Pionneer’s Tower, Bennin Residence
Prime Dome, Planet Irkalla
4452.2.14 Interstellar
The dream was half-in, half-out, half in the present, half in the past. His parents were as they always were in the virtual program, but he was back in Prometheus Base, intact, like he’d wound back the clock.
“Hi, Mom, Dad. I have some good news.” He was in his ten-year-old body, but he knew he was older. He had a sense his parents were really listening this time, which felt different, almost embarrassing, but if his parents would have been proud of him for anything, surely the events of the past day would have topped their expectations. “I’m going to be an aspirant.”
The faces of his parents suddenly changed, and for just a moment he could almost pretend they were real. They shared a smile between them, then beamed the smile to Janus.
“We’re so proud of you, honey,” Janus’s mom said.
The screen suddenly went blank, and Janus tried to pull up his VI again, but it didn’t respond. There was just darkness, and looming shapes, and people being dragged through Prime Dome’s streets.
Light came suddenly, and he was dumped wet and shivering onto the tiled floor.
“Rise and shine, candidate,” Ivan said. “Can’t afford to sleep the day away because you’ve gotten a moment of fame.”
“Sleep the day away?” Janus asked, aching and disoriented. It was still hard to reconcile Ivan the great champion of the Trials with his lay-about uncle who got buzzed while Janus paid the rent. “You do remember I was headed for exile a few hours ago? Working two full shifts? Struggling to get by? Getting demoted and made a scapegoat? Living like a pariah?”
“I never said life was easy,” Ivan responded, “but it isn't exactly like you were facing life and death on a daily basis.”
“Like you've said. Survival isn't everything. Strength through struggle, and that's exactly what we've been doing.”
“Okay.” His uncle put his hands up. "Call it what you will. But if what you've been doing is struggle, then get ready to ramp it up into overdrive. Because life just got a whole lot harder.”
“Sure. But it's not like there are going to be assassins following me around. How is waking me up like that going to help me?”
“You got to think about what's next, and you've got to anticipate what the wayfinders are going to throw at you.”
Janus shook his head. “The wayfinders swear by their neutrality, so do you have something more specific than conspiracy theories? No? Then it's just about making it around Irkalla. As long as it's within twenty-eight days, it's all good.”
“You do remember I was an aspirant, don’t you, kid?”
“Not in twelve years, you haven’t been,” Janus shot back, feeling petulant but also tired and irritated and not that sorry about it.
His uncle let out a mirthless laugh. “Is that it then? Just a quick trip around our cozy, peaceful planet. Listen. I know you think I’m just your crazy old uncle, but I have been around a while, and I have seen a few things. I have friends who are Hunters, believe it or not, and if a tenth of the stories they have told me are true...”
“Whatever drunken tales your buddies tell you after they're eight or ten beers in may be entertaining, but I'm not sure they're lessons to be learned.”
“Believe whatever the hell you want, but if you want to survive, then you’ve got a lot more to learn about the world.”
***
He should have been angry, or maybe just stumbling-drunk tired. True to his uncle’s word, the night in the tank hadn’t been restful, and he had little aches and pains like he was finishing a strenuous day instead of just beginning one. But the truth was, as Janus made his way through the deserted corridors toward the airlock behind his uncle, he couldn’t shake the guilt that had been building in him since the day before. He had never thought so before, but he was lucky—lucky his uncle was a former aspirant, lucky he’d gotten a great education in Prometheus Base and a solid apprenticeship in Prime Dome, although he hadn’t realized it at the time. Uncle Ivan still called him a candidate, but Bennin and Callie all but assumed Janus was going to be the next aspirant, and he didn’t feel like he deserved it.
It was full dark outside, earlier even than early shift. While most of the dome slept, a small minority of dusters would be outside the armor-glass, fixing the things that couldn’t wait. The walk from Sector Six to the Hub had been like a dream, but moving from the Hub to Sector Four was a return to harsh reality. Four was a mixed quarter, housing more established outsiders and second-gen Primers. That meant more mixing, more dependencies, and ambiguous loyalties. The books Ivan had given him said that was a sure recipe for conflict and to stay away, but since the Sector Six lock was still under repair, there wasn’t much choice. There were signs of damage everywhere Janus looked, from vandalized walls to soot and broken glass. Didn’t people realize the dome, for all the tons of pressure it withstood, was fragile? Most of them lived here. He didn’t understand how they could do it to others, let alone themselves, but then his status as an outcast among outcasts meant he’d never joined in during previous spats of unrest, either.
In an hour, early shifters would pull themselves from sleep and begin their preparations for the day. He wondered who would be filling in for him, and if they'd fix the damage the trilith did. Meg would have made sure of it, if she’d still been around. A lot of things were changing; he just wished more of them were for the better.
And thinking of his shift supervisor and the look on her face when she died hit him like a punch to the gut. At least she died doing something heroic: keeping the maddened dusters out so the rest of them would live. Meg saved them all.
“Hey,” Uncle Ivan said, grabbing him by the suit shoulder.
“What?”
“You did good yesterday. No one could have done it better. You took control, saved as many as you could, and people followed you.”
“You getting soft on me, old man?”
“No,” Ivan said. “Now, get your head screwed on straight. You’re as distracted as a teenager who just got dumped by his crush and we’re about to step out into the dust and we don’t have time to give you a safe training environment. This is going to be as real as I can make it for you to stand a chance. The void takes.”
“The void takes,” Janus echoed without thinking.
Ivan rapped him on the chest plate with a gloved knuckle and continued toward the airlock.
Janus mentally kicked himself, but this time for letting himself get distracted in spite of it all—in spite of Bennin’s warning the day before. There was no time to hesitate, to worry, or to mull. There was just the work, the void, and surviving the next days.
He’d process what was happening to him when the Trials were done.
As for whatever responsibilities Prime Dome had given him before, he had to keep reminding himself that skipping those responsibilities was so he could focus on bigger priorities, and ultimately contribute more, both materially and by setting a new precedent that outsiders weren’t just a stepping stool for Primers to stand on, but that they could also lead.
Janus and Ivan put their helmets on at almost the same time, still twenty meters from the airlock. In some ways, being around his uncle was like shaving with a sander, but in others it was comforting.
After all, Uncle Ivan was the paranoid son of a bitch who taught Janus all his most unlikable habits.
“Just remember,” Ivan started over the suit-to-suit link, “Crossroads can be just as bad as Mercuria Point. One place will try to rob you, and the other will call it commerce, but you’ll still end up broke with nowhere to go. If someone talks a big game about how they like to help aspirants, they are always thinking of number one before you, or their dome, or whatever other greater good they’re selling. There are also good people in both places, you just have to find them, which is usually as hard as avoiding the bad ones.”
His uncle continued to talk as they cleared the airlock and trudged through the dust, talking about far-off domes and habitats with a lived-in familiarity that clashed with Janus’s memories of Ivan as the drunk uncle passed out on their ratty couch. Not for the first time since the hearing, he wondered what his life and Callie’s would have been like if he’d known, grown up in the Hub. Maybe he’d have turned out as well as Ryler; maybe as bad as Craig. He looked wistfully at the machines they were passing because while they weren’t the ones he’d worked on, they were familiar. They were something he could understand, could know intricately. All this new information was harder to get a handle on. There was just so much nuance. Irkalla might not have had the population of the planets humans inhabited before the Survivor’s exodus, but it was still big enough to be overwhelming.
Janus followed Ivan far past the reclamation pit and almost far enough for him to wonder if they should have just signed out a rover before stopping in front of a dome under construction.
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“Word is they're going to restart building on this dome to help alleviate the Beta Station refugee burden,” Ivan responded.
“Why was it scrapped in the first place?” Janus asked.
Ivan looked over his shoulder before answering. “Budget cuts. Council decided we've got enough room as it is.” He sighed and looked over the half-finished dome. “But expanding out here helps prevent us from having a single point of failure, which is what happened to Beta Station. Same reason Irkallans don’t all live in one settlement.”
“Because any two people stuck together long enough will find a reason to hate each other?” Janus asked.
“Cute, but no,” Ivan said, triggering the airlock. “That’s why I took my sister’s kids with me when I left Prometheus Base instead of having any of my own.”
Janus winced. He’d never really spoken to his uncle about his past. It always felt like Ivan had been his sister’s shadow, taking care of her kids because she and Dad were the accomplished ones, but clearly that hadn’t been the case. Janus wondered how much his uncle had given up to stay with his nephew and niece.
The half-built dome was large and airy, with many buildings in various stages of completion rising right out of the ground. Most of the domes in Prime Dome were dug into the rock and underground, with only the privileged few getting to rise above the caves below. Janus wondered how deep the underground complex ran here. Looking at the large equipment just sitting around, Janus wouldn't have been surprised if they were very deep indeed. His suit told him there was atmosphere inside, but Janus wasn't about to risk it. He kept his hard suit on, as did his uncle. They made their way through the broad unfinished courtyards. After the episode this morning, Janus expected some kind of gauntlet: an obstacle course that would push him to his physical limits. But instead, Ivan walked over well into the dome, not stopping until they were far in.
“Ambitious project to abandon,” Janus commented.
“Not abandoned, just postponed. Allocation of resources, Janus. You should be proud to live in a dome where people have the foresight to stop and reevaluate when circumstances change rather than brazenly pushing to completion when new information says not to. Now follow me and listen up.”
His uncle proceeded to show him all the ways he could strip the place for parts, refilling water and oxygen from lines and residual tanks, and breaking off the most valuable parts for trade. It was all the stuff some people had accused his family of doing over the years, and Janus instinctively balked, but his uncle was deadly serious about it. As they worked, Janus realized a lot of the jobs that he'd done over the years, jobs that his uncle pushed him to take, had prepared him to understand exactly what he was doing here.
“So all that garbage about aspirants traditionally being afforded protection and welcome in all domes?” his uncle started as they took apart an already half-deconstructed construction bot, placing the different components into piles, which his uncle had explained he'd go into later. “That's just something the wayfinders want everyone to believe. It's an ideal, but doesn't quite live up to the practice. No matter what, people tend to look at self-survival as the first order of business, immediate community second, and wait for these idealistic overarching stuff third.”
“Is this legal?” Janus asked. “Are we going to get into trouble for taking this stuff apart? Aren't they going to need it when they rebuild it?”
His uncle smiled through his faceplate. “There we go again. Are you messing with me?”
“No. I'm completely serious,” Janus responded.
“You need to get in the right mindset, Janus,” his uncle groaned. “You are no longer some tech who fixes machines. You're an aspirant candidate and you need to start acting like one. I know you're used to giving as much as you can to the community, but now's the time for you to start taking stuff back. These skills are important and you need to master them if you want a chance at survival.” His uncle grunted as he got back to work. “Besides, they're going to replace a lot of this stuff. Bureaucracy. They like to use new stuff and forget the old stuff that works just fine. You should know that from your time on early shift.”
Janus thought about that for a moment. He was an aspirant candidate now, maybe the aspirant. He could just take what he needed and most wouldn't give it a second thought, just like so many others had taken from him over the years. He shook his head. “That's not who I am and that's not how I'm going to represent the dome. We need to clean up after ourselves and not leave a mess for others to clean up. I've been cleaning up others’ messes all my life and I'm not about to let someone clean up after me.”
Ivan threw down his tools and in half a moment, he was a hand's width from Janus's face. “You don’t like what I’m teaching you?”
“No,” Janus answered.
“Then do something about it. Go ahead. Take a swing at me.”
“We're in hard suits. That would hardly be practical,” Janus responded as he continued to do the work his uncle assigned him, ignoring his uncle's provocation.
Ivan removed his helmet. “Go on. I know you’ve wanted to. Take out some frustration. Punch me in the face.”
“It's not going to happen, Ivan. Why would I do that?”
“Because I'm asking you to. If you do, I'll help you clean up this mess and the others we've left behind,” his uncle said. “You just have to land a punch.”
Janus didn't even answer, he just got to work.
After a moment Ivan grunted and backed off. “You're too soft by half. I shouldn't have pushed for you. There's no way you're going to survive this if you're worried about some bureaucrat's feelings.”
“It's not the bureaucrats I'm worried about. It's the workers who have to take extra time out of their day because I was selfish with mine.”
“Goddamn it, Janus. Your time is worth more now, and they know it, or they should anyway. Everyone has a lot riding on you. If you get this done, we could finish this dome, then grown men in their mid-twenties wouldn't need to share a fragging room with their little sister. Maybe then you could actually get laid for the first time in your life. Maybe that's what you're missing. We need a man and we got a little boy.”
“Maybe we could afford a better place if you pulled your weight,” Janus responded. “If you drank less and worked more.”
“Whoa, look who grew a backbone. Now if you only had a pair of nuts to go along with it.”
Janus stood up. “I know what you're doing.”
Ivan stood up, too, getting into Janus's space. He only came up to Janus's nose, but Janus knew he was still someone to be wary of. “Then just humor an old man.”
Janus spread his arms. “Fine,” he responded, and removed his own helmet, as he felt was only fair.
Ivan stood with his feet squared, leaving his face wide open as he rubbed his cheek in a circular motion. “Right here, if you will.”
Janus was fuming, but also knew he was bigger and stronger than his uncle. Even if the bastard tried to block it, Janus's sheer strength would blow through, so he had to be careful not to hurt him. He balled up his fist and took a swing.
But instead of his fist finding his uncle's face, he found it wrenched from its trajectory and twisted behind his back, his whole body falling forward. He hit the ground, face pressed to the smooth concrete, then felt his shoulder twist causing extreme pain.
A moment later the pain abruptly ceased, just an echo lingering in his joints.
Janus found his way to his feet, rotating his shoulder, elbow, and wrist to make sure nothing was broken. He was so impressed that his uncle had utterly blindsided him that it almost made up for the seething anger coursing through him. Almost. “Are you serious? You provoked me just to break my shoulder?” Janus said. “Are you that convinced I can’t do this you want to send me back to medical?”
“The Trials aren't going to be easy, and when things seem like open invitations, they're going to be challenges, threats. If you go into this thing with a mindset of ‘Hey, I'm going to help everybody,’ you're going to find yourself on the floor in a compromised position. Every. Single. Time.”
Janus rolled his shoulder, or at least tried to. It wasn’t easy in a hard suit. “Where in the void did you learn to do that?” Janus groused.
His uncle was already moving on, sorting through the pile Janus had made, grabbing a few pieces before leaving the rest and walking away. “I was an aspirant, remember?” He looked up and made eye contact. “If you think you’re the only kid who’s wound up with his face against the floor, you’re not. Those who get it in training have a chance to survive.”
***
The rest of the shift turned into an intensive stealing and brawling training course as Ivan proceeded to show him several simple but effective ways to disable or kill people with common tools or his bare hands. When Janus started to flag from the fast, tiring movements in the heavy gear, Ivan reminded him things could be far worse than anything Ivan was throwing at him. They might not be. They could be fine and dandy, but Janus needed to be prepared in case things didn't go how he wanted.
Whenever they weren’t sparring, with Ivan punishing Janus if he tried to hold back, Janus was stripping more parts and materials out of the deserted facility and either stowing them in his suit or prepping them for transport. He didn’t have time to have qualms about it, because the next fight was always too soon and without warning.
“An unprepared aspirant is a dead aspirant,” Ivan said many times.
“Just like old times,” Janus said while catching his breath after another round of sparring. He’d almost forgotten how much he and his uncle used to fight when he was a teenager. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but his uncle had definitely been holding back. There had also been more of a method to their rough-housing than Janus had realized.
“I beat you then, too,” Ivan said.
“Yeah, when I was a kid,” Janus responded. “Do you remember why we stopped?”
Ivan took a swing at him, but Janus dodged it. “Yeah. My knee still hurts when the air conditioning is too high. It was a cheap shot.”
“It was a fair hit,” Janus said. “You just didn't know when to quit.”
Ivan swung out with another fist, but when Janus moved to dodge it, he was struck with Ivan's knee in his gut. The suit took most of the blow, but with how tired Janus was, it still dropped him to the ground. “A good lesson to remember,” Ivan said. “If you keep letting yourself get drawn into fights, you’ll eventually get hurt.”
“I thought you wanted me to fight?”
“No,” Ivan said, giving him a hand up. “I want you to win. Now, one thing you won’t be able to count on is people coming at you one at a time. We’re going to work on footwork and escaping holds—if you remember anything about this session, just remember that if they can surround you or get you on the ground in a hard suit, you’re as good as dead.”
Just as the sun began to poke up from the horizon, Ivan called it and they turned back. Janus felt nervous as he headed toward the airlock. It was Sector Four, the same one they’d come out from, but it had only been a day, and the memories of all those ripped bodies still lingered in his psyche.
Fortunately, when his uncle hit the button to open the airlock it had no problem.
“Well, would you look at that?” Ivan asked. “Looks like someone finally came out and fixed these damned things. There's another lesson for you, Janus. Fix your kit before someone dies and forces you to fix it.”
“I always do,” Janus responded, a bit more defensive than he meant.
“You do now because you don't have forty other things demanding your attention. When you get out there and it's just you, your second, and your buggy, things might be different. You're going to have to prioritize and you won't be able to do everything. One of these days, a split-second decision to do the hard thing instead of what’s easy or convenient is going to make the difference between you living or dying.”
“I'll keep that in mind,” Janus said. “Where are we off to next?”
“We’re splitting up,” Ivan said, walking straight to the head of the queue for the airlock. “I’ve got the next parts of your training to arrange and a nap to take; you get to meet with one of the Survivor’s own crackpot servants along with our favorite sector admin. This would actually be a big day for you, if you’d gone through years of formal training like the other candidates. Today, you get to find out your route!”