What Kate Found in the Fringe

by Nemo West

Table of Contents, parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

part 2

The gloomy, utilitarian transport had been designed to keep cargo secure but not passengers entertained. With limited options for the long journey, personnel from the expedition’s various divisions largely segregated into their own cliques, leaving the admins somewhat orphaned. As a result, Kate and Quince often found themselves alone together, feeling out one of those eager-but-cautious friendships common to people facing a long, uncertain stint in each other’s company.

In the dim mess hall one evening, Quince pulled out a deck of cards. “Up for a game?”

Kate looked up from a lukewarm tea and shrugged. “Why not?”

Quince began shuffling and Kate pushed their empty dinner trays aside. As he riffled the deck, Quince casually asked, “So, where are you from?”

“Mars.”

“Yeah? You like it there?”

Kate shrugged. “I could take it or leave it.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Not much of a homeworld girl?”

“My homeworld’s fine. It’s just...” She suddenly caught herself. “I... like to travel.”

Quince glanced at her but chose not to pry. Instead, he called the game and dealt them each a hand. With an open table, Kate started by laying down a pair of threes.

“So, why’d you do it?” Quince asked as he dropped a seven over Kate’s threes.

“Do what?” she replied.

“Sign up for this circus.”

Kate played a nine. “I’ve never been to a first-gen world before, and this seemed like sort of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” She shrugged. “Plus, I’ve heard a gig like this really stands out on a resume.”

“I’m sure that’s what you told the recruiter,” Quince said as he played a king. “What’s the real reason?” His eyes held a playful inquisitiveness.

Kate focused her own eyes on the table. “Are you playing cards or fishing?” she asked as she scooped up the stack and started sorting it into her hand. Flattered by his curiosity, a familiar frisson tickled her pulse.

Quince shrugged and played a jack. “People with good prospects and happy childhoods don’t volunteer for expeditions to the Fringe,” he said. “Take me, for example. I’m running away from my family.”

Kate swallowed, dumbfounded to find something so specific in common with her new partner. “You are?”

He nodded and a shadow seemed to pass over him. “They want to kill me.”

Kate chuckled and played the king she’d just picked up. “I can relate.”

“No, I mean literally. If I go back home, I’ll be executed.”

The humor drained from Kate’s face. “Are you serious? Why?”

“My family lives on Absalom, one of those fire-and-brimstone evangelical colonies. They made the mistake of letting me attend college on Earth and” — he sighed — “I guess I read too many books. I became an atheist, which also makes me an apostate. As a cocky kid, I told my family. I figured Dad would yell, Mom would scream but, in the end, somehow, they’d... see me as my own man, I guess?”

A weary sadness filled his eyes. “Instead, they cut me off and reported me. A few weeks later, I got a formal notice from the Church ordering me to return to Absalom... for execution.”

Quince shrugged. “Of course, they can only execute me under their sovereign status. I’m safe under Colonial law, as long as I... never go home again.” His gaze drifted into the distance for a moment but soon snapped back. “Ever since, I’ve been crashing with college friends and working odd jobs. But nothing was really going anywhere, so” — he gestured to their surroundings — “here I am.”

“Jesus, I’m so sorry!”

“Please.” Quince raised a hand. “Leave Jesus out of this; it wasn’t his fault.”

Kate balked. “Wha—?”

A gallows smirk dimpled Quince’s cheek.

“Wow.” Kate shook her head, no longer certain how to interpret the moment.

“Sorry.” Quince gestured wryly to himself. “Not normal.”

“No kidding.” Kate narrowed her eyes. “So, was any of that even true?”

“Every word,” he promised, raising the Youth Corps salute for trustworthiness with a grin. Then he played a two and reset the stack. “Now it’s your turn. Why are you really here?”

Kate blushed unexpectedly at his grin. “I already told you.” She played a pair of threes again. “This will look great on a resume.”

Quince drummed lanky fingers on his chin before laying down a four. “This isn’t like some weekend backpacking trip, you know. We’re going to spend a year out in the most dangerous part of Colonial space. That’s not the kind of thing people sign up for on a whim.” He arched his brow. “So, what are you hoping to get out of it?”

“Are you always this nosey?” Kate asked as she played a five.

He shrugged and dropped an eight onto the stack. “You say nosey, I say curious.”

She allowed a patient grin to dimple her cheek as she played a nine. “That just sounds like a different way to skin the same cat.”

“Maybe.” He played a ten and discarded the stack. “Open table to you. And you still didn’t answer the question.”

“What do I hope to get out of this?” Kate sighed. “I guess I’d have to say... clarity.”

“Clarity? That’s one I haven’t heard before. Care to elaborate?”

“No. I answered the question. Now it’s time to turn things around.” She dropped a queen onto the open table. “Answer your own question: what do you hope to get out of this?”

“Me?” He blinked. “You want to know about me?”

“Does it feel nosey?” Kate smirked. “Or just curious?”

Quince blushed slightly before answering, “Well, in the spirit of cryptic one-word answers to big exploratory questions, I think I’ll go with” — he paused to pick up Kate’s queen — “hope.”

“Hope? You hope to get hope out of this?” She raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

“Well, Kate, we’re going to be working together for the next year. I think a little mystery gives us something to look forward to as we get to know each other.”

“It does, huh?”

A grin tugged the corner of his mouth. “Open table to you.”

* * *

The excitement of finally reaching their destination dulled to excruciating monotony during a disembarkation that unexpectedly stretched across three days. Docking facilities at the colony’s primary settlement, Cinder Pointe, proved inadequate. The tetracrete landing pad was too small for industrial shuttles; everything needed to set down on open ground. However, two weeks of rainstorms had turned the nearest flatland into a muddy swamp that mired heavy equipment in knee-deep muck. Landfall became a grueling chore.

When Kate’s shuttle doors opened on the third day, the tang of an ozone-rich atmosphere stung Kate’s throat, the first fresh air she’d tasted in weeks. Squinting in afternoon glare, she struggled to balance her way across a precarious network of planks threaded from the landing site to dry ground in the nearby hills.

Among the last crew to arrive, she found every board slick with greasy mud from hundreds of overlapping footprints. In many places, the path was indistinguishable from the mottle-green morass beneath it.

Beyond where the star Acturus seared an orange hole through the sky, the clouds held the wan color of a fading bruise. Ribbons of dark cumulus dribbled precipitation that never quite thickened to drizzle but never quite faded to mist. Kate was damp, mud-splattered, and trying not to let her sour mood metastasize into regret by the time she and Quince finally trooped into the administrative tent. Around them the expedition’s sprawling camp churned with activity. Dripping camels pulled carts while sullen figures in ponchos hoisted gear.

After waiting almost an hour, Kate and Quince finally reconnected with their boss for the next year, Patricia Gelson. They hadn’t seen her since launch, and the three-day ordeal of landing and deployment had clearly taken a toll on her. “Oh, the admins,” she muttered as if discovering a forgotten stack of books right after alphabetizing her library. She rolled her shoulders, cracked her neck, and sighed wearily. “Follow me.”

Bedraggled, sunken-eyed, and covered to her waist in still-wet mud, Patricia led her charges through a maze of caterpillar-shaped tents. She walked with the disoriented sway of a new mother after weeks of infant-induced sleep deprivation. “A month to get sorted. Then we head for the ore deposit,” she said. “During that month, you will be in this camp, or at that settlement.” She nodded to Cinder Pointe, a small cluster of squat pre-fab buildings atop a nearby bluff. “No exceptions. You wander off and disappear out there” — she gestured toward the planet’s uninhabited wilderness — “no one will come looking for your corpse.”

Beyond the hulking silhouette of the day’s last shuttle down on the flatlands, Kate could see a forest of thick foliage wrapped over the surrounding hills. Trees with scraggly scarecrow limbs loomed over dense purple-green undergrowth. The terraformed biomass undulated on evening breezes beneath austere alien twilight.

After leaving her home on crowded, metropolitan Mars for college, Kate had skipped around several worlds, sight-seeing, volunteering, freelancing; anything that would get her on her way to someplace else. But this was her first time setting foot on a planet that had only just met humanity.

To her surprise, she felt an odd kinship with those early space explorers she’d learned about in history classes, the ones who’d gambled their lives venturing out from beneath the skirts of Mother Earth to colonize the first new worlds. Although many centuries had passed since their time, Kate could comprehend some measure of the courage they’d required as she now gazed over the horizon of a vast, empty planet. As if punctuating her thoughts, whiskers of lightning flickered overhead, provoking a rumble of distant thunder.

Patricia glanced toward the darkening sky. “This damn overcast is making everything take even longer. Our solar power banks can’t charge quickly enough to match our draw, so we have to ration power and limit the trucks and lifters to two hours of use per day.” She shook her head. “Thank God for the camels.”

Soon afterward, she pulled open a rain-slick tent and waved Kate and Quince inside. “These are your quarters,” Patricia said, indicating a cramped, damp, and dim interior. “Your cots are in the back. Make yourselves comfortable, but no charging of any personal devices until our power stabilizes. If your luggage isn’t here yet, you’re just going to have to wait on it. Nothing is happening very quickly right now I’m afraid.” She turned aside to read a batch of incoming messages on her palm-sized omni-device, known as a Digit.

“Any chance we could get some food?” Kate asked. “We haven’t eaten since lunch.”

Patricia half-glanced in Kate’s direction. “The mess tent is on the west side of camp. Or you could head up to Cinder Pointe. The accommodations are meagre, but they have a cantina that runs on the local geothermal power grid and could at least offer you a hot meal.” She shrugged and headed toward the door. “Whatever you do, just be ready to start work at dawn tomorrow. We’ve got a lot to do.” Then she pushed back out into the wet evening gloom.

* * *

While Quince and Kate waited for their meals, rain pattered the cantina’s tin roof. Wine-colored tapestries with swirling patterns covered the corrugated metal walls. Dim café lights crisscrossed the ceiling, their incandescent amber hovering above huddled aluminum tables. A few neon beverage signs overlooked the room, implausible emissaries of civilization on this remote frontier. Twenty years of grease and steam had permeated every surface, leaving a faint funk of stale spices lingering beneath the aroma of fresh-roasted zuka squash. Only a low counter separated the grill from the dining room, allowing the kitchen’s muggy heat to fill the air like a cloying relative.

When their food arrived, a voice with a clipped accent said, “Hope you like that crap.” Kate and Quince turned to find one of the locals grinning at them from a nearby table. He wore a slate-gray field suit and had a face like a shark: bullet-shaped features and a mouth overfilled with teeth. “Because while you’re here, that’s almost all you’re going to get.”

“What do you mean?” Kate asked.

The man gestured toward their plates of steaming squash. “That zuka took to the soil here like mad. Choked out most of the other food crops in the terraforming bundle.” He shrugged. “So, on Oberon, this is what we eat.” He offered a sardonic grin. “Mahlzeit.”

Kate regarded the man for a moment before offering an ambivalent, “Danke gleichfalls.”

The man cocked an eyebrow. “Sprechen Sie deutsch?”

“Ein bißchen.”

A surprised grin revealed even more teeth. “A little, huh?” He raised an eyebrow. “Where’d you pick it up?”

“A tour with the Blue Star Service Corps on Neu Bremen, in the Cygnus system.”

“A tour with Blue Star.” The man rubbed his chin and eyed Kate like a trinket in a thrift store. “Maybe you’ll do all right on Oberon,” he finally decided. Then he leaned forward and motioned her closer with a finger. “But while you’re here, just remember one thing.”

“What’s that?” Kate asked.

“Remember who your friends are,” the man replied as if sharing a secret.

Kate’s brow furrowed. “And who are our friends?”

Thumping his own chest, the man declared, “Janco is your friend.” He tapped the corporate badge on his shoulder. “Raumstrasse is your friend.” Then he pointed out the window toward the alien wilderness, pitch black now in the night. “Whatever you find out there, just remember that.”

Quince caught Kate’s eye and they exchanged a brief, puzzled glance. She turned back to Janco. “Why?” she asked. “What are we going to find out there?”

“You’re going to find gold,” Janco replied with a canny grin. “Make us all rich! That’s why Raumstrasse invited Terra Novus here.”

“And you’re worried we’ll forget who our friends are if we find gold?” Quince asked.

Janco’s grin wilted. “It’s my job to worry.”

Quince shrugged. “What’s there to worry about? Raumstrasse and Terra Novus have a contract, some kind of profit-sharing agreement. If Terra Novus finds gold here, Raumstrasse and the settlers get a percentage.”

Janco focused a sharp gaze on Quince. “Whatever they told you back in the Core, you learn pretty quick things are different out here in the Fringe.”

“How so?” Kate asked.

Janco’s expression darkened. “Pirates, slavers, smugglers — all the boogeymen you hear about lurking in the Beyond — they’re all real, and they cross the frontier all the time.” His gaze flickered briefly toward the sky and Kate noticed genuine apprehension in his eyes. “Could pop in at any moment. Very little warning. Be gone long before any Colonial troops can intervene.

“But not all pirates come in gunships.” Janco narrowed his eyes. “Raumstrasse is a small settlement company; we keep frontier colonies safe. Terra Novus is a big mining company that makes more in a week than we do in a year. And clever little bureaucrats know how to lie on reports, hide data, wait for colonies to go bankrupt and then jump claims, stealing fortunes that should belong to someone else.

“So Raumstrasse men have to be ready.” Janco shifted in his seat, revealing a sidearm slung beneath his blazer. “We have to take care of the worlds that sign up for our protection, make sure they get what’s rightfully theirs.” He leaned forward. “Contracts written by corporations back in the Core matter only if men like us in the Fringe make sure of it.”

Kate suddenly noticed several other men in Raumstrasse gray nearby following Janco’s conversation attentively. Many of them had ugly, visible scars, rarities in an age of cosmetic nanosurgery, and testament to both the dangers and technological crudeness of life on the frontier. Their stares held an intensity that reminded Kate of wolves she’d seen in a nature documentary, circling their prey with fixed, hungry malevolence. They stood out from the local homesteaders in the cantina who wore patched coveralls, faded sun caps and stares of practiced apathy.

“We’re really just guests here,” Kate said with the caution of a chess player maneuvering out of check. “This is your world, so” — she paused to glance around the room — “we should remember who our friends are.”

Janco’s expression changed from scrutiny to satisfaction so swiftly Kate felt as if she must have just passed some sort of test, or perhaps an initiation. “Du bist bei uns,” Janco said with a toothy smile. “Good. Good.” Then he winked. “Welcome to Oberon.”

* * *

Proceed to part 3...

Copyright © 2021 by Nemo West

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