“Yeah,” I say. “I think so.”
His tray pops out. We gather our food and head toward a table in the back. I can feel the Security guys’ eyes on the back of my neck as we go.
“Remember when we swung out over that ridge line, about twenty klicks south of the dome?”
That whole trip is actually a blur, and I have no idea what he’s talking about, but in the interest of moving the story along, I nod. We sit, and he immediately tears into his rabbit haunch.
“There was a rock formation at the top of the ridge,” he says around a mouthful of meat. “We flew right over it. Do you remember?”
At this point, I think we’ve reached the limits of bullshit. “No,” I say. “I honestly don’t.”
He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. Picture a spike of granite, maybe thirty meters tall, with another slab just a little shorter leaning against it. The space between is maybe ten meters at the base, tapering down to nothing at the top.”
“Okay,” I say. “I guess I can picture that.” Actually, now that he’s described it, I think I do remember seeing the place he’s talking about. I thought at the time that it might be a good spot for bouldering.
That was before the creepers, obviously.
“Right,” Berto says. “So for the last few weeks I’ve been telling anybody who would listen that I thought I could get the flitter through the gap. Crazy, right? I mean, even rolled ninety degrees, the clearance on either side would be like half a meter at the top end, and you’d have to initiate the roll with a margin of maybe a tenth of a second.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That does sound crazy. So?”
“So,” Berto says, “everybody else thought it was crazy too. I’ve been collecting bets.”
He stops there to take a bite, but I don’t need him to finish that thought.
“You did it?”
“Yeah,” he says, with a grin that I don’t think I’ve seen since he won that goddamned pog-ball tournament. “I did. I collected three thousand kcal, all told. Sweet, right?”
“You…” I begin, then have to stop to collect myself. “You could have died, Berto.”
“Could have,” he says. “Didn’t.”
I set my fork down beside my tray, and my hands clench into fists. “You risked your life. You risked your fucking life for two days’ rations.”
His smug grin fades. “Hey,” he says. “Easy, there, buddy. It wasn’t that big a deal.”
“Not a big deal? You risked your life for goddamned kcal, Berto. You wouldn’t risk jack fucking shit for me.”
Berto’s face goes slack. He stares at me. I stare back.
This is the point where I realize that I’ve just told him something that I’m not supposed to know … or, wait, did I? Good lord, I can’t keep track of my own lies at this point, let alone Berto’s.
“Mickey?” Berto says. “What do you mean by that, exactly?”
I open my mouth to reply, then let it fall closed again.
“You just came out of the tank,” he says. “Isn’t that right, Mickey?”
I look away. One of the Security guys is staring at us.
“Yeah, Berto. You know I did.”
“I thought I did,” Berto says. “Gotta admit, though. You’re making me wonder.”
I stab a potato, bring it to my mouth, and chew. This meal is the first solid food I’ve eaten in over two days. It’s a sin that I’m not enjoying this as much as I should be. Over the course of five seconds I decide to come clean with him and then change my mind again a half dozen times. When I look back at Berto, he’s chewing slowly and watching me through narrowed eyes. I didn’t die, I picture myself saying. You left me in that fucking crevasse, but I didn’t die. As he takes another bite of rabbit, I imagine adding, Maybe I should have offered you a couple days’ rations to come back for me, huh? I’m working my way up to actually opening my mouth and saying it when the goon who’s been watching us gets up from his table and starts over toward ours.
I know this guy, vaguely at least. His name is Darren. He’s big for a colonist, almost as tall as Berto and probably ten kilos heavier, with close-cut dark hair and a weird curly tuft of beard growing from the bottom of his chin. He’s not stupid—nobody who was selected for this expedition is stupid—but he’s always struck me as having the kind of attitude that dumb guys get when you give them just a little bit of power. He stops a pace or two behind Berto, folds his arms across his chest, and tilts his head to one side.
“Hey,” he says. “You gentlemen enjoying our rations tonight?”
Berto turns to look, then brings the rabbit haunch to his mouth and takes a slow, deliberate bite.
“Yeah,” he says with his mouth still full. “Very much, actually.”
Darren’s face twists into a scowl. “You’re an ass, Gomez. You could have wasted yourself and our only functional flitter out there this morning.”
Berto shrugs, turns back to me, and takes another bite.
“Flitter’s no use without me anyway. Nasha won’t fly anything without a gravitic grid.” He chews, swallows, and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “Anyway, if you felt so strongly about protecting colony assets, why’d you put kcal into the pool? I wouldn’t have done it if there weren’t any stakes.” The grin comes back now, and he looks up at me and winks. “Oh, who am I kidding? Sure I would have. This place is boring, and that was a hell of a ride.”
A hell of a ride. I just fucking bet it was. My jaw is knotted so tight that it feels like my teeth might crack. Darren’s eyes shift to me.
“What’s your problem, Barnes?”
I don’t trust my voice to answer. Darren’s eyebrows come together at the bridge of his nose, and he takes a half step forward.
“Seriously,” he says. “If you’ve got something to say, say it. If you don’t, wipe that look off your face.”
“Back off,” Berto says. “Mickey’s had a rough couple of days.”
“Yeah,” Darren says. “I heard. He got two of our guys killed yesterday, and then today he dipped out of a fight and left Chen to rescue his ass for the second time in twenty-four hours. I feel for you, man.”
Berto sets the rabbit bone he’d been gnawing carefully onto his tray, then puts both hands flat on the table. He’s not smirking anymore.
“Step away, Darren.”
“Suck it, Gomez. I just ate goddamned cycler paste for dinner, and I’m not in the mood for—”
He stops there, because he’s made the extremely poor choice to shove the back of Berto’s head. As I said, Darren’s a big guy, and he’s Security. He’s probably used to people letting him get away with that kind of stuff.
Berto, to my knowledge, has never let anyone get away with that kind of stuff.
Berto pushes up from the table and pivots on his back leg, already swinging as the bench he’d been sitting on slams into Darren’s shins.
There’s a reason Berto is hell at pog-ball. For someone as tall and lanky as he is, he’s inhumanly fast. Darren hasn’t even managed to get his hands up when Berto’s fist smacks into the left side of his face and drops him.