by Tarah Benner
My alarm blares me awake at oh five hundred sharp. It’s dark in the little cubbyhole they assigned me, and I can’t find my Optix to save my life. I grope around on the shelf above my bed, and my fingers finally make contact with the stupid thing.
I shut off my alarm and roll over. This place is definitely not what I was expecting.
In the army, my bed was always about as wide as my body and not nearly as long. In basic, it was a bunk bed in the barracks that I shared with twenty other guys. Later, it might have been a cot in some hellhole bunker if I was lucky. The army seemed to operate under the philosophy that the less comfortable the bed, the less time you’d want to spend in it.
This bed is a different story. It’s like sleeping on a goddamned cloud. I have a window that looks out into space, but if I stare too hard at the big blue blur that is Earth, I start to feel a little sick.
Rubbing my eyes, I get up and flip the bed into the wall so that I can access the cargo bins stowed under the floor panels. Both of my bins are only half full. One of them is lined with uniforms, socks, underwear, and a few sets of civilian clothing. The other contains my hygiene kit, a set of electric clippers, a Benchmade knife, my watch, and a worn manila envelope.
I pick up the envelope and pull out the one photo I take everywhere I go: the one of me, my mom, and my brother at Will Rogers beach. It was taken when I was nine or ten years old, just before Ian enlisted. It’s the last photo that was taken before he was killed and the very last one of all three of us together.
I stick the photo in a crack above my headboard and grab a clean T-shirt from my bin. I get dressed, lace up my shoes, and head to the lavatory.
It’s early enough that I expect to be alone, but someone is already in the shower. He’s singing “Hotel California” very loud and off-key, and I try to ignore him as I splash cold water on my face.
The lavatory has six showers, four urinals, and a long row of sinks. Everything is coated in the same charcoal-gray tile, and I’m amazed that the shower stalls actually have doors.
I still have dark circles under my eyes and the start of a five o’clock shadow, but at least I managed to get a decent haircut before coming to Elderon. I stick my head under the faucet to swish some water around in my mouth just as the shower shuts off.
A cloud of steam wafts out from the shower, and a disturbingly familiar face appears behind me in the mirror.
It’s Ping.
When he sees me, a huge grin spreads across his face. “Heyya, sarge! Fancy meeting you here!”
“Morning, Ping,” I grumble, grabbing a towel from a rack by the sink to dry my face. “Put some clothes on.”
Ping grins and wraps a towel around his waist. “You off to get your swole on?”
“What?”
“You goin’ to the gym?”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
“Well, shit. You need a spotter? ’Cause I’m a real good spotter. Or maybe a sparring partner?” He feigns a few punches at my reflection in the mirror.
“I think I’m good,” I say, hoping he’ll take the hint and leave me alone.
“Nah. You shouldn’t go alone, sarge. Battle buddies!” He gives me an admonishing look. “Hang on one sec. I’ll be right back.”
He dashes out of the lavatory, leaving a trail of watery footprints behind him. I groan. The last thing I need is to have Ping attached to my hip for the next five years.
I toss my towel in the laundry bin and slip out of the lavatory, glancing around to make sure he doesn’t see me sneak out.
The barracks are arranged in pods — weird honeycomb modules that stretch five levels high. The officers’ barracks are in a different hallway than the privates’, but we share a lavatory and a common area.
I slip out of the barracks before he can return and head down the hallway that will take me to the gym. I’m barely a hundred yards away when I hear a familiar voice behind me and the sound of sneakers slapping the floor.
“Hey, sarge! Wait up!”
I keep walking, but Ping catches up. His hair is still damp from the shower, but he’s dressed in his workout clothes and ready to go.
“Hey!” he pants. “I told ya to wait!”
“Sorry,” I mutter, wishing I’d been a little quicker. “I usually do my workouts solo.”
“I get it,” says Ping, though I’m ninety-nine percent sure that he doesn’t get it. “You’re out of shape, and you want a chance to get back in the game before anybody sees.”
“No.”
“Aw, come on, sarge. I love a good sweat sesh. Wouldn’t you rather have a gym bro anyways?”
I roll my eyes, but Ping is oblivious.
“Great! Me too.”
I break into a jog — mostly so we don’t have to talk — and he runs after me and doesn’t shut up.
“You have brothers or sisters?” Ping huffs.
My throat tightens. “No.”
“Well, that explains it,” says Ping. “Me, I come from a big family — three brothers and a little sis. I’m the oldest. You know I’m the first one in my family to join the armed forces?”
I quicken my pace, but damn if he doesn’t keep up.
“Now my little bro wants to join.” He chuckles. “My mom cried for days when I told her I was gonna go live in space.”
By the time we get to the fitness center, the place is already packed. Most of the people there are nonmilitary personnel, working out on the ellipticals as they check their messages.
I jump on the first treadmill I see to finish warming up. My playlist starts on my Optix, and pretty soon I’m in the zone. Ping falls into pace right next to me, showing no signs of fatigue whatsoever.
I let Ping spot me on the weight bench — a decision I immediately regret. He talks way too much (and too loudly) and sometimes forgets what he’s doing. I’m so irritated that I abandon my last set halfway through.
When we switch, Ping spots a woman at the lat pulldown machine, and his arms nearly give out. She’s very attractive — dark-haired and ripped — with Middle Eastern features and two prosthetic legs. I have a feeling that I’ve seen her before, though I can’t think for the life of me where.
“Do you know — who that is?” Ping huffs as I help him get the barbell back in the rack.
“Should I?”
He lets out an incredulous laugh. “Uh, yeah! That’s Ziva Blum!”
I don’t say anything. I don’t have any idea who that is.
“Former CEO of BlumBot International?” Ping prompts me. “Her company made all the bots in this place!”
“Oh . . .”
“Damn, mama,” says Ping, his eyes glazing over as he watches Ziva sweat in her tangerine sports bra.
“She’s old enough to be your mother,” I say as Ping sits up and mops the sweat out of his eyes.
“Mmm. I’d let her spank me if she wanted.”
“That’s disgusting.”
Ping is distracted for the rest of the workout. But the dude keeps at it, and by the time I’m done, his shirt is completely soaked with sweat. He’s not lazy — I’ll give him that. If he didn’t talk so much, he’d almost be tolerable.
He follows me back to the barracks to get cleaned up for our shift, but I manage to lose him between the showers and the dining hall. The first day is all meetings and formalities. I have an officers’ briefing at oh seven hundred, which means I don’t have much time to eat.
Lucky for me, it doesn’t matter. The food looks only borderline edible — and I lived on MREs for close to a year. Breakfast in coach includes a heap of runny eggs, burnt sausage links, and some kind of sugary bread that could be French toast.
But the real spectacle is the things behind the serving line: half a dozen humanoid robots like I’ve never seen before. They have silicone skin, mechanical mouths and eyebrows, and creepy glass eyes that blink and move. They’re dressed in the same unisex blue smocks, smiling and scooping as people order their food.
Fortunately, the bots don’t have hai
r — just a bald silicone forehead in the front and a skull made of clear plastic in the back. When the bot nearest me moves its head from side to side, I see a rainbow of wires and mechanical components working behind its eyes.
Feeling queasy, I skip the line altogether and grab a bowl of corn flakes from the cereal bar in the back. Ping joins my table just as I’m finishing up, clearly blown away by the robot lunch ladies.
I say goodbye, dump my tray, and jog down the escalator to the lower deck. I scoot into the briefing room five minutes before the meeting and find my place at the end of the line.
The other officers are around my age. Some are younger; some are older. I recognize most of them from officer training, but we aren’t exactly friends.
The other sergeants got recruited straight out of the armed forces. About half of them are American, but there are also recruits from the UK, India, France, and Germany. They were all still completely enmeshed in military life, whereas I’ve been out of the game for two whole years. While they were stationed overseas or training guys back home, I was busy playing security guard and toning the asses of LA’s elite.
Captain Callaghan walks in at oh seven hundred, and the sergeant closest to the door yells to get our attention. We all stand at parade rest, and Callaghan shoots us all a dirty look.
Callaghan might be an asshole, but he’s the real deal. According to his profile, he served in Russia about the same time I did and was deployed to Ukraine a few years before that.
“Listen up, people . . . For those of you who don’t know, I’m Captain Callaghan. I oversee this company. Squad leaders, meet your COs. Memorize their faces. If you need your hand held, your nose wiped . . . they are your first stop. Any real problems will be passed up to me.” He glares down at us, and I feel his eyes linger on me. “If an issue makes it to my desk, God help you.”
I glance around at the rest of the squad leaders. They all look as though they’d rather be dead than find themselves at Callaghan’s mercy.
“Sergeants, keep your squads in line. I do not tolerate any drama in my company. Troublemakers get a one-way ticket back to Earth — no questions asked.”
He looks around accusingly, as if we’re already guilty of wasting his time.
“So far we’re only at twenty-five percent capacity. Don’t anybody panic. Your squads should start to fill out by the middle of the week. By the end of Reception, we’ll be at full capacity.”
He folds his arms behind his back and starts to pace. “One thing you’ll notice about the men and women under your command is that a lot of them wouldn’t survive public daycare, much less make it through basic in any branch of the armed forces.”
His mouth tightens into a thin line. “Maverick Enterprises and the Department of Defense seem to be laboring under the delusion that the greatest threat we face is a cyberattack from an enemy combatant. That’s why they’ve hired a bunch of eggheads to serve in this company.”
There’s a brief pause, as if to say that he knows better than Maverick and the DoD.
“Personally, it’s my belief that we need to be ready to weather any sort of attack — not just one that comes in the form of zeroes and ones. I’ve taken the liberty of reviewing each recruit’s file personally. Most of them don’t have a lick of combat experience. It’s your job to train them up to Space Force standards in ten weeks’ time. If you don’t, it’ll be your ass on the line as well as theirs.”
A few officers around me exchange nervous looks. I wonder how much input Captain Callaghan got in the recruitment process. He definitely didn’t have any say in recruiting me. He’s made it perfectly clear that he’d rather not have me at all.
“Don’t think this is gonna be a cake walk just because we’re in space,” he continues. “I expect you to train your squads as if you were heading into a war zone. The Bureau for Chaos is still at large, but that doesn’t mean that an attack won’t come in the form of an invasion or a missile.”
Callaghan stops pacing and eyes each of us in turn, settling on me for what seems like a very long time.
“Our job is to stay one step ahead of the enemy. Catastrophes can happen when you least expect them.”
11
Maggie
I wake up suddenly with the immediate feeling that I’ve overslept. The room is a blur of white and gray, and for a second I completely forget where I am. I’ve got a cellophane wrapper wedged under my boob, and the mattress is littered with pretzel crumbs — not the first time I’ve woken up in this position.
I look out the window. The view is pitch black. There’s no traffic noise whatsoever — no noise at all except the gentle whir of an air conditioner.
I sit up. Something about my room is different. That’s when I remember that I’m no longer in my apartment. I’m in my suite aboard Elderon. I’m living in space.
I grab my glasses and touch my Optix. The time is flashing in the upper right-hand corner, but it looks as though it’s still set to Pacific Time. It’s a quarter ’til two, which means it’s four forty-five back home and a quarter ’til nine on Elderon.
Shit. Double shit.
I must have fallen asleep without setting an alarm. I’m supposed to meet my new editor for a briefing in fifteen minutes, and I still don’t know where the newsroom is.
I swear and roll out of bed, searching in vain for my clothes. All I find is my balled-up jumpsuit and the boots I kicked off last night. Still in my undies, I open my door a tiny crack and peer out into the corridor. My cargo bins are nowhere in sight.
Fuck! The bots were supposed to drop off my stuff by eleven last night, and now I have nothing to wear.
Feeling frantic, I dig down in my messenger bag and shake out my wrinkled pair of jeans. I’m still wearing my “Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down” T-shirt from the Revolutionary Café. I can’t meet my editor looking like this.
Pulling up a map of the colony, I find the hospitality offices. They’re located on the upper deck — across the station from my suite.
Not caring that I’ve got full-on mad-scientist hair, I fly down the stairs to the first floor of my pod, sprint through the fitness center, and jump on the escalator.
It’s clogged with about a hundred other people going about their day. Several of them are dressed in lab coats and Dockers. They must be the university researchers. The Silicon Valley people are all in jeans, tennis shoes, and those hideous neon puffer jackets — as though it’s so cold on the climate-controlled space station.
Squeezing my way between two Brits talking rat DNA, I shoot off the escalator and make a beeline for the clean white counter outside hospitality. There’s already a line six or seven deep, and I swear so loudly that several people turn to look in my direction.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
I shift anxiously from one foot to the other, watching the minute hand on the clock hanging over the counter. It’s five ’til nine — five minutes until I make a horrible first impression by showing up late and unshowered on the first day of work. Great.
I have no idea what this editor is like — only that Alex Brennan was enough of a shark to make it to the galactic press corps. He was the senior associate editor for The Atlantic before moving on to The Times and getting poached by Maverick Enterprises. He’s gotta be Darth Vader with an AP Stylebook.
Suddenly, a smiling woman appears in front of me, and I realize I’ve reached the front of the line. The woman is wearing the same crisp white dress and blue scarf as Space Barbie Vanessa. She’s got light-mocha skin and dark-brown eyes and looks as though she just waltzed out of a skin-care ad.
“Good morning.”
“Morning.”
“Are you enjoying your stay on Elderon?”
“Uh . . . yeah.” There’s something weird about this girl. She’s looking right at me, and yet I get the distinct impression that she’s not really listening.
“Wonderful. How can I help you?”
I let out a breath of relief mixed with exasperation. “So I
woke up this morning, and my cargo bins are still MIA. I don’t have any clothes to wear — or deodorant — not to mention my desktop. I haven’t eaten breakfast, and I’m supposed to meet my editor in, like, five minutes.”
“I am so sorry to hear that,” says the woman, offering an apologetic smile. “Let me see what I can find out.”
She pushes a little scanner across the counter toward me, and I place my hand over the glass. The scanner reads my fingerprints, and the woman turns her attention to her Optix.
The picture from my press credentials appears in front of her. I see a line of bold red text marching across the page, but I can’t read the words in reverse.
“Thank you for your patience, Ms. . . . Barnes. Just give me one moment . . .”
She fiddles around with her Optix for a few seconds, and her cool-as-a-cucumber expression wavers.
“I’m sorry,” she says, refocusing on me. “But it seems that your cargo was not delivered to your suite last night.”
Well, duh. “That’s what I just said.”
The woman cracks an accommodating smile. “The system is showing me that your cargo is still en route.”
“En route to where?” I ask impatiently, flinging my body over the counter and trying to read what it says on her Optix.
“Hmm. It appears that there was an error with your delivery information. This bot seems to be headed to a different sector altogether.”
“Where’s the bot now?”
“The tracking information is telling me that he is somewhere in the defense module . . . Sector Q.”
“He?” I repeat.
“This particular bot has a masculine designation,” she explains. “I can redirect him to your room —”
“No,” I say quickly. “There’s no time. Can I just find the bot and grab my stuff?”
“If you’d prefer . . . The bot will require your biometric credentials to unload somewhere other than his designated —”
“Fine!” I say, slapping my palms on the desk. “Beam me the location.”
She nods, still unfazed by my attitude.