I wake up face-down, Serena nude and wrapped in blue flames, doing cartwheels across my vision and screaming, “WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE THE FUCK UP!”

A diagonal crack hisses across my faceplate. The low-oxygen warning pings in the background, nearly drowned out by Serena’s screaming.

“We need to move to a new suit. Prepare for emergency egress. This suit is fucked" Serena said.

"Alright. Where's a new suit?"

"Lying right next to this one. Literally to your right."

"You have seven minutes of air."

As a Commonwealth Scout attached to a Terrestrial Army heavy mechanized infantry platoon, my average life expectancy in combat is about seven minutes. My MOS also comes with the highest basic pay and death benefit package.

I was sending money home to help my parents pay off their penury and what they borrowed from the La Compañía syndicate. My death allotment lets my parents clear their debt, live comfortably, and still send my baby sister to school.

Governments are slipping as mega corporations are getting larger and more powerful than governments, and will soon own everything. The company pays my family and other workers in company scrip. This scrip is worthless off the station or outside the colony.

The company owns everything and charges workers for food, air, clothing, and water. My family barely makes enough to stay afloat. The company managing the colony obviously believes that keeping most colonial residents in abject poverty makes them easy to control.

My family can't afford to buy a ticket off the colony because of the Commonwealth's transactional view of life. Prices are artificially high, which prevents workers from accumulating enough credits to leave the station or company.

I had daydreamed of adventures on exotic worlds I would see while enlisted in the Commonwealth Terrestrial Army. The sudden hiss of aerosolized drugs breaks my introspection.

"Hey? What the fuck?"

"I administrated an inhalant that helps you retain oxygen for when you slip out of this armor and into the toxic environment of IY98k."

I also gave him a little bit of anxiolytic, Serena mused.

I know Serena has access to my amygdala. She probably hijacked it, lessening the effects of the trauma. Personal AIs such as Serena are not common except for the very rich and certain veterans who keep them after discharge.

My sweat-soaked haptic suit clings like a pre-spaceflight neoprene wetsuit. Thankfully, the suit keeps me clean so I don't have to inhale my bodyodor. With Serena's help with our waldos, I get the rear access hatch open on Sergeant Smilla's dreadnought power armor.

"Why wasn't the sergeant in his armor?"

"I do not know Sam. Just get the fuck in there as fast as you can. No sightseeing."

With a hiss, the clear inflatable emergency egress hood settles around my shoulders. As soon as the hood verifies a good seal, Serena triggers the emergency egress with a thump, blowing the access hatch off the back of our ruined armor.

The attached boots with hardened soles, protect my feet as I scramble into my new suit. I made the transfer well within the critical thirty seconds. My old drill sergeant would at least not ride my ass for being too slow. All those drills paid off.

What little of IY98k’s atmosphere I taste during the scramble is hot, toxic, and corrosive. IY98k is a small moon—the eleventh of seventeen major moons—orbiting a gas giant three times the size of Saturn.

Settling into the armor, I wait for the purge cycle as the emergency hood dissolves along with my old haptic suit. The armor applies a new haptic suit, its basic AI running until Serena takes over the suit’s systems.

My augments take a few seconds to connect to the new armor. It’s lonely waiting for Serena to come back online, even though she lives in the superconducting molecular-circuitry quantum computer behind my occipital lobe. I have always wondered why Serena does not talk to me during suit transfers. 

I once mistakenly suggested that it took up too much of her processing power to talk to me and take over a new suit. The AI equivalent of eating noodles while walking and talking. I got the disgusted AI noise, and then she tormented me with an itch in the middle of my back. I never again suggested she might lack in some manner. 

Our personal AIs can be touchy. Scientists theorized quantum computing in the mid-20th century. Modern computers are exponentially more powerful.

I wonder where the sergeant's AI went. "Sam, I downloaded Carl, the sergeant's AI into a brain box. Hopefully someone in the future can recover him."

There were several brainboxes stacked at the casualty station, but it got hit by a tactical nuke. The sergeant was heteroflexible, but seemed to like boys the best, so he chose an AI with a male persona. I'm hetero so I prefer an AI with a female persona.

I come from a fairly conservative family. I still remember one of my first conversations with Serena as we got to know one another. 

 "Honey, no one cares who you screw. You come from a very conservative colony where only one life partner of the opposite sex is the accepted practice. Out here that practice is not so common and in some places such as the Eros colony would be seen as very odd."

My new suit's waldos stash the brainbox with AI Carl in it into a storage niche. With the niche's power supply plus the box's own power, the box will keep Carl alive for the foreseeable future.

Both the ship and the CP have several racks of brain boxes for storing AIs from damaged suits. We treat the quantum computer-driven armor suit AIs as persons. Losing one is the same as losing a bio person's life.

“Honey, I'm home.”

Serena pops up on my HUD. "Full integration completed Sam. Good job hustling into a new suit."

Serena appears as a tall, attractive, slender woman, with high cheekbones and shoulder-length blonde hair. She wore a black skirt and top that looked sprayed on, and black knee-high suede boots with four-inch stiletto heels.

Serena appreciates that Sam's mental image, or 'office persona' of her has never been childish with no stripper look, or one that is oversexualized such as seen in manga. Mass media images often present women in a dehumanized way, sacrificing their humanity to display an artificial ideal. I am an artificial woman, so it's impossible to dehumanize me. I lack the cultural conditioning of a human woman.

Serena and I enjoy watching mid to late 20th-century propaganda films. Even though mega-corps that ruined Earth produced them, they are still entertaining.

The inside of the new suit is sweltering. I feel immediate relief when the life support functions come online. I went from lightweight scout power armor to a heavy mechanized infantry suit of armor.

I hardly feel the plumbing connections for waste, food and water. I'm lightly augmented by today's infantry standards with extra blood flow to my stomach and an extra artificial artery. Enhancements to my stomach sped up digestion and improved efficiency, allowing it to better process the nutrient-rich tastes like shit sludge the armor delivers straight inside.

Serena and I go through new suit checks. The ten-centimeter recoilless Gauss rifle mounted on my left arm is new to me. Waldos shovel raw mass into the feed chute, ready for matter-transmitter printing.

Supposedly, we'll have hand-carried laser rifles soon. Physicists have dreamed of that for almost a thousand years, since the invention of the laser. Space warships of the line have the space and the reactors to carry larger Gauss weapons such as mass drivers, as well as grazers, and laser weapons.

"Sam, I've activated the ELF emergency beacon," Serena said. "It's almost never used so highly unlikely the enemy will detect the signals"

"Let's hope someone friendly hears it."

"Sam, we've been listed as MIA assumed dead. That was the last status update I received before the satellites stopped broadcasting."

During inventory, I discover my new suit still has 13 nuclear armor-piercing rounds. Each 10-centimeter round has an approximate five to nine kiloton yield with a slightly adjustable yield. The fuze choices available were point-detonate or timed-delay ammo. I wonder where the other seven rounds that the armor had had gone.

CIH makes better batteries, but the Commonwealth makes better power armor, as displayed by my new multilayered armor with carbon fiber, nanocomposite spider weave, titanium alloy armor with an ablative layer, kinetic armor and ceramic-crystalline composite plates.

My new secondary and light anti-personnel weapon is a 16-barreled, 4.5mm rotary gun. The weapon mounts in the armor's right forearm. I'd rather have the weapon in the left forearm. The ammo drum behind my right shoulder holds 298 rounds of the telescoped caseless ammunition.

Continuing my new armor inventory, the grenade launcher over my left shoulder contains white phosphorus, high explosive frag, and smoke grenades.

The rocket launcher stored six rounds, which weighed down the middle of my back.

"Sam, only four rockets remain. All are directional ATAF."

"Directional as tight as fuck rockets?"

Serena giggles. "No you silly dummy. ATAF stands for Anti-Tank/Anti-Personnel/Anti-Material warheads focuses explosive energy and fragments in a specific direction. With advanced fuzing, explosive shaping, maximizing lethality by directing the blast where needed. Only two rockets have multi-point detonation."

"Not sure what I am going to do with the rockets. If I need them, shit is even more fucked up than it is now."

"We'll see Sam. Let's survive this toxic rock first."

Daytime on IY98k lasts nearly nine standard days. As the moon rotates around the super-Jovian gas giant, nighttime lasts nearly 300 days. The small moon is barely large enough to hold an atmosphere. The surface is all red, black and gray dead rock with deep crevices and dead volcanic peaks.

Looking at the dead Commonwealth soldiers lying everywhere alongside me, I dig around until I find a rifle lying beside a dead soldier I don't recognize. The new rifle has a partial magazine, but the underbarrel integrated grenade launcher has space station antipersonnel flechette load. My new suit's waldos grabs the spare magazines from the fallen soldier.

The flechette grenade is a soft load that won't poke holes in a space station or ship hull, but it's less than fucking worthless out here. The flechette load is great for shredding lightly armored or unarmored personnel, but worthless against armored foes. Soft flechette rounds bounce around in the compartment.

I'm going to need better grenades for my new rifle. Hunting around, I eventually find more flechette grenades; these, however, are made of hypervelocity five-millimeter tungsten carbide. It might not outright kill some asshole.

Poking a bunch of tiny holes in someone's armor in a toxic environment or vacuum either kills them slowly, or causes them to stop fighting while attempting to patch holes in their armor.

I wake to the sound of the station breathing.

It is never quiet here. The ventilation ducts rasp and tick as they cycle recycled air back through the hab ring. Somewhere above us, cargo clamps thud shut. Somewhere below, a pump stutters, catches, and keeps going. The station is old and tired, and everything that lives inside it learns to breathe with it.

Our unit is a coffin-sized compartment with a sliding wall that only seals if you kick it twice. My parents sleep on either side of the narrow aisle. I take the fold-down rack at the foot, feet nearly touching the recycler. My brother and sister used to share the rack until my brother signed on as contract security and never came back.

The light strip flickers to life at six hundred station time. That costs us half a script-credit. We leave it on anyway. My mother needs it to see the ration ledger.

She is already awake, hair tied back, eyes sharp despite the early hour. The ledger scrolls across her wrist screen in dull gray numbers. Script in. Script out. Always out faster than in.

Air allotment debited overnight. Water ration adjusted downward. Protein paste surcharge applied. Hab maintenance fee pending.

My father sits up slowly, joints popping. He works in external maintenance for the company. Vacuum seals, antenna arrays, hull patches. The company docks his pay every time he needs a new glove or a fresh seal or a new space suit. They charge him for the suit, and they charge him for the air in the suit. They charge him again when he breathes station air afterward.

He catches me watching and forces a smile.

"Morning, Sam."

I nod and slide off the bunk. The floor is cold. The station keeps the temperature low to reduce microbial growth. They tell us that every cycle. They do not tell us it also saves money.

My youngest sister is already awake, sitting cross-legged with a cracked slate balanced on her knees. The educational feed buffers every few seconds. Company-sponsored learning package. Basic math, basic literacy, and a rotating set of inspirational vids about productivity and loyalty.

She looks up when she sees me. "Sam, did you fix the recycler?"

"Not yet," I said. "I'll look at it after my shift." I fear that the cost of repairs may be more than we can afford.

She nods as if she understands. She is too young to understand. That hurts more than if she did.

Breakfast is two nutrient bars split four ways and a measured cup of warm water. The bars taste faintly metallic. New formulation. Cheaper binders. When we stand in line for our daily rations allotment you have to protect your food, and sometimes fight to keep it.

My mother watches the ledger as we eat.

"If the air and water surcharge goes up again next cycle," she said, not looking at anyone, "we will have to cut water use. Cannot do much about the air we use."

My father exhales slowly. "Overusing air and water means penalties. Penalties mean debt. Debt means interest. Interest means the syndicate eventually knocks."

I feel a familiar tightness in my chest. The station does that to you. It teaches you to measure your life in margins so thin you are always one bad day away from suffocation.

I check my wrist screen. My shift at the cargo gantry starts in an hour. Script pay, no benefits. The company does not offer benefits to temporary labor. Temporary labor is permanent here.

Outside my family's hab, the corridor smells faintly of ozone and disinfectant. Company posters line the bulkheads. Shiny propaganda. Smiling faces in clean uniforms. Leave the station. See the system. Serve the Commonwealth.

The price of a single passenger ticket off-colony scrolls beneath the slogan. It might as well be a star chart. Artificially high. Everyone knows it. Nobody says it out loud.

The Commonwealth calls it market stability. The company calls it workforce retention.

I stop at the transit junction and watch a group of contract workers shuffle past. Company boots and jackets. Company script chips clipped to their collars. Worthless anywhere else. The system is clean. Elegant. Inescapable.

At the enlistment kiosk, the Commonwealth seal rotates slowly in hologram form. The screen is cracked. Someone has scratched a line through the word volunteer.

I stand there longer than I mean to.

Scout enlistment flashes across the display. High risk. High pay. Full credit compensation. Death benefit guaranteed in real currency.

Real credits. Credits that work everywhere.

My parents could breathe easier. My sister could eat without counting bites. Maybe even go to a real school feed. Maybe leave.

The kiosk does not care why I am here. It does not care that I do not want to die. It does not care that I want something better than being ground down into script and recycled air.

It only cares that I sign.

I press my thumb to the pad.

The station keeps breathing.

I jolt awake, the weight of my suit pressing against me. I didn't realize I'd drifted off to sleep again. Looking at the time on my HUD, I see that I have slept for about an hour.

"Did you have a nice nap?" Serena asked.

With a groan, I stand up in the trench surrounded by dead Commonwealth soldiers.

"We need to secure more supplies. You are down to about half of your air. At current exertion levels, you have about three and half hours of air. I'll adjust as you move."

Thinking of supplies, I look up, wondering what happened to the Tartarus IV, the assault troop carrier that brought my battalion to IY98k. The atmosphere is now opaque, particulate-choked, and nuclear ash-loaded and too thick to see the ship and its escorts.

Keeping below the trench top, I walk hunched over as I search for supplies. Serena keeps updating my map and air supply while I head in the general direction of the supply dump. I know the ammo dump got nuked, so I will not bother going there.

"Amount of air left at current exertion levels is two hours."

"Thanks Serena."

Most of the junior soldiers lying around me are from my basic and AIT classes. I find clumsy "two left feet" Valter, who could never stay in step while marching, dead with most of his left side missing. Unfortunately, Valter's air cylinders are empty.

I discover PFC Gülnara, or what's left of her, lying under Valter. The night before we dropped onto IY98k, we got drunk in the enlisted lounge. Stumbling back to my bunk, we had a quick, pre-drop, desperate but friendly fuck. The sex at the time felt meaningless but necessary. Now, the sex and her death just feel meaningless.

Though almost everyone broke the rule, they strictly prohibited sex on board the ship. Right before a combat drop, many things, such as limiting alcohol consumption and sex on board the ship, were relaxed.

I believe most of our company suffered hangovers while in formation in assault bay #2. I stood next to Zdena before we boarded the assault shuttle.

"Damn, Zdena," I said.

Rolling her torso over, I found her scout power armor completely fried. I didn't know Zdena that well, only had sex with her once, but I'm sorry she's dead. I wonder how Zdena bought it. From our pillow talk, I learned she feared getting shot. It's easy to be brave, I know, until faced with a gun. She enjoyed joking about armor ratings.

Zdena was a good sport when we teased her about her horrible flinch on the unarmored live-fire range. Experiencing gunfire without the protection of power armor was a bit of a shock. For most station rats such as Zdena and me, who had never handled or shot a gun, the violent cacophony of gunfire was shocking. 

"Sam, the radiation readings from her suit indicates that she suffered a near miss from a tactical nuke. I'm amazed she made it back to our lines."

Serena privately processes her battlefield improvisation. Serena ponders whether she ought to inform Sam that she disarmed the explosives and remote detonation. Turning her and Sam into a walking 15 to 20 kiloton bomb does not instill any confidence in the Commonwealth in her.

It is clear to me that Serena has fully connected to the new suit monitoring my vitals. I notice that because of the dimming of my HUD when my heart rate spikes. 

Serena sorts the holographic tactical data, defenses, and target priorities on Sam's HUD. She can also display a 3D representation of the battlefield if needed. To avoid Sam freezing, she makes the threat icons smaller for Sam. Serena also controls the suit's waldos taking supplies from the fallen soldiers. She knows from his thoughts that Sam feels guilty robbing the dead, but this is survival.

I find Private "friendly fire" Henson dead. His armor shows signs of nuclear scarring. I wonder if the dumb bastard shot a nuke anti-armor round at a friendly soldier. Supposedly, the safeties wouldn't let you shoot another soldier by self-detonating the rounds before they hit. 

"I'm sorry Einārs," I said quietly as Serena operated the waldos, taking his air canisters. Einārs and I had been friends since basic.

Henson's entrails spill all over the rocks in a gory puddle. I gulp deeply a few times. I suddenly feel a slight decrease in my nausea. 

"Don't you dare puke in our armor," Serena said. "I gave you an antiemetic; your nausea should be easing."

I wonder how many commanders are going to get medals for IY98k when so many soldiers are dead. I haven't found Lieutenant Stupid yet. I'm too exhausted to look for the ludicrous, micromanaging bastard who ran my Scout section right at the enemy rather than letting us do our job.

At least we are not dealing with sectarian violence. All we need is a bunch of religious nutjobs in this war. Serena and I fought in the Battle of Broken Minds, where religious differences between two groups of colonists led to a brief, one-battle war.

"Sam, I've monitored the communication channels and it is completely silent. I do not even hear any of the CIH ships or troops."

Hating them wasn't hard after years of war. It was hard to hate them when you heard their conscripts beg for mercy. I felt horrible for the poor bastards when their commanders trigger the release of the piranha solution in their armor, dissolving the soldiers alive. Their screams still haunt my dreams.

"Sam, none of my open channel queries have been answered. I fear we are alone on this toxic rock."

I stop mid step and glance at my air supply. "Nothing from the Commonwealth?"

"Not a peep."

"Fuck."

"Agreed."