by S M Briscoe
The hopeless cries had begun during their departure from Trycon and through the choppy flight off world, dying down once they had reached the silent and still vacuum of space. Within two standard hours the cries had recommenced as they entered atmosphere again. The short journey meant they were still within Turaus’ immense lunar system. He had stopped expecting Jarred to suddenly blast through a door at any moment and come to his rescue shortly after the freighter had departed Solta, but the thought that he and his sister were still close by brought him at least a partial feeling of comfort. He just hoped they were both all right.
The vibrations in the hull increased to a constant steady rumble and Ethan heard the distinct sound of the repulsers kicking in, groaning with the effort of steadying the mass of the ship through its descent. They were landing. Feeling a rush of anxiety building up from the pit of his stomach, he took a deep breath and tried to calm his nerves. Panicking wasn’t going to do him any good. If there was anything he had learned, it was that keeping your wits about you in a crisis was the best way to get through it and he was going to need all of them if he planned on making it through this one.
The freighter touched down heavily, jostling a few more fearful yelps from some of the passengers as it settled. The turbulence seemed to intensify, rattling the hull violently, the grounded landing struts acting as a conduit for the tension between the deck and the freighter, Ethan knew. It was a normal occurrence, especially with a ship this size, but he had to admit the experience wasn’t at all pleasant while sitting on the cold hard deck of the vessel as it shook you to your bones. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before the hull vibrations began to dissipate, the engines letting out a final rumble before powering down and leaving the hold in relative silence.
It stayed that way for nearly half an hour. Ethan hadn’t noticed on the journey here, maybe because his mind had been preoccupied with other things, but without the constant hum and vibration of the engines to hear and feel, and with nothing to see, his one remaining sense had been left to take in the result of a cargo hold filled to the brim with hundreds of terrified, mixed species refugees. The strange aromatic concoction of body odor, strong alien pheromones and fear made for a stench so potent he could almost taste it. Unsure if he could continue to stave off the urge to gag any longer, he was almost relieved to hear the cargo hold door’s pressure seal finally release.
Across the hold, white cracks began to appear from out of the darkness, luminous fissures in the near black hull that formed an outline of the cargo bay door as it slowly lowered open. Blinding light poured inside like water rushing through a flood gate, filling every corner of the hold with its cold, artificial brilliance. The bluish hue and lack of radiant heat told him it was not sunlight, meaning either it was night here or they had docked in some kind of enclosed hangar. Even so, after two hours in near complete darkness, Ethan had to shield his eyes against the harshness of it, struggling to see the dark hazy figures moving in through the bright opening. He didn’t need to see them to know what they were once one of them began issuing commands. He had been around enough security mechs to instantly recognize the distinct, synthesized sound and dialect of their vocabulators when he heard it. Following the mechanical blur’s stern directive, he got to his feet with the rest of the disoriented passengers, who began to shuffle towards the cargo bay door.
Outside, it took a few more moments for Ethan’s eyes to adjust to the spotlights shining down on, what he was beginning to distinguish as being, some kind of lowered docking area. Similar to Wasteland Station, which he had so recently fled, the docking area was likewise sunken with a raised circular wall around it, though only a fraction the size, and in this case, an artificial structure as opposed to a naturally formed crater as before. The sealed bay door covering the top of the docking silo, as it were, led him to conclude that much like Wasteland, this facility was being purposely concealed, whether it be to shield it from a possibly harsh environment outside or simply to keep whatever transpired within hidden.
Ethan continued moving with the rest of the refugees as they were herded by additional security mechs down the cargo ramp and across the floor of the dock towards a large open hatchway. Numerous other utility mechs of varying models and sizes moved about the bay, paying him and the others no mind as they tended to the newly docked freighter. The short but slow march across the bay allowed him to complete a fairly thorough visual sweep of the dock and in that time he had noted no living personnel whatsoever. The bay appeared to be fully automated, its operation and maintenance handled solely by mechanicals. This struck him as odd and a bit disconcerting. Though many installations were run predominantly with the use of mechanical labor, sentient organic supervision was always present. Mechs, for the most part, weren’t designed to make their own decisions. They were programmed to serve specific purposes, like vacsweeping the floors or refueling transports. They needed people to direct and oversee their work.
He assumed he would find those people inside the facility, away from the arduous labor of the dock that was better left to mechanical workers, but as he passed through the open hatchway, into what appeared to be some kind of large gated holding cell, he found none. The room was dark, but for the light coming through from the dock silo, barely allowing him to make out its circular shape and the barred divider that created a meter wide perimeter inside its outer wall.
As the last of the refugees; Ethan estimating their numbers at close to five hundred; filtered into the cell, the gate and outer hatchway door closed shut behind them, leaving the large group in total darkness again. A moment later, numerous overhead lights snapped to life, fully illuminating the room around them. Able to view the entire cell now with clarity, he saw that the room was not actually a perfect circle, as the holding area was, but extended at one end where it eventually narrowed into a bottleneck. In the extended area, spaced out across the face of the cell wall, were a half dozen scanning booths of some kind, open at both ends to allow a person to pass through, though the cell bars blocked the side they were all on. A tall, sleek computer terminal stood at the end of each booth. Continuing to survey the room, he noted that the security-mechs had taken up positions all along the perimeter walkway outside of the holding area, including six that were positioned next to the scanning booths, across from each the computer terminals.
His attention was drawn back to the front of the room, where six new mechs were entering from a newly opened passage at the end of the bottleneck. They were less intimidating than the bulky, militaristic security-mechs, looking more like administration models. The kind you would expect to find manning the desk at a medcenter or an information kiosk, or serving as a personal aid for some sort of important business type. Their long, slender builds gave them a kind of comical look as they rolled up to the terminals along the front of the cell.
A number of refugees, located near the front of the holding area, jumped back, startled, as six doorway sized sections of the cell wall adjacent to the scanning booths slid down into the floor, an aura of shimmering, crimson light phasing into existence in the open spaces at both ends of the booths. Force barriers of some kind.
“Welcome,” a calm and polite voice began to speak from an unseen, overhead amplification system, “to the Syntax Corporation’s Ryza Mining and Manufacturing Colony, located on the Turausian satellite, Ryza. It is the Corporation’s sincere hope that each of you will find this business relationship mutually beneficial and that your tenures with us are pleasant ones.”
Ethan’s jaw dropped. They were on Ryza. Another of Turaus’ moons, which the Syntax Corporation owned, it was one enormous factory, a city really, that the workers actually resided in. The Ryzan ship yards were one of the more well known in the system, as was its mining operation. Miners extracted ore from the abundant rings that encircled Turaus. Those metals were used in the construction of everything the factories and shipyards produced. The whole operation employed tens of thousands. Syntax Corporation itself was the system’s lar
gest developer of . . . well, just about everything. They manufactured vessels of all kinds, both civilian and military grade, industrial machinery, a wide range of personal devices and tools, weaponry, even space stations. There was very little they didn’t have their hands in.
Ethan had assumed he was being taken to some fabled slave camp in the far reaches of space to drudge out a lifetime of backbreaking labor, not to the largest, most well known corporate entity in the galaxy. How could Syntax, which practically employed half the system’s citizens, in one way or another, be involved in the slave trade? And why?
The force barriers that allowed access to each of the booths vanished and the overhead voice continued. “In an orderly fashion, please proceed through one of the gates before you for skill analysis, job classification and living assignments.”
From where Ethan was situated in the middle of the group, which was quickly reverting back to the state it had been in during the journey aboard the bulk freighter, the whimpers and general commotion made it difficult to see and hear everything that was going on. Between the scores of people in front of him, he watched as six refugees entered the scanning booths, the barrier fields reactivating once they were inside. After a few moments, the shields opened again to allow each subject to exit their booth into the open area of the room where the admin-mechs had them place a hand into some kind of device on top of their computer terminals. When they removed them, they had each been tagged with a metallic wrist band of sorts, for what purpose Ethan wasn’t sure. The security-mechs then ushered them towards and through the bottleneck hatchway at the back of the room.
The sequence continued, refugees being filtered through the scanning booths, and as Ethan moved closer to the front of the holding area, he could hear and see more of what was happening. As each refugee was scanned, the admin-mechs would assign them a work detail, usually a one word designation, such as Disposal, Service or Maintenance. It seemed to be more of a redundant step in their processing procedure, as none of the refugees were willing parties to their assignments or had any choice in the matter.
The cold, mechanical efficiency of the process disturbed him greatly, and watching the soulless robots work, he finally understood why he had not seen any living personnel here, and why he wouldn’t be seeing any. For the most part, sentient beings lived their lives by a certain moral compass, an ethical code of some kind. Though some may have found slavery to be a permissible trade, the majority frowned upon it. That’s why it was illegal. If living beings were overseeing them, word would get out about what was happening here. An organization the size of Syntax couldn’t afford to have anyone know about this. If the public found out they were buying and using slaves, they would be finished.
Unlike people, mechs didn’t have moral compasses or ethical codes, apart from the ones they were programmed with. To a mech that wasn’t programmed to make the distinction, there would be no difference between a slave and a convict, or a person and a tool. A mech wouldn’t see or understand that this was wrong. They were sorting people into various slave work details, but as far as they were concerned, it was no different than sorting nuts and bolts. The realization turned Ethan’s stomach.
He was startled from his thoughts by a woman’s desperate cry and looked towards one of the scanning booths where a mother was fighting to hold onto her infant. One of the security-mechs was attempting to remove it from her. Shouting erupted from all around the holding cell, echoes of the woman’s own cries and angry calls for her to be left alone. The mechs responded by shocking a number of refugees with their stun batons, jabbing at random people through the bars of the cell and receiving numerous painful yelps in return. Once the crowd had calmed back down to its original whipped state, Ethan was able to see the mother again. The security-mech had managed to pull the child away from her and she was frantically attempting to take it back when a second mech approached from one of the other booths and gripped her by one arm. It produced a small med-injector from an array of devices on its lower arm and pressed it against her neck. Ethan was surprised when she didn’t immediately slump to the ground. Instead, whatever she had been given caused her to drift into a dazed state, the fight leaving her completely. She seemed fine, still able to stand on her own, though a bit unstable, but it seemed as if she had no idea of what had just taken place. It reminded him of the chem addicts that were so common in most slum areas he had been through.
A new mech, much smaller and more delicate looking than the others, rolled into the room from the open bottleneck hatchway. It approached the security-mech that was holding the woman’s child, which passed the infant down to it. It then immediately turned and exited the room. The woman had no reaction. The security-mech that was still holding her took her hand and placed it in the tagging device on the nearby computer console, affixing a bracelet to her wrist. She was then moved off in the direction of the hatchway, two refugees from the other booths helping to lead her away.
The processing quickly continued, unabated by the incident, and it wasn’t long before Ethan found himself moving into one of the scanning booths. Dual scanners, one on each side of the booth, scanned him from head to toe multiple times before the barrier field was lowered to allow him to exit. Stepping up to the admin-mech’s computer terminal, he waited for his job designation. The mech leaned over its terminal to stare down at him, waiting for what seemed like an eternity, probably due in part to his own anxiety, before finally speaking.
“Disposal.”
Placing his hand inside the hollowed out tagging device at the top of the terminal, he felt the metal bracelet wrap around his wrist and clamp shut. While turning his wrist over to inspect the device, he began to move towards the bottleneck hatchway, following a few other refugees.
The door led to a long, descending corridor which he followed with the others, continuing to burn as much of the facility as he could to memory. Escape didn’t seem like a probable outcome at the moment, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up hope yet, and knowing his surroundings was all he could really do towards that means at this point in time.
The same voice from the processing room began to speak again from amplification modules along the corridor. “The personal correctional bracelets you have each been supplied with will help to direct you in your daily schedule and work regiment, and alert you to any possible infractions you may mistakenly commit. Please be mindful of its alerts and correct your missteps promptly.”
Ethan looked at his bracelet again, tapping the light display with a finger. The device didn’t look overly complex, but he assumed it was more for tracking its wearer’s location than for organizing his or her time.
The corridor eventually opened up into another large, circular room where the rest of the refugees turned slaves that had preceded them waited. The room had three closed hatchways along the far half of its perimeter, each one marked with one of the job classifications that had been assigned to everyone, in large, block Tradespeak lettering. No security-mechs stood guard. People were spread out around the room, some sitting, others pacing. Ethan decided on the former, finding an open spot on the floor where he sat down. Glancing around the room, he spotted the woman who’s child had been taken from her, slumped against the wall, apparently still under the influence of whatever tranquilizer she had been given. He wondered where her baby had been taken, seeing no sign of it or the small mech that had taken it.
He had heard stories of what happened to the children slavers took during their raids. The young ones were taken from their parents, too small and weak to be useful laborers, and sold through the black market. There was a healthy market for well-to-do couples who couldn’t have their own children, or snobby wives who didn’t want to mark their cosmetically perfected bodies by baring any, while, for whatever reason, not having anyone know about the adoption. It was an awful thought and he felt sorry for the woman, but when compared to a life as a slave, for the child it almost seemed like a blessing. Almost.
An hour or two had pass
ed, it was hard to tell exactly, before the last of the refugees filed into the large room, the entry doors sealing shut behind them. The amplification system came to life again.
“Welcome to your living assignments,” the familiar voice began. “Shortly, you will continue on to your designated career zones, which will be your new homes within the facility. It is the Corporation’s hope that each of you will excel in your selected fields.”
Ethan shook his head at the absurdity of the voice. Their careers? Were they crazy enough to think that anyone here would actually want to be here. What he now assumed was a voice recording played to all incoming slaves, and maybe even the actual Syntax employees, was obviously meant to calm them. But no recording was going to convince him that he wasn’t here against his will. The pleasant voice and its positive statements didn’t change the fact that what was happening here was a crime. The fact that it was being played to them seemed like little more than a cruel joke. He guessed that whatever corporate scumbag had decided to implement the slave walkthrough, as it was, had probably had a good laugh about it.
“The doorways ahead of you,” the recording continued, “will soon open. Please proceed through the clearly designated doorway which corresponds to your selected career field.”
Slowly, the refugees began to file through the open doorways. Ethan stood up and, sparing a final glance at the dazed mother still slumped against the wall, moved off towards the open Disposal hatch. Passing through the doorway, he followed the crowded corridor until they came to a series of open hatches, each one opening into a large room that contained twenty or more simple bunks. Hesitant at first, refugees eventually began to move into the rooms, Ethan passing a number of full ones himself before coming to one that was partially empty. Moving inside, he stood by the door a moment, eyeing the rest of the occupants. He didn’t want to go in any further. These were cells and he suddenly had the sickening feeling that once he stepped inside, he would be locked in forever.
