The Slip: The Complete First Season

by Herschel K. Stroganoff

  Chao-xing’s eyes widen. "Armand is not a criminal."

  "Oh please, do you think we don't know he's Purdah, that you sneak around with him, smuggling him into your private quarters?"

  "But you’ve said before the Purdah aren't in the wrong."

  "Right or wrong, they are still a criminal group."

  Chao-xing raised her chin, glaring. "And what if I refuse?"

  "Then we are done. You can sit by yourself nursing a child in a shack on Lunar while your boyfriend's off in his ship stealing seeds, thinking he's fighting the good-fight. You can be so much more than that. You can strive for greatness or you can be weak, pathetic."

  Chao-xing did not respond.

  "You have three days to tie up any loose ends on Lunar, to say your goodbyes and terminate this pregnancy."

  "Why three days?"

  "Because that's when you're to set off on your assignment."

  "But—."

  "But nothing, Chao-xing. You've brought this on yourself.

  Chao-xing beat her fists against her bed as she lay on her front, sobbing. "I don't know what to do. I really don't know what to do for the best.” She turned onto her side and met Armand’s gaze, her eyes throbbing.

  "Why is this even a debate?” he asked, shaking his head. “What's the choice? You’re exiled either way."

  "It's not that simple."

  Armand frowned. "It is that simple. You've got choice. We can leave together, you, me, and that little life growing in your belly. Or you can lose me, lose the baby and be sent away from everyone you care about some mining platform beyond Neptune."

  "But what about my implants? You don't think they'll banish me let me have access to the Knowledge, do you? What good can the Purdah do with the Knowledge if I don't have access?"

  "Fuck the Knowledge. I don't care about that, I care about you, and now you're carrying our child. Things have changed." Armand smiled. "We can do this. We can make this happen."

  Chao-xing placed an arm across his body and put her head on his chest, hearing his heartbeat. "You're right. I know you're right. But what you suggesting is too extreme. I'll speak to my sisters, plead my case, they are bound to understand."

  "They won't understand. They've told you already you've got three days. That's not three days to make your mind up, that's three days before they going to ship you off to mining platform at the other end of the Union. I'll be long dead before you return, that's if you even return at all. You might have a long life, you might be able to regenerate, but these mining platforms are deadly. Your implants aren't going to protect you from a rogue mining drone, or an explosion, or any other accidents. It's a death sentence."

  Chao-xing closed her eyes.

  Chao-xing stood dressed in a white vest and black leggings, running her gaze across the faces of her sisters, her right hand cradling her belly. "Sisters, I'm begging you for your empathy. Armand and I are in love. Forcing me to take an assignment in the Kuiper region will mean a severing of our relationship."

  "We empathise,” Huizhong said, subvocally. “You are seeing the end of your relationship with Armand as an unintended consequence, when it is by design."

  Chao-xing tilted her head, her eyes narrowing. "I don't understand why you can't assign me to something on Lunar. I'd even go to Mars or Venus, everyone I care about is on Lunar."

  Huizhong shook her head. "Chao-xing, why are you making this so difficult for yourself? You don't get to negotiate, you don't get to bargain, you have been assigned, and you have vowed to carry out the assignment. The only people you need to care about from this point forward are your sisters. Do I make myself clear?"

  Chao-xing sniffed, shaking her head and she stepped up to Huizhong. "How can we strive for greatness if we only interact with each other? We have the same bodies, we share our minds — new influences, different ideas and perspectives should surely be encouraged, not stifled."

  "And you think you're going to find greatness with the Purdah?"

  Chao-xing raised a hand in frustration. "It's a start."

  The faint trace of a grin twitched at the corner of Huizhong’s mouth. "Have you prepared yourself for leaving? Our decision is made."

  "I'm not prepared, I don't want to leave. I want to stay here with Armand."

  "So pathetic," Guan-yin spat.

  Chao-xing turned to Guan-yin, cutting her with a sharp glare. "I'm not pathetic. If you are unwilling to compromise, then we are going to have to part ways."

  "And you understand all that entails?” Huizhong said. “You understand what that will mean?"

  There was a long silence before Chao-xing spoke. She looked around at her sister’s faces, sucking in her bottom lip. "I understand."

  Huizhong’s face turned stiff, her eyes flickering with rage. "To be clear, you will be banished and shunned by your sisters from now until you die. Your implants will be deactivated and you will renounce the name Yao."

  Chao-xing gulped. "So be it."

  Guan-yin stepped forward, raising a placating hand. "This is very sad, Chao-xing. You have a strong will, and that is good. This is your final chance, you don't have to do this. Take up your assignment, and we will leave this mess behind us and agree to remove it from our records. Please reconsider."

  Chao-xing looked down at her belly then raised her chin. "I can't....I'm sorry."

  "Please step forward and kneel," said Huizhong. She placed a hands Chao-xing head, squeezing tight as she deactivated the implants. She summoned a shaving drone. It chopped off the spike of Chao-xing fringe with a single swoop.

  Chao-xing felt the Knowledge slip away, fragments of long buried memories whizzing through her mind in fleeting glimpses, like echoes of dreams.

  "Take her away,” said Huizhong. “Terminate her pregnancy."

  Chao-xing’s eyes widened as hands gripped her arms and torso, and then at her flailing ankles as her sisters took her away, kicking, flailing, screaming.

  Breathless, Chao-xing charged into her private quarters, shocking Armand from his sleep. “We need to leave,” she said, stuffing clothes into a shoulder bag.

  Armand rubbed his eyes, confused. "What happened to your hair?"

  "Nothing. We need to go."

  "What do you mean?"

  Chao-xing turned, glaring at him. "We need to go, now."

  "I don't understand." Armand rolled over and sat up on the side of the bed, shaking his head.

  "Yes you do. I did what he said, now let's go before I do something I regret."

  Armand got up, his face etched with a frown. "What do you mean you did what I said?"

  "I've been banished,” she said, pulling out clothes, tossing some aside. “They deactivated the Knowledge."

  "Just like that? What did you do?"

  She heaved the bag onto her shoulder, heading to the door. "We don't have time. We need to go. I don't ever want to see my sisters again."

  "Let me think about this for a second,” Armand rubbed his eyes with heels of his hands, still in his underwear.

  "I don't care, just grab what you can and let's go."

  "Where are you going?"

  "We’ll find somewhere on Lunar. We'll take the elevator.”

  Armand scooped up his belongings. "No. We'll take my ship. We’ll get away until we can get set up as a family."

  Chao-xing looked at him, went to speak, and then nodded.

  The pair ran across the elliptical docking bay towards the Occulto. The black ship hung from three tether lines at the end of a steel walkway, a jagged sphere, one-hundred-metres in diameter. Reaching the main airlock, Armand keyed in the access code and the doors hissed open.

  They passed through a thin corridor, lit only by dim blue halos. They passed pair of doors one on each side leading to living quarters, a third and fourth door leading to a bathroom and kitchen area. Reaching the end of the corridor, Armand placed his face before a scanner and waited until the door slid open.

  They stepped into a warm, cramped workroom, a mess of wires an
d machinery, strewn between desks, chairs and a sofa. Chao-xing placed her bag on a desk next to a pair of terminals as Armand continued through another door to the cockpit. She slunk onto the sofa and sighed, her insides tender from her operation, her skin slick with sweat. She lay down on her side, and curled into a ball. She felt something sticky against her hand, but she did not move, only stared.

  The Occulto hummed to life. Daylight lamps illuminated, shining down from the ceiling above, and Chao-xing felt the wobble of the tether lines as the ship was dropped out of the docking hatch and into space.

  The Occulto, Lunar region

  Chao-xing’s dreams were a constant barrage of significance and meaning, fractal-like structures revealing ideas within ideas within ideas, folding and unfolding. An infinite array of broken axioms and disjointed images.

  She awoke to find Armand shaking her from her sleep. She turned, confused. "Where am I?" She rubbed her eyes, fingering her tear ducts, teasing out the last remnants of sleep.

  "We are on our way towards Mars. It’s just me. I've made some chicken. I’ve put your drink there, and there's some meds on the side," he said, gesturing to the desk.

  "Thank you, I can't believe I fell asleep." She sat up and took the water.

  "You've had a hard time — but we're going to be together now. Just you, me, and the baby."

  "We're not," she said, her voice cracking, her eyes filling with tears.

  He shuffled onto the sofa next to her, placing an arm around her. "Of course we are."

  "There won't be a baby. There won't be any baby. They took it away, they took my womb away."

  Armand gave no response, his arm dropping to his side.

  "Are you going to say anything?"

  Armand wiped a tear. "I don't what to say — how could they?" He raised his arm, trying to hold her.

  She flinched and got up. "I can't. I'm sorry. I will. Not now."

  "Take your time — I'm here for you." He sighed.

  Chao-xing lay wrapped in a blanket when Armand entered the room.

  "Look," he said. "I'm going to sleep in the other bunk, leave you to get your head straight. If you need me, you know where I am. This changes nothing — we can still be a family, just you and me."

  She nodded, rolled over, and cried herself to sleep.

  Chao-xing awoke cold and shaking after a series of disjointed, fragmentary dreams. She pulled on a pair of grey coveralls, stepped out into the corridor, then turned left into the bathroom. She splashed water on her face, blinking away the last remnants of sleep. She dried herself and stepped across the corridor into the kitchen, taking care with her steps under the reduced gravity.

  "You're awake," said Armand with a languid smile. "How you feeling?"

  "Not great,” she said, scratching at her stubbly scalp. “The meds are helping. Just had these crazy dreams. Really vivid. I think they were fragments from the archives running through them."

  "Anything interesting?" He asked, placing Chao-xing’s leftovers into the composter, the food vanishing with a quick, dry sucking slurp.

  "Have you heard of something called the Slip? I think it was an event centuries ago. Something to do with the Lunar Band. There's something about it that been buried, that's been hidden. It's like it's almost there, it as though I can almost grasp it, but it is just out of reach. I can't make sense of it."

  Armand made a face, confused. "The Lunar Band's just an asteroid belt - don't read too much into dreams."

  "This isn't like a dream I've ever had before."

  "Your body's been through a lot and those meds are pretty strong."

  She shook her head and leaned her back against the wall. "It wasn't that."

  "Then help me to understand."

  "Please, I don't know how else explain it, I just know this is something that is important."

  Chao-xing watched the blackness of space through the screen as Armand ran through routine checks on his console.

  "Have you thought you more about what you going to do?" he asked, turning to her.

  She blinked away the white dot of the sun that had imprinted onto her retina and turned to meet his gaze. "About?"

  "About your life, about the Yao."

  She turned back to the screen and sighed. "I don't want to talk about it now."

  "I wish you would talk to me."

  "There's nothing to talk about, please just drop it."

  They sat in silence for a long time. Armand ran his routine checks again. "It wasn't just your baby they killed ," he said.

  "It wasn't a baby,” she said, her fingers gripping at the armrests. “It was just cells, nothing more."

  "How can you be so cold?"

  "You think it is easy for me? I'm trying to find the best work and to cope with this. I've lost my home, my sisters — I've lost my identity."

  "You're still you — you're still the same you that you always were."

  "The old Chao-xing is gone. She died when they cut off my hair and activated those implants."

  "So they cut your hair off, it will grow back. It’s already starting to show through.”

  She flinches when her touches the top of her head. "It's not about my hair. Do you not realise how ridiculous you sound?"

  "I'm just trying to help."

  "Well don't."

  "Fine."

  Armand stormed from the room. Chao-xing gritted her teeth. “Wait,” she called after him. “I know where we need to go.”

  A long moment of silence hung in the air before Armand returned to the doorway. “What do you mean?”

  She scratched her head and sighed. “We need to go to the Titan orbiter.”

  “Titan?”

  “That where the main archive is. I saw it when I was dreaming.”

  Armand shook his head. “You want us to go to Titan on the basis of a dream?”

  She looked up, meeting Armand’s gaze. “Yes.”

  “We’ve got someone on there. We should be able to get in without causing an issue.”

  “Good.”

  Titan Orbiter, Saturn

  The stairwell groaned as Chao-xing ducked beneath a trio of torch beams slicing through the darkness. Bursting through a thick black door, she turned and sprinted between rows of cages housing thousands of chickens.

  Disorientated by the squawks, the rattle of wings against steel, and the stench of chicken shit, she ran. She had been careless, but it was worth it for what she had stolen. Her dark eyes darted back with panic as bright torch beams pierced the blue half-light. Her pursuers were gaining.

  Making a sharp right, she raced past the birds as they reached out to her – to claw, to peck, to scratch. Their calls increased in violence. She feared they would betray her location.

  A farmer flashed her a sharp glare as she tripped over a basket. Eggs scattered across the floor as she stumbled to regain her balance.

  She turned a sharp left as a stitch took hold in her chest and the muscles in her legs burned. The farmer called out to her pursuers, but she couldn't make out the words above the sound of the birds.

  The uniform lines of muted blue lights flickered above as she searched for somewhere to hide. Sweat poured down her forehead, her hair a matt of jet-black. She wiped her face with the sleeve of her coveralls.

  Pinning her body against the side of a cage, Chao-xing strained to listen through the noise for the sound of footsteps. She held her breath as her pursuers passed along a parallel row of cages. She breathed out with relief as the torch beams faded.

  Crouching low, she crept past the farmer. She returned to the door and sighed as she backed her way through the door, catching fleeting glimpses of torchlight in the distance as she looked back across the farm.

  The door closed shut as she felt a hard blow strike the back of her head. Everything faded as she collapsed to the ground.

  A sharp slap to the face brought Chao-xing back to consciousness.

  Straining against the binds holding her wrists behind her back, she shook her he
ad to push away the blindfold. It was useless.

  She winced as tape was ripped from her mouth, pulling out the tiny hairs from her upper-lip.

  “What do you know about the slip?” a man asked in a growled whisper.

  Chao-xing did not answer. She told herself to stay silent. The man paced before her while she braced herself for another slap. Instead, his stubble scraped against her swelling cheek. His breath was a foul mix of onion and bitter cider.

  “What do you know about the slip?” he asked again.

  There was a whispered exchange between at least two others. Sitting motionless, she kept her jaw clenched, focusing on the low whistle of the air ducts behind her. She flinched as another man stepped toward her.

  “You will tell us about the Purdah,” said the second voice Chao-xing's head snapped right as he slapped her hard across the cheek.

  “Again, you are Purdah. Do not think we do not know who you are. What do you want with the Yao file? We know you have them.” His voice was cold and detached, a flat soulless hum.

  Chao-xing shuddered. “I know nothing of the slip, I know nothing of the Purdah, and I know nothing about the files.” She regretted opening her mouth. A pulse pounded inside her skull.

  “This is good,” said a third man in a jovial tone. This man scared her.

  “You can talk, which means you will talk,” he said, his breath warm against Chao-xing's face. “We can drop the lies and tell us who you, what you have taken and where it is now.”

  “I—,” she gasped, “I’m a trader. Independent. I don’t know who you think I am, but I am not that person. Please believe me. Please let me go.” She hated herself. She wanted to be strong, to stay silent, but instead she was pleading.

  The third man laughed - a loud, obnoxious belly laugh he cut short with an abruptness that made Chao-xing tremble. “Don’t fucking lie to us,” he hissed. “Why did you run? Why run if you've got nothing to hide?”

  “I was scared. I panicked,” she whispered. It was true.

  “We shall begin over,” the second man said.

  Something metallic was dragged toward her. Liquid splashed onto the floor as it came to a halt. One of the men tipped her chair back, flooding the darkness with a bright purple and white flash behind her eyes as her head bounced off the floor. Something cold and dripping with water was placed over her face. She gasped as one of the men closed the around her mouth and nose.