Mid Rim Territories
Lambda Sector
Zolan
With a hiss of hydraulics, the boy climbed inside and the door slid shut behind him. Inside, the shuttle-taxi felt cramped and dirty, faux leather seats made greasy from frequent use and infrequent cleaning. The seat cushions were flattened into uselessness where people were supposed to put their butts. Before he buckled in, the engines revved and the taxi jerked into motion.
“Um, hold on,” he said.
“I can’t find the other end of the buckle.”
Ahead of him, tall and threadbare seats rose like twin towers, connected at the center by a woven-mesh fence. On the other side sat the driver, an unfamiliar, scaled, adult-sized Monzu, one of the dominant species in the world's unending warfare between both Clawdite and Monzu populations, and a rare sight within the Clawdite’s Zynt’Ek extremist cells. Nevertheless, the metal cage was designed with the driver’s safety in mind.
“Shut it,” said the driver.
“An’ figure it out.” After all he was an adult, and sometimes that made him right.
“What the. Found it!” He said. “It was under the seat,” he said.
“Kind of sticky.”
The driver said nothing, and for a time the two sat silently, the boy watching the world go by from the other side of a locked speeder door. People thronged the streets carrying belongings in dirty bundles, shepherding younglings through missile-collapsed cityscapes. Dust clouds obscured villages made out of tents— the kinds of tents made with fabric, wires, and sticks— inside of which lay people who looked sad and hurt. One refugee coughed and seemed alarmed by the color of the wetness which hit their hand, another had only a bandaged stump for a leg and leaned against a gnarled metal bar. One adult just sat near the edge and cried.
“Where are we going?” He said.
The driver said nothing. “Where are we going?” He said, this time louder.
“We’re not going anywhere,” they said.
“Where am I going, then?”
“Nowhere soon,” they said.
The boy rolled his eyes and let them land again on the viewports.
“What’s it like out there?” He said.
The driver said nothing. “They all look so… I don’t know, sad? They’re all just kind of staring.”
The driver said nothing. “I don’t get to see outside the crèche very often, what’s it like? ... Sir?”
“Ain’t nothing special,” they said.
“Same work, different days of the cycle. It's no pretty place, kid. Truth? Life outside your Zynt’Ek is harder'n a fistful of irradiated rock. Lucky you’re one a ‘em, least you don’t have to worry ‘bout puttin’ meals on the table. But you're just a number now. Ain't much room for questions.”
The boy frowned and sat back hard in his seat, glaring at nobody.
“I’ve got plenty of room for questions,” he said.
“What’s it to you, anyway. Why’re you with Zynt’Ek?”
The driver seemed to stir at this, glancing back over their shoulder.“We’re not all the same, kid.”
“So… what? Does that make you different, then?”
“Not sure,” they said.
“But it puts me on this side of the line.”
“With the crèche?” The boy asked.
“With Zynt’Ek.”
They passed a Monzu hefting a rifle on the side of the road, and a Clawdite body laying still on the ground nearby. Smoke and blood gushed from fresh and fatal wounds. Screaming, a tattered family pawed at the corpse, trying and failing to tug its dead weight, then retreating from the rifle’s aim. The boy and the driver watched in silence, watched until the figures were just specks on a cluttered horizon.
“You fought in the war, didn’t you,” he said to the driver.
The driver said nothing. “Didn’t you,” he said again, louder.
“We all fight in the war, kid. One way or another.”
“Not me,” he said.
“I’ve never fought anybody.”
The driver said nothing. “So that’s a yes? You have fought in the war.”
“That’s a yes,” they said.
“Then you’d know stories! What’s happening out there, they don’t tell us anything at the crèche.”
The driver let out a long sigh, its throaty noise like the hiss of a buzz-viper.
“The world’s a mess, kid, always has been. They can put on their brave faces all day long over there at Zynt’Ek, but the truth is your side’s desperate.”
“My side?” The boy asked, pointedly.
“Our side,” they corrected.
“Desperate?”
“Yes, desperate.”
“What’s that even mean?”
“Means we’re being pushed back, further and further every day,” they said.
“By the Monzu?”
“By the Chordatan government,” they corrected.
“Yes, and their riot troopers.”
“What’s the difference?” The boy said.
“We’re not all the same, kid. Not every Monzu hunts your kind.”
“Oh.” Right.
“It means we’re goin’ need a miracle soon, somethin’ to turn the tides a’ this thing.”
The boy frowned and considered.
“That’s why you’re with Zynt’Ek?” He said.
The driver said nothing. “The miracle. You think they have it?”
“That’s why I’m driving you,” they said.
“Me?”
“Aye.”
“Me, me?” Asked the boy, gesturing to himself for nobody’s benefit.
“Me, me?” Asked the boy, gesturing to himself for nobody’s benefit.
“You… and all the others who sit in that seat,” they said, more quiet than before.
“Wars aren’t fought with fists and starships alone, kid. Some of us contribute in other ways.”
“Even me?” He asked.
“Aye. Even you.”
The boy grinned, but there was no humor in the expression.
“So you know where I’m going,” he said.
The driver said nothing.“Don’t you,” he insisted anyway.
“You’re persistent, kid, I’ll give ya’ that.”
“I don’t want that, I want to know where you’re taking me.”
The driver said nothing, and they fell again to silence. The roads outside had become barren of people or infrastructure. For as far as he could see out to any side through the speeder’s viewports, nothing but the wastes stretched out to meet jagged horizon lines in the distance. Wherever they were taking him, it was remote.
“It’s goin’ get harder before it gets easier, kid,” the driver said into his thoughts, their voice sounding strange.
“I can tell you that much. Persistence will pay off.”
“Harder?”
“You’ve gotta be tough,” they said.
“Think you can do that?”
“Harder?”
“You’ve gotta be tough,” they said.
“Think you can do that?”
“Tough how?” The boy asked.
“Not for me to say. You’ll see before long.”
“But—”
“But you push through that hard stuff and, frack, you may have it better than just about anyone else on this forsaken rock. They’re givin’ you an opportunity, Zynt’Ek. Guess it’s up to you what to do with that.”
“What kind of opportunity?” The boy asked, leaning forward in his seat.
“What kind of opportunity?” The boy asked, leaning forward in his seat.
“The opportunity to make something of yourself, kid. Maybe even get out’a this place, maybe dump this hell-rock, choose your own future. That kind’a opportunity.”
The boy reached up and clutched at the serial tag stapled into his ear.
“What would you do if you could choose your own future?” The boy asked.
“Would you drive a shuttle-taxi?”
The driver scoffed, then cleared his throat. “I’d go somewhere safe. Take my brood. Wouldn’t need to get picky, just somewhere safe would do.”
The driver glanced back over their shoulder again.
“What about you?”
The boy said nothing. “Anywhere in the galaxy, any future you want, yours.”
The boy said nothing.“What’d ya pick?”
The boy considered.
“The Chordatan government follows a King, right?” He asked.
“Well, Regent currently, but yes, theoretically.”
“Then I’d want to be a King,” he said.
“A King who takes care of people. A good King.”
The driver was silent for a while, then chuckled, but there was no humor in the noise.
“You know what? I actually believe you, kid.”
“That’s cuz I mean it.”
Rising up from the desert horizon like a broken bone, and rapidly approaching, the boy caught sight of a large, industrial looking building, camouflaged by large deposits of black and porous igneous rock.
“What’s your name, kid?” Asked the driver as they started to slow.
“Don’t have one.” He said.
“No?”
“No?”
“No. My parents died before my name day. Now, even though I’m almost eight, all I’ve got is this number.”
He clutched at the ear tag with delicate fingers. “Not your number,” they said.
“That’s not who you are.”
“My hatchling crèche?”
“Sure, what’d they call you?”
The boy grimaced. It felt like ages since he’d heard anyone call him this.
“Caedes,” he said.
“They called me Caedes.”
“Well then, Caedes,” the driver said and pulled the taxi to a stop.
“May the Force be with you, and long may you reign.”
