Scott Cleveland - Pale Boundaries

Intense, agonizing heat washed across him accompanied by a sudden, massive downdraft that whipped up a choking cloud of ash.

Terson stared dumbly at the Colonial Police helicopter hovering overhead as the door gunner played the beam of his Active Denial weapon back and forth over the chinche in the crater. The Colonization Board mandated the use of the supposedly non-lethal device in any situation involving chinche, inadvertently supplying the colonists with their most effective weapon against the insectoids to date. Although the microwave energy spent itself against the first layer of skin in mammals, producing an excruciating but harmless burning sensation, it penetrated the chinche’s dry, porous chitin, exciting the moisture in their innards faster than their bodies could dissipate the heat.

The chinche clinging to Terson dropped dead, roasted in their own shells.

Terson dimly perceived someone rappelling from the helicopter, then a dizzying harness ride ten meters into the air where the gunner pulled Terson and his rescuer into the helicopter. The last thing he remembered was a laryngoscope blade sliding down his throat as they intubated him.

The sound of a steel door slamming against its stops tore through Terson’s throbbing head like a bullet. His eyelids felt like they were lined with sandpaper. His mouth tasted like a small animal had crawled inside and shit itself to death.

“Reilly; out!”

Terson pulled himself to his feet and shuffled across a floor tacky with bile and stale urine. The jailer took him by the arm and led him to the discharge station. A tall, slender man in a black jumpsuit stood in the foyer bouncing on the balls of his feet—Captain Maalan Bragg, the Federal Police investigator who also acted as Terson’s probation officer.

His belongings spilled onto the counter before him. Nothing was left of the hundred-euro note he remembered leaving home with but small change. The arrest bond slid across to him.

“Twenty-five hundred,” the jailer smirked. “Cash or credit?”

Terson flipped his debit card back. “Cash—and I want my receipt this time.”

The transaction processed and his card hit him in the chest. “See you next week, smartass.”

Bragg intercepted him as he headed for the door. “You violated probation again.”

Terson examined his knuckles. New cuts and scrapes lay atop old scars and partially healed wounds. He explored the inside of his mouth with his tongue for cuts or missing teeth, but everything was as it should be.

“I guess I won.”

Bragg only shook his head and pointed at the door.

The humid air outside enveloped Terson like a moist blanket. His eyes teared up in the bright, clear sunlight. He fumbled at his pockets but his sunglasses were gone, lost during the night’s binge. He stepped into Bragg’s shadow and followed the officer to a car equipped, mercifully, with tinted windows.

Bragg was already sweating heavily in the heat and humidity, but to Terson the air was just on the edge of comfortable. He had yet to experience more than a few days he considered hot. He certainly didn’t sweat like the locals, who dashed from air-conditioned dwelling to air-conditioned vehicle as if their veins coursed ice water, and then massed on the beaches to expose their bodies to insects and the crisping radiation of the sun.

No one thought to caution Terson about the sun when he arrived. Algran Asta’s perpetual cloud cover blocked the most harmful radiation, and the rare periods of clear sky were too brief to do damage. Terson found Nivia’s deep blue sky fascinating the first day, but he woke that night in horrible pain to find his face, neck and hands bright red and blistered. He rushed to the local hospital in near panic, convinced he’d contracted some disfiguring disease. The medical staff chuckled at his ignorance, adding anger to his anxiety, which brought on an attack of another sort no one thought of, this one life threatening.

Terson grew up in high gravity at an altitude lower than Nivia’s sea level on a planet with an average atmospheric oxygen level of twenty-seven percent. Consequently, his lungs lacked the capacity to oxygenate his blood normally on Nivia, where the air pressure and oxygen levels were considerably less than what his physiology was accustomed to. He collapsed in the hospital and almost died before the staff realized that he was suffering from acute altitude sickness.

The damnable AC in Bragg’s cruiser came on before they reached the street. Terson closed his eyes and rested his head against the warm window while they drove downtown. He could not say he received less than a fair deal from the Commonwealth, though it was a close thing. The prosecution painted him as not merely a Militia sympathizer, but an active member who participated in a potentially deadly attack on two Marine pilots engaged in the performance of their lawful duties. The alleged Militia member who launched the weapon was never found and therefore existed as nothing more than a transparent fabrication intended to deflect responsibility for the crime from the real culprit.

The defense produced the falsified manifest signed by the shipping agent in Windstone who was later indicted for an unrelated incident in which he attempted to funnel weapons to the Colonial Resistant Militia disguised as legal cargo using an unsuspecting shipper. The Marine pilots confirmed that they observed two individuals eject from the helicopter, but the prosecution could not adequately explain how either man could fly and fire the weapon at the same time.

Terson was found guilty of providing false statements to an agent of the Colonization Board, to wit: the Marine pilot who first contacted him. He received four years, suspended, with credit for time served, and maintained his resettlement rights plus full compensation for the family homestead and herds held in trust for him by Boss Hanstead.

Bragg turned down a ramp leading to the Federal Police garrison’s parking garage. He boasted a corner office on the upper floors with a good view of the ocean two kilometers distant. Terson sat, rubbing his temples while Bragg shuffled paperwork.

“It becomes a felony if you accumulate too many probation violations,” Bragg said.

Terson shrugged.

“We’ve got people you can talk to,” Bragg said. “There’s no reason for you to live like this.”

Terson rested his face in his hands; a wad of scum oozed down his throat. He’d heard the coming lecture a dozen times, but the sooner he got through it the sooner he could go home.

The vidcom behind the desk chimed. Bragg stabbed the privacy switch and picked up the handset. The light over the video transmitter gleamed, though the screen and speaker remained inactive. “Yes, ma’am,” Bragg told the unseen caller, “I’ll bring it up right now.” He pulled another file from his desk. “Wait here.” The door closed behind him with a well-oiled click.

Terson could hardly believe his luck when they offered him another Class I colony; planets with a breathable atmosphere were rare, and after months in a cell he would have accepted transportation to anyplace with a sky , breathable or not. Had Terson actually read Nivia’s strict environmental charter before he signed he might have changed his mind.

Though inhabited for just over one hundred and seventy-five years, with a population barely over the median average of Algran Asta, Nivia was far from the raw, burgeoning colony Terson expected. Habitation was forbidden on two of the planet’s three continents; new development on the Alpha continent required years of permits and hearings.

Slow growth coupled with advanced technology offered a standard of living higher than colonies twice as old. The state provided for the colonists’ organic needs through carefully managed harvesting of wildlife, making large-scale agriculture and animal husbandry unnecessary. The ocean yielded the bulk of the food, but even getting a job as a deck hand required education and certifications Terson didn’t have.