I should probably tell you the truth about how I met Luisa Perrella.

It was just after the the first Thaiax War ended and I was in a spacers’ bar called the See & Call in the bowels of Clavius, the worst spaceport on good old Luna. If you don’t know what I mean by ‘worst’ ask any spacer you know. Or just search on synonyms for ‘stinking hell’.

It was dirty and smelly. The publican was some new cheap-ass since the old cheap-ass had gone broke during the war with no spacers around. It was hotter and noisier than a Class Fiver spinning out in flames, and I oughta know. Everybody was yelling because they had to, and I heard seven different languages just walking from the door to my buddy Jim’s table. The new guy was letting people smoke if they wanted too, but all the recently released draftees and merx were still following wartime shipside discipline, so it was one annoyance we nobler customers were spared. For now.

Jim was just back from the war too. He’d sworn he’d make it because he had two boys and great wife to get back to down on the Dirt, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, right about where the Great Ontario Elephant’s jewels would be. He been drafted after the first Thaiax invasion, but they found out he wasn’t just boarding party and he got to spend the two years on tech and tactics behind the lines.

I grabbed a girl whose age probably made her illegal in here whether she was client or server and ordered a beer. I sat down. Jim smiled through a short new beard (in the army you weren’t allowed facial hair) and we shook hands. I hadn’t seen him since this shit started and I will admit to being quite a bit happier right then and there than I’d been in a long time.

“Chupta?” I asked as if it was just yesterday when I saw him off at Tycho, with his hard-copy letter to his wife and kids in my hand. I was supposed to send it express that day, because I wasn’t supposed to be drafted, but I was, and she didn’t get it for weeks, and only then by regular post.

“Don’t mention the war, buddy,” he said and we both laughed. Not only was everybody saying that, but Basil Fawlty’s sound-bite was probably being e-mailed to more people across the System than Queen Caroline’s weird abdication speech. That saying was scrawled in public washrooms, sprayed across lunar cliffs, and translated into every known human language, real, artificial and imaginary, including Klingon and Elvish. Rumour had it that the Thaiax were getting an earful (or whatever) of it too.

He went on. “I am deloused, debriefed, demobbed and delighted. I’m on the 1800 shuttle to High Manhattan, then from there tomorrow morning to JFK, then to Toronto tomorrow aft. I am so totally pissed off at three seconds latency that I kept getting back in line at the Demobilization Office until they got sick of me. Going home, Dave. I am going home.” Just then my beer actually arrived.

Home for me was – well, never mind. But just because I didn’t have a family to go home to didn’t mean I was jealous. Well, okay. A little jealous. I wished it was me, but I was glad it was him. “Yeah, well when you get yourself settled, send me an invite so’s I can stay a week or too. I’ve never been down to the Dirt, you know.”

He’d never known that about me. I was one of the first generation that were born in the Big. We took our treatments and pills and observed strict physical discipline for our bones and cardiovascular health, but most of us never really wanted to drop into a gravity well. And if we did, it would be where the really happening shit was going on, Mars or Europa or even the newer rotating asteroid shells. I’d heard that Dirt air smelled wrong. But I’d brave it for my buddy.

He looked off towards the doorlock, then his eyes went wide with surprise and he roared “Hey! Luisa!”

I looked over. So did a couple of other guys. Two years of shipside took over and we all stood up. Some of us even started to salute. Captain’s bars.

“Stand easy, you idiots!” she laughed. “War’s over, remember? Hiya, Jim. Who’s the demob?” She reached out to shake my hand. Part of me recoiled. She noticed my hesitation and laughed again. “You’ll get over it.”

“David Barker, ma’am.” I shook her hand carefully, and started smiling myself. I was not in the army anymore.

“Ma’am,” she said. “I’m Luisa Perrella to you. What ship were you?” She sat down and gestured to someone she thought might be a server.

“Isildur,” I said softly, but she couldn’t miss the look on my face when I said it. Jim winced. He hadn’t known that either.

“I’m sorry. She was a good ship.”

“Yeah. Good captain.”

“I knew him.” She tapped her lapel. “UNS Thorold. I only got these the week before the Armistice. My captain was injured at Enceladus and I had to take over. He was invalided out after and They made it official. Getting saluted still makes me nervous.”

“Hey, saluting still makes me nervous and I’ve been trying to get it right for two years.”

“So, Jim,” she said. “Who’s David Barker?”

“We worked together on the BCB project, when it was still secret. He was on the voice component team.”

She looked over at me. “Bugger to work with, isn’t he.” Jim opened his mouth to object, then decided he agreed with her.

“Probably, but I wasn’t on his team so I didn’t have to put up with him. So how do you know him?” I asked.

“Kids were in the same daycare in Toronto. Then when I enlisted and my hubby and kids moved up here, we stayed in touch. Didn’t know he was up here himself until after BCB went public. Then the war started.”

“Don’t mention the war,” all three of us said at the same time. It was echoed across the noisy room like a mantra. Everybody seemed to order another round of drinks at the same time, as if that saying and getting drunker went hand in hand. And they did, believe me.

Luisa didn’t drink though (she got a fake mineral water; 'Eaux Faux' they called it), so I was careful with mine. We chatted about things for a while, and yeah, it was impossible not to mention the war, because it was all the three of us (and everybody else in the bar) had been thinking about for two years. It turned out that I was the only one of us who’d actually seen a Thaiax, albeit through its space suit ‘helmet’ or ‘chest-window’ or something, during one of the rare boarding raids on a captured enemy shuttle out at Saturn, before Isildur went to join the gods. Luisa had seen combat twice but had never been injured. Jim sort of felt guilty about being safe in the dome on Titan the whole time. But Luisa and I were adamant. It was his work as much as ours that had helped win the war.

It felt really good to be able to talk like that about things. I’d been angry as hell when they drafted me out of the blue against all expectation, given my clearance and job. But when it’s for the human species, down on the Dirt or out in the Big, you realize it’s the right thing to do, even if all your own plans are changed, even if you think you’re going to get fried or freeze-dried or aerosoled. You just do it. Luisa had figured that out by herself, long before the war. I’d gotten used to the idea pretty quick once it was inevitable. And Jim realized he’d better be working his ass off for people like us who were really out there.

Luisa had a great idea then. She had the keys to Thorold’s shuttle. And the keys to Thorold too, as it turned out. All three of us went out to her ship, she gave Jim and me the tour and we spent several hours just hanging out and talking in the captain’s cramped ‘salon’ as she called her staff-room.

Jim’s gone now, but he died at home with his family there. Luisa and I are still good friends. Her husband and children are my friends too, which fact I take great comfort in. I’ve met some amazing people because of my friendship with her, some I’d even brave the gravity well and bad air for. And have done.

She was still in the army during the second Thaiax invasion but we won again. It was worse than the first war because we were on more solar real estate than the first time. And whatever the Thaiax’ reasons for invading, they were meaner this time. Luisa lost two ships in major battles, made admiral (to save the rest of the fleet said her husband Reid) and came home again in one piece.

It’s been seven or eight years so far. The Thaiax haven’t come back and I have actually been down to the Dirt six times now. The air is funny. But it really is worth it for your friends.