by Gus Flory
“I want a full analysis now—where it came from, the camera used, meta data, everything.”
“Roger, sir.”
Diego’s fists were clenched tightly. He hadn’t inhaled since Robodan appeared on the screen.
“Are you OK, sir,” Staff Sgt. Ozawa at the battle desk asked.
“Negative,” Diego answered. “I’m not OK.”
5. Honeypot
Diego sat alone in the DFAC. Titan News Network was playing on the flat screens on the walls. On the big screen on the wall in front of him, Judy Reza was being interviewed by one of her colleagues about her personal experience of the Einstein Plaza attack—how the blast had knocked her down and bullets were flying over her and then the roof exploded and outside air flooded into the plaza. She described it cinematically, as if she were the star in this version of the event. Diego imagined she’d already started writing a book about her first-hand experience of the “Terror on Titan.”
He shoveled down his chili mac and mixed vegetables and gulped down his orange drink. He finished his meal but couldn’t summon the energy to get up from his chair. He sat slumped watching Judy tell her story to her enraptured and empathetic colleague.
“You must have been terrified.”
“There was no time for that. I mean, the terror of what happened came later, but at the moment there was only shock and confusion and a feeling that I had to help. I was one of the lucky ones, which I knew right away from seeing the dead and wounded all around me.”
“Major Zanger, is this not a good time?”
Pristina Sage stood between Diego and his view of the screen. She wore jeans, a white T-shirt and a ball cap over her hair that was pulled back in a pony tail.
“Pristina. It’s good to see you. Out of the hospital. Up and about.”
She smiled.
Her eyes seemed otherworldly, a splash of color, like the blue of a tropical sea. Diego felt butterflies in his stomach. He stood from his chair.
“I just finished dinner and saw you here. Thank you for what you did, Major. I don’t think I’d be here now if it weren’t for you.”
“I feel I should’ve done more.”
“Will you have coffee with me? I’ll buy.”
Diego followed her out of the DFAC. They walked side by side on the enclosed walkways of Camp Hammersteel.
She led him past the PX into a small food court with a coffee bar. A few soldiers and contractors sat at the tables. She ordered a mocha and asked him what he wanted.
“Coffee. Black.”
They sat at a table near the wall.
“Your soldiers interviewed me today. The intelligence officer and his chief.”
“Major Mangal?”
“Yes. I told him everything that happened. And what you did.”
She sipped her coffee. Diego set his down in front of him.
“Detectives from Titan Police came to visit me at the hospital. They also interviewed me.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them after the explosion I was knocked down. I was confused. I saw them grab Oscar and I ran after them. Then they grabbed me. I was afraid and angry. They were hurting him. Then one of them shot him. I thought he was going to kill me, too, but you came.”
Her eyes teared up. But she found her composure.
“Is there a reason they wanted Oscar?”
“Maybe. I don’t know… I saw the news about Sergeant Moxley. I heard you lost another one of your men.”
Diego leaned back in his chair. The news was playing on a flat screen on the wall. Amad Robodan’s face appeared. Different pictures of him were shown—on Mars, in the Asteroid Belt, on Callisto. Usually, he was posing in armor with a rifle, looking menacing.
It seemed there were screens everywhere always showing the news. It was inescapable.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It must be painful for you.”
“This was supposed to be an easy tour. No action. They told us we’d be bored. But we were caught by surprise. We let down our guard.”
“It’s strange, Major. Who would do this?”
“The Neo-Fascists. They’re ruthless. They have no respect for human life. There will be no peace in the Solar System until we’ve captured or killed every last one of them—until we’ve killed Robodan.”
“Now the police and the S.S.F. Army will crack down on the Noer community, on Noer leaders. It’s already begun. This attack hurts the Noer but gives the Governor more power.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m just trying to understand. Who benefits? I’m a political analyst. This attack has changed Titan’s political calculus.”
“You saw them up close, Pristina. You saw what they did.”
“I saw men in armor with their faces covered.”
“You saw Amad Robodan behead my soldier.”
They sat across from each other in silence.
Pristina Sage took another sip of her coffee. Diego hadn’t touched his.
“I have to go,” she said.
She stood. Diego stood with her.
“Thank you again for saving my life. I’m sorry about your soldiers. I mean that with all sincerity.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
They left the food court and walked down Camp Hammersteel’s main corridor, past the tactical store, the PX and the gym.
“I’m catching the next shuttle to T-FORCE MAIN. We’re having a meeting with all the political analysts. They’re deciding what to do with us until they’ve replaced Oscar.”
He walked her to the pedestrian gate. She stopped and turned before exiting.
She stepped to him and hugged him. He held her embrace.
“Titan was once a peaceful place far away from the troubles of the Inner Solar System. I wish you could have seen it then, Major.”
She stepped back. Her eyes were red.
“Call me Diego.”
“Good-bye, Diego.”
She turned and exited through the pedestrian gate.
Diego walked back through Camp Hammersteel’s corridors. He walked past the enlisted quarters—row upon row of containerized-housing units. Some soldiers lounged in collapsible chairs on the walkways in front of their room doors. Music played. Soldiers leaned on the bannisters, chatting in groups and watching passersby. Two soldiers threw a baseball back and forth down the corridor. A group of soldiers stood around a barbecue grill set up on a bannister beneath a ventilation vent. They were grilling synthetic meat, laughing and listening to old music from Earth, drinking non-alcoholic beers. Even though they were off duty they carried on them their pistols and rifles.
One of the soldiers leaning on the bannister recognized Diego and turned to his companion and said a few words. His companion nodded.
Diego imagined the soldier had said, “There’s the major who lost his entire team.”
Diego entered the Tactical Operations Center and walked the hallways to his office. The workday was over and the halls were empty. He sat at his desk. All of LT’s and Moxley’s personal items had been categorized and put in storage for shipment back to Mars. Diego digitally signed the form that confirmed their things had been properly accounted for.
He attempted to draft official letters to LT’s wife and Moxley’s parents. He sat for hours alone in his office working on the letters. He had only known them from the Bell. But he had liked them both. They were good soldiers. Good men.
As he wrote the letters, he swore to himself their deaths would be avenged.
He left the TOC and returned to his room. He had a message on his handheld. He opened it.
Havana sat alone on their bed wearing nothing but a T-shirt. Diego had bought her the shirt on a vacation at the Olympus Mons Military Resort Hotel on Mars. Her sandy-blonde hair was pulled back. Her brown eyes were red. She’d been crying. She ran her hands through her hair and looked into the camera.
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately. I think I’ve been thinking too much
. About you and me. Our marriage. Our family. You’ve been gone so much, Dee. For all intents and purposes, I’m a single mom. It’s hard on me sometimes, you know. It’s hard on the kids, especially now that they’re old enough to understand. When you were on Callisto, it seemed every other day one of the spouses got a knock on the door from the notification team. I remember when Karen got the knock. Then Yulia. Then Beth. It seemed like the lieutenants and captains were being killed off one by one. I waited for the day when I would hear the knock on our door. I planned for it. I was ready for it. But it never came, and you came home. We were so happy. But the Army took you away again. I swear, I hate the Army. I hate them.”
She looked down and was silent for a long moment.
“I can’t let go of you... I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I love you so.”
She turned off the camera.
Diego sat alone in his room gazing out the window through the haze at Saturn and its rings. It was beautiful here, better than Mars. Maybe when the war ended and there was peace, he could move Havana and the kids here and start over. Start a new life. Tegan would love it here. Maybe George and Havana would, too.
He thought about what to say to Havana to set her mind at ease. He rehearsed what he would tell her, but his mind wandered. He lay down on his bunk and soon fell asleep.
He dreamed of Mars, of red landscapes, canyons, desolate plains and the towering red eminence of Olympic Mons. A feeling a dread filled him. He was back on Callisto in the back of an armored car bumping down a stark landscape of craters, scarps and sparkling frost deposits. Jupiter’s roiling clouds and red eye dominated the sky.
“Incoming!”
Rocket-propelled grenades zipped down from the ridgeline. The car in front of them vanished in an explosion of metal. The soldier driving Diego’s vehicle accelerated and sped around the wreckage as rockets exploded around them. He turned too sharply.
“Rollover! Rollover!”
The car flipped and rolled with violent, bone-crushing force. Diego was trapped upside down. His head was numb and throbbing from the impact. His ears rang. His arms and legs were pinned. His chest was being crushed. Grenades exploded with concussive force. He couldn’t move. He gritted his teeth in searing pain. He was suffocating. He couldn’t breathe.
He sat up in his bed, awake in the dark.
He lay back down, tossing and turning, unable to sleep.
He sat up and put his feet on the floor. He reached for his guitar beneath his bunk. He strummed it. He strummed a song he had written for his daughter when she was a baby. He hummed as he strummed. She used to cry and cry. No amount of consoling from her mother had any effect. He would take her and put her in her crib and strum and sing about a comet that appeared in the Martian sky the day she was born. Within a few moments, the crying would stop, and little Tegan would slip into a deep and peaceful sleep.
Diego put the guitar back in its case and fell asleep.
In the morning, he skipped breakfast and returned to his office. Col. Butcher’s assistant entered as Diego was checking his messages.
“Sir,” the lieutenant said. “The commander requests your presence in his office.”
“When?”
“Now, sir.”
Diego stood from his computer and followed the lieutenant. They entered the command section and stepped into Col. Butcher’s office. The office was large with comfortable chairs around a coffee table on one half of the room. The colonel’s large desk dominated the other. Pictures and souvenirs from the colonel’s various deployments hung from the walls and were set on cabinets—knives and pistols in frames and boxes. Photos of the colonel in armor on Mars, Ceres, Vesta, Callisto and Ganymede—old photos of him on Earth during the war there. The armor on Earth looked primitive compared to what the Army was issuing now. Diego saw an old photo of Butcher in a pre-Federation uniform on a beach with his arms around two of his fellow men-at-arms. They were wearing U.S. Marine Corps uniforms. They were all smiles and looked so young.
Unlike other officers of his rank, Butcher had no pictures of family in his office. Diego knew that Butcher’s wife and two children were killed on Mars decades ago in a Neo-Fascist terrorist attack.
The colonel’s desk had five different screens on it. Butcher didn’t look up from the screens as Diego stood in front of his desk.
“Give me a minute,” the colonel said.
Diego stood in silence until the big man looked up at him.
“Governor Cone and General Freitas want to hold a press conference tomorrow night. They want me to say a few words about our capabilities—what the battlegroup is doing to mitigate another attack. About how we plan to capture Robodan. I need you to write me up a few talking points. Get with operations for background.”
“Roger, sir.”
The colonel leaned back in his chair and studied Diego closely.
“How are you doing, Diego?”
“I’m fine, sir.”
“It’s not easy losing men.”
“No, sir.”
The colonel returned his attention to his screens. “I need those talking points by close of business today.”
“Roger.”
Diego turned and walked toward the door.
“Diego.”
Diego stopped at the door.
“I’ve lost men before. I’ve lost plenty. It’s never something you get used to.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can come to me anytime if you need to talk. Understand?”
“Understood, sir.”
Diego left the colonel and walked the hallways back to his office where he spent the rest of the workday crafting talking points.
When nearly everyone had left for the day, he stepped into the Mission Secret room and searched the classified sharepoint drives for files on Oscar Bennett. The secure room only had two Mission Secret computers for Soldiers who worked in this section of the Tactical Operations Center. He was alone in the room.
Several hundred files saved by Bennett were on the sharepoint. Most of them were wonky analyses of the various political parties on Titan and projections on how the distribution of seats in the Titan Provincial Parliament could shift the political balance following the upcoming elections. Bennett had built profiles of all the leaders in the Titan political scene.
The last files Bennett had created were about Gov. Cone. Bennett’s analysis was that Cone would most likely lose the elections scheduled three months from now. His rival was a woman named Tupo Pelagi from the Alternative Party for Titan. Pelagi was from a prominent Noer family and was running on a platform of conciliation with the Imcels and increased independence from the Federation. She had been gaining in the polls and was successfully branding Cone as a police-state tyrant who wanted to wring every last dime out of the taxpayers. Bennett was advising T-FORCE to maintain its neutrality in the upcoming elections and distance itself from Cone in preparation for a new administration.
Diego stepped out of the Mission Secret room and walked down the empty hallways. He left the TOC and headed for the gym. He was full of nervous energy and felt the need to burn some of it off.
The gym was full of military muscle heads grunting and sweating on the resistance machines. Their arms, legs and necks were pumped with blood, veins bulging and pulsating.
Diego hit the machines and got his pump on. He took out his anger and frustration on the machines. He sat on the shoulder press machine pushing and exerting himself with far more force than usual. In the mirror he sighted Pristina Sage on a treadmill. She had earbuds in, hair back in a pony tail, and was running at a brisk pace. Her tight workout uniform revealed her exceptional figure.
Their eyes met in the mirror. She smiled and then looked forward as she ran.
Diego finished his set and stood from the bench. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his towel, then turned and walked to the treadmills. He got on the treadmill next to her, attached the resistance belt and started to run.
“Are we racin
g?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Are we?”
“I don’t think you can keep up.”
She turned up the speed on her treadmill. Diego matched her. She turned it up to a full sprint and held it. Diego sprinted alongside her. She kept the sprint up for about a minute before finally slowing down to a jog. Diego matched her.
She was breathing heavily. Diego not so much.
“I see you’re a runner,” she said.
“I see you are, too.”
She jogged for another couple minutes, then stopped her treadmill.
“I’m going to shower, then have dinner,” she said. “Will you join me? For dinner, I mean.”
“Sure.”
“Meet me in front of the gym in thirty minutes.”
“Roger that.”
Diego showered and changed back into his uniform. He waited for her in the gym lobby, sitting in a chair watching the news on a flat screen on the wall. The talk was endless about Robodan. Two pundits debated whether the Solar System’s mastermind terrorist had fled to Titan because things were going badly for him on Callisto, or whether some other master plan was in effect.
Pristina stepped into the lobby carrying her bag. Her hair was down and still slightly wet. Diego couldn’t help noticing how attractive she was. He thought if he weren’t married he would pursue her.
Diego walked toward the dining facility, but she turned down a corridor and beckoned him with a nod of her head.
“Come, I know another place. The contractors lounge. It won’t be crowded now.”
He followed her through the contractors’ quarters. The containerized housing units here looked less orderly than the soldiers’ quarters. Couches and lounge chairs sat on the metal porches. The bannisters had been painted different colors—red or green or yellow. An overweight woman sat on a couch on the porch stroking a Yorkshire terrier while talking on her handheld.
Pristina turned and entered a doorway. Diego followed her several stories up a winding metal staircase. She pushed through two swinging doors. Diego followed her into a large open room with a bar on one side and large bay windows on the other. The room had an Old West theme, with a wagon wheel chandelier, a mahogany saloon bar with a large mirror behind it, a buffalo head on the wall, and cigar store Indian and a full-sized statue of John Wayne in cowboy hat with pistol drawn. On the walls were Charles M. Russell paintings of outlaws on horseback, Native Americans hunting buffalo and cowboys rustling cattle.