Sol Break Chapter 1

Shane and I are posting this as we write it. Well, and after we clean up the original draft. The draft that occurs directly after the vomit-write is what we call Draft Sucks A Little Less, and usually gets some of the major typos out, but that’s about it. Shane will come through on the next draft and add a little more action to my action sequences and correct the repeated words I throw in there. I’ll go through his scenes and add description and a few complete sentences.

So, go through this with a little patience. You’re getting the raw files right now.

The first two chapters will be free. Anything else after that will be behind the pay wall.

Raven

An asteroid broke its harness and veered dangerously close to another. A small scuttle ship retrieved it, flinging a harpoon into the thick of space. Nothing moved quickly in the black. That was something Raven respected and hated. She liked things to move faster. She hated these long moments filled with nothing.

As she watched the asteroid’s recapture and re-harnessing bathed in the red light reflecting back from HUMP’s surface, her mind churned. Something was going on and she didn’t know what it was, how big it was, or how it would affect her. Joy, she didn’t even know if she should get involved, but an old fire sparked to life inside her, a spark that should have been banished through her many long years of indentured and then unindentured years of service to the UniCorps Republic.

The people of HUMP were feeling a growing pressure, more than the normal ebb and flow of planetary and inter-system change. The Republic was up to something, and she wanted to know what.

How badly did she want to know, though? That was the question. After this many years, she’d learned how dangerous curiosity was. Life in the black was fragile at best. Life in the HUMP System was a might more tumultuous.

With a sigh, she unfurled her cold fingers from behind her back and leaned against the frigid metal frame. It shouldn’t have been that cold. With eight layers of metal and other reinforcement between her and the black, it should have been warm. It just meant there was a leak somewhere. Where? She didn’t know, and she really didn’t care. There were others who did and that was fine with her. She didn’t have a mechanical mind. She was a commander and a fighter.

But what was she fighting anymore?

“Sir,” Tyrel Calder said as the office door slid open with a soft wisp and a low ding. “We’re ready.”

He didn’t say they were ready for her. Her days of serving on the boarding teams was long past. She had risen to the level of management which meant she should be occupied with the reports on her desk which were mostly done anyway.

Her nerves drove her to the door though.

“Sir.” Tyrel’s tone reminded her she had duties elsewhere while also stating he knew there was no sense in fighting.

She gave him a look on her way by that stated she understood and would continue to do what she drammed well felt like doing anyway.

He grunted and followed. “Celestee’s information was good. Blorn Harik was scanned entering the port.”

Even better than she was expecting, though for different reasons than her bosses or her current team would understand. The Families worked the underbelly of the four systems like well-oiled machines, churning the lower caste of society and keeping the cogs of the fragile interstellar existence running. The Corporate Elite pushed everyone to think of the Families as outlaws, mostly because they existed well outside the boundaries of the Republic’s laws. The Families had an empire of their own, right smack dack in the middle of the UniCorps Republic.

If Blorn had been scanned, it was because something had either gone wrong, or he was trying to get a message to someone on the inside. She’d been trying to figure out who the leak was for months now. There was an entire task force created to locate this person.

But Raven understood HUMP and she understood the Family, which were two of the reasons she’d been forced into service after her arrest in the first place. She understood the secret waves and ping-backs.

And Blorn Harik allowing himself to be scanned and recognized was a wave. Her bosses thought this was a show of their amazing technology at work and were there to apprehend their suspect.

She was there to see the ping back. She doubted the real Blorn Harik was even there. Blorn Harik was a dead end.

She wanted the person on the other side.

She led the way through the bright metal hallway and stopped in the ready room. There, her team was dressed in their battle gear already. She went to her locker and made quick work of strapping hers on. She was always ready for battle, something her bosses had floated her hard about. However, she could be ready in two and a half H-minutes.

She clicked her hood collar in place and fingered her blaster, knowing it was there already. “Let’s move out.”

“Who’s lead?” Chief Petty Officer Myla Nalle asked, her dark hair pulled back in a bun that raised her thick, dark eyebrows.

“You, of course,” Raven said crisply. She had other things she needed to focus on that wasn’t chasing ghosts. “As always.”

CPO Nalle nodded once and looked to the group. “We’re going to apprehend Blorn Harik. He’s currently being slowed down in customs. Casualties should be at a minimum.”

Meaning, she’d received the missive from the Republic that casualties were allowed. Myla had breathed too much Corporate Elite air to think this was acceptable. 

Raven pushed her ire to the side as the doors to the insy-corridor slid open with a low-whistle whoosh, revealing a sealed metal floor and a domed glass corridor that stretched from her ship to the Astro-colony waystation. The red marbled world of HUMP took up most of her line of sight, filling her with a sense of peace. This black hole of a world sucked people in and didn’t leave anything to be sucked back out. It took people’s souls. It ate their lives.

But it was her home and the only place she felt as though she belonged.

The magnets in her boots kept her from floating to the glass archway as they suck-clicked with each step along the corridor, the hairs on the back of her neck rising. The glass was only five layers thick. When it was made of the weakest element that could be built with, she would have thought they’d add a few more layers. The view was impressive, but many lives had been lost in inner-system corridors like this. The design needed upgrading. 

“Put that away in here, Rogers,” CPO Nalle barked. “Weapons are always stashed in insy-corridors.”

Because of the glass. No one wanted a person to trip with something in their hands that could destroy an entire layer of an Astro-station.

“Right, Chief,” Rogers said, sweating as his dark eyes looked around, wide and frightened.

This was Rogers’ first day and it didn’t look like the man was going to make it.

The hanger they stepped onto was wide. This astro-station was one of the smallest in this field but had been one of the first built by HUMP resources, so the Republic allowed HUMP System to maintain proprietary controls, even though they had owned HUMP before it was settled.

But just because it was a large hanger capable of storing a large portion of goods didn’t mean that the Republic allowed HUMP to have their resources. This way-station was a beacon to many. It was a calling card to remind the HUMPers that they were strong and voracious and capable.

But the HUMP System was also poor and at the mercy of the Republic. So, the treasured jewel of HUMPers was left practically barren.

Raven sidestepped the freight loader bringing in sealed crates of supplies all bearing the Republic’s blue and silver stamp.  With only one loader working that shift, there was plenty of room to maneuver. The air inside the Astro-station felt heavy and smelled of feet and old ration cubes. The air scrubbers obviously needed serviced, but Raven doubted they had the mechanics on staff for that. Mechanics were in high demand in the Republic and were usually conscripted if they didn’t voluntarily serve.

It didn’t take long for CPO Nalle to make it across the wide, tall hangar, the two bay doors on either end closed with solid metal clamps.

The ship the passengers in customs had flown in on was still parked. As a rock skipper, it had a small body where the cockpit was located and the crew stayed, with several multi-person pods that could be added onto it without connecting to the control ship or any other pod. Those pods were usually cramped with people.

Or they had been. There were fewer and fewer people traveling between rocks these days. Fewer people shipping down to HUMP at all. That in itself was concerning. Without trade, HUMP would suffer. This was a mining system. It didn’t have the capabilities of producing much of its own food or clothing. HUMP had a mixture of elements and ores the Republic had called H.U.M.P., or hexium uranium meitnerium lead. Aside from a lot of minerals, metals, and radiation, the planet HUMP and the entire system was lacking in the ability to produce just about anything else. There were a lot of rocks in this system, but not dirt and certainly not water-based rain.

CPO Nalle opened the seal door with a screech. No hiss meant that neither side was pressurized.

Which meant that their target might actually be on the move.

CPO Nalle glanced back at her team, ignoring Raven, nodded once, and fingered her weapon, crouching slightly to enter.

Raven sighed thinly as she followed, her eyes scanning the crowd. There was indeed a long line of people on the other side all being shuffled through one person at the desk on the far end of the room. The line wound around three times. It looked like a lot of people, but there weren’t a lot of bags or supplies, so there was still a lot of open area.

The people barely looked at CPO Nalle and her unit as they spread out amongst them, checking credentials. Raven ignored the message blips in her ear that came back with various names, none of which were Blorn Harik. She doubted any of them would come back as Blorn Harik. She was almost certain that the name was scanned once and wouldn’t come up again.

She searched for the door that was open. There was a possibility that someone had just failed to close a door, which happened in the relative safety of a stable station. Complacency, though, could get people killed.

But it could also be used as a means of escape where seconds mattered.

The people shuffled to the side with murmurs of apology as she made her way through the crowd, scanning each door, her hands nowhere near her pistol or any other weapon.

“As-Salamo Alaykom,” a young woman said in a greeting of peace.

Raven nodded and didn’t even look at her as she found the door she was looking for. “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam,” she said, responding with the returned HUMP greeting as an afterthought. The door in question was behind the desk and had been closed, but not fully, leaving a slight seal break. It was improbable that this door was being used as an escape.

A hand fell on Raven’s arm, though the grip was light. “Hanasou,” the woman said, shifting her language. Let’s talk.

Raven turned to her. Shifting languages was a technique many rock skippers used, though this language was typically only used on Kalamatra, the ring station in the center of the four systems, which told Raven this woman was likely Family.

The woman let her hood fall back to reveal a young face with a dark tattoo around her left startlingly blue eye.

This was the person who’d flashed the Blorn Harik credentials, but it wasn’t anyone she’d expect to see in a place like this.

The woman standing before her was TsaniKrahs.

Daughter of the Kalamatra Family baron, Sorak Osiris.

“I’m actually here for you,” TsaniKrahs said with a confident smile. “Do you have a place we can razgovor?”

She wanted to know where they could have a conversation? Raven’d shown up to find the leak, but it looked like she was about to find out much more than she’d expected.

Sikks

Sikks stared out the window of the transit train. The impound yard swung into view, fencing and drones obscuring a clean view. Not that it mattered much. The old and ancient husks of confiscated atmocraft and EP craft, and at least one jump ship corroded away in impound.

 There. His hand reached up out of years of habit and tapped the glass. For nearly one second he glimpsed the ship. His great grandfather’s ship.

The Asho’a.

Once his family had money and influence, respected members of the scientific community that almost made them corporate elite. Then he stood trial for a morality crime and convicted for a four-life sentence. Sikks had the fourth life sentence, so his kids would be free again.

Sunlight flared from a reflective observation window, and it was gone. A mounded pile of scrap hid the ship once again.

“You know—” Jarko shook his head with a pained smile— “you’ve done that every day for months.”

Sikks turned his head to Jarko. “Done what?”

“Every time we pass the impound, right at the end you tap the glass. Just right there. What are you looking at?” He cranked his head out as though he might see a glimpse of something even though the transport had moved far along.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sikks settled himself, upset that his friend had noticed. “The yard is the yard. No significant changes there for what, a hundred years or so? Nothing there but old dead dreams.”

“Uh, huh. And one nervous tick. I get it, serving a sentence that isn’t yours is… a little overkill, but the law is the law. And at least your kids can go on free.”

“As free as being quarantined on the planet can get, sure.”

“Anyn did take his test, didn’t he?”

Every natural-born child on Earth had been mandated to take a genetics profile test for the past century for unspecified service, either in the government or military, nobody knew for sure. “He did, his third is with Piper this year.” Earthgov had three years to decide if they wanted to take a child with the right genetic markers. What those markers were, he didn’t know. He only knew he had no right to ask and hadn’t been told.

Sikks cast a look to the front of the car. Would it make a difference if Earthgov took the kids? Anyn and Piper had this life to look forward to if they stayed with him. Public transit out, public transit back. Sentencer’s and citizens all packed together, the same as everyone else. The train slipped over inconsistencies in the mag-track making passengers sway back and forth in time. Everyone exactly the same whether they were free or not.

He turned his stare back out the window. Tanielle, his dead wife had always wanted to leave the planet again. The quarantine killed that dream, but at least Sikks had a part of her in his kids. He would follow her dream to the black if he could, but his children could. If the quarantine ever lifted.

Jarko nattered on. Usually Sikks had no problem keeping himself occupied talking, but he thought he’d seen something different with the jump ship. Probably his imagination, but the thought nagged at him.

The train pulled into the station and crept to a stop. The parking clamps hissed into place and the doors folded open. As one, the passengers stood and filed from the train to the platform and wandered away.

Sikks grabbed his tool bag and waited with Jarko for their turn and followed after the crowd. 

Day in, and day out. His life hadn’t changed much since becoming an adult, serving the last term of four life sentences.

Sikks and Jarko filed up the stairs trailing the crowd.

Guards in black plasteel armor stood at the entrance scanning a look over the crowd, just regular workers returning home after a long day at work. The personal habitat buildings rose high into the sky, bits of white peering out of the greenery that encapsulated most of the exterior. The windows were dark, allowing the inhabitants to see out but no one but scanners to peer inside.

At the entrance, Jarko meandered casually to the main door while Sikks joined the long line to be scanned. After several minutes, he made it to the conveyer belt and set his tool bag on it, waiting his turn while meeting no one else’s gaze. As the lighting slipped from natural to manmade and as his legs began to ache from standing on the cooling pavement, he wondered why Jarko waited like he did ever evening. They were friends, sure, but it wasn’t like Sikks had a lot to offer. He didn’t have a lot to begin with and what he did have was randomly confiscated for missteps throughout his day.

His bags went through, paused for a long moment that had his heart pound. Not because he had anything bad in there, but because he didn’t know what rules might have changed. Was he still allowed to have his screwdriver set at home? His bag continued without issue.  

Sikks paused at a white archway and passed his hand under a scanner. His profile pic and info popped up on the screen, and a green light lit the background.

Cleared, he collected his tools on the other side.

Jarko joined him at the steps leading to the main doors, missing being jostled by the incoming crowd as another transit dropped off more people. “Me and the wife would like you and the kids over for dinner tonight.”

The air outside the habitat buildings was always cooler and more humid. Sikks figured it was due to all the plants growing along the walls and balconies. Inside, however, the air was crisp. Five arched corridors swept in five directions and the crowd dispersed.

“Why do you always wait until we’re off the commute before asking us over?” Sikks stopped in the lobby and shook his head at his friend, people passing by them without issue in the high, wide space.

Jarko shrugged. “Because by this point, I figure you can’t say no? It can’t be easy raising three kids all on your own with your sentencer allowance.”

It wasn’t. Jarko had prodded Sikks in the past about it, but Sikks had deflected his questions. He enjoyed having a non-sentencer friend and he didn’t want to think that they were buddies out of pity. “I’ll see if Pandra made a plan. If she hasn’t, we’ll be out in a couple hours.”

Jarko inclined his head with a smirk, taking a step backward toward his corridor. “Great. See you in a couple hours.” He turned around and disappeared.

Sikks walked to the lift hidden just beside and tucked around the main doors and pressed his hand to the scanner. The light blinked green, and the doors slid shut before the number above the door went into the negatives.

At level thirty-eight below ground, the doors opened, and he stepped into the hall to his domicile. How many times had he and Tanielle dreamed of leaving the planet?

She would have left if the quarantine hadn’t been implemented overnight catching the entire populace unaware. She would have left Sikks alone in the world. Not entirely, but close enough.

Sikks and Tanielle only married and had kids after the quarantine began, and so lit the only bright spot of the planetary quarantine.

Sikks pressed his palm on the door scan and waited for it to open.

Pandra stood in front of the wall viewer, her arms crossed as the news rattled through headlines.

Anyn sat in an old and worn chair, his look about as angry as Pandra’s.

“Hey guys, I’m home.” When neither turned to say anything, he attempted to catch the news.

“… for another year. Director Crenel agreed with the decision saying we can’t expose our young to the perils of free travel in the system, but in a year, the plan could open to short trips and graduated travel to non-sentencers. The infrastructure still needs upgrades to filter sentencers out and keep them safe on-planet.”

Relief hit him followed by a quick stab of guilt. The quarantine was supposed to have been lifted to allow travel to the rest of the system. For the third year running, it’d been delayed and Sikks was grateful. It meant his kids would be staying with him longer. He wanted them to have their freedoms, but he also wanted them to stay with him. They were the only things giving him any reason to exist and he didn’t want to lose that.

“The decision was unanimous in the upper chamber of the global Senate, and the quarantine remains in effect.”

It’s important to keep in mind that this is Draft Suck’s A Little Less. But I figured this would be a fun insight for you.

To help us out, if there are things that aren’t jiving or that you don’t like, let us know.