by Kal Spriggs
He’d stuck with me. He wasn’t as strong or as coordinated as me, he wasn’t as passionate about getting into shape, either. But at the end of our twelve- and fourteen-hour shifts in the lab, he’d invariably joined me for my exercises, every day. He never remotely claimed to enjoy them, but he didn’t stop until I did.
I looked at Ted, really looked at him, and noticed that he was filling out with muscle. He wasn’t lean, like me, but I had the feeling that if we kept on with this, he wouldn’t be nearly so easy to push around as he had been. Maybe I could get him to see that. Perhaps, if nothing else, giving him some confidence to stand up for himself would make this worth it.
I could admit to myself that I didn’t really like working out. Given the choice between reading books and turning myself into a sweaty, exhausted, mess, I knew which one I’d choose.
I got to my feet and went over to the shower, pulling off my shirt and pants. Privacy wasn’t exactly something either of us had, especially not with the toilet and shower being in the open room. The shower water was cold and the spigot came right out of the wall, so I had a very chilly rinse and then used the rough towel to dry off.
Wessek’s people had given us a few more sets of the cheap clothing, but our stack of dirty laundry was growing. I was going to ask about washing them, if they’d give us access to a laundry facility it might give me the opportunity to see more of the base.
I flopped onto my cot as Ted rinsed off. I was utterly exhausted, both mentally and physically. That was good, because on days when I didn’t exhaust myself, I had dreams. They all started out the same, I was at home, I was with my family. They were doing normal things around the house and I was helpless, knowing what was coming and trying to explain it to them, to warn them. The dreams all ended the same, too. Vars came through the door and killed my father, then my mother, then my sister. That was normally when I woke up, sweating and shaking.
“What do you think this is about?” Ted asked as he was getting dressed.
“What?” I was half asleep when he asked it, so I opened my eyes and looked over at him.
“This project, the notes, all this,” he waved his hand. “I mean, I thought Wessek and Vars were just pirates, you know?” He sat down on his cot, frowning as he considered it. “But this girl, Kiyu, she seems important. Like, really important. And her uncle...” Ted shook his head. “It’s like they’re military or government or something. Only they’re working with Wessek, who’s a pirate. And this alien stuff that your parents were working on. I thought all that alien archeology stuff back on Century was just like, pottery shards and stuff.”
I snorted at that, “Most people do. People hear that something is like, a million years old, and they think it must have been primitives and stone-age tools. But Century used to be an outpost for some advanced species. The Wall... well, you probably know about the Wall.”
Ted gave me a nod. The Wall was a kilometer-high construct in the shape of an open-topped box built near the northern pole of Century. The first colonists had built nearby and there’d been some initial exploration of the site. But then the Seconds had arrived and the Star Portal back to Earth had closed and there was a lot of instability on Century and elsewhere. My parents had complained, a lot, about how many of the artifacts of value had been stolen and plundered from the Wall.
Supposedly the Wall had been a city, but it had either been destroyed or abandoned. No one had ever found any remains of the inhabitants, so it was assumed that they’d abandoned it for some unknown reason.
“The site at Black Rock Mesa was either a military or scientific outpost, or at least, that’s what my parents said.” Saying that aloud wasn’t giving anything away, my parents’ published papers said as much. “Maybe these people think they’ll get a military advantage out of it.”
“But who are they?” Ted asked. “I mean, Vars and his dad both have accents, but I don’t recognize them. Kiyu and her uncle, too, but theirs are different.”
I’d noticed that too. Accents didn’t mean all that much, though. Century used standard English, but our world was relatively unique in that, from what I’d heard. The Star Guard utilized Standard French or English, depending on military sector, from what I’d heard. Languages shifted over time and while many worlds taught common languages, they didn’t necessarily teach them to the same standards.
“Their bodyguards wear uniforms, but I’ve never seen anything like them,” I spoke up. For that matter, Kiyu’s bodyguard seemed inhumanly strong, to the point that I wasn’t sure she was entirely human. That thought disturbed me more than a little. There were stories about rogue humans who worked with the alien Culmor or the Erandi, often as auxiliaries on raids and attacks. That was a scary thought since both alien species were at war with humanity.
What if Wessek and Vars are part of some kind of precursor to an attack on Century from the Culmor? The aliens had attacked my homeworld once before, with thousands of their troops making planetfall, back in my great-great-grandfather’s day.
I didn’t bring that up to Ted, though. It was bad enough that we were prisoners to pirates. If those pirates worked for aliens, well, I wasn’t sure that Ted would be able to function with that hanging over our heads.
I closed my eyes and I heard Ted settle into his cot, groaning a bit as his muscles complained. I hoped I wasn’t pushing him too hard, I didn’t want him injured or something, but I was approaching it how my Cadet Drill Instructors had during Academy Prep School. I had to fight acid bitterness as I thought about that. I’d been so certain, so happy about completing Academy Prep School. I’d finished with the best scores. I’d worked so hard. I’d been so excited to start at the Academy... and now I knew that was a lie. That future had been taken from me just as surely as Wessek had taken my family.
Grief piled into me and it was all I could do not to curl up into a ball, sobbing. Only the fact that I knew Wessek and Vars were watching me prevented that. I had to cling to the little bit of dignity I had left. They had taken everything else from me, but I wasn’t going to let them see me cry like a child.
The ache, though, the raw, unfeeling, unfairness of it all stabbed through me, far sharper than the agony of my exhausted body. I had nothing left and it was all I could do not to reject every principle I’d grown up with. How could I believe in fairness, in justice, in right and good after what had happened to my family? The ethics classes we’d had, the upbringing of my parents… all that seemed so fragile, so meaningless in the void of what had happened.
I didn’t feel like I could forgive myself, not for surviving when the rest of my family had died. I’d seen Jiden with my own two eyes as she kicked out a stanchion that dropped thousands of tons of sand on her and the pirate she’d been fighting. She’d done it without hesitation... and maybe if I’d been stronger or faster or just better, I could have made it to the deeper tunnels like she’d told me.
I gritted my teeth so hard that my jaw creaked. My parents hadn’t been big on prayer or church, but I’d found some peace during my time at Academy Prep School in the chapel. Right now, the last thing I wanted to think about was some all-powerful being. If God existed, that meant he had allowed this to happen to me, allowed my parents and sister to die. He hadn’t stopped Vars when he’d killed my Granny Effy. He hadn’t saved my mom when she died trying to buy Jiden and I time to escape... and he hadn’t given me the strength to fight the pirate who’d held me while Jiden sacrificed herself.
I remembered the words of the Chaplain, my first Sunday at Academy Prep Course. He’d said, “Everything happens to a purpose.” I’d realized he’d meant not just our training, but also our lives. The words seemed hollow, empty. I couldn’t imagine what terrible purpose might be behind the deaths of everyone I cared about.
I can’t give up hope. Ted counted on me. I had to get back to Century, too, to bear witness, to tell the authorities what had happened and that Wessek had connections to the Enforcers. I had to get revenge on Wessek and Vars. I had to make cert
ain they couldn’t use my parents’ research and that they didn’t benefit from it.
I lay there, pretending to sleep. Despite my exhaustion, my brain insisted on going through every detail of the last time I’d seen my family. It was a like a entertainment sim on repeat, over and over.
It was a very long time before I fell asleep.
***
Despite my intention to delay things as much as possible, I knew I had to give them some evidence that I was working. After I’d gone through the computer files for most of a week, I told Vars that I had something.
Kiyu showed up not long after that and I played a video that I’d found, of my dad entering a room in the alien ruins. It was under low-light sensors, and my dad scanned the walls, floor, and ceiling, pausing as he described the collapsed corridor that he’d partially excavated in order to reach the room, crawling the last ten meters through a braced section where the solid rock had been shattered.
I’d already read in his notes that he suspected the aliens had collapsed the corridor themselves, in part because the ever-present sand from Century’s surface wasn’t found in that room, which would have been the case if the room had been open for any period of time after they abandoned the facility.
He’d suspected that meant they left something in that room that they couldn’t take with them. I guessed that this room was what Kiyu was interested in, but I wasn’t sure what she was after specifically.
I watched her and Vars as I played the video on the display. Vars looked bored, which told me he either didn’t know or didn’t care what his father was after. Kiyu, on the other hand, was watching every detail, having me pause and reviewing sections.
“There,” she pointed at something on the screen, “is there more on that?”
I shook my head. The section she’d pointed at was near the very end of the video. “Just the one bit,” I zoomed in as much as I could, showing the blurry form of the thing. It looked like a console or maybe even a computer terminal. There was no power, so it was hard to tell, but it did look like many symbols made up the top surface, laid out like a computer keyboard or terminal maybe.
In fact, I had seen photos and videos of just that device, but I hadn’t spent time on it. There’d been dozens of similar devices in the chamber and I hadn’t known which one they were interested in or if it were all of them.
“Find me more on that device,” Kiyu snapped to Vars. “Find out if it was removed from the dig site or if it was still there.”
“My father’s directions from your uncle,” Vars glowered, “are to focus on translating the alien symbols. Why should we care about the device?”
Something flashed across Kiyu’s face and her green eyes flared, “You were supposed to have retrieved all equipment there. My uncle wants this equipment and we need to know where it is. Find it... or I’ll be sure to mention to my uncle how unhelpful you are.”
She stalked past him and I could see Vars grit his teeth as she passed. He was not used to being ordered around like a servant. As she and her bodyguard left the room, he spun to face Ted and I. “You,” he snapped out at Ted, “start searching the files for what she wants.”
I started, “But I--”
He didn't even look at me. My entire body locked up and agony washed through me. I fell, limply to the floor, my nerves screaming at me. I couldn't even move my eyes or blink.
I heard footsteps and a moment later, Vars squatted down. He grabbed my hair and pulled my head around to face him. “Let me make this clear, Armstrong.” It was the first time he'd used my name. “You work for me. My father owns you. You're a hongre slave, our slave.”
He slammed my head down into the metal deck hard enough that I saw stars and I felt agony from my temple. A moment later, I felt sharp pain and hot blood as it pooled around my face. Vars leaned over, so close that I could smell his stinking breath, “Don't think that will end, ever. Because any time I want, I can send the signal to your slave implant, and it won't just stop your outer limbs, it'll stop your heart, stop your lungs, and just like that you'll be dead.”
He patted my left cheek and stood up, moving out of my line of sight. “Get him up,” he snapped at Ted.
Ted came over and hoisted me up, my body still not responding. I could feel the blood running down the side of my face. “Phaw,” Vars swore, “He's bleeding everywhere. Get him to the infirmary.”
“I-- I don't know where it is,” Ted stuttered.
Vars waved us to the hatch and he opened it. My head hung, I had no control over it, but I could see a steady stream of blood dribbling down onto the deck. “This way,” Vars snarled.
He led Ted down several corridors. I tried to memorize the path, but I was feeling dizzy and the amount of blood coming out of my head was starting to worry me.
We arrived at what looked like an infirmary. Ted set me on a bed, while Vars talked to someone on a comm. Ted pressed something against the side of my head to stem the flow of blood. I was having difficulty getting my right eye to focus on anything.
It couldn't have been very long, at most a half hour or so, when the doctor from before arrived. I was getting some control over myself again, so I was able to turn my head and look at her. She was wearing a cloak or cape of some kind and it was spotted with water drops. She took it off and threw it over a table, water dripping from it onto the floor.
“I charge extra for emergency calls,” she told Vars, her voice and accent harsh.
Vars scowled, “Fine, I'll pay.”
She came over and pulled away the cloth that Ted had pressed against the scrape. Blood began to run down my face and into my eye. She made a disgusted sound, “This is quite the gash. I assume you did this?” She didn't even look at Vars. She reached into her satchel and pulled out a device of some kind. Before I knew what she was doing, she turned my head and wiped the wound clear of blood with a wet cloth that stung and sprayed something that felt cool and tingly as it touched my skin. The pain faded rapidly after that into a dull ache rather than a jagged spike. “That will seal it, but he'll have a nice scar,” she noted. She shone a light in my eyes and I flinched away.
“He has a concussion. I can scan him for brain damage, if you'd like,” she noted. “That will be extra.”
“Do it,” Vars grunted, sounding disgusted.
She pulled out a scanner of some kind and she ran it over my head. “No signs of permanent damage, but I'd recommend light duty. Probably keep him in his bed for the next day or two.”
“That's not... that won't work,” Vars scowled. “I need him functional.”
“I can give him some quick heal,” she noted. “That'll be extra.”
“On top of...” He broke off as she looked at him. “Fine.”
The doctor injected me with something, right at the base of my neck. She laid my head back down. “He'll need to sleep it off, but he'll but at a hundred percent by morning.” She walked over to her cloak and threw it over her shoulders. “I'll send your father my bill.”
“Send it to me...”
“I think he'll be interested in seeing the details of his injury,” the doctor scoffed. “Now, I've other clients to see to, and it's such a lovely day for it.”
Vars might have said something back to her, but my eyes lost focus as whatever she'd injected me with hit my system.
The last thing I saw as my world faded to black was the water dripping off her cloak onto the floor.
***
Chapter 7: Just When I Think I Have It All Figured Out
Whatever the doctor had given me, I got the best night of sleep in my life. There were no horrid dreams, there were no moments where I woke up, wondering if I should give up, there was just total and utter nothingness. I woke up feeling refreshed and alert and everything in my body just felt good.
It wasn't just a physical thing, either. My spirits were buoyed. The nagging question, the one insurmountable obstacle, had been removed. Wessek had shown me that we were on a volcanic planet, where even if the he
at didn't kill me, the toxic atmosphere would. There was no escape on a planet like that. Ted and I would have had to hijack a ship or shuttle as a part of our escape and those would almost certainly be well-guarded... plus neither of us knew how to fly one. I'd managed to get my civilian skimmer license, but that was worlds away from being able to pilot an orbital shuttle, much less a warp-drive ship.
But the doctor had come in wearing a cloak. A cloak soaked in water. Which meant either she liked taking showers while fully clothed, or she'd been outside and it wasn't what we thought.
I was kicking myself, now, for believing what Wessek and Vars had clearly wanted me to believe. They'd shown Ted and I that hellish lava-scape through those windows on purpose, to dissuade us from even attempting to escape. I thought about all the “airless moons” that Ted had visited, which could just as easily have been on inhabited planets or even on Century, for all we knew.
The rain-soaked cloak suggested we weren't home, though. It only ever rained in the far north, the most populous areas, and even there, the rain was carefully caught and stored. The doctor had been far too dismissive of the water from her cloak, as if it were nothing more than a nuisance.
It didn't tell me where we were, but it told me I could at least survive on the outside. There was rain, there was an atmosphere.
It was time for me to step things up.
Ted and I went straight into the lab, escorted by two of the normal goons.
Ted went to work on the computer, searching for pictures and videos on my dad’s computer. I went to my mom’s computer and began doing what I’d been told to do, pulling up files she had on the alien symbols and her translations. All of it was in code, so I was able to draw things out.