by Jason Letts
A part of Rion couldn’t believe this was even a fight. How could some backyard tinkerer stand up to the Assailing Face for more than a minute?
“Why don’t you just use the face and blow him away?” Rion asked. He noticed Lena and Bailor were behind him, getting close enough for him to feel their breath on the back of his head. They were worried.
Reznik’s hands came to rest.
“The face is just one more feint in my dance of deceptions. It’s really nothing more than an oversized flashlight. Lusque knows that. Use it once and it’s lost its power. I wish I could’ve created a weapon to delete entire ships from the galaxy at the push of a button, but that’s not been within my grasp. The whole point is to provide a distraction, enabling my more mundane weapons to do their jobs. While the pulse has him shut down, the satellites can get to work.”
They watched through the windshield as two tiny dots lit up and began firing at the ship in front of them. The ballistics exploded, one after another, rocking their enemy back and forth. Rion was hopeful that he’d see that ship crack open and blow apart into a million pieces, but instead the plasma cannons managed to rotate and fire. The satellites couldn’t withstand more than a single hit each, as their remaining payloads detonated inside of them.
When the Assailing Face’s sensors came back online, it lit up with more red dots. Other bombs had been stashed all over the area and were coming online, cutting off their escape routes. Lusque’s ship began closing the gap, getting into point blank range. For the first time the thought crossed his mind that they could lose this fight.
“Was it the assassination? Do you want to take credit and step into the firestorm, Marino?” Reznik mused. “You’d be better off back at your base on the south pole of Uranus, where you sleep so soundly in your oil-stained sheets that you pay no mind to what lurks in your midst. Are you under the impression I’ve gone all this time without insulating myself from your threats? You’ve been carrying the implement of your destruction around with you for years.”
A few taps on the screen brought up a model of Lusque’s ship, displaying what looked like a needle under the cockpit in bright green. In space, the ship was getting so close that Rion could’ve pointed to the spot with the implanted bomb fairly accurately. He was in awe at the lengths Reznik gone to in order to thwart this foe.
Their enemy trained its plasma turret on them, and another pack of missiles had been loaded into the launchers. Before they could fire, Reznik detonated his bomb, and this time the entire ship did burst into an expanding explosion, one that stretched enough to envelop the Assailing Face. The ship rocked, the blast sent the three kids sprawling, and suddenly fires broke out in the cockpit.
A shrieking scream that seemed like it would never end filled the air until tiny ports spewed enough flame retardant that they were momentarily unable to see anything. It dissipated, and everything seemed awfully still. The scream diminished to a moan, and then gasps.
Rion rushed back in to the cockpit, where he shut his eyes hard at the sight of a burned and bloodied body in the seat. He could only open them when he felt a skinless hand close around his wrist. Much of Reznik’s tape had burned away, revealing parts of the face, torso, and arm. Though burned, a breast was distinctly apparent.
“No one who touches the Assailing Face lives. That one’s true.”
The voice was hoarse and tortured but sounded completely different. Reznik Igorovich was a woman, and she was moments away from death. The light was fading from her now-visible eyes, which became glossier and less responsive.
The impulse hit him to ask what they should do after her death. Where could they go in this ship that they would be safe? But she was going fast, and Rion figured whatever guidance they might glean would soon be spent. Instead, he pulled the black disc from his pocket and held it out in front of him, something he should’ve thought to do earlier. Maybe Reznik had an answer about what the symbol of the hand with the shortened finger meant.
Her eyes glossed over the disc, eyelids hovering halfway down.
“You could’ve saved me so much trouble.”
“What? What does that mean?” Rion said, exasperated enough to try to shake her covered shoulder, but he wasn’t going to get another word out of her. She was gone, and once again they had no one but themselves.
CHAPTER 6
Ten Years Later
Rion knew today was going to be his big break.
He thought about it as soon as he’d woken up in his one-room space station apartment, when he arrived for the job at Gravilinx that he’d begged his way into by rattling off ship specs, and it consumed his mind now as he performed the job of a low-level maintenance man by cleaning the grime from the windows of a ship that had come in for service. He floated about a kilometer away from the surface of Earth’s moon, but in his head he had the better life he desperately wanted.
A tap on the glass brought him back from his fantasies.
“You awake?”
The man inside the ship said something of that nature before leaning back in his chair to resume reading on his tablet. Not everybody got to own their own ship like this man did, and not everyone had a fulfilling job that was reliable and carried a little bit of prestige, but Rion finally had a chance at it. He’d applied to Gravilinx’s engineering corps course and expected a response to his submission as soon as he returned to the garage to clock out at the end of the day.
Only a couple of hours left.
Once he got in the course, successful completion assured him a position as an engineer with Gravilinx. That came with higher pay, the ability to afford a more tolerable apartment, and he could begin saving up for his own ship. With a decent job like that, girls would be less inclined to shut the door in his face so quickly.
“I wouldn’t have studied so hard in school if I knew I’d be wiping grit off of ships,” said one of his coworkers over the com from the other side. This guy had just started, while Rion had been doing this for an entire year, and in that time he’d heard more moaning and complaining than he could count.
The truth was, even this beat some of the things he’d done to get by over the past ten years.
“I still tell my mom I’m on my way to becoming a doctor,” another said.
Now it was Rion’s turn to commiserate, even though he neither had a normal upbringing in school or the expectations of parents. Where he came from or what he’d done weren’t things he talked about with anyone. These guys didn’t know he had a ticket to moving up the ladder either.
“One day I’ll be old and look back on this time with satisfaction that I slaved for a company that didn’t care about me,” he said, glad their suits provided them with a private communications channel. If his bosses heard, a comment like that would be enough to get his application rejected. Company pride was a big part of the Gravilinx ethos, he’d learned.
But the truth was he felt like he couldn’t spend one more day doing what he was doing. He couldn’t stand it, and he needed someone to give him a leg up.
The time passed slowly until he was finally able to turn his back on the last ship and follow the line back to the garage hanger. The time had come to make something of himself, and he could barely keep his hands still as he removed his space suit and headed to his locker, where his second-hand micro-tablet would deliver the news to him.
“Who’s getting hammered tonight?” one of the guys asked.
Rion popped open his locker and reached into his jacket pocket for the tablet. Flipping it open, he immediately saw that he did indeed get a response to his application. Another tap delivered the news.
Rejected.
“I am,” Rion said.
Stunned and disappointed, Rion sought out his supervisor to ask about the decision. It seemed like there had to be some mistake. He knew he got every question right on the application’s quiz. His supervisor, a woman in her forties, didn’t take her eyes off of the terminal screen when she responded to him.
“The cours
e is extremely selective, and it looks like they didn’t think you were among the top candidates. You can always apply again for the next term in another six months,” she said.
The thought of waiting another six months when he was only likely to be rejected again felt like a toothache that never went away. He endured it for the next few weeks, noticing that almost everyone he talked to was in a similar position. Stuck with no way out. There was always something in the way that held them back. If getting a perfect score wasn’t enough, what did it take?
He decided to find the answer. It started by telling his supervisor he needed to get into the supply closet for more compressed air tanks. Since she never got up from her terminal—he’d never once seen her even use her legs—she gave him her ID card instead. Passing the supply closet, he traveled to the other end of the station. The classrooms weren’t too far from the executive offices, and people in garage overalls weren’t often to be found around here. But the few people around were too busy to pay him any attention, and the card gave him access to the room and the terminal he needed.
A quick glance at the names and the applications told him all he needed to about who got in. No one else had scored as well as he did, but some of the successful applicants were related to managers. Others had paid an application fee as much as fifty times what was required. Rion had no idea paying more than the amount of the fee was even an option, but it seemed to be the only other way in. Six months wasn’t enough time to save up thousands of charges. He’d need six years.
It turned out that even that was too optimistic an appraisal.
He was out in space scrubbing another ship when one of his coworkers pointed out an approaching fleet. The purple and gold coloring, the insignia of the circle and eight dots, it was unmistakable. These were Planetary Alliance ships making an unscheduled stop at Gravilinx’s station.
“I hope they don’t need to be cleaned,” Rion said.
It was difficult not to be distracted while the ships approached and docked. They were significantly larger than anything Gravilinx produced, even bigger than the T1 Mammoth. He wondered if Gravilinx had broken some law, or if this fleet was out patrolling and needed to refuel. Either way, he’d never seen anything like this.
The message went out on the public com that everyone needed to drop everything and return to the main hangar immediately. Rion was even more perplexed.
By the time he got in and took off his spacesuit, most everyone on board the station had already made it to the assembly. A podium had been set up on the hangar floor, and hundreds of Gravilinx employees were packed to the wings in every corner. Rion had to jostle himself in to get a good look at what was going on. A speaker had already started, but he hadn’t caught any of it.
What he immediately noticed was the man on stage, who wore a belt with a noticeably large buckle. A jolt of recognition hit him. He’d seen this man before on the day his father left him. The close-cropped beard was the same as well. There was more white in his hair now, but even at a distance the man had a youthful glow and couldn’t really have been more than thirty. What had his father been doing talking to one of the Alliance’s higher-ups, and did that have anything to do with why he left?
Rion pondered as he tuned in to the speech, which the man delivered with a warm smile that belied the words.
“It’s Gravilinx’s rich history of service that brings us here today. Like so many times before, you’ve risen to the call of duty, and we must ask yet again for the biggest sacrifice a company can make. The Marshall Force is growing increasingly hostile, and their Pluto project has turned out to be something more menacing than simply enlarging the surface for habitation purposes. They’re building a massive military installation with the intent to vie for power with the Alliance. The attacks started days ago. We need to respond quickly yet prepare ourselves for a protracted engagement.
“That’s why the Alliance is hereby seizing Gravilinx’s factories in order to boost our manufacturing capacity. We need battle-ready ships, and you are best situated to give them to us. I know this will come as a shock, and an unwelcome one at that, for many of you. But what you give up for us now will be repaid with a brighter, safer future. Don’t worry. Much of your competition, including Voidjet and Espirit, will be pitching in to the exact same degree.”
After a while, Rion stopped hearing the words. He knew lip service when he heard it. In a snap, he became a cog in the Alliance’s new factory. When the man finally got in his ship and departed, there were a couple hours of idleness before new positions and orders filtered through to the low-level workers. If scrubbing ships seemed tedious, Rion had the pleasure of pounding rivets on the new ships. He wouldn’t be alone in doing that since a sizable ship required tens of thousands of rivets, but it did mean more soul-crushing labor in the name of something he cared even less about.
As the days went on, more details came out that made the situation even worse. Instead of getting paid, their meals and housing would be provided for them. They weren’t allowed to leave the installation more than once a week, if their production was ahead of schedule. His previous supervisor had been replaced by an Alliance project manager, a short man with a large birthmark on his cheek who looked flummoxed when Rion dropped in on him near the end of a shift.
“Sir,” he began, as he’d learned, “I have to let you know that I’m capable of doing so much more than I’m doing. If you looked at my engineering application scores with Gravilinx, they were perfect. Is there any way to get transferred to another unit? I can help in a more substantial way.”
It took the manager a few minutes to sort out who Rion was and what job he currently performed. Why that information was necessary when the man finally shrugged and shook his head was a mystery to Rion.
“You have to understand that what you’re doing is incredibly valuable. A sturdy ship is what protects our pilots and crews. That’s something you can take satisfaction in. The size and complexity of these ships requires a human touch like yours at so many stages of production.”
Rion nodded his head, wondering why he’d bothered to come here in the first place. All they wanted him to do was crawl into small spaces where the machines couldn’t reach. His loss of enthusiasm pushed him to speak more freely than he would’ve otherwise.
“I heard the pilots are pressed into service and that most don’t want to be doing that either. Is it true?”
The manager conjured a phony grin.
“We use many recruitment tools to gather talent for our military division, and you can bet they’re all dedicated servicemen who take the job of protecting the Alliance seriously.”
Rion looked to the doorway and the gray station hall, but he couldn’t leave while he had a teaspoon of hope left.
“How long do people usually have to work in positions like mine before they are promoted? A year, two years?”
“With our production schedule, we may never run out of ships to build. We’re not really looking to move people around much. You should feel that the Alliance has your needs covered, because we’re all chipping in and playing our important parts, no matter how small they seem. You don’t have to be on the front lines to be a hero, OK?”
“Tell me something else. Who was the man who made the announcement about the station takeover, the one with the beard and the belt buckle? Is there any way for me to reach him? I have some questions for him as well.”
The manager’s eyelids grew heavy. His patience was cracking.
“You mean Commander Hobart? All correspondences go up the chain of command. If you want to send a message, I can move it that way if you want.”
Rion could tell the man wanted nothing more than for Rion to disappear from sight as quickly as possible, and after hearing he was never going to have much ability to control his future, Rion didn’t want to look at the manager anymore either. He sure wasn’t going to let dozens of people read questions about why he was abandoned at age five as the message traipsed around inside the Allian
ce.
Each day was identical to the last, right down to the television broadcasts displayed in the station’s mess hall. Elbow to elbow with his fellow grunts, Rion watched reporting about the latest point of conflict between the Alliance and the Marshall Force. Grainy footage revealed raucous space battles near Uranus, surface fighting on Venus, or small ships crashing in apparent suicide missions right down on Earth. It seemed like anywhere could become the next hot spot.
More than once Rion had been tempted by the promise of easy work with the Pluto project and even went out that way a couple times. That had been after he’d parted from Bailor and Lena—bad memories he didn’t want to think about. If he had joined up to work on Pluto, he wondered if his life would be any different than it was now, except that he’d be on the opposite side of the fighting.
He was so worried about things getting worse that he couldn’t spare a thought for how they could be better. That was when he noticed he’d received an unsolicited message on his micro-tablet.
“The Alliance is cutting off food supplies to pacifist groups on Venus,” it read. Rion squinted at it, wondering how this bit of information got to him or if it was even real, since he hadn’t heard it on any of the broadcasts.
“Who is this?” he wrote back. A few hours later, he got a reply.
“An old friend.”
Rion didn’t have many old friends, and even fewer would’ve had the ability to sleuth out his private messaging address. It had to be Bailor.
“I thought I’d never hear from you again,” Rion wrote.
“Times have changed,” came a quick reply.
They had, but that didn’t change the sting of what had happened. They’d used some of the charges from Wud’s card to rent a ship, allowing them to park the Assailing Face in a place no one would ever find it. Shortly after, Rion convinced them to buy a cheap, short-range shuttle they could use to ferry people around the space stations near Jupiter, but they were sold a lemon. The ship never worked and the seller disappeared with their charges.