Son of Sedonia

19

Aberrant


JOGUN’S LEG SHOOK for the entire ride back to Themis, tapping his foot on the bulkhead like he’d taken a face-full of Sway. He wrung his hands. No return flight had ever felt this slow. The lunar surface crept by outside the Scout’s passenger window, one gray kilometer the same as the next. Matteo. Here. Little brother, what happened? Will I even recognize you? Sweat beaded on his blotchy forehead. He felt nauseous. Not unusual given his bouts with radiation sickness, but worse now. Much worse. He grabbed the pilot’s seat in front of him. Leaned forward.

“How much longer?” he asked. The pilot jerked, still obviously sensitive from the Dose that had rewritten his life. Only a few hours ago if Jogun had to guess.

“Three-point-five-six minutes to Themis.” The accuracy of his own statement seemed to shock the poor kid. Matteo would be about his age. Jogun thought about calming him, but had no calm to give. He sat back, wondering if he’d have any comforting words when he found his freshly-Dosed little brother. If he found him.

Finally the main facility appeared in the porthole. The pilot dropped the Scout low and set the craft to textbook approach speed. Seventy-five percent slower than they had been going. Jogun’s stomach turned. He felt the retch building inside. Wiping sweat from his brow, he looked again out the window. Squinted.

He’d never seen the place so busy. Dozens of new Crawlers formed splaying lines of traffic from Themis. Every group of them escorted by five Scouts rather than the usual three. And the ground personnel. Inmates in their EVA suits swarmed along the canyon floor, carrying equipment, repairing power cables, inspecting generators, directing traffic. Thousands of them, each with the rigid control of a fresh Dose. Jogun’s mouth gaped open and for the first time in six years a flicker of anger lingered inside of him.

When the Scout hatch opened, Jogun pushed his way out onto the hangar ramp. Everywhere, new inmates occupied themselves with their parts in the Helium-3 production machine. Walking down among them, Jogun could smell the faint perfume of Rasalla. The spices of the Falari Market at midday. The sweat of Sway addicts. The sour-sweet stink of a Blue Lady’s blessing. All fading in place of plastic, dust, ozone, and industrial byproduct.

Jogun scanned the faces. All so young and so strong, familiar and yet still strangers. Have I been gone that long? A boy brushed past him, toting a duffel bag of Crawler tools. Jogun missed the face but definitely heard something. A cough, then a wheeze.

“Matteo! Little brother?!” He lunged for the boy and caught him by the shoulder. The boy dropped his duffel of tools with a crash. Turned and knelt to pick them up. Not him. Though fresh bruises marked his face, neck, and left arm. The EXOs had made him pay for something. Maybe nothing. Jogun turned back to the crowd.

Too many to check one-by-one. He could call out, but not without attracting attention. And Matteo might not know his name anyway. Only one thing came to mind. The employee terminals sat on the far end of the hangar in an elevated guard-shack. He pushed his way toward it through the shuffling crowd. Lifted a rivet gun from a tool palette on his way.

An A/C unit in the corner pumped fresh, filtered air up into the sealed guard-shack. Themis personnel, the legally employed kind, went through great lengths to protect themselves from the radiation and disease of gen-pop. Jogun checked to make sure nobody watched him, raised the rivet gun, and hesitated. It wasn’t violence. He wasn’t hurting anybody. But the specter of the Dose made him sweat as his finger felt the trigger. Gotta find him…gotta find him...gotta— Somewhere in the hangar, a Crawler rumbled to life. Jogun squeezed the trigger in the noise. Felt the hole-punch through the thin sheet-metal. The hiss of air followed. He repeated for the three separate chutes.

As the alarm klaxon blared, Jogun dropped the rivet gun and started walking. Above, hastily suited guards and techs retreated through a backdoor in the shack. Behind, inmates converged on the A/C unit to begin inspection. Not much time. Jogun picked up a tool bag, and moved upstairs to the airlock guard.

“Stop!” said the guard through a clear plastic hood. The man placed a hand on the polymer baton at his waist. Stun prongs protruded from the end.

“The airlock has been compromised, sir,” said Jogun in his best robo-tone, “I need to inspect it.”

The guard eyed him suspiciously. Didn’t budge.

“You’re a Crawler operator, not Maintenance,” said the guard.

“I’m certified to assess and repair pressurized environments,” Jogun said. The Themis guards liked to flex authority with the inmates, but had little fear of them. Especially with scrawny, institutionalized ‘old-timers’ like Jogun. It was the new arrivals that scared them. And there were plenty around to be scared of.

“Make it quick,” said the guard, buzzing the lock open, “Need to get the room scrubbed and back to operational ASAP.”

Jogun entered. Heard the door shut behind him. After a feigned inspection of the airlock interior, he popped the seal on the inner hatch, walked into the shack, and shut the door. Bolted the emergency locks.

He was banking on the terminals being similar to the Crawler systems. No such luck. The wide touchscreen terminals had hundreds of icons, menus, and subsystems. Okay...‘Database’...‘Assets’...‘Personnel’ That led to listings of paid employee profiles. He backed out. The klaxon outside stopped. In seconds, he heard pounding on the inner hatch door. The guard struggled with the lock. He didn’t look happy.

‘Database’...‘Assets’...‘Acquisitions.’ There it was. The list of every prisoner in Themis, designated by a serial number and status. Jogun touched a search prompt at the top. Had to stop and think. The Lifter had told him the name all those years ago. But that was before Themis. Before the Dose taught Jogun to read and write. The exact sound of it was a hazy memory. Jogun spoke aloud as he typed, listening for the right fit.

“Randall...Rrrringle? No. Rindahl...Rindal.” That one sounded closest. He typed it in the search field and pressed enter.

“No results found,” said the terminal. Jogun sank. His mind grasped for ideas that weren’t there. It could take weeks to find Matteo. Maybe months. Plenty of time to die on the Moon. The hatch lock snapped open as Jogun dropped to the floor. He seized as the stun baton was shoved into his chest.

Jogun regained consciousness to the sensation of being dragged on the floor. Blinking in the fluorescence of the hangar ceiling, he recognized one of the faces dragging him. A much bigger version of the chubby little thug that used to pick on Matteo.

“Oki?” Jogun said. The kid twitched at the name, but otherwise didn’t respond.

“Oki! Have you seen him? Matteo, where is he?—” They tossed Jogun’s limp body to the feet of the perimeter guards.

“Whoa! Hey fellas, whatta we got here?” one of the guards sneered. His voice seemed fuzzy and distant to Jogun’s throbbing ears.

“This inmate displays aberrant behavior. I am remanding him to your custody,” Oki replied. The words sounded bizarre in his mouth, colored by an accent that had never once used them. The guard laughed.

‘“Aberrant,’ huh?” The guard looked down at Jogun. “The Moon claims another old timer.” He whistled. Two more Themis guards approached, one of them carrying a pole with a looped wire on the end. Jogun tried to twist in Oki’s grip, but the Earth-strong muscles held him steady as the wire slipped over his head. It pulled tight.

“Toss him in the Decom chute. But tag him for Doc Yugi first. Man’s been chomping at the bit to get a peek at some of these guys,” said the main guard. He turned to Oki, “Back to your post, shitbird.” Oki nodded. Left without hesitation.

Jogun clawed at the wire strangling his neck as the guards pulled him away. Atrophied muscles failed. Consciousness leaked out of him as they pushed him into one of several small pods set in the wall. Everything went black as the doors slid shut.