The shop was a disorientating mix of unidentifiable sprawling clutter and neat workspaces. All around the tiled room, boxes of components of varying complexity and quality huddled around clean white benches. The slab-like assembly areas resembled places of worship, altars to a machine god who demanded pristine surfaces, shiny tools, and high-wattage LED lamps. Whereas the rest of the floor space was dominated by scraps and components, one couldn't tell which was which; these were relegated to the floor like bizarre offerings, thrown into all numbers of crates and containers. Perhaps the off cuts or remains of the sacrifices made at each altar.
Hanis Mills led the way through this unsettling space with an evident familiarity that diligently ignored the various obstacles and potential trip hazards. Not once did his slippered feet knock a stray piece of equipment. Maxwell followed hesitantly behind, his head still aching softly with Steels Five Year’s enduring legacy. Sleep had been hard to find after his latest summons; mangled heads on lonely balconies still flickered unsettlingly in his mind’s eye.
The short technician halted before altar number one, his crisp white lab coat sharing kinship with the pristine workbench. The proffered creation seemed relatively benign amidst the heaps of complex circuitry, nano weave clippings and polymer sheets discarded in trays surrounding the final product. Upon the bench, a pair of plain brown slacks were neatly folded down the middle. The material was dull under the clean white light of the overhead LED lamp.
“Your trousers were perhaps the simplest to fabricate and thus were finished first” Hanis glanced round at Maxwell with beady eyes and a furrowed brow; the man was such a blatant boffin stereotype Maxwell often wondered if dorky people chose to be lab technicians or if just being a technician moulded you into the stereotype.
Hanis continued, “As will most items such as this, the hardest part was trying to conceal its true properties. However, all your requirements have been met; the material is a matrix of smart nanofibers and standard military-grade synthetic polymers selected for durability and weight. The material is extremely heat resistant, offering moderate protection to a range of hand-held beam weapons, and of course, it has the requested anti-ballistics capabilities provided by the smart nanoweave matrix.”
Maxwell marvelled at the new slacks. They looked like exact copies of the genuine cotton pair he wore now; he couldn't wait to test them in the safety of his apartment. Hanis didn't seem discouraged when his client remained silent; instead, the small man moved to a slightly larger workbench positioned against one of the walls, still deftly ignoring the cluttered floor space. This bench was much larger, accommodating a dark brown overcoat and a folded waistcoat of a similar shade.
“Now, the waistcoat has much the same properties as your trousers; however, at the expense of some additional weight, the ballistics protection has been enhanced by at least fifty per cent. The fabric also has an additional processor array below the armpit, which will integrate with your cortical web and the various sensors in the coat. In this way, your implant will be able to control the coat’s medical package. The package contains the standard suite of treatment functions and drug dispensers used for trauma care” Hanis gestured for him to feel the weight of the fabric, which he did, the difference was hardly noticeable, yet it was appreciably thicker.
Hanis ran a hand over the sturdier-looking material of his new overcoat “Now, this item is truly a significant feat of micro-engineering and fabrication. Some of my best work went into this project.” Hanis stared thoughtfully at the bulky coat, probably recalling numerous tedious hours and fleeting celebrations during its creation.
Hanis sighed. “This coat will stop a Hunners and Baron R30 at intermediate range when activated.”
Maxwell gaped, his stony all business façade shattered. “You're not serious?”
“I'm serious” Hanis rubbed the bridge of his nose as though tired. “Now. I know you didn't request anything with tolerances like that; however, I got carried away when I discovered it was possible.” He licked his lips. “And so, I won't charge you more than the original quote. The proof of concept this item represents is extremely valuable in itself.”
Maxwell frowned, a Hunners and Baron R30 was currently considered the galaxy’s most powerful hand-held projectile sniper rifle ever built. Its manufacturer, Hunners and Baron, had developed the weapon around four years ago and, with its release, had sent waves of giddy excitement and awe through every man, military organisation, police force or mercenary interested in firearms. A month or so later, the company expanded its manufacturing by two hundred per cent, owing to multiple supply contracts around the Conglomerate. Soon after, military spectators began to report seeing the R30 in the hands of special forces units in various deployments.
Hanis had obviously guessed his client’s interest in firearms. Only someone in the know would understand the significance of his claim.
“How did you manage it?” Maxwell was genuinely intrigued; only high-end military specification armour systems had any hope of stopping a slug from the R30. Usually, this was achieved with a mixture of nano-fibres and ceramics.
Hanis narrowed his eyes momentarily, obviously reluctant to divulge the details of his work, but then sighed again. “I guess you could have the thing examined and find out for yourself anyway.”
“I won't”
Hanis’ face brightened
“Good craftsmanship is hard to come by, and what you’ve done is extraordinary” Hanis blinked, obviously not used to praise from his clients. God knows what type of people he had to deal with.
“Well, thank you.” He produced a nervous smile. “I will be lodging a patent for the technology within the next day or so” He looked back at the coat. “Without going into too much detail, it was simply a matter of manipulating the size of the nanofibres and their pattern algorithms and then combining this system with something not previously used in this type of armour. Upon sensing a certain threshold of kinetic energy, the coat’s active armour system is activated. The nanofibre layer splits into two. The layer closest to the skin hardens into the normal anti-ballistics mat while also deploying a layer of ballistics gel to the skin below. The layer above that forms a slightly looser mesh. Between these layers is a small explosive – well, it's not really an explosive, but it's more of a store of kinetic energy, but it's easy to describe that way, anyway. With this timed perfectly, it will greatly decrease the force of the impact.”
Maxwell shook his head. “I've never heard of that sort of armour system being used in body armour before.”
“It hasn't. The nanomesh has always been too weak for this technique to be viable for the clothing application,” Hanis replied. The small man began packing the items in a large black carry case, folding the bulky overcoat in his small hands. Maxwell was starting to develop a less than cautious respect for the man. Hanis was obviously at the top of his field, yet why the man was here in Needle city building custom protection systems for mercenaries and not in a state-of-the-art lab at one of the enormous military-industrial conglomerates was a mystery.
Maxwell picked his way out of the lab with the large composite carry case in one hand. Manoeuvring matte black case between the workspaces proved to be a challenge for which he was glad to be sober.
Maxwell placed the case down in the lab’s bare reception area and waited for Hanis to send him a copy of the invoice. The man was fiddling with his portable computer, tallying up the final expenses. Finally, a copy appeared in his mind’s eye. He scanned the charges quickly and grunted; he had undercharged him by an obscene amount. As he had promised, Hanis hadn’t charged him for the actual cost of creating the coat, instead charging him for only what the original quote specified.
Maxwell formulated a payment and produced his Chalice Expenses slate. Hanis took the black rectangle gingerly and placed it against his portable computer. When he saw the proposed payment appear on the device’s small screen, the man’s beady eyes bulged momentarily out of their fatigue-burdened sockets. He mumbled something inaudible before accepting the payment.
Maxwell smiled. “I think that is a more appropriate sum, don't you think?”
Hanis glanced up at him nervously “It's most generous of you, Mister Grant.”
“May I ask one last thing in return?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You never built this coat.”
Hanis frowned
“There is more than enough there to cover the costs of the materials for another if you wish to make it. Otherwise, you might like to create a more appropriate demonstration piece for your new technology.”
“You don't want anyone to know you have it?”
“Correct”
Hanis stared back blankly before realising the benefits this arrangement would bring. If he wanted to sell the technology to one of the other corporations, he would get a much better price if he could promise it would be exclusive.
“Ok.” He smiled weakly, smoothing his lab coat unconsciously. Maxwell picked up the case and extended his right hand towards the very capable boffin. Despite his prejudices, Maxwell had always had a healthy appreciation for the technical types. They were always what had kept his company ahead of his competitors.
“Why are you doing this, Mister Forrest?” Hanis had taken his hand firmly. His grip was surprisingly solid for such a small man.
Maxwell felt a pang of anxiety. “That’s Mister Grant, actually.”
“I knew it was you as soon as you walked in”
“I don't know what you’re talking about.” Maxwell let go of Hanis’s hand and began formulating a new payment. “But how much will it take to stop you from discussing it in the future?”
Hanis looked confused and slightly insulted. “No, no, that won’t be necessary, Mister Forrest. My colleagues and I always admired you, sir. Forrest Iron was always good to us. When we heard about what happened, all of us were distraught, believe me. Everyone still thinks you’re dead.”
Maxwell was staring blankly as the coldness sunk into his stomach. The icy sensation slid into his belly from its hiding place in thick glacial slabs, spreading anguish and misery from a place he’d tried so hard to destroy. It was a sensation he could only hope to temporarily push away, never cure.
“Goodbye, Hanis” He turned and made his way to the door.
Hanis watched the man leave, seeing that horrible darkness seep from his former employer’s tired eyes and infiltrate every square-centimetre of the man’s frame was painful to watch, Hanis began feeling supremely guilty he had ever mentioned it. He must have been the only survivor.
That poor, wretched man.
____
The classroom was bright, filled with second-hand afternoon sun, illuminating the gaggle of small desks inside. Outside, The Boulevarde was busy with self-assured adults, steady, vigorous and lazy, going about their business. Arlo did not envy them – all busy, all stressed, and, in the end, much closer to death. He was happy to be inside this classroom; nothing to do but listen to Misses Wilde. Her blue eyes and dark brown hair captivated him totally and held his attention hostage, but this wasn’t a kidnapping, or if it was, he was buried in Stockholm syndrome. He was a willing prisoner. He wasn’t really paying attention to the lesson, but he could pretend to listen to what she said. It didn’t matter. It just gave him an excuse to look at her face, eyes, and lips.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
It wasn’t a regular day at school. Today, they had a new student. From his place at the back of the class, he couldn’t really see her – Erica was her name – but he didn’t mind, as novel as it was to have a new classmate, he was content to watch Mrs Wilde. Arlo’s School was small – just one room, one teacher and ten students. He knew it wasn’t like this in other places, but Chalice was unique in more ways than just how it educated its kids.
“Cruor is a supergiant, one of the largest gas giants discovered within the Milky Way galaxy. Despite being extraordinarily large, it’s Cruor’s colour that makes it so alluring. Our host, a huge ball of gas, is a vibrant crimson, a huge sphere of swirling blood-coloured gas, occasionally coagulating into super storms which churn across the vast oceans of thick ruby liquid gas below.”
Arlo sighed – Chalice, Cruor and Solari 101.
Misses Wilde heard him exhale, paused, and focused her eyes upon him. “Am I boring you, Arlo?”
He broke out into a sweat, shifted in his seat and avoided the probing eyes of his classmates. “No, Misses Wilde” The new student remained facing forward.
Misses Wilde nodded and cleared her throat. “Good. As I was saying - The key ingredient is iron. It's extremely rare for a gas giant to have large quantities of any metal element, let alone the element that colours the very fluid in our veins. The outer gas layer is not actually red in colour but clear; only the red mist created by turbulent storms and the crimson sea below give the crimson giant its colour. However, viewed from space, Cruor resembled an enormous bright red cherry, as you well know.”
Xavier was next to fold. He raised his hand impatiently
Misses Wilde regarded the plucky boy with a small smile. “Yes, Xavier?”
“Why are you teaching us this? Everyone knows this stuff, and it’s common knowledge.”
Misses Wilde raised a shapely eyebrow. “Common knowledge for some – not for others.”
She meant the new girl – Erica from the Moon.
Xavier frowned at the back of her head.
Misses Wilde continued. “Aside from us, Cruor’s system is lifeless. Only three planets exist within the demure gaze of our aging sun, Samaran. The two innermost planets are hot balls of rock, similar to the Solar system’s Mercury. Cruor is the next in line and positioned within Samaran’s goldilocks zone. It was initially deemed the most likely candidate for colonisation. Well, not Cruor itself, but one of its many moons.”
She paused. “How many moons orbit Cruor, Xavier?” Misses Wilde asked the boy.
Eight thought Arlo.
“Eight”, Xavier stated through the exhalation of another melodramatic sigh.
Misses Wilde nodded and continued, “Raysor was the obvious choice; however, due to its ultra-dry climate and almost complete lack of liquid water, settlement was postponed to create a hub for iron mining, which would take place in the asteroid belts. As I said, Cruor exists as the third and outermost planet. Millions of kilometres out from Cruor, one encounters the system’s extensive asteroid belt, filled with the remains of at least four other planets that used to accompany the now lonely three remaining. At least two of these now obliterated planets had been almost eighty per cent iron by mass, meaning that the system’s asteroid belt is also largely made up of iron.”
Iron was a precious commodity in the current galaxy, be it for soils, construction, medicines, chemical manufacture, fuels, and a hundred other things - many people wanted it and more than a few relied on it. Arlo’s mum wouldn’t shut up about it.
Arlo knew the drill, so to speak. Large robotic diggers, part space-ship and part excavator, mined the metal within the asteroid belt. The huge machines resembled blocky beetles tearing apart iron asteroids both large and small. He had seen footage of his mum’s mine and watched the machines devour space rocks – it was pretty dull. Once fully loaded with rocky iron composites, the insectile machines would navigate via fusion engines through the thinning sections of the asteroid belt to one of the hundreds of spherical processor loaders. These ball-shaped factories could dock twenty-four miners on their external hull at once. The ships would sit in designated cradles where they would unload their payload of iron ore from the storage sections in their bellies. The minerals would be processed as they travelled to the sphere's centre, where a larger interplanetary hauler was slowly loaded. The huge iron carriers slotted into the processing spheres so deeply that only the tips of their hulls were exposed outside the mechanised ball. Arlo couldn’t help it, he had traced the journey of iron ore from space rock to foundry a thousand times, as soon as the thought was triggered, it was if his brain became a clockwork showreel, cranking out a series of pictures and diagrams as familiar as the layout of his bedroom, or shape of his mums face.
He submitted to it, lets his eyes glaze over and carry him through the show.
After the ore was processed the huge freighters would emerge slowly on herculean magnetic rails, facing towards Solari and wherever Cruor was at the time in relation to that area of asteroid belt. Then, a week or so would pass on a slow burn moving deeper into the system's heart. Meanwhile, the final refinements occurred within kilometres of the big ships' hull factory units. Their destination was the system’s blood-red marble and its sole habitat, which acted as the distribution hub for all metal exports.
Aside from his mum’s tutelage, knowing the process was inescapable when he was forced, simply by proximity, to listen in on hundreds of his mum’s phone calls whilst trapped in their flyer, on space flights or during brief, sporadic and rarely sacred family holidays. The process complete, his mind began to resync with the present, the classroom and the lesson.
Meanwhile, Misses Wilde continued the lecture, familiar and boring.
“Cruor’s habitat is called Chalice. Chalice is a cylindrical living space filled to brim with a unique cross-section of the conglomerate population. The habitat itself is nine kilometres in diameter and for twenty-two kilometres of its length, its hollow interior a needlework jungle of dense metropolis, its enormous skyscrapers anchored to the curved interior all pointed towards the cylinder’s middle axis. If one were to look straight down the middle of the habitat, Chalice’s city looks like a steel pipe and with a hundred thick needles of varying lengths pointing into the centre, leaving a small gap between their tips. In realistic terms, the skyscrapers directly opposite each other always had at least a kilometre gap between their pointed rooftops”.
Misses Wilde paused and looked at Arlo again – he panicked, had he been breathing too loudly again?
“Arlo, tell me about the population of Chalice and its society.”
Arlo swallowed; where to start? Not the boring stuff, no, no more boring stuff.
“The needle city has a certain reputation-“ Xavier sniggered “- for being on the dangerous side of liberal. We have very few laws here in Chalice, owing to Fred’s autonomy from the conglomerate. Thus several shady individuals and their dubious enterprises call the Needle City home. As a result, Chalice grew popular not only for its proximity to Cruor and iron mininig, but for the plethora of semi-legal goods and services available to us and not the rest of the conglomerate.”
Misses Wilde gestured for him to continue, “Such as?”
Arlo continued, “radical genetic modification, experimental implants, illegal arms, restricted pharmaceuticals, bounty hunters, hit men, animal transformation, incompatible marriage…. ahh, etcetera.”
Xavier interrupted, “Meanwhile, the mining companies rake in the real cash by stripping the asteroid belt of all the iron; companies like your mum’s company, right Arlo?”
“Xavier, be quiet. If you want to speak, raise your hand like the rest of your classmates” Misses Wilde snapped.
Arlo reddened. Now the Erica from the moon knew he was a rich kid because of his mum.
Misses Wilde retook charge of the lesson, continuing the boring, in-depth description of Chalice and its people, sacrificing the attention of a class to educate the new girl on stuff she probably already knew.
Arlo lost focus. He was busy daydreaming about everything else when a notification appeared in his cortical web. Most of his implant’s functionality was suspended during school hours, but the message function remained active, lest his family try to contact him.
It was a text from Xavier
“Rich prick”
Arlo felt anger rise from his belly. Xavier shouldn’t be able to message him. Their addresses were restricted during school hours so they couldn’t pass notes like this. He examined the notification. It seemed Xavier had sent the text via third-party software designed to mimic a message from outside the classroom.
He stared at the back of the boy’s head, imagining the smug look on his face.
Arlo replied via the same thread
“At least my parents don’t murder kids”, Arlo fired back.
Xavier’s parents worked for Black Sun, a protection service for gang VIPs who didn’t trust their own members to keep them alive, a company accused of murdering a family, including young children, at the behest of a disgruntled gang boss.
Arlo watched Xavier stiffen, relishing it.
Then he noticed the new message in his inbox
“Passing notes are we gentlemen?” From a MW
Oh fuck.
“Arlo, Xavier, please come to the front of the class.”
Arlo’s composure fell through the floor, he was in trouble, he hated being in trouble – hated the attention.
He extricated himself from his seat, following Xavier's sullen back to the front of the class, and turned to face his colleagues.
“You have both failed today’s test. That was to pay attention and remain obedient despite the familiar content” Arlo shook his head. Everything was a test with Misses Wilde. “Please read out your notes, Xavier, you first.”
Xavier flicked his eyes between Misses Wide and the rest of the class.
“Rich prick” He stated, defiantly.
The other students reacted with a mixture of shock and amusement.
Arlo was red in the face, dreading having to speak the message he sent when he finally noticed the new girl. Erica from the moon, with a face more beautiful than Luna by half. She was, quite simply, perfect, and she was staring at him with brown eyes that seemed fit to bursting with sparkling wit and cool, focused attention.
“Arlo, now.” Misses Wilde ordered.
“At least my parents don’t murder kids,” he said flatly.
Erica smiled.