Morning Star

—

Our contact goes by the name of Rollo. Stringy and wry, with sparkling, bright eyes and an easy way with the women, even though he brings up his wife, the most beautiful woman who has apparently ever walked the surface of Mars, at least twice a minute. He also hasn’t seen her in eight years. He’s spent that time on the Hive as a welder on the space towers. Not technically a slave like the Reds in the mines, he and his are contract labor. Wage slaves who work fourteen-hour days, six days a week, suspended between the megalithic towers that puncture the Hive, welding metal and praying they never suffer a workplace injury. Get an injury, you can’t earn. Can’t earn, you don’t eat.

“Mighty full of himself,” I overhear Sevro saying under his breath to Victra in the middle of the pack as Rollo leads on.

“I rather like his goatee,” Victra says.

“The Blues call this place the Hive,” Rollo’s saying as we head toward a graffiti-smeared tram in a derelict maintenance level. Smells like grease, rust, and old piss. Homeless vagrants festoon the floors of the shadowy metal halls. Twitching bundles of blankets and rags that Rollo sidesteps without looking, though his hand never leaves the worn plastic hilt of his scorcher. “Might be to them. They got schools, homes here. Little airhead communes, sects, to be technic, where they learn to fly and sync up with the computers. But let me learn you what this place really is: just a grinder. Men come in. Towers go up.” He nods his head at the ground. “Meat goes out.”

The only signs of life from the vagrants on the floor are little gouts of breath that plume up from their lumpy rags like steam from the cracks in a lava field. I shiver beneath my gray jacket and adjust the bag of gear over my shoulder. It’s freezing on this level. Old insulation, probably. Pebble blows a cloud of steam through her nostrils as she pushes one of our gear carts, looking sadly left and right at the vagrants. Less empathetic, Victra guides the cart from the front, nudging a vagrant out of the way with her boot. The man hisses and looks up at her, and up, and up, till he sees all 2.1 meters of annoyed killer. He skitters to the side, breathing through his teeth. Neither Ragnar nor Rollo seems to notice the cold.

Sons of Ares wait for us on the run-down tram platform and inside the tram itself. Most are Red, but there’s a good amount of Oranges and a Green and Blue in the mix. They cradle a motley collection of old scorchers and strafe the other hallways that lead to the platform with edgy eyes that can’t help but jump our direction and wonder just who the hell we are. I’m thankful more than ever for the Obsidian contacts and prosthetics.

“Expecting trouble?” Sevro asks, eying the weapons in the Sons’ hands.

“Grays been sweeping down here last couple months. Not hollow-ass tinpots from the local precinct, but knotty bastards. Legionnaires. Even some Thirteenth mixed in with Tenth and Fifth.” He lowers his voice. “We had a nasty month, where they shred us up real bloodydamn bad. Took our headquarters in the Hollows, stuck Syndicate toughs on us too. Paid to hunt their own. Most of us had to go to ground, hiding in secondary safe houses. Main body of Sons have been helping the Red rebels on the station, obviously, but our special ops hasn’t flexed muscle till today. We didn’t wanna take chances. Ya know? Ares said you lot got important business….”

“Ares is wise,” Sevro says dismissively.

“And a drama queen,” Victra adds.

At the door to the tram, Ragnar hesitates, eyes lingering on an antiterrorism poster pasted onto a concrete support column in the tram’s waiting area. “See something, say something,” it reads, showing a pale Red with evil crimson eyes and the stereotypical tattered dress of a miner skulking near a door that says “restricted access.” Can’t see the rest. It’s covered in rebel graffiti. But then I realize Ragnar’s not looking at the poster, but at the man I didn’t even notice who’s crumpled on the ground beneath it. His hood’s up. Left leg is an ancient mech replacement. A crusted brown bandage covers half his face. There’s a puff. The release of pressurized gas. And the man leans back from us, shivering, and smiling with perfectly black teeth. A plastic stim cartridge clatters to the floor. Tar dust.

“Why do you not help these people?” Ragnar asks.

“Help them with what?” Rollo asks. He sees the empathy on Ragnar’s face and doesn’t really know how to answer. “Brother, we barely got enough for flesh and kin. No good sharing with that lot, ya know?”

“But that one is Red. They are your family…”

Rollo frowns at the bare truth.

“Save the pity, Ragnar,” Victra says. “That’s Syndicate crank he’s puffing. Most of them would slit your throat for an afternoon high. They’re empty flesh.”

“Empty what?” I say, turning back to her.

She’s caught off guard by the sharpness of my tone, but she’s loath to back off. So she doubles down instinctively. “Empty flesh, darling,” she repeats. “Part of being human is having dignity. They don’t. They carved it out themselves. That was their choice, not Golds’. Even if it’s easy to blame them for everything. So why should they deserve my pity?”

“Because not everyone is you. Or had your birth.”

She doesn’t reply. Rollo clears his throat, skeptical now about our disguises. “Lady’s right about the slit-your-throat part. Most of ’em were imported laborers. Like me. Not counting the wife, I’ve got plus three in New Thebes that I send money back to, but I can’t go home till my contract’s up. Got four years left. These slags have given up on tryin’ to get back.”

“Four years?” Victra asks dubiously. “You said you were already here eight.”

“Gotta pay for my transit.”

She stares at him quizzically.

“Company doesn’t cover it. Shoulda read the fine print. Sure, it was my choice to come up here.” He nods to the vagrants. “Was theirs too. But when the only other choice is starving.” He shrugs as if we all know the answer. “These slags just got unlucky on the job. Lost legs. Arms. Company doesn’t cover prosthetics, least not decent ones….”

“What about Carvers?” I ask.

He scoffs. “And who the hell do you know that can afford flesh work?”

I didn’t even think of the cost. Reminds me of how distant I am from so many of the people I claim to fight for. Here’s a Red, one of my own more or less, and I don’t even know what type of food is popular in his culture.