Mamore Pond

The pond looked to Gav like it had only ever known silence before he and Red crashed onto its bank out of Mamore’s steaming jungle. Dozens of tiny amphibians scattered before them, churning its uncannily level surface and swirling red silt through the volume below, fleeing the alien disturbance of two panting young adults stumbling to a halt beneath the nearest longfrond tree.

Both boys were dark-haired, fatigue-clad, and prickling with sweat as they scanned their surroundings wide-eyed. Gav was thinner, paler, and hung from an arm wrapped around Red’s neck to make up for a nest of biofoam and bloodstained gauze wrapping his left calf. Red was shorter, stocky, and trying not to show the toll carrying Gav since pulling him from the smashed escape pod had taken on him. The way he winced each time his spine unbent, however, was telling enough.

“You should leave me.” Gav mumbled as Red started pulling him again.

They were clinging close enough to hear little over one another’s breath, but Red still made a pretense of grunting, “Huh?”

“I mean it. You can’t keep this up.” Gav snapped. He itched wherever sweat stuck clothing to his skin, and he was sweating everywhere. “At this rate, all you’re doing is getting us both killed.”

There was another pause ahead of Red’s response. By now the effort was straining even his ability to lie. “It’s only seven more klicks.”

“Seven—!” Gavin groaned and dug his good heel into the sand, forcing Red to stop or drag him along. “You won’t make it with me before the Oonskies find us.”

“Oh, no you don’t.” Red started to argue, but the gasps he spoke between and the way he planted his feet told Gav he was grateful for the halt. “When Mamore’s free, I’ll still have Judy to find, and what do I tell her then? You’re not sticking me with that.”

Gav opened his mouth to reply, but Red’s breath suddenly held and his eyes narrowed toward the gap in the canopy over the pond.

“Down!” he shouted, and shoved.

Before he could even register not being vertical anymore, the rush of pond water filled Gav’s ears. Silt stung his eyes and he kicked instinctively to support himself—only to bleed fresh agony into his nerves as he put weight on his leg. His jaw wrenched open to scream, but the pond washed in to swallow his last lungful of breath.

Choking as his hand found the bottom, Gav tried to push back up for the surface only to feel a hand on his back. His friend couldn’t mean to drown him, but in the moment Gav was lost for any other explanation. Panicking, he thrashed to spell out his plight or break free, but Red’s hand only released to wrap an arm around his waist, holding tighter as the last possible seconds Gav could go without air slipped away…

Suddenly he was above water again. Red was sloshing through the shallows, dragging him back to the muddy bank. Gav clawed for it, dragging himself away from Red as he collapsed in turn, both vomiting murky water and spitting the grit from their teeth. Water sealing Gav’s ears drained away, and what he first thought was their ringing resolved into the last crackling echoes of thunder; no, a sonic boom, Gav realized. Some UNSC aircraft, or maybe a UAV. Deciding it would either be the last check in this sector for a while or they’d been seen and were already dead, he gladly lay his cheek in the cool, moist earth and did nothing but breathe.

Only a few minutes later, he could hear Red rouse himself, and—still resentful of the near-drowning—Gav rolled the other way, placing his back to the longfrond’s trunk as he sat up.

Red was trying to blow a mix of snot and grit out of his nose, fatigues matted darkly to his body and boots squelching as he moved. Letting the extra weight of his own soaked clothes pin him like a thick blanket, Gav glanced out over the pond. An evaporating contrail slashed the rosy Mamorian sky, its reflection in the pond mutilated by the disturbance of the pair’s dunking.

Only noticing Gav once he’d sorted himself out, Red marched over to take a knee beside Gav’s hurt leg and reached for the bandage.

“I need to make sure the wound’s clean.” he said, only to jump back as Gav recoiled like he was about to aim a kick his way. Aghast, Red seemed to forget the haste they needed to make and froze, staring at Gav for explanation.

Regret swelling inside him, Gav dropped his gaze to his injured leg. He wasn’t even sure why he was angry. With his waterlogged clothes staving off the oppressive heat, the only things left troubling him were exhaustion and pain where the escape pod’s safety bar had impaled his limb.

Red had pulled him free when he couldn’t himself; it wasn’t even the first time he’d saved Gav’s life. The two had grown up together in the undercity of a faraway world, part of a band of unwashed urchins just scraping by. And it’d been Gav’s fault when Red was nicked, caught stealing from some rich person’s house. They’d only met again once they joined up with the Insurrection, fighting the very army Red had joined to get out of jail time.

Not that Gav didn’t want his life saved, but here Red was, risking his own to do it. Just like when they’d been in Judy’s crew as kids, Gav was weighing him down. He couldn’t stand it. “Forget it,” he said. “Just get yourself out of here.”

“Come on,” Red relaxed, shaking his head. When Gav didn’t kick again, he started looking over the bandage. “We promised we’d find Judy together, right? What am I supposed to say when I show up without you?”

Her again. Was that what he wanted, a clear conscience when he found her? Gav was already begging to be left behind.

“Anything you want.” Gav said, deadpan. He managed to meet Red’s eyes. “You could have her all to yourself. Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

Red blinked, and his turn came to break the contact. Gav thought it must be shame, until a minute later he said, “I don’t like girls.”

“You—what?” Gavin stumbled. Years of memories he’d thought were concrete, things he’d filed away under a past he knew everything about were suddenly shaken. If all those times Red talked to Judy he really had just wanted to be friends, Gav suddenly had more stupid things done to regret. “So, how long have you… ?”

Red shrugged. “Since always, I guess. Didn’t start thinking about it until we were old enough to notice that kind of thing.”

“Huh.” Gav wrinkled his brow as he started recalling every dumb stunt he’d ever pulled to get Judy’s attention off Red. More regrets piled onto the heap of memories that made him cringe, times he’d been too stupid to understand the situations. But these, somehow, he wasn’t ashamed of. Embarrassed, sure, but that alone only made him chuckle in chagrin. “Jeez, you really should just leave me. So, why did you never… ?”

Red raised one eyebrow. “What? Ask you?”

Gavin shrugged in turn. “Yeah.”

“Aside from you being weird about Judy?” Red smirked. “You had long hair. Didn’t like it.”

Somehow, between heavy breaths, Gav started laughing. When Red’s face seemed like he was looking at a crazy person, he said, “Heheheh, you were into guys with short hair, so you joined the military!”

Red’s lips parted, the whites of his teeth stark amid his grit-covered face. “Shut the fuck up. Your fault I got conscripted anyway.” Apparently satisfied the biofoam seal hadn’t broken, Red picked himself up with an effort and offered Gav a hand. “Think you’ve got another seven klicks in you?”

Gav stared at it a minute, all the unappealing muck worked into its creases and nails. Then, with more indifference than determination, he slapped his hand into the palm and let Red haul him to his feet—or foot. “Ask me again in another one.”

They set off again, Gav making an effort to hop over the obstacles in their path. The pond was left behind, slowly ironing out the last ripples they left behind until the last trace they’d ever passed was gone.

“So how did you end up getting out of New Alexandria, anyway?”

“Tried to steal a crate… out of the back of a tramp freighter. Right after I snuck on… they sealed the cargo door, and I got stuck stowing away. Been in slip a week before they found—”

“Short versions, Gav. Less talking, more marching.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”