Savage Horizons

by CJ Birch

  After humans fled Earth to colonize the asteroid belt, food was less a privilege and more a luxury. I’ve heard of kids starving to death, especially in the group homes on Epsilon. There are a lot of accidents in the mines. If you’re unlucky enough to be born on Epsilon and your parents die in the mines, they put you in a group home where one day you’ll take their place. Every child, once cherished, is now seen as another mouth to feed. It’s no wonder thousands signed up. Everyone here will be dead long before we reach our destination, but it’s still a hell of a lot better for some than life on the Belt.

  I enter the med center located on the Posterus’s lower decks, looking for Ash. With everything that’s happened, I haven’t had a chance to see her. I’ve been going nonstop since I woke up in my cabin two days ago. Every time I tried to come see her something else would come up. I haven’t even had a chance to sleep. I only have the doctor’s word she’s alive. But I need to see it for myself. I need to make sure she’s all right.

  I still don’t know how it’s possible. No one does. Even Hartley said she should be dead. We all should. I spoke to him yesterday evening. He said he grabbed her so she wouldn’t fall into the engine pit. As soon as he touched her his hand felt heavy like it had become the weight of her and himself combined. And then there was this sense of lightness like they were floating and everything went white. That’s all he’ll say. He can’t remember anything else, and I can tell it’s infuriating him not knowing.

  He woke up on the floor in the engine bay with Ash next to him. His grip was still fused to her forearm. He wasn’t hurt.

  But Ash was.

  The doctor said she had burns on most of her body and a dislocated shoulder. Her right hand gripped some device of Hartley’s. He removed it along with most of the skin on her palm.

  I hear her before I even reach her room. She laughs at something someone’s said and I walk a little faster.

  I stop before I enter and stare. From where I stand, I can see her, but she can’t see me. A blue sling holds her arm tight against her chest, keeping it immobile. She’s in a hospital gown, her leg flung on top of the blanket. There’s a deep purple bruise along her calf and grafting bandages on most of her left side. She looks so small sitting in the hospital bed, I have an urge to encase her in protective foam.

  Her face is still lit up from laughter, acting as if she were sitting in the mess not the hospital covered in burns. She doesn’t look like she almost died two days earlier. She’s pulled her auburn hair back into a messy ponytail. Her pale skin has a healthy flush to it.

  There’s someone sitting on the bed in front of her. I can’t see who it is, but when I hear that booming laugh, I realize it’s Hartley.

  “I guess I should be happy, even if I don’t get a school named after me. You think the captain will let me name the incident after myself? That is, when I figure out what and how it happened. The Hartley incident sounds pretty cool, right?” he says.

  Ash’s face drops a little. She picks at a piece of lint on the bed. “Have you seen her?”

  “The captain? Yeah, I briefed her on what happened in the engine room earlier. She has a meeting with the council today. I didn’t tell her it was your idea to eject the core. She seemed kind of mad at you, so I let her think it was my idea.” I roll my eyes at this, like I thought for a second anyone but Ash would be behind such a self-destructive idea.

  “Thanks, Hartley.” She reaches out and grabs his hand. “But I doubt she bought it.” There’s silence for a few moments and then she asks, “How did she look? She didn’t get hurt or anything did she?” I feel guilty now. I shouldn’t be eavesdropping on such a personal conversation. I begin to move away to come back later, but Hartley’s next question stops me.

  “Is it true then? You and the captain?”

  I’m surprised as hell to learn this has been a topic of conversation. Not that much happened. One night. But I thought we’d been discreet.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She scowls, pulling her hand back.

  “Oh come on, everyone’s heard the rumors. Well, I guess you haven’t since no one ever talks to you except me and the captain. And also the rumor’s about you, so I guess they wouldn’t tell you even if they did like you.” He takes a breath, then continues, “But there’s a rumor going around about you and the captain.” He lets the sentence trail off and everyone’s imagination goes places it shouldn’t.

  But what she says next tears at my insides more than anything. “Do I look like I’d be dumb enough to get involved with my commanding officer?” He doesn’t say anything. Ash huffs and turns away from him, her free arm coming up awkwardly to cross at her chest. “Well, I’m not, Hartley. There’s nothing going on between us. And I don’t care who thinks there is, they can go to hell.”

  I lean my head back against the wall. I close my eyes and breathe for a few seconds. Of course, she’s right. There isn’t anything going on between us. There can’t be. But if I’m being honest with myself, there’s more there. Our relationship goes beyond command and friendship. The way she says it though, like it’s nothing to her, fills me with shame. Shame at the way I behaved, shame at my own constant selfishness. Always that.

  I push off from the wall and rush toward the exit, almost laughing at my own unerring selfishness. If I see something I want, it doesn’t matter what I have to do, who I have to hurt, I’ll get it in the end.

  Chapter Four

  I drift through the concourse, no longer awed by its grandeur. I don’t know how long I roam. My thoughts are a jumble of regrets and resolve. I find myself standing in front of the brig waiting for Corporal Wyatt Fossick to open the door.

  “Me, finally me.” Sarka sits on a thin cot. He grins, taunting me. It’s a smile I remember well. When I was a child I used to love it. That smile meant he was paying attention to me, even if he was teasing. It made me feel wanted, loved. Now it infuriates me. It stirs the rage deep inside, like hydrogen feeds a star, keeping it burning.

  If he has to come with us, I’d rather he stay in the brig. But I can’t keep him here forever. There’s a brief moment when I contemplate proposing the reinstatement of capital punishment, but push that out immediately. I’m not a murderer, and I don’t want my crew to be either.

  “So this is how it’s going to be.” I lean against the door. “I’m taking you to quarters with a twenty-four hour guard. If you try to escape, I’ll bring you back here. If you so much as lift a finger to one of my guards, I’ll bring you back here. If you even step out of line or bad-mouth my crew—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it, brought back here.” Teeth flashing, he says, “Here’s nice, though,” and looks about the room as if it’s a grand place with a view. “What if I want to stay here?”

  I shrug and move off the door. “Fine with me.” I turn and knock for Fossick to open up.

  “Although, you know me. I’ve always been a bit of a gossip, and this place is kinda echoey. Who knows what I could let slip out.”

  If I hadn’t seen the crew’s reaction to Ash, to the fact she has a piece of the Burr’s technology in her, I wouldn’t care. I’d tell the crew myself. But if they’re willing to hurt Ash for that? What would they do if they found out I had twenty-three chromosomes from Davis Sarka? What would they do if they knew I was one half of the nightmare?

  I lean my forehead against the door. The cold metal spreads across my hot skin. I knew, before I even walked in, he’d be difficult. This is what he does. He plays head games, always those same twisting mazes to confuse you, to make you reveal your secrets. He’ll play with me, holding it over my head, and each time I give, he’ll take more than I’m willing. He’ll toy with my fears until he knows them all and has all the control.

  I can’t let him win. Not like this. Not again.

  “Go ahead. Tell them. But the second you do, I’ll slit your throat.” I turn back to show I’m not bluffing. I want him to see how much I mean it.

  The door opens behind me, and I nod to Fossi
ck, then look back at Sarka, a question and challenge on my face. He doesn’t say anything, just unfurls from the cot and stalks toward the doors.

  “Cuff him,” I say.

  He stands and holds his hands out to Fossick. “If it’ll make you feel safer, you can cuff me to one of your security officers.” He says this without sarcasm. He’s rearranged his face to be expressionless. It smooths out the skin and doesn’t look as stretched. I push him through the door. I’m not in the mood for any of his bullshit today.

  Fossick steals looks at Sarka’s face as he places the cuffs around his wrists. This is the closest any of my crew have ever been to a Burr. It must be unsettling, to see up close what we only talk about in hushed voices. I wish I knew what he was thinking. Is Sarka worse or better than what he has worried about his whole life?

  Once a handsome man, Sarka is now a plastic version of himself. During the resource wars Ethan Burr developed a special type of soldier. He engineered them to be the last soldier any army would need. He implanted mind knots—tiny bots to control their actions—and programmed them to act without question.

  What most people don’t know is that he also rewrote some of their DNA, like opening a computer program and rearranging some of the code to get a different result. This was, of course, before they banned genetic manipulation. As a result, Burrs are almost impossible to kill. It isn’t so much that they can’t die, it’s that you usually only have one try. Their reflexes were improved and their pain receptors dulled, which makes them more like robots trained to kill than human beings let to live.

  We’re led by two security guards down the corridor. I’m in back, Sarka is in the middle and Quinn Yakovich, my head of security, and Fossick are in the lead. They make a strange pair side by side. Fossick is short and stocky and Yakovich is tall and lean. Her muscular shoulders fill out her tunic in a way Fossick must envy. The only thing they have in common is a lack of hair on top. Fossick’s bald head is not by choice. The ring of stubble around the nape of his neck shows he hasn’t shaved it in a few days. The rest of his head is very shiny, so much so that it reflects the LEDs that line the hallway. It’s a shame, that bulbous head of his would look a hell of a lot better hidden under hair.

  Yakovich’s head is the perfect shape for bald. Hers isn’t shiny like Fossick’s. She keeps it short on purpose. Only a few millimeters of hair coats the surface. The blond stubble frames large brown eyes and a pointy chin.

  A few of her tattoos peek out the back of her tunic. One of them is the unmistakable mark of the Dirt Demons, a guild of miners who work stray asteroids for specialty minerals. From the time she was six until she was sixteen, she grew up in one of those group homes on Epsilon. I wonder if she even remembers her parents, or if the only thing she knew was the dirt and grime of the mines. I’ve heard rumors that the tougher ones start working as early as ten. It’s against the law, but out there it’s hard to police. And sometimes working in the mines is better than starving in the homes. At least if you’re working, you’re guaranteed rations.

  Mining the strays is a hundred times more dangerous than mining asteroids in the belt. It’s why they pay more. Stray miners are like the rock stars of the mining world. If you can last a year on one of those crews, you’re set for life. The problem is most don’t make it past ten months. If you’re not killed when you land the ship on the asteroid—which happens more often than you’d think—you’re killed in the explosion when they open a new seam. Or the Burrs get you when they raid your ship for the minerals you’ve risked your life to get.

  Not only was I impressed to learn she worked with the Dirt Demons, but she spent two years with them. Why the hell she joined Union fleet after is beyond me.

  Fossick is going on about some mahjong game from the other night. Yakovich is doing her best to ignore him.

  We round a blind corner on deck five and run into a crowd streaming out of the crew mess. I grab Sarka, pulling him tight against the wall. Yakovich moves to the other side gripping his arm. Her eyes never leave him. I cringe in horror as Fossick steps away from us to high-five someone in the group. I make a mental note to switch Fossick off guard detail. That’s the last thing I need, Sarka discovering the weak points in my security. Finally the crowd disperses, I hear a few, “Hey, Captains,” as they pass.

  A few more stare when they see who we’re escorting. Yakovich pushes them off. I nod to Yakovich to keep going. I don’t need a bunch of gawkers hanging about.

  I’ll post two guards in front of his door that he knows about and two more on either end of the hall by the chutes. Those he won’t know about. That way, if he does make it past the first two, there are still four more. What it also means is that I’m going to have to enlist crew from other departments to make the rotations fair. Six crew sitting around, scratching their asses all for the sake of one man is going to grate on my nerves real quick.

  I leave the guards at the door and enter. Sarka is already getting comfortable on the bed. He clasps his shackled hands behind his head and crosses his feet at the ankle. His eyes close like he’s about to take a nap. It’s strange, he hasn’t changed much since I was a child, but I suppose that’s the point. They corrupted the Burrs’s physiology to enhance their natural abilities. It also makes them age slower than the rest of us. Davis Sarka is one hundred and sixty-eight years old and doesn’t look a day over fifty. But there’s an artificiality to him. His hair is too black and skin too taut, his lips too red and eyes too blue. He almost looks like those early twenty-first century versions of robots. They look real, but something’s still off.

  He turns those blue eyes on me now. And like that, I’m eight years old begging him to take me on his next raid.

  “Hold out your hands,” I say.

  He sits up. “You know, it’s a mistake letting your crew get so chummy with you.” I roll my eyes as I grab the cuffs and enter the passcode. I knew he was going to latch onto that.

  “Not everyone leads with a heavy hand.”

  His eyes are hard and he answers immediately. “If you’re lax on respect, soft on the rules, they’ll replace you faster than you can slit their abdomen open.” I step back but he grabs my arm tight and yanks me so close I can taste his breath. “You have to keep them afraid of you. But you can’t play at it. Can’t pretend. They’ll see through you, like children, and when you turn your back, they’ll gut you.” I pull away and the movement makes me stumble. I grab the desk chair, placing it between us. “I’m not going to hurt you. What do you take me for? A monster?”

  “Oh, you’re human. But human nature is dark. You taught me that.” The heat in my belly builds until it’s a small fire burning.

  I glance around the room, taking in the bed, the empty desk, the shelves, searching for anything he might use to escape. When I’m satisfied there isn’t anything, I turn, ready to leave.

  In a voice so innocent, I know it’s trouble, he asks, “Will you come visit me?”

  I stop and pivot, not sure I heard him correctly. “No one’s going to visit you.”

  “What if Alison comes to visit me?” He props himself up on his elbows, his eyes dance with suggestion.

  I take the two steps to the bed and stand over him. “She won’t.”

  He’s goading me. It’s what he does. He’s testing his limits and I’m at the top of the stairs, teetering. “Oh, she might. I made quite an impression on her.”

  And like that, I’m toppling down the stairs, speeding to the bottom. I lean in, getting close enough to see the brown flecks in his irises. “I will fuck you up if you so much as look at her.” My voice is low, calm, but I’m seething inside.

  “There’s my girl.” He chuckles.

  I grit my teeth, the rage now a warm ball of hate in the pit of my stomach. “What you did to her, you don’t deserve to even talk about her.”

  “Oh, please. It was only a bit of light torture. It was entertaining, actually.” He grins, stretching the skin around his cheekbones. “I was sorry she broke so quickly
. I had a lot more fun planned for her.”

  He’s trying to make me mad that Ash broke, that she wasn’t strong enough to take it. But I’m happy knowing it was quick, knowing for once, her stubbornness gave way to good sense. Then my insides drop. He’s lying. Ash would never give in that easy. I watched her endure an excruciating medical procedure because she was too stubborn to let the doctor sedate her. No, Ash didn’t break. She would’ve gritted against anything he tried to take from her by force.

  “If you mention Ash again, I’ll cut your throat.”

  “If I thought you meant it, I’d actually be proud.”

  I reach into my cargo pocket and unsheathe a Bowie knife. It’s his. I relieved him of it when we escorted him to the brig. I don’t know why I still have it, but I’ve been carrying it around with me for the last two days. I guess it felt safer with me.

  “You may think you know me.” I stare into his dark blue eyes, so much like my own. “But twenty years is a long time. You don’t know me any better than you knew Mom.” I grip the knife’s handle, feel the smooth hilt against my palm. At first it was bravado, a way to show who’s in charge. Then an image of Ash strapped down, made to endure God knows what, flits through my mind and I grip tighter. She wouldn’t tell me what he did, but it only makes it worse because I’ve seen what he does to people who don’t cooperate. And in that instant, I know it’s not bravado. I will gut him if he so much as gets within a meter of Ash.

  He moves so fast, I didn’t think it was possible to cause a blur just by moving. But he’s in front of me in a flash, slamming me against the wall. His hand grips my wrist, driving his fingers into my tendons. I release the knife and he turns the point of the blade toward me and strikes. It all happens so quick, I’m left breathless.

  Chapter Five

  My breath lodges in my throat. I stare down at the knife. It sticks out of the wall inches from my abdomen. Adrenaline surges, rage, with its all consuming power, shame that after all these years he can still provoke me, and fear because one day I might not be able to pull back in time. All of it boils to the surface. I shove Sarka. A low growl, from deep in my throat, escapes through gritted teeth. I knock him onto the bed, giving him what I hope is a deadly stare. Based on the smirk curling the edges of his lips and my heavy breathing, I somehow doubt it.