by Lazlo Ferran
As I left the mess for my cabin with a grin on my face, some of the officers were still arguing over something but again I ignored them. Closing my door I put the ruby ring – a present from Jena, on my second finger on my left hand and yawned before putting on the headband and saying, “Download.” I skipped the message from Jena but played again the message from my mother.
“A peculiar thing happened the other day. I was in the main terminal, collecting your cousin, when this army type tapped me on the shoulder and asked for directions to Frisco South. Well, it is really obvious to anybody with a modicum of intelligence – it's right there on the board, so I was suspicious. I thought – forgive your old mother for being vain, but I thought that maybe he was chatting me up, so I humoured him. We chatted for a few minutes actually. He asked me what it was like living on J5 and then he asked if I knew any other army types. I thought perhaps I should say that I didn’t know any at all, but he seemed so charming so I mentioned you. He asked about you and I really felt quite uncomfortable at this point. He seemed far too interested in you, so I cut it short. He was polite enough and I didn’t think too much of it. The funny thing though was that he was unshaven and looked as if he had been sitting there for days. He had shiny glasses on so I couldn’t see his eyes but there seemed to be something familiar about him. I couldn’t place him though. Perhaps I have seen him in a paper or something. Anyway I wouldn’t have thought any more about it, but two days later, I could swear I saw him again loitering on a street corner while I was doing the shopping. I could be wrong. Do take care. Love Mum x”
I lay on the bed and closed my eyes.
The Ionian day is 42.5 hours so the next time I woke up it was still the same Ionian ‘day’. We marked time in Earth hours and dates followed those of Earth but we divided the Ionian ‘day’ into two 21.25 hour ‘working’ days – too short for the human clock to endure for long periods. This time when I awoke, it would have been dusk outside if I had put the monitor on and left it on ‘Real Time’. Final arrangements had to make with Stone before I left for the USAC Station 5, in orbit around Jupiter, not far from the orbit of Io, where I had been invited by Roanald to take part in the planning meeting for the operation at Ruwa.
“Stone. I am leaving for S.5 within the hour. I want you to prepare the MCS for exit tomorrow morning. Something has come up and I am not sure we will leave tomorrow but best be ready.”
“Yes sir!” He swiped a salute at me, grinning. I guessed he had some idea it was something to do with the intel from Smith.
The shuttle was prepared for me and as the rockets fired, lifting the shuttle against Io’s weak gravity, I looked down at the grey MCS, settled on the only plateau in a flat sea of sulphur, which stretched for hundreds of miles. I looked at Jupiter; orange bands around a creamy sphere filling half of the view from the port with my face pressed close, and looked for S.5 but I couldn’t make it out from this distance.
As the little craft drew away from the little moon I became aware of the Io Flux Tube – a glowing torus of green, blue and orange light wrapped around the orbit of Io. A field of highly charged particles, it made radio-silence a necessity while escaping the little moons weak atmosphere.
After four hours strapped into the tight space of the shuttle, I saw the lights of Station 5, twinkling in the night.
“Major. What is your opinion?” asked a bald colonel with a salt-and-pepper moustache, on the opposite side of the large black granite table in the lavish Ops Room. The convention seemed to be to stand up when speaking, more I felt to assert one’s self in this room of giant egos, rather than for auditory reasons, so I stood up.
“Sir. There is a way to do this. It’s not conventional and may take a little longer to get into position but I think it can work.”
“Well? What is it?”
“We drive sir. The MCSs have four backup diesels which are hardly ever used. We only use them for very short distances or when the fusion reactor is broken down. In fact many MCSs never use any of these apart from one, which is generally used for some life support systems. If we drive to Ruwa, then the IM won’t pick us up on the radar – at least I don’t think they will. They are not used to seeing anything moving across the salt-flats, as we call them. If we use the fusion reactors we cannot get into position without somebody, somewhere, noticing, as you rightly point out.”
“How long will it take?”
“Well. 1200 miles at roughly10 miles per hour is 120 hours; five days sir.”
“Five days? Well rather you than me Major. Good luck with your men.” He chuckled and there was general laughter around the table.
The MCS was only about ten feet tall, even when the wheels were down and in motion, and I didn’t think the Ionian Militia radar, patchy as it was, would pick us up, but now that we were moving, I was nervous about my strategy. A great cloud of sulphurous dust plumed above and behind us and I just hoped that some observant IM grub wouldn’t see it. What made things worse was that there would be two other such plumes and all three traveling on convergent headings.
On the third day – the second Ionian day, the bald colonel’s words came back to haunt me. I was leaning forward in my straps on one of the mess seats next to the window, looking at the desiccated desert outside. I enjoyed these moments of calm, and spent hours watching the surface of Io roll by, with the arc of Jupiter stretching from the horizon up to the seventy degree mark. Suddenly Stone’s face appeared next to mine. I could smell his breath and feel it on my cheek.
“Sir?”
“Yes. What is it Sergeant?”
“What in Hell are we doing sir? Any more of this fuckin’ desert and the men will mutiny. On and on it goes and why? Does any other company ever – I mean ever use the diesels for motive power? Nope. For five days? Nope. So why are we the gullible idiots who are letting you do this to us?”
“Sorry Sergeant. It’s all part of my cunning plan.”
“Cunning? Cunning? I could make a dirty joke using that word that might be closer to the truth. Sir!”
I laughed. “Go and sit down. Just relax.”
I stared out at the sea of sulphur – totally flat and featureless, save for the occasional cracks, some of which were large enough for us to have to drive around. If you stared at it long enough you started to feel that you were underwater, or floating in yellow and rust-coloured clouds.
Just after the Ionian noon on day five, we were finally in position on the flanks of the great volcanic mountain of Ruwa Patera, inactive for many years. As the lead MCS, we were placed only about 400 yards from the main mine entrance, and slightly above it, next to the track. I hadn’t seen the other two MCSs which were now under my command – each with a small company of 50 men inside, but we had been in radio contact all day and now all three were in position, spaced evenly around the flanks of Ruwa.
“Okay Sergeant Stone. Let’s dig in. Disengage the PODs.”
“Yes sir.”
I felt the fusion drive building to full power and then the teeth-loosening vibration began as the MCS started digging itself down into the sulphur so that only the top few inches would be left visible. Although the grunts hated it, it would only last a few hours and activating the S-grav immediately afterwards was always a relief that compensated for the discomfort. The vibration was of short movements and only severe enough to shake cups off the tables. It was still possible to work in the MCS. Indeed this was necessary, as often at this point in a mission we would be vulnerable and need to secure the perimeter using radar, deployed squads and covering fire. The eight tracks; four in a row on each side of the vehicle, were now turned through 90 degrees, using their variable teeth to cut through the sulphur and shift it to the side of the MCS. From there compressed air jets forced it to the surface and out into defensive banks. Blue U.V. cabin lights came on as the sulphur rose over the windows.
Our MCS wasn’t the very latest type but only a year old. It looked like a long, low tank without a main turret, or perhaps a heavily-arm
oured, single-storey military building on tracks, 126 feet by 64 feet. There were turrets at all four corners and a row of small windows either side of the port turret, one of two half way along each of the long sides. The two Protective Ordinance Deploys or PODs engaged half way along each long side and could be detached and deployed with their nuc-lasers to protect the MCS. Called fondly ‘decoys’ by the men, their crews of ten had one of the most dangerous jobs in the USAC Army so the role was rotated among the crew of thirty on the MCS. The decoys were also useful to provide extra power to get the MCS out of sticky situations in difficult terrain; able to operate as tractors or simply contribute their own traction. * The skin of the vehicle was coated in an electrolytically-controlled film which could take on just about any colour or pattern. On Io it was almost always yellow. Of course when it was fully submerged all you would see from above would be a few unusually shaped boulders.
“Deploying S-grav,” came a voice over the speaker in the mess finally, and there was a mighty roar of approval from the men.
All the hammocks and fold-aways were stowed and an impromptu game of football ensued. I kicked the ball around myself for a while before helping Stone break out the four crates of beer we had smuggled on board after the last shore-leave.
“So what’s the plan Cap?” asked Stone pulling the tab on a can of Viper X, releasing a spurt of gas.
“Well, the main briefing will be tomorrow morning, early, and we have a few days to hang around but basically; ambush. Ambush the Ionians.”
“Yeah? Cool. Why here though. I mean why this mine?”
“You’ll find out...”
Two of the officers had been having a heated discussion in a corner of the mess and now one of them stood up and prodded the other in the chest. He was shouting and they caught my attention.
“Stone. Isn’t that the two who were arguing the night before we left?”
“Yes sir. I think so.”
I walked over to them holding my hand up to stop the football. By this time one of the Corporals had grabbed the other’s wrists. “DeTunne, Walsh – what’s this about?” Walsh looked angriest so I asked him again.
“Nothing sir. Sorry sir.”
“DeTunne?”
“Walsh has been griping since that little raid on the grubs the day before we left. His X.50 jammed and he blames it on poor equipment but I told him he should have checked his weapon before we left.”
“I could have been killed sir!” said Walsh. “A grub guard was pointing his piece directly at my face. It was just luck that DeTunne was watching and covered me. It’s shit equipment! Same as usual. We shouldn’t have to check everything all the time.”
He knew I hadn’t checked my X.50 before we left; the one handed to me just before we entered the airlock, but he would not dare to say it. Normally I would have cut this conversation short, but the looks on the faces of men now surrounding us told me that he was not the only one to feel this way. I sat on the arm of a foldaway.
“Well it’s best to get this out in the open, and for once we have time.” I pulled the rings on two more cans of Viper and handed them to Walsh and DeTunne. “Let’s hear it.”
“Well sir. When I joined USAC I thought I was joining the best. I thought we that we had the best men and we would have the best equipment. Now I see that we do have the best men but we do not have the best equipment. Constantly we are being let down by stuff that doesn’t work or is just badly made. I mean my old man’s dad used to talk about cars being made on Friday afternoon – having loads of faults. Some of our gear is like that. I mean look at this thing!” He pointed to the ceiling. “There isn’t one civilian transport on this moon that uses diesels. Nothing uses diesels any more. Everybody knows solar fusion is better; smoother, quieter and more efficient. But no. The army still uses diesels. Man, that technology is like the Stone Age. I mean the only innovation I can remember is that we use Diesel’o now and that’s a laugh! Diesel’o. You can’t buy it anywhere – even on the black market. Only USAC use it and that’s only because Riccard-Amtel make it. So this army is owned by Riccard-Amtel.” Feeling he had scored a point, he lifted the Viper to his mouth and took a long swig.
“He’s got a point sir,” said Opinnskey. “Why are we even here? Another cruddy mission like the last one. We spent fifteen weeks holed-up on the side of that rock just waiting for any IM traffic from the mines. Why the hell would they bother? There’s nothing there! All we were doing was watching no-man’s land. Border guards. That’s all we were, but that’s just cos we are R-Company.” There was general laughter from the men. Our name was K-Company but we were known colloquially as R-Company.
“Ah, now you’re talking!” said DeTunne. “I agree that all we are is border guards – we get all the shit jobs and I hope this job’s gonna be better, but I don’t agree about equipment and I don’t agree about what you say about USAC.”
“Republican!” shouted one of the other officers.
DeTunne swung to face him. “No! Yeah I know that USAC is short of cash. Every government’s short of cash these days but I don’t think we’re owned by RA.”
There were a lot of shouts from the grunts and officers and the word ‘Diesel’o’ from somebody. It was a private.
“Speak up!” I said to him.
“Well everybody knows the oil barons were desperate for one last fix so they created Diesel’o.”
“Yeah and we’re the only buggers who use it!” added Walsh.
Everyone grew silent.
“There are more Iron Crosses in K-Company than any other company on Io,” said DeTunne, quietly, his head down, as if reading from a book. His long nose suddenly looked noble to me.
“Yeah. Another invention by Riccard-Amtel,” spat the grunt who had mentioned the oil barons.
“No way stoopid,” said he grunt next to him.
“Yeah. You moron,” added DeTunne, with a flourish of his mech hand. “You think I lost this for RA? The Iron Cross goes way back. Second World War I think. Germany?” He looked at me for confirmation.
“Further back I believe,” said Lieutenant Khan, with precise, clipped diction.
“Napoleonic Wars I think – and Prussia originally, not Germany,” I added. “It was made more famous by Germany though in the First and Second World Wars. It faded from use after that but you have a point – Emphill, isn’t it?” I said recalling the name of the first grunt. “It was re-popularised at the beginning of the Ionian Wars. I think they needed something with more gravity – if you'll excuse the poor joke – than the Medal of Honor; something that sounded tougher and the core of Io is Iron so it seemed appropriate. Iron medal for iron men on an iron moon. At least that’s my interpretation. And don’t worry, some of you may well win one in the next few weeks.”
There were lopsided smiles from some of the men at my rousing speech. They had seen many of my press-interviews and didn’t buy the character I portrayed for the public: super-tough soldier with few ambitions but to win the Iron Cross with all its embellishments.
“The Major has won the Iron Cross five times – all on Io,” added Osei irrelevantly.
“Yes. Ten years – since I was a grunt. It’s been a long ten years,” I said. “Okay. Five-a-side soccer match with the winning side getting a bottle of vodka I happen to have stashed away.”
I made my excuses soon after, and retired to my cabin.
Sitting at the desk I took up the pen and stared at the last line of my novel. ‘Dusty picked up the scrap of paper and looked at the address scrawled in a neat, feminine hand.’ I had only recently settled on the name Dusty. I had tried Rusty too but decided it sounded too immediate. I thought Dusty sounded better for a private eye who specialised in cold cases, but I was still uncertain. I wrote, ‘The faint smell of a Turkish cigarette, held between perfumed lips hung in the …’ and then threw down the pen. I just wasn’t in the mood.
I glanced at my left hand and it was shaking. I tried to stop it and then looked at my right, which was ste
ady as a rock. I laughed out loud for a moment and then felt the coolness of a single tear, rolling down my cheek.
I sat there for some time, thinking – trying to master my fear, before taking a shower and lying flat on the bed. I closed my eyes and, as I drifted off, a powerful memory came to me.
My dad was taking me out of the dome on his hoverbike to watch a sunset on Mars, soon after a big dust storm. Of course, you could see sunsets from the dome, but the U.V. protection took out most of the colour and I had nagged him for weeks to take me outside to see one. In my little hand-made spacesuit I clung to his waist, my heart thumping in my ears, as we covered a few miles across the ochre desert. The hoverbike skittered easily around the few rocks we saw and I laughed inside my helmet. I knew I was a lucky kid. No other kid had a dad rich enough to get a child-sized spacesuit made. I loved him so much I wanted to squeeze him but my arms weren’t strong enough. I wanted the trip to go on forever but eventually my dad stopped the bike and it sunk silently to the ground. He lifted me off and I turned to look for the dome but I couldn’t see it any more. This was the first time I had been out of site of the dome and it felt strange. I felt a moment of fear but then my dad’s hand on my shoulder made me turn and look up at his helmet. I couldn’t see his face, only the reflection of the lowering sun in the visor. It was like a burning disk of white. He took my hand and we climbed together to the top of a steep bank. There we waited. When the Sun was almost touching the horizon he said, “Now Jake! Lift up your filter.”
With difficulty, because my fingers were so small, I lifted the outer U.V. filter and gasped. The white disk of the sun almost burned a hole in my head. Its white was so intense it was almost blue and the blue became a corona as my eyes quickly looked up and away from it. The corona gradually faded into a riot of colour that filled the rest of my vision. The purples and oranges were deeper than those in a bowl of the freshest and most tangy grapes and peaches. For a moment I almost lost my balance and felt myself falling forward into a forever-sea of spectral light. We stood on the edge of time – until the Sun had completely disappeared below the horizon and then, eventually, my dad sighed and said, “Let’s go.”