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Personal Journal of Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Chevalier de Lisieux
Saturday, 24 July–Monday, 9 August 2297
Adjudant-chef Eberhardt’s tour of Camp Danjou lasted two hours.
This was longer than strictly required to view the camp and considerably faster than required to appreciate its architecture.
We began at the reception building and proceeded past administration, stores, the main barracks, the officers’ quarters, two vehicle parks, a field hospital, three dining facilities, the headquarters of the 13e Demi-Brigade, the headquarters of 2/13e, several training areas and a collection of temporary buildings which had stood long enough to acquire historical significance.
Eberhardt identified each without slowing.
The lower gravity made the first half-hour deceptively easy. My legs felt light, my stride lengthened and I began to suspect that Aurore had been created specifically to reward the natural athlete.
The heat corrected this impression.
Notre Soleil climbed through the reddish haze while Tithonus remained fixed above the horizon. The air grew warmer and more humid, with a taste unlike anything on Earth. Sweat failed to evaporate as efficiently as I expected. My lungs worked well enough, but not quite as they ought.
François kept pace beside me.
“Still adapting?” he asked.
“Splendidly.”
Laetitia began to struggle after the first hour. She was fit, but less experience carrying on when the body advised against it, and an unfortunate habit of attempting to explain the physiological effects of unfamiliar atmospheric compounds while running.
Her explanations grew less detailed with every kilometre.
I instructed François to help her.
“Why don't you help her, Sir? I'm sure she'd appreciate it more.” he said.
“I must remain in front where she can see me. For morale.”
François fell back and ran beside her. He said something I could not hear. Laetitia glared at him, which restored enough energy for her to accelerate.
Thus, through sound leadership, all three of us completed the tour.
Eberhardt stopped exactly where we had begun. He was breathing no harder than a man who had just gotten out of bed.
“And that concludes our brief tour of Camp Danjou,” he said.
Laetitia bent over with her hands on her knees.
“You seem well adjusted to the gravity and the summer heat. It remains to be seen how well you'll cope with the schedule.”
Aurore turns around the giant Tithonus once every sixty hours, or about two and a half Earth days. The colonists divide this period into six cycles of ten hours each. On paper the arrangement is elegant: two cycles for sleep, two for work and two for rest and personal activity.
The Legion has improved upon the system by removing one of the unnecessary rest cycles.
Three cycles are therefore assigned to duty, two to sleep and one to such personal matters as eating, washing, maintaining equipment, reporting to administration and being informed that one’s personal cycle has been reassigned to duty.
Sunrise and sunset are of little assistance.
Eta Bötes A, known locally as Notre Soleil, brightens and dims across the long day, but it never appears as fierce as the sun over France. It's companion, the red dwarf Eta Bötes B, aka Rubis, lends a weaker red light when geometry and cloud permit. Tithonus itself never rises and never sets. Its glow persists even when Notre Soleil has passed below the horizon, leaving Camp Danjou in a ruddy half-light which resembles neither day nor night.
The body waits for darkness, but darkness does not come. The mind longs for the bright light of a summer's day, but at best we get the equivalent of an overcast day in Southern France.
Instead of light and darkness, clocks rule Aurore. Clocks, bells, meal schedules and senior non-commissioned officers.
During our first sleep cycle I lay awake beneath a window that refused to become properly dark. During the second I slept so deeply that François had to shake me before duty. On the third local day I awoke after ten hours convinced that I had merely closed my eyes for an afternoon nap.
It was, according to the camp clock, morning. Outside, the sky looked exactly as it had before I slept. Abominable. But I eventually adapted through discipline and a regular schedule.
François adapted by sleeping whenever nobody was actively speaking to him. One has to admire the ability of soldiers and NCOs to nap wherever and whenever.
Laetitia adapted more quickly. She claimed it was all thanks to setting alarms, vigorous exercise, and some yoga, but I think she did it primarily to spite myself and Chef Blanc.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let us briefly go back in time to our arrival.
Commandant Mireille Vautrin, the 13e DBLE's Chief of Staff, received us in an office overlooking one of Camp Danjou’s older courtyards. She was a compact woman in her forties, with dark hair cut short and the controlled manner of an officer who had already made up her mind about us.
She rose when we entered.
“Lieutenant de Lisieux.”
“Commandant.”
“Welcome to the 13e.”
There was no theatricality in her manner, but neither was there hostility. She asked sensible questions about our journey, our health, and the delay in receiving our baggage. She knew about the events aboard the Jean Bart, in general terms at least, though she did not encourage me to recount them.
Vautrin turned to François.
“You requested that Blanc remain attached to you.”
“Yes, Commandant. His experience and judgment have repeatedly proven valuable during our voyage here.”
François displayed no visible reaction to this praise.
“His record says he struck a superior officer.”
“His judgment is not infallible.”
“Apparently not.”
She studied him intently for a moment.
"This isn't the Army, Chef. We don't take kindly to your sort in the Legion."
"Yes, Sir."
She turned to me.
“Then I shall leave him in your capable hands, Lieutenant."
Laetitia was more complicated. As an aspirant, she required both instruction and practical experience, but no platoon had yet been assigned to me and therefore there was no position for her to occupy at my side.
“For now, Aspirant Cassart will be attached to demi-brigade headquarters,” Vautrin said. “Her academic background may be useful.”
Laetitia attempted to appear disappointed.
She did a poor job of it.
“When Lieutenant de Lisieux receives a platoon,” Vautrin continued, “I see no objection to assigning you to it.”
“Thank you, Commandant.”
“Provided the arrangement still seems sensible by then.”
Chef de bataillon Philippe Artaud was less welcoming.
He commanded 2/13e, the Legion’s only battalion raised organically under the demi-brigade rather than detached from another regiment. He possessed a heavy face, iron-grey hair, and the suspicious gaze of a man who regarded charm as an indirect form of attack.
His eyes paused on my name.
“Chevalier de Lisieux. Quite the pedigree, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I will try not to hold it against you."
He then questioned me about the Franco-German War and colonial operations.
“You have seen quite a bit of combat. And indeed led men in combat, which is a whole other thing,” he said.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Promising. You will get the opportunity to prove your worth to the Legion in the 2nd Company.”
This was the company stationed farther south, near Lumière. I had not yet seen that part of the colony, but it was where Artaud expected to place me once a platoon became available.
Until then, François and I were attached to Capitaine Anaïs Mercier’s 3rd Company at Camp Danjou. Laetitia disappeared into headquarters and emerged periodically with new information.
Garrison life began.
There was always something to do.
Medical personnel measured our reaction to Aurore’s gravity, light and atmosphere. Instructors lectured us on earthquakes, storms, native toxins, agricultural quarantine and the importance of never assuming that unfamiliar wildlife was harmless merely because it was small.
The Legion issued us local field equipment and then inspected it before we had learned where half of it belonged. We trained in the lower gravity, where every familiar movement was slightly wrong. A loaded march was easier on the legs but more treacherous on broken ground. One could jump farther than expected, fall more slowly than expected and still strike the ground with sufficient force to regret both discoveries.
Camp Danjou revealed itself gradually.
The oldest structures dated from the colony’s founding. Some had been shipped from Earth as prefabricated units and were never intended to survive five years, much less fifty. They had been patched, reinforced and connected to newer buildings until no engineer could remove them without threatening something important.
Later commanders had added proper barracks, hardened command centres and underground shelters. One nostalgic colonel had built an officers’ mess with white walls, shaded verandas and arches copied from photographs of North Africa. It was absurd beneath Tithonus and therefore rather magnificent.
The newest facilities were hyper-modern: smart armour, self-sealing utility lines, adaptive foundations and walls that altered their insulation as the long day warmed and cooled. Such buildings stood beside sheds old enough to have grandchildren.
There was no space left for Camp Danjou to grow. Civilian districts pressed against one side and military support installations against the other. Units had spread into secondary camps, depots and training areas across the region.
At the time, this seemed inefficient, but I would later revise that opinion.
My first earthquake occurred during a meal. The shaking lasted perhaps ten seconds. A junior officer at the next table steadied his drink with one hand without looking up from his meal, but other than that, no one seemed to notice or care.
“Should we not evacuate?” I asked.
That's what our standing orders said, after all.
The officer smiled at me, explaining that a little shaking didn't qualify as a real quake, and that it was therefore not against orders to not evacuate.
Sergent Nowak, the driver from the spaceport, proved indispensable during these early days.
If one asked where a regulation item should be obtained, he directed one to stores. If stores did not have it, he knew which depot had failed to record receiving it. If no depot possessed it, he knew a civilian supplier in Port Loubet. If regulations prohibited the purchase, he knew which form transformed the item into something regulations permitted.
He also knew every rumour in Camp Danjou while claiming never to listen to gossip.
François cultivated his acquaintance with great care.
I did not object. A wise officer recognizes the value of good relations with experienced non-commissioned officers, particularly those capable of obtaining decent wine after the quartermaster has declared it unavailable.
Lieutenant Étienne Valois became the closest thing I had to a friend during those first days.
No relation to Henri Valois of the Jean Bart, fortunately. I established this early, perhaps with less delicacy than I intended. Étienne accepted the question without offence. Valois is not an uncommon name, and he had apparently spent his entire career explaining that he was not related to one distinguished Valois or another.
He was close to my age, held the same rank, and appreciated a glass of wine or two.
These qualities initially suggested profound compatibility.
In other respects, we were less alike. Étienne possessed no great enthusiasm for history, considered ceremonial swords an inconvenience, and had joined the army because it offered stable employment. He intended to complete his service, marry a woman in Port Loubet, and acquire a house with sufficient land for two dogs.
I found this lack of ambition puzzling, especially for an officer in the Legion.
He found my ambitions entertaining.
Nevertheless, we drank well together.
The long Aurorean day encouraged such friendships. After ten hours of training, administration, and briefings, one could sit watching the disk of Tithonus crest the western horizon with a glass in hand and feel that evening had arrived. Several hours later, the light remained almost unchanged, the glass was empty, and a clock announced that another duty cycle had begun.
It was possible to lose all sense of time.
It was also possible, slowly, to acquire another.
By our seventh local day, the bells of Camp Danjou had started to make sense.
Aurore had not become familiar.
But it had stopped being impossible.