Noah was so, so tired. He was pretty sure that he could sleep for a day straight if he got the chance, but it was nearly impossible to get anything resembling actual rest aboard a Leviline. Not that his body cared. No matter how many times the rough tracks or rowdy passengers aboard the train shook him awake, he’d be shushed right back to sleep mere moments afterwards. It was cyclical torment, but he could do little to escape it. Good thing there was something warm and soft he could lean against. It felt safe, reassuring. Like he was back home in his mother’s arms.
His addled mind didn’t quite consider that there wasn’t supposed to be anything more comfortable than a mineral-polymer seat in the 3rd class. The cart he was in lurched again with a screech of metal-on-metal, more intense than any before. The sudden movement launched him out of his seat and jolted him wide awake. His eyes shot wide open and granted him sight of the studded metal floor, which was rapidly approaching.
A scream got caught in his throat as he turned his head away to brace himself for the painful impact, but a strong grip on his shoulder caught his fall. “Hah, close one, right buddy?” Said a familiar voice. He couldn’t quite place it. Not with his brain still caught between peaceful slumber and sudden shock. His heartbeat quickened in response to the unexpected threat, not realizing the danger had already passed. As if by magic, his weariness seemed to have been lifted, Noah felt as awake as he’d ever been, opening his senses up to all the things his weariness had filtered out.
The air in the cart was stale, recycled a hundred times over, though there were also more exotic scents, not all of which were particularly pleasant. He caught a whiff of synthetic meat, some fungus-based beverage, and even a trace of urine. He shot a look back at the slightly damp metal floor and shuddered, now extra glad his face had been spared a closer meeting with the dirty surface.
The strong hand started hoisting him up as if he weighed nothing at all which, in all fairness, he really didn’t. Before he even realized it he was back in his seat. Noah turned to the mystery savior sitting next to express his thanks when a flash of recognition shot through him. “Thanks Rosa.” He said, feeling slightly embarrassed about the whole ordeal now that he remembered who he was with. “Was that the Hestia dead track?” He asked, partly to get his bearings and partly to give his companion something other than his near-fall to talk about. Rosa nodded and turned to look outside.
The squat and featureless towers of the Hestia foundries rose up like a forest stretching as far as the eye could see, each tree an enormous steel tower hundreds of meters high and as broad as this train was long. Now that Noah thought about it, the thick clouds of smoke coming from the tops of the foundry towers did somewhat look like a canopy of leaves, and the countless conveyor belts connecting the towers might as well have been branches sprouting from the trunks.
The resemblance ended there, though. Noah had never seen a real tree before, but the stills always depicted them as organic and asymmetrical. Nothing like the sharp, perpendicular angles and carefully planned layout of the foundry. The color scheme was off, too. The angry orange glow of liquid metals cascading down the towers was nothing like the gentle forest greens promised by the stills. Noah supposed the foundries were impressive to behold, from the right angle perhaps even strangely beautiful, but the sight still made his heart ache, knowing that he would likely never get to see a real forest hurt him in a way he couldn’t really explain, so he finally turned away, his eyes settling on the girl next to him.
Rosa looked back at him and Noah realized she was in the middle of a rant of some sort, one he was only picking up on now. “–I mean that dead spot has been there for months now, Magtrans replaced the superconductors, like, twice at most before they gave up.
“They said, and I shit you not–” Rosa pushed her chin out, tilted her head, and added a slow, almost whining, undertone to her voice in a fairly accurate imitation of Magtrans’ iconic announcer. “The extreme heat from Hestia Foundries burns our equipment out at such a pace that it has become unviable to conduct repairs until further notice. Please travel safely and have a nice day.”
Her delivery was spot-on and Noah only managed to stifle a snort because he knew Magtrans had banned people from their Leviline for criticism less than this. He quickly shot a look around, hoping that no-one was listening in. Luckily the other passengers all seemed too busy with their own business to notice.
An overhead screen showed the very face of the company Rosa had just pretended to be, the long-chinned man was currently listing off the next few destinations, starting with the Foundries. Noah wondered whether the announcer was just an actor on a pre-recorded roll or if it was a digitized rudimentary intelligence. If the latter was the case the train itself might very well be overhearing their conversation. One look at Rosa’s face told him that she wasn’t at all concerned about it. In fact, she was still rattling on:
“It’s like they don’t even know that high-temperature superconductors also exist. By the grace of the Great Engineer, they’re made right THERE!
“And Hestia’s not addressing the issue either, you’d think they wouldn’t risk a train derailing into one of their fancy fractionation towers, but they’re not even offering heat-resistant equipment for the greasers. Let me put it like this–”
Noah stopped listening when Rosa started delving into the inter-corporate politics which, according to her, ruled the system more than even the Bondsman did. Luckily his mental absence went unnoticed. She just kept talking and talking with the passion of a preacher, her dirty brown hair swinging about every time she made a wild movement to emphasize a point. Rosa was… strange. Well, that thought felt meaner than Noah had meant it to be. He knew there was a better, nicer word to describe Rosa, he just couldn’t remember what it was. “Participant? Nah… It’s not Particular, either…”
“What was that?” She asked, and Noah realized with a shock that he had been mumbling out loud.
“Er… nothing, go on…” He responded, moving on from the difficult word for now. Rosa was around five years older than him, so seventeen or maybe eighteen. He’d never asked, because he was fairly sure that’d be rude.
Rosa was very tall, taller than most of the guys her age, and easily as strong. In all honesty, Noah found her a little bit scary. They didn’t know each other very well, they used to hardly even talk. But for some reason Rosa had decided to be like his shadow a few months ago; everywhere he went she followed, and he still wasn’t sure why.
He turned to look at her. Like himself, Rosa was dressed in her workskin: A bulky, drab-green suit of thermal gels encapsulated by graphene fibers that would keep its occupant alive even at temperatures near absolute zero.
With its thick insulation, robust hydraulics, and life support-systems, a workskin was as critical for life on Sindrion as food or water.
What a workskin offered in cold-resistance, however, it lacked in protection against heat. If the outside temperature was cold enough to freeze water, a workskin would already be uncomfortably hot. In a room-temperature environment, they were nearly unbearable. Any warmer, and they could start cooking you alive.
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It was why laborers like Rosa and Noah often undid the torso of their workskins in warmer environments like the Leviline. Their skinsuits came apart at the waist, spreaded out against the seat against them as if they’d just shedded them. Taking their workskins off, even partly, meant braving the cold of the cart in their normal clothes.
That was better than the near-sauna of keeping them on all the time, though.
Noah breathed out a small cloud of condensing air. Despite the press of bodies and the orange glow of the nearby foundries, the cart itself was still freezing cold and it would stay that way until they got deeper into Svartheim. Noah shuddered and glanced back at Rosa, who was still talking about topics he had no hope of understanding if he tried. Upon seeing her, something gnawed at his mind, something about a soft warmth that disappeared when he woke up.
“And let’s not even begin to talk about the Koha trade embargo. Did you know that–”
“Um, Rosa?” He interrupted her, knowing that if he waited for her to stop talking, he’d be waiting for a while.
“What is it, buddy?” She asked, shooting him a warm smile that told him she didn’t mind being broken off mid-sentence..
“Well… I was just wondering… I wasn’t leaning against you while I slept, was I?” He asked, carefully choosing his words. The older girl chuckled and shrugged in response.
“Don’t worry about it. You looked like you needed it.” She leaned back against her seat and an exaggerated frown crept over her face. It was the usual kind of theatrics Noah had come to expect from her.
“By the Oracles, these things are about as soft as an Accie’s sense of humor. Really can’t blame you for seeking some comfort.”
The train came to a sudden halt before Noah could respond. He only narrowly avoided being thrown across the cart again by grabbing on to the railing next to him.
“Current stop: Hestia Foundries, South.” The Announcer blared. A few dozen of the other passengers stood up and fastened their Hestia-emblazoned workskins with a trained efficiency gained from spending a considerable part of their lives within them.
“Reminder: By order of the Bondsman all production facilities are maintaining 25% additional quotas to support the war effort. Failure to comply will result in chastisement.” The Announcer’s words reminded Noah of the ache in his limbs. The extra work they’d all been given in preparation for the attack was grueling, especially for someone his age, but like most of the workers he’d managed to keep his spirits up with the promise of thrilling action and the victory feast that was sure to follow. Noah was mostly looking forward to the celebrations.
He watched the crowd as they patiently made their way to the seals on either end of the cart. The airlock cycled, they got off the train. New passengers got on the train, the airlock cycled, and the Hestia employees coming off shift took the empty spots left by their night shift coworkers.
A push of acceleration signaled the train’s departure and within a few minutes the Hestia foundries were out of sight again, only to be replaced by different industrial complexes, stretching for hundreds of kilometers. But they didn’t last forever. When the train started a steep climb through a tunnel flashing orange warning lights Noah hurriedly turned around and sat on his knees on his seat, peering out of the stained windows of the cart with wide eyes of excitement.
“Highlight of your day, ain’t it?” Asked Rosa with a chuckle, but she too turned to watch. The train passed through a set of enormous steel gates before the tracks brought it above the surface of Sindrion. From one moment to another, the faintly yellow glow of fluorescents was replaced with the intense rays of a neutron star.
Many of the passengers raised their arms to shield their eyes, which were so accustomed to the underground darkness, but not Noah. He stared out into the open landscape even when the unfamiliar sunlight made his eyes sting and water.
Sindrion III wasn’t much to look at. No life had existed here before Runora colonization, not even before the supernova that had shaped the system. The planet was, and had always been, a barren rock with lots of useful metals.
Deep craters, ancient even when the Runora had first set foot on the world, pockmarked the otherwise featureless landscape as far as the eye could see. The sharp edges of reds and browns that made up Sindrion III’s native geology were mixed in with patches of yellow, black, and pale white. Snow made of sulfur, soot, and frozen carbon dioxide. Noah knew it was a hideous pallet, but he smiled nonetheless.
Ugly as she was, this world was still his home. He cast his gaze up to the swirling sky and his jaw nearly dropped, a gasp of awe escaped his throat as he pointed up to what he’d seen. “Look, Rosa, Look!” He said, hopping up and down on his knees.
Rosa followed his outstretched finger and whistled in amazement.
“That’s a RAL-port, Right?” Noah asked, looking down to check with the seemingly endless source of information next to him before he peered back through the most unlikely gap in the dirty yellow clouds that surrounded Sindrion III’s largest cities. The RAL-port stood as a spindly tower reaching far above the thick cloud cover, only kept in place by billions of Calsec’s worth of magnetic power.
“Yup, Ring Array Lift. Rare treat to see one of those from the surface.” Rosa said, then shot a sideways glance at Noah.
“Your brother’s on one of those, isn’t he?”
Noah tensed up at the question and slowly turned back around to sit normally again. His excitement seemed to have popped like a balloon, and Rosa was quick to notice it. “Woah, hey. I didn’t mean to–”
“So that’s what this is all about, huh? You’re sticking with me to suck up to him?” He interrupted her, talking quickly because he felt a lump start to form in his throat. Noah was fairly certain that Rosa wasn’t after his brother, he just wanted the conversation to go a different direction, any direction away from Cai.
Rosa sat stunned for a second, then blew a lock of greasy brown hair away from her eyes. She sat back and chewed on her lip thoughtfully before slowly shaking her head no.
“Nah, I might’ve fancied your big bro when we were younger, but now that he’s broken atmo I’d say he’s kinda out of my league, right?”
She chuckled, though Noah failed to see anything funny.
“What?” He asked after a moment of hesitation. He tried to sound mean and hard to approach, but even he himself could tell that he wasn’t having much luck.
“Well, ever seen a labor girl and an Accie together? That shit’s pretty hard to imagine.”
Noah tried to picture a couple like that and found that he indeed couldn’t, but Rosa’s answer did raise another burning question.
“So if not for Cai, why are you following me around all the time?” He asked, the rough front he had tried to put up now completely gone.
“Well, I suppose your bro’s sort of the reason. I mean… Well, don’t take this poorly, but this is a very big world we live in, and you’re a not-so-big boy. With Cai gone and your parents working elsewhere, someone has to keep an eye out for you.”
“I can take care of myself!” Exclaimed Noah with assertiveness he didn’t really feel. Rosa shook her head and leaned in, her face obscured by sudden darkness as the train passed into Svartheim proper. She took one last look around then whispered to him, her voice ice-cold.
“Kid, you’re being shadowed”