by M J Dees
"Are you sure it's safe?" asked Sevan.
"As sure as I'll ever be," said San.
"Come on," said Tori who, weapon at the ready, tried the door.
It opened with ease and, passing through, they found themselves in a dirty alleyway behind one of the makeshift container stacks.
"Which way now?" asked Ay-ttho.
"This way," said San, leading them along the alley to a junction with a thoroughfare which only qualified as a street because it was located between two ramshackle container stacks. San led them along the street until the sandy surface became a prepared road.
"We need to think where they will prepare the device," said Ay-ttho.
"I know where it will be," said San. "Follow me."
He led them along a side street until they reached a container much larger than any of the others, as if they used it for storage or as some kind of distribution facility.
"In here," he said, leading them through a small door in one side of the container.
Inside, the container appeared almost empty, there were no internal divisions, and it seemed to contain nothing except a smaller container in the centre of the space.
"You think it's in there?" Tori asked as he approached the container.
"I am sure this is the right place," said San.
Before Tori could cover half the distance between them and the small container in the centre, the doors of the large container burst open and Corporation guards streamed in from every entrance.
Tori and Ay-ttho raised their weapons, but they were so outnumbered that any resistance would be useless.
The guards closed in until they had encircled the group. Ay-ttho and Tori held their weapons firmly and Sevan raised his weapon in solidarity.
"You may as well hand over your weapons," said San. "They will prove useless against a force of this size."
"You," said Ay-ttho. "I knew you were up to no good. I knew I had no brother."
"That's where you are wrong," said San. "I am your brother, as I am also the brother of Tori."
"You mean we're related," Tori glanced at Ay-ttho.
"Fushy that! I'm no sister of yours."
Ay-ttho blasted San square in the torso, sending him sprawling and smoking onto the ground. The guards aimed their weapons at Ay-ttho.
"Hold your fire!"
The voice came from an entrance on the far side of the container. Sevan saw the unmistakable robes of Barnes.
"So good to meet you all again," said Barnes. "We have some unfinished business from the last time we met."
"What business is that?" asked Tori.
"I didn't get to kill you last time."
"Well, what are you waiting for?" asked Ay-ttho. "Kill us."
"Oh, no," laughed Barnes. "That would be far too easy. You must suffer first. I will make you suffer until you plead for death and then I will make you suffer even more until you cannot plead for death. Only then will I liquidise you."
"What have you got against us?" asked Sevan.
"You ruined my plans when I was about to finish the Republic on Tomorrow."
"Yeah, sorry about that," said Sevan. "Just one question. How did you escape from Tomorrow?"
Barnes laughed.
"That doesn't answer my question," said Sevan. "Nor does it explain how you convinced these fushy heads to do your bidding."
"Oh, you'd be surprised how large my loyal following still is."
While they were talking, the circle of guards had been closing in, four or five deep, and the friends now stood more or less back to back.
""It's now or never," Ay-ttho whispered, and then shouted. "Now!"
The friends dropped to the floor and blasted the first row of guards. Reacting, the second row of guards blasted the guards opposite them. Sevan sent another blast into what was the fourth and final row of the circle at his side and, in the chaos, slipped through the gap unnoticed. He made it to the exit before one guard sent a blast which removed the door negating the need for Sevan to open it before he ran through it.
Sevan didn't look back; he retraced the route that San had led them. As he ran, he began to wonder whether he should have stayed to help Tori and Ay-ttho. He kept telling himself that they were more capable of looking after themselves than he was and that staying would have meant that they would have had to look after him as well as themselves. He couldn't help feeling guilty that he could or should have done more to help.
He realised that the road's surface was becoming more sand like which meant that he was getting close to the wall. However, it wasn't until he reached the alley running along the foot of the wall that he allowed himself to turn and look to see whether he was being pursued. He couldn't see anyone, so he headed for the small door, his plan was to get back to the looters, explain what had happened and convince them to help him find Tori and Ay-ttho.
Sevan stepped through the door and closed it behind him. He ran across the expanse of sand to the first wrecked freighter but stopped in his tracks when he saw what lay beyond the wreck.
He saw the unmistakable bodies of the professor and the beast lying in the sand. Sevan ran over to the professor but he was dead. In his marbles, Sevan cursed San. Without the professor he was powerless to convince the looters of anything and without the beast the journey to the looter encampment would be long and dangerous, too long to return and find the device let alone dismantle it before they would use it. There was nothing for it, Sevan would have to return to the concession, find his friends and the device. If he didn't then it doomed Mastery of the Stars for sure.
He checked the professor for anything which might be useful but only the mechanism which translated looter vibrations into a form the professor could understand seemed useful. Sevan considered using it to communicate with the looters but thought it better to return and find his friends and if not them the device. He took the mechanism with him, just in case.
Nothing else about the professor's person or on the beast seemed much use, so Sevan headed back across the sand to the door set in the wall.
Opening it, he looked through the opening to check the alleyway was clear before stepping through. It seemed to be deserted, and he made his way back towards the same road he had followed earlier.
There seemed to be very few workers on the street and those that there were, paid little attention to him. Sevan was unsure what to do; he just kept walking until he reached the corner where San had told them to turn. Sevan had no idea where he might find the device, his only chance of finding any clues was to return to the place San had led them. He now felt embarrassed for having kept running all the way outside the concession when nobody had been following. If he hadn't run so far, he might have been able to have followed the others, assuming Barnes had captured them, or he could have helped them stay and fight until the end if that is what happened. He felt guilty, both for not staying and for thinking he didn't want to fight until the end.
It seemed strange that he could leave the concession and re-enter it without having been apprehended. Either he was not considered very important or very much of a threat. The thought did not fill him with confidence. He returned to the large container expecting it to be empty and that is almost what he found. He entered the space with the smaller container in the centre but, as he approached the smaller container, a robed figure emerged from around the corner. It was Barnes.
Sevan raised his weapon but, as he did, a sound behind him alerted him to the fact that dozens of Corporation guards were entering the container and pointing their weapons at him.
Sevan lowered his weapon.
"Wise," said Barnes.
"Where are they?" Sevan asked.
"I have sent them to Aitne."
"Aitne? The prison planet?"
"Yes," said Barnes. "And that is where you will go now."
CHAPTER 11: TO FLY ON AITNE
Sevan watched Daphnis shrink into the blackness of space as the security shuttle into which they had strapped him sped away from the
planet. They had strapped Sevan firmly into his seat and he felt very uncomfortable.
He was trying to avoid the stares of his fellow passengers who he assumed must also have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives on Aitne.
When the shuttle emerged from the portal he could already see Aitne. He thought it strange that they should locate a prison planet should so close to a portal. Aitne itself was not so much a planet as a very large asteroid. It was not spherical and Sevan imagined it had no atmosphere and very little gravity. He could see plumes of smoke, rocks and other debris floating away from Aitne into space into a conical canopy suspended above the surface.
Past Aitne, Sevan could see a large metallic sphere like a silver moon much shinier than the Giant Cup Sevan knew from home.
A guard arrived and unstrapped Sevan, forcing him to climb into a suit. The whole process was humiliating as the suit had to be connected to his waste discharge parts as the suit recycled his waste into water and products to augment the meagre diet he was to receive via additives mixed with his recycled water. It also used a process to recycle his outward breaths into gases he could breathe in.
The suit was bulky, especially the boots which felt heavy. He could hear his own breaths.
"You only leave these suits when you die," the guard told them with glee.
Sevan glanced around at the other suited prisoners in the shuttle. They intimidated him less in their suits but it made him wonder whether, if Tori and Ay-ttho had been sent to Aitne, how he would find them.
As they drew closer to Aitne, Sevan could see a cylindrical building that seemed to be rotating.
"What is that?" he asked the guard.
"That's where you sleep. Creating some artificial gravity while you sleep helps you to deal with the low gravity environment."
The prison was a working mine. They expected the prisoners to do the work considered too dangerous for miners to do. Sevan heard stories that the prisoners died early on Aitne because of the long-term effects of low gravity on their bodies’ essential functions.
They were now closing in on the docking stations, below which Sevan could see the largest freighter he had ever seen. The shuttle shuddered as it locked onto a docking port on the outside of the settlement's structure.
When the shuttle door opened, the guards marched them into a hall where more guards in different coloured suits stood waiting. When all the prisoners were in place, one guard addressed them.
"Welcome to Aitne. Here you will spend the rest of your lives mining metals, non-metals, minerals and volatiles. That period may be long or it may be short, it makes very little difference to us, we are happy to replace unproductive prisoners with productive ones."
The guard picked up a machine which looked very heavy but was easy to manipulate in the low gravity.
"This will be your first tool," said the guard. "The grinders are at the front of the tube, the material passes along the tube to this cylinder which expels the dirt and separates the metal using magnets. Once full, you exchange your full tool for an empty one."
The guard passed the tool to a subordinate.
"A word of warning. Be careful not to push yourself off the surface of Aitne. It is not economic to send a shuttle after you, even to retrieve the suit. If you perform well using this tool, you may progress to some larger equipment. Because of an important visit we are expecting, we are operating a zero tolerance policy. Any dissent will be responded to with liquidisation. This is all you need to know for now."
They led the prisoners out of the hall, handed a tool to each and, through the next door, Sevan found himself on the surface of the planet. He followed the other prisoners to a crater where thousands of other prisoners were pushing their tools into the planet's surface. A great cloud of material pushed out of the back of the machines was climbing up towards a conical canopy waiting to collect the material.
Full machines were being exchanged for empty ones. The full machines were being emptied into a silo from which great tubes led back to the port, to the huge freighter docked there.
They led Sevan to a vacant area of the crater. The guard pointed to where he should grind and turned on the machine. Grinding teeth at the end of the hose began to turn and Sevan could see dust being sucked into the end. The guard gave him a nudge as if to suggest that he should get to work and so he pressed the end of the hose into the crater floor and it began to suck up the debris which the grinding teeth liberated from the planet's surface.
Work was easy, but it was very dull and monotonous. Prisoners worked in a line removing the top surface of the planet, moving forwards and up an incline until they met a ridge. From the ridge Sevan could see an adjacent area where the surface had already been removed. There, larger machines with more heavy duty grinding equipment were performing a similar task, grinding into the harder rock which lay below the surface.
Every so often, Sevan would take a sip on the liquid via a tube which the guard had inserted into his mouth when he had attached the suit. The liquid did not taste great and Sevan tried not to think about from where it had been recycled.
When Sevan was feeling very weak, a guard came and told him his shift was over. Sevan and the other prisoners, whom they had granted a break, followed the guard back towards the construction where the shuttles and freighters docked.
Sevan pointed up at the shiny silver sphere in the sky and asked the guard what it was.
"That's where we live," said the guard. "You rest over here."
He pointed towards the rotating cylinder on top of the construction they were entering. The guard led Sevan and the other prisoners up an iron staircase into the centre of the cylinder. Rotating around him, Sevan could see thousands of suited prisoners reclining in hammocks which swung outwards with the centrifugal force of the rotation. Looking up, Sevan could see many platforms, one for each level of the cylinder.
When they reached their level, Sevan could see that surrounding the platform were moving walkways, each moving faster than the one inside it and the outermost walkway was moving almost as fast as the rotating cylinder itself.
The guard instructed the prisoners to follow him onto the first moving walkway. One by one he led the prisoners onto the next walkway until they were moving only a little slower than the cylinder itself. He allocated each prisoner a hammock and instructed them how to get into it. Sevan climbed into his and could feel the gentle pull of the centrifugal force. The hammock felt very comfortable, and he soon drifted off to sleep.
*
An alarm awoke Sevan. Through the metal grates of the platforms and moving walkways, he could see guards being thrown about by a prisoner on a level a few stories higher.
"Ay-ttho!" Sevan said to himself.
He got out of his hammock and jumped from walkway to walkway until, on the central platform a guard pointing a weapon at him convinced him to stop.
"That's my friend," Sevan shouted. "I think I can help."
The guard did not move but kept pointing his weapon at Sevan. Above them, blasts were being fired and Sevan could see prisoners falling from the hammocks onto their moving walkways.
"She doesn't like being woken before she's ready," Sevan tried to explain.
"Shut up and go back to your hammock," said the guard.
There was another blast, and the fighting stopped. A prisoner lay motionless on the platform.
The guard gesticulated for Sevan to go back to his hammock but Sevan stayed and watched as the other guards removed the boots of the dead prisoners so they could drag them down the iron central staircase.
Sevan tried to look into their helmets as the guards dragged them past, looking for the face of Ay-ttho but he could not see well enough. After many prods from the end of the guard's weapon, Sevan returned to his hammock but he could not sleep for thinking of Ay-ttho.
When the guards came to wake the prisoners on his platform, Sevan noticed that there were more guards than usual. As they emerged from the construction into the mining f
ields and they handed Sevan an empty machine, he noticed many more guards than had been escorting the prisoners last time.
"Is this because of what happened in the cylinder?" Sevan asked a guard.
"Of course not," laughed the guard. "President Man is visiting today."
"President Man? Here?"
Sevan's marbles whirred. If only he could find some way of contacting President Man, he could let him know about Barnes and what was happening on Daphnis.
"I need to speak with the president," Sevan told the guard.
"You do? As soon as he arrives, I'll take you straight to him."
"Really?"
"No, of course not. Get to work."
The guard gave Sevan a shove and Sevan joined the others in line, sucking the surface off the planet with their machines.
He estimated he was only about half way through his shift when he sensed a commotion amongst the guards.
"What's happening?" he asked the nearest guard.
"The president is on his way," said the guard. "So look busy or I must show the president how we deal with lazy prisoners."
The guard pointed his weapon at Sevan who returned to grinding the surface.
Moments later the entire work party, guards and prisoners, were distracted as a ship the like of which Sevan had never seen before, began to descend nearby.
It was the most beautiful ship Sevan had ever seen. The body was made of the most beautiful metal which seemed to shimmer. On top of the ship was a huge observation dome. It was clearly the presidential cruiser.
Sevan turned to the prisoner next to him.
"Do you think if I jumped hard enough, I could reach the cruiser?" he asked.
"Not with those boots on."
"And if I took them off?"
"You would die. The artificial atmosphere would escape from your suit."
"And what if I could tie off the bottom of the legs with something?"
"Then you would lose your feet."
Sevan weighed up in his marbles whether it was worth losing his feet to get a message to the president. Time was of the essence as he could see the cruiser was preparing to fly low over his work area; he might not get another chance.