Chapter 18

Lee blinked the sleep out of his eyes and summoned the will to sit up on his rack. The morning wake up tone sounded with the lighting in his quarters growing steady but slow—part of the regular wake up sequence. After a couple of months on Arber Penal Colony, his body had adjusted to the forced schedule. Now he was waking up before the alarm, much to his annoyance. He sat for a moment, first to allow his faculties to return to him, and then to assess his level of soreness.

The gravity here was far less than standard. The only place he’d been with a gravity close to it was on Titan City at around a tenth or so of ‘standard.’ He slid off the top rack and half-floated to the floor. His quarters weren’t much more than a small, unadorned hotel room. Across from the wall with two mounted sleeping racks was a doorway to the utilitarian private bathroom.

He stumbled into the bathroom past the small chest of drawers and a recliner set against the back wall. After relieving himself, he washed up in the nondescript sink.

He splashed cool water on his face and watched the reflection in the mirror, allowing the droplets to drip from his brow, nose, and chin. The drops slowed, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the reflection that stared back at him.

He lost everything.

Tarrek and Jackson were captured and shipped to the penal colony with him. Xohn was taken by Duryss goons. Who knew what happened to Zee and Dex after Foden Dock was attacked. Vic was already gone forever, but they took the Nightcrawler from him—his last connection to the old man. He let everyone down and lost it all.

That’s what happens when you get involved. Serves me right, he thought to himself.

Worse still, he didn’t have any direction. He’d confronted the man responsible for Vic’s death. He couldn’t even do that right. His mission for the Resistance failed.

He felt less than worthless and dragged himself back across his quarters to sink back down into the lower sleeping rack. Pulling the blanket up to his shoulders, he rolled away from the growing light of the room’s automated illumination.

Another sequence of tones sounded—ten minutes until breakfast. Instead of getting up, he pulled the blanket back over his head and buried himself under the pillow. He wished he could curl himself tight enough he could collapse out of existence like an imploding star.

A thumping sound on his door startled him out of his self-loathing.

“Go away!” He shouted, his voice muffled by the pillow.

“Hey, it’s breakfast. I mean, I know you don’t want to miss breakfast, Lee.” There was more pounding. “Hey, come on! You gotta get to your shift, or they’re gonna throw you in the tank.”

The colony wasn’t anywhere near as brutal as a prison. Their basic needs were met. They had access to decent meals, medical care, even entertainment. It was more of a strictly managed police state. Guards were posted in sensitive areas, but otherwise, they had the freedom to move about as they wished. All you had to do was show up for the mind-numbing labor you were assigned. If you didn’t, you were sent to a void-vault, a ‘tank’. It was the term colonists used for total isolation therapy. Lost in his personal ocean of despair, complete isolation sounded fitting.

“Just leave me!” He shouted back.

“Come on, grow up, and be a man. This isn’t doing you any good.”

“Jackson, you’re the last person in this galaxy I want any help from. Just go!”

He waited and listened. When the pounding stopped, he assumed Jackson must have given up on him.

He was right though; the tank wasn’t going to do any good. When they were processed into the colony, they all had to spend a 24-hour cycle in that hellish exile. The isolation chambers were less a room and more of a closet. They weren’t even big enough to turn around in. He was forced to stand against the new gravity for hours. But the worst part was the absolute silence created by noise cancelation filters. The outside world was gone. Nothing existed outside of that coffin except the sound of blood that rushed through his head. He had no appetite to ever do it again. It was admittedly ironic given how much he wanted to be alone. It seemed working with the Resistance was far more influential than he thought.

Lee threw the covers off and sat on his rack, holding his head.

Another sequence of tones sounded. Breakfast was starting. Missing breakfast meant missing fuel his body was going to need. With renewed urgency, he changed into his work clothes and rushed out of his quarters into the dim corridor already filled with people.

“Morning,” he heard Tarrek’s sharp voice behind him. Lee ignored him, kept his head down, and shuffled forward in the crowd. “Still upset, Sollinger?” There was a ‘you should be’ implied in his tone. Tarrek hit his shoulder while walking past him.

“Yeah, and you’re still mad at me?”

“You got caught.”

Lee scowled back, “Yeah, well, so did you.”

“I blame my pilot. Who was pilot on your ship again? Oh, right. You. And now Resistance continues blind strikes. You got greedy and now…” He threw his hands dismissively at Lee in disgust and walked away from him.

“Oh, come off it!” Lee stopped behind him and shouted over the heads of the crowd. “We all knew it was risky. If I remember it right, you got caught before we did.”

Tarrek stopped, spun around, and stabbed a finger in his own chest, “I knew going in!” Then he pointed down the hall into the crowd, “Jackson—he knew. He knew we’d get caught. He sacrificed to protect you. Point is, we were supposed to get caught, not you. You made our sacrifice… failure. You lose. We lose. Resistance loses.”

“Okay, so I screwed up everything. What do you want from me?”

It looked like Tarrek was about to lay into him again, but something stopped him. He dismissed Lee with a wave of his arms and walked up to where the crowd was stopped to wait for the lifts.

The lift was packed. Space was almost as tight as a void-vault tank. Tarrek drifted off somewhere into the mass of people, and Lee lost track of him.

When the lift doors opened, the crowd forced Lee out in a rush to the breakfast queues. Lee moved into a forming line, getting shoved and shoving back a couple times to keep his place. He grabbed a sealed tray of food. It was standard fare: eggs, bangers, potatoes, and tea. He walked the enormous hall to find a seat and devoured his meal.

Like a robot, he disposed of his tray and headed to the lift. He thanked his lucky stars that it was empty. People wanted to stay to make the most of breakfast time. Lee was ready to get on with the day and avoid people as much as possible.

It was a long trip from the residential tower to the factory buildings below. From the lift, he strolled down a long corridor. Near the end of it, he arrived at the security checkpoint. Amid the morning rush, it was notorious for delays that backed up foot traffic all the way down the corridor. Some days the only way to get through quick enough was to bribe the guards.

Lee found a soft spot with one of the guards that always seemed to be in a disturbingly good mood. Sure enough, he was there this morning, much to Lee’s annoyance. He was short and portly with a bushy white beard and tufts of white hair wrapped around his head. His cheerful demeanor completed the look, but it was the twinkle in his eyes that was his namesake. Everyone knew him as Billy ‘Sweeteyes’. He always had a small bot or gadget that he was fiddling with between residents passing by the checkpoint.

At Lee’s approach, he put down his tool and a blinking palm-sized decorative bot of some sort. It had the simplistic svelte design of Imperial stylings. Lee’s eyes were drawn to the mesmerizing lights blinking all over the device.

“Mornin’ Lee,” Billy looked up at Lee with an ear-to-ear grinning smile.

“Morning Billy,” he sighed, already irratated at his pleasantness. Somehow, Billy frowned but kept smiling with his eyes. “Oh, say, you look down, son. Whatsa matter?”

Lee couldn’t hold back his sarcasm, “I don’t know, take a guess.”

Billy stared him in the eyes for an awkward amount of time and shook his head, “No it ain’t the work. Ain’t jes the work anyways. Tell ole Billy what’s got ya down.”

“Not today, Billy. I just want to get on with it.”

“Alright. But jes’ remembers this thing about life; ain’t nobody gets out alive, so make the most uh your livin’ now,” he offered Lee his work chit.

Lee took a slow deep breath and took the chit. “Words to live by Billy. Thanks,” he said with a fake smile. His eyes returned to the rhythmic flashing lights on the bot. His curiosity got the better of him, and he blurted out, “What is that thing?”

Billy picked up the small bot, regarding it for a moment, “Eh jes’ a little cam bot, I ’spect. He’s a lil’ cutie idn’t he? Ya like it?”

Lee couldn’t help but be sarcastic, “Sure Billy, it’s just what I need to go with the barren slum look of my quarters.” He shook his head.

Billy kept smiling, unaffected by Lee’s tone and went back to his tinkering.

Lee shrugged it off and walked through the scanners, then stepped down into the main hub of the factory complex. The large open area branched out into several corridors and lifts to ferry laborers to the sprawl of work zones across the complex. The scrapyard facility required another long walk straight through to the last building.

He geared up in the locker room and dropped his work chit into the receptacle to check in for his shift. Grabbing the safety helmet from the bench and throwing it over his head, he stepped into the scrap sorting department. It was enormous—of the scale that could more easily be built planet-side with gravity. Far above their heads, and the towering machinery, was a series of gangways. The foreman, a man Lee found to be an arrogant churdtool, stood overlooking the work crews. He did his best to avoid the guy.

Lee meandered through the sprawl of the huge metal processing equipment all connected by the conveyor belts. Big hunks of metallic fragments were being shuttled around the huge space to the sorting and processing machines. It was a noisy affair. A loud stamping machine pounded in the distance causing the entire facility to shake under his feet as he walked.

He reached his position and, not wanting to shout over the noise, he tapped the laborer he was replacing. A rather obese fellow, drenched in sweat, turned to see Lee with a look of relief that crossed his face. The man stopped the machinery, detached his safety tether, gave Lee a haphazard salute, and bolted at as much of a run as he could manage.

Lee strapped in and began the mind-numbing process. His job was to pull ferrous metal from a magnet and put it on the ferrous metal processing line. It was an important first step to sort the ferrous from non-ferrous metal to process it into re-sellable cubes.

Going through all the motions that he’d done over and over again since he arrived, he felt himself die a little more every day. In any other facility, it all would have been carried out by expensive automation. Here, it was replaced by a low cost meat machine. The process was designed as cheap and de-humanizing as possible. And why not? It was a perfect setup. The labor paid for colony operations, including meals, housing and the like. It gave the colony “guests” something to occupy their time. During their stay they made a contribution to the economy, and were kept too tired to cause trouble.

The scrap came in a wide variety of sizes. Everything from small palm-sized strips and bits of bot-scrap to heavy hull-plating for ships. It was another reason why facilities like this were often setup on low-gravity worlds. The low-gravity helped the meat-workforce handle larger scrap, but it still took enormous effort to move around. It made him sore every day. That was his life now.

The day came and went, much like any other. His replacement was late. When the tap on his shoulder finally came, he was too tired to even scowl. He shutdown the machines, unplugged, and sluggishly headed back to his room.

He tossed his work uniform onto the chair and took a long relaxing shower, trying hard to keep from thinking about anything.

When he emerged, he placed a glass of water next to the recliner, then grabbed his work clothes to shove them into the reclamation slot. When he turned to sit back down in the recliner, he found the Imperial cam bot that the checkpoint guard had been tinkering with. Billy must have taken his sarcastic comments literally. Lee shook his head. He palmed the bot while floating down into the recliner to relax. He turned the bot around in his fingers, regarding it for a moment, then smirked.

“Computer, dim the lights,” Lee commanded the room’s environmental controls. A tone sounded in acknowledgment, and the lighting decreased.

This is what his life had come to. All those lofty goals, and this is where he wound up. In the end, there was no fairness in the universe. Even the balance that held planets in orbit was an illusion. Everything was in a slow and imperceptible decay. The galaxy tried to kill him and everyone else while dying out itself. No where was safe. Nothing lasted forever. Even the eternal stars themselves would die out.

None of it mattered.

Despair more profound than any he’d known took hold of him. It was a dark place—darker than any starless region of space he’d traveled. A part of him knew not to go down this path of hopelessness. Another part was ready to relinquish himself to it.

It wasn’t enough for the universe for him to fail the Resistance, or lose his friends, or his ship, or his family. He had to lose himself.

He pulled his legs up toward his chest and let the emotions swallow him. Completely overwhelmed, tears filled his eyes and clung there. The low-gravity insufficient to pull them down his cheeks.

His energy spent, he drifted into a deep sleep.

“Oh, my boy,” an old familiar voice came to Lee.

“Huh, who’s there?” He asked, disoriented, unable to see anything. There was an impression of a presence near him. Then he saw a figure backlit with the glow of light around them in a doorway. It was a dream, or a memory he seemed to be both in and watching. He was young.

“You need to get up, Lee.”

“I’m too tired. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to.”

“Come on, mate. I need you on this one.” The lights in his bunk raised, and Lee could make out the familiar silhouette of Vic pulling his arm back from the room controls.

Lee didn’t respond.

“You can’t stay in here all day. What’s got you all worked up today? You’re moodier than a cat.”

“Just leave me alone.” He rolled back away from Vic.

“Look bud, we’re in this together. You and me. I wanna help, but you gotta start opening up.”

“No offense, old man, but this is… it’s something personal I gotta deal with. You wouldn’t understand…”

“Try me, son. Help me understand.”

Overcoming his reluctance, he turned to look over his shoulder. “Today…” he started to say, but couldn’t finish it.

“Today, what?”

“Today’s the anniversary…”

Vic sat on the wall bench in his bunkhouse and waited.

“Today is the day I lost my mom.”

“Ahh,” Vic looked down at the floor as if in thought.

Lee shouted, “You don’t even know!”

“I wanna know. Come on—we’ve been through a lot, together, and you never talked about it before. There’s no one else here, Lee. It’s me, partner. Talk to me.”

“I– I want to… I just wanna deal with it on my own.”

“Okay, okay. But look at this. In this big wide galaxy, you landed with me. You been with me on the Nightcrawler for what now, four or five years? You trust me, right? You need to get it off your chest. This is poisoning you.”

“Alright, look…” he summoned the energy to get it all out. “This pockmarked, ponytailed arse took my mom from me. He got her hooked on drugs until she couldn’t take care of me anymore. I had to take care of her. Steal for her. Clean her up… I was 11! 11 years old, Vic!” He remembered the jumbled emotions of sadness and anger he felt in that conversation.

“Alright, alright. I hear you, son.”

“‘Son’? I’m not your son! And, if I ever find the guy that did it to her, I’ll kill him! I don’t care, I’ll kill him!” He smacked at the bulkhead. It hurt his hand, but he didn’t care.

When he looked up at Vic, he saw a pained expression in his eyes—in his brow.

“Okay. Alright. I understand how you feel,” Vic said with a comforting softness.

“Understand? How could you possibly understand what I lived through?”

He put his hands up to gesture for Lee to stop. “Hey now…” Lee heard a catch in the old man’s voice. “I’ve seen my share.” A tear stuck to the old man’s right eye. He had such a soft, sad, distant expression on his face. It was a look Lee had never seen before. “Look, you’re not the only one that’s been dealt a bad hand in this galaxy.“

He relaxed his clenched jaw and sat in his bunk with his arms around his legs. The restraints held him to the bunk, so he didn’t float away in zero-G.

“You want revenge. I get it. You’re in that dark place. But let me tell you… You go looking for darkness, and that’s all you’ll ever find.”

Lee tried to wave him off. “What would you know,” he said and rolled back on to his side with his back to Vic.

“Many, many years ago, I was a combat pilot with the AJN, under Admiral Wilson.”

“Admiral, who?” Lee asked.

“Never mind, it’s not important. The important thing is, I was part of the militia force when the AJN was being cobbled together. We ran escort sorties for the AJN Bounty. Boy, was she a piece a’ work—Valiant-class battleship. Sounds impressive, but she was really just a bunch of new hardware and weapons crammed on a long-range cruiser’s frame. See back then, the Imps were threatening to invade, so the Alliance was retrofitting ships to build up a defense force. We became the AJN. After that, I went to combat training at the Academy. While I was there, I…” He paused to collect himself. “I had a son.” His face became a mix of pain and pride.

Lee watched Vic adjust himself on the bench holding a tight fist.

His voice cracked with anguish as he continued. “He followed his old man’s footsteps. It was my fault. I encouraged it. He was a true AIS soldier through-and-through.”

Vic wept and stared at the deck plates for awhile.

“What happened?” Lee unstrapped from his bunk and held himself in place by the edge.

“Growing up, he loved to fly with me. Had a real knack for the stick, too, and he knew it. He was always so sure of himself. Thought he was invincible. Back in those days, the Alliance was heavily recruiting. As soon as he was old enough, he went to the Academy. Graduated top of his class and did 4 tours. I couldn’t…” He put his fist up to his mouth. “I couldn’t stop him.” The tears stuck to his cheeks and bounced with his movements. He shook his head, and Lee watched the liquid globules fling off.

Vic continued, “I couldn’t stop him from the fourth tour. The lad didn’t have to go, but he did anyway. His wing was sent to a combat zone. His ship was disabled, and they had to use the escape pods. He was recovered, but his co-pilot was captured by the Imps. All he wanted was to give the Imps some payback and rescue his buddy. Even got the rest of his wing to join him in an assault-rescue mission. He was out for blood. It’s all he could see. He wouldn’t listen. His anger and hatred blinded him. I couldn’t reach him no matter how I tried… But you know, he was a great pilot. They got into it, completely outgunned. He saved every last one of his boys. Rescued his friend, too. But he paid for it… with his life.”

“Wow,” Lee was breathless.

“So I went after the pilots that took his life. I was angry. Found the Imps training in a HazRes with this very ship. I learned an important lesson that day. It’s better to get ahead than it is to get even. Getting even feels good for a few seconds. Getting ahead means completely destroying your enemy, but it’s hard. It’s a sacrifice.”

“Right,” Lee nodded. “So, how did you beat them?”

A proximity alarm sounded from the command deck. Lee jolted, and his adult self’s perspective ran from the scene of his teenaged memory. When he made it to the command deck, Vic was there waiting for him. Lee looked out of the canopy and saw a now-familiar Anaconda flying with the Para Bellum off the port bow.

“Your friends are here, Lee,” Vic said matter of factly.

“What? Where are we, what are you doing here?”

Vic was back to his usual, calm self. “Your friends.” He pointed to the ships.

“Vic, they’re not my friends. They,” he pointed to the Anaconda, “want to kill me, and that’s the ship that… that killed you.”

Vic shrugged his shoulders.

Lee had a sudden realization he was dreaming, “Vic, I’m in a bad place,” Lee said.

“Yeah? How bad is bad?”

“I’m on a penal colony… I lost the Nightcrawler. I’m stuck on a moon in Glist, and I lost everything. Everything’s gone wrong, and it’s all my fault.”

“Sounds pretty bad, bud. But you’ve got friends, and I’m here for you.”

“Vic, you’re dead. You’ve been gone 3 years now.”

“Lee, I’m here.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t real. It’s just my brain making up a story from random stuff in my head.”

Vic was busy looking through the Nightcrawler’s system panel. “True. That’s all true. But I’m here. You brought me here, kid.”

“So help me! Tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

“But you always seem to like going it alone.”

“Only ‘cause you’re not around anymore. People basically suck.”

“Yeah? Even that bald tattooed fella?”

”He’s alright, but his accent drives me nuts.”

“You know Lee, everyone comes with baggage. They all have a story behind who and how they are. The trick is to not get even. Get ahead.”

Lee rolled his eyes, “Yeah, yeah. Heard that one before. It’s getting pretty old, old man.”

“And?”

“And what? I don’t have a clue how that helps me here.”

“You always were a stubborn kid.”

“Look, the Resistance was counting on me, and I blew it, and now I’m stuck here, chucking metal like a bot. They didn’t even give a sentencing date. I could be locked away in here forever.”

“Resistance,” Vic said, considering the word for a moment. “That’s the story of your life, kid. You’ve grown up with that chip on your shoulder, dependent on only one person. Your own little personal resistance to life.”

“Vic, I’m… I’m at the end of my rope here. Are you here to badger me?”

“I’m here to help.”

“Then help me! Please!”

He pointed to the Para Bellum. “That’s a beautiful ship.”

“Yeah, with a stupid pilot.”

“There. See? All that ‘resistance’? You need to get to know him better. Everyone’s gone through something you know nothing about.”

“I know all I need to know. That’s the pilot that killed you!”

“But was it really him?”

“Yeah, he did. I know it.”

“Lee, he may have been behind the trigger, but there’s always someone else’s agenda behind it. Remember, I used to be a combat pilot too.”

“So?”

“I stopped the day I realized the Imps that killed my son were following someone else’s agenda, following orders. That’s what a soldier does. We were soldiers. That was the day I decided to resign my commission from the AJN.” He pointed back at the Para Bellum, “This guy was going about his life, following someone else’s orders. And you’re going to make him responsible for doing his job to the best of his ability?”

“I just… I don’t want to like him.”

“Resistance.”

Lee shrugged, then nodded.

“You’re trapped here.” Vic patted a hand over his heart. “As long as you hold onto that resistance, Lee… You’re a prisoner of yourself.”

Vic took the controls of the Nightcrawler and throttled forward. He smiled a simple, peaceful, contented smile. “You were a second son to me. All I ever wanted was to help you the way I couldn’t help my son. You grew up street smart. You had to be to survive. You’ve broken out of jail cells before. You can hack your way through security systems. And, if you’re brave enough, you’ve got friends that can help you out of this prison you’ve made for yourself. If you’re brave enough to let yourself out and let others in.”

The Anaconda and the Para Bellum maneuvered into a wing formation and followed their lead.

“Don’t get even, Lee. Get ahead.”

Lee woke up to the familiar ceiling and walls of his quarters on the penal colony. The dream was fresh on his mind. Still in the recliner, he leaned forward and tried to recall it all before he lost it.

The wake-up tone interrupted his thoughts. The lights began their gentile illumination.

A fresh perspective invigorated him. He was up and ready before the second tone sounded. Like the day before, there was a pounding at his door.

Lee sighed. Alright, Vic, I’ll try it your way, he thought to himself. He opened the door to Jackson, standing there waiting for him, “Morning, Lee.”

“Morning, 2K.”

“Wow. Honestly, it’s good to see you up.”

“You worried about me?” Lee scoffed.

“Ehem. No. Not worried. I mean, I’ve got something that will cheer you up.”

“You? Cheer me up? What could you possibly say to me that would cheer me up?”

“Okay, look, just come with me, alright?” Jackson made a gesture for Lee to follow.

Still reluctant, Lee went along with Jackson to the lifts and down to the mess hall. Instead of filing into line, Jackson led him around the building crowds of people to one of the last sets of serving stations. There, behind the counter, handing out trays was a burly, curly-haired beast of a man with a cybernetic arm.

“Well, as I live and breathe. Sollinger!” Dex said with a toothy smile.