Chapter 6
It was home and all I’d ever known. What would it be like to live on an actual planet for a while?
The starlight blurred into white lines as we entered hyper drive, and I returned my gaze to my lap.
They claimed that Gehennan ships could outrun light itself, but Mictlan ships barely hit half that speed.
In most forms of technology, we were out matched.
Up until now, Shinka Units were our one and only triumph, and now I didn’t think we even had that.
The transport shot into Saturn’s atmosphere with a jolt, bringing into view a cobweb of domes and tunnels that housed our capital city.
The largest dome was Mictlan proper, which was a brilliant contrast of dark buildings and neon lights, while the intricate tapestry of tunnel ways connected smaller domes filled with different styles and colors of architecture.
Our transport ship entered the boarding tube for Mictlan’s Capital city, and a hatch closed behind us to seal the climate-regulated colony.
Saturn was, ultimately, a gas planet. Though the core was solid, it was far too deep in the layers of increasingly dense gases to use as a stable or safe environment for habitation.
Most of Mictlan was built within a floating dome colony that rested on the outermost layer, but there were also several cities and training facilities built within the rings, spinning evermore around the central mass.
Astaroth Academy, however, was square on the planet’s face.
It was similar to a space station, in the sense that you couldn’t simply walk outside of the atmospheric dome at any point, and it wasn’t possible to survive outside the chambers without heavy equipment to protect you from the environment, but unlike a space station, it had things like a true sky, separated from the atmosphere of outer space, and the city followed the planet’s natural rotation, giving way to a time structured day and night.
The ship landed on the loading dock, and I waited patiently to be taxied into the pressurized exit bay.
I retrieved my bag, then I took my first step into the capital city of the Democratic Territories of Mictlan.
The temperature was warm but comfortable with the humidity set at an ideal thirty-eight percent, while the scent signature of the processed air was more heavily floral.
The artificial atmosphere of the Saturn domes was enhanced with rose oils according to a short “Welcome to Mictlan” video that played in the station’s arrival hall.
Every station and planetary base used a different earth plant to season the air, I’d heard, but having never personally touched a living plant, I had no way to verify the accuracy of the scents.
I couldn’t even imagine how different the air would smell or taste on our origin planet, but this was familiar enough by first impression.
I’d definitely have to get used to it though.
We transferred straight onto an intercity shuttle, where everyone was eerily silent as we were carried to Astaroth Academy.
There were only four of us who had arrived from 005 in this batch. One of them sat all scrunched up, hugging his long arms nervously, Another had the most rapid shaking leg syndrome I’d ever seen, and the fourth nibbled on his fingernails like a chipmunk.
I trained my eyes on the window, where the vast city whizzed by.
Mictlan was far removed from Zircon in design and vibe.
Where the station surrounding the University was comprised of sterilized laboratories, pod houses, and artificial grass fields, Mictlan was dense and industrial, with angular sky scraper apartments that nearly reached the top of the atmospheric dome, brightly lit convenience stores, and marketplace compounds with stalls stacked atop each other, the highest levels only accessible via hover platforms and elevators.
The city streets of the capital were bustling with vehicles, hovering just over the roads illuminated by neon lines, some fast and some slow, some new and some old, from sleek, sporty transports to broken down taxis.
Garish virtual billboards were plastered on the side of every building, selling everything from fruit to religion to male enhancement pills, while pedestrians followed the navigational lights of their CHRONOs along narrow metal walkways.
Between the vehicles and the foot traffic, there were so many navigation trails projected directly onto the ground, I didn’t know how anyone kept track of their own.
We transitioned from extravagant living quarters, to the commercial district, to barely bolted together slums, each new segment separated by walls and sealable tunnels, as if to section off the riff raff from the elites.
It wasn’t entirely surprising, but it was a bit more blatant in its bias than I was used to.
I’d always pictured a clean, beautiful city full of the most ambitious and successful people in the Territories, but instead, the downtown high rises and elegant restaurants loomed over trash covered streets, too thick for even the cleaner bots to keep up with, while people slept on the floor in alleyways and under the shade of dumpsters.
The fact that we were both in a population decline crisis and a housing crisis at the same time was ironic in a way that was difficult to put into words.
They wanted me to give up my body to create more people, but where were they going to put them all?
While my brother and I had been on government assistance within the colonies since our parents had been killed, the slums of Zircon were nothing like this.
The Enforcer presence had been heavy enough to suppress crime since we were taken under Mictlan’s rule, and there was enough provided housing to prevent vagrancy post-war.
Our homes were small, and our possessions were few, but I’d always felt safe enough, because we always had that little bit of shelter, however imperfect it may be.
The world felt less scary when there was somewhere to hide from it all.
This… wasn’t that. We were only in this district for twenty minutes of the commute, and I’d already seen one person running with a woman’s purse, and a man wearing slave coils—spiral cuffs that were fitted onto prisoners— who was being beaten by an Enforcer in an alley.
Another block and I was looking at a woman heaving up nutritionally complete something or other onto the walkway, and a man blacked out on a sidewalk.
Three road closures were lit up with Enforcer vehicles as we passed through, and I chose not to look down the roads to see why.
Mictlan was perhaps even worse off than I’d thought. I’d often felt like an outsider in the culture of the Territories, but now I was starting to think it would be more accurate to say I’d been sheltered to the true state of the union.
I kept my head down, no longer wanting to look at the city I’d be living in for the indeterminate future.
This was still better than being auctioned for breeding. It had to be.
The shuttle stopped abruptly at a gate, and we were ushered through massive iron bars that twisted around each other in an intricate, artistic pattern.
The subtlest blue glow of a disintegration barrier pulsed in between every gap in the design—a defense mechanism that even a Shinka couldn’t pass through.
Surely a necessary precaution at one of the most prestigious training facilities for our military.
For most of the ride, I’d felt like an observer of a foreign land, watching an obscure and unfamiliar ecosystem that had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t until I watched that gate slide shut behind us that it truly sank in how real this all was.
I was at Astaroth Academy as a student. Not a visitor coming to see her family. Not as a cook or a cleaner or a nurse or a pregnant wife.
I was here to be a soldier, just like everyone else. Vann would be mortified.
And he would be safe.
He’d live the life he wanted, and I’d bear the burden of this one.
It was already late in the afternoon, when the shuttle stopped by the front entrance of a large, chrome building. The soft glow of track lights added a hint of color to an otherwise harsh monument.
I stepped out of the craft, where our small group was greeted by one man in a General’s uniform, and four others in formal school uniforms who stood in wait of command.
After a very brief and generic welcome, the General headed off, and I was approached by a man with shaggy, light brown hair that had hints of red, eyes colored in mesmerizing dimensions of greens, browns, and golds—hazel, I think it was called—and a light tan that was a more natural looking hue than the artificial complexion darkening options that were in trend on the station.
That must have been what an actual solar based tan looked like on light skin.
I’d only ever seen it in pictures. Most people on the stations used A2s or the Dermal Salons to get the shade they wanted if they didn’t want to be whiter than the housing pods.
His unique coloring was complimented by his tailored school uniform with a high black collar trimmed in a thin band of silver, with the same sharp patterns of swirling stars snaking down each arm that were seen on the armored guard uniforms. Tapering lines on the torso flattered his lean yet athletic build, while I had to tip back my chin to meet his eyes so far above mine.
The thick material and the lines that flattered a male figure would certainly make it easier for me to blend in.
“You must be Vann Callan,” he said with a winning smile. He had a tone and natural charisma that was so sing song it was disarming. He offered me a hand as he added “Breaker Delacorte. Lucky for you, I was assigned as your ‘big brother’ as you get oriented to the ins and outs of Astaroth.”