His men were quick to finish and left Sergeant Gonzal all the showers for himself. Showering last and lonely was the only privilege that Gonzal demanded, and the Wings were all too happy to allow him such small pleasure. The Sergeant loved to sing while amid the hot mist, especially after finishing an op by the book, and his lungs were as powerful as he was an awful tenor: if Gonzal had a cent for every note he missed, he’d own the Chapter by now. The Wings called him Pava-Rottin’ behind his back. Gonzal knew it, and his men knew that he knew; they also knew that as long as they kept it among themselves and never in front of him, their Sarge was not a man that would deny his soldiers a bit of good-natured joking and laughter at his expenses. In Gonzal’s book, Death earned such right—most of the Wings had been killed under his command; most of them more than once.

His crew was surely gathered by the Mess Hall by now, gorging on whatever Kooks had made for dinner.

Meat and fried rice would be nice, Gonzal thought, as he tortured a few high notes. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and get again some pasta? Kooks was an artist punching the food replicators, and his veggie ravioli with crispy bacon was the stuff of legends.

Gonzal chuckled noticing that, mouth watering, he had stopped singing.

Nah, we ain’t getting pasta again. Kooks had made ravioli last week, and the fat bastard was all too keenly aware that the scarcer he made his masterpiece, the better the reception it had among his loyal fans. Well, what the hell; a guy can dream, can’t he? Lady Luck was with us on the field, maybe she’ll join us for dinner.

He dried, shaved, took his time, half humming half barking a popular chanzion that had stuck with him since his tour in Luly IV. Getting ready for supper was the Sarge’s best part of the day. He left the barracks as the last bunch of sunrays set this side of Dari Cal into dusk.

Always blue, the sky…

Gavity tugged differently in each planet, and stars were strange, and even the sun was never the same color, but everywhere the Corvids Chapter had taken Gonzal, the sky had always been blue.

He took a deep breath, enjoying immensely the cool evening air…

… and filled his nostrils with the deep, earthy scent of Minds’ Loohee tobacco.

Aw, for fuck’s sake… not again!

Some yards to his left, towards the Mess Hall, there stood a huge tree with thick, dense dark green foliage, which the Corvids called “Squirrel’s Tree”. As all of Dari Cal’s flora, xenobotanists surely had named the specimen with some long name that rhymed either with “bonus” or “anus”, but nobody in the Chapter could be arsed to remember it. The thick branches were as much roof over his head as Squirrel could put up with, the huge tree was pretty much his home, and “Squirrel’s Tree” was all the name that the tree was gonna have for the Corvids.

From the barracks Gonzal saw that Squirrel, a small grey-skinned Homo Pernix, was squatting by the thick protruding roots, peering into his plate as if it was a sad goodbye letter from a dearly loved one. Beside him Minds, cig in hand, blew a thick cloud of bluish smoke over the Pernix’s head.

“Not hungry, folks?” Gonzal asked.

“If you don’t mind me peeking into your future, Sarge,” Minds said, “soon you won’t be, either.”

Squirrel looked up from his plate. “No psi skills required to spot that, Sir; normal sniffing should suffice.”

The Sergeant sighed. Creeping under the dark scent of Mind’s tobacco, the putrid stench from Squirrel’s plate clawed its way into Gonzal’s nostrils. “What the hell is wrong with Kooks, anyway? Third time in two months his food reps go nuts.”

“Not his fault, Sarge,” Squirrel said.

“Apparently”, said Minds, “Ordie needed to replace the ammo rep’s nanoplex. And when he was about to, Ordie found that Logistics had fucked up good, and sent us the wrong spares. Needless to say, our ammo stock was already below crit, so Ordie had no option but to gut Kooks’ food reps for parts, and try to jury-rig the—”

“Long story short,” said Squirrel, “we ain’t gonna run out of bullets anytime soon, but Kooks can get nothing from his rep except this here turdstew. Best he can do, he says. All the right proteins and carbs and vitamins to keep us going, but flavor’s fucked beyond recon. Not Kooks fault, really, but we’re screwed until the next shipment arrives."

“Shit…”

“That’s exactly right, Sarge.” Squirrel smirked. “Looks and smells like rotting sewage. One would think a victorious soldier has a right to a tasty meal… do you think you could drop a word to Captain, ask him if we could spare the budget to buy spares from the Phaays?”

“Yeah… that could work. In fact, you have my permission to go talk to Captain Luthz yourself, Corporal. Knock yourself out. Just make sure to take all credit for this idea.”

Squirrel grinned. “On second thought…”

“Good call,” Gonzal said. "Roll me one, Minds."

The young Homo Gnarus smiled. With his own cig firmly between his lips, Minds took a plastic bag from his side pocket, spread a few dry leaves over a white square of paper, rolled it into a perfect thin cylinder, lit it with his own cig, then handed it to the Sergeant.

Gonzal pulled in sharply, savoring the creamy, raspy earthen notes.

“Dark Loohee Sky, eh?”

Minds nodded.

“You sure know the good stuff, kid.”

Minds’ smile widened. “Tastes like Home sweet Home, Sarge.”

Gonzal smiled, too. When it came to grenades Minds was a dispassionate, mass-murdering surgeon, telekinning his deadly charges with pinpoint precision… but remind him about Loohee Prime and he turned into a little, day-dreaming homesick kiddy.

They both finished their cigarettes in silence while Squirrel did his best to swallow some more of Kooks’ fetid broth without throwing up.

Gonzal chuck out the tiny stub and crushed it under his boot. “Sure you don’t wanna come with me, Minds?”

The young Garus shook his head and tapped his own temple. “Everybody in there, trying not to retch, plus the reek of the turdstew itself… too much for me, Sarge.”

“You’ll eventually have to eat something…”

“I think I still have a couple of chocolates in my personal stash, Sarge. I’ll be ok.”

Squirrel drove the last spoonful of brownish goo from his plate to his mouth. “Better they fix Kooks’ replicator, and soon. This dung is the stuff mutinies are made of, Sarge."

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Corporal.”

“Heard what, Sir?”

“Never mind. Must have been the wind on your tree, Squirrel. Thanks for the smoke, Minds.”

As he walked towards the Mess Hall, Gonzal heard Minds say behind him, “Don’t say we didn’t warn you, Sir.”

***

Stench got stronger with each step. Pushing open the Mess Hall’s large metal doors and stepping inside took Gonzal a good chunk of his remaining willpower: the air reeked like the rotting bowels of a decomposing scavenger.

The Hall was by far the largest building inside the small Corvids’ Nest base. Most tables were deserted; unsurprisingly, the Corvid Chapter was suffering from an epidemic of acute anorexia. Gonzal counted a couple of Jays, Sarge Tejaru with a few of her Azure Magpies, and no Crows other than his own squad.

Well… at least we are living up to our reputation: the Crow Wing, only ones who can hold our ground when dung is thickest.

Save for Haiko, who had not yet returned from his usual trip to the clone vats, and Minds and Squirrel outside, his whole squad bravely held its position: Bigfoot’s colossal body on one end of the table, Stoic by his right, then Haiko’s empty seat, then Wolf the rookie looking sick; in front of them Noui, Minds’ vacant place, and Chinkx, who didn’t seem in the mood to crack one of his jokes. There was no room in the table for Squirrel—the crazy little Pernix had been gengineered for open environments and narrow, wall-enclosed spaces launched him into a panicked frenzy.

The turdstew stench clung to the air like poisonous miasma. Jaw clenched, Gonzal picked up a food tray and, gripping it as tightly as a medieval knight would wield his shield, grimly marched forth across the hall to confront Kooks.

The Corvids’ one and only chef was huge as a mountain. A Sapiens through and through, yet so big that from afar anybody could have mistaken him for an overweight Homo Clypeus. Usual joke was that, of the two food replicators under his command, one fed the Chapter and the other fed Kooks. Nobody had a case for complaints, though: food was plenty, varied, and always falling somewhere between above average and all the way up to marvelous…

… that is, when his reps worked right, which today was nauseatingly obvious not the case.

Long ago, when he was still a PV-nothing, Gonzal’s platoon had been stuck, like a cyst, in the wen on the arse of a goddamned, god-forsaken little moon in the ass-end of nowhere. Nobody seemed to know why the hell they were there, or what the hell they were supposed to be guarding, or fighting, or protecting. They did nothing other than to keep guard duty and keep the station clean. Which was easier said than done: their pathetic joke of a base was surrounded by a thick tropical jungle and something about the heat, the water and the food gave everyone in the platoon permanent diarrhea.

And of course, as yet another proof of the universal nature of Murphy’s Law, the sewage composter refused to work. Gonzal’s CO at the time, always eager to find a wealth of opportunity in every crisis, decided that the manual excavation of cesspools and shit trenches was indeed the perfect occupation for bored soldiers.

Dari Cal looked nothing like that little god-forsaken moon, and the Corvids’ chubby chef looked nothing like Gonzal’s former CO. But the tepid pot of noxious slurry that Kooks was churning looked like and, worse, smelled exactly like the tropical-heated, shit-brimming trenches that still stank Gonzal’s worst nightmares.

“No options today, boss,” Kooks said. He would usually grin wide enough to light a room, yet today the chef could muster no such welcome. “Daily special is all we got.”

Gonzal sighed. “That’s third time in two months, Kooks.”

“And tomorrow will be fourth.”

The Sergeant’s dismayed expression was louder than words. Kooks shrugged.

“What can I do, Sarge? Ordie vulture both my reps for parts. Now one rep’s out, the other is fubared. And will be until Ordie gets his spares. Meanwhile I can’t organolep nothing, can’t umminate a thing. All I can do is fill the pots with whatever crap drools from the nozzles.”

“Kooks… it reeks…”

Kooks snorted. “Wouldn’t know, Sarge. Here all day, myself.” He tapped his gnarled nose. “Only good thing ‘bout this mess is that your smelling gets numb after some time, you know?”

The chubby chef swirled the swampy fecal mass with an enormous stainless-steel ladle and took out a spoonful. With no viable tactic other than quiet acquiescence, Gonzal surrendered his food tray.

Squirrel, Minds and Stoic called it turdstew. For Bigfoot and Haiko, it was shitsoup. Gonzal shook his head: he forced himself to remember that whatever floated in that lukewarm bog, no matter what it looked and smelled like, was made of protein and carbs. And fighting men needed all the protein and carbs they could sink their teeth into.

“Thanks, Kooks.”

“See if you thank me later, Sarge. Oh… and day after tomorrow?” he raised his chubby hand with all fingers extended, “that's gonna be the fifth day you’ll eat this crap, unless somebody brings us the spare parts for my reps."

***

Bigfoot had already finished whatever it was they were eating. Stoic, honoring his callsign, straight-faced and methodically gulped one spoonful after the other. The rest were doing their best and more or less failing miserably. Wolf looked like he was about to faint.

Gonzal took his place at the head of the table. “C’mon, Wolf,” he said to the young Sapiens. “Put something hot in your stomach, kid. You’ll need it.” To set an example, Gonzal grabbed his spoon and forced himself to chew.

From the other side of the table, Bigfoot rumbled, “That means we’ll need you in the field tomorrow, rookie. Which means Sarge’s happy with you.”

“Damn right!” Noui said. She smiled at Wolf and nodded eagerly.

Wolf cracked a thin, timid smile. “We showed them today, eh? Those synths?”

“We did,” Stoic said. “You could have wasted a few less bullets but hey, bullets are cheap again, or so I hear.”

“Oh, but will you just look at that!” laughed Chinkx. “The virgin gives pointers to the maiden!”

“Hey! Stoic’s a virgin no more,” said Bigfoot.

Spoon held mid-air, Wolf’s thin smile dissolved from his face.

Bigfoot laughed good-naturedly. “Don’t worry, rookie. Cloning don’t hurts,” he said. “Even you Saps can take it. C’mon, Stoic. Tell the kid.”

“The big Clyp to my left is right,” Stoic said. “The cloning doesn’t hurt: you get shot, everything fades to black, then there’s this sharp light and violent pull and blam, there you are, floating inside the proteome vat. And about getting shot itself… about bleeding, internal hemorrhages and all that stuff”—Stoic gulped a spoonful of turdstew, chewed, gulped—“there things much worse, by far. Trust me on that.”

The rest of the Wing agreed and did their best to go back to their plates.

Gonzal willed himself to grind a spongy portion of something that, according to his taste buds, had been rotting in a waste dump for long, torrid summer days. “On the subject of clone jockeys… where’s Haiko?”

“Should be back already…” said Bigfoot.

“He okay?”

“Doc Kourailen said so, yeah. Haiko already almost outta the vat when we came back.”

“Well…” said Chinxs, sniffing, “maybe ol’ Haiko just ain’t hungry?”

“Fresh clones are always hungry, mate,” Bigfoot said.

Stoic nodded knowingly. “Man! Right off the vat, I thought I could eat a whole gregol myself, hairs and all.” He looked at Wolf. “When you get cloned, your new stomach is brand new, right? And your clone has been floating in the vat all this time, fed like a baby in a womb, so it’s like you have a black hole in your belly. Tell you, rookie: all you wanna do is eat.”

“Poor Haiko, though…”, Noui said, “filling his brand-new clone with this shitty soup…”

“Speaking of which…” Gonzal said as he pointed at the door.

“Wow…”

“What da…”

“Is he smiling?”

“He is smiling!”

“Can’t he smell!?

“Ten bucks says Doc Kourailen botched Haiko’s chemos.”

“You’re on!”

“Wait for it…”

“What the…!?”

“He is smiling to Kooks now!?”

“Is the moron blind, too?”

“Dude! He is looking at the turdstew and fucking smiling!?”

The whole Wing watched with jaw-dropped amazement as the grinning Haiko, tray in hand and shitsoup in tray, approached their table.

“Hey, crew,” he said as he sat down between Wolf and Stoic. “Where’s Minds? Our favorite minder ain’t hungry?”

They all stared like mute men as Haiko accommodated his bulk over the chair. He was big and massively muscular, even for a Homo Clypeus; a bit shorter than Bigfoot, but noticeably wider. He took a spoonful and chewed eagerly.

“So…” Haiko said. “Everybody quiet? No jokes, Chinkx? Was I the only one, or did somebody else just died?”

“Eh…” said Stoic. “Haiko?”

“Yep. That’d be me. Brand new flesh suit, but still ol’ me inside it. Oh, and rookie…” he said to Wolf, patting him on the back, “yours was one hell of a trial by fire today. At least as long as I could see before those damned synths sent me for a swim in the vats.” He chewed, swallowed, smiled. “Welcome to the Crow Wing, kid.”

Wolf nodded, too surprised to answer.

Haiko filled his mouth again.

“Haiks?” Stoic said.

“Yes, mate?”

“It’s turdstew, man.”

Haiko looked at his tray. “Yeah, I know. Taste likes shit, right?” He shrugged, took another bite.

“And… Haiks?”

“Yes, mate?”

“You’re smiling…”

The old Clypeus’ grin widened.

“Yes I am, mate. Yes I am.”

Haiko kept going at his stew as if it tasted like Cheruvian chocolate.

“Haiks…?”

“Yes?”

“It’s shitsoup, mate! You are eating shitsoup and smiling!?”

Haiko chuckled. “I died a couple of hours ago, son. Can’t a man be happy to be brought back to life? To be surrounded by his mates? Tell you, Stoic, if you don’t learn to enjoy the little things, smell the roses and such…”

“Smell the… what the hell, smell!?”

“Hey, Bigfoot,” chipped in Chinkx, “is this some kind of new Clypie joke that we Saps don’t get?”

Bigfoot shrugged, clearly as puzzled as everybody else.

“C’mon, Haiko,” Chinkx said. “What’s going on? Doc testing some new feel-good drug back in the vats? That it?”

Haiko smiled wryly. “Maybe. Maybe Doc Kourailen spiked my seros. Or maybe I died and went to heaven for a second. Who knows? Maybe I just saw an Angel.”

Wolf jumped in his seat. “Did you?”.

“Nah, kid. Figure of speech. And don’t you worry, maiden boy; the cloning don’t hurts. Heck…”—wry smile again—“just like our good man Stoic here, you may even learn to like it."

Gonzal raised an eyebrow and hawked.

Silence engulfed the Wings as the mood quieted.

“Seriously now, Haiks,” Gonzal said. “What’s up?”

Haiko’s grin shortened, but didn’t entirely vanish. “Nothing much, Sarge. You know that that’s all I can say, Doc’s NDA and all.” He munched the last of his stew. “Kooks’ soup tastes like shit, no doubt, but boy oh boy it’s good to be alive.”

He stood up, picked up his empty tray, left it by the short pile of dirty dishes and went outside. Haiko and Squirrel were best pals, had been together through one hell of a lot, and usually enjoyed a long chat after dinner.

Gonzal, eyebrow arched, looked at Bigfoot.

The Clypeus shrugged. “I have no clue, Sarge, I swear. Kooks’ stew tastes as shitty for me as it does for any of you, and same for Haiko, of that I’m sure.”

“Ten bucks say Doc’s testing some new shit on us,” said Chinkx. “A dopamine spike, like he does to Squirrel’s clones to avoid his claustrophobic seizures.”

“Your guess’ as good as mine,” Bigfoot said.

“If I had ten bucks,” said Noui, “which I don’t, they’d say it’s not drugs this time.”

They all looked at Gonzal.

“Never mind, crew,” he said. “What happens in the vats stays in the vats. NDA, Doctor-clone confidentiality, etcetera; you all know that. Finish up.”

The Wings nodded and grudgingly went back to dish-sweep duties.

But it sure as hell is odd, Gonzal ruminated as he chewed Kooks’ stew. What has got into ol’ Haiks?

Never mind: the Sergeant had learned that patience usually outsmarted guesswork. Doc Kourailen and the old Clypeus were entitled to their little secret, if it was indeed little. And if it was something big…

… in small bases, like the Corvids’ Nest, big things tended to not stay secret for long.

###