Pinwheel Remastered

I wondered why Raz didn't just move on to any one of the other machines, there were plenty of unoccupied dipping bars. It seemed as though she wanted this particular one, however. She bared her teeth as the two aliens faced off, their ears flattening against their heads, their tails whipping back and forth behind them.

Raz was an inch taller than her opponent, and the other Borealan seemed less sure of herself, backing off a little as she advanced. Just when I was beginning to wonder if a very literal catfight was about to break out, the rest of the pack came to the rescue. They crowded around the Borealan, hissing and spitting at Raz, who gave as good as she got. I was amazed that their relationship had deteriorated to this point after such a short amount of time.

The noise was starting to attract the attention of the Staff Sergeant now. How would he break up a fight between the aliens? Before he saw fit to intervene, however, Raz backed down. She gave her former pack one last growl, then moved off to one of the other machines. Knowing nothing about Borealan social interaction, it was hard to guess what had just happened. Raz had said that she was the most dominant, so might the mere act of allowing the other alien to use the machine that she had set her sights on be construed as a sign of weakness?

Even so, I couldn't imagine how she would win back the respect of her pack by hissing at them...

***

When everyone had completed their workout routines, we headed to the showers to wash off the sweat that we had worked up. Vasiliev had worked us pretty hard, and as tired as I was, it felt good to get back into the old routine.

The showers were co-ed, as were most facilities on the station, but Raz mercifully elected to shower a good distance away from me. I was used to being around women who were nude, or in various states of undress, it was unavoidable in the Navy. There just wasn't the room, nor the time, to give everyone complete privacy. But Raz and her ilk were different, they were just so...impressive, that it became a distraction.

Once we were dry and dressed, Vasiliev gave us time to wind down, and to get some food in us before we started our studies later that day. Now the real work was beginning, we would be learning about the enemy. Their physiology, their tactics, their technology.

As the group left the gym and began to make their way back to the barracks, Raz took my arm roughly and pulled me aside.

"Teach me about guns," she whispered, once she was sure that the others were out of earshot. She seemed embarrassed to even make the request of me.

"You want me to teach you how to use the XMR platform?" I asked, and she nodded vigorously. "Alright, I can ask Vasiliev for clearance to visit the firing range. I'll go find him, he was still in the gym last I saw."

***

We were granted permission to visit the firing range, and when we arrived, we found it mostly deserted. It was lunchtime, after all, most of the personnel would have been eating. There were two Marines occupying a couple of booths, however. They weren't wearing their black combat armor, but I was more than familiar enough with rank insignias to recognize them. They were testing out weapon configurations, or perhaps just trying to stay sharp. Raz and I moved to the far end of the range where we wouldn't disturb them.

"So, how far did you and the other Borealans get when you stayed behind to train with Vasiliev?" I asked. She had already fetched her abominable XMR, and she handed it to me, letting me examine the mess that she had made of it.

"He made us drill with them over and over," she complained. "He wouldn't tell us how best to configure the guns, he said that if we didn't understand what we were doing wrong, it wouldn't do us any good."

"Yeah, that would be like giving you a cheat sheet with the answers to a quiz," I replied as I turned the heavy weapon over in my hands. "The trick isn't having the correct answer, it's understanding how to arrive there." The aliens had to learn through experience, or they wouldn't be able to modify their weapons on the fly, which was the whole basis of the platform. "Okay," I said, handing the weapon back to her. "Why don't you show me what you can do?"

She snatched the rifle from me, perhaps taking my suggestion more as a challenge, walking up to one of the booths and shouldering the weapon. She growled and snarled with frustration as her XMR bounced and kicked. Her most accurate shot merely grazed the edge of the paper target, and I suspected that was accidental. Her anger wasn't doing her any favors, she looked to be one step away from breaking the gun over her knee. She had probably trained with Borealan rifles from an early age, becoming quite proficient, I had no reason to doubt that what she said was true. But this sudden shift to an entirely unfamiliar weapon system had invalidated all of that practice, erased all of the muscle memory that she had built up.

I called her back over and had her place the weapon down on a nearby table.

"So, you're doing several things wrong here," I began as I pointed to the different components. "This isn't like a Borealan gun. I'm assuming that you use powder weapons, breech-loaders, right?"

"Yes," she replied, blowing an errant lock of her orange hair out of her face. "We use brass casings filled with gunpowder."

"Alright, well when you fire a bullet down a barrel, not all of that energy is directed forward. Some of it is directed backward, which creates recoil, right? With an XMR, the recoil doesn't come from the bullet leaving the barrel, it comes from the opposing magnetic force. The slug is fired using magnetic repulsion. You ever play around with magnets? You know when you turn them in opposite directions, and they push each other away? That's repulsion. When the tungsten slug leaves the rail in the receiver, before it gets captured by the magnetic coils in the barrel, it rocks back on dampeners. That means that the recoil is coming from further back than you're probably used to."

I reached down and removed her barrel, checking that it was cool enough to touch first, not wanting to burn my hand. I lay the heavy piece of metal on the table, gesturing to it as I continued.

"See how thick this barrel is? This is a barrel intended for light machine guns. It's thick and heavy because it needs to dissipate a lot of heat from sustained firing. It looks big and scary, but it's designed to be used by a Krell, or on a frame equipped with a bipod. You won't be able to hit the broad side of the barn if you're trying to use this on a rifle, it will jump all over the place."

I wandered over to the back of the room, sifting through the selection of attachments on the shelves and in the crates. After a minute of searching, I returned with the part that I wanted, setting a long barrel down on the table.

"This is what you want for a long rifle, which is what I'm assuming you were trying to make. Something that's similar to the Borealan variety, right?"

Raz nodded again, paying more attention now. She may have finally realized that I really did know what I was talking about.

"This barrel is lighter, but it has a denser concentration of magnetic coils. This one isn't designed for sustained fire, it's designed to fire a single shot with very high muzzle velocity. That means that the projectile will leave the barrel traveling faster, it'll go further, and it will hit harder. But if we have more electromagnets, what else do we need?"

The Borealan considered for a moment, her tail waving back and forth.

"A bigger battery?"

"Yes!" I exclaimed, and a smile brightened her face. She seemed pleased with herself. "More electromagnets will drain the charge more quickly, so we need one with a higher capacity. That's one of the benefits of using a large frame, you can fit a bigger battery in the stock. Want to go find us one that will fit?"

She nodded, making her way over to the shelves and digging through components for a minute or two. She returned with an appropriate battery pack, and I showed her how to replace the one that was housed in the stock of the rifle.

"Good job. Now, let's take a look at this forward grip..."

***

We spent about two hours training with the XMR until I was satisfied that Raz understood how to get the most out of the platform. She had gone from being unable to so much as glance her target, to hitting it dead center in the head, even on followup shots. She had eventually conceded that the XMR was more accurate than the Borealan rifles that she had been so eager to extol the virtues of, and she seemed to be having fun with her new toy.

The configuration that she had settled on was a truly massive semi-automatic marksman rifle that resembled a spear, the long bayonet that was affixed to the barrel furthering the illusion. Now that I thought about it, I couldn't be certain that she didn't intend to use it that way...

Raz had a spring in her step as we made our way back to the mess hall. She had overcome a setback that had genuinely seemed to undermine her self-confidence, and she would now be placed firmly at the head of the pack when it came to marksmanship and familiarity with the XMR platform. I couldn't wait to see the looks on their faces when she outmatched them on the range.

"Hey, Stanley..."

I stopped walking, looking up at her.

"What is it?"

"Earlier today, when we were in the mess...you were talking about friends, right? You said that if someone only sticks around because they're scared of you, it means that they aren't really your friend?"

"Yes, I believe I said something along those lines."

"Are you scared of me?" Raz asked unhappily. Her ears were starting to droop again, and I watched as she began to rub one of her furry forearms absent-mindedly. It was a very un-Raz-like gesture.

"Well," I began, carefully formulating my reply. "Considering what you did to me last night...yes, I'm somewhat scared of you. I'm not a Borealan, Raz, I'm a human. I'm too fragile for you to treat me that way, you might have injured me." You have injured me, I neglected to add, my hand moving subconsciously to the fresh scars on my chest.

"That's just how we do things on Borealis," she said, turning her eyes to the deck. "You were supposed to submit, but you didn't. Now I'm thinking that maybe...humans just don't understand when they're supposed to submit and when they're not. You kept challenging me when a Borealan would have given in, and it made me feel like I had to keep going so that you'd accept me as your Alpha."

I crossed my arms and cocked an eyebrow at her. This was sounding more like a justification than an apology, but it might be the closest thing to one that I'd get out of someone like Raz.

"All of the other Borealans who I considered my friends," she continued, "they all turned their backs on me. The pack is supposed to obey the Alpha without question, but if the Alpha loses face and can no longer defend their position, then..."

"Have you never been in this situation before?" I asked, "is this not normal for your people?"

"It happens," she replied, "but never to me..."

Raz was the daughter of what she called the Patriarch. It was an impressive title, perhaps the equivalent of some kind of King or President. It sounded like he had a lot of authority. She was also clearly the largest and toughest of her pack, she had a good inch over most of them. She was certainly the most outspoken, the most aggressive, the most dominant. Could this be the first time that her authority had ever been brought into question? The first time in her life that she had dealt with failure?

"Maybe Borealans don't have friends," she added, her round ears flattening against her messy hair. "Maybe what we call a friend is just someone lower in the social hierarchy who does what we say because they fear what will happen if they don't. Even after I tried to dominate you, after I hurt you and frightened you, you still wanted to help me. You still wanted to be my friend. Why?"

"That's what friends do, Raz," I replied. "For humans, our friendships are mutual. There's no Alpha, there's no pack leader, we have to be tolerant of one another. We have to forgive each other when we screw up, because it's going to happen eventually. We can't force people to act the way that we want them to."

Raz looked thoughtful for a moment, as if she was mulling over what I had told her.

"I will try to make friends," she finally said, "they seem to be far more reliable allies."

She had opened up just now, I had seen a rare glimpse of the true Raz. There was an emotional person lurking behind the wall of aggression and bluster that she liked to put up. She was trying to gloss over it, to make her lapse seem like no big deal. It was almost cute...

She caught me grinning at her, and gave me a shove, sending me toppling into a nearby shrub. I struggled to free myself from the planter as she smirked at me, now back to her old self again.

"Don't get any ideas, tree climber," she sneered. "We made a deal, remember? Until you get me to the top of the class, and I get my standing back, you're my slave."

"Yeah, I made a deal. Under duress," I complained as I righted myself and brushed the leaves off my uniform.

"I don't need you to be my friend, monkey, I've already got you exactly where I want you."

"We'll see about that," I muttered under my breath.

***

When we were done eating, we proceeded to the school building, where we sat through a rather uneventful lesson. We went over the basics of mixed unit tactics and ground combat, we learned some more about Betelgeusian anatomy, and then we were dismissed.

As we walked back to the barracks beneath the dimming light of the sunlamps, I quizzed Raz on what we had just studied. I wanted to make sure that she had retained at least some of the information. We could go over the details later on, as I would be tutoring her in our free time.

It had not escaped my attention that the Borealan was sticking closer to me than she usually did. Perhaps it was intentional, or maybe it was some subconscious desire to stay close to the pack, but she had slowed her loping gait so that I could keep pace on my shorter legs.

I didn't know what to make of her. We had known each other for almost a week now, and I couldn't decide if I hated her, or if I pitied her. Maybe it was some strange blend of the two. As little as I wanted to admit it, I was attracted to her. Her chiseled physique was mind-blowing. Every time that I caught a glimpse of her rippling abs or her impossibly tight butt, the way that her wide hips swayed and the way that her ample chest bounced with every step, my heart began to race. Her aggressive and crude behavior filled me with a kind of guilty excitement that I preferred not to think about too intently for fear that it might somehow worsen.

I couldn't think of anything that would put a wider smile on Raz's face, or grant her more power over me, than if I was to ask her for sex. Not that the thought had ever seriously crossed my mind, or at least, I had not allowed it to...

I stumbled as a large, orange hand ruffled my hair.

"What are you thinking so hard about, monkey boy?"

"Nothing much," I replied dismissively. "We should go over the lesson plan when we get back to the dorm, I noticed that you were a bit rusty on Betelgeusian anatomy."

"I guess it's not enough to just shoot their heads off, huh?"

"You'd think so, but...you know what, I'll just save that one for later. You aren't going to understand unless I can show you an autopsy video of the extended brain stem."

We continued on along the torus, the artificial breeze blowing through our hair. I craned my neck and looked up at the deep blue sky. Well, it wasn't a sky, it was a mural painted on the ceiling, but it did the job well enough. I couldn't even remember the difference between this station and a real planet anymore.

"Do you ever miss your homeworld?" I asked. Raz looked taken aback by the question, but she followed my gaze to the ceiling as she considered for a moment.

"I guess not. Society on Borealis is harsh, there's a lot of pressure to succeed. I guess I'm still adjusting to the idea that on the Pinwheel, we don't have to be on guard all the time, we don't have to fight over every little disagreement. Here I can have friends, maybe."

"You're really hung up on this whole friendship thing, aren't you?" I said as we dodged out of the way of a passing Krell. The alien marched past us, his long, leathery tail making a sound like a wet towel being dragged across concrete as it trailed behind him. "I could be your friend, you know, if you'd let me."

She looked conflicted, her tail twitching in what I had come to understand was annoyance, then she changed the subject.

""What was life like for you, back on your homeworld?"

"On Earth?" I asked, and she nodded. "Where I lived, it was very flat. There weren't any hills or mountains, no large forests, just miles and miles of farmland as far as the eye could see. The only real landmark was my family's farm. We had a farmhouse, a grain silo, one of those big red barns. Well, you probably don't know about red barns, but it's a tradition."

"Weren't there any other humans around?" she asked.

"No, not really. I went to school with other kids of course, but it was quite a commute. Outside of the classroom, I rarely got to see any of my friends. Didn't have any siblings, either."

"Is that normal for humans?" Raz asked, her ears twitching in a gesture of surprise. "Borealans are born in litters, we're never alone from the moment that we're born."

"It's a little unusual for humans, yeah," I admitted. "I was just unlucky, I suppose. I learned a lot by living on a farm, though. My father always told me that hard work builds character, so I guess I should be thankful for that. He wasn't too happy when I dropped out of agricultural college to become a Marine."

"You disobeyed your father!?" Raz exclaimed, the very prospect seeming to shock her.

"We didn't fight about it or anything, but yeah, I suppose I went against his wishes."

"That's not something that would happen on Borealis," she said, chuckling nervously. "My father would give me some good scars for my insolence if I ever did anything like that."

The leaves of the bushes and trees rustled in the wind as we walked by them, the sunlamps simulating dusk. We were nearing the barracks now, but such a personal conversation with Raz was rare, and I didn't want it to end so soon. She was sharing invaluable insights into her strange, primal society, and I was beginning to paint a new picture of her. Less as a dangerous, cruel alien, and more as a misunderstood girl. Her culture had developed over thousands of years, maybe tens of thousands, it was the natural order of things of Borealis. She had never been exposed to anything else, she had never questioned her way of life before. Yet the longer she stayed away from the other Borealans, and the more she interacted with me, the happier and more relaxed she seemed to become. I was confident now that I was having a positive influence on her.

We reached the automatic door to the barracks building and made our way inside. We had lagged behind the other trainees while we had been chatting, so most of them had already eaten and gone to bed. Neither of us was especially hungry, and so we decided to retire to our dorm room for a little a little extra studying, and then get some sleep.

"Remind me tomorrow Raz, and I'll teach you how to play some human games."

She nodded, a smile on her face as she held the door to our quarters open for me. By God, she was actually learning to be polite. It wasn't quite dark yet, we still had some time before lights out, so we sat on the edge of her bed and used the time to go over the day's lesson again. Raz was having some trouble remembering the different classifications of enemy weaponry, and so I tutored her for a while.