by James Stubbs
‘No.’ Is all he says. I finally lose my temper with him. I’m so sick of his nonchalant sort of attitude and his vagueness every time I need information out of him.
‘Is that all you have?’ I raise my voice but still don’t turn. I know I’m the beta male in this relationship. This guy could snap me clean in half if he tried. I want to vent my frustration but not lose him as a friend. I’ll never make it on my own out here. I hear him sigh though his breather. I briefly glance up and he is walking much closer behind me than I though he was. That makes me flinch but I hold my ground.
‘My ship, is not my ship, I was only a soldier on board it. Maintenance and repair.’ He says. He sounds distant again. Like he was trying to pull out a dated memory from right at the back of his mind. At least that explains his odd and garish attire.
‘Then you can fix the damn thing?’ I keep on my course of anger and frustration. It might work. This is the most information I have been able to get out of him in two days.
‘It is “Kraken” Class.’ He says like a spark has gone off in his mind. But I know what that means. My heart flutters with childish and naïve excitement.
The Kraken Class, named after a mythical sea creature, was an enormous breed of interstellar vessel. Among the very first of them too. First breed of hyper drive engine. Balls to the wall space exploration with no hope of back up when it all went wrong!
They were used for conflict though. I’d never given any thought as to why Kolt was here. On this desolate and uncivilized world. But I guess he must have crashed during a fight.
But to the point at hand. There are two glaring problems with what he said. Problems that protrude from behind my mask of excitement. The Kraken’s are old. Very, very old. Museum old. So what the hell was he doing with one? And second. There was no way we could fly a Kraken on a crew strength of two. My overactive mind lurches into action and I start digging around my imagination for a solution to the questions.
We stumble a few more yards, I say we stumble, of course I mean I stumble. Kolt takes it in stride as always.
‘Why did you bring a Kraken here?’ I decide to take a saw to the branch he is sat on. I can already predict his answer. And I’m poised and ready for the frustration of his reply.
‘I don’t remember.’ He says with no hesitation, but with a hint of frustration of his own, and proves me right. I push further.
‘The Kraken is a warship, Kolt, I didn’t even know they made any more after the Colony Wars.’ I stop, realize I’m screaming at him, and turn to look right at him. The Colony Wars ended a very long time ago ‘What the Hell did you come here for?’ I calm myself and hold his vacant stare. He shakes his head. He stays calm but I can sense somehow a deep and burning anger coming from inside of him. He stares into the distance over my shoulder and continues.
‘We maintain our course. We locate and board my ship and use the communication modules to call for help as planned.’ He hammers out a rehash of my own plan.
‘Call who?’ I ask, more calmed, and turn my attention back to the ridge we are trying to traverse across.
‘The Russian Council of Federal Governments.’ He sounds pleased and proud with himself for figuring out how to get off the planet. But more for the effort he has gone to dig out a what must have been a long lost memory.
But my heart virtually stops. I try so hard not to let my surprise and shock show. I feel a wave of bubbling fear boil over me like a freezing wave of icy water. I keep going with our path and hold onto the rocks beneath my feet using my clammy hands with as much power as I can manage.
I know my pace has slowed but I can’t help it. I try to control my breathing and not let my fear show. The Russian Federation doesn’t exist. It hasn’t for over a hundred years.
Chapter 6
The Morris-Cooper Mining Company
I awake, the same way I do every miserable day, to a high pitched blaring alarm. At least I’m not alone. All of the other miners in my sector are up and ready too. They, like me, resist the urge to turn over and get a little more sleep.
There are days I would literally kill for just another five minutes. I know better than that though. I did it once and got a swift slap round my face from one of the brutish guards as penance for the crime of wanting just a few more seconds of shut-eye.
I crawl out of my top bunk, the highest of three, and jump to the cold floor. The impact shudders through my flat, bare feet and hurts a little but I’m used to it. I stretch but only briefly. Those thin cots are no way near big enough for a guy of my size to get a comfortable night’s sleep.
The walls of the facility are grey and uninspiring, cramped and claustrophobic, and aren’t exactly designed to make us comfortable. I file in line with my fellow downtrodden miners and wait for my turn to be served my daily intake of orphan grade gruel.
There are a hundred of us working in slave like conditions in this sector. There is no telling us apart, other than the tone of our skin, for we all wear the same bland grey vests and black trousers. The company don’t provide us or even allow us to provide our own nightwear. We just get these itchy wool based garments that serve as multi functional clothes. Night clothes first and underwear later when we stick our mining suits on all thrown into one nice unattractive and itchy package.
Some of these guys are close to tears every single morning. They’re the newest of us. We’ve all been there. We all came here at some point or another with dollar signs glistening in our eyes. With thoughts of new worlds, different frontiers, and life experiences bubbling through our young and naïve minds.
The first to arrive are the most distressed. They realize the truth behind the propaganda and it hits them like the slab metal of a sledge hammer. The rest of us have our hearts hardened to it by now.
Nobody says anything as we walk, single file, smelly and miserable, down the thin and grey concrete covered corridor to the cafeteria. There is barely enough room for a gentle sway of the shoulders in here. The cafeteria is no better. It’s serviced by more hopeless wrecks like ourselves.
There’s never any chance of service with a smile. I take a thin wooden tray that has compartments carved into it from a pile in the corner of the narrow and boxy room. I’ve had this one five other days so far. I know because I etch a little mark into the corner every day with my breakfast knife. Some of them I’ve had like fifty or more times. It’s odd how we pass the time here and measure out our sentences.
Some of the guys have notches scribbled in chalk above their pillows. I bet they wish they stood for all the women they managed to bed while they were here. I do.
The room is housed in a deep underground facility which contains all living quarters and access to the mines too. I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun. That’s why they serve us this crap. It’s laced with vitamins and minerals, all cheap to produce, to stop us getting rickets or scurvy.
The young woman behind the chest high counter slops some white, lumpy, slop onto my tray with a deep spoon and refills it for the next guy. I used to say thanks to her. Can’t be bothered anymore. I never even got so much as a smile back from her. And she’s not exactly pretty either.
I take it, since there is no point in protesting, and go to sit on one of the white colored plastic tables set in the middle of the room. I don’t know what time it is. I don’t even know if it’s day or night. They keep us on a constant rotating shift so we never know how much sleep we have or anything like that. Alarms go off all the time as the next group rises or beds down.
They might even artificially lengthen the day or maybe even shorten it so it feels like time is all wrong. I have no proof of that but I don’t put it past them. I kept track the best I could for about a month. Now I have literally no idea. I can barely remember how long it has been since I started “working” for them. I think it’s years. I remember when I started but I can’t mark time here so I guess it could be longer.
We’re guarded the whole time. I wonder what they are. I never get to
see their faces. They all wear red armor that is galvanized in a plastic shell and stand a good few inches above us. They might be bio-engineered slave drivers for all I know. They speak in different tones like men and women but they always wear mirrored masks that just cast my own reflection back at me every time I even dare to look at them.
They always stand there, wherever we are, looking menacing and ominous. They must get fed a damn sight better than we do though. The guys are massive with huge bulking arms that are the same size as most peoples’ legs. The women are tall, curvy, maybe even sexy. I can’t tell anymore. They might be horrible looking but I have nothing else to go by as I endure my long sentence of employment. I’ve had a good few beatings in my time from them.
‘What are you thinking about Parker? Any good dreams?’ His booming voice greets me as soon as I sit down. He sleeps one bunk below me and we mine together sometimes. He is a massive, muscular framed, and energetic black man. Doug. His teeth miraculously remain dazzlingly white after our long service underground.
He always asks me that. And it always really winds me up. I’m thinking the same thing that everyone else is thinking about. Taking a big axe and slamming it against some rocks for a few grueling hours. And I can’t remember the last time I had a good dream. I hit out at him over it.
‘Yeah.’ I say. ‘One really good one. I think your mother was in it.’ That’s out of character for me. His smile fades briefly but he soon erupts with glorious laughter. I wish more people were like him. It takes no time at all for one of the beating guards to come over and stomp on our brief exchange. They don’t even bother to ask us to be quiet. They slap me across the back of my head and do the same to my buddy.
He erupts though. He has a temper on him. I’ve seen it get him in trouble so many times before. He jumps to his feet and ignores the fact the tray he is holding still has food on it and starts beating the guard over the head with it. He grunts with every hollow impact. I want to help him. I really do. But I daren’t. I hate myself for it. They have me broken, beat down and afraid. Just where they like us. I wish I could be more like Doug and just swing out for a lucky punch.
The male guard endures a few beats and then punches out at my buddy. I’m frozen to my seat. I know what will happen to me if I try to help him out. That kind of insolence gets you thrown in isolation for sometimes months at a time. The female guard comes racing over and administers an electric shock to my friend with a concealed weapon.
He hits the table, eyes still pinned wide open, and passes out immediately. The guards drag him off, spilling all of my food across the room as they do. I hate myself for not doing anything. I know what they’re doing is wrong and I hate the fact they have me too damn afraid to do anything about it. I quietly promise to no one but myself that one day things will change.
Breakfast is over quickly. I lost all my appetite and ate nothing. We are filed out into the changing area which is down a few more pale and uninteresting corridors. I was gonna miss Doug on this shift. Him getting dragged away has put me on a dangerous downer.
I pull my black suit on in silence in front of a towering blue locker as some of my team mates start to wake up and enjoy a few bantering jokes. I’m happy they have their spirits up. I honestly am. But mine is rock bottom and theirs will be soon too. Damn newbies. I don’t feel like getting involved. I still feel deeply ashamed.
The suit is tight and unforgiving to the male extremities. It has basic padding but it does nothing for you if you get a rock falling on it or anything like that. I’ve seen guy’s arms snap clean off before. It is patterned like a human muscular frame with protruding silver colored pads that emulate a six-pack figure and a good general muscle structure. I remember seeing the pictures of them and thinking, stupidly, that if I signed up I would end up looking awesome like that.
None of us have good frames. They feed us too much crap and we get no time to recover to build any muscle. I pull my mask on. It’s like a motorcycle helmet. It has interior lights that illuminate my face and allow me to see a few paces in front of me. It’s dark and claustrophobic to wear though. It intensifies my breathing and exaggerates the sound of my pulse through the sides of my neck. It freaked me out at first but now I just think they’re stupidly uncomfortable.
As soon as we are changed the shift leader, a short, bald, highly aggressive and insufferable son of a bitch, comes to take us to the mine. I hate that guy so much. He talks like he owns the place. Like he knows everything there is to know. He thinks he has all his life figured out and that life comes easy to him.
He gets a kick out of how beaten down and depressed we all look at the end of our long slog. He likes to wind us up and take the piss out of us all day long, like he could do any better at this hard as nails, rubbish job than we can. He thinks he’s God’s gift to the job.
At the end of the day the dumb ass is still stuck down here with us, staring at the same rock for months on end, watching and laughing at us as we try to break it apart. That epitomizes what I hate the most about this job. They caught us, all of us, with promises of promotion and creating a better life. If this is the kind of guy I would have to turn into to “make it” to the next level in the company, then they can keep it.
He leads us through a large air locked door, that is locked with a spinning mechanism in the middle of two splitting parts, and down the dry black rocks to the same face of brick we’ve been hammering at for months on end. We were supposed to be mining a crag in the planet for some damn mineral I’ve never even heard of.
I stay pretty much silent for my whole shift. You would think that in this day and age we would mine using expensive equipment but that’s not true. I think it’s more economical to slave drive us into the ground with sharpened pick axes. And then just replace us when we burn out and die. Humans are cheap. Machines aren’t.
I swing my axe at the rock face, deep down in a dark tunnel completely void of natural light, relentlessly at the unforgiving wall. I swing hard each time but I can’t get the picture of my buddy getting dragged away from the back of my eyes. I hate this place. I hate getting talked down to the way that I do. I hate how the security forces lord it over us and how we never get any time to get off-world and enjoy some downtime. I hate that I never see my family any more, barely even get the chance to call them up.
There is no light down here. Just the silly, virtually useless head torches they have built into our crash helmets.
I think about quitting. I think about it all of the time. I don’t even know how to do it though. I don’t even know how to go about handing a notice in. I never see a “higher up” to even talk to them. Not that I would dare.
I know my energy isn’t up to scratch. I think about how I used to be. I think about how I used to try to impress my boss on my first few shifts with him and I would slam at the rock as hard as I could over and over again until some small speck broke off.
I remember how he used to praise me and say I would do well and that I would go far. How naïve was I? That disappeared after a few months and then the beating started.
The guys in the sleeping quarters used to hate me. They hated how enthusiastic I was and how I made them look bad. They never did anything about it. I would forgive them now if they just beat the living daylights out of me every single night. But they didn’t. And they didn’t because they knew what would happen. They knew the company, and its true colors, would soon shine through and that I would turn into the same bitter and destroyed sort of wreck that they are.
I know I’m not like that anymore. I know my boss detects that I’m on my way down and he is on my case every single day. Life shouldn’t be like this. Slaving away for some company, never seeing your family, never being able to get out and meet new people. Maybe even a girl. While I might still be young. I can’t even remember if I am or not. I don’t feel it. I feel old.
I swing my axe with mere muscle memory. There’s no thought behind it. There is no power behind it. There is no intent with any swing.
The dull edge of the blade just chinks at the stone all day long. I assume, of course, that it is even day time. There truly is no way to tell. Some of the guys to my side have a few boulders, fist sized fragments of the rock face, lain on the floor beside them. I have nothing to show for the shift. I know I’m in for it. I can’t bring myself to care though.
‘Parker?’ There goes his aggressive, grating little voice. He looks up at me from his stunted frame and immediately invades my personal space.
‘What?’ I’m immediately shallow with him. I’m hostile and he hates it. It might dig my grave for me but I’m not backing down to this guy today.
I don’t know if he can sense my deflated tone or, even if he does, if he will care or not. I doubt he has any emotion beating through his shallow heart.
‘Why haven’t you got anything from today?’ He emphasizes the word “why” with such a condescending tone. It gets right under my skin.
‘I guess the rock is too hard right there.’ I point at it. He thinks I’m being sarcastic. I am, but not intentionally, I just want this over with as soon as possible. He hardens his stance and flares at the nostrils. I can see the shadow below his nose stretch, illuminated by the weak lights in his helmet.
‘If you can’t do this job then I’ll just find someone else who can!’ He barks at me as he points an accusatory finger right at my chest. I can feel the primal rage build up inside of me. Just like I feel it every time he starts. But there is something different about today. Today, I can’t stop it, and I don’t want to either.
‘Then how do you pay to feed your family, I bet your fat mother eats ten tons a day!’ He barks again. And there it is. I snap. Like I’ve wanted to for so long. The pent up anger raised inside of me finally releases and I’m no longer in control. I submit entirely to the beast within.
I lift up my axe and strike the sorry son of a bitch with the dull end of it. The force of the blow, the most powerful I’ve delivered all day, cracks right through his glass helmet face. I can see the fear in his face. I see his eyes widen and his chin wobble. And I love it. I’m the top dog all of a sudden!
