Crimson Dawn

The Disciplinary Center was close to the habitats, just one train station away. Women and children sat in the waiting area, nearly a hundred chairs filled, the air heavy with the fear each convict exuded as they awaited their punishment.

Four pressure-sealed doors led from the waiting room, each one to a different form of punishment. Even behind the door marked "Exit" penance awaited the workers. But the weight of immediate punishment here and now was far heavier. A corporate officer stepped up to the second door from the left, one hand on the lever, and called out a dozen names—including the boy’s.

In a blindingly bright hall with no windows, three strange steel machines stood in separate sections. Children lined up on the right, women in the center and men on the left. No one said a damn thing. Lex pulled his jumpsuit down to his waist, baring his upper body, and stepped onto the marked spot, pressing his heels into the shackles on the ground, which snapped shut around his ankles. He picked up the handcuffs attached to a steel chain and fastened them around his wrists. The chain automatically retracted into the metal arm hanging above him, stretching his body until he stood tall and rigid.

The machines, barely cooled from the last session, whirred back to life. Lex glanced at the whips hanging from the side of the machine. He clenched his teeth. Squeezed his eyes shut.

I hate you, Zara Thandros, he thought, and I hate this damn corporation.

Then the steel engine roared from idle to full speed in just a few rotations. The electric whips hissed through the air, screams filled the room, and penance showed no mercy.

******

Habitation Station 3, Floor 6, Container 231. Lex lay face-down on his bed in the lit wall alcove, running his finger across the scratched double-paned window. Outside, the Vortex storms raged, and visibility was barely a meter.

"Ouch, damn it."

"Hold still."

The overhead light illuminated his bruised back. Mori carefully applied antiseptic gel to the dark welts. Lex gritted his teeth in pain and anger, his eyes stinging with unshed tears.

"Those bastards," he muttered.

"Amen, brother."

"This gel’s supposed to help with your burns."

"Yeah, but it hurts like hell."

"It’ll feel better in a minute."

"Where’d you get it, Mori?"

She paused for a second before answering. "I swiped it from the medical ward today."

"You what?" Lex pushed himself up on his forearms, glancing back at her over his shoulder.

"You could—"

"I know."

"They’ll send you into exile if they find out."

"No one caught me. Now lie back down."

Lex obeyed. "God, if I could just get back at those corporate assholes somehow," he said after a moment.

A deliberate cough came from the corner, where Tayus sat with his arms crossed on a metal stool. "We’re not gonna get a better segue than that tonight," he said, standing up. "We were actually gonna talk to you about something at the bar yesterday, but…"

"I’ve got something to tell you guys, too," Lex cut in, thinking about the selection program and his chance to get off the prison moon.

"Let us go first," Tayus said, licking his wide bottom lip. "Remember that day, almost four years ago, when we were sitting by the fountain in Bancarduu, secretly fishing out the copper pieces some corporate goons had tossed in? We were talking about the FLD. The rebels were on the rise. They were taking over one place after another. Nearly the entire eastern sector was under their control."

"And we wanted to join the FLD," Mori added.

Lex laughed bitterly. "Yeah," he said, "and thank God we didn’t. They’ve lost over ninety percent of their territory by now. I saw it on the news recently. Their leader was executed, and—"

"Ember Drake is still alive."

"Ember who?"

"Ember Drake. She’s the leader of the FLD. Back then, she was just a ghost, making history under the name Echelon."

Lex studied his two friends. He kept what he was thinking to himself for a moment longer.

"Ember Drake has been declared dead by the corporation more times than I can count," Mori said. "It’s just to demoralize us. But three weeks ago, a video message from her surfaced on the infonet. She’s found a hideout—looked like some kind of cave."

Lex rested his forehead on his arm, thinking for a moment. Then he lifted his head and said, "Why did you say ‘to demoralize us’? We’re not rebels."

The girl with the cropped hair didn’t respond.

"Guys, what’s going on here?"

"Do you believe in fate, Lex?"

Silence.

"I didn’t know we were answering questions with more questions now." Lex swung his legs to the floor and leaned forward out of the wall alcove. Then he shrugged. "I haven’t had much reason to believe in fate. Unless you mean, do I think we’re destined for a lifetime of work? ‘Cause that I don’t believe."

"Neither do we," Tayus said. "Which is why we joined the FLD three weeks ago. We’re part of it now. No—we are the Forces for the Liberation of Demeter.”

Lex’s eyes widened. He stared at his friends. "You’re kidding."

"We’re not."

"You didn’t."

"Do you think we’d joke about something like this?"

"How did you ... Oh, holy crap."

"Man, I’m so sick of being treated like garbage. To them, we’re just slaves or machines. Berry, my old shift partner, got beaten to death by a guard a few months ago. Just like that. The guard was having a bad day or somethin'. He was pissed off and needed to crack a convict’s skull. I was practically right next to him when it happened. Scared out of my mind. I wanted to help Berry, but he was already gone. His skull was just ... well, never mind, I’ll spare you the details. Anyway, that corporate scumbag told me if I breathed a word about it, I was done for. The next day, Berry was replaced by another worker. I told the new guy what happened to his predecessor, and…"

"And then?"

"Then one thing led to another. Turns out the new guy was part of the resistance. He clued me in on how things really work. Asked me if I wanted to do something meaningful with my life before cancer takes me out or some random guard beats me to death."

"And you said yes?"

"Of course I said yes, man. This is what we’ve dreamed of our whole lives."

"And you too, Mori?"

She shrugged. "I want to fight for our freedom. If I have to, I’ll die for it."

Lex stared at a random spot on the metal wall of his room. Then he looked back at his friends. "You know I could get into serious trouble just for you telling me you’re part of the rebels, right?"

"Would you turn us in or something?"

"Of course not," he said, pausing for a moment. "Wait. You’re not telling me this because you want me to join the FLD too, are you?"

"We could work together as a team," Tayus said. "The FLD is split into thousands of cells, each with three people. You, Mori and me. We’d be a team, just like we are now. Only this time, we’d be fighting for something that actually matters—not just surviving. Each of us recruits a new member, and that person forms their own cell with two more people. See what I mean? That way, each member of one cell knows only one member from another. So if there’s ever a traitor, they can only take down their own cell and the one person they know from another. The FLD as a whole survives."

"Great. And how does it all get organized? By some supercomputer?"

"Echelon," Mori said, "is the top authority of the rebels. Echelon now stands for an entire network of men and women at the head of the resistance. Their influence even reaches Cetos V. They’re in direct contact with Crimson Dawn. They’re running the war against the Thandros Corporation. There’s an encrypted page on the infonet where Echelon assigns tasks to all the settlements in every sector of the colony. We carry out these missions to weaken the corporation. We get updates on plans, successes and failures. And here in Orongu, there’s going to be an uprising soon. The way things are going, we might actually pull this off."

"Pull what off?" Lex snapped. "Walking into a death trap? How are you going to beat the corporation? How are we, a bunch of slaves, going to beat them? They’re stronger than us in every way by a quadrillion miles. We have no weapons, no money—we own nothing."

"We can show you the site, Lex. Right now. We can show you that everything the rebels have been building for decades has a real shot at working. If we all work together, we have a chance. There are more of us than you think. We’ll tell you everything about the organization, but first, you have to swear loyalty to the FLD."

"I need to think about it, guys."

"I don’t get what there is to think about," Tayus said. "Since the day we met, we’ve dreamed of taking down TC. Now it’s happening—we finally have the chance to do something that actually matters. And now, all of a sudden, you’re backing out? If you’re scared, man, let me tell you something: You’re not getting out of here alive. But if we fight, at least we have a chance to die free."

Lex stared at Tayus.

"So, what do you say, man?"

He didn’t know what to say.

His mouth hung open as he looked at Mori, who nodded at him while holding the wound gel.

Do the right thing, her eyes said. Choose us.

His heart pounded in his chest.

He thought about the Selection Program.

He thought about his friends.

And he thought about how unfair the world was.