The Symbionts of Murkor Read online

  Garcia enjoyed the banter between two friends. He had dispensed with many of the formalities of military conduct, rarely addressing personnel by their military title. With only five people under his command, and given the exigencies of their assignment, no one would construe the lack of convention with complacency. He was seasoned enough to know, or he never would, what latitude to grant the people serving under him. After thirty-three years of military service, Nadir was to be his final command. With any luck he’d survive three more uneventful months of active duty, followed by the six-month return trip to Earth.

  Home. The renewal of intimacies and friendships not soon forgotten. Reunion with his father, retired from Unión politics, frail in his old age, missed for three long years. In one sense, it was an equal emotional exchange. He’d be leaving behind five individuals he had come to know under circumstances most people couldn’t even imagine.

  “Treadmill,” Garcia commanded, deliberately ignoring Carlos. “Three-minute cooldown, then full stop.”

  Tomorrow he’d use the one other piece of equipment in the room, an antiquated rowing machine that he had obtained after convincing Central Supply that it was crucial for combating the effects of Murkor’s low gravity. At sixty-one years of age you may win some battles, but time wins the war. He had recently come to accept the sobering fact that he could work out twice as hard as someone half his age without obtaining equal results.

  In a career replete with zero and low-grav assignments, Garcia still had managed to keep physically fit. When the body is properly coaxed by sensible living and exercise, good results follow. His appearance belied his age. In some men, advancing years can foster good looks. When good looks are given an early head start, as they were in the person of Andrés Garcia, they can result in an exceptionally attractive older man. Piercing black eyes, aquiline nose, wavy jet black hair distinguished by a touch of gray at the temples. A look accentuated by a calm, dignified deportment that could never be mistaken for excessive pride or arrogance. Youth had left him behind, but the favorable impression he unconsciously made on those around him had stayed.

  Garcia happened to be a very modest man.

  No one could say the same about Carlos. Regardless of their obvious differences (and maybe because of them), during their years of serving together they had become close friends.

  “We’ve managed to overtax the air ventilator,” a breathless Garcia said, stepping down from the treadmill where he had spent the last hour of his daily workout. “Haven’t you noticed it’s unusually close in here? And don’t bother complaining how hopelessly inefficient the system is.”

  “Want me to crack open a window?” Carlos said, an obvious impossibility. An expert engineer, Carlos was kept busy maintaining Nadir’s outdated mechanicals, the most important of these being the ESS. Everyone knew, because he told them often and it was true, that he was single-handedly keeping the base operational. He took his work seriously. That didn’t mean he always had to show it. “Forget the window. I’ve a better idea. Grant me three months leave on Varian and I can get—” A quick read of Garcia’s expression and he left the sentence hanging in the stale air. “I’ll get on it.”

  “Report the results to me what you’re done.”

  “Will do. Any intel on the shuttle that buzzed us earlier?”

  “Gustavo informed me that it touched down at Zenith an hour later,” Garcia answered.

  “You mean Club Zenith,” Carlos said, looking up from adjusting his jerry-rigged weights.

  “The same.”

  “Delivering some much-needed supplies, I suppose. Like a few kilos of a delicate brie paired with a case or two of delightful and perfectly chilled chardonnay—the spoiled fuckers.”

  “Nothing like that,” Garcia responded. “I had Gustavo tap into their ship to ground communications. He informed me that they were likely carrying one passenger and little else.”

  That got Carlos’s full attention. He stopped his workout and stood up.

  “And who might that passenger be?”

  “You know the answer,” Garcia said. Although the when was sooner than anticipated, everyone on base knew the who.

  “Commander Ellis—chancro bitch.”

  Carlos’s hatred for anyone or anything related to Coalition was well known. This seemed to be a darker shade of the feelings that, to varying degree, most shared.

  “You’re reacting to a rumor,” Garcia cautioned, aware that the imminent replacing of Zenith’s present commanding officer had been the subject of much speculation.

  “That’s pure bullshit!” Carlos snapped back. “After what she did on Varian? The Coalition sent her here for exactly one reason—to fuck with us!”

  Although Garcia did not altogether disagree, it was a conversation best had after Carlos calmed down. “How many sets of bench presses do you have left?” he asked.

  “What does that got to do with it?”

  “Answer the question, Sargento,” Garcia insisted.

  “Two,” Carlos responded, “but—”

  “Do them,” Garcia said, turning his back. Walking away, he quietly went about wiping down the treadmill, followed by his arms and shoulders. Carlos stared after him. Finding no one to argue with, he would have to redirect his anger toward fighting the force of gravity.

  The arrival of Ellis was problematical, Garcia thought, even though he didn’t hold much stock in rumors preceding her, a long military career teaching him that inaccurate intel was worse than none. As comandante, however, it was his duty to evaluate any and all sources of information, especially when official communiqués were a month old and themselves of dubious value.

  The communiqué concerning Ellis had, however, proven more accurate than most, estimating her arrival to within a few weeks. The standard bio included made mention of an altercation, specifics unknown, involving her and two unidentified officers, this occurring shortly before her reassignment. The same communiqué repeated old news: Coalition’s continuing strife with Unión was spreading to other sectors, Murkor being a likely flash point. It went on to reiterate the usual warnings about remaining on high alert—an advisory rendered almost meaningless, having been repeated during the greater part of the last two years. An important question was posed, and largely left unanswered, as to exactly why Ellis was replacing Zenith’s present CO before his term of service had expired. More disturbing was additional information he received from another, unexpected source.

  Nadir and Zenith shared isolation and nothing else, the hostile relationship existing between Coalition and Unión precluding any meaningful contact. Each base, however, did have lapses in the encoding of their routine interplanetary communications that provided a glimpse into the more mundane day-to-day operations of the opposition. Sometimes outbound transmissions were made purposefully misleading, ludicrously so. Garcia had to smile at a recent example. When Carlos became aware of Zenith’s water shortage, he sent an easily decipherable message to Varian which included his intention to install a spa hot tub. To avoid misunderstanding on the receiving end, a well-encrypted part of the same message explained the joke. Zenith often engaged in the same chicanery. It was considered unlikely that they had ever held a pig roast.

  On one recent occasion, however, the veil was reliably lifted.

  It was during the first (and last) time that a third-party merchant vessel, hoping to engage in profitable commerce, made the long voyage to Murkor. The vessel’s entrepreneurial captain, realizing the sale of his own wares would fail to cover the cost of repairing a damaged deflector shield, decided to try his hand at brokering transactions between the two bases. Being an astute businessman, he hit upon the one thing each party desired most and the other could best supply. After some tough negotiations and some shuttling back and forth, five hundred liters of Nadir’s water were bartered for five liters of Zenith’s premium vodka.

  When the captain extracted his commission, Garcia extracted a firsthand account of what was transpiring at Zenith. It reinforce
d what had been made evident by the transaction: Zenith’s thirst for water was becoming urgent. Garcia recalled how Carlos had taken particular delight in this knowledge.

  Playing it out—Zenith’s thirst for water, the rancor centered around Coalition’s politics, the increasing tension between Coalition and Unión—Garcia concluded that the assignment of a new commanding officer, someone with a questionable reputation, spelled trouble. At a minimum, it meant that Commander Ellis, acting with tacit Coalition approval, would conduct forays into Nadir’s EZ to pilfer water resources.

  Nadir was incapable of warding off such an incursion. He’d be forced to send a request for assistance to HQ on Varian. In view of the antagonism between the two superpowers, Unión would be compelled to respond. Although it would take a month or more to arrive, a heavily armed T-4 Battlecruiser would assuredly be dispatched to the planet. Coalition would answer in kind. Playing it out still further, considering the chances of the conflict escalating, a request for immediate assistance might be a very bad thing. Of course, he could be wrong about all of this…

  As he watched Carlos approach, a spurious thought crept into his head. It was undeniably selfish, sure, but he couldn’t exclude it: Three months from now Nadir would also have a new CO and the headache would be transferred to someone else.

  “I guess I owe you an explanation,” Carlos said.

  “When you’re ready.”

  “The Río Pecos Incident. Have you heard of it?”

  “I have,” Garcia answered, dredging his memory. “The details escape me. It occurred, correct me if I’m wrong, on Earth, eight years ago?”

  “Eight years and two months.”

  “Yes. I was on duty in the Lascor System at the time,” Garcia replied. “I’m sure I didn’t receive a full accounting.”

  “Not many people off-world did,” Carlos said, his voice hard and cold, anger returning to his eyes. “Fewer know the real story, the government spinning a version they wanted everyone to believe.”

  “I’d like to hear the truth about it,” Garcia said, curious how it connected to Carlos’s heated reaction to Ellis’s arrival. Beyond that, the young man was placing his trust in him, and had come to hold him in high esteem.

  “If you don’t know the geography,” Carlos began, “the headwaters and upper stretch of the Pecos are in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range within Coalition territory. The lower portion of the river, that which lies within Unión territory, runs through arid lands, making it the major water source for cropland and pasture in the Pecos Valley.”

  “Is there no source of desalinated water?” Garcia asked.

  “Pipelines weren’t run into that area. ‘Economically unfeasible,’ they said. Because of this, farmers were reliant on flood irrigation to water their crops. Cantaloupes, cotton, and alfalfa—and pecans.” Carlos struggled for a moment, deciding how much to tell. “Ever give any thought to where a pecan comes from?”

  “Can’t say I have,” Garcia admitted. “I’m curious, now that you mention it.”

  “A tree. And a pecan is not a nut. It’s a drupe. My family owned a pecan grove in the Pecos Valley, about ten kilometers from the river. Five generations farmed that grove. I was going be the sixth,” Carlos said, choking back raw emotions before emphasizing the next word. “Willingly.”

  “Instead, you’re here on Murkor,” Garcia pointed out, stalling to allow Carlos time to regroup.

  “And the chancros responsible are still a hundred kilometers away,” the young engineer said. “The distance from here to Zenith,” he added when Garcia looked at him questioningly. “That’s how close my family’s grove was to the Coalition border.”

  Garcia noticed that Carlos kept using the past tense when referring to his family’s farm. Seeing the pent-up emotion in his friend, he was reluctant to rush the reason why.

  “Do you know how pecans are harvested?” Carlos asked. “A machine grabs the trunk and shakes the whole damn tree until they fall to the ground like hail. Fifty kilograms or more per tree. That’s the way it should be. The way it was. Except a tree can’t live without water.

  “The first bad year should have been a clear warning of what was to come. You see, my parents had this belief—this stupid belief that reason would prevail. It was in that first year, a drought year, when Coalition farmers upstream began diverting more water than treaty rights legally allowed. That’s when some of our neighbors began calling them chancros. My parents never did.

  “In response, the farmers in the Pecos Valley organized. Complaints were sent through proper channels. Legal briefs were filed with both governments. Nothing happened—except, that first year, when a tree was shaken, forty kilograms of pecans fell to the ground.

  “The second year of the drought was worse. Coalition farmers, emboldened by their government’s lack of response, diverted more water. A lot more. And why wouldn’t they? I was learning economics at an early age. The hard way. As their harvests flourished, ours failed, allowing them to capitalize on higher commodity prices. They could only win.”

  “Our government didn’t step in?” Garcia asked.

  “Low-level diplomatic overtures. No one got involved who could actually make a difference. As talks dragged on, things got worse. The crop was halved. When the trees were shaken, brittle leaves covered the few pecans that fell. Trees were slowly dying.

  “We tried to make both governments understand the urgency. This isn’t corn or wheat that can be replanted after a year of failure. A pecan tree needs to grow many years before it begins producing. So we organized. We marched. We hired lawyers we couldn’t afford. Nothing came of it. If you know anything about farming, you’ll know that most of the smaller farmers scrape by from year to year. My family was nearly bankrupt. I was sixteen at the time.”

  Carlos stared at Garcia. “Do you have any conception of what it’s like watching your parents cry?”

  Garcia shook his head. “Thankfully, no.”

  “I do,” Carlos said, bitterness etching his voice. “You hate yourself for seeing it. You hate those who caused it much more. I would have done anything—my father realized this. He kept a tight rein on me during those times.”

  “Sounds like a good man.”

  “Yeah, he was that,” Carlos said, his eyes going glassy with the recollection. “By the middle of the third drought year, I had turned seventeen. You could walk across the Pecos, the riverbed, without getting wet. They say that desperate times lead to desperate measures. Four hundred men women and children—many of them I knew, neighbors and close friends—crossed the international border and descended on Coalition’s regional capital at Santa Fe. To the best of my knowledge, no one carried a weapon. That didn’t stop things from turning bad.”

  “Most of this, the details, I heard nothing about,” Garcia said, shaking his head. “Only the violence. You always hear about the violence. The reason behind it gets lost.”

  “Coalition sent in troops,” Carlos continued. “At first to keep the peace. So they said. Then, on the second day, they were used to separate us from the farmers who had diverted our water. That’s when it all unraveled. You’ll hear a dozen versions of why. I know we were unarmed.

  “Twenty-seven of us, including nine women and children, never returned home.”

  “Carlos, I’m sorry—”

  “Yeah. We finally got the attention we wanted. The ‘incident,’ as they were calling it, made global news. An international crisis. Not so much because of us, of what we had endured, but because national pride was now at stake. The diplomats met. The diplomats threatened. In the end, a new water rights treaty, a bad one, was signed and token reparation was made by Coalition. A damn insult. Money?! As if that could replace what was lost.

  “Six thousand of our trees had died. Trees thirty and forty meters tall. Some had to be one hundred and fifty years old. Our family’s prosperous farm ruined. One of many.

  “My parents were forced to sell the land and equipment. Want a laugh? An internatio
nal corporation bought out most of the groves for a fraction of what they had been worth. They were the only ones with enough financial capital to invest. Now the land is plowed for cotton and cantaloupes.

  “I had two younger sisters. Having three children didn’t give my parents a lot of options. We relocated to a city where they could find employment. My mother found work in a genetics lab. My father mostly worked on servicing elevator motors in older buildings. He had the aptitude—operating a farm teaches you about heavy equipment, a rare talent nowadays. My sisters were in school. I was eighteen by then. The best thing for me, it seemed to make sense at the time, was to enroll in the military’s advanced engineering program. We all made do. We still had some happy moments, but you could tell something was gone that could never be replaced. You could see it in my father’s eyes, though he tried to hide it, a spark that was missing—replaced by bitterness and regret.”

  Garcia didn’t know what to say. What could he say that would make one bit of difference? The words would ring hollow.

  “Damn it to hell, Carlos,” he finally offered, making eye contact, then reaching out to squeeze his friend’s shoulder. “I much prefer pecans to cantaloupes.”

  Carlos stared, saw what he wanted to see in the Comandante’s expression, then managed to laugh.

  Garcia was glad the young man had shared his painful story. Little did he know how his hatred of Coalition, and therefor Zenith, would ultimately affect them all.

  Brrroogghhhufff!

  Until that moment, the strength of Carlos’s story had relegated the bellowing sounds of the fumaroles to the background. “Somebody should teach those damn things some manners,” Garcia remarked, responding to the unusually loud noise.

  Both men laughed, then returned to the task of finishing their workouts: Sit-ups and stretching exercises for Garcia; rock lifting, in the form of deadlifts, for Carlos.

  It wasn’t long before light footsteps were heard on the metal treads of the spiral staircase rising up from L2. Teniente Amanda Cruz made her entrance, and it suited her fine when both men stared. She had a heightened appreciation of the effect of her own good looks, often expecting her physical appearance to achieve purposes that others would normally accomplish through their intellect. Of course, when a woman is strikingly attractive, it is the society of men that furthers this type of development.