Chapter 10

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At the sound of the high-pitched twinkling fanfare, Doctor Li withdrew the probe of the datatap and moved to the next Marine seated beside Corporal Nero in line. Nero pushed her ponytail back over her shoulder, blinking through a bit of cloudiness that crept into the edges of her vision. It soon passed, though, like it had never happened. This had grown into a weekly routine—in an out in about 3 minutes while the docs gave them all their firmware updates, updated their prescriptions, checked their oil, etcetera. It all felt like being tended by a racetrack’s pit crew, but that was okay since she preferred not to spend any more time in Medical, playing get-to-know-you with the medics than she strictly had to.

“I’ll be walking sentry,” she announced, standing up to collect her gear. If the doctor had a problem with it, she didn't say anything.

The Marine duty roster on the Sisyphus stations rotated; most of the time squads were assigned to Magnum shuttles for space patrol duty. Some days squads pulled sentry duty, which in Sis-1 was an official-sounding term for mall security. There were other duties of course, warding secure labs, the armories, and various other areas of the administration sector, but what little trouble there was around the station came from the Galleria. That was, if you counted pre-teen shoplifters and the odd domestic violence as trouble.

Nero volunteered for flight patrols when she could, but Major Sylvia and the doctors had put limits to how many mission hours she could log in a week. They thought they were doing her a favor by putting her on mall-walking duty. Part of the reason she’d been sent here—that she’d filed for the transfer here—had been to avoid combat duty somewhere quiet, somewhere safe.

She didn’t know what she was thinking after Ixion. She knew it was going to be bad, that even the few who agreed with what she’d done would never stand up for her. She knew she couldn’t just hop back over it and rejoin the fold. She guessed, thinking back about it, that it was pride that brought her back. At first she would have said she didn’t care, but that was a lie. She’d refused to apologize. Even if she had, would it have done any good? She thought not; it would have just made her look noncommittal. Weak.

They’d shit in her locker, torn the seals of her armor, sabotaged her weapon and her radio, and done everything they could to make it crystal clear that she was a walking dead woman. She was going to get shot in the back. In her old unit, it was assholes like Lieutenant Crane who would last about a week before “accidentally” wandering into the line of fire, listed as a casualty with a footnote at the bottom of the page that would become his epitaph: “Whoops.”

Usually it was nothing personal; liabilities had a way of disappearing one way or another. She never used to feel that badly for them. Back in the real world, such actions were unconscionable. In the Corps, it just made sense. Once in a while, someone had to go. It saved lives, long-term. It wasn't much of a moral issue when you dealt death for a living. That was, until she’d become the first in line for an unfortunate accident. Usually it was nothing personal. Usually.

She tried to hang tough on the Vendetta. Crane was a first-class fuck-up and everyone knew it, even the cherries. Even for a green-sleeve from college ROTC he was a prick-and-a-half. Nero had thought for a time the other marines would come around, maybe realize she was on their side. The day she’d first thought that, someone had left a book of baby names in her locker. The message had been clear: this was personal, and you don’t belong. Weird shit happened out here, and it was outsiders who got fragged first. What can we say? “Whoops.”

She had to leave. She knew she’d crossed a line at Ixion, and they’d crossed a line she hadn’t even known existed by throwing their own sick little bloody baby shower for her. Maybe she wasn’t afraid they’d kill her. Maybe she was afraid that if their tormenting had gone on much longer, she had no idea what she might do to them.

She still had no idea if coming to Callisto had been the right call. So far, most of the marines here gave her a wide, wary berth. They were reluctant to believe rumors they’d heard about her from friends of friends, but unwilling to discount them entirely. The others likewise gave her space, probably believing that she could easily ruin herself in the normal course of things. Already they’d taken to calling her Loudmouth because of Major Sylvia. For the most part it’s affectionate—she’d long had a habit of cracking wise to people who’ve had the nerve to order her around-- but when people like Sylvia said it, they knew it’s about more than being a smartass. A lot more.

But what was she going to do? Callisto saw some action, but it was no combat tour. The attack on the Jupiter foldpoint was a freak occurrence. Pirates rarely go after the major colonies for fear of drawing the Navy’s wrath. Back and forth, all day long was her routine. She was the only one around who seems to take her job seriously. Even after the Crimson Tide’s attack, after the deaths of an entire squad of marines, things rolled on as before. Replacements arrived, the squad reformed, and after a week everyone just started going through the motions again. There really wasn’t anything to do.

Nero wondered if Pinball was right, if she ought to pack it in. There was no room for her in the service. She’d been shuffled off to be a glorified security guard, babysitting commodity transports four days a week and a food court on weekends. Maybe if serious fighting broke out they’d reinstate her, but she doubted it. Funny, she thought, the war’s avoiding my calls.

“Sonya?”

Nero barely recognized the voice, and turned back to see Doctor Li looking at her, waving for her attention. Her own name sounded strange to her, and she was a little surprised she responded to it. She’d been “Nero” since boot, if they called her anything beside her rank. Even “Loudmouth” didn't seem as foreign to her ears as her birth name. But even then, everyone called her Sonya Lee as if it were a single word.

The doctor smiled up at her as she inserted her datatap probe into the back of Private Przybyszewski’s neck. Everyone called him “Polish” because nobody could say his name properly without extensive coaching and a violent attack of hay fever.

“Merry Christmas,” she said.

Nero blinked dumbly at her for a second, doubly confused at the seemingly genuine sentiment and that—while she’d seen Christmas decorations arranged in the Galleria shortly after she arrived—she’d had no idea what day it is. “Yeah,” she said dreamily, stealing a look at her P.C.I.. The chrono read December 24, 2107: Christmas Eve. She returned a wan smile to Doctor Li. “Yeah, you too.”

“Hey Loudmouth,” called O-Face, “If you’re working the Galleria can you stop by Santa’s Village and ask him to get me a pony?”

“I don’t think you’ll get one. I doubt you’re on his ‘nice’ list.”

Reggie King looked wounded. “Why you say that?”

“I’ve seen the porn you got stashed in your locker, you nasty bastard. Some of those magazines got ponies in ‘em.”

The other marines laughed. O-Face shouted over them, “Hey, what’re you doing lookin’ at my porn anyway?”

Nero shrugged. “I didn’t have any so I had to borrow yours.”

Now everyone laughed, including King. They all started bragging about the size of their own porno collections (a dubious honor, to be sure) or shouting to her the unfairness of her own self-gratification when there’s no shortage of horny, shallow men around here. They were only half-joking. Even the guys knew the basic policy of “don’t shit where you eat,” and even she knew that she was hardly someone desirable enough to tempt someone to risk violating it. She’d rather go get violated elsewhere anyway.

She left Medical with a smile on her face, grateful for normal moments like those. Her walk to the tram was much quicker, now that most of the Synapse Corporation’s people had left along with their engineers. The corridors were clear of their equipment carts now that Saras and all of its sensors had been installed. As she headed to the tram station, she logged her active status on the system with a few taps on the screen of her P.C.I. and fixed her headset around her ear.

“Good morning, Corporal,” she heard through the earpiece. “I have updated your P.C.I. with your itinerary and pending citation reports. You have a new message in your personal mailbox.”

“Who from?”

“Craig Pell, from the American embassy in Lon—“

“Erase it,” she interrupted, her mood already shot.

“Are you sure?” Saras didn’t sound puzzled, but clearly the A.I. didn’t understand or else it wouldn’t ask. This was its way of dropping a hint. Saras must have already read the message, something that bothered the hell out of Nero no matter how much that lawyer from Synapse, Dick Wagner assured everyone at the orientation that their privacy would be maintained.

“Yes, and I thought I told you to block any messages from him.”

“Not explicitly, no.”

“Well do it.”

“Done. May I ask why? The messages are conciliatory in nature and—“

“I want you to stop reading my mail, you got me?” she said into the headset’s microphone at her mouth. The microphone wasn’t necessary to speak to Saras; she had audio pickups placed everywhere throughout these halls. It was there mainly for person-to-person communication on the marine tactical radio. A few passing non-coms turned in alarm at the sound of her raised voice and quickly minded their own business as they met her glare.

“I’m afraid it’s not as simple as you believe it is,” Saras said with her usual flat tone. “I receive files in encrypted packets, and each message has a header, appended with a hash and a checksum to verify each message’s authenticity and correctness. In the course of decryption, analysis, and indexing, I am forced to examine the entire file. This analysis also includes a thorough scan for malicious software, censored information, and unwanted sales correspondence. I can assure you, however, that no third parties are privy to this information.”

Nero didn't bother arguing. She didn't really care. But something stood out in her mind, yet another aspect of Saras’ “personality”—if it can be called that—that raised unsettling questions in her: “May I ask why?” The question demonstrated curiosity, a desire for extraneous information, to explain an apparent contrariness in its concept of human desires. It probably knew the details of her personnel file, knew the public records that documented her relationship with Craig Pell, but didn’t yet know how that translates into predicted behavior. It illustrated the limits of Saras’ understanding, as well as its realization of those limits and its attempt to overcome them. How much of Saras is smoke and mirrors, Nero wondered.

Nero entered the connecting tram terminal, a long, round windowless chamber of heavy steel. The Marine Sector’s terminal saw brisk traffic; people didn’t loiter here as much as they did in the other sectors, and so the place had a hollow feel to it. Footsteps echoed with a metallic ring from the permacrete floor slab. A low electric hum seemed to emanate from the other half of the chamber, where the slab endedcand the floor dropped to a charged monorail. The rail led into a large set of airlock doors directed towards the Central Sector, a unique arrangement to the Sisyphus installations on Callisto.

Because of tectonic instability on the Jovian moon, most of the sectors were divided into modular, vertically-designed sectors bored deep underground like reverse skyscrapers connected by overland tram tunnels to a central sector like spokes in a wheel. The Central Sector was by far the largest and most well-developed area of Sisyphus-1, as it contained the majority of colonial housing, the Galleria, and the primary spaceport. Probably not the most efficient way of designing the colony, but defensibility and damage mitigation had always been high priorities in colonial expansion ever since the disastrous mass driver incident on Trinity in the early days.

A chime sounded, and red lights activated around the airlock doors at the end of the station. Saras’ voice came from public address speakers overhead, speaking to the half-dozen other officers milling about in the queue.

“The tram to the Central Sector is arriving now. Please stand behind the marked areas and wait for passengers to debark.”

The doors opened to admit a blocky single-car conveyance, gliding smoothly on a cushion of electromagnetism. It pulled to a halt against a long rubber barrier bolted against the permacrete slab, sat a moment, then opened its doors on the sides and rear. Marines and non-coms filed out, most in pairs. Many others seemed to be talking to themselves when viewed in profile but were carrying on conversations over their headsets as Nero had been doing a moment ago. She stepped into the car and threaded her wrist through one of the nylon loops suspended from the ceiling. The armor she was wearing didn’t lend itself well to sitting because of the rigid plates situated throughout the microweave suit. It’d be a while before she broke this suit in.

Soon the train headed back through the overland conduit on Callisto’s surface. Long windows stretched along both sides of the tunnel, allowing her to see the moon’s surface. Not that there was much to see; the terrain looked jagged and black even at the best hours at full light. The surface of Callisto had been brutalized with meteoric impacts leaving the landscape pocked with huge craters. The ice marked these features by highlighting the edges against the glare of the sun. Even many of the structures that comprised Sisyphus-1 resembled great permacrete craters because most outside access came through recessed landing bays. Some areas had hospitable domes, but underneath them, protecting the critically important hardware, colonists, and station personnel was about a hundred feet of reinforced steel and ‘crete to protect against things like rogue asteroids, surface-penetrating nuclear weapons, or (if we’ve really made them mad, she thinks) a direct hit from a high-yield mass-driver.

But the eyes were usually drawn to the artificial structures first because of the colored lights that set them apart from the background. Nero could see the other tram conduits, the silhouettes of swiveling point-defense turrets, the bristling shadow of the control tower, and the massive shape of the Callistoan mass driver along with the Space Force’s catapult angled low like oversized artillery poised to fire.

It’s sights like this that Earthers rarely got to see even if they did much traveling to the colonies. There was such majesty and power around her that it still made her feel awed by the size and terrible complexity of human machinations that surround her. Nero tried her best to make these quiet snapshots the things she remembered, but they never stuck. This was the tourist memory. Her hand moved back to touch the scar over her collarbone. Her mind wandered to the only memories that wanted to stay. The screams, the fury. The scars in her memory that couldn't be grafted over.

She turned away from the window. “Saras? How about some of that Vivaldi?”