03 THE FAINT light of morning cracked through the darkness of the winter sky, the days at this part of the year in the Taiga Wasteland short and the nights exceptionally long. The low-hanging clouds overcast and depressing, shedding their snowstorms aggressively.

Cálor Ballow looked out the window at the neverending snowstorm and felt contentment. He loved the snow, loved the Taiga Wasteland, it’s wonderment and the challenges it presented. Ballow got up from the desk he was seated at and walked over to his caffeine dispenser. Caffeine was his only vice in life, and, cupping the titanium caff mug with both hands, let the warmth flow through him -- the bungalow he was in may have been a fairly new build, but the cold of the deepfreeze outside cared not for any insulation on the surface of Ehrinchia.

Ballow raised the mug to his lips and sucked down some of the steaming caff. It was peaceful, though dangerous, in the Taiga Wilderness, but Cálor Ballow enjoyed the posting.

‘Hey dere, you going to geeve me any’dat caff too?!’

Ballow closed his eyes, sighed deeply, and took one more long gulp from the metal mug before turning around to face the shout.

‘Well, you know,’ said Cálor Ballow, his voice so deep it nearly rattled the glass of the windows. Ballow spoke in a distinctively slow cadence, something not all too surprising for the rumbling deepness of his voice. ‘I just didn’t think about that, LeMowe.’

‘Why, of course you’s didn’t, you’s a no good dirty cheat!’ yelled LeMowe, banging his fists against the wall.

Ballow chuckled, his laugh a hearty roll of thunder. He stood leaning against his desk, crossing his thickly muscled arms and cupping the caff mug in his right hand. ‘Is that right?’

‘You’s know eet right, vaurien!’ yelled LeMowe. ‘Everyone knows, watch for Ballow in red, hees a cheat!’

‘I bet they do,’ laughed Ballow. ‘Cool off for a while, LeMowe. Mute.’

Voice-linked to the bungalow’s central computer system, the air just in front of LeMowe sparkled as if lit up by a holographic lightning that ran the whole length of the room. LeMowe still talked, yelled even, but Ballow was left in peaceful quiet. LeMowe completely comprehended what had just happened, but it didn’t stop him from continuing his muted yells; he kept up yelling even as he retreated to the cold, steel bunk at the back of the cell.

THREE OR four gnarled logs popped in the inglenook fireplace. The faint light of day had nearly disappeared entirely, though it wasn’t much past midday. Ballow was glad he had gotten the fire going when he did, before the chill of darkness settled in. The fireplace was antiquated, but this far north in the Taiga Wasteland he would’ve been hard pressed to get a current-manufacture radiator unit any time soon, and the soothing smells and sounds of natural wood fires were much prefered anyhow.

Ballow had his legs kicked up on a tabletop next to his work desk, typing away at the tablet keyboard in his lap. No matter how little fieldwork he had done in the snowstorm of the last few days, the reports kept building. He typed a few more words, and took a bite from the rationstick on his desktop, the bland hardpressed breadstick no bigger than his pinkie finger containing all the calories and nutrients needed for a single meal; he wasn’t the biggest fan of the drab rationsticks, but had grown accustomed to their necessity over the years.

The warmth from the fire filled the room surprisingly well, and Ballow poured himself another mug of caff from a tall, slim vacuum flask. Gulping down some of the hot liquid, Ballow felt a sudden doziness come over him. He looked at the report he was working on, scrolling through the last few paragraphs on the touchscreen tablet, and shrugged. Perhaps a quick nap wouldn’t hurt.

He tossed the small keyboard from his lap to the desktop, gathered his mug and caff flask, and stood up, stretching out his large, two-metre tall frame. The heels of his boots clop clop’d on the polished concrete of the floor as he passed the popping open flames in the fireplace, heading towards his spartan sleeping quarters, when a sudden pounding on the door to the bungalow reverberated throughout the front office space.

Ballow stopped, wondering if his ears were playing tricks on him. He looked towards the back holding cell, still muted he remembered, but saw LeMowe asleep on the steel bunk, and waited in silence. There it was again, a clear series of panicked knocks on the thick entrance door to the bungalow.

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Ballow set his caff mug and flask back down on the desktop, and slipped the atomizer from the holster on his gunbelt. It had a full chargepack, and he thumbed the safety knob to the off position before replacing it and ensuring the thick braided kernmantle lanyard that looped around his neck to the butt of his service handgun was tightly cinched.

He peered out the window, but couldn’t see anything outside through the whiping snow and dwindling light, but the pounding came again. He moved to the door, and punched a quick code into the boxy computer terminal next to the doorframe, placing his right hand on a reader in lieu of an access code. The door shimmered, and seemingly turned clear for Ballow to see through it -- a clever process of camera trickery, relayed to an internal projector inside the bungalow. Huddled outside at the door was what looked like a skinny teenager, orange harsh-environment coveralls torn and muddy and caked with ice.

Ballow cut the projector feed and unlocked the entrance door, turning back the great central wheel mounted on it, and swung the door open. The teenager outside tumbled into Ballow’s bungalow, and he shut the door quickly before the cold and snow whipped inside.

Right hand on the butt of his atomizer, Ballow turned to face this newcomer where he laid on the floor once the door was secured, but eased up when he saw the kid was passed out cold. Ballow gathered him up easily in his thickly muscled arms, and headed back to his sleeping quarters.

THE FACE peering down at the kid when he awoke with a start was kindly and handsome, the pronounced cheekbones and chiseled jawline both harsh and inviting.

‘Where… where am I?’ the kid asked, groggily, trying to get up out of the bed he was now in.

‘Not so fast, kid,’ the big man said, passing the kid a steaming mug of caff. ‘You were passed out cold at my door… looks like you were out in the elements for more than a few days.’

‘I ain’t no kid! I’m seventeen!’

Ballow laughed, his deep voice rumbling around his small, spartan sleeping quarters. ‘Sure, sure… whatever you say, I meant no offense.’

The kid nodded and, holding the metal mug in both hands, took a deeply soothing drink of the warm brown liquid inside. It felt good as it passed down his throat, warming him from the inside out. Ballow leaned against the wall and watched him. Kid was young, no way he was seventeen; it wasn’t unheard of for runaways to lie about their ages so they’d be able to work the cattle drives or logging plots this far north in the taiga.

‘Where’re you from?’ Ballow asked.

The kid shrugged and took another sip of the caff.

‘Parents? Family?’

Another shrug, another sip of caff.

Talkative, real talkative…

‘My name is Cálor Ballow, Sergeant-Major, Mounted Rifle Patrol. Who’re you?’

‘Everyone just calls me kid… I ain’t really got a name.’

‘I thought you weren’t a kid,’ Ballow said, barely holding back a laugh.

‘I ain’t, but it’s what everyone’s always called me, far back I can remember.’

Ballow stood up from the wall and stepped over to his bunk. ‘What were you doing out there?’

The kid ignored the question. ‘It’s warm in here, feels nice.’

‘You hear me, kid?’

‘I’m starving,’ said the kid, looking up at Ballow. ‘You got any food?’

Ballow moved out to the other room and came back with a few rationsticks, tossing them to the youngster. ‘All I got right now,’ he said before the kid started to devour meals-worth of the hardpressed sticks.

‘You said you’re a Rifle?’

Ballow stared at the kid for a moment. ‘Yeah,’ he answered, ‘I’m a Rifle.’

‘I was told to find the Rifles,’ the kid went on after a while. He took another gulp of caff.

‘Who told you?’ Ballow asked, kneeling down on one knee. ‘Who told you to find the Rifles?’

‘Jade,’ the kid said absentmindedly, blowing into the caff. ‘Said to get a brythm from the remuda, but there weren’t none left.’

‘Where is Jade now?’

‘Dead, most like.’

‘Dead?’ asked Ballow, his forehead scrunching up as his eyes narrowed.

‘Stampede. Told me to git and then stampeded.’

Ballow stood up and looked down at the kid in his bunk. Definitely confused and half-frozen, but there was an innocent truthfulness in his words. ‘Were you and Jade cattlemen, kid?’

‘Drovers, yeah… chuupa from up north, to market at Slimport Station. My first drive.’

‘Did you walk here from where Jade was?’ asked Ballow. ‘If there were no more brythm?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How many days was that?’

The kid thought for a while and took another sip of caff. ‘I’m not sure. Three or four days maybe? I lost track in the darkness.’

Three or four days, in the near-total darkness and a never ending snowstorm. Ballow couldn’t fathom what this kid had been through, or the sheer willpower it took for him to keep going in those conditions. Ballow refilled the mug with steaming caff from the vacuum flask, and let the kid fill up on the warm liquid. He wouldn’t press the kid anymore right now, but let him warm up and rest.

‘They’re all dead, ain’t they?’ the kid asked.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The rest of the drovers… they’re all dead.’

‘Well I… I don’t know, kid,’ Ballow said.

‘I don’t know what happened to the chuupa, Rifleman, but the brythm were all dead… and the men…’ the kid started to shake.

Ballow pulled a heat-retention blanket from a shelf and wrapped the crinkly silver fabric around the kid’s shoulders. He took the metal mug from the kid’s hands and placed it on the shelf where the blanket was. ‘It’s okay kid. Get some rest, we’ll talk about it more when you wake up again.’

The Rifleman walked to the doorway of his sleeping quarters, to give the kid the privacy to sleep.

‘I can hear the men screaming still,’ the kid said, and Ballow turned around to look at him. ‘The screams, they bounce around in my head, Rifleman… and all I smell is the blood.’