"Alay’s nearly better," I said, and squeezed her hand. "Dodge faster next time. Scared me half to death."
Zee smiled and mumbled something I didn’t understand. She was pretty out of it. I watched her failing to stay awake, and for a while wished I was still living with the Lents, that I’d never seen any of the Setari after being rescued. They live such dangerous lives, and the chances of all of them surviving is so slim. That may be another reason the Setari as a group are so competitive and distant with each other outside of their squads: having too many friends would mean having too many people you care about constantly in danger.
That was after midday, while the two extra shuttles were still here. The greysuits wanted to record as much detail of the massive as they could before it vanished, which it did a couple of hours later. The vanishing thing really worries me, actually: it makes all this a little too like a computer game for me to be entirely certain that the nutter-in-a-straightjacket option isn’t the right explanation for everything I do and see. Monsters that respawn infinitely, whose bodies despawn after they’re killed. And me being some mysterious touchstone thing with bunches of incredibly hot people looking after me. It’s all a little too wish-fulfilment.
I would really hate it if I was insane. Though if this is a psychotic episode, at least it came on suddenly and doesn’t make me face up to the fragmentation of my own mind. It would be far worse to be insane only some of the time.
But if this was all my own private fantasy, I think I would make more people like me. The captain of Ninth Squad is called Desa Kaeline, and she has wonderful smoky eyelashes and unusually pale skin for a Taren. And was extremely correct and polite to me in a way that suggested that I gave her a headache but she didn’t want to admit it. And there was another girl in her squad, Kahl Anya, who gave me this absolute viper-look. I’ve got to stop reviewing my own logs: it was only a quick glance and I wouldn’t have caught it at all if I hadn’t looked back over the reinforcements leaving just before sunset.
They took First Squad away with them, and left Ninth Squad behind. Today sucked.
Monday, April 7
Team Drama Queen
Ruuel made us all get up early to do enhancement testing and training, since Ninth Squad has never worked with me at all. Setari pecking order seems to be based on active duty seniority, so when the squads work together, the captain of the squad with the smaller number is treated as being in charge. Ninth Squad doesn’t seem to resent this, though I noticed during this morning’s session that Ruuel had Ninth do a lot more repetition of the multiple-squad enhancement rotation and the intricacies of carrying me around than he bothered with when Fourth Squad was testing. I don’t know whether that’s because he thinks they’re slower on the uptake, or he just isn’t sure another squad member would ask to go over things again if they needed to. It’s pretty clear squads hate looking bad in front of other squads.
Ninth Squad is another generalist squad: a little more big-hitting than First, since the older Setari for the most part aren’t quite as powerful as the younger. Desa Kaeline turned out to be easy enough to work with; maybe she simply did have a headache when she was introduced to me yesterday. The rest of the squad seemed to settle into two groups: Kahl Anya and her two best buddies, and two people who really don’t like Kahl Anya. I began to see why Kaeline might be prone to headaches.
Not that they were squabbling or glaring at each other. I doubt they’d do that where Fourth could see. They just had this tendency to stand in two different groups, and Anya and her groupies would exchange little smirks, while the other two looked unhappy. I was glad my ride in Ninth was one of the non-groupies – a bean-pole guy named Rebar Dolas. Other than an undertone of being in a bit of a mood, he seemed nice. He asked me where I prefer he put his hands, anyway, gave me a sympathetic smile, and kept an eye on my reaction when we changed directions abruptly.
I was pretty tired. Napping half the morning yesterday meant I’d stayed up very late, doing school work in my pod since I hadn’t felt like chatting. Fortunately Fourth Squad was on babysitting duty, so I didn’t have to walk half the day. Islen Duffen kept making aggrieved comments about all the damage to the buildings, but she wasn’t blaming the Setari particularly.
I sat with Glade and Mori at lunch and dinner. I’m liking Mori more and more. She has a wry sense of humour, which she mostly only indulges when Ruuel isn’t around, and she and Glade both watch The Hidden War devotedly, just to pick apart the things that don’t make sense. They say that some of the characters who show up later in the series are based on leaked details of the real Setari. I’m still only up to the second year of it: I like it, but I’ve found I can only stand watching it sporadically, and prefer Super Sight Six. The Hidden War is often quite a dark show, and just now I don’t want to think about how First has had two close calls in a handful of weeks.
I’m glad I’m settling into Fourth, that I’m able to chat and laugh with some of them, because otherwise I’d feel pretty alone without First, dealing with Ninth. Of course, no-one’s about to discuss Ninth Squad with me. By this stage I know to not even consider asking. I don’t know what Anya has against me. I figure the best thing I can do is just not be interested in the opinions of people who’ve never even spoken to me.
Nor is anyone willing to discuss whether the Cruzatch could really have driven that massive to attack us. People are discussing it, but the idea makes everyone desperately uneasy, and they shut up when I’m nearby with my ever-present second level monitoring.
I keep thinking of Zee, falling out of the sky.
Tuesday, April 8
Chinese Mountains
Halfway between midnight and dawn I woke feeling fretful and uneasy. I thought maybe I’d had a nightmare, and lay for a while not able to sleep, then eventually got up to go to the bathroom. The pods have quite a lot of shielding on them, much like my room back on Tare, and it was only after I’d opened mine that I started to properly register what had woken me.
It was the "mmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn" noise, the one I associated with the Ddura attacking or hunting, but very far away. I could barely hear it, and spent the time it took to go to the bathroom and then to get a drink to decide whether or not it was just my imagination. I’d been told I had to immediately report if I heard the Ddura, but hearing a noise which might be the Ddura in the middle of the night meant my own interpretation of immediately. Especially when the person on night watch was the prima donna from Ninth Squad.
Still, I was assigned to Fourth Squad and all Anya would be able to do, beyond act like I was wasting her time, was report to the captains. So, with a squeamish mix of feelings, I sent Ruuel an override saying: "Can hear Ddura."
He didn’t treat me to any sleep-fuelled incoherencies, responding within maybe ten seconds with: "At what distance?"
"Very far away," I said, watching as his pod cover lifted and he sat up. Facing away from me, fortunately, so I could enjoy the sight of him with his uniform converted to a tank top and knee-length arrangement. He scrubbed a hand over his close-cut hair, his uniform starting to return to standard configuration, and I looked away, feeling oddly uncomfortable. "Can only just hear," I added, out loud this time instead of over the interface. "It making noise it makes when it attack things."