Orion Colony

by J. N. Chaney

  “Hey, Dean, wait up,” Stacy said, jogging beside me. “Why didn’t you tell him the truth? I was going to take the blame. You didn’t have to get docked any wages for me.”

  “I didn’t do it for you,” I said, shaking my head as I headed over to my assigned workspace.

  “Then, why did you do it?” Stacy asked, confused.

  “No more questions,” I said, stalking up one of the ramps. The interior echoed with the sounds of mechanics at work, welding and cutting. I headed for the level I was supposed to be working on. “Stop following me.”

  “At least let me pay for your lunch,” Stacy said, and then a little more forcefully she added, “Let me rephrase that. I’m going to pay for your lunch. It’s the very least I can do.”

  I was going to argue with her, but other mechanics and a few Civil Authority Officers were starting to look at us sideways. Here she was again, drawing more attention to me than I wanted. What was with this chick?

  “Sure, fine,” I said, trying to get her to just leave me in peace. “Lunch, great, and then we’re even.”

  If Ricky saw her with me, there would be no shutting him up.

  “Good, see?” Stacy said, still behind me. “Was that so hard? Why are you so reclusive, anyway?”

  I turned the last corner. A dozen or so mechanics were at work, laboring on what would eventually become the hydroponics bay.

  I let out a deep sigh as I saw Ricky make eye contact with Stacy. Great. Well, my day just went from bad to worse, I thought.

  Ricky was probably the closest thing I had to a friend, even though we were polar opposites. He was short and skinny with an overactive tongue and a gambling addiction to match. As soon as he saw Stacy and me, he dropped the torch in his hand and headed over. A Cheshire smile crossed his lips, and I knew there was no shutting him up the rest of the day.

  “Well, hello there,” Ricky said, offering a hand to Stacy. “I’ve seen you around the yard but never had the pleasure. Miss?”

  “Stacy Wilson,” She said, accepting the offered hand.

  “You didn’t tell me you knew—well, that you knew anyone else besides me,” Ricky said, looking me in the eye, then down at my arm. He glanced back at Stacy, noticing the bruise on her face for the first time. “What the hell happened to you two?”

  “Nothing,” I said, moving to my tools. “She was just leaving.”

  “Just leaving?” Stacy repeated, raising an eyebrow. “First, we were on a long date last night, then you agree to lunch today, and now the cold shoulder?”

  I shot her a glare that suggested she’d better stop whatever she was doing and leave.

  Ricky looked back and forth between us with his mouth hanging open. “You two went out on a date? Wait a minute, I need to hear everything in as much detail as possible.”

  “Maybe next time, Ricky,” Stacy said with a smile. “It was nice meeting you. I need to get to my level and start working before I get into more trouble.” She turned to me with a little smirk and said, “See you at lunch, Dean.”

  I knew she was just rubbing it in, so I waved her away with a shake of my right arm. It was hard enough focusing on work right now, thanks to the pain, but this wasn’t helping. The last thing I needed today was Ricky digging for answers.

  Too bad for me.

  “Okay, okay,” Ricky said, rapidly. “What am I missing here? Mr. Quiet and Brooding is suddenly going out with the hottest mechanic in the yard? You some kind of kink freak? Come on, we’ve been working together for nearly five years now. You never even mentioned an interest in anything other work, and I’m pretty sure that’s not even something you like. What’s going on?”

  For a moment, we both paused as a Civil Authority Officer passed by. Their dark blue uniforms and black armor made them easy to pick out among the mechanics wore.

  It’s not like we were afraid of them, and we didn’t care if they saw us working or slacking off. They weren’t here to give us a hard time. They were only here as an added precaution against vandalism and sabotage. The Disciples, a radicalized terrorist group of Transients responsible for multiple recent bombings in the city, had already hit a few yards in recent years. Not a month went by when we didn’t receive another threat that our little shop would be next.

  Even though neither of us had anything to fear from the Civil Authority Officer—or suit, as most liked to call them—we both paused as he strolled by. He gave us a tight head nod before continuing down the line of pens.

  “Come on, give me something,” Ricky begged. “Even if you have to tell me a lie. Just make it good. A little something my imagination can run with for a while. Come on, man, throw me a bone. It gets boring down here.”

  “All right,” I said, realizing that Ricky wasn’t going to let this one go. “Walking to work, some thugs calling themselves the Warlords roughed her up. I scared them off, and she feels like she owes me.”

  “Warlords, huh?” Ricky said the word as if he knew exactly who they were and then quickly snapped out of his own thoughts. “Wait a minute, you actually stopped to help someone, and you talked to them? When was the last time you did that?”

  “Hey, I talk,” I said, reaching for my thick gloves and mask. “I have you to bother me every day and tell me all your stories over, and over, and over again. No matter how much I beg you to stop.”

  “Come on, you know what I mean,” Ricky said, sighing heavily. He looked down at my injured arm again. “So, what? Like an hour of work and then you get it checked out? Man, that thing is going to sting when you have it fixed. You’re kind of bleeding all over our workspace. You should go soon. It’s unsanitary.”

  Ricky talked a lot, but the man was intuitive. I’d give him that much. He also happened to be right. Looking down, droplets of crimson were falling to the steel floor.

  “Yeah, about an hour of work, and I’m headed to medical,” I answered. “Don’t tell anyone, yeah?”

  “My lips are sealed,” Ricky said, making a zipping motion across his mouth with his right thumb and pointer finger. “You’re my friend, Dean. In the time I’ve known you, you’ve never done me dirty. That means loyalty, and loyalty means family.”

  “Man, you’re not going to get all sentimental on me again, are you?” I asked. “I really need to get to work.”

  “A real man’s not afraid to cry,” Ricky said, going to his own station next to mine. “You ever need someone to talk to besides that necklace of yours, you let me know.”

  “Yup, will do,” I said, instinctively reaching for my necklace to ensure I still had it on after the fight. It never crossed my mind that I might have lost it in the alley until now.

  Through my work glove, my fingers met the thin piece of metal, and I could feel the circular medallion that hung on the chain. I had seen it a million times before, yet it still comforted me in ways I didn’t understand.

  The symbol was one I didn’t recognize—a sword with a circle in the middle of the blade and two knives coming up on either side of it. It wasn’t really the symbol that comforted me, but rather the memory of the person who gifted it.

  Just before the waking nightmares could pull me down that road again, I was brought back to reality by the crack of Ricky igniting his torch.

  You can’t change the past, I reminded myself as I donned my protective visor and lit my own. Ain’t no sense in going back.

  Chapter 3

  Ricky was right--the visit to the med station had sucked. I made the trip after only forty-five minutes of work. Fear of infection from the thug’s knife was a great motivator, along with the pain, but I only wanted to work and keep my head down. Imagine a white-hot poker tearing a hole through your skin, and you’d be close to what it felt like standing around with this wound in my arm.

  Much like Boss Creed’s office, the med station was little more than a sparsely decorated shipping container. The front door opened into a cramped waiting area with a handful of chairs and a small desk.

  I was the only one in the room
at the moment. I couldn’t tell if it was a good or a bad thing until that question was answered for me. A shriek rang the other side of the long room.

  I tried looking further down, but a white curtain kept the source obscured.

  The scream came again, along with hushed voices I couldn’t make out. Suddenly, my arm wasn’t hurting so bad. Maybe I could cauterize it myself or clean it out with some whiskey and sew it up. Now, any option seemed better than staying here.

  I was about to turn and go when the white sheet drew back and an older woman with short, blonde hair and piercing, green eyes smiled at me. Someone else moaned behind her, but she simply ignored them and closed the curtain behind her.

  “No need to worry, he’ll be fine,” she said, like she could read my thoughts. “He just needs a few stitches. There was an accident installing one of The Orion’s cooling valves.”

  “The Orion?” I asked, forgetting about the moaning man altogether. I didn’t know our colony ship had a name yet.

  “Whoops.” The doctor smiled, revealing pearly white teeth. “Sorry, I don’t think that’s public knowledge yet. Let’s keep that between you and me. I received a memo about it just this morning. Grade-4’s and above, you see, so I doubt you’re meant to know about it yet.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes but knew better. I always hated how proud people were of their ranks, but especially when they talked about privileges. No matter how high your rank was, it wasn’t going to change the fact that you were still a Transient. The only way to become an Eternal was with money, and even then, it took decades for the drug to change your physical appearance. White hair, blue eyes, pale skin--these were traits that only the older Eternals had, which meant everyone could still tell the difference.

  I thought she was going to say more, but then her eyes found Stacy’s bloody beanie on my arm. The impromptu tourniquet was more of a sponge for blood than anything else.

  “Oh, my.” The doctor strode forward, grabbing a pad from a tabletop on her right. She punched in a few keys faster than my eyes could track. A second later, blue light shot out from the top of it, scanning my body. “Dean Slade, mechanic, grade-2. Never visited the med station before. No record of past injury.” She paused. “What happened to your arm?”

  “I was working and got caught on a sharp piece of steel,” I told her. “I’m just worried about infection.”

  The doctor came closer. She placed her pad back on the counter and reached for a pair of sterile gloves in her white lab coat pocket. She was close enough now I could see her nametag. Doctor Kelly Allbright.

  “An open piece of steel did this to you?” Kelly asked as she unwrapped the mushy tourniquet and carefully rolled up my sleeve. “Really?”

  “Really,” I said. I was all in with the lie at this point. There was no turning back.

  “Mhm,” Doctor Allbright said, waving me to the back of the room. “Okay, let’s get you cleaned up and stop this bleeding.”

  I sighed, grateful she had at least pretended to accept my words at face value. The way she looked at me said she didn’t believe me, but she wasn’t interested in pursuing the matter further.

  I followed her past the curtain to a narrow hall with three closed doors. Kelly opened the second one and ushered me inside to a square examination area.

  “Take a seat and let's get you patched up,” Kelly said, motioning to the reclining chair. “You know, Mr. Slade, I’ve been a doctor for quite a few years. Even worked the Emergency Care Ward at the local city hospital.”

  “Is that a fact?” I asked.

  “Roll your sleeve the rest of the way up, please,” Doctor Allbright said, reaching for a tool I was more than a little familiar with. It was called a Heal-Aid, and even though this one looked like it was about to fall apart, she seemed confident enough in it.

  The tool was in the shape of a wrench with a digital display screen on the back for the administrator to use. It was usually meant for deep cuts, much like the one I had now, but I’d seen people use them for smaller, more superficial wounds. A blue light scanned my abrasion, telling Doctor Allbright what she needed to apply to stop the infection.

  “While I was working in the E.C.W., I saw everything you could imagine. Mugging victims, gang fights, street wars, you name it. Transients with nothing better to do than prey on one another for a few extra credits.” Doctor Allbright pressed a few buttons on the back of the device and the machine went to work.

  It sprayed something into the knife wound, making me grimace. Disinfectant liquid, I guessed. At the same time, it cleaned the laceration. The process hurt, but in a good way. I’d been in enough fights and visited enough clinics to know the difference.

  “Wounds like this one came in all the time.” Doctor Allbright held the Heal-Aid on my arm with one hand while using a towel to soak up the bloody run off with her other. “If you’re caught up in something, I can point you to an organization that can help. Maybe set you on the better path.”

  What the hell? I asked myself, looking up at the good doctor with wide eyes. She thinks I’m some kind of thug, wrapped up in a gang?

  “It’s not what you think,” I said as the little machine stopped washing out my wound and prepared itself for the next phase. “I’m fine.”

  Doctor Allbright raised an eyebrow.

  I could see where she was coming from. The beard and long hair didn’t exactly scream “upstanding Transient”. To be honest, right now I just wanted to get the hell out of the med station and disappear. Maybe head home and crash on the couch. This Doctor Allbright was too smart for her own good. It was a reminder to stay away from this place and keep my head down. Doctors always asked too many questions and assumed too much.

  “Okay,” she said with a sigh, presumably letting the matter go for the time being. “This next part is going to hurt a bit. I can give you a sedative or some painkillers to take the edge off.”

  “I got to get back to work,” I said. If Boss Creed found out about my little medical visit, I’d be out of a job for sure.

  “It’s not going to feel good,” Doctor Allbright said, looking at me again. “This isn’t a tough guy act, is it? The Med-Aid has to close the wound now. We don’t have the fancy tech like the Eternals doctors downtown, just the good old-fashioned cauterizing kind.”

  “I’ve had it done before,” I said, motioning to my arm. “Like I said, I’m good to go. Just do it.”

  “I feel like that’s the first honest thing you’ve said to me,” Doctor Allbright said, tapping the display screen on the back of the healing tool. “Ready? Here we go.”

  I needed to concentrate on anything else besides the searing hot pain that was about to scorch my arm. It would take only a few seconds for the machine to close a wound this size, but those few seconds would be hell.

  I thought about everything I had to do today to finish my work. I thought about Stacy and the red holo card she and the thugs seemed so interested in. I even thought about Ricky and his incessant need to meddle in my life.

  “Okay, that’s it,” Doctor Albright said, tearing me from my thoughts as she placed the Med-Aid on the counter. She cleaned off the blood from the rest of my arm while examining me. “Good as new, I think.”

  I followed her gaze, lowering my eyes to the new pink skin that covered the place the wound had been only a moment before. It still hurt, but at least I knew it wasn’t infected and the bleeding had stopped.

  “Here, tough guy,” Doctor Allbright said as she stood from her seat and motioned me from the room. She handed me two white pills. “Just old school extra-strength Motrin to help ease the inflammation. You can still work and go about your day. If you don’t want them now, just take them later with a beer.” She gave me a wink. “Just don’t overdo it.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” I said, accepted the pills and placing them in my pocket.

  She opened the door and invited me into the hall. I rotated my shoulder, stretching my arm and noticing a significant drop in pain from before.

&nb
sp; I had to admit, this lady wasn’t so bad, although I’d never openly say it.

  She led back down the narrow hall to the front of the office. “If you’re worried about me telling anyone, rest assured that I won’t,” Doctor Allbright said, opening the front door of the med station to usher me out. “I—”

  Shouts and the screeching of tires masked whatever she was going to say next. Turning to my left, the suits at the gate opened fire on a dump truck bulldozing its way toward the front entrance to the yard.

  The next thing I knew, the gate snapped open and the truck came barreling inside.

  Gunshots muffled the screams from the men on the catwalk, followed by the yard’s alarms. In seconds, the entire facility was so loud I could hardly discern one noise from another. I could barely think.

  The dark grey dumpster weaved like a drunk trying to find its way, finally turning and aiming itself directly at the medical building.

  Chapter 4

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said out loud as my adrenaline spiked for the second time that morning.

  The behemoth of a dumpster truck was bearing down on us too fast to make any calculated moves. For those few seconds, I made eye contact with the maniac behind the wheel. He looked younger than me, somewhere in his late twenties, and his wide-eyed expression look fanatical as he fought the steering wheel.

  There was no more time to think. I could only react.

  I tackled Allbright to the ground, pushing her back inside her office and far from the door. A second later, the dumpster truck tore off the small catwalk outside her building, along with most of the door. Metal screeched as the dumpster truck scraped against the walls, finally breaking through them and sending a mist of dust into the compartment.

  The entire med station shook with the impact from the blow.

  “Th-thank you,” Doctor Allbright coughed as I removed myself from her. “What—who’s doing this? The Disciples?”