King Slaver

The Bertha, a prisoner cargo vehicle, slowed to a crawl without so much as a squeal of tires. The skies were clear and burning blue, and a heat haze wavered up off the scorching bone-white sand.

Bertha’s doors opened and a large man with a gun stepped out. He didn’t look around but immediately walked on a few paces away from the vehicle, then turned and looked at it silently, standing at ease.

A group of red-clad, head-shaven men shuffled out, single file. Most of them did not look around, either, though whether out of fear of what they might see or a dread that it might be exactly what they expected was hard to tell. The last man to exit the vehicle did glance to either side, taking in the desert fields all around him, buffeted by ugly swamps full of gnarled trees and animals and a musky stench he could smell all the way to where he stood, and, closer by, a huddle of wood and stone buildings that stood on top of black-sanded stalagmite hills, surrounded by deep trenches from which came ugly, grinding sounds. His designation was number 47; a low number, but he’d been informed that they were re-used when their past owners no longer needed them.

Another ugly sound, short and sharp, rang out much closer. Prisoner 47 looked back to the group and found that the man with the gun had shot one of the others, for whatever reason. The dead man lay sprawled in the sand and his blood ran out slowly, absorbed and blackened by the earth. What unsettled the prisoner – he was not shocked, nor aghast, because by now he had exhausted the wells of those emotions – was the silence: not just of the others in the group, which was understandable, but of the guard himself. The shooting obviously hadn’t been out of any kind of justifiable motive, any more than the rest of the events that had landed them all in this place, but the calm look on the guard’s face showed it hadn’t been because of anger, either. It was, simply, the way things were here.

The prisoners, Amarrian all, were marched into the camp that was to be their home for the foreseeable future. They were somewhere in the Minmatar Republic, they had been secretly tried in Minmatar military courts, and they were considered a collective threat to the interests and the freedom of the Minmatar people. Freedom was an important concept, apparently. The Minmatar found it so important, the prisoner thought, they wanted to keep it all to themselves.

***

It was several weeks before 47 first heard of the King, and by that time he was to all intents and purposes dead himself.

Faith had been a notable part of life in the Amarr Empire. No more, and no less. It was there, always there, in speech and the back of minds, but it was not an important part unless cut off, much like breathing. The citizens of the Amarr Empire were not, whatever outsiders might like to believe, fanatics. They simply accepted faith, and had a tacit agreement among themselves not to violate its major tenets. Civilization, to them, worked much the same way. One did not impinge on another’s sphere of being – their liberty, their freedom or their joy – just as one did not, metaphorically speaking, walk into church, lower one’s pants and leave a steaming gift to the almighty. Things worked, and people understood what they needed to do and not do in order to to make them work.

The Minmatar understood this, too.

After the murder at their arrival, the group had suffered no more direct attacks, deadly or otherwise, from the guards. None were necessary. The entire colony had been constructed not for the output of its manual labor but to break the spirits of its inmates. Work started under dark blue skies and ended the same, and whatever little sleep there was to be had remained unsettled and light, punctuated by the groans and muffled wails of fellow inmates. They slept in large barracks with little privacy, three per bunk. The guards who walked through would swing their batons against the bunk beds’ metal railings, startling the inmates out of tired revelries; and once awake, the prisoners would lie still with open eyes and hear the mournful, hungry howling wails of the slaver hounds drifting over from the swamp. During the day, the sun would beat down on them as they worked, either digging or mining or, in a very few trusted cases, running services for the camp. Noise blared throughout the work areas, echoing off the rocks that surrounded them, vibrating in their tools and in their heads. Food was scarce and revolting, and clothes were rarely washed. The routine wore them out. It kept them numb, too, but only on the surface, leaving them completely susceptible to deeper influences.

The guards played games. One day per week was a holiday, during which inmates were free to rest, roam about or even leave the area altogether. No one wandered; the sun-drenched desert and the swampy woods beyond were formidable repellants. Instead, the guards would hide things – anything from colored pebbles to little skeins or wooden plaques with pictures of Amarrian idols – in the possessions of some random, unknown prisoner, then call out a hunt. If the items were found before sundown, and the right person given up, that individual would usually have their rations withdrawn for the next two days. If the items were not found, everyone lost their rations. That was the basic version of the game, but some guards were more inventive than others, and occasionally offered an alternative to the rations – especially if the target looked like they wouldn’t last two days without food.

One liked people to eat sand, or wads of someone else’s hair. The prisoner saw a friend ingest so much dirt that his exhalations left little muddy spatters on the ground; and later, overnight, he sat up with the man and held him still as his agonized, bleeding body rid itself of what it had been forced to ingest.

One liked public sex, choosing at random another inmate to accompany the victim. The rest of them had to stand around in a wide circle and maintain absolute silence, hearing only the hoarse, bleating grunts from the center.

One was partial to violence, and breakage.

The prisoner 47, after somehow bearing to watch several of these events, began to notice that certain people had an aura over them. They were safe. They stood where they wanted, instead of hiding among the assemblage. They lost their rations like everyone else if the item hunt turned out empty, but when special rules came into play they stood at ease, solitary and sheltered. All of them had apparently been in the camp for a while.

The prisoner saw them mill about, unobtrusive but entirely unconcerned, as he watched friends and compatriots tortured, molested and beaten. He saw them look at the sky not because they wanted to avoid the sights on the ground, but because they genuinely found nothing else of interest around them. Unconcerned, and unaffected.

It shook him. When he tacitly inquired about these people, every question went unanswered. It wasn’t as if they were aiding the guards, or in some manner actively participating in the degradation. Amazingly, 47 felt no real animosity towards the guards themselves: They were the catalysts of pain and suffering, but what they inflicted was so terrible as to render them inhuman in his mind. There was no more point in hating them than there was in despising the weather. But those fellow inmates carrying a secret that in any way related to or amplified the suffering of everyone else around them, those men were nothing but traitors. Worse than that, in 47′s opinion, they were evil. They were evil men. Not grey like the guards and the sand at night, but black just through and through.

And he was continually forced to watch the games, week after week after week, until one day something in him simply gave way. While two inmates were fighting in the middle of the circle, seeing who could break the other’s right arm first, 47 shuffled over to an ignored little corner of the plaza and picked up a wooden plate on which was painted in gold a picture of an Amarrian saint. It had been the day’s bounty and was now being ignored by the other prisoners, who all stood slack and gazed at the fight in the distance. Number 47 held it casually to his side as he walked up to one of the safe men, some older guy inspecting a cloud far above, and swung it back and beat him in the face with all the power he had.

The man crumpled to the ground, blood spurting from a gash on his cheek. Number 47 descended on him. He got in a handful of blows before the guards yanked him onto the ground and adminstered a beating of their own. As he lay on the ground, shortly before he lost consciousness, he caught a glimpse of the other man, lying there not far from him, apparently at ease with himself and the world. The man was smiling. He said something but it was muffled by the blood in his mouth, and all 47 could read from his lips was “hail to the king.”

It took him several days to recover, during which he was exempt from labor but given only half portions. No major bones had broken but several were badly bruised, tendons were overstretched, and his skin looked like a relief map. He had a lot of time to think while everything healed. Being yanked from his daily routine, first by the upset that had led to the beating, then by being forced to stay in the sick ward – he hated the routine but it really was all he had – turned him more and more tense, and all he could think about was his growing obsession with inequality.

It was like faith, and in his convalescence he realized that even in this place, where he truly expected to remain until he died, he had clung to his beliefs. Not the great, grand vision of God and Emperor, but the deeper, unspoken truths that lay behind them. Everyone could suffer, everyone did suffer, and 47 had grown up implicitly accepting that life, for all its joys, had plenty of suffering to heap onto its people – but only so long as everyone was equal. Not in the experience of suffering itself, for that, along with life’s pleasures and darkness, belonged to you and nobody else; but in open judgment, in evaluation, before the renownedly loving but – secretly, suspected, known in the heart of hearts of all their subjects – uncaring and disinterested authorities.

Each time he shifted, it hurt like blazes. He was aware of every breath. His body had lost so much weight that his bones clicked against one another. He was willing to die in this place, if that was his secular fate; in this cot or out in the mines. There was little, at this point, he could do about that. But he wanted so badly, with such horrible need, to go to his eventual death as a man of values, not a slack-jawed ghost who hadn’t known the meaning of the life slowly leaving him. He needed to know the meaning of things here. He knew it existed; it had to exist, or life no longer made sense and he was a ghost among ghosts. A god, or a guard, or, as it seemed, a king. A ruler of the earth. The perfect authority for this terrible place. The devil.

It had to be, the more he thought of it. The source, not of suffering, which was God’s work, but of inequality. The chaos of counterbalance to God’s own order.

And he had to meet this king. To understand why the world was the way it was. Not to comprehend it in its entirety – that was given only to God and the most wicked of men – but to understand the balance. To know how this inequality worked, of the camp and the people in it, and through that understanding, to incorporate it as a blip, a sensible aberration that was merely a stray chaotic fluke in a much greater scheme of order.

He understood that he might have a fever, too. Certainly the things he saw crawling on the inside walls of the infirmary could not possibly be there. Not even the ones that sometimes crawled up into the cot with him, with chitters and wet little clicks.

When 47 finally got out of the infirmary, he was a different man. He got into more fights, seeking to beat out the knowledge he needed. Other inmates shunned him. There were more beatings, too, though none so vicious as the first had been.

He got pulled into a game, once. He sobbed into his straw-filled pillow that night and several nights after, and in the days that followed merely fought even harder. If this was chaos, he would be part of it until recognized as its own.

And at last someone gave it away. One of the men with the holy auras, caught unawares behind a supply shed. Once he recognized 47, beneath the flurry of blows, he started to say something, but it was not until 47 had exhausted himself and fallen gasping to his knees that the victim managed to speak. Even then, it was hard; the man’s face was swollen up and distended, as if made from lumps of clay. Prisoner 47 crawled over to him and bent over his face, looking down at the mess of blood and flesh he’d brought into creation. Still, the man tried to talk, his tongue pushing away blood that 47 noticed was being watered out and then realized it was from the tears dropping from his own eyes.

“Jungle. The King is in the jungle,” the victim told him. “Go there. He will see you now.”

That same evening, not for cover but the cool of dusk, 47 ran off, through the desert for either minutes or hours, until the musky scent enveloped him.

He waded through for hours or days. The chittering was loud here, and the things clicked wetly when he held them, but they had protein and liquids and that sustained him. Occasionally there was growling in the distance, which 47 suspected came from wild slaver hounds, but never anything more. It did not worry him that the beaten man had refrained from giving directions. Whoever or whatever this King was – and 47 was just as ready for it being a desiccated tree or some other dead altar where he would lay down and die – he would be found if he wanted it.

When at last he stopped, he did not sleep. Instead, he dropped into some place dark and still. Once he came back to himself he found the night felt different, not brighter but perhaps more still.

Before his eyes, a mix of broken, felled trees and rotting foliage resolved itself into a shack, standing on crooked feet a little above the marsh. He waded over to it, clambered up onto the gap that seemed to be an entrance, and made his way in.

There was almost total darkness inside, though his eyes adjusted remarkably fast. A corner held an empty spread of straw – dry, to 47′s amazement – and in the murky gloom of another, a silhouette of deeper darkness gave the impression of a man.

“Sit,” the voice said. He obeyed. The straw crackled under his weight. He couldn’t help but touch it, languidly running his hands over it in a combination of nerves and obsession. It seemed entirely too pure to be here.

A thought struck him. “We are-” he started, then stopped to cough his voice into action. He couldn’t remember when he had last spoken.

“We are in a desert,” he tried again. His voice was deep but without much volume. He could feel it echo in his faded body. “How do we even get food, let alone the straw in our bedding?”

He could hear the King’s breathing. It turned shallow for a moment, as if he were amused. “Hot-dropped from outside, like all your supplies. Selected prisoners bring the crates into camp under cover of darkness.”

“Who selects them?”

The unseen figure, he knew, grinned at him for a moment. Then he said, not unkindly, “Is this why you came here? To ask about the straw in your bedding?”

Prisoner 47 thought it over. It was hard to hang on to thoughts for very long, and he didn’t feel certain he could articulate them too well. He slid a hand over the straw and felt how the clamminess of his palms left a slick trail over the surface. It wasn’t just that the straw was dry; he was wet. He was soaked.

He had a fever again, he realized.

Something shifted, and something small and inert was suddenly lying in front of him. “Eat this,” the voice said.

He did. It tasted greater than anything he’d had for a long time, certainly in the colony itself, though a part of him missed the crunch and chitter of the jungle outside.

He tried to collect his thoughts again. “I think I went mad.”

The King replied, “Yes. I think you’ve gone mad,” and waited for 47 to speak again.

The prisoner thought it over. At last he said, “How did you become King?”

There was a hesitation. Then, “I was like you, worn out and broken. But I kept glimpsing something else, as if behind a veil. At last, something in me gave way and let me see the darkness proper, only to find out I’d known it all along. ”

The prisoner thought this over, too. “Is that true?”

There was a short laugh. “Maybe. Or maybe I was just good at making connections and reading other people’s minds, until the point came where even the guards didn’t know what to do with me.”

“So you left.”

“So I left. I get what I need here. They bring me straw, held over their heads to keep it dry, and they bring food and drink and whatever else I require. If the guards have it, so do I.”

“Why?”

“What else is there, in this place?” the King said to him. “Except eventual death, and all your suffering until then. And me, giving you the faith you need.”

“Does everyone follow you?”

“No. And they die either way, but the ones who came to know me can live in a little comfort, which is briefly important, and die with understanding, which means so much more.”

The King continued, “I decide who is safe. My people do not get chosen for games. If you get hurt, you will be allowed to mend before going on. You will never lose a meal. It’s not for everyone.”

“I made it here,” 47 said. Even with the meal in his stomach, it was hard to think.

“You made it here. You went into the darkness. You can be one of our own, if you wish.”

In the darkness, 47 nodded. “What do I need to do now?” he said.

“The same thing you did that let you be led here. Embrace it. Accept it. Know that you belong to it.”

“The chaos.”

“Oh yes,” the King said, as if receiving the right answer to an unasked question. “Exactly that.”

The voice grew closer, as if the King had leaned in. “Every man who comes here is a man of faith, a creature of thought come to understand that there is something greater than you. But until you come here you have nothing like the true faith, only carefully selected pieces of it. Here is where you fill in the rest. Here is where you become, at last, a believer of a dark and utter truth. Did you feel it missing, before you came here?”

“Yes,” 47 whispered.

“Was it a life that seems now not only distant, but fake as well? False, and incomplete?”

“Yes,” 47 said.

“Yes,” the King echoed. “Here is all the truth a man of faith, a true man of faith, could ever have sought.”

The prisoner knew he was right. Here it was, all of it. In a prisoner’s camp where people were broken; in an emptiness full of beasts and starvation. The balance, found at last.

“Thank you,” 47 said. It came out choked. He cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said again, loud and clear.

“I’m glad you found the faith,” the King told him.

The prisoner 47 left the cabin and began making his way back to camp.

On his way through the marshy wilderness, he heard the growl again, much closer this time. He turned and found himself looking at a slaver hound, realizing in that moment what a terrible joke, what a perfect fulfilment of this life it was to have these beasts here to guard the faithful, diverted from their original purpose of guarding and attacking Minmatar slaves back in the Empire. He could hear the hound’s hoarse, deep breathing. Puffs of air wafted from its hungry face.

He stood still, calmly looking back at it. And in that animal face, with its sharp teeth dripping saliva, and the eyes red-rimmed and unblinking, he saw no longer a hunger, but a fellowship.

The Desert Fathers

Well, uh. Okay. My name is Kartanen Sedia. I am the overseer on Outpost 4972, where in the past three years we have been extracting minerals used in the production of various hybrid polymers that in turn are used to create advanced components for the capsuleer industry.

In fact, in those three years we have sustained a consistent output in the top forty-eight percentile while simultaneously maintaining a perfect safety record extending not only to security but to employee safety, and-… I’m sorry?

Oh. Of course. Yes.

First off, I am sorry about what happened. I assure you that once we are done here, I intend to launch my own investigation and get to the bottom of this. Szekel is not getting away with what he took.

It’s not easy, living in the desert. If they hadn’t discovered those mineral deposits I don’t imagine anyone would ever make their home here, at least not on this continent. That goes double for the scientists. You can always find hard workers for the excavation, people with calluses and no savings, but it’s harder pulling in those who consider air conditioning a basic human right, no matter what kind of interesting rock we’ve suddenly pulled out of our back yard.

Yes, I hired them all. Yes, even him. As I said, I regret what happened. His resume was-… my own? What do you mean?

All right. I’ve been an overseer on various outposts for most of my life, really. I was born on an asteroid colony and spent a good part of my life working those, but eventually the lack of solid footing got to me and I transferred to planetside work instead. I maintained exemplary security during my tenure on those colonies, with a near-perfect record in my thirty-year career.

Yes, including Outpost 3478, out in the dark near Stain.

Yes, where the Sansha came. What’s that to do with anything? It was ages ago, I did what was right, I was investigated afterwards and exonerated, and nothing’s ever been prov-…

Ah, hell. God damn it, god damn it and god damn you.

Nothing’s ever been quite the same since. Happy now? Everything changed. Yes, I’ve been working thirty years in the same damn business at the same damn level of lower management, and all because the cyborgs came in and ate up my people all those years ago. Nobody trusts me anymore.

Well, I suppose, yes, but I wouldn’t call it a sliding slope. It’s just hard to pull up from that kind of career slump. I drifted through jobs on other colonies and finally got a contract at this one, where I had intended to spend my remaining years until retirement.

No, not that well funded. I’ll have some money to live on, but … wait, why are you even asking me this? We’re trying to find a thief here!

No, I don’t have a lot of money. Not after the Sansha debacle.

Why are you asking me this?

***

Certainly. My name is Jania Betodt. I am working on my post-doctorate studies in astrobiology. The atmospheric properties on this planet make it a haven for acquiring large intact samples, though I must say I’ve never quite grown accustomed to the living conditions. I am married to Phaedan Betodt, and we have a wonderful daughter, Adara.

No, they’re not with me, but those are the costs of an interstellar life, right? They visit me on a regular basis. Anyway, I have had some noteworthy articles published in peer-reviewed journals, including at the University of-… well, yes, I suppose it has been a while since they last were here. I do communicate with them on a fairly regular basis, you know. When the relays work, yes. We’re a very close-knit family.

Well, because there was important work to be done here. I didn’t want to leave them behind, of course. It simply didn’t suit us to break up our careers. Look, is this about Szekel or my family?

What do you mean, ‘Both’?

Yes, I did work with him. Yes, closely. He’s a talented scientist and a hard-working man, whatever else he may be. We pulled a lot of long, hard shifts working on-site whenever a new batch of data came in. There’s only so long you have to study the new samples before the life they harbor is extinguished, no matter how well you may try to prolong it.

When that asteroid landed a few months ago, we were in heaven. It contained sealed pockets that our scans indicated might harbor brand new life. Only microscopic archaea, of course, but the way they seemed to be reacting with the metals in the asteroid was astounding. I don’t think we’ve even begun to scratch the surface, though of course Szekel’s disappearance, and the data I … guess he took, all of that is going to be rather a setback.

My daughter? She is with her father, and before you ask, I do miss her. I miss her a lot.

Him too, of course.

Yes, they were long shifts.

***

Rakan Dep.

I’m a security guy on this outpost.

Nothing else.

Hey, I’m cooperating. Even if I don’t know who the hell you people are.

Disgruntled? Hah! Listen. Listen. We are on a desert planet. There is nothing here but sand. If you end up living in a place like this with no hope of anything better, disgruntled is the least of your worries.

Well, okay. There’s a few towns and settlements in the area, but you’d be an idiot if you thought you could walk there by yourself. You’re isolated here, pretty much. You make it to the outpost, fine, but you’re not making it out on foot again.

I suppoze Szekel must’ve gotten help, yeah. Assuming you haven’t found him yet. Scorched and dead and picked at by the jackals, by now, if he went out by himself.

Of course I’ve been to the settlements. That’s why I’m not disgruntled, isn’t it, my pretties? Besides, there’s no fun to be had elsewhere.

Fun, yes.

Reading scripture, group hugs, and watching the sky. What do you think I’m talking about? Goddamn old fashioned fun-for-money. It’s mostly gambling, actually. I’d stick my dick in the noontime sand before putting it to some of the women you get down there. I’m sure it’d burn about the same in the end.

Hah! Thanks. I am available for children’s parties, you know.

Money, yeah … I don’t have enough, truth be told. Never quite manage to hit that mark. Always seem to spend too much. Hey, I’m not ashamed. I pull long shifts. You’ll find idiots anywhere who say they work hard and play hard, in that order, as if the first causes the second. I can’t say the desert life is my first choice, but I’ll live it the way I would anywhere else, and that means I need to bust my back earning for it. Doesn’t make it right or wrong, and certainly doesn’t mean I deserve any sympathy. It’s just how it is.

Yeah, the scientists got plenty. Especially after that damn meteor hit and the grants started coming in again. They’re decent people, most of them. Humans like the rest of us.

No … I just mean they do human things. I’m not gonna gossip. But let me tell you, it gets cold at night, here in the desert.

Sure, I’m human too. What, you’re calling me out on my track record? Go ahead. I know it’s grubby. You try working security all your life, live in the desert, too; see how clean you come out. Never taken money from people I shouldn’t, though. Nope. No, I don’t care how you put it – I’m clean when it comes to that. I may have taken some from people who shouldn’t have been dumb enough to bet it, and I may have been an intermediary for some people who had money and pale skin and fear of a little sand. But I haven’t gone dirty. You know Kartanen, the overseer? He gave me a shot at this. I’m here because of him.

No, he’s not a client. He’s saving up, thinking of buying a little house on a small planet a couple jumps from here, somewhere in … 32-GI9, I believe. He doesn’t think anyone knows about it, but I do. I watch the money. He’s never made bets or anything. He’s a decent man. And besides, you don’t touch someone’s life savings, not in this business. You know who people are.

Szekel? I don’t know him. I don’t know him at all. I have no idea how he breached security like he did.

I suppose it’s my responsibility, yeah. What are you getting at?

***

Look, it’s been three days. I’m getting tired of sitting in this room all the time. I’m the overseer on this colony and I don’t care who you people are, you can’t just come in here, shut everything down, and pull people into a-…

Yes! I hired Szekel, I let the man in and I gave him a job here, being fully aware that we were working with highly sensitive data, that we’d had an important rain and we were due to have another, and that he would be overseeing the research teams along with Jania. What else do you want?

What do you mean, everything?

***

What’s that you’re bringing in? I’m well familiar with all the equipment on this colony and this is not a part of our stocks. Look, if you have brought in your own scientific equipment, I need to be told. I am the sole remaining head researcher on this colony and I am to be included in all communications-…

Uh. Yes, I’m sitting comfortably. Why do you ask?

***

The fuck you doing with that thing in here?

***

I think, I think, I think we got off entirely on the wrong foot here. I did vet Szekel, I did give him a job, yes, certainly. But I haven’t done anything wrong. Surely you see that.

Of course I know how valuable the asteroid was. Of course I did. I am used to handling serious responsibility, I will have you know.

That was a cheap shot. We had no idea the Sansha were coming.

Look, there’s really no need to activate that thing. I am cooperating fully. I don’t know where you think you have your authority from, but-…

Oh. Really?

Ah.

All right.

Well, can you please tell them that I would never work for anyone else? I mean, while I was overseer here. Certainly not our competitors. I wouldn’t be feeding anything to them, data or whatever else.

I really don’t think you need to turn on that thing.

***

We did work together. I told you that. I worked with him, and yes, we got along fine. Can someone please tell me what this is all about? I don’t-… why did you just put that there? Why is that there? I consented to the monitors because I wanted you to know I was telling the truth, but I don’t think I want that there at all.

We just worked together. I didn’t know he was pulling data, or that he intended to do whatever he did with it. He was a good man and I trusted him. There was nothing going on. Can you please take that thing off me? Look, I am going to tell you whatever you want. I mean, I’m not going to hold back. I’ll be honest. I am not covering up for Szekel. I know full well how important our research was here, for me and this colony and for our employers. That’s who you’re working for, right?

I am going to ask you one last time to take that thing off, to-… What are you doing? No, come over here and take it off!

***

Look, I knew the dude from a little betting. The worker’s pool, mostly. Maybe a few extras, too. He wasn’t a bad guy, I’m sure, but he did make some bad bets. Had a few people upset at him over in the townships, but he was working to fix that. And I believe him. I did believe him.

Maybe he was doing something else, and maybe I’ll tell you all about it, but you better wheel that goddamn thing back out right this minute before I’ll say another word. I’ve worked in nullsec before. I’ve worked on colonies that rebelled, I’ve been there when the black suits come in, and I know what that hellish thing is for.

So maybe Szekel needed money and was looking for a way to make some, or maybe he just didn’t like the perks of being in the desert. That’s all I’m saying. That is all I am goddamn saying.

***

Look, look, look, look, look, look, I know there’s a guard. There is a guard on this colony who has money problems and access to security logs and probably a guilty conscience over something, hell if I know what other people think. I’ve seen them talking together, and I know they were in cahoots. It was him. If you want to find someone guilty of working with Szekel, it was him. Talk to him and you’ll see. Make him talk and you’ll see. Please take that thing off me. It was the guard.

***

I’m sorry about my earlier outburst. It was unprofessional of me. Unbecoming. Just let me take a breath, clear my head.

Alright. We can resolve this like human beings, I’m sure.

So. Of course you hear things, working on this station.

Yes, of course I will tell you. I am a respected scientist. We are having a reasonable discussion, you all and I. We are professionals. Yes. I have rights, and I know they apply even when there’s a communications blackout. Even in the private sector, on a colony in the middle of a desert, I have rights.

Of course. If you’ll just take that thing off me I can tell you all you want in detail, if you’ll just take no don’t activate it again please I beg you-…

***

You know they had an affair.

That’s all I’m saying. You can stop it now.

She mentored him when he came in, taught him to use the equipment, and spent all her time with him. Long hours in the lab, she’ll tell you. I know better. Lab, my ass. I know what the access logs would say. You can start up a job in those labs, let it idle for hours, and do whatever you want in the meantime.

Doesn’t take long to figure out how he might’ve got what he wanted, does it?

I want you to stop it now. I want you to unplug that damn thing and take these straps off me, because I am a patient man but I don’t need to be pushed and prodded to tell you anything.

Don’t you touch that dial. Don’t you touch it.

I’m going to throw up again, you bastards. I’m going to throw up. I’m gonna throw up!

***

Okay. I took the money, too. A share of it. It’s on my special account. No, it wasn’t for 32-GI9. It was to betray the colony, to let Szekel take the data to our competitors, or sell it on the open market, or whatever. Not 32-GI9. Just … make it stop. That’s all I know. Make it stop.

I did take the money, I don’t care if you can’t see it. I took it, all of it. What? No, no, a share, that’s what I meant, a share.

Thank you. Thanks for stopping it. I’ll just … I’ll just catch a breath.

You people are pretty brave, aren’t you? Coming in with your tools and your unquestionable authority.

Well. Let me tell you something.

You’ve gone over the limit and I intend to report you, I am going to stop you, I AM GOING TO TAKE YOU DOWN, I WILL TAKE ACT-

***

Don’t make me do this. Please. I don’t want to drag him into this, we haven’t spoken forever and the last time we talked I had to tell him that I … that I …

Don’t make me do this. If I talk to Phaedan then I’ll have to talk to Adara as well, and I don’t want her involved.

No. No, you’re wrong, I do have a choice. In fact, I want you to bring in my overseer. I don’t care what authority you people have, I want you to prove to me that he sanctioned the things you’ve been doing to me.

What do you mean, he-…

Oh no. No, you didn’t. Not Kartanen. No. I-… no.

No, don’t show me pictures.

I will make the call. I will contact Phaedan, I will talk to him and get him to come here if that’s what you really want, but please, not Adara. Oh gods. Kartanen was a good man. Please, not Adara.

You promise?

***

You can’t break me. Go to hell. You can’t break me.

You know the truth anyway. Oh yeah, she asked me to delete it from the logs.

When I get out of here, I will find you and I will hurt you.

Go to hell. You can’t break me.

***

…

***

You promise?

You promise?

You promise?

In the love of your life – any one of them, for there are many, no matter what you might think – there are three people, three human beings you fall for. There is the one at the start where everything is fresh and new, which is when you see only what they want you to see; the one some time after, when the gloves come off and they show you – or stop bothering to hide, at least – whatever else they knew they contained; and the last, long after, when you’ve begun to see so deep into them that you can tell what they cannot. If you’re lucky both of you will dovetail, fitting each other and changing in each other’s perceptions as you pass through time.

***

I was a Guristas operator, working out of a minor, unaligned asteroid colony in a system of really no repute at all. After years in my line of work – I was only twenty-eight but I’d started early, having developed the necessary business acumen as a teenager and had the required set of morals beaten pretty soundly into me as a child – I had come to the conclusion that nondescript, monotonous but decently populated locales were the best places to do my kind of business. Everyone here walked with their eyes to the ground and their ears clogged up with asteroid dust. Most of what I did involved oversight of nearby transactions, the kind where I linked up one person to another through channels I made damn sure were safe from prying, and acted as intermediary, facilitator or occasional pacifier, depending on the situation. ‘Nearby’ is even a misnomer; the distance between me and my customers was measurable in astronomical units, and I was very good at keeping tabs on the locations and movements of everyone I did business with. On occasion someone would dock at the station and request to see me in person, but I was well enough in with the local station operators that I always received plenty of warning and, if necessary, backup.

I was surprised one night when a call came in over the local line to inform me that a team of allegedly Angel-affiliated operators was to dock at the station and had requested my assistance. I was free to work with anyone I liked, so long as the Guristas got their due, but people explicitly affiliated with the rank and file of other pirate factions were loath to seek out my business. When they did, it was usually out of desperate need rather than convenience.

The call included verified contact details, which was normal, but also single-use encryption keys for their positions within the Angel hierarchy, which was rather out of the ordinary. I ran those and they all checked out. The group captain, a woman called Hona, was member of a special operations squad within a little-known branch of the rather extensive Angel hierarchy. It was a vague enough title and rank that I couldn’t make out what her real job was, but since she was working here on the outskirts and willing to meet with nonfaction black market personnel, it was bound to be interesting. I agreed to the meeting, and as it was only Hona who wanted to see me, requested that the rest of her team be given good accommodations well away from the tumult of the mining grounds. I was always open to new business relationships, and having the clients’ first memories be of sleepless nights and trembling furniture was not a good idea.

We met in a local bar whose owner had considerately set up isolation booths, both aural and electrical. I arrived first and took a seat with my back to the exit – I wanted to project a comfortable, slightly trusting relaxation, and besides, if I was unsafe here of all places, it wouldn’t matter which way I faced when shots got fired. I did discreetly place a small scrambler on the middle of the table; no lack of faith in the bar’s isolation tech, but I also wanted to project the feeling that I knew what the hell I was doing.

The beating of a tattoo on the floor told me that she had approached. From the muffled hush behind me a calm, crisp voice said my name, and I nodded in acknowledgment without turning in my chair. She walked around me and took at seat at the booth, directly facing me. There was a dominant air about her – it’s been so long I can barely remember what she looked like, except that her face was set in determination as well as something else, creeping towards exhaustion.

“Welcome,” I said. “Drinks or anything?”

“Just business,” she told me.

“I hope I can help.”

She nodded and said, “So do I,” in a tone that didn’t quite imply a threat so much as an inclination not to suffer idiots lightly.

Humor, even in the darkest of circumstances – especially in those, really – was a major asset in any potential business partner, so I decided to test the waters a little. I shrugged and with a nonchalant air said, “If I can’t, well. Shame.”

She shrugged in turn, and seemed to accept this. “If it’s not your own fault, nothing to be done.”

I agreed.

Then she added, “If you do mislead us, of course, we’ll send death squads after you,” and I decided I liked her.

It took a while for her to explain the particulars. The basic case was simple – undercover Angel recruitment agents had been turning up dead – but the real details lay in what they’d done thus far to find the culprit. Hona did not want me to waste time following the same tracks. As she described the precise work she’d undertaken to find the murderers, I was fascinated, first by the clear and definite purpose with which she had followed up on this – the murders had been particularly vicious and taken place in areas not safe for Angels to be in, so even recruiting people to her squad had been an undertaking – and then by the meticulous way in which she’d investigated what few leads she’d found. At some point I admitted to her that I would have a hard time improving on her work, and she took my compliments in good grace.

She was charming. Presentable, assertive, in control. We got on well. As the evening wore on I found myself revealing to her a number of options that I had not even considered mentioning for the fee her superiors intended to pay me. I openly discussed, without breaking confidentiality, the extent of my connections and the abilities they lent me. She told me about life in the Angel Cartel, not only as an agent of theirs but as a regular person living on colonies under their aegis.

We had drinks. We got on even better. She had signed up for the Angel service because, she said, she wanted to control the world as much as protect the people in it. Also, kick people in the teeth. I was here, I found myself saying, because it was a safe place, netted with webs of communication that I could – there was that word again – control, and yet remain at a safe distance. She understood this. She was good at talking to people, and at appearing tough enough to exercise an authority that she often did not have. We agreed on the loneliness of space. Where our careers would take us, we each admitted that we had no idea.

We did not end up sleeping together. We wanted to, and so we didn’t.

But at the end of a long evening and a long night, we decided that she and her team would stay on station for a couple of days. We had found in each other a capable, intelligent person, and we were convinced that together we could develop a plan to root out the criminal Hona so badly wanted to find.

It took a couple of days and a couple beyond that, and I had to get in touch with more people than I had expected to, but finally we acquired sufficient data to develop an extensive plan of action. It involved a series of inquiries in neighbouring space, interviews and investigations using multiple local contacts, heuristic searches through vast repositories of local data that I had access to, and a definite possibility of bringing in added manpower and weaponry in case Hona found herself outmatched by the criminals. We were going to present it to her team that evening.

Then I got a note from her saying that they’d received an unexpected lead: one of the recruiting agents in a nearby constellation had lost his partner to yet another messy, horrible murder, but this time there was evidence the culprit might still be in the area. She had to go. She was sorry, but she had to go.

I never answered the note. She knew where I’d be if she needed me.

***

The next time we met she stumbled through my door covered in blood. My immediate shock was the sight of her, the poor tattered thing; quickly followed, to my shame, by a shock that she had made it all the way to my quarters without me receiving any advance warning.

I didn’t bother to say anything, but helped her as gently as I could to the bathroom. One of the compartments there held an assortment of healing agents, coagulants and such, including a few expensive plexiglas syringes that held different types of nanomaterial. Some of the items I had in there were expensive and even bordering on illegal, but I hadn’t bothered to hide them. I’d figured that if I ever needed to access to this stuff, I couldn’t expect to be in any shape or condition to burrow into any kind of secret compartments.

Hona was cut and burnt all over, but the biggest immediate worry was a deep gash on her leg. It was still bleeding, so I reasoned she must’ve had access to some kind of basic medical help along the way – she would’ve bled out otherwise – and focused my attention on it. The obvious conclusion of the focus she must’ve possessed to reach me in particular didn’t occur to me right at that moment. I sprayed her with local anaesthetic and sprayed my own hands with a sealant that formed a second skin, lest I touch the anaesthetic with my bare hands; then smeared a disinfecting coagulant into the wound. It stopped bleeding after a while, to my immense relief, and I got out the clamps. Her head was turned to one side, but I shifted a little to block the leg from view just in case. Once I’d stretched the clamps to match the wound and fixed them to the skin, they gave off a burning smell and started retracting, pulling it together and sealing it with immense local heat. It was not the most pleasant of sights – the skin blistered and dripped at the mouth of the wound – but it was a million times better than watching Hona bleed out on my bathroom floor. Once the clamps had properly sealed the skin they dissolved into the leg, where they would, at a much slower pace, continue to seal up and heal the wound underneath.

I glanced up at Hona, only to find her staring right at me with unblinking eyes. Her mouth was slightly open and she was taking shallow breaths. She’d gone into shock. I gave her a little smile and stroked her cheek, then took hold of her hand and slowly stroked that as well. Whether she noticed the small patch I affixed to the inside of her wrist, I don’t know, but in a few moments her breath slowed, and not too long after she drifted into sleep.

She stayed with me for several weeks. Try as I might, I could not get her to tell me what had happened, other than that it had involved the murderer she’d been after. That person, she said, had been brought to justice. I sensed there was quite a bit more to it than that. She, in turn, got frustrated and then annoyed at my curiosity, and didn’t hesitate to let loose when she thought I’d done enough prying.

It wasn’t a good time. She recovered from the initial, physical shock – her wounds healed remarkably fast given how serious they’d seemed at first and how little proper medical care she received both before and after coming to me – but there was a deeper-set trauma that neither one of us were ever able to properly deal with. It wasn’t just shock; it was a nervous breakdown, something I realized the first time Hona woke up screaming and then had brought home to me when she sullenly refused, then and later, to discuss anything in her past. Not just the incident, but anything else prior: Her career with the Angels. Her past team and what had become of them. Us.

She was not a woman who would allow herself to be helped. She needed it – she’d come to me, I reasoned, because I could give her a balance of safety and trust on one hand and anonymity and distance on the other – but she hated it, and I bore the brunt of her frustrations. All the sides I’d seen of her in our initial meeting came out reverted, turned in on themselves. She continually attempted to dominate our relationship, or whatever it was; in words, and in actions as well, using her secret past as excuse to go into shrieking arguments over issues of no importance whatsoever. At times she’d treat me like an underling, someone to order around. Other times she’d obsess about our safety, continually asking me about the security mechanisms in my quarters and on the station, then freaking out when she thought she perceived gaps in them. She was good at using words, and when she put up a front there was nothing I could say to pierce it, good or bad.

We slept together, sometimes. We didn’t always want to, but we did.

Despite her intermittent worries over security, there were times when she was amazingly nonchalant about her arrival on the station. My own questions about potential repercussions or chase went unanswered outside of brief, slightly condescending comments from her that there was no risk hanging over us. When I finally did look into the records of her arrival – it took me more than two weeks to even get to that point, caught up as I was with her arrival and the change in her personality – I was astounded to find that there was no registration, no check or mark, nothing whatsoever denoting that she had even arrived in this area of space, much less crawled bleeding up to my doorstep.

The anger I took in good grace. I’m sure I yelled back just as much, though that’s not the point. She was changing. I could tell, easily, even though in truth I barely knew her, so I was sure she could tell, too. Sometimes, in peaceful moments, I’d see her stare out my window, at the colony outside and at the protective atmospheric shielding and the stars beyond it; and I’d see something in her face, either shifting about or, possibly, slowly settling. She was on her way to somewhere. She was shrieking because she was moving too fast, but she definitely had some manner of destination. Even with the arguments, and the petty games, and all the rest that we could never have borne for a long period of time anyway, it hurt a little that this destination couldn’t be here.

Why I took it, well … I knew that I was getting to know another side of her, one she’d not have shown to many other people. Even in all the tumult, I still respected her; I saw a woman trying her hardest to deal with events that had clearly stretched her mind beyond its breaking limits. I wasn’t unfamiliar with screaming arguments and fights – I’d ended up at this colony, in this job, for a reason, and even though I’d progressed far since those ugly childhood times, I still had coping mechanisms ready for use. I did get upset, as anyone would, and I did feel hurt and let down, but I retained my perspective.

Besides, I knew this situation would eventually change, one way or another – for her, or for me. If I had been entirely happy with my life on the station I would likely have been more protective of it and less inclined to let Hona in. In reality, I had been growing so dissatisfied with it – especially since that initial meeting with Hona, when I’d had it hammered home just how lonely and meaningless this existence was – that I knew my own time on the colony was increasingly limited. So I kept my anger in check, allowing it to slowly rise and strengthen. I wanted to leave, sometimes, just pull up stakes and disappear, but I knew that if I dared, I would leave behind in Hona a guilt that would never be extinguished. She would think that she drove me off, and I couldn’t allow that, because now matter how badly we got along – and how much I wanted her, all at the same time – I knew that this was not about me, or about us: It was, in the end, solely about her. That face, growing increasingly peaceful between the rages it was forced to express. That stare, seeing other planets. And that strange body, healed too soon from terrible damage, hidden too easily from electronic eyes. Something else, more than human.

One day we woke up together. She turned to me and whispered “sorry.” Then she kissed me with warm lips, open eyes, calm breathing. It tingled, and afterwards I lay in bed, stunned, more peaceful than I’d been for a very long time, far beyond her arrival in my life.

I didn’t hear her when she left, but I knew. I left soon after, myself, on some road of my own.

***

When I awoke, I was in a cave, surrounded by lit torches, and there were people standing around me. I grinned at them.

In the preceding months I’d been drifting about through various regions of space, trying my hand at different jobs and different lives. I’d had enough money saved up that I could leave any place whenever I liked without fear of starvation, but my natural ability to develop and make use of connections came to the fore, and I found that I was able to settle in nicely wherever I decided to stop. Eventually, though, I’d grow unhappy with whatever life I’d set up, and disconcerted at seeing old patterns arise again. I would isolate myself, no matter how big or welcoming the crowds around me. I saw all people eventually as collections of usable traits and potential benefits. I sought a general control over life that the universe wasn’t much inclined to let me have, so I ended up applying it only to myself, and in the process disengaging from other people before they could start poking through the shields I’d put up.a

During the drifting it did on occasion occur to me, yes, that the one person in recent memory I’d had a different relationship with had been Hona, first because we connected through an understanding of our own loneliness, and then later when her raw, exposed, confused self was too taken up by its demons to bother with faking it from me and my own. I never reached out to her, nor made any attempt to find out what had become of her. I figured that in time, if I was meant to, I’d find out; and besides, the way the woman had covered her tracks when coming to me, there wasn’t a chance I’d find her unless she wanted to leave tracks.

It finally happened when I was headed through Angel space. I received an anonymous request for a meeting that ended up bringing me to a large asteroid in the middle of nowhere. Just as I was about to turn the shuttle back, it malfunctioned. First engines, then pathfinding. Then life support. The oxygen lasted amazingly long, really; I breathed easy the whole time. I knew it was her.

They brought me into a city of stone, encased somewhere in the asteroid. Stalactites like cathedrals hung suspended from the ceiling. Past the center, on the outskirts, in an area where people spoke in hushed voices, there was a building – a hollowed-out stalagmite – where they led me and left me to wait alone.

Hona was there.

We talked for a while. She sounded distant; not for lack of commitment to our conversation, but as someone who now lived somewhere very far off from the rest of us. She explained to me how she had come to be there, how she’d come to terms with what she’d become and, once having reached that level of honesty with herself, had begun to be honest with the world at large. She had accumulated fellow thinkers – she did not have to call them followers; I understood what they were – and they had found themselves drawn here, to this living rock. I asked them how they got food and oxygen here, and she said the rock provided. I enquired whether they were as safe from prying eyes here as she had been after her accident, and she said the rock gave them all the protection they needed. I told her she was being maddeningly vague and she said me she didn’t know what in the world I was talking about. Torches burned on every wall, casting their arcane lights on her.

The people in this place, she explained, did not worship gods, but powers and universal forces, and looked to her as the conduit. She did not attempt to explain these forces and I did not ask. When I said, only partly in jest, that this made her a demigod, she looked at me for some time with the strangest smile on her face. I met her gaze and smiled back, and it took me a while to realize that whenever I blinked, I still saw her there. Somewhere in the dark of my head, where my eyes couldn’t go. She asked me to turn around, and I did. She was still there. When I asked her if this was magic, she laughed, a beautiful laugh, and shook her head.

I told her I was glad that she’d found the place meant for her. When she tried to shrug it off by saying it could’ve been anyone, I interrupted.

“It’s perfect for you. You’re in control, you get to plan and think and care for other people, and you belong to a system greater than yourself; greater than anyone, really, given the way you’ve described it. I don’t think I know anyone who’d fit this role so perfectly, let alone get through the initiation ritual the way you did.”

“You think what happened to me was a ritual?” she asked.

“Not in a preordained sense,” I said. “I don’t believe bad things happen for a reason. But I think it brought you to a place you might not have reached otherwise. And I think you’re proud of it, and of yourself. That’s why you invited me here.”

“You think I brought you here to brag?” she said, looking immensely amused.

“No, dear heart. You’ve no interest in acknowledgment nor compliments. You brought me here to show me you were all right,” I said. “And I think you are. I think you found the end.”

She nodded her thanks. I stayed a little longer, but we didn’t say much more. I enjoyed being with her, and she with me, and we exchanged thoughts that went beyond language. When I finally did leave, I did not need the acolytes to show me the way out.

***

I’m still headed somewhere. Haven’t quite found my way there yet. It’s alright. She’ll be there, however long I have to take.

I still see her when I close my eyes.

Rust Creeps

I’d had a tiring and frustrating day, the kind you don’t even want to mull over once you’ve lain down in your bunk. There are too many days like that, these days. You close your eyes and what you start seeing is too much for a tired old man to take, so you keep them open instead, you look out the viewport at the unblinking stars, and you listen to the silence.

That was what brought him to mind: The silence, or rather, the impression of it; that velvet cloth laid gently over the air. It never is truly silent on the ship – the mind merely learns to block out all those little noises – but you don’t hear the other crew members much. The ship is built to muffle the sound of other people going about their off-hour lives. This is good; it gives you a little privacy, and keeps you from losing your mind if the person on the other side of the bunk wall in your quarters has a sinus problem or likes to sing.

No, the only thing you hear in that near-dead quiet is the ship itself. Adjusting to space. Gently balancing its mass distribution and heat. Stretching.

I hadn’t listened to it for a long while, not consciously, but it felt soothing after the long, rough day. This was not a tour I had wanted to sign up for. Our dubious mission aside, the ship itself was not the best and certainly not the most well-maintained in the cluster – even Eren would’ve had a hard time with it – but we all have our dues to pay. We all have our dues to pay, and Eren, who paid dearly, he knew how to listen.

***

Eren and I first met on a similar tour years and years ago. The technology at the time was pretty advanced, obviously – I live on a goddamn spaceship – but still not nearly so much as it is today. There was, in particular, a dearth of reliable automated repair systems, which is a major problem for a type of transport that involves shifting a highly complicated piece of technology through an extremely simple and deadly medium.

On ships like that, good hands-on engineers are worth their weight in any precious metal you care to name. The best ones tend to be more in tune with their machines than they are with the crew, and they get plenty of leeway both when it comes to proper procedure and working conditions. Some people have a problem with that. I don’t. My ship’s purpose is to get me to wherever I’m going, safe and sound, and forcing some guy to alphabetize his spare parts instead of doing repairs isn’t really going to help.

That ship was having a hard time of it. We’d managed to avoid taking damage – I think we were transporting some bulky cargo, and we certainly weren’t kitted out for combat – but something, somewhere, kept breaking down and slowing our way. Nobody on the crew could fix it, not even the people supposedly brought on as specialized repairmen. Eventually our team leader announced that we’d be docking a few systems away, a detour that would add considerable time to a schedule that was already far delayeddue to all the breakdowns. I openly wondered why we were going to all that trouble; if there was a special team for us to pick up on that station, or special equipment that could detect the flaws in our machinery, or what.

My boss at the time said there wasn’t. There was just this one guy.

We hauled ourselves to the station and sat there for half a day. I was put on assist, but I never even got a chance to talk to the man. They sent me instructions on how to prep the repair area, which mostly involved me crawling all the way into the bowels of the ship while lugging a bunch of heavy gear with me. I deposited it in the manner I’d been ordered to and waited around in case he’d need anything else, but when someone entered it turned out to be my own boss, who told me to get the hell out. Eren couldn’t be disturbed, he said.

I grunted, got up and left. For some reason the walkway lights had been dimmed, to the point where I had to feel my way along the handrails even to see where I was going. I took slow steps, muttering to myself in the darkness – not something I usually do, but it had been a long shift and I was too tired to keep my mouth shut. It wasn’t until I’d made it to the exit that I realized what my own stupid voice had nearly hidden from my ears. Someone had been whispering. Someone had stood stock still in that dark corridor and whispered, either to themselves or to me. I turned and glared down the walkway, and just as the door closed on the engine room I saw that stranger – and I knew it was that Eren guy – walk through it, one hand trailing over the metal surface. The vision is still burnt into my memory: A younger man silhouetted in the door, his face looking up at the bulkhead opposite with that puzzled expression people have when they’re trying to work something out, his posture that of someone young enough not to have to worry about it just yet.

Of course he fixed the problem. He stayed onboard for a few days before getting off at our next port of call, and nobody spoke to him. We weren’t ordered to leave him be, but he gave off that kind of awkward loner vibe; and anyway, someone who could just walk in and do what he did was not necessarily someone you’d feel safe around. Geniuses – not just highly talented people, or the lucky ones, but actual bona fide geniuses – tend to attract either attention or trouble. At that period of my life I felt it would be best to avoid the chance that either of those might splash on to me.

I didn’t see him for years after that, nor did I think much about that time. I was doing well. I’d had the good luck of signing on to safer vessels, which is probably the reason Eren remained absent from my life. But everything breaks down eventually, and after a long haul through dangerous areas with not a lot of time to waste, we called on him to patch up our broken machines. As it turned out, I was the only man who had ever worked with him before – if you can call it work to lay out the instruments and scuttle out before the band starts to play – so I was automatically assigned to do the same. This time I did get to meet the man, and while he was very reticent to talk – and I certainly didn’t push him – we got along well in our own quiet way. He looked a lot more worn than I’d imagined. I remember being amazed that I’d ever thought he could be younger than me, for he clearly wasn’t, but then my sighting hadn’t been under the best of conditions, and heaven knows we all fall short of God’s glory in full daylight. I enjoyed watching him work, and didn’t wonder how he managed to find the exact fault in the mess of steel and insulation he was fairly buried in. I think he sensed this, for after the work was done and Eren long gone, I got a commendation from the captain, and was given to understand that if ever they called on the man’s services again I would be expected to act as his assistant.

To my knowledge they never did request his help again, but then I didn’t stay with them long. I’d had enough of the weightless life – there is perfect gravity on ships but in some sections they need to shift you a little to the side to accommodate for their designs, and walking on walls will get to you after a while. Instead I signed on to a colony in safe space, working at a refinery that enveloped well over half the asteroid it was located on.

Truth be told, it wasn’t more than a few years before I was thoroughly sick of that life, too. I guess if you make the jaunt into space, and take to it, you cease being the kind of person that takes root anywhere at all. Nonetheless, no decent tours were on offer, so I stayed on and patiently did my job.

The break came from the strangest of places. A ship docked, which was no great news, but surprisingly it was without cargo and had no trade agreements with the colony’s ruling corporation. They did need repairs, they said, but we could offer them no men or equipment that they did not already possess on their vessel.

What they wanted was me.

They needed the services of a specialist, they said, and were on route to the system where he was located. It was quite a few jumps from here, but the expense was negligible when compared to the losses they would incur over the upcoming weeks and months if they didn’t stop having breakdowns right in the middle of tightly scheduled deliveries. Supposedly this specialist was worth the trip, but he would only sign up if an assistant were brought on as well. Someone who had extensive mechanical experience, but more importantly, someone who had worked with him before. Someone like me.

I grabbed the chance. Packed my things, signed the waivers, got to know the crew and settled in for the long haul to see Eren.

When we met, I was rendered speechless. If I hadn’t seen him a few years earlier, I would have thought decades might have passed. His hair in particular had noticeably thinned out and greyed, and there weren’t so much wrinkles as deep grooves in his skin, etched there by pressures I hoped I would never have to experience. All his movements had taken on that slow, methodical pace one sees in people who’ve gotten too old to have the energy for mistakes.

I decided right away not to mention it – you can’t turn into that kind of wreck and remain unaware of how it shapes you – but did my part in the ensuing repairs by making sure his tools were always where he needed them and often just a little closer than he really needed to reach. I didn’t think he saved a lot of effort from that arrangement, but I had the distinct feeling that having the tools closer than usual would make him more mentally comfortable, as if they created a small safe space with no room for outside influence. A protective circle, really.

He seemed to like it. We didn’t talk much at first, but as the days passed – mostly spent waiting for replacement parts so we could get on with the actual repairs – Eren opened up a little. Besides, we were in the deepest parts of the engine rooms, the ones where everything is exposed, and you really don’t spend time with someone around machines that can potentially kill you without developing at least a little camaraderie.

Actually, it’s not entirely truthful to say he opened up – at least not to me. He simply let his guard down. Two days in I noticed that a quiet murmur I’d assumed to be part of the ship’s own thrumming heartbeat was, in fact, coming from Eren himself. I peered closer – all ship cores are gloomy and dark, probably because if you don’t know by heart where every single moving part is now and is going to be in five seconds’ time, you shouldn’t be down there anyway – and saw that he was talking to the metal itself. He was talking to the ship.

He must’ve heard my breath stop, because he fell quiet, leaned back and said, without looking, “They say things.”

“The … parts?”

He shrugged. “Or the ones who touched them last.”

“Ship parts come from all over the place, often from recycled ships,” I said. I’d meant to imply that he couldn’t possibly know who these people were, let alone that they were even alive anymore, when I realized what he was saying to me. If there truly were voices, they weren’t on our side of the veil.

I swallowed dry air and asked, “What do they tell you? How to fix the ship?”

He nodded.

It really was very dark in the engine room. “What do they … want in return?”

He shrugged. “To talk. To be heard. For someone to remember the stories of the dead, of this ship and all the others where their parts have been used. Or even places where this ship has docked, places that no longer exist.”

Those places would have been in space, unorbiting colonies, very possibly pirate ones, and very definitely long since fallen prey to capsuleer fire. Deaths, and more deaths; and once their graves had been picked clean by the attackers, the only usable things left in the wreckage would have been those parts.

Capsuleers went through frightening amounts of ships and even colonies on a regular basis. I wondered just how many ship parts had been salvaged from the dead. How many voices wanted Eren to hear them, all moaning in the discordant choir.

***

Late that same evening I was too restless to sleep. I ended up using the ship’s dataline and looked up a few things, which satiated my curiosity but eliminated any small chance I would sleep that night.

There were, amazingly, other people like him; but then, in this vast universe, everything has to exist somewhere. Psychomancy, it was called. They could tell things from machine sounds, working them like the entrails of a shaman. The buzz, burr, shear and whine; the way the rust stretched its coarse surface over them.

More than anything, the mention of rust unnerved me, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The next day I mentioned it to Eren.

He responded, “It’s true. And I don’t like rust. It creeps. It distorts.”

“You mean it makes it hard to hear the, uh, voices?” I asked

“Oh no. It doesn’t muffle them. They just … come out distorted. As whines, or these shrieky, tattered howls. Imagine the rust was on your vocal cords,” he said matter-of-factly. “Imagine it going into your lungs. It’s a cancer.”

I couldn’t help it. “So Minmatar ships…”

“…can go right to hell,” Eren replied with a grin. He added, almost absent-mindedly, “All ships are haunted. It’s like a sea we’re on, this vast and cold sea. Voices always drift to the warmth.”

“You ever think about signing up for repairwork on a colony instead? I can’t imagine this kind of life is easy for you,” I said.

He gave me a look, but in the gloom I couldn’t see it clearly. “Don’t like to work colonies much. Too many buried there.”

I got the distinct feeling there was more to that comment, and I really didn’t want to pry into the matter any longer. It’s bad enough working in the gnashing darkness without imagining things that aren’t even there. We finished our work for the day, and we didn’t speak of the voices after.

The next day turned out to be the final one in our stint on the ship. A part we’d been waiting for was finally shipped, and I installed it for Eren. I said to him, “I honestly don’t know how you’re going to get this one going. The team’s replaced this part three times already, and it simply refuses to work.”

He looked at me for a while, not unkindly – I couldn’t tell if he was amused or if he was listening – and then he leaned out, and he simply touched the damn thing.

The breathless hammering we heard shortly after was one of the crew running into the room to ask us what we’d done and how the hell we’d done it.

***

I lay there in my bunk, thinking of that time so long ago. It was the last and only occasion we’d worked together. I had expected to be called out again, and Eren certainly hadn’t seemed averse to the idea, but the quality of repair technology had caught up and the services of people like him were in less demand – either that or they were being assigned tasks complicated enough to eliminate the need for a simple machinist assistant like me.

I did see him once more, years later. On a colony somewhere, in a place I left shortly after. I barely recognized him at first; it was like he’d been shunted head-first into old age, his body matted, wrinkled and eaten up by time and whatever other forces worked on that poor man. I didn’t say a word, but he acknowledged me with a nod.

“Tt’s the rust,” he said. He thought it over, nodded to himself and repeated, “The rust. The rust creeps.”

I couldn’t help but ask. “Still the voices?”

His eyes were rheumy and blinked too often. The skin on his hands slid like oil on water. “I haven’t heard the voices for a long time.”

I was still trying to understand this, and the implications of it, when he added, “I hear what’s beyond them now. There’s something else. There is something behind them and it never falls quiet.”

His voice dissolved to a mutter. I didn’t know whether it was directed at me or the machine. Or at whatever lay beyond, which surely knew that he could hear it.

All his hair had fallen out except for the bushy growths over his eyes and in his ears, and I could see the veins in his hands.

I lie here on my bunk and I think of him. That old soul in that rapidly dying body, and the things he listened to. I think quite a lot of Eren, these days.

Because the ship creaks. The ship creaks, and we are going into empty space, and there is a patch of rust in the corner, and I wonder if my old friend is calling for me.

Tattoos

While body markings and modifications appear across all cultures in New Eden, it is the Minmatar who have taken that most ancient method of body marking, the tattoo, to a whole new level. To the Minmatar, the tattoo is not simply a form of art, but rather an integral part of their culture and customs.

The Tattoo in Minmatar History

When the Minmatar Empire was in its heyday, before a single Amarr ship ever darkened its skies, the Minmatar had truly made the tattoo into a form of high art. It was said the best artists could breathe life into the skin of an individual with their work. Today’s works, although still beyond what other races can achieve, are mere scribbling compared to the greatness of their predecessors. The Minmatar tattoo artists of today are forever seeking to regain the knowledge and skill that was lost to them when the Amarr, during their occupation of the Minmatar, issued an edict banning the practice.

This was a savage blow to the Minmatar, for a Minmatar’s tattoos proclaim who he is, where he came from, what he does, where he has been and what he has experienced. They represent a Minmatar’s identity as well as his story. A Minmatar without his markings is not considered a Minmatar at all. Such a one would be as alien to the Minmatar as a universe without God would be to the Amarr. In this, as well as in myriad other ways, the Amarr began to erase the Minmatar’s culture and identity, converting them into more pliable slave stock.

During the millennium of enslavement, the Amarr all but eradicated the tattoo culture. Nevertheless, it managed to survive in various different bastardized forms until the Great Rebellion, when the Minmatar finally threw off their shackles. What followed was a long hard struggle for the Minmatar to regain all that was lost to them during the occupation, and within the context of this endeavor the culture of tattoos was given primacy. The Republic of today is enjoying a renewed ascendancy of this ancient art form, with the tattoo once again representing an integral part of Minmatar culture and being.

The Tattoo Today

While the forms and styles of tattoo vary across tribes, the structure and culture behind the art are surprisingly uniform, making it a strong source of cultural bonding between the tribes. For the first few years of her life a Minmatar infant has bare skin, and it is left symbolically so. When the infant reaches a certain age she is given a temporary naming tattoo, which identifies the child and tells which clan she comes from. This temporary marking is renewed as the young Minmatar grows. It is the only tattoo a Minmatar child is permitted to wear until the Voluval.

The Voluval is the sacred coming-of-age ceremony for the Minmatar. It is here that the individual transforms from a child into a fully recognized member of their tribe. At the height of the ceremony the presiding shaman will finalize the ritual by invoking the Voluval mark, where the soul and destiny of a person are said to be revealed through the emergence of a tattoo on the recipient, the secrets of which are closely guarded by the Vherokior mystics who kept it alive during the long centuries of subjugation.

The Voluval is considered the most sacred mark a Minmatar can carry, and in some rare cases can change his life irrevocably. Although the significance attached to the Voluval mark has waned considerably in today’s Republic, certain marks can still see the recipient cast out from his clan and tribe, and conversely certain marks can lend the bearer much acclaim. In nearly all cases, however, the mark falls somewhere between these two extremes and the bearer moves on with little effect.

After the Voluval ceremony the young Minmatar will receive her permanent naming mark which will reside forever on her face. This mark will identify the name, clan and tribe of that Minmatar, plain for all other Minmatar to see. In such a way, two Minmatar meeting for the first time can immediately know these fundamental specifics about each other.

After the Voluval, the markings the individual will carry can vary greatly depending on the course of his life, where he travels, his occupation and what great achievements, if any, he has made. Each will reside on a specific area of his body – a person’s ranks within their occupation and their clan are usually displayed on the shoulders, for example.

In modern society many such tattoos are covered during day-to-day affairs. For example, Republic Navy personnel will wear uniforms with rank identifiers, but their true mark of rank is considered to be their body mark, even though this is not usually displayed. The culture of tattoo is truly ingrained into the Minmatar mindset, pervading nearly every aspect of their society.

A Minmatar cannot bestow upon herself just any tattoo. In some cases she may be able to influence styling and shape, but she cannot add a tattoo without having first earned the right. Inking a tattoo upon yourself without permission is considered a grave crime and offenders are subject to severe judicial punishment. Because of this arrangement, a Minmatar who is heavily tattooed is more respected by her peers, which will allow her greater opportunities to advance. Her experience is there for all to see.

Through this near-constant long-term process of tattooing, it is sometimes necessary for a tattoo to be removed or replaced with another tattoo. Since Minmatar technology is very advanced in this area, removal of a tattoo is extremely simple, with a pinpoint-precision surface laser wiping clear any unwanted area. There are times in which a Minmatar will symbolically choose to use the old method of skin removal, which carries the side effect of leaving large, highly visible scars. This is particularly prevalent when changes of allegiance or other actions of heavy emotional investment occur. (It is especially common after certain judicial punishments, for example.)

The Gallente find the culture of tattoos somewhat barbaric and uncivilized, and early on tried to persuade their Minmatar neighbors to drop this old custom and embrace their future as a civilized nation. Their efforts to this end were initially met with polite denials and later with derision, but interestingly the Gallente youth now find the custom fascinating. Indeed, it is not uncommon to see young Gallente teenagers sporting tribal and gang motifs lifted from their Minmatar peers, symbols of whose true meaning they have little to no knowledge. This can evoke anything between high derision and outright hostility when those so inked encounter true Minmatar.