked, as unashamed as the flyers were mortified. They ran and shouted, they wrestled on the floor, and couples and threesomes enjoyed noisy sex in the bunks, skin against glistening skin. And they all looked young, even compared to the population of Arches Base.

It was a swarming mass of youth and energy, an animal mass; Pirius had never seen anything like it. It was more like a nursery than a barracks. But some of these children were already veterans of combat. You could tell, he was starting to learn, by the gleam of metal in their eyes.

They reached a little block of bunks. One of the bunks was occupied by a man who lay on his back, hands locked behind his head. He said, “Welcome. Pick a bunk! It doesn’t really matter which…” He was old — at least twenty-five, old compared to the population of this chamber anyhow. He even had a little gray at his temples.

On three of the bunks sat small stacks of clothing: coveralls, underwear, a skinsuit each. The clothing was clearly ancient, much patched, and lacked any sentience whatsoever, just a one-size-fits- all design with crude expansion joints at elbows, knees, waist, and neck. You even had to do up the fastenings yourself. But the coveralls were at least clothes, and the flyers grabbed at them.