Alec opened his eyes and glanced at the display on the control panel next to his bed.  09:21.  He had to remind himself that with days on Callisto lasting sixteen-some Terran days, the colony used Terra’s twenty-four-hour clock, rather than measure days by relative solar time.  He still wasn’t used to the shift from Mars’ twenty-hour day.  Lying in bed, Alec wiped a hand over his face.  It felt too cold to get up, but it was always cold on Callisto. Even though the engineers claimed that the heat generated by the colony’s nuclear reactors was sufficient, it seemed Alec could never shake the pervasive chill that came from knowing that subzero temperatures awaited just outside the walls.  Curled under thick blankets, he missed the lava canals on Mars.

     Half-awake, Alec had long since stopped snoozing his alarm and had simply shut it off.  He kicked his legs to the space where Lana had been a few hours ago. Alec knew he had slept too long, but he just felt so tired.

     A list of tasks that he needed to accomplish rolled through his head, though none seemed pressing.  Not here.  Sometimes Alec wondered why he had ever accepted this assignment.  Other times, he was grateful for forgetting why.

     Turning over, Alec reached toward the control panel on the wall beside the bed; accessing the mod controls, he upped the temperature by several degrees.  Other than for the low hum of the air vents, the mod was perfectly still. He threw off the covers and they rolled down and over the edge of the bed.

     As much as Alec wasn’t used to Callistoan time, he certainly wasn’t used to the moon’s gravity.  Nothing had been as heavy as his homeworld of Terra; going from that to Lunar gravity, which was about seventeen percent of Terra’s gravity, had been quite an adjustment.  After two years there, though, he’d moved on to Mars, which had a little more than twice Lunar gravity. But Callisto’s gravity was only about a third of Mars’ gravity.  It wasn’t Alec’s largest relative change, but it got harder as he aged.  Going from the low-G of Luna to the higher-G of the red planet was doable, but after moving back to low-G, he wasn’t sure he could switch again.  A return to Terra was out of the question.

     Alec pulled himself to a sitting position and threw his legs over the side of the bed.  Putting both hands on his lower back, Alec bent backward, stretching. His back was strained from turning and twisting in his sleep, but at least the lower gravity of the moon meant less stress on his back, generally.  Alec reached down to a drawer under the bed and retrieved an orange plastic bottle. He unscrewed the cap and spilled a pill into his palm, careful not to let them all come tumbling out, then popped it into his mouth and swallowed it whole.  He put the bottle back into the drawer, then touched a panel beside it, closing it.  He shook his head at the bitter taste.

     Again, Alec wiped a hand over his face, this time conscious of the thick stubble.  Across the room, a light blinked on his computer, reminding him that he had work waiting.  He reached back to the control panel and opened the mod’s dome shades.  Overhead, the domed ceiling blinked with light as panels pushed up, then reverse telescoped under each other, collapsing at the base of the dome.  Beyond the clear plasti-steel, Jupiter was half-lit by the sun’s rays, half-dark, its myriad swirling oranges, whites, reds, and yellows disappearing into shadow.  Unlike terrestrial planets or moons, the gas giant always looked different.

     Callisto, though, was always the same.  With barely any atmosphere, there was nothing to refract the incoming light; so, rather than look up to sky blue or dust red (like Terra or Mars), the view above Callisto was always black.  Just over the shadowed side of Jupiter, Europa and Io traveled through that blackness, in orbit around the massive planet.  Near sunset, the faraway sun twinkled like a too-bright star, seemingly as distant as any other and appearing smaller than either of the Galilean moons.

     As he watched the sky, Callisto was orbiting the terminator line of Jupiter, where the bright side began and the dark ended, which Alec knew marked the shadow time for Callisto, when in synchronous orbit with the planet, the colony would turn its back on the sun: beginning in Terran time what was about four days orbit to occultation, followed by four more days of shadow time.  Then, the moon would transit around the dark side of Jupiter, before again being lit by the sun’s rays for its eight-and-a-half-day long “day.” As Callisto didn’t rotate on its own, its solar days coincided with its orbit around Jupiter.  Early settlers to the moon had tried a variety of relative time scales, but none had worked.  They had found it simpler to use a timescale with which they were familiar.  As it turned out, most of the researchers had come from Luna or Terra, not Mars, so they had adopted Terran time.

     As Alec stared out the window, a smile crept across his face, almost begrudgingly.  He loved the view from Callisto.  There were times when he could just lay in bed all day and stare at it.  He would forget to eat or drink or use the toilet; he would ignore his work.  He just stared.  In that Zen-like immersion of pure aesthetic, it was almost enough to allow him to forget Mars and what he had done there. Almost.

     Alec shook out his short, wavy brown hair and exhaled. His gaze fell across the mod, past the sleeping area and his desk, to the free-standing kitchen counters—opposing semi-circles, with space to walk between them—where the food storage units sat atop shelving space.  There was no stove, no oven.  It was all reheated, processed meals on Callisto.  Not much different than those issued for space flight.  Definitely a downside of Callistoan life.  But just beyond the storage coolers was a heated carafe which Alec knew was filled with coffee.  It was the one luxury they were allowed other than alcohol, and he knew his wife had brewed some fresh before going to work.  He could smell it from where he sat on the bed: Pavonis blend, fresh grown on Mars.

     Alec pushed off the bed, loping in low-G half-hops to the kitchen.  It was nothing like zero-G, but it was the closest to it in which he had spent any significant amount of time.  He was at the carafe in five bounds. Alec bent down to reach into the plastic drawers built into the counter, holding his back as he did.  With his opposite hand, he retrieved a coffee mug, then straightened, grimacing slightly.

     The funny thing about Callisto was that despite having lower gravity than Mars, it was all enclosed, so the colonists were able to keep air pressure at Terra constants, which meant that things like showers and drinks worked normally.  In contrast, with the low air pressure on Mars, everything was drunk out of straws from closed containers, lest the liquid float away. That had been hell on hot drinks like coffee. Being able to drink coffee out of a proper mug was worth losing out on everything else Mars had to offer. Like atmosphere. Like the ability to go outdoors without a spacesuit.  Like temperatures that could sustain human life.

     Alec walked to the living area past the kitchen, careful not to splosh the coffee in the low-G—it was a mistake he had made all too often when he first arrived.  Sitting down in the soft couch, he turned on the wall-vid.  The three by two-meter screen lit up.  A tape delay of Martian news was on.  He quickly flicked the channel to a sports talk show, cautiously sipping his hot coffee.  He still loved Terran sports.  He always had.   He slouched into the sofa, losing himself in the latest scores and highlights: laying the warm coffee mug in his lap and sipping from it periodically.

#

     The colony on Callisto was a collection of domed habitats, both residential and research-oriented, connected by air-locked corridors built over underground compounds and connected by a tram rail that weaved through the small city.  At its center was a community building, where the only fresh-cooking was allowed, at a restaurant called Callisto’s Kiss.  The restaurant also had the only bar in the colony, though few of the researchers, engineers, and doctors were big drinkers.  There was also a small amphitheater in the middle of the community building—used for a variety of events—a meeting hall, and several administrative offices. Built above this central building was a tall tower that soared over the rest of the colony.  It reached higher than the other assorted antennae, telescopes, and satellite dishes scattered around the colony, just peering over the crater walls within which the colony was built.  At its top was a circular observation booth, allowing the colonists to look out on the mostly flat icy rock of Callisto, interesting only insofar as its surface was saturated with crater strikes.

     They said Callisto’s cratered pock marks were among the most dense concentration of such strikes in the solar system.  Even to non-scientists, like Alec, the large-scale geology of the moon was relatively simple; there were no large mountain ranges, volcanoes, or other endogenic tectonic features. The impact craters, along with the associated fractures, scarps, and deposits were almost the only features to be found on the moon’s surface.

     The tower was named after one of the colony’s founders, but was known to most simply as the Spire.  Its observation deck was the only place within the colony proper to see the moon beyond the colony, as the rest of the settlement, even if one had the right view (as Alec’s mod did), looked out only at Jupiter and its moons, the sun and stars, and the high circular valley walls that blocked out everything else.  The only other way to see the moon was to take the tram to the spaceport to the east, the reactors past that (provided one had the right clearance), or perhaps explore the excavations to the west; but past the crater walls there wasn’t much to see. At best, one might catch a glimpse of a few pointed jags stretching upward, like teeth of the moon, made by impacts long past.

     At the center of the Spire’s observation deck was a conference room surrounded by glass walls, where, once a week, the Callistoan Council met.  The government was mostly a part-time job on Callisto, a form of civic duty that was a remainder of the moon’s other professional responsibilities.  The Council consisted of the Heads of Medicine, Engineering, Research, and Security, as well as the colony’s governor.  While the four department heads were elected by their peers, the Governor was elected through popular vote to a one-year term, during which he or she took time off from their normal duties to concentrate on running the administrative function of the colony full-time.  For the most part, the Council functioned like a meeting of university department heads, each largely autonomous, reporting to the others as a formality, and asking for approval of certain projects, with an understanding that most matters would be left to their discretion and rubber-stamped.

     Politics on Callisto were fairly tame.  Unlike Mars, there was little to be gained by grabbing power here, so the dramatic power dynamics found on the red planet were absent.  While Callisto was important in the sense of being a waystation to research Jupiter, its moons, and the outer planets, there were almost no citizens of Callisto who were not engineers, scientists, or doctors, making its general utility somewhat limited.  Only in the last decade or so had they brought in teachers to look after the growing population of children on the colony.  So, the impact Callisto had on the Sol system was mostly academic, not profit- or military-based. Nor was land expansion realistic; beyond frontier academics, Callisto had little to offer.  It had neither the comforts of Mars or Terra, nor the political independence of Luna—in other words, there was not much value in the positions of power on Callisto.

     Alec slipped his hands to the side of his coffee mug, trying to warm them.  His attention had long since drifted past the computer screen in front of him and the other people seated at the table, and he was only aware on an unconscious level of the words coalescing around him about the height-mass variance of colony-born children, the spectroscopy of water ice absorption bands of Jupiter’s other moons, and the increased kilowatt output of the nuclear reactor power systems utilizing unique Callistoan minerals.  His gaze meandered through the small dark shadow cast over Jupiter, just over four days into the Callistoan shadow period, while the moon occulted the sun.  Alec didn’t know why, but he was always amazed when he saw this astronomical phenomenon.  Did Galileo and Marius romanticize such events, imagining the shadow kiss on the planet the soft touch of Jupiter’s lover?

     “Alec,” a voice cut into his reverie.

     Alec straightened in his seat and looked to see two men and two women staring at him, expectantly.

     “I agree,” Alec said, answering with that unconscious part of his brain that had been paying attention. “I approve,” he added, looking at the others.  The head of security raised his coffee mug to his lips and sipped.

     The others nodded and returned to their conversations.  This was how things usually went.  The rest of the meeting was much the same.

     Afterward, Alec stepped out of the room and stood at the perimeter of the Spire.  He put a hand on the thick plasti-steel glass, feeling the intense cold, a contrast to his other hand cupping his mug of freshly poured coffee.

     “Alec,” a male voice called out from behind him.  Alec half-turned. The man was a few years older than him, perhaps in his mid-forties.  Dr. Matthew Morrison. Head of Medicine. Fellow Councilor. “You seemed distracted in there. I hope we weren’t boring you.”

     Alec shrugged, turning back to the glass.  He dropped one hand to his side and brought the other with the coffee cup up to his lips and sipped.  He swallowed, then said, “No more so than usual.”

     “Lana’s been worried about you,” Dr. Morrison said.

     “Nothing to worry about,” Alec said, still gazing at Jupiter, enormous.

     “Your report was terse,” Dr. Morrison said.

     Alec turned slowly from the window. “ Well, unlike you geniuses, I don’t have teams of doctors and physical therapists reporting to me, pioneering space medicine.  I don’t have engineering crews keeping the power running or coming up with IT problems.  Nor do I have cadres of research geeks telling me every little thing about the rocks, stars, gases, and radiation from here to Neptune.  What I have is a few pilots and techs around the colonies and exploratory forces who tell me what they see.  And let me tell you, not many have anything of note to report.”

     “So why did the United Nations insist on placing a security officer here if there’s nothing to do? Especially, for a man of your,” Dr. Morrison cleared his throat, “capabilities.”

     Alec’s brow furrowed.  He ignored the doctor’s insinuation.  “Come on, Doc.  You know after Mars the UNT couldn’t not put some kind of security net in place. It’s just there’s no call for police or military on-moon.  Not enough of you to warrant that.  Besides, with all you geeks, crime is almost non-existent, and I’m more than capable of handling whatever does pop up.  Of course, the UNT throws a few naval ships in Jovian space as a precaution, but that’s about it.  But even they don’t really have to report to me.  They just send reports now and then as a courtesy.”

     “It’s not exactly as if we’re all privy to what happened on Mars,” Dr. Morrison said.  “I guess it’s not the kind of thing people talk about, right?”

     Alec knew the casual way of Morrison’s voice.  “If you don’t know, then you damn well know I can’t tell you,” he said.

     Dr. Morrison shrugged.  “Fair enough.  Well, see you next week.”

     Alec watched him go.  Then he turned back to Jupiter in the black sky.

#

     Sex in low-G was a cautious affair.  Neither Alec nor Lana were used to it.  Although the mechanics were the same, it was the movements that had to be adjusted.  What had once been a natural motion to thrust down and pull back and again, more instinct than planned effort, had to be subdued, as the expected gravitic response was missing, and it wasn’t the moon’s invisible forces that swung a person back down, but muscle thrust—otherwise the upward motion tended to have the same loping slow descent that one had when walking.

     When Alec was on top, he could hold onto her and control his thrusts into her through handholds, especially when her legs circled around his and held him tight—though, even then, there was a slight pulse of both their bodies upward, a bouncing on their bed that forced them to time their movements into each other in ways that differed from their up and down motion on and off the bed.

     When Lana was on top, as she was now, she either had to bend over and grip him for purchase, or sit straight, and collapse on his penis with the slow, languorous lope of a Callistoan: a tantalizing form of sensuality, where she barely pushed off him with her thighs, squeezing him tight as she slid upward on him, the brief push enough to let her hang in the air for a moment, inches over his groin, before allowing the low-G to pull her back down on him.

     Lana’s long brown hair fell halfway down her back; when her head dipped back, it almost touched her waist. Underneath, she heard Alec moan.  After another few movements, she screwed shut her eyes, her mouth hanging open, her breath catching.  Lana’s hands squeezed his, and both their arms extended fully, bouncing off the sheets with their bodies.  The heat was cranked up in their mod, which not only allowed their nakedness, but caused a profuse sweat to run along both their bodies.

     He mostly watched their sex, regulating his breathing to match the rise and fall of their bodies, hers collapsing over his again and again; his eyes falling to her taut stomach, latching onto her breasts.  He thought of reaching up and taking either in both hands, of kissing them, or caressing them; but, seeing her head dipped back, he knew she was close.  He knew her well enough to know that when she was in control, when she was on that precipice between pleasure and climax, that she knew best how to reach that end, to fall over that edge.  So he watched her face, her heated grimace, her quivering lips: a flutter starting from somewhere else and reverberating throughout her body.  Now it was she who squeezed his hands, hard, her head snapping up at the top of a body-wide convulsion: her hair falling slowly in the low-G; her eyelids opening, green irises staring down at him out of the bottom of her eyes; and a loud groan escaped her mouth, ringing against the cold plasti-steel walls of their mod.  His hands felt crushed.

     Her tense shoulders contracted, pulling her body down, relieved, satiated.  Her grip on his hands loosed, but she held on, controlling her ever slower thrusts.  “Oh stars,” she grunted, a wide smile unfolding along her lips.  Her eyes flashed wide and then narrowed, shining sparks of green in the dim light under thin brown eyebrows.  Alec pulled his hands away.  With one he reached up and ran a finger over her thin nose, then cupped her chin; her cheeks were flushed.  A strand of hair fell over her face and shepushed it away.  With her other hand, she fanned herself.  “Stars,” she said again.  “you always make it so hot in here.”

     “Because it’s so cold out there,” Alec responded.

     Lana leaned forward with both hands on his chest. She was still moving her pelvis slightly.  “Did you?” she asked.

     “No,” he said, absently gazing into her eyes. He wished they had left the shades open.

     “Okay,” she said, still trying to catch her breath.  “Well, I can keep going.” It was more of a question.

     “That’s okay,” Alec said, looking away.  “I had too much coffee anyway.  Have to piss.”

     Lana pushed off him and rolled to his side, throwing an arm over his chest.

     But Alec slipped out of her embrace and loped over her, landing smoothly on the ground and walking, head down, toward the clean room in the corner of the mod, the only cordoned off area.

     Lana rolled over to his side of the bed and reached up to turn the heat down.

#

     The dome closest to the spaceport tram out of the colony was a security checkpoint.  Alec worked there when new colonists came to Callisto.  But it also served other ends, such as having a private workout facility and gymnasium, armory, and security offices.  Most often he worked from home, able to use the computer there to do any of his type-work, and he walked the colony for visual inspections the rest of the time.  But once a Terran month he worked out with rotating units of UNT Naval officers. He had several programs he ran with them, but his favorite was straight hand-to-hand combat.

     The ones surrounding him now were newbies.  He had seen the looks on their faces dozens of times before.  Cocky.  Arrogant.  Maybe he’d had the same look on his face at their age, but while they’d fought in zero-G and low-G simulators, he’d done plenty of the real thing.  Moreover, they figured he was a pushover as an intelligence officer: a spook, a desk jockey, a type-pusher; all cloak and dagger, smoke and mirrors.  They’d find out soon enough.  Alec shook his hands, dancing on the balls of his feet, loosening his muscles.  He rolled his head, ostensibly to stretch, his gaze lingering on each of them.

     “Come on, Colonel,” the one closest to him said, a severe buzzcut visible through his padded headgear.  “We heard you’re good.  But five on one?”

     There was a man with short blond hair falling out of his headgear to Alec’s left, a woman with dark stubble over her shaved head to his right.  Glancing over his left shoulder, he saw a large man behind him, crouched, ready to spring—with just enough brown hair to pull.  Glancing over his right shoulder, Alec gave a hard look to a second woman, with short wavy brown hair and squinty eyes, immediately pegging her as the most dangerous.

     “You know what the first rule of combat is?” Alec asked. He laced his fingers and pushed them away, cracking his knuckles.

     “What?” the buzzcut in front of him asked, pulling his padded gloves tight.  His eyes were lazy.  He was expecting a verbal answer.

     Alec spun backward and launched himself in the air, foot first, striking the bulky officer straight in the neck; then, using the force of the blow, he pushed off him in the low-G, just past the outstretched arms of the squinty brunette.  The buzzcut officer who had been standing in front of him was running forward and directly met Alec’s padded fist right between the eyes.

     Then Alec cocked the same arm back, thrusting his elbow into the surging squinty brunette’s face, balancing himself just long enough to leap upward as the other male and female officers collided under him.  With the numeric advantage, their instincts had been to grapple him and let their teammates pummel him. Sound reasoning, but predicable.

     Alec’s leap carried him forward and he landed in a forward roll, coming up right next to the buzzcut. He immediately jumped to his feet and locked his elbow around the man’s throat.  As the officer struggled against his grip, Alec surveyed the others.  The bulky man had fallen down and was still clutching his throat; the two who had collided were spinning toward him; while the squinty brunette sat behind them, rubbing her chin.

     Alec threw the officer in his grip at the others, causing a stumbling attempt to stop which ended in another collision, the low-G not holding them as much as they would have liked and causing them to reel away from him.  Alec immediately launched himself in the air, literally running up the back of the buzzcut—who was hunched over, trying to catch his balance—and after two more steps drove his feet into the other two officers’ faces, knocking them on their asses.  Alec pushed off those contacts to flip backward, but the low-G brought him down too slow and the squinty brunette drove her fist into his chest as he landed.

     Alec stumbled backward and fell to the ground, right under the buzzcut’s legs.  Without hesitating, he drove his fist into the man’s groin.  The naval officer immediately crumbled.

     But the squinty brunette didn’t pause either, dropping a scissors kick at the same region on Alec.  He threw his hands down, to block the strike, and caught her heel.  Leveraging his sitting position, he threw his hands up, flipping her over, but she didn’t fall as Alec had hoped—instead landing on her feet.  So while Alec had driven forward, intending to finish her with one strong punch to her face, she deflected his blow to the side and spun, unleashing a quick kick to Alec’s lower back.

     Alec collapsed, his hand instinctively going to his back. He didn’t move for long enough to signal that the fight was over.  Then, with a grimace, he turned and looked up.  The squinty brunette was holding her hand out.

     “Sorry,” she said.  “But something in your stance said you hadback problems.”

     “Don’t apologize,” Alec said, grimacing as he stood.  “You did your job.”  He looked at the others coming to their feet.  “Why don’t you take them this time,” he said to the squinty brunette, a hand on his back.  “I’ll sit this one out.”

#

     Although the eight and a half or so Terran-days of shadow was considered the “night” of the Callistoan day, the darkest time came at “high noon” of that long day.  For almost a full Terran-day the distant glare of the daytime sun was eclipsed by the gas giant.  Even the partial eclipse occluded the otherwise swirling miasma of Jupiter’s oranges, yellows, reds, and whites, leaving only a black disc, suddenly flat, outlined by a red crescent of light, a Jovian wink.  Even then, the sun was powerful enough to light Callisto. It was only as the full eclipse began that the sun’s rays were truly obscured and the orb was again visible, albeit as a dark red disk: the barest of ambient lighting in the space behind, a myriad of stars that disappeared in brighter light suddenly visible.

     Leaning against the railing running around the Spire, Alec marveled at the black increasing as Jupiter slipped over the last of the sun.  He’d been on Callisto for over a year and it still never failed to impress him.  He could stare at the sight for hours.  Just watching.  Thinking.  Looking at something new each time.

     Almost all the colonists had the same reaction, at first.  Whenever the colony took on new people, the Spire was full as they flocked there to see the view. But as the planet eclipsed the sun for almost a Terran day, the excitement fizzled.  And when it happened a second and third and fifth and twelfth time, they lost interest and returned to the low-G effects on Terran pharmaceuticals, the operating problems of machinery at eighty Kelvin, or magnetosphere studies of the inner moons.

     But not Alec.

     “Back again?” he heard from behind him.  A female voice.  Lana.

     He didn’t answer.

     There were footfalls, then he felt hands on his shoulders.  “It’s pretty,” she said.  “But you’ve seen it a hundred times. It gets old.”

     “It’s the best part of being here,” Alec said without turning.

     Lana dropped her hands and walked around him, putting her back to the rail in front of the glass, and inserted herself in front of him. “Really?  The best?”  She raised an eyebrow.

     Alec frowned.  “You know what I mean. I’m not talking about people.”

      “Hunh,” Lana said. “I thought maybe you were.”

     Alec paused before pulling himself up straight.  “Did you think it was the job?”

     “You’re head of the Jovian Security Agency.”

     Alec laughed once.  It wasn’t really a laugh.  “The JSA?I’m the JSA.  I pay a few people to snitch.  There’s no one here to spy on, though, let alone fight.”

     “Are you looking for a fight?” she asked quietly.

     “There’s no enemy here, so no need for ’security.‘”

     “Not like on Mars?” Lana said.

     Alec opened his mouth to respond, then closed it.  He placed his hands akimbo and shook his head once, pursing his lips.  It was a conversation they had already had.

     “Why don’t you ever talk about it?” Lana said.

     “Because I can’t.  You know that.”

     “You can’t tell your wife?”

     “Stars, you know the answer already!  You were okay with it when we met at physical therapy.  You knew then that I was an MCA agent.  And you were okay with it when you knew I was engaging in active ops on Mars.  What makes you think I can tell you now just because we’re on Callisto and will never go back?”

     “It’s just,” she started, then paused, pushing hair out of her face.  “It’s just that I can sense there’s something there that weighs on you. Something that happened on Mars.  And I can’t do anything about it.  That’s why I’m asking now.  I just.” She threw a hand up, then dropped it. “I just feel so helpless.  So stupid.”

     Alec took her face in his hands as her eyes started to well.  “Stop,” he said softly.  “I’m fine.  The past is . . . past.  We’ll be fine.”

     She threw her arms around him and pulled him close, burying her head in his chest.  He could feel her sobbing.  He ran a hand through her hair and stared out at the Jovian eclipse.

     After a moment, she picked her head up, her eyes red.  She lifted a hand and wiped away the wetness on her cheeks.  “I’m sorry.”

     “It’s okay,” he said.  “But, Lana.”  She looked up into his blue eyes.  “You need to stop talking about me to the Head of Medicine.”

     She pushed him away,hard.  “Are you serious?  That’s what you have to say?  Now?”  She wiped her face again: roughly, quick.  “You’re unbelievable.“  With that, she turned on her heel and stormed out of the Spire.

     Alec rested both hands on the top of his head and exhaled slowly.  “Shit,” he cursed. Then he turned back to the view, watching the dark red hue that had fallen over the colony.  He shivered.  It was always so fucking cold on Callisto.

#

     Touching the computer screen, Alec chose a particular system and pulled it across the viewscreen, opening a new program window.  Lines of code opened before him.  Something wasn’t right.  He had been tracking periodic deviations in the security matrix, but he had been unable to figure out what the purpose of the spikes was.  He took a sip of coffee from the mug in his other hand.  He hadn’t even been sure there was a problem.  Until now.  Alec touched the screen again, pushing some lines up and off the screen, pushing others down and off, isolating a few specific strings of code.  They had been altered.  He was sure.  And whoever had done it was good.

     Alec tapped a button at the bottom corner of the screen, the lines of code unraveled, and the security program traced the practical application of the altered code, spiraling out from a line-by-line readout to a map: a blinking red light indicating that the altered code related to an external hatch.  Who would want to break out of the colony, Alec wondered, let alone seek to cover it up or have the technical wherewithal to do so?  Alec frowned; he wasn’t sure.  But he was going to find out.

     Alec glanced over his shoulder to the bed, where Lana was asleep.  Turning back to the computer, he hit another button and the viewscreen went black, locking it.  Reaching into a desk drawer, he pulled out a medium-sized case and opened it.  Inside was something that resembled a handgun lying in a molded fit, only its barrel was much larger than most handguns, and it had no trigger guard.  It was designed to send an electric burst, attuned to the wavelengths of human neuron firings, temporarily paralyzing the victim.  Plus, it hurt like hell.  When one resided on a closed colony, where survival depended on artificial atmosphere and temperature regulation, rounds of either penetrating or explosive force were frowned upon.  The neuro-weapon had the ancillary bonuses of being manipulable when wearing a spacesuit and usable on enemies in spacesuits (as it was able to knock out foes without puncturing their suits).

     Alec took the tram to the security station and then suited up in his black spacesuit, the only one of its kind on Callisto.  It was designed to blend in better with the dark dust and rock of the moon, not to mention the black backdrop of the sky; concomitantly, it identified him as a security officer, as all the researchers and engineers had light-colored spacesuits.

     From there, Alec took the tram back across the colony to the external hatch leading west toward the excavation area, where he had detected the security breach.  He used a security code to override the tram so that it took him straight there, without any stops.  After checking the power levels on the neuro-weapon one last time, he put it in a black holster on the outside of his spacesuit.  When the tram reached the external hatch, he punched another override code to stop the tram between stops and exited into a maintenance airlock.  As the door closed behind him, he heard the hiss of air being sucked out.  When gone, a green light blinked beside a second door; and, after he depressed a button, that door slid open.

     Alec leaned away from the doorframe, peeking out.  He didn’t see anyone in his immediate view, so he stepped out.  Spacesuits had evolved quite a bit since humans had settled on Callisto, but Alec still found them bulky and unwieldy.  He loped forward, moving in quick, silent, hop-steps.  He did his best to keep his head on a swivel, his visor shaded to the daytime glare of the second transit: Jupiter bright in the sky, close, the sun twinkling from afar.

     Through the thin atmo, he would be able to hear, the suits were designed for that; but he wasn’t sure what he should be listening for.  Moreover, if there was more than one person out there, they wouldn’t be talking through the air, they’d be using radios.  Although early Callistoans had experimented with suits that projected sound through the air, they found radiowaves a more efficient way to communicate with an entire work team, who at times might be out of earshot.  Alec lifted his hand and punched his comp-radio controls, programming his receptors to cycle through the standard radio frequencies first, and then to search others randomly.  Who knew who was out there or why.

     While his comp-radio was still cycling through frequencies, he saw a shadow move past a pointy outcropping ahead. Alec quickdrew the neuro-gun, his finger on the trigger before it was leveled.  His left hand slipped under the thick barrel, supporting his aim.  He took careful steps, tip-toeing his way forward in the low-G, keeping aware of his surroundings as best he could in the spacesuit.

     When he rounded the crag, he saw two persons in spacesuits.  One pushed the other: sending them spiraling backward in the low-G, hitting the ground, and rolling. The first bent over and slapped their thighs.

     Suddenly, laughter exploded in his audio sensors.  Keeping his weapon-hand level, his other hand snapped to the comp-radio controls and froze the channel cycler. Laughter? he wondered.

     “You fucking asshole!”

     “Baaah!  Dickweed!”

     What they hell? Alec thought, as his second hand returned to the barrel of the neuro-weapon. “Hey!” he snapped.

     The person who had pushed the other over looked around, unsure where the transmission was coming from.  Alec could see a head barely tall enough to make it to the top of the helmet visor.  The one on the ground twisted too, turning to look up at him.

     The one standing doubled over with laughter.  The other pushed to his feet.  Alec moved fast toward that one, loping with a few bounds, the neuro-weapon still raised.  He took hold of the space suit, and looked down the visor.  Too short.  Again.  Kids.  That’s why they were swimming in the suits.  Fucking kids.  And there was some apparatus under the suit, likely strapped to his chest.  With a straw running up to his mouth. What the?

     “Get your hands off me,” the boy in his grip said, trying to brush Alec off.

     Alec’s grip didn’t loosen.  “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

     “Let him go,” a girl’s voice said, sloppy.  It was the pusher.  Alec shot her a look, but she hadn’t moved.  He looked back down at the boy.

     The boy’s eyes had gone wide.  “You’re Colonel Stanton.”

     “And you know who I work for?”

     “JSA?”

     “That’s right.”

     He heard the girl gulp through the radio.

     Fucking kids of scientists and researchers, Alec thought with a shake of his head.  Grew up with great genes, plenty of practical hands-on ways to learn, and not enough to occupy their time.

     “Who cares!” the boy said, pushing Alec away.  Alec let him go.  In the low-G, the boy tumbled back over and fell again.  He cursed, sloppily.  Fucking kids came out here to get wasted, Alec thought.

     The girl burst out laughing again.

     Great, Alec thought.  Just great.  Because this is just what I fucking need.

#

     Reclining in a chair in the Governor’s office, Alec scrutinized the woman behind the desk.  She was dressed in a rumpled tan jumpsuit, with her blond hair pulled back; there were black bags under her eyes.

     “You know this is a small community,” she said.   ”So did you think I wouldn’t get complaints from parents after they’re called in the middle of the night to pick up their drunk kids from jail, each still suffering from the effects of a neuro-blast?”

     Alec absently scratched his scalp.  Governor Anderson was slightly stocky, and short, but mildly attractive.  She looked overworked. “I thought being Governor was a cush job,” he said.  “You look tired.”

     “It’s the middle of the night, Colonel. Seriously, can you explain to me what was going through your head?”

     “First of all, if you had to listen to their belligerent drunk chatter, you would have shot them too.”

     “The neuro-weapon is painful, Alec.  And they’re just kids.”

     “Think of it this way, it’ll give the doctors something novel to study.  The long-term effects of neuro-weaponry on adolescents.  If it helps, I can keep blasting them.  They could run tests for years to see if it stunts their growth or something.”

     “You think this is funny?” the Governor asked.

     Alec laughed.  It was a hearty laugh.  “Yeah,” he said, trying to cover his hand over his laughter.  After a moment he gave up and wiped the tears rolling out of his eyes.  “Stars, yes!”

     The Governor just stood in front of him, waiting; shaking her head.  “Are you done?” she finally said.

     Alec nodded, still wiping the wetness from his face.

     “Good,” she said.  “Because if things aren’t working out for you here, we can have you transferred somewhere else.  This isn’t Mars.  You’re no longer part of Team Zero and you no longer have the discretion to kill.  You have to use some kind of rational judgment, man.”

     “What do you want from me?” Alec said, standing. “I’m a counter-insurgency specialist. I’m fucking bored out of my skull here.”

     “They why are you here?”

     “Any intelligence officer would be bored on Callisto. If it wasn’t for my wife, fuck, I don’t know.”

     “You need to get your game together, Alec,” the Governor said. “You need to do your job.”

     “I detected a security breach, tracked it down, found the perpetrators, and apprehended them,” Alec said, pointing a finger at the Governor.  “How was I not doing my job?”

     “They were kids!  Just out drinking.  Who hasn’t done that at their age?”

     “And what happens when those kids start reading revolutionary philosophy and decide they want to take over the colony?  What happens when they rebel against their parents like all kids do only these ones decide to get violent about it?  What happens when they’re lifting guns and blowing up bombs?  Should I cut them slack then?  If we don’t lay down the law now I’ll be killing them tomorrow!”

     “We’ll cross that bridge, Alec, when we get there,” the Governor said, her voice getting louder.

     “We are there!” Alec said.  “And just because you’re Governor doesn’t mean your vote counts more than anyone else on the Council.  So unless you all want me to start paying a lot more attention to how you run your departments, I’d appreciate it if you leave security to me.”

     Anderson’s brows furrowed.  “You think you did the right thing here?”

     “You’re damn right I do,” Alec said, almost before she had even finished speaking.

     The governor shook her head again.

     Alec turned to leave.  “This is bullshit,” he said.

     “I didn’t dismiss you,” the Governor said.

     “Oh, am I still in trouble?” Alec asked, twirling around, his wavy brown hair bouncing.  “You still need to slap my wrist some?”

     Governor Anderson leaned over her desk, glaring at Alec.

     “Before you do anything,” Alec said, “you might want to think real hard about your next move.”

     “Excuse me?” the Governor said, her head lifting.

     “You took the cushy job as Governor, despite being the colony’s most prominent geologist, so you could spend more time with your new baby, right?” he asked, stepping toward her.

     She straightened, waiting to see where he was going with this.  “It’s what my husband wanted,” she said.

     “Really?” Alec said, raising his eyebrows.

     “Yes.”

     “That’s funny,” Alec said, stepping closer to the Governor again.  “Because I was under the impression it had something to do with that young buck in the records administration office.”

     “How dare you!” Governor Anderson said, her eyes flashing.

     Alec smiled, though, because there was fear in her eyes.  “Should your husband and I go over your son’s DNA records?  Because I think there may have been some discrepancies in the initial reports.  He might be interested in that.”

     Alec was only inches away now.

     “How could you possibly know that?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

     Alec bit his lip, taking in her now-quivering eyes, lids fluttering, her whole body starting to shake.  “Because I don’t spend all my time staring at Jupiter,” he said quietly.

     With that he turned and walked out the room.

All Rights Reserved © 09/16/2011