The next couple of days fire moments in full auto, task leading to task, training into training into eating into rest. They have me punching at a shield made of punching bag stuff held by Merry before doing sit-ups, stretches, running, helping them stock boxes.

  Sometimes Becca joins us, spars with me. I respected Becca's talents before; I learned to fear her in CQB, where her agility makes up for my strength and ys me out on my ass before I start to hold my own.

  All of this is fueled with better food than I've had for seven years - waking to eggs and bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes, toast with real butter and real jam, fucking orange juice, and that's just our breakfasts. All of this is fueled with better rest than I've had for seven years - sleeping on a real bed, with real cushions, under a real bnket, with real weight, within four real walls, under a real roof.

  Even my nightmares level out. The Invaders are everpresent in my dreams, but sleeping in the Resistance base makes for dreams of being chased rather than dreams of being caught, dreams of losing them behind the fortress walls rather than being cornered in an alley.

  Nightmares of Gabriel turning to fight and buy me time, rather than nightmares of Gabriel being devoured senselessly

  .I wake up the morning of my third day here from one of those, take a moment to drink water. Dress. Head to breakfast.

  "What's the pn today?" I ask Merry when I see her - she's not in the kitchen today, instead eating with the other Oracles.

  She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "Today," she says, "you train under your XO."

  For a moment I almost believe that Victoria Lam made it past her sad birthday, with how tall she is, with how wide her hips are, how big a bust she has, most of all by how shredded she is. The scar on her face that almost reaches her right eye adds to the illusion. But her face is a shade too soft, her eyes a shade too big, for her to be anything but the oldest kid here.

  She takes a cigarette out of her pocket and manages, with difficulty, to put it to her lips. Then she fumbles for a match.

  Meredith rolls her eyes and offers a lighter from her own pocket. "Here," she says, frowning.

  Victoria leans down to let her light it, with an expression that might have some gratitude in it.

  "Appreciate it. Terrible habit, I know I can be a pill sometimes," Victoria says.

  Meredith shrugs. "I'm not terribly worried about suicide by nicotine, given everything else."

  Victoria passed a gnce my way before taking a deep drag. She tilted her head away from Meredith before deliberately blowing the smoke downwind and away from the shorter girl.

  And coughing, once.

  "This is the kid, huh? Jesus Fitzroy Castelno."

  I grimace at the middle name. At the Colonel's name.

  Meredith shrugs. "You know how the Colonel gets better than anyone else here."

  Victoria scowls. "Intimately."

  They talked about me as if I wasn’t there. Great. I loved being reduced to scenery.

  "Guess I should give you two some privacy?" I deadpan.

  They both blinked, before turning and staring at me at the same time. Meredith looked away and down first, then Victoria narrowed her eyes."Just what is THAT supposed to mean, nugget?" Victoria asks.

  I held my palms up, but I didn't lower my gaze or back away.

  "That if you're going to have a private conversation about me, maybe I shouldn't be around to hear it? I just thought the three of us would prefer that," I said.

  There was a moment of utterly frozen silence.

  Then Meredith ughed, and the warmth from that melted the awkward away.

  "We might, at that," Meredith mutters, looking up at Victoria's face with a tightly controlled smile that still had a bit of smug leaking from it. "Well, aren't you the wise-ass today, Soos?" Victoria coos in sarcasm smooth as silk.

  "We were both being very rude," Meredith insists. "By all means, join our conversation. I for one did not mean to exclude you, Joshua. Especially not given that this concerns you."

  Victoria sighs.

  "Merry? As much as I hate to see you go, I need to talk with him alone," she says. "You understand."

  "I do. I'm going."

  Meredith started to head in, then remembered something and spun on her heel to me.

  "Good luck and godspeed, Soos," she says, before leaving.

  Victoria took another drag on her cigarette, then sized me up. I returned the favor. She leaned against a wall, and shuddered as she did; taking weight off a wound?

  "So," she says. "Nugget."

  My eyes flitted to the pins on her shoulder. Two triangles, close enough together to make a diamond. Not quite a Marine Corps oak leaf, but close enough.

  "Major Lam, sir," I say.

  She blinks, then grins, canines sharp in her smile.

  "Good eye, Castelno. Very good."

  "Thank you, sir. Ma'am?" I ask.

  She cackles. "Don't you dare call me ‘Ma'am,’ Makes me feel a lot older than 17. ‘Sir’ works, as does ‘Major Lam.’"

  "Wilco, Major Lam," I say, arms behind my back, not daring to slump.

  "Your papa was big on military discipline before the fan hit the deep shit, then?" she asks.

  I grimace. "Somethin' like that, Major Lam."

  She grins at me like a cat that caught a pigeon.

  "Allow me to formally welcome you to the Treasure Isnd Resistance, nugget. For all that's worth. I just have one question for you before we begin training."

  "Shoot," I say.

  She takes a drag, exhales a rolling cloud of soot.

  "What makes you think you are good enough to fight with the Resistance?" asks Major Victoria Lam.

  I was almost insulted and nearly answered with fire. Nearly.

  But it was a valid question. Letting in some joker who can't pull his weight could do some real damage. And I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me fly off the handle.

  I had to answer carefully.

  I sigh and deliberately loosen up, rolling my neck.

  "Well, Castelno?" she prods.

  "I know my own shortcomings, Major Lam," I answer.

  Her eyebrows shoot straight up."

  "Not the tack I'd have expected you to take," she admits. "Eborate.

  I fold my arms and look her in the eye. "For example, I know that my reflexes are shit," I tell her. "And knowing that? Knowing I'm not going to win a battle of reflexes means I know better than to get into one. I know I can't get cocky, Major. Flying by the seat of my pants just means I'll tumble out face-first."

  Victoria ughs, shaking her head. "We've established you don't have reflexes. So show me what you have got."

  I roll my neck. "I figure, if I get in a dogfight - or a knife-fight - I'll be ripped apart."

  "Yes, yes, and so you don't get in knife-fights. Instead?"

  I grin. "I always bring a gun to a knife-fight."

  She ughed, and squeezed my shoulder with her good hand.

  "I am a damn good shot," I say. "Pistol, shottie, rifle if you got it. If I can keep 21 meters away from the knife fight, I'm golden."

  "Words to continue to live by," Victoria says, tracing curls in the air with her cigarette. "I can work with that; God knows Becca needs to learn that lesson fast."

  I take a deep breath. "Thank you, I think, Major Lam."

  "So long as you do just that, I'll be happy," she replies.

  "Think?" I ask.

  "Exactly," Major Lam said. "Now... Let me make this perfectly clear."

  She stubbed out her cigarette, then pced the leftover half of it in a red and gold box of its peers. She held up a finger, angling it up at my nose.

  "If you join us as a pilot, you're going to have to follow orders," Major Victoria Lam said. "MY orders. That's what the brass triangles mean. Now, If you want to join up and tend the farms, milk the goats, do all the little shit that needs doing? We still feed you, we still give you water and medicine, and no one will think anything less of you."

  For the third time, my answer to that was immediate.

  "Fuck that. I'm here to fight the Nightmares, Major Lam."

  She smirked.

  "Big words. Let me be completely clear with you," she says.

  "Yes, sir, Major Lam," I say.

  "I have been doing this for two years," she says, all of the smile gone from her face. "I'm the st of the first Pilots. The only survivor of our very first missions. I have seen better soldiers than you break against worse things than you can possibly imagine. Don't presume you're a hero; don't presume that we're friends. And maybe, if you follow my orders, if we're smart as hell and someone is looking out for us - you'll make it. And we might win the war."

  I took this all in.

  Then, slowly, I nodded, and met Victoria's gaze.

  Her eyes were so dark that they were almost bck, like the night before the invasion - when there were lights everywhere, and the stars couldn't compete with them.

  "If that's what it takes, Major," I reply, saluting.

  She returns the salute.