Silence.

“Okay, then. Load the tubes.”

I used handholds to pull myself towards the stern, stopped in front of the starboard ejection tube, and checked to make sure that my squad had lined up behind me. They had. I dived inside and used fingertips and toes to push myself forward. My squad did likewise. A hatch closed behind the last member in.

The gunny did much the same thing along the port side, followed by a seal check. She called thirty-eight names, got thirty-eight affirmatives, and blew the tubes.

We were in position now, ready to be fired out of both sides of the ship, falling, or in this case blasting, down towards the target below. Of course the Loot, plus the ships behind her, would cover us with cannon fire, missiles, chaff, electronic countermeasures, and everything else they had up their naval sleeves, but none of it would mean diddly if the tool heads knew we were coming. Yes, surprise was the key, that and the most fickle ally of all, luck.

“Five and counting.” The Loot was tense but rational. Better than some I’ve flown with, but wired tight just the same. And who could blame her? Recon pilots have a life expectancy of five or six months. “One and counting.”

I stared at the steel in front of my helmet and tried to ignore my surroundings. I gave thanks when the ten-second count began. “Nine…eight…seven…six…five…four…three…two…one.”

The hatch, mounted up against an indentation in the spacecraft’s fuselage, slid aside. I braced myself, watched the inner hatch cycle out of the way, and felt a wall of air hit the bottom of my boots. We were propelled outwards like bullets from a gun. I had little more than seconds to orient myself, to realize that it was an ambush, and feel the individually targeted micro-missile hit my chest plate.

They say you can’t scream if you’re dead, but I proved they were wrong. It took hours to slow my pulse, to think pleasant thoughts, and drift off to sleep.

“Dissent is a luxury that Mars colonists can ill afford.”

Margaret Peko-Evans, architect of Mars Prime-the first settlement

The rest of the trip was fairly routine. Each shift was pretty much like the last. Get up, take a shower, drink three cups of coffee, pet the aniforms, and read for Sasha. Progress was slow, but I did my best and was reading at a second-or third-grade level in no time at all.

The whole thing might have been somewhat enjoyable if it hadn’t been for the way in which the aniforms were “harvested” and passed down the ship’s food chain. I had no part in the actual killing, thank god, but felt like a traitor whenever one of my charges disappeared and was replaced by a newly decanted clone, or “bud.” Then, after I had spent countless hours petting it, the cow, sheep, pig, or chicken would vanish only to reappear around the captain’s waistline.

Yes, the others were just as carnivorous as she was, but I held the captain personally responsible and saw her as the sole culprit. By doing so I could ignore the fact that Sasha seemed to have an insatiable appetite for steaks, pork chops, and Killer’s super-crispy fried chicken.

And making a bad situation even worse was the fact that each aniform was identical to all of its predecessors. It was like killing the same pet over and over again. It got to the point where I could hardly look into their adoring eyes or touch their eager heads. So, it was with a sense of tremendous relief that I saw Mars on the main view screen. It was beautiful and looked like a sphere of reddish-orange marble set spinning on a sheet of black velvet. I was thinking about the surface and what we might encounter there when the captain burst my bubble. She moved quietly for such a large woman, and I didn’t know she was present until her forklift brushed my right shoulder.

“Welcome to Mars. Ever been outside before?”

My eyebrows shot towards the top of my head. “Outside? As in outside the ship?”

“Sure,” the captain replied curiously. “What? You thought we’d dump the cargo and let it drift?”

“I assumed we would dock with a habitat. Like Staros- 3.”

The captain laughed. Tidal waves of fat rippled back and forth beneath me surface of her black pajamas. “A habitat! That’s a good one! As if the poor bastards had the resources to build a space station! Hell, they’re lucky to meet the company’s daily production quota, much less dick around with habitats. No, we unload the cargo in orbit and they take the stuff down in shuttles. So how ‘bout it? You been outside before?”

I knew there was a strong possibility that I had, but I couldn’t be sure, so I shook my head.

The captain clucked sympathetically. “Too bad. But don’t worry, you’ll catch on. And sweet buns too. When it comes time to unload, everyone turns to, and I mean everyone. Even me.”

And she meant it too, which accounted for the fact that Sasha and I found ourselves adrift within the main lock four hours later. My space suit was too small, Sasha’s was too large, and both smelled like an overripe armpit. The captain had taken the spin off the ship in order to provide unobstructed access to the cargo bay. The result was zero gee and nausea in the pit of my stomach. The others, Sasha included, showed no signs of discomfort.

The regular crew members had customized their suits, or purchased customized units, I wasn’t sure which. The captain’s was bright pink with lots of flashing red lights and a hint of chrome. Killer had co-opted Lester’s suit. It had been painted to resemble a naked Hercules complete with fake sex organ. He made a production out of cutting it off and waving it over his head. Kreshenko had gone for the high-tech look, favoring a suit fitted with articulated cutters, lasers, and other accessories too numerous to mention. It made him look like a large Swiss army knife. In fact Wilson, already positioned in the cargo bay, was the only one besides ourselves who wore an unmodified suit. The outer hatch cycled open, and the captain’s voice crackled in my ears.

“Okay people, listen up. Sweet buns will team with Kreshenko, and chrome-dome comes with me. Let’s get it over with.” So saying, the captain fired her jets and headed out into the void. She looked like a wad of pink chewing gum wrapped with Christmas tree lights.

I didn’t want to go but knew I had to. I fired my jets. The suit surged upwards, bounced off the overhead, and took off again. I cut power, aligned myself with the hatch, and gave it another try. Nausea rolled over me as I passed out into the vast emptiness of space. The captain loomed ahead, dodged out of the way, and made a grab for my suit. “Maxon! Cut your jets!”

I obeyed and felt completely humiliated as she clipped a line to the eye mounted on my chest plate and towed me towards the ship’s stern. So much for my secret hopes that past knowledge would surface to save the day.

The ship filled most of the view. The hull was cylindrical and covered with duct work, antenna farms, solar arrays, and other installations too arcane for me to understand. And beyond that, half hidden by the Trader’s hull, was Mars herself, a glowing red presence against a field of black. The sight was so awesome, so compelling, that my nausea was momentarily forgotten. No wonder the earlier me had ventured into the Big Black. There could be nothing more beautiful than the sight before me.

The cargo hatch was open, and the loading lights served to illuminate Wilson’s launcher. The launcher was the equivalent of a spacegoing forklift, except that it could “launch” cargo modules, as well as move them around.

In this case that meant propelling the containers from the ship’s hold towards the holding “pen” where the rest of the crew would retrieve and move them inside. No simple task when the modules were eight times bigger than you were. The launcher looked like a praying mantis with a man strapped to its stomach.