Kraken Mare by Jason Cordova, Christopher L. Smith

to guard, but that's not happening. We have female security contractors here, but there's a strict no fraternization rule that I vigorously enforce. When I catch them.”
    “That's rough,” I pointed out. “Those must be interesting discussions when you do catch them.”
    “I think I've given the speech once or twice.”
    “That's a lot less than I thought it would be.”
    “You're single, according to the file I got on you,” Gerry said. “Divorced?”
    “Widowed.”
    “I'm sorry.”
    “So am I.”
    “What happened?”
    I stared hard at the far wall, thinking back. It had been a long while since I had talked about Concy with anyone not related to me. That particular wound had not yet had time to scar over, but it didn't hurt nearly as bad now as it had five years ago.
    “Long story.”
    “I've got time,” Gerry spread his hands. “One of my jobs here is to make sure all of my employees are mentally suitable for this sort of work. Isolation and monotony tends to make the mind wander quite a bit, and that could take the emotions of anyone in the wrong direction. So…if you're up for it, I'm all ears.”
    “You remember when the People's Republic of Uganda fell awhile back, right?” I asked. It had been all over the news at the time, but public opinion – and public attention – had quickly turned towards other wars, different news stories. “When the Caliphate of Sokoto took over and all hell broke loose?”
    “I remember. That was a hell of a messy civil war,” Gerry nodded. “There were an estimated sixteen million killed or displaced? Still got some hotspots flaring up even now. The US and the UN have deployed peacekeepers there half a dozen times or so since.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Well, my wife was from Uganda originally before immigrating to the states when she was ten. Left quite a bit of family behind when her mother and brothers packed up at the outset of the war. They weren't rich, not by our standards at least, but they had money squirreled away just in case. Her mother was…a bit prescient when it came to predicting if and when a government was about ready to fall. She would have made one hell of an election analyst.
    “Concy was…hell, I don't know. She was special. I was a scrawny bookworm who got picked on a lot. She was this beautiful, exotic girl who seemed to enjoy hanging out with me. She was assigned to be my lab partner in middle school and we hit it off. We both loved reading, and she knew more about the classic writers than I did. We went from friends to being in a relationship, a strong one. Got some weird looks but who cared, right? We were young, in love, and I had it all planned out. I couldn't get into college – no money, my family was fairly poor – so I joined the Corps. We married right before I left for Parris Island so she could get my health benefits. My parents weren't sure about it – not because she was a foreigner or that we were too young, but they thought that she would be too traumatized from the war to acclimate and that we were rushing into it, plus I would be leaving her alone so soon after we got married. My folks may have been poor but they sure as hell weren't stupid. They were just overly cautious when it came to me. Extremely protective.
    “You have my files, so you know I was assigned to the Second Marine Division. I found base housing for us. Concy was prepared to move in with me when news came that some family she still had in Uganda were in some serious shit. Like, in danger of being enslaved or executed because they had found themselves on the wrong side of the Caliphate. When she heard, she completely lost it and flew home. She had to get them out before anything bad happened to them.”
    “Oh no…” Gerry's face was filled with sorrow and understanding. “She never came back?”
    “She got caught in one of those religious dragnets where they whip women who are caught in public without their husbands or a male family member