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People have told Katie a hundred times that she and Volleyball are so close, they must have been childhood friends, right?
Katie always smiles and shakes her head. Nope. We met the day I joined up.
“Joined up” is a misleading phrase. Katie Jensen didn’t sign up to join the army; she just didn’t have much of a choice. When you get pulled out of a burning building by a young man in armour who tells you, “Hang tight kid, we’ll take you back to base” – well, you don’t tell him no.
Back then the rebel army still had a required age to sign up for military operations, so Volleyball – two months older than Katie, nearly sixteen and just about bursting to get started – was loud, larger than life, a warm, bright distraction from the well of grief that sat hollow in Katie’s chest. She still went by Amira then, and she spotted Katie the moment she shuffled into the mess hall, shoulders hunched, hugging herself with her arms.
“Let’s get you some food,” she said, her voice blunt but kind. “I’ll show you which bits are vaguely edible.”
Volleyball and the others carried the conversation that day, and Katie was grateful – she could just listen, distract herself without having to worry about contributing.
She learnt all their stories in time. Most followed a similar pattern; parents or other guardians lost to some accident or calamity, they’d migrated here for safety, out of necessity, or sometimes, for revenge.
“My dad used to be part of an anti-government group,” one of the other girls told her one night. “Back when they used to do peaceful demonstrations and debates, y’know. He told me he used to get arrested every other week; that’s why Mom left him, he said.”
“She didn’t like the arrests? Or she didn’t believe in the cause?”
Katie could just about see the other girl shrug in the darkness. “Both? I don’t know. I guess, if she’s still alive, she’s a Fed now.”
Her name was Julia; she died on their third mission after completing training, a supply run in the hills west of Armonia. Katie can still remember Julia telling her about the nightmares she used to have – being shot by a Fed soldier who took her helmet off to reveal her mother’s face.
If people have family with the Feds, they don’t talk about it. It’s not a taboo subject, but it’s a pain one mostly keeps to oneself.
A few weeks after Katie joined the New Republic Volleyball turned sixteen and joined one of the training squads, so she saw a lot less of her. When Katie turned sixteen as well, she became part of the same squad.
“I asked if we could form our own team,” Volleyball told her in the dorm after lights out. “They told me I’m too young to lead one. But one day, right?”
Katie had nodded. “Yeah, definitely.”
Katie had never had occasion to hold or shoot a gun before, and she was disappointed to find she wasn’t that good at it. “You’ll improve with time,” the trainer told her, and she sure hoped so; even hitting near the target was an achievement for her right now.
Volleyball was a slightly better shot, but far and away better when it came to hand to hand. “I used to beat kids up behind the bike shed at school,” she’d say, grinning from ear to ear.
“I don’t think that’s something to be proud of, Amira,” Katie would reply, and Volleyball would laugh, her loud, raucous laugh that always made people turn and look and set off a weird fluttery feeling in Katie’s stomach.
It was when Volleyball picked fights that Katie got worried. Usually she kept it to snarky comments or sharp words, but the first time she got in a fistfight was the first time Katie felt truly scared for her best friend. It all came to nothing, ending with both combatants limping moodily away from each other after being yelled at by a senior officer, and Volleyball letting Katie lecture her as she wrapped a bag of some frozen vegetable she’d pilfered from the kitchen in a towel so it could be held to her black eye.
The second time Volleyball got in a fistfight was mostly memorable because it was the first time Katie saw the New Republic’s mercenary up close.
“Time out, wildcat,” Felix had snapped, and the way he pulled Volleyball back by the collar of her uniform did sort of remind Katie of a cat with its kitten. The other guy slid backwards on his butt, getting quickly out of range, holding a hand to his bloody nose while Volleyball glared murder at him. “Why you wailing on the guy, anyway?” Felix asked, sounding irritated rather than angry.
Volleyball transferred her glare to him. “He called Sam a bitch.”
Felix raised an eyebrow. “And no one calls people names while you’re in town, Batman? That it?”
Volleyball didn’t answer, just glared at him until he made a disgusted noise and released the back of her shirt. “Whatever. Just clear out, and don’t let Kimball find you fighting.”
“He’s an asshole,” Volleyball had fumed later when they were back in the dorm.
“Has been since we joined, well done for noticing,” Chopra said from the other end of the room.
Volleyball threw a shoe at her, which she ducked with a yelp. “Seriously, though. What a fucking douchebag.”
“He kills people for money,” Katie pointed out, “Did you expect him to be a paragon of virtue?”
That made the other girls giggle, and even Volleyball cracked a smile. “What big words you use, Miss Jensen,” she said.
“I read a book once in a while,” Katie sniffed, faking haughtiness, and that made Volleyball laugh.
Volleyball got her chance at leading a month into their training. A simple capture-the-flag exercise, it should have gone easily enough.
Of course, few things in their lives went easily.
“That,” Volleyball groaned, slumping down onto the bench next to Katie, “was a disaster. A fuckin’ shit show.”
“It was only your first time,” Katie said, trying to sound encouraging.
“The first and only time.” Volleyball put her face in her hands. “Not like they’ll let me take the lead again.”
“Never say-”
“Never,” Volleyball said grimly. “Katie, we charged right into their ambush and got shot down to the last man. And woman. Last human. Whatever, we just plain sucked, okay?”
“It was your first time,” Katie said again, emphasizing the words. “No one’s perfect on the first run.”
Volleyball had just made a discontented noise and started eating her soup.
Despite mishaps of tactics, they’d both graduated to full New Republic Privates after their intense four-month training program, and begun to run real missions.
Actually being on the battlefield, Katie discovered, was nothing like being in the training hall. She desperately tried not to freeze up and lose her head, but it was hard to concentrate on anything but the sound of bullets whizzing around her, the roar of her own heartbeat in her ears.
Still, she survived where many others didn’t – though whether that was down to skill or luck, she can’t say.
Now she and Volleyball are standing with the others on what passes as the New Republic’s parade ground, listening to General Kimball make a speech about their new arrivals.
“War heroes?” Katie hears Volleyball whisper over the radio. She darts her eyes to her HUD, confirming that she’s is talking to her over their own private channel. “Do you think it’s for real?”
“I don’t know,” Katie hisses back. “Why would war heroes be all the way out here?”
Volleyball is silent at that, but Katie can tell from her silence that she’s thinking about it. “You think they’re fake?” she asks after a moment.
“I haven’t even met them yet,” Katie says, noncommittal. “But if General Kimball believes it…”
“Hmm.” Volleyball lets out a long, low sigh. “I guess we’ll just see for ourselves.”
The Reds and Blues aren’t exactly what Katie would have expected of war heroes. They’re not confident and self-assured like Felix, don’t have the quiet strength and determination that emanates from Kimball. They’re not even that good at capture the flag.
But there is something about them. They may not be perfect soldiers, but they’ve seen things. Sometimes when they speak, it seems to come from a well of personal experience that Katie can’t begin to fathom.
And sometimes they can’t talk to her without their voice breaking every five seconds like a fourteen-year-old boy.
Well. Actually that’s just one of them in particular.
“This helmet’s almost done, sir,” Katie says, fixing the last few wires into place.
Captain Simmons just nods at her; he prefers to communicate non-verbally where possible. She’s wondered if she should offer to take up learning military hand signals, if only so they could communicate more effectively.
Still, when they’re not trying to hold a conversation, it’s kind of nice to sit and work side by side. Irrespective of his communication problems, Captain Simmons is matching her blow for blow – if one reimagines the phrase as pertaining to wiring cameras into helmets, that is.
When she gets back to the dorm Volleyball is the only one still up, sitting on her bed in the near-darkness, arms crossed, just waiting. “It’s almost midnight, Katie,” she whispers, disapproving.
“Lost track of time,” Katie mumbles, pulling her armour off.
When Volleyball doesn’t speak, Katie looks up and makes out an expression of vague suspicion through the darkness. “We were rewiring helmets,” she says quickly, “Nothing weird.”
Volleyball rolls her eyes. “From anyone else that would sound like bullshit, but because it’s you?” She snorts and lies back on her bed. “You managed to get a project like that done without exchanging words? Or was it the conversation that slowed the whole process down?”
Katie feels slightly defensive at Volleyball’s derisive tone, though she tries not to show it. “It’s just a fiddly bit of work. That’s all.” She clambers into bed, pulling the covers snugly down over herself. “I’m going to sleep, V. I’ll see you in the morning.” Volleyball only grunts in response.
They don’t really talk about the whole team leader thing. Volleyball is smart enough to know that she’s not really cut out for the job – her head for tactics hasn’t noticeably improved since their first dramatic failure – but Katie knows it stings nonetheless. Having your teenage dream crushed isn’t a pleasant experience for anyone.
But it’s not like being team leader really means anything, not when you’re disposable enough that your Captains prefer to sneak away in the night just so they can leave you behind.
And then get killed. There’s that, as well.
Katie’s hiding in an unused section of the base when Volleyball drops down beside her, huffing out a breath as she hits the ground. “Thought I’d find you here,” she says, voice soft.
Katie sniffs and says nothing.
They sit in silence for a while before Volleyball says, “They left to protect you, y’know.”
Katie bites her lip. “And if we’d been there, if we’d had their backs like we were supposed to, they might not have-” The tightness in her throat cuts her off.
“Not from the way Felix tells it.”
“Fuck Felix,” Katie snaps, so forcefully that Volleyball jerks round to look at her. “He doesn’t know, not for sure. We could’ve done something.”
“I…” Volleyball stops, the fingers of one hand tapping against the other, as if she’s not quite sure how to put into words what she wants to say. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Katie,” she says after a moment, “But I’d rather have you than them.”
Katie looks at her long and hard, then glances away. “That’s only sentiment talking.”
“Maybe.” Volleyball taps two fingers on the knee plate of her armour, two quick sharp taps. “But aren’t feelings what makes all this matter?”
Katie can’t, as it turns out, argue with that.
As they gear up for their assault on the capital, Katie often finds herself thinking back to that quiet night rewiring helmets with Captain Simmons. It’s always seemed so strange to her, how someone can be so alive in one moment and so very dead in the next. How someone’s memory can linger like a ghost, almost as corporeal as their living body, even after they’ve been put in the earth.
Volleyball comes to her the night before they leave for Armonia. There’s a ledge about halfway up the walls, easy enough to scramble to up the cliff face at the back of the motor pool, and from it Katie can lean back against the rock wall and look up through the gash in the earth that hides them, out at the starry night sky.
She hears Volleyball grunting with the effort pf climbing and the scrapes her armour makes against the rock face long before she sees her. Her friend finally hauls herself up onto the ledge, out of breath, and flops down beside her. “You make it look so easy,” she complains. “Scrambling up here like a monkey.”
“One thing I can still beat you at,” Katie says with a grin.
“Yeah yeah, cocky,” Volleyball taps the side of Katie’s helmet with her fist gently, a gesture that’s come to replace ruffling someone’s hair among the troops. “What’re you contemplating up here all alone?”
“Our possible imminent death?”
“Cheery.” Volleyball mirrors Katie’s casual slump against the wall and folds her arms. “You don’t think the plan’s gonna work?”
“It might work, but I also might die in the process.”
“You could have died in any of our missions.”
“Yeah,” Katie shrugs, “But this is taking the capital. It’s on a whole other level. Kimball’s not hiding the fact that there’ll be casualties.”
“I can’t see it being you,” Volleyball says confidently.
“Because you don’t want it to be me,” Katie says.
“No, I’m pretty sure you’re too smart to get shot.”
Katie can’t tell if she’s joking, but she laughs anyway. “No one’s too smart to get shot.”
Volleyball makes a noncommittal noise and says nothing.
They sit side by side for a long time in the quiet night, neither saying anything. The only sound is the wind whistling through the caverns, night creatures rustling and calling, and a few quiet noises of late night activity from the base.
After a while Volleyball reaches up and pulls off her helmet, taking a deep breath of unfiltered night air. “I’m gonna miss this place if things go south,” she says quietly.
Katie snorts. “This hole in the ground?”
Volleyball smiles in the darkness. “It’s more than that. The people… the people make it more.”
“So what you’re saying is, you’ll miss us,” Katie says, and also reaches up to take off her helmet. The humid, hot air hits her skin, bringing with it the smell of earth and the jungle.
“I’ll miss you,” Volleyball says softly. When Katie turns to look at her, she says, “You in particular, I mean.”
“Really?” Katie says, feeling a grin pull at her lips without being able to suppress it.
“Yeah,” Volleyball says. She sounds breathless. “I mean… you… You and me are…”
“We’re what?” Katie breaths.
Volleyball hesitates, then whispers, “Fuck it,” and leans in to kiss her.
Katie stills, and there’s a single, magic moment when everything goes quiet, as if the world is holding its breath. Volleyball’s lips are soft and warm against hers. After the first second of surprise, Katie kisses back as best as she knows how.
After what seems like hours, Volleyball pulls back. “Sorry,” she whispers, “Probably should’ve given you a little more warning on that one.”
Katie shakes her head. “That was good,” she says, her voice just as soft, “Didn’t need any warning.”
Volleyball laughs quietly. “What?”
Katie blushes, hoping the darkness will hide it, and says, “I’m trying to tell you that you can kiss me whenever you want, idiot.”