Siege of Stars: Book One of The Sigil Trilogy Read online

  Chapter 8. Cadet

   

  Xandarga Station, Earth, c . 55,680,000 years ago

   

  She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue;

  Vermilion-spotted, golden, green and blue;

  Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,

  Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d.

  John Keats— Lamia

   

  For the first few weeks of his naval career, Ruxhana Fengen Kraa, space cadet, saw nothing more exciting than the inside of his barracks. The day would begin with reveille, after which it was all guns blazing, sometimes literally, until well after sundown. What with roll-call, and drill, and lectures, and physical training, and mess, and weapons practice, and more drill, and private study, and basic uniform maintenance—all to the enervating odors of stale chow and unwashed laundry—he could do no more each night than collapse into his bunk.

  After the initial shock had worn off, Ruxie found that he enjoyed his new life very much. He discovered that his sinewy, ranch-honed frame, combined with a quick intelligence and a gift for anticipation, meshed with the requirements of naval life. The name of Ruxhana Fengen Kraa crept quietly towards the top of most of his classes and routines. People in the hierarchy far above the level of rookie pond-life began to take notice.

  Ruxie knew nothing of this, because he was more concerned with pond-life closer to home. Ko, who bunked in the cot immediately above Ruxie, seemed to start with the same enthusiasm for naval life. After a while, though, Ko began to lose ground. The only class that Ko always headed was Uqbar-rules boxing, a traditional sport whose antique ritual did little to cover up its gladiatorial viciousness. Professionals were multi-millionaire megastars, but few lived long enough to enjoy their wealth. What worried Ruxie was Ko’s apparent conviction that unchallenged success in one sphere of life compensated for slack performance in all the others. When Ruxie was studying late into the night, or working out, or at the weapons range, Ko sloped off into the City, with a crowd of the kind of toadies that no aspiring boxing pro could afford to be without.

  Late one evening, Ruxie was on his bunk, reading a manual on a new model of Higgs projector for use as a side arm. The schematics were beginning to swim before his eyes, and he was sure that if he tried to sleep now, they would dance before him in his dreams, mocking. Perhaps when he got to use the real thing, on the weapons range, it would all make sense. Right now, a restorative workout and a swim would put him in the mood for sleep. Reveille was only six hours away, and the routine would start all over again.

  He sat up, wondering where he had left his gym clothes, when Ko’s legs swung down from the bunk above. Ruxie was surprised—he was so lost in his own thoughts he hadn’t even noticed Ko was there. Ko dropped noiselessly to the floor. He looked at Ruxie’s reading matter. “You know, Ruxie, all work, and no play,” he said. What you need is a drink.”

  Slipping undetected out of barracks was easier than Ruxie had thought. Ko bowled along with Ruxie straining to keep up, and before long they were outside a bar in an alley a few blocks from the harbor-front. Bagpipe music squirled from the door as Ko and Ruxie arrived, finding themselves at the edge of a crowd, rapt, before a couple in the closing stages of a traditional Turgai sword-dance. Masked, and dressed in carnival finery, the dancers paced round each other in a pool of blood-red light; stylized steps marking time to the screech of the pipes. The dancers’ arms made broad strokes with the scimitars each held in both hands. They swept the blades towards the crowds, expressionless masks filled with menace, the spectators flinching, laughing nervously—and then towards each other, scything closer and closer in, now whipping hairs-breadths from the costume of each.

  The air became enriched with an auroral glow from the dancers’ bodies, deepening with hems of iridescent blue, bars of crimson. The scent of sex rose. Faster the dancers whirled, and as the bagpipes reached a final, caterwauling cadence, scythes slashed, costume was rent, and the dancers were exposed, unmasked and unmarked, bare to the waist, shining pelts clothed in sweat and victory. The auras twisted from blue to purple to yellow, and then faded. The music was replaced by applause. The dancers made a triumphal circuit of the audience, gathering coins thrown in their masks.

  Ruxie was amazed to find himself cheering, and, more than that, aroused. It wasn’t just the sight of the female dancer’s taut flesh and wild black hair, and—Ruxhana dared himself think it—her five pairs of breasts with their brazen tips. It was the experience of the dance itself, its frenzy, its climactic release, that he found so stirring.

  “Good, eh?” Ko’s voice in his ear. Ruxie was amazed to hear it at all, so transported had he been. “That’s Xalomé, that is,” he continued, picking up on Ruxie’s glances. “She’s a cracker, isn’t she? Now—oh, there they are!” Ko steered him to a big table already occupied by many of their barrack-mates, some already in the party mood. “Look what I’ve dragged up!” Ko shouted to the throng,

  “Yo, baby! It’s shoon-to-be-Adm’ral Ruxhana Fengen Kraa!” yelled a half-uniformed rating in response, rapidly standing to attention, and sitting down again as abruptly.

  “Beers for the Admiral!” bellowed another, and a flagon was shoved in front of him. Within minutes, his presence was forgotten—just one of the crew, laughing as Ko told some wild tale of land-shark-hunting on the prairies of home. Ruxie was so enthralled by the tall tales, the sodden feelings of fellowship engendered by the beer, that he hardly noticed another body squeezing on to the bench beside him. But the pressure of a thigh against his, and warm breath in his ear, sobered him up at once. He turned. It was the female dancer. Dressed now in a prim naval uniform with pips on her shoulders, but definitely the same tumble of dark hair. The pupils of her yellow-green eyes were narrowed to slits even in the darkness of the bar.

  “It’s... Xalomé, isn’t it?”

  “What took you so long, spaceman?” Without looking at him, she placed her hands behind her head and lifted her hair away from her face. She was close enough for him to smell a wild strangeness, like an animal at bay, or on heat. It took him right back to the ranch, and one of his first memories of ever going outside. He had been hardly more than a blind kit at the time. After his earliest years spent in darkness, as they were for all kits, the world of light was bright and new. The first thing he saw was two indricos rutting, one on top of the other, the two mountains of flesh bellowing, the air filled with dust and the cries of the farmhands. The air was charged then, too.

  “So... long?”

  “Yes. I’ve been waiting weeks for you to turn up.” Her voice was cool, assured.

  “Me?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised. Your friend Mr Raelle has told me all about you. Quite the mystery man, aren’t you?” He was suddenly conscious of a hand on his upper thigh, like her voice—assured—like it knew what it was doing, and where it was going. He flushed and struggled for breath. But something else took charge of him then. Months of training had taken the edges off this farmhand. There were times, he knew, when one should stop thinking, and just act. He covered the hand on his thigh with his own and pressed it firmly. Her fingers were small, yet resolute.

  “Shall we go?” he said.

  Concentrating on simply putting his feet one in front of the other, and not bumping into his companion or anyone else in narrow night streets still thronged with partygoers, Ruxie reached the promenade on the harbor front. Boats bobbed in the brightly lit marina below, with ships and industrial gantries as silhouettes further off. He found a bench, remarkably unoccupied, and invited Xalomé to sit down. She did so, with an air of almost mocking amusement at Ruxie’s obvious efforts to act the gallant. He sat beside her, wondering what to say or do next. Her hair strayed like tendrils over his shoulders, under his chin, across his lips. They tasted of salt and abandon.

  They sat for hours as the streets thinned. The silvered bubble of the Assembly Building hung motionless over the waves, reflecting the lights of the Cit
y and, in weird cycloid curves, the illuminated skein of the El that rose up behind them.

  Something broke in Ruxie, and he found that all he had lost was boyish embarrassment. He found that he could talk with Xalomé like he hadn’t been able to talk with anyone since he’d arrived in Xandarga Station. Without the forced and formal cadence of naval operations, nor the false braggadocio that Ko’s circle seemed to require. Into the night they talked. He told her of ranch life in East Gondwana. She tended more to listening than talk, but he learned how she’d grown up there, in the City, and had just graduated. Special Ops. Hence the pips.

  “And the dancing?”

  “Oh, that. A girl’s got to have a hobby. I love dancing. Especially the traditional stuff. It’s the ritual.” She turned towards him. Her eyes glowed, reflected, feral. “Were I a man, I’d probably go for Uqbar-rules boxing. Ritual, combined with sheer bloody savagery. Poetry in motion!” She laughed. Ruxie said nothing. “You don’t think I could handle myself?”

  “I... well, I’m sure you could. Special Ops, and all that.”

  “Your friend. Mr Raelle. He fights Uqbar Rules, you know. Have you seen him in action?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Impressive, isn’t he? I think he could handle himself, too. But sometimes I think he overdoes it. He’ll learn, with experience. He’ll have to. I think he needs taking in hand.”

  “But what about your dance partner? Don’t you...? Aren’t you...?”

  “Shakiló? Are you serious? He couldn’t be more gay if you tied pink ribbons round his prong. You’d need a lot of ribbons, mind...”

  With that she turned to face him, and the last thing he saw were her eyes crossing slightly as her lips approached his and he was catapulted into the void.