Ben Chaney - Son of Sedonia

Matteo didn’t flinch. He stood straight and stared them down.

“If you wanna keep it that way, cut me in. What are they lookin’ for?” he asked.

“Oh I’ll cut you!” the thin, scrappy one said, pulling out a sharpened metal wedge.

“Ruka, chill,” the command from the dark Cutter seemed to slacken Ruka’s muscles. “Blood wastes time and attracts attention. ‘Sides, an extra hand might work out.” The Cutter casually turned back to the third man. The move was subtle, but Matteo saw him mouth a word into Ruka’s ear. ‘ After.’ Good to know .

“I’m Samir. That’s Ruka and that’s Taliq. Get your gear, follow us, and keep your mouth shut.” Matteo pulled up his shoulder strap and followed. The four of them climbed through a ragged tear in the lower hull of a skyliner called ‘The Somnium.’ Just inside, crews swarmed all over the hover-engine room, grabbing everything that wasn’t riveted down and torch-cutting anything that was. The shell of a fusion reactor came down in minutes. The workers’ only protection against the radiation: rubber kitchen gloves, thread-bare track suits, and expired re-breathers they’d found on the walls.

Samir wasted no time getting up the metal stairs and through a hatch at the aft end. He led them through the maintenance corridors, a twisting, turning, climbing series of angular, high-ceiling passages. The path grew pitch black as they passed the last of the early crews and their lamps. Samir took out glow sticks, cracked all four, and passed them around. Shaking them bathed the hexagonal tunnel in blue-green twilight. Deep in the aft end, they finally reached an untouched block of engineers’ quarters. Two bunk beds per room with all the trimmings intact.

“Okay, we’re lookin’ for batteries, copper wire, and any kind of switch you can find. Lights, TV, window, A/C, whateva, so long’s it turns on an’ off. Get the plumbin’ pipes too, ‘specially PVC. Go,” said Samir. All four of them took a room and got to work. Matteo glanced around his first bunk in an instant, mentally marked his targets, then stuck the glow stick between his teeth. Batteries in the emergency floodlights. Copper wiring in the wall sockets, intercom, and light fixtures. Light switches from the door, bathroom, and shower. Panel switches for the wall-mounted monitors. Circuit switches from the climate control box. He squinted behind his sunglasses and handkerchief as he torch-cut PVC pipe from under the sink. All flew into his satchel, and he was on to the next room. And the next. And the next.

With his bag filled to the brim, he pulled it shut and stepped out into the corridor. Glowing light still flickered from the others’ first rooms. He grinned, stuffed his glow stick in his waistband, and pulled the hoodie down over it, dousing the light. Their route to this section played back in his head. Reversing it was easy. He stepped carefully past the rooms and turned into the inky darkness of the main corridor. Bye, Samir .

Less than halfway down the path, he saw lamplight appear. More crews headed aft . He wondered if Ruka would pull a knife on them too. He thought about warning them, but his heart sank when they came into view. A young worker and his younger friend, neither over thirteen. Both lay motionless against the bulkhead. Both burned beyond recognition. The eldest seemed to have tried to carry his friend away from the fire before collapsing there in the tunnel. Matteo tried to wake him. No response. Only a vacant stare.

Hotburst. They were common enough. A Cutter would torch right through a line and trigger a fireball, cooking all inside the compartment until the gas pocket burned away. Smoke gathered in the passage as Matteo crouched beside the boys. He reached into his bag and took out his air canister. The sight of it made the callus under his nose itch. He dropped the tank into his hood, wrapped the tube over his ears, and fastened it under his nose. The air inside tasted stale. Metallic. He put down the rushing flood of memories to focus on finding the way out.

The morning had been difficult, but continuing through the rest of the day drained him. After leaving ‘The Somnium,’ and the threat of bumping into Samir’s crew, he crossed the yard to join a Cutter crew on a Virton Energy bulk-freighter. The afternoon and early evening was spent climbing all over the ship, rappelling from the sides, and cutting massive gashes in the bulkhead so the chains could yank it down in sections. No one was killed. He thanked God for that. But the injuries weren’t any easier to see. A crushed leg here. An open gash there. Those always happened.

The sun dipped under the horizon by the time he got in line for the Seedmaster. The blue-uniformed, squat City man sat behind a table just inside the open hatch of a City Municipal shuttle. Two armed guards, likewise uniformed, stood silent beside him. One by one, the Cutters, Runners, and Medics took their day’s wages. Each hung their head after. A bad sign.

Matteo’s turn came.

“Job?” asked the Seedmaster, smacking loudly on a wad behind his lower lip.

“Cutter,” Matteo said, “Worked ‘The Somnium,’ ‘Virton JF-145,’ ‘The Sedonia Queen—’”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” The Seedmaster reached behind the desk. Matteo stood on tiptoes to watch. Five giant duffels of seed sat behind the table. The Seedmaster sunk a plastic scoop in one and brought it to the table over the scales. Matteo got excited. Gotta be at least an ounce in that scoop!

The Paymaster tipped it over the scale tray, dropping a trickle of seeds. Stopped. Matteo sank as the tray was emptied into a plastic baggy. He could count the tiny seeds by looking at them.

“Point-oh-eight grams. Next!” shouted the man as he handed over the bag.

Matteo lingered, scowling at the bag. Weak for a Runner. Damn insulting for a Cutter. He did the math in his head. A hundred-twenty-two more days of this to hit the nine-point-eight goal. A hundred-twenty-two more days to die… . IF they don’t cut rates again.

“Move on!” one of the guards snarled, pointing his weapon at Matteo. No use arguing. Matteo pocketed the insult, shouldered his satchel, and made for the road into town. Triple salvage… Samir, your cousin better not be full of shit.

POLITE APPLAUSE CRACKLED from the press corps as Governor Sato shook hands with Elias Finley, CEO of Virton Energy, the largest Helium-3 fuel production company in the western hemisphere. Sato’s best and last hope to turn the polls stood a full foot shorter than him, squinting through a smile on a pinched, froggish face. To everyone there on the Virton Hub’s central landing deck, that hope already seemed dim.

The gray sky and bitter ocean air did nothing to help the mood…or the frizzing in Liani Ray’s curly, auburn hair. She struggled to tame it as Sato and Finley waved to the crowd and departed the landing deck for the Hub’s Main Office tower. Mr. Kabbard and a compliment of black-suited goons followed behind.

“I look insane, don’t I?”

“Of course not, Ms. Ray. You are sanity personified.” Corey, her cameraman, panned his camera left to right, tracking Governor and CEO on their path along the catwalk. She would have punched him in the ribs if he wasn’t focused on keeping the shot framed in his real-time Neural readout. Instead, she looked into the pin camera on her ring. Her pouting face frowned back at her in a floating video feed.

“Hopeless.”

“No kidding. Sato can plead and beg with Finley ’til the sun goes nova, but he’ll never get that tight-ass to restructure the budget,” Corey said. Liani rolled her eyes and switched off her ring-cam.

“Win or lose, a story’s a story.” She tried to sound confident, but her hands trembled as she smoothed imaginary wrinkles on her tight-fitting blouse. She caught Corey peeking at her curves. Relaxed a bit. Those curves had served her well, gaining the attentions of the station manager and thus a shot at a story that no twenty-three year old rookie had any business covering: The last power-play of the once-great Governor Enota Sato. Yet now, in the moments before her first sound byte, her mind buzzed with all the ways she could fail. Corey pressed a few buttons and lowered the camera. His scruffy, more experienced face smiled at her. At least he knows what he’s doing .