A light rain drizzled down on me as I waited on the tarmac. The rain was that greasy type of drizzle that couldn’t figure out if it was a light rain or mist. The onshore breeze from the bay whipped it into a drenching light precipitation that wraps around you and soaks you from all sides. My tee shirt and jeans had become sodden weights that clung to me and chilled me to the skin. I looked across the Orbital Port landing pad. On the other side of the glass doors guarded by two armed marines was warmth, food and comfort. There was literally nothing keeping me here. If I walked no one would stop me. Several others had already Walked away as the processing dragged on and the rain began. With a call I could order a transport and be home by the end of the hour. If I wanted to live with that choice and all it meant. I looked over at the doors regretting my circumstances but not my options. A gray clad sergeant caught my wandering eye and prowled over to me.
“Is there a problem here recruit?” she talk shouted at me. “Something you would rather be doing?” Her voice a clear alto that carried menace in it. She stood equally soaked. But her posture was ramrod straight and aggressive, she seemed to not notice that rain at all.
“No, sergeant!” I responded in a clipped and hesitant tone.
“Then snap your eyes back front and keep them there, recruit.” She yelled at me, her nose inches from mine. Her eyes bore into mine.
“Yes sergeant!” I responded in the manner that the master sergeant had earlier instructed. She stalked off to harass another recruit.
I did so. With no other place to look, I watched the multi time zone digital display above a closed orbital transport office reception desk on the other side of the landing yard that I could see through the glass. The time read 14:43. By now my mother probably finally figured out that I was missing. I figured it would be another fifteen or so minutes before the first call to the wrist comm that I had forgotten to turn off and now laid in the side pocket of my backpack. Another hour after that when she couldn’t get a hold of me she would attempt to link directly to my cybernetic shroud. Then frantic attempts on both when I ended up a no show for the dinner Susan’s parents had arranged. Thinking ahead I accessed my shroud and changed my availability to do not disturb.
I continued to wait as stiff backed sergeants moved through the lines of waiting recruits trimming the last vestiges of our lives away from us. On the ground behind me was the allowed ten kilos of personal effects I could bring with me. A backpack and a duffel. Some personal effects, civilian clothing and a few mementos I was surprised at how little I really wanted from almost twenty-five years of life when given a hard limit. I had already bricked my personal data pad in my room and transferred all of the data to removable data storage cubes. My college diploma with a BS in Cybernetic Sciences from New Shanghai Central Poly-technical University was protected by a hard waterproof cover. A few scientific competition awards. A four inch by four inch lexan cube protecting the working cybernetic shroud I had made for a planetary wide cybernetic wetware competition that I had won first place in. A picture of my family from better times when dad was still in the picture. Most of the other detritus of my life could be left. I realized I wouldn’t miss most of it, and the odds and ends that I later did, I could always replace.
The three-one-two vibrating buzz on my comm signaled my mothers ring tone.Staying in attention I moved my eyes to the digital time display. She was five minutes late. That was uncharacteristic of her. No doubt she got hung up in the lab. Her secretary's ringtone shortly vibrated on the device ten minutes later. The third time it buzzed a prowling sergeant noticed and dug the comm out of my backpack.
“Turn it off, Recruit!” He snapped at me. With an internal shrug I followed orders. I wouldn’t have answered it even if I wasn’t standing at attention.
By 16:00 the rain had turned to a constant medium downpour. I was so cold that I was numb and didn’t notice it anymore. The temperature started to drop as the primary sun dropped behind the orbital port’s main terminal, it would be another thirty before the secondary red dwarf set too. The change in the weather echoed my uneasy feelings about my recent life choices.
I had never had an aspiration to join the Colonial Expeditionary Services Marine Corps. Until three months ago I had never even contemplated it. I knew I was running away. Betrayal wasn’t the correct term. But that was how my mother would see it.
“I have made an opportunistic arrangement for you,” she had told me over a year and a half ago, “You’ll like Susan, She is a very nice girl.”
I admit I was intrigued at first. For the past few years I have focused on my studies and then working at my mother’s lab as a junior researcher rather than dating or socializing. The girl was the daughter of a major supplier in the industry and quite well known in the field as the Ander Corp. sion and heir to the business. By the third meeting with her My mother was plowing on with the arrangement while I grew increasingly uneasy with it. Susan was nice enough but aloof and cold. I knew of her. We attended the same schools and summer academies as children. We often worked on competing projects for academic competitions. But she was nearly four years older and we rarely shared acquaintances, much less friends. After she graduated college she began to work her way through the departments of her parent’s company learning the business. I was still at University on the other side of the planet.
I wanted to like her and get to know her. I even arranged unchaperoned dates and meet ups with her. I took her to the usual places where men took dates. She was uninterested and often distracted. A lot of the time she had that look that people get when communicating through their shroud with someone while she was spending time with me. A few months in she started to cancel dates but plowed ahead with the wedding. After a few months more I asked her about it.
“Nathan, you must know by now that this is a business arrangement. Please don’t expect more.” She glanced distractedly at her wrist com. “Look, my parents are expecting us to produce them an heir. Your mother is expecting financial and recourse access. I need someone with the right education and pedigree to take me to events and meetings and can serve as the new lead researcher to your mother’s lab when she retires, but stay out of my family's business. You’re not bad looking. You got top marks at university. We will make intelligent children. You don’t make waves. You tick the boxes.” She looked at me with a pitying look. “Don’t read more into this than it is. If you want something more I won’t mind if you take a mistress as long as you are discreet and don’t produce children. Our children can not afford the competition when inheritances of the size of my family are on the line.” I gave up realizing she wanted a figurehead or token male for appearances.
When she sent me the ‘Fertilization and Paternity’ legal forms I mentally checked out. She wanted scientific conception and artificial natal maturation. She indicated that she would allow the fertilization of ten eggs. The most viable embryo would be allowed to mature. She had a timeline of two years from the date of the wedding. The other nine would be stored cryogenically in case of an emergency. In all ways she wanted a platonic and sexless marriage. She didn’t even want to carry or nurse the child. There were clauses for visitation and primary and secondary external caregivers. A company that supplied professional nannies was listed.
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Other forms followed that legally defined the parameters of our marriage. One legal form read ‘Mistresses and Extramarital Encounters’. The document identified Melissa Campbell as her designated ‘other’ and left space for me to do the same. Now or at a later date. She was legally informing me that we would have an open but sexless marriage so long as we kept it discreet and under the table.
At this point I approached my mother to call off the wedding. She refused. My mother has a gift for ignoring reality and hyper focusing on her goals. It is what makes her a great scientist and terrible mother. My mother can also gaslight with the best of them. She started to trivialize my concerns early on. When I brought up the documents and legal forms she countered that they were just a thorough prenuptial agreement. She often forgot earlier conversations we had about my concerns. When I brought documents and evidence she diverted or blocked the conversation. If I stuck to my guns she said I was making a mountain out of a molehill.
After some digging I found out that she had entered the agreement a year before telling me and had already started using Ander Corp. resources. If I didn’t go through with the ceremony her business was sunk and she would owe back several hundred thousand credits. She literally needed me to marry Susan.
Then I found the forged documents my mother had filled out for me in my name. I discovered It was surprisingly easy for her given that she had an unhealthy access to my shroud for research purposes in her lab. I often got to test out new shroud augments and she needed access to my wetware from time to time. Signing the papers with my shroud signature was laughably easy. Not only was my mother on the hook, but so was I. I asked my lawyer to look into it, but she stated that on the surface it looked like I had legally agreed to the marriage. Deeper digging might find fraud, but that would cost literally thousands. Probably more than it would if I pulled out of the marriage. Nothing spurs inspiration better than a no win situation.
The Colonial Expeditionary Service Marine Corps. were not a legal military branch of the New Shanghai Planetary Government, and had no legal obligations to the planet, nor did New Shanghai have any ability to command or compel the CESMC to do anything that it didn’t want to. So long as I have no existing warrants, liens or outstanding personal private debts (and the money my mother had taken in my name still didn’t count), or financial fines payable to the government I could leave the planet however I wanted. With whomever I wanted. For any legal reason.
I guessed it would take a few weeks to a few months for my absence to be legally confirmed. Several months for legal filings and a case to be made citing my mothers research firm as a financially culpable party. Several more months or years for the trial, delays, and appeals. I even gave my lawyer an upfront sum of money and power of attorney to represent me to a small degree. In the meantime she was investigating the signature fraud a little. But it wouldn't matter for me, not in the long run. By then I would be in a deep freeze stasis pod on my way to the other side of this end of the spiral arm in relative space time. It meant leaving my few friends, my job, and my career. But I also gave up on a no-win situation.
I felt bad for my mother. In all likelihood her lab would be absorbed by Ander Corp in the fall out. She didn’t have the creds to pay her debts to them. Her liquidity issues were what most likely put her in the situation in the first place. Ander Corp. might have even floated the idea to her. She was very very intelligent but not always wise. I doubt she would have caught on if anything shady was going on. It was a fifty-fifty toss up if Ander Corp. would still keep her as the lab head. The lab, its patents and new research was literally driven by her. She might be allowed to stay long enough for Ander Corp. to find a team to replace her. Who knows.
Ahead of me the space bound transport sat resembling a massive toad. It was painted a scratched ugly yellow color. On its sides parts of the paint was missing and replaced with scotch marks. Its bulk out massed many of the buildings that surrounded it including the terminal building that normally only handled shuttles. Stubby antigrav emitters protruded from its sides and the enormous thrusters took up nearly half of the exposed surface of the outer skin. I had never seen a surface landing vessel this large before. I didn’t know vessels this large could land on the surface of a planet. Everyone on the field waited for what came next.
With nothing better to do I watched the digital clock across the landing pad. By 17:30 The sergeants had finished with the last recruit. The earlier rain was now a heavy downpour. Still we waited. Only a handful of dim Space Port lights illuminated the landing area, but a blindingly bright set of powerful spotlights from the landing craft illuminated the field and side of the Orbital Port building.
Thirty minutes later, I thought I may have seen my mother’s secretary through the window on the inbound/outbound shuttle passenger side of the Orbital Station’s windows. No doubt looking for me. Someone did try to walk onto the field but the marines guarding the door stopped them. They argued with them inside. The heavy rain, crowd, and flood lights made seeing anything from inside impossible. Besides, the newly shaven head of two thousand recruits camouflaged me. After a few minutes they were escorted out of the building.
Five minutes later, the largest man I had ever seen in my life calmly walked down a massive ramp that led into the cavernous interior of the landing vessel, paying the rain no mind. He stood surveying us for a long minute. From an inside pocket he fetched a small microphone and spoke calmly, laconically even.
“Once your cohort is called you will have three minutes to get your asses onto this transport. Once that hatch closes you are the property of the Colonial Expeditionary Service. For the next ten years you belong to us. After that hatch is closed if you wash out in training we will drop your useless ass on the nearest habitable world with a Colonial presence. We don’t care which, and It won’t be here.”
I noticed a few of my potential coworkers nervously glancing around. I did too. However I was getting on the vessel no matter what.
“There is nothing that I can do to make you walk onto that ship,” the unidentified man continued, “If this isn’t what you want, all you have to do is nothing. That hatch will close and we will fly away without you. Let me be clear I actually don’t want you on that ship. Each and every one of you are a pain in the ass I can’t afford. Each of you will cost the CESMC time and money. Time and money to train, to equip, and to feed and house. But the CESMC needs new recruits to replace all of the other actually useful soldiers that died and retired.”
“Your recruiting sergeant should have already explained this to you. But if you were sleeping through the sales pitch let me cover it again. Once you get on that transport, you owe us ten years of real time service, after your training has completed in eighteen months. If we need to ship your carcass to the other side of the galaxy and you spend a thousand years in FTL in relative space-time frozen in status you will still owe us ten years of service once we thaw your asses on the other side. Once we leave this rock it is highly likely that you will never see it or your loved ones again. And if you do they will be decades older. Make no mistake this is a one way trip whether you like it or not. Your life on this rock ends now.”
“When the sergeants call you, get on the ship, or not. I don’t care.” He stowed the microphone, turned and walked back onto the ship.
At this the sergeants started to shout at us. I was surprised that it actually did take less than three minutes to move over two thousand people up and onto the ramp leading inside. The sergeants shouted at us the entire time. I was among the last only because of a traffic jam at the opening onto the ship. I turned to look one last time at the skyline of my planet and home and noticed a few recruits still standing on the landing pad not boarding. At the last moment one young girl screwed up her courage and leapt onto the boarding ramp after it started to close and was a foot off of the ground. The ramp did not stop closing and she slid the last few feet in before the inner doors closed, nearly squashing her. She got to demonstrate the proper way to do pushups for her recklessness once aboard. Then for the next eight weeks we all go to follow her example several times a day.