#04 PARIAHS OF CALLISTO
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Callisto’s windy rooftops once attracted entitled tourists from the Middle System, cocky Marine pilots on shore leave, and haughty white collars of the resident pharma-megacorps. All flocked through the busy aerial lines or aboard swarms of yellow taxicabs to enjoy the long distant biweekly sunset over the human-made lake. But following the unprecedented recession that hit Solaris, trendy bars, clubs and restaurants had all closed their doors; except for the Rocketeer Club on Wabash Avenue, which belonged to Joe Batters’s grandchildren.
Gulping his flammable shot, Braun spilled a few drops of cinnamon vodka on his badly ironed pointed collar shirt. Wiping his chin with the back of his mauve sleeve, he finished his sentence after swallowing with difficulty: “—basically, the guy was just looking for his truck.”
Lieutenant Commander Myriam Stanišić delicately rested her last glass on the perfect pyramid she was building. “What guy? Kurt Russell?”
“Yes!” Braun exclaimed as he slid C$10 to the waiter. But the wrinkled bill landed between two smashed peanut pods floating in the alcohol flooding the counter.
“Your movie fucking sucks—like everything from New-Hollywood,” the woman reacted, pointing with her chin to the buzzing TV set behind buckets of melted ice. The latest season of Cyber Macho was being aired after the sardonic Belter Late Shows.
“Language…” snapped Braun, dedicating his new drink to the ultra-violent reality star with a fuzzy horseshoe mustache. “The Noah’s crew—and especially Mute—they’re absolutely fans.”
“Mute? The mutant who collects kung fu VHS?”
Braun nodded. Once Myriam too had grasped her shot, they both downed it bottom-up. As the MIA agent lost himself in a coughing fit, the former MP grinned and patted her arm. “I thought your bionic stomach filtered out the alcohol molecules—that you couldn’t be drunk.”
Crying, the soldier rubbed her sore throat. “I have a secret trick, K…” she said with a husky voice.
Braun raised an eyebrow.
Myriam hawked before watching the bartender, a tall robot who must have once been a bouncer, leaving for the storeroom downstairs. “It’s about blowing the implant’s threshold…” she replied. The woman then leaned forward over the sticky counter. “And what about you?” She fell for something on the other side of the tin surface. A few seconds later, her fingers closed on a bottle of Seagram 7. “How can you still be standing? You, who haven’t touched booze since graduation day!” Whiskey in hand, the Lieutenant Commander came back on her stool when the waiter returned with a cellulose sponge and a foam-filled bucket.
Braun sadly smiled as he helped Myriam hide the spirit inside her long Marine coat. “My cursed inheritance, I presume…” he mumbled as he tipped with the last bills from his Velcro wallet. “My Soviet blood.”
The Yugoslavian stood up, putting back the stool with the sole of her boot. “The Marine gave you a hard time all your life, eh? What do you plan to do now?”
Money in hand, the bartender loudly unrolled the metal flap behind them.
“Still pondering…” Braun admitted through the noisy magnetic lock. He headed for the elevator, skirting the dirty, dusty booths. On a glass panel separating two of them, he picked up his worn denim jacket.
“A sweet retirement on Mars? I heard on the news that Hellas Springs is neat.”
The Soviet swiped his key tag on the reader. The welcome screen validated his access and discreetly displayed his floor number and close accommodations. “No way!” he uttered as the doors slowly opened. No one had been on the elevator since they arrived two hours earlier. “I’m not leaving. I won’t let them ditch me with a shiny medal!”
Myriam joined him in the car. “What are you up to, K?” she asked before leaning her head against the carpeted back wall. Her light smile had turned into a pout of concern.
Between the rusty spots on the closing creaking doors, Braun saw the reflection of a forty-year-old veteran in civilian clothes, with a tired look and trembling hands. “I’m being ousted just as I’m getting close. The DIA guy—or Dick Cheney—this… this son of a bitch—sorry.”
His drinking buddy laughed. Rolling her eyes, she uncorked the stolen Seagram 7.
“He tried to scare me, Myriam. But, he just confirmed my suspicions,” Braun sighed, running a sticky hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “That foolish boomer!”
“Boomer?” Myriam noted through her drink.
Braun smiled. The elevator’s speed and the fumes of alcohol made her heart ache. “That’s how the colonists call them in Kuiper. Those Techno-loonies over a hundred years old, born on the Blue Planet with front-row seats when it blew up. Hence the nickname: boomers.”
“Clever...” Myriam took a double sip before handing the bottle to Braun.
The ex-MP scoffed by seizing the whiskey. “I hope the Metacastes aren’t involved, and that this is just a case of blatant corruption between the Black Haven and greedy corpos like WarTech or Gibson Electronics. Otherwise, that would mean this lunatic on Cressida was right about everything.”
“What lunatic on Cressida?”
The elevator had reached the 89th floor, Braun and Myriam descended.
“The Boogeyman!” the Soviet resumed as he staggered towards his room at the end of the hallway. Beneath his feet, the teal carpeting waved as if he were moving through the ocean. “A terrorist thinking the Moon and Mars planned the war for profit or other nonsense. A sort of Guy Fawkes, according to my crew. The MIA doesn’t have a watch list for dangerous anarchists?”
“Probably. But for now, I’m being grounded with those environmentalist assholes in the belt!” growled Myriam as she threw the empty bottle against a vending machine. Luckily, it smashed against the steel frame and a packet of Viceroy slipped out of her case. She nonchalantly retrieved her favorite smokes from the pickup box.
Braun opened his room. He immediately tossed his jacket against the coat rack where it miraculously clung. “You look like you’re having a hard time, too.”
Cigarette swinging on her lip, Myriam grumbled as she did the same, but with less fortune. “Like you, I played poorly with my hierarchy—how was Cressida? Never been to the Rings.”
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In the kitchenette, Braun poured two glasses of ice-cold comet water. He brought one for Myriam before answering: “Like every moon beyond Jupiter: ravaged. The gold mine and the Blue factory were nuked during the conflict. The nuclear fire diverted the satellite out of the magnetosphere. It’s now a dead world.”
The military woman took a drag on her cigarette, instantly burning the edges of the crimson filter. She then crushed the butt in the ashtray conveniently built into the fridge’s doors. “Most moons or asteroids are just lost rocks, you know…” she breathed while opening a compartment at the base of her thumb. From it, she picked up a trapezoid micro-pill and tossed it into her glass. Many cyborgs could only drink demineralized water. “Bleak frozen pebbles swept by solar winds until given an atmosphere or underground stations.” Waiting for the liquid to stop foaming, she lit a second cigarette.
“Bombs are nothing. The colonists are depleting potential havens, one after another. All the way towards Kuiper!”
“There must be some kind of a ‘Techno-Master Plan’ behind this…” Myriam sighed. She pulled off her boots to throw them away on the flashy rug surrounding an empty aquarium with neon lights.
“Hard to believe. Earth has exploded. And since the Hard Reset, Mars always comes up with nothing but short term colonizing nonsense! Looking for more resources. Over and over.”
“We’re making progress nonetheless. The media are saying Planet Nine could—”
“Progress? We keep killing each other on an industrial scale because some boomers want more money! Finding new ennemis and creating new conflicts to pour our limited resources and energy into!” Braun paused. “As humans, shouldn't we aim higher?”
The Lieutenant Commander laughed, before removing the chalky tablet out of her glass. “We can’t. We’re just sociopathic space monkeys, K. Flawed and designed to fail one way or another. That’s the way it is. You won’t change it…” she said. “You’ve always been an idealistic dreamer…”
“I remember a more optimistic Myriam Dajana Stanišić hoping for a better world too, back in the Academy.”
“Hippie stuff,” she scoffed.
Tired of his drunken anger, Braun slumped into a pastel chair near the single oval canopy. With his elbow on the comfy armrest and his knuckles fused to his right cheek, he gazed at Jupiter slowly disappearing behind the unoccupied skyline. The night was black and silent on Callisto since the immense holographic advertisements which formerly made the charm of the business district were discarded. Without the pollution, the purple lights of departing G.T.C. supercargos flashed across the fading artificial atmosphere.
“I can’t stop thinking about this…” the ex-MP sighed.
Myriam joined him, tucking a lock of bleached hair behind her fully pierced ear. “I’ve stopped thinking…” she said, sitting on the Soviet’s lap. “Instead, I drink. I fuck. And I forget.” She then rested her head against his shoulder.
Braun set his glass against the windows’ edge, just as the power went out. Savings were necessary on Callisto. Only the orange glow of the Star of Zeus illuminated them both.
“What stage are you at?” he asked, running his hand through Myriam’s hair.
“This one, K…” she whispered, kissing him.
When she stood up to step out of her red leotard, Braun looked at her. He followed the numerous scars lining up along the woman’s bulging muscles and bones. The Techno-Marine turned her into a cyborg, an almost invulnerable human-weapon with the help of camouflaged Kevlar coating under her flesh; but also electronic gadgets doting her genetically enhanced body.
Braun didn’t mind. Despite the implants and military drugs, his former comrade of the academy’s skin had remained as soft as when she was twenty; and her dark eyes as bright.
The ex-MP was also naked when she came back to put herself astride on his thighs, passing her legs under his armchairs. Through the alcohol and the cigarette smell, he recognized her discreet perfume as he covered her upper body, chest and shoulders with pecks. When he went up on her neck, she seized his head to kiss him again.
Myriam tightened her knees against his sides, trapping him. “This reminds me of our tour on Hygiea,” she whispered.
“It does…” Braun went on.
Held in thrall, the Soviet witnessed Myriam stiffening, whereas her position crushed his hips. Of her tended arms, she maintained his hands on the armrests; and through the bare skin of her contracting biceps, Braun saw a set of hydraulic pistons marrying her dark-blue veins.
But Stanišić began hurting him.
The ex-soldier worried before he heard a curious metallic clanking sound from his lover’s throat. The heaving woman glared at him again, her jaw awfully dislocated. Ejecting from the depths of her neck, a retractable sting grazed the Soviet’s cheek.
Surprised, Braun leaped backwards, knocking over the chair. The latter broke apart under the impact of their combined weight. “Myriam! What are you doing?” He uttered. But with her thighs around his pelvis and her long steel nails embedded in his arms’ flesh, the cyborg had pinned the ex-MP to the floor.
The assassin's stinger reared up like a cobra before returning beneath her tongue, ready to strike again. Braun reacted immediately and headbutted her friend, dazzling her. He then managed to get one of his hands out of her embrace, and took the opportunity to grab his attacker by the throat. Of the thumb, he blocked the sting’s ejection mechanism. Eyes filled with rage, the furious cyborg struggled, clawing at his face and shoulders. With her knees, she broke many of his ribs.
“Myriam!” insisted Braun, choking her with both hands. Despite the pain, he kept up the pressure, and even managed to reverse the hold to gain the upper hand. Once on top of her, he tightened his fingers until blood and oil spurted from Stanišić’s nose.
After a long battle, the cyborg’s shaking fingers struggled to grasp the Soviet’s bruised wrists. “Pl—Please!” the MIA officer gasped as a long stream of tears started flowing from her eyes. “Stop, Yossef!”
But the latter maintained his pressure until the stinger’s ejector broke, slicing the woman’s throat in half. She tried to scream, yet could only squirt a brown liquid through her mouth, nostrils and exposed larynx. At that moment, she stopped struggling.
Panting, Braun finally released his grip. Straightening, he tipped backwards, and quickly backed up on his buttocks against the bed frame. “Wh—why?” he stammered, still confused and wiping on his thighs the blood and oil from his shaking hands. On both his sides and arms, huge hematomas were reddening his skin around the scratches.
Myriam lay on the ground. Her bare chest was swelling and deflating at a jerky pace. Her breathing was wheezy. She coughed a couple of times, vomiting the same brown mixture of plasma, saliva and cyber-oil. Cream cooler dotted the liquid.
“Why Myriam?” Braun angrily insisted.
“You know damn well why…” she croaked.
“Honorably discharged…” Braun whispered.
The Yugoslavian straightened up with difficulty. From her broken jaw hung the yellow killer tongue and its deadly steel appendage; which she snatched off with a sharp blow. After replacing her mandible, she spat before running a shaky hand over her face, cleaning her eyes. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry—orders…” She was livid. Her lips slowly turned blue, and she struggled to stay conscious. “Orders…”
“Just lie still. I’ll come. We’re going to make it through this, Myriam. Remember the Troubles. We will—”
“We will do nothing!” The cyborg cut him off. Leaning on her elbow in a pool of fluid the carpet couldn’t mop up, she motioned him to remain seated against the bed and its floral spread.
Braun got up on one knee. He extended an arm towards the military woman standing. “Wait…” he spat before a sharp pain between his ribs made him wince.
Myriam straightened before bringing two fingers to her throat. “They know I failed...” Fumbling them into the gaping wound the implant had opened, she dreadfully tweaked a small chrome cube from her trachea. From one side ran a severed wire. On the others, white LEDs blinked through the gore. “You’d better keep dreaming, K…” she panted, crushing the bug. “This is all you have left now…”
The Soviet shouted as she stood facing the canopy. She plunged her dark crying eyes into his. The broken blood-covered snitch fell from her palm. Braun jumped in her direction as an emerald dash shattered the glass.
The woman collapsed into his arms.