The Forgotten Outpost

by Gus Flory

  “When do I get to take a ride on this spacecraft?” Butcher asked.

  “We’ll arrange that with our Reptilian overlords,” Hsu said, to more laughter.

  Hsu clicked to the next slide up on the screen, which depicted a roundup of Titan’s main sources of information.

  “Sir, as you know, Alan James is only a small part of Titan’s dynamic media environment. Earth and Mars media are readily available here. We have a lively ecosystem of local websites and chat forums that cover a variety of topics, including the military and politics. As far as local video streams, we have several entertainment sites that runs dramas and comedies, a few of which are produced here on Titan. And there’s the Titan News Network, which covers local news. While friendly to the Solar System Federation and the Army, Titan News is not hesitant to report on any of our mishaps or the misbehaviors of our troops. Your I.O. officer will get the chance to interact with our local reporters and media producers, and you’ll have the opportunity to conduct interviews and press conferences, which we’ve found are a great way to shape the information environment. This concludes my brief, sir, subject to your questions.”

  Butcher turned to Diego. “I want to do an interview with Titan News once our transfer of authority is complete. And find out everything you can about this Alan James joker. I want to know where he lives, who’s paying his bills, what he eats for breakfast, the name of his cat, everything.”

  “Roger, sir.”

  The 690th JAG officer began her brief on the number of legal cases involving brigade soldiers over the past year.

  Diego looked over his shoulder and caught sight of Staff Sgt. Moxley studying Col. Butcher for a long moment. Moxley took notes on his tablet, then looked up and saw Diego watching him. Moxley smiled, gave a thumb’s up and directed his attention at the JAG officer up on the big screen.

  The briefing concluded, and Col. Banerjee signed off. The staff then mingled in the conference room talking about their imminent arrival on Titan. A feeling of anticipation filled the room.

  “You ready to get off this ship of fools?” the brigade intelligence officer, Maj. Marvin Mangal, asked. Mangal was tall and skinny with wavy black hair, and dark, deep-set eyes. He was young for a major, having shot up the ranks quickly. He was quick to laugh, often cynical and known for his sharp mind.

  “It’s been a long voyage,” Diego said. “It’ll be nice to feel the pull of gravity again.”

  “Yes, it will, even if that pull is only 14 percent that of Earth.”

  “What do you make of this talk of Robodan being on Titan?”

  “It’s bunk. Amad Robodan is a high-value target with a price on his head. If he were to show up on Titan, we’d know. We’d roll up him up. Take him out. It would be a major victory for Butcher and the Dragon Brigade to capture or kill him. If Robodan’s still alive, he’s hiding in a cave on Callisto like the coward he is.”

  “I got the feeling the boss wants him to be there.”

  “He’d love that—the chance to capture him and be the hero. But it ain’t gonna happen.”

  “How are you so sure?”

  “You don’t know what’s going on here, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Butcher is the most decorated officer in the Army. He’s a warrior. Close on the enemy and destroy. That’s what he’s all about. Think about that for a moment. Kinetic operations ended on Titan three years ago. All the action is on Callisto and Ganymede. Why do you think the command sent their most aggressive commander to a forgotten outpost on the most distant human colony in the Solar System?”

  “You’re the intel officer. You tell me.”

  “That’s just it. Titan has been forgotten. The war is over there. There’s no chance for glory.” Mangal leaned forward. “As you know, things get political in the general officer ranks. Lots of egos. And few slots to promote into. Butcher’s made enemies amongst his peers. He says what he means, damn the consequences. He’s relentless, single-minded. He wins his battles, but he drives his soldiers hard, often to the grave. He’s never been one to shy away from losing soldiers if it means victory. If the Dragon Brigade had deployed back to Callisto, Butcher would’ve racked up the Neo-Fascist body count into the thousands and he would’ve smoked Robodan out of his hole. We might not have survived it, but he would’ve ended the war, returned to Mars a hero and they’d be forced to promote him to general. Instead, they sent him out to the farthest reaches of humanity to be forgotten. He’s now gone four years on a peace and stabilization operation. His peers will get promoted in his absence. On his return he’ll be quietly retired, thanked for his service, and sent out to pasture.”

  “But if Alan James is correct and Amad Robodan is on Titan, Butcher smokes him out of his hole and returns to Mars a hero. He’ll get his star after all.”

  “Wishful thinking. Alan James is full of hot air. I would take anything he says with a grain of salt.”

  Staff Sgt. Moxley floated through the crowd and hovered behind Diego’s shoulder. He planted his boots on the floor with a click.

  He tipped his head to Maj. Mangal. “Sir.”

  Mangal nodded in acknowledgement.

  Moxley then looked up at Diego. “It looks like our I.O. cell is going to have our work cut out for us.”

  “They’ll be plenty of work,” Diego said.

  “I’ve already built a file on Alan James. He’s good at fooling the biometrics system and changing identities and appears to move between Cassini City, Huygenstown and several of the smaller Noer communities along the equator.”

  “Give the section the complete brief once we get to the surface. Get with LT and Chief and tell them to have their B-bags in the APOD by 1600 hours. Only A-Bags and combat packs on the drop. Full battle rattle. We’ve got an hour until formation.”

  “Roger, sir,” Moxley said. He pushed off the floor and floated to the conference room door.

  “He seems to have bounced back nicely after the death of his girlfriend,” Mangal said.

  “She wasn’t his girlfriend. At least not as far as I can prove.”

  Diego parted from Mangal and headed out the conference room and down the Bell’s corridors. The ship was bustling with activity. Soldiers floated down the corridors loaded down with duffel bags, ruck sacks and assorted gear. Misplaced items floated out of open pod doors—socks, gloves, toothpaste tubes, 550 cord, strips of duct tape. Soldiers yelled out hit-times and clean-up detail rosters.

  Diego reached the officer quarters and entered his room. He packed his few possessions into his duffel, ruck and combat pack and then suited up in his yellow-gray camouflaged Tactical Battle Armor—Version 5, the TBA-V5.

  He floated in the emptiness of his room, examining his gear. Saturn was now large outside his window, a beautiful sight in all its ringed glory. He flipped on his handheld and checked for messages but found none.

  He scrolled through the last photos Havana had sent. He smiled at a picture of Tegan playing the piano at her recital. Another showed George in a baseball cap sitting in front of the flat screen playing a video game with a friend. Another was of Havana, Tegan and George leaning toward the camera smiling while eating pizza at a food court in the central atrium in New Moscova.

  He flipped through older pictures until he came to one of the whole family together shortly after he had returned from his last deployment. He had a big grin on his face. Havana was looking up at him smiling as he held both kids in his arms. Tegan was smiling from ear to ear while George was sticking out his tongue.

  He attached the handheld to his forearm. He slipped his pistol into its holster, slung his rifle around his back, gathered his bags and guitar case and left his pod for the last time.

  Sergeants barked commands that echoed through the Bell’s cavernous loading bays. Soldiers packed their bags into containers in a bustle of activity. The brigade’s maneuver battalion had already made the drop to the surface. Headquarters company was next.

  Diego found his three s
oldiers waiting for him next to their cases and bags anchored to the bay floor with carabiners.

  “All our gear is accounted for,” Moxley said. “Chief and LT are ready to load up.”

  “Load ‘em up,” Diego said.

  They loaded their bags and cases into a container. As always in the Army, it was hurry up and wait. They joked and chatted as they waited on the bay floor. The excitement of finally leaving the Bell after nearly a year voyaging through the Outer Solar System was evident on all their faces.

  “Fall in!”

  The soldiers of headquarters company formed up in platoons. Their magnetic boots clicked as they planted them on the bay floor.

  “Company!” the first sergeant bellowed. “Atten-shun!”

  They snapped to attention.

  “At ease,” the first sergeant said.

  He strode in front of the platoons, his boots clicking with each step on the metallic floor. “Well, this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. It’s finally here. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to get off this bucket of bolts.”

  “Hooah!” the soldiers bellowed.

  “Some of you have made multiple combat drops. Others have never dropped before. As you all know, this will probably be the most dangerous part of our mission. We’ll be at our most vulnerable, so put your game faces on. No joking and jinxing. Remember your training. Keep an eye on your battle buddy. Conduct your PCCs and PCIs. Let’s look sharp. Let me get a hooah.”

  “Hooah!”

  “All right, then, Dragons. Let’s do this.”

  He stood up straight in front of the formation and called them to attention. “At the command of fall out, line up in your assigned chalks. Fall out!”

  The soldiers separated from the floor and floated across the bay clustered in squads.

  “Chalks one through five!” the first sergeant bellowed. “Load up!”

  The first five chalks pulled themselves through the transport tubes and into one of five bullet-shaped rocket landers docked on the port side of their massive troop transport. The landers were built to drop from the ship through the atmosphere and onto the surface and then rocket back up to pick up the next chalk. They would drop and return ten times before all the soldiers of the brigade were on the surface. The landing would take nearly 24-hours until complete.

  Diego pulled himself down the narrow transport tube toward the lander. The boots of the soldier in front of him were in his face as he floated down the tube. He could feel LT behind him, bumping his hands and helmet against Diego’s boots every time movement in the tube slowed.

  Diego entered the lander, found his seat and strapped himself in. Crew chiefs wearing helmets with visors down moved from soldier to soldier, checking straps and pulling them tight.

  The hollow sound of giant metal clamps unlocking and releasing reverberated as the lander separated from the Bell.

  Diego looked over at LT who had his eyes closed and was breathing deeply.

  “You ready for this, Obuyaye?”

  LT opened his eyes and gave a sidelong glance at Diego. “Yeah. Piece of cake.” He gave a thumb’s up, shut his eyes again and took a deep breath.

  Moxley rolled his eyes. Diego smiled.

  The lander gained speed. It shuddered violently as it plunged into Titan’s thick nitrogen atmosphere. The retro rockets fired intermittently, shaking the lander as it buffeted through the clouds. But the lower gravity meant the drop was slower and less violent than one on Mars or Earth.

  The lander plummeted through the reddish-orange clouds, glowing from the friction. The retro rockets roared as the lander descended toward a giant circular landing pad on a flat expanse on the outskirts of Camp Hammersteel.

  The moon was enveloped in a thick, yellow haze. Through the haze, Camp Hammersteel came into view below. The camp was laid out in a grid pattern of interconnected buildings and hangars centered by a large headquarters complex, called the Tactical Operations Center, or TOC, situated on a hill. The camp was backset by rugged mountains and overlooked dunes, rocky plains, hills and the methane sea of Kraken Mare. Saturn loomed huge and beautiful, filling a third of Titan’s yellow sky.

  The blast from the rockets increased in power. The lander shook in ferocious turbulence until, abruptly, the skeds made landfall with a jarring crunch.

  Everything was still.

  “Hey, look at this,” Moxley said. He tossed his handheld. It fell back slowly into his hand. “Gravity.”

  The soldiers smiled. They lifted their arms and turned their heads, adjusting to the nearly forgotten sensation of gravity’s pull.

  They unlatched themselves from their seats and stood in the narrow confines of the lander. They lined up and slowly made their way to the hatch.

  Like nearly everyone in the line, Diego checked his handheld. He had a signal again. But still no messages from home.

  He exited the lander, walked down the passenger bridge and entered a holding area with a high ceiling of rafters and beams. Painted on the far wall were the words, “T-FORCE Landing Station 2.” Patches from units that had rotated through here were tacked on the wall in a quilt-like pattern.

  Chief stuck the brigade’s dragon fire patch onto the quilt.

  The troops lined up to be scanned into the Titan biometrics system.

  “We made it, sir,” LT said. “Titan. Safe and sound.”

  “You didn’t lose your lunch.”

  “No, sir.” LT took a deep breath. “My headache is gone. The air is good here. It doesn’t smell like burned metal. The CO2 scrubbers are working properly for a change.”

  LT held up his handheld. “Check it out, sir.”

  Depicted on his handheld was a picture of his wife. She was in her panties and bra, blowing a kiss.

  “Looks like she’s been working out.”

  “Oh, yeah. She’s a dancer. Three hours in the studio every day. She’s getting ready for when I get home.”

  “She’s got two-and-a-half more years to train.”

  “That’s right. And when I get back, we’ll do the boogie all night long. Oh, yeah.”

  Once scanned into the biometrics system, the soldiers loaded onto trams. The tram cars sealed shut and shot out of the terminal into a twilight orange moonscape.

  This far out in the Solar System, the distant sun appeared nothing more than a large star aglow in the yellow sky, casting its dim light through the tholin haze.

  The tram clacked over tracks that ran across a rock-strewn plain. Hills beyond the plain sloped upward to craggy mountains. To the south, the smooth, black surface of Kraken Mare merged with the horizon. The rocky shoreline of the methane sea twisted and turned in narrow fjords adjoined by sweeping bays. Farther off shore were large islands. Above the horizon dominating the sky was the immensity of Saturn.

  A lone ship cruised across Kraken Mare under giant Saturn and its rings.

  “Looks like a pleasure cruise,” Chief said.

  “Amazing,” LT said. “Boats. What a sight. It’s like being on another planet.”

  “Titan is a moon,” Moxley said.

  The tram curved across the plain. Camp Hammersteel came into view. Its buildings, hangars and towers were surrounded by a high wall that ringed the camp.

  The tram pulled parallel to a highway. Automated trucks and rugged passenger vehicles with knobby tires rolled up and down the highway following the glow of blue and green guide lights.

  Concrete traffic barriers channeled vehicles toward a large gate manned by security guards. The guards held rifles and wore armored suits and helmets that protected them from small-arms fire and from temperatures that dropped below minus-180 degrees Celsius.

  Several vehicles and trucks were lined up awaiting entry into the camp.

  A guard waved a vehicle forward. It pulled up to the gate where a large robotic scanner moved from left to right scanning the vehicle for weapons and explosives.

  The tram shot through the gate’s rail entrance and entered the camp.

&nb
sp; “There’s the dining facility,” a soldier said, pointing to a large building set in rows of smaller buildings.

  “That must be the PX.”

  “There’s the gym. I recognize it from the map.”

  The tram slowed and entered a tunnel. It came to a stop in darkness. The doors slid open revealing the inside of a large hangar where soldiers sat at fold-out tables behind computer screens. Above them was a sign that read, “Welcome to Camp Hammersteel. Keeping the peace since 2096.”

  The soldiers of the Dragon Brigade stepped out of the tram onto the hangar floor.

  “Scan in at the stations,” the first sergeant bellowed. “Your counterpart will take you to your quarters.”

  They lined up behind the tables.

  “Major Zanger?” a young female captain asked.

  “Captain Hsu,” Diego said.

  They shook hands.

  She was skinny, like a distance runner.

  “Good to finally meet you in person. We’re happy you’re here, sir.”

  “I bet you guys are ready to go home.”

  She smiled. “The sooner we complete the RIP-TOA, the sooner we get to leave. We plan on being as efficient as possible.”

  Hsu tapped at her handheld and transferred maps and schedules to Diego.

  After Diego checked in, Hsu led him and his team out onto Camp Hammersteel’s main concourse. They walked on the concrete walkway under a high ceiling ribbed with struts and steel beams. Soldiers with pistols on their hips ambled along in small groups. Contractors in baseball caps, T-shirts, jeans and work boots walked briskly to and from the entrances of buildings that lined the concourse. Electric carts carrying soldiers zipped past.

  To Diego, the camp looked temporary. Many of the buildings were connexes and clamshell hangars linked together by corridors and enclosed passageways. Camp Hammersteel had originally been a forward operating base, but since the end of hostilities, it had taken on the appearance of a peacetime garrison.

  Compared to posts on Mars, the conditions here on Camp Hammersteel had a frontier appearance. But unlike forward operating bases on Ganymede and Callisto, the urgency and threat of war appeared absent.

  Capt. Hsu led them to the headquarters company supply room where they found their duffels and rucks stacked in a container out front. They gathered up their gear and followed Hsu to their quarters.