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Tau Ceti IV was to be the first of many outer colonies, a shining beacon of progress and testament to the human spirit. Isabel Palomer thought it looked like those fake towns designed to be wiped out in the testing of nuclear bombs; nothing but bland prefab houses arranged into a neighborhood-like simulacrum, surrounded by miles and miles of desert. And not even particularly interesting desert if you weren’t willing to drive out.
She’d just stay on the Marathon at all times if she could, but the brain trust running the ship decreed that she get punted down to the colony for a couple of weeks every month with some bullshit excuse about avoiding burnout. Isabel didn’t agree(?) to put millions of miles between herself and Mars just to have to camp on “Mars But Even More Shit”.
And it wasn’t like she didn’t often end up doing security work down here, too.
It started with one man yelling at the other about parking and escalated to the taking-out of knives, both of which promptly turned on Isabel when she tried to step between them. All it took to drop both of these jackasses were a few forceful blows aimed at vulnerable areas; community watch arrived shortly afterward to drag them off, with a mention that this was the third time in one month these men had gotten into an altercation.
The burst of adrenaline offered by that fight soon faded, and Isabel soon found herself at her usual spot on the colony: at its southernmost edge with nothing more than a single terminal booth for company. Maybe if she got lucky, a chockisen would wander by that she could shoo away.
“Tellin’ ya, Hero. Some days, I think coming here was a mistake.”
This particular terminal lacked video capabilities, so Isabel couldn’t see the pretty face of the colony’s lone AI, but she could at least hear her. “Well, we’ve just barely gotten started on it,” Hero said. “I’m sure that in a few months, Tau Ceti will look a lot more impressive.”
Isabel shrugged. “Reminds me of the army base I lived on at Mars, except it doesn’t even have trees; just a bunch of cactus.” Supposedly, these alien cacti performed a similar role in Tau Ceti’s ecosystem to trees, but Isabel wasn’t the botanist; that was Cyrille.
“Give it time; we’ll make this a place worth living in.”
Mars had had plenty of time to become a ‘place worth living in’. Isabel was grateful that Hero couldn’t see her facial expression.
–
Tau Ceti’s lone convenience store somehow managed to feel deeply grotty despite having been set up only a few months ago; apparently, the colony budget did not extend to cleaning products or vertical lights that didn’t constantly give off a high-pitched whine. Every visit, without fail, Isabel had to check in for something, and each time she left in desperate need of a shower.
She dropped off her groceries at the temporary quarters for ship-side residents and immediately walked back outside; temp quarters were literally a bed and bathroom with a communal kitchen at the other end of the building, and the less time Isabel spent languishing there, the better.
It was too risky to just walk to the Septa Desert at twilight, so Isabel pulled a bike away from the rack and started driving until the lights of the fledgling colony were far behind her.
Out in Septa, there was actual life—cacti and shrubs and actual grass (however patchy), plus the occasional distant chockisen herd. Isabel liked to head out here, far away from all the colonists trying to stave off buyer’s remorse, and simply take it all in. Thankfully, the colonists were under strict orders not to expand out here, so with any luck, there was no hard limit on how often Isabel could do this.
Nothing but quiet ambiance and the wind against her back—the one thing from her life on Mars that Isabel missed.
–
Another day, another would-be brawl prematurely ended with copious amounts of blunt force. Isabel sighed, and found herself wandering between the houses as she tended to do during the day. Her call to return to the Marathon couldn’t come soon enough; what she wouldn’t give to have something more engaging to do.