The Planetwalker: The Planetwalker Trilogy, #2

By Anders Aaslund

Marooned on the planet Alamea, Pioneer Imogen Hart and her team have to find a way back aboard the spaceship Conestoga—their home. But their arrival on the planet has not gone unnoticed. The wild beasts of the jungle are watching, and war is brewing between the two nations already inhabiting the planet. The unwelcome visitors could quickly become the spark that lights the fuse.

 

Imogen soon finds herself a pawn and a prize in the race for world domination. Will she be in time to stave off disaster?

 

Fans of Emma Newman's Planetfall, Scott Reintgen's Nyxia, Amie Kaufman's These Broken Stars, and Suzanne Collin's Catching Fire will enjoy this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anders Aaslund
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9789152734117

Book preview

THE PLANETWALKER

ANDERS AASLUND

Copyright © 2023 Anders Aaslund All rights reserved

Independently published

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-91-527-3412-4 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-91-527-3411-7 (epub)

Cover by author

Awesome cover art by Martin Trokenheim

www.grumpynovelist.com

for Justin

THE SOLDIER

ONE

Every morning, Private Arklight Adana wakes up and wonders how hell can be so insanely boring.

The days out here, at the Yusei-Llawand garrison, on the edge of the sea, blur together in a mind-numbing sameness. Even worse, Arklight can’t seem to get used to it, so it’s as if he discovers how tedious the life of a soldier is over and over again. In fact, the only interesting thing that can happen to someone here has already happened to him. Within a week of his arrival, a bile bug larvae found its way into his colon and laid an egg there. Two days later it hatched, and the newborn bile bug dug in, causing immense pain and voluminous, bloody diarrhea. It took powerful anesthetic and a colonoscopy to remove it and nearly three weeks to recover physically. He knows he will never fully recover mentally.

Also, Arklight has been known as Asslight ever since.

At first call, the other grunts rustle out of bed quickly and get on with their business: hitting the lavs, splashing cold water in their faces, donning their uniforms, and making a lot of noise. Unless one is quick, which Arklight isn’t, one would end up at the back of the line to the lavs. He usually waits out the worst of the scuffle in his bunk, on his back, using his enstim neural implant to conjure up his happy place in his mind: Kolawa Beach. Wakea rising over the hot dunes and the towering waves. The tangy smell of drying seaweed washed up on the shore. The girls on boards out in the surf. A mellow intoxication still clinging to his mind after last night’s party.

His place. His dream.

A solid kick to his bedstead shakes him out of the neural simulation. Sergeant Olega stares at him, his face too close for comfort. Oy! Asslight! I know you’re stimming! Shut it off and get going!

Yes, sir! Arklight says, bouncing out of bed with that fake–energetic spring he’s been practicing. He’s always the last one up and about. Kind of proud of it, truth be told.

The sergeant looks at him wearily. You’re not fooling anyone, son. Least of all me.

What do you mean, sir?

I mean, the sergeant says, again leaning in so close Arklight can see the thin little veins in the whites of his eyes, you’re a waste of perfectly good air. You don’t think I can see right through you?

Arklight’s mind doesn’t need to race for the appropriate response. He’s good at this. He’s always been able to conjure up things to say to get him out of sticky situations—his ending up here the one notable and very irksome exception. Sir, he says now, his voice clear and firm, if I’ve done something wrong, you should report me!

The sergeant flinches. Yes, that’s it. Technically, as long as he shows up at the right place at the right time, he’s not doing anything wrong. Just because he’s not doing it with the same eager enthusiasm as the other idiots in this place doesn’t mean—

You think you’re clever, don’t you, Asslight? Sgt. Olega says now, barely containing his disgust. Just a little more pressure, and his eyes will pop.

Definitely not, sir! I’ve never been clever.

The sergeant’s uniformed chest presses against Arklight’s. I’ve got my eye on you. One mistake… one… and you’re in for the roughest, dirtiest duty there is. You’ll think that bile bug was a vacation!

Yes, sir!

His breath shuddering with rage, Olega lingers for a few seconds, right in Arklight’s face. Then he turns on his heel and leaves the barracks without another word.

—

Stepping outside, Arklight dons his cap. Wakea is beating down hard. Today like any other day. Funny how the same star can feel so different depending on where you are. In Kolawa, it’s hot and breezy. The Eastern Sea helps cool the air. Out here, on the other side of the civilized world, the sun’s rays needle your skin from the moment it rises above the horizon until it vanishes again. Arklight doesn’t count his lucky stars anymore, but it is fortunate that he got warehouse detail. Down there, below ground, where it’s cooler.

From the air, it sort of looks like the Yusei-Llawand outpost teeters on the edge of the cliff. When he first saw it out of the dusty porthole of the troop transport that brought him here, he thought it might fall into the sea at any moment. He wouldn’t have minded. This place represents the ultimate penalty for being an Adana; the atonement for being privileged. Naturally, being an Adana, his sentence was much harsher than most of his unlucky brethren-in-arms. He would do five years of service rather than the regular three. Nobody could change that, not even his politician mother. No, especially not his politician mother. It would look particularly bad if she used her influence to relieve him of his duty.

What she could have done, he thinks—the thought crosses his mind more often than he likes—is get him out of doing his duty in this forsaken place. He tried to argue that there were plenty of other perfectly reasonable places to put him. He also argued that he wasn’t the soldier type. That he would do much better at headquarters, manning a desk.

Your father pulls the string on this one, his mother, Orealee, replied. He wants to make a man out of you.

I’m already a man, he said, but she didn’t answer.

And so here he is. His fellow soldiers heckle him, call him a weak, spoiled, rich kid with nothing but smoking kosh, surfing, and getting laid on his mind. On the eve of his being shuttled out to the hellhole that is Yusei-Llawand, he felt so sorry for himself it bordered on panic.

Across the strait, barely visible in the morning mist, Outland’s hazy coastline rises out of the sea like a slumbering beast. Like any other Carran, Arklight has been fed enough stories to make him always aware of its horrors, and being close to it hasn’t dulled his fear one bit.

Yusei is legendary, son, his father, colonel Danial Adana, said. It was the night before Arklight shipped out. He had gone through training without a scrape but also without commendation—a point of shame for his family, whose military traditions stretched so far back they were practically Earthers. The Vigil, they call it, serving there. You should be proud!

It’s a hellhole, Arklight’s eldest brother said. He wasn’t even trying to hide his glee. It’s hot, it stinks, it’s full of nasty bugs, and you’ll be the first to get hit when the Outlanders attack. Good luck.

His brother was right: the heat and the stink never seems to let up, and, well, he had first-hand experience of the nasty bugs. Even worse, the Yusei-Llawand garrison will be the first to set off for Outland if war finally comes. If Yusei-Llawand is any indication, what’s waiting on Outland will make this place seem like a regular paradise.

Still, it’s the boredom that gets to him. The place, the people, the job—all of it, mind-numbingly boring. Endless stretches of hot, stinking nothing. In fact, bile bugs are the only break in the monotony, he thinks, a thought that makes him smile a little bit. Yeah, sure, he doesn’t have to go on treks through the jungle. He won’t risk having more interesting species of insect chew his insides. But the warehouse doesn’t exactly stimulate his mind like, say, a lithe girl in a swimsuit riding into the sunset on a surfboard would.

Sometimes, he wonders if he might welcome the war. If it ever breaks out.

Fat chance, he mutters, steering clear of a large, yellow drone hauling material from one end of the base to the other. It seems to be all that happens here, things getting moved back and forth.

His father told him not to be complacent. War will come, he said. The conviction shone in his eyes. He wanted war. All of Carran wants war. It has been preparing for it for four hundred years, after all. You just wait.

Arklight knew not to press the issue. To doubt the need for a giant stockpile of weaponry at the edge of the world was heresy. After hearing all the horror stories about the Outlanders’ cruelties and degenerate way of life, every Carran was expected to whole-heartedly support the three-year mandatory military service, the mountains of government money spent on the armed forces, and the treacherous peace that at any second might explode in violence. Woe to those who question the centuries-long high alert, this half-a-millennium long standoff. Outland cannot be trusted.

—

Walking across the compound takes less than ten minutes; most of Yusei-Llawand lies under Arklight’s feet. Buried in the bedrock are seven floors dedicated to mayhem and destruction. Up top are landing pads and barracks. Below: everything else. Arklight heads down into the cool, air-conditioned mess hall. He actually looks forward to breakfast. Cooked food, not fabbed. One of the few perks of being stationed on this rock.

Halfway across the compound, he slows his steps as the large, featureless shape of the visitor’s spacecraft appears on the horizon. It rises swiftly, growing in size as it approaches zenith.

He had hoped to time his brief walk across the compound so that he wouldn’t have to see it. Every time he does, it frightens him in a way that he can’t understand, much less describe. It’s what he imagines it would be like to be watched by some supreme being, a planet-sized eye staring back at you.

The other soldiers don’t talk about anything else. Even now, several days after it appeared in the sky, they talk. Arklight forces himself to look down and forge on ahead. Soon, he’s safely underground again.

He was in the canteen when it appeared. He’d just made it to the line when the mood suddenly changed. It was palpable, like the way one can sense electricity. It made the hairs stand up on his arms. A silence fell over the chowing grunts. As one, they turned their heads to the big screen feeding Carran news around the clock. What was the big deal? It only showed a hazy blue sky. Then something came into view. Arklight frowned. What was that? It looked distant and tiny at first, like something filmed underwater. Shaped like a cylinder. Or a large pill.

Turn it up! someone shouted.

Moments later, a stern and familiar female voice boomed through the room: …and despite attempts to make contact, none have so far as we know succeeded. The Court of Veterans commented earlier this morning that the visitors may have hostile intentions, and that it may become necessary to put our forces on high alert.

Another familiar voice took over: The Court urges Carrans everywhere to remain calm. Meanwhile, questions are already being raised as to how an object of this size could slip right through our planetary alert systems and enter orbit.

Yes, and it may be difficult for viewers who are just now tuning in to grasp just how big the object is, but we have some graphics here that will make it plain…

Arklight watched apathetically for a bit more as the two hosts speculated freely about the origin and purpose of the big, greyish cylinder thing that apparently entered orbit around Alamea around five o’clock standard time. Then someone shouted: Outside! It’s coming! We can see it!

It’s coming! another one yelled.

Like a camouflaged tidal wave, the grunts surged outside. Arklight let himself be swept up the stairs into the searing morning sun. The soldiers milled about on the tarmac, craning their necks to the sky. Someone pointed out to sea, past the dim, jagged shape of Outland. It’ll come from the east! Any second now!

And it did. There was a collective gasp followed by a stunned silence as a blue-grey shade the shape of a cylinder rose above the horizon, grew impossibly large, and zoomed across the sky. It passed almost directly overhead, and for once, the news reports hadn’t exaggerated or over-dramatized. The thing was enormous. Arklight’s math skills were wanting, but given its orbital altitude and the sheer apparent size, it must have been several tens of kilometers long and a few wide. To his knowledge, there were no spacecraft that large in any fleet. It was just not practical to move such masses around in space.

He was not the only one thinking it. Are there even any ships that big anywhere? a soldier next to him asked.

Miners, another one said. Much bigger.

They’re not technically ships, though, more like asteroids with engines strapped on them. Nobody builds ships this big.

Someone did, Arklight mumbled under his breath.

—

As predicted, only a handful of soldiers remain in the mess hall when Arklight arrives. He gets his breakfast and sits down by himself, trying not to think about the visitors, who they were, and why they have come.

At least the giant cylinder has brought some of the soldiery some energy. Before, they all wore that dumb, collective look of servicemen everywhere: a sort of resolve and pride that only got steelier once they donned their uniforms and grasped their rifles. Now, they all look animated, excited, and babble amongst themselves, gesturing and comparing sizes as if spaceships fit between their stretched-out palms.

He knows what they’re thinking: this means war. For real this time.

Here’s the thing, Arklight muses (and he feels himself more qualified for such musings than anyone here), war is great before it starts. A constant state of pre-war tension, especially one that’s lasted this long, works well for the common soldiery. It makes them feel like they’re part of an unfailing machine. But when war does come, it won’t be like the endless propaganda says it will.

What better proof than an unknown, humongous spaceship?

You wanted something to happen, Adana, a voice behind him says. This what you were hoping for?

Let’s not talk about it, Brey.

If he has one friend on this base, it’s Arminata Brey. They make a fine pair: both skinny, pale, and as un-soldier-like as can be. Arklight has his father’s sharp features and heavy eyebrows, but other than that, he doesn’t have much of a commanding presence. Brey even less so: a soft, punchable face with thin lips and small eyes, the sort of face you can stare at for minutes and still not remember afterwards.

Arminata puts her tray down. We can’t not talk about it. It’s all we’re going to talk about forever.

Not if I can help it.

Why not?

Because it’s just going to be… conjecture.

Conjecture. Listen to you, Arminata chuckles and takes a seat. Fancy talk.

Whatever. You know what I mean.

So… what do you think it is?

Arklight sighs. I don’t care.

Yes, you do. Don’t try that with me. I know you’re as interested as everyone else.

I am not, as a matter of fact, Arklight says and angrily tears his bread roll in two. Weak minds discuss people. Average minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas.

Clever, but that, my friend, is evasion, not disinterest. I bet you’re stimming about it right now.

Wrong.

Enstim makes everything easier. Living, loving, hating, being. He rarely thinks about it in those terms, but the tiny, pinky-nail size enstim implant that gives instant access to, well, everything, is a fundamental trait of the Carran way of life. It’s impossible to imagine existence without it. If you, like Arklight, have a visual augmentation implant as well, then the the secrets of the world are simply displayed right before your eyes, whenever and wherever you choose. He can, if he wants to, watch the news right there, literally in his mind’s eye.

Only he doesn’t want that big, hazy cylinder thing anywhere near his mind’s eye. Also, he’s only allowed to so much stimming on duty.

I think they’re aliens, Brey goes on, drooling with excitement. Think how big they must be!

Maybe it’s just one big alien.

Oooh good one! There you go! Excellent conjecture, Brey says, smirking. Arklight grins, despite himself. I thought I’d get you smiling.

To be fair, Arklight can’t get a handle on his own reaction. He can’t wait to get to the warehouse, where he doesn’t have to think about it or see it. Which is kind of funny, because only moments ago, he was thinking about ways to get out of working without raising suspicion.

—

A few hours later, while directing a liftbot to where it should store the newly arrived AS-71B rapid deployment surface-to-air plasma cannon (now 36% deadlier!), a very old, stooped woman in ragged clothes appears before him, and he nearly trips over his own feet.

TWO

Arklight’s tablet clatters to the floor. The old woman before him must be a witch. An Outland witch, straight out of the scary stories Arklight watched as a kid.

He knows they’re not real. Only stories. And yet, when she looks at him with her dark eyes set deep in a crinkled, pockmarked face, fear strikes right at that primal part of him that wants him to run away, screaming.

He blinks, stares back, blinks. Is she real or not? The confusion jumbles his mind and makes linear thought difficult.

It must be a hallucination. A trick of the light. It’s impossible to even imagine an old woman somehow finding her way onto this heavily guarded, fortified island. So why doesn’t it go away when he tries to make it?

The old woman takes a step towards him, her foot dragging on the ground. Dried sweat, something sharply vinegary, and a pungent, earthy tone that reminds him simultaneously of the sea and of the jungle. It’s like sticking his nose into his board shorts after a week in the surf. The smell releases him from his paralysis. He nearly gags and surreptitiously covers his mouth and nose with a hand like a scandalized old lady.

Who are you? he asks, finally. The words come out harsh, almost aggressive. She barely reacts at all, merely turns her head slightly at the sound of his voice. He tries again, louder this time: Who are you?!

Lost, the woman replies in the common language, Parlis. From that one word alone, he can tell that she doesn’t really speak the language, that she only knows bits and pieces. He half expects her voice to be gritty, coarse (like a witch’s) but it’s clear and soft.

How did you get here? he barks. His voice bounces against the metal storage units and carbon-reinforced walls.

I… walk? she says, looking back from where she must have come. Extends a gnarly finger and points. Walked, she adds.

You’re not supposed to be here.

She doesn’t understand. He takes a step forward, wishing for the first time he had a weapon. What’s he supposed to do? Tackle her, wrestle her to the ground? She looks like she’ll fall apart if he as much as touches her. Not break up into pieces either, more like disintegrate to a cloud of dust and ash.

All right… uh… you’ll have to come with me, he says, moving as to grab her arm. She’s close now, and the smell of her goes up his nose, in his eyes, through every pore.

He wraps his fingers around her bony arm. His nose wrinkles in disgust.

A man appears out of the shadows beyond she shelves and throws himself at him. Arklight receives a blow to the ribs and goes sprawling on the floor. An angry voice yells something at him. On all fours, he scrambles away until he slams into the storage unit on the other side with a bang. The assailant didn’t follow him, but stayed with the old woman. He’s got one arm around her shoulder and glares at him, his eyes like slits in his face. An Outlander. Young, only a few years older than Arklight. He’s wearing nothing but a ragged pair of pants, barely held up around the waist with a tattered leather belt that looks self-made. Probably actual leather, from the skin of a beast that he hunted himself. His finely sculpted, muscular torso gleams in the bioluminescent light. Long, black hair cascades down his back. A string of beads around his neck.

You no touch! the man says.

Who… what… you can’t be here! Arklight sputters, getting to his feet now. He’s winded, but his ribs seem intact.

For a second or two, he considers his options. They’re not great. He can stay here, and let the Outland savage kill him. Or he could make a break for it, and make it slightly harder.

In the end, panic prevails. He scrambles to his feet and makes a break for it, certain that the last thing he’ll hear will be the patter of the savage’s feet as he catches up with him.

—

When he reaches the first level ramp, alive, he dares to throw his head around. There’s nobody there. The Outlander didn’t follow him. He slows down, backing up the ramp, while his hyped-up mind churns out a string of frightening ideas. A team of Outland assassins infiltrating the base! A suicide squad here to wreak as much havoc as they can before they’re taken out! Terrorists, here to blow up the base from inside so that Outland forces can cross the strait and invade Carran at will!

And then it dawns on him. The giant thing in the sky. What are the odds that something like that turns up in orbit and he stumbles upon a crack team of elite murderbots from outer space?!

At the same time, he tries to get a hold of himself. Why would someone make a murderbot in the shape of an old lady?

Someone really clever, that’s who! She’s probably the device itself, a walking, talking antimatter bomb!

He emerges on level one and runs flat-out the distance across the enormous loading bay to the quartermaster’s office. Raise the alarm. Make someone else take care of the Outland spies.

He reaches the office gasping for breath. Rivers of sweat run down his face and his back. The QM’s assistant frowns at him but buzzes him through.

The quartermaster of Yusei-Llawand, Captain Annesley Hahn, commands Arklight’s respect in a way he did not anticipate any soldier to do before coming here. This is, he is painfully aware, because she is incredibly, even surreally, beautiful. A blend of every single attractive woman he’s ever seen, with sharp features, much like his own, but plumper lips, larger eyes, and a general aura of Do not mess with. She is also darker-skinned than anyone on the base. He’s only ever seen a few people with skin as dark as she. The story goes, her parents came from Earth, where the great range of climates made humans evolve a matching range of skin tones: from pinkish white to charcoal black. Visitors from Earth show all kinds of colors.

He can very well picture the quartermaster on a surfboard as well, and, in his shameful loneliness, he has developed some very detailed fantasies of him and her in a very different setting.

He stumbles into her office and throws a sloppy salute. Ma’am! Captain, the—

She doesn’t even look up. Private, you need to practice entering this office.

But ma’am, it’s an eme—

First we knock. Then we enter, close the door, and make a proper salute.

Emergency! he gasps. It’s an emergency.

Captain Hahn finally looks up at him. Do tell.

Outlanders! In the warehouse!

Arklight expects her to jump up, sound some alarm, and grab the nearest rifle. Instead, she merely frowns. Really? What did they look like?

Uh… the… a woman! An old woman. And a, a, a, a man! A huge man, like a wrestler or something.

She sighs and leans back in her chair. I guess it was just a matter of time.

Uh… ma’am, don’t we… I don’t know, don’t we need to go down there and… you know…

Kill them? she suggests.

I don’t know. Arrest them?

She snorts a laugh. Right. Good call, private. Please don’t think so hard. I can smell your hair on fire.

His cheeks burn. He wishes she could see his real qualities, but this isn’t exactly the sort of gig that entails a lot of surfing and making out on a beach.

Okay, she says, standing up. Let’s go.

Are we… by ourselves? Ma’am?

I’m confident the two of us can handle this little problem.

—

The old woman and the young Outland savage are no longer in the warehouse, but Arklight can still smell them.

They were right here! Arklight whispers hotly, before the captain can accuse him of anything.

I believe you, she replies. And you can talk normally, private. Follow me.

She continues down the next ramp, and the next. Down they walk, very slowly, until they reach the bottom level, known on the base as the Piss Off Level. Half of it is a bunker-within-a-bunker, an area reached only through large, armored loading doors on rails to which only the senior officers have the access codes. Likewise, only the senior officers know exactly what’s hidden behind the green, heavy metal doors, but the soldiers speculate. Some believe the bunker contains a secret weapon, a last-resort doomsday device to be used only if Outland somehow gets the upper hand in an all-out war. A laughable idea if there ever was one. It’s borderline treasonous to imagine that Outland could win a war against mighty Carran!

No, boring as it sounds, the bunker must be used to store ultra-sensitive equipment and hi-tech gear of some sort.

Arklight has never taken part in the speculations, mostly because he doesn’t really care. In the event of a full-scale war, he expects to get killed immediately. The first strike will no doubt target Yusei-Llawand, and it will happen without warning—about the same time as the declaration of war drops into the inboxes at the War Department back in Terranovus. An all-out strike with all the might of the Outland armed forced which, if the War Department is to be believed, doesn’t stand a chance against Carran. That’s supposed to be comforting, apparently, but to the soldiers on Yusei-Llawand, that kind of confident boasting has little effect. The island will be the first to go, everyone knows it, and all the AI-powered umbrella defenses and magnetic shielding in the world won’t stop a determined enemy.

Propaganda is all about simultaneous wins and losses. Strength and frailty at the same time.

These things all cross Arklight’s mind as the two of them approach the giant steel doors. If an old Outland woman and her what, bodyguard? got in here, what good will a robotic super-defense be?

A smaller door, set in one of the giant bunker doors, stands ajar.

So that’s how she go out, Captain Hahn mutters.

Ma’am?

She stops in her tracks. Listen up, private. You’re about to learn something many, many levels above your rank. I don’t need to tell you what will happen to you if you let slip what you see in there to anyone. You will keep your mouth shut about this, that’s an order. Do you understand?

A storm of confusion still ravages his brain, but here’s at least something useful he learned in basic training: always agree to what a superior officer tells you. Yes, ma’am! he barks.

Very well then.

She approaches the open door and pulls it open. The stench wafting out of the bunker nearly overwhelms him. It smells like the old lady, only much, much more of everything. Like a faceplant in a puddle of muddy, bacteria-laced jungle water. He knows because he’s done it.

It doesn’t seem to become the Captain. She steps over the massive door sill, and Arklight stumbles after, his mind in a daze. And stops dead just inside the bunker.

There are people in here. More Outlanders. Arklight counts six of them, all dressed like the Outlanders from the propaganda videos: dark, rugged, angry. And there’s his assailant, just about to help the old woman sit down on a bunk bed. He turns to face them, his hands curling into fists. Another young man, who looks remarkably like the first one, puts his hand on his twin’s arm as if to calm him. The others, a little girl, an old man, and a person of indeterminate gender and age, stand absolutely still, as if trying to blend into the environment and disappear.

Do they live down here? Arklight wonders. Two rows of bunk beds line the left wall. In the middle of the room, a gaggle of tables and chairs. To the right, a row of shelves and cabinets.

He half expects Captain Hahn to reach for her sidearm. Instead, to his surprise, she walks right up to the old woman, gets on one knee, and—Arklight’s jaw drops—speaks to her in Olo. The Outland language. Of the following, brief conversation, Arklight catches only one word: quarantine, mostly because it’s the same word as in Carran and Parlis, only airier, lighter, somehow.

It takes him several seconds to close his open mouth.

—

Captain Hahn speaks with the young men in Olo for a while. They’re obviously talking about Arklight. One of them keeps shooting glances his way. The conversation finished, they lose interest in him, finally. One of them takes charge of the old lady and helps her into the bunk bed. She sits down on it with obvious relish, as if the trek up into the upper levels of the warehouse wasn’t her idea. The springs creak loudly and metallically in the big, electrified silence of the bunker.

The little girl runs up to Captain Hahn and says something. The captain replies in a calm, playful voice, and the girl grins.

Arklight remembers then what little he learned in school about Outlander society—communal child rearing, polygamy, self-government. In particular, he remembers what his social studies teacher called them. Perverted, he said with a sneer. Inhuman.

Arklight shudders. What are they doing here? How did they get here in the first place? Why couldn’t they stay in Outland?

His back straightens involuntarily as he catches Captain Hahn gazing back at him. She has no difficulty reading his mind.

They’re refugees, she says. They come across the strait. We rescue them, bring them here, and then ship them off to the mainland, where they’re properly assimilated.

It takes Arklight a few moments to collect himself in order to form a coherent, if not intelligent, question: How do they get here?

Boats. Rafts. Whatever floats.

But… why do we not just blow them out of the water? He stumbles over the words, his temper rising now. He shoots them a contemptuous look over the captain’s shoulder.

She looks calmly at him. That’s what you would do, is it, private?

He opens his mouth but checks himself. There’s a glint of something in the Captain’s eye. I… they… what if they’re spies? Or worse! He wheezes the last part out so they won’t hear.

Do they look like spies to you? Captain Hahn turns to the group as if to check for herself. You don’t need to worry, private. They have nothing but the clothes on their backs.

She says a few parting words in Olo. The wrinkly, smelly old woman raises a hand and waves goodbye. In confusion, Arklight does the same, which brings a great, yellowing grin on her face.

—

On their way back up, the captain drags her feet. He catches her throwing sidelong glances at him.

Ma’am?

You understand why, don’t you?

Understand what?

Why this needs to be kept under wraps. I’m sure you do. And I know you have questions. So shoot.

Ma’am? It feels like he’s getting dumber by the second. In reality, he doesn’t understand a single thing about it.

Ask me anything.

For a terrifying moment, he can’t think of a single thing to ask.

What are they fleeing from?

It’s not as much what they’re fleeing from but what they’re fleeing to. Outland is not for everyone. Not even all Outlanders. It’s been like that since the beginning. She frowns and gazes intently at him.

Another thing strikes Arklight right then. The refugees didn’t look at all like he thought they would. For one thing, they were very obviously ragged and destitute. He’s been taught the Outlanders all have sophisticated smartwear, androgynous looks, and plenty of body modifications. While Carran society frowns upon body augmentation beyond eyestim and instim, the Outlanders, he was taught, embraced it to the extreme. To the point, in fact, that they’re barely human anymore, but cyborgs, devoid of true emotion and, by extension, loyalty and honor, too.

They’re not… modded?

"No. Not all of the Outlanders are. And not all of them live in the cities. Some chose a different life, a life without mods or modern tech.