Marcus Pane: Planet Taraya, third cycle, the planetary year 2052

Marcus woke up with a piercing headache. The familiar metal sheets bolted to the steel beams appeared above his head, first blurry, then as clear as he remembered them. The inside of his mouth was sticky, his saliva felt gooey and sour, and his breath smelled foul, courtesy of the few terrible beers he had drank the night before. He sat up slowly, as every sudden move made his headache worse, and he stayed like that, not moving for some time, deciding if going back to sleep was a good choice. He decided against it and stood up. He felt dizzy and stiff from a long sleep.

His living quarters were located on the Hill of the rising sun or the Horse, as locals called it. It was considered as one of the better places to live inside Aegis walls. The Horse was located in the third outer ring on the east side of the Aegis. People did not live on the Horse for luxury but for the beautiful woods and Teardrop lake. Those two were worth more than any riches and comfort.

He opened the sliding door to his right and stepped into the toilet equipped with a small toilet bowl, sink, and mirror. He angrily looked at his reflection as if he scorned it for how it looked back at him. His hair was raven black and long, as was his beard, now with a few gray hairs appearing, a testament to youth leaving his body, as his grandpa used to say. The sticky note he put on his mirror reminded him to drop by the pharmacy and buy some painkillers. He tore it and threw it in the trash. He looked at the ring on his finger. The insignia decorating it brought up bad memories of the war. But that was a distant past now. The war against them was over, and Taraya was heavily scarred by it.

Marcus preferred not to remember those times. They invited anger and desperation to creep back from the dark corner of his mind, where he struggled so desperately to keep them. Marcus squeezed the sink rim until the pain in his fingers urged him to stop. He washed his face and brushed his teeth. Being occupied was a way to suppress the unpleasant thoughts that clawed through the mental armor he made to keep them locked in. The war is over. We lost. Life moves on, and surviving is what we do know. He then grabbed a handful of coins from the table and hurried to the second ring.

Air on the Horse was one of the best things about it. The sweet scent of plants waking and bakeries starting to bake their goods. There was also a slight bite of the cold, which was a rarity nowadays. He looked straight up to see the pitch-black clouds and through them the scorching ball of death that was once their treasured star. Thick layers of stained glass that formed the Aegis dome distorted the shape of the clouds and made the sky appear more colorful than it was. It looked less sinister that way. That was not a bad thing.

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Marcus shook his head in disbelief. Even 15 years after the anomaly appeared, no one knew what or who had caused it. Or how to undo it. But it must have been them. They arrived a few days after the anomaly was first detected and wiped out every form of organized military force on the planet. As sudden as their arrival, so was their disappearance. They left survivors to suffer from climate change, to watch their planet die, with its inhabitants soon to follow.

He looked at the piercing blue light in the sky, located near the star. The anomaly. The greatest mystery of their lifetimes. He sighed, then put his hands into his jacket pockets and went downhill toward the access point where he would traverse into the second polis ring.

It was not his first time visiting the inner rings. He started working as a water plant technician right after he moved to Aegis. He worked on maintaining the water pumps located in the second ring. It was a very demanding job, but he was happy doing it. It meant helping people, and that was what mattered to him.

Aegis polis was one out of 20 cities built on Taraya in an effort to develop cities able to function in harsh environments. Like on the moons of Stixa, a nearby gas giant. Most of the projects ended up becoming more like lifeboats. They were the last places in Taraya where people could survive the ongoing great calamity. But no calamity is everlasting. It either ends, or it will end us Marcus thought to himself as he rushed towards the inner city wall where the dirt road gave way to the cold grated steel plates.

The two inner rings were part of the original city plan. The original purpose of Aegis class cities was for them to be built as a research stations on one of the four Stixa’s small moons. The plan was for them to be burrowed into the moon’s surface. Every city was to be equipped with powerful water pumps meant to extract water from the natural underground reservoirs.

Outer rings and the glass dome were built much later in the city’s development to test the durability of new composite materials. Their original purpose was to encapsulate the underwater habitats in the oceans of the Stixa’s moons. The project was never completed. That was the main reason Aegis did not appear hemispherical when observed from the expanse. It looked like a chunk of its dome was bitten off by a large beast.

The last thing that was built, had been the electromagnetic field generators. Their sole purpose was to create a powerful magnetic field in the hope it would shield the city from solar radiation. The field proved useful against numerous solar storms that have become part of everyday life in Taraya.

After a short walk, he was at the ring transit gate. The gate was open, but everyone traversing to the second ring had to have a permit for transit and show it to the guards. Guards wore black uniforms similar to Mr. Nakaral’s . They had white stripes running down their sleeves. The number and length of stripes depended on rank. The more of them and longer they were, the higher their rank was. These guards had only one short strap, which made them barely outrank the regular citizens in Aegis. That meant they had little to no military training. It was hard to employ ex-military personnel. Most of them died in the Swift Sorrow war.

Marcus forgot his permit at home. He hoped the expeditionary corps ring would do the job fine. He showed the ring to one of the guards, who saluted, and stepped aside so Marcus could pass. Nice little accessory. I could get used to it. He turned around and glanced over at Horse one more time. Who knows, it might be the last. He saw his cube room nested on a hill. It was a dump, but it was home.

But he had no time for sentimentality. He had much to do. First to quit his job, then to visit his landlord about room rental cancellation, and finally to freeze his bank account. And later, the meeting at the Dry Sea. Alien girl, I hope she will be of use to us, Marcus thought to himself while avoiding people crowding the second ring streets.