Sector Six, Prime Dome
Planet Irkalla, Survivor’s Refuge
4452.2.10 Interstellar
The inner doors were still closing behind them when Ryler took off his helmet, revealing ebony skin and long black hair coiled into thick locks. He said something, which Janus didn’t hear because he still had his helmet on and sealed.
Ryler rolled his eyes.
Janus waited until the door had fully closed and locked before taking his helmet off. “What?”
Ryler gave him a crooked grin. “I was going to commiserate with you about how some people should just be grateful you’re there to keep them alive, but I can also see where they’re coming from.”
Janus raised an eyebrow. “The ‘time is money’ guy? When’s the last time you saw an extra life for sale in the commissary?”
Ryler smiled. “Nevermind. It's just... you work a double shift almost every day. You should be using your skills to do more important things than cleaning leachate from the recyclers. Something with sector maintenance, somewhere you wouldn’t have to deal with the jerks.”
Ryler was a good friend. They’d met in mech school, where Janus hadn’t understood why someone from a Hub family like Ryler would be in a class with him until their instructor called on Ryler to teach a more complex concept in his place. Ryler was a genius when it came to multi-disciplinary applications of materials, and the two struck up a friendship around their shared enthusiasm to make things better, once Janus accepted that Ryler wasn’t just acting out of pity or rebelling against his parents.
Ryler Abraxxis was a good guy, but he also had blind spots when it came to the limitations of being born anywhere other than Prime Dome.
Janus started walking toward the decon center, forcing Ryler to jog a few steps to catch up.
“I mean it, man,” Ryler said. “I know you’re doing this for Callie, but you're allowed to want things, too.”
“For one,” Janus responded, “jerks are like leachate, it doesn’t matter whose recycler it is, it’s always going to produce slimy unusable crap that gums up the works.”
Ryler guffawed. “Okay, wise one, you have me there. What’s your second point?”
“No one wants to clean the recyclers, so it’s the one job a refugee like me doesn’t have to fight to keep.” He left Ryler’s privileged position as a Prime Dome elite unspoken, but Ryler winced anyway. “What were you doing out there anyway?” Janus asked. “You don't work early shift.”
“You know me,” Ryler said, holding the door to the decon center open for him like Janus was some Hub administrator instead of being covered in desiccated crap. “Someone told me they found some weird shit stuck in one of the iron-mesh filters, and I wanted a sample before they burned it out.”
“And just what are you going to use it for?” Janus asked.
“Oh, man, I have so many good ideas! I was thinking some sort of self-sustaining lubricant, except what’s the opposite?”
“Glue,” Janus said, trying hard to keep from laughing.
“Glue? Genius! Gotta write that down,” Ryler said, following Janus into the bowels of the decon center. Janus shook his head. Ryler might have had the privilege of well-placed parents and the best education the Prime Dome could offer, but he genuinely deserved the small comforts and flexibility dome admin afforded him. He was always coming up with something new, and some of it was even practical, which Janus appreciated. Someday, something Ryler thought up was going to save a lot of lives. Janus was sure of it.
He was less comfortable with Ryler’s family’s devotion to the wayfinders and the Cult of the Survivor. Janus uncle, Ivan Invarian, had raised Janus to be suspicious of anything the cryptic tech-priests said. Because Uncle Ivan was one of the only people who made it out of Prometheus Base alive, Ryler and his family treated him with something approaching reverence, which Ivan hated. That was why Janus didn’t get to invite Ryler to their home that often, even though they were close.
The two friends quieted down as they entered the crowded locker room. Early shift was over and, since Janus and Ryler had been delayed by the malfunctioning airlock, most of the others where already stripped down to their main-shift coveralls. Ryler hurried to get out of his suit, but Janus hooked his into the diagnostic machine, uploading his data for analysis as he calmly undid the locks on his gloves and boots.
Someone leaned against the machine in front of him, and he looked up.
It was his shift manager, Meg. She was a wiry, weathered woman with short, graying hair who Janus respected because she was damned good at her job, even though he didn’t always like what she had to say.
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“Good shift, today, Janus.”
“Thanks,” Janus answered, picking his boots up and pulling the connection to the diagnostic machine.
“You’re three units behind schedule,” Meg said.
First the compliment, then the crap. It was a classic management move, the open-faced crap sandwich. “The units I fix break down less often. I’ve checked.”
“I know. That’s not what early shift gets paid to do. We get the most machines to run at any given time so that more flow can go through them during main and late shift. You need to make your quotas.”
“Even if that means we just have to fix them again tomorrow?” Janus asked.
Meg nodded. “Now you get it. Paychecks and job security. What more could you ask for?” she said with a grin. “And listen, it’s really impressive you got so many machines up to full function. Put in the time, work your way up. Maybe you can change the system.”
Janus had more to say, but knew his battle wasn't with Meg. She was just doing what sector maintenance wanted her to do. “Yes ma'am. I'll do better tomorrow.”
Meg walked off. She was a good boss, as far as early shift bosses went. Any manager could feed their shift workers a line of crap, but not all of them bothered with both slices of bread.
“Good to know I wasn’t the only one to notice you were slow, Invarian,” a new voice said.
Janus turned to find Lira Allencourt staring him down across the locker room. It looked like this morning was going to be a double decker. “What did I do to piss you off now, Lira?”
“You blocked the airlock when Craig and I were trying to get through.”
Lira was Craig Bennin’s sidekick, and Craig was the lead candidate for aspirant in this year’s Trials. This close to the planet-spanning competition, it gave her an almost unbearable amount of clout, especially since she’d made it clear she hated Janus’s guts from the moment they’d first met, years ago.
“Sorry,” Janus said, heading toward his locker. He didn’t have time to fight; he had another shift to work.
“Sorry?” Lira said mockingly. “You interfered with the aspirant, Invarian. You slowed us down and took away from our training time. We might come in second instead of first because of parasites like you.”
“Better than dead,” Janus said, louder than he’d meant to.
The locker room’s background conversational buzz died out.
“What was that, Invarian?” Lira asked, walking toward him.
“Take it easy, Lira,” Craig Bennin, the actual lead aspirant candidate, said, standing up from a nearby bench.
Lira hesitated.
“We all know you mean well, Janus,” Craig said, a relaxed smile on his square-jawed face. “Lira’s right, though. First place means prestige and a much bigger prize for the winner’s dome. It’s big stakes out there, my friend, and the whole dome is depending on us.”
Everything about Craig shouted that he was dome royalty, from the broad shoulders he got from the extra rations to the smooth, rich cadence of his tutored voice. He was like Ryler with an extra helping of entitlement and none of the grit beneath his nails.
He was right about one thing, though. Placing first in the Trials earned the winning team valuable resources only the cult could provide, such as exotic materials, advanced blueprints, or process optimizations only the wayfinders could provide. An entire department of Prime Dome’s administration was dedicated to training high potentials like Craig. He’d basically been bred to be an aspirant, and someone so far on the opposite end of the spectrum, like Janus, should have instinctively folded in front of his magnificence.
Except Janus didn’t.
“You don’t compromise safety unless it’s really life or death,” Janus said, stowing his boots in his locker.
“Are you kidding me?” Lira almost shouted. “Craig, are you hearing this?”
Ryler joined the fray. “You’re both still candidates, Lira, and you can’t compete if you blow out in training.”
“By using the lock the way it’s designed to function?” Lira retorted.
“That’s a backup system,” Ryler said.
“We know it’s a backup system,” Craig said, walking over. “It’s our job to evaluate the risks and make the best decision under the circumstances. You think there are going to be safety officers out there during the Trials?”
Lira wasn’t done. “Are you really going to side with a maintenance tech over an aspirant on this, Ryler? Of all people, I would have thought you would see which side the wayfinders would choose.”
Janus let them argue, stripping off his suit and carefully stowing it in his locker. He knew that if he’d been a “real” Primer, even a poor one, he’d have joined in, defended his friend, confronted Lira for the constant and unjustified needling. He might have gone as far as to submit a harassment complaint or file for a restraining order. Doing that as a Promethean working two jobs would have been suicide. His family needed those paychecks, and no one was going to replace his suit until it reached the end of its work life or suffered a breach. Even minor wear and tear could become a fatal weak point, A little care—and a touch of discretion—was the difference between a survivable event and a fatal one.
“Is he seriously ignoring us?” Lira asked more loudly than she needed to, playing to the room.
Janus met her eyes. “I don’t know much about the Trials, or the prizes, or the training you go through. I hardly know you at all. What I do know is what happens to micro-motors when you try to run them without lubricant, how hard it is to force a door open or closed if the seals lock, and what happens to a human body when the void gets to it.
“I have a shit job. I spend early shift making sure your crap flows through the pipes so it can become something useful. You don’t want my job, and I can’t do it if I’m dead. So if your training is so important you need to put an entire shift at risk to save two minutes, use a different airlock.” He slammed his locker shut.
Ryler winced, and someone in the room clapped before Lira glared him into silence. She looked back at Janus, eyes full of fury, and said, “You'll pay for that, Invarian. No matter how hard you try or who you suck up to,” she said, eyes flicking to Ryler, “You'll never be more than outsider trash.”
Craig put an arm around her shoulder and led her away. “Come on, Lira. It’s not all his fault. His parents killed their dome by accident. If we had that kind of legacy, we’d be cowards, too.”
Janus had to steady himself against his locker, or the rage he felt at their casual slander of his dead parents would have showed. He could feel himself shaking, feel the ugly, purple and red bruise of hatred tighten his hands into fists but he forced it down for Callie, for his parents’ name, and because it wouldn’t do him any good.
He wasn’t powerless because he’d been right or wrong, because he was poor, or because he was a mechanic on the early shift. He was powerless because of who he was and always would be.