by Gus Flory
The quarters on The Bell were more comfortable than those on Space Force troopships. Diego’s pod had a desk, refrigerator, microwave oven, large flat screen on the wall, a bunk set into the bulkhead, and its own commode and shower. And best of all was the window. If he leaned in close, he could see Saturn looming large forward of the ship.
These quarters were stately compared to the open bays and communal living on his voyage to Callisto on his last deployment.
Diego sat at his desk. Magnetic strips in his uniform held him to his chair. He turned on the computer screen. He clicked open a new message from his wife that had arrived while he was out.
Her image appeared. His wife, Havana, was standing in the kitchen in their home on Mars preparing breakfast. She smiled at the camera. He could almost smell her sandy blonde hair. He longed to look into those big brown eyes again.
“Tegan did awesome in her recital yesterday,” she said, while pouring hot cocoa and punching buttons on the microwave. “You should’ve seen her, Dee. She was brilliant, like a little Beethoven. I’ll send you the video when I get a moment. I wish you could’ve been there.”
It was Saturday morning back home. Even early in the morning in the kitchen making breakfast for the kids, in loose-fitting t-shirt, with bed-head hair, she looked great. He ached for her.
“Go wake up your brother,” she said over her shoulder. “We’re going to be late.”
She returned her attention to the camera. “We’re going to a movie today. I’m picking up Shelly and Dana’s kids. Jody’ll be there, too. Then we’re going to the waterpark. I swear, Dee, if I don’t get the kids out of the house on weekends, I start going a little crazy, right?”
“Mom, George isn’t waking up.”
“George!”
She turned back to the camera.
“Have I told how much a help Jody’s been? Our CO2 scrubber went down again and Jody came over and fixed it. Easy. I thought I was going to have to shell out big bucks for a repairman. I better go. We’re going to be late. Love you.”
She reached and clicked and the image closed.
“Who’s Jody?” Diego asked himself.
He leaned back in his chair. From this distance it took about an hour for a message from Mars to reach the ship. He missed having real-time conversations with his wife and kids.
Real-time conversations would have to wait until his return. He’d already spent nearly a year in space on the voyage from Europa to Titan. Then he’d spend a year on Titan. Then another year back to Europa. And it was six months from Europa to Mars.
Four years away from his family. His last deployment had taken him away for two. He was missing his children’s childhoods. He was missing his wife in her youth.
His youth was being spent on cold spaceships and faraway moons. The pay and benefits were good, and if it were any consolation, his income was tax free while deployed. That’s how the Federation made up for all the time the troops spent away from home, and for the risks they took, by paying them respectable salaries and not taxing them during deployments. Combat pay. Hazardous duty pay. Separation pay.
But the pain of separation never went away.
Diego picked up his handheld and clicked on the camera.
“Hey, Tee. It’s your dad. Mom told me about your piano recital yesterday. I wish I could’ve been there. You’re so talented. I swear. You get it from your mother, not me, that’s for sure. Remember that time we played at the brigade ball? You were awesome. Can’t wait till we can play together again. Remind Mom to send me the video, OK?”
Diego floated up from his chair.
“Hey, check this out.”
He floated over to the window and leaned against it until he found the right angle. He flipped the screen around. The image of Saturn filled the screen.
“Pretty cool, huh? You always said Saturn was your favorite planet. Now that I’ve seen it up close, I can see why. You should see the view of it from the bridge. I’ll get you some pics from up there. It’s the most beautiful sight in the Solar System.”
He zoomed in on the yellow orb beyond Saturn’s rings.
“There’s Titan. That’s going to be my home soon. It’s got mountains and lakes and rivers and an atmosphere way thicker than on Mars. I hear we’re going to have an amazing view of Saturn through the clouds.”
Diego pushed away from the window and pulled himself down into his chair. He adjusted the camera.
“In a few hours we’re going to make the drop to Titan. Tell your mom no need to worry. I’ve done drops like this a million times.”
He saw on his screen that Sgt. Moxley was trying to reach him.
“I miss you, Tee. Hey, tell George to send me a message every now and then, would you? And tell Mama I love her. Talk to you soon.”
He clicked off the camera and answered Moxley’s call. The sergeant’s face appeared on the screen.
“Hey, sir. The sync meeting with the 690th is in thirty mikes. I’d like to sit in on it if that’s OK with you.”
“No need for that. I’ve got it covered.”
“I’d like to attend the brief. For situational awareness before our arrival.”
“If that’s what you want to do. But let me warn you, Sergeant Major doesn’t like anyone getting up and leaving before it’s over, and it’s going to be a long one. The colonel likes to get into the weeds.”
“Roger, sir. Brief is an oxymoron, as they say. I’m hearing from our intel shop that something big is happening down on Titan that they’ll be discussing. A new threat. The brief might give me a good overview of the situation on the ground, make me more effective as your NCO, hooah.”
“Roger. Always a new threat with those guys. Don’t be late or Sergeant Major will have your head.”
“Yes, sir.”
Moxley was always trying to insert himself into meetings and briefings, even ones that had little relevance to his duties or position. Diego didn’t mind allowing him to sit in or even fill in for him if the situation allowed.
He had a few minutes before the briefing. He reached under his bunk and pulled out his guitar, an acoustic guitar he’d had for years. He called it his war guitar. It was old and banged up from lugging it around.
He sat at the edge of his bunk and strummed the guitar for several minutes as memories of Havana, Tegan and George filled his mind—his wife and her smile, the way Tegan laughed at his jokes, George playing lacrosse.
Strumming his guitar calmed his mind.
He put the guitar back in its case, checked his uniform in the mirror, then left his pod for the conference room. This meeting was an important one as it was their last with the 690th before their arrival on Titan.
Inside the conference room, everyone’s attention was directed at the large screen that dominated the front wall. Butcher, his command sergeant major and the executive officer sat at a long desk at the front of the room. Seated in the row behind Butcher were the officers in charge of each section on his staff. Diego sat at the end of the row. Junior officers and NCOs sat in the gallery behind the primary staff officers.
The screen above them displayed images of soldiers from the 690th in their operations room on Camp Hammersteel on the surface of Titan. The 690th brigade commander, a dark-eyed man named Col. Banerjee, introduced each member of his staff. Butcher then introduced his staff members.
Each officer in charge of a staff section was known by his section number. The personnel officer was known as the “one,” intelligence was the “two,” operations the “three,” logistics the “four,” plans was “five,” and communications and information systems was the “six.”
Diego, as the information operations officer, was the “seven.” His section was often not included on an infantry brigade headquarters staff. But in the years following the pacification of Titan, information operations had been deemed critical to deterring another outbreak of violence.
Diego’s information operations section consisted of himself, his deputy, who was a fir
st lieutenant named Osei Obuyaye, a warrant officer named Henry Yanez, and Staff Sgt. Kevin Moxley, who was their NCO. Their role on the brigade staff was to analyze and track the information environment on Titan and shape it in the brigade’s favor.
Diego had been attached to the 801st at the last minute in what seemed like an afterthought of some planner at Division headquarters. Diego wasn’t even a trained information officer, but a military intelligence officer. Somehow his name had been selected for this deployment, probably, he thought, because every officer qualified for the billet had been able to weasel out of it.
The 690th executive officer up on the big screen relayed the challenges and difficulties his brigade faced on their yearlong deployment on Titan. Most were issues that arise while in garrison—disciplinary problems caused by boredom, personality conflicts, fraternization and the complications that result from soldiers getting romantically involved with the locals.
Military operations on Titan had ceased nearly three years prior. The colonists had fully submitted to the occupation and jurisdiction of the Solar System Federation. This deployment on Titan, unlike a tour on Jupiter’s moons, was not a combat deployment. The executive officer explained that his brigade’s solution to boredom was constant training exercises for the troops. A rigorous training schedule kept the idle hands and minds of his soldiers out of the devil’s workshop.
The executive officer concluded his comments and the intelligence officer appeared on the screen. He gave an overview of Titan, explaining how the moon’s population was divided between the majority, who accepted the jurisdiction of the Solar System Federation and supported the presence of the Army, and the minority, who wanted independence. Over a million-and-a-half people lived on Titan, spread across the moon in settlements. The largest settlement was the capital, Cassini City, home to more than 500,000 people. The next largest was Huygenstown, population approximately 250,000.
These settlements were dominated by newly arrived immigrants. The Federation had a complex classification system for immigrants, breaking them down into different subgroups or classes, categorizing them by profession, sponsorship, place of origin and so on. Immigrants: Class A were initial settlers. Class B generally had engineering skills. Class C were government administrators. Class E through L were government sponsored immigrants brought in to run the day-to-day life of the colonies and consisted of construction workers, maintenance personnel, business owners, and so on. Most of the newly arrived immigrants on Titan were designated Immigrant: Class E-L, abbreviated to IMCEL, colloquially pronounced “Imcels,” which had become a pejorative in the Noer community. The Imcels had been induced to settle on Titan with a variety of government incentives, including subsidies, free housing, government employment and government guaranteed monopolies.
Spread across Titan were smaller settlements mostly populated by the minority, known as the Noer, named for Vladimir Noer, who had organized the initial colonization of Titan.
Many of the Noer were known to be Neo-Fascist sympathizers, if not outright Neo-Fascist adherents. The Noer and their descendants thought of Titan as their birthright. They resented the newcomers who had overwhelmed them in numbers by design and policy of the Solar System Federation. The newer arrivals dominated the Titanian government and economy.
In 2095, when the S.S.F. Army was occupied with a violent pacification campaign on Ganymede and Callisto, the Noer had rebelled and committed massacres of immigrant populations on Titan. The violence of this period left deep scars on the Titanians.
Soon after the Noer insurrection, the S.S.F. Army arrived on Titan and quickly pacified the moon. The pacification had been complete, and no outbreaks of violence had occurred since the end of kinetic operations in 2097.
“Sir,” the intelligence officer up on the screen said, “at this point, this is only rumor, unconfirmed, but it’s been making the rounds in Noer circles, and we’ve had a few instances of graffiti in Noer communities that’s raised concerns. The rumor is that Amad Robodan has arrived on Titan.”
“Robodan?” Butcher asked.
“Yes, sir. Our sources in the Noer community are saying he’s organizing a Neo-Fascist underground militia that’s going to drive the S.S.F. Army off Titan and take vengeance on T-FORCE and the Imcels.”
Diego watched Butcher closely. He could swear he saw a sparkle in the commander’s eye at the possibility that the most bloodthirsty and infamous war criminal in the Solar System might be on Titan.
2. Camp Hammersteel
“What’s the source of this rumor?” Butcher asked.
The face of the information operations officer for the 690th, a young captain named Grace Hsu, appeared on the big screen. “The source is a man named Alan James, who runs an underground media operation,” she said. “James is a notorious rumor monger who peddles in conspiracy theories, half-truths and Noer gossip. His site has a substantial following, and he’s often able to inject his viewpoints into the lunar conversation. But he’s full of bluster and most on Titan see him as a clown.”
“Tell Colonel Butcher about the I.O. campaign we conducted against Mr. James,” said 690th commander Col. Banerjee.
“Roger, sir,” Capt. Hsu said.
A picture of James appeared on the big screen. He was a tubby man with a wide face and a shock of thinning blonde hair atop his head.
“One of the stories James spread on his site was that an ancient alien spacecraft was buried under the ice on Iapetus. He said it belonged to a race of aliens called Reptilians who secretly rule Earth. James told his followers that the reason the Solar System Federation Army occupied Titan was to secure the spaceship so that Federation scientists could exploit its technology. Of course, humans have been visiting Iapetus for decades now. Space Force has a small station there manned by a few astronauts. Three months ago, we anonymously emailed some photos to James of a spaceship frozen in ice. We told him the pictures were top secret, leaked from a confidential source. He immediately ran a story showing the pictures as proof that the Army was hiding an alien spacecraft on Iapetus. The story created quite a stir on Titan. It even made the rounds with the conspiracy crowd on Mars and Earth. The local news here on Titan eventually picked up on it. The Titan News Network sent an investigative team to Iapetus to see what they could find. What they found was a crazy old hermit who spent all his time building plastic models of spaceships from old science fiction movies—toys, basically. His habitation was filled with them, and he’d throw the ones he didn’t like out onto the ice. Titan News found the spaceship from the pictures Alan James had broadcast. They were pictures of a toy spaceship named the Red Wrath from a popular science fiction movie from the early part of the 21st century. The Titan News investigative reporters had a lot of fun showing the spaceship, zooming it around in their hands, making fun of Alan James.”
Up on the screen, a video showed a female reporter wearing a moon suit in the hermit’s habitation cluttered with plastic models of spaceships, trains, cars and sailing ships. The hermit and the reporter put on their helmets and stepped out of the airlock. The old hermit pointed out the model of the Red Wrath frozen in the ice. The camera zoomed in showing the same image that Alan James had reported was an alien spacecraft. The hermit chipped at the ice until the model broke free. Then he handed it to the reporter who held it in front of the camera in her hand and zoomed it up and down while making spaceship sounds.
“We initiated a meme campaign in the schools encouraging kids to call anyone telling a story that seemed untrue or ridiculous an ‘Alan.’ We got them to say, ‘Don’t be an Alan.’ Or, ‘You’re such an Alan.’ We got them to call outrageous statements ‘Alanisms.’ We had a few popular musicians and actors here on Titan make jokes about being Alans. The most popular singer here, Moira, wrote a song about a boy who was being an Alan. Moira is actually an agent of our PSYOPS team and is an effective means of influencing the youth here. The Alan meme spread quickly and soon we had nearly everyone on Titan saying, ‘Don’t be an Alan.’ Ala
n James’s reputation took a nosedive due to our campaign.”
“This was one of our most successful I.O. campaigns over the past year,” Col. Banerjee said. “Captain Hsu received a Meritorious Service Medal for it.”
“The hermit was a PSYOPS sergeant,” Hsu added. “He’s since redeployed to Mars.”
“Where is Alan James now?” Butcher asked.
“He’s still at it, doing his shtick,” Hsu said. “He’s saying the whole alien spaceship story was a trick to discredit him, which, of course, it was, but he has no way of knowing that. He’s been trying to redeem himself but his reputation has never been lower.”
“Why haven’t you rolled him up?” Butcher asked. “Why play games with him?”
“Sir, as members of the S.S.F. Army, we support and defend freedom of speech and a free press. That being said, James does serve a purpose. We’ve planted other stories with him that he’s run with. He allows us to reach an audience that is skeptical of us, if not outright opposed to our presence here. We track and identify the people who follow him. That way we know who they are and what they’re thinking, to some extent. They show us their cards, so to speak.”
“Is there any truth to Amad Robodan being on Titan?”
“James reported that Robodan arrived disguised as a colonist and that he’s undercover in Cassini City, organizing a resistance movement,” Hsu said.
The 690th intelligence officer jumped in. “We’ve found no evidence of this. We have records of every arrival and departure on Titan, and we have biometrics on all the moon’s residents. If he’s here, the iris and DNA scanners are not tracking him. He’s not using currency for rent, food or transportation.”
“What’s your assessment?” Butcher asked.
“Bottom line up front, I think Alan James is blowing smoke.”
“I think I know where he is,” Butcher said. “He’s hiding on that alien spacecraft on Iapetus.”
Everyone in the room laughed.
