Colony Lost
Page 7
“You’re clever enough,” Dustin said. “You’ll think of something. Throw shit with a catapult.”
“A trebuchet,” Waren exclaimed. He signaled a passing waiter for another drink. Then signaled again to make it a round for the table.
Melody reared her head back in a laugh that shook her whole body. “A trebuchet? When was the last time someone built one of those huh? Antique warfare at its finest.”
“About a hundred and . . . forty years ago,” Daron said and polished off the last mouthful of his beer.
“For real?” Waren asked.
“Yeah,” Hauptman said. “There were a handful of settlements that expanded out into the savannah areas of Phoenix before the military could be trained, brought up to speed and whatnot. They were struggling against the shellback mammoths. Super territorial creatures right? They kept charging houses and knocking them down, tearing up gardens, trampling people. Firearms were too rare to send to the borders where it was worst and bows and arrows weren’t strong enough. Someone had the bright idea to build trebuchets. They managed to kill enough to keep them away until they could build a garrison and stand up a unit of soldiers. Funny shit.”
Daron clapped Hauptman on the back. “They teach that at the marine infantry officer’s school. They must skip over that at flight officer’s school. I believe the lesson serves to remind you that there are more ways to skin a cat, and that the oldest ways are sometimes the best. Good years at the Melting Pot, eh Lionel?”
“Hell yeah.” The lieutenant clinked his empty bottle with Daron’s. “We’re all just iron being pounded.”
“Pounded, you got that right. Forged.”
The table became an oasis of quiet in the midst of the roaring celebration. A waitress appeared with a round serving tray covered in beer and shots. With a smile she sat them all down and then whisked away to serve others.
Daron raised his beer. “To the human race, undivided and driven, and to the men and women who risk all to ensure we have a tomorrow. But most of all to today, to my daughter and new son-in-law, Melody and Dustin.”
The table cheered one another, and drank as one.
“You be careful on that planet, kids,” Daron said and stared, his eyes fixated on the mouth of his bottle, like it was a whirlpool that drew in his entire being. “Everyone does their job, and everyone comes home.”
“The planet will be fine,” Waren said after polishing off his entire drink in one go. “There isn’t a damn thing we can’t handle.”
“I don’t doubt you’ve got the skills and equipment Waren. It’s not about what’s from there. That’s not what worries me. I worry about the people who are coming with you. Sympathizers. People who don’t want us to spread ourselves out again. People who are fighting to keep expansion allocated resources in their local communities. People who think their kind will die at home because we have expanded to another world. Normal people who are fighting to feed their families, and think what you’re doing is a danger to them. People who will kill for that idea.”
“Terrorists?” Do you seriously think they’ll try something?” Dustin held Melody tighter.
“Yeah,” Daron said, taking a sip from his whirlpool. “If anyone should agree with me I would imagine it’d be you. Have you forgotten about what happened to you in White Bay? Waren? How’s that gunshot healing? I guarantee you someone on this trip is up to no good. Keep an eye on everyone.” He leaned into the table and swept his eyes to all there. “Everyone.”
Chapter Six
Downtown Scoville city mall, Ares
12 July 163 GA
The capital city of Ares earned its name from the oppressive heat it suffered. Long ago on old Earth a man had invented a means to measure the level of heat a food offered to its consumer. His method of measurement began a love affair with the challenge of eating preposterously hot foods. The man’s name was Wilbur Scoville, and the city carried the legacy and association of heat the name once did.
Erected in the belly of a small river’s curve, Scoville had expanded over the years into a substantial city. Created with the idea that its populace would use their feet or the electrically powered train system built into the city’s subterranean design for transit, it had narrow city streets and wide sidewalks. Architects called it “European” in design. Only recently were the streets even used by private citizens for the tiny number of electric cars, all made in one of three manufacturing plants in the colonies. These cars were few though, their price tags still too steep for the masses to afford, due to the lack of materials available to build and maintain them. Colonizing Selva might provide more abundant resources to allow for faster production.
During the cooler period of the eighteen-month-long Ares year when the mines in the deep valleys within a hundred kilometers went to full capacity the city swelled to almost 150,000 people but now–in the heat of the burgeoning summer–Scoville numbered half that, and the city felt more like a necropolis than a metropolis.
Built to defy the crushing weight of the incendiary sun pressing down from above, the buildings of Scoville were submerged into the ground. Rather than the skyscrapers of Phoenix, or the pier-buildings of Pacifica here the idea was to build down.
Most buildings had one or two tinted glass floors above ground, but some reached below like iron and concrete roots. Each structure’s brightly colored pyramidal roof was designed to catch the sparse Aresian rainwater with elaborate spiraling gutters. On a parched world, every drop of rain mattered.
A visitor to the city mall would enter one of the building’s four equidistant entrances, find a few stores that enticed just inside on the ground level, and then would immediately descend down a series of concrete stairs, or one of the escalators that had just been installed. Below they would find fifty stores, and a marvelous food court that could sit several hundred Aresian shoppers seeking solace from the heat and retail opportunities in every direction besides up.
Lionel, Waren, and Dustin were at the Scoville mall on the day the colonies officially announced that the mission to explore and settle Selva was a go. Everyone would remember where they were when the senior senators appeared on the vid-feeds.
Waren clutched at a newspaper as he tilted his food court chair onto its back legs, his feet on the worn corner of the whitewashed wooden table. He flipped page to page as the two other marines shoveled steamed land crab into their mouths with glee and celerity. Today was “all you can eat” day at Mercer’s Crab Shop, and the men had pledged to put the restaurant out of business. Again.
“We’re really going. Crazy talk.”
Lionel swallowed a buttery mouthful of spongy white meat and wiped his face clean. “Yep. We’ll be spooling up to a staging site within a day or two. My bet is southern Phoenix in a mountain valley. One of the more remote bases so security can be tightened around us. Keep the nut jobs and their bombs far away.”
Dustin took a mouthful of crab and flushed it down with some iced tea “What does the paper say?”
Waren snickered. “There’s a letter from the Colonial Senate about the whole affair. Hope, dreams, love, all that bullshit.”
“Yeah?” Dustin asked. “Read it? I’d like to hear what our elected leaders have to say.”
“You got it,” Waren said, clearing his throat and shaking the newspaper to get the wrinkles out of it. After fixing his eyebrows for errant hairs, he spoke in an official sounding baritone, enunciating each word with care, and aplomb. “It is with great pleasure that the Colonial Senate has received word that the Selvan Expedition has received the final go-ahead for launch from Herbert Maine in Gharian orbit aboard Pioneer 3.
“As our founding explorers looked to the sky nearly eight hundred years ago on Earth with hearts full of wonder and awe, we too join them on the eve of yet another step forward for the human race. While we are hopeful and confident in the skills and equipment our explorers bring to bear on their imminent journey, we are also mindful of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made for the s
ake of learning and exploring. From the loss of ancient ships at sea millennia ago to the loss of Pioneer 4 and all aboard during its six hundred year journey to Ghara we know the steep price that the universe asks us to pay from time to time for the right to exist, expand, and thrive. It is in their honor that we face our fears and grow the worlds of humanity.
“The Colonial Senate and the people of the Colonies of Ghara wish luck and godspeed to the Selvan expedition and all its members. We will watch their efforts cheering each and every day as a new world joins our interstellar family and with open arms we will receive these pioneers when they return as heroes.”
“It’s signed by all twenty senators. Melody’s dad’s name is right here,” he said and showed them a printed scrawl that looked something like ‘Daron Courser.’ Nineteen signatures surrounded it.
“Neat. That’s not bad. The letter, that is.”
“Agreed. It’ll do. It won’t appease the anti-expansionists, but nothing has. It’s as good as anything else.”
“What could they have said?” Dustin asked.
“They could’ve offered up something about shoring up some of the settlements that need support right now,” Waren said, sounding serious for the first time in memory. “That might’ve given the terrorists a pause at least.”
“Give me an example,” Dustin said.
“The mine here on Ares that just started up, made the news a couple months ago? What are they getting out of the ground? Bauxite is it? That mine was geared up for full production long before it was made safe. It’s still fucking unsafe. A dozen miners have died, and instead of sending resources there to help make it safer, they brought in workers from off-moon to replace the dead and we’re heading to another planet and spreading our already limited resources out thinner. The anti-expansionists are worried we’re growing too fast, and that we’re causing needless suffering and death. Let’s do one thing right instead of five things wrong. Focus. I get where they’re coming from, I do.”
“Should we be watching out for you?” Hauptman said, smirking.
Waren threw the newspaper at his commanding officer. The lieutenant ducked under the spinning paper and it dispersed on the tile floor.
“Fuck off. Sir. You know where I stand. I’m just the one playing devil’s advocate.”
“Fair,” Hauptman said. “I think we’re going to have enough problems on Selva without terrorists fucking with us, too. The planet could be very dangerous. Will be dangerous. With shit advance intel because of the interference of the magnetic fields, we’re going in a lot blinder than our predecessors did on Pacifica, or Sota. We have no idea what to expect once we get boots on the ground.”
“It could be a real horror show on the surface for all we know.” Waren poked the paper plate of uneaten crabmeat on the table then looked up to his brothers.
Mercer’s Crab Shop received a stay of execution as the marines lost their appetite.
Chapter Seven
Umbriado’s Bistro, city of Ulsan, Pacifica
18 July 163 GA
Six days had passed since Herbert Maine declared the way safe to Selva, and the whole of the colonies still buzzed with excitement. Vid-feeds were dominated with news of the trip’s development, and every conversation started or ended with talk of the reality changing expedition. The first day of safe transit to the new world was two days away, and this was the last night those involved with the expedition were allowed to move freely. The following morning all involved would be sequestered under lock and key, far from prying eyes, and hopefully even farther from those who wished to disrupt the voyage.
Lionel had been wrong about where they were heading to prepare. To ensure the shortest voyage to Selva the expedition relocated from Ares to the oceanic orb of Pacifica. Covered with shallow, warm oceans the color of turquoise and emerald and littered with thousands of lush, green islands surrounding two small continents Pacifica couldn’t have been more different from the arid and dust-covered working-class Ares.
The comfortable warmth and abundant food from the seas attracted wealth and the restaurant choices in the small city of Ulsan outside the military staging grounds reflected that prosperity. Predictably, seafood was the most common of fares. Dustin and Melody chose to celebrate their last evening of freedom and civilization having a romantic meal they couldn’t afford.
The couple sat in a secluded booth in the rear of an opulent establishment. Dimly lit, draped in ruby and saturated with gold, the fine eatery welcomed and enveloped. They had abandoned their uniforms for the night to escape any attention by the media in the town. She wore a black, spaghetti-strapped dress and he wore the best suit he owned. The only suit he owned.
Dustin sipped a wine he didn’t know how to appreciate. The red drink felt sticky and acidic on his tongue, like it had been sprinkled with pepper and doused with lemons right before he’d sipped it.
“It’s so quiet in here. I love it. How’s the wine?” Melody asked him.
“I think it’s delicious,” Dustin said after she finished her sip. “I think your dad would love it. Let me pour you a glass.”
Dustin picked up the bottle with one hand and her pear shaped goblet in the other. He poured her what he judged to be a pair of gulps rather sloppily, and sat the glass down in front of her. When he finished returning the bottle to its table side serving basin Melody had a smile on her face that melted him. He couldn’t help but smile back. “What? What is it?”
Melody picked up the glass and held it up to her nose. She inhaled deep, absorbing the scent of the rich wine as if it were life itself. She sighed, and sat the glass down.
“You’re not going to drink any?” Dustin asked. “Oh wait, you need to let it breathe right? Shit I didn’t.” He flinched after his curse. He looked to the booths and tables nearby; the patrons hadn’t heard. He swirled the glass with delicate precision sending the wine up and around the inside of the glass in a hypnotic parabola. He’d learned the technique watching Daron and Melody at family gatherings.
“Well yes, you need to let it breathe, but I really can’t drink,” Melody said. She took up her fork and speared a mouthful of greens from her bowl. She stuffed it into her mouth.
Dustin forgot about the wine and watched her. Melody wasn’t the most feminine of women and he appreciated that on most days. She served in the military and had a harder body as a trophy of that hard work and dedication. Pretty she was, but curvy she was not. In that moment, as she sat there just eating, Dustin felt captivated by her. The gentle line of her collarbone under her dress strap, the curve of her modest bosom below. He traced the contour of her shoulder and neck as it led to her small ears punctuated by a string of hanging diamond earrings.
He loved her, and he felt it intensely.
“Take a picture?” she teased.
“I might,” Dustin said, spearing a mouthful of his own salad. “Why did we get the wine if you’re not drinking any? This dinner is gonna cost us enough without whatever vintage this is.” He looked at the bottle. “Ares Meritage, ’51.”
“I wanted you to have something classy to drink before we ship off for half a damn year or more. Plus . . . ”
He stared at her, waiting. “Plus what?”
When it became apparent she wasn’t going to say anything he took another drink of the wine. It was getting better. Less sticky tasting. Less peppery.
Melody leaned in. “I have some information. Mission-related shit.”
He leaned in over his salad. “What is it? Can we talk about it here?”
She looked around as if they were in a spy movie, and the evil corporate drones of a conglomerate were watching from the shadows.
“You cannot react to the news here. No getting angry or celebrating, or freaking out. You must promise me.”
“Fine, yeah. I promise. Poker face.” Dustin looked around as if her imagination had actually conjured threats to be wary of.
“Dustin, you promise me you’ll sit there like a good marine. Promise.”
“What I’m about to tell you could screw up the entire expedition, okay? There’s a lot at stake for us personally as well,” she said.
“Yeah fine, let’s have it already.”
She looked around again, and leaned in closer. She motioned with a finger for him to get closer as well. “No reaction what—so—ever Dustin Cline.” She paused for the bulk of a minute before continuing. “I’m pregnant.”
Dustin sat back in the booth and looked at her. She winked at him and scooped up another forkful of salad. Dustin downed his glass of wine without tasting it. She pushed her glass over to his side of the table and winked once more. He downed that glass, too. Then he looked around for Waren and Lionel, expecting them to be watching, waiting for him to faint, or lose his mind. It had to be a prank. Behind his paranoia and skepticism, though, his glee roared. His heart pounded and his palms became wet with sweat.
“I’m going to be a dad?” he whispered, shocked.
“Good job, marine,” she said.
“Are you serious? Already? We’ve been married like, less than four months. We used protection.”
“Already. I took a test a few days ago when things felt off. Took another this morning. Big old plus sign. Congratulations, daddy.”
Dustin watched as her eyes brimmed with tears.
He’d never seen her cry and the image before him of her almost spilling a tear sent him over the edge. He bent over at the waist and sobbed for joy into his hands over his appetizer plate, hiding it as best he could.
Dustin looked up at her.
“You have to stay.”
Melody blotted her eyes with her napkin to capture the tears and rescue her eye makeup. “I can’t stay. I have to go. I want to go.”