"A little of both," said de Santo wearily.
"Fine, so you have expressed your opinion," said Arcturus. "What else was there?"
"There's a message arrived for you on the vidsys console. Figured you'd want to know."
Arcturus took a deep breath, fighting down his annoyance at de Santo's interruption, but knowing, deep down, that she might be right.
"Fine," he said at last. "Keep working the resonator. I'll go see what it is."
De Santo sat behind the surveying equipment’s display as he set off toward the central hab-unit, where the crew gathered for meals and relaxation after the day's labors.
He turned back as he walked. "Any idea whom the message is from?" he asked, expecting it to be from either his mother or Dorothy.
"Signal origin code is Umoja," said de Santo.
"Umoja?"
"Yeah, some guy called Pasteur."
Arcturus shucked off his boots and jacket as he stepped into the entry hall of the hab-unit, letting the flow of dry air cool him down after the humidity of the dig site. As he hung up his hardhat, he saw that his palms were sweating and realized he was apprehensive.
Whal could Ailin Pasteur want with him after all these years?
It had been nearly a decade since he had seen the man, and their last words were not ones of abiding friendship. Was it perhaps Juliana using her father's console?
He hoped not. He'd taken Achton Feld's advice literally and made a clean break with his previous life when he'd left Korhal all those years ago. Through the hellish years of the Guild Wars, he'd not thought of Juliana or returned home on any of his infrequent periods of leave.
Instead, he had entered the Marine Corps study program, earning himself innumerable qualifications in prospecting and mineral exploration in preparation for the day he could stand before Brantigan Fole and resign his commission.
"Damn, but I hate to lose you, Mengsk," Fole had said when Arcturus slid his discharge papers across the commander's desk. "The Kel-Morians are on the run, and it's only a matter of time until they got no choice but to surrender. You sure you don't want to wait a while, son? You're a colonel now, but they're gonna be handing out promotions like party favors when this is all over. You could be a general if you wanted."
"No, sir," said Arcturus. "As appealing as that is, I've done my time and just want out."
"What you gonna do with yourself, Mengsk? You're a soldier. You were born to be a soldier. I don't think you've got it in you to be a civilian. Come on, son, the things we've done, the things we've seen... How can you go back to being an ordinary joe after that?"
"With respect, sir," said Arcturus. "It's because of the things we've done that I'm leaving."
"What's that supposed to mean?" said Fole, all civility gone.
Arcturus sighed. "I suppose I just don't believe in what we're fighting for anymore."
Fole had glared up at him and, without another word, signed his discharge papers.
Arcturus shook off the memory and pushed open the door to the rec room. Inside, conditions were spartan, the meager furniture battered from the many times it had been shipped around the rim from potential claim to potential claim. In one corner sat an old cine-viewer where everyone caught up on the latest broadcasts from the UNN or their favorite holodrama. A number of mismatching chairs were gathered around a chipped Formica table, and a pool table—its felt faded and duct-taped—sat in the corner.
Beyond a bead curtain was a small kitchen unit, and a communal ablutions block lay at the far end of the quarters where Arcturus and a number of others slept and kept their few personal belongings.
Against the far wall was the vidsys console, a battered unit they'd bought secondhand and that had never quite functioned as the seller had promised. But it was serviceable enough, and Arcturus had enough technical savvy to keep it running and allow his prospecting crews some fleeting contact with their homes.
A blinking red light flashed on the grimy, oil-stained panel of the console and Arcturus set himself on the stool before it. Taking a moment to compose himself, he ran his hands through his hair once more and wiped the worst of the grime from his face as he always did before opening any communication. An unnecessary ritual, since the message would have been prerecorded, but Arcturus never liked to begin anything without looking presentable.
Satisfied, he punched the red button, and the screen fuzzed with static before a grainy image of a pair of three-pointed stars, locked together within a circle, flashed on the screen. For all his skill with electronics, Arcturus had never been able to get the color to work properly, but he knew that one of the stars was jet black, the other pure white.
This was the planetary icon of Umoja, and Arcturus look a deep breath as the image faded and was replaced with the face of Ailin Pasteur.
The man had aged, his face deeply lined and his hairline having receded alarmingly. Arcturus saw the years had been a burden to Ailin Pasteur and that he carried their weight in his eyes.
"Hello, Arcturus," said Pasteur.
"Ailin," replied Arcturus, falling into the habit of most people when viewing such messages and thinking that the other person was actually on the other end of the link.
"It's been some time since we spoke, so I'll keep this brief."
The man might be looking aged, but his voice had lost none of its strength and Arcturus was quietly impressed as Pasteur continued.
"Your mother told me you'd left the Marine Corps and that you're working your way along the outer rim territories as a prospector. Well, you always said that's what you wanted to do, so I suppose that counts for something. But a lot of things have changed since you left your old life behind, Arcturus, things you need to face up to. I haven't contacted you before now, because Juliana asked me not to, but, like I said, things have changed."
Arcturus's brow furrowed at Pasteur's words. What had changed?
"I need you to come to Umoja," said Pasteur. "I know you probably won't want to, bul, I'm appealing yo any shred of humanity you might have left in you. Come to Umoja, Arcturus. As soon as you can."
The image of Pasteur faded from the screen and Arcturus chewed his bottom lip as he considered what he'd just heard. He replayed the message twice more, searching for the meaning lurking behind Pasteur's words, but he could detect nothing beyond their face value.
He shook his head and went into the kitchen to fix a hot drink, and armed with a tin mug of steaming, military-grade coffee, he made his way to his quarters.
Something had changed, and it was something he was going to have to face up to...
What in the world could it be?
The room Arcturus had taken within the hab-unit gave a narrow window into his personality. He kept it as clean as was possible in a prospecting camp, which wasn't very clean at the best of times. A narrow cot bed sat against one wall, with a gunmetal gray footlocker at its end. Bundles of clothes in need of washing were piled at the foot of the bed and a number of disassembled pieces of electronic kit lay strewn on a collapsible table in the corner. The walls were largely bare steel, though one wall had a gleaming gauss rifle hung on cloth-wrapped bolts, and another boasted a collection of curling holographic images lacked to it.
In one of these images, Dorothy waved to him and blew him a kiss. The image had been captured on her thirteenth birthday and a cake bedecked with candles flickered in the foreground. Dorothy was fast becoming the apple of every Styrling lad's eye, with boys from all the moneyed families queuing up to court her, only to be sent packing by her father and told to come back when she turned twenty-one.
He reached out and touched the image, as he always did, and scanned the other images: one of him at the graduation ball with Juliana, another of being presented his colonel's stripes by Brantigan Fole, and one of him standing heroically atop the glittering seam of minerals at his first strike.