The Unincorporated Woman by Dani Kollin, Eytan Kollin Read Free Book Online Page B

funeral procession were able to make their way, albeit rather slowly, out of the landing bay and into the safer environs of a secure holding room.
    As soon as they cleared the bay, J.D. handed off the battle standard to the nearest soldier and ordered Alliance One’s other precious cargo, the newly found sarcophagus, to a safe location. She then strode out of the room, barely dignifying Justin Cord’s empty space suit with a passing glance.
Day Fourteen
    Admiral Christina Sadma, defender of Altamont and commander of a once superior fighting force now whittled down through warfare and attrition, stared unblinking into a darkened, empty crevice through the scratched pane of a battered helmet. Standing on a small ridge overlooking the silent thoroughfare, she breathed in her suit’s stale, processed air and realized with sad portent that she could no longer remember the last time she’d been out of the damned thing. Yes, it was an incredibly well-designed machine wearable for weeks on end with nothing worse developing than an aversion to a tenacious ozone odor that seemed to linger despite the best efforts of the Alliance’s engineers. The smell had, amusingly, spawned a whole new industry in “suit scents,” the most popular of which was called “new suit.” The odd, tree-shaped stickers had been quite the rage as the outfits wore down and their filters wore out, but now the stickers too had disappeared. The supplies of everything had dwindled to almost nothing.
    However, her current disquiet wasn’t a result of having spent too much time in the suit. She’d been born and raised on Eris, past the Kaiper Belt, and—like most in the Outer Alliance—had spent weeks “in suit” on one job or another. No, the thing that irked her most was what she was staring at: a horridly scarred and pitted landscape that only a few short weeks ago had been more fit for the donning of a summer dress than wearing the stifling, stale-air contraption she’d been forced to live in now.
    As Christina looked out over the great rock’s once pristine interior, her heart grew heavy. Gone was the settlement’s famous “miracle of light,” in which large, strategically placed mirrors had been used to create a glimmering star in the asteroid’s center. Gone too were the abbey’s famous gardens, growing a thousand and one impossible things in perfect harmony—testament to the gentle care and patience that eons of such tranquil endeavors could produce. Gone as well were the notions of life and peace. Christina even missed the Altamont she’d had to create to fight the war. True, “her” Altamont did not have the beautiful gardens. They’d long ago been replaced by kilometer after kilometer of uniform soy plantations and all manner of other staple foodstuffs. “Her” Altamont also had much heavier traffic than the asteroid had ever been used to, with ships and personnel coming and going at all times. There’d been such purpose, though, to the place. Christina’s Altamont, fueled by a hatred of incorporation and infused by the passion to fight it, inspired a life all its own. Though the asteroid’s once idyllic interior had been transformed with the abbey’s permission, that hadn’t stopped Christina from dreaming of the day she could eventually return it to its Godly purpose. But now, standing amongst its ruins and degradation, she realized that that day would never come and that this current grotesque iteration was to be its last.
    It had indeed become a dark world. So much so that the windowpane of her helmet needed both infrared and ultraviolet enhancing just to see what the natural human eye could not. It was a darkness relieved only by the occasional spark of an exposed wire or the momentary sputter of an emergency light. It had, at first, been fascinating to watch the exposed wires fizzle out in lonely protest amidst the blackness. Eventually, though, it had grown depressing—a reminder of the dying rock itself. The vast