Date Point 10y9m1d AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Major Owen Powell
“Mister Arés to see you, sir.”
“Cheers, Corporal.”
Powell stood as Gabriel Arés limped through the door. The poor bloke’s disability was getting worse with time despite Gabe’s best efforts at rehabilitation, and he had to wonder when the day would eventually come when it finally beat him.
If his son was anything to go by, that day was most likely still far off. Still, he sank gratefully into the seat opposite Powell’s desk as soon as hands had been shaken and pleasantries exchanged.
“It’s not often you pay me a personal visit,” Powell noted.
“Your office is a son of a bitch for a crippled ancíano to even reach,” Gabe replied, with a self-effacing chuckle. “That’s why. But this is important.”
“Summat to do with your son?”
“My daughter, actually.” Gabe’s body might have been slowly giving up but there was nothing wrong with his wits, or his shrewd dark eyes. “I know, I know, you don’t like her much, but hear me out.”
Powell cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I’m sorry if I-”
Gabriel tapped his cane once, dismissively. “If the day ever comes when I try to police what you’re allowed to think about people, please lead the armed uprising,” he interrupted. “But she needs help.”
“And what help can I give that she needs?”
“I’m guessing you either have a therapist here on base, or have access to one, who’s in on DEEP RELIC?”
“…Aye, we do. Lieutenant Mears, Royal Navy. His office is four doors down thataway.” Powell aimed his thumb at the wall.
“Good. I want her to have access to him.”
“Done.” Powell nodded.
This seemed to surprise Gabriel, who blinked at him. “I was… expecting some resistance.”
Powell chewed his cheek thoughtfully for a second as he thought. “Look… If she needs to see Mears, I can fookin’ sympathize,” he said. “I don’t mind admitting that I go an’ see him pretty often myself. I’m not some pig-headed bastard who’ll block her getting needed treatment out of spite. If you say she needs it… well, I trust you. ”
Gabriel sighed. “Es justo. That’s fair.”
“Sorry if it’s not exactly a glowing sentiment, but… well, I look out for my Lads.”
Gabriel stretched his wounded side slightly and nodded. “Adam’s lucky. He’s got two father figures.”
“I, er… can’t exactly get that close with ‘em…” Powell demurred.
“There’s fathers and fathers.” Gabriel shrugged. “It’s a shame you’re not a parent yourself—I think you’d be a good one.”
“We all make our choices, mate,” Powell told him. “An’ we have to live wi’ the consequences.”
“There’s nothing wrong with regret, you know.”
“Sure there is. Means you went wrong in the first place.”
“Don’t you believe in redemption?”
“No.” Powell shook his head. “I believe in healing, an’ in movin’ on older an’ wiser. But redemption? Absolutely bloody not. If you make the bed then you have to fookin’ well sleep in it, and you don’t get to pretend you never did.”
Gabriel nodded sadly, and then heaved himself upright with a groan. “Thank you,” he said.
“I’ll let Mears know to arrange that appointment,” Powell replied, rising to shake his hand. Gabe nodded, patted him on the upper arm, and limped out in a more sombre mood than he’d arrived.
Once he was gone, Powell sat back down and ran his palm down his face. He liked Gabriel and respected him on the whole. They’d had a good professional relationship for… about six years? Something like that. And it was hard not to sympathize with a man who had so much love for his children, even if one of those children wasn’t actually his own flesh and blood. He hated to sadden him.
He fired off a quick email to Mears, who was on Earth for the week attending some kind of certification course, then checked his diary. He had PT with Warhorse in an hour, a meeting with Lt. Col. Miller after that, and then a fitting and measuring session with Kovač and the suit techs.
Time to catch up on his messages. And if some of those messages were accurate, his job was soon to become much more complicated…
Date Point 10y9m1d AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Xiù Chang
Adam—he’d point-blank refused to let them call him ’Sergeant Arés’—was managing to make Xiù feel very lucky indeed for her own relationship with Allison and Julian. He was exhausting.
They’d been invited on a kind of triple-date. It wasn’t anything formal, just dinner and drinks at a nice apartment south of the river, and already she was feeling overwhelmed by him and she wasn’t even his date. One of his buddies, a walking mountain called Christian who was pure charm and friendliness once you got past the aura of visceral threat he had no choice but to project, was taking him under his wing and teaching him some life skills.
From the look of things, Adam was a tricky student. It wasn’t just that he paid excruciating attention to every detail of the excursion, it was that he paid excruciating attention to the wrong details and managed to somehow miss some important ones like, say, his date.
Fortunately, Natalie—a bubbling British chick with what must have been about the thickest skin in the cosmos—was indulging his micromanagement with a wry smile, but she privately admitted while he was absent tending to some thoughtful detail that she considered Adam to be “lots of fun, in small doses.”
“I mean it’s nice, but I’ve been to weddings where the place settings were less, erm…” she waved a hand to indicate the immaculately arranged table. There were napkins, which had been folded into clean little pockets in which the cutlery was nested. The music was a selection of good songs, at the perfect volume to not interfere with conversation. There was a condensation-beaded jug of cold water with a couple of lemon slices in it. It wasn’t extravagant, but it did feel painstakingly conscientious. There was a spark of spontaneity that was noticeably lacking.
Fortunately, Julian had found the perfect way to bring some warm disruption to the table—he’d removed his foot and was busy repairing it. It had suffered badly from his game of soccer with Adam and Christian earlier in the day, and the little island of chaos he’d made as he maintained the prosthesis was quite welcome.
“Weddings, Christ. Not been to a wedding since I was yea high,” he commented, waving a hand at about tabletop-height.
“I was even smaller at the last one I went to…” Xiù mused.
“Oh God, you must have been the cutest child…” Allison realized.
“No comment,” Xiù teased, and sipped her water. Her presiding childhood memories were actually of skinned knees, perpetual bruises, and that one time she’d tried to do twenty back handsprings down the school hall, lost her bearings and suffered a greenstick fracture when she slammed into a wall. She had cleaned up quite well for the wedding, though.
Christian’s date, Freya, was pretty much a human Myun with much better-developed social graces and the broadest streak of pleasant confidence Xiù had ever met. Where Natalie had danced around the issue of just who she was sitting down to dinner with and had basically done everything in her power to pretend she wasn’t fangirling out, Freya hadn’t bothered to hide it. She’d shown up with a sharpie and a photo frame for them to sign, taken a selfie and then left it at that. It was a simple, uncomplicated and straightforward approach that had immediately won her a friend in Allison.
“Last wedding I went to, the drinks were in an old bathtub full of salt water and ice cubes,” she chuckled. “This is way fancier.”
This earned more laughter, and they made small talk like that for several minutes until a sizzling from the kitchen suggested that the salt slab had warmed up and was now in use. Sure enough, only minutes later the two enormous chefs emerged bearing smiles and plated rib-eye steaks with spiced sweet potato wedges and an avocado green salad.
It was all divine, and the evening was generally pretty relaxed even if they were treated to spectating some more of Adam’s attempts to be the most perfect date. He got better as the night went on and even managed to relax and get out of the mindset of making everything as super perfect as he possibly could.
Sadly, they had to wrap it up early and relatively sober. Misfit’s itinerary called for a jump back to the Cimbrean-5 customs beacon to recover their impounded stuff in the morning but it was a pleasant way to round off what had effectively been a brief vacation.
Naturally, the topic of choice in the cab back to the spaceport was their host’s prospects.
“Poor guy,” was Allison’s opinion. “I kinda get the impression he’s new to dating.”
“Lot of fun, though. I had a great time today,” Julian said.
“You spent most of it getting thrown around like a football,” Allison pointed out. She’d been on edge the whole time as they watched him kick a ball around and wrestle (or rather, be wrestled by) men who were so much larger than him it had been like watching a labrador merrily chase a couple of tanks. Xiù, whose lifetime of practising Gung Fu, Taiji, gymnastics and ballet had given her slightly more insight into how people moved had instantly spotted Adam and Christian’s incredible poise. Both men were so utterly in control that Julian had been perfectly safe to roughhouse with them, and he knew it as well.
Worrying about something less than Allison did had been an interesting experience.
Julian grinned, a little apologetically. “Been a long time since I hung out with guys my age,” he said.
“…Shit, yeah. I guess it has,” Allison conceded. “And you didn’t really do stuff like that with Lewis or Amir, did you?”
“They weren’t exactly the physical type…” Julian sighed. “It’s weird, you don’t really appreciate something simple like just playing ball with a couple guys until you haven’t done it in years.”
“Glad you got the chance?”
“Yeah.”
The conversation ended there as they arrived at the spaceport, and they lingered in the hangar doorway to look out across the concrete and take in the town’s lights around them.
“…I’m going to miss Cimbrean.” Xiù decided. There was something so different about it compared to Earth, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“We’ll be back. Resupply in nine months, remember?”
“I’m still going to miss it.”
“…Me too.”
“Yeah.”
They stood in silence then shook themselves, headed indoors, and went to bed.
They had a long job ahead of them.
Date Point 10y9m1d AV
Celzi Alliance command facility, Crzlrfek System, The Freedom Stars
Warmaster Trez Ekrat
There was still far too much yellow in the volumetric strategy map, but that was why seeing one important marker blink and turn blue felt so… satisfying.
That marker represented a class six temperate world so newly colonized that the Dominion’s supine bureaucracy hadn’t even approved a formal name for it, yet. It still appeared on the Dominion’s star charts as ’DTC-whitesquare-44170-T6’.
On Alliance star charts, its name translated to something equivalent to ’Fertile Flood’, a name that sounded strong in Celz’ (Zrefn Delc’) and poetic in Qininis (Nisiqithathe). In most regards it was an unremarkable planet with nothing much going for it, other than one valuable feature: An enormous flood plain network where several river deltas met and crawled across thousands of square kilometers of incomparably fertile soil under warm temperate sunlight with predictable weekly rains.
Upon taking receipt of the planet, its owners had promptly stripped that biome every scrap of native flora and introduced alien feed crops like Cqcq and Rhwk. From the mountains to the ocean, every square meter of an area th e size of a moderate country was farmland, tended by ten million drones.
The Alliance needed that food. Their existing agricultural infrastructure only barely met the demands of a swelling population that had bred in expectation of a war of expansion onto the fertile unclaimed worlds around them, and had instead found themselves confined to a dense knot of planets when the arrival of humans had compelled a ceasefire.
A ceasefire that had finally ended, thanks to the baffling decision by a Dominion fleetmaster to plunge suicidally deep into Alliance territory and blow up a communications relay station.
Warmaster Ekrat didn’t know the term ’straining at the leash’, but he had been doing it nonetheless. By the time the Alliance council realized that they could postpone their unpopular plans for rationing and instead had the chance to annex an already established farming colony, Ekrat’s plans had been drawn up, his troop carriers loaded, his patrol ships recalled and his assault poised.
He’d even completed the lengthy process of preparing a space station for transit, and the anchorage ’Light Spike’ had jumped into orbit around Fertile Flood three days after the order was given to invade, punctuating a swift and utterly effective annexation. With its firepower, long-range defensive shields and repair facilities in place the Alliance fleet had a new base of operations so strong that the Dominion would have almost had a better prospect of evicting them from Crzlrfek.
The question before him now was…
“Where next?”
Ekrat turned. His Qinis logistics-master, Vasi Thal, was pondering the strategic map with a finger resting lightly on his lips and his ears twitching this way and that as he thought. Despite being as thin as a grass stalk he cut an impressive figure wearing an ornate black uniform with sombre steel trim and a dozen tiny iridescent chains that clipped to his ears and whispered like a silver breeze at the slightest movement.
“That’s for me to decide,” Ekrat told him.
“Counsel, Warmaster?”
“Of course.”
“Our first objective should be to consolidate our hold on Nisiqithathe. We need to secure the access to that system so that the colony’s food products can be delivered back to the core worlds.”
“An objective that will most easily be achieved by threatening other Dominion colonies and bases in this region,” Ekrat agreed. He brought up his long, dextrous tail and gestured into the heart of the map display, picking out the markers that indicated Dominion facilities in and near the border stars. “We can keep them on the defensive.”
Thal looked uncomfortable. “When you say ’threatening’…?”
“Ah. So you have heard my reputation.”
Thal cleared his long throat. “Is there any truth to it?”
“Some.”
“How much.”
Ekrat snuffed a hint of contemptuous amusement. “Thal, never tell your subordinates how accurate your reputation is. A little mystery is good for a commander.”
“Even if the reputation is for unnecessarily ruthless violence?”
Ethrak had had this conversation or some variant of it many times before, and he had learned with effort to suppress his irritation at the word ’unnecessary’. He had never done anything unnecessary. Ruthlessly violent, yes, but never unnecessary.
“Especially then,” he replied instead.
“So… when you say ’threaten’…?” Thal pressed.
“If your conscience makes you squeamish, Thal, then don’t ask. The threat will be credible: if it was not, it wouldn’t be effective.”
“I… see, Warmaster. I withdraw my question.”
“Sensible. Make your preparations to take over the colony farm and export the food. Leave the dirty work of securing your space lanes to me.”
“…Yes, Warmaster.” Thal bowed stiffly, and made himself scarce.
Ethrak made a satisfied gesture to himself, and planned how best to terrorize the Dominion into defending the wrong things…
Date Point 10y9m2w AV
Ava Ríos
Gabriel was waiting for Ava when she checked her bags with the HMS Sharman gate guards and was allowed to leave, but her heart sank the moment she laid eyes on him.
He was in his wheelchair. He hated using his wheelchair.
She gave him a kiss on the cheek and a hug. “Hey! ¿Estás bien?”
Gabe grumbled unhappily. “My fucking leg’s not working at all today…” He groused. “Enough about me. How did it go?”
“He’s put me on, uh…” Ava dug in her handbag and read the prescription. “…Paroxetine.”
“That’s good!”
“I guess…”
Gabe gestured back toward town and turned his chair. There was nothing wrong with his arms at least. “¿Qué pasa?” he asked, softly.
“I… this is gonna sound stupid…” Ava sighed, falling in alongside him.
“Go ahead and say it anyway.”
“I just really don’t want to have to take these.”
He looked up at her. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just… I know it’ll help me feel better and I know I need it, but…”
Gabe nodded.
“You know?” Ava finished, lamely.
“I do, yeah.” Gabe slapped his wheelchair. “I know I need this thing, but…”
“But you hate it.”
“Yeah. I’ll use it when I have to, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. It’s…” Gabe paused to select his words. “…It’s a reminder that I’m not whole.”
That was maybe a little too blunt of a description for Ava’s taste, but under the discomfort she had to admit that he’d hit the mark for her too. She felt like she’d been walking around with a piece missing that she’d managed to hide for so long, and now it was out in the open for everybody to see. She felt exposed.
Gabriel sighed as they stopped at the pedestrian crossing. “It’s human nature to avoid the hard stuff in our life if we can,” he said. “I remember when I was your age, I never wanted to look at my bank balance even though I needed to know how much I had so I could spend it sensibly. Everybody’s like that. It’s why people don’t exercise or stick to diets, because that’s hard and we all prefer the easy way.”
“And then you get obese diabetics complaining about how hard their life is when it’d have been way less harder if they just put in some effort,” Ava observed as he pressed the button..
“You’re in a cynical mood today, mija…”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t blame you, though…” The light changed to let them across, and Gabe rolled his chair off the sidewalk. “You are gonna take the pills, right?”
“Charlotte’s promised to nag me if I don’t,” Ava told him, with a weak but genuine smile. Finally opening up to her best friend had been difficult and tearful, but had rewarded her with the kind of emotional and practical support that only a midwife could provide.
“You’re lucky to have friends like- ¡Me cago en todo lo que se menea!”
Heads turned at that last virulent outburst as Gabe inexpertly turned his chair a little too soon after making it up onto the sidewalk and managed to get himself stuck straddling the kerb. He wrenched furiously at the wheels to try and get it back onto the sidewalk then went limp and defeated.
“…Help.”
Ava hauled him back up safely onto the sidewalk. He sighed and rubbed at his temples then threw his hands down in frustration.
“Fuck!”
“Swearing in English for a change, Dad?” Ava teased, trying to lighten the mood. It worked, and Gabriel chuckled a little.
“Sometimes I think ’fuck’ might just be the best word ever invented,” he confessed.
She put a hand on his back. “Entiendo.”
He rubbed the wheel ruefully. “Let’s go for a walk. I need the practice and the doctor says I should use this thing more anyway…”
“You should. It’s supposed to increase your mobility, Dad.”
“Weren’t you the one saying you didn’t want to take your pills?”
“I don’t want to, but I will,” Ava said firmly.
Gabe paused, then nodded. “Right. Es justo.”
“There’s that nice gelato place on Parkside and Peake…” Ava suggested.
“Sounds good.” He turned his chair in the right direction and headed out with a determined expression. Ava watched after him for a second feeling a complicated mix of emotions that she couldn’t quite pick apart, then adjusted her handbag and followed.
It was nice not to feel completely alone.
Date Point 10y9m3w AV
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, USA, Earth
Master Sergeant Derek Coombes
The problem with doing PT alongside Staff Sergeant Walsh was that his nickname—”Tiny”—was a completely ironic one. The guy had tried out for SOR for crap’s sake, he was as big as a barn and lived in the kind of performance athlete territory that meant he was constantly “failing” physicals and having to get a waiver from the doctors to say that, yes, he was perfectly healthy and that “excess” weight was all muscle.
Coombes was a different creature, from a different philosophy of training that had fallen out of fashion in the modern army. He was lighter and more wiry, more average in build and well-suited to blending into a crowd exactly like he’d been doing in Egypt.
This naturally meant that when it came to the gym, anything Coombes could do Walsh could do better. Much better. And that shit was not about to be accepted, no matter how much his muscles and joints got angry at him. He couldn’t match the big fucker on weight but he would damn well match him pace-for-pace and rep-for-rep, his pride demanded nothing less.
Fortunately, Tiny was diplomatic enough not to comment on how Coombes spent a bit longer massaging his aching limbs under the shower afterwards.
They talked about other things instead, while they did their boots up. “So you’re taking a second shot?”
Tiny nodded. “Dude, the only reason I’m not wearing that spacesuit already is because I fucked my arm up. I’m gonna be SOR.”
“Too bad for me they don’t take guys my size,” Coombes mused. Ever since Allied Extrasolar Command had tentatively declared that the Hierarchy threat on Earth was neutralized, he’d been at something of a loose end. There was plenty of shit still to do on Earth, but somehow the global war on extremism seemed much less important than the extraterrestrial stuff nowadays.
It was kinda hard to accept that the war he’d literally been shot through the lung while fighting had sorta… fizzled out after Operation EMPTY BELL. The enemy was still out there, the war was still on, but suddenly it didn’t need guys like him any more. That stuck in the craw.
They were both surprised to find a man in air force blues with silver oak leaves on his shoulders waiting for them outside the fitness center. He looked up the second they stepped outside and stood.
“Uh… good afternoon, sir,” Coombes said and saluted.
“Afternoon, as you were, gentlemen.,” the officer replied and returned the salute. He had a friendly, informal manner and a pleasant smile. “Master Sergeant Coombes, right? And Staff Sergeant Walsh?”
“That’s us,” Tiny agreed. Both men assumed a loose parade rest.
“As you were, gentlemen. Lt. Col. Miller, 946th Operations Support Squadron,” Miller introduced himself and shook their hands. “I’m the DoD’s maintenance officer for the Spaceborne Operations Regiment. Got a career opportunity for you boys if you’re interested…”
Naturally, both of them jumped at the chance. There was the usual rigmarole of finding somewhere private to have the conversation and all the other stuff that went with a classified briefing, but none of that took long. They wound up seated at the corner table at Quiznos where Miller treated them to their pick off the menu and produced the kind of sound-suppressing and air-opaquing security gizmo that only people who worked closely with Scotch Creek seemed to play with.
The air around them fuzzed and became… hazy. Not opaque, but certainly impossible to discern any detail from outside their little gray bubble of privacy. The noise and bustle around them vanished under a blanket of white noise, which in turn stopped their own words from leaving the immediate vicinity of their table.
“Allied Extrasolar Command want to reincarnate JETS teams,” Miller said, as soon as they were settled. “But not as a certification this time. As the real deal—a working, full-time part of the SOR. Given that the reasons why have to do with your mission in Egypt, you were the obvious guys to offer first refusal.”
Coombes brightened immediately. This was already sounding exactly like what he’d been hankering for but when he glanced over, Tiny’s expression was interested but unenthusiastic at best.
“JETS already fell through once,” he pointed out.
“It’s a different beast this time. Very different,” Miller promised. “We have a definite mission and need, a clearer idea of the requirements and, importantly, JETS team members will be a critical counterpart to the guys in the spacesuits, the HEAT teams as we’re calling them now.”
“I kinda have my sights set on being one of those guys in the spacesuit…” Walsh said. “Hell, I already got selected and then busted my arm…”
“Well, hear me out.” Miller selected a file on his tablet and handed it over. “How old are you, Walsh? Twenty-eight?”
“That’s right…”
“You were briefed on the built-in declining efficiency of Cruezzir-D, right?”
Tiny nodded reluctantly.
“So even if you head down to Huntsville today you’re never really going to feel the full benefit of Crue-D enhanced training…” Miller said.
“Begging your pardon sir, but bullshit. Firth’s was about my age when he started the Crude. A little older even, and look at the guy.”
“I thought you might bring that up.” Miller fished out an e-paper photograph. He laid it down on the table and swiped through the images loaded onto it. “Here. Firth was kind enough to share some photos to drive home the point. Here he is at thirteen…and fifteen…and seventeen, when he enlisted….”
Coombes and Walsh both boggled. The allegedly thirteen-year old boy in the first photo was unbelievably fit and only marginally smaller than Walsh was right now. The young man in the second image was legitimately enormous, and the photos after that…
“…Jesus.”
Miller nodded. “Mm-hmm. Now imagine if he’d started on Crue-D early in life, like Warhorse did. Honestly, the fact that he’ll maybe never hit his theoretical maximum is probably a blessing in disguise for him.”
The way Tiny scowled slightly at the photo told Coombes that Miller had scored a hit.
“I think what Tiny’s saying is he doesn’t want to settle for second-best, sir,” he observed. Walsh nodded.
Miller sat back and tapped the tabletop thoughtfully. “…What do you mean by ’best’?” he asked. “Biggest? Strongest? Deadliest? Let’s face it, Firth and Warhorse already have those wrapped up tight, but you should talk to them sometime. What they both focus on is all the ways their buddies are better than them at other stuff. So… best at what?”
He smiled winningly. “This is still the SOR. Same unit, same standards, same stakes, same mission, everything. I’m still offering you the chance to be the best: the only difference is focus. As a Joint Extra-Terrestrial Scout, you would infiltrate hostile worlds and live there for months at a time, never seen, never detected, and you’d generate absolutely priceless first-take intel. Intel without which the big guys in the suits would be useless.”
“That doesn’t sound second-rate to me, Tiny,” Coombes said.
Walsh gave him the slightly askance look of a man whose friend was siding with the other guy. “Dude.”
“What? I like the idea and I want you with me!”
“You do?”
Coombes nodded. “Come on, you saw the suit-jockeys in action. How big’s the fucking logistics tail behind those guys?”
“They may as well have a power cable running out the back,” Miller nodded.
“That’s true of any advanced unit, sir. That’s true of an F-16, or an infantry platoon.”
“But not of a scout.”
“Never thought of myself as a scout before…” Tiny rumbled, thoughtfully rather than reluctantly.
“Why not, though? Hell, you’re CCT for fuck sake, how’re you gonna drop a bomb on stuff if you don’t know where it is?”
Tiny smiled, “I’m usually there with a laser designator, but…yeah. I mean, in a way, I guess a combat controller is like a raider, or short-term recon. Hell, recon is a big part of the mission. It’s just…we’re only equipped for days, not weeks or even months, and the equipment load is already…”
He trailed off thoughtfully, and his lips moved silently as he did some mental arithmetic for a handful of seconds. “Armor, equipment, food as dense as we can package it, garbage…tablets for water, tablets to clean up latrines… Shit, you really do need a guy my size for this, don’t you?”
“We really do,” Miller said. “Though, none of this means you can’t still take a swing at HEAT if you want to. But you’ll be blazing new trails, developing tactics and doctrine, you’ll be collaborating with people from all across the special operations communities of the world, finding what makes sense, what doesn’t… You might just find it rewarding, if you’ve got the chops for it.”
He sat back and gave them both a daring stare. “Do you?”
Date Point: Halloween, 10y10m AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Adam Arés
“You know, those fatigues aren’t really part of the costume…”
Martina Kovač folded her arms. “Oh, sure, just ‘cause Cammy hangs her ass and cameltoe out for everyone to stare at, that means I have to as well?”
“Well… you are dressed as her.” Adam pointed out.
“It’s creative license.” She saw his expression and softened. “Plus, I’ve got that giant burn scar on my butt cheek. Let me have this, okay? I already feel half-naked in this thing…” she plucked awkwardly at her costume’s skin-tight green leotard.
Adam remembered some of the stuff Firth had taught him and stopped himself from pointing out that he, having had the role of Zangief thrust on him, was technically wearing less than she was.
That was their theme for the night. The SOR was throwing a barbecue and party on the green at Quarterside park for the sake of some good PR, and had collectively decided to dress up as an assortment of Street Fighter characters.
“Sorry.”
She shot him a warm look. “Thanks. It’s kinda dumb isn’t it? I’m so used to seeing all of you naked I don’t bat an eyelid, but ask me to dress up like this…”
“We’re in a public park. I don’t think it’s the same.”
“True… but the fatigues work, right? They don’t ruin the costume?”
“Nah, it looks like some kinda DLC alternative outfit or something. You’re fine.”
“Good…” Marty tucked some stray hair up into her long blonde pigtails wig. “…Shall we?”
Adam grinned and got into character. “Da! The Red Cyclone will put on show for little children!”
“That’s… a terrifyingly good impression.”
“Thanks! I practised.”
He took the way she smiled and shook her head as a good sign and got out of the car.
Kids pointed and made awed noises as the two of them approached and Adam took delight in flexing extravagantly for them.
Cimbrean didn’t really have trick-or-treat, though that wasn’t down to any lack of enthusiasm for the holiday. It was just that in the early days of the colony Adam had been one of only about a dozen young people below the age of twenty on the whole planet, and the adults had decided to go with a big themed party instead, a tradition that had stuck especially hard when somebody had hit on the idea that you had to perform some kind of minor forfeit to get your food if you weren’t in costume.
As a result, Quarterside Park was a sea of people of all ages in costume, from the traditional little girls in pointy-hatted witch costumes, through videogame characters and superheroes, and of course there was the Cimbrean franchise of the Ghostbusters with their brown boiler suits and their intricate and expensively realistic proton packs. Akiyama was a member, though today he was playing his role in the SOR’s Street Fighter ensemble.
The aliens mostly treated it all with bemusement though the Gaoians were getting into the swing of things, led by their cubs. While they occasionally had slightly odd ideas for what constituted a costume, as evidenced by the burly Straightshield brother who was walking around dressed as a boiled lobster, nobody could argue they hadn’t enthusiastically grabbed the spirit of the day with both paws.
They made a meandering line for the horseshoe of barbecues in the middle of the park where Sagat (Firth), Balrog (Burgess) and Ken (Sikes) were expertly tending two grills apiece in a confident bustle of activity and keeping up some banter with the happy eaters as they went.
Then there were the snack tables where Blanka (Vandenberg) and Dan Hibiki (Murray) were keeping everyone supplied with all the snacks, sweets and soda they could ask for. On the grass, Guile (Blaczynski) and Ryu (Akiyama) were having a push-up contest with several children sitting on their backs and cheering them on..
“So where do we fit in?” Marty asked.
“Meet and greet, amuse the kids, make the adults happy…” Adam replied. They’d all gone over their roles earlier in the week while assembling their costumes, and the consensus had been that Adam was best placed doing their strongman show while Marty could take some of the masculine edge off. Already kids were pointing and nudging each other, and the adults were gawping, including some whom he recognized. On any other day it might have made him self-conscious but today he was in-character.
Marty stifled a giggle as he hammed it up for the crowd and put on his outrageous Russian accent. They made a good double-act, especially when she wound up sitting primly on his shoulder while half a dozen children and a couple of cubs tried their best to drag his arms down while he roared with massively exaggerated laughter.
Then there were the selfies, the handshakes, posing for photos and hour after hour of being as friendly as he could muster which finally came to a blessed end with the fireworks display.
It was a massive relief when the last of the children was finally ushered home and literally every adult in the park heaved a sigh of relief and relaxed. The beers appeared from nowhere, the music got a little more raw, the jokes edgier and the smiles (and language) were less guarded.
The only potential tripwire in fact was the friction between Ava and the Lads. She was present in her role as an ESNN photojournalist and had spent the day recording the festivities for the network’s local news website. Once the children and their parents were gone there was no reasonable way for her to avoid the SOR without shirking her duties, nor indeed for them to avoid her without shirking theirs.
The Lads weren’t being rude exactly—all of them knew that actively snubbing Ava was a good way to irritate the man responsible for their exercise schedule—but even for the camera they were being decidedly cool, and it was dragging out the shoot longer than needed as she tried to capture some merriment from them.
In the end, Marty took her gently by the elbow and led her away from the group where they settled into a quiet conversation while the Lads shrugged at each other and unwound. Adam sidled over to try and listen in.
“…don’t like me, I know why they don’t like me and… I mean, I accept that,” Ava was saying, when he could finally hear her. “But I don’t want to mess this up for you. This is important, isn’t it?”
“Good PR is kinda vital for us, yeah…”
“Right. Well, I wanna deliver good PR. I just… I don’t know how right now. It’s hard when you can’t build a rapport.”
She sounded so despondent that Adam would have stepped in and given her a hug right then and there if Marty hadn’t caught his eye and, very subtly, shaken her head so instead he backed off a little to the discreet distance he’d found where he could still make out what they were saying while seemingly be far enough away that they’d think he couldn’t.
“I think… part of the problem is you’re going with this heroic angle,” Marty suggested to Ava. “You’re trying to show us in a positive light rather than just, uh, point the camera at what’s there. Right?”
Ava cocked her head thoughtfully. “…I guess so,” she conceded, after a few seconds.
“So, maybe the thing to do is just…”
“Let them be themselves,” Ava finished. “Stop trying to tell a story.”
“Well, I can’t blame you for wanting to tell a story,” Marty said warmly, “but yeah. I guess that’s the gist of what I’m saying.”
“And you’re right… thank you.”
“No problem.” Marty stood up. “You gonna be okay?”
“Uh… actually, can I ask you a personal question? Like, as me, not as the reporter.”
Marty gave her a curious look, but gestured for her to ask.
“Why are you being nice to me?”
Marty glanced at Adam, scratched thoughtfully at the line of her wig and then sat back down again. “…Counter-question. Why are you being nice to them?” she asked. “You’re being surprisingly loyal considering how hard they’re snubbing you.”
“It’s nothing I don’t deserve.”
“You think? Well… I guess they think so. But I know ‘Horse doesn’t and I trust his instincts, even if he is hella naive sometimes.”
Ava laughed at that. “That makes two of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Huh?”
“Well, do you mean you’re naive too, or do you mean you trust his instincts too?” Marty clarified.
“…Both?”
It was Marty’s turn to laugh, and that drew out one of Ava’s real smiles. She had so many flavors of fake, tired, weak and polite smile that seeing some genuine happiness dawn on her face was like witnessing a small miracle of nature.
“He is naive, though,” Marty added, and Adam felt his ears burn pink a little.
“Can you blame him?”
“Hell no. He’s been stuck in this hyper-masculine bubble for his whole adult life and… I mean, I know you two had a pretty rough time of it, losing your home and everything…”
“Yeah.” It was Ava’s turn to glance in Adam’s direction, and he did his best to pretend not to notice. “We both learned some really hard lessons and… I guess there were some other lessons where, like, we didn’t get the chance.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
Adam had heard enough. He got up and joined them, causing both girls to first look up curiously and then make very similar squeaks as he drew the pair of them into his trademark huge full-body-workout hug.
Marty, being stronger than Ava, was the first to work her way free. “Dude, what-?”
“I’m just glad you two are getting along!” Adam explained, easing off.
Ava straightened her hair and tugged on the pink sports jacket that was part of her costume, then took a step back. “Thanks, uh… Look, why don’t you go mingle? I’ll just sorta… snap whatever I see,” she suggested.
Adam looked to Marty, got an almost imperceptible nod, and gave an amplified nod of his own. “Okay! Get yourself a steak sandwich off Firth though, ‘kay? He does the best steak sandwiches.”
“I’ll…do that, sure.”
“Come on, Zangief,” Marty said, and led him away with an eye-roll and a smack on the arm.
He checked they were out of earshot—really out of earshot—before he said anything. “Uh… Thanks. For helping her.”
“You’re welcome.”