Copper Rain

Copper Rain Part 5

The Past

The sarge was an equal opportunities prick, and his idea of a prize was a good, old-fashioned beat down. He didn't care where you came from. He didn't care who the fuck you were. He was nasty and vicious and smashed Ines down all while barely raised a sweat. Blood gushed and Ines got up off the mat more times than was good for her, but the bastard didn't relent. I got pissed and tried to step in and help, but the dick in charge caught me with the stun stick, and I saw more stars than there were in the galaxy. With a final thumping kick Ines went down and stayed down. Those of us that were still conscious lifted our new comrades up and carted them off to med-tech where the nanites could get the busted bits of us back into working order. I think they were trying to prove a point. And the message we received was crystal fucking clear—don't trust the fuckers in charge.

The next day saw us in the classroom, something none of us Skulkers had ever experienced before. On a day-to-day level basic education on Heladon was taken care of in a holo-pod that every legit household had. Twice a day, five times a week, we were forced to hook up and immerse. Most of the shit they fed us was HeXtract corporate brainwashing, but every gang member worth their initiation had a sub-shunt bypass to make sure none of this crap lodged into the long-term memory. HeXtract military knew this, which was why most of the new recruits were from the gangs. The upper class Enshri with their cloistered, handheld existence were worse than useless when it came to independent thought. We were this galaxy's Morlocks, and the military top brass knew that.

So there we were, hunkered into too small seats, scars shining in the overhead lamps and bruises fading as the med-nans worked their wicked ways. And I had to say, I was hooked. If this shit was real, then we were at last learning something worthwhile. The holo hanging in front of us was massive, but even with rip-tech it couldn't possibly be in real time. The image of so-called Old Earth was a huge blue-green verdant jewel hanging against the velvety black backdrop of a tiny solar system.

"Come on, sarge," drawled Dali, "this is ten kinds of bullshit."

"How so?"

"Old Earth is a cinder, man. Nothing but a dust ball. Everyone knows that."

The sarge scowled. "You don't believe in second chances?"

"Fuck, man. I don't believe in first chances."

The class laughed, but Dali had to be right. This Earth, the Old Earth didn't exist anymore. Humans had fucked the planet six ways from Sunday. When the polar icecaps melted into non-existence, the climate turned into a roiling mass of super storms. After the atmosphere became too toxic for consistent human survival, the fortunate jumped on the closest ship and rip-gated the fuck out of there. The poor and desperate headed underground, but in the end the dirt and debris kicked up by the hurricanes were enough to block off the sun's light. After that the survivors were just playing for time.

"Dali's right," I chipped in. "This has to be crap. Old Earth doesn't have the equip to do a terraform and atmo-wipe this quick. This is made up shit."

The sarge shook his head. "This is real enough, but that's not the problem."

"Problem?" I say. "If this is real, why not just rip back and start re-habitation. Dead easy."

"No can do. The gate's down."

"Rip gates don't go down. Trade would stop. The Houses keep them open."

This last comment was from Ines. The sergeant tagged her pretty bad, but the med-tech had got her up and running in no time. Usually time in the cura-tanks at the Skulker levels took days. This sort of shit was widely available, but the cura-tanks cost. The longer you spent getting better, the greater the chunk taken from your wages—or your parents' wages if you were still underage. The corporate Houses had to keep the worker bees alive and productive, but it didn't mean they wanted to pay for it. But the military cura-tanks were awesome, and Ines looked better than she did when she first arrived. That probably went for all of us.

The sergeant parked his butt on the edge of his desk and surveyed the room. This whole classroom shit was a little weird. There was a central holo display, but we didn't have our own units. All we had was a dumb-tab and a stylus—we couldn't even give them verbal commands. If we wanted to actually remember something, we had to write it down. Fortunately, I hadn't shunted the auto-write lesson from my head. But it made me wonder if they weren't trying to ensure that this information didn't get out into the wider community. Then the sarge got down to biz.

"There's a lot of stuff they don't tell you," he intoned.

Everyone in the room groaned. This was the opening line to a HeXtract-produced propaganda ephemeral that did the rounds a few cycles ago. Some anti-hero shit where two run down, but still strangely glamorous actors, work together to overcome impossible scenarios, before getting their love groove on in some exotic, terraformed planet in a faraway solar system.

The whole ephemeral series was a shameless attempt at getting young people to abandon the heavy-load home planets and spread the corporate seed into some underdeveloped shit hole. The theory went that the younger generation may not be as genetically polluted as those that came before. That some of the earlier chromosomal manipulations may have been 'washed out' through careful management by the corporate breeding programs. That having a multi-parent gene pool may have gone some way to filling in the blank genetic spaces crispred off by the fools of the past. Therefore, the same theory went, the young may not suffer from the same catastrophically low birthrate that previous generations had only just survived through.

Everyone I knew called bullshit on this theory. Basic science told us that we were as screwed as anyone else, so why give up the good life on the established planets because of some fucked up theory? Everyone knew that the aggressive population of empty planets was the first step in establishing market share in newly discovered solar systems. And everyone knew that was why we shipped out the convicts and corporate prisoners to these exact same places.

He waved the groaning down. "Got your tiny minds' attention now?"

I didn't bother writing that shit down on the dumb-tab. But he had me intrigued. That old ephem had got my attention, and that's not just because both the actors were hot. I'd always wanted to go off world to try and earn some decent money and get my Moms out from under debt. And that shit wasn't going to take while I was stuck on Heladon doing the mindless gang thing. The sergeant continued, and at last some of the stuff he says became interesting.

"This," he said, indicating the Old Earth holo, "is the last pic they got."

He had left us hanging. Up until now we had all been told that Old Earth was smoked. The cradle of humankind was a smoldering ash pile with only some of the outer system moons scarcely hanging on. But he'd gotten me halfway convinced, otherwise why bother with this charade. We were recruits, the lowest of the low in the military hierarchy, they didn't need to pull this shit on us. They could just order us to do stuff and we'd do it. So I bit.

"What do you mean last pic? Who took the pic?"

He crossed his legs and leaned back on the desk. "We don't know." He nods in the direction of the blue-green holo. "And whoever did, shut down the rip gate. We no longer have access to the home system."

"So what's this the fuck to do with us?" I asked.

"Jesus, son. You've got a fucking mouth on you."

I shrugged and said nothing. He looked around the room. At this stage there were still the same twenty of us. But things were going to change.

"This is for your ears only," the sergeant continued. "We need brand-new recruits with no skin in the game."

"Skin in what game?" asked Ines.

The older man rubbed his hand along his chin and stared across the room to the image of the blue-green globe. He open and closed his mouth a couple of times as if trying to figure out exactly what to say.

"Most of you are going to die looking into this. Maybe even all of you. But we need to get to Old Earth before anyone else does."

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