Revolution: The Ship Series // Book Two (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Just protecting the Ship one pipe full
of sewage at a time.

 
“Wow
,
Zax!” Kalare gasped for breath. Sweat had formed on her brow and slicked the
jet-black hair which framed her face. The gold flecks in her blue eyes
shimmered even in the dull glow of the mess hall lighting. “What a ride! That
was awesome!”

Zax grinned from ear to ear. He had worked on the
simulator for months and was thrilled to see its physical effect on Kalare. His
own heartrate was maxed out and he was panting as well, so it was clear their
nervous systems were fully engaged. This had been the last hurdle in his
programming efforts, and he appeared to have cleared it with room to spare.

Zax gazed around. The cavernous mess hall had emptied
out substantially. The two of them were so immersed in the simulation they
appeared to have missed most of the breakfast period. He appreciated how
strange they must have looked sitting there, breathing hard with their eyes
closed to focus on the simulation shared across their neural Plugs, but
ultimately he couldn’t care less. Kalare continued.

“It’s just about as good as the ones we use in the Pilot
Academy! Oops! I’m sorry, Zax—I did it again. I hate how I keep talking about
my training. It must be so hard for you to hear.”

“It’s OK. It really doesn’t bother me that much.”

Zax was being only partially truthful. He didn’t mind
hearing all of Kalare’s stories about the ins and outs of pilot training. They
helped him stay focused on finding a path that would get his career out of the
toilet and back on track. What bothered him immensely, however, was the look
she gave him
every—single—time
she realized she was in the middle of
another one. He didn’t need her pity and once again attempted to dispel any
reason for her to think otherwise.

“Working in Waste Systems could be a lot worse. The
woman I report to doesn’t care what I do all day as long as the machines keep
running and I stay out of her hair. The civilians do most of the real work, so
I usually spend my shifts volunteering for whatever extra credit assignments I
can find to rebuild my Leaderboard ranking. I even manage to find time to work
on stuff that interests me—like this sim.

“And I
really
don’t mind hearing about the Pilot
Academy. I don’t think I would have worried as much about the physical effects
of my simulator if I hadn’t seen the look on your face whenever you talked
about any of the training exercises you’ve been through.”

“I’ll say it again then, your simulation is as good as
the ones in the Pilot Academy!” Kalare paused for a sec to close her eyes and
check her Plug. “Hey—it’s getting late and I should get going. What’s on your
schedule today?”

“Oh you know—nothing much. Just protecting the Ship one
pipe full of sewage at a time. How about you?”

Kalare rewarded Zax with one of her big, beaming smiles
in response to his joke. “I actually don’t know. I’ve got a shift in Flight Ops
in a few mins, but the Boss said something about the two of us going on a field
trip. I have no idea what that might mean.”

Zax couldn’t prevent himself from wincing ever so
slightly. He didn’t mind hearing about Kalare’s pilot training, but mentions of
the Flight Boss were something else entirely. It still felt like only yesterday
that his decision to defy the second most powerful officer on board and attempt
to expose the man’s actions had sent Zax’s career into a near-death spiral.

Kalare picked up on Zax’s discomfort. “I’m sorry about
bringing up the Boss, Zax, but you’ve just got to get over it already.”

“Get over it? Get over it? You had ‘gotten over’ Flight
and wanted to join the Marines. Do you remember that? But somehow a year later
you’ve become more focused on your career than you ever were before. I wanted
the Boss’s mentorship
more than anything
back when you were rolling dice
to pick your next assignment. Knowing I did the right thing doesn’t make it any
easier to pretend I’m not hurt when I see my friend enjoying a prime spot that
could have also been mine.” Zax paused for a sec. “Wow—it’s hard to believe
it’s been a year already. I suppose time flies after you kill your career.”

The compassion in Kalare’s eyes was plain to see even as
her voice revealed plenty of frustration. “I’m sorry, Zax, but you can’t
honestly believe I would still have anything to do with the Boss if I thought
there was any truth to your accusations. Don’t
you remember
how
we
decided
I would accept his mentorship so I could stick close to him and see
what I could learn about his role in Mikedo’s death? Isn’t it reasonable that
I’ve determined you were wrong and he had nothing to do with it after all?
Yes—I care about becoming a pilot more now that I’ve had a taste of it, but you
seem to be suggesting that I’m disagreeing with your beliefs about the Boss
purely out of self-interest. That hurts too. I’m sorry you trashed your career
chasing your suspicions, but at some point you have to be willing to accept
they were wrong.”

Hearing Mikedo’s name had the predictable effect on Zax.
Even a year after the young officer’s death, he still got weepy thinking about
her. He knew her for only a short time, but she changed his outlook on life
forever during those intense few weeks when she led the training contest for
the Boss’s mentorship.

Without Mikedo’s influence he would probably still be
near the top of the Leaderboard experiencing firsthand the pilot training he
now only glimpsed through Kalare’s eyes, although he’d have been doing it
entirely on his own. Mikedo cracked open his shell and forced not only herself
but also Kalare inside. Even if they couldn’t see eye to eye about the Boss,
Kalare was still the only person who truly cared about Zax, and he remained
grateful for her friendship.

While Zax took a moment to get his emotions in check,
the morning newsvid began to blare out of the screens around the mess hall. He
looked up and saw the announcer superimposed over an image of a burned out Tube
junction.

“The recent spate of destruction and bloodshed
continues with a 300th consecutive day of violent unrest among the civilian
population. In addition to the hundreds of agitators justifiably killed by
Marines for damaging the Ship and harming our Crew, there have been almost
15,000 civilians Culled over the past year for their role in these heinous
riots. Generations of civilians have been honorably protected by our brave Crew
for millennia and yet for some unknown reason a faction has turned their backs
on that proud history and threaten our peaceful existence together. Let’s go
down to the scene of today’s riot for more details about this latest bout of
senseless ruination.”

Zax latched on to the newsvid story and diverted their
conversation away from yet another debate about the Boss. “Well, I hope your
field trip doesn’t get impacted by this latest disturbance. Every day there’s a
different area of the Ship we’re supposed to avoid. It seems whenever the
Marines get one riot mopped up, another two pop up to take its place.”

“I know! It’s gotten so crazy the Boss doesn’t travel
anywhere on his own anymore. The other day when he brought me to lunch at the
Omega’s mess hall, we were shadowed by six Marine guards!”

“Well...I’m glad to hear you’ll be safe wherever you go
with him,” Zax said with as much faux lightheartedness as he could muster. “I
can’t imagine any civilians stupid enough to try anything when a half-dozen
Marines are around!”

Kalare and Zax shared a laugh and gathered their trays
for disposal as they stood to leave. Zax grabbed an apple off the pile on the
counter and slipped it into his pocket (ten demerits) as they departed the mess
hall and went their separate ways.

CHAPTER THREE

They get all the benefit and we bear all the cost.

Zax
had two tasks on his agenda before he was due in Waste Systems. He was
scheduled for advanced Plug training later in the morning, but before then had
to lead a lesson for a group of eleven-year-old cadets from Gamma Cadre.
Teaching used to be one of his favorite activities because the younger cadets
had eagerly devoured his tales about Flight Ops. Zax’s tumble down the
Leaderboard, though, drastically reduced the Gammas’ interest in his stories.
They still had to defer to his position above them in the Ship’s hierarchy and
his power to influence their rankings via the assessment of credits and
demerits, but the group’s dwindling respect had become increasingly noticeable
over the last year.

At least they would move along to another instructor
soon. This cohort of students had witnessed Zax’s descent from Flight Ops to
Waste Systems, but the next would only ever know him as the loser at the bottom
of the Leaderboard they had gotten stuck with. Never having respect in the
first place struck him as a more palatable prospect than losing it.

The training compartment buzzed with nervous energy. The
words “civilians” and “riot” and “Tube” could be picked out repeatedly from the
pockets of chatter around the room. Zax was supposed to provide the Gammas a
primer on the inner workings of the Ship’s gravity generation system, but he
decided to start instead with a discussion of the civilian situation given it
was a topic he had more than a passing familiarity with.

 The newsvid announcer had professed ignorance
about the rationale for the non-stop civilian unrest, but Zax was certain it
traced back to his actions in Flight Ops a year earlier. Before she died,
Mikedo had convinced him their discovery of a mysterious spacecraft from Earth
might spark a revolution. She believed evidence proving the Ship was not the
sole remnant of humanity would radically destabilize an already teetering
society built upon 5,000 years of that mythos. Between what he saw for himself
after Mikedo’s death and what he learned from her final message to him, Zax had
recognized the power of their shared secret and concluded the only way to
prevent himself and Kalare from suffering the same fate was to expose it.

Zax shocked the Flight Ops staff with Mikedo’s video of
the human spacecraft during his confrontation with the Boss a year ago. The
same clash where he announced one of the Omegas had killed her to hide that
evidence. The first riot occurred scant days later and Zax was confident word
of the video had spread throughout the Ship and ultimately triggered the
violence. Of course, Zax couldn’t share all of those juicy details with the
Gammas, but he was curious to hear their perspectives.

“Cadets—what’s with all of the commotion? What are you
all so excited about?”

Zax acknowledged the raised hand of a girl sitting in
the front row of the compartment.

“Sir, didn’t you watch the morning newsvid? There was
another civilian riot and this one destroyed a Tube junction a group of us just
used the other day.”

“Interesting. Who can tell me why the civilians keep
forcing us to deal with all of this violence?”

“Because they’re idiots,” said a boy towards the back of
the class.

“That is the obvious root cause, but ten demerits for
speaking without raising your hand.” Zax glared at the boy, but the Gamma smirked
back at him. He was one of the cadets who had become increasingly brazen with
his disrespect. “Does anyone have anything more insightful to offer as to why
the civilians have been rioting for the past year?”

Zax looked around the room, but all of the hands
remained down. He let everyone wallow in the uncomfortable silence for a min
until finally the same girl who originally spoke raised her hand again.

“I don’t think anyone really knows why this has been
going on for so long, sir. I just know it doesn’t make any sense to me. I mean,
the Crew has spent thousands of years defending the civilians from all manner
of alien attacks, right? I don’t understand why they can’t appreciate how many
of us have died keeping the Ship safe during our Mission. I’ve heard some Crew
say we should just put all of them into cryostorage and be done with it. That’s
never seemed like the right answer to me, but the longer this goes on, the more
I find myself agreeing.”

The girl provided a good area to explore and Zax jumped
on it. “Twenty credits for a great observation. It’s true that being members of
the Crew requires us to serve and protect the civilians. They obviously benefit
from this a great deal, but what do we get out of the bargain?”

“I can’t think of anything we get from the civilians,
sir. They get all the benefit and we bear all the cost.”

Zax smiled at her. A year ago he would have had the
exact same viewpoint, and it would have stemmed from the same place of
ignorance. These cadets had never experienced a single direct interaction with
a civilian. Their fellow humans, who actually outnumbered the cadets one
hundred to one among the Ship’s inhabitants who were not in cryostorage, were
nearly as foreign and unknown as the aliens they were training to battle.

The civilians ceased being an abstract concept for Zax
once he was dropped from Flight Ops and landed at the bottom of the Crew
hierarchy. Waste Systems managed the Ship’s sewage and because it involved the
most disgusting tasks it was staffed almost exclusively by civilians. Zax
didn’t interact with them all of the time, but as the most junior member of the
Crew on the small operations team, it was usually his job to assist whenever
they needed help. He had been surprised to learn the civilians almost universally
felt antagonism towards the Crew, though he hadn’t yet been able to prod any of
them into sharing enough to help him understand their antipathy. Regardless, he
had come to develop some small measure of appreciation for the work they
performed.

“I’m assigned to a part of the Ship where I interact
with civilians all of the time—excuse me, would you like to share what’s so
funny?”

The cadet who made the “idiot” comment earlier had
leaned over and whispered something to the girl sitting next to him. The friend
started giggling and Zax decided to call them out rather than allow them to run
roughshod over his lesson.

The boy stared defiantly at Zax. “You were talking about
where you work, and I observed how we are all well aware because we can
generally smell the stink on you.”

The words stung, especially because Zax knew they were
true. He fought to keep the shame hidden as he refused to give the cadet the
satisfaction of seeing even a hint of his self-loathing. Slamming the boy with
a massive slug of demerits would be delightful, but Zax knew doing so could
potentially backfire if the cadet appealed. A key feature of the Leaderboard
system was that all officers and instructors knew they would be personally
docked ten times the number of any demerits if they were shown to have assessed
them out of self-interest or spite. Though they were clearly intended to
offend, there was technically nothing inaccurate about the Gamma’s words and he
had delivered them with a neutral tone. If the boy appealed any excessive demerits
he would certainly prevail, so Zax focused only on what was incontrovertible.

“Twenty demerits for each of you for the interruption.”

The boy grinned once again as he clearly seemed to
believe having fun at Zax’s expense was worth the cost. Zax swallowed his
aggravation and continued.

“As I was saying, I’ve had a chance to work with
civilians extensively in the past year. What I’ve learned in that time is they
do serve an important role on board. Operating and maintaining this Ship
requires a host of tasks that anyone in the Crew would hate. These jobs don’t
require much in the way of skill, but the Ship wouldn’t survive without them.

“Maintaining the civilian population does require effort
and resources, but throughout history they have typically caused far fewer
headaches than they are right now. We don’t have to provide them with much
beyond protection and food rations, so the benefits they provide usually
outweigh their costs. As you get older and have exposure to more of the
day-to-day life on board, you’ll come to appreciate their role more.”

The girl in the front row raised her hand again, and Zax
gestured for her to speak.

“It reminds me of a quote from one of Earth’s great
philosophers.
‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his
contribution.’
”

Zax grinned. “Great way to tie it all together. Fifty
credits. Now, let’s put aside the civilians for a while and dive into how the
Ship generates artificial gravity.”