Origins by Jamie Sawyer Page B

involuntarily and scanned the Obs Deck again, fought the dizzy sensation in my head. My data-ports began that steady throb, promising release and a sense of invulnerability that I could never feel in my own skin. My missing left hand gave off a phantom itch.
    â€œSorry to hear about what Williams did to you,” Kaminski said.
    â€œIt could’ve been worse.”
    â€œI just want to get back into the tanks,” he said. “I can almost count the days since my last transition.” He nodded at the chest of my fatigues, at the holo-badge that read “236”. “I need to catch up with the boss.”
    Although there was a captain somewhere on the Askari Line who claimed to have topped two hundred and thirty successful transitions, I still held the record. It was a dubious honour and one that I wasn’t necessarily proud of, but it was another aspect of my legend: a statistic for the greens to look up to.
    â€œIt’s not the number that counts,” Jenkins said, “it’s what you do with it.”
    â€œWe’ll be back on Calico in three days, provided we don’t meet resistance,” I said. “Take it easy until then. Anything you need, just let me know. There are some perks to being a colonel.”
    â€œWell done on the promotion,” Kaminski said.
    I shrugged. “They had two choices: court-martial me or promote me. Glad to have you back, ’Ski.”
    I turned to walk away, but Kaminski kept talking. “They know you, Harris, and they’re scared of you.”
    â€œThey should be,” I said, with all the conviction that I could muster.
    My mind was elsewhere. I found myself wondering whether the Asiatic Directorate would fear me if they knew who I really was.
    What
I really was.
    Old, exhausted, lost.
    By the time I’d finished with Kaminski, and checked on the progress of the other prisoners, it was late in the
Independence
’s day-cycle. Mess had finished, and the ship was quiet: exhausted Sim Ops teams and flyboys sleeping off the short trip back to Alliance space.
    So I found the mess hall dark and largely empty. I grabbed a hot coffee and some stale bread from the servery, and hunkered down in one corner of the hall.
    â€œDo you find that dying makes you hungry?” came a voice.
    I snapped awake and realised that I wasn’t alone. Lieutenant James sat at the other end of the room, and stalked over to sit at my table. He looked dejected and shaken: a similar expression to that I’d seen him with on the surface of Capa, when he’d hesitated on the landing pad.
    â€œNo,” I said, swallowing a mouthful of bread, “but dealing with fuck-up flyboys who lose it when I need them most: that tends to make me hungry.”
    â€œYeah,” he said, “I’m sorry about that.”
    He had a small bottle of Martian vodka, already uncapped. It was plain and unmarked, but seemed to emit a psychic beacon that called out to me.
    â€œNext-gen sims don’t get drunk,” I said. “We’ve been through this before.”
    That wasn’t quite true, because I’d seen James inebriated when he drank at speed. But this was a single bottle of vodka and I didn’t think that it would be sufficient.
    â€œI’m not drinking to get drunk,” he said.
    â€œYou get permission to bring alcohol aboard?”
    He raised an eyebrow. “Why? You going to tell Captain Qadr on me?”
    I didn’t answer but took the offered bottle. I’d been resisting it for a while – trying to do my best, hoping to avoid the other simulant teams seeing me in an impaired condition – but I couldn’t resist any more. That ache in my bones, the sensation that could only be relieved by a good drink… I couldn’t hold out. The spirit tasted hot and calming as it went down.
    â€œWhat the fuck happened out there today, James?”
    â€œNothing,” he said, sighing. “I… I