Antares Demir
Character
The squat, square building at the center of the village was all things to the village. Every seventh day, it hosted a bazaar for two neighboring villages and its own, where the peasants traded and bartered. Most nights, it was a canteen where miners gathered after their shifts and to exchange tools with the next shift. All-too-frequently, it was a morgue and then a church to mourn the loss of their comrades, most recently holding the crushed bodies of the seven people killed during the collapse, then a joint memorial for them. Six miners. Two engineers. A surveyor. A water girl.
Andromeda Demir
. The memory caused Antares Demir to hesitate in the doorway. The cavernous building was full up, standing room only. Just like it had been that terrible day. He thought he might never be able to enter the building without thinking of her again. His little sister, in one of two caskets that had been closed to protect the survivors from the horrors of seeing the mangled bodies within.
"'Scuse me," a man gruffed behind Antares, and, muttering a quick apology, he quickly stepped in to avoid blocking the door, moving toward the bar, currently disused. He stood leaning against it in his dirty miner's clothes, his body aching from another twelve hour shift down below. He wanted to sit down -- really, he wanted to lie down with either a bottle or a blonde, but there didn't seem much opportunity at the moment, and a chair would have made a fine alternative, but they were all full. So he leaned.
"What's it all about?"
Antares glanced to his left where his mate Tiny had just come to stand beside him, folding his arms and puffing out his chest. Tiny by name and Tiny by nature, the man only came up to Ares' shoulder. What he lacked in height he made up for in power, though, and he was one the strongest people Ares knew. He cleared his throat, spit a mouthful of coal dust into the nearest spittoon, and grunted: "Mattis' and his petition. Don't know why we all need to gather to hear The City tell us to fuck ourselves. Waste of time."
"Maybe they won't," Tiny said, though he didn't seem convinced.
Antares sighed inwardly and said, without conviction, "Maybe."
Mattis was an older man, the former chief of the mine. He had retired after too many burns and scrapes and collapses had left him crippled. His rations from The City had stopped, but not the quota demands. The village somehow made up the difference in both. In the interim, to make himself useful, Mattis served as a sort of unofficial elder and representative of the village to its neighbors and The City. He hobbled onto the makeshift dais, an empty wooden crate turned upside down, with the aid of a cane and a younger man. The crowd fell silent; there was no sound system in the village, so Mattis had to raise his frail voice. "Friends," he called. "I have heard back on my letter to The City. And I -- well maybe I should just read it out to you." He drew a piece of flimsiplast from his pocket and cleared his throat before, with an apologetic smile, paused to pull his broken spectacles on.
"Mr. Mattis," he began. "We were most disheartened to hear of the mining accident in Mine 01138-Aurek. Please inform the families impacted by this tragedy of our condolences. We considered your request for a relaxation of the production quotas owing to the deaths of several of your personnel carefully and it is our decision to deny this request. The requirements of these materials is simply too urgent and, we note, five young people in the vicinity of Mine 00138-Aurek are within two years of reaching the age of majority and should, therefore, be physically able to take shifts in the mine to meet requirements. We also note that two of those killed in the accident were non-productive and, therefore, no additional consideration is given."
The crowd, which had been seething throughout the letter from almost the beginning, openly jeered at this last sentence.
Antares and Tiny shared a look. "Fuck ourselves," they said in unison, a grim humor to their words.
"Friends!" called Mattis, pleading for silence with the crowd of miners and their families. "Please, there's more. Where was I -- oh yes, here. 'In order to ensure continuing production quotas are met, as well as to reassure the workers of Mine 001138-Aurek of the City's support, a contingent of the Guard will be coming north to the area. We trust that you will welcome them dutifully as any good citizen would. Kind regards, etc. etc.'"
Mattis folded the note and tucked it back into his pocket as murmurs swept through the audience. "They're coming here?" one woman called from near the front of the seats.
That never ended well.
"Send 'em another letter and tell 'em to kick rocks," a man joked, a few rows back from the woman. The crowd tittered nervously.
"They'll kill us!" a familiar voice shouted, and it wasn't until the heads swiveled toward Antares that he realized that it had been him shouting it, voice raw with rage. The thought that had been festering for days, for months, for years. "They're coming here to kill us," he repeated loudly.
"Now, wait a minute," Mattis said. Mattis, always eminently reasonable. Mattis, who had given his life to the mine, to the City. Mattis, who had every reason to hate them as much as Antares did. More. Three sons out of five, dead in the mine. "Don't say anything you'll regret, Demir."
His body aching in protest, Antares hauled himself onto the bar he had just been leaning on. His heart hammered in his chest. "They're coming here," he said again. "To kill us. Whether it's by working us to death in dangerous mines without proper safety equipment, or to shoot us dead with their rifles, they will kill us if we don't fight back." At this, a handful of people shouted "Yes!", and a dozen faces nodded reluctantly. He saw his mother, on the outskirts of the room opposite, face white with fear and grief. He avoided making eye contact with her. "How many more of our people are we going to sacrifice for their greed?" Antares went on.
"No more," said someone quietly, a few rows away from where Antares now stood. The crowd was shifting toward him, some people rising from their chairs.
"How many?" Antares roared, grief and rage and frustration causing his voice to break.
"No more!" this time the answer was shouted, not just by the man who had originally said it, but a handful of others.
"No more," Antares agreed. His flesh crawled with the excitement of the moment. "No more!"
It became a chant, a mantra, growing with intensity. Mattis, from his little crate, seemed dwarfed, and he shook his head, but not in anger. How many boys had he seen, full of fire and fury, only to be filled with bullets and holes by the City? He clambered down, limped his way through the crowd, and extended a hand to Antares. Reluctantly, Antares hauled him up, placing him on the bar next to him, and the old man raised his hand.
The chant slowed, then stopped.
"They are sending the Guard," Mattis reminded them, his voice dull and heavy. "How can we stand against them?"
"It's a six day march from the City," Tiny called. "We've never had notice before."
"We'll build barricades," another man shouted.
"Or spikes!" called a boy, no more than twelve summers old.
"We'll do both of those things," Antares announced. "And more. The engineer, spirits rest him, had explosives. I know some people who know how to use them. We've got a few rifles. And we'll have the element of surprise."
He had been part of Rising for years. What had started as a social club of angry peasants had grown, in recent months, to bold but mostly ineffectual attacks on The City's forces. A patrol attacked here, a flaming bottle thrown there. But Antares had been part of a few successful raids. Poorly guarded outposts had contained some weapons and supplies. They were hidden in an exhausted mine shaft now, waiting. Waiting for the opportune moment.
But going against The City was a dangerous game. When someone was caught and or killed, then identified, the reprisals were cruel. He did not wish to condemn his village to the wrath of The City. He hesitated, then his voice softened. "But I cannot speak for the village. I put it to you. I feel we would have better odds of success in familiar territory, in the village. There are places for ambush, for striking from shadows. But better odds are not sure odds. If we fail, and they can link it to the village, they will hit back and hard."
"Been hittin' us hard since 'fore you were born," a man in his mid-forties called out. "Only this time we might deserve it. Might."
Tiny thrust his fist into the air. "I say we fight. Show of hands! Fight!"
Hands rose, some -- members of Rising -- like shots into the air. Others, more reluctantly. Boys and girls in their teens, some with their parents protesting and others with their parents joining and still others whose parents were dead. Older people. Not everyone. But more than three quarters of the village gazed expectantly up at him. All had grieved the seven dead in the collapse in this tight-knit community, but most had suffered other, more personal losses.
Antares half-turned toward Mattis, expecting to have to convince him that the majority ruled. But as he did, he found Mattis gazing at him with an odd look of sadness and determination on his face. After a beat, the old man leaned heavily on his cane with one hand, and lifted the other in a four-fingered fist, jamming it into the air.
"How many more?" Antares asked the crowd.
The response was nearly deafening. louder than any accidental explosion or collapse. "No more!"
