The Dust

Neurachem

Harris lit up a cigarette idly, ignoring the dirty glances that his squadmates shot him. The captain was prone to the same vices, so nobody was able to say anything, but it was just another way that he looked like the Irkallans.

He felt bad for them, personally. A pointless life in a factory producing goods that would go off-world only to be consumed by the desperate and unappreciative, paid for by the Federals who were really only concerned in keeping the people busy and complacent. A few weeks earlier he had met a woman who'd sold her insides, taking the stipend that the Federals paid those who were willing to sacrifice their chance at children.

He had to say that he didn't feel she'd made a horrible choice. New Haven had never been a great place to live, but right now it wasn't a world he'd damn anyone else to. In three weeks, his rotation would be up and he'd be a full-fledged Federal citizen. He hadn't even seen combat, though he'd heard the occasional frantic cries over radio.

The cigarette began to burn too close to his fingers, and he tossed it in the gutter, which he supposed wasn't really so much a gutter as an indentation, since everything in the city was uncomfortably moist. The career soldiers said that in its prime Irkalla had been a better place, but twenty years of occupation meant that things like making sure the life support system wasn't leaking water that you had more than enough of went by the wayside. It was random searches, the occasional harassment, and managing the various private contractors that took up his time, and the Irkallans spent their time trying to scrape by, the castoffs of a humanity that had decided it was more civilized than they were.

In some moments, Harris allowed himself the thought that perhaps the rebels were right. Living the neutered life of housepets in the Federal system had to be an insult to their dignity, if not an assault on the essence of who they were. And he'd heard the cries, the tears, of the women who sold themselves to the Federal soldiers, desperate for scrip that would hold up for more than just the plastic novelties of a world suspended in time.

The mines were where the real business was run, but offworlders had been running it for some time now. Harris was glad he wasn't stationed in those districts; in some places they hung up the corpses of the Federals or the corporation men by their feet, using them to lure soldiers into ambushes and snipers. Jackob showed him a video of a tank getting gutted with a railgun when the garrison had decided it had enough of the upstarts. Harris vaguely recalled being so anxious the next day that Captain Lewis had just taken a glance at him, a glance at Jackob, and left him in the barracks as they went on patrol.

Harris was glad that Jackob had been shipped out. Now the rest of his pointless time on a pointless world guarding a pointless city with pointless factories could be spent thinking about what he was going to do afterward.

The whole occupation was all because of an order from above. The line had to hold. Irkalla had long been the central manufacturing center of New Haven, and if it fell to the rebels there was no telling what would happen; they could actually push the Federals off planet. Harris figured that wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that he was standing in the way of that particular future.

"Alright, men, battle stations. Not a drill. Patrols indicate that we've got armed foot-mobiles headed this way, and we're going to turn them back. We don't expect much, but we only caught them because they weren't careful about keeping what they have under wraps. They're going to hit us hard, but we're going to push back harder."

Harris tried to steady his hands, feeling them shake without really knowing how to keep them still. As the others filed out to their positions, Lewis turned to speak to him directly.

"Once you get moving, they'll steady. Just remember your training, and shoot the bad guys before they shoot you."

Captain Lewis was pretty mellow about the prospects of a battle, Harris thought, but then he was a veteran and had seen combat several times before. He tried to focus on the confidence, the calm, but was jarred from his focus by a fire alarm.