Claire Takes On The Galaxy

Claire - Chapter Four

After Claire shook off some of the lassitude of the drugs and induced coma of six weeks of hyper sleep she thought to check her personal messages. There were more than 300 emails from her mother. No matter where you are in space, she thought, some things never change.

The marines of The Two-One were ferried down to the planet’s surface and returned to operational fitness through exercises and dietary supplements. In one of the food queues Claire and Lou encountered a medic with two years’ service as opposed to their service of less than a year, who introduced herself as Adriana Groves.

“My family calls me Adria,” she told them. “My mother thought I might be a fashion model when she named me, but here I am in an unfashionable marine combat uniform.” Both Claire and Lou thought that she wore the uniform with a certain air that might have passed muster on the catwalk. Her blonde hair, which was longer than either of the two girls’, was kept pinned up at the neck. “I see you two are the Annies. I’ve heard about you; you’re good I’m told.”

“Claire here shoots at stuff,” said Lou. “I’m along to add style.”

“That’s what I plan on telling the wounded when I get any. What a battlefield really needs is style.”

Adria was also attached to the headquarters section of the Two-One, as were the company’s three sniper teams, so she fell into Claire and Lou’s orbit, and went with them when they first ventured onto the surface of Devil’s Pit. This experience was both awe inspiring and depressing. The planet’s surface was mostly off limits to tourists unless they were in a spacesuit or pressurised cabin. The one part where humans could walk around freely was a gigantic rift valley along the planet’s equator. For Devil’s Pit was one of those earth-sized planets where plate tectonics (continental drift) had started but then had stopped. The carbon cycle which had kicked off earth’s atmosphere had never become a feature of the planet, so it had never become alive. Two major features left by these primordial volcanic forces was a gigantic rift valley running east-west along the equator, and an equally gigantic volcanic cone at the eastern end of the valley. Claire did not see that mountain on that first day but sometimes, when she happened to be far down the valley she would notice the shadow of Mount Gigantic – what other name could there be for that vast mound – and see its bulk as a distant shadow to the north east.

As the rift valley was so deep, as well as wide, the planet’s residual atmosphere had collected at the bottom at high enough pressure for terra forming to occur. Microbes were left to do their stuff. By the time Claire arrived, the valley floor had an atmospheric pressure equivalent to about 2,000 metres on earth with enough oxygen to breathe, although cold enough for 4,000 metres. The air and occasional rain from this gradually developing atmosphere was enough for unattractive, hardy-looking plants with red leaves to cover much of the valley floor. Groves of small trees where the trunk and branches grew in spirals, for reasons the geneticists could not explain, dotted the landscape at random. With their newly acquired eye for terrain, the Annies quickly noticed that the valley floor was broken up by endless small hills, valleys, mounds and naturally occurring channels. None of the hills reached much above Claire’s height, however, and digging trenches to any depth would require rock drills. If and when any shooting occurred, the marines would have to keep their heads down.

The depressing part of the scenery was that this valley floor covered by red plants stretched as far as the eye could see in any direction from the marine base and the adjacent civilian settlement. The awe-inspiring part was that they could see a very long way. The cliffs that bounded the rift valley were a faint smudge of grey on the northern horizon, and not visible at all to the south. That was the arena in which The Two-One, along with the in-place The One-Five plus a command support unit, was expected to fight.

With her limited military experience, Claire wondered why any invasion force would not simply stand off and blast the marine base and the town into oblivion and claim the ashes, rather than land and fight it out. The answer as she later found out, was that the marine base was mostly underground and had defences against missiles, and there was no point at all in blowing up the town. The Mercantilists wanted the facilities, including the power supply and food production vats of the settlement, just as much as the Federated Earth forces, not to mention civilians to operate them. That meant possession of the settlement and the mines still had to be fought out on the valley floor. Humans may have reached the stars but battles still came down to a bunch of grunts with machines fighting another bunch of grunts with machines.

As part of the standard sightseeing tour Claire, Lou and Adria, put on coats and gloves against the cold, donned the wide-brimmed green hats they had been issued with to shade against the sun as the valley’s ozone layer was still very thin, and walked from the marine base along a well-trodden path to the valley’s sole river. Plenty of other marines from their company were coming back from making the same trip, mostly men who eyed them speculatively. They mounted an observation platform overlooking the river, called the Alph, from the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem. This was explained in an information board on the platform, which had the first five lines of the poem.

In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn

a stately pleasure dome decree:

where Alph the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

“Dude gets high, writes a weird poem and a river gets named on another world,” said Lou, reading the notes on the board. “If we got high we’d be on charges.”

The girls looked over the railing at the “river” - a trickle of water at the bottom of a narrow stream bed. This trickle eventually collected in a small lake well to the West, inevitably called Sunless Sea.

“No chance of anyone drowning at least,” commented Adria.

“I think it’s in flood,” said Lou. “Must’ve had some rain up east. See, there are clouds.”

A few fluffy clouds drifted around in the blueish sky above them, seemingly uncertain about what to do next. As they were looking four male marines from The One Five climbed up to the platform.

“Look at the fresh meat, guys,” said a sallow-faced corporal, perhaps a decade older than the girls.

“Excuse me!” said Adria. Her hat had been tilted to a jaunty angle and had remained there without seeming effort on her part. She leant with her back to the platform railing, one boot on a rail. The impression she gave was that of being a fashion model on earth, rather than a marine private in uniform, combat boots, coat and gloves. Claire, who like Lou had been forced jam her hat square on her head and tie it tight to stop it falling off, wondered what Adria was doing at Devil’s Pit. “We are not meat, fresh or otherwise.”

“We call all the Two-One fresh meat,” said the corporal.

“We’re the One-Five,” added a private, a beefy youth with a lumpy chin.

Adria folded her arms. “You can call the men what you like, but to call the women ‘meat’ invites coolness.”

“Frostiness more like it,” said Claire. Lou said nothing. As she explained later, Adria was doing so well she decided to sit that one out.

“Come on ladies, don’t be so hoity toity,” said the corporal.

“Hoity toity now is it? We’re not just meat, we’re snobbish meat,” said Adria.

“Forget the crack about meat and come for a walk up the river,” said the corporal.

“Doesn’t look to be anything up the river,” said Claire, “or down the river, or across the river.”

“You have to make your own fun here,” said the corporal. “We’ve got some hooch cooling in a pool of water up river. There’s enough for some fine ladies like yourself, as well as us.”

“Just what I want to do,” said Adria, “get wasted with a bunch of guys who think of me as meat. We’ll take a look at the town instead.”

“I could order you to come,” said the corporal, smirking. He might have tried that before and had some success, but not with Adria.

“If you’re going to drink hooch you can’t order us to do anything,” she said. She moved to the platform ladder. Claire and Lou followed.

“Errh! You can’t order us to do anything,” sneered the corporal, putting on a mock, upper-class accent.

“I hope these boys fight better than they proposition,” said Adria without looking around.

The three girls walked on, The One-Five crowd forgotten.

“What’s hooch?” asked Claire.

“Booze made on the sly,” said Adria.

“Tradition among the guy marines,” said Lou. “Poker games and hooch. My brother drank some on deployment. He said beast hydro-oil would’ve tasted better.”

Two officers of the Two-One came into view on the path, obviously heading out to the observation platform the marines had just left, deep in conversation. Officers had been kept separate from the other ranks in the revival procedures until now. All three marines saluted. The officer on the left, closest to Claire, looked around seeing them for the first time. His mouth fell open and his eyes widened, then he apparently took hold of himself and returned the salute.

“Do we look that frightful?” thought Claire.

“The Annies in my section and a medic,” said the officer on the right, returning the salute and looking at the badges. “I’m Lieutenant Jel Masters. This is The Two-One CO Captain Andrew Chan.”

“Marines,” said Captain Chan, a very good looking man, Claire thought, with an Asian cast to his features.

“Sir!” they said.

“What section are you a medic in, Private Groves?” said Captain Chan, after peering at Adria’s name tag.

“I’m also headquarters section, sir.”

“So, you’re all under Lieutenant Masters,” said Chan. In the Stellar Marine company organisation, the company second in command headed the headquarters platoon. “First briefing tomorrow, marines. We will all have to learn to work together and, don’t worry, Lieutenant Masters here is not such a bad guy.”

They all smiled, saluted and departed.

“Captain’s hot,” said Lou when they were a safe distance away, “and no ring.”

“He is,” said Claire, “but he’s more than two ranks above us and in the same company.”

Relationships were tolerated in the Steller Marines, but not in the same company and not where one side of the relationship was two ranks higher than the other. If a relationship broke the rules on earth, and it was discovered (nobody looked very hard) those concerned could be shuffled around or the junior party promoted. On deployment, there was less room for shuffling people around and the unit might be plunged into combat at any moment, where such involvements might matter, the rules were more strictly enforced. Claire, along with the other marines, had been lectured sternly that it was about care but not passion. The phrase court martial had been mentioned. Claire did not want to be court martialled.

“That rule is a shame,” she said, “but did you see the look on the captain’s face? He was horrified? We were in the right uniform. What else did he expect, fashion?”

“It’s like I told you before,” said Adria, cheerfully. “there should be more fashion in military matters. That’s what I’m going to tell the wounded. I’m sorry you’re bleeding I’ll tell them, but red is just not the new black.”

(“I thought you had issues over your LW-150 lovers,” Lou told Claire later. “If I’m wounded I dunno if I want to go to Adria’s aid station.”)

Downtown Devil’s Pit, the next stop on the tour and a short walk from the river information board, was a series of low, grey buildings connected by a single, narrow track scraped out of the landscape. When it rained, which was seldom, the track got muddy. Where that track crossed with another that led to the marine base, just to the north of the town, a handwritten cardboard panel sign nailed to a post announced the intersection as Times Square. A hangar-like building on the corner was the town’s one and only store, with merchandise left in piles on the floor. There were food concentrates fresh from the town’s food vats, some electronic gear, electric razors, and a few personal items.

On the table next to the robotic checkout was typewritten sign.

Seek and ye shall find.

Underneath that someone had written, in felt tipped pen:

Customers f**k off

“Charming ˗ so much for the shopping experience,” commented Adria.

“You can order stuff from earth,” said Lou, “if you don’t mind paying freight and waiting two months.”

The next building along, much larger than the general store, included an upper story with windows at regular intervals, all firmly screened with curtains. There was one door at street level, but no markings or signs on the building to indicate what it was supposed to be. Claire had been told that the tiny civilian population of Devil’s Pit lived in detached houses or units. That building did not fit the bill.

“The base Dollhouse,” said Lou.

“Must be,” said Adria. “Looks larger than the one on my last deployment.”

“Dollhouse?” asked Claire, looking from one girl to the other.

“For the entertainment of our male colleagues,” explained Adria.

“I heard a part of these houses is virtual reality, but they have girls,” said Lou.

“And synthetics,” said Adria. “Only place where synths are allowed for this work.”

Claire finally realised what they were talking about.

“You mean it’s a brothel?” she exclaimed.

“Another part of the marine tradition for the guys,” said Lou. “Sam said something about it when I told him goodbye. He said to be wary of the Dollhouse, but I think he wanted to scare me off going out with guys here.”

“That’s outrageous,” said Claire, thinking of finding Brad in the closet with another girl. “Where’s our Dollhouse?”

“You mean a house with hot guys who want relationships?” said Lou. “We’ve a whole base full of guys, except our own company and those that don’t go here, of course.”

“It’s outrageous!” fumed Claire. “Guys!”

Just then a man in a black, civilian coat and wide-brimmed hat happened to step out of the door of the Dollhouse. He was carrying a large and apparently heavy satchel, and was waving at someone inside the building.

“Okay, May, I’ll see you at the meeting,” he said.

He was tall, firm-jawed and generally good-looking enough for Claire to be reminded of Brad. That and the discovery of the Dollhouse set her off.

“I suppose you’re happy with yourself going here?” she snapped, stepping forward.

“I, um, what?” said the man looking around and seeing the marines for the first time.

“Your wife probably thinks you’re just out shopping?”

“Wife? Shopping?” Then he looked over his shoulder as if realising where he was. “Oh, you think..”

“You don’t want to know what I think,” snapped Claire, stepping forward. The man stepped back, alarmed. Lou considered holding back her friend and then thought it would be more fun to see what would happen. She had never seen Claire quite so worked up. “And you probably have children.”

“Well, I….”

“Shame on you! Shame!”

“Shame?” said the man, still backing away as Claire was advancing.

“Just go back to your wife and beg forgiveness for being a cheating hound!”

“Hound?” The man backed up a couple more steps, looking concerned, his satchel held in front of him as if to offer some protection from Claire’s wrath. “Okay, hound, got it.” He turned and left.

“Way to go, girl,” said Adria, catching up with Claire, “..whoever he was.”

“Now that was interesting,” said Lou.

A woman appeared at the door of the Dollhouse. She was perhaps in her fifties but still arresting to any man. She wore a light-blue dress covering her shoulders and arms, cut to a trim figure, with a brooch set above her right breast. Adria remarked later that the dress was stylish, and there was not an ounce of fat on the women’s figure.

“Why are you yelling at James – he was just here to fix the security droid?” said this lady.

“Oh oh!” said Lou.

“He was coming out of this place ma’am,” said Claire.

“I’m May, just call me May. You ladies must be the Two-One. No one uses this door if they want to see my girls. Marines come in through the sheltered entrance at the back.” She gestured over her shoulder. “The miners come through tunnels that way.” She gestured to her right, which was to the west, further down town. “I had to call James because your marines busted my security droid last night, and hurt one of the girls. We’re going to have words with your colonel over this.” She eyed Claire and Lou’s uniform badges. “You two must be the Annies I’ve heard about.”

“Is the girl seriously hurt?” asked Adria.

“One of your One-Five animals knocked her over. Mild concussion. She’ll recover. Just don’t yell at James, sniper,” May said, switching her gaze to Claire. “He was trying to help.”

“He was coming out of here,” said Claire, her anger of a few moments before gone.

“A misunderstanding,” said Adria. “Will he be offended?”

May chuckled. “James’ll survive. He’ll be amused by the whole thing.” She looked appraisingly at the marines. “If any of you girls want some extra money let me know. I can arrange it so you just do miners, not marines – no need for your colleagues to know anything.”

“Not really our scene, but thanks for the offer,” said Adria.

May shrugged. “You girls know where to find me.”

She closed the door. The marines moved off, Claire feeling deflated.

“How was I supposed to know,” she said.

The other girls laughed.

The next building along, about the size of a suburban building on earth had no doors or windows and no apparent function, but the one after that was a respectable bar and grill called Colonel’s Find, which turned out to be the place to go after hours, for those not heading to the Dollhouse. It was packed with marines, male and female, and some miners – a rough-looking bunch sitting at a separate table who eyed the trio speculatively. The girls found one end of a table bench free and discovered a menu. A limited choice but they would survive. Adria’s phone chimed, and she looked at it.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” she said and slipped away – actions so normal and natural on earth that it took the other two a few moments to wonder just who could be calling her already on Devil’s Pit.

“Has she already got a secret miner lover?” said Lou.

“On our first day here?”

“Maybe she has hidden depths.”

Just then Claire noticed a small figure come in through the front door and push back the hood on her coat. It was a girl, perhaps eight years old, fresh-faced and with curly brown hair to her shoulders. She greeted the bar tender who smiled at her then turned and pointed in the direction of Claire and Lou. The girl walked up to them, looked at their nametags and then pointed accusingly at Claire.

“You!” she said.

“Me?” asked Claire, startled.

“Yes, you,” she said, folding her arms and looking stern. “You’ve just been yelling at my foster dad.”

“Oh my, my,” said Lou, amused.

“Your foster dad is James?”

“The same.”

“You know where he was?”

“Of course, I know,” said the girl indignantly. “He was fixing the droid the marines tried to break last night. May set me a message with your name.” She produced a phone and looked at the face. “And I got, one, two, three, four other messages about it,” she said, counting on the screen with her finger. “Two from girls in the upstairs rooms who heard you, one from the store next door and another from the workshop across the way. They all know me, and know the struggle I’m having to raise James right.”

“I see,” said Claire. “I’m sorry to yell at your foster dad but he was outside that place.”

“Oh, I don’t mind you yelling at him, and I don’t think James will be upset. He doesn’t get upset easily. But if you’re going to yell at him again, check with me first. If yelling is to have any effect against James it has to be properly co-ordinated yelling – and for stuff he deserves to be yelled at over.”

“Shouldn’t your foster mum co-ordinate yelling at your foster dad?”

“No foster mum,” said the girl. “I couldn’t handle one of those. A foster dad is hard enough to manage.”

Lou laughed. “I didn’t know Devil’s Pit would be so much fun. I’m Lou, what’s your name?”

“Madeline; Maddy is fine.”

“I’m Claire,” said Claire.

“Now known as Claire the yeller,” said Maddy.

“It seemed the thing to do at the time,” said Claire, wishing she could learn to keep her mouth shut.

“She’s had a harrowing experience with a man she won’t talk about,” said Lou. “She joined up in a wedding dress.”

“Did you?” Maddy was impressed by this. “What happened?”

“I don’t talk about it,” said Claire. “I don’t even like it to be mentioned” She glared at Lou who half-smiled and shrugged. “Sorry to yell at your foster dad.”

“You can apologise to him yourself. Come with me now. I’m on my way home”

“We were just about to have lunch,” said Claire in alarm, “and shouldn’t you still be in school?”

“I duck out whenever the educational experience gets too much, or I feel like it. It’s a virtual school; just three other real kids, and the system adjusts to what I want. Come. James will be in his workshop and the autocook can give you a sandwich.”

“I insist that you go with Maddy to apologise to her hot foster dad, with no foster mum,” said Lou, cheerfully. “Me and Adria will check out the action here and report back. Go! Go!” She made shooing away motions with her hands. “You don’t want to be rude to Maddy.”

“You don’t want to be rude to me,” said Maddy. “There will be consequences.”

Without quite knowing what she was doing, Claire got up and followed Maddy outside.