Part 5
“She’s a traitor!”
Gray set her jaw and knelt down to get a better look at the giant’s wound. It wasn’t quite as bad as it could be, bullets doing less damage to him than another human, but it was still painful, and Rice was starting to sweat from where he sat propped up on the ground.
The captain moved like he was drunk on shine, Gray noticed. As he drew near, there was something else that seemed odd about him; his uniform was cleaner than the others’.
“They’re fucking.”
“At least I wasn’t assaulting,” Rice panted with a smirk at the corner of his mouth.
“And you!” Wesson snarled, turning to the Anak with a strange combination of rage and dissociation in his voice. He seemed frustrated by the fact that the massive man wasn’t howling in pain. “You fucking started this all, you disgusting… You’re like animals, aren’t you? Go into heat and start rutting against anything that moves.”
He turned to her, and she could see it in his face: the effects of the sweet liquor. He took a step closer. “You sold us out, you lying, traitorous whore.”
Gray’s first impulse was to deny him, to explain how Rice had gone out of his way to try and prevent this…
But Wesson, shaking, did the miraculous thing: sider pointed at nothing, he reached into his pocket to grab the flask again, fumbling one-handed with the screw cap. Gray’s eyes narrowed.
“You’ve been drunk this whole time, haven’t you?”
Wesson was torn between getting his next fix and winning the argument with her, but in this state, it was looking like he wouldn’t get far with either. He cursed under his breath and in a moment of brave indignance she snatched the flask from him.
“Let me help you with that, sir.”
Gray opened it and poured its contents out onto the ground. Wesson cursed again, loudly this time, as she threw the flask away.
“You didn’t fight at all, did you?” She turned to the gathered corpsmen. “How many of you saw him?” No one answered. “How many of you saw this scumbag fire a single shot or lead a single man?”
“I was there,” he growled.
“Where were you, cap?”
“I was there!”
“You were cowering in the mud, I can see it on your uniform. You don’t deserve to call yourself a corpsman, Wesson, and you never did.”
The silence was deafening before it was interrupted by Rice’s slow, deep laugh.
“Shut up!” Wesson cried, and fired another sloppy shot into the sentinel’s leg. The giant grunted, hissing and biting back his pain. But she could see it in the cordage of his neck pulled tight as a tent skin and the sweat now dripping down his face. Gray was livid, the floodgates to weeks of grief and rage intoxicating her in a moment of unadulterated fury.
She tackled the captain to the ground. With the brass’ liquor in his veins, it was easy enough to take on the larger man and wrestle his weapon from him. In seconds she had his sider, and was pointing it with two shaking hands at his chest. The man under her fell still, and he stared at her with those cloudy blue eyes. Blinking.
Air sheared in and out of Gray’s nostrils, and sweat prickled at the nape of her neck. Her blood burned.
“Harper,” Wesson said. “Help me out here. You gonna let her do this? She betrayed me. Us."
Harper was silent.
“Douglas?” he tried.
Douglas was silent too.
“Somebody needs to get this goddamn dirty retrainee off me! That’s an order!”
Gray pressed the barrel of the sider to Wesson’s breastbone. “Tell them what retraining is.” He hesitated. “Tell them where you were sending me, you coward!”
He couldn’t and he wouldn’t. She looked him dead in the eye.
“It means being given to the Algo, doesn’t it? That’s where the good specimens go, isn’t it captain?” She turned to glance at the others. “I didn’t betray anybody, the Corps gave me to that sentinel!”
Taking her eyes off him had been a mistake, because he wrenched the gun back from her and pointed it right between her eyes. There was bloodlust on his face this time.
But Rice was quick with his uninjured arm, and Gray jumped at the louder gunshot. Spasming, Wesson fired a single shot into the air, missing Gray, before falling limp.
Quickly, she tended to Rice, whose injured arm and leg were held stiffly out before him.
“Do we have a medic?” she asked.
Harper shook his head. “No.”
She swore, and wiped the sweat from his wide brow. Their eyes met and he tried to get up. “What are you doing? You’re in no shape to walk you giant motherfucker.”
“Not the first time I’ve been shot,” he grunted. “And this one—“ He patted his oozing wound on the outside of his thigh. “—Was worth it.” Rice was able to get himself upright enough to balance on a rock and catch his breath. After a moment, he found his stash of little white pills and popped two.
Douglas was the first to interrupt. “Is it true, Gray?”
Another corpsman, a fifth-year named McGill, added: “Yeah, why would they do that? The ‘Naks, they…”
“Need humans,” Rice finished.
Gray swallowed. “Just like Corps needs an enemy.”
The group stood in silence for a while.
“We can’t stay,” Harper said, holstering his weapon. “When the battle turned, we were all told to rendezvous here, then shelter at Camp Jay until new orders came from Alpine.”
“We’ve been here since this morning but no one else has showed up. We’re not sure how long to wait.”
“Camp Jay is another ten miles west,” she said. “With injured it’ll take you two days to get there. And that’s if you’re not jumped.”
Harper sucked in a deep breath. Gray saw his shoulders stiffen then slump.
“Are you the ranking corpsman now?”
He nodded. “Come back over with us. There’s a bit more shade over there. The… sentinel can come too.”
Gray emptied Wesson’s pockets while Harper and McGill looted the dead Rice. She found a wad of fridays, some real money… and a pouch of tobacco. Douglas took his boots and she was about to stand up when she decided to grab his tags. Then, like the flask, she hurled them with all her might across the flats, and the last she saw of them was high in the air as they shone briefly in the sun. No one would know who this body once belonged to.
“C’mon, Gray.” Harper put his arm around her shoulders and turned to Rice. “Not that we can help, but can you walk?”
“I’ll get by.”
