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Chapter 03 ——
    It was only as Arun approached the battalion chow hall, hobbling with the aid of the walking stick the medic had given him, that he knew for certain he hadn’t gotten away with his embarrassing episode in the tunnel. At first, the complete shunters of the 412th Marine Regiment — his future comrades-in-arms, sworn to aid him in his hour of need — had acted as if nothing had happened, though he imagined he saw concealed smirks on their faces.
    He begun to hope he’d actually gotten away with it.
    But now the cadets spilling out from the hall and into the approach corridor were no longer hiding their smirks. He ignored the little vecks as he pushed his way through and into the chow hall. As soon as he was inside, the door sphinctered shut.
    Marine cadets of all years thronged the room, overwhelming the ventilation system to suffuse it with a sweaty pong, not unlike the stink of menacing Troggie guardians. Everyone in that room stopped whatever they were doing, and twisted around to stare at Arun McEwan.
    Digi-sheets had been stuck onto every available surface. All of them looped the moment when the alien scribe grasped Arun’s manhood with its feelers. Underneath the moving image, some wit had added the caption: ‘Arun McEwan: so desperate he’ll prong anything.’
    The room erupted in a cacophony of cheers, catcalls, hoots and jeers. Some was good-natured. Most of it wasn’t.
    Osman slid over from somewhere and slapped Arun on the back, laughing along with everyone else in the room.
    “Not you, too,” groaned Arun.
    Slapping his back all the while, Osman leaned closer and said: “Laugh, Arun. Laugh with them. It’s your only chance.”
    “He’s right,” said Zug, who was standing a few paces behind Osman. “If they sense your humiliation, they will use this against you forever. Your status will be permanently degraded. What then for your sexual fantasy?”
    Arun scowled at Serge Rhenolotte. Zug to his friends. He was about to remonstrate that Xin Lee was not a fantasy, but a real woman, when he realized that just then, Xin was a little too real for comfort. She was sitting only a few meters away.
    “You can do it,” said Zug. “Like I’ve done my whole life.”
    If the stories were true — and one thing you learned early on Tranquility was never to trust what you were told — then when the first humans had been brought to Tranquility, they had come in a variety of shades and shapes, reflecting the regions of Earth that had originally offered up their children to the White Knights. But that had been many generations ago. United in common service to their unseen masters, and with the distinctions between nationalities reduced to misremembered fables, the Earth races had churned and averaged, to a norm of mid-brown skin and black hair. Except for the occasional individual, such as Zug.
    “Say something,” Osman insisted.
    “Shut up!” Arun hissed. “I’m thinking.”
    Zug possessed by far the darkest skin color in his year, and that had made him stand out his entire life. He’d grown up being picked on and mocked for looking different, but he had never been cowed. He’d never been in with the popular crowd, but neither had Zug ever been isolated, never been singled out as a loser. Zug had even shaved his head bald to emphasize skin that was the color of the void.
    If Zug could survive being different, Arun could too.
    And so Arun put his trust in his friend and laughed. A brittle sound at first — obviously fake — he eased into the act and slowly the sound grew more natural. Soon, the crowd’s interest waned. It was working!
    Just when Arun began to imagine his ordeal was over, Xin Lee limbered her toned body out of her seat and sauntered his way.
    Arun stood his ground, but his smile cracked.
    Osman whispered: “Whatever she says, keep grinning.”
    Easy for you to say.
    The girl who frequently turned his dreams feverish stopped in front of the little group of friends. She