The Great East–West,
Planet Irkalla, Survivor’s Refuge
4452.2.27 Interstellar
Janus and Syn headed to the maintenance area where the Primer team’s vehicles and gear had been stowed. Lira’s buggy was in one of the active repair bays, as was the buggy the Gracian’s had blown up and flipped for their “B” footage.
The front of Lira’s buggy was already open, sheared axle beam removed, and a Gracian mechanic had the new beam in hand. “Can I help you, Aspirant?” the mech asked him.
There were overtones of respect and caution around the Gracian use of the word aspirant that Janus didn’t like. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Janus, nice to meet you.”
The mech looked at Syn, then looked at her own hand, which had smudges of carbon and oil on it. “Rosa. I’d shake your hand, but…”
“I’m not afraid of a few grease stains, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Janus said with a grin. “I’m trained as a mech.”
Over the next hour, Janus and Rosa got the buggy’s front axle replaced. She was skeptical at first, in the way the first mech to sharpen a spear or carve a wheel had probably been wary of offers to “help,” but by the time they’d greased up and threaded the torsion springs through the beam, they were just two mechs working on a project together.
“I’m surprised you had Prime Dome buggy parts in stock,” Janus told her.
“You do make a good suspension,” Rosa answered with a smirk. “Callabrean control arms are better, they’re just a little more stable once you get up to speed, and I wouldn’t use anything but Betan bearings on my vehicles. I don’t know what kind of wizardry they used in the manufacturing process, but I swear they’re as close to zero-friction as I’ve ever seen.”
“And they’re compatible?” Janus asked with interest.
Rosa raised an eyebrow at him. “A Primer taking interest in outsider materials? Are you okay?”
He laughed. “Funny story about that, actually.”
Janus told Rosa and Syn his story, from “fabled Prometheus” all the way to becoming the first outsider aspirant. He was conscious of the small camera drone floating over Syn’s shoulder, so while he didn’t embellish his story to holo-novella levels, he might have allowed the Gracians to reach their own conclusions.
“So, after all the bad rap Prime Dome has gotten about their treatment of outsiders, they’ve had a secret aspirant training program all along?” Syn asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Janus said, while his body language suggested just the opposite. “But when the Council was ready to put all of Prime Dome’s citizens to their best use, they just happened to have an outsider lead aspirant lying around.”
After talking to Rosa about the advantages and disadvantages, they ended up overhauling Lira’s buggy with a combination of parts from different settlements. The Gracians didn’t manufacture their own parts. Instead, they bought or “borrowed” what they needed from everyone else. There was no standard configuration. Instead, the mech brought up a simulation that allowed different assemblies to be mixed and matched based on their interoperability and desired characteristics.
Janus chose a mix that would give Lira more maneuverability and shock absorption since her buggy was usually in the lead. It was a risk to specialize the vehicle; it meant that Janus’s buggy wouldn’t be as suited to the scouting role, and that Lira’s would be subjected to more stress from always being on point, regardless of who was driving it. At the same time, this new incarnation of the buggy would have shrugged off the shock that tore the wheel off the old one.
“It’s a shame we can’t optimize the other buggies,” Janus mused as they finished.
Rosa glanced sideways at Syn and said, “I was told to make the repair bay available to our guests, including any parts required.”
Syn’s eyes twinkled with mischief. “I’m just here to get some background footage.”
Janus grinned.
Over the next four hours, they not only repaired Lira’s buggy, lubricating, sealing, and locking it up tight, they also configured Janus’s buggy to be the perfect long-distance hauler and turned Mick’s buggy into a high-speed rescue vehicle with an extra bank of capacitors that would throw it into overdrive for a limited time. The configurations would have been impossible using parts from only one settlement, but after simulations, testing, and a few solid encouragements with a wrench and a mallet, they landed on something that was quite literally more than the sum of its parts.
At some point, Syn stopped worrying about the footage and the three of them just started talking. They were on a crawler moving at a steady 80 kilometers per hour toward Beta Station, but Janus might as well have been back in the shop in Recycling Station Six. He found out that parts weren’t the only things Gracians borrowed; both the mech and Syn were from other settlements.
“I’m from Mercuria,” Rosa said. “I was a ’Naught before, but the Gracians gave my family a home in exchange for…” She looked at Syn, as if for permission.
“It’s not a secret,” Syn said.
“All of us are in the deferred immigration program,” the mech said. “We stay in the crawlers for four years, working to help the aspirant teams, and then we get to rejoin our families.”
“I meant to ask about that,” Janus said, waving a wrench at the maintenance space. “I left Prime Dome with Lira, my second, and what we could carry. This all feels a bit like—”
“Cheating?” Syn said with an impish grin. “The rules say an aspirant can recruit and be helped by as many people as they can convince, they just can’t be people from their settlement or have been part of their settlement in the past two years.”
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“So this is all legal?” Janus asked.
“Nobody else thinks so,” Rosa said. “I know others have tried it, but the Gracians—I mean us—we’re the only ones who get away with it year after year.”
“How often do you win the Trials?” Janus asked.
“Never,” Rosa said.
“Always,” Syn said at the same time.
Janus looked at both of them and said, “You’re going to have to explain that one to me.”
“I don’t fully understand it myself,” the mech admitted. “This is my first year.”
“And this is my last one,” Syn said. “Let me put it this way, Janus. It sounds like you have a lot riding on the outcome of the Trials, right?”
“I mean, yeah,” Janus said. “My sister’s getting the royal treatment right now, back in Prime Dome, and if I win, that would mean a huge change in the quality of life for most outsiders.”
“Maybe,” Syn said, and Janus frowned. “You could lose, right?”
“Of course,” Janus said. “We almost didn’t make it out of Mercuria. If we’re not careful, we could die out here.”
“What if you could just find a place to hole up for a couple weeks, shoot a few videos, and go home to a triumphant victory without all that risk?”
Janus could see where she was going. The Gracians had been fighting a mock battle outside that looked just as dangerous as what he’d faced in Mercuria, and far more heroic. “People would know.”
“People do know,” Syn said, looking at Rosa. “Just not the ones who matter. No offense to my colleague, here, but while no one goes hungry in Survivor’s Grace, it also doesn’t matter if the two of us talk about what happens out here because no one will pay attention. People rarely leave their dome, so their opinion is shaped by the ‘real’ footage of the Trials they see every day. With a journey as heroic as our aspirants’, how could they do anything but win?”
“She’s not wrong,” Rosa said, although it clearly made her uncomfortable.
“The other domes and the cult know what we’re up to, but since we never come close to winning, they also don’t care,” Syn said.
“I think you’re wrong, there,” Janus said. “The cult still gives your aspirants a route and access to some of their technology. They’re allocating people to look at your performance and review the data records.”
“Okay, but why would they do that?” Syn asked. “Anyone else who tries to do what we do gets hammered.”
Janus thought about it for a moment, and then he thought of Callie and laughed out loud.
“What is it?” Syn asked.
“I was just thinking of my sister. She’s… I was going to say she’s smarter than me, but she’s just being trained for a different path, one that she’s suited to. When Callie’s in work mode, all she talks about is data—more data, better data, more timely data… To her, data is like a good prybar—if you’ve got enough of it you can get anything unstuck.”
“Okay…” Syn said.
Janus almost burst out laughing again, but he managed to keep it under control. “It just makes me laugh that Martial and Terra—and now Lira, I guess—they’re all strutting around like they’re the heroes of all Irkalla. But I’ve met someone fairly high up the Cult of the Survivor’s hierarchy, and he talked a lot about data, too. I think the wayfinders are obsessed with it.”
Syn frowned. “I mean, that’s true, but why is that funny?”
Janus shrugged. “They’re collecting data on us all the time. This is an experiment. I’m no scientist, but there’s only one way someone as serious as Callie or Nikandros would allow one of their subjects to deviate from the protocol, and it’s not because they’re the heroes of the story.”
Syn covered her mouth with her hand to stop from laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Rosa asked, annoyed.
Syn looked at her with sparkling eyes. “He’s right. The Trials are an experiment—maybe the whole planet is—and we’re the control group.”
***
Lira came back to their room after dawn, smelling of alcohol.
Mick looked at her awkwardly, and Janus said, “Did you have fun?”
Lira sneered at him. “It was good to finally be in the company of my peers. Terra and Martial are more like real aspirants—like Craig—than you could ever be. It just reminds me that he should be here with me, not you.” Her voice dripped condescension. Even knowing she was faking it, Janus was impressed with how well she was playing the role.
“Well, at least when I was a candidate I was on my own, and I didn’t have to put up with some stuck-up over-bred and under-skilled Hub princess like you,” Janus shot back.
Lira hesitated, then said, “Yeah. You mean when you wrecked your buggy and stumbled back half dead, completely oblivious that you were being recorded?”
“Yeah. Even that, Lira. Thinking I was going to die of radiation exposure was better than having to team up with you.”
“You do that, Janus. Keep being you, on your own, no matter what your betters tell you. That’s what’s going to get us out of this,” she said, her voice dripping sarcasm.
“Hey, now…” Mick said.
“Shut up, Mick,” both Janus and Lira said.
Heavy silence settled over the room. Janus looked at Mick and said, “Come on, man. Let’s get some sleep. It’s going to be a long night tomorrow, and a longer night for some of us,” he said, glancing at Lira.
Mick nodded, and Lira got into her bunk without saying a word.
Janus mulled over the conversation they’d just had. He thought she’d been telling him that the Gracian aspirants were inexperienced, dangerously willful assholes like Craig had been, and that she was out drinking with them because they were being watched and she was playing them. Using subtlety and politics to help their team win the Trials was the reason he’d accepted his former—hopefully former—nemesis as his second, and she was good at it. He’d learned a lot.
He’d also learned that people were less trustworthy and more vindictive than he’d imagined possible. Lira could be playing the Gracians, and she could be playing him. What if they’d told her the same thing Syn had told him, that Lira could go back to her dome victorious, without the danger, without having to work with the outsider son of the people who’d killed her mother?
Janus was almost sure he couldn’t trust Murkinson; the Gracian agent had been as cynical and mercenary as anyone Janus had ever met. That they were getting this much support for “free” only meant that he planned to steal something of far greater value.
Janus had two choices. He could trust Lira and hope that whatever she was doing would counteract the Gracians’ plans, or he could not trust Lira and take steps to break them out of this trap. If Mick was right about them being watched, which Syn’s comments had only reinforced, then any steps he took would get noticed either immediately or when Murkinson reviewed the footage.
He could make the call. Mick would follow him. Lira might, too, but if she did, she would do so knowing he hadn’t trusted her, and that would set them back.
Trust Lira.
That wasn’t what his gut told him. His gut spoke to him in Ivan’s voice, and it told him to run. It told him that these elitist pricks had it out for him, and if he sat here and gave them power over him, they would use it, and he would suffer because that’s who he was, the outsider.
But his heart, which sounded like his mother, wanted to trust Lira. He wanted to believe that trusting her in Crossroads and fighting side by side in Mercuria had meant something, that the kilometers and hours out in the dust had built something between them.
He’d also learned that he hadn’t been powerless because of who he was, but because of information that had been withheld from him. This time, he and Lira were the ones holding information, and he didn’t want to give that advantage up.
It took him a long time to fall asleep, and when his wrist-comm woke him, he felt like he hadn’t slept at all. It wasn’t until they met up with the Gracian team that he knew he’d been both right and wrong, and that, if he’d known, he would have pulled his team out no matter what.