Chapter One
Happiness was in short supply on X29. The planet should have had a better name, but we humans trapped on it felt no love for the strange, dusty place. It didn’t deserve a nickname. We called it Ex sometimes, but that’s all. It wasn’t home and it was never going to be. It was Ex, a place where we had to live because we had no other choice.
The klaxons rang loudly from speakers spread through the camp, signaling the start of another day. It was a horrible, loud, shrieking noise designed to wake even the drunkest man. The klaxons meant that it was time to get up and go to work. They were a call to the men of the camp, telling them to descend into the mines for another day of hard labor. The days were endless, filled with work followed by more days filled with more work, each one leading to the next with no break or rest.
With a loud sigh, I pulled myself out of bed and stretched. It was a struggle to keep my eyes open. I felt tired all of the time. It was an endless exhaustion. All I wanted to do was stay in bed. Nausea hit me when I moved and I put my hands to my lips, struggling to contain it. I couldn't afford to be sick. I needed to keep every bite of food I ate in my body.
I rubbed my soft belly. I could feel the start of a swell there. Or maybe there was nothing. Maybe it was all still in my imagination. But the symptoms were clear enough. I was pregnant. It was good I wasn’t showing yet. Hopefully, I could hide it for a while, wear baggy clothes, wrap myself in rags. I had always been curvy and I was thankful for that now. It would help hide the pregnancy for a little longer.
“Knock knock,” I heard a low voice say. I looked over to see a man with a red face and yellow eyes leaning into my tent. He was tall and thin, with that sunken-cheeked look that all the miners had after enough time spent here. He had dirt permanently trapped under his fingernails and his clothes were thin rags, though he managed a wan smile.
“Good morning, Rob,” I said, as I stood and stretched my already aching back.
“Ready to do some business, Mereen?” he asked me. Behind him, I could see the glaring morning sunlight of the planet. Morning and night were words that had no meaning here. The planet sat between two suns. There was no night. The temperature ran from hot to hotter.
“Always,” I replied. Rob was my salesman. He sold my wares to men in the mines for fifty percent of the profit. It was a high markup, but it kept me safe and away from the more dangerous side of the business. It was too risky for me to deal with the miners. Rob was better at it, and he knew them. He knew their schedules and personalities; he knew who could be trusted. I handled the supply, Rob handled the demand.
Rob and I had done this countless times. He didn’t need to be told to close the flap and wait on the other side. Once the flap was closed all the way and I knew he couldn’t see, I reached into my rucksack at the foot of my thin mattress. Inside, sewn into the lining, was a secret compartment. Reaching in, I took out a handful of small bags filled with a clear liquid. Alcohol, concentrated and deadly, but easy to smuggle around the camp.
“Enter,” I called to Rob, and he opened the flap and came inside. He handed me a heavy clump of copper ore and I placed it on the scale. It was three pounds, exactly. “How do you always get the number so perfect?” I asked.
“A magician never reveals his secrets,” Rob said, grabbing the small capsules of alcohol and slipping them into the many hidden pockets of his vest. “Same time tomorrow?”
“I’ll be here,” I answered, and with a tip of a nonexistent cap, Rob left. I let out a deep breath and sat down on my bed again. Just that small act had taken the strength out of me.
There were no comforts in my Spartan quarters. This was a work camp; it wasn’t meant to be pleasant. My tent had a thin mattress on the floor, a bucket for waste and a jug for water. I kept the few personal items I owned in my rucksack, and carried it with me wherever I went.
Our settlement was in the northern half of the planet. Anything further south would have been too hot and inhospitable, though I knew the southern pole had a small tropical island. It was the one place on the planet that wasn’t a miserable desert.
We lived on a huge, wide, flat plane. Thousands of tents lined up in neat rows, each one with human men and women working and struggling to survive another day. There were children as well, though only those boys that would one day be suitable for work were allowed to live.
The klaxons outside changed their tone. Tent check. I stood up, my body crying out from exhaustion. I grabbed my shawl and brought it over my head to shield my skin from the bright sun.
Standing next to my tent, I nodded to my neighbors. To my left was the wife of a miner who had already left for work. Women were considered too weak and small to be functional in the mines, but there was still plenty of work for us to do. There was washing to be done, food to prepare and Goseb commanders to care for.
According to the ID chip implanted in my neck, I worked in the washing facility. I should be spending my days elbow deep in suds. But a bribe every week to the woman in charge of the laundry ensured that I got credit for work without ever actually washing a single thing. The laundry was where I made alcohol and I used to surplus income to stay alive.
The Goseb guards walked between the tents. They held a sensor in one hand and every time it passed over a human there was a quiet beep that meant the human was exactly where they were supposed to be.
The guard loomed over me. He was wearing armor that both protected and cooled him. His face was covered with an expressionless black mask, but I knew what was underneath. Goseb’s were oddly human-like in stature and size. The guard in front of me was only a few inches taller than I was. Underneath the armor his skin was green and his eyes a bright violet color. He would most likely have short hair and a body decorated with tattoos. Not that I would ever see him. The Gosebs only took their armor off when they were at home among family.
I kept my eyes downcast as the sensor moved over me. I heard the beep, and then the Goseb moved past me and onto the next human. On and on down the line he went. It would take them about half an hour to scan every human, and we had to wait outside of our tents until they were finished.
I glanced at the faces of the tired and broken down men and women around me. They all looked aged and stooped, though there was no human on the planet over the age of sixty. No one made eye contact with me. It was too dangerous to make friends. At any time, the Gosebs could kill any one of us. They could wipe the whole planet clear if they wanted to, set their bombs down on us and torch the entire planet. We only lived as long as we were useful to them.
The klaxons stopped and I went back inside of my tent. I pulled a small working table out from underneath my bed and began to chisel away at the copper. I chipped and cut it into small portions and measured them out. Some of it would be used to bribe the guards, some to buy additional food and vitamins. The rest I would add to my stash. I had managed to save quite a bit of my copper, but I would need all of it and then some once the baby was here.
Nausea came roaring through me again and I closed my eyes and waited for it to pass before continuing to separate the copper. Once my work was done I set the alarms on my tent: tin cans and spoons hanging on a line. If anyone tried to get in, the noise from the rattling metal would wake me up. I crawled back into bed and closed my eyes. The heat of Ex wafted over me. I closed my eyes and began to doze, slipping in and out of a light sleep.
Outside, I could hear people moving up and down the lanes between the tents. There were boys selling water and homemade sweets, and women selling themselves to men. What was going to happen to me here? It had been two months since Detro and I had been separated. I’d had no word from him at all. He could be anywhere. Maybe he was dead. Maybe he’d been re-educated by the Gosebs. What if he had found some other woman to keep him warm at night? What if he had forgotten about me? He didn’t know about the child. I hadn’t known about the child when we were separated. There was no way to get a message to him.
Think happy thoughts, my mother used to tell me that. Think about happy things and better times. She spent her days cooking and cleaning and doing other things for the Goseb army. Whenever I cried, she would tell me to think of something happy. That was her trick for getting through long days. So, remembering my sweet mother who had been taken so long ago, I thought back to happier times.