Chapter One

The Birthday Summons

Fort Backwater

Colony Two

1 September 2727

Agloff’s mother had said she was going to find his brother. She must have screwed that one up because that was fifteen years ago, and she still wasn’t back yet. It was a fact his peers were at no pains to remind him of on a daily basis.

Another such taunt rang in his ears. The foreman’s shadow moved across Agloff, flexing its piggy fingers. It raised an arm to strike, and he winced in expectation.

Agloff jolted. Pain stung his cheek. He clenched his face without a sound, then politely straightened his back, and waited as the foreman moved on to the next one down the line. That might be the last time that happens, he thought.

‘Last night of the indenture; gotta make the most of it. Two hours’ overtime, Ashborne,’ the foreman, Marcus Persky, called. Indenture. They could call that for what it was: cheap labour for the Fort.

Agloff murmured his acceptance. His colleagues didn’t react anymore. It was like they were a part of the machinery, patiently awaiting their own beatings.

There was a nervousness along the line tonight, each of them deep within their own heads. For as soon as they finished their servitude today, they got their school results tomorrow. Every time the thought came around, Agloff’s body tightened.

But today was a good day, Agloff told himself. It was his eighteenth birthday for one, but for whatever tomorrow brought, countless days of all-round misery and minor injury were almost over. This seedy factory at the back of Fort Backwater had been his school and his work for a decade. Persky could delay Agloff’s freedom by all the hours he wanted. But he couldn’t stop it. And with that freedom, the world beyond would come into terrifying focus. But that was for tomorrow’s Agloff to worry about, he supposed.

‘Oi Ashborne,’ Persky added. Agloff winced for the second blow but it never came. He was a thin and wiry boy, taller than most with elbows and shoulders pointy like knives. It made for an easy beating as the bruises formed quickly. Instead, the foreman tossed a small envelope onto the line in front of him. ‘Letter came for you,’ he said.

Agloff couldn’t imagine who would be writing to him, unless it were a response about an apprenticeship. He didn’t recall applying for anything, unless Ariea had done it on his behalf, which would not be out of character. He scooped the envelope from the floor and tore it open:

Dear Mr Ashborne,

Warden Elena Drake of Fort Backwater requests your presence post-haste at the Council Offices Uptown at 8.30 this evening, the First of September, to discuss an urgent matter. Please rearrange any other engagements.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused,

Secretary Flick

At once, his heart pounded in his ribs, and a million possibilities scurried through his head. Why would the Warden of the Fort want a meeting with him? What had he done? Was he in trouble? Was it a job offer? (Not likely; his school grades were middling). He raked a hand through his mop of mud brown hair and thought.

‘You coming out later?’ Ariea Finland asked Agloff from the station adjacent. Agloff stuffed the letter into his pocket, pretending it was nothing. He knew his friends had planned a trip to one of Backwater’s less dead dives, an ale house up on Short Street.

‘Maegen was coming too,’ Ariea continued. ‘You could maybe ask her out? I’m like ninety… seven percent sure she likes you, you know.’

Agloff felt his cheeks turn a shade rosier as he smeared his wounds across his sleeve.

‘What about you?’

‘Me?’ Ariea leapt back defensively.

‘I mean, are you going? I wasn’t planning to myself,’ he said, hiding the shot of anxiety coursing inside him.

Ariea’s bob of auburn hair tilted in judgement, and she drew a finger across the redness of Agloff’s lips. She had a pretty, round sort of face, with round features. Her skin was delicate and pale.

‘I am and you should come. You do realise people enjoy their birthdays, right? Traditionally,’ she said.

Agloff feigned disinterest. ‘I don’t know. You know I’m not into it. I was gonna stay home and watch something,’ he lied. Were it true, Old Earth movies still beat going out, even with Ariea. It wasn’t Maegen he cared for.

‘I mean it’s your birthday, I guess. We were basically going out for you!’

‘And not because we finished our indenture?’

‘Okay, fine, but this is the one night of our lives we get to dream! Before we get our results tomorrow, inevitably find out we missed out on what we wanted, and the abject despair of being a logger or street sweeper for the next fifty years sets in.’

‘Those are good jobs,’ Agloff pretended. He watched her eyes twinkle.

‘You’re allowed to dream, Agloff.’ She placed a hand at his shoulder. At once, Agloff felt comforted.

‘I have a dream.’

She laughed, then stifled it into a cough. ‘There are bigger dreams than being a postman.’

‘Doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it. And it’s mail rider, actually.’ Or striders as some people called them. The thought sucked him in, again and again. To roam the Colony aback a horse, secret messages and love letters bundled in his saddle bag. He could visit every town, make the Colony his sticker book, to be collected. Not that he could actually ride a horse, for now.

He would need passing grades in numeracy and literacy. Better than that in modern history and geography and to excel in his physicals. That last one was hard because no matter how much Agloff seemed to eat, none of it seemed to cling to his bones.

Ariea excelled at the sciences. She was destined for medicine, although she denied her talent. Like all talented people did.

‘You could come with me. A travelling physician.’

Ariea smiled. ‘Turns out you are a dreamer. This is home, Agloff.’ She paused. ‘Maybe one day, when you learn how to read a map.’

Maybe one day, he thought, his deliveries could lead him home to his mother, to his brother. But they were less than whispers on the wind. That was a more impossible dream.

‘Anyway,’ Ariea said, ‘if ya gonna be a misery and stay in, check on my dad when you get home. He said he felt funny.’ Agloff nodded as she turned to leave. It would be a detour on his way to Drake. Persky dismissed them one-by-one until Agloff was the only one left. His eyes lingered on the doorway until long after Ariea vanished from view. As if in half-expectation she might have forgotten something and had an excuse to come running back.

But no. He carried on into the narrowing sunlight. Its glare blurred his vision through the slats of the window across the belt opposite him. He guarded his eyes with one hand and inspected crates of pulped beef chattering towards him with the other.

Overtime whittled by with his mind occupied by circular thoughts, the kind that spiralled, inwards and downwards. Dreams of scaling Backwater’s walls and walking through the unsoiled air to where his mother might have been. In his mind he had already made the journey countless times. To the rolling pastures at the end of the Colony, or the Scourgelands to the south, where Winter dare not touch them and the land was arid and tasteless. Then Marcus Persky appeared and dismissed him with little more than a flagrant wave. Reality crushed Agloff again like a sack of bricks, and his mind beckoned back to his mysterious meeting with Warden Drake.

He departed into the night, grateful he would never have to tread the factory floor again. His feet skimmed over the battered cobbles, eyes scanning from beggar to beggar with a shameful look, praying they would not halt him. They were crammed into every crevasse, hustling and bartering for rations and beds in groups of six or more, like strange, patchwork families.

But then his progress was stunted in the thick crowd trudging down Main Street. All the night-shifters headed for an evening’s labour; all the day-shifters starting to head home, all bobbing in their pale grey boiler suits. Some hauled heavy loads across their backs. Agloff knew them to be miners and loggers, taking their tools beyond the walls. Some worked in the factory like him. Some laboured on the farms outside. This was the only future his indenture bought him. Life-long back pain and a boiler suit. The thought that he might suffer their fate for another fifty years stirred a deep-seated dread. The untamed plains of Colony Two beyond Backwater could be no worse than this.

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‘Tina!’ a woman cried ahead. The hoard turned to the side of the road. Agloff craned his giraffish neck for a better view. For a moment, the world was plunged into silence by the woman’s tide of gentle sobs.

‘Who could have wanted anything with Tina?’ she said to the heavens. Her gaunt figure was bathed in rags. The kind Agloff felt sorry for but wanted nothing to do with. ‘She was ill, God bless her. My own granddaughter. Who’d want to snatch her?’

Another one, Agloff thought. There had been murmurs people were vanishing off the streets, mainly out-sleepers. But he hadn’t seen it himself yet.

‘I’m sure we’ll be able to find her,’ one man said, stepping forward from the crowd. A white strap on his shoulder marked him a councillor of the Fort, one of twelve.

The woman snatched her arm away, eyes alight with rage. ‘This is you, your lot and Drake, snatching people in the dead of night. What is it? Got too many people so you pick on the sick? Or are you chucking them outside, to Winter, in the hope they won’t come here… She never left her bed!’ She pounded weak fists on the man’s chest, but he failed to move, unsure of how to act in full view of his public. Agloff could see through the councillor’s façade, that rulebook of dos and don’ts that guided politicians’ every word. Of spin and half-truths.

First had come the odd instance: a beggar never seen again. Then a few, then dozens, then people disappeared from inside their homes. Always the weak and the sick. There were mutterings it was Winter, others said it was the Fort. Try as he might, Agloff always felt detached from it. It had always been someone else’s problem. Never something that would affect him.

Above, the clouds parted and the sky was split in two by a blinking ring that arced from one horizon to the other. Everyone seemed to look up in solidarity.

Cerberus, they called it, a ring-like superstructure, swallowing the entire planet, built to watch over the largest prison ever constructed by man: Colony Two, otherwise known as Earth. Every now and then a ship would hum in the distance, from Atlas or one of the colony worlds. It would deposit its human cargo, whatever their crime, and leave as calmly as it had arrived. Cerberus was a reminder to all they could never leave this planet, no matter how far they ran.

The crowd then cleared and Agloff darted up a side road that sloped uphill. In keeping with his word to Ariea, before seeing Drake, he would check on Michael. The flats were like scaffolding laced together by rope and curtained in rags, with a room or two to a family. They tilted over the narrow streets, guarding the paths below from the moonlight. Agloff fumbled for his key and stopped before a narrow three-floored house he was grateful to call a home. It was one room to a floor. The kitchen, then Michael Finland’s room, then his and Ariea’s.

Seeing as his mum wasn’t about, a family friend, Marty Naples, had arranged for Agloff to be a ward at Michael’s home when he was three. Agloff dropped his keys against the kitchen surface and turned to see Mr Finland’s breakfast untouched beside him: crusty porridge and a ripe glass of milk. Agloff gagged, clearing it away. Maybe Michael had to leave in a hurry this morning, he thought. He called up the ladder. Silence.

That was odd.

Maybe he had to work late.

Both were unlikely.

He couldn’t linger though; Drake’s summons awaited. He powered uptown to the council offices. His exhaustion was buried in the fist of panic that gripped him. He didn’t know what it was, but he wanted it over, bolting past the terraces at Acre Square on Main Street and towards the offices.

Agloff’s destination was a squat dome. It was one of the few brick and mortar buildings of Fort Backwater built after the Departure, when humanity drifted on to worlds anew. Neat columns circled it, supporting a capped roof that hung over the building’s edges. He felt nauseous, unsure if it was the running or anxiety. Be brave for once, he told himself and ascended a flight of steps into a tidy entrance hall. From the desk opposite, an administrator peered threateningly from over his file through a pair of tinted spectacles. He studied Agloff up and down, lingering on Agloff’s moulting boiler suit, fraying at its creases.

‘Business?’ he said, returning to his file. Agloff silently stepped forward and passed him the letter. The administrator considered it then replied with a sigh of recognition. He stood, indicating for Agloff to follow.

He led out into a long corridor. For the life of him, Agloff could not imagine anyone wanting or needing this much space to live in. One room was surely enough. This just seemed wasteful. He passed the offices of people with fancy titles he had never heard of, their names inked onto their doors. Then, the administrator pushed the lockless door open to the office of Warden Drake. The sign on her window dubbed her “Chief Lawmaker and First Councillor of the Fort.” A throaty voice beckoned for him to enter.

‘Ah, Agloff,’ Warden Drake said, pointing for him to sit. ‘A pleasure.’ Her desk arced across the back of a circular office. She raised her head from some important document and smiled. Her greying hair was knotted up in a bun and the glare of her glasses hid the lines drawn across her eyes.

‘Warden,’ Agloff said, with all due deference.

He then realised that there was a third person in the room. Ariea was backed against the wall across from him. She was clad in a tidy black dress and heels, her face made up and prettier than it already was. Agloff said nothing, confused.

Ariea opened her mouth but Drake spoke first. ‘I’ve already spoken to Miss Finland. That will be all, Ariea,’ she said. ‘If you wait outside for Agloff.’ She waved an arm at the administrator who nodded his head and escorted her from the room. ‘I was very sorry to interrupt her night out. Completing your indenture is meant to be a joyous occasion. Regrettably…’ Her voice tailed off before she could complete her thought.

‘Can I ask what happened?’ Agloff said, urgency in his voice. ‘Am I in trouble? Is this about my results? Did I fail?’

‘Of course not! I wanted to talk about your mother.’

‘What about her?’ Agloff’s heart thumped harder. A coldness filled his body. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. Raw panic gripped him. It took every morsel of energy in his body to appear calm. This was what he had waited for all his life.

Drake sighed. ‘When she arrived nearly eighteen years ago with you, and you alone…’ Drake’s words seemed to pre-empt Agloff’s next question as it raced through his mind. His brain moved faster than it could keep up with itself. ‘She was a strange woman.’

‘How’s that?’ Agloff wondered if he should be offended.

‘Most people were just happy to be here, to have a place to exist, refugees or crooks. Colony Two is about fresh starts, after all. Not her. You could say I was intrigued. And suffice it to say, I think she was far cleverer than she ever let on.’

‘So, why’d she leave?’ Agloff’s hands fidgeted in his pockets.

Drake bit her lip. ‘She said only that a man called Jask may come looking for you. I am afraid I don’t know why. Your mother was incredibly guarded.’

Agloff frowned. ‘Jask?’

Drake looked unsettled all of a sudden. ‘He’s the leader of Winter. Are you familiar with it?’

‘Everyone is,’ Agloff said before it dawned on him what she said: the leader of Winter, an order whose name invoked dread across the Colony, wanted him. It was a thought almost too big to comprehend. ‘Jask wants me? Specifically?’

‘Jask wants you and you specifically,’ she repeated.

‘Why me?’ Agloff said like it was a complaint. ‘What have I done that I don’t know about?’

‘The question I’ve asked myself for fifteen years. At the time, her warning seemed innocuous. But time strengthened Winter. There were many days that it was in my interests to move you on. But no,’ said Drake, amused. ‘It was never within me to do that to any child. But now, it is time you moved on, for the safety of my citizens.’ She collected her walking stick, concealed from under her desk and stood. ‘If Jask were to come here one day, I…’ The thought seemed too terrible for her to even entertain.

‘You- You’re asking me to leave?’ His voice begged.

Agloff felt sick. He couldn’t become a mail rider without his grades. The towns would think him a vagrant. Would he wander the Scourgelands to the south? He could seek refuge at the Underground out west. His mum’s friend, Marty, had said he was going there, years ago, when he left Backwater for the last time. Leaving was always Agloff’s dream, for some distant time ‘when he was older’, trained for it, capable. This was what he wanted, to leave. But its sudden imposition on him was terrifying. ‘When he was older’ had become now.

‘You know what Backwater was before we came here, Agloff?’

Agloff shook his head.

‘A factory. The whole town. Out in the middle of nowhere, on a hilltop. Pipes and concrete. We tore it down. Anything we could repurpose we did. There was no surplus. That’s the hand the Confederacy left us when they built this place. The Colony is a world of beggars and crooks. We make do but we can do little else.’

Fun story, thought Agloff, but he couldn’t say what that had to do with him, or Winter.

‘There’s a reason every fort in the Colony made its home in small towns, plants, retail lots. Cities were too big to be viable. We have no resources, no defences.’

‘So, what are you saying?’

‘I’m saying if Winter came for you, what could we do to stop them?’

‘Well, what could they do to you?’

‘They’re a cult, fanatics of Jask. They roam between forts like animals. Thieving. Kidnapping. They’re of a creed, a faith I’ve never known, and I’ve seen a dozen worlds, stood on half as many. They just fell from the sky on the back of Cerberus one day. I don’t know exactly what they’re capable of, but I’m not inclined to find out. We don’t have the means to safeguard you and repel them. You must go.’ She sighed deeply. ‘But arrangements have been made in that regard; you need not worry. I suspect, aside from Miss Finland, there is little here for you.’

‘Why not tell me sooner, Warden?’ Agloff said, as politely as he could manage. His panic submitted to anger. Why had he been led to believe he was welcome here? Or was it a blessing? He now had a reason to go out and find his family.

‘The way things went were not the way I would have chosen,’ said Drake. ‘When she left, near three years later, she told me if she didn’t come back that I keep an eye on you, and I have done, from a distance. I’m not sure why I was inclined to do as she asked. Maybe, her being a single mother, I can empathise. I thought it better not to interfere. To let you live. But I’m telling you now.’ Drake was unmoved.

She then reached an arm to a drawer and rummaged until she found a grey file. ‘Anyway,’ she continued. Turning to what looked like a random page, she traced her finger across the words and started reading.

‘What is it?’

‘I know you feel compelled to find her, so I feel obliged to tell you. Your mother,’ Drake said, flashing the file at Agloff. He thought he caught a glimpse of the word Andromeda. ‘I was curious why Jask wanted you and assumed it had to do with her. When she left, I reached out to a few contacts from my time aboard the Sochi.’ She paused. Agloff noticed her eyes flash towards a photo frame in front of her. Then, she began to read from the file. ‘Andromeda Ashborne was born on the Freedom Ark Olympus on the twenty-fourth of July twenty-six-seventy-seven.’ She glanced up. ‘But the child was stillborn.’

‘But my mum didn’t die as an infant, did she?’ interrupted Agloff, unsure if he had heard correctly. ‘You’re saying what? They had a miscarriage? They can’t have!’

‘Yes. Three months pre-term. They did name the child Andromeda though, for administrative purposes. Conveniently, both her parents, Joseph Ashborne and September Lewis, died in an industrial accident on the ark a few weeks after Andromeda’s ‘birth’. ‘I don’t know who your mother is, but she is not Andromeda Ashborne. The identity is stolen.’

Drake said nothing for a moment, apparently allowing time for the enormity of what she had said to sink in, but it never did.

‘Regrettably, for our citizens’ safety, you need to leave Fort Backwater, Agloff. And you will need to leave tomorrow.’