Si Vis Pacem Read online

  I climb back down the stairs.

  “Honey, are you OK?”

  “No.”

  Dee climbs up my ladder and hisses. When she comes down, her eyes are wet again. “We can clear it up. I can do it.”

  “No. It’s my bunk. I’ll do it.”

  Something hits me: our drawers. We didn’t check our drawers. I climb up my ladder, open the first one, and lo and behold, piss and shit. My spare uniform is filthy. All the stuff I managed to collect while I’ve been here is filthy. It’s not much, but it’s everything I have, and they’ve literally shat on it. The other drawer is the same. When I climb down and open Dee’s drawers, they’ve been wrecked too. Her store of paper is soaked, and all her drawings, and all the pretty things she made to take some of the horror out of this place. They didn’t care enough about them to steal them, so they shat on them instead.

  My body starts to shiver and I can’t stop it.

  “This is it. Fuck this. Fuck it with fire. I’m done here.”

  Dee puts her arm over my shoulders. “Honey, I know you’re upset, but…”

  “No. I mean it. As far as I’m concerned, this place has exhausted its already dubious charms. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, but…”

  “Fuck sentiments, too. I mean it. You wanna get out?”

  “How?”

  “You’re nearly eighteen. As soon as you’re of age I can be your ward. We’ve got enough qualifications between us to get a job somewhere. Anything. Anywhere. Just not here.”

  Her eyes get so wide they show white all round.

  “My ward? Giving me complete power over you? No way.”

  “It’s for less than two years, and only for show. And I trust you.”

  “I get that, but...”

  “I’m telling you, I’m getting out of here. Legally, illegally, whatever. I’ll suck the dick of the next pilot who docks here and see if he’ll let me board. I am not staying.” I find myself panting and I realize I’ve been screaming at her. I also realize that I’m unlikely to stop.

  She seems to get it, because instead of getting angry at me she starts to rub my shoulders. “OK. Alright. So we get out of here and do what, go grubbing? You had so many plans…”

  “So did Kris. Remember where it got him?”

  “You can’t… OK. You can. You want to get out of here. I get that. Let’s do it, but let’s think our way through it, OK? Rationally.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Absolutely. Do you think I like it here?”

  “What about your plans?”

  “If they can’t take a bit of a wiggle, then they’re not very good. You know I have next to no credit, don’t you? A couple of days’ air is all I’m good for. And that’s if it’s going cheap.”

  “Not a problem. I don’t have squat.”

  “Great. And our qualifications?”

  “Mine aren’t worth shit unless I get into a higher study program or gain a professional qualification, and I can’t apply for any of that until I’m eighteen. I meet the basic requirements for a bunch of tech stuff, but that’s about it. I’m not worth shit.”

  She scowls at me. “Don’t ever say that!”

  “Dee, it’s just an expression.”

  “I don’t care! I won’t listen to you saying anything about yourself I wouldn’t take from a third party! Honey, if we could hold on until I’m nineteen and you’re of age…” She sighs. “I’m sorry, but it’s frustrating. You have all the qualifications you need to apply to just about anything you’d like, and you can’t because you got there too quickly. I haven’t done a fraction of the work you put in and I could start applying around in a handful of weeks because I’m old enough. It makes no sense.”

  “It is what it is.”

  “It’s messed up, is what it is. The only thing holding you back is your date of birth.”

  Her words bounce around my head a bit. They have plenty of space to do so: I can’t seem to think at all. I start giggling and I find that I can’t stop. Dee stands back from me, her hands still on my shoulders, and looks at me in horror.

  “Honey, are you OK? What is it?”

  “One fucking digit on my record, that’s all that matters. One digit makes all the difference to my life. It’s hilarious.”

  Dee stares at me as my giggles turn into cackles. As she looks at me, her expression drifts from concern to wonder.

  “Honey, that’s not a bad idea. Not at all.”

  “What idea?”

  “Changing your records. I mean, everything else would tally. You have the qualifications of someone at least two years older than you.”

  My cackles dry up. “You’re not joking, are you?”

  “No. All we need to do is change your records. Then we can get ourselves a godsdamned job and get out of here.”

  “How the fuck would we change my records?”

  “We just need to get access to one of the master terminals.”

  “Yeah, because they leave them unattended.”

  “All you need is a disturbance serious enough to get the Supervisors out of their office. I can sort something out. Then you sneak in, change your records, and get the hell out. We can start applying for stuff that very evening. We could be celebrating my birthday out of here.”

  “But as soon as we get approved for something they’d realize that I cheated. They know my age here. It’s kind of a big deal. And the first two years of my life would be unaccounted for.”

  She snorts. “As if anyone would care. No Fed employee is going to bother querying a transfer order, or trawl through your records and notice that you were in nappies until the age of four.”

  “But I don’t look eighteen.”

  “You don’t look sixteen. You look fourteen at most. You probably always will. And again, nobody cares. It’s all about the fucking numbers. So let’s rig them.”

  The first half of Dee’s plan is a doddle. Biometric scans are required to activate the terminals, so only an approved Fed employee can do that, but access to them is by code and password only. She simply needs to be in the room with a Supervisor while they’re inputting their access code and use her telepathy to read it. Provided she doesn’t fucking forget it before she leaves the office, we’re going to be fine.

  We engineer that situation by going to the office together, allegedly because I want to ask about transferring courses. The Supervisor on duty groans, checks my records, tells me that I don’t qualify yet but will do so next term, and tells us to clear off.

  As soon as we’re out of the door, Dee starts chanting. I input the string of letters into my reader. She checks it through half a dozen times before she’s happy with it. All in all, that was no trouble.

  The second half of the plan is a different story. I think it’s either too simple, way too vague, or both. Dee disagrees.

  “Honey, leave it to me. I just have to make a bit of a fuss to get the Supervisors out of the office. That way you can nip in there, input the code, change your records, and the job is done.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re faster than me in every possible way, and particularly around a terminal.”

  “If they catch me fucking around with one of the master terminals, I will be in a world of shit.”

  “Just tell them that you were trying to enroll on that course you asked about the other day, or change your last batch of grades because they ruin your average. You’ll get in some trouble, but not much. Don’t worry about that, anyway: I’ll give you plenty of time.”

  “What the hell are you planning to do?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Why don’t you tell me now?”

  “You would probably not approve.”

  “How is that supposed to help? Dee, I don’t want you to get in the shit.”

  “Don’t worry about me. You focus on your part of the plan, I’ll focus on mine. We’re a team, right? Trust me, honey. If we c
an’t pull this off, in less than a month you’ll have to be my dependent. I would be responsible for you. That’s a horrifying prospect. I’m not going to fuck this up.”

  And she refuses to say any more on the subject. I’m utterly unconvinced, but I’m also desperate. All I can do is go along with her plan, do my bit, and hope that she doesn’t mess her bit up.

  We are set to do our thing at lunchtime. The Supervisors are spread all over the place at that time of day, so we’re maximizing our chances of the office ending up empty. It’s easier to cause a ruckus, too, because the refectory is a tinderbox at the best of times. Our plan makes just enough sense in theory, but I can’t believe that we’ll get away with it. We don’t have a plan B, though, so lunchtime finds me lurking near the office entrance, acting as nonchalantly as I can, which isn’t very.

  I know the moment Dee starts her diversion: the noise is loud enough to startle me even though I expected it. My instincts scream at me to run to her, to make sure that she’s OK, but that would be the end of our plan. Instead I stay put until the duty Supervisor bolts out of the office, stop the door from shutting by trapping my heel in it, wait until nobody is paying attention to me, and dive in there.

  I sit at the first terminal I can get to and realize that unless I calm the fuck down we’re screwed: my hands are shaking so violently that I can’t type. We have no time for this bullshit, so I breathe myself into an approximate representation of calm and input the code. I’m into the system and into my file in no time flat. Two strokes of the keyboard turn me into an adult. I’m just about to log out when an idea catches me. It’s too good not to follow it, so I spend a few more moments at the keyboard before getting out of the terminal, out of the chair, and out of the door.

  The adrenaline surge I suppressed hits me as soon as I start moving. There is no way I can walk there, so I let myself run. By the time I’ve reached the refectory my brain is in that special place where time stands almost still and everything is possible. It takes me a fraction of a breath to work out what’s happening. The Supervisors are busy clearing the room by herding people out of the main exits. That would be just great, because nobody wants another riot, but nobody is bothering to help Dee, who is getting her ass handed to her. She is on the ground, three girls standing near her, one kneeling on her. The girl who’s on top of Dee is punching her, but she’s doing such a bad job that she’s hardly a problem. Two of the three girls are just cheering her along. The third girl is pulling her leg back for a kick. If she gets Dee in the head, that will be an issue.

  I duck under a Supervisor’s outstretched arm and by the time I reach Dee, another fraction of a breath later, I have a plan. I run straight into the kicking girl, shouldering her in the ribs at full speed. Her bulk stops my momentum, which suits me fine. She can’t catch herself and falls over. I’ll have to deal with her later, no doubt, but that can wait. The girl who’s punching Dee needs to stop doing that. I’m not much good at hitting, so I grab her face from behind and pull her upwards and backwards. I’ve shoved a finger up her nostril, which has got to hurt, but, instead of falling backwards, she braces herself on one arm and uses the other to get me off her. She has stopped punching Dee and is trying to punch me instead. I’m happy with that change. I kick her braced elbow and watch it bend the wrong way before someone grabs me from behind and starts to choke me. I don’t like that at all, so I kick backwards as hard as I can. I hit something, but not hard enough: their hold loosens but they’ve still got me. I can turn around, though, and when I do their face is near mine, which means that my nails are near their eyes, which means blood.

  The next thing I know, I’m on the floor.

  I must have passed out, because I’m just coming round. My brain is hazy as hell. Dee is kneeling next to me, stroking my hair. Her face is bleeding but she doesn’t seem worried, so I take the time for a quick internal scan. I catalogue a collection of aches but no real pains, so I sit up.

  Four Supervisors are yelling at us, their batons at the ready. That explains my head being fuzzy. Dee stands and helps me up. Two of the three girls are sniveling and the third is screeching, blood all over her face.

  This has been a hoot, but I’ve had enough roughhousing for the day, so when the Supervisors yell at us to get going I listen and obey, even though I’m still feeling unsteady. I don’t want them to decide to help me along. Dee grabs my arm, which is just as well because I am not sure I could make it otherwise. Walking clears my head, but we are nearly at the office door before I can get it together enough to hear Dee’s ‘pathing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  She beams and squeezes my arm tighter.

 

 

 

  I was expecting to get taken to the Supervisors’ office, but they head towards the Captain’s office instead. Huh. I guess we’ve overdone it.

  When we walk in, the Captain is scowling at her screen. When she stops reading and turns around, she barely looks at Dee. Her withering scowl would hurt my tender feelings, had I any.

  “Pax. You’ve done it now. Your performance of late has been appalling. You’ve barely scraped through your classes. Your Professors have complained about your participation, or non-participation. And now your roommate is misbehaving after being an exemplary pupil throughout her residence here. Don’t think that I don’t know whose fault that is!”

  Dee steps up to the yellow line on the floor. “This has nothing to do with Pax. She wasn’t even there when it started.”

  “But she was there when it ended. How convenient. If she had nothing to do with it, how did she know where to find you?”

  “She could have followed the noise, like a ton of other kids did.”

  “A ton of other kids didn’t send three students to the med bay!”

  “She was protecting me.” She says that so proudly, her chin right up in the air, her eyes shining.

  “Protecting you from what? Witnesses say that you started the fight.”

  “Those girls had it coming.”

  “Why?”

  Dee shrugs. “A ton of reasons. They had plenty of stuff to pay for. They’ve not finished paying yet.”

  The Captain hammers her fist into her desk. “You need to adjust your attitude. This is the time for sincere, humble apologies, not threats.”

  “I’d rather eat my own shit than apologize to them. Or to you.”

  The Captain freezes, looking as if she were trying to parse Dee’s words and failing. She takes a few deep breaths, and then she speaks as if the last couple of exchanges hadn’t happened.

  “In view of your past record, if you can tell me what Pax did to get you involved in this incident I will send you back to your room.”

  “If you send me back to my room, I’ll just go and find those girls again and finish what I started. They should be out of the med bay soon.”

  The Captain hits her desk again. “If that’s what you’ve got to say, then you leave me no choice. Solitary for the both of you, for two weeks. Hell, you can share the same cell: see how you like that. And you will still be attending your classes. If your
performance doesn’t pick up, you can stay in solitary until it does. Get out of here!”

  Dee turns on her heels, graceful as always, and we walk out the door as if we were just taking a stroll. A Supervisor waiting in the hallway checks his wrist reader, scowls at us, and escorts us to the med bay. They take their merry time dealing with those assholes already in there before they get around to patching Dee’s face up. I fucking hope that they’ve got her eyebrow aligned properly, and that it won’t scar. Whatever we may get out of this, it isn’t worth her spoiling her face.

  After the medics are done, the Supervisor takes us down two levels to the solitary section, herds us into one of the cells, and shuts the door behind us without a word. Dee takes the two steps to the bed and sits down. I go sit next to her. I can’t do anything else, really. Our cell contains a single bed, a tiny ‘fresher area, and just enough floor space to walk from one to the other. It’s not precisely spacious. It’s also not designed to house two people.

  “Dee? This makes no fucking sense.”

  “What doesn’t, honey?”

  “The two of us being in solitary together. That’s not what “solitary” means. And that we’ll still be going to classes. The whole point of being in solitary is that you’re totally isolated, not hanging out with your buddy.”

  “I know. This is better, isn’t it?”

  “Sure is. It’s the best we could have hoped for. We won’t fall behind on our classes and we won’t have to worry about getting killed in our sleep for a couple of weeks.”

  “Four weeks.”

  “The Captain said two!”

  “Yes, but she inputted four on the terminal. I watched her do it. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. But I still don’t get why we’re here, and on these terms.”

  “I might have done my thing at her, a tiny bit.”

  “You might?”

  She grins. “OK, I did my thing at her. It was easy: she wanted to punish us and to get us out of the way, but she couldn’t possibly do to us what she really wanted to.”

  “Oh. Do I want to know what that is?”

  “You don’t. Anyway, all I had to do was steer her towards punishments that met her goals while doing us a favor. She’ll be positively pissed off if she ever finds out just how much of a favor she did us. You know that I don’t believe that the end justifies the means, but.”