The Long Black (The Black Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  THE LONG BLACK

  J. M. ANJEWIERDEN

  ©2017 Jared Michael Anjewierden

  All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by CJMA Press, Salt Lake City, UT.

  Cover art from SelfPubBookCovers.com/Daniela

  Editing by Christina Anjewierden

  First Edition

  FOR CHRISSY

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 01

  Chapter 02

  Chapter 03

  Chapter 04

  Chapter 05

  Chapter 06

  Chapter 07

  Chapter 08

  Chapter 09

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  PART 1 THE DEEP BLACK

  CHAPTER 01

  Many of my colleagues point to the loss of Sol as the catalyst for the descent of so many worlds into barbarism and cruelty. One only need to look to the history of the planet Hillman, and its graveyards masquerading as mines, to put that notion to rest.

  - Professor Alfred Sagendorf, Royal University of Ena, Albion, Parlon System.

  THE GROANING OF the corn stalks under their own weight was almost audible to Morgan. She could understand how they felt. The plants had not evolved to survive under twice standard gravity. Then again, neither had little girls.

  Heavy gravity or no, Earth people had to eat Earth food, or near enough. Corn was one of the few crops that could grow at all in the alien soil of the planet Hillman, so corn it was.

  One necessary thing lead to another, unintended consequences piled up, and here was Morgan, slaving away in the muggy summer air. There was no sun overhead, just the pale light that diffused through the thick cloud cover. For a close-orbiting planet like Hillman, those clouds made the difference between bursting into flames and tolerably hot. For some values of tolerable, at any rate.

  Despite the oppressive heat, everyone kept their thick padded coveralls on. It was better to suffer the heat than get innumerable cuts from the sharp leaves of the corn. They still got cuts on their hands, of course. The children too young to work trudged back and forth along the rows bringing water to the workers. They were wearing little more than shoes and worn out coveralls cut into shorts. Many things were lacking on Hillman, but space outside the towns wasn’t one of them, so the corn rows were widely separated. Not for the littles’ sake, of course, but that of the guards, who had removed their shirts as they walked up and down the fields.

  For once Morgan wasn’t annoyed that despite ‘becoming a woman,’ as her momma put it, she hadn’t developed enough to need a bandeau under her coveralls. She didn’t want to imagine how much hotter that made the other women. Of course this also meant she’d have to leave it completely on once they headed back to town. By then the sun would have set, so it shouldn’t be unbearable.

  Presently, Morgan was trudging along behind the men sticking aluminum poles into the hard soil. Her job, as well as the job of all the boys and girls not yet full adults, was to tie the stalks to the poles. It was slightly more difficult than it sounded. She had to ensure that the weight of the stalk didn’t tear the knot loose, nor lie in such a way that it would turn the tie into a dull saw blade.

  It was boring, repetitive, and tedious. In other words, it was heaven compared to her normal duties.

  All children twelve and older – by the Hillman local year – were expected to work. For the majority, this meant a year being taught how to maintain the mining equipment and portable generators. After that, they spent eight years of scrambling around the access tunnels on hands and knees.

  Those that survived were married and then assigned a job. For almost all of the men, this meant working the main shafts. Women ended up in the bakeries, factories, and other support jobs. At least, when they didn’t have small children to care for.

  “Look alive there,” a guard said, prodding Morgan with one end of his heavy baton. It was one of the guards that worked Morgan’s shift in shaft 3B. Six years in the shaft and she’d never learned his name. Officer Thirty-Four was all she ever called him to his face. ‘Tin-Badged Tyrant’ was how she always thought of him. She was hardly unique in thinking of the ‘Tinnys’ that way. Looking them in the eye tended to be taken as a challenge, so Morgan didn’t look up as she finished on her current stalk.

  This also meant most people learned to recognize the different guards by their stature and build, more than their faces, especially in the mines where everyone wore helmets. Right now what stood out most about Thirty-Four was the fact that his arms and chest were completely free of scars.

  When she was little, she’d heard all the stories of the voracious predators that lived beyond the walls of Pari Passu and the other towns of the region, though she had yet to see one. Every time they came out to the fields, the town’s ‘Voice of the Comradery’ would show them a holo of them, great ravening beasts with long teeth and longer claws. She then reminded the workers to be diligent and alert so they could finish work as quickly as possible and return to the safety of town. But more than that, she also went on and on about all the risks and dangers the brave guards took keeping their comrades safe, and how everyone was equal but extra risks required extra support.

  The first time Morgan had come out to carry water, a year or so before starting in the mines, she’d been relieved that the guards were there. Then she noticed how they watched the people, rather than the edges of the field where it backed up against the thick forest.

  She asked Daddy who the guards were watching, the workers or the animals. ‘Yes,’ was the only answer he gave, but Daddy was odd like that sometimes.

  “You can go faster than that,” Thirty-Four prodded her again in the ribs, hard enough this time that it hurt. Morgan turned and glared at him for a moment, careful to look at his mouth rather than his eyes, before moving on to the next corn stalk. He grunted at her, almost a growl. “Am I supposed to be scared? What your father does doesn’t make any difference for you. A spoiled child like you needs to remember that you’re no better than anyone else.”

  Tinnys hardly needed an excuse to come down hard on the workers, especially the mere tunnel rats, but Thirty-Four had taken a particular dislike to Morgan. She didn’t think she had caused it in any way, especially since it had started almost the moment they met. No, he obviously had a problem with her daddy. Whatever it was, he was taking it out on her.

  Her mood somewhat soured Morgan grimaced and got back to work. There was no way to know how much longer they would be out here, with neither the progress of the sun to watch or something as basic as clocks, but there was undoubtedly more ahead of her than behind.

  ***

  Thankfully the rest of the work went without incident. There hadn’t even been any animal sightings. The lot of them stumbled and staggered back towards town, the guards making up the fore and rear of the ragged column, while the strongest men carefully carried the exhausted children.

  At least their surroundings were moderately pleasant. To the north and south were the massive forests. Daddy had told Morgan that the trees had originated on Earth, introduced some three centuries before and aggressively supported with new imports up until contact had been lost with Sol. They were hearty oaks and pines for the most part,
trees that were tough enough to push for the sky despite the gravity. Without any real competition or diseases, they had grown quickly, to the point that timber was now the planet’s only export that wasn’t tied to the mines. Hillman wood was apparently highly prized for its dense, durable nature.

  The path was only marked with metal stakes painted white every few meters. Keeping it cleared was wasted effort as the path, along with the entirety of the plains below, was carpeted with the native analog of grass. It was closer to a moss than anything, a soft spongy plant that spread out like a two centimeter carpet across everything, rocks and dirt alike.

  At the moment it was seed season and you couldn’t go barefoot on it, thanks to the spikey winged spores the moss produced. But the rest of the year it was quite comfortable for walking and lying on. There wasn’t much in the way of insect life on Hillman, at least not of any noticeable size. The few there were seemed to consider humans inedible, thankfully.

  About a kilometer out from the town wall they passed under one of the wide supports for the elevated train tracks, connecting Pari Passu to the central shuttle launching facility. Craning her neck, Morgan followed the magnetic rails until they disappeared from sight at the base of the mountain. She liked watching the trains loaded with ore whirr past, a reminder that they weren’t completely cut off from the rest of the universe.

  He didn’t talk about it much, but Morgan knew that Daddy had helped design and build the rails, modified from the systems used on friendlier planets. He was the only one in the town that had worked on the project. Now he repaired the equipment in the factories while the rest of the designers and engineers lived in the capital or, if they were really important, the space station above it.

  The miners didn’t talk to him much, but that just meant he had more time to talk with Morgan. He told her all kinds of things the miners didn’t even guess at. His hours were longer than anyone’s, the backlog of machines no one else knew how to fix never ending. In two days he’d even head up to the station to work on something or other, and he wouldn’t be back for at least a week. Six whole days with no stories, no impromptu lessons about fixing things, Morgan frowned at the thought.

  “You know we all hate it, right?” a feminine voice said from right behind Morgan.

  Morgan lurched forward, startled, and then turned to glare at the speaker.

  “Jane. I didn’t see you there.”

  Jane was another of the workers on Morgan’s shift, a year older or so, and probably the tallest tunnel rat on the whole planet, around 150 centimeters. She was also just about the only friend Morgan had.

  “Yep. Too busy staring at the prison gate.”

  Morgan’s brow furrowed.

  “Huh?”

  “Never heard it called that?”

  Morgan shook her head.

  “Before that thing, freighters had to land shuttles up here.”

  “And?”

  “And I have a brother out there.” She gestured heavenward in a general way. “He escaped on one of those shuttles. A lot of people did. They took that from us.”

  “I. . . “

  Jane cut her off with another wave of her hand, “Oh, people don’t blame him. He’s down here suffering with us, isn’t he? But every time we see that or hear it go by it’s a reminder that we can’t escape.”

  “No one talks about it.”

  “Why bother? ‘Hey kids? There used to be a way out of here, but it’s gone now. So sad.’”

  “You knew.”

  “Mom talks about my brother sometimes.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  Jane shrugged. “It was before I was born. I’m glad he got out, I guess. Makes me hate them more though.”

  “The Tinnys?”

  “Well, sure, but everyone else up there too.” She pitched her voice lower, though she had already been speaking quietly. “Comrade Father and the ‘essential workers.’”

  A heavy hand fell on Morgan’s shoulder, its twin on Jane’s shoulder a moment later.

  “Stop gossiping and pick up the pace.” It was Thirty-Four again, his deep voice practically growling.

  The pair muttered the appropriate half-hearted agreements and started walking again, feeling lucky that he hadn’t overheard what they were talking about. As he stalked off, Thirty-Four glared at Morgan before leering at Jane. Jane just turned her head and ignored him, but Morgan could see her face heat up, even in the dim light of dusk. Jane was so pale she was almost translucent and even a hint of a blush stood out markedly. Morgan did not have that problem with her decidedly duskier complexion.

  As they trudged on, Jane zipped back up the top of her coverall, clasping her hands together so the too-long sleeves met, leaving only her neck and head visible.

  It was just as well they had stopped talking, as it wasn’t too long before they passed the oldest mine shaft on the planet. Everyone, Tinnys included, didn’t want to linger too long there. The pace picked up noticeably.

  The town’s wall had been constructed with the rocks pulled from that mine in the first hardscrabble days, a ten meter tall construction of native stone and mortar. It was ugly, all odd angles and barely fit together rocks. Most people could forget where it had come from, or at least pretend they did, but it was harder to ignore when passing the actual mine. This mine, alone among all the shafts, had its own wall, fifteen meters tall and topped with razor wire.

  It hadn’t been a very productive or efficient mine, as the colonists essentially made their methods up as they went, lacking any training or experience in mining. Fortunately the planet had enough heavy and rare metals to keep the colony supplied via trade until it could get its feet under it. In that capacity the mine had literally saved the utopian colony that had fled Earth in the early days of the jump gates. Thanks to the quirks of space travel, it had actually been quicker to use a jump gate to come to Hillman than to make a round trip to Sol’s asteroid belt. There were plenty of metals on Hillman usually only found in large quantities on asteroids.

  History wasn’t something The Voice encouraged anyone to learn or think about, however, so most of the town didn’t know anything about it. No, everyone avoided Shaft One because of what it was currently used for.

  Simply put, the mines of Hillman were dangerous at the best of times, and that was never truer than for that first haphazard shaft. It was too risky for normal workers, so it had been converted into a prison, with all of the scattered towns of Hillman sending their hardened criminals there to serve their sentences. ‘Lengthy’ was the best way to describe those sentences, but also the worst. Good behavior and above-quota production reduced these sentences, something even the most anti-social of prisoner was eager to do in a mine with such a high accident rate.

  The planet as a whole had some millions of inhabitants, but there were no cities, no urban sprawls. People in a town knew almost everyone else, at least by reputation, and everyone knew someone who had ended up in S1. No one, in Pari Passu at least, knew anyone who had made it back out.

  Just inside the gate was the large commissary where the town took its meals. Like almost all of the buildings, it was square with a flat roof. No windows, no frills, just poured concrete and metal doors with a row of chimneys along the back wall for the ovens.

  As the long group of workers filed into the building the familiar smell of soup washed over Morgan. She smiled and breathed in deeply. This is where Momma worked, and the smell always reminded Morgan of her.

  Jane smiled and waved goodbye as she darted off toward a group of tunnel rats loudly chatting at one of the closer tables. Her shift in the mine started four hours after Morgan’s, so she wasn’t in as much of a rush. Morgan just wanted to get some food and get home to her bed.

  As small as the town was the mines were worked 28/6, all forty weeks of the year. There wasn’t any sense of day or night in the mine of course, but even on the surface the difference between night and day was much less pronounced.

  Morgan had never seen it, but Hi
llman had a massive moon that was just shy of being a twin planet. It was an airless white rock reflecting enough light onto Hillman to make the night only marginally dimmer than the already dim day.

  The line moved forward quickly, easily accomplished when everyone got the same food in the same amounts.

  Momma was at the end of the counter today, handing out bread.

  “Well, there you are Morgan. How did working the fields go?”

  Morgan shrugged. There wasn’t exactly time for a conversation, after all.

  Momma smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “A change of pace, at least.” Her voice got more serious as she steadily ignored the other worker gesturing towards the line of people. “Your father had to go fix something in ore processing. I don’t think he’ll be home before morning.

  Morgan’s heart sank. It wasn’t just that she wouldn’t see Daddy until after her shift in the mines. This meant that there was no one at home. And that meant. . .

  “. . .You’ll just need to stay there until I get out of here.”

  “It’s summer time. It’ll be roasting in there.” Morgan tried to keep her tone level, but her voice rose in pitch in spite of her efforts.

  “Morgan.”

  “I’ll be careful. No one will know I’m there.”

  “No.”

  Morgan opened her mouth to argue, and then closed it again.

  “Yes, Momma.”

  “We’ve had this talk. We can’t have it again now. You can’t act like you’re a little girl anymore.” Each point was emphasized with a wave of the loaf of bread momma held.

  Out of the corner of her eye Morgan could see one of the Tinnys starting to walk over, probably wondering why the line wasn’t moving. Hurriedly she snatched the bread from Momma’s hand and walked off towards an empty table.

  “Bye, Momma,” she said quietly, her voice low.

  If she had been asked at that point, Morgan wouldn’t have been able to name a single good thing about growing up. It was so completely not worth it in her opinion. She couldn’t be home alone, she had to be more careful where she went and who was around her, and on and on.