"When I went to the market today they didn't even have bread."
"No bread?" Carl Naylor echoed, raising an eyebrow toward his wife. "How could they run out of bread?"
They stood in the kitchen of their little home on Tellus—the industrial planet that served as Darius's capital—in the city of Breitenberg, preparing dinner. Outside, the perpetual rust-colored haze that hung over the city had deepened with the evening, turning the light through their kitchen window the color of old copper. Tellus had always been an industrial world—the foundries and smelting plants that ringed Breitenberg pumped iron particulate into the atmosphere day and night, and the rain that fell most afternoons left ochre streaks on every surface. The locals called it blood rain, though no one remembered when the nickname had started. It stained clothes, corroded metal, and gave the entire city a faintly metallic taste that clung to the back of the throat.
Carl trimmed half-rotten vegetables at the sink, examining each carefully for glaring imperfections before dropping them into a bowl along with the others. The sour-sweet smell of decay hung in the air, mingling with the musty dampness that never quite left their walls—a problem on Tellus, where the iron-heavy moisture worked its way into everything.
As Darius's rebellion went on these last two years, the tolerable level for rot and decay on these vegetables had loosened. Now, he accepted anything that wouldn't make his family sick.
"I don't know. But they had none, and no one knew when they would be able to bake more."
"Damn," he said, dropping another spear of asparagus into the bowl. "Things keep getting worse. First they ran out of most dairy products, and now bread."
"That isn't even the half of it," Kate replied. "By all accounts, the rationing has only just begun."
"What are they planning to cut back on next?"
"Meat, maybe," Kate answered. "Water? If it's something we need, they'll ration it or hike up the prices until we can't afford it."
"I'll get a second job if I have to," Carl said. "If we need the money."
"The money won't matter," Kate said, leaning heavily against the counter. "There won't be anything left to buy."
Alaina knelt in the living room next to the kitchen door, listening to her parents speak. The television played behind her, but she ignored it to eavesdrop on her parents' conversation. Her parents didn't like her doing that, but she couldn't help herself.
They always assumed she didn't know what was going on out in the world and that she didn't understand grown-up things, but she did. She hated being treated like a seven-year-old girl.
Never mind that she was one.
In a short while, they would call her in for dinner to eat the meal they had prepared, but judging by the meager supplies her mother had returned home with from the market, Alaina expected a small meal.
They were all small meals nowadays.
"The food lines are the worst of it," Kate continued. "Having to wait for hours and then only being allowed to purchase a small amount of anything. They only let you buy enough to take care of half of your family."
"I waited three hours for a cod filet yesterday," Carl agreed. "Three hours for one filet, and by the time I got there, they were all sold out. The woman three spots ahead of me got the last one." His hands stilled on the cutting board. His shoulders sagged. "Never been through anything like it."
"How are we supposed to feed our children?" Kate asked. She spoke lower now, a thickness in her voice. Alaina had to strain to hear. "Or keep them clothed. I've had to mend Jessie's shirt three times in the last week."
A long moment passed, the only sound them working side by side. Alaina didn't like when her parents got sentimental like this, but it was a lot better than them being mad at each other. That happened a lot nowadays, too.
"We'll get by," Carl said finally. "It can't stay like this forever. The economy will make a turnaround."
"How?" Kate asked, anger flashing in her voice.
"How can things possibly turn around? It's been two years since Tellus ratified the Union. Two years since our planet joined Darius and this stupid rebellion. The aid funding we used to receive from the Core is gone. Trade dried up. How are things going to get better?"
"Problems like this take time to correct," Carl argued.
"How much time? Do you know? Does Darius know? This war is costing us far more than it is costing the Republic."
"I know. Progress has been slow, but you saw the news. Big things are happening. More planets have sworn for the Union. Trade is starting back up in Sector Six—the Indeil Kingdom's territory. Darius is calculating, waiting for things to fall into place before launching an all-out military campaign against Axis and the First Citizen."
"How long can we wait? We are starving and can't take care of our families. By the time Darius decides we're ready to start fighting, we'll all be too weak to do anything. We should end this: surrender and let us go back to the way things were."
"There is no turning back," Carl said quietly. "The only way for us now is forward."
"How are we supposed to keep up this rebellion? If Darius can't even keep his own people fed, how is he going to bring down the Republic?"
This time, her father was slower in responding.
"I don't know," he said. "Kate, I just don't know."
Kate sighed, breathing out the tension. "Neither do I. I know it isn't your fault…I just…"
"I understand," Carl said. "I supported Darius when he came to Tellus, but I'm not so sure anything will change now. But I promise I won't let you or the kids go hungry."
"How will you do that?"
The silence hung in the air. "The families of soldiers never go hungry."
"No, Carl," Kate said. "I won't let you. You promised you would never join or risk your life, and I will not let you."
"I know, but—"
"No," Alaina's mother cut in. "End of discussion."
Alaina heard her father blow out a breath of air, but he didn't say anything. She strained to hear, but it sounded like they finished talking.
A few moments passed and then footsteps alerted her that they were heading toward the living room—where she should have been watching cartoons.
She scurried back over to her spot on the floor. On the television two children wandered through a make-believe forest, searching for stupid teddy bears or something. She pretended like it was funny as her parents pushed through the door and came inside.
"How's my big girl?" Carl asked, lifting Alaina up and giving her a hug.
He was disheveled, his clothes carrying the bitter tang of factory grime and stale sweat. He spent long hours at work each day, coming home in the middle of the night, sometimes after she fell asleep. She rarely got to see him anymore, with how often he worked or waited in the food lines.
She missed him.
"Hey, Daddy," Alaina said, squeezing him.
"What are you watching?"
"Cartoons," she answered.
He set her back on the floor and sat down on the couch. Her mother sat next to him, eyes red-rimmed, cheeks still glistening.
"How are your dance lessons going?" her father asked.
Alaina looked at the floor.
"We had to take her out of dance," her mother explained. "They closed shop because there were too few students. Everyone was behind on their payments."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I had no idea."
"It's okay, Daddy. I didn't like dance anyway."
"You didn't? I thought you loved it?"
"Nope," she said, kind of annoyed. She hadn't enjoyed her dance lessons for almost a month. "I want to learn how to fight."
Carl glanced at her mother, raising an eyebrow quizzically.
"Don't look at me. I don't know where she gets these ideas. Probably from vids."
Carl shrugged. "Maybe," he agreed. He turned back to Alaina. "So you want to learn how to fight, huh? Why? So you can be a superhero?"
She nodded emphatically. "I want to fight monsters."
"Don't worry, honey," her father said. "There aren't any real monsters."
"Oh, yes there are," Alaina said. "And I'm going to beat them up!"
He laughed. "Well, then I guess we had better eat dinner. We need to make sure you grow up big and strong to defeat the monsters."
Alaina bristled at his dismissive tone, but it didn't surprise her. Adults never really took the things she said seriously, but one day she would prove them all wrong and do everything she promised she would do.
A loud crashing sound erupted in the distance, followed by a heavy rumbling that shook the whole house. The ground bounced under her feet, plates fell to the floor in the kitchen and shattered, and the windows rattled in their frames. Rust-colored dust sifted down from the ceiling—the iron particulate that settled into everything on Tellus, shaken loose by the blast.
Alaina screamed, covering her ears. Her father knelt on the floor next to her, wrapping her up in a tight hug and using his body to shield her. It lasted a full fifteen seconds, reverberating through the entire house before calming back down.
Once it ended, silence enveloped the living room, punctuated by the barking of dogs and screaming of sirens in the distance. Her father's arms tightened around her, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Gradually, she pulled herself loose.
"What was that?" Kate gasped, clutching the couch as she rose on wobbling knees.
"I have no clue," Carl said. His face had gone ashen, hands trembling as he released Alaina. "Maybe an explosion."
"An explosion? You don't think the Republic…?"
"No. No way," he replied. "We aren't under attack."
"How can you be—?"
"We would have heard something before today. They would have said something on the news if the Republic was on its way."
As he spoke, he moved over to the couch and flicked the remote to change the television station. Reports flooded every channel as news outlets posted breaking coverage of what had just happened.
He selected a station, and the broadcast showed an aerial view of the wreckage of an old building. It looked like an old warehouse, but no external markers denoted what it served.
Fire licked the interior and an explosion had destroyed half the building. Containment crews and barricades surrounded it. Firefighters struggled to get the blaze under control.
"A gas line malfunction," Carl read, shaking his head as the news captions scrolled past.
"Gas line?" Kate said. "Are you kidding?"
"That's the official story."
"There is no way a gas line did that," Kate said, gesturing angrily at the images on display. The camera panned left, and they saw a pile of long shapes under blankets. Alaina squinted, wondering what might be under the sheets.
Her father quickly turned the news back off.
"I know," he said. "Do they think we are stupid? That used to be an old chemical processing plant."
"They are probably testing a new weapon."
"Maybe," Carl said. "Or they might have been cutting costs in the chemical stores and had a malfunction. They've sacrificed safety in there for years. This could be a terrible accident."
Kate let out a huge sigh. "We keep seeing 'accidents' like this and we're supposed to look the other way? We can't keep living like this."
"I know," Carl agreed.
"Constantly afraid," Kate continued. "Hungry. Despondent. We can't raise our family like this. We need to leave."
"Where?" Carl asked. His voice was low, full of defeat. "Where will we go, Kate? Where could we go that is better?"
"I don't know," she replied. "Off world?"
"Who would take us in? We are outcasts now, part of Darius's rebellion. Every other planet in Sector Six is as bad off as we are, and no one else would let us come. At best we are fools. At worst, traitors."
"Maybe this was all wrong," she said. "Joining Darius and his rebellion; joining the Union: maybe it was all a terrible mistake that we're paying for."
"It was," Carl agreed softly. "Supporting Darius was the worst decision we've ever made as a planet. I wanted freedom for our children, but I didn't really understand how bad things would get. Now we're all going to pay."
Alaina could barely believe her ears. Normally, when her parents argued about Darius and the rebellion, her father wasn't willing to give an inch. He thought joining the Union was the right and only choice. It was the idealist choice, the one best for the future.
How bad must things be, then, for him to take her mother's side?
"Maybe it was all a mistake," her father reiterated. "And we will lose everything. I honestly don't know. What I do know is that there is nothing we can do now except move forward. We can only do the best we can with what we're given."
"I know," Kate said. She pulled Carl close and pressed her face into his chest. "But at what cost?"
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