Sol Break Chapter 2

Raven

“Not here,” Raven said, appearing to continue to scan the crowds.

“Joys’s Jiggling Donkey,” TsaniKrahs said and put her hood back up. “This evening.”

Raven nodded and moved on, wondering what the Osiris Family was doing in HUMP and what they wanted with her. She didn’t believe in the Republic, but she wasn’t going to be a chew toy for both sides, either. What use would they have for her anyway? They ruled Kalamatra, the largest station in the Four Systems, and the beating heart of the inter-system network. As such, they were also the most powerful Family. They weren’t more powerful than the UniCorps Republic, but they wouldn’t be easy to put down. She had no doubt her bosses would be really interested to hear that Sorak Osiris’s daughter was in system.

She wasn’t going to tell them. They didn’t know what she looked like. They didn’t know her name.

Terrans did. Sky people did. The people who worked the systems and made life possible knew who she was and what she looked like, or at least knew of her tattoo. Raven might have invested a good portion of her life to the UniCorps Republic, but she wasn’t loyal to them. She was loyal to HUMP.

“I’m Blorn Harik,” a young man said quietly as she passed.

Raven glanced at the man. He was too young and too pale to be the man in question. She shook her head and continued to scan. “No, you’re not.”

“If you’re meeting with Tsani, then I am Blorn Harik.” He reached inside his jacket, pulled out his credential packet, and met her gaze squarely. “Bring me in.”

This was the price being paid by the Family to schedule this meeting, and Raven knew it. He was the treat to throw suspicion off her trail, and an enticement to be the leak she was searching for. Did that mean their previous leak had been stopped? “You will never see the outside again.”

“La batali valoras la ofero,” he said with conviction.

The fight is worth the sacrifice. Raven chewed the air in frustration and then turned and roughly searched him, taking the packet in her hand and continuing her search for weapons.

He didn’t resist. He held his hands up and smiled to those around him, telling them no resistance was needed.

Not that any would be offered. The people of the black liked the freedom to breathe the air they paid bitterly for. 

Angry, she looked at the credentials. They certainly did have Blorn Harik’s name along with this young man’s face.

CPO Nalle came over. “Did you find him, sir?”

“I did.” Raven handed the credentials to her chief petty officer and grabbed the man’s wrist, cuffing him in the front to allow him to save himself if the atmosphere suddenly turned deadly.

With a frown, CPO Nalle nodded and led the way back.

The people didn’t change how they’d looked or acted because this was standard procedure. The Republic came in, they took who they wanted, and then they went away, and the people left behind had to be thankful they’d been ignored for one more day.

Once back in her ship, she closed the bulkhead door and disengaged from the insy-corridor, allowing the pilot to take them to their base. She stashed the man in a holding cell and went to her office to watch him on the vidscreens embedded in the walls.

“Sir,” CPO Nalle said as she stood in the door.

“Chief,” Raven acknowledged and gestured for her to enter.

CPO Nalle came to stand beside Raven, watching the screens. “How did you find him?”

“Something he said.” Everyone in the system was under constant surveillance, so whatever she said had to be close to the truth. Videos didn’t lie, but they also didn’t see everything.

“What was that?”

Raven narrowed her eyes. “’I am Blorn Harik.’”

“He admitted this to you.”

Raven nodded.

“And you took him in.”

Taking in a deep breath, Raven thought about her answer. CPO Nalle was loyal to the Republic. That was obvious. She couldn’t be as loose or as comfortable with this team as she had been with her first one, which was the reason they’d been reassigned in the first place. “I know he’s not Blorn Harik, but we need to know why he’s carrying those credentials.”

“You knew the real Blorn Harik wouldn’t be there.”

“Any idiot would know that,” Raven gritted out as frustration rose inside her.

CPO Nalle tipped her head to the side and stepped away. “I misread you, sir.”

Raven doubted the woman had. She was very observant. She simply viewed the world through the eyes of the Republic instead of through the eyes of the people who created the world the Republic claimed credit for.

With the chief petty officer no longer in the office and their suspect in the holding cell, Raven went to her desk and checked the time. They weren’t going to get information out of the man in holding, so she could focus her attention on something else. It was evening on Earth’s Alaska. She’d never seen it fully, but she’d heard about it from her daughter who was quarantined there. Running her hand over the communication panel, she sat as a screen of amber light rose from her desk. “Call Pandra.”

“Calling Pandra,” the female AI voice said helpfully. “Connecting. Have a great conversation, Raven Fenn.”

“Thanks, Ioz.”

“Of course, Raven Fenn. My pleasure.”

Raven closed her eyes slightly at the formal name, but by now, she was more than used to it.

Pandra was her daughter. She’d given birth to the girl seventeen years before on a freighter just outside of the Sol System, something that still upset her. If Pandra had been born within the radius of the Sol System, she would have been afforded all Sol had to offer, but instead, she was a citizen of the UniSystems, which meant the girl had no power and no rights on Earth where she was trapped.

The holoscreen flickered to life with a soft whir of air and Pandra’s petite face filled the space, her hair pulled over to one side and shaved on the other. Her lips moved, saying, “Hey.”

Raven intentionally kept the sound low or off all together. The difference in visual versus audio was significant and she was fairly good at reading lips. She smiled. “Hey. How was your day?”

Pandra narrowed her eyes and then waited, biting her lips as the audio bounced from the HUMP System, through the jump station communication relays, to Kalamatra where the signal was amplified, and then pinged back down another series of jump stations to Sol System many, many light years away. She rolled her eyes and screwed her lips to the side. “Not good. Quarantine’s been…” Her mouth moved in a weird way so Raven couldn’t actually read what she’d said.

Raven could guess, though. Earth’s quarantine had been extended. “How long?”

Without waiting for the audio, Pandra said, “Another year.”

Raven chewed on that as anger burned through her.

Pandra nodded, her own anger curling the edges of her expression. “It’s not fair.”

No. It certainly wasn’t. Raven couldn’t even tell if this “quarantine” was real or not. It’d been in effect for over fifteen years. How long did it take to cure a virus in today’s age?

“We had tickets already to see Luna.”

“You and Sikks?”

Pandra paused and then frowned, her lips rising to one side in a grimace. “No. My friends. Sikks can’t leave Earth.”

Raven knew that but often forgot. As the last generation of his multi-generational sentencing–which was barbaric–he had few freedoms, but the kids could have gone. “Right.”

“The tickets were amazing. First shuttle lift off Earth since the quarantine hit.”

Which meant they had also cost a pretty price, something Raven didn’t care about. One of the reasons she’d stayed with this job for as long as she had was so she could afford to take care of Pandra on Earth and keep her own place in HUMP.

“Are you mad about the tickets?” Pandra asked, her expression shifting apologetic almost.

Raven shook her head. “I’d hoped to get you out here, is all.”

It took a minute or two for Pandra to react. She licked her lips and looked away. “I had…” She paused. “…plans to go see places, you know. Do things. And now I can’t.”

Raven bit off her anger and looked away. What Pandra was really saying was that she wanted to explore the four systems, but didn’t want to see her. Why would she? Raven was just a vidcall every week and a financial source of freedom. It wasn’t like Raven was really Pandra’s mother, even though she’d paid the cost of being a parent as a UniCorps prisoner the girl’s entire life. “You’re old enough for your freedom.”

Pandra lowered her head and stared off into space petulantly. “Yeah, I guess.”

Raven pulled up another console and opened the account she’d made for her daughter seventeen years ago. Raven’d been conscripted shortly after she’d conceived, something that not all HUMP women could even do. Getting rid of the fetus wasn’t even a thought. HUMP children were precious, but she also knew that she couldn’t bring her daughter with her through her conscription. She’d seen too many of those children.

CPO Nalle was one of them.

So, she’d escaped and had run to Sol on the fastest ship she could find, which happened to be an Elite freighter. That one hadn’t been equipped with slip drive, but it had still been a heck of a lot faster than anything else Raven could find. She’d proven herself so she hadn’t been floated and had fought to keep her child in her small belly until they’d made it to a system where her child could be free.

Pandra had been born two inter-days outside of Sol, something Raven had kept a secret until they’d reached Earth. She didn’t want her daughter to become a piece of Elite property, either. So, she’d slipped out of the hanger with her daughter as soon as she could and had found her best friend who had gotten an internship on Earth to study agriculture.

Raven’d had four days with her daughter.  She pushed her anger aside, knowing she didn’t have the right to be upset with Pandra for not wanting to come to HUMP to see her. “It’s fine.” With the account open, she sighed lightly and then looked back at the holoscreen. “I’m transferring your account to you.” She hit the button that said transfer and waited.

Pandra frowned and grabbed her display disk, opening it, the yellow-orange light reflecting back onto her tanned face. Her dark eyes rounded as her mouth fell open. She looked back at Raven. “Are you tiggin me?”

Raven shook her head. “It’s yours. You’re an adult now.”

“Thank—”

The screen blanked out and receded into the projection port.

Raven’s heart beat wildly. “Ioz.”

“I am sorry, Raven Fenn, but the transmission was cut off from Earth.”

There were several reasons for this. Something disastrous had gone wrong. Their area had been under attack. “Is there information about a war?”

“No, Raven Fenn. All reports are good. This seems to be isolated to the Geyer household.”

Raven fell back in her chair. Sikks had done a good job raising her daughter, but at some point, Pandra was going to have to escape the prison cell of his house if she was ever going to live a life.

But at least now the girl had money, and Raven just had to be glad for it.

Sikks

Sikks pulled a clean shirt over his head and plopped down on his bed.

Quarantine for another year. The odds of getting Anyn and Piper off-planet just dropped considerably. He stood and checked his door for any of the kids. Nobody hung around outside, so he gently closed and locked it.

He pried open the loose panel by the ceiling illuminator and pulled out a cloth-wrapped package. Setting the pile on the bed, he separated the old-time papers from the memory drives. The papers were drawings of a jump ship with lines connecting descriptions to places on or inside the ship.

The ship design was as old as the papers, as old as the ship in the impound the drawings showed. The memory sticks were more in-depth descriptions and technical engineering packets. He’d had to beg Pandra for the extra money to buy a retro reader for the sticks and try to hide the reason why he needed it.

Asho’a.

The ship his great grandfather had designed and built that could have made them corporate elite. He’d heard stories from his father and grandfather about the wonders of this ship and how it’d had been the reason they’d been served with three consecutive life sentences. When Anyn turned seventeen, he’d inherit everything confiscated from Jeager Geyer from almost a hundred and thirty years ago.

If the government knew about the ship, and they almost certainly did, there was little chance they’d let it go. There had to be a reason to force three generations into prison in order to keep it buried. A jump capable life ship that didn’t rely on the jump gates? That was a treasure governments killed for.

Or imprisoned them for.

The question on this mystery was why had they given it back? He’d had stories from his family, not proof. These plans had come from someone in Earthgov. The Earthgov Top Secret stamps marred every single page. Why would anyone risk giving the information back to the family that had been incarcerated for creating the ship?

Three of the memory sticks were inaccessible, or inoperative. Nothing happened when he tried to open the contents. He’d tried several different ways to open them and he simply couldn’t.

The technical information on the others was priceless. When Anyn legally became an adult, Sikks’ plan was to teach him about the ship so the kids could have a ride off-planet. With their own living ship with a workable slip drive, they’d be able to live Tanielle’s dream of leaving and going back to HUMP, or wherever the solar winds blew. Pandra could go with them, possibly even join up with her mother and live in the Black.

If they could make the slip system work, they could still be Elite, with all the privileges that encompassed. He realized that best they were likely to get was freedom, but that alone was worth it’s weight in gold.

Sikks would stay on Sol, serve out the rest of his sentence, knowing his kids were living a life he never knew. The Geyer name would fade to nothing here.

Of course, that plan hinged on Piper’s genetic scan coming back without the marker. Nobody even knew what marker they were looking for. But Anyn’s scan had come back negative two years running. He didn’t understand why kids had to be scanned up to four years in a row.  

Pandra had never been tested, not having been born on Sol. As a legal alien, Pandra didn’t have the same rights, but she also didn’t have to follow the same rules. She still had almost a year before Raven’s custody bonds cleared themselves and she was free to do or go wherever she pleased.

Sikks felt the pangs of jealousy, but he pushed them back. Four life sentences, and his was the last. All he had to do was keep Anyn out of trouble until he was seventeen, and then he could legally take Piper off world and to a new life in the Black.

An alert came through the wall viewer. Sikks opened his door to read the screen.

Raven Fenn scrolled across the bottom, the alert tone sounding again.

“Pan,” Sikks called. “It’s your mom. Answer the call.” Silence answered him, but that didn’t mean anything. It could mean that the girl hadn’t heard him, or it could mean that she had. He scooped up the drives and papers into the bag and waited for Pandra to accept the call.

He was about to hit accept when the call was picked up in another room.

Sikks didn’t need to listen in on their conversation. It never really amounted to much. Pandra didn’t have the patience for conversation across that kind of distance. Raven was usually stationed in HUMP, so the time delay was pretty significant. Not as bad as it had been when Tanielle had first arrived. They’d still been in message mode. When the first video communications had been introduced a few years back, the video would be nearly a full three minutes ahead of the sound and there’d been a weird delay in the video as well.

He went to the small kitchen to see what they had. Raven’s money paid for most of what they had. It paid for the larger apartment, the larger kitchen area, the extra bedroom. He was grateful for her and for the fact that he’d had the chance to raise her daughter. Pandra was an amazing kid.

But a terrible cook.

She came out of her room, a dark expression on her face. “The comm cut us off.”

It was odd that she’d be upset about that. She was usually happy when the calls were shorter. “What happened?

Pandra flopped against the door edge and crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know. She gave me—” She stopped herself and shook her head. “We were just talking and then it cut us off.”

“What were you talking about?”

“The quarantine.” She rolled her eyes. “And how I’m still stuck.”

Sikks fought back the relief. “Are you okay?”

She pulled a face and shook her head. “Yeah. I’m always okay.”

She wasn’t. “You can talk with me, you know. Little Bear, don’t give in to the anger. I see it. Use that constructively like we showed you.”

Pandra ground her teeth together and then pushed out a breath. “Yeah.” She plastered on a fake cheery smile.

“Don’t hide it either. You have feelings. They are who you are, but don’t let them make you who they want you to be. It’s not easy, but ultimately you are in control, not them.” He took the two steps to walk across the small room and pried her cool hand off her arm. “Trust me when I say you’ll leave. You will. And so will Anyn and Piper.”

Pandra’s face twisted in a sneer. “But not for another year, at least. And then another after that and another after that and another—They’re never going to lift this quarantine.”

Sikks agreed, but saying it out loud would only make her want to give up. “But you will leave. Food may help you cope right now. Jarko and Marine offered to cook.”

“Again?”

Sikks shrugged. “He knew you’d let us starve.”

“I’m not the only person in this apartment.”

“You’re the only adult or adult-like person who doesn’t work all day.”

Pandra ducked her head and rolled her eyes again. “Whatever. Let’s go, I guess.”

“You should probably put something on your feet.”

She glared at her bare feet and then back at him. “’We’re not leaving the building.”

“You never leave without your shoes.”

“I hate shoes.” She turned to disappear into her room.

Anyn popped out of his bedroom his expression stormy, Piper following behind.

“You heard our conversation?”

Anyn shrugged. “The walls are thin when the doors are open.”

The walls were thin when the doors were closed, too. “Goes for you, too.”

Piper slid along the wall from the bedroom she shared with her brother, looking like she wanted to blend into the dirtied white wall.

“Anger is a motivator and demotivator under the right conditions.” Tanielle was the smart one. She’d taught him the anger speech, but all he could do was repeat her words. “Let it motivate you, but in the right direction. Anything else is useless energy.”

Piper winced, but nodded.

Anyn just stared forward, still sullen.

Pandra stepped into the room with her boots on but unlaced. “Oh, god. He’s doing it again, isn’t he?”

Anyn sighed and gave her a tight-lipped look.

“Fine,” Sikks said, rolling his own eyes. “Since you know everything I have to teach you, let’s go eat.”

The family piled into the lift somber, but not sulky. Sikks tapped the button for the ground floor, where they moved to Lift Four and went up to Level Twenty-Two. Not quite as far up as they lived down. Sikks always liked the transition from the under levels to the bright levels above.

The bright blue sky lit up the world outside the glass panes. Mountains with trails of snow in shadowed gullies appeared from behind the buildings as they shrank. He loved the mountains, though he’d never seen them up close. His entire life had been lived no more than it took to walk in several hours. Even the transit only took him a few miles from his public standard quartering.

He'd find a way to get his kids—all of his kids off Earth. One way or another. They would live the kind of life he’d never been allowed to.

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.

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