The Rock Rats

DOSSIER: JOYCE TAKAMINE

Joyce was quite content living on the Moon. She lived alone, not celibate, certainly, but not attached to anyone, either. She had achieved most of what she had dreamed of, all those long hard years of her youth.

She was a mature woman now, lean and stringy, hardened by years of physical labor and cold calculation, inured to clambering up the ladder of life by grabbing for any rung she could reach. Now that she was at Selene, with a well-paying job and a secure career path, she felt that she could relax and enjoy life for the first time.

Except—she soon felt bored.

Life became too predictable, too routine. Too safe, she finally realized. There’s no challenge to this. I can run my office blindfolded. I see the same people socially every time I go out. Selene’s just a small town. Safe. Comfortable. Boring.

So she transferred to the Humphries operation on Ceres, much to her supervisor’s shock, and rode out to the Belt.

Ceres was even smaller than Selene, dirty, crowded, sometimes dangerous. Joyce loved it. New people were arriving and departing all the time. The Pub was rowdy, raucous. She saw Lars Fuchs kill a man there, just jam a power drill into the guy’s chest like an old-fashioned knight’s spear. The guy had admitted to killing Niles Ripley, and he tried to shoot Fuchs right there at the bar.

She served on the jury that acquitted Fuchs and, when the people of Ceres finally started to pull together a ragtag kind of government, Joyce Takamine was one of those selected by lottery to serve on the community’s first governing council. It was the first time she had won anything.