Night Sky (Part I)
by Fabio Fontana
The night sky was lit by invisible tracing
fire. To private Fert, who was looking up through his light-enhancing
optics, it seemed like it was raining upwards. The anti-aircraft
batteries from his own lines were trying to shoot down the incoming
Rightful Earth Alliance’s interceptors. He couldn’t tell
whether they were having any effect.
Standing with his back against the rim of
their dug up positions, huddled beside Fert, was private Renen. He was
just staring down at the butt of his laser rifle. Short of stature and
wearing fatigues two sizes too large for him, Renen looked like a kid
in a uniform. The brown helmet hung on his head like a bowl perched
on a pole. He spoke with a strange accent from Earth, but then his family had
arrived on Mars only twenty-five years back.
Nestled a few meters away, in various holes and
hidden positions, was the rest of his squad. Fert couldn’t hear
anybody speak through the background cacophony of explosions, but
that was probably because nobody was talking. Those who could were
trying to rest and Fert wished he could do the same, but he found
it impossible. The cold passed from the
chilled soil through the fatigues and penetrated deep into the spine.
It was like trying to sleep on icy spikes. Besides, there was no
telling when the enemy might start to push through to reach their
lines.
The past six days had been spent like this: dug
up, waiting for orders and eating lukewarm rations. Nobody was
telling when it was going to end, if they were going to advance or if
they were going to be swept away by a tide of REA forces. He doubted
his sergeant knew either.
Every now and then he became dizzy and almost dozed off, but
the stinging chill painfully forced him back to consciousness every time.
In those moments, inner thoughts surfaced spontaneously: I don’t want to be here – he repeated to
himself every night, but damn Earth was trying to take away
that for which they had worked so hard to place it in the hands of
millions of rejects the government didn’t want on its own planet,
and they all had to fight to maintain their freedom. He didn’t
want to be there, but they compelled him to fight.
Gradually, as time passed, the anti-aircraft
fire ceased. Eventually, only the occasional burst could be heard,
and the night was finally returned to its natural silence.
“Renen, are you awake?” asked Fert.
“Hmm… what is it?”
“I am going to find something warmer to
sleep on.” He hunched forwards and began to crawl away from their
position.
“Ok, see you later. Stay close.”
Stalking amongst the various trenches he could
see the bundles of brown fatigues, blankets and sleeping sacks that
were the other members of his squad. Most seemed to be sleeping and,
if they were noticing him lurking around, they weren’t
bothering to take action. They relied on the proximity sensors positioned
at the front of their lines to detect any enemy infiltration.
Fert remembered seeing some broken crates not
far away the day before and hoped that the plastic containers would
isolate him sufficiently for him to rest. When he got there, however, the
place had already been occupied; a gun crew from Short Range
Artillery Support had taken up position there. Two crewmen were
sleeping while the third was huddled next to the robotic gun platform
and its remote. This last soldier seemed awake. Fert went over to
her.
“Who goes there?” called out the R-gun
controller pointing something that glinted like a handgun in his
direction.
“I’m from squad 4, platoon 5A, I am
only looking for a place to sleep,” replied Fert as he got
close enough to be recognised, or shot at at point blank range.
“Try back there,” she said, indicating
the direction with her gun. Then she curled back and took no further notice of him.
Fert passed another small mound and found
what he was looking for: a bunch of discarded crates and packing
material. They were all quite battered, but his legs felt like stone
and would not carry him any further. He arranged the ones that looked
most suitable into a makeshift bunk, then tuck tight in his overalls
and tried to rest on it. The packaging material gave him enough
isolation against the icy ground and, with the minimum of warmth
provided by his outfit, he finally felt sleep overcome him. For a
moment he forgot that he was on a battleground, that he had spent the
last eight months of his life in the Martian Liberation Front eating
tasteless rations, urinating in holes in the ground and trying to
remain alive while attempting to kill the enemy. He had been a
hydroponics plant engineer once, and had eaten fresh food almost
every day, not the synthetic slop he was now served every evening. His whole
working life had been dedicated to producing stuff that allowed
people to forget the synthetic slop …
Soon he was asleep. Overhead, the occasional
anti-aircraft battery burst broke the surreal silence of a front line
that appeared to be a strip of barren desolation. In reality, it hid
thousands of men nestled as best as they could and ready to defend
a principle.
***
The hydroponics plant was a clean and luminous
place. Artificial sunlight shone from thousands of sources in a dozen
domes bathing the multitude of vats that grew some of the very best
fruits and vegetables on Mars. Outside was the barren red desert of
the planet punctuated, here and there, by the blue bulbous
atmosphere processing plants.
“The pulse is looking extremely good
lately,” whispered a soft voice close to Fert’s shoulder.
He turned around to see Veria, her dark eyes ever beautiful to
watch.
“Yes…” he nodded with a smile.
The pulses were his project: lentils, peas, beans… all plants
with highly useful nutritional properties. Veria said that his pulses
were the best the institute had ever grown. His heart jumped every
time she looked at him. Such a beautiful flower that could never be
his though, for she was already married to one of the chief
researchers in the institute. Yet the way she talked, looked and
behaved constantly nourished his hopes, his love that might not have
been so secret after all. Fert was sure that she knew, she must have
known.
With a slender hand she reached down to pick a
pod of beans, twisting it carefully to avoid causing any damage to
the plant. She placed it on a dish and smiled at him: “I am
sure the results of the analyses will be as good as all the previous
ones,” she said. Fert looked at her silently as she walked
away, hoping deep in his heart that those eyes were sincere, and that
she was not just playing some kind of selfish game. His gaze returned
to the windows.
The red desert was beautiful and terrible to
watch at the same time. When the first colonists arrived they had
found a chemically active yet perfectly sterilized soil. Solar
ultraviolet light, unfiltered by the atmosphere, broke up carbon
molecules and proved deadly to life. Now, after countless human
lifetimes, the atmosphere was breathable, but the only things that
really grew well in it were the atmosphere processing plants: porous
leathery balls that constantly converted carbon dioxide to oxygen. In
theory, the carbon dioxide rich atmosphere was ideal for many types
of plants, but they had soon discovered that, to survive the
roaring dust storms of Mars, the plants had to be much tougher than
they expected. Many colonists had died when the first generation of
atmosphere processing plants perished after an unpredicted dust
cloud, started in the southern hemisphere, grew to cover a large
fraction of the planet. The atmosphere had changed composition in but
a few days, and those who had not found refuge in the self contained
biospheres had died intoxicated. It had taken the colonists
generations to crawl out of the domes again with a new variety of
atmosphere processing plants. All this lay written in the history of
that red desert, and a new chapter was about to be added: Fert knew
all too well the rumours of the recent attacks on the Rightful Earth
Alliance installations…
END OF PART I
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