WE HURTLE LIKE A black thunderbolt over a pale waste of silicate dust and sulfur dioxide frost in a starship adorned with electric dragons. Out the breath-fogged window, a yellow-green sulfur plain stretches toward the dark side of the moon, broken only by lava floes, volcanoes, ash plumes, and mountains. They do not rise in chains according to the humors of tectonic activity, but in isolated, violent surges out of the moon’s crust, so that they look like leprous old giants wading through the stained sea.
Each day, 3600 rems of radiation—enough to wither a man’s DNA in hours—bombard the moon that was once one of the driest objects in the Solar System. But now, six hundred years after the first ice was carved from Europa and transported to Io, she has become the breadbasket of Ilium—as the Jovian Moon Lords prefer to call their cluster of moons.
Despite the fear I feel at my incarceration, I can’t help but be enamored by the testament to human will.
The Conquerors were not daunted by Io’s temperament. Wise as they were, they did not try to change her face, but instead created bold bubbles of life upon her surface. Out the small dirty window on the other side of the passenger aisle, I glimpse a chain of agricultural domes, docks, and skeletal tramways. There, botanical enterprises manned by lowColor slaves produce enough food to feed Ilium and, with Titan, feed the rest of the Rim.
Io is a contradiction, and so, I know, are its inhabitants. Something I must keep in mind if I am to find some means of escape for my friends.
The ship jerks against sudden turbulence. I lose hold of the plastic cup that I’ve brought up to the edge of the metal muzzle that’s affixed to my head. It drops to the floor, spilling the water across the deck. The guard stares at the water running along the floor planking with dull, mole eyes. He is disgusted by the waste and my noises as I lick the mesh of my muzzle, desperate for any last drop of moisture for my swollen mouth. He moves on, the magnets in his boots securing his rangy legs to the deck despite the turbulence from the atmospheric entry.
“May I…” My dry throat closes around the words. “May I have another cup?” I rasp out, eyes on the man’s boots, trying and failing to keep the desperation from my voice. This one’s name is Bollov. He has an unyielding disposition, a tremor in his right hand. He likes power and teaching lessons to spoiled Corish Pixies like myself and Cassius. I wish I knew why; perhaps then I could dismantle him. My grandmother once told me, “A new wound can take a body. Opening an old one can claim a soul.”
I observe the small exchanges between the guards, the idle chatter in halls or as the watch changes; but these Rim dwellers hoard their emotions. Better to guess the thoughts of a lizard than those of Bollov. My head pounds from the dehydration headache that I’ve been nursing for thirty-four days. My sleep has been restless, filled with visions of the crew I abandoned.
The water deprivation is civilized torture, and I know deep down Pandora yearns for something more barbaric. It seems only Diomedes’s protection has staved off that course. Could he be a potential ally? Pandora is certainly not. She’s a savage. Two days into my capture, the old woman visited my cell. For an hour she sat cross-legged on the floor and watched me, saying nothing until she asked if Seraphina brought a datacube onto the Archimedes. I told her I didn’t know of such a cube. She left without a word and I’ve been unable to discern just what the datacube could contain.
Since that day I’ve been given just enough water to survive, but no more. My muscles ache like they’ve seen hard gravity. My gums are swollen, mouth like chalk. Every day she would return, watch me like an old, evil owl, and make the same request. I’d give her the damn datacube if I’d seen one. It doesn’t matter to Castor au Janus, the persona supported by our ship’s logs. Cassius is Regulus au Janus. We’re Martian traders from New Thebes who were on the Rim ferrying water to blackmarket ore miners.
The fact that I still have my skin must mean they haven’t found our vault yet.
“Please,” I implore Bollov. “Just one more cup.”
“That was your cup, gahja.” Their word for outsider. Derived from the original Japanese language that was the native tongue of the Raa, before the arrival of a South African strain of Golds. “Waste not. Want not.” Bollov moves on.
Beside me, Cassius hunches in his seat, his arms sealed in metal cuffs and locked to his chest, with just enough room to bring his cup to the steel mesh muzzle that’s wrapped around his head. He’d share with me, but he’s already gulped his down. A thin chain connects the jaw of his muzzle to a belt around his waist, so he’s hunched in permanent supplication, even when he walks. Together in the tan prisoner uniforms, we look like a pair of pre-Neanderthal hominids. But my friend is alive, and that is all that matters.
This is the first I’ve seen him in the month voyage from the asteroid belt to Io. Based on Jupiter’s current orbit, these new ships of theirs are faster than they have any right to be. I crave to see their designs, their new engines, but my world has been a steel cube three meters by three by three. I almost wept when I saw Cassius waddling toward me in the hall before we boarded this shuttle, his face still as ugly and bulbous as the day we escaped the Ascomanni.
Despite the joy of our reunion, a pall hangs over us. We don’t know if Pytha is alive. If this is how they treat Golds, it makes my heart ache to think what misery her life has become. I’ve not stopped thinking about how I could have averted this. How I could have done better. What action would I adjust? What different move would I make?
“Give him another cup,” a voice tells Bollov from behind me. Coming up from the storage hold of the dropship through the prisoner section is Diomedes au Raa. His hair is loose and falls around the shoulders of a gray scorosuit, a hooded body-fitting polymer suit with electromagnetic radiation shielding and water reclamation pockets. His storm cloak flows behind him and seems alive with mutations in the color.
“If you’re so afraid of Pandora, set it there and go on.” The guard does just that, leaving the plastic jug on an empty seat. I nearly pitch sideways to steal the whole thing, but I wait patiently as Diomedes opens the jug and pours me another portion, hoping to impress upon him that we are of the same breed. He gives me just one cup to replace the one lost. There’s little mercy here, but even amongst the guards, there’s been less callous cruelty than in the Interior since our imprisonment.
“Thank you,” I manage. The lukewarm water gives new life to my throat.
He looks down at me without a smile and then moves away toward the main cabin.
“Why was she in the Gulf?” I ask. He stops and I wish I had read his psychological profile in Moira’s SIB database when I was younger. I remember he was secondary heir to his older brother Aeneas, who died at the Battle of Ilium. He’s risen to the challenge of being an heir, it seems. No easy task. I would know.
“Shut up, Castor,” Cassius mutters to me. “Take your gift and be silent.”
I don’t shut up. Whether Cassius wants to admit it or not, these people are our kin. And if I do not stir the pot, the only opportunities will be the ones they choose to give us. That is unacceptable.
“She was in the Gulf for a reason,” I say to Diomedes. “And without permission from your father, it would seem.” Diomedes turns back, measuring me with a blademaster’s gaze: eyes then hands then scars. “Do you even know why? Or is that Krypteia jurisdiction?” His silence speaks for him. There it is. A chink in the emotional stoicism of the man. I appeal to what seems his strongest sense, that of a soldier’s honor: “If you are truly thankful that we saved Seraphina, save us. Do not let us see Io. We’re traders, that is all. We thought we stumbled upon salvage. All we’ve seen is a hangar, cells, and this ship. If we see anything beyond this ship, we both know we will never leave. Let me and my brother and our pilot go back from where we came. Escort us to the edge of your space and send us on our way. That is what is honorable. Life for life.”
“My brother is a child,” Cassius grovels to the knight. “Forgive his mouth. It tends to run. He didn’t grow up amongst his own.”
Diomedes walks back to me and cocks his head as if I were the most curious of bugs. “There are no eyes like yours beyond the Belt. You are a pretty boy. Aren’t you?” I don’t reply. “How old are you, Martian?”
“Twenty.”
“Your brother is right. You speak like one of our children.” With an easy show of strength, he grabs the chain attached to the back of my muzzle and pulls it so hard I’m lifted off my feet. My neck bends painfully. “A lesson is needed. I will teach you.”
“Don’t…” Cassius says from behind his muzzle.
Diomedes presses something on his datapad and Cassius’s muzzle buzzes with electricity. Shaking violently, Cassius falls back into his seat and I’m dragged by my chain through the prison unit into the loading bay. Diomedes shoves me into the center of the floor doors and presses me to my knees into the worn intersection of a painted red X. He does something behind me I can’t see, though I hear the click of metal and feel the evil fingers of fear slithering through my stomach. It’s a test. Slow your breathing. Do not be afraid. Stand astride the torrent.
He talks as he works.
“When I was a boy, I remember the envoys the Core would send. Slippery Politicos in their slick suits, fingers laden with gaudy rings.” I glance back and see him unspooling a cable that’s now attached to the back of my harness. “All they wanted to see were the seas of Europa. The mountains and towers and dockyards of Ganymede. Always, though, they had to come see my grandfather. To pay homage to Revus au Raa, because power lies where honor reigns. But you could smell the derision when they came to my home. They called my family savages behind our backs, safe under our shields. Rustics. Dusteaters.” Trailing the cable behind him, he walks to a red button protected by a plastic case on the wall. It takes every ounce of courage I have to remain kneeling in the center of the door and not to scramble to safety. He smiles at my inability to tame my fear. My hands shake. “They were startled by my grandfather’s hospitality. The respect he showed them. The gentle way in which he spoke, even as the Codovan and Norvo gnashed their teeth over Rhea. They mistook grace for weakness. Abused his kindness. Then Fabii learned the lesson I am about to teach you.”
“I don’t have an oxygen mask,” I say.
“No. You do not.”
With that, he slams his hand against the red button and the steel doors beneath my knees retract, leaving me kneeling on open air. My stomach rises up into my throat as I plummet out the belly of the craft, legs thrashing, holding my breath against the poisonous air. Wind roars through my ears. Then a horrible pain erupts at my waist as the cable snaps taut and arrests my fall, digging into my skin and jerking me upward. My head snaps down into the restraining vest so hard I feel metal puncture my skin and nick the bone of my forehead, sending flashing lights scattering across my vision. Blood streams into my eyes and I swing up, pressed to the belly of the craft as it races across a sky stained with acid-yellow clouds.
My body lurches into shock from the temperature. I’ll die from the heat well before I gasp for oxygen. I close my eyes as needles of fire stab into my brain. Sound and fury swallow me, pain as my body slaps against the hull. And just as my lungs have depleted their oxygen, I’m dragged back into the hangar by the chain and tossed onto the floor. I gasp for air and it’s some time before I can open my eyes. My body aches and my skin feels alive with fire. Diomedes stands over me, his dark eyes still and quiet, no evil in them, no malice. “Have you learned the lesson, gahja?” he asks. It is a lesson in respect.
“Apologies,” I manage.
This is met with a satisfied look from the man. “Forgiven,” he says, hoisting me up by my bonds. “Welcome to Io.”