Ben Chaney - Son of Sedonia

“Check in here then have a seat, someone will be with you as soon as possible.” The woman tapped a few icons on her Neural and started talking to a face on a screen. Liani fidgeted for a second, then rolled up her sleeve to scan her forearm. Her profile appeared on the receptionist’s display followed by the text: “ 4.678 minutes late. ” Liani grimaced until the receptionist shrank the profile window and stuck it into a queue of other profiles.

“Thank you,” Liani said, attempting to be cheerful. She turned and strode toward the colony of circular sofas in the center of the lobby. Halfway there, everyone in the room froze at the sudden burst of intro music and soundbytes. On the high wall behind the desk, GSBC-17 anchor Garen Todd appeared on a massive physical screen. His sharp blue eyes and chisel-cut features stared solemnly down at the lobby.

“We interrupt today’s broadcast of ‘Inter-Lunar Freighters’ to bring you this Special Report. At 5:03 SST this morning, the Sedonia Border Police Department executed what Commander Gorman of the EXOs referred to as the ‘largest, most decisive strike against organized terrorism within the Rasalla District in the history of the SCPD.’ The majority of the SCPD EXO division’s aerial combat and infantry were mobilized in a single, organized raid to decapitate leadership structures of Slum terrorist factions plotting violence on the Border and the Outer Ring territories. Chief Gorman confirms that all major operations have concluded successfully with the capture or death of every top-ranking target. Our safety, however, has apparently come at the highest of costs, for, and it is difficult for me to share this information with you, twenty-one EXO officers lost their lives in the effort andthirty-six were wounded. We have correspondent Byron Youngblood coming to us live from the Southwestern Rasalla District. Byron, what is the current situation?”

Liani dropped to her knees in the middle of the floor as she stared up at the screen. No one seemed to notice or. Some even joined her in their own displays of grief, real or faked. The screen changed to show a grizzled, world-worn correspondent against a backdrop of fire and smoking debris. Gunships patrolled overhead and, to the reporter’s right, EXO Cops loaded unconscious dwellers onto a carrier.

“Garen, the mood here is definitely a somber one. The official casualty report came over the Net roughly an hour ago, sending a shockwave through the men and women of the SCPD. Their friends and brothers have made the ultimate sacrifice in this morning’s events, Garen, and every officer I’ve spoken to carries the weight of that loss. Yet there is also great relief and pride, and as you can see behind me, their mission is all but accomplished with the elimination or incarceration of over twenty-five-hundred individuals throughout the district, the majority of which belonged to the notorious Triumph-99 or T99 crime syndicate, a group the Sato Administration has dubbed ‘a threat to civilization’—”

“Thanks Byron, but I’m going to interrupt you briefly so we can show some of the images coming to us from all over the Rasalla District. For those of you joining us, I have to issue a warning about the graphic nature of these images.”

I’m…. I’m too late. God, I didn’t mean to— Liani’s stomach turned. A slideshow of well composed, color-corrected footage appeared on screen. A ragged gash rippled through a neighborhood, collapsing its buildings into piles of smoldering debris. Women wailed in the streets as EXOs walked by with prisoners in tow. Bloody faces. Broken corpses. The last image made her turn away. On screen, a row of children stared down at the destruction from a nearby rooftop. Liani felt their eyes on her.

A touch on her shoulder made her jump. Hastily applied mascara ran down her cheeks in black streaks. She wiped it away and looked up. A thin, blond young man spoke to her between glances at the screen.

“Ms. Ray?”

“Y-yes.”

“We have an editor ready to see you now. Do you have it with you?”

“Wha…? I…” Liani stood on weak knees. Buckled.

“Whoa! Taking this pretty hard, aren’t you?” asked the man, reaching to help her up. She pushed his hands away and stood. Straightened her ugly blazer.

“I don’t have anything… Th-thank you for your time.”

Liani stumbled out of the automatic doors in a daze, drifted to the edge of the skywalk, and grabbed the railing. The GSBC building stretched what seemed like forever underneath her. Dizzy and nauseous, she swayed back from the rail and sunk down to sit on the concrete. Her purse clinked next to her. She reached in and took out the memory chip. The power to topple a government in the palm of her hand. And maybe not just a government. Murder. Kidnapping. Slavery. If the people knew, it would crush them. And if they knew she could have done something to stop it… No.

In a flash, Liani took the chip in both hands. Snapped it in two.

MATTEO AWOKE TO thundering white-noise and a crushing pressure all over his body. Though unable to move, he felt a lead burden pulling him forward. Or was it downward? Hot blood tingled against his skin in its direction. It pressed him into something hard, crushing his collar bone, chest, and groin to the point where he thought they might crack. He fought for ragged sips of air from a plastic mask over his face.

His eyes throbbed as they darted over the space around him. Curved bars ran past his head and over his shoulders, holding him against a seat. A harness? His foggy mind drifted to his hands. He tried to raise them… found them pinned at his sides with thick metal cuffs.

Matteo could see flickering, blurry shapes in front of him. Violent pulses of light cast on figures that seemed to be seated and bound like him. Faint human sounds cried out against the background roar. Gotta be engines. Big ones. Observations struggled against the sharp pain in his temples. He pinched his eyes shut.

Then something cut the weight. A gasp filled his lungs with hot wet air and his chest trembled with each wheezing breath after. We’ve stopped. Why are the engines still running? The thought vanished, overcome by strangeness. His body felt… disconnected. As though his insides were floating around. The stunners? Out of nowhere, his stomach lurched. He vomited. But it didn’t move right. Yellow-green liquid left his mouth and gathered into rippling blobs. They drifted out in front of him, suspended in the pale blue glow from small windows to his left and right. Scared voices in the compartment fell dead silent as they watched the liquid orbs touch, combine, and split apart.

“What… the… fuck?” said Oki, restrained opposite Matteo. The blue light faded, plunging the room into pitch black. The heads of every prisoner craned forward from their harnesses to peer out the window. Stars. Billions of them. The compartment erupted.

“Shit. SHIT! Where the hell are we, man?!”

“They can’t! They didn’t! They just didn’t!”

“Not there! No fuckin’ way! Anywhere but the goddamn Moon! ”

Matteo heard them but didn’t hear them. Where most shut their eyes or stared at the floor, Matteo stayed fixed on the porthole. On a clear night in the Slums, he could see maybe forty of the little white dots in the sky. He had counted them several nights on the roof of Utu’s clinic. So… many. His lips parted as waves of goosebumps spread over his aching skin.

The ship rolled, giving no physical indication to the prisoners. They saw stars cascade past the portholes. Whimpering cries croaked from the T99s. Suddenly light-headed, Matteo’s neck went slack.