From Ice to Ashes

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “I worried you might’ve wound up with more color up there,” he said. He stopped in front of me and stared up into my eyes. He grinned. “What brings you back to your favorite old fence?”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the nearest henchman. He breathed down my neck, nostrils flaring. “Mr. Howser,” I began. “I think you know why I’m here. I’d love to catch up, but can we please skip to business?”

  He grimaced. “You’re not still bitter about your last job, are you, Kale?”

  I was hoping he wouldn’t bring it up. Other than his stench, it was the main reason he was last on my list. It was because of him that I’d wound up taking the job on the Piccolo. For the parts of my life I remember, my mom had worked as a servant for a wealthy Earther merchant named Larius Saunders. Because of that, Dexter knew that I had a better shot at robbing him than any of the other kids under his thumb. He promised me a fifty-fifty share of whatever I could get from Larius’s place in the Uppers. Naturally, the Earther’s security was tighter than anything I’d ever dealt with, and I got pinched.

  I never thought my mom would look at me the same way afterward. My father was shot doing something similar when I was barely four, and my whole life she’d preached about me staying on the right side of the law. But instead of allowing me go to a cell like I deserved, she convinced Larius to have me pay off my debts by working on the Piccolo, a gas harvester captained by his clan-brother, Traven Saunders.

  Since the alternative was spending years in one of Pervenio Station’s infamous cells, I accepted the deal. Supposedly the cells were airlocks with a view of space, keeping prisoners under the constant threat of being ejected until they lost their minds. If the Q-Zone was the worst place a Ringer could wind up, that was a close second.

  Work on the Piccolo was boring compared with the shadows of the Darien Lowers, but eventually I was able to slip out from beneath the thumbs of seedy fences. The crew was tiresome, though Cora made up for them, and Captain Saunders was actually quite fair for an Earther. After a year I got even on my debt too, and was placed on salary, where I started to earn some legitimate credits.

  Everything in my life turned around until two years later. My mom and I managed to exchange the occasional message over Solnet while I was on the Piccolo harvesting Saturn’s precious atmosphere. During my latest four-month shift, however, she went totally silent. That was until the last day, when I received the message that flipped my world over and placed me right back where I’d emerged from.

  KALE,

  I’VE BEEN SICK. THEY HAD TO TAKE ME IN…

  That was all I needed to read. I would honestly have been ready to hijack the Piccolo and drive it straight to Titan if the shift hadn’t been ending anyway. I resigned the moment I got back to Darien so I could stay near my mom. I knew she would tell me to keep working hard and not to worry, but I couldn’t leave her alone to wither away. I was all that she had left in the world, and she was the same for me. The Piccolo could be decommissioned and gutted for all I cared if it meant being there for her.

  “Kale,” Dexter repeated, drawing me back to the present.

  “No,” I said, shaking the memories out of my head. “I knew the risks of what I was doing. I just don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Got an appointment with that Earther captain of yours? I bet he loved you.” He made a lewd gesture with his hand in the direction of one of his henchmen. They all laughed.

  “I—” I stopped myself. I stole my first ration bar when I was seven, and if all those years working the shadows of the Lowers had taught me anything, it was never to let a fence know how desperate you really were. Plus, he wasn’t about to be the first person I told about my mom.

  I decided to move things along myself. I took out John’s hand-terminal and slapped it on the counter. Dexter’s eyes went wide. “V3X model hand-terminal,” I said. “Brand-new.”

  He wheeled over, snagged it, and spun it in his hands. He looked like he was about to start drooling; it glistened as brightly as his false teeth. “How in the name of Trass did you get your hands on this?”

  “I still know a few people.”

  He tapped the screen a couple of times and then checked the missing battery port. “Anybody else know about this?” he asked.

  “Only you.”

  “Now, now, Kale. I thought we were beyond lying. I’ve heard talk you were back, asking around, trying to wriggle back in. I may not be able to walk, but I have ears everywhere.”

  The two henchmen by the counter edged closer. I took a deep breath. “Nobody else would open their hatch for me but you.”

  “The people you knew, you’re lucky nobody had you removed after you decided to go up.”

  I was well aware of that. For a while people from my old life gave me crap. They’d write EARTHER LOVER on the hatch of my mom’s hollow when I wasn’t there, or threaten to gut me if they ever caught me conversing with certain people. Eventually it died down, and I knew if anyone really thought I needed to be removed it’d happen with my back turned. A shot to the head seemed preferable to breaking the deal my mom had secured with Larius and winding up a Pervenio prisoner.

  “Look, Dex, if you aren’t interested—” I said before he cut me off with a wave of his hand.

  “Let’s not say that,” he said. “I’m just hurt you didn’t come to me first. You know who always offered you the best jobs.”

  “Best jobs to get caught, you mean?”

  His glare hardened. “It’s all part of the trade, Kale, you know that.”

  “I know.” I sighed. “So do you want it or not?”

  He wove his fingers through his mess of facial hair as he ogled the shiny device. His eyes betrayed him. I knew he wanted it. Other fences were willing to pick and choose, but Dexter Howser couldn’t keep his paws away from anything worth more than a handful of credits.

  “Terms?” he asked.

  “We split the revenue fifty-fifty,” I said, the words coming out more softly than I’d hoped. Negotiation was a muscle I hadn’t flexed in a long time.

  Dexter eyed his men and then started to chuckle. “Fifty-fifty?”

  “Yup. I did this freelance. No tips, no help. Consider it a gift.”

  “A gift for old Dexter?” His features suddenly darkened and he stared daggers at me. “How about I just get rid of you and take the whole thing?”

  The two henchmen I could see armed their rifles, grinning ravenously. There was no saying what the ones behind me were doing, and I didn’t have the nerve to check. I tried my best to ignore them.

  “Dex, c’mon,” I said.

  He continued staring for what seemed like half a minute, his face not shifting. Then he broke out into hysterical laughter, saliva spewing all over his beard. His men lowered their rifles and joined him.

  “You should’ve seen your face!” Dexter chortled. “Oh, Kale. You always were fun.”

  I laughed nervously with them, but said nothing.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Dexter said after gathering his breath. “I’ll do sixty-forty, and unless you’ve set up a shop and have a troop of back-channel dealers to get top credits for this thing, you’ll take it.”

  “I know what it’s worth,” I replied. “Fifty is generous.”

  “It’s very generous. And you’re welcome to see if anybody else is interested, but I think you’d have to go far away from Darien to find them. You leave us behind, we leave you behind.”

  He was right, and he knew I knew it. If I wanted my mom to stay comfortable in the Q-Zone, I needed to take the offer. Her entire credit savings had dried up, since she’d never earned much more from Larius than what it took to pay rent and buy food.

  “Why did you agree to meet with me then?” I asked, not wanting to appear overly eager to accept.

  “Curiosity, mostly. I’ve heard two years on a gas harvester could give a Ringer wrinkles, and I had to see if that was true. Looks like you made it out smooth as ever. Like a baby.”

  “Two more and
I might not be so lucky.”

  He smirked. “Look, I know you’re no Earther lover. You took the blame back then and kept your mouth shut when you got caught. Any of us would’ve accepted the same deal to stay out of one of their cells.” He shifted his chair, and then drove it closer to me. “My real question is, are you back home for good?”

  “I’m back,” I declared. “I’m ready to move on, tired of sitting around in High G getting ordered around and making shit.”

  “Then don’t be an idiot and deny my offer.”

  I maintained the ruse that I was still considering as best I could. “If I do agree, how long until the credits come in?”

  He picked up the terminal again to examine it, licking his lips as he did. “Something this new? Probably a week. Maybe longer.”

  “A week? C’mon, Dex, you can’t be serious.”

  “If I could sell it to some uppity Earther, no problem, but I’ve got to mask the product key, get it off of the Pervenio network and Trass knows what else just to make it Solnet-capable without it registering as stolen. You want instant gratification, strap your collar back on and return to the Piccolo.”

  I accidentally groaned loud enough for him to hear. My job at the noodle shop might be able to hold me over, but my credit account was starting to be stretched as thin as my mom’s. Getting her placed in the more preferable quarters of the Q-Zone wasn’t cheap, and I was paying the full rent on our hollow now too.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Say yes now, and I’ll have something else for you by tonight. Others said no because they looked at you and only saw a traitor. I see a worthwhile investment for both of us.”

  I could tell by the glimmer in his hawkish eyes that I wasn’t a good enough actor and he’d already gained a clear picture of my desperation. Rather than hurt my cause any more, I swallowed my pride and extended my hand. “Fine, Dex. You’ve got a deal.”

  “Outstanding!” he exclaimed. He grasped my hand and shook, his palms as rough as sandpaper. “Let’s start fresh, and maybe, soon, we’ll find a way to make a little bit more than shit together.”

  “Fine by me. I’ll be back tonight. Just try not to get me caught again.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Dexter’s lips lifted into a predatory smile, his chrome teeth shimmering like the icy rocks of Saturn’s belt against the black of his mouth. I faked a smile in return, and as I went to let go of his hand, he squeezed harder and pulled me closer. His breath made me want to vomit. “Oh, and Kale, a word of advice,” he whispered. “For Trass’s sake, lighten the fuck up, or I’ll drop you so fast you’ll never step foot in Darien again.”

  Chapter 3

  As I rode the inter-block tram to the visiting area of the Darien Quarantine Zone, I couldn’t imagine a more depressing place in all of Sol. Every seat in the car was occupied by a Ringer like me off to visit a sick loved one. It was easy to tell who was making the trip for the first time—their eyes were wet with tears. Mine weren’t. I’d been to the Q-Zone every day for the last month since returning to Darien and I was out of tears. My mom had already been stuck inside for six.

  The tram emerged from the Lowers and ascended to Titan’s surface. A midday storm outside whipped up the ruddy sand covering Titan, obscuring most of my homeworld. It made it hard to avoid focusing on the bright red Pervenio Corp logos—a helix wrapped around a tree branch—reflected in every window. Each of them had a mark above them with the date the Q-Zone had been built, 2285 A.D., just a year after the Great Reunion between Ringers and Earthers.

  After Darien Trass sent the earliest Ringers to Titan, the Earthers who survived the Meteorite rebuilt their world, all while seeking new ones so that Armageddon could never happen again. They spread from Earth to Mars, to the asteroid belt, and then beyond. Fifty years ago they reached Saturn, where my people had already been focused on establishing a new civilization of humanity based around Titan for over two hundred years. It was supposed to be an incredible moment of unity after centuries apart, but with the Earthers came all the sicknesses our weakened immune systems had forgotten about. No measure of precautions could stop it: Thousands upon thousands of my people died off, and the Earthers had to step into our cities and establish order with quarantines and separated living areas before the rest joined them.

  The one I was headed to was the oldest, to go along with Darien’s being Titan’s earliest settlement. That meant that countless Ringers had succumbed to illnesses within its unsanctified halls.

  It didn’t seem right that my mother could wind up as one of them. She’d always been rigorous about cleaning her body, about wearing her gloves and sanitary mask no matter where she was. She’d taught me to be the same way. To keep them on even while I slept aboard the Piccolo, despite its living quarters being segregated. That was probably the only thing I was ever smart enough to listen to her about when I was younger.

  In the end, none of it mattered. She caught something, same as everyone else thrown into one of the many Q-Zones dotting Titan’s frozen surface had. Didn’t matter what the disease was, either. Sure, they’d separate people with different ailments, but most of the diseases had no names, or did once but were lost in the annals of Pre-Meteorite Earth. All I knew for sure was that getting the right medicine through Pervenio Corp cost a fortune in credits. I’d already put aside all the money I’d ever earned, and it barely scratched the surface.

  I wasn’t going to give up, though. I owed my mom everything. From first giving me life to later helping me straighten it out.

  It grew dark as the tram slipped into the Q-Zone’s entrance, carved into a lonely plateau rising from a plain of bleached sand. After it came to a screeching halt, Earther Security Officers garbed in the red and black of Pervenio Corp marched up and down the aisle, letting each row out one at a time. When my turn came, I fell in behind a somber line consisting almost entirely of masked Ringers, shuffling along as if they didn’t actually want to get where they were going.

  Security guided us into a long, bright lobby with sterile white walls that had a tendency to give me headaches over time. It seemed like every other Ringer on Darien had the idea to arrive in the Q-Zone at the same time, because it was taking even longer than usual. On most days I tried to visit when opening hours commenced rather than toward the late afternoon. My date with John in the Lowers had destroyed that possibility.

  Enhanced security measures never helped things move along either. Every visitor was patted down twice. Life in Darien was more tense than it had been when I’d left for my last gas-harvesting shift. There was news of a bombing back on Earth carried out by an unknown faction of offworlders while I was away, as well as multiple riots that had taken place throughout Titan’s colony blocks during M-day.

  My feet tapped nervously as the line slowly trudged along. Warm, Earther-comfortable air had me sweating. By the time I reached the reception window outside of the decon-chamber, I was one of the last few Ringers who would be permitted through until the next morning.

  “Name and ID,” the elderly Earther woman sitting at the desk on the other side said. She was so short that I could barely see her froglike face over her computer screen. It was obvious she didn’t recognize me despite how often I’d been visiting. Hundreds passed by her every day.

  “Kale Drayton,” I said as I handed her my card. She glanced up at me from her computer a few times while she looked it over. Satisfied, she gave it back.

  “Visiting?”

  “Katrina Drayton.”

  “One moment.” She typed so fast that her stubby fingers became a blur. It made my stomach turn to imagine how many times she’d probably searched for a name in her files. It was a job that nobody should have to do, Earther or not.

  When she was done, she extended her palm. “Hand-terminal.”

  Pervenio Security didn’t permit handheld devices in Q-Zones. They didn’t approve of pictures of the suffering leaking onto Solnet without context or consent. Of course, that didn’t matter to
me. I’d already sold mine so I could help pay for my mom to stay on one of the higher levels of the Q-Zone, one where she’d get a soft mattress.

  “Got none,” I said.

  “Proceed.” She waved me on and then turned back toward the line. “Next!”

  I took a step forward. Two Pervenio Security Officers immediately signaled me to spread my arms and legs. They left no part of me unsearched. It would’ve been uncomfortable if I hadn’t undergone the same process many times before.

  “Clear,” one of them grumbled.

  I was beckoned into a boxy decon-chamber. It was amazing anybody ever got sick given how many of them were sprinkled throughout Darien. They were at the Q-Zones, between the Uppers and Lowers, outside of every tram to another colony block, along every dock and hangar—everywhere. All it took was a single germ, though. Or so I’d been told by countless ads in the Lowers preaching safety and cleanliness.

  “Clothes,” an automated voice announced.

  I removed all of my clothing, even my undergarments. After depositing them through a chute, I stood in the center of the room completely naked. The decontamination process initiated. As usual, I waited nervously the entire time.

  A whistling sound met my ears as balmy air rushed through air recyclers into the chamber. Then a tight web of pinkish beams that made up the electrostatic cleaning matrix spread across the room. I felt a tingle when they passed across me, once through the front and then again in the other direction.

  “Clean,” the automated voice announced after a minute, easing my concerns.

  My clothes, now warm from being washed, appeared on a shelf by the exit. I put them back on and hurried out of the decon-chamber, and they were instantly cooled. Like most exclusively Ringer-occupied places on Titan, the air in the Q-Zone was chilly enough that I’d have seen my breath if I hadn’t been wearing a sanitary mask. That was the only comfortable thing about the place.

  “Visiting room C-7,” an officer posted behind a glass screen just inside the Q-Zone said. This one wore a full helmet and a visor so dark that he seemed faceless. No Earther was permitted to enter the Q-Zone without a completely insulated suit. It was one agreement between our peoples nobody had the nerve to ever break.