Daughter of Mars #85 | (Mourning)
Words escaped Risa as Shiro pulled her by the hand at a brisk walk through the Arcadia Exchange courtyard. He led her through a cluster of doomsday prophets at the north end, all shaved bald and clad in anachronistic black robes. They stood in somber silence, holding metal staves, which projected holographic signs objecting to humanity’s presence on Mars. Risa locked stares with a man about her age, gaunt and forlorn. He mouthed ‘why,’ as if she somehow had the answer to why civilization dared leave the sanctuary of Earth.
Shiro tugging on her arm drew her attention forward as they headed down the street among a crowd more tourist than local, and not in the direction of her hotel room. By the time they halted at a PubTran terminal, she fumed. He still hadn’t released his grip on her arm, as if she’d run off like a foolish child the instant he let go. Momentary worry distracted her from being pissed at him long enough to shift her coloration back to a tan Earth native with mousy brown hair. The effect of the CamNano spread over her body with a faint tingle.
“‘Perhaps he should have?’ What’s that supposed to mean?” She pulled on her arm. “Let go.”
“If Kree was about to walk off a bridge, would you let go of her hand?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not a six-year-old.”
“No, but you’re as careless as one.”
Risa twisted her arm. “Ow. Come on. This isn’t funny or cute.”
A little silver and cyan taxi squealed to a halt in front of them, and opened its side hatch.
“I’m not trying to be cute.” He guided her into the car, closed the door, and released her arm. “I’d rather you’d be alive to resent me than have a dead woman in my heart.”
She rubbed her wrist, not quite able to lift her scowl to eye contact.
“Thank you for choosing PubTran. Please―”
“Sector 19 Commerce Quad.” Shiro swiped his NetMini before the auto attendant could speak again.
The car jolted forward.
Risa held the purse in her lap, knees together. “I’ve never been abducted before.”
He pressed two fingers into the ridge over his right eye. “Please stop being melodramatic.”
“Why did you come to Mars?” She fidgeted with the thin material over her legs. Her lack of armor left her feeling naked in a way a simple dress couldn’t cover.
“To offer my assistance to the Front. Your people have already benefitted from some new weapons. There are some in the command staff who agree with my opinion that it is better to focus efforts on one war at a time.”
“The General?” Risa laughed. “What ‘command staff?’ The MLF is about a hundred people.”
“You never bothered to look in your own network, did you?” Shiro grinned. “Maris is one of several commanders operating in self-contained cells. Your true numbers are closer to a thousand.”
She rolled her eyes, sending violet glare over the roof. “A thousand… still a drop in the bucket. Last I looked, the UCF had over 217,000 military personnel on Mars. The ACC about half again that.”
“Your numbers include all operational staff including office workers, mechanics, and medical teams. Front line combatants aren’t quite sixty percent of that number… and the ACC has bad equipment and even worse motivation. Most of their soldiers are defectors waiting for the right moment.”
“So what”―she grabbed the seat to keep from sliding on a hard left turn―“you’re saying is, the MLF helps kick the ACC off Mars, and then we do it all over again once the UCF owns it?”
“Bombs aren’t the only way to effect change.” He grasped a handle by the door as the PubTran car stopped short.
Risa looked out at a food court surrounded by storefronts, flooded with red and orange light from holographic signs. She pondered running, but decided to wait for him after getting out of the car. He can’t be right. Okay, my first time, I wanted to have sex before I got killed. With Pavo, it was so much more. Her mood imploded, burying her in a mountain of grief. None of it showed to the outside world, aside from a slumped, forlorn posture.
Shiro put an arm around her. Her body registered his touch, and his urging her to walk, and complied while her conscious mind analyzed every moment with Pavo, searching for any hint what they had was less than real. Her memory of his carrying her to the med center made the presence of another man’s hand on her back seem traitorous. She snapped out of her mental wandering and moved ahead.
Risa walked faster than his hand. “Where are we going?”
Shiro stopped by one of the food court tables, enamel white with attached,chairs. “This is fine.”
Risa eyed him with suspicion as she lowered herself into the hard, plastic seat. He’d chosen a table along the outside edge of the seating area, directly in front of a storefront bearing a sign reading “Sector Z.” Inside, an uncountable number of children raced about, occupied with numerous games and amusements. Near the back, little uncoordinated bodies in zero-g suits flew around a three-dimensional arena like teddy bears caught in a hurricane. As soon as she saw the place, she scowled at him.
“So you bring me to a kid-tainment place to… what? Make me feel guilty?”
Shiro sat across from her. His suit, his smile, his very presence seemed out of place among the middle-class mundanity surrounding them. “Risa, you already feel guilty. Some part of you thinks you could’ve done something different to keep that Voronin fellow alive. You regret what you’ve allowed Maris to do to your body. You wonder if Pavo would be okay if you didn’t go to Arden. You feel shame that you considered his life worth more than the farmers’ lives. Now, despite how much it tears you up inside to think about abandoning that little girl, you’re ready to run off to your death to get revenge against a faceless bureaucracy.”
“Mommy! Mommy! Look at the score I got!” A little boy’s scream lofted out of the chaos to her right.
She shrank in on herself.
“It’s not one person responsible for what happened to Pavo. You can’t kill the political machine.”
“Why?” Risa’s voice came out angry, though she could not hold back tears. “Why Pavo? He wasn’t important. He was just a soldier. Why would they target him?”
Shiro brushed his finger back and forth over his lips for a moment. “The only thing I can come up with is your relationship to him, and they wanted you off your game.”
Risa straightened. “I know C-Branch did it. The operator who almost killed me told me all about how the Front is a C-Branch operation for plausible deniability. What balls. I can’t believe he expected me to believe that. I mean, I can accept they might not be coming after us as hard as they could since we do sort of help them whenever we hit the ACC, but even if that were true, why would they want to attack me? It makes even less sense if we’re supposedly the same team.”
“You’ve been erratic lately.” He lowered his voice. “Openly talking about leaving the Front. After that stunt at Arden, they realized you could be a threat. C-Branch likes sharp swords. They don’t like swords that think for themselves.”
“Stunt?” She glared. “I had to stop them from murdering their own citizens.”
Shiro raised a pacifying hand. “Not ‘stunt you.’ I meant what they tried to pull.”
Risa gazed into the gloss white table, tinted violet from her eyes. “All I wanted to do was get away from the killing. I’m not a threat. I’ve lost the heart to wage a war that the people we’re fighting to free don’t even care about. Whenever we do anything, the media makes us out to be the bad guys.” She cringed as a wave of giggling came from the zero-g area. “I… don’t know what to believe anymore.”
Small children in suits with glowing rings around their wrists, ankles, and waists glided and flipped in a slow-motion midair dance, protected by a cube of transparent mesh netting and padded floor. It seemed to be some manner of electronic paintball game, but the kids were having too much fun flying around to fire their toy weapons at each other. Kree would love that… if I could get her outside without her having a panic attack.
“Looks like fun, doesn’t it?” Shiro smiled. “Pity those rigs only support up to ninety pounds.”
“What do you want, Shiro?” She spread her hands flat on the table. “Show me a bunch of normal children laughing and playing to remind me of everything they took away from me?”
“No, Risa. I’m showing you what you could have with Kree, or children of your own.” He put his hand on top of hers. “His death was tragic, but it’s no reason for you to give up.”
“Who is Shiro Murasame?” Risa stared at the back of his hand. “Why does he care so much about me? You seem to have a unique set of skills for an executive.”
Shiro grinned. “I grew up in West City. My mother is Japanese and my father half. We weren’t wealthy by any means, but I didn’t want for much. They couldn’t bear the cost of university, so I signed my soul over to the military. Graduated and went straight to active duty. Wound up volunteering for Special Operations school, managed to get through it, and spent a few years running around jungles and deserts.”
“Sounds like the same story I get from every guy.” She leaned back.
“How many of those grunts finished their tour and went back in-country to climb the rungs of private enterprise? I’m not rich, but I’ve got nothing to complain about.”
“You paid for my repairs.” She shied away. “Listen to me, I even sound like a machine.”
He squeezed her hand. “If you want to be technical about it, Starpoint paid for your medical care.”
Two small girls squealed as they ran hand in hand down the center of Sector Z and jumped in a simulator shaped like a stubby fighter plane. Kree hates the cute games. She’d probably love that one… it involves explosions. “Oh you forgot to mention the guilt over almost killing those kids.”
“That one I missed.” Shiro pulled her a little closer. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She stared into space, her voice lifeless. “We’d gotten intel that put one of the men responsible for my father’s death in a base the UCF was about to use as a staging area to launch an operation targeting Front assets. My mission was to set off a charge underground, causing a cave in to swallow the facility. I fixated on getting revenge so much I never checked the tunnels before I planted the explosive. On my way out, I found Kree and a bunch of others living down there.” Risa’s gaze fell to the table. “I almost didn’t make it in time.”
Shiro peeled her hand from the table, threading his fingers through hers as he rotated her arm palm up. “I’m glad they sent you for that. Most wouldn’t have gone back to stop it. You have a good heart, Risa Black. I wish you’d stop letting it torture you.”
She looked up as he leaned across the table, a mix of hope and affection in his eyes. Could I be one of those parents sitting there, watching them play, oblivious to the war?
“It was never supposed to happen. I had intended to keep our relationship strictly one of business. I never planned on falling for you, but I have.” His face drifted closer, his voice quiet. “Let me take you to Earth. Away from this war, away from the not knowing. You deserve more than this.”
Does he really care? She tried to read his eyes. He knew about Pavo. “The rebound never works. If I say yes, I won’t know if it’s true or if I’m just running away from my pain.” Risa drifted back as his lips closed in. “You don’t want me to resent you?”
“No.” He smiled, and sagged back in his seat. “I most certainly do not.”
“I can’t tell what I feel. I know he’s dead, but I still feel like I’m betraying him even being here with you now.” Both of them dragged me to a hospital. Both of them walked in on me naked. She tried to conceal a faint smile. Pavo twice. I didn’t feel nervous with him like I do with Shiro.
“I understand.” He bowed. “I am fortunate enough to have been spared the pain of losing someone I cared dearly for. I’ve lost squad mates in action, but such deaths are to be expected. I suppose I prepared myself for that before it happened. You need time.”
“Yeah. I need time.” She eyed the playing children. I might not have much.
Shiro stood. “May I escort you back to your hotel?”
My armor… “Sure. I’m sorry, I just―”
“Needing time is not a no. I’m the one who should apologize for moving too fast.” He offered his arm. “Forgive me. I saw you in pain and only wanted to help.”
She couldn’t bring herself to smile, but accepted his arm. “I don’t mean to come off ungrateful.”
“Say no more.” He walked with her towards a PubTran terminal. “Just promise me you won’t do anything rash.”
Risa looked up at the stars shining through the dome. Raziel, if you’ve got anything to say, I could really use some help right now. “I’ll try.”
Related posts:
Daughter of Mars #84 | (Tempting Fate Part 3)Daughter of Mars #74 (Blind Wish part 4)Daughter of Mars #79 | (A Better Life Part 1)
