by Nathan Pedde
“We’re in so much trouble,” Elsie said. “I shouldn’t have let you talk me into that.”
“We’ll be fine,” Des said. “Let me do the talking.”
“And why should I do that?”
“Cause you need to trust me.”
“But—”
“Please. For once. Just trust me.”
“We’re going to have a black stain on our records,” Elsie said. “He might throw us into the brig and transfer us to Io to work in an asteroid mine.”
The door whooshed opened. A tall man strode in wearing the brown fatigues of an on-duty marine officer. He had a square jaw that protruding out from his face. He wore a simple brown cap which covered his buzz cut hair, smelling of cigarettes and putrid coffee. His name tag read: Kusheeno, while his rank insignia described he was a Captain.
In his hands, he held a couple of files. Des swallowed.
“Des O’Neal and Elsie Dagg,” Captain Kusheeno said, taking up his chair.
He tapped the file on the desk.
“Shouldn’t we have our parents or guardians in here while you question us?” Des asked.
“Why?” Kusheeno said. “You’re not in trouble.”
Des jerked upright, his words stuck behind his tongue. He expected a lecture including a finger waved into his face, but not this.
“We aren’t?” Des asked.
“Why you didn’t get into a shelter,” Kusheeno said. “Everyone must report to a shelter. That’s the law.”
“We were delayed,” Des said, choosing his words.
“Delayed?”
“Yes. We were on the way, but the one which was closest was full,” Des said.
“Why were you in the Ruby Sector?” Kusheeno asked. “School kids your age, with jobs in the Grey and Black Sectors have no reason to be over there.”
“We were exploring. Having fun. Being teenagers,” Des said, he thought he could see the vein pop in the Captain’s forehead.
“I’m going to cut to the chase,” Kusheeno said. “I know you were in the Undercroft. Answer my questions truthfully.”
“We aren’t in trouble?” Des asked.
“You aren’t,” Kusheeno said. “If you tell me exactly where you went in the Undercroft, and how you even got in—”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want information,” Captain Kusheeno said. “This talk will go on your permanent record of course, but that’s to be expected.”
We aren’t in trouble, but that can change quick, Des thought.
Des grew up on Europa in the poor section and knew the Captain's type well enough.
“No,” Des stated.
“What?” Kusheeno asked, his voice annoyed and firm.
“I want you to mark that Elsie made it to a shelter,” Des said. “I want you to take her out of the office and take her home. I want you to personally make sure nothing gets put on her permanent record.”
“And if I do all of it, what will you do for me?”
“I’ll tell you all you need to know,” Des said. “It wasn’t Elsie getting into places where we shouldn’t be, it was me. Elsie has nothing to do with it.”
“Listen, kid, do you know what will happen if I refuse your demands?”
“I know,” Des said. “You’ll be forced to arrest me. Like actually arrest me and not this fake arrest you’ve done. However, it’ll come up that you brought in two under-aged minors without their parent or guardian being present. That would look awkward.”
“Okay kid,” Kusheeno said. “You’re bold. I’ll give you that.” He pressed a button on his desk phone. “Corporal Johnston, please come in here.”
A few long moments passed. A young female soldier walked into the small office.
“Captain?” Johnston asked, standing at attention. “How may I help you, sir?”
“I remember seeing Ms. Dagg here at a shelter,” Kusheeno said. “Please add her to the list of one.”
“Yes sir,” Johnston replied, her face a stern mask with the hint of a question in the corner of her eyes.
“Then please escort her home, personally,” Kusheeno said.
Corporal Johnston saluted and left the office.
“Ms. Dagg, you’re free to go,” Kusheeno said.
Elsie followed Johnston out of the office. Elsie mouthed the words, ‘Thank you’ as she exited the office.
“Now,” Kusheeno said, turning his attention back to Des, “what information can you tell me?”
Des sat up straight in the chair. “Ask me a question?”
“Where did you go today instead of reporting to your job?”
“You know I haven’t been going to work?”
“We’re at war,” Kusheeno said, referring to the conflict with the United Terran Federation. “I get reports on many things. Especially rebellious youths.”
Des reached into his pocket, tossing a small Data Crystal at the Captain. “Try this. It contains a record of where I’ve gone in all of my explorations of the Undercroft.”
Captain Kusheeno inserted the Data Crystal into his computer.
“This even contains information on where you were today,” Kusheeno replied, his eyes widening. “Why did you compile this?”
“I wanted to prove a point. And because you adults think we kids are idiots and don’t know anything. I’ve been saying the security into the Undercroft is complete Bragga Dung. Anyone can waltz into it and go wherever they want to.”
“You think we of the Jovian Defense Force are incompetent and are the shit of a small Martian reptile?”
“That’s what a Bragga is,” Des said, “But on Europa, it means ill-informed and stupid thinking. You’re stuck looking in one direction while leaving the other side unguarded.”
“Unguarded—”
“Go to entry one-thirty-eight,” Des said.
Kusheeno scrolled through the entries.
“This was from today,” Kusheeno said, he cleared his throat as he began reading the small entry, “Three-Thirty-One pm. Footprints noted in the dust. Prints too large to be my own. I’ve not gotten lost again. I will attempt to follow them back to where they were going. Four-Eighteen pm. I see a Figure in the distant. Too dark for a picture. I think it’s a middle-aged male with balding hair. But I can’t make out his face so, I could be wrong. He hasn’t turned around. He has a small computer out and connected it to a service panel on a wall. He isn’t in a maintenance or a Marine uniform. The man is wearing civilian clothes… He almost saw me. I will back off and get back to the surface.”
Captain Kusheeno looked at the entry for a few seconds.
“I paused the recording to look for Elsie, who had gotten lost,” Des explained. “We were there during the missile attack. Some of them sounded like they’d gotten close.”
“Gotten close? That doesn’t make sense. I’ve no reports of any issues with the defensive batteries or the shielding.”
Des shrugged. “Maybe he wasn’t doing anything sinister. Can I go?”
“Yes,” Kusheeno replied, gesturing toward the door. “Thank you for the information. I’ll have someone drive you home.”
A short while later, Des arrived at his home in the Teal Sector. The door shut automatically behind him. He heard the electric whine of the hover-car engine, announcing his ride left.
Des stood in the entryway of his uncle’s small two-story townhouse for a few moments. Unlike some space stations out there, the one Des lived on was built to mimic Earth or one of the Terraformed planets. Plants and animals lived on the inner surface. Some of the animals were even wild, and not tamed pets. The people didn’t live in quarters like on a military station. They lived in homes or apartments. It wasn’t efficient space wise, but the extra space was a luxury people on Europa would dream about.
Mom would have liked this place, Des said. She could have gotten a job running the station. Dad could have set up a shop.
Des’s mother and her vessel disappeared before the war had started six years before. Hi
s father joined the Jovian Defense Force as a fight pilot and shipped Des and his brother to live with their uncle Jacob. Soon after, his father had been listed as killed in action.
His uncle was the owner and operator of an inter-planetary freighter, moving freight around Jupiter and her moons. Once in a while, he would take a load out to a distant asteroid station or the Trojans. He was gone for days, weeks or even months at a time. This all meant he was single and never around.
Uncle Jacob did have a family friend’s kid, Susan Tao, who looked in on them when her college and work schedules would allow it. Not that Des thought he needed anyone to look after him. He was sixteen. But it was nice to know there was someone other than his annoying brother to hang out with.
Des took a sigh of relief. Susan didn’t seem to be at home at the moment. No one was. After the Undercroft Experience and the meeting with the Captain, Des didn’t want to talk to, or hang out with anyone. He needed to eat something and pretend that nothing had happened. Part of him still thought the other shoe was going to drop.
What is Kusheeno doing? He’s never this nice, Des thought.
He took his shoes off and walked through the house. Des headed up stairs to his bedroom on the second floor. No pictures decorated the walls along the stairwell. No pictures were anywhere. The house was very spartan. His uncle’s decorating style or lack thereof showed through.
Des entered his room. He quickly changed out of his school uniform and into simple pants and a shirt. He walked downstairs to put the soot-covered school clothes in the wash for the next day. He liked the pair as it was lived in; the synthi-fabric had lost its stiffness, and itchiness.
The front door opened, and Susan called out. “Hello? Anyone home?”
Des groaned, he wasn’t looking forward to this. “I’m home, Susan.”
“Oh, good,” Susan said from the front entrance. “I need to talk to you, young man.”
“Take a number.”
“Excuse me?” Susan stomped her way through the house to the laundry room. “Excuse me? Please repeat yourself.”
“I said,” Des said, “to take a number cause my brother is going to rip me a new one, and soon as my uncle gets home, he will too. I don’t need to be yelled at by you too.”
“You assume you’re in trouble,” Susan said.
“I’m not?”
“What gave you the idea your trouble with the Captain is my business?” Susan asked. “There’s been no official disciplinary report.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“I know you and Elsie were called in. The whole station knows that. But for some reason, Elsie got let go with an apology, and you didn’t get a disciplinary report.”
“That’s odd.”
“Where were you?” Susan asked.
“The Undercroft. I was exploring with Elsie when the attack came. We couldn’t get to a free shelter before the attack was over,” Des said.
“That’s weird, because when I was your age, kids got sent away if they were caught in the Undercroft.”
“Well, this isn’t back then. It’s now,” Des said, not keeping the annoyance from his voice. After a moment, he asked. “What did you want to talk to me about again?”
“Oh, right. I need to hire you to help for a school project.”
“School project? Hire?”
“Yes,” Susan said brightening. “My team is working on a promotion for a locally made fruit drink. I need people to go down to the Black Sector and hand out samples.”
“How much?” Des asked.
“I have signed authorization from your school to give whoever helps extra credits in their courses.”
“Really?”
“And some free product and a meal.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It’s not this Saturday, but the next one. Can I put you down for one two-hour shift or two?”
“How about none.”
“Keep it up, and I’ll make it a split shift.”
“You’re desperate, aren’t you?”
“No,” Susan said, her eyes narrowing.
Des crossed his arms. “Besides me, how many other people have you recruited?”
“Three. We have no budget and need people to volunteer their time.”
“Great,” Des said, “but, at the moment, I don’t need the extra credits though.”
“How about I get your school to let you work off some of the demerits you seem to collect?”
Des groaned, “Fine.”
Chapter Three
The next day Des sat in his history class, dressed in his cleaned school uniform. He tapped his tablets stylus on the desk impatiently waiting for the rest of his classmates to finish the quiz. He had been done for a while but didn’t want to be the first one to submit. Des didn’t want his classmates to think like he was a nerd.
Des stared at the plastic top with a built-in tablet. He tapped the detachable stylus for the actual schoolwork. Des’s desk was in the second row from the back of the classroom. The student desks were the same as everywhere he had been to.
The teacher, Mr. Mixon, was a middle-aged man who spoke in a nasally voice. He stood in front of the class, dressed in his usual brown suit and tie.
“That’s time,” Mr. Mixon droned. “Please submit your quiz.”
Des pressed the submit button.
“Now,” Mr. Mixon said, “it’s advisable for you to spend the rest of the class working on your assignment on page one hundred and thirty-four.”
Des flipped his stylus over to the tablet and started moving program icons around on the screen. He didn’t want to work on the assignment about Early Martian history. He had no interest in anything that had happened on Mars during the early years.
“Hey, Des,” Alix Keshnikov said from beside him.
Alix, a seventeen-year-old boy from a smaller station out in the Trojans, spoke with a grating accent Des hadn't gotten used too. His voice had a grating quality to it.
“What do you want Alix?” Des replied, annoyed.
“Why were you called to see SS Bootie-shorts?”
“Who?”
“Captain Kusheeno,” Alix said, droning out the vowels.
Des glanced at Alix. “Why do you call him that?”
“It’s a history joke,” Alix said.
“Right. It was nothing, really.”
“Nothing?” Alix whispered, surprised. “You and Elsie got caught outside of a shelter during the last attack all because you two were snooping around the Undercroft. Am I right?”
“You should stop listening to the gossip girls.”
“Des. Alix,” Mr. Mixon said from his desk, “please cut the chatter and get to work. Focus. Focus.”
Des looked down at his tablet. He flipped through the icons to the textbook and his workbook. After a moment, and an internal groan, he began to work on the simple assignment. Des had to answer a bunch of questions from the textbook. It didn’t take him long to finish. It was something he almost didn’t have to think about. The work seemed natural for him, not that he liked the thought about being good at history.
Des had been done for a couple of minutes when the bell rang.
“All right,” Mr. Mixon said, “Your quizzes are marked. Please review your quiz tonight. They’re to help you. And don’t forget the test tomorrow. If you got a good mark on the quiz, you should do fine. But it shouldn’t stop you from studying. Right, Mr. O’Neal?”
“What? I study,” Des replied.
Des pulled his own personal tablet out of his bag. It was a smaller version of the class tablet, but with more bells and whistles. He looked at the quiz in his inbox. It was out of ten marks, and he had gotten nine correct. He opened the InstaPic application. Des scrolled through different pictures of people, places, spaceships, and cats. He walked down the hallway toward his locker, not paying attention to where he was going. He trusted his feet to take him where he needed to go.
“Thank you for getting me out of trouble yesterday,
” Elsie said, leaning against a locker. “I owe you ice cream at the Old Market Station.”
“It was really no problem,” Des shrugged. “I’ve been dragging you everywhere dark and dirty. Least I can do.”
“Did you get in trouble?”
“I don’t understand it,” Des replied. “For some reason, I didn’t.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Me neither. Speaking of bad things, how are your grades?”
“Why?”
“Because I might have a way for you to get some extra credit,” Des said.
“What?”
“You know Susan, right?”
“Yes, I remember Susan,” Elsie said.
“She needs a volunteer for some college project,” Des said. “She’s able to offer extra credit for any volunteers from our school.”
“When is it?”
“Two Saturday’s from now.”
“Are you trying to get out of it or something?”
“No—”
“I’ll do it, but on one condition,” Elsie grinned.
“Which is?
“You’re going to volunteer too.”
“Fine,” Des said, slumping his shoulders. “It’s not like I have much of a choice.”
“Oh?”
“I was volun-told.”
Des reached his locker and quickly unlocked it. Pictures of computers and space crafts decorated the inside of it. Des put his school tablet in, exchanging it for a gym bag and sneakers.
His phone rang. The horn of a ringtone echoed from his backpack.
Des dug, pulling it out. He looked at the call display. It was a government number. He answered it on the third ring.
“Des O’Neal,” the voice said.
Des closed his eyes, recognizing the voice. “Captain Kusheeno. What do you want?”
“I need you to come into my office once you’re done class today,” Kusheeno said.
“Why?”
“Because I asked nicely—”
“And if I don’t show up?” Des asked.