Sector 1 - Axis
Argus Wade
“What’s he doing?” Yeol whispered, tilting his head to the side with a frown. His eyes were locked on the spectacle in front of him. His face was a mask of awe tinged with fear as he watched the robed figures move about the courtyard.
“It’s a ritual,” Wade explained, straightening his black robes and pulling the hood back from his head. They were ritual robes, itchy and uncomfortable. Everyone was expected to wear them for religious holidays. “Something the church has done for thousands of years.”
“What for?” Yeol asked.
“To pay homage to our ancestors. This shows our respect for the dead. Today, we ask for their guidance,” Wade replied. He considered pulling Yeol away—children weren’t allowed to take part in religious rituals until they were fourteen—and decided against it. Better to dispel his youthful illusions now than let them build over time.
“They ask a pig for guidance?”
Wade was silent for a moment. “Not exactly.”
The porcine was snorting and squealing as a nimble, cloaked man led it to the center of a deep pit of sand. The pit was surrounded by several Ministry Officials, including the Minister Givon Mielo, as well as many of the high priests.
Behind them were students at the Ministry as well as low-ranking priests. Everyone was chanting, filling the courtyard with a quiet hum. Even the priests who spoke low of the Ministry were in high religious fervor today.
Which was reason enough for Wade to keep his distance. As a member of the Ordo Mens Rea, he had a target on his back. Better to spend his day hidden from the people itching to form a mob.
It was a beautiful day on Axis—thanks to the domed structure forming their sky—and a lot of priests would visit. Some civilians would come as well to offer alms and pray.
Wade glanced up at the dome roof above them, looking for any signs of wear and tear. In some, there were lines or imperfections, dispelling the illusion of open sky. A few were even missing lights or had broken machinery, making the dome shape obvious. Above the Ministry, however, the dome was perfect. Open sky above him. Except it wasn’t. It was tons and tons of metal, trapping him like a rat in a cage.
He hated these holidays. He hated the rituals with a severe passion. His Order, the Ordo Mens Rea, had no rituals of its own. When they were adopted by the Ministry, they were forced to give up their old way of life. They were forced to accept the Ministry’s God as the one true God.
That had never really bothered Wade. It had been over two hundred years since, so he didn’t even know who their original God or Goddess might have been.
What he did care about was how ignorant the Ministry was. They were proud of that ignorance, reveling in it. Normally Wade didn’t mind the life he’d been forced into. But it was days like today that made him truly hate it. If it wasn’t for his unique genetic markers, he would never willingly be associated with something this primitive.
He’d never even had a chance at a normal life.
He sighed and gently squeezed the young student on the shoulder. Yeol was turning eight in a few weeks. Like Wade, his enrollment in the Ministry was not voluntary. He shared the genetic markers; as such, he would spend many long years as a test subject and victim. He would be looked at like he was different, a freak, for the rest of his life.
The Ministry took him from his family at two months old and brought him here to live in an antiseptic plastic room with the other babies. He knew nothing about life except what the Ministry wanted him to know.
And if he ever, ever, stepped out of line, they would declare him a dangerous subject and lobotomize him. He would become a Keeper, then he would serve as an example, a shadow wandering the halls with a vacant look, terrifying the next generation of children brought in as human guinea pigs.
So, no, Wade wasn’t interested in protecting Yeol’s fragile reality. Better that he understood early what would be expected of him. If Yeol didn’t view the Ministry and the Shields through rose-tinted glasses, then he would have a better chance of surviving in this cruel, harsh world.
2
“You ready to go?” Wade asked. The cloaked man was leading the pig in circles, letting everyone see it. It snorted every few steps.
“Can I watch?” Yeol asked, looking up at Wade with big eyes.
“You shouldn’t,” Wade said. He’d been put in charge of Yeol and five other children as a mentor this year. The Ministry’s sadistic program to give children the semblance of a parental figure. Wade hated performing this role and avoided the children as much as possible.
“But can I?”
Wade sighed. “A few more minutes,” he said.
“Yay,” Yeol replied, turning his attention back to the courtyard below them.
To think, only a few weeks ago, Patrick Uhlren was down in that courtyard, impressing students with his virtuosic shooting skills.
Will ritualistic slaughter be as impressive?
The courtyard was comprised of cement flooring with two meters of dirt on top with grass and flowers growing out of it. It was constantly changing as the Church updated the selection to match the times. White flowers, pink, large green bushes. Occasionally, they even planted trees.
For the ceremony today, a garden dominated the northern side and an enormous circular pit of sand decorated the other. The walkways overlooking the courtyard were full of everyone who couldn’t find room on the ground floor.
That pit of fine-grain sand—imported from a planet in Sector Three for this occasion—was already stained red from the morning rituals.
An old woman stood in the sand, hunched over and frail. She wore long black robes, and ugly white hair rested on her shoulders. A white bone mask covered her eyes.
She was the Ritualist.
Two other men came onto the sand with ropes. They slung them around the pig’s neck, and the three men took up a triangular position with the animal in the center. The Ritualist removed the hood on her cloak; her face was a mess of lines and wrinkles. She was anywhere between sixty and two hundred years old.
The grim smile on her face showed that no matter how many times she’d performed this duty, she still enjoyed it. A long-jagged knife appeared in her right hand.
“What are they going to do?” Yeol asked, his voice taking on a note of apprehension. “What’s the knife for?”
Wade let out a long sigh and held up his hands in defeat. He couldn’t think of a better way to explain. “They are going to kill it.”
The woman stepped forward, and with a smooth swipe of her wrist, she slid the knife across the pig’s throat. It squealed once, trying to jerk free, but the ropes held firm. The squeal was replaced with a wet wheezing sound as the pig slowly fell to the sand. Its eyes held a look of abject terror. Blood spurted.
A hush fell over the crowd.
Wade could swear he heard a drip, drip somewhere.
The creature thrashed against its ties for nearly a minute.
Yeol had a terrified look on his face and his body was shaking. “Why?” he mumbled.
“It’s a ritual,” Wade explained again, taking the child’s shoulder and guiding him farther down the hall. The next part was to cut open the animal’s midsection and drag its entrails out. The Ritualist would ‘read’ them.
No one in the Ministry believed she could see the future, but the rituals were still common whenever important events or holidays were coming up. It was a source of pride and solidarity with history.
And one which outsiders weren’t privy to. There were no civilians allowed down there now. They would be allowed into the chapel, but they would never see this courtyard. Such barbaric rituals weren’t discussed in polite company.
“What for?”
“History,” Wade replied. “And respect. These are ceremonies that we enact to show our devotion to those who came before.”
“Why do we do this, though?” Yeol asked. Wade couldn’t think of a good answer. There was no sense in ranting to the child about the stupidity of people who held the power.
Once the pig was out of sight, Yeol seemed to calm down. His body stopped shaking. The beauty of children, Wade knew, was in how fast they forgot traumatic events.
Or how well they repressed them. It was always hard to tell which.
They walked down the hallway, passing other students and priests and guests. Wade wasn’t a teacher, but he was a respected member of the Ministry. Yeol was a good kid, ambitious and clever and very lonely in his new surroundings.
He supposed the reason he didn’t avoid Yeol like the other kids was because he was the same age as his daughter—before he abandoned her on Denigen’s Fist. Just thinking of his daughter made Wade’s chest hurt. He was worried sick about her.
She was safe, he knew. The Captain had promised that Abi would be protected, and he didn’t doubt that Captain Grove would keep her word. At least in that regard.
“We just do,” he answered finally. He felt like he should say something.
“When did we start?”
“A long time ago,” Wade answered. “Back when the Ministry was founded.”
Yeol seemed to think this over. “What about our Order? The Order Mint Raya.”
Wade smiled. “The Ordo Mens Rea,” he corrected. “No, we never actually sacrificed any animals.”
“Oh,” Yeol said. “But we’re part of the Ministry, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” Wade said. “But we didn’t start in the same place. They…adopted us.”
“Why?”
Because when they found us, the first plan was to kill us all. They decided we would make a better weapon.
“Because they wanted to teach us about the True God,” Wade said instead. “And because we could help them, too.”
“How?”
Wade paused. The halls were mostly empty. He didn’t like using his powers where anyone might see—they were expressly forbidden from using them publicly—and it was the fastest way to become a Keeper. He might be a priest on the official record, but here in the Ministry complex, he was as much a prisoner as if they’d used steel bars.
He guided Yeol into a side classroom. The door was unlocked, and he was careful to lock it behind him. He left the lights off and guided Yeol to the front near a window.
The room was plain and empty, lacking any wall decorations or posters that would be found in the typical classroom. The Ministry didn’t allow the teachers to use any special teaching materials or posters.
He gestured at the board.
“Write your name.”
Yeol looked at him curiously but did as he was told. He scrawled Yeol Din across the board in big capital letters. Wade waited until he was finished, and then did one more sweep of the room. He wanted to be completely sure that no one saw or heard anything. Especially if he was about to break one of the sacrosanct rules.
“Set the chalk down. Good. Now watch,” he said. He closed his eyes, focusing on his mind and building energy. When he opened them again, he cast out through his implant. The chalk lifted off the table, seemingly of its own accord, and floated to the board. He heard Yeol gasp in surprise but kept his attention on the board. He didn’t want to lose his focus.
He scrawled Wade in chalk on the board with the little piece and then pulled the chalk through the air into his hand.
“How did you do that?” Yeol asked, breathless.
“That was nothing. Here. Think of a number,” Wade said. He stepped forward—he couldn’t multitask with his implant—and handwrote ‘52’ on the board. “Now a color—” orange “—and now think of any random thing.”
Wade hesitated a second and scribbled spaghetti on the board. Then he set the piece down. Yeol’s jaw was hanging open as he watched.
“How can you do that?” Yeol asked. “You can read my mind?”
“Surface thoughts,” Wade said. He rubbed a bead of sweat from his brow and fought down the sick feeling that came whenever he used the implant. He wasn’t good at it, didn’t do it often, but it served very well for parlor tricks. “And I can move some objects. But they have to be really small.”
“But how?”
“No one is quite sure,” Wade said with a shrug. “We receive implants and then learn how to use them. Mental exercises. It’s the only way we can do anything. But we don’t know who invented them.”
“Why not?”
“The Order didn’t keep historical records,” Wade said. “Just specifications. We aren’t even sure what planet they came from. Some think it was on one of the moons orbiting Vitius. Some think it was outside the Republic. Maybe in Sector Nine.”
Wade wiped the board clean of his scribbling and headed for the exit.
Yeol was silent, legs pumping furiously to keep up with Wade’s easy stride. “How many people can do that? Like you did, reading my mind?”
“Less than one percent of people with implants,” Wade answered. “And of those, very few ever master it.”
“Can I do it?”
Wade shrugged. “One day, maybe. When you have your implant.”
“So, I get to join?”
“In a few years,” Wade said. “You have to join, technically.”
Yeol thought about that. “Could I be a Shield?”
“Maybe,” Wade lied. Yeol didn’t have the natural talent nor the proper body type.
“If I don’t get chosen,” Yeol said, “can I go home?”
Wade hesitated, slowing his stride. “No,” he said finally. Again, he omitted his follow-up statement: you’ll never go home.
Perhaps the only saving grace was that, since the Ministry took Yeol from his mother before his first birthday, he never knew a real home.
They rounded a corner leading to the Minister’s office. Wade stopped and turned to Yeol. “I need to go into a meeting now. You should run along to your classes.”
“There aren’t classes today.”
“I know. But I’m sure there’s homework you could do.”
Yeol nodded. “Okay.”
“Have you been saying your prayers?”
“Uh huh,” Yeol said, then recited, ‘Through His Grace we grow strong.’
“Very good. Now run along.”
The kid disappeared around the corner. Wade glanced back at the large ornate double doors. It was the archway into the office of one of the most powerful people in the galaxy.
Wade didn’t want to keep him waiting.
3
“You wanted to see me?” Wade asked, hands folded behind his back and standing rigidly straight. His black teacher’s robes hung loosely about his shoulders, swaying with every movement in the still air.
The Minister’s office was twelve-by-twenty meters with a fifteen-meter-high ceiling. It was lavishly decorated in a cream-colored motif. Rare hardwood flooring was covered with expensive woven rugs gathered from all around the galaxy. At great expense, of course. The value of the paintings covering the walls could have bought a large planet in Sector Three.
Ostentation didn’t begin to describe it. In Wade’s eyes, the artwork would have been better served in museums. The things I could do with the money from selling those…
A docked CPU decorated half of the desk with a rounded touchscreen and holographic projector. Its value wasn’t in the hardware it used, but the databases it interfaced with. The Minister had the same access to data that the First Citizen had: every detail about the trillions of people living in the Republic available at his fingertips.
Givon Mielo, the Minister, was an impressive and dignified figure, despite his advanced age. He sat behind the enormous desk, fingers intertwined before him. He appeared frail and diminutive in the oversized chair, but his eyes held a deep set and steady focus that belied any memory loss.
His hair was all but gone and his skin had the rough leathery texture of a well-used ragdoll. What remained of the fading white strands was pushed along the scalp in clumps, leaving gutters of pale, blotchy skin.
Wade felt bile in the back of his throat and suppressed the urge to pick his fingernails. A nervous habit he’d never fully broken. He did that whenever he was uncomfortable, and he was always uncomfortable in the presence of the Minister.
It’s because he is always judging me. He doesn’t even seem to be looking at me, but rather through me. He’s looking through my eyes, into my soul. He sees what’s inside me.
Luckily, Wade knew that the Minister had no such abilities. Givon Mielo was an intimidating man, but his power came from personality. He wasn’t a member of the Ordo Mens Rea, just the Ministry.
Jealousy was part of the reason Givon hated Wade.
The Minister sat in his enormous ivory chair, raised several feet above Wade. No invitation was made for his guest to sit. Two child-aged Keepers flanked the man on either side of his chair, dressed in flowing blue cloaks and vacant stares.
Wade hated Keepers. He hated the entire concept. They had existed since the Order was first brought into the Ministry to humble them. In theory, they represented the forgiveness of the Ministry —they didn’t execute anyone in the Order when they lashed out or rebelled, even their worst offenders—but it was just another method of control. There was no Council to decide it, no overriding principles. It was simply at the discretion of the current Minister.
And there had never been a Minister so willing to make Keepers as Givon Mielo.
“Yes,” the old man answered finally, staring down his beaked nose at Wade. Then he fell silent once more.
An old cuckoo clock chimed in the corner.
Wade resisted the urge to scratch his nose.
“I wanted to get clarification on a few things,” the old Minister continued finally. He had the slow and emphatic cadence of a man deliberately choosing his words. The effect was contagious, and Wade found himself second guessing everything he thought to say.
“What things?” he asked.
“How long were you in Sector Six?”
“Nine days.”
“Nine?” Givon echoed. “What made you leave?”
He can’t possibly be serious?
“Warships were arriving from Sector Four. The First Citizen sent an Edict that all Republican Citizens were to leave. It was unsafe. So, we left.”
“I see,” Givon said, resting his hands on the desk in front of him. “But it says Vivian Drowel of the Ordo Mens Rea chose to stay behind in a posting in the region. If it was dangerous, why would she stay?”
Wade hesitated. He was treading on thin ice. He didn’t know how far he was willing to push his luck. He was already at risk with the Minister sniffing around the parentage of a certain young girl named Abigail. A new student who had conspicuously disappeared a few days earlier.
He didn’t want to sell Vivian out, but he would if he had to.
“She thought a single ship could remain unnoticed, and she is hoping to wait until the Union ship has left to establish a post.”
“Ah,” the Minister said. “I see. And that’s all it was?”
“Yes,” Wade said. “That is all there was to it.”
“I see,” the Minister repeated, tapping his desk. “So, it had nothing to do with a certain strange occurrence. A child…flying through the air?”
Wade felt his stomach sink. “A what?”
“A child. Jeremiah told me he saw a child fly through the air, perhaps propelled by another child.”
“That would be impossible,” Wade said. “No child out there would have an implant.”
“True,” Givon replied. “But Jeremiah was quite insistent. He said you could corroborate his tale, as well as Ms. Drowel.”
Wade shook his head. “I have no idea what he was talking about, but I saw no such occurrence. We did come across children who were fighting, but nothing strange happened.”
Givon eyed him. “I see. But, had you witnessed such an occurrence, you certainly would have brought the child here?”
“Of course.”
“As the law demands.”
“As the law demands,” Wade echoed.
Givon nodded. From his expression, Wade knew Givon didn’t believe him. He would send people out there immediately to look for Traq, but it wouldn’t do any good. “I will, of course, wish to speak with Vivian when she returns from her post.”
“Of course,” Wade lied. “As soon as she arrives on Axis, I will send her to you immediately.”
Wade had no intention of following through with that promise, but it seemed he was in the clear. For now. He would just make sure Vivian was always busy, and there would always be a ready excuse when the Minister asked. Eventually, the old man would forget.
“Very well,” the old man said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I thank you for the update and your continued service to our Ministry.”
Wade couldn’t have been happier for the dismissal. He hated spending time with the Minister. He knew he would spend the rest of the day exhausted from these few minutes of high-tension conversation. It made him feel unclean, pathetic.
He bowed to the Minister and headed for the ornate double doors.
I’m in the clear. Now that Traq is safe and the Minister has no leads to follow up with, I can finally relax…
He was only a few steps away, hand already raised to push open the door and escape, when he heard the Minister speak behind him.
“Oh, and Wade. Please keep me updated on how your daughter serves as my Envoy aboard Denigen’s Fist. I am greatly interested in her success.”
Suddenly, Wade felt sick.
