Eos

Eos is the leader of the Red Faction.

Attributes

• Team: Red Faction
• Role: Leader
• Sex: Female

Biography

There's no going back now. We've finally made a move, after all these years of planning and talking. With last night's attack, we're finally committed. Orion rigged the bomb. Once he was clear, I hit the Alert button outside the cafeteria. When the security guards ran out of their barracks, the blast took out six of them. That should stir things up.

I can't think of them as people. There's too much at stake here. They work for Ultor, helping the company kill miners. They're the enemy. Too many of my friends have died to feel pity now. We need to harden attitudes on both sides, to make conflict inevitable. Once miners realize they have no choice, once they know their lives depend on defeating Ultor, then they'll fight. And we'll win.

I can't believe it took this long. Ultor's made us live like animals for so many years that we've forgotten we're human. People have been beaten down, physically and mentally, and it's going to take a strong shock to get them back up. We're going to provide the juice, even if it kills us. But no matter what, the miners here will never go back to lurching through life like zombies. We're going to make sure of that.

Everyone talked about how awful life was here, but no one would do anything about it. They were scared they?d turn up missing at the end of a shift. I had to do something. Dad didn't raise any whiners. He clawed his way up through the ranks, starting out chewing rocks in the tunnels, and now he's a shift foreman for Sector T-2. He worked and fought for everything he has; he says that's the only way to get it.

I know better than to look to my Dad for approval, though. He'd hate what we're doing. Nothing could shake his loyalty to Ultor. Not even Mom's death made him question that. She was one of the early Plague victims, over four years ago. Something about the reactions of the docs and techs in the medical facility made me wonder what was really going on. When she died, I saw guilt burn across a doc's face. I started screaming, blaming Ultor. My Dad dragged me back to our apartment and locked me in my room until I stopped yelling. He refused to hear it. But I knew. I just shut up and churned inside.

That night, I decided to rid Mars of Ultor. I had to do it for my Mom, for what they did to her. It began with getting Orion on board. We'd grown up together and I knew I could trust him. I started talking to him, sketching out my plans, such as they were. We met between shifts, in places deserted and crowded, anywhere we thought we could avoid attention, always looking over our shoulders. We knew we couldn't do it by ourselves, so mostly we talked about who to ask to join us.

We had to be sure of everyone we brought in. One slip, one untrustworthy member, and Ultor would have us. Ultor is everywhere in the mines, with security guards, cameras, bots, listening devices, and monitoring software. I think they use even the maintenance bots to keep tabs on us. The worst are the human spies. You wouldn't think anyone here would want to spy for Ultor, but some do. When we uncover a spy, we arrange an accident in the mines. Crude but effective.

The idea of getting rid of Ultor has been our biggest stumbling block. For most people here, Ultor is Mars. They hate the guards, the barracks, the food, the restrictions?everything about life here. But they can't make that conceptual leap to how much better things would be if Ultor were out of their lives. We talk about eliminating Ultor and they look at us as if we'd said they'd be better off without oxygen in the air. I swear, Ultor's done something to their minds. Orion says that's just the way people are. If they're not willing to fight, they make themselves believe that things aren't so bad after all.

So it's been a long, slow road to gather fellow revolutionaries. It's taken four years just to get to this point. Sometimes, I've despaired of ever being able to strike out against Ultor. Whenever I feel like giving up, I think of my Mom, and my Dad. That's all I need. "As our core group grew, it got harder to meet without arousing suspicion. Orion and I decided to create a smokescreen of athletic competitions between miner barracks. Each barracks could field one or more teams to meet in weekly contests. We submitted a proposal to Gryphon, Ultor's Deputy Administrator. It made my skin crawl to ask him for something, but he quickly approved the idea. He thought it would boost miner morale. He even insisted that Admin run the league. That was fine with us. Pretty funny that Ultor's helping us cover up our activities.

It was Orion who came up with the name Red Faction for our team. He thought the political sense of "Faction" would have meaning only for us. And the "Red" symbolized that we represented all of Mars. The name clicked with everyone, and Red Faction became the first team to join the new league.

Once the league got underway, we met several times a week for "training" sessions. We couched all our planning in sports terms. This gave a light-hearted feel to a frightening undertaking. Our meetings were also less dangerous because Ultor had to spread its monitoring efforts among the many teams in the competitions. Of course, we got clobbered every week in the actual contests, but we didn't care. That had the side benefit of preventing anyone from wanting to join our team; everyone called us "Dead Faction." The Admins running the league even started listing us that way in the league standings. But we'll have the last laugh.

We all took codenames to use within the group. It probably doesn't provide all that much protection, but it makes us feel a little safer. We'll see. Keeping the group small should help too. There are 23 of us now, plus a few probational recruits. Few enough to be fairly certain there are no leaks, but more than enough to rally groups of miners against Ultor when the time comes.

Sometimes it bothers me how much the others look to me for leadership. What if I get captured or killed? I'd hate for everything to fall apart if something happened to me. Orion's the only one with any initiative. Maybe I've been too forceful, but someone had to do it. We'd still be sitting on our butts complaining if I hadn't taken charge.

Last night's action might have gotten the ball rolling. The security goons are freaking out. I heard they dragged some miners off the third shift and beat them. Everything's primed for the rebellion to start. All it needs is a spark.

And once it gets going, we'll be there to lead it. For weeks now, we've been blanketing the barracks with pamphlets condemning Ultor and blaming them for everything wrong on Mars. The writings are signed "Eos." I would have preferred to have them from us as a group, from Red Faction, but that would have given us away immediately. Orion also said the miners needed someone to believe in and follow, not another faceless group. I don't know if I buy that, but it's good enough for now. Once the rebellion begins, though, everyone's going to know that Red Faction is the driving force behind it. There'll be no more hiding.

We've been stockpiling weapons for months now. We've quietly stolen weapons from a bunch of weapon lockers at guard barracks and posts. We had to break into only the first couple we raided. After that, we found the doors unlocked to every post we tried. The weapon cabinets were unlocked too. It freaked us out the first time it happened. We figured Ultor was on to us and backed off pretty quickly. But when we found the door to another weapons locker open a few nights later, we took some weapons and boxes of ammo and got out fast. The doors have been unlocked every time since. We still have no idea why. We don?t know if Ultor's doing it or someone else, but we're going to grab weapons as long as we can.

We don't take more than a few weapons and boxes of ammo from each locker. No need for Ultor to find a weapon locker completely stripped and then hit the panic button. This way, the execs will think the guards are either stealing a few weapons or breaking them and grabbing replacements. They won't know miners are armed until the bullets are coming out the backs of their skulls.

We've cached the stolen weapons throughout the mines and barracks. When the rebellion starts, Red Faction members will head to the nearest cache and hand out weapons to any miner willing to fight. The security guards are used to bullying unarmed miners; they're in for a big shock.

I don't know what to do about the mercenaries that Masako brought here, though. They're tough, and so is she. We'll make some feints at important installations around the complex, maybe get the mercs dug into defensive positions. If that doesn't work, we're in trouble. The mercs will slice right through us if they go on the offensive too soon. If we move fast enough, they won't hit us until we've settled with the guards and gotten everyone armed. Our sole advantage is numbers, but I don't want to waste thousands of miners in human wave attacks.

The next few days are going to make or break us. Four years of planning and plotting are either going to pay off or get us all killed. Getting rid of Ultor is the goal for everyone else in Red Faction. But I want more. I want to know who's behind the Plague. And I want them to die.