Pip's Ophidian Book 1: Beatlebug & The Provider

Chapter 1: Language

Pip's pulse felt powerful enough to threaten his starched collar, but Ma still tightened the clasp at his throat. "You ready?" she asked, forcefully brushing imaginary lint off the freshly pressed sleeves of his dress uniform. It had been laid out on his bed when he got back from the gym as if he wouldn't have known to wear it, otherwise. Crisp and clean against his rumpled blankets.

Ma did things like this: soft things, when he wasn't looking. Sharp things, when he was. It took a lot sometimes for him to remember it was all an expression of care.

Pip resisted the urge to loosen the collar.

"Yes," he said, "Uh-huh."

"Yes. Leave it at 'yes.' Unless you want to add a 'Captain,' cadet."

"... Yes."

"Ok. Good." Her hands paused at his lapels a moment before she dropped them again.

She was already wearing her own dress uniform. The clasps all glinted down her front, polished gold against the command crimson. Her own collar was tight, and he saw her swallow behind it.

He had, in the last year alone, gotten quite a bit taller than her. Neither of them seemed used to it yet.

Ma let out a breath. Spoke quickly, "Look your Teach in the eye when she addresses you, up there. Don't slouch, don't–"

"I know. Ma, I know," he straightened.

She looked hard at him. He looked at her dark eyebrows, the only really soft part of her severe face. The corner of her mouth twitched. "... Uh-huh," she said then, mocking. Pip couldn't help it; he laughed, startled. Ma shook her head, let out a huff. "Come on, then."

"You go ahead," Pip said, throat tight. She glanced at him but nodded, left.

He breathed for a moment in the stillness and the silence.

Then, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from yelling, flapped his arms quick and fast, ruffled his own hair, destroying it in a single frantic burst, shook his head and snapped his fingers.

Breathed.

Went to the mirror. Fixed his hair.

Straightened his shoulders.

Followed after her.

~

It's not that Pip's Ma was never proud of him.

He had once scored highest in his class during a SkillDemo virtual immersion test, killing no fewer than eight Ophidians — essentially a whole nest — in a single run. She'd nodded once at him, after that. That had been great. She had told him later that he had flinched too much beneath the visor, but whatever. Bright colors and loud noises and inescapable: not great. Nodding: great.

As he rose to greet his Teach though and was saluted, he saw Ma in the audience, just on the edge of the crowded atrium. She saluted, too.

Then he remembered he had to salute Teach back, and he saw the exasperation in Ma's eyes, but whatever.

"Do you now vow to protect the human souls of this great vessel, who done wandered far?" Teach said, speaking the ceremonial old twang of the Prophet who had come before them.

"I surely do," Pip responded, a little less twangy, a little too quickly. Always too quickly.

Teach let the salute fall and placed her hand over her chest. She smiled. "Aye," she said, and then moved on to Layal, the next cadet, leaving him behind: a soldier, now. A soldier. Just like Ma.