Tafkar

Shane has been the face of Mars since he was a baby. It wasn't planned that way at first. But: baby born on Mars with his tragic familial backstory, a newborn living under the dire conditions they survived under in that first year before any emergency supplies from Earth could get to them — of course people would want that shot of hope. And then when the supplies came, that created its own news clips that kept him in the spotlight. (The video of him rejecting chocolate pudding was shown on late-night talk shows and morning broadcasts and is now a ubiquitous reaction GIF.)

And then the rescue mission came with the new crew, and it became clear Shane couldn't leave without more treatment and medical support. So the M-6 and the corporations made her a private deal. Keeping Shane alive would cost millions, and they needed Mars Ops people on site, not astrobiologists, which meant Yuna was also a burden. But not if Shane sang for their supper. They wanted potential colonists to feel Mars was a safe place to live and work, and child Shane was the perfect tool to create the illusion of safety. He was also the perfect lab rat for investigations of the long-term effects of Mars life. Eventually, their medical discoveries would allow him to go home to Earth. The multiethnic angle helped him appeal to a broader range of nations. All he had to do was appear in a few (some) (more) (many) (so many) (Mom, do I really have to do another?) videos. And to background the Yoshida name in favor of his father's famous family name, Hollander — something that her father-in-law Ed Hollander was 100% behind. And for Yuna to give up astrobiology in favor of Mars ops.

(Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if her scientist love David, so calm and thoughtful and brilliant, had survived instead of his chaotic astronaut father Ed. Would David have let her make the deal at all? Would David have leveraged Shane's position for political capital of his own, as Yuna had?)

But the medical discoveries they made using Shane's body as a lab experiment never allowed him to leave. The videos left every person who came to Mars feeling like they somehow knew Shane, attention that made him deeply uncomfortable, made him escape God knew where on the station when he'd had enough.

And also, because Shane had to be palatable globally, there were enormous restrictions as to how he presented to the world. His manner was studied, practiced, as nonthreateningly nonsexual as a Disney Mousketeer. The role was crushing the life out of her son, just more slowly than Earth gravity would have. And then a brief reprieve; around the time that her father-in-law got sick, the video requests ebbed.

And then somehow, the plans the M-6 and corps had hatched to make Mars a fully automated space settlement leaked. And Yuna realized they hadn't stopped making video requests out of consideration for Shane's family situation; they did it because they didn't need it anymore.

She had a vision of being dragged to the last departing ship in handcuffs while Shane stood on the surface in a spacesuit, waving farewell. So when rumors of rebellion started, she used her connections and her political capital to keep Martians on Mars.

But she'd never thought it would come to this. She doesn't know how many people have died. She doesn't even know where Shane was.

And she doesn't know where the M-6 invasion's command center is. But as the red dot moves, she knows they are about to find out.

"Rabbit is leaving his hole," says Carter, the poor young MOCC specialist who is now monitoring the operation.

Yuna presses her fingers to her lips. This has to work. She tries hard not to think of the cost. She has to keep her son safe.

Fortunately, Shane's heavy burden is unconscious for most of the trip through the tunnels to the medbay.

Fuck. Ilya Rozanov. Shane had never met him, but he's seen through Rozanov's eyes easily a thousand times. Because Rozanov was the Russian Army Hockey Juniors skater that wore a VR filming rig during a game to give people a POV experience of hockey.

Shane loved watching hockey, but even if the open space for a rink wouldn't have been a criminal waste at Happy Valley, the amount of water needed to create a rink would be. Ilya's VR clip was the closest Shane would ever come to the experience of playing hockey, and he'd been watching it over and over since he was 16.

And now he'd shot the guy. Fuck!

Rozanov rouses himself right about when Shane starts climbing the ladder up to the main corridor. (Maybe Shane can't survive Earth, but he has worked hard to be an exceptionally strong Martian.) "You torture me now?" he groans from somewhere around Shane's waist. "I have no information to give you."

"Next time I'll just leave you there to bleed to death," Shane says.

"Violation of Geneva convention," Rozanov says.

"Like you guys massacring a bunch of Peacekeepers wasn't?" Shane spat out.

"We did not —"

"Some of your guys did. I saw it. I was hiding in an air duct." The Peacekeepers had allied themselves with the invading force, stealing food and medicine and sabotaging equipment. Shane should have been glad they were dead, but he'd known some of them since he was a kid. "If I'd been a couple of inches to the left we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. You should have stayed on Earth and worked on your backhand."

"And you should have stuck to giving little Mars tours instead of overthrowing government."

Pretty fucking coherent for someone who is upside down, Shane thinks. "Shut the fuck up so we don't get shot," he says. He looks through the grating at the bottom of the door as they came up the stairs. It doesn't look like anyone is out there, and he can't hear any stompy boots. He slips into the corridor and quickly gets into the medbay.

"Is Dima here?" he asks as he came through the door. Every stretcher is full; it looks like a war zone. He gets down on one knee and carefully leans forward to slowly let Rozanov down onto the floor. He can hear the other man's suppressed grunt of pain. Shane strips off his hoodie and tucks it behind Rozanov's head as a pillow.

It takes a minute, but Dima, the doctor who has looked after Shane since he was a baby, comes over. Shane slips into Russian when describing the injury; all of his doctors were Russian until he was 7, and his brain just defaults to Russian for medical terminology.

"Good job on the tourniquet for two weeks' training," Dima says. He looks at the name on the soldier's chest. "Rozanov?"

"Ilya," Shane supplies.

"You're Grischa's boy?" Dima asks, squatting next to Rozanov.

Rozanov lets his head thud back on the makeshift pillow. He looks sweaty and pale. "You knew my father?" he asks.

Shane's stomach drops. Rozanov isn't an unusual name, but Shane knows exactly who Grischa Rozanov is. He died with Shane's dad. Sveta had never mentioned who Ilya's dad was.

Dima pats Rozanov's shoulder. "I will tell you about him later. But first let me get you something for the pain."

Shane follows Dima as he goes to the pharmacy. "Shanya, all I have left is baby aspirin," he says grimly. "Do you have anything left in your kit?"

Shane fishes out a couple of Tylenol. "Can you treat him?" he asks.

Dima gestures out to the medbay with a wave of his hand. "Our surgical bays are full. I don't have IVs. I don't even have a hemostatic dressing to convert the tourniquet. If we don't convert it soon..." he shrugs. "Compartment syndrome, acidosis. He'll keep the leg but he'll lose more function."

Shane thinks of that goal he's watched Rozanov make a thousand times, of skating around the goal. Rozanov might never have that again. It's Shane's fault. He has to fix it.

"I'll go get the supplies" he says.

"The Peacekeepers have them," Dima says.

An image flashes in Shane's mind of the pile of dead bodies in the machine room. He can feel himself start to freak out and tamps it down. It was a lot easier to do when he was working on Rozanov's injury. "There aren't many of them left. I think I can do it."

Dima looks at him grimly. "I'll make a list."

Ten minutes later, Shane is climbing back down a ladder. He's pretty sure he's got a sneaky way to get under Main Street and through to the section the Peacekeepers had taken over.

In the MOCC, the red dot on the screen keeps moving. "Rabbit is going across Main Street," Carter says.

Yuna keeps her focus on the screen. Shane is a medic trainee. Shane has probably already made his way to the medbay. He'll be safe with Dima.

She watches the red dot move across the map of Happy Valley.