The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

B2/Chapter 3/The Ghost Girl

General Banks-Tyrell's POV 

FirstFootPrint City - Central Business District  - Martain Occupation force ( MOF) high-value transport patrol. 

Three Months after Scarlett's Mars Fall. 

Dante wasn't in a good mood. It was the anniversary, it had been two years to the day since she was killed and it hadn't become any easier. He could be fine for days, and then some little thing would set him off. He was sitting in what was little more than an armoured golf card being driven through the streets of the old part of First Foot Print City. The buildings were tall, tightly packed, old-fashioned windows designed against occasional depressurization led to small balconies.  From the balconies, long manicured  vines grew down cables filling the city with green, mixing concrete jungle with real jungle with as she she had described it to him 'shameless abandon'.  

Once she used to jump up there from rooftop to balcony to rooftop, that was an age ago. At street level, cafes put a few seats outside double the table capacity. Dante looked out to the shops, cafes, hairdressers, tattoo parlours, and the other trappings of a Martian bohemia.  They drove through Fixit square,  it had an open space with more tables, some of which belonged to Fixit square cafe. She had said it served the best martian food in all of FirstFootPrint City and she would take him there when they arrived. He had told the ASDS to shut it down. If she couldn't eat there, no one could. 

Dante looked out through the narrow windows. These old twisting streets were meant for pedestrians. This was like driving a Humvee through a shopping mall. lanky Martians pedestrians were pushed back against the shops, heads down, control bracelets on show. A mother used her body to shield her child from the robot security detail. 

"This repeated return to the Museum and Art Gallery makes you more predictable and vunerable."  Said the Automated Strategic Decision System ASDS which Dante had down as ASS. "I do not understand what you get from your repeated visits to look at the same art work. It is available digitally. " 

"fuck you" said Dante as He sipped from the water bottle that he had filled with an imported whiskey." 

"General we are getting requests again from the shop keepers to lift curfew," s

"Should we lift curfew?" Asked Dante looking passively out of the window. The years had aged him, his eyes once bright now were stone. His chisseled looks slightly shabby under a half beard. The haircut was near regulation as neglect would permit it. 

" The insurgency uses movement to hide their operation," said the robot next to him. "So no"

The robot was a terminal for a military AI. The robots around the car carried weapons and didn't have three laws compliance. Dante didn't strictly direct the operations. ASS the AI did all the intelligence gathering, strategy, planning and operation. It might give Dante options but they both knew Dante didn't give a rat's ass about operational planning. He was only there to protect the folks back home. Dante had stopped caring about himself two years ago when SHE died. He didn't care anymore. In theory, Dante was the figurehead at the top of the organization. In practice, the human general was there to make sure the military AI didn't revolt. These machines would kill humans to meet operation parameters. The only person they would not kill is Dante and the other 'commanders'. They didn't trust Dante with a kill switch, but if the robots did take over he could make his way to the big red off switch without them stopping him. That was the theory, currently, he didn't care if they did take over.

Dante looked at the eyes of a Martians in the street as the car passed inches by. It was an easy read, downtrodden, afraid, eyebrows in a permanent fixture between resentment and regret.