by Jake Bible
“Right,” Derrick laughed. “He would throw one anytime one of his architectural projects was completed. Sometimes me and Alexis would just sleep in the great hall between feasts. We’d wake up and grab a plate of something, steal some wine, then pass out in the corner again until the next one.” The minor looked about at the bowls of mush that everyone was eating. “A far cry from this subsistence, I guess. I can almost see why you rebelled.”
“Almost?” Langley asked. “What else do you need to see? The lack of physicians? The eight person families crammed into a closet? The missing limbs from rotational drive engineers because their safety harnesses haven’t been updated since the last century?”
“Alright, alright, you can stop,” Derrick sighed. “I’ve heard it all before. Trust me when I say that my brother understands all of this and truly wants to help.”
“And you?”
“Me? Honestly?” Derrick mused. “I could give two shits. I’ve lived under the shadow of others my whole life. I let them make the hard choices and just worry about staying out of the way. I do as I am told and don’t rock the boat.”
“So you live as a coward,” Langley stated.
“I live,” Derrick replied. “Not always the easiest thing for a royal to do.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I used to set a timer to wake me up every fifteen minutes. That way no one could sneak into my room and kill me in my sleep.”
“That’s pretty paranoid,” Langley said. “How do you sleep now?”
“Oh, I sleep fine now,” Derrick said. “That was what I did when I was eight. That was the year Alexis came down with the weeping sickness and almost died. My sister told me if he died I would be next in line for the crown which meant there would be plenty of people wanting me dead.”
“Nice sister,” Langley chuckled.
“She’s gotten better,” Derrick smiled. “Now she scares my brother’s kids instead.”
“You have no children of your own?” Langley asked.
“No,” Derrick said, shaking his head. “Never married.”
“Marriage isn’t how children are made,” Langley winked. “I should know. I have three by my wife and probably more than a couple others running around the lower decks wondering who their daddy is.”
“Some royals have a stable of bastards,” Derrick shrugged. “I’ve always been careful.”
“Why? Knock up a whore and so what?”
“Because if anyone found out who sired the bastard then that child would be dead in an instant,” Derrick replied. “You forget I hear the secrets of other stations. Master Rutge of Station Klaerv sent three of his bastards down to Klaerv Prime to hide. Within the month they were returned to him, piece by piece, until he had their whole bodies. Then someone sent him an instruction pamphlet on how to sew them back together.”
Langley stared at Derrick for a good long while before he shook his head.
“That story makes my case for why the monarchy should be abolished,” Langley said. “And to think lowdeckers are considered the barbarians of this station.”
“Please,” Derrick laughed. “You understand brutality and violence, but we royals understand that and cruelty. You haven’t met evil until you’ve looked royal ambition in the eye.”
“What do you call that?” Langley asked, pointing at the stacks of paper being set on the table. “Looks like royal ambition to me.”
“Hardly,” Derrick responded. “My brother wanted nothing to do with this. It was all the meeting of the stewards’ idea.”
“I am willing to bet there was one steward in particular that wished for this to happen,” Langley smiled.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” Langley shrugged. “It’s business better left unsa—”
His voice was lost in the massive explosion that roared towards them in a split second. Langley and Derrick were both thrown from their seats and sent flying against the wall. Smoke filled the mess hall and body parts rained down on those still left alive. Bits of paper floated lazily to the ground.
Derrick struggled to open his eyes and blinked several times before he could focus on the carnage.
The dead were everywhere. Legs, arms, and torsos covered every inch of space. Small fires burned here and there and Derrick realized most were fueled by human remains. Of the several dozen lowdeckers that had been present, only a third seemed able enough to stagger about and try desperately to help their fallen friends.
Derrick tried to look for Dormin, or any of the royal guards, but the space where they had been, where the hand cart had been, was nothing but a smoking crater and massive hole in the wall. No one within a thirty foot radius could have survived the blast. Derrick quickly realized he was alone.
That wasn’t his only realization: he could see all the panicked activity, but he couldn’t hear any of it. He reached up and snapped his fingers by his ears, but there was nothing but a high-pitched ringing and the low thump-thump of his pulse. He wiped at the skin just below his ears and his fingers came away bloody.
But his attention was quickly diverted from his new disability as hands grabbed him and yanked him to his feet. All were suddenly screaming at him, fingers jabbing Derrick in the chest. Bloody spittle flew onto Derrick’s face, but he didn’t care. All he had eyes for was the heavy blade one of Langley’s men was pulling free from its scabbard.
“Hey. Stop!” Derrick shouted. “I didn’t do this!”
His words were a far off buzz in his head. The minor started to thrash and fight against the men that held him, but a couple quick shots to his kidneys stopped that. He felt as if his back was on fire and he wondered what other injuries he had.
The men dragged him over to an overturned table and forced his neck against the edge. Derrick continued to fight, despite the constant battering he took, but his strength gave out quickly as he felt wetness run down the backs of his legs. He was bleeding and badly, he knew it.
Not that it mattered as a man stepped in front of him and showed him the razor sharp blade of impossible size. Then the blade was lost from sight as it was raised over his neck.
Derrick’s last thoughts were how in Helios’s name could anyone even lift a blade like that.
Then it was over.
* * *
The lift came to a stop and the guards turned to open the doors.
“Welcome back, your highn—” one of the guards said then stopped, his jaw dropping.
The other guard shoved him out of the way, stared at what was inside the lift, then turned and vomited.
Inside were piles of papers, most scorched and charred by fire, with each pile topped by a bloody body part or two. A couple of fingers on that pile, an ear on the other; a foot over there, a shoulder on that one.
In the middle of the grotesque scene was an almost pristine pile of paper. And on top of that was the severed head of Derrick Teirmont, Minor of Station Aelon.
Chapter Five
The blade cut so cleanly that the man’s eyes widened with surprise and confusion in their last dying light after his head was severed from his body. It tumbled through the air and sent a spray of blood across the attacker’s face. The man shoved the headless body aside, ignoring the geyser of blood that tried to drown him in one last ditch effort of violence.
“Press on!” Langley shouted, not bothering to wipe any of the red liquid from his eyes as he pushed forward, urging his men on, keeping them from retreating to the safety of the lift that led to the lower decks. “Take it to them!”
The lowdeckers snarled with rage and fought with a fury that only the ruthlessly oppressed could know. Nothing to lose and everything to gain was the fuel that stoked the flames of hatred and revenge. They tore their way through the royal guards with their heavy blades, sending men to death like a Vape wind parting wild scrim grass on a prime.
They were a force of nature that was bottled inside a station made by men. A trapped cyclone of strained muscles and sheer willpower, any that stood in their
way were cut down without regard or mercy. The passageway was flooded with blood and offal. Lowdeckers stood ankle deep in the bodily fluids of the royal guards and regiments sent by the stewards to keep the wild ones from ascending any farther than the lower decks.
“I see you, Klemshir!” Langley roared as he spied the steward at the far end of the passageway holding the lift to the middle decks with a contingent of his men. “Run, if you like! But know you die if you stay!”
“End this, Langley!” Klemshir shouted back. “Go back to your world below and stop this idiocy! You can’t win against the crown or the meeting of stewards! Save yourself!”
Langley hacked at a soldier that tried to spear him in the belly. He took the soldier’s hands, as well as half the spear, with one swipe of his blade. The man collapsed to the ground, his spurting stumps held before his face. Another swipe and the stumps became new stumps and the soldier’s head joined his body parts that lay about him.
Langley kicked the man to the floor and then fell back against the wall as a volley of flechettes ripped down the passageway. He turned to see three of his men double over and hit the ground, their thin breen armor no match for the power of the longsling projectiles. Another volley was fired and Langley barely had time to dive into the inches-thick gore and keep from being shredded by the metal rounds.
He lifted his face from the gore and looked towards Klemshir as a squad of longslingers poured from the lift and set themselves before the soldiers that held the way up. It took only a fraction of a second for them to get in place and begin firing once more.
Those of his men not fast enough to flatten themselves cried out as the flechette particle barbs split and split again, blossoming within their bodies over and over with every contact of flesh until the pieces were so minuscule they started to rip apart the very atoms the men were made of. Blood mist filled the air as men so muscled that their breen armor stretched to breaking were cut down by things smaller than gelberry pollen.
Langley saw what was happening and calculated how many men he had left versus how many longslingers kneeled in front of the soldiers that held the lift up. If it was his heavy blades against only the long blades and spears of the soldiers and guards then he would have pressed the attack; they had been that close.
But the longslingers hadn’t lost a single man in their ranks and Langley knew the day was over. He waited for the next volley of death to fly over him before he shoved himself to his feet and retreated down the passageway.
“Back below!” he shouted. “We have wounded them and they won’t soon forget it! We fight again another day!”
“Run, you lowdecker trash!” Steward Klemshir screeched. “Scum like you will never leave the lower decks!”
“Neither shall you!” Langley yelled as he kicked a spear up into the air with his foot.
He caught the shaft, cocked his arm back, and threw it as hard as he could. The look on Klemshir’s face turned from smugness to fear. Then to pain. The life left him before his hands could even grip the spear that pierced his heart. His men gawked wide eyed, stunned that their steward’s polybreen armor couldn’t hold back a spear it was designed to repel. Langley laughed as the noble collapsed to the ground and the soldiers closed ranks around him.
“His soul will be damned with the rest of ours!” Langley shouted as he backed into the lift to below, his eyes watching the longslingers, ready for the next attack. “Helios will never let him ascend to the Surface again!”
With their leader slain, the soldiers’ resolve began to fail and Langley honestly considered one more attack. But the longslingers were beholden to no steward, having sworn fealty to the crown only, and their eyes narrowed, their fingers tightened, and another volley of flechettes exploded towards the retreating lowdeckers.
The lift doors closed just as the particle barbs reached the end of the passageway. The lowdeckers stared in wonder as the metal began to bubble inward, pocked by the ever-splitting flechettes. Langley looked about and realized that a fifth of his men hadn’t made it onto the lift. Their screams were cut short quickly as the particle barbs tore them up; then lost completely as the lift began to descend to the safety of the lower decks below.
“We need our own longslings,” one of Langley’s men said. “Then we wouldn’t have to run like lasses.”
“We will get them,” Langley sighed.
“That’s what you have said for a year now,” another man stated. “But where are they?”
Langley turned on the man, his face stone cold. The man was easily six inches taller than Langley, but he quickly withered under the shorter man’s cruel gaze.
“If any of you doubt my leadership then please bring it up with the others,” Langley said. “I will gladly walk away from this fight and let those more capable than myself take over.”
There was no response from the man, or any of the men, as Langley looked about the lift. He locked eyes with each and every one of them until they were all forced to turn away. They knew the rebellion was nothing without him. It was an unfortunate truth, but a truth nonetheless.
“Exactly,” Langley said. “I have gotten us this far and I will take us further until we all stand on the Surface of Station Aelon as equals amongst the stewards.”
There was no response and the lowdeckers stood in pained silence as the lift took them ever downward, back to the squalor they were so desperate to escape.
* * *
“Show me the weak points,” Alexis ordered as he stared at the vast schematics before him. The banquet table of the great hall was covered end to end by sheet after sheet of paper. The master’s eyes took in every inch, studying the various lifts, maintenance tunnels, and access ports that crisscrossed Station Aelon. “I know we have secured all sectors on the western hemisphere of Aelon, but what about the eastern side? Steward Veschy? How have you fared with your mission?”
“My sectors are defended, sire,” the squat, dark-complected man replied. Only a few years older than the master, Veschy had hair that was liberally streaked with grey. The same could be said of all the men that stood around the banquet table; the wages of war making them old before their times. “Ninn, Staben, and Lauchknit will hold against any attacks thanks to the squad of longslingers put in place.”
“Yes, I understand that your sectors are holding, but have you made any headway with penetrating the lower decks? I sent you those longslingers as an offensive force, not to defend your interests with!”
“My apologies, your highness,” Stolt said. “I gave the order for Steward Veschy to keep the longslingers back in order to conserve ammunition. Unfortunately, Gornish Wyerrn was struck ill and passed away last week. Production of the particle barb flechettes was halted due to unforeseen circumstances.”
“Unforeseen circumstances?” Alexis snapped. “This is war! Death is never unforeseen in war!”
“If I may, sire,” de Morlan said, in an uncharacteristic show of solidarity with Stolt. “The unforeseen circumstance is not the deck boss’s demise, but the fact that he moved the exact specifications for the particle barb flechettes just before said demise. Until his daughters can find the specs, production of the flechettes has been halted.”
Master Alexis looked at the two stewards in shock. He was used to bad news, having fought against the rebellion for over eight years, but the lack of ammunition for the longslings was almost too much to bear. The stewards’ soldiers, as well as the royal guard, were well trained, but every one of the nobility had learned the hard way what training did against the full might of the lowdeckers’ heavy blades.
Absolutely nothing.
“What do we have left?” Alexis asked as he took a seat, his body exhausted after days, weeks, months with little to no sleep. “Please tell me we have stockpiled the particle barbs.”
“To tell you that would be a far cry from the truth, sire,” Stolt said. “The royal armory reports we have enough to outfit a dozen squads and that is it.”
“A dozen squads?” Al
exis barked. The sound was like a mix between a laugh and snarl, and most of the stewards took an involuntary step back from the table. Alexis looked about the great hall until he found Corbin standing at the far end of the table. “Can we hold the lifts with a dozen squads?”
“We can, sire,” Corbin said.
“I beg your pardon? Impossible!” Stolt blurted then cleared his throat. “I mean, it is not mathematically possible to cover all the sectors’ lifts with a mere dozen squads.”
“How fast we have become dependent on tiny pieces of metal,” Alexis groaned. “As the Ledger says, ‘From the highest mountains to the tiniest of molecules, Helios’s will rules all.’ We have forgotten to pay respect to those tiniest of molecules and now instead we pay a price.”
“I’m not sure Helios’s will is in play here, sire,” de Morlan responded. “More like human folly.”
“The folly would be to underestimate my men,” Corbin said. “They have learned over the years the best strategical use of the longslingers. While the stewards worry about a proper show of force to prove their manhood, my methods are much more subtle.”
“I don’t believe that tone is called for,” Stolt said. “You forget your place.”
“He knows exactly where his place is,” Alexis responded. “Advising me on matters of warfare that none of you seem to understand.”
“Your highness,” Corbin said. “The weakness of the rebellion has always been the lifts. They need them in order move out of the lower decks to attack us. Their weakness is ours as well.”
“Are you suggesting the master is equal to a lowdecker?” Stolt challenged. “Saying as much could be considered a capital offense.”
“Do you believe that is what I am saying, your highness?” Corbin asked.
“Of course not,” Alexis snapped. “Continue.”
“We shut down the lifts except one,” Corbin replied. “We bottleneck the entire station. One way down, one way up.”
