by Gus Flory
“Visitors, boss,” the parakeet said. “You’ve got visitors.”
All the budgies cackled and chirped at once in a cascade of sound like shattering glass.
Dave Carlyle stood in the tree leaves quietly pruning a young apple tree.
“Hello, Dave,” Pristina said.
He looked up from his work. He was a thin elderly man with bushy white hair and blue eyes. He wore work coveralls and had grease on his hands.
“Pristina,” he said. “Sonny.”
He smiled in surprise and hugged them. He held Pristina at arms-length and looked at her. A parakeet dropped slowly onto his shoulder.
“Hi, Prissy,” the budgie said. It then gave a wolf-whistle. “Hi, Prissy.” The wolf-whistle the second time was long and drawn out.
“You behave, Charlie,” Carlyle said. “It’s been ages,” he said to Pristina. “It’s good to see you.”
“Hi, Sonny, little fella,” the budgie said. “Hi, Sonny, little fella.”
“Sonny. You look just like your father. You were this high last time I saw you.”
“How’s business, Dave?” Sonny asked.
“Slow. But the greenhouses are paying off. Pistachios are my cash crop. No one else is growing them yet. I’m raising hogs now, too. Bought a batch of embryos from a Martian contractor. Thirty of them. The little piglets haven’t figured out Titan gravity yet. They keep bouncing off the ceiling. One got sucked into an air duct, right through the fan blades. Messy.”
Carlyle turned to Diego.
“And who is this strapping fellow?”
“A friend,” Pristina said.
“A friend with no name?” Old Man Carlyle’s eyes narrowed. “I know you. You’re Major Zanger.”
“How did you know my name?”
“Your face. It was all over the news yesterday. In fact, I’ve been expecting a T-FORCE patrol to arrive here today asking questions—checking if you’ve been through here.”
Carlyle walked through the trees to the greenhouse door. He pulled it shut and turned around.
“Those two out there. They’re nitrogen pirates. They’ve built a nitrogen collection plant on Cobalt Mountain. I’ve known them for a while. But the third man with them is new. Never seen him before. Could be nothing to worry about, but who knows?”
Diego turned to Pristina. “We can’t stay here. We need to move out. Quickly.”
“You’re right,” Carlyle said. “You can’t stay here. T-FORCE troopers are in here at least once a week. They sit at the counter and chat me up. They’re friendly enough, but they pump me for information. They want to know everyone who’s been through here. Names, destinations. They ask for specific people. Noers. They’re rounding us up. They’ve had Old Man Carlyle under surveillance for quite some time now.”
“We’re headed to Huygenstown,” Pristina said. “We were gliding but the wind picked up. We were hoping to stay here until the storm cleared.”
“Why are you traveling with an AWOL soldier?”
“He helped us, Dave. He saved my life. He saved Tupo from arrest.”
“The patrols come in from the west. From Camp Lonely Mountain. You’ll have to go east. Take one of my rovers. Head down the highway and you’ll avoid the next patrol. Then take the bypass. It’s the long way around but it’ll take you to Huygenstown.”
Carlyle walked out of the greenhouse and across the garage. He led them into the vehicle airlock. Two rovers were parked near a sliding metal door. He ran a diagnostic check on one of the vehicles.
“They’ll be watching the roads with drones. If they catch you with the major, you’ll be arrested, Pristina.”
“We’ll be fine, Dave,” Pristina said. She kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for helping us.”
He opened the door to the rover. “Get going. Nightfall is coming.”
Pristina, Sonny and Diego loaded up into the rover.
“Bye-bye now,” the budgie on Carlyle’s shoulder said. “Bye-bye now.”
Old Man Carlyle stepped out of vehicle airlock. He gave them a thumb’s up from behind a window, then opened the automatic door. Orange air flooded the airlock.
Sonny started up the rover and drove out the driveway and onto the road that ran parallel to the ethane river.
Rain began to fall. Large methane raindrops fell slowly, drifting downward, then hitting the road in big, slow splashes. The raindrops splashed off the windshield and windows. The windshield wipers swished back and forth. The road disappeared behind the rain. Sonny set the rover on auto-drive and turned the headlights off.
“It’s going to be a long ride,” he said.
“Why are you taking me to Huygenstown?” Diego asked.
“To meet Tupo,” Pristina said.
9. Huygenstown
Lightning flashed and flickered in the dark sky. Thunder growled. Large methane raindrops fell slowly in Titan’s low gravity, illuminated by the lightning. The raindrops hit the windshield in slow-motion splashes.
“This is the first time I’ve seen rain,” Diego said.
“Titan and Earth are the only places in the Solar System where it rains,” Pristina said. “Someday I’d like to see a rainstorm on Earth—a tropical rainstorm. I’d like to feel the rain on my skin.”
“I wish that someday, too,” Diego said.
“Maybe the rain will keep the drones away,” Sonny said.
“The drones fly above the clouds,” Diego said. “They can see through them, so the weather is no hindrance.”
“They’re going to locate us then.” He turned to Pristina. “This was stupid to rescue him.”
“They won’t be looking for me out here. They’re probably still searching the city, thinking I’m hiding out in the tunnels, or in some back alley somewhere.”
“I hope you’re right,” Pristina said.
The rover turned onto the bypass and wound through narrow passes between high cliffs. In the flashing lightning, they could see liquid methane flowing like slow-motion waterfalls down the cliff faces.
Hours passed. Eventually, the rain stopped.
It was now pitch-black outside. Titan’s long night had fallen.
Diego looked out the window at Saturn, its rings and banded colors aglow in black sky. Only a crescent of the planet was visible as Titan orbited behind the gas giant. Twinkling stars filled the blackness beyond the glow of Saturn and its rings.
“This is a special place,” Diego said. “There’s no other place in the Solar System like it. I see why the Noer have such a strong connection here.”
Sonny looked over his shoulder at Diego in the back seat. “Just so you know, I’m not buying your act.”
“Stop it, Sonny.”
“I think you’re playing us, playing Pristina.”
“Sonny.”
“Let me fill you in on something, Sonny,” Diego said. “T-FORCE thinks you’re a terrorist. You’re on their high-value target list. They’re looking for you. They want to roll you up, take you in, dead or alive.”
“Yeah, right. I’ve never done anything to them.”
Sonny looked forward through the windshield into the darkness. He looked nervous.
“The police are looking for you. They’ve issued a warrant for your arrest.”
“For what?”
“They’ve identified you as one of the Einstein Plaza terrorists.”
Sonny’s face was lit by the glow of the displays and dials on the dashboard. He was silent, staring forward into the darkness.
“I know they’re wrong. They’re going after the wrong man. You’re no terrorist.”
Sonny was silent for a long moment. “And how do you know that?”
“You’ve got no military training. The perpetrators of Einstein Plaza were a trained kill team. Military trained. Both the Titan Police and T-FORCE are looking for the both of us. If we’re detained, that will be the end us. We’ll be disappeared, never heard from again.”
“Why would they be looking for Sonny?” Pristina asked. �
�Why on Titan would they think he’s a terrorist?”
“You tell me,” Diego said.
“Don’t you see, Pris?” Sonny said. “It was a false flag terror attack, like Alan James said. The Federation committed the attack to pin it on us Noers. So they could arrest us, harass us. Make everyone hate us.”
“But why would they try to pin the attack on you?” She turned to Diego. “Why pin it on Sonny?”
“I don’t know,” Diego said. “Maybe Sonny has some information they want.”
“The Tesla Project,” Sonny said.
Pristina shot a sidelong glance at him.
“What’s the Tesla Project?” Diego asked.
“Nothing,” Sonny said.
They fell silent. The long silence became heavy and oppressive. They sat silently as the rover bumped along through the darkness.
“Tell me more about your parents,” Diego said. “Tell me about the Noer Expedition and how they survived here.”
“Don’t tell him anything, Pris.”
The only light in the vehicle was from the glowing displays on the dashboard. Outside the windows was nothing but blackness. Pristina turned around and looked at Diego through the dark. She pulled a blanket around her shoulders.
“Our parents were both bio-engineers. On Ganymede they worked for the Frontier Jupiter Corporation, in the sustainment department. Living conditions on Ganymede were bleak. The war on Earth had divided the colonists. Supply ships came through infrequently. Rationing was severe. My parents hated working for the corporation, which was based on Earth. The corporation had laid claim to all the moons of Jupiter and was making life difficult for the colonists who were attempting to build lives and communities for themselves on Ganymede, Europa and Callisto. When Vladimir Noer began recruiting colonists for an expedition to Titan, my parents jumped at the chance. They were young and in love with two young children. It seemed a grand adventure, a way to escape their dire circumstances on Ganymede. Titan was long thought of as a new Earth, the most similar to Earth in many ways of all the planets and moons in the Solar System. The fact that it was so far away from the Inner Solar System had been an obstacle, but with the war on Earth and the rising factionalism in the colonies, the distance began to be seen in a positive light. My parents landed on Titan in 2073. There were five hundred families in the first landing. They set up their habitations and named their settlement Huygenstown. My parents oversaw the greenhouses and bio-labs where the settlement’s food was produced. The conditions were difficult in the beginning. Vladimir Noer was a dreamer with big ideas but not much in the way of resources. But the colonists pulled together and within ten years they were thriving. Within that first ten years, Titan was becoming the most prosperous place in the Solar System. My parents ended up settling in the Simon’s Bay Colony on the shores of a methane lake beneath the snowy peak of Mithrim Montes. There were about twenty families in the colony. Simon Balton was our first mayor. But Simon soon left for Cassini City, which, at that time, was rising in the north. My mother became mayor of Simon’s Bay, followed by my father. We all worked together, expanding our living quarters and our food production. Our standard of living at that time was high, much higher than on the Jovian moons, and as high as on Mars. It was a comfortable life, surrounded by friends and family, a great way to grow up. We explored Titan, its mountains, dunes and lakes. My father built a shuttle and we traveled to Saturn’s moons—Enceladus, Mimas, Dione and Iapetus. We skated on the ice on Enceladus, climbed into the great crater on Mimas, and flew low over Saturn’s rings, soaring through her clouds. My father had the heart of an explorer, always wanting to see more, wanting to show his children the wonders of this system.”
“He sounds like a great father.”
“He was.”
Sonny had shut his eyes and was attempting to sleep, leaning his head against the rover door, as if trying to shut out Pristina’s talk of their childhood.
They were silent for a long while as the rover bumped slowly through the inky black.
“Tell me more about your wife,” Pristina said.
“I’d rather not.”
“Tell me.”
“We went to high school together. We married young, right after I was commissioned by the Army. I’ve been away so much, we hardly know each other now. We no longer communicate. She may have moved on.”
“Kids?”
“Tegan is eight. George is ten.”
“You must miss them.”
“I barely know them. They barely know me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s not uncommon for soldiers. We deploy and the years pass. We grow distant. Families lose touch, fall apart. For me, there’s no going back now.”
“Why did you do it, Diego?”
Pristina was leaned back in her seat with the blanket pulled over her. Diego sat behind her, looking at her silhouette in the darkness, her slender arm on the blanket.
“I did it for you, Pristina.”
She was silent, not replying.
He sat in silence in the back seat wondering if he was playing this game correctly, wondering what he had got himself into, if she and Sonny suspected he was out to destroy them.
He drifted to sleep. Visions of Jupiter filled his dreams, of Callisto’s tunnels and claustrophobic FOBs, of urgent alarms warning of incoming fire, of colonists who hated him, hated soldiers, hated the Federation.
He awakened, alarmed that he’d been talking in his sleep.
“Bad dream?” Pristina asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“Up ahead, Huygenstown.”
The city was alight in the misty darkness. Cupolas and cylindrical habitations were set around a large city center, interconnected by enclosed concourses and walkways, linked like strands of a spiderweb. The rover cruised through the blackness toward the glow of the city lights.
Sonny pulled into a warehouse structure. A large door rolled shut behind them. Titan’s heavy air cleared the warehouse. Sonny drove the rover up a ramp into a parking garage.
“Keep your eye out for police and soldiers,” Diego said. “They’ll be looking for us.”
“Stay close to me, Diego,” Pristina said. “We have hackers monitoring the surveillance feeds. They alter our faces and heat signatures to defeat the biometric systems. I’ve sent them your profile, but if you wander away from us, they’ll stop tracking you.”
They left the rover and walked through the garage, then rode an elevator to the main concourse. The ceiling was low, covered in insulation. Mom-and-pop restaurants and shops lined the concourse. A busy traffic of people moved through the crowded walkway.
Huygenstown was the oldest settlement on Titan, but still had the look of a rough-and-tumble frontier town. The people here looked like hardscrabble space colonists. In comparison, Cassini City residents were urbane, city slickers.
They passed a Mr. Chiba’s restaurant. A few other corporate chain stores and eating establishments lined the walkways.
“Look at that,” Sonny said. “They’ve got a Mooney Donuts here now.”
“My kids love Mooney’s,” Diego said. “They’re all over Mars.”
“Cops,” Pristina said.
Three Titan Police officers walked out of Mooney’s and moved slowly through the crowd. They were armed with K4 rifles.
Pristina, Sonny and Diego rode the escalator down to the lower level, turning their faces as the police officers walked by.
An electric tram swished by as they walked on a walkway between support columns.
“Where are we going?” Diego asked.
“To see a friend,” Pristina said.
They arrived at a tram stop. Several people waited on the platform. Diego eyed them, trying to determine if anyone recognized him. A large wall-sized flat screen played the news. The anchor on the screen was interviewing a Titanian representative in the Solar System Assembly. They were discussing rising transportation rates for shipments of manufactured goods
to Mars and Venus. No mention of Diego or terrorism. The anchor then moved to a breaking news story about a battle with Neo-Fascist guerillas on Callisto. Helmet cam footage showed explosions on a stark moonscape as soldiers returned fire from a ravine. Then the footage showed fast-flying Neo-Fascist fighters making an unprecedented strafing run on a Space Force base on Europa.
Diego was transfixed by the news footage. He’d never heard of Neo-Fascists ever attacking Europa.
The tram arrived. Pristina pulled him aboard. They stood holding the hand grips as the tram zipped through the tunnel, stopping intermittently at the stations—a market district, a residential district, a manufacturing district. People stepped off and boarded at each stop before the tram shot away from the platforms. The tram grew progressively crowded after each stop.
“Who’s the friend?” Diego asked.
“His name is Zubin Zaba. He’s a big deal in Huygenstown. Then we’ll meet Tupo.”
Some of the passengers on the tram were wearing sports jerseys and caps. They seemed in a festive mood.
“Next stop is…” the voice on the tram announced, “City Center. City Center.”
“This is our stop,” Pristina said.
Most of the passengers filed off onto the City Center platform. They rode escalators up to the main floor, which was wide and open with a high, domed roof supported by struts and beams.
The main level consisted of a central meeting area surrounded by various shopping and eating establishments. Residences on the upper levels looked down at the main floor below.
The crowd was flowing across the main floor toward a large entranceway with a sign above that read, “Huygenstown Sports Arena—Home of the Cosmonauts.”
“You’re taking me to a lacrosse match?” Diego asked.
“Yeah, why not?” Pristina said.
“I don’t know. Maybe because we’re wanted fugitives? The cops are looking for us. And T-FORCE.”
“It’s the biggest match of the season. You almost made us miss it.”
They entered the arena. The stadium seating was set around a 100-meter field of green artificial turf. The seats were packed with city residents wearing the red and blue colors of the Huygenstown Cosmonauts.
