by Allen Ivers
Holmst took a heavy, guilty breath, “I’ve read the BDA, Colonel. But we have our orders.”
Those pesky orders. Wartime orders that. Failure to adhere, and a court-martial is the least of their worries. The battle damage assessment was galling: the word ‘total’ occurred about two dozen times. Hell, it occurred three times in Riley's deployment orders.
His instructors’ voice rung through his head: the Orders are Gospel, and you will be asked to write your own verse.
Riley looked up at the Governor, studying the grey bloodshot eyes. He had cried when he heard the news, from fear or grief or rage. And he wouldn’t ask for help.
The Governor hung his head, unable to bear the weight of Riley’s gaze.
Riley sighed. He was going to catch a whole new Hell for this.
“What is the Oskie Creed?” Riley asked, invoking the words etched onto the marble floors of the OSC Academy at Holkstad, on the side of every Naval cruiser, and in a bold font on the walls of Riley's office high above them.
Gospel words, ones that every junior officer in Orbital knew by heart, and often were compelled to recite it under incredible duress: sleep deprivation, temperature extremes, even toxic shock. Riley himself chanted it as a young cadet, knee deep in freezing mud while carrying his bunkmate on his shoulders in a cold October wind.
Holmst would know the words better than his own name. “Service to the People, for they are the Kings. Service to the Crown, for he is the Sword. Service to each other…”
“For we are the Shield,” Riley stood up, giving the Governor a good-natured clap to the shoulder. “We’re not going anywhere.”
The Governor perked up. Even he didn’t predict this outcome, “Colonel?”
“A volunteer program,” Riley declared, loud enough for the crowds, “The transports will leave as scheduled. Any Regulars that wish to remain -- in violation of our orders -- will suffer no consequence. I will bear all responsibility.”
The crowds erupted in cheers. The Governor almost melted to the floor, a combination of gratitude and gravity. “Oh my God...”
Riley’s fierce eyes scanned over him, “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“It’s…” The bureaucrat couldn’t find the words. The frightening implications of Riley’s pronouncement weren’t lost on him. He knew as well as Riley that the Ministry of Defense would not take kindly to their orders being so flagrantly defied. It addressed their current problem in exchange for an Imperial one later.
While Riley’s absence on the field would bear no real impact, his dissent might inspire others to do the same. It was a single slip of snow that may cause an avalanche, and the Ministry needed to snuff that out before it escalated. Riley’s deep connections in the Ministry would only protect him so much. This might be seen as its own act of rebellion, a brand new faction in the Civil War, if mishandled.
Riley would need to tread carefully.
It was a reality of command. Blending morality with circumstances often came with biting results.
Holmst squared up with Riley, a strange bounce to his step. No weight in his heels, all forward present. Was this cast-iron man actually pleased about something? “We won’t have enough to staff a full watch, let alone engage in skirmishes.”
“We?” Riley questioned, with a smirk.
“Goddamn right, sir,” Holmst shot back with a crooked grin, “And patrols beyond the Wall will have to end immediately.”
Riley nodded, having arrived at the same calculus. He turned to the Governor, “Tell your farmsteads they are to evacuate. Leave everything they can’t carry and retreat to the safety of Vanguard.”
“Some would rather die.”
“And they will, Governor,” Riley affirmed, “We can’t cover them out there. Make sure they’re aware of that. You’ll net a few dozen families with that threat. Every single one that elects to retreat is a life saved.”
The Governor sagged, all power in this world sapped from him. He faded down to sit on Riley's crate while the two officers paced away, deep in thought. “We’ll need to fill out our ranks somehow. We won’t have blood to spare,” Holmst posed.
That was an intriguing problem requiring some moral flexibility of its own. Most of the Regulars were loyal patriots, and many would fear retribution from Sol. Riley would likely be left with a handful, maybe a few hundred volunteers to man the Colony wall. Hardly a reasonable force.
The local wildlife would take advantage of that weakness, and this sacrifice would be for nothing if they couldn’t bolster their numbers.
The creatures had harried the palisades and nearby settlements since Landfall. Towering creatures, ferocious and organized, but primitive. An Oskie properly equipped was more than a match for four -- maybe five -- of the brutes in close quarters.
But should the creatures sniff out the diminished presence, they might press the advantage, overwhelm the fortifications. Riley needed to put bodies in the line of duty. Now.
“Do we follow the Governor’s proposal?” Holmst offered, “Civilian enlistment?”
Riley shook his head, “Most of the colonists are scientists, doctors, farmers. They can’t be made to fitness in time. And many won’t pass medical. They'll fight, but they're not soldiers. They'll just get themselves – and God knows the people right next to them – killed. What about equipment retrofit? In the Academy, we defended an outpost by bringing farming and mining equipment up to military grade.”
“Clever,” And yet Holmst’s lip curled at the thought, “But I don’t think we have the expertise on hand, let alone the hardware.”
“But we do have the Mining Pits…”
Riley and Holmst eyed the Governor. They had just dismissed the chance of robotic shock troops. So, where was he going with this?
The Governor nodded, talking himself through his own moral gymnastics. Suddenly he popped up to his feet, gliding over to the officers with a hushed tone to his voice. Even he wasn't comfortable with his suggestion, not enough for the consuming public a dozen yards away, “There’s a few thousand Capitals in the Pits. They’re fit, desperate. They might relish the fresh air.”
Capital laborers brought to the colony to work off their crimes. He was suggesting they draft up a slave army.
It was an abhorrent concept; one the Empire had flirted with in the past. Service was, after all, a kind of labor. Riley had written one of his first officer candidacy papers dismissing the possibility — he had been eleven.
Severe enough crimes made citizenship null and void; sufficient service might win that citizenship back. And as they are not citizens of the Empire, they are not subject to its protections. They could be pushed harder and farther than a colonial militia. And they had spent their entire deployment under incredibly harsh physical conditions.
Those that survive the crash-style training might be workable soldiers. But they lacked dependability and loyalty, just as likely to turn and revolt. Textbook logic indicated that they would bite the hand with newly given teeth.
A child could see this was a bad idea. But this was not a textbook moment.
“Let’s take stock of who we have.”
2
Aaron
The wind was hard enough it might blister the skin, but for the thick cake of dust protecting him, an incidental barrier between him and the harsh elements.
Aaron Havenes inspected the towering rig buried halfway into the rock -- an HML Model 68 Autonomous Mining Drone. It had been squealing not half an hour before, when the Gearmaster threw the switch. It had earned him a mild beating at the hands of the Foreman before the emergency had been made apparent.
That used to frustrate Aaron, the abuses and knee jerk violence of prison guards. Now it glanced off him before sliding down his grimy jumpsuit to the dusty ground. The smaller injustices didn’t even slow him down anymore. Not worth the trouble it brought.
The Gearmaster had done the right thing, cutting the power. Gearmaster -- the term was frowned upon by the establishment
. It granted the Capitals too much authority, but Aaron knew expertise when he saw it.
Gearmasters knew machines like Aaron knew his own hands. They could hear when the mining rigs were off, well before they broke. It was like they spoke a proprietary language that could not be taught.
It was a talent well respected in the Mining Pits, but the guards saw the title as a sign of authority. And nobody held authority in the Hellmouth but them.
Aaron was not a small man, but smaller than most in the Mining Pits. A stocky man well under six feet, he was strong enough to climb up into the rig with ease, and small enough to slide past most of its moving parts toward whatever offending piece of detritus had gummed up the works. Should someone turn the rig on, he’d be mashed into chili in short order.
It wasn’t unlike spelunking into a cave, working his body through seams and crevices. All of the open space the moving parts needed were large enough to accommodate his small frame. He knew of a few pockets where one could hide from the cranking levers and pistons, but he was nowhere near them now.
And the sadistic Foreman might enjoy the sounds his mashed potato body would make.
This wasn’t trust he placed in authority, but a lack of options. Even prudent hesitation to plan the next action might be interpreted as willful disobedience.
Aaron could see the problem now. A chunk of rock had been cut up, then tossed upward by the ten-foot wheels sliding against the silt. The drill bit at the head of the machine would have freed it up from the rock face, and over the three-hour process of grinding forward, the tires would’ve tripped up on it and hurled it up into the Rig’s guts wherever the whims of fate dictate.
Normally, there is a faceplate to prevent such natural sabotage. It had been removed for repairs, after one too many high-velocity impacts, but the Foreman had directed they continue working. This was the natural by-product of missing safety measures.
If this hadn’t been caught, the entire forty-ton rig would likely have seized, with pent up energy snapping a half dozen hydraulic lines, throwing the magnets out of alignment, and maybe even started a fire.
Nobody would’ve died; not from the accident anyway. There would have been a public display, with every opportunity for fatal results. They wouldn’t stay their hand for fear of damaging the property — Capitals had no value.
One outstretched hand, and Aaron managed to snag the fossil. It was caught up on the drive shaft, the one piece of the rig that didn’t have excess torque. As it was, the rig couldn’t move forward. Had it been tossed up into the drill bit’s system, the rig would hardly have stuttered as the gears pounded the bit into dust.
No such luck. Aaron had to worm up inside an industrial goliath for the most invasive kind of exams.
Aaron plopped back onto the dirt, prize in hand, to the mild chatter and applause of the few prisoners who dared show emotion.
Just as Aaron had given up fighting the mild abuses, the guards had given up instilling maximum discipline. They had found the smallest of celebrations allotted to the workers increased their efficiency, not lessened it. It’s the bigger shows that might inspire rebellion and discord.
Let them have their small joys.
The offending stone was a small piece, part of something larger shattered by the drill. It was fresh too, despite its depth in the ground.
Stone fossils chunked and split like sandstone, but this had splintered like wood -- or bone -- with one sharp spire stretching out to a point. The body of it curved back on a smooth line, as though made to cup against the human waist, and a natural edge that would cleave that waist in half with a single swipe. It felt porous and light, as though it might be hollow or some other material entirely.
This was a Jergad arm bone.
He had heard the descriptions but never seen it in person. Belonged to one of the natives. Big burrowing bastards, must’ve died before the colonization and been uprooted by the rig.
A guard’s eyes narrowed, watching Aaron’s study of the trophy. His hands fell to his sides, where he unlatched the taser on his hip.
Aaron tossed the bone to the side, lest it appear he was growing a spine.
The ‘Gearmaster’ stepped forward, inspecting the work. Jensen Davila was his name, and he was properly big, head and shoulders over Aaron. He was also the only one Aaron had met that made the labor teams’ mandatory shaved head look good, with his chestnut skin glowing in the sunlight. He looked sculpted, all curves of broad muscles.
Despite the regular beatings, the drab uniforms, and the oppressive atmosphere, Jensen seemed to have his trademark grin tattooed on his face, ever a source of warmth for everyone around him. He even swapped jokes with his guards sometimes.
Making the best of a bad situation, Aaron supposed.
Jensen clapped his big hand across Aaron’s back, his palm so broad that his fingers stretched across both of Aaron’s shoulder blades, “Like tamin' a dragon!”
“Says you!” Aaron shouted over the rig’s idling groans, “You don’t have to climb up its gulaw ass!”
“I’m too pretty to do that, shortstack,” he snarked back, resting his arm on Aaron’s head like he was a chair back. “Ugly work for ugly folk.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Aaron shrugged, cupping his hands to his mouth to help project, “Gears! Loud!”
“A-yup,” Jensen blurted, with an almost contrarian melody, “Fire ‘er up!”
The metal titan soon roared to life again, absent the ailing groans that had once beleaguered it. It resumed its perpetual task of chewing through the ground, filtering out waste from useful ore, its gnashing teeth rejoining the orchestra of machinery in the mile-wide pit.
There were nearly a hundred of these rigs, each requiring a small maintenance team to keep running. The Foreman didn’t tolerate even one hiccup in his great symphony, despite them being unavoidable and natural to an operation of this size.
The planet’s odd thirty-hour day cycle made for long work days, and finding time for food or rest was hardly a priority. The benefit of using Capital laborers meant the Forman didn’t have to reserve much time for worker safety. But even the guards knew to allow breaks for water and bread in between the incessant beatings, so that maintenance and repairs to damaged rigs could be completed without error.
The workers may be replaceable; the rigs were expensive.
Jensen mimed a few commands, indicating Aaron should take his water break now. To be heard in the Pits, Capitals had developed a form of sign language -- quick and broad gestures of the arms -- to communicate over the noise and great distances.
It became rather colloquial and most of the guards had picked up the critical phrases via repeated interrogations; they didn’t enjoy the prisoners having a silent language all their own.
A water break — it was a wise choice. Aaron wouldn’t likely have a better opportunity, and he needed to wash the soot and grime from his throat.
He waved to the nearest guard and mimed splashing water on his face. The guard consulted the holo-display that projected up off his wrist, checking to see if prisoner 626-B9 had already used his ration time.
Satisfied, he ticked a little glowing box, and the display flickered away down into the projector on his wrist. The guard jerked his head, ordering Aaron to move out, but he kept his hand on his taser.
He wasn’t worried that the prisoner might try something. He wanted to remind everyone who had power in the relationship, and who could exercise it whenever their sick mind so desired.
This guard had a taste for it. Aaron could see it in his eyes. The perverted glee sparkled in the pale whites, as if the threat of violence sent an erotic shock through him.
Aaron had kept his head low. Despite being a smaller, leaner type, he had also managed to not be that remarkable. It was a conscious decision to avoid the more aggressive kinds of trouble. The guards picked on those with spirit, or without it, taking pleasure in breaking the prisoners like wild stallions to be tamed. It was an exercise in power, and the invocation
of it for its own sake, as though the wielder had to be reminded of his own importance.
He walked the narrow ridgeline between the Pits back toward home. Previous Pits that had been mined out were now filled with the tailings from the current operations -- pools of acidic sulfide slurry kept dammed up in man-made lakes. The fall would be a few bumpy stories down, and the pools below masked a hundred feet of hole.
Dozens of Capitals died every year from the fumes, and more than a few had ‘fallen’ into the mix and never been retrieved. Only one had fallen in out of stupid; the rest had been dropped into the mire, by guards and rivals alike.
It wasn’t murder if there was no body.
Aaron imagined the day when they drain that swamp and find the mass grave in its depths, some Colonial bureaucrat would feign outrage with hands on hips at whatever bad man allowed this, before writing some long op-ed in a local rag and sipping their beverage of choice.
The apartments dedicated to the mining complex might be considered lavish by that same bureaucrat. The five-story structure had been early colonial housing, but since the expansions provided citizens with more comfortable beds and softer floors, the aging industrial walls had been relegated to housing for the Capitals.
What furniture and furnishings existed were bolted to the walls, installed by the engineers in the factories back at Sol. The cement foundation had only a few major cracks, like dried out skin cracking in the brutal sun. Prisoners used them as a semi-secret storage, hiding food reserves or personal belongings out of immediate sight. To have a room with a two-inch crack in the floor was a luxury, despite having to share the small space with half a dozen others.
The confined space gave swift rise to tribal mentality, with people from different floors and distant wings hoarding supplies from one another. What little manpower the guards had was kept to the Mining Pits, leaving the Capitals to police themselves inside the apartments.
This worked in surprisingly long spurts with inevitable small skirmishes. There was even a religious sect that had formed on the top floor, what started as a Gnostic prayer group selected their new idol in a charismatic guest speaker who rose up from the basement two years back.