Breaker's World Lit RPG Novel - Chapter 1

"Stop it." A flash of anger crossed his mother's usually passive, beaten features. "Stop that talk. You're not your father."
You mean, you hope I'm not. Jax bit back the harsh reply and felt a knot growing in his empty stomach.
"Mom, we can't live like this." He waved his hand to encompass the dingy confines of their bare, single compartment living space inside the hulking wreck of Absalom.
300 years ago, Absalom was a proud starship, plying the starry night in some faraway solar system, guarding the perimeter of an affluent empire. Jax didn't know that and didn't even know such a place existed. As far as he knew, the only battle the hulk had fought was the one against the rust and mold creeping up the walls of their home – and it was losing.
"You go hunting, go deeper, and you'll die."
The 17-year-old's work-hardened shoulders tensed. "I'm not a kid anymore. I can handle exploring a few old hulks."
"That's exactly what your father said. And he was stronger than you," her eyes flashed again, this time with both anger and sadness, "smarter than you, too. He was…" Her words trailed off into painful memory.
He wanted to fill the void between them with something kind, some shared memory of happiness, but his own surge of emotion betrayed him. Dad, picking me up. Dad playing Core Hunters with me.
He cleared his throat, told himself to harden up. His dad's voice rang in his memory, Breakers don't cry.
As if hearing the same voice, his mother visibly worked to shut down her own emotions, reaching instead for her work harness and what certainty the servitude of breaking could provide.
Knowing his mother was also hungry yet preparing to head out for another torturous day of back-breaking labor, numbly facing the danger of cutting, blasting, and melting hazardously unstable spaceships to scrap for nothing more than meager rations, he felt a surge of anger. It's not fair. Knowing he was expected to do the same, his anger gained heat.
"There's more than one kind of death, mom."
She paused near the door, trying to settle her heavy harness across her wiry but undersized shoulders. He thought she would recite the tired maxim Breakers lived by, live together, break together, die together; Breakers never quit. Instead, she said, "And your father found his, didn't he? Lucky bastard."
His mouth fell open at her vitriol. But she had her crew face on now and was done being vulnerable.
"Get your harness. Let's go earn ours the honest way."
In near-darkness, they deftly worked their way through the tangled warren that was Absalom's stripped-out interior, years of routine making navigating the complicated and hazardous path an unconscious task. Breaking ships transformed the carefully engineered masterpieces into something entirely different as crews, typically comprising extended family members, worked together at a feverish pace to find and extract whatever systems and scrap were most valuable.
Over the many generations, since Breaker's World was founded, families had developed their own techniques and secrets of how to reach the valuable components first, or died from lack of ingenuity. The planet's currency was scrap, as all food had to be imported from off-world, with the Managers trading basic human necessity to the breakers on whatever terms they saw fit.
"Careful." His mother jerked her head toward a bulkhead that was hanging at a slightly different angle than before.
At 40 years of age, with a lifetime of navigating hulks, Lei had developed an innate understanding of how structures became dangerously unstable. He shivered subconsciously and gave the collapsing, multi-ton wall a wider berth than yesterday. The haphazard way in which breakers competitively dismantled the ships made them increasingly dangerous to navigate until, eventually, the dangers outweighed any obvious value left, and everyone moved on to another ship.
His mind still churned on their earlier conversation, and he tried again. "One core could get us out of here, you know that."
She sighed, stepping from a slanted metal section to sand, looking at the pre-dawn light ahead instead of him. "Stop it. They're all gone. Hunters get them now." They emerged into the dust-filled haze outside, and she quickened her pace to reach another pair of figures. Len was a burly, jovial man with a bristling beard. He turned to greet them with a smile.
"Ah, our welders finally woke up!" He gave his sister a warm shoulder squeeze. "Hey, Lei."
As the crew began the half-mile trek to their current project, the scout ship Inferno Rising, Jax's cousin Fen hung back and spoke in low tones. "What’d she say?”
“What you said she would,” Jax admitted. “You?”
Fen looked at the back of Len’s head. “I didn’t bother. Only solution he’ll ever see is a strong crew.”
Jax’s empty belly twisted, and his mood along with it. “Can’t be strong without food.”
Dawn was fast approaching, and a growing stream of other crews, each larger than Jax’s small family were visible, all streaming moving toward Inferno. Len looked back at the boys. “Pick it up. I got a line on fuel cells, but we got to get there first if we want to eat tonight.”
The boys obediently joined their parents, breaking into a trot to get an edge on the competition. As they passed other dilapidated hulks, Jax imagined them pressing in on the scrambling crews like the jaws of a trap. The jaws of hopeless fate.
Breakers all climbing over each other just to make it one more day.
He set his jaw and ran faster, pulling ahead of Len and Lei. What choice did they have? Breakers never quit.
--
In the distance, a single prefabricated structure towered. A well-groomed man in a sleek offworld robe walked out on the upper rampart, a cup of coffee in hand, and squinted at the armies of breakers streaming toward different hulks. Nearly hidden by the luxurious robe, between his shoulder blades, undulating ridges of a spiral-shaped device melded to his skin. Pulsating, glowing segments of alien-tech seeming to inject power into his spine and muscles. Unseen by the army of workers below, he sipped his beverage and smiled.
--
Jax’s family was the third crew to reach the hatch, their breath coming in ragged gasps as they approached Inferno. Their efforts were weakened by lack of food and the heavy equipment attached to their harnesses, but there was room for hope that the first two crews were heading for a different target within.
Waiting for his turn to enter the narrow opening, Jax spared a look left to the gaping hole that had been uncovered yesterday. Over hundreds of years, shifting sands had filled in around hulks stacked atop each other, with older wrecks becoming completely submerged over time. Yesterday, a large section of Inferno had collapsed, and while most of the attention was on the two hapless breakers who had lost their lives in the collapse, Jax could only think of one thing. Where that cavernous hole must lead.
Another ship is right under this one. Maybe one the core hunters haven’t raided yet?
A core could change everything for his family.
I have to get down there.
Uncle Len was giving out orders in a low tone, looking at a rough drawing in his hand while keeping one eye on the crew ahead of them to make sure they weren’t listening in. “When we get, in we take the first passage to the left. Second bore-cut we come to, turn right and head inward.
“Marik grant it’s still there,” Lei invoked the God of Sustenance, in a semblance of prayer.
“Jar’s good, and about as trustworthy as a finder as you can hope for,” Len reassured her. “I got it fresh off him an hour ago. It’ll be there.”
She put on her crew face and nodded, with little choice but to trust her brothers’ leadership. Finders were experienced breakers with a special knack for locating good scrap, often combining decades of experience with a SenseCore to develop superhuman abilities to find promising breaks. Their skills were so valuable that they could afford to split off from their crews and sell their abilities at a premium to others.
The crews ahead of them were just about through, and Jax’s family was next to squeeze into the narrow hatch. Other crews had now reached the hulk and waited impatiently in a growing line at the chokepoint. The extensive armor plating and thick hull of the ships made it very time-consuming to cut through the exterior, and most Breakers were at the mercy of whatever access was available.
A ripple of excitement, then a ragged cheer coursed through the line as a new crew approached.
“Crap. Yak’s here, Dad.” Fen pointed at a large figure who led a group of eight figures, all better dressed and fed than the other breakers.
About to step inside, Len glanced back and cursed. “Theo’s balls. I thought they were on Favorite Traitor. Must’ve got a line on something good here.” Yak was a massive man to begin with and a strong leader for his crew even at only 30 years of age. A year ago, his aggressive crew had lucked out, and he had found a StructureCore. The subroutines it possessed had enabled him to build an exoskeleton, a bio-molded contraption of steel and mechanical assistance that whirred and thumped gently as he strode confidently toward the ship.
The towering man skipped the line, his crew strolling along behind him as he walked right up to the side of the ship, twenty feet to Jax’s left. Radiating from a hexagonal emblem between the man’s shoulder blades, the machinery melded to his frame in intricate biomechanical webbing, allowing him to carry much larger tooling than Jax’s harness. He had taken full advantage, integrating a massive plasma cutter on his left arm and a motorized, electromagnetic claw on his right.
“Stand back, kids!” Yak’s voice was halfway between a boom and a laugh, and other crews were already abandoning Jax’s line to fall in behind Yak’s crew. Here it comes. The battery on Yak’s back must have weighed 100 Lbs. When it juiced the plasma cutter, a gout of white and blue flame over three inches long erupted toward the ship’s hull.
“Jax, let’s GO,” Lei was yelling back at him from inside, and someone bumped him impatiently from behind. He turned to hurry after his family, just catching out of the corner of his eye as the one-man-show cut a massive slash through the thick armor.
Not fair.
One core had made the man a god among them, a popular figure who could easily support his large family. The threat of Yak’s arrival was not lost on Len, and he surged forward at a run through the tangled passageway. Mostly stripped wiring and missing sections of higher-grade materials made the path hazardous, but his pace was relentless.
“The angle he’s cutting in…” Jax called ahead.
“I know.” Len’s frustration was evident in his voice and his pace. They had good intel and were to the wreck early, but it was entirely possible the finder had later sold the same information to other crews. If Yak had it, every second mattered.
They made it to the first borehole, the jagged edges demarcating where either a determined crew or an enhanced breaker like Yak had opted to cut straight through the heavy bulkheads rather than navigate the warren of passageways in a foreign ship.
Rubble filled the passageway ahead, and the entire crew began frantically grabbing pieces and hurling them out of the way. Behind them, the smell of burning metal and a shower of sparks heralded Yak’s entrance into the passageway.
“They are heading right for it,” Lei hissed.”
“We can make it.” Len heaved mightily and moved a large section of twisted steel out of their way.
A few minutes later, sweat was pouring from their bodies, and their breath was coming in gasps for the second time that morning. Jax felt faint, the recent lack of food taking a toll on his endurance, but blindly followed the rest of the crew, determined to not slow them down even as his vision began to tunnel to black. Running toward the ship’s center, they bounced haphazardly off wall sections, leaping over holes in the passageway floor, ducking under wires and broken ductwork.
Len jerked left into a narrow opening, and Jax heard him yell. “Here!” Then in hushed tones, the older man said, “Here. Got it. Come on, quick.”
Jax was last in the room and saw it was some sort of small reserve power node, a round room n more than eight feet across, not the massive energy storage he was hoping for, but still pretty good. His body screamed at him to rest, but his mind cheered at the sight of useable scrap.
We’ll eat tonight!
The hybrid fuel cells were in neat rows of square-ish panels and bolted to the wall, wires running between them in a once-organized maze. He estimated each weighed at least 20 lbs., and there were 12 of the little beauties. Instinctively he reached for one, his near delirium from exertion and hunger pangs combining to make the modules look viscerally inviting. His mother dove across the space and tackled him.
“Idiot. Let me disconnect it first.” Fen, the most electrically inclined of the crew, stepped closer to examine the maze of wires.
In a heap on the floor, trying to pretend like his own mother didn’t just tackle him. Jax tried to play it off. “I know that.” He jerked his chin at his cousin, “Hurry up, slowbie.”
While the hulks were supposedly all powered down and safe to work on, that was anything but true when you started ripping their guts out. Breaking was rife with many kinds of dangers, and possibly the only reason these cells were intact was that other crews lacked Fen’s expertise to disconnect them safely. The latent voltage could be enough to kill instantly, and an arc between cells could erupt into a flame that engulfed them all in a fiery, excruciating death.
Len yanked Jax to his feet. “Quit messing around. Get ready to haul.” He jerked his head toward an intricate panel on the wall opposite the energy cells and addressed his sister. “Torch that off. Probably has decent circuits.”
Nodding wordlessly, each moved to comply, the crew working in concert to perform the tasks they were best suited to. Despite her small stature, Lei had proven her worth for years as a cutter. While lacking the strength to carry as big of tools as an enhanced breaker like Yak, or even a large man for that matter, she gravitated more toward finer cutting torches and tasks. Fully capable of cutting out raw metal sections at a decent pace if it came to that, where she really shined was surgical removal of more valuable solid components. She pulled on special gloves and activated small plasma torches on the index fingers of each, deftly manipulating the appendages to sever small bolts and rivets that held her target panel in place.
Lacking her precise nature, Jax had taken after his father, a welder and fabricator. Getting the scrap disconnected from the ship was only part of the job, it had to get transported all the way to the managers for anyone to get paid. Working quickly in the confined space, he unfolded the contraption he had made for this purpose, a kind of skeletal wheelbarrow that hooked onto his harness. His dad’s design, it was a careful balance, strong enough to carry a good deal of scrap, but light enough when folded that the young man could carry it.
“Got one,” Fen announced without looking up.
His father lifted the cell, and grimaced as he found it to be heavier than anticipated. It shook the frame of Jax’s cart when he dropped it in, and the younger man braced his arms and legs to steady the contraption.
His uncle cast a worried glance at the undercarriage. “It’ll hold?”
“Of course.” Jax tried to project confidence but leaned forward to inspect his new weld as soon as the other man turned away. He had made an emergency repair to one of the lower struts last night but only had scrap welding rods he had scavenged from another break. What should have looked like a nice, even seam of dimes laying in a row like fallen dominos instead was gnarled and twisted from contaminants in the weld.
“Move!”
Jax jerked his head back out of the way as Len dropped in another cell and winced at the added weight, his reaction equally related to the strain on the cart as himself. Better hold.
A cacophony of sound in the passageway caused them all to freeze and listen. A loud hissing sound was accompanied by reflected flashes of light.
Len’s face darkened. “Yak.”
Out of time.
Lei’s voice was plaintive, “Len, don’t.”
Their leader sighed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to fight them for it.” He looks like he wants to. “Get what you can, and we’ll go.”
Jax braced the cart for a third cell. Despite the strain against his muscles and wondering if he has the strength to get even the first two out of the hulk in his starved state, he feels sick knowing they will have to leave good scrap behind. But he knows the threat of violence is real, and they are at a severe disadvantage against Yak’s crew.
There is really only one law on Breaker’s Word. Managers get the Cores. Even then, breakers like Yak can normally get away with keeping a SysCore. Failing to turn in one of the much rarer MindCores would be a death sentence, of course, but the Managers tolerate SysCores being put to use by the lucky breaker who finds them because it increases production.
Managers make the rules, such as they are, and have never found a benefit to regulating how breakers find scrap or who it really belongs to. Whoever walks up to the local Manager’s compound with scrap, gets the reward from it.
And whoever dies in here, getting it… nobody cares.
A booming crash lets the family know the last barrier between them and the larger crew has fallen.
“Go. Go. Go.” The tightness in Lei’s voice betrays her fear. Deep in the hulks, the strongest breaker takes what they want, and some people want more than scrap. The small room suddenly feels like a trap, not a treasure trove.
A fourth cell thumps into Jax’s cart, quickly followed by the circuit panel Lei had detached. He braces his shoulders and pushes mightily against the deck, surging toward the narrow opening. Lei, in near panic, darts in front of him and is first to the entrance.
“Hey, where you going, girlie?” Yak’s booming voice echoes in the passageway outside. Adrenaline surges as Jax feels an anxious need to protect his mother but is encumbered by the heavy cart.
“Get out there.” Len’s voice is urgent, not afraid. “Go.”
Lei breaks right, away from the enhanced man, and Jax surges forward to fill the space. He makes it just in time, catching Yak across the front of his mechanically powered legs as the man reaches his claw toward the fleeing woman.
Chaos.
The cart takes a racking blow to the side, denting the framework and tipping the precious load precariously. Jax grits his teeth and strains mightily to keep the cart upright against the added weight of Yak’s bulk.
Yak’s crew presses in behind him like lava about to burst.
Len half-climbs over his nephew, getting right up in Yak’s face. He waves his arms wildly, an exaggerated expression of joy on his face. “Hey! Plenty for everyone, right in there!
The man swings his face to look where Len is pointing and spots the remaining power cells in the room. He grins over his shoulder at his crew. “Booom! Told you. Right where I said it was.”
Jax uses the confusion to maneuver his cart in the narrow space, the framework scraping off the walls and threatening to snag before he gets it aimed toward the hulk’s exterior. Fen squeezes past him and steadies the front of the cart, pulling to get the load moving to safety.
Yak swivels with a mechanical whir to the teenagers. “Need some help with that?” His mechanical claw swoops to the load, and he activates the electromagnetic field. One of the heavy cells leaps off the cart, sticking to his appendage.
He laughs. “There ya go. Much lighter now.”
His crew laughs with him, and anger spikes through Jax’s veins. “That’s ours!”
One cell will trade-in for a basic meal, and they just went from four to three.
He’s stealing our food! Yak’s smile turns to a snarl. “Maybe that whole load is too heavy for you. Maybe you better go while you can.”
Len jockeys to stay between the boys and the towering man, raises his hands placatingly, and forces a laugh. “Not a problem, Yak. We’d have never made it out with that anyway. Kids got greedy, you know.” Out of the corner of his mouth, he growls, “GO.”
Yak stares at Jax through narrow eyes as the youngster gets the cart moving. “Better teach your crew some sense, Len-Lek.”
Still facing the bigger man, Len adopts a conciliatory tone. “I’m working on it.” He speaks loudly, making sure the entire other crew can hear, “Plenty of good stuff in there! Everyone eats tonight!”
A cheer goes up from Yak’s crew as they spot the loot, and they surge around their leader, flowing into the room. Yak frowns, still staring at the retreating boys, then shrugs his shoulders and joins his crew.
--
Even with one cell stolen, getting the load out of the half-dismantled hulk was a difficult challenge. Len and Fen worked to steady the cart and push, while Lei placed scraps of metal to bridge holes in the floor, held wires out of the way, and watched out for other crews who might try to steal their load.
The going was slow, and heat slowly built in the stale air inside the hulk. Jax craned his neck down to his tensed shoulder, trying to wipe sweat from his brow without letting go of the cart.
“Almost there,” Len pointed ahead to a shaft of light, urging them on toward the open hatch.
When they finally spilled into the glaring sunlight, Jax saw the sun was high in the sky. Spent from the exertion of manhandling the cart such a distance, he leaned against the side of the hulk, vision swimming.
Lei looked up, and her face fell. “Almost noon already.”
“If we get a move on, maybe we can still get in another load?” Len eyed his exhausted crew. “Something light, like wires, maybe.”
No one said anything, but they were all thinking about the long trek to the Manager’s Office that still lay ahead before they could trade in the batteries and finally eat.
Lei switched off the lights attached to her harness and checked the battery level. “I’m going to have to recharge some before we go in again, especially if we end up after dark.”
Len checked his by reflex, as did the boys, each silently finding a similar problem.
Welcoming their moment of rest before the trek ahead, Jax mentally calculated the rest of their day. Two hours to get to the Office with this load. One hour of waiting in line. Eating. His stomach’s growl at the thought of food was more of a plaintive whine at this point, and he fought back against dizziness. Recharging from the power station will probably take 30 minutes. One hour to come back, maybe 45 minutes if we can manage a trot…
He looked at the sun again. There was no way they could do a second run, and they all knew it.
He kicked the cart in frustration. “If I could get a motor on this thing, we could do two runs per day, easy.”
His cousin snorted. “Yeah, where you going to get one, though?”
Len clapped Jax on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about what can’t be helped. It’s a good cart. We could only carry half as much without it.”
Half as much. They were barely able to maintain enough strength to work as it was. If they lost half their rations, they would start circling the drain. He had seen it. Other families' faces getting thinner and thinner, desperation soon their only weapon against oblivion, willing to do anything to survive but unable to reverse their fate.
A rumble and sudden motion caught his eye, and he focused on an approaching group. Innate worry about the remainder of their load being stolen was quickly replaced by awe when he saw they were all riding powerbikes.
“Core Hunters,” Lei’s voice carried a note of warning, and she moved half behind her brother’s larger frame. But the hunters paid no attention to the breakers.
There were four of them, all dressed in a striking black and red motif of offworld clothing and gear, each clearly evolved to serve specific functions. What looked like a highly advanced Finder was leading them, his equipment consisting of holographic screens, various antennae, and optical lenses all connected back to an eye-shaped device between his shoulder blades. A wiry man, he seemed to slither off the powerbike like a snake when the group stopped. On foot, he flipped a lens in front of his face, and Jax’s adrenaline surged when he saw where they were headed.
The hole!
The man slowed his pace as he tentatively approached the opening in the ground, scanning. The other three hung back.
A deadly-looking one, probably a Gunner turned his head to keep an eye on the Jax’s family. A tinted shield hid his eyes, probably some sort of targeting system that connected to the many guns attached to his person and powerbike. He was completely calm and still, yet his right hand moved to the butt of a large pistol strapped to his thigh, and he looked ready to draw on them if they so much as twitched.
Len spoke in a low tone out of the corner of his mouth, “We’re ok. Just don’t move. They don’t care about us.”
A lithe form suddenly vaulted off her bike. Her form-fitting clothes and flowing hair leaving no doubt about her gender as she approached the breakers. She unsheathed a long, slightly curved blade from her back and spun in a complicated step before cartwheeling high in the air in a show of athletic ability, the power sword flashing around her in a dazzling pattern as she moved. Her weapon was simple, but the way she moved with it seemed impossible, twisting and turning to make the place she just was empty and the place she arrived at always a surprise.
Her final movement brought her within inches of Len, and he recoiled despite himself at the sudden proximity. Jax’s visceral reaction was different, and he felt pulled toward her with powerful magnetism.
She’s gorgeous!
A flowing mane of fire-red hair, billowing from her acrobatics, settled in a soft frame around her fine features, and her feminine curves were even more striking up close. And she was clean. Water was a precious resource on Breaker’s World, and using it for bathing was a luxury only crews could rarely afford.
Her lips parted in a captivating smile, and Jax had trouble focusing on her words. “Good day, Breakers. Have you seen any other hunters here this morning?”
“No.” The words were out of Jax’s mouth before he thought to consider her question. Wanting only to please her.
Len, while not immune to her charms, was more wary. “We have been inside, Huntress.” He jerked his head at the hulk behind them. “Can’t say for sure if anyone has been about.”
She studied Len, then turned her piercing green eyes to Jax. “We heard there was a collapse here yesterday…”
His pulse quickened with her attention, and he was only dimly aware of the guy over by the hole. His body begged him to tell her everything, but a part of his mind screamed at him to keep his mouth shut.
They want to know about the hole. They think there might be a core down there!
Their mere presence was validation of his desire to explore the buried ruin, and he wished anew his mother had agreed to his plan.
Seeming to sense his hesitancy, she stepped closer, bumping his cart gently against him as if silently prompting him to speak.
“Uh, yeah. Two dead.” He stammered, his desire to please her and his instinct to protect information warring within him.
“Lasa!” The fourth hunter was approaching, his thudding footsteps and the heavy plating of his power armor suggesting his core a DefenseCore. “Quit playing with the Threes.”
Indignation heated Jax’s mind at the disparaging classification. Breakers had three letters in their name. Using more was above their station. Managers, of course, had five, along with a dearth of other more substantial privileges. All Core-enhanced and highly scpecialized, Hunters took the liberty of expanding their birth names to four.
Among other liberties.
Lei kept her head down, subtly shifting her position to keep Len between her and the powerfully built Defender.
The fiery redhead turned to her fellow hunter. “We’re all born threes, Teno. They could have information.”
Scowling, the man moved to stand beside her, letting his hand rest on her shoulder in a display of casual intimacy. Jax felt a strange urge to murder him. He swept the group with an impatient stare. “Well?”
No one said anything, and Teno’s tone became mocking and impatient as if he talked to retarded children. “Do you widdle breakers know stuff?”
Jax’s heart pounded as he took in the plates of bio-mechanical armor that protected the man. Interlocking sections formed a seamless barrier, sliding nearly silently against each other as he moved, with a faint whirring hinting at the integral motors and circuits. Battle-specific, and far more advanced than Yak’s itteration, this man’s enhancements would make the dangers they faced daily in the hulks seem trivial.
He could take on Yak’s crew with one hand while eating breakfast with the other.
Len didn’t appreciate the ridicule but was smart enough to hide his emotions. “All we know is we have to get this scrap to Management, so we can eat.”
“Yeah. We’re hungry. I know that.” Playing off his dad, Fen entered the conversation.
Teno nodded once and looked at Lasa. “There ya go. Wasting your time.”
Lasa sniffed and withdrew a high-grade ration pack from a pouch. “Hungry. Of course. Perhaps we can make a trade?”
Teno snorted and stomped off. Fen’s eyes bulged at the luxurious meal, a veritable feast of calories. His mouth opened, and, hidden by the cart, Jax kicked him. Fen coughed, and Lasa looked at him, then Jax.
She smiled as if she had learned a secret and twirled away. The finder was walking back from the hole, checking something on one of his hollo screens.
“Come on.” Len was moving, eager to get away from the Hunters. He surged forward in the direction of the Manager’s Office, while under his breath. “Eyes straight. We’re just breakers, minding our own business.”
The group was conferring as Jax’s crew ambled past with their cart. He tried not to look but couldn’t help him getting one last eyeful of Lasa.
I wonder what kind of Core she has? He thought.
She caught him looking, smirked, and said something to the Defender. Jax jerked his eyes forward again, praying the man would leave them alone. No thumping followed them, and soon all his attention and effort was once again focused on pushing their heavy meal ticket one step further.
The crew’s trek involved navigating a complicated path between, over, and sometimes through massive stripped-out hulks. For hundreds of years, Upper Management had been buying and depositing derelict and aging spaceships of all kinds on the planet. Arriving haphazardly and often more of a crash than a controlled landing, the new ships were typically placed close to an existing concentration of breakers. The ebb and flow of humanity would evolve in accordance with the promise of fresh scrap, and with most workers having no transportation other than on foot, profitability and endurance were often stretched thin.
The creation of Breaker’s World had been the brainchild of a low-level corporate man, Theodis Marin, who pitched the idea to his business masters of buying the useless, barren planet for use as a scrapyard. With a massive circumference and surprisingly low density, ships could be landed relatively safely, and a low-tech workforce could inhabit the planet and scrap the wrecks in exchange for basic supplies.
The plan was arguably brilliant, as the passage of time on the planet was much faster relative to space-time. Theodis and the management conclave he established lived on a high-orbit station, aging more normally, watching generations of breakers grow old and die. Breakers were imported with promises of building their own lives, families, and society on the planet, an empty canvas on which their dreams could be painted.
Of course, Theodis neglected to tell the workforce about the difference in the passage of time. He blamed cosmic anomalies when no off-world communication was answered, when in reality the replies came, decades later when most had quit listening. He generously offered to build a communications relay hub and slowly started gaining control of all communication, technology, and power.
With fast life cycles occurring on the planet, society evolved rapidly, and not in a good way. Managers assigned to surface duty served a tour of duty in accordance with their company rank. The higher they climbed the ladder, the less of their life they had to spend on the time-sucking planet. The only way to gain rank was to increase profit, and soon any pretense of being fair to the breakers evaporated.
Breakers with knowledge of off-world life quickly grew old and died, leaving behind younger generations deprived of any news or formal schooling. The day-to-day grind soon became everything, and when thoughts turned to rebellion, they were quickly quashed by management.
Within a few generations, the effective enslavement of the Breakers was complete. With no way off the planet, no communication, a dwindling memory of passed-down legends, and a daily necessity to obtain food from their corporate masters, survival became the sole focus. Breakers produced massive loads of scrap at what amounted to breakneck speeds; Marin manufactured the kind of outgoing news that kept everyone uninterested in Breaker’s World; the plan worked well, too well.
Then the first MindCore was found, and everything changed.
The sand gave way to bare metal under their feet as they approached the Office. The heavy traffic at the central collection point of the local economy effectively sweeping clean the top of a long-since buried hulk.
The Office towered ahead, made of prefabricated sections provided as boons from Sarin, God of Hulks. As the sands rose, so did the building’s levels, but it looked like the towering structure was well ahead of the sand and gaining to Jax's eye.
“Look at that line.” Lei’s voice was full of fatigue, hunger, and more than a tinge of resentment at the thought of waiting even longer for food.
A the foot of the tower, a figure in a luxurious red robe stood atop ornate, semi-circular steps, a godspeaker floating near his head. Heavily-enhanced Gunners stood on the next step down from the Manager, flanking him and watching the crowd with sharp eyes and advanced optics. At the base of the sweeping staircase, four Traders interacted with the line of breakers. Jax’s crew fell into the tail end of the line, behind several other waiting crews.
A transaction was made at the front of the line, and everyone inched forward in an organized fashion. However, the next transaction evoked a commotion, and Jax, balancing the heavy cart against his hip, saw someone break ranks with the line and run for the steps.
“Hey, look.” A low rumble rippled through the line as both the sharp-eyed bodyguards and two massive automated turrets attached to the tower trained all their weaponry on the figure, a frail woman.
She slowed, raising her hands wide to show she was unarmed, and stepped up onto the lowest step, dead-center. She bowed, hands wide until her forehead touched the step in front of her. When she spoke, her voice rang out in a plaintive cry, clearly audible to all. “Oh, mighty Manager Ranik, please ask Marik to open her generous hand. Pray on our behalf that we might receive more food for our righteous labor!”
Whispers erupted from the crowd. “Idiot… useless. ”
“Brave woman.”
One particularly bitter old man, back bowed with age and labor, spat on the ground and muttered a curse involving Marik and an undignified act.
On the steps, the red-robed figure regarded the woman cooly. One of the guards, rifle leveled at the woman’s head, looked a question at his boss, but Ranik shook his head slightly. His arms spread as if to embrace the woman, or perhaps the whole crowd. “Good breakers! I beseech the almighty on your behalf daily. Would that I could improve your portion with a wave of my hand.” He looked at the woman, extending one arm toward her. “Faithful…” he paused, and cocked his head, then continued, “faithful Mir is right to voice her request, and I have heard it.”
The woman raised her eyes to the Manager, hopeful.
The man let his voice ring out for all to hear, using a strong but respectful tone as he addressed the device floating near his head. “Marik, God of Sustenance, I beseech thee, on behalf of your faithful Breakers, let not your bounty be withheld from us. Bring us a double portion of rations so that all might eat and be filled.”
The crowd stirred with excitement at the request, hope lighting the eyes of many. Some fell to their knees, taking the same posture as the woman on the steps. Lei was among them, and Jax heard her whispering an echo of the prayer.
The bowed old man spat again and said something disparaging about Marik’s mother. A guard fixated on that spot in line, and a younger man, part of the same crew, shushed his elder and roughly forced him to his knees, out of sight.
Jax looked at Len, but the crew leader’s face was neutral, eyes fixed on the godspeaker.
After a pause, the device started humming, and a pulsating light emitted from it.
The crowd’s excitement bubbled over.
“She answers!”
“Marik be praised.”
“Maybe a shipment will come right now!”
Jax had never seen Ranik kneel before, but to his surprise, the man did now. He put one knee on the step, tilting his head slightly down, and in a slow gesture extended his arm to the godspeaker, then motioned to the crowd as if encouraging the artifact to move forward.
It did, and the excitement redoubled. Many more fell to a bowed position, and no one cursed this time.
Jax didn’t know what to do. He had seen supplicants approach the Manager before, but never with this result. “Should we bow?” He asked Len in a low whisper. Beside him, his mother tugged on his hand as if to pull him into a more respectful position, but he had the cart to worry about.
A twisting, leaping mixture of sounds emitted from the device. Sounds that no breaker could produce. It sounded beautiful, rhythmic, like a story without words, and Jax felt his heart respond to the sounds, to the music. The artifact floated to a position directly over the heads of the assembled crowd, and the music faded.
The voice that emitted was breathy, female, and carried a slight autotune. A trained ear may have detected a certain digital rhythm to it, but the breakers did not.
“Breakers break, and my heart breaks with them.”
Tears flow, and hands reach toward the voice.
“Shakers shake and bring me great sorrow.”
Angry rumblings filter through the crowd, accompanied by dark, suspicious looks from one crew to another.
The voice becomes tinged with anger, “I cannot bear this wanton destruction of my Brother Sarin’s blessings.”
Her tone strikes an anxious chord in Jax’s heart. He does not have time to guess the import before the next words hit them.
“Until Breakers break the Shakers, my heart will grow hard, and my hand will yet close more tightly.”
The light goes out, and the device returns to its position near Ranik.
Anger and fear rake the crowd, and more than a few criticize the woman for making her plea.
Lei stays kneeling, her shoulders slumped in defeat and tears moistening her cheeks. Len places a hand on her shoulder, giving her a supportive squeeze even as his words offer a warning. “It's going to get worse.”
Ranik stands slowly, shaking his head with a worried expression. He tries to keep his tone reverent and formal, but his halfhearted effort doesn’t hide the mocking quality of his words. “Oh no. That’s not good at all.” He pretends to listen to the device, even though it is now motionless. “Hang on, she’s telling me more…”
The old man, crouching amidst his crew just ahead of Jax, clutches a plasma cutter and struggles to break the grip of his younger relative.
Ranik continues, “She says rations must be cut to half until the shakers are caught.”
Cries of despair erupt, and now it’s Len who curses. “Theo’s balls, if I find me a Shaker...”
Operating in secret, the Shakers are a mysterious rebel group that works to destroy, not salvage, the hulks. Their nickname comes from how the ground shakes when they successfully topple or collapse structures, and odds are good they caused the accident the day before. Their activity reduces profitability for management and is fatally dangerous to breakers. And now our food supply is being cut as punishment for it.
Consternation boils at the head of the line as the remaining crews in front of Jax find their scrap is suddenly reduced in value. Jax stares at the man in the red robe, the slight smile on the man’s face grating on him.
He’s enjoying this.
Lei has regained her feet and now wears her crew face again. He puts his arm around her, offering his support, “We’ll still eat, Mom.” Her eyes remain vacant, and not for the first time, he feels he is losing her.
“It’ll be less.” Len’s brow is furrowed, and he looks at the sun, now well into its descent in the sky, as if considering trying to get a second run in before dark.
When they reach the head of the line, the trader looks at their cart, then raises an eyebrow at Len. “That all you got?”
The crew leader’s lips are tight. “How much?”
“Half ration for each cell.” He eyes the four crew members. “That panel might be worth something. Tell you what, I’ll round you up to two ration packs.” He says it like he is doing them a favor.
“The cells should be a ration each!” Anger livens Lei’s features, a spark of her hardy nature igniting her tired eyes.
The man jerks his head at the godspeaker. “You heard our Lady.”
Jax looks at the device and sees the man under it is looking their way. Now the man is only twenty feet away, Jax can see biomechanical enhancements at the edges of his robed arms and base of his neck. He’s clearly core-enhanced, but the nature of his core is not clear.
Len interjects. “We also need power credit, so we can recharge.”
The trader sniffs. “’Course you do. You got anything else to trade?”
“You see anything else?” Lei snaps. “We each get half a meal. First thing we’ve eaten since yesterday, and you’d deny us the light we need to break tomorrow?”
Ranik nods almost imperceptibly at one of the guards, and the man descends the steps to stand behind the trader. His core is fully evident as a WeaponsCore, making him in demand as a bodyguard and highly dangerous in combat. A whirring sound accompanies his movement, and an undulating coil between his rifle and a powerpack hums and emits a slight glow as he charges the weapon. His armor does not bear the same biomechanical wonder and strength as Teno’s but is clearly high-grade stuff, easily capable of withstanding anything a breaker is likely to employ as a weapon.
“Problem?” The man’s voice is neutral, bearing the easy strength of routine authority and a note of irritated boredom.
Lei’s eyes flash, but she bites her tongue. The trader raises an eyebrow and gives her a superior smile, then points at Jax’s cart. “That looks clever. I’ll give you a power chit for it.”
Len tries to reason with the man, letting his voice carry to make sure Ranik can hear it. “That’s generous of you, to be sure. But I worry that without our hauler, our production will drop. We need light and a cart to stay useful.”
The weasel opens his mouth, maybe about to accept the crew leader’s logic, but the gunner wants to flex his authority and breaks in. “Quit screwing around. Accept Marik’s bounty and move out.”
Jax thinks about all the work that went into the contraption, all of the hours he has spent welding the joints back together. He darts a glance at the contaminated weld from yesterday and sees it has a fresh crack in it, likely from the impact with Yak earlier.
“It’s fine, Len. I can make another one,” He offers. A long night of work, but this one’s pretty much had it, anyway. The beginnings of an idea enter his mind. Someone bumps them from behind. The trader waits expectantly, and the heavily armed guard glowers at the family, finger on the trigger of his power rifle. As far as bargaining goes, it’s a sham. In any case, it’s over, and they know it.
--
A few minutes later, the crew huddles in lengthening shadows near the power wall, dividing up their two rations while their harnesses recharge. The largest part of the ration pack is a protein cube, not particularly appetizing, but exactly what they need to make it another day. He grasps it in the middle, about to break it in half, then glances at his mother’s exhausted form and adjusts his grip.
“Here.” He holds out the larger piece to her, and she is too tired to notice his portion is smaller.
She leans back against the wall and chews with her eyes closed.
He sets his jaw. We can’t live like this. He knows what he has to do. He also knows her fear of losing him is stronger than her hunger.
He keeps his tone neutral, keeping a lid on his excitement by drawing heavily on his own exhaustion. “I’ll need to gather a couple things for a new cart.”
Len looks up, and Lei furrows her brow.
He has it planned in his head, and the words roll out in an even cadence. “A few struts and some hinges, and I’m going to look for a small motor and gyro this time. Maybe I can build a better version. Carry more weight and move faster.”
Lei smiles weakly. “My optimistic boy.”
Here’s the tricky part. He talks fast, ignoring the growing knot in his stomach. “I’ll need Fen to help. Might be circuits attached, but if we can score some sort of small motor no one has bothered scrapping, maybe we can get two loads in tomorrow.”
Len looks at his son, then at the sun with a frown. “You’ll need to use your lights soon, and we won’t have much charge. We should probably just make that part of our run tomorrow.”
Jax shakes his head. “I need time to build it too. Fen and I can get the stuff and be back quick, then I can throw something together overnight. Improve it later.”
Fen is catching on and adds his voice. “He’s right. I should go so we can get it faster. And we can all split the light from your harnesses tomorrow.”
Len wasn’t born yesterday and narrows his eyes. Jax feels like the crew leader can see right through him.
If Fen had asked his father for permission yesterday, the man would have surely sniffed the plan out now. His intuition gets him pretty close as it is. He sighs and nods his assent, but when Lei goes to gather her harness, he issues a low warning to the boys.“If you go back to Inferno Rising, Stay well clear of that hole, ya hear? If those Hunters so much as think you are after a Core, they’ll kill you.”
Jax’s reply sticks in his throat. Does he suspect something?
His cousin saves him, making light of the danger. “Yeah, Jax, stay away from the hole. No redheads, ya hear?”
Jax gives the grinning miscreant a playful shove, and a returning Lei smiles at the boys’ merriment, wondering what it’s about. On the way back to their home in Absalom, Jax’s gaze is continually drawn to Inferno in the distance. Fear and excitement bubble. His half-full stomach speaks loudly to him of the urgency of his mission.
His father’s words echo in his mind. Breaker’s never quit. We adapt.
He shares a secretive glance with Fen, who gives him a wink of acknowledgment. Even without the Core Hunters snooping around, a deep dive is full of danger, but they both know they have to try. Watching their family starve is not an option.
We need a Core, or we are done.