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“Fuck… I’m so fuckedup…”
The First hallucination gets in his face. “Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?” Then Catch’s arms are seized by a pair of giant hands and yanked upward, and his body follows, wobbly and weak, as the First-who-is-not-First drags him from his bed and across theroom.
Hilt stands back, hands still on his hips, his service cap pulled low over his eyes, watching. And suddenly Catch’s cube comes into focus around them. He perceives it, and himself, the way anyone else would—withdistaste.
The disarray. The broken tablet on the floor. The stale must of sex and sweat and unwashedclothes.
The thin cuts on his arm, dried with scabbyblood.
He’s hauled into the tiny bathroom and tossed into an ice-cold shower. He doesn’t have the strength or the will—or the gross motor skills—to put up much of a protest. The officer standing over him slaps his face, hard. “Get your shit the fuck together,Trist.”
Trist.
Only one person ever calls himthat.
“Nuh… no… it can’t be you…” Catch’s tongue feels too big, his mouth too dry as he struggles to make words, toswallow.
“It can, and it is. Flew in this morning, along with half the fucking fleet. Did you not hear that siren? It’s not a drill. Every operable Crasher on Six and Seven is being mobilized. Seven’s taking on a shitload of personnel from ships in the area that are being called in. Civilians, too. Cruisers, research ships, whatever the hell is out there, it’s comingin.”
“Civilians aren’t allowed on Seven,” Catch says stupidly, struggling to keepup.
First just tosses him a towel with a snort of disgust and strides out of thebathroom.
Catch follows as fast as he can, dripping wet, blinking, trying to see straight as he wraps the towel around his hips. “The Crashers? They’re sending out all the Starcrashers?” Catch swipes a fistful of his dirty clothes from Hilt’s hand and starts getting dressed, vaguely registering that Hilt’s been trying to tidy his cube. “Are you going? If you’re going, I’mgoing.”
First and Hilt exchange a look Catch can’t even begin to comprehend in his current state. His thoughts are too slow, his edges dulled, his vision still fuzzy around theedges.
“No one’s been cleared to fly since eleven hundred,” Hilt informs him. “Special Forces only. Rangers will be deployedsoon.”
Rangers.
That hits a raw, festering nerve. Catch was once a Ranger. Still is, technically, just not on activeduty.
But that doesn’t mean they can’t call himup.
He picks up his tablet, but it’s dead, the screen badly cracked. He looks at the clock on his wall; almost fifteenhundred.
He slept all fuckingday.
“We’re awaiting orders,” Hilt says. “There’s a meeting in anhour.”
“Yeah, and your ass better be at it,” First puts in. “Which means you’ve got time to shave and scrape your brains off the walls or whatever the fuck you’ve gotta do before youreport.”
“They have to give us our wings back,” Catch says, sounding way the hell more sure about this than he feels—at least, where he’s concerned. He’ll be totally fucking stunned if they don’t make First a pilot again; can’t even believe they kept him grounded as long as they did. “They’ll tell us at the meeting. If they need Crasher pilots, they can’t keep us grounded. They’d be better off—” He stops short at the look on Hilt’sface.
Hilt tips his chin toward First, and Catch notices, for the first time, that First is wearing his black service jumper. His pilot’soutfit.
Complete with black-and-silver wings stitched above theinsignia.
“Told you. I flew in thismorning.”
“Flew…” Catch can’t quite wrap his head around the word, though it should mean everything tohim.
Once upon a time, itdid.
But he just blinks, foggily, at his best friend, at those shiny wings above his lieutenant’sinsignia.
Lieutenant.
