Chapter Text
I shove my finger into the sand just to see how deep it would go. It is crumbly, wet, and warm all at once. Or at least, that is how I have been told it feels.
Enraged by my invasion, a crab scuttles out of its burrow, waving its claws at me like fists raised to heaven. I am so much bigger, so much stronger, and yet it still wants to pick a fight. It races around my boot, putting on a show of how intimidating it can be. I watch it struggle.
Then I pick it up in my hand. I close my hand into a fist, and I feel it shatter.
I drop it back on the ground, dead. The waves receive it, and the burial at sea commences.
“...do I even wanna ask?”
I hear a voice from behind me. A junior officer in our ranks. She is on her phone again. It is glued to her like someone torched it into her very palm, but her eyes are on me. I hiss at her. What does she want?
She takes five paces back as soon as I shift.
“Never mind, not asking! Sorry to bother you, haha…”
She spins on her heel and leaves– flees– down the coast. The grainy slaps of her sandals grate my ears. She is too noisy. I raise my arm, aiming squarely at her back. I doubt her skin is any tougher than the carapace of a vagrant Sting.
But something else interrupts me. A twig, of some unknown make, is thrust between my fingers.
I turn to the new arrival. He does not need me to speak to know he has four seconds to explain himself.
“There are better things to do on a beach than go after the wildlife,” he says.
I stand. I tower over him, the snarl of my engines giving him ample warning to leave me alone.
He does not heed it. Instead, he produces another twig and dips it into the flames pouring from my chest.
“...like this, for instance.”
He draws back. So do I. The stick is in flames, but it is no flame I have seen before. Only the tip is engulfed, and vibrant–painfully vibrant–sparks of peach-gold and dream-blue scatter from it. Like a dozen warheads going off in a single second. But I feel no danger from this fulmination. This is no weapon. For what purpose am I given this implement?
He takes the stick in my hands and does the same, baptizing it in the fire.
He puts it back in my hand.
“Give it a swing,” he grins a stupid grin.
I do not know why, but I give it a swing.
The sparking inferno… shifts as I move. Pink blends into red, and blue flashes between purple and a curious orange. I swear I see something else in the fire.
I drop it immediately.
But he grabs it before it hits the ground, saving it from being extinguished, and sticks it back between my stiff fingers.
“You have to wave it harder than that,” he laughs. “Then you’ll see the pattern!”
What pattern?
I hear the hiss of my shoulders venting their steam, the internal whirring of munitions rolling into place. My irritation is rising.
He demonstrates. With a wide, sweeping arc, he swings his stick. I brace for tedium. But instead, the sparks of his stick blend together. Their colors blend like crushed pincers and bluish blood, and from the depths of the flame… there is a projection.
“Ah…”
And my voice escapes me, sifting through my visor like poison.
“This kind of sparkler is… special…” he huffs, slashing back and forth to keep the image alive. “It’s… hahh… h-holographic…!”
What is that? It has far, far fewer legs than I am used to seeing. It may very well have none at all. But I recognize the make of a predator, sleek and dangerous, with slender spines adorning its torpedo-shaped thorax. Its maw brims with teeth. Its black eyes would find their home in the abyss.
“It’s a shark,” he beams. “They live in the sea.”
Only… this drawing seems simplified, somehow. The beast is pudgy and round. Its eyes are large, and its mouth twists into a smile that reminds me of him. I look up at him. He is already perspiring from the mere few seconds of wielding his weapon.
I take the stick from him. He looks surprised, and I see his mouth curl downwards in protest. I hold one in each hand, a stance more familiar to me than home.
I wave them together. What happens if these projections overlay one another?
Immediately, they snap. I twist them broken in the air itself, and both sparklers crash to the ground. Their flames die in the sand, and the waves carry them away.
My shoulders unfurl. The clicking grows louder, and I feel my eye twitching as I take aim.
He grabs me before I can open fire. I interrupt the assault sequence before I unwittingly reduce him to ash.
“It’s okay, Sam! We have more! We’ve got a whole box of these!”
I am on the verge of storming away. My thrusters are ready to leave this entire planet and forget about the crab and the sparklers and sharks.
“...I think you should listen to him for once,” the woman with sunglasses remarks from behind me. “He spent a long time finding an… animal that would fit your personality.”
I seize up. The tension ebbs from my shoulders and eyes like the waves are carrying them away, but I know from the velvet glimmer behind her sunglasses that this is just her witchcraft. I could kill her if I wanted to, even with these shackles, but I choose not to.
I choose to sit there. The junior cadet returns. The man with hair the color of insect blood reveals himself from the tentage. He… carries an entire box of these sticks. My exasperation melts away my desire to desert them.
“Take your time,” the thing with gray hair nudges my arms full of sparklers. “Maybe if you swing more than one at once, they won’t break.”
“Pretty sure he could still break them if he wanted,” the child begins, only to shy away as I rotate towards her.
The other two, the senior officers, reign me in. They show me how to stand with my back to the wind that I cannot feel. And gray-hair teaches me how to hold the sticks, so that they do not crumple in my fists.
“Looks good,” he says. “Try giving it a swing, Sam.”
I try. I hear them splinter. My shoulders unfurl like wings, but the ignition code never fires.
Only some of the sticks have broken. The rest remain whole.
“Ah…”
My voice again, seeps through. I can barely make out the form of the creature the sparks are meant to paint.
But I… see it, somehow. I wave my sticks. The image grows thicker, more animated. I wave my sticks. The thing called a shark begins to move in its frame. I wave my sticks, and it swishes its appendages. A strange symbol, several sticks with heavy dots beneath them, leave its toothy maw.
“It’s singing,” the woman with sunglasses remarks. “You’re doing a great job.”
I do not know what that is. But it seems I have executed my orders to satisfaction.
“There are more animals, if you’d like.”
This is from the man with hair the color of insect blood. I normally find him to be as competent, as professional as myself. To see him endorse this idle nonsense makes my engine murmur in dissent.
However, the rest of them would have trouble swinging the sparklers with nearly as much competence. I shove this excuse down my throat, even though I know my squadron commander would condemn me to impoundment for such.
But my commander has been dead for so long I do not remember her face.
These faces in front of me; I do remember.
I take a handful of the sticks, but they are hurriedly pried from my vise grip.
“Wait, wait! If you mix them up, we won’t be able to see the projections!”
“Here, Sam–” the child shows me the bottom of the sparklers. I refocus my eyes until I can see the writing.
SHARK
WHALE
SWORDFISH
JELLYFISH
CUTTLEFISH
SEA URCHIN
CRAB
I crush the last batch, making sure I burn them to ash. I throw the cinders into the open ocean for them to bury.Nobody stops me.
We play with the rest instead.
I do not know why I say “play”. It is a word that the child taught me. She describes it as “something you do to have fun”. But she also says I am not allowed to call my deployments “play”.
“Because… playing with someone doesn’t usually involve murder,” she said.
I do not understand. But gray-hair says I will, someday. Apparently, I am damaged, and will need to be repaired through social interaction. I… do not understand. I am whole.
My systems are green. My weapons are operational. And yet these sacks of inflammable flesh deem me broken.
Maybe I am damaged. Because I sit down with them to… “play” with sparklers. I swing them back and forth until the projections “sing”. I am applauded. Even the man with hair the color of insect blood dons an expression of approval.
And I am informed of the various beasts. The “shark” is a swift predator that hunts prey by smelling blood in the water.
“It is very fat,” I observe its singing face. “Its form is impractical for hunting.”
“It’s a mascot shark!” says the child, before gray-hair adds.
“It’s like… a cuter version of a shark. If it was accurate, it would be scary. Then people wouldn’t buy the sparklers.”
I try to understand. Things that are fatter, less dangerous, are “cute” to a greater extent, and hence a viable means of advertisem*nt.
The other animals are less fascinating. The whale is a shark that suffers from incomplete construction. It is fatter still, and must leave the ocean to breathe. That is like if I had to deactivate my armor to reload my armaments. The child chuckles at my chagrin.
The swordfish is swift. But it does not hunt with the same ferocity as the shark, and I let the entry slip away from my archives. The rest are even worse. They are weak creatures who lie in wait for their prey. As such, they are enjoyed as foodstuffs throughout the galaxy.
“I still believe the shark is the most effective hunter,” I reason.
“Well, yeah, generally she’s only good at holding lanes if you have her module,” the child says.
I punch her for her noise, and my fist fizzles through her hologram. She sticks her tongue out at me and scuttles away. I hope the ocean buries her.
Gray-hair sits next to me.
“I like sharks too,” he says. “I feel like… if I could keep one as a pet, they’d make great defenders.”
“Actually, she’s a dollkeeper specialist– WAAAGH!”
This time, my missile lands true. The child, blasted out of her hiding place behind the trees, dashes into the ocean to extinguish her burning clothes.
“I’m not going to pretend she didn’t deserve that,” the man with hair the color of insect blood rises, weariness in his eyes. “But I am going to make sure she’s fine.”
And I hope the ocean buries her.
Dusk turns the sky black. Eventually, there are no sparklers left to play with, and no animals left to sing. We sit in a circle, and I watch them eat. Past 2100 system hours, this meal is known as supper. It is usually eaten in secret, especially by the woman with sunglasses, who dislikes thinking about the impact of overconsumption on her health and physique.
“I never asked, Kafka,” the child speaks with her mouth full of rations. “Why’d you bring us all the way out here in the first place? Without one of Elio’s scripts, too.”
She refers to our current commander, who is absent from this sortie. The woman with sunglasses drinks her liquor before replying.
“They’re building a port here.”
There is a deafening silence. I hear only the waves, and the child’s phone playing music.
“The IPC,” gray-hair concurs, as if realizing something.
I do not know, so I sit and listen.
“Which means scenic viewing platforms, entry fees,” the woman with sunglasses counts on her fingers. “Food stalls, spaceports, and… tourists.”
She spits the last word out. I almost hear it land in the sand. The ocean, once again, buries her contempt.
“We won’t come back here again,” she says with a smile, shaking her cup. “So enjoy yourselves, okay?”
They affirm this suggestion. I let them.
It is some system hours later that I find myself being rebooted, my sensors detecting movement from outside the tentage. I deploy at once.
By now, visibility is poor. My armor is the main source of illumination on the terrain. I spot him easily, kneeling in the sand. I approach him from behind, letting my steps make noise. The child had advised me to do so when the aim was not to ambush and kill the other party.
“Sam,” gray-hair looks up at me. He is exhausted, and I see a lighter in his hands. He is crouched over the pile of discarded sparklers we had used.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m…” he strikes the lighter again, and the feeble flame only licks at the charred stems. “...trying to see if we can make a campfire.”
“For what purpose?” I ask.
He strikes the lighter again. The damp kindling fails to ignite, as the ocean is far too close. The coast is rocky, and devoid of trees we may use instead.
“I read about it in a book. You can’t have a beach party without a campfire.”
“Why not?” I ask.
I am perturbed by his insistence.
“I don’t know,” he laughs, and there is no humor, no happiness to be found in it.
“I… just thought it’d be a shame that we’ve got to leave in the morning.”
“What?” I shift my stance. My engines mumble in discontent. “Why would you say that?”
“What’s with the outburst?” gray-hair looks up at me, stunned. “I’m just… saying it as it is.”
“You are ruining the mood,” I shift again, uncomfortable. I do not know why he focuses on a future that has not yet come to pass, rather than considering present circ*mstances. “Why are you fixated on the end of our sortie?”
He is speechless. I realize this is the longest conversation I have ever had with him.
“You should… do what you can, while you can,” I try to elaborate, parroting someone else’s words that I do not truly believe. “The end will come anyway, no matter what you do.”
He stares at me, still speechless. I realize he does not realize I have the capacity to construct a sentence of this length and complexity.
I swallow. I have overstepped my authority.
I am good for only a few things, and thankfully, what is in front of me is one of them.
“...move. Let me.”
I pull him away from the discarded heap of sticks.
My weapons have been loaded for hours. To fire them is as simple as exhalation.
I breathe them into destruction.
My fire is nothing like the sparklers. They are greenish and golden, and the pile of kindling roars into an inferno under my outstretched arms. My task completed, I step away, but he grabs me, just like before.
“Where are you going?”
“To rest,” I reply, confused. “You should… as well.”
“We can rest any time we want,” he says, his golden eyes full of insubordination. “But we can’t always sit in front of a campfire and chat, Sam. Come on. Stay awhile.”
He is on the verge of throwing my advice back at me. I deny him the satisfaction by slamming myself down in the sand.
I do not know how he convinced me. I do not know what defect in my person made me sit down on the sand, in front of the campfire, watching the mountain of sparkler corpses burn.
The surface temperature is cooler than during the day. The air is rich in oxygen. The wind speeds are low, and gray-hair’s gray hair is blown by the breeze. A whistle of steam from my back signals that I am ready to fire once more.
It takes me longer than I would admit to notice that as I am watching the flames, he is watching me.
“Does it come off?”
“What?” I ask.
“Your armor,” he laughs. He laughs all the time.
I shift. Steel plates click as I do.
“I just thought the air tonight smells wonderful. It’d be a shame not to breathe it in a little.”
“The air… smells?”
I am unsettled. I did not know the air had a scent. Or perhaps I was made not to know, to keep me from nausea when drenched in viscera.
“You can take off just your helmet,” he says. “Or whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“Then… only for a moment.”
I do not know why I entertain him. I do not know why I entertain myself. There is the low hum of plates disengaging and folding, and the crackling of my armor as it melts away. I feel the metal creep along me like webbing until it retreats into my arm.
The air is cold. I breathe it in. It does not smell like anything except smoke, which I am used to.
I realize I forgot to tell him I cannot take off only my helmet. It is secured to the rest of my armor. That is why he is surprised, I assume.
“Sam?” gray-hair is shocked. “You’re… a girl?”
“What of it?” I ask.
My gender is of little consequence. All that is required of me is to receive orders, and carry them out. As long as my body serves that purpose, I do not care for what it looks like. At least, I am used to telling myself that.
“sh*t,” he says. “You’re… cute.”
Is he implying I am fatter, less dangerous, and more marketable?
I raise my foot. He grabs my leg before I slam it through him.
“Wait! Wait!” he laughs. “Not like the shark!”
I learn from him that there is more than one definition to “cute”, depending on its referent. For animals, it can refer to their size or harmlessness. The shape of their eyes and appendages matters just as much. For people, the term refers to a person who is considered to be physically attractive in a manner that evokes immaturity.
“You believe me immature,” I say.
“I’m saying you… look pretty young,” he says. “I thought you’d be closer to Kafka or Blade.”
Again, I stress that my body serves its function. A larger frame would weigh more, and require more nutrients to upkeep.
“I see,” he says. He thinks for a moment, and then continues. “I still think you’re cute, though.”
I fight down the instinct to lash out. He means well. But in doing so, I feel my temperature rising. I touch my face, frowning.
“What is this? Am I…?”
“You’re blushing a little,” gray-hair says. “If you’re shy, I won’t look.”
“U-understood,” I stammer–I stammer in spite of my protocol. “I require a moment to recalibrate… I did not expect you to be so… brazen.”
What is happening to me?
I did not yet tell him I can only sustain myself for several hours outside of my armor. Something deep inside me does not want to tell him. Something deeper still knows he will be fearful on my behalf, and I do not wish it. I do not know why I know this.
I stay silent. He takes my hand. I barely feel his thumb brush over mine, from where he holds me. My lower lip vibrates.
“...what’s that on your face?” he asks.
“It is not your concern,” I say quickly.
Unfortunately, I am too quick. He immediately deduces that it is his duty to be invasive.
“Are those… scars, Sam?”
“It is not your concern.”
“Sure it is.”
He turns my hand over, then. His fingers lace into mine. I look up at him, uncomfortable, and I somehow manage to hold his gaze. He searches me while I scan him, gauging his purpose. His mask cracks like glass into a deep frown.
“You’re my colleague, Sam. If you’re hurt, or if you’re sick, someone has to know.”
“It is not your concern.”
Why can I not pull my hand away? I am stronger than him. He is not even holding me tightly. He is barely touching me. Yet my body does not respond.
“It is,” he says. “You’re the one who talks about efficiency and effectiveness all the time. If you’re sick and keeping that a secret, how are we gonna look after you?”
Look after? Look after me?
I am deeply confused. I shake my head, uncomprehending. I do not need to be looked after. My armor tends to my biological functions.
“I am afflicted with Entropy Loss Syndrome,” I say. I am shocked that I said it at all. But my mouth continues to operate, independent of my will. “This… scar is a sign of its worsening.”
I know from the twitch of his brow that he does not know what I am talking about. I elaborate.
“I am detached from time. I perceive events slower. Eventually, my biological functions will be converted into… light.”
I touch my face. The ridges of the scar are pulsing like egg sacs.
“And I will perish thereafter.”
“What?!” gray-hair squeezes my hand hard enough to feel. “You’re going to… die?”
“That is a fact of life for all living things,” I say.
“You’re terminally ill!” he bursts out. “Why are you fighting?! Do Kafka and Blade know? Does Elio-”
“Commander Elio is aware.”
“He… oh.”
“My armor enables me to perform adequately in battle. It also suppresses the exacerbation of my condition.”
“It… suppresses?” he stretches his lips out to the side. “Wait– wait, then get back in! Put it back on!”
I shake him off before he can grab me.
“There is… no need,” I say. “I can spend two system hours and seventeen system minutes outside of my armor each day before I am at risk.”
My lips twist in a way similar to his.
“...next month, two hours and sixteen system minutes.”
It can only support me for so long. Commander Elio promised me some sort of solution. That was why I agreed to enlist under his leadership.
Gray-hair sits back down, as do I. We watch the fire. We watch it for a very long time, until I sense that he is weary. But he speaks first.
“Sam.”
“What?”
“Do you want to swim?”
“What?”
“In the sea,” he laughs. “We’ve been at the beach the whole day, and you didn’t even get into the water. I thought it was because you’d rust or something.”
He laughs all the time. He laughs too much. I cannot rust. I can fight in aquatic terrain if the need arises.
“Come on,” he takes my hand. “Let’s just go for a dip.”
“For what purpose?” I ask.
“For fun,” he says. “Swimming is fun, Sam.”
“Is it… playing?” I ask.
If an activity is done for the purpose of having fun, the child tells me it is play.
“You could say that,” he smiles.
I follow him. I am aware of how to swim without the aid of thrusters. I am also aware, from the child, that when swimming for play, one should not enter the water while clothed. It is unnatural and disruptive, and hinders mobility. My pilot suit does not hinder my mobility, but I disrobe nonetheless.
Gray-hair turns around. I sense he wants to say something, but his face turns red.
“Sam?! Why are you… s-stripping?”
“We are going to swim,” I say. “Silver Wolf told me that one does not swim for play while clothed.”
“B-but–” he stammers. “You’re not even… well, uh... you don’t have a swimsuit!”
I learn, then, that there are garments one must wear in order to enter the water. They are called swimsuits. They resemble innerwear, but are brightly colored and engineered to resist damage from the activity.
I… am unequipped with such garments.
Entering the water, as I am, while naked, is another type of swimming, known as skinny dipping. It is illegal in many places.
“It is alright,” I say. “I will return to the tent.”
He does not let me. He is strangely stubborn. As the planet is uninhabited, there are no laws. Thus, what I am doing is not illegal. He takes me by the hand and leads me to the ocean.
“Caelus,” I say. “Do you think we will see sharks?”
“I–” he chokes. “W-why?”
“I am quite fond of sharks.”
“If we go to a beach, I’m hoping we don’t see any sharks!”
“I see,” I say. I cannot resist the urge to turn my nose up at him a little. “Pathetic. You are afraid you will be hunted.”
He sticks his tongue out at me. I realize it is a gesture of mockery, and I mirror his movements.
We step into the water. It is faintly cold as well, like the air. I try to estimate what it would feel like if I could feel.
I am lighter now, without my armor. The waves resist our advance. We engage in swimming. Gray-hair asks to compete against me in terms of speed. He loses every time, but he keeps asking “again, again”, and laughing. As I grow tired, the difference between our performance grows smaller. I end the contest before it closes entirely.
“You’re just scared I’ll beat you next time, huh?”
“I am tactically retreating,” I say. “I am your better at any hour.”
“Oh yeah?” he smiles. “Then let’s try one more time.”
The difference in our timings for the last contest was only two seconds. I shake my head.
“Spoilsport,” he sticks his tongue out at me. “Didn’t peg you for a sore loser, Sam.”
“I prioritize efficiency,” I stick my tongue back out at him.
“And your pride.”
“That is untrue,” I say quickly.
“You’re blushing!” he laughs loudly. “You’re blushing, Sam!”
I throw him into the ocean. He can compete against himself and swim back as fast as he wants.
But by the time he returns, he is still laughing. I ask him why he is so happy.
“Because you are.”
What?
“You’re… smiling, Sam.”
What? No. I touch my face. I slap my cheeks. My lips are curved upwards at the corners. I have been smiling for so long that my jaw is sore. I try to return myself to a neutral expression, but I cannot. I cannot stop.
He laughs. “You should do it more.”
“Throw you into the ocean?” I say.
“Smile,” he says. “You’re… beautiful when you smile.”
Beautiful.
I… do not know this word. The woman with sunglasses has used it before; on the beach at dusk, on the stars, and on me. I still feel her fingers in my hair, raking through decades of curls and grime and gore as she tells me I am, I am, I am.
Gray-hair reaches out again. Instead of my hand, he is aiming for my face.
I tense up. I shift my legs into a wider stance.
His hands are alien to me. Alien to everywhere except my hands.
He notices, and he stops. His fingers droop.
“What are you doing?”
“I…” he swallows. “I want to touch you.”
He blinks. He puts his hand on his chest, like he is saluting.
“But I’m a little scared,” he says. “I’m scared I’ll… hurt you.”
“Ah…” my voice escapes me for the third time. “It is not your concern…”
He does not accept that any more.
“...no,” I correct myself. “Th-thank you for your concern. But I am safe to touch.”
“You sure you don’t mind?”
I shake my head. He is being overly cautious.
But I realize my reputation precedes me. I realize that he is afraid I will kill him if I am touched, like how I am in the battlefield. The thought makes me uncomfortable. I do not wish for my comrades to be afraid when they are with me. I am supposed to guarantee their safety this time.
This time, yes. My eyes flutter shut in silent promise. I hear someone calling my serial number.
“You won’t punch me like you did Wolfie?”
“I would never,” I say quickly, opening my eyes. “We are comrades. I should not see you come to harm!”
I clarify that I consider the child a comrade as well. My strikes are meant to warn her, not harm her.
“So…” he raises his hand again. “Here I come. Okay?”
He touches me. I do not expect much of it. I have been touched before. Punched, bitten, crushed, spat on, and entangled. Why should contact with another living creature be different without my armor?
“A-ah…”
At least, that is what I think. The sound I make as soon as his palm touches my cheek is unlike me. Why?
He is warm. I can just barely feel it. But it burns. It burns from inside, like something inside my chest is trying to burst out.
I feel my sweating get worse. I did not realize I was sweating prior. My vision is unfocused, and I cannot concentrate. Something is wrong.
I want to run. I want to strike him down. I want him to never stop. I want him to hold the other cheek with those weak hands of his. My heart beats twice, like a fist.
I feel weak. My legs do not respond, and I will my arms to move.
“Ah!”
I throw him into the ocean.
“Sam?”
I hear the child in the distance.
“I heard some splashing, and I thought there w… w-w-woah! Who the heck are you?”
She runs up to me. I am still panting, trying to catch my breath. I am exhausted. I have never been exhausted. My muscles do not ache. It is my chest that feels tight. My stomach is warm and comfortable, but I feel like I am about to explode.
“I…” I manage. “I am Sam.”
The child looks me up and down.
“Cap,” she says. “You’re a girl.”
She coughs.
“And you’re naked. And Caelus is swimming back to shore as we speak.”
It is a question. She does not phrase it like one. She wishes for an explanation.
I widen my stance and raise my fists.
“It is not your concern.”
“Oh, f*ck me,” the child lurches back, recognizing. “You… you’re actually a girl?”
I stiffen.
“What of it?” I ask.
Once again: my gender is of little consequence. All that is required of me is to receive orders, and carry them out. As long as my body serves that purpose, I do not care for what it looks like.
“sh*t,” she says. “You’re cute.”
I hope she is not implying I am fatter, less dangerous, and more marketable.
She looks me up and down again. I assume she is judging my market share.
“Then you should really… wear something.”
“For what purpose?” I stress again.
“You’re cute,” the child does not provide an adequate explanation. “If he sees you like this, he’ll get all, uh… horny.”
“Caelus?” I shift. “He has raised no complaints.”
“Oh, for the love of–” the child smacks my cheeks without my consent. “Why the hell would he complain?! You’re cute, and you’re naked, and–”
I throw her into the ocean.
She manages to scream out several profanities before she lands in the water. I watch her swim back, and I watch her crawl back to her tent like the wretch she is.
She shuts the flap behind her. I wait until she is gone before I look back at gray-hair, who is drying himself off with a towel.
“Caelus,” I ask. He looks up.
“Are you horny?” I ask.
He stares at me, his mouth wide open. He looks from me, to the tent where the child fled, and he looks down at himself.
He throws himself into the ocean.
This time, I run in after him and drag him back to shore before he can drown in the shallows.
“What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?!” he shoots back. I do not know why he repeats my question. I say it back to him.
“No, what are YOU doing?” I say.
“No, what are you doing?” he stares blankly at me. I grow impatient.
“You are not making sense at all!” I give him a shake. “What are you trying to say?”
“What the hell did you just ask me?!”
“I asked if you were horny!” I raise my voice. “Are you?”
“I… d-did Wolfie ask you to ask me that question?”
“She did not,” I say. “But she told me you would be horny if I was undressed. Are you?”
I frown. I hold him up like a wet rag so I can look him in the eye.
“More importantly, what does it mean? I do not see you sprouting horns.”
He cannot answer me.
It is a very long time before he can answer me. By the time he can, we are sitting beside the “campfire” I made earlier with the corpses of the sparklers. He covers himself with a towel, and only wears his shorts.
I am as I am. He is not looking at me.
“...is it hard to understand?”
“What is?” I ask.
“Elio… told me a bit about you. Your past.”
“What of it?” I say. And then, “It is not your concern.”
Gray-hair points at his cheek, then he points at my face. I stay silent, aware that my words no longer affect him the way that they used to.
“You… do you know what love is?”
“Yes,” I say quickly. “I love my empire, my planet, and my comrades.”
“You pledged that,” he says.
I do not see a difference, and I tell him so.
He shakes his head, “That’s not… love love.”
“What is this ‘lovelove’?”
“Two words,” he holds up his fingers to count them. “But… repeating the same word twice doesn’t make me better understood.”
“It does not.”
I request an explanation. He tries.
“Love… is an emotion.”
I nod.
“It’s when you want to protect someone,” he says. “And keep them safe… even if it hurts.”
“If protecting someone is an active detriment, then they are a liability to your wellbeing,” I say. “If it hurts, they should stop.”
He shakes his head.
“Some people are worth hurting for.”
I hear the hiss of a sputtering engine. The clicking of a thousand mandibles. Flesh and steel tearing like sinews. Crackling in my ears where my communicator sits. I am the only one standing. I dig through the meat and bones to find if there is anything alive. I shout until my throat is raw and torn. There is nobody left to forgive.
“So, you love anyway,” he says.
He takes the towel off his shoulders and puts it on me. I shake my head. He nods, and he covers me.
“You’ll get cold.”
“I do not feel the cold,” I say.
“Your body does,” he says. “You’re shivering, Sam.”
That is not cold. I do not tell him what it is.
He continues.
“Love is when you want someone to be yours… like getting married, or being someone’s girlfriend or boyfriend.”
A matrimonial bond. I am aware of this custom.
“So you must love who you marry,” I say. “Love is when you want to be married.”
“Not always,” he twists his face. “Some people… can’t get married to those they love. Others marry people they don’t really love.”
I straighten up. “That is unnecessarily complicated.”
“Emotions are complicated. Heck, I might not even be right about half the things I’m saying.”
He says that I might love Glamoth and my comrades. But it’s a different type of love. He isn’t sure what all the differences are.
“Then why say it?”
I pull the towel over myself. Tighter, tighter. I want the fabric to dig into my shoulders until it can armor me from the stinking fog of insectoid pus lurking in the shadows behind us. I still hear them. I wish suddenly for my armor.
Gray-hair puts his hand on my hand again. The shadows retreat.
“...well, I just felt like giving it a try. You don’t have to understand everything I’m saying,” he says. Then he smiles. “Besides… it’s just nice to sit here and talk with you. This is the longest I’ve ever seen you hold a conversation, y’know?”
He moves closer. The shadows pull away. I hear the tiny legs disappearing into the waves. I check to make sure they are gone. He touches my arm, where the knob of my wrist bone protrudes like a knife.
I untense. I did not realize I was tense.
He tries to explain the different types of love. There are a dozen of them, and I try to remember the important ones. Philia is love between friends or comrades. Within the Stellaron Hunters, I may also feel storge, or familial love. This is in how the child will constantly pester the woman with sunglasses for cookies, and she will always, always, bake them. It is also how she is willing to sit beside me after every deployment and scrape the viscera out from between my armor plates. I remember the first bath.
“I am grateful for Kafka’s care,” I say.
“That might be familial love already,” he says. “See? You do know a little about love.”
Ludus, then, is the larval stage of girlfriend and boyfriend love. It is an impulse to want to be with someone; to protect them even if it hurts, to love anyway, and you want them to be yours.
“Imagine… um, if you get giddy from someone just saying your name.”
“I cannot imagine,” I frown. “How does saying one’s name create nausea?”
He asks if he can show me. I accept, although I do not believe it will be effective.
“Sam.”
I stare at him. I do not feel anything.
“Sam,” he says again. “Saaaam. Sam Sam. Samuel Rodrigues. Sammy.”
I feel something at last. Slight irritation.
“Saaaaaaaaam. Saaaaaaaaam.”
“Stop,” I cut him off. “I am annoyed.”
Instead of giddy. Something inside of me thinks I have failed.
“What?” he looks a bit cross, but laughs it off. “Didn’t like it?”
It is not what he said. It is what I am.
I take a moment to brace myself. I have never told the Hunters before this. I do not know why I am telling him. I surmise that being without my armor and suit must have made me feeble.
But I say it anyway.
“I believe it is because… my name is not Sam.”
That stuns him. He looks like his entire world has exploded around him.
“Is it short for something?”
“It is not,” I shake my head. “I am called…”
Something rises in my throat, thick like venom. I can barely say the numbers. Saying them reminds me. I lurch away from gray-hair, overcome with the urge to vomit.
He grabs me. He hold me to keep me from falling. I breathlessly hiss at him to let me go, but I do not have the strength. My fingers tear trenches into the sand.
“I…” I sputter, my vision swimming. “I am c-c-called… AR-26–”
It has not even been forty-five system minutes. My vital signs should not waver for a while longer. Yet, something within me is collapsing. I am collapsing. I feel myself slipping through his arms. I smell the insects.
“Sam!”
He is ten thousand stars away. I barely hear him. His voice minces into someone else’s. A Molten Knight overrun by centipedes the size of trucks. A maggot as heavy as a cannonball crashes through his shoulder, and I watch as his arm tears apart at the joint. His sinews paint his shuddering knees. His heart glows a brilliant red amidst the webs and mandibles and blood. The glow intensifies. He tells me to run. I run. I hear the explosion before I am clear of the blast zone, and I crash into the mud. It seeps through my mask into my eyes. The fire spreads. Another explosion, somewhere else.
Another explosion, somewhere else. I hear bodies bury themselves in the dirt. There is more blood than dirt. It is a swamp made of bodies.
Another explosion, somewhere else. My protocol wills me to stand. I am running again, limping with a single thruster as I radio for backup. The radio hisses like a centipede into what is left of my skull.
Another explosion, somewhere else. I tear a sting off of AR-1266. There is barely enough left of her to carry. She tells me to end her suffering, that they have filled her with eggs and they are hatching and eating her from the inside out and her helmet is melting into her eyes. I have no missiles left. I have no bullets left. I fall to my knees and break her neck. Worms spill onto my shaking fingers. They are so fat.
Another explosion, somewhere else. My thrusters are dead. I cannot hear anything except my own screaming, even when my mouth is closed. I reach the rendezvous point. Our extraction shuttle is waiting. Seventeen swarm lords are eating it. There are no human voices. Only the landing gear is left. They see me and scream murder. They run after me. They chase me, and I flee. I throw myself down a fissure between the cliffs. The water that hits me is ice cold.
“Sam!”
I do not hit the bottom of the ravine. I am not even falling. I am being held. My hands are full of sand.
“Sam, breathe!”
I punch. I miss.
I am restrained, and I thrash.
“Sam, listen to me–”
I punch again. My strike lands true.
“Listen, and stop struggling–”
I stop like I have been shot.
Kafka’s nose is broken. I broke it. My fist is full of blood. But she keeps her hands on my face. Her warm, soft, palms. Whispering directly into my brain.
“Calm down. We’re here. You’re not alone.”
Blade wipes her nose. Silver Wolf grabs my hand to keep me from swinging a third time. Caelus is holding me from the other side.
“Listen, Sam. You’re not there anymore. You’re here with us. Breathe.”
She pushes the Swarm back. Her red strings invade my mind, cleaving the insects into shards. They fall from the sky, pouring over corpses. It is raining.
“Breathe, Sam,” she repeats.
“Sam!” Silver Wolf calls out, desperate. “You’ve gotta breathe! You’re– sh*t, she’s turning blue!”
“Hush,” Blade taps her shoulder. “Let Kafka work.”
I breathe heavily. No air can enter my lungs, and my next breath is even more desperate. Blade presses down on my chest, forcing me to take in the oxygen I need to live.
“Um, I thought you just said to let Kafka work?”
“Hmph,” Blade ignores her.
I breathe. I finally take in air. It cuts me from the inside out like hatching eggs.
“Listen, Sam,” Kafka tries a fourth time, more than she has ever pushed herself in a single day. “Look at me, Sam. Look at me. Forget about the insects.”
Her strings push deeper, dredging up my memories ounce by frigid ounce. They slip through her ropes, and she fights to seize them again. They are like flies. She casts a web, the net bulging with their frenzy.
“Look at me. Forget about them. They’re not here. They can’t hurt you anymore. Okay?”
Kafka tightens her grip. She pulls them away from me. Out of me– deeper.
Sweat streams from her brow. Her hands are shaking. I have never seen her tired.
“There aren’t any bugs here. Okay?”
I try to say “okay” back. My mouth does not move. But the memories are fading away, dragged back by her strings into the shadows.
“We will kill every last one we see,” Blade says.
“Will, meaning future tense,” Silver Wolf adds quickly. “There are no bugs here. At all. Like, I checked the local ecology, and the only thing on dry land with more than four legs is a tiny, fruit-eating wyvern.”
She may be lying. Silver Wolf talks more when she wants to cover something up. And there were crabs, weren’t there? But my chest feels warm at her effort to keep me safe.
“I swear it on my life,” Blade puts a hand on his heart. I have never seen him do that.
“Swear on something else,” Silver Wolf cuts in. “You’re already looking to die, so…”
“My blade, then. And my body, until nothing is left of me.”
“That’s still your life… ahhh, whatever.”
Silver Wolf rolls her eyes. But she is smiling. Blade’s lips twitch, and he tries to hide it.
“Sam.”
It is Caelus. I look directly at him, over Kafka’s trembling arms. I thought everyone else was asleep. He must have called them over.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I… dragged you into something you weren’t willing to be a part of.”
Apologies are like bandages. They do not prevent the wounds. I want to tell him it is okay. But my lips move, and no sound emerges.
Kafka kisses me. I should have jerked away, and hit her. But I melt into it, mewing like a child at the touch of her lips to my forehead.
Caelus is next to kiss me. I jerk away and hit him.
“Owie! What the hell?”
“Too… soon,” I gasp with my newfound voice.
“Don’t mind him,” Silver Wolf snickers, obviously enjoying the affair. “He’s on the grind for game.”
“If you keep speaking in riddles, nobody will understand you, Wolfie,” Kafka teases from behind the bloody napkin Blade is pressing to her face.
“Coming from Miss Dialogue Padder herself. You’re one to talk!” Silver Wolf scoffs.
The two continue bickering. Caelus and Blade sit me up and dress me. A loose shirt and pants, with a towel under me to keep me comfortable. These are Caelus’ clothes.
They are so warm I begin to cry. I don’t know why. That is my only explanation.
They are warm– the clothes, the sand, the people, the campfire, the sparklers.
Blade stands vigil, looking to the horizon to see if anything threatens us. Silver Wolf says she will return to the tent to wash the sand out of my discarded pilot suit. Kafka offers to make me some supper to calm my nerves. I accept a suggestion of chicken soup.
Caelus sits behind me, holding me.
I put my hand on his. I have never done this before. I cannot stop the tears. My eyes forgot what it meant to cry.
“...I had a… s-serial number.”
“Shh. You don’t have to talk about it,” he puts his head against the back of mine. “In fact, don’t talk at all. Just rest.”
But I need to talk. I need to spit out the venom in my throat before it burns through my chest. I want to say. I want to scream. I want to kill. Caelus hugs me to keep me from shaking. His lips are on my shoulder. He whispers a song into my ear, one about birds born in shackles that bravely spread their wings.
But how could I escape?
He does not care. He continues to sing to me. He sings until Kafka brings out the soup, until I am able to hold a spoon again, and I start to drink greedily.
He sings until I cannot hear the wingbeats. Kafka stays beside me, her eyelids fluttering shut every few minutes. Silver Wolf watches me like a hawk, refusing to look at her phone so she can ascertain I am stable. Blade stands at a distance, but his legs are tense, his heels dug into the sand. He is prepared to make a mad dash towards me in case I try anything stupid. Caelus sings to me. I let him kiss me, and with every kiss, I cry more.
My eyes are drenched. But I cannot feel my throat trying to wail. I am silent, tearful, and wretched.
But I am not alone.
For the first time in my life, I learn something for myself, without someone else having to hammer it into me. My radio is silent.
I squeeze Caelus’ hand. The others take it as a sign that I need something, and they rush over.
“N-no,” I manage to say. “I… I’m just… a little cold.”
Blade’s shirt is off immediately. He wraps it around me. Silver Wolf is tearing across the sand to get something to put on my body; a blanket, Kafka calls to her, we have sandproof quilts in the blue suitcase.
Kafka feeds me the rest of my soup. I am crying so badly I cannot see her, and I can barely taste the soup. Caelus sings. Silver Wolf lays a blanket over me, and gives Blade another shirt to wear.
I can just barely hear them over my pounding heart. They all stay, sleepless, holding their ground.
Caelus changes his song. Silver Wolf and Blade sit down, throwing kindling at the fire to keep it going. Silver Wolf wonders aloud if we should head back inside, but Kafka says I need fresh air. Being trapped somewhere cramped is the last thing I should be doing. Kafka kisses the side of my head like a senior figure of familial love. I do not know the word.
It’s us against the universe, I realize. I realize for the first time in my life that I’m able to think such things.
I’m damaged.
I don’t know why I tried to hide it for so long when there are people around me I’ve hurt in the process. But I can’t let them in yet. I can’t let them see everything yet, and bare the burning blood of my bones to their unblemished eyes.
But I know the Swarm is still out there. There are worse things in the galaxy, crueller men and viler women, and all shapes of monstrosities in between.
I can’t die yet. I have to kill them.
To protect the people I love. To avenge what I could not save.
An hour passes. Blade’s head lands on his knees from exhaustion. He doesn’t lift it up again. Kafka, murderously tired, is next to go, curled up in her quilt next to me. Silver Wolf plays something on her phone with the volume turned off. I’ve never seen her do that. But she is third to succumb, and I watch the device slip from her hand. I catch it before it hits the ground, and place it gently beside her. I don’t want it to get damaged.
I don’t tell anyone, but in the pocket of my pilot suit is a letter from Elio. I’m the only one who came here with a script. He told me not to tell anyone what I was here to find, or I would lose it.
I didn’t tell anyone. I think I’ve found it.
Caelus has stopped singing. I don’t know if he’s asleep, but when I shift my shoulders he is immediately awake.
“Sam?”
He falters, suddenly remembering it’s not really my name. He doesn’t know what to call me.
But I want him to call me. I want him to call me something.
“...do you want a new name?” he asks.
I do. I’m not sure how to say it. I tell him I’m not sure where we could get a new name from. He says,
“Let’s try something… uh, familiar, I guess?”
Nothing is familiar. I have never been given a name aside from the number I’m too scared to recite.
He tries names at random, to begin with. They sound so civilian, so normal that they don’t fit me. Caelus reads the displeasure on my face, and tries using his phone to search instead. With a click, he turns it on.
Kafka rolls over in her sleep. Blade’s head snaps up at the noise. He looks around, and Caelus gives him a nod. Blade tilts his head downward, then rests it back on his knee.
“What kind of name would you like, Sam?”
“I don’t know,” I laugh sadly. “I thought this was something parents did for their offspring at the moment of birth.”
“Don’t you dare say it’s too late,” he warns me. “We’re your family now. We get to name you. Simple as that, okay?”
He wants to rebrand my past. He wants to overwrite the thing called Sam and every burden on its metal shoulders.
“You mean you get to name me,” I roll my eyes. “Doing it when everyone else is asleep… you’re rather selfish, aren’t you?”
He laughs again. He laughs all the time, and it makes me want to laugh more, now. I try laughing. He smiles, and I think he likes the sound of my laughter.
“Blade would name you like a weapon.”
I already am, I manage to avoid saying.
“Wolfie would call you something you’d hit her for.”
Like Ayanami or Soryu or Jetstream. I don’t see anything wrong with those names, but Caelus does, and he pleads me not to let Silver Wolf do it.
“We’ll get punished for infringing on copyright,” he warns. I have no idea what he is saying.
Silver Wolf inches closer to Kafka, who stirs, and takes her under her arm like a bird. Silver Wolf purrs, and pushes herself deeper into the embrace.
Kafka would have named me after music. I don’t think Aquarion would be a bad fit, but Caelus suggests that I am absolutely the wrong element to have that name. I should be christened a child of fire.
How strange that fate leads us to the answers we need most when we least expect them. Elio never said I couldn’t find more than one thing on the beach in the same evening.
“Fire…?”
I have a small idea. It blossoms in me like a thing with feathers.
I cannot tell him my serial number, but I can tell him the armor I wear. It is a Firefly Type-IV Strategic Assault Mech. And SAM has already been used. I see nothing wrong with it. It is a rare name, and it fits my combat style adequately.
“Oh!” he nods, seemingly understanding immediately. “We should call you Type Four then!”
I grimace. I didn’t realize I was capable of grimacing, but what he just said was enough to make me.
“I’m going to throw you into the ocean.”
I would have, if my family wasn’t fast asleep around me. I get the hunch that Kafka is pretending to be asleep so she can listen to us talk.
“Tomorrow,” he grins. “You can toss me around all you want if it’ll make you feel better…”
He leans in. His lips brush the scar on my cheek, and something like fire shoots through my body.
“...Firefly,” he whispers.
I shudder. It is neither fear nor cold. I want him to say it again.
It’s my name. Not a number, not a code printed on the inside of my helmet, but my name.
“C-Caelus?”
My voice is very small.
He pulls back, worried he’s somehow hurt me. Kafka’s eyes snap open.
“...could you say it again?”
He looks at me, slowly comprehending.
“Firefly,” he says.
Kafka keeps her eyes open. I hear her lips curl into a gentle, proud smile.
“Hello, Firefly.”
“Hello, Caelus,” my mouth lets out a short burstfire of laughs. “Hello!”
I later learn that this is called giggling, when one is happy enough to laugh, but too embarrassed to do so loudly.
“Firefly,” he says. “Firefly…”
Just like that, I feel the tears come again. Say it. Please.
They flow freely. Caelus whispers my name into my ears until my entire body is blushed and warm beneath layers of other people’s shirts and blankets.
Kafka silently reaches up to wipe my cheeks with her handkerchief. She puts a finger on her lips, telling me not to tell anyone else she is awake, then she closes her eyes. I know she’s not planning on sleeping until both of us are.
But I can’t sleep yet. I’m sorry, Kafka. I’m too busy getting giddy over hearing someone say my name.
Giddy, I realize. I’m feeling giddy.
“Firefly…” he yawns, and rests his chin on my shoulder. “Firefly… I love you.”
What!
I nearly slap him, shocked and delighted. But I realize his eyes are closed. I’m not sure if he meant to say that, or if he meant to say it out loud, or at all. Oh, but I want to hear him say it again.
I put my hand on his. He does not stir. Kafka watches us. I wonder about a line I once read in a book that Kafka gave to me.
“If we were both stars, Caelus… would you hold my hand as we burned our way out of the sky?”
“...sure,” he snores. “I’d do… anything to… make you happy.”
“Anything…?”
“Anything… in the world,” he promises me. He promises me.
He falls asleep after that. I pretend to as well, at least until Kafka is also asleep. Then, I shake myself free from Caelus, and collect my pilot suit from where I left it. I can’t sleep in the open like this. It has been two system hours by now.
A minute later, my heavy bootsteps make their way back to the dying campfire.
There is no kindling left to ignite. We used poor fuel in the first place.
I turn the output of my armor down to ten percent. I let my engines whirr to life, a gentle hum. I sit back down, and I help Caelus lie on his side. He should not have to suffer a cramp from lying on my pauldrons the whole night. Kafka and Silver Wolf inch closer to me in their sleep. Blade murmurs about the warmth in the Xianzhou tongue.
I light up the beach, and I shelter my family with my warmth. I stand vigil over their rest, my eyes turned starward.
Elio was right. I have found many things today.
Beating within my chest is the crystallization of those new emotions, new words, and new memories. They throb and pulse, settling in the pit of my ribs.
Love is when you want to protect somebody.
Love is when it hurts, and you love anyway.
Love is when you want someone to be yours.
Love is when you want someone to say your name. To hold you. To kiss you. To argue with you. To feed you. To joke with you. To bleed with you. To trust you. To trust you to protect them. To die for. To kill for. To kill for. To kill for. To kill for. To kill for. To kill for. To kill for.
