Asteroid 734: United Earth Nations, #2

By Terry Spinks

The war between Earth and Mars is heating up. Major Jave Divine, a Martian ground forces hero, has gone renegade and his leaders have disowned him. When a corrupt administrator in Jupiter's Martian asteroid field forces Divine to pursue a Martian family into the asteroid belt, Vance Pyne is faced with an impossible choice. And time is running out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terry Spinks
• Release date: Feb 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224261642

Terry Spinks

I retired about five years ago. I'd worked in logistics; distribution planning for a crude oil refiner, and then sales replenishment for a retail national - both roles I enjoyed. But after decades of mind-numbing commuting, my wife and I decided to toss our corporate coffee cups and head for the hills. Now, with time to explore our bucket-list of hobbies, I thought, why not write a book. I certainly don't think of myself as a writer any more than I'm a chef because I mess up the kitchen. Who knows, one day I might be a writer. In case anyone wonders why GAI was published before Into The Void, or Asteroid 734 - it's because GAI was meant to be my one-and-only dabble. It turns out some of the characters had ideas of their own. Terry Spinks 2020

Book preview

Part 1

1

Location: Callisto

United Earth Nations frigate: UEN Decatur

Lieutenant Lauren Jacobs, call-sign Eljay, stretched and curled her fingers before wrapping her gloved hand around the fighter’s control yoke. She squirmed her backside on the thinly padded seat and jiggled her shoulder blades back to get comfortable. A running light on the front of her fighter shone down the black tunnel in front of her, highlighting the leading edges of a series of rings receding into the dark distance.

The mission brief was simple, she thought. It was the same as yesterday. And the same as the day before, and the day before that; shoot any Martian dumb enough to come around to this side of the small moon. They’ve got their side of Callisto. That’s where they’re building their rotating habitat cylinder. And this is where we’re building ours. So bugger off.

Technically, the United Earth Nations was at war with Mars. The Martians started it, thought Eljay, remembering back to the attack on Remorseless, the corvette stationed at Luna. And ever since Mars kicked the game off, hostilities had been more of a fizzle than a bang. The UEN’s massive frigate, Decatur, was out here as more of a visual statement, a posture. Both sides agreed the habitat cylinders weren’t military targets. There was no risk of them being attacked. But that concept didn’t stretch to cover the resources each side needed for their construction work. And that, thought Eljay, is where things might get interesting.

Now settled, Eljay pushed her helmet back against the pressure-reader in the headrest to tell Launch Control her head had whiplash support.

A few seconds later, Launch came through her helmet speaker. ‘All units are green. Punch in five seconds.’

Eljay’s squad was fresh from the academy. For their own good, she put them on a steep real-world learning curve. She instructed Launch Control to set today’s catapult for a full powered spit. If Mars attacked and they had to scramble for real, her team needed to know what a general quarters ride down the chute felt like.

Outside her canopy, the light tree came to life, flashing its countdown from top to bottom. Orange...orange...yellow...yellow...green. And then she blurred past it; smacked in the guts and thumped back into the seat. The magnetic sled holding her fighter pushed from behind while it pulled forward.

And then she fell forward against the harness. Someone whooped across the comm line. Someone else said, ‘my shadow just told me to come back and get it.’

Eljay smiled to herself. ‘Anyone black out?’ she asked.

‘No,’ came a chorus of replies.

‘Alright, form up and we’ll head over to the rock pile.’

Callisto sat a few hundred kilometres below as Eljay’s squad cruised by. Its pocked face looked like a shotgun-peppered bauble.

One of the squad members said, ‘Roadkill ahead.’

Turning her head to the side, Eljay looked out at a set of giant curved bracing spars attached to a long spine - Earth’s rotating habitat work in progress. Hanging there, in the dark, it resembled the rotting rib cage of some interplanetary mega monster.

‘And the builders say our floating rock pile contains all the resources they need to finish it?’ said one of her squaddies.

‘Doubt it,’ said another.

Eljay tapped the line: ‘Our asteroids won’t be enough if we let the Martians steal back any more.’

Someone laughed. ‘I’d loved to have been a fly on the wall when they returned and saw their rock pile had orbited to our side.’

* * *

Hours later, Eljay squirmed in the fighter’s uncomfortable seat and rolled her head around her shoulders. She flipped up the helmet visor to rub her eyes. The coarse material of her gloves may as well have been sandpaper. Then, snapping the visor closed, Eljay gave her harness restraint a sharp tug.

This was the eighth day Eljay lay hidden with her squadron within the purloined rock pile. She was sure the Martians were up to no good, but all she had was a numb butt and a pain in her back.

A minuscule glow caused her to look down at her instruments. But the tiny cockpit was as dark as the surrounding space. She stared into the black of her instrument panel until tiny motes floated in her vision. Did she imagine the glow a moment ago? Maybe. She was about to look away when it pulsed again, tiny and faint. Frowning, Eljay calculated its position. She huffed a breath through her nose and aimed her laser comm array at one of her squad members.

‘Croft, did you just open the vanes on your engine?’

‘Sorry, Lieutenant,’ came the reply a moment later. ‘I bumped the stick, stretching out a cramp.’

Eljay nibbled her lower lip. What to do? If she had seen Croft’s energy blip, a Martian fighter could have seen him, too. Should she order Croft to detach from his asteroid and use manoeuvring gas to puff his way to another rock? While there’d been no sign of the bandits this past week, it didn’t mean they weren’t sniffing about. And Eljay’s squad weren’t giving themselves away by filling space with radar emissions. So if the Martians were out there, she wouldn’t detect them until they were at knife-fighting distance.

Bring it on, thought Eljay, likening her fighter parked in the asteroids to her time of piloting a submersible through the ocean’s inky depths.

Then all hell broke loose.

Croft’s fighter erupted in a ball of plasma. The front third of it spun away, twisting in crazy circles and propelled by its own venting gas.

Eljay opened the squad frequency, copying Decatur. ‘Contact! I repeat contact! Croft took a hit. Request immediate search-and-rescue to his position.’

‘Decatur copies. Organising a SAR team now, Lieutenant.’

Eljay flicked on the radar. Her squad appeared as four green dots on the instrument panel. She counted five red dots now breaking formation.

Then several yellow trails streaked across her tactical screen. Simultaneously, she saw the flare of missiles through the cockpit canopy.

More fighters erupted into glowing balls. In her display, two icons flashed and disappeared; one red and another green.

‘Bellamy just took a missile,’ someone shouted across the comm line.

Eljay cursed. She backed the fighter around and behind her asteroid. Her targeting AI locked two of the bandits and she double-tapped the missile-launch stud. Her fighter shuddered when the missiles came off the rails and disappeared into a pair of diminishing white dots.

‘Another bandit down!’ called one of her squad members.

Then: ‘Two more bandits down!’

Eljay rounded the bottom of her asteroid into a massive fireworks display. Explosions lit space and flickered around the asteroids like a macabre light show. She saw a brief flare in the distance and looked at her panel. The last Martian fighter was escaping. She tapped the comm line: ‘Jackson, you're closest. Go!’

‘Acknowledged.’

Another voice cut across the comm line: ‘Belay that order, Lieutenant Jackson.’

‘Captain Hunter?’

‘Affirmative, Eljay. I want the Martian to take his grief home and let them know what’s in store for them if they come back.’

‘Sir, they killed two of my people.’

‘And Two of mine, Eljay.’

* * *

Back aboard Decatur, Eljay spent a long afternoon between the medical department and the post-action debriefing. Croft was in stasis. The search and rescue team found him unconscious and clinging to life in the twirling wreckage of his fighter.

The flip side of Croft’s survival was the loss of her other pilot, Bellamy. They found nothing larger than a soda can when they tracked down his wreckage. The doctor gave Eljay a private space to draft her condolence letter to the young pilot’s parents.

Finally, weary to the bone, Eljay stepped out of the elevator and into the harsh lighting of the officers’ accommodation deck. She walked the short distance to her quarters and pressed a thumb against the scanner. The door hissed open, sliding into its recess, and she walked in, sighing to herself at the soft lighting.

When the door closed, she busied herself, undoing buckles and fasteners in her flight suit and ripping Velcro joins apart. She peeled out of the Zero-G suit and tossed it onto the bed, then continued to the small en-suite.

A short time later, washed and refreshed, Eljay dressed in a loose-fitting tracksuit. She pulled her hair back, holding it in place with a scrunchy, a sad looking black thing with red polka-dots. Where the hell did I get that?

She leaned into the mirror, swinging her head left and right to check out the crow’s feet. Not crow’s feet, she silently admonished, pilot lines. Satisfied with her appearance, Eljay flicked off the light and headed out. She should, she knew, check her Nav.net account for news or amended orders, but the disturbing messages scamming her inbox were growing in number. And they were becoming more explicit and depraved. Whoever was sending them was now referring to her past.

The lift down to Crossover was a short six-storey ride. Crew called it Crossover because the area connected the port and starboard sections of the twin hull. Shift changeover meant traffic.

Eljay weaved through the moving sea of uniforms and made her way over to the opposite side. When the lift doors slid open, she shuffled in with the crowd, stretching an arm out to tap her destination as she went. By the time she reached the medical section, most of the occupants had departed.

Watching from the doorway of the physiotherapy area, Eljay smiled to herself. The rehab gym’s sole occupant concentrated on her exercises. Frowning into each laboured move, Pamela Trellis was a picture of determination. Her hands gripped a pair of parallel bars while she twisted her waist around to flick a foot forward into another step. When Trellis reached the end of the bars, she let go of the rails and held her arms out at shoulder height. Then, dropping into a cautious half-squat, she held the position until her quivering thighs threatened to cave in. Only then did she rise.

Eljay laughed and clapped from the doorway.

‘Lauren!’ said Pam, smiling and leaning over a bar to pull a seat in close.

Eljay hurried the last few steps and held the chair to steady it. When Pam manoeuvred herself into the seat, Eljay pulled another chair over. She bent to peck her friend on the cheek before sitting. ‘Ew, you’re sweaty.’

‘I’m a grunt, I’m supposed to sweat,’ said Pam with a lopsided smile.

‘You better not let your sergeant hear you using the ‘g’ word.’

Pam nodded, still smiling. Then, leaning in to scrutinise, she said: ‘My scrunchy! I’ve been looking for that.’

Eljay rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll buy you a new one. This one’s retiring.’

‘Hey, I heard the scuttlebutt, nice shooting out there today. You guys rocked.’ Then, noticing Eljay’s expression, Pam added: ‘Terrible to hear you lost a squaddie.’

‘I know. Even though we’re a new team, we’re really coming together. This is gonna take some getting over.’

‘It’s a bitch, losing a squad member. What about the guy they recovered? How’s he?’

‘Lucas Croft? He’s in a stasis pod. Needs a new arm, a couple of organs and a mile of skin.’

Pam nodded her understanding. ‘He’ll only get a B-grade graft for his arm replacement. That’s gonna suck.’

‘Yeah, B-grade grafts are all the military will cover. Which does suck! Lucas won’t have the dexterity in that arm to pilot a fighter.’

‘Can his parents fork out the difference for an A-grade limb?’

‘No. I asked them. It’s such a false economy, Pam. We spend a fortune training fighter pilots and then ground them because we’re too stingy to cough up the little extra for top shelf grafts.’

‘Little extra? Eljay, these grafts you bought me cost a fortune, I checked. I can’t believe you paid for A-grades for me - two of them. With the progress I’ve made, I’ll be walking by the end of the week, probably with a stick for a while, but at least I’ll be mobile. I can’t thank you enough for doing that for me.’

Eljay brightened. ‘You’re welcome. Anyway, the money was a bonus from my last job and I had nothing else to spend it on. And you’re kinda cute...for a grunt.’

Pam cracked a grin. ‘Did you just call me the ‘g’ word?’

Eljay pulled on her angel face: ‘Who? Me?’

Pam laughed and then asked: ‘Did you know the search and rescue guys are still out there?’

Eljay pulled her head back a degree. ‘No. Are they searching for the Martian pilots?’

‘No, they’re rounding up asteroids.’

‘Really?’

‘Your skirmish upset the rock pile. Picture pool balls bouncing around a table. Captain wants all his pool balls back together.’

‘I guess.’

‘You think the Martians will try that tactic again?’

‘Hope not. We effectively lost two pilots out there today, and two combat fighters - the other side lost four pilots and fighters. That’s an expensive bill.’

Pam nodded. She leaned in a little and kept her voice low: ‘Have you gotten any more of those weird messages through your Nav.net account?’

Eljay dipped her eyes.

‘Knew it. Thought anymore about what we talked about?’

Eljay gave a single, slow nod. She curved her head a few degrees to the side to check they were still alone. ‘I still think I should speak to Captain Hunter.’

Pam sat back. She drew in a deep breath and just looked at Eljay.

‘You don’t think I should, do you?’

Pam shook her head. ‘You know I don’t. Despite the message Vance sent you before he disappeared, you’ve got no proof your old shipmate screwed with your fighter, Lauren. Way I see it, Fenton will get off scot-free. Or maybe they’ll discharge him and hand him over to the surface police.’

Eljay sat back in her seat and ran her hands back over her hair, thinking. ‘I’ve seen him, Pam. He’s part of the hangar service crew. He’s calling himself Gordon Fletcher now.’

‘If you take this to the captain, if you make it official, they’ll investigate Fenton for sure. But he’ll still be free to roam around until they make a call. He might be a loser, Eljay, but I suspect he’s got rat cunning. He’ll figure you’re behind any sudden attention and if he’s pushed into a corner, you’ll have a target on your back. You want that?’

Eljay shuddered. ‘He creeps me out. I get clammy just thinking about what he’s capable of.’

* * *

An uneventful week passed after the rock pile skirmish.

With the aid of a stick, Pam was walking. Exhausted and in pain, but still making progress. She groaned under Eljay’s kneading knuckles. She was lying on her stomach, on a thin gel mattress on the floor of Eljay’s quarters, while Eljay massaged her legs. ‘Hurt?’

‘Yeah, not so hard.’

‘Doc said you’d whine.’

‘Computer! Record this conversation and file it under the name evidence.’

Eljay laughed. ‘That’s science fiction, you idiot.’

‘Crap. Decatur’s AI monitors everything. Didn’t they tell you?’

‘You’re kidding,’ said Eljay, suddenly sitting back on her haunches and looking up at the ceiling.

‘Ha ha hah. Fuck yeah! Got you, Jacobs.’

Eljay slapped Pam’s bum and climbed up to sit on the sofa. ‘I’ll get you.’

Pam rolled onto her side and pulled herself into a kneeling position. She took the offered walking stick and dragged herself up with a groan to sit in a lounge chair. ‘Thought anymore about my suggestion?’

‘I don’t know, Pam. Fenton’s a scary guy. Seriously.’

Pam gave a small shrug. ‘I’d just talk to him. Sure, I might use some choice language, but we need him to think we have proof he sabotaged your fighter. And if he touches you or even comes near you, he needs to believe we’ll hand that proof over.’

‘Mm, maybe.’

‘Lauren, guys like Fenton are crunchy on the outside and soft in the centre; bullies when they can, cowards when they can’t. We need to shape our message for that audience.’

Eljay’s face was a mask of worry. She nibbled the inside of her lip and lifted a shoulder into a one-sided shrug. ‘What do you need me to do?’

‘Just call him. Tell him you saw him on Remorseless, and you have something he needs to know.’

* * *

2

When Neville Fenton peeled out of his old identity, like a snake shedding last year’s skin, he climbed straight into his new self: Gordon Fletcher.

Humming to himself while he worked at his bench, pulling up a little spring and giving it a flick, he thought back to his disappearing act. Chasing him around the planet made the International Guarda look foolish, especially when they couldn't find him.

Yes, it had been a case of goodbye Neville Fenton, hello Gordon Fletcher. And his disappearing trick was a cab ride to the nearest recruitment office for the United Earth Nations space navy. Who on Earth would look for him up here, on this bloated piece of crap?

Fletcher blew a fleck of dust off the object in his hand - a navigational gyroscope from one of the ship’s shuttles. Two duds in a row, he thought, recalling how the previous gyroscope went belly up, too. Which was odd because he’d re-calibrated it only the week before.

Turning the delicate instrument around in his hand, Fletcher looked into the parts box he’d requisitioned for the rebuild. He picked out the torque-driver and set the thing to its maximum setting - gyros needed to be tight. Inserting the driver into the screw, he torqued the handle until it reached its setting. Fletcher knew that wasn’t as tight as it should be. For fuck's sake, it was his job to know. He reset the driver to bypass the torque limit and inserted it into the screw again.

Fletcher applied pressure, tightening the delicate screw. He could feel how far to take it. Zen, or some shit like it. Whatever. He just knew how much to tighten. The trick was to take it to the edge, to the very edge, and then ease back. Simple. Why don’t people understand?

With the screw now screwed to Fletcher’s precise requirements, he flicked the tip of a finger through the parts box. A tube of Nylex lubricant stared up at him. It had a long, curved nozzle with an odd-shaped applicator valve at the end. What the fuck’s that for? The level of waste in the military never ceased to amaze Fletcher as he scooped up the box and tossed it in the bin.

He’d been working hard - harder than any of the useless arseholes who wasted space in his assigned dungeon, the hangar maintenance workshop. What a bunch of wannabes, especially fricken Jansen, Corporal Lynette Jansen! Who died and left that bitch in charge? Screw her! Might as well put a uniform on a fucking buzz saw and call it a corporal. Fletcher smiled at the mental image of saluting a buzz saw. He’d cup a hand to his ear and lean in close, nice and close, and when the buzz saw opened her fucking mouth, he’d drive a glowing red-hot spike through her fucking head. Put me in charge and I’ll sort the shit out. Yes siree, I’d sort the arseholes from the crap. First to go would be Lynette Buzz-Saw Jansen, then Lauren Dip-Shit-Pilot Jacobs.

Fletcher smiled again as he metered out his imaginary justice. If only they’d recognise his potential. But, no, better he stayed under the radar; fly too high and someone might notice him. And where would that lead? Better to let Fenton remain lost in the past and continue flying low as Gordon Fletcher.

Anyway, he’d already offloaded one of the useless pilots, Vance I-Surrender Pyne. Fricken navy lets any fucker fly their fighters. Well, if you wanted to be technical about it, it wasn’t Fletcher’s move that took Pyne off the board. So what if the prick shone a glowing light on himself by flying off to space on a one-way ticket? He’s gone. And gone is gone no matter how you spell it.

Now we just have to get rid of Jacob’s, he thought. How many lives does that bitch have? Fletcher noticed a greasy smear on the gyro’s gold-plated data pins. Inspecting his other hand, he frowned at the black smudge on his thumb. A quick swipe across his shirt resolved the issue and a bit of spit and a quick wipe fixed the gold data pins.

Fletcher’s buzzing communication device snapped him back to the present. Someone always wanted to interrupt his work. He tossed the delicate gyroscope onto the bench and picked up the comm unit. ‘Yeah.’

A few seconds later, he disconnected the call and stood staring at the wall with unseeing eyes. ‘Bitch!’ he said with an icy glint in his eyes and a colder glint in his brain.

Sliding his gaze along the workbench, his lips pulled into a nasty sneer when he saw a long-handled torque-wrench. He reached for it and then spotted a whip-rod, something he used to pull oiled rags through gun barrels. He picked it up and looked around to make sure he was alone. Satisfied, he snapped the rod out in a whipping motion, smiling at the whistle it made slicing through the air. Perfect.

Humming a tuneless melody to himself, he set off. His maintenance area was amidships and below the hangar. He caught the port-side lift and rode it down to the rendezvous; the stupid bitch wanted to meet on deck 4, near the waste recycler. Around this time of day, the empty passageways resembled a ghost town. Perfect.

Illuminating as he approached, and going off as he passed, proximity lights cast pools of light along the passageway as Fletcher made his way along deck 4. He swung a left at the third intersection and stopped.

‘Trellis,’ he said, peering around Pam to look along the dim passageway. ‘Where’s your bitch?’

Leaving her walking stick behind, Pam walked forward in the shadows. She took a few slow steps, eyeballing the man as she came. ‘You sabotaged Eljay’s fighter on Remorseless, Fenton. I’ve got security surveillance proof.’

At the mention of his real name, Fenton’s eye ticked. He flicked the whip-rod out and slapped it against his leg.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Trellis. Can’t blame me if they let second-rate pilots into their fighters.’

‘This is a warning, Fenton. You come anywhere near Eljay again and I’ll give Captain Hunter the proof. Anything happens to me, and that proof automatically goes to the captain. Stay away and you can continue doing whatever it is you do. You understand?’

‘You’re full of shit,’ said Fenton, quickly closing the gap on Pam. The whip-rod caught her across the cheek, tearing in deep. Pam gasped and staggered back, lifting a hand to her face. Fenton followed. The wicked steel rod whistled again, this time cutting into Pam’s bicep. It would be the last mistake Fenton ever made.

The heavy slabs of muscle in Pam’s upper arm absorbed the punishment. Her offside hand grabbed Fenton’s wrist and twisted it up and back. The rod flew out of his hand and hit the wall. Snaking her arm under Fenton’s, Pam reached up to grip his shoulder. She used her arm as a fulcrum while she reefed down on Fenton’s. He screamed when his limb snapped at the elbow and folded back on itself.

Pam used his crippled arm as a cable and swung the stricken man face-first into the steel wall of the ship. Dazed, Fenton pulled his shattered nose away from the blood-splattered wall.

A vice gripped him around the back of his neck, pinning him to the wall. ‘You’re a lousy sack of shit, Fenton. Messing with Eljay was a mistake.’

Pam let go of Fenton’s neck and spun him around to face her, slamming him back into the wall again. With his unbroken arm, Fenton tried to pry Pam’s grip free. But Pam knew all the moves; her martial arts, her years in the weights room and ground force combat training, it left her with little trouble immobilising the man she detested.

Drawing her knife from its scabbard, she jabbed around Fenton’s midriff, searching for the soft entry point below his ribs. Fenton screamed under her hand, his desperate eyes watery and pleading. He snuffled wads of panicked blood and snot in through his ruined nose and tried to lift himself onto his tiptoes, away from Pam’s torture.

Pam stared back at him, angling her blade and forcing the point inwards and up. She held Fenton’s body tight against his spasms. And when she felt the tip of her knife meet the thumping resistance of his heart, she drove the blade home.

Fenton’s body convulsed around his exploding heart. He shuddered against the wall for long seconds while his life ebbed away. In the end, Pam pulled her blade out and wiped it on the dead man’s shirt. Stepping back, she let the lifeless body crumple to the floor. She left him there, on the cold metal deck in a darkened corridor of the garbage section in a spreading pool of blood.

* * *

Three officers, dressed in formal white, sat behind a table in Decatur’s conference room. As dictates required, four ground force soldiers, along with their sergeant, stood at ease along the back wall. Each held a charged pulse-rifle across their chest. Another armed soldier stood behind the seated officers.

Facing the officers, a pilot and a ground force corporal stood ramrod straight, eyes aimed like lasers at the wall behind the seated three.

The judge advocate general looked up from the desk. ‘Corporal Pamela Trellis, to the charge of premeditated murder. We find you guilty.’

Pam dipped her head into a single nod of acceptance, the finger-thick wound on her cheek now a raised and angry red welt.

‘Lieutenant Lauren Jacobs,’ continued the JAG, ‘To the charges brought against you, we find you guilty. I’ll speak more on that in a moment, Lieutenant.’

Eljay gave a brief nod of acknowledgement.

‘Trellis, you didn't just murder Gordon Fletcher, you straight up tortured and gutted him.’

Pam blinked under the harsh light those words shone on her. She lowered her eyes to the seated officer. Wanting desperately for him to understand her side of the story, she opened her mouth to speak, but no words came - there was nothing left to say.

‘You could have gone to your commanding officer, Corporal, or even the captain. Had you taken that path, we’d still have a valuable team member - and you were, Corporal Trellis. Your squad mates spoke highly of you. And now...’ he said, turning his hands out in front of him on the desk. ‘This,’ he said.

‘I understand, sir,’ said Pam, finally finding her voice. ‘I can only apologise to the captain, to the ship’s company, and to my squad. I acted-’

‘You gutted the man, Corporal; coldly and with vicious intent.’ The officer shook a dismal head and said, ‘That crime carries a sentence of life in prison under the Truth in Sentencing Act. Do you know what that means?’

‘It means life, sir,’ said Pam, staring steadfastly at the wall.

‘That’s right, Corporal,’ said the JAG. ‘It means life. Never to be released.’

Turning his attention to Eljay: ‘Lieutenant Jacobs, up to now, you had an exemplary record of achievement. And then you lured a man to his death. That’s aiding homicide before the act. You'll serve eight years. Like the corporal’s custodial period, eight years means exactly that. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Eljay, nodding once.

The judge advocate general sat for a moment, looking between the two convicted women. He shook his head and said: ‘Jacobs, why the hell didn’t you take it to Captain Hunter?’

Eljay lowered her gaze and met the officer’s eyes. ‘Sir, as part of our trial, you reviewed the security video from Remorseless’ hangar bay. You saw Fenton in the cockpit of my fighter and working on my cannons. His fingerprints were all over my broken cockpit jettison lever. He had a jar of iron filings mixed with oil hidden at his workstation. And you’ve discovered he’s a wanted criminal on the surface. With all of that,’ said Eljay, casting her eyes along the line of seated officers, ‘you’d still have given him the benefit of doubt.’

‘That’s how the law works, Jacobs. If you’re talking about justice, that’s got nothing to do with the law.’

‘I felt I was in jeopardy, sir. And I felt my fighter squadron was in danger. Fenton was an explicit threat to Remorseless; if my guns hadn’t jammed when the Martians raided us, we’d still have our FTL membrane generator. We’d still have Vance Pyne. Fenton did that, sir. You can talk about justice and law, sir, and if you do, I hope you include that in your discussion.’

The JAG compressed his lips into a tight line. He swung his head to look at the officers on either side, asking if they wanted to say anything. Both men declined. Taking a last look at the two women standing before him, he nodded toward the guard. ‘Escort the prisoners back to the brig, Corporal.’

* * *

3

Mars: Dome 6

Naval Munitions Depot

In the predawn light of his office, the munitions quartermaster sipped his coffee and gazed out at the dark, lifeless landscape. Sunrise was his favourite time of the day, the solitude and the gentle easing in to a new day’s hustle and bustle. Some mornings, if he squinted a certain way, he could make the horizon appear as a glowing line; a fiery line that stretched right across the world. It wasn’t fire, of course. How could fire exist out there in the thin Martian atmosphere? Rather, his schoolteacher had told the class, it resulted from a trick of the light, a mirage. It was a mix of factors - the Sun's angle at dawn and how the curved dome covering their city refracted the light. Whatever the science, it looked beautiful, he decided.

A strident tone pierced his meditation. In his periphery vision, the