The unmoderated acceleration carried Kik and his escort awkwardly pressed into the gel for about five hours until it slowed down slightly and the zero-G of orbit resumed as their acceleration matched up with the gravity. About two minutes in, Kik had vomited into his helmet, which was good because he had nothing left to throw up later in the journey. His suit had slowly absorbed and recycled it as they descended, but there were still bits encrusting his face where it wasn’t touching his undersuit.

Once the forces had cancelled out, the white lighting turned green and the pods popped open. Kik spiralled out among clumps of floating green goo, tearing off his helmet as fast as humanly possible. His guide emerged at a more relaxed pace.

“I think I got vomit up my nose,” Kik said. “From the outside.” He took off a glove and wiped his face with his sleeve, the absorbent material going to work and draining off much of the organics there.

His guide nodded in sympathy and offered him a meal pack from a belt pouch. “You should eat. We only have an hour or so before the acceleration stops and gravity kicks in. Enjoy the freedom and view while you can.”

Kik nodded, feeding the meal pack into his arm, where it mixed with the other biological material his suit had recently stored…

“On second thought, I don’t feel like eating right now. Give it a few minutes until I’ve forgotten about all this and I’ll have a go.”

The guide shrugged. “Your choice. I’m Kev, by the way.” He took a sip from his meal.

“Kik”.

“So what do you know about Lanos?”

“Never been there.”

The conversation lapsed into silence as Kik floated near the ceiling, batting around balls of goo. Eventually Kev spoke up again. “This view is really something. I’ve always dreamed of seeing something like this, that’s why I enlisted. Was there any reason why you or your parents came to space?”

Kik grimaced behind his helmet. “No. It’s just what we always did.”

Kev noticed the past tense. “Sorry.” He fell into silence.

After an hour, the green lights started to flash red. Kev quickly strapped both of them into the cylinders before they began to decelerate rapidly. They were both pressed into the floor by the deceleration adding to the already-above-standard gravity. Kik could feel his organs being pressed to the inside of his ribs. His whole body was flat against the floor. His head was held against the floor, facing towards the center of the space tether. He swore he could see sparks around the outside edge of the lift as the supports struggled to compensate.

This continued on for hours on end. Eventually, the red flare of reentry started around the edges of the viewport as the airbraking kicked in. They were pressed even harder against the floor for a few agonizing minutes before they finally came to a sliding halt. Kik took off his helmet, now that they were in atmosphere. He looked the other way, outside the window, and realised he must have missed a beautiful view off the planet as they fell. He hadn’t really had much time to enjoy it, though. He also realised that he wasn’t going to be seeing much now they were under the cover of the smog over the city.

The grey cloud was everywhere. It filled the skies and the streets. It was breathed out by the buildings and in by the people. Faint lights flickered through it as traffic passed through the streets and skies, but the furthest that could be seen throught it was at best two hundred metres. It was all the more shocking to one who had grown up in a spacecraft where all the air you breathed was thoroughly cleaned and mostly inside your suit.

The elevator’s final destination was an arrivals centre at the base of the tether. There was a barred-off area erected and manned by a group of law enforcement soldiers, shown by the watching eye on their shoulders and breast pockets. Beyond it was a curious and bored crowd, queuing for the elevator. Salesmen, cargo porters, ship crew on shore leave, all were waiting to get back into space and about their business.

Inside this walled area were two transport vehicles and five men. Four of the men were standing around one of the vehicles. They were exuding the confidence that only armed people are capable of, the knowledge that they can take lives with ease. The final man gave off a different feeling, a sense of self belief and contentedness. He alone was standing by the front car.

The men were all dressed almost identically, in two piece dark blue clothing. These were covered by a multi-pocketed jacket, in black or again blue. The fifth man, however, wore a white buttoned shirt and black pants. He was overly formal, in the plaza surrounded by armed soldiers and greasy-handed market stallholders. Most other people simply wore coveralls with jackets, or other simple clothing.

The vehicles they stood in front of were large, dark, armoured affairs. They sat low to the ground, with no seeming wheels. There were four bladed protrusions, though, two on each side, which Kik couldn’t figure out. They were curved slightly backwards, and the best equivalent that he could find would be the fins of a fish. The one with four men next to it had two doors on each side and one on the front, while the other had only a single door on each side and the front.

When the doors to the lift opened, though, Kik forgot about who the people were or what the outside looked like. The senses that he barely used were assailed by sensations. First was the hearing. The clamoring of the crowd. Machinery off in the distance. Footsteps as people ran up and down the street.

The problem wasn’t the volume, he had experienced that before, such as in the elevator just then. The problem was the variety. He had trouble filtering it all in. It struck him as a wall of noise, and he could barely make out individual sounds against the background roar.

The second sensation came a second later as it flooded in with the air from outside. The smell. He could taste the smog in the air, smell the sweat of the people outside. He could smell numerous other things that he couldn’t identify, and they all combined together and flooded towards him.

He backed up slightly, but the escort put a hand on his shoulder and looked down at him. The touch helped him focus once again, and he brought himself back to reality in time to hear the last of what the escort was saying.

“to the outskirts of the city. It shouldn’t be so bad out there. Mainly because it’s where the rich like to live. Well, I’ll be leaving you and waiting here until the main elevator comes down.” Before he could reply, the man stepped out into the space before the crowd, gesturing that Kik should follow him.

Kik moved forwards, noticing the drag upon his body due to the strong gravity. It was over twice that of his ship, perhaps one and a half of a standard G. He also noticed the unfamiliar sensation of material crunching underneath his feet as he moved. He looked down and realised he was walking upon jagged pieces of rock mixed with coarse sand. There was an unfamiliar sensation of the ground moving as he walked.

After a brief moment, he had his feet under control again, and looked up, which scared him again. There was a ridiculous number of people here, something in the magnitude of seventy to eighty. He didn’t realise that was comparatively a small number, having spoken with at most ten people at a time in his life. Even then, he had been wearing his helmet. He froze up, realising that quite a few were looking at him. He was unused to the stares of others.

Once again, a tap on his shoulder woke him up. He thanked the soldier quickly, embarrassed at his own inability to handle the situation. The two of them walked forward to greet the man standing by himself at the car.

“Greetings. My name is Walston. I’ll be taking you to the estate today.”

The man in front politely introduced himself, and Kik nodded back, still a little out of it. Walston opened the back door for him and waited. As he was about to climb in, his escort tapped him on the shoulder to say something, but whatever it was was drowned out by the roar of engines and blast of air as the second vehicle lifted off the ground. It was lifted by the four jets beneath each corner. It rose into the air and circled, waiting.

Kik wanted to ask what he had said now that the noise had gone down somewhat, but the car was waiting and Kev was already walking back to the lifts. He got in the back seat and Walston returned to the front where climbed across and got into the driver’s seat, which took up the whole front of the vehicle.

Inside was a lot more comfortable than any vehicle Kik had been in before, but he didn’t have time to enjoy it as the vehicle took off. Flying in gravity was something he wasn’t quite used to. While he had flown to planets before with his parents, most of their trips were to the tops of space tethers like he had just descended, or space stations. Their ship, like most, wasn’t built with atmospheric entry in mind, although it could manage it quite well.

The sensation was unique. It was like being shaken around in a tank of liquid with weights on your belt. You would move around the tank, but in the end you’d always end up at the bottom. For Kik, who was trained to either strap in, or follow the flow and just bounce off the walls in zero-g, he felt as if his legs were tied to the floor.

Once the takeoff was finished and their movement had settled to forward, though, he found it a lot easier to concentrate on other things. He first looked around the space. The windows were blackened and he could barely see out, and not much light got in, either. That made it somewhat hard to see around the space, but Kik was accustomed to dim lighting. He made out one other human-shaped figure sitting silently in the corner.

He was surprised for a second, but then realised that it was still and hadn’t moved since he had noticed it. He looked closer, expecting the person to be asleep. Instead he found it had never been alive in the first place.

The creature was robotic. Kik thought he had heard of some sort of robotic life-form, but he doubted this was one. The ones he had heard of were far older than human civilization. This one seemed to be made by normal construction techniques, but he was more confused as to its function.

The Interstellar Conglomerate permitted building of robots, but most were made in a non-human model and devoid of intelligence. In fact, many advanced starships could be considered to be giant robots, as they were governed by weak AI even if they were directed by humans. Most of the reason was technological difficulty. While the technology existed to make humanoid robots, and the technology existed to make AI with human-level intelligence or greater, even if this was limited, it was next to impossible to fit the massive computers required inside a human-sized robot.

So what was this one? It seemed to be off, so he decided to leave it. If he got bored enough, he might try turning it on or taking it apart, but for now he’d look out the window, what he could see at least. He didn’t feel quite up to doing anything else.

A minute later and a minute closer to their destination, Kik wondered when they would arrive. Before he could continue that train of thought, though, he realised the robot was on and speaking.

“Good to meet you, Kik. I’ve heard a lot about you from your parents.” Its voice was male and lightly accented, seemingly from a blend of languages.

A startled “Huh?” escaped his lips. He didn’t believe the robot was intelligent, but it seemed that way. It continued.

“I’m sorry that we had to meet in this way, but we’ll get a proper introduction later. In the meantime, we can talk about what happened to you in space if you want.”

Kik was utterly confused. “Wait, did you say you know my parents? They never mentioned a robot.”

The machine was silent for a second, as if deliberating. “I’m not a robot.”

“You are,” Kik said. “I can see the microphone your voice is coming from. Or are you an android or something?”

“Oh, you mean this body. No, I’m full human. Actually, I’m the one who hired you. I’m just controlling this remotely and hearing your reply on my end.”

Kik thought about the final statement and was annoyed he hadn’t considered it. He realised he’d have to ask his mother about it later. Then he realised what he just thought. While he was occupied with his own depression, the man continued speaking through the machine.

“I was sorry to hear about your parents. They had worked for me before, and they did good jobs. I wish I could say I knew more about them but I didn’t really.”

Kik couldn’t tell the man’s sincerity from his tone of voice. Then the first part of the statement sunk in, and he realised the man was Erstine.

“Well, I would have come to meet you myself, but I won’t be back at the estate until after you arrive. I had some other important business to take care of, and I’d prefer speaking to you before we meet in person.”

He shook of his depression for the moment and replied to Erstine. “So what do you want to speak about right now?”

“Well, mostly it’s about your run-in with the pirates. Tell me as much as you can remember.”

Kik spoke for half an hour and mostly Erstine listened. The only indication that he was paying attention was his asking the occasional question, such as the calibre of the pirates’ weapons, which Kik didn’t know, and the number and type of supplies in the medical kit. Kik tried not to answer the questions about his parents’ ship as much as possible. Searching his brains for the answers, Kik felt better about telling another person what had happened to him. However, the talk gave off a similar pressure to the interrogation on the ship, so he wasn’t too relieved.

When it was over, Erstine was silent for a few minutes, perhaps talking to someone on his end. The silence was broken when he finally spoke. “It sounds like an inside job. I’ll have to look through the information trail on my end later. In the meantime, my men will see you to a room at the estate where you can unwind for an hour or so before I arrive. Wander if you want, but don’t touch anything, stay away from the guards and stay out of sight of visitors. It would raise too many questions.”

Kik nodded, even though he probably couldn’t be seen, and the line cut off. The robot went back to ‘sleep’ and wouldn’t respond regardless of what Kik said to it.

Another ten minutes later, three quarters of an hour into the journey, Kik noticed the outside was getting brighter. He looked through the window and noticed that he could see somewhat further; the smog was clearing and beneath him the landscape was changing from industrial reds and greys to dark brown and yellowish sands with streaks of coloured minerals, blue, green and red. Walston’s voice came from a speaker towards the front of the room. “We’re approaching the landing zone, it will be getting bumpy again as we approach.” Kik groaned and held on to the edge of the seat as he experienced the now unhappily familiar feeling of taking off and landing in full gravity.

The estate, over two hundred kilometres out from the space tether, was free from the pollution of the central city. The skies were clear and heat burned down. At the equator near the large seas, this was probably the wettest the planet got, and it was still hellishly dry. The pair of airborne vehicles landed in a large cave, one of several, built into a hill, which was good, because the paint on them probably would have melted had they landed outside. Kik’s suit was temperature-regulated and still it felt hot.

Kik followed Walston and was followed by his four guards through a doorway at the back of the cave. On the other side were stately hallways carpeted in white, lined with columns. There was an occasional painting or picture, of verdant landscapes, mountains and the occasional view of space.

Thirty metres in, the four men behind turned a corner as Walston went straight. Kik asked why he was being left with no guards, and received a confusing reply.

“There are plenty of guards that you just haven’t spotted. And besides, I’m not too worried about what you could do with me here.”

Despite this incident, they proceeded through the large hallways. Most were empty, but there was an occasional maid cleaning, constantly cleaning. The section of the house they were in seemed to be endless corridors, perhaps with some guest rooms and storage closets. Kik was taken to one of the former, where there were some clothes laid out on the bed. There were also a pair of boots by the nightstand, and the rest of the room was bare.

The clothes were semi-formal, similar to what Walston was wearing. They seemed more adapted for movement, however, and the pants were slightly more baggy with a brown-dotted pattern. The shirt had longer sleeves and seemed to be made of some heat-adapted cloth.

“Take off your void suit and leave it here,” Walston told him. “Wear these for now. At the master’s permission, you can move around the house, but stay away from servants and stay out of trouble. This is for your own safety, so make sure you obey.”

Kik nodded and started to unbuckle his gloves and boots, leaving his helmet on the nightstand and backpack next to it. Walston walked out to give him privacy.

Once he had unzipped and taken off the main part of his void suit, Kik stripped off the undersuit, revealing his long, untanned limbs. His muscles were weak, and he was already tired from walking around with the heavy pack on. It was designed to maintain his centre of gravity and allow easy movement in low to no gravity, but unfortunately it sacrificed light weight to achieve this. After putting on the undergarments, he slipped into the pants and pulled the shirt over the top. There were many things he found unfamiliar about the clothes, but at least he recognized which way the front was. After he buttoned the shirt back up and put the boots on, he called Walston back in.

When he returned, Walston clicked his tongue at the dressing attempt and ordered Kik to hold out his arms. He tied some small buttons on the ends of the sleeves, and did up the clasps on the boots. He also pulled out a comb from somewhere on his person, but thought against it, looking at the unsurmountable tangles in Kik’s grey hair.

Finally granting permission for Kik to leave, he nevertheless called a guard, who had seemingly been standing outside, to watch over the “guest”. Kik was then given reign to walk around the house.

The first place Kik ran was out of Walston’s sight. He felt he wouldn’t escape all eyes here, but at least that one pair would be away from him. His first destination would be the room where his mother would be kept when she arrived, as he presumed she would. He wanted to make sure that she would be taken care of properly.

The thought dampened his exploratory mood, but he pulled himself back together. Surviving came first. This might seem a less dangerous place than space at first glance, but he had no doubt that there were just as many ways to die here as in a pirate’s lair.

He wasted ten of his sixty minutes walking around aimlessly, not finding anything. He tried talking to the guard following him, but he was nowhere to be seen, despite being ordered to protect him. Finally he stumbled across a pair of people with white clothes and small red addition signs on their shoulders, the symbol for a medic. He followed them, not particularly trying to hide, and they almost immediately walked through a glass door which closed and locked behind them.

Walking up to the door and peering through, Kik could see several beds across the room from him. Of the three in view, one was curtained off, one was empty and the last had a man in it with his arm missing and the stump wrapped in bandages and wound gel. Walking up and down the corridor in either direction, Kik could see other medical rooms, including surgeries, rooms filled with scanning machines, and what might have been a cryogenics bay for human bodies, either alive or dead.

Unable to enter any of the rooms, he was satisfied that the facilities were good enough. They seemed better than every medical bay or hospital wing he had seen or been in, which was quite a few; he had been injured many times as a child in space, some more seriously than others.

The next place Kik went was looking for food. This one was easier; he followed his nose. He walked to a stairwell and breathed in the air, smelling something heavily scented from below. Going down the stairs to the very bottom, he found a large plant garden, long and wide, with arid soil and bright light. The light seemed to be reflected from large holes around the edges of the room and cast by floodlights in the ceiling. The smell came from a large plot of flowers along the side of the room.

Kik was hungry, but not enough to eat dirty produce, assuming he even could find any. He looked elsewhere. After twenty minutes of searching, with more than half his time used up, he found a room with many controlled fires. What seemed to be giant gooey ration blocks were placed inside, then taken out again after they had increased in size and browned.

Three people dressed in white were putting in and taking out these blocks from the fires and placing them on a table near the door. A smell completely different to packaged rations filled the air. Kik thought he had tasted something similar during a warp once, a long time ago.

One of the men inside the room noticed Kik at the doorway when he put the next block down. He looked at the other two behind him, and gestured that he should take one. He also put a finger to his lips and waved him quickly.

Kik nodded in thanks and grabbed one before he could change his mind. He ran down the corridor away from possible retribution from the other two. Sitting in a corner made by a pillar, he tore chunks off and stuffed them into his mouth with his hands.

He pulled off a quarter and left it in a pocket for later, but ate the rest. It had a slightly springy texture, but it almost melted in his mouth. It was brown, but the inside was a smooth, pale colour. When he broke pieces off, a soft crunching sound filled his ears.

Overjoyed, he thought how he had to share this with…

Once again depressed by his reality, he put the second remaining quarter block in another pocket. He didn’t really feel like eating anymore. It didn’t taste quite the same, and he had already eaten half. His needs were satisfied.

Wandering around the mostly empty hallways, Kik found a balcony shaded by palm trees. This one was actually outside; it seemed he had come to one of the sides of the hill the estate was inside. He found a bench and sat down, watching the patterns of shade shift and change across the rolling hills of sand.

He must have fallen asleep, because the guard outside the door shook him awake. His grip was surprisingly powerful, or at least it seemed that way to Kik.

“It’s time to go. The leader will be back soon, you have to get ready to meet him.”

Kik nodded and stretched. His head was still fuzzy, but he could keep it under control and stop himself slipping back into darkness.

He walked off to meet Erstine.

The guard dropped him off in another empty room and had him sit at a table. The feeling was almost identical to the military interrogation chamber. He sat for a very short time, less than a minute, until a pair of burly men walked in. They wore dark jackets, shorts, and some kind of white, unsleeved shirts. They walked in silently and didn’t move. Another minute later and a door at the other end of the room opened.

Kik wasn’t sure what to expect, so of course he was surprised. The man who walked in was not very tall, only just taller than Kik, so perhaps a hundred and sixty centimetres. He was also slightly plump. Obviously, though, he wasn’t just a normal person. He wore a blue tail-coat and matching blue trousers over a gold-buttoned shirt. Small golden patches decorated his shoulders. But more intriguing was the mask on his face. It was a full face, gold, Venetian style mask. It was decorated by waves, small patterns and with engraved plates attached to some sections. Kik was stunned into silence, half by his style and half by how ridiculous he looked.

The masked man, evidently Erstine or someone close to him, came up to the centre of the room and stood there. Kik waited for him to speak first, taking in his appearance. It was a little difficult because of the lack of lighting, but he looked over all the strange clothing. His main thought was that it didn’t seem very practical.

“Well, it’s nice to speak with you again, mister Kik,” the man said. “Sorry I took so long, I was caught up in a meeting, I didn’t even have time to change.” The man spoke deeply, heavily and gutturally, strongly pronouncing his consonants, especially grating the w’s.

Even while trying not to think about what kind of meeting the man had been at, Kik shook his head. “I don’t think we’ve ever spoken before.”

The man reached up to his throat and tapped something there, letting the blend of accents from the Erstine he knew flow through again.

“It’s a simple matter to change your voice. I can speak like this if you prefer. Telling you whether it’s my original accent is a different matter.”

“So why did you bring me here?” Kik asked.

“Ah, down to business straight away. Well, put simply, you had some of my cargo on board, however small an amount it was. I pulled some strings to get it picked up, and you came too to make it seem less suspicious.”

“What cargo are you talking about? The pirates took it all.”

“Most of it, certainly, but there was at least one crate left aboard your ship.”

Thinking about it, there was only one thing left one their ship. The LEACh bombs. “So that’s what we were carrying. No wonder we weren’t told.”

“Yes, well, not knowing helped you get through the questioning by the navy. They may have been playing nice, but had they known you had been carrying that by design, there’s no way I could have gotten you out of there.”

Kik thought about it and it made sense, but there was no way he’d trust Erstine that easily. Not telling them protected him more than them. “That still doesn’t tell me why I’m still alive.”

“Well, I suppose. Did you know how useful your ship was, by the way? One of the reasons why I agreed to so favourable terms when your parents took it.”

That was a story he’d have to ask about sometime, Kik noted to himself.

“Anyway, now that your parents are dead or incapacitated, I need a new pilot, but almost nobody knows how to pilot a ship like yours these days. It really makes me wonder how those two learnt. So that’s where you come in.”

“You want me to be your smuggler?”

“Ding ding. Yes. And before you argue about how young you are, you got those two people… or one… here safely. That’s something. I’ll just stick an older person with you who can pretend to be captain and speak with the authorities. You’re the one with the skills.”

Losing his neutral expression at Erstine’s obvious cover up, Kik nevertheless considered his options. “Why?”

Erstine sighed, which came out as a burst of static from his voice box. “That’s always the question, isn’t it. Ideally, you’d do it out of the goodness of your heart and love of the galaxy.” He glanced at Kik’s expression. “Or more likely, you’d do it for money.”

Kik shook his head, but Erstine held up his hand again. “No, not just wealth. The ship, one of the things that your parents owe me for. At the moment, of the three shareholders, one is dead and one is incapacitated. That means as the third shareholder, I own it for now. So if you want to keep it, you need to make me owe you.”

Kik’s frown deepened, but he was still not fully convinced. Erstine sighed and leaned forward, keeping his eyes perfectly on Kik. His voice suddenly lost all accent, enunciating every word clearly.

“Well, there are other reasons. I didn’t want to use these methods on a child, but that’s fine. You’re pushing me. Your mother will require intensive medical treatment until she wakes up. If she doesn’t get it, she may survive. She may not. Who can say? Who can tell if this house will have a blackout someday?”

Kik’s eyes widened, but he hadn’t given up, even if his voice choked slightly. “But if she… died... you wouldn’t have any power left over me. I could just leave. That’s not what you would do if there’s a chance of getting me back.”

Erstine might have been smiling beneath the mask. “I think you’re mistaking something. If you die, I lose next to nothing. I get a few less pawns to play with until I find another smuggler. You have nothing I can’t find anywhere else. And besides, she doesn’t have to die straight away. There are a lot of things she could live without. Hands are one. Her frontal lobe is another, and it may prove difficult to prove that it was me who did that. Hmm, it’s a shame that problem hasn’t been found till now. She must have been hit harder by those pirates than we imagined.”

If Kik hadn’t been sitting down, he would have collapsed already. Slowly and shakingly, he nodded. “All… right. I’ll work.”

Erstine laughed and his voice turned to normal. “Good, glad to see you with a goal. I’ll send you off to one of my men and he’ll set you up.” He tapped something, seemingly empty air, in the centre of the room and walked back out, nodding to the two silent men. The light illuminated dark blonde hair just before he passed out of sight.

Kik sagged in his chair and pulled his knees to his chest. He felt like crying. One of the men spoke to him, but all he heard was noise. His shoulder was tapped a few times, and when he didn’t respond he was picked up and carried out of the room.

The man carrying him was massive, not much over a metre eighty but very heavily built. He was carrying Kik like a baby over his shoulder, despite only a thirty centimetre height difference between them. Kik let himself be carried and his body relaxed, deadened by fear. The fear that once again, that which he fought so hard to save would be taken away and he could only sit and watch.

Eventually he was taken into another room and sat in a chair before a desk, on the other side of which was a revolving chair. The man on it clicked an old-fashioned ink pen as he decided Kik’s fate.

The man had dark business-like clothes, dressed similarly to Walston from earlier, but with his black jacket hung over his chair instead of wearing it. Despite the availability of vision correction surgery, he was wearing a pair of square-rimmed glasses. He scrunched the paper he was holding up and threw it behind him, where it passed through a large hole in the wall and fell. His disinterested gaze aimed towards the two large men, and he nodded to the door. They complied, so he turned and observed Kik.

“Name… Kik. Just Kik? Well, it’ll do for now. Parents deceased and in a coma, now agreed to work, legal age is… and the ownership status on the ship is…” He flicked through a few documents and nodded. His voice was clear and precise, embellishing the unnecessary words. “The first major issue is your parents. Your father is dead and your mother is unconscious, so you need a new guardian.”

“Huh?” Kik asked. He had expected some sort of gang member, and he got legal advice?

“Well, that can be arranged, that can be arranged. Next problem in this situation is… possessions. Your guardians’ possessions would usually pass to you, but since one isn’t actually dead, you’d usually be taken care of by the government until they wakes up or are pronounced brain-dead. That’s two years from the date the injury is registered, which was yesterday, by the navy. Hmmm…

“The ship you’ll have no problems with, as well as what’s on board, since it had other owners. Anything else, however, will be held until that time.”

“Oh…” the reply was. He didn’t have anything but his ship for two years or until his parents woke up. Didn’t that sound bad?

“Furthermore, extensive damage has been found. Given the age of the ship’s parts and its obscurity, repairs should take at least a month and a half. Only half is covered by insurance, as piracy is considered a moderate risk, and the extra wasn’t paid for the full coverage.” He made a note on another sheet on the table.

“Finally, we get to the work contract.” He pulled a many-paged document from beneath the table. “Three signatures are required, please, here, here and here. I hear you don’t have much choice but to sign, so you may as well hurry up about it.”

Kik had reluctantly picked up the pen before realising he didn’t know what he was meant to do. He drew a tick-like mark with a small scribble beneath the tail in each of the indicated spaces.

“The document will be provided for your own perusal at a later date. It is recommended you come to read and understand all the terms and agreements, as they are legally binding, especially in the event that you wish to terminate this contract before the two-year date has passed. Well then, that’s business taken care of.” His voice finally slowed down on the last sentence.

“Now that the official talk is out of the way, I have three things to talk to you about. The first is your abilities.”

Kik nodded and listened halfheartedly.

“So, as you have realised, you’re far too weak to do anything on a decently-sized planet,” he continued.

“I can’t help that. That’s just how I’ve grown.”

“The question, Mister Kik, is not what you can do, it’s what we can do. It wouldn’t be too hard to grow your bones and muscles for a month or so under our supervision.”

Kik looked up at that. “Wouldn’t that be useless? How would I adjust to the added muscle?”

“Well, you’d train, of course, which brings me to the second point. I know somebody who used to know Garet, who’d probably be willing to train you. It would also take close to a month for him to arrive.”

Kik was fully attentive now. “Who is he? How did he know my father?”

The man shook his head. “That’s a story that you’ll have to ask him, if he’ll tell you. Which also reminds me of the third point. I have something Garet used to own, although I’ll have to find it for you. It may take a little while.”

Kik smiled slightly in anticipation before going back to his previous inattentive state. “Is that all?” His voice was a little warmer than before.

“Yes, that should be everything. Oh, and by the way, my name is Thenfor,” the seated man said, reaching out to shake Kik’s hand. “I was an… acquaintance of Garet’s at one time. Perhaps I’ll tell you more about him one day. Perhaps.”

Kik smiled bitterly. “Perhaps someday I’ll be ready to listen.”

The next few hours for Kik were a whirlwind of medical checks and chattering scientists calling out obscure terms. They ended with him lying on a bed in just thin underclothes, covered in needles. He could even feel them spiking into his back from below. As one scientist had explained amid the hustle, “They’ll force your muscles to move constantly, tear and heal. There’ll be some pain over time, but they’ll grow as if you’re exercising constantly.”

He also had some kind of bone supplement injected into various parts of his body. At least he had been put out before the three hundred and something needles were shoved into his arms, chest, legs and back. Even his bottom wasn’t spared.

Eventually, he was left alone with nothing to do but sit and stare at the ceiling, waiting for the first dose of painkillers to wear off. Apparently, they had been ordered to forgo the second dose onwards to prepare him to take pain, so he was ready for hell. His head was held straight by a brace, while his arms, legs and chest were bound to the table. Some of the needles passed through the bindings into his body, making them even more secure.

He lay there for hours, counting the cracks on the ceiling and trying to twitch his fingers as the pain slowly began to flow back. He wished he had somebody to talk to, at least. Eventually, Thenfor turned up, but before Kik could speak he had a pair of dark glasses placed over his eyes. These weren’t sunglasses, they barely let any light through at all; they were more a glasses-shaped blindfold. Even so, Kik could see Thenfor grinning down at him.

“I knew I had it around somewhere! The glasses I was told to give to you by Erstine, but one of the memory chips inside was what i was looking for. It has some songs Garet used to listen to all the time. He lost his parents young too, you know. You might learn something from him. Anyway, I have to get back to my job. Figure out how to use them by yourself. Enjoy your month.”

Over the first day, with nothing else to do, Kik figured out how to turn on and use the glasses. He tried blinking at certain portions of the screen, blinking hard, even crossing his eyes. In the end, he figured out that if he squinted, he could see a small lightning indicator in the corner. If he blinked twice at this, the device would turn on and coloured text would appear before his eyes. Once on, the glass cleared out and let him see beyond.

When he first did this, he was overjoyed, but the large amounts of tiny, close text made him nauseous when he moved his eyes, so he turned it off almost straight away. Over the next few tries, he attempted different methods, taking breaks when he felt sick, until he realised that if he focussed his eyes on the background and kept them still he didn’t feel sick. After sitting like that for a while and slowly adjusting, he eventually became used to this, and started concentrating on text. After another few hours, he was able to focus enough to see the words properly.

Moving his eyes quickly gave him a headache, but if he concentrated on one word at a time, he could read. He browsed through the menu, seeing four connected data ports. He opened the first one; it was full of technical manuals for various gadgets, from weapons to spaceships to elevators. The second contained galactic history and details of particular worlds of interest. It also included a section on galactic government. The third one was the one he was looking for, but he checked the fourth one briefly anyway. It consisted of briefings on the various criminal organizations across the galaxy and their methods. Kik sighed, knowing he would have to learn much of this soon, and moved back to the third folder.

Inside it were three things. The first was a picture of his mother and father in some kind of scrapyard. She was laughing and hugging his side while he was carrying a long metal pipe or bar over his back, drenched in sweat and grinning. They both looked much younger, in their mid twenties. Choking back tears, he moved to the second. It was a picture of Garet with two other men standing in a desert. All three were in camouflaged combat fatigues.

His father was bare-chested, while the other men were fully clothed. One of them was old and grizzled, with a scar across his chin. The second was young and pale-skinned, maybe seventeen, giving off youthful confidence and innocence. Of the three, Garet was between them, at perhaps his early thirties, and he seemed a little bit more worn than the younger person. The younger man’s hair was the same brown as Garet, while the older one’s hair was white.

Kik hurriedly closed the picture. He’d come back and look at both later, but for now it brought back too many bad thoughts. He opened the third object in the mostly-empty memory, a group of files. These were songs. The alphabet was the same as he knew, but he didn’t recognise any of the titles or the words in them. One was marked simply with a 1. He went to this one first. He lay back, half-asleep, and let the music soak over him. There was a light instrumental accompaniment, mostly background. More importantly, he didn’t know what language the singer was singing in, but he recognised the meaning behind the words, as if he had heard them long ago.

All the stars you see in the sky,

They shine beautifully, but that is fake,

For behind them lies unending darkness,

And an end that comes for you.

And whenever the stars seem to shine,

Know that the end is slipping closer.

But we do not sit and wait,

We do not accept our death.

We do not let our light burn out

Until it has shone brighter than the stars.

So when death comes for you,

We scream and cry, “This is not my day”.

We will not give in, even at the end,

So while the stars hold nothing but death,

We shout to that death, “This is not my day.”

*One Month Later*

Four hours before he was due to be released, Erstine visited Kik. He assumed it was Erstine anyway, he didn’t see the speaker, but the voice certainly sounded the same. “So how well have you spent this month, mister Kik? I hope you have read much of what has been left for you.”

“About half,” Kik replied. “At least of the history and criminal parts.” His voice was hoarse from misuse, as he had only spoken two or three times a day to the doctors asking him his condition.

“And the technical knowledge? Not half of that?”

“Almost all of that. I knew most of it already.”

Kik could imagine Erstine raising his eyebrows behind his mask, if he was wearing it. “Impressive. I didn’t expect quite so much. Want some water?” A hand appeared in Kik’s vision holding a glass.

Kik was about to accept, but he decided against it. “No, I’m not really thirsty. Maybe later.”

“Really?” Erstine asked. “You seem quite thirsty. I can hear your throat catching.”

Kik was put off by his sincerity. “No, it’s quite alright, I’ll get my own later. The thirst distracts me from the needles.” He began to be more on his guard, despite not being able to do much in this position.

“Very well, suit yourself,” Erstine said. “If you find it hard to trust me, that’s fine too. It means you’re a little more intelligent than some. As you may have guessed, I was testing you. Although whether you passed or failed is up to you to decide.” He walked out, and Kik could hear the splash as the contents of the glass was poured out, perhaps into the sink. He sighed at the thought of water on his dry throat.

When he was finally released Kik stood up out of the bed where he had lain for a month. He had slept, defecated and lived in the needle-strewn lair. The greatest feeling he felt now was relief, relief that he could finally stretch his muscles, move his neck around and scratch the itch he had gotten around day seventeen. The main reason he had stayed sane was because of all the reading material and music he had on hand. He cupped his hands beneath the sink for washing tools and drank long and deeply, splashing his face, letting the fluid soothe his aches and bring life to him again.

The next place he went was to his room to get a proper night’s sleep at last.

In the morning, he was woken up by a maid. Last night, he had slipped the clothes he had first worn back on, put his new glasses into his pocket, then fallen onto the bed and passed out. He had dreamed of needles and woken up in the middle of the night, but slept deeply afterwards.

“There are people waiting for you outside,” she told him, not showing the deference he had heard them give the scientists and doctors whenever one came into the facility. Perhaps it was because he was a child. He thanked her anyway and followed.

Outside the building, in the blistering heat, three people were waiting. The first was Thenfor. The second was a small girl, who Kik didn’t recognise and seemed to be slightly younger than him. The third, who was arguing animatedly with Thenfor, was the eldest of the three men in his father’s picture.

One event perhaps worth noting also occurred in the facility where Kik had been treated, a few hours after he had left. One of the maids doing cleaning found one of the potted plants dead in the corner next to the sink, despite having been fine the previous day. She told one of the biologists who took care of it. After taking samples, she realised there were poisonous chemicals inside the soil. She blamed it on one of another scientist spilling or playing around with chemicals, although he insisted his innocence.