Free The Settlers by Jason Gurley

one on Station Galileo, which is a hideous block that lumbers around the Earth now.  
    He thinks back on the stations. Ganymede, the first, was designed for function and immediacy, and was based on the lessons learned by NASA and Roscosmos and others. It was expected to be full of cables and exposed guts, and it was. Over the years, Ganymede's residents have renovated the station, turning it into a glowing filament of life. He hears that Ganymede is the station most visible from Earth.
    Cassiopeia was not much better to begin with, and has not improved with time. He hears it described as a shopping mall, an industrial park. It is a complex stack of cubes and corridors, where people are often lost.  
    And Aries -- home sweet Aries -- is the fleet's golden star, a series of rings that spin and turn like Saturn. Most refugees from the planet below request asylum on Aries. It is a technological hub, though it was not designed as such. It has emerged as a home for science, while Cassiopeia has developed a reputation as a home for believers.  
    Everyone had expected that Galileo, named for one of the great astronomers, would trump them all.
    Instead, the entire station looked like a school cafeteria.  
    Its hospital was no better.  
    Windowless.  
    Bland.
    The corridors were infinitely long. The floor, ceiling and walls were all the same interminable shade of beige, so that it was not difficult to lose track of yourself as you walked. The smell of iodine hung in the air, as if doctors were conducting business on a Civil War battlefield instead of in a floating hospital in space.  
    Perhaps that is what bothers Emil most.  
    This is space, goddammit. Why does it feel like a shipping container at the bottom of the sea?
    He picks up his coffee cup and abandons his table in the physician's lounge, taking his screenview with him. He often uses it to watch the public video feeds broadcast from the Aries. There's one external camera on that space station that isn't too far from his own office, and watching the slow pinwheel of Earth past the station reminds him just a little bit of home.  
    He dumps the coffee out and throws away the cup, tucking the screenview beneath his arm.
    At he door, he pauses.
    What is that infernal buzzing? he asks.
    There is one other doctor in the lounge. She glances up at him, frowns, and then looks up at the lights.
    He follows her gaze to the ceiling, where fluorescent bulbs hum behind textured plastic covers.  
    You're shitting me, he says.
    The other doctor shakes her head. I do not shit you, she says.
    Emil yanks the door open. It's like they time-traveled to the 1980s to build this place, he grumbles.
    The other doctor returns to her crossword. 1970s, maybe, she says.  
    Emil smiles despite himself. Hey, he says.  
    The doctor looks up.
    I'm Emil Widla, he says.
    I know, she says. Soma guy. Don't envy you.
    He stares, waiting for her name, but she doesn't offer it.
    So he leaves.

    Seventy-six Soma patients are dead.
    The treatments were finally banned when the mortality count hit fifty, which meant that nearly two hundred people were given Soma before the wall came down. One hundred eighty-five, actually. This befuddled Emil. While Soma patients were already dying, there were still people lining up for treatment, and new doctors emerging who were quite willing to administer it.
    Frank Hart and Amelie Golding, the other two physicians licensed for Soma treatment, were both dead now.  
    Golding had attempted suicide twice, and had been resuscitated both times. Emil had actually been on his way to visit her when she finally managed to finish the job. He guesses that when you fail at the easy way -- both of her prior attempts had involved medications -- you gain the nerve to go out hard.  
    She had cut her own throat.
    Frank had gone into hiding when he and his family started receiving death threats. He turned up underneath one of the station cars on Ganymede. Nobody saw anything, and he had