by Gus Flory
Diego followed her down a corrugated metal porch that extended from the side of a connex. She carried one of his duffel bags. He carried another duffel, his ruck sack, an action packer case and his guitar. The gravity on Titan was so low that his large load was lighter than it might have looked on Earth or Mars.
“Here’s your room,” Hsu said.
She opened the door by passing her badge in front of a panel and stepped inside.
The room was slightly larger than a prison cell. A bed was against the far wall. A wall locker stood against the wall next to a refrigerator and microwave. A desk and chair were against the opposite wall.
“Home, sweet home,” she said. “At least for the next year. Field grade officers are lucky because you don’t have to double up like the company grades and NCOs or triple up like the lower enlisted.”
Diego threw his bags on the nylon rug in the center of the floor.
“Get some sleep,” Hsu said. “I’ll pick you up at 0730 and take you to your office.”
“Roger,” Diego said.
“Welcome to Camp Hammersteel,” Hsu said, and stepped out of the room and left.
Diego took off his armor, stashed his rifle and pistol in the wall locker and unpacked his gear. He checked his messages.
None.
He sat on his bed and propped his handheld on the desk. He turned on the camera.
“Hey, guys. I made it to Titan. Safe and sound. Here’s my room.”
He picked up the handheld and stood in the center of his room and slowly panned. “It’s not much but this is home for the next year.”
He hit a button on the wall above his bed and metal shutters cracked opened. He turned the knob and opened them all the way revealing the view outside the window.
Outside in the reddish-yellow twilight were the buildings, towers, radar dishes and antennae of Camp Hammersteel. Silhouetted in the distance were craggy mountains. Beyond was the glassy surface of Kraken Mare. And filling the sky above the sea was the ringed majesty of Saturn.
“I’ve never seen a place as hauntingly beautiful as this. Camp Hammersteel isn’t much to look at—at least what I’ve seen so far, but Titan is like no other place in the Solar System. Maybe I can bring you guys here someday.”
He held his handheld against the window for a moment, then turned it toward his face.
“I hope all is well back home. Send me a message and tell me what you’re up to. I miss you guys.”
He turned off the camera and sat gazing out the window until finally laying down and falling asleep.
He slept fitfully, his body adjusting to the gravity of Titan. He felt as if he had only just shut his eyes when his alarm went off.
Capt. Hsu knocked on his door while he was putting on his boots. She led him down the porch where Moxley, Chief and LT were waiting.
Hsu led the team down the wide corridors. Soldiers walked briskly to breakfast or to their workplaces.
The team reached Camp Hammersteel’s dining facility, known as the DFAC, and lined up. A Titanian woman in a white apron scanned them in.
Hsu told them that the food at the DFAC was generally very good, with bacon, eggs and omelets to order for breakfast and a varied menu for lunch and dinner. Mongolian Mondays, Taco Tuesdays, surf and turf night, and so on. While the meals were good, the menu rotated on a regular schedule and could get old after the third or fourth month here, she explained.
The DFAC tables were filled with soldiers wolfing down bacon and eggs and slurping coffee. Contractors and local colonists who worked on the post occupied several of the tables. Many of the civilian men wore beards. The civilian women had their hair pulled back in pony tails and wore sneakers, jeans and utility jackets.
Diego and his team ate their bacon and eggs as Hsu filled them in on the flow and pace of life on the camp.
“It’s been a good tour,” she said. “We’re usually off work at 1600. Then we hit the gym. Then the DFAC. A lot of the guys play intramural sports. Crash ball, low-grav tennis, lacrosse and basketball. I spend my nights working on my Ph.D. You’ll have plenty of time for self-development. Some here learn a new language, or a musical instrument, or earn degrees. But most just hit the gym. Or play video games. Or play with themselves.”
Sitting at a table across from them was a young woman with raven black hair and striking blue eyes. She was smiling and chatting with colleagues. In her peripheral vision, she caught Diego looking at her as Capt. Hsu talked to him.
Their eyes met. She smiled. Diego smiled back.
She looked away and continued chatting with her friends.
“We had plenty of time for self-development on the Bell,” Diego said.
“You finished a Ph.D. in history on the ride over, didn’t you, boss?” LT asked.
“Almost finished. Still trying to get through the Byzantine Empire.”
“This place feels different,” Chief said. “Not like Ganymede. Or Callisto. Everyone’s too relaxed. There’s no sense of urgency.”
“This isn’t a combat deployment,” Hsu said. “Be sure to remember that.”
They finished their eggs and coffee and stood up gathering their trays.
The raven-haired woman watched Diego, her elbow on the table, chin in her hand. She turned her attention to Capt. Hsu and beckoned her with her finger.
Capt. Hsu stepped over to her table and leaned down. The woman smiled and said something to Hsu, who laughed and looked back at Diego. Hsu said a few words and the woman nodded and squeezed Hsu’s hand.
Hsu turned away from her and faced Diego and his team who were holding their trays.
“Come on,” Hsu said. “I’ll show you the TOC.”
They placed their trays on a conveyor belt. Diego walked next to Hsu as they stepped out of the DFAC.
“Who was that woman?” he asked as they walked down Camp Hammersteel’s main corridor.
“What woman?”
“The one you were just talking to. Black hair. Blue eyes.”
“Her name is Pristina Sage.”
“Who is she?”
“Why are you so interested?”
“No reason. Just asking.”
“You men are all the same. I swear. Who’s the blue-eyed girl? What am I? Chopped liver?”
“Who is she?”
3. Einstein Plaza
“She’s a political analyst who works on the commander’s staff. Her boss is the T-FORCE political advisor, a man named Oscar Bennett. You may get the chance to work with him if the political climate continues to turn south.”
“What did she ask you?”
“What did she ask me?”
“She called you over to tell you something. What was it?”
“She told me she has a going away gift for me.”
“Is that all?”
“Probably a sweater or a coffee cup she bought at the PX, I’m guessing. We’ve hung out a bit, but we weren’t close or anything.”
“I meant is that all she had to say?”
Hsu looked up at Diego as they walked.
“I told her you’re married, sir.”
They walked up a long stairwell under a low ceiling. Diodes embedded in the walls illuminated the stairs with a blue and green glow. They passed soldiers walking the opposite direction. The soldiers saluted Diego as he passed.
Hsu led them into an entry control point where two soldiers stood behind a counter. A flat screen on the wall played a military movie produced on Mars.
Hsu, Diego and his team handed off their handheld devices and were scanned in by the two soldiers.
Hsu then led the team into the Tactical Operations Center operations room. The dimly lit room had a high ceiling. Hsu walked them past the battle desk that was manned around the clock. Soldiers sat at the desk behind glowing screens, typing at keyboards and talking into secure communication systems. On the back wall above them were two giant screens displaying maps of Titan. Live footage from helmet cameras showed first-person views of soldiers on patrols.
Data scrolled down one section of the screen. Video feeds from surveillance drones and satellites depicted various sectors of Titan’s surface.
The battle desk was located at the bottom of an amphitheater. Rows of balconies looked down at the battle desk and across at the two giant screens. A few soldiers sat up in the galleries behind computer monitors.
“This is where everyone assembles in the event of a crisis,” Hsu said. “Each staff section has a designated area. Information Ops is up there.”
She pointed to the third ledge up. “That’s where you’ll stand with your team during commander update briefs. When it’s your turn to brief, you’ll stand down here on the floor. You’ll brief the commander on what your section is doing to contribute to the mission and fulfill his intent.”
Hsu led them out a door and down a maze of hallways lined by a series of offices. She opened a door.
“This is my office, soon to be your office.”
Each of Diego’s team members had offices in the staff building. Hsu introduced the team to their counterparts and then sat Diego down at her computer. She showed him databases, information portals and contact rosters and explained the various reports he had to prepare and present on different days of the week.
The rest of the day passed with Hsu and her team passing off their responsibilities and duties to their replacement crew. The old crew was ready to leave while the new crew was eager to take over.
The following day, Hsu took Diego’s team into Camp Hammersteel’s main flight hangar. Inside the hangar lined up in rows were the battlegroup’s main aviation asset, the TH-60 utility transport and air assault vehicle. The TH-60s were camouflaged in a yellow-gray-orange pattern. They were large, squat aircraft with stubby wings and powerful swivel engines—their squat aerodynamics conformed to the parameters of Titan’s low gravity and dense atmosphere.
Hsu and the information operations team loaded up into a TH-60, which rose up off the hangar floor. The hangar doors opened, and the aerial vehicle shot out into Titan’s reddish-orange twilight for a flyover of the battlegroup’s area of operations, which was Titan’s western hemisphere.
The fast-moving TH-60 zoomed through the hazy atmosphere, shot away from Camp Hammersteel and flew low over Titan’s mountains, lakes and dunes before gaining altitude as they approached Cassini City.
They orbited the gleaming towers and domes of Titan’s largest metropolis. Four highways extended outward from the city. Vehicle lights sped along the highways below.
“It always amazes me to see the city from above,” Hsu said through her headset, “out here so far away from Earth.”
“On Mars, it would be called a town,” LT said.
“On Earth, it would be a village,” Chief said.
“Look there,” Hsu said, pointing to a large building sticking up between the skyscrapers. “The Governor’s Mansion.”
“What’s that large complex behind it?” Diego asked.
“That’s Government Town. You’ve got to have some kind of crazy security clearance to enter it. It’s where the big ballers live, SSIS operators, mostly, or so I’ve heard. You’re not allowed to take pictures of it from the air. We probably shouldn’t even be looking at it.”
The TH-60 flew out across a plain and over rugged hills. Methane rivers carved gorges and canyons into the moonscape.
They flew over a walled military camp. The walls were interspersed with guard towers mounted with robotic, large-caliber machine guns and anti-aircraft laser cannons. Inside the walls were rows of interconnected military barracks and assorted buildings, which surrounded a headquarters building. Armored lunar patrol vehicles were staged in a motor pool. A landing pad was situated adjacent to the motor pool.
A platoon of armored soldiers carrying K4 rifles was assembled near a firing range.
“That’s the Forward Command Post,” Hsu said. “That’s where the majority of the brigade’s maneuver element is stationed.”
“Are those our cavalry scouts down there?” LT asked.
“Roger. Those are your bubbas. Your scouts completed their transfer of authority yesterday. Our Spaceborne Rangers have already popped smoke for the Diversity Bell.”
The TH-60 flew over a mountain range. Between the craggy peaks, a methane lake filled a large gorge. They flew near the conical peak of a cryovolcano. Water, ammonium and methane bubbled and spewed skyward into Titan’s thick atmosphere. Water flowed like lava down the ice volcano’s steep slopes until the floes cooled and froze hard as stone.
The TH-60 circled the volcano, skirting the plume of water and gas erupting from its apex. The aircraft turned and flew low over jagged mountain peaks covered in snow and methane ice.
“Camp Lonely Mountain,” Hsu said.
Atop a mountain was a small walled military camp centered by a landing pad. Communications towers and radar dishes protruded upward from every direction in the camp.
“Your CAV scouts rotate one infantry company through the camp every month,” Hsu said. “They run patrols through the mountains and monitor the Noer farms out on the foothills.”
The TH-60 flew over a stretch of sand dunes that dissipated into rolling hills.
“Down there,” Hsu said. “A Noer farm.”
Several circular greenhouses were situated on a flat expanse. In the center of the complex of greenhouses was a large cylindrical structure.
“That’s the habitation module,” Hsu said. “A Noer family lives there.”
Various surface and aerial vehicles were parked on pads around the structure. A human in a moon suit walked alone over the reddish sand toward one of the greenhouses. He stopped and looked up at the TH-60 flying overhead.
The aircraft flew over several more Noer farms. The farms were connected by gravel roads that converged on a large pentagonal structure.
“That’s their town center. About a hundred Noer families live in this colony. There are several thousand more of these types of colonies scattered around Titan, mostly on the equator in the Western Hemisphere facing Saturn. They settled the moon in these types of colonies before the Solar System Federation arrived. They had been out here on the frontier of the Solar System surviving on their own. As you know, they didn’t take it well when the government showed up and started bringing in thousands of Imcels.”
“I understand them,” Chief said.
“What do you mean?” LT asked.
“They were out here with no one telling them what to do. No one telling them what laws and regulations to follow. No one telling them to pay their taxes. They could do what they wanted.”
“That’s no reason to commit genocide,” LT said.
“Bunch of Neo-Fascist terrorists is what they are,” Sgt. Moxley said. “Do you have Neo-Fascist tendencies or something, Chief?”
“I’m not saying I agree with what they did,” Chief said. “But I understand them.”
Scattered across the moonscape were the ruins of Noer colonies that had been destroyed in the war—the skeletons of greenhouses, half-demolished town centers, collapsed domes, slowly being consumed by sand and ice.
The team returned to Camp Hammersteel and spent the next few days in a blur as Hsu and her team concluded their Transfer of Authority-Relief in Place. The main body of the 690th departed for the Bell, and suddenly Camp Hammersteel felt less crowded. The lines in the DFAC and at the PX were shorter and the TOC seemed less hectic. The 801st headquarters staff settled into a regular battle rhythm of attending meetings, producing reports and monitoring the patrols conducted by the aviators and cavalry scouts. Only a skeleton crew from the 690th remained behind.
The day came for the final Transfer of Authority ceremony. The units of the 801st assembled in Camp Hammersteel’s largest hangar. The soldiers and aviators of the 801st Dragon Brigade stood at parade rest in formation behind the color guard that displayed the black flag of the Solar System Federation and the blue and gold colors of the 690th Infantry Brigade Combat Team.
Behind the colors stood
the cavalry scout battalion, an aviation company, a MEDEVAC detachment, a military police platoon, an explosive ordnance disposal detachment, and a military intelligence company—all in ranks at parade rest behind their respective commanders.
At the far end of the hangar, rows of chairs were set up on a stage that looked out at the formation. Gov. Fareed Cone was present, as were many members of the Titan Provincial Parliament. The mayors of Cassini City, Huygenstown and a few of Titan’s smaller towns were also in attendance, as were Titan’s most influential corporate leaders.
Diego and Capt. Hsu stood in the press box with the media. They had escorted the reporters and cameramen onto Camp Hammersteel. Their mission was to assist the reporters in the hopes of influencing their stories and reports to portray the 801s and T-FORCE in a positive light.
“Bring your units to attention!” the deputy commander bellowed across the cavernous hangar. The subordinate commanders snapped their units to attention.
Col. Banerjee and his command sergeant major marched to the front of the formation alongside Col. Butcher and his command sergeant major. They halted in front of the color guard and turned and faced each other.
The T-FORCE division commander, Maj. Gen. Mondaca Freitas, stood between them. The colors of the 690th were lowered and sheathed by Banerjee and his sergeant major.
Cameras flashed. News teams filmed as the flags were symbolically passed from the outgoing commander to the incoming.
Diego stood watching the ceremony. Many soldiers disliked the pomp and circumstance, but Diego had always enjoyed military ceremonies—the units assembled together replicating military traditions and rituals that dated back to classical times. During ceremonies like this, he could imagine himself on a parade field in Ancient Rome, Renaissance Europe or Imperial China. He felt the brotherhood of arms reaching back through countless generations and civilizations.
Col. Butcher and his sergeant major unsheathed the colors of the 801st Infantry Brigade Combat Team—yellow and red centered by a fire-breathing dragon. A smile crossed Butcher’s face as his colors were raised.