OLIVIA
Olivia, a gaunt, white-blonde northern Russian, walked to the enormous sapphire crystal windows and looked out. Her icy blue eyes surveyed the green fields that glistened with dew inside the dome, and the dead red-orange clay in eerie stillness beyond. Outside the dome was a quick death, asphyxiation, freezing, or radiation, whichever came first. The line was thin, and life on Mars remained precarious.
On the ashen surface of Mars, in the tallest tower of the Russian colony, Olivia Svard checked the time. Seeking more heat from her fireplace, but unable to bend, she twisted the iron poker into the logs in the flagstone hearth. She rubbed her side where the assassin’s bullets had shattered her body armor and shredded her insides. She had been strong, powerful, a special forces operative in her youth. Now she felt every year of her age, brittle, and full of the weakness she loathed. Done with feeling cold, she stoked the fireplace, an anachronism she had insisted on, high atop her new office in the steel and glass tower.
Her com beeped, announcing the arrival of her guest, and with her health failing quickly, she needed this interview to go well.
A Russian company commander, Captain Alyona Kovshova arrived in full Russian military uniform, medals, sidearm, and boots. Her black hair tied in an austere bun, wearing little makeup, she trusted in her youth to color her cheeks. Her athleticism gave her an angled jaw, tensed for the interview. She saluted smartly, and Olivia returned it while she stood by the fire.
Olivia looked over the younger woman’s uniform, searching for any signs of weakness. “Do you know why you’re here?”
Alyona opened her mouth, then abruptly closed it. “It’s best not to guess.”
Olivia nodded. “Don’t worry, it’s not going to be one of those formal meetings.”
Alyona looked at the roaring fire and back to Olivia. “I’m guessing that since you are now the sole leader of the Russian colony—”
Olivia turned and held a hand up. “Yes. Previously, the leadership had been run by two men, both now dead. When Anatoly Gromyko obeyed orders from Earth to kill Nikolai Yegorov, his co-chair, I killed Anatoly, ending the leadership dispute.”
Alyona’s eyes widened. This rumor had never been confirmed.
“As I had once been Nikolai’s executive officer, I am now interviewing for my own executive officer, second in command, and if I die suddenly, you will serve my successor.”
“I’m honored.” Her eyebrows raised “But I have many questions.”
Olivia was distracted by the memory of killing Gromyko. She had been Nikolai’s executive officer and his lover.
The spacious office had custom furniture, including an immaculate white suede set of couches, and Olivia finally offered her a seat and said, “At ease.”
Alyona took off her hat and sat rigidly.
Olivia smirked. “What do you drink?”
“You have whiskey?”
“I do!” Smiling, she walked to the wet bar and said over her shoulder. “Let me guess, you were sleeping with some American?”
Alyona looked shocked, as Olivia intended. Alyona’s color rose. “That’s quite a shift in tone. You’re still my commander.”
Olivia handed her the drink, sat opposite her, and crossed her legs, smiling. “Nonsense. We are two Russian women, in a glass bubble, trapped on a foreign planet millions of kilometers from the snowy fields of our fathers.”
Alyona sipped, frowned, and sat back, stunned by the drink. “This might be the best whisky I’ve ever had.”
Olivia said, “Da! I got it as a gift from Abigail Marten. I’m halfway through the case.”
“The head of the American colony? She owed you a favor?”
Olivia sipped. “This job is about more than military strategy. It has subtle politics, deal making, coercion.”
“Even with Americans?”
Olivia watched her closely. “Especially with Americans.”
Alyona shifted in her seat. “I am not certain this is true—”
“Ask me a question and see if I lie.”
Alyona frowned, swirling the strong whiskey. Four months after the insurrection, she was being elevated to second in command.
“Why are you picking me as your second? Was it because I was one of the new troops? You wanted to insure their loyalty?”
Olivia frowned. “You proved your loyalty during the coup. I don’t trust most of the shits that are up here now. Many are good engineers, but too many were selected to come.”
Alyona understood. “Party loyalists.”
“That or worse, some Politburo’s cousin, the nephew that can’t keep a job. What worse backwater to push these idiots to than Siberia?”
Alyona’s eyes went introspective. This was a nightmarish idea to consider.
Olivia nodded. “Incompetents in an environment that rewards mistakes with death.”
Alyona looked concerned, but she was Russian. This was always the way.
Olivia decided to level with her. “You made sense to me. I saw you wouldn’t throw away the lives of your soldiers.” Alyona had to look away from the intensity of the truth. “Is that better? Ask another.”
“Why did they try to overthrow the leadership?”
Olivia liked the younger woman, decided the truth was probably best, at least to start, and said, “The problem was the asteroid, 16 Psyche. Do you know it?”
Alyona, a younger, fit athlete from the Russian military academies, had little use for astronomy. “It was the M-class asteroid the Americans wanted, no?”
Nodding, Olivia said, “It was my idea to take it first. Snatch it from under the American’s noses. Their satellites watched the surface, verifying our troops were surrendering and rebuilding, not massing or readying an assault.”
Alyona had been leading those troops.
“This was your operation?”
Olivia nodded. “Yes. I thought it up. We were still repairing the dome, but we had tons of methane for rocket fuel. I thought it would mitigate our loss in the war and put us back on top. Imagine crashing that much metal in the shadow of Arsia Mons! Over 10,000 quadrillion U.S. dollars! We’d have been rich! Bartering with the Americans, controlling metal prices, all manufacturing dollars would have gone through us!”
Alyona gasped at the wealth. Russia was notoriously poor, still.
Olivia smiled. “It was quite the prize. My spies heard the Germans wanted it, and our stupid war pushed them together with the Americans, and together they could get it before us.” Olivia raised her drink, “Until President Gorkiy sent those two rockets from Earth to attack.”
The rockets had tanks, troops, including Alyona and her company, part of an entire battalion for the conquest of Mars.
Olivia watched her. “After the conflict, I stole the rocket and seized the initiative.”
Alyona warmed by the whiskey, the fire, with her head swirling from hearing the truth instead of having to infer it between the lines, said, “Money, a mission, stealing from the Americans, who could object? Where’s the conflict?”
Olivia nodded. “Anatoly Gromyko’s supporters discovered my bold plan and hijacked it. Their contribution was to demand the asteroid be crashed not by Arsia Mons, where only Russian miners could get it, but into the American colony.” She stopped to drink and watched Alyona’s reaction.
Alyona put a finger into her uniform collar to loosen it. The heat rapidly rose as the idea of the cold-blooded murder of two entire colonies settled in.
Incredulous at first, Alyona sensed it was true. This was a career-militarist’s thinking. “This got dark quickly, even for Russians.”
“Yes. To murder every German and American while they slept. All the engineers, air, water, and food, would all be dead and gone.”
Alyona said, “Weren’t there rumors of a coalition? All Martian colonies trying to bond together, build a new world? Couldn’t we have taken the asteroid and bargained?”
“Gorkiy had just lost a land war and assumed the Americans would ignore the law, and take the asteroid by force. Gorkiy’s plan was simple, to destroy their rivals utterly and ensure hegemony over Mars in one bold maneuver.”
Alyona eyes darted around the room as she drank, considering the magnitude of the war crime and if it would even be considered part of a war.
Olivia watched her closely, she had to be certain Alyona would have made the same choices. “Yes, fail in the war, and murder in the peace.” Olivia paused. “It was thought we could easily subdue the Australians and British colonies after. The Chinese colony would be expected to remain neutral as Russian authority consolidated.”
Alyona’s lips pursed. “They decided it was best to kill them all and you refused?” Refusing orders was a clear and treasonable action. There was no room for debate.
“I was clear. We would be rich bullies, not genocidal monsters. I didn’t want to go down in history as the most murderous woman to have ever lived. They began the coup to clear me out of the way.”
“Why did you allow the Americans to take the asteroid? What changed your mind?”
Olivia wasn’t sure what to say. “First, the Americans called and wanted to help me defend against Gromyko and his coup.”
Alyona grimaced. “Foreigners would have only made the situation worse—”
“Of course. I refused. I couldn’t guarantee their safety.” Olivia drank. “I told them to fight for control of the asteroid. Anatoly’s allies were barricaded into the control room. I couldn’t stop the asteroid in time. Also, I needed their help. We trade with the Americans for water, air, food, and technical equipment. The fools on Earth are certain that we’d ‘make do’ somehow.”
Alyona thought of suffocating slowly and looked out at the deep blackness beyond the dome.
“Also, and here I’m a little embarrassed.” She shifted uncomfortably. “That stupid American politician on Twitter. She was already drafting a Declaration of Independence for Mars.”
Alyona looked outraged. “Da ‘mer!” She cursed floridly and ended with, “You believed this?”
“Da, the colonies need each other. I felt being the rich, powerful colony, would be enough. Trading the metals to the Americans would make us rich! I convinced Nikolai to back my plan. Anatoly disagreed, shouted, threw things, and after the meeting, reported everything to the Supreme Leader of the Communist party.”
“Vladimir Gorkiy.”
“Gorkiy wanted the asteroid for himself and began betting on futures contracts for the price of iron and nickel to tank, and demanded Gromyko hijack the operation and kill the American colony. Gromyko picked the loyal followers that Gorkiy told him to, and the planning for the coup began in earnest.”
Alyona nodded. “But you won.”
“What Gorkiy and Gromyko overlooked was that I had been special forces. When the Russian assault forces failed to take the Russian colony or to destroy the Germans in their war, I greeted the special forces rescued from the battlefield personally.”
Alyona nodded. “We started with an entire battalion of twelve hundred soldiers, including four companies of special forces with tanks, troop assault carriers, set to take over Mars. Only six hundred and fifty of us survived.”
Alyona continued. “After days sitting in their vac-suits, captured, stuck in sand, marooned in red deserts on a hostile world millions of kilometers from home, you were our savior.”
Olivia had to know. “Why did you listen to me instead of Gromyko? Why did you stop the coup instead of help it?”
Alyona looked for her answer, first in her drink, and then in the fire. “Well, you rescued us. Gromyko and those others were the idiots who put us on Mars in a losing position. For their mistakes, we would die.”
The survivors were brought to the airless Russian colony and set to finish repairs and pressurize the dome. They had one week, or their suits would run out of oxygen. The Americans rushed a shipment of compatible oxygen packs and given them an extra two days to finish the repairs.
The Americans then took in the entire German colony as refugees.
Olivia exhaled and looked at the gun hidden in her seat. She’d lost her train of thought.
Alyona filled the pause. “Besides, I saw you, a strong woman, and decided I’d had enough of those old men leading us. Their cold hands fumbling over our bodies.”
Olivia saw her look away and understood. There had been plenty of that when she was climbing the ladder as well.
Alyona continued. “My soldiers saw you as special forces, one of our own. Handling the typical mess created by the bureaucrats, making the best of their terrible work.”
Through her leadership, they completed dome repairs, made enough gas to pressurize, and survived.
“Without your leadership, the time of our death was clear and certain. We’d look inside our suits, read the oxygen, and calculate the time we’d die.”
Olivia had waited for extractions from dangerous assignments, sometimes while bleeding from gunshot wounds. She understood.
Alyona said, “What of your part? Did you catch Gromyko yourself?”
Olivia startled back to the present. “I had been thinking of just that. Yes, I shot his guards in this room and then his knees.”
“Well done.”
“Gromyko was a soft playboy. He liked the ladies, politics, and blackmailing. He led people to kill but had never done it himself.” She drank.
Olivia’s eyes were far away, in memory. “When people came to kill me, pointing guns, it was not my first time.” She drank again.
She had killed the young recruits and arrested Gromyko, torturing him for the rest of his plans, names of co-conspirators, and anything else she wanted to know.
“I sent Nikolai to gather loyalists and organize the resistance. I stayed behind to squeeze Gromyko for the rest of Gorkiy’s plans.”
Alyona had more questions, but Olivia had already remembered too much and wanted to vomit.
“You negotiated the deal with the Americans to trade—”
Olivia stood. “Enough for now. Know how we got here. Know more Russian troops will be coming when the Hohmann transfer window opens. Be ready to dig in, and don’t get caught unprepared.”
“You mean, keep a gun nearby, like you?”
Olivia nodded and moved to walk her guest out.
Alyona stood, turned.
“Oh, and remember, I’m letting the Americans dig for fossils under the canyon.”
Alyona said, “Good looking Americans, with whiskey?”
Olivia smiled. “See if you can pick a handsome one and work him for information, da?”
Alyona smirked. “If one of them is too good-looking for me to stop myself, I might have to.”
She finished her drink and took her leave. Turning at the door she said, “Are we sure Gorkiy will be sending more troops in the next transfer window?”
“If oil and gas prices are propped up, he’ll have money for war.” She sipped to soothe her stomach. “Hell, with the windfall from shorting the commodities market, he might have all the millions he needs to launch anyway.”
Alyona already knew this. Gorkiy called her often. She nodded politely and left.
