The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera

by David Afsharirad

  The kid laughed and Meathead’s face flushed red.

  “Or you can give that back to me and we’ll pretend this never happened.”

  “Give it back to him!” the little girl said. “Are you morons trying to get us all killed?”

  Meathead’s buddy poked him in the arm. “Just give him the damned can and let’s go get some grub. Eisenhower didn’t tell you to take his stuff anyway.”

  I smiled and nodded, then winced at the pain in my jaw.

  Meathead tossed Felicia’s canister in my direction. It tumbled and I did some silly juggling to keep it from hitting the floor. The goons laughed, and by the time I had it tucked it safely under my arm, they were strutting down the corridor with their backs to the girl and me.

  I took a deep breath and dabbed at the blood trickling down my cheek.

  “You’re a dumbass,” she said.

  I shrugged and slipped past her. “And you have a foul mouth. Go home before you get into trouble.”

  She followed me. “Me get into trouble? I saved your ass! If I hadn’t come along they would have beat you into pudding.”

  “I guess I do owe you some thanks, but you shouldn’t have done that. Those guys wouldn’t hesitate to hit a kid.”

  I palmed the lock plate on my door. It slid open and I nearly dropped Felicia as the kid slipped past me into my dark cabin.

  “What the f—” I growled then heard Felicia again.

  “Don’t yell at her, Clarke.”

  I took a deep breath and paused just inside the door. “Let’s have some lights, Calvin.”

  The cabin computer turned on the lights and I could see her sitting in my only chair, legs dangling as she examined a power regulator module from one of my mining robots.

  “You have an AI!”

  “Just a smart computer,” I said. “I spliced it into the cabin electronics. I do a lot of stuff like that. Now go home.”

  “My mom says you’re crazy.”

  I glowered at her. “Does she also say that you’re rude?”

  The girl laughed. “All the time.”

  “Look, kid, you can’t be in here. I could get in a lot of trouble.” The door started to close, but I grabbed it and held it open. “Go home.”

  “Why would you get in trouble?”

  “I’m sure your mom has warned you about being alone with strange men.”

  She reached for a paper book I had laying on the table, then stopped and looked at me with a perplexed expression. “You talk funny. You weren’t born on the station?”

  “No. I was born on Earth. In Chicago. Now, you really need to leave.”

  With a slow shake of her head, she crossed her arms and grinned. “You’ll have to throw me out and if you do, I’ll start screaming that you touched me in the naughty place.”

  Anger flared and I activated my wrist unit—ready to call security to come remove her—then stopped. Had I really just considered calling Security?

  “Calvin? Lock the door open and keep a video record until this kid leaves.”

  “Understood,” Calvin said.

  The kid shrugged. “My name is Nora, not kid.”

  I leaned against the wall next to the door and hoped I hadn’t already attracted more attention from Security. The girl twisted her mouth into an odd slant as she looked around again. She had a squarish face and the same dark hair with pale skin that seemed to dominate the station’s worker population, but her eyes were bright and inquisitive, which made her stand out from most of the drug addled adults.

  “So how old are you? And why does your mother let you run around alone?”

  “I’m nine. And my mom has to do double shifts until I’m old enough to work in the factory. Food and space for two she always says.”

  I nodded, but hadn’t ever thought about how people managed to raise kids on the station.

  “Mom won’t let go to the factory yet, but I used to help out when I got paid for scrubbing air ducts. I used to be small enough to crawl inside, but I think they found a smaller kid.”

  My stomach tightened and I suddenly felt very ignorant about the people surrounding me.

  “Would you like a food bar?”

  “Sure,” she said, and her face brightened.

  I pulled one from my pants pocket and tossed it to her. She opened it and gobbled it down in three bites.

  “It’s a good thing that security guy is stupid,” she said as she chewed.

  I blinked at the sudden change of subject. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Mars will be at its closest point in a few weeks. They’d have plenty of time to kill you and get a replacement from Mars.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Holy crap, kid. You’re a real piece of work.”

  “Stop calling me ‘kid.’ My name’s Nora. By the way, you’re a terrible liar. Decompression wouldn’t squirt that guy through a small hole. His body would just block it. You’d need a big hole.”

  “I never said a small hole, but I think he got the point.”

  She shrugged and looked at me through squinted eyes. “You need to clean up. When’s the last time you changed clothes?”

  I looked down to see fresh blood droplets added to the food and sweat stains on my dingy island shirt.

  “Sorry. Hey, this has been nice . . . Nora, but it’s time for you to go.”

  She ignored my comment and nodded toward Felicia’s canister. “What’s in the can that you were ready to kill for?”

  My initial reaction was to tell her it was none of her business, but then I decided maybe the truth would shock her into leaving. I stroked the cool black metal canister and then held it up. “This is my wife, Felicia.”

  The kid blinked then frowned. “Um, right. Is it some kind of computer? Or a game machine?”

  “When my wife died, she was cremated and her ashes were sealed in this container.”

  That got her attention. She had a horrified look on her face and leaned forward on the chair. “Ashes? She wasn’t recycled?”

  I shook my head. “They . . . sometimes do things differently on Earth and Mars.”

  “That’s kinda creepy,” she said.

  I shrugged.

  “Then why do you talk to it? That’s why my mom thinks you’re nuts.”

  “Nora!”

  The yell came from just behind my right ear and made me flinch. Nora’s mother rushed into the cabin, grabbed her daughter by the arm and pulled her upright. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just talking,” Nora said, then grinned at me. “He tried to make me leave, but I was having fun. Did you know that his dead wife is in that can?”

  “Oh, Nora,” the woman said and ran a hand through limp, messy hair that was dark like her daughter’s. She also had the same squarish face, but hers had sharp angles from being much too thin. Her eyes were dull with exhaustion and she seemed on the brink of tears.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Clarke Kooper,” I said and extended my hand.

  She edged past me out the door, dragging the girl with her, and once safely in the hall, turned back and glanced at my bloody cheek and wild hair, half of which had come out of my ponytail during the fight. She took my still-extended hand. “I’m Wendy and I don’t think you’re crazy. Nora just . . . has a rather vivid imagination.”

  “She’s been quite,” I struggled for a word that wouldn’t sound rude, “entertaining.”

  “I’m sure she has,” Wendy said with a sigh then turned to Nora. “C’mon, you little monster, let’s go eat some dinner.”

  As I watched them go down the hall I thought about inviting them to eat dinner with me, then reconsidered. I didn’t need to form any new attachments. I’d either be gone or dead within a few weeks.

  The next day in my hub-based control center, I kicked off from the interface station and floated to the wall hiding my salvation. I resisted the urge to run my hand along the section where the door would appear. On the other side, exposed to the bitter cold
asteroid belt, was a four-by-three-meter external equipment blister I’d quietly and secretly converted into an escape pod.

  I moved on to the robot launch tube, cycled it and opened the hatch. Burnt smelling air poofed into the cabin as I pulled out the basketball-sized mining drone called a Mining Operations Manager, or MOM. Once I locked it into the fixture on my test bench, I changed its status to inactive then opened the main access cover. I slipped my hand inside and removed the mostly empty nano replicator bladder. The “mostly empty” designation could get me killed if station security found out. Nano-device manufacture was strictly controlled and each tiny robot made for a MOM had to be loaded into the MOM. But nothing could count the replicators that left the MOM out on an ice ball, the number of times they reproduced or the number that returned with it. This bladder was still a quarter full.

  With a series of coded taps against the MOM’s inner shell, I directed the remaining replicators into a hidden conduit that allowed them to flow into the empty spaces in the station’s hull structure, where they would hide until I needed them.

  A loud beep announced the door opening and when I turned the breath caught in my throat. Bernard Eisenhower drifted into the room. He wore his trademark half smile that never reached his eyes. He could be beating a suspect or chatting up a pretty girl and the smile was always the same. I tried to force myself to relax. He probably wore augmentations that helped him read and record fluctuations in body heat, heart rate and eye movements.

  “Hello, Clarke. How goes the dowsing? Your magic water stick still working?”

  I smiled and pushed my feet into the cleats at my workbench. “Business is slow. But given time, I’m able to find enough ice to keep us going.”

  He worked his way around the room, looking into every open device, picking up and examining each scroll screen. He nodded repeatedly to himself.

  “My boys told me about your little threat yesterday.”

  “They should leave me alone. I’m just trying to do my job.”

  “No, you aren’t doing your job, Clarke. Instead, you’re playing a dangerous game with Arturo Station’s water supply. That makes it a Security issue, which is why I sent my men to talk with you in the first place.”

  Eisenhower might be a bully and abusive with his power, but he wasn’t totally stupid. After my first week on Arturo Station, when I realized the highly addictive productivity enhancement drug called Canker had been put into my food—and that of nearly every worker on board—I started planning how to get out of the situation. That had been nearly a year ago, and much of the ice I collected had been stored in secret tanks I’d hidden inside the hull, but the official ice I “found” for the station had dropped at a steady rate ever since. Making management and security think we had a limited supply was my only insurance if my escape plot were ever discovered.

  “My predecessor used up all the close ice balls. I have to send my bots further and further out. It takes time. Maybe management should move the station to richer hunting grounds or better yet, tighten up their water reclamation system.”

  “Bullshit, Clarke. There’s ice out there close. Our scanners see it.”

  “In small amounts. It would take twice as long if I tried to mine every little grapefruit-sized nugget out there.”

  Eisenhower glared at me. “Your replacement is on the way. I’m sure he’ll have better luck.”

  I snorted and shrugged.

  “You don’t believe that?”

  “Hell no. If my replacement were on the way you wouldn’t be wasting your time talking to me. My corpsicle would already be tumbling out toward Jupiter.”

  His smile almost broadened and he started toward the hatch. “Don’t push it, Clarke. We have backups you don’t know about and we will send you spinning to Jupiter if that ice tonnage doesn’t come up a lot and very quickly.”

  I exited at my level and Nora was waiting again, this time just outside the lift. Her face lit up and she started chattering.

  “You’re really from Earth?”

  “Yep.”

  “I was born here,” she said. “Momma too. She was in the first generation born on the station.”

  “So she’s never been off of Arturo?”

  Nora shook her head as we approached my door. “No. Momma said they’ll never let us leave.”

  Many of the workers would be afraid to leave. Canker was an ugly thing. It was named for the sores that formed around a user’s mouth during the long and nasty withdrawal period. It left scars on most and even killed some. Arturo Station was just one of dozens that operated outside the Earth and Mars protective zones, so unless those governments had overwhelming evidence these atrocities were going on—something that would get a lot of press attention—then they would ignore the rumors. They had too many of their own problems to go looking for more.

  Nora and her mother would likely spend their entire lives as slaves in this illicit bioware factory.

  “So why aren’t you in school?” I said as I opened my door.

  She shrugged. “I’ve learned everything they have to teach me.”

  I snorted. “Sure you have. So you’re an expert on Mars history, European literature and calculus?”

  “They don’t teach us that stuff. But I know how to clean bio-vats and assemble crystal matrices.”

  I just stared at her as she slipped past me and into my cabin. She looked around, then turned back to me.

  “I’ll clean your cabin for five credits!”

  “Huh?”

  “Or I can mend clothes? Anything like that. I need to earn some money. Seth has been coming a lot more since I lost my duct cleaning job. I hate Seth.”

  I scratched my beard. “Sure.”

  I locked the door open again and started giving her instructions on what to clean. She worked fast, folding clothes, shelving books, separating my trash into the proper recycling bags.

  I hated this station and its criminal overlords since I first realized I’d been tricked, but had always kind of blamed myself for my own stupidity in coming. That wasn’t the case for these people. They had no choice. They were born on the station and probably didn’t even exist in any citizen records outside this place, but were still made to pay for food and a sleeping berth. It wasn’t mean or even greedy, it was evil.

  “Well?” she said. “What now?”

  “That’s enough cleaning for now. Calvin? Please transfer fifty credits to Nora’s account.”

  Her eyes widened a bit and she shook her head. “That amount of work wasn’t even worth five.”

  “It was to me.”

  She bit her lip and stared at me for a second before darting down the hall.

  “This is fantastic,” Nora said in a whisper.

  I could barely see her mouth below the interface goggles, but it was stretched into a wide smile. I glanced down at the scroll screen echoing what she saw. The MOM’s work lights swept along one of Arturo Station’s four rotation rings, revealing a complex field of conduits, access hatches, antennae and stenciled identification labels.

  “Could you really find that jerk’s cabin from the outside?” she said, as she tapped and spun the thumb controls on the tele-operation yoke like an expert.

  “If I knew his cabin address,” I said, then briefly took the controls to zoom the MOM’s camera down to read some of the hull identifier text. It read R1S4-43. “These station habitat rings are assembled from hundreds of identical wedge-shaped sections. One for each cabin. So it’s just easier to keep the construction identification tags as a cabin address.”

  “Cool!” she said and took the controls yoke away from me again. “How did you use that camera zoom?”

  I showed her and suddenly the view slaved to my scroll screen started zooming all over the station.

  “I bet you spy on people all the time!”

  “I do not,” I said and took the yoke from her again. “And I think this lesson is over.”

  “Noooo!”

  “We can do it again la
ter.”

  I helped her remove the interface goggles. Her hair floated nearly straight up and she wore a wicked grin.

  “You have a great job.”

  “You didn’t think so until I let you drive a robot.”

  Nora’s mother refused to let her come with me at first. After nearly an hour of Nora’s begging, her mother finally allowed her to accompany me to my hub control center for the day instead of staying in her cabin alone. I thought she might like to watch me launch and retrieve some robots. She’d been fascinated for a while by the video feeds coming back from some of the MOMs as they shepherded their flock of nano-disassemblers through the process of stripping the rock and minerals away, leaving the remaining ice in strange, twisted, lacy sculptures that were returned to the station by the MOM.

  But she eventually got bored with the video feed, and started playing in the microgravity. My control center was really too small of a space for her to be flailing and bumping around, so I had to do something.

  “I like having you for a friend,” she said and then glanced away as if embarrassed that she said it aloud.

  “I like you too,” I said and then felt suddenly and horribly guilty again. My makeshift escape pod was finished. Using nothing but nano-scale robots, I’d bypassed critical systems without sounding alarms and had slowly separated the equipment blister from the station hub. The little ship contained a minimalist acceleration sling and enough air and water for the two-week trip to Mars.

  So why did I feel so damned guilty? She wasn’t my kid, but when my hands started shaking I knew I couldn’t leave her here. I started rearranging the computer model of my escape pod, adding a second acceleration sling, trying to find places to attach more tanks. I’d need near twice as much water and air. I’d also need more fuel to get that extra mass to Mars. Food? Should I take more food or let her suffer the same excruciating withdrawal I would?

  Felicia’s voice echoed in my head, telling me no, that I couldn’t take Nora. I looked up at her canister locked in its special mount, but ignored her and kept working.