“That’s because I actually feed him, unlike your barracks kitchen.” Cyra thrust a bright green jumpsuit into Akos’s arms that was marked L. When he unfolded it, it looked nearly as wide as it was tall, but no reason to complain, as long as he didn’t get water in his boots.
“Right you are,” Malan said in his reedy voice.
“You used to eat there without complaining,” Vakrez said, elbowing him.
“Only because I was trying to get you to notice me,” Malan said. “Notice I haven’t been back there since.”
Akos watched Cyra put on her suit to see how she did it. It looked so easy for her that he wondered if she’d been to Pitha before, but he felt odd, asking her questions—acting at all normal—with Vakrez right there. She stepped into the suit and pulled straps he hadn’t noticed before tight around her ankles, binding the fabric to her body. She did the same with hidden straps at her wrists, then fastened the suit up to her throat. Hers was as shapeless as his own, built for a person not made spare by the hard life of a Shotet.
“We were planning to join one of the platoons for the scavenge,” Vakrez said to Cyra. “But if you prefer that we go out on a separate vessel—”
“No,” Cyra said. “I’d rather try to blend in with your soldiers.”
No “thank you,” no niceties. It was Cyra’s way.
Once they were all in suits and strapped into their boots, they walked the covered tunnel to a ship. Not the one they’d flown in the day before, but a smaller floater, round, with a domed roof so the water would slide off as it flew.
Soon enough they were drifting above the waves, which looked like snowdrifts to Akos, at a squint. They had the same captain they’d had yesterday—Rel was his name—and he pointed out where they were headed: a huge island, about the size of a city sector, piled up high with scrap. The Pithar kept their refuse afloat.
At a distance the trash pile looked like a brown-gray lump, but once they got closer he saw the pieces that made it up: huge sheets of twisted metal, old rusty girders with pins and screws still stuck in them, soaked fabric of all different colors, cracked glass as thick as his hand. Clustered between some of the larger piles was Vakrez’s platoon, all wearing the same color suits they had on.
They touched down behind the platoon, and filed out of the floater one by one, Rel at the back. The drum of the rain on the roof gave way to its splatter on the ground. The drops were heavy, each one a hard tap on Akos’s head and shoulders and arms. He could feel only their temperature on his cheeks. Warm, which was unexpected.
Someone at the head of the platoon was talking:
“Your job is to spot things that are actually valuable. Newer current motors and engines, intact scrap metal, broken or discarded weapons. Do not cause trouble, and if you see any native observers, be courteous and show them to either me or Commander Noavek, who has just joined us. Welcome, sir.”
Vakrez nodded to him, and added, “Remember, the reputation of your sovereign, and of Shotet itself, is at stake here. They see us as barbaric and ignorant. You must behave as if that is not the case.”
A few of the soldiers laughed, like they weren’t sure they ought to, since Vakrez wasn’t smiling even a little. Akos wasn’t sure the commander’s face remembered how to do it.
“Get to it!”
A few soldiers surged ahead to climb the pile right in front of them, made up of floater parts. Akos searched the ones who dawdled behind for faces he knew from training, but it was hard to tell—they wore head-coverings that looked almost like helmets, and visors to protect their eyes from the rain. He and Cyra didn’t have them—he kept blinking raindrops into his eyes.
“Helmets,” Malan said. “I knew we forgot something. Would you like me to request that one of the soldiers give you theirs, Cyra?”
“No,” Cyra said, almost snapping. “I mean . . . no, thank you.”
“You Noaveks,” Malan said. “How is it that simple words like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ sound so unnatural coming from you?”
“Must be in the blood,” Cyra said. “Come on, Akos. I think I see something useful.”
She put her hand in his like it was natural. And maybe it should have been, just him relieving her pain, like he was supposed to. But after the way she had touched him in her room on the sojourn ship, fervently, reverently—after that, how could he possibly lay a casual hand on her again? All he could think about was how hard he was squeezing—too hard? Not hard enough?
They walked between two piles of floater pieces, toward a stretch of scrap metal, some of it warm in color, like sun-kissed skin. Akos walked to the edge of the island, where huge girders kept the shape of the man-made land. He wasn’t looking for weapons, or scrap, or machines. He was looking for small things that would tell stories: broken toys, old shoes, kitchen utensils.
Cyra crouched next to a bent pole, scraped at the base like it had been the casualty of a collision. When she tugged at it, it just kept coming, knocking over empty cans and cracked pipes. At the end of the pole—now twice as long as Akos was tall—was a tattered flag with a gray background and a circle of symbols in its center.
“Look at this,” she said to him, smiling. “This is their old flag, before their acceptance into the Assembly of Nine Planets. It’s at least thirty seasons old.”
“How has it not disintegrated in the rain?” he asked, pinching the frayed corner.