The Phobos Maneuver (7 page)

“Implants?”

“Are you kidding? You can buy a hog for that kind of money.”

Like all the farms in the Breadbowl, the Petruzzelli farm was a SPIN—Small Plot Intensive—setup: they kept a herd of Jerseys and raised pigs and chickens as well as crops. It was a labor-intensive way of life, despite all the bots and high-tech monitoring systems, which was one reason Petruzzelli had five or six parents at any given time.

“Mom Elaine?” she said, trying not to sound hopeful.

“Oh, honey, she’s gone. I think she joined a quad over Pleasantville way. We can get her contact details for you.”

“That’s all right, I can look her up if you tell me her new last name.”

An animated discussion ensued as they tried to remember it. Tempest brought Petruzzelli a glass of iced tea, and said, “Really, don’t worry about the eggs.”

“It’s OK if you don’t have her details,” Petruzzelli cut across the chatter. The sun chose that moment to peek through the clouds, illuminating the vivid reds and oranges of the biggest suncatcher in the window. It depicted a stylized StarTractor passing in silhouette across Jupiter. Mom Elaine had made that one to celebrate Petruzzelli’s promotion to captain of the
Kharbage Collector
. Mom Elaine had been the last one in the family who had known Petruzzelli as a child. But now none of the others could remember anything about her. That probably meant the breakup had been acrimonious, and they’d deleted her details. People relied so heavily on their BCIs that deleting was the same as forgetting. “I guess she’s moved on,” Petruzzelli said. “It’s fine, it happens. My fault for not staying in touch.”

With visible relief, they abandoned the topic of Mom Elaine. They updated her on their own activities. The twins came in and stared. Petruzzelli assumed they were Tempest’s, although no one said so. The oldest of the women, Mom Gretchen, turned out to be the individual formerly known as Dad Greg. “Nice transition,” Petruzzelli complimented her.

“I love your eyebrows,” Gretchen said, returning the compliment.

Petruzzelli’s eyebrows were smart tattoos, swooping curves that ended in smiley faces. She made them do
Snarky grin!
She did not feel up to producing a real snarky grin. Her gaze drifted to the cluster of screens in hand-carved wooden frames on the wall. They sometimes showed family vids, but at the moment were just showing feeds. That figured. Given the amount of turnover in the family since her last visit, her parents would logically be in a bonding phase—lovey-dovey, all is new and exciting, oxytocin abounding in the air—not a nesting phase, when they would want to bring out and polish the family heritage.

Her BCI was out of area at the moment, so she hoped to see some war-related news. Instead, she saw:

—A knitting class

—A live feed from the Iowa Rap Festival

—A romantic comedy about a guy who falls for a phavatar

—The President of Idaho giving a speech about something

“Want to hear the Prez’s speech?” Dad Ezra said. “He’s talking about the Idaho Immersion Tournament. That’s your kinda thing, isn’t it? Games. I’ll give you wifi access and you can get the sound on your implants. Hang on while I look for the password.”

“No, no, it’s OK, I was just—”

“Wait up, guys!” Tempest said. She jumped off Dad Raimundo’s lap and stood in front of the screens, stabbing at the air in the universal pose of one remote-controlling a balky system. “I found something really great! I’ve never even seen this before!”

The center screen switched to an old family vid—a
very
old one. It showed a three-year-old Petruzzelli with Mom Gabriella—her biological mother—and Dad Carlos—probably her biological father—in the vegetable garden. Petruzzelli had an earth-covered carrot in her hand, which she was happily chomping, to the grownups’ amusement.

Everyone squealed. “OMG, look at those hairstyles. That’s
so
fifties,” Dad Ezra yelled.

On the screen, Mom Gabriella swooped little Petruzzelli up in her arms and kissed her nose.

“Did you guys seriously wear those
culottes?”
Tempest demanded, astride Raimundo’s lap again, playfully pulling his ears.

Petruzzelli said loudly, “I was actually wondering if there was anything about the war.”

Everyone went quiet.

“The war?” she repeated.

“Uh huh,” Mom Gretchen said. “Sure, honey, I’m sure we can find something about that. Tempest, can you—”

“Oh, never mind,” Petruzzelli said. “It’s not important.”

It seemed impossible that they wouldn’t pick up on her sarcasm, but they didn’t. She should have said,
Sarcasm,
the way you would in space when you couldn’t see the other person. She was sitting right here with them but they couldn’t really see her. All they saw was her tattooed eyebrows and trekkie gear. They didn’t see a daughter, and why should they? She wasn’t biologically related to any of them.

But legally … ah, legally, it was a different story.

She finished her iced tea and said, “Well. Why I came back to Idaho. Not to stay!” Her eyebrows added a
Big grin!

They looked relieved.

“There’s a war on. And I’m going to join up.” She waited out their exclamations of surprise and horror. “You have to apply in your country of citizenship. But that’s not the only requirement.” She’d been appalled to learn just how many requirements there were. “I need you guys to sign off on it. You confirm that I’m of sound mind, you absolve Star Force of liability for anything that might happen to me, yadda yadda.”

“Fuck the UN,” said Dad Ezra. He suddenly looked like an old man.
“Fuck
’em.”

“I know, I know. But everything’s different now.”

“Yeah, everything’s different! We’re about to be dragged into a war that Idahoans don’t want and Idahoans are not responsible for. You don’t kick a fucking hornet’s nest! Tell me, do they have any
idea
what’s going to come out of Mars, once we start throwing bombs at it? Can they guarantee the PLAN won’t attack Earth?”

“Nothing’s guaranteed. But I’m a damn good pilot, and I will do my utmost to protect the people of Earth.”

“You shouldn’t have to do this.”

“I don’t
have
to. I
want
to. I’m volunteering.” She pulled her tablet out of her pocket and held it out to Mom Gretchen. “I have the form right here. If you could all just sign it …”

They passed it around, adding their digital signatures, with expressions so grim they probably believed they were signing her death warrant.

“Is that all?” Dad Ezra said.

“Actually, there’s one more thing …”

“What?”

She’d spent the morning standing in line at the recruiting office in Boise, fresh off the spaceplane, disoriented by the gravity and the brightness. Her neighbors in the queue were young men, mostly. A few old foilhats. Not
everyone
in Idaho wanted to pretend the war wasn’t happening. Sweating in the heat, taking turns to go buy sodas from the Kwikstop, they’d traded scuttlebutt about the recruiting process, and that was how Petruzzelli had learned the following:

At this stage, Star Force was being
very
selective.

They’d take you all right, but if you got recruited as a ground-pounder, that’s where you’d stay for the rest of the war. Same went for specialties such as telepresence, IT, demolitions, and so forth. Everyone wanted to go into battle,
really
into battle, not just remotely from a couch in low earth orbit, but only a few of these Johnny-come-lately volunteers would ever set foot on a spaceship. Those with the best of the best qualifications … and those who knew how to work the system.

Petruzzelli had all the desirable qualifications. Everyone in line had murmured enviously when she mentioned captaining a recycling barge in the Belt. But she also, unbeknownst to them, had an ISA dossier. It was now clear she had to do something about that if she was going to end up where she wanted in this war. She needed a definite, non-disputable gold star to balance out the black mark against her. Something so bright and shiny it would literally obscure the black mark from view.

So she’d left the queue and hopped on the bus to Murtaugh.

“I need a testimonial,” she said to her parents. “Testimonials, plural. The more the better.” She knew this from the guys in line who had researched ‘the system’ to death. “Real endorsements from real people. It’s the new fad.”

“That’s not a new fad, it’s an old one,” Mom Gretchen said. “They used to call them character references.”

“I guess everything that goes around comes around.” She looked at Dad Ezra—the only one of these people she’d met before today. “So could you do a testimonial for me?”

“Well, honey, I hardly know you,” he demurred.

“All you have to do is say I’m a good person!”

“And I’m sure you are, but I don’t feel qualified to say so. It would be unethical.”

“Oh, come on,” she said hopelessly. She knew what he was really saying:
I’m not gonna lift one finger to help the UN fight their war.

She left soon after that. Tempest followed her out, gushing about how nice it had been to meet her. Halfway down the drive, she got around to asking Petruzzelli to pay for the eggs. Biting back tears, Petruzzelli paid up. She knew her family was financially strapped. Small farmers always were. Not much different, actually, from asteroid colonists. Maybe this was happening to her because she’d treated all those settlers in the Belt unfairly. Sure, she’d only been doing what Adnan Kharbage told her to, but still. She held some responsibility for it. Maybe it was only fair that she, now, should be deprived of her one true dream.

Out of sight of the farm, she sat down in the middle of the road. The silence of the countryside cocooned her. The Dirtglue® felt springy under her butt. She watched an army of ants dragging a cicada’s carcass away. She rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes, inadvertently making her retinal implants flex. IS THERE AN EMERGENCY? they enquired in large text.

“Why, yes,” Petruzzelli muttered. “Humanity is in real danger of extinction, and now that we’re finally doing something about it, my freaking family doesn’t want to know.”

She scrolled through her address book, trying to think of anyone else who might provide a testimonial for her. She fired off emails to Martin Okoli and a few of her other old colleagues from Kharbage LLC. Then she thought of the perfect person.

“Excuse me! Excuse me!”

A driverless delivery truck careened around the bend, its electric engine silent. It halted, its soft bumper nudging her suitcase.

“Excuse me!”
it trilled.

“Hang on,” Petruzzelli said, scrambling to her feet. “Where are you going?”

“Boise! With stops at … Murtaugh… Twin Falls … and Mountain Home!”

“That’ll do.” Petruzzelli raised her thumb, making sure the truck’s sensors could see it. The tailgate opened. She climbed aboard and wedged her suitcase between sacks of hog feed. She nodded at the other hitchhikers flicking at their tablets in the dark, and enabled the backlight of her retinal implants, so she could write another email.

★

From: Alicia Petruzzelli [ID string attached]

To: Elfrida Goto [ID string attached]

Hey! How’s everything going? I know it’s been ages. I’m really sorry about that. I suck at staying in touch.

Well, it looks like you’re still in the Space Corps.
(This information was available on Elfrida’s public profile.)
I guess you guys will be operating in a support capacity? Or maybe you won’t be involved at all? It’s really hard to tell at this stage how big of a thing this is going to be, isn’t it? I mean, we don’t even know what Geneva’s strategy is, which I guess makes sense, because the PLAN is always listening, of course. Every announcement has to have a high disinformation quotient. But I heard
(from the guys waiting in line at the Boise recruiting office)
that they’re recruiting INFANTRY. Which has to mean they think we might end up in a ground war. Pretty exciting! And now I’d better not say anymore or this email might get ‘lost.’

Anyway. Fill me in on what you’ve been up to! And while we’re chatting, I wonder if you could do one thing for me. It would only take five minutes …

v.

“All you have to do is say I’m a good person,” Petruzzelli had concluded, with a smiley-face that made Elfrida Goto remember Petruzzelli’s comical eyebrows. But it wasn’t that easy. Too positive, and her testimonial would seem fake. Elfrida needed to paint Petruzzelli as a person who had the right stuff. But she was pretty sure Petruzzelli would not want her to mention the most right-stuff thing she’d ever done: stealing a Star Force ship to save 30,000 helpless asteroid colonists. Elfrida herself had been involved up to her forehead with that escapade. The ISA had warned her never to mention it to anyone.

In the end it took her an hour of recording and re-recording to produce five minutes of vid. She focused on the time she’d crossed paths with Petruzzelli in the Belt, the year after the 11073 Galapagos incident. That time, Petruzzelli had helped her to rescue
another
bunch of squatters—who turned out to be scammers, but never mind that. “Alicia really goes out of her way to help people,” Elfrida said, staring sincerely at the camera. “And I should also mention that she’s great at teamwork.” A bald-faced lie: Petruzzelli was the kind of person who
broke
teams. But Elfrida knew Star Force was big on teamwork.

Her friend Jennifer Colden walked into the room as Elfrida was giving the vid one last editing pass.

“Dog almighty,” Colden said, glancing at her tablet. “Why are you staring at the camera like that? You look insane.”

“I was trying to look sincere.”

“Microexpression fail.”

“It’s so hard to be honest,” Elfrida fretted.

She sent the vid to Petruzzelli, who replied seconds later with a pic of herself giving a double thumbs-up. No way she could have even watched the vid yet. She had orange-and-yellow streaked hair. In the time Elfrida had known her, it had been magenta, then turquoise, and it was now a sunburst. Elfrida wondered if her friend was really cut out to be a Star Force pilot.