Excerpt
"Let me get this straight," Kymmie said now. "They forced you to retire because you got old?"
Okay, that wasn't so endearing. Gus might think of herself as old, especially on those mornings when her joints ached and no amount of exercise got the kinks out, but to hear some kid call her that?
She took a drink from the shot glass in front of her. Irish whiskey—the real stuff—produced the kind of smooth burn all the way down that no synthetic booze could hope to replicate. Depak Station was far enough from the central hub of the Free Worlds Alliance that it was a damn miracle any bar in this station managed to stock real booze manufactured on Earth. The shipping charges alone must have cost a small fortune.
Gus had no idea what the three shots of real Irish whiskey must have cost Kymmie. With any luck, the kid had an expense account.
"Not me," Gus said. "My armor."
Kymmie raised an eyebrow as she shot a pointed look at Gus's hair.
The short gray hair had given Gus the nickname "Gray Lady." Her hair had turned gray when she was little more than Kymmie's age, she'd just never seen the need to do anything about it. She wasn't a fashion model. She was a warrior who went to battle wearing a mechanized suit of armor. The gray hair suited her. The men she'd taken to her bed over the years certainly hadn't complained.
Had been a warrior, she corrected herself. The fact that she still wore her hair regulation short was more habit than anything else. She'd been shitcanned (because that's what it really was when you got right down to it)—what? Almost ten standard years ago now? How time flies when you're not doing the job you loved more than nearly anything else in the universe.
"Didn't they offer to upgrade you?" Kymmie asked. "Just because your armor wasn't any good any—"
Gus slammed the shot glass down on her table hard enough that a few of the old dogs—crew from freighters waiting out repairs to their vessels, captains of short haulers trawling for passengers willing pay enough to keep their ships flying—glanced in her direction to see what the fuss was all about. Gus ignored them, and they went back to their own drinks.
Kymmie had gone pale. She shrank back in her seat as Gus glared at her.
"Insult me," Gus said, "and I could give a crap. I heard much worse from those far better than you." She leaned forward. "Insult my armor? Do it again and I'll throw you across the bar."
It wasn't an empty threat. Gus kept herself in shape. All those hard-earned muscles from decades spent inside her armor, she wasn't about to let them go to flab. Throwing someone like Kymmie across the room wouldn't even make Gus break into a sweat.
She could tell Kymmie understood that. She swallowed hard enough that Gus saw her throat move beneath the silk scarf the reporter wore around her neck.
"Sorry," she murmured.
She might actually be contrite, or else she was just scared shitless. Either one worked for Gus.
"Look," Gus said. "How many armor jocks have you interviewed in your life?"
The flush that swept up Kymmie's cheeks gave Gus the answer. She was Kymmie's first.
Maybe she should cut the kid some slack, but the next armor jock—military jargon for the soldiers who climbed inside a few tons of metal shaped like a giant of a man and carried enough ordnance in their big shoulder guns alone to blow an enemy squad to kingdom come—might not be so forgiving. Better she learn now not to trash-talk an armor jock's best friend.
And Gus would be an armor jock until the day she died. Her armor was more than her best friend. It was her life. A second skin that had allowed her to survive when by all rights she should have been toast. More than once.
"Here's the deal," Gus said. "For armor jocks, that big, ugly suit's more than a tool we use for our jobs. When you're out there, even if your squad's all around you, you might as well be a universe of one, got it? Your whole world, it's nothing but you and that armor. You're trusting it with your life, and it trusts you to run it right."
That was the longest speech Gus had given in years. Armor jocks didn't talk, not unless they were talking trash with each other. They certainly didn't take pity on a wet-behind-the-ears reporter. Maybe she was getting soft in her old age.
Gus polished off the last of her three shots of whiskey. When she put down her glass—gently, not slamming it on the tabletop this time—she glanced at Kymmie. The reporter's cheeks weren't flushed anymore, and a frown line had built between her brows.
"You're not what I expected," Kymmie said. "I read all I could about you before I contacted you, and you're not…"
She shook her head, apparently annoyed with her inability to put her thoughts into words. Someone who made a living—or hoped to make a living—by stringing words together in something like a coherent fashion probably didn't have that happen to her often.
"A bitch?" Gus said. She'd heard that term applied to herself often enough.
"No, that's not it," Kymmie said matter-of-factly. "You're more thoughtful than I expected. More… self-aware? You've given me an angle for my story I hadn't thought of. I came here to interview a hero. Instead I found—"
"That there's a real live person inside the suit?" Gus said. "It's easy to forget that."
Especially when you'd had a lot of practice. Armor jocks didn't think of the enemy as people. The enemy was a target. Something you put in the crosshairs of the heads-up display inside your armor's helmet. You didn't think about the person lined up against you. The people inside the transports you shot out of the sky or the ground assault vehicles you blew to smithereens.
The corners of Kymmie's mouth tipped up in a smile. "Something like that," she said.
Her eyes lost focus for a moment. Gus figured she was deactivating the chip that had recorded their conversation. It was a signal that the interview was over.
Kymmie hadn't touched the drink she'd ordered for herself, some synthetic concoction that looked like a sunset over a desert.
Gus stayed seated when Kymmie stood up. "You made this pleasant," she said. "For the most part."
"Thanks," Kymmie said, her smile widening. "So did you. For the most part."
A bit of mischief touched her eyes. The kid had balls, Gus would give her that. She'd walked into a spacers' bar like she belonged even though she clearly didn't, and she'd only let Gus intimidate her a little bit. Maybe she wasn't such a wide-eyed innocent after all.
"I didn't ask earlier," Gus said. And maybe I should have, she thought. She was out of practice. "How come you tracked me down anyway? I'm old news."
"Not really," Kymmie said. "I'm doing a sidebar to go with a story about Shepard's Moon. There's apparently a skirmish brewing—there's always a skirmish brewing there, I guess—but this one's serious. The 83rd has a history there, and my boss thought it might make for a good story to interview some of the infantry who had—"
Kymmie kept talking, but Gus had quit paying attention.
Shepard's Moon.
She hadn't heard that name in nearly thirty years. She hadn't been on that planet in nearly thirty years. The 83rd had fought there. Some of them had died there.
What had happened to Gus on that dusty, dry, hellhole of a world had been much, much worse.
She ordered another drink and activated the table's viewing screen, Kymmie long forgotten. Gus directed the screen to show her all recent news feeds on Shepard's Moon.
By the time her drink arrived, Kymmie was gone, but Gus didn't care. She was too busy reading everything she could find on Shepard's Moon. Desperately scanning the viewing screen for a name she wanted to find. A name she hoped she wouldn't find.
A name she could never forget.
The name of her son.
