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Sherrod-Thirteen years old

“ P layback,” I ordered the tablet.

“Affirmative.”

It was today’s lesson that Commander Randall was having with his niece, Zephyr. She was still learning staves and I was bored out of my mind, but I was determined to beat her in mastering this.

Jealousy, it turned out, was a hell of a motivator.

The commander had cut back on his visits to me these last nine months.

Instead, he had me up at all hours during his training sessions with Zephyr so I could learn with her via a live feed.

Then, later, I was to send him a holo of me going through the lesson to show how I’d mastered it.

I was progressing faster than her, because of course I was.

She was a spoiled diplomats spawn and I was… well, not.

I had already learned Talosian when she’d started, though she had picked up the Valtoshan dialect for pleasure houses easier than me.

I’d been fluent in Trade Speak all my life so I didn’t count that one.

The more ‘book learning’ part of all this seemed to be about even for us, even though she had a diplomat child’s primary education which did give her an edge, I worked harder at it to keep up. In my mind, that counted for more.

But in this, the weapons and combat training, I was ahead of her more often than not. She’d been having an issue with hurting someone; I saw the way she pulled her punches, diverted the stave at the last minute. And so did the commander.

She’d be eaten alive in a combat situation, and that’s exactly what he was finally telling her.

He’d gone off today, screaming at her that she was going to die her first mission out if she wasn’t willing to go for the kill.

“You can’t even go for the pain!” he’d raged.

At first I thought she was crying because she was upset he was yelling at her and I rolled my eyes.

Soft skinned, pampered…

And then, she’d turned around to face the hidden camera and what I saw startled me.

Fury pulsed through her beautiful eyes. It was so familiar, like staring into a mirror. I knew that pain, that drive and the frustration of not being able to use it. I’d gotten over it after my first few months training with the commander.

I held my breath as I watched this moment again.

The jut of her jaw, the flush of her cheeks, the tears that left dirt tracks on her face and dripped off her chin.

She spun around, not waiting for the commander to give the go ahead and laid into him.

She had him halfway across the sparing circle before he realized what was going on.

It was the most beautiful flurry of staves I’d ever seen.

I slowed the play back to look at her feet, her hip movement, the placement of her hands and shoulders.

I was probably on my fiftieth replay but I wanted to see how she’d managed to not only push him out of the circle, but hit him hard enough to land him on his ass in the dirt.

Zephyr was a stunning display of deadly grace and movement and I studied every second.

“Playback that section again.”

A phlegmy cough behind me had me flinching.

“Watching your girlfriend again, are ya?” asked my caretaker, a wiry old man who smelled of burnt cheese and rot gut.

“Shut up, Litman, go cheat someone out of their credits and leave me be.”

“Oh, big man now, huh? Think your commander is going to swoop in and adopt you too?”

I clenched my jaw and tried to ignore the stab the words produced.

I had thought that, once upon a time. When I’d looked up at the commander from the literal gutter I’d been living in, half dead from starvation and getting the shit kicked out of me, I’d been ten years old, homeless and ready to do vile things just to be able to eat regularly.

The commander had cleaned me up, gotten me medical attention and found this drunk asshole to take me in.

Litman was an annoying prick, but at least he didn’t beat me or make me do things I didn’t want to.

He cheated and skirted the law constantly, but I ate three times a day, had clothes to wear and the old man didn’t let anyone lay a hand on me.

I suspected it had more to do with fear of the commander than affection for me, but I hadn’t really cared.

After I’d healed and gained a bit of weight, the commander had started training me.

For two months, he was here, encouraging me, believing in me. And then he was just gone.

I learned later that his sister had died and then months later, she had come along. His visits became fewer and fewer, until now I didn’t see him in person at all. I hated her for that, for taking him away, for replacing me.

I’d show him that I was the better student, the one he should be focused on by being faster and better than her. I was so sure that would be the easy part, until today.

“How did you do this?” I murmured.

“Who said that?”

I jumped up onto my feet, combat stance, ready to attack.

“Hello? Is someone there?” came the voice again.

I was coming from a com disguised as an old melted piece of metal. The commander had given it to me when he first started training me. I kept it with me at all times and I had only ever heard him through it.

Until now.

It was her voice, I recognized it perfectly.

“Who’s there?” she demanded.

I snorted at the stupidity of it. If I had been an intruder, she’d be telling me where she was and I could overpower her.

“No one, go back to your soft bed,” I sneered.

Silence and I assumed that had shut her up but then, “Fuck you, whoever this is.”

The steel and anger in her voice was making me feel something I didn’t have words for. It was…tingly in a weird way. Like when I had a job near the pleasure houses, but different. I was more than familiar with arousal, this was something more and I didn’t like it one bit.

She’s a kid, doesn’t even have tits yet. And I hate her.

“Fuck you, soft little daisy,” I shot back.

“Who is this?!”

“The better student.”

She gave a frustrated grunt and swore in Valtoshan.

I swore back.

She swore in Talosian.

I swore in Old World Chinese.

She told me to eat a bag of dicks in Nigerian.

Back and forth we traded insults in the languages we knew. Somewhere in the middle of it, what had started out as anger and trying to wound, turned into a competition for who could come up with the oddest insults.

“Did you just call me a ‘bagger’?” I asked. “You can’t even see me!”

“You sound ugly,” she replied.

Silence.

And then we were both laughing so hard that I almost couldn’t breathe. Somehow, this had become ridiculous.

“Alright…alright,” I tried to stop laughing long enough to talk. “I got one.”

“You sure about that?”

I cackled again along with her and called her a twat-waffle in Atavarian, or at least an approximation of it.

“You do realize you just called me a vagina sandwich,” she said through snorting giggles.

“Atavarian doesn’t have derogatory words for genitalia.”

“I know, it’s too proper for that.”

“Stuck up bitches,” I said at the same time she did.

We laughed again, and when silence descended, I felt lighter, as if the arguing and laughing had drained something heavy from inside of me. I had no one my own age to be around, no friends, no one to talk to except a drunk asshole who was scamming tourists most of the time.

I didn’t realize how much I missed having someone my own age to just be stupid with until now.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

I hesitated. We weren’t supposed to tell that to each other.

Hell, we weren’t even really supposed to know about one another.

All of the commander’s assets operated independent of each other.

We only ever found out about one another if it was necessary to a mission, and even then, it was aliases and the understanding that you forget them as soon as the mission is over.

“Jacen,” I said, pulling a name out of one of the old holo novels I liked. “And I’ll call you Daisy.”

“That’s not my name.”

“It is now.”

“I guess we’re not supposed to know, huh?” she said.

“Nope. Why don’t you know that?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe he just hasn’t gotten to that lesson yet.”

“You know,” I said, bringing up the video of her rifle lesson from last week, “you’d get more accuracy with the phase rifle if you locked it into your armpit, hugged it close.”

“How did…how did you know…?”

I winced and swore silently, realizing the mistake.

Fear of losing this connection shot through me.

I still wanted to beat her at these lessons, still had the drive to be better.

But it was no fun if it was too easy, right?

So I maybe if I told her that I was watching, maybe she’d get competitive too.

“He lets me watch your lessons,” I admitted. “So I can learn.”

“Oh, that’s…I don’t like that.”

“I bet.”

“Don’t sound like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re so much better than me at all this.”

“I am so much better than you.”

“Then why do you need to watch my lessons to learn?”

“Maybe because he doesn’t know how good I am.”

She snorted.

“Yeah, okay, Jacen. I gotta go, tomorrow is another lesson that you’re going to be so much better than me at.”

“Wait,” I shouted, holding the com badge hard enough to dig into my palm. “I didn’t…I’m sorry, okay? I’m not used to…”

“Being nice?”

“Yeah, basically. I’m a rodent, okay? A little gutter snipe, not some diplomat’s kid.”

She paused.

“I’m not a diplomat’s kid. Not anymore.”

The sadness in her voice struck me like a knife and I swallowed.

“Sorry, that was…Like I said, I’m bad at this.”

“Oh, something I’m better than you at, huh?”

“Fucking hell, are you gonna let that go?”

“Nope.”

I rolled my eyes.

Women.

“Fine, yes, I suck at talking to pretty gir-people. And ugly people too. Any people, really.”

I slapped my palm against my forehead. Zephyr wasn’t bad looking, she might even be pretty one day, but I didn’t need to admit that.

“Oh…well…okay.”

“Okay?” I asked, confused.

“Yeah, I mean…I’m not good at talking to people either. Not since the implants.”

“Yeah. People stare, it’s weird.”

“And say things.”

I nodded and then realized she couldn’t see me.

“I know, people are assholes.”

She snorted and I got the feeling that she’d been crying from how wet it sounded.

“How about this,” she said after a moment, “I’ll help you learn how to socialize and talk to people. We can practice our languages. And you can give me combat tips.”

My stomach gave a flip, and the one thing I’d grown to loathe started to bloom inside of me: hope. I’d been witness to it dying far too many times, and I didn’t want that attached to this person. Not when I was really starting to think that she might turn out to be a friend.

But her offer was tempting. To have an excuse to talk to her more, to connect with someone that didn’t make me feel like I was worthless. The commander had been that person at first, but he was gone now. Zephyr, or Daisy, was here and wanted to talk with me.

“Okay,” I said, my voice cracking. I cleared my throat, and lowered the register a little to hide the crack. “Okay, that sounds good.”

“Is something wrong with your voice?”

I slapped my forehead again.

“No, just…tired, okay?”

“Okay, geez. Do I call you then?”

“I guess, I have no idea how this works. You weren’t supposed to be able to contact me.”

“Let me see…oh! I think I figured out why we connected.”

“Congrats, you know how to use a com badge.”

“Are you always such a cockburger?”

“A what?”

“Cockburger.”

“You made that up!”

“No, it says…I mean—”

“Wait, what?” I jumped and gave a shouting laugh. “Are you reading insults out of a book?”

“No!”

“You are!”

“Shut up!”

“It’s okay, I’ll teach some good ones that you don’t need to go hunting for. Do you even know what a cockburger is?”

“An arrogant and pedantic person.”

“Huh...I guess I might be a cockburger.”

And that’s how the most important relationship of my life started. With cockburger.