Title: A Plane Scraped Its Belly on a Sooty Yellow Moon
Author: L0C
Rating: R
Summary: Harper has a bad shore leave.
Spoilers: Bunker Hill and Ouroborous
Disclaimer: Andromeda is property of Tribune.
Gone savage for teenagers
With automatic weapons
And boundless love.
-Soul Coughing "Screenwriter's Blues"
The Andromeda Ascendant was currently resting on the surface of the only natural satellite of the planet of Sardon, a human colony that was ancient even in Dylan's original days. The planet was almost completely covered in concrete and neon, the capital city Tipiskaw swallowed up mostly all the other towns and cities around it until it reached the northern continent's shores.
Its seat of power was here on its bright yellow moon, far removed from the smoggy, rainy home of a hundred billion beneath it. It offered a view of the planet rising over the sooty yellow horizon, freeways splayed across the land like knots, continents glowing brightly against the utter darkness of the naturally unlit oceans.
Sardon's elite were here on the moon, in the small town that held the presidential palace and was completely dependent on money and resources from the planet far below it. They were mingling with the crew of the Andromeda, or most of it, to celebrate their new status as a member of the Commonwealth.
Tyr was bored. He was there to protect the ambassadors from each other and whatever other threats may be present. It was a function he often served and it usually kept him pretty busy, but no tonight. Tonight there was no threat. The Sardonics were a happy, jovial bunch of people. Too jovial. Too trusting. As uneventful as it seemed, it made Tyr a little nervous. But they posed no real threat. So it didn't really bother him that much.
It just made him bored and a little restless. He glanced around the meeting hall at the various locals, fellow crew members and ambassadors from various signatories- no representative of the Sabra-Jaguar pride, however. That was good. Tyr wasn't really in the mood to see Charlemagne or his wife. There was no real reason for bad feelings or mistrust between them, Tyr just wasn't in the mood.
He'd been falling into and out of moods lately.
By the Progenitor, this was the most bored he had ever been. Even with his inhuman attention span, there was only so much he could take.
Harper had managed to get out of it. He had badgered Dylan for weeks beforehand, talking about how he was getting cabin fever and needed to feel a planet beneath his feet for a while, how he was only going to screw up the negotiations anyway and how Tipiskaw was famous for its nightlife, please, please, please? Dylan had at last bended and Harper had been on leave for the last two days. No one had heard from him yet but they figured they only would if something had gone wrong, so no one was worrying yet.
Harper, however, was not having as much fun as he thought he would. Sardon wasn't the best place for surfing, surprise surprise, but it did have a bunch of good skateparks. However, it rained, constantly, since he hit dirt, so that didn't help. Rain always made him feel gross and sickly like he was back on Earth. It was the same foul brown acidic rain that fell on Earth, too, and there was poverty on the streets. All over. It was different from Earth, but it was there, in the shadows, a child in rags or an incapacitated bag lady. All the locals seemed to be able to ignore them easily enough but it hit Harper a little close to home.
Good parties, though. Harper spent two days alternately drunk or sleeping, usually with the full intent of it being with someone, but that had not yet proved fruitful. Now he was wandering through a demonstration in one of the main squares, and it was interesting. All these people yelling and cheering, some singing and dancing. It was fun. Harper didn't quite understand what was happening, but it felt good to stick it to the man like that. `Sardon Industry out of Dragon Space' picket signs read. Sure, everything out of Dragon space. What?
Harper wasn't quite sure who threw the first stone, the crowd or the law enforcement, but soon there was panic. Hoses were unleashed upon the crowd, gas bombs released, fires started. Harper ran in no particular direction, away from the chaos at least, and right into the chest of a fully armed policeman.
"Oh, Jesus," He started, and that seemed to be enough provocation for the law enforcer. He grabbed Seamus' arm and wrenched it behind his back while another beat him with a billy. Harper resisted at first but eventually, sadly, his old conditioning returned to him and he fell limp. They tossed him where the street met the wall and there he remained.
He wasn't sure how long he stayed there, watching the chaos, watching others get beaten or carried off, cringing at the pain in his stomach and his back. Eventually it quieted down, sounds of yelling and gunfire and sirens in the far distance. Footsteps approached him from the distance and suddenly a young local woman was kneeling by him. "Holy shit, are you hurt? What did they do to you?"
Harper looked up at her blearily. "Huh?"
"Fucking pigs. Here. Let's get you someplace warm." The girl knelt by him and slung one of his arms over her shoulder, helping him stand.
--
Harper woke up staring at a dimly lit dirty beige wall. Music floated up faintly from downstairs. He realized he was fully clothed and lying in a small messy bed. A warm plaid flannel blanket was tucked around him and his shoes were lying in a heap on the floor. He turned slowly, taking in the rest of the room. A female laugh came at him softly from his right.
"Yeah, yeah I know. You should totally quit. I mean it. You're always talking about it, you should just do it already." A young woman, a girl really, sat on a chair in the corner, painting her toenails, an earpiece leading to a communication port whose vidscreen was snowy with static. She glanced up at him. "I have to go. He's awake. The guy I told you about. Yeah, I know, I'll take care of it, Klint, don't worry." She took out her earpiece and smiled at Harper. "Hi," She didn't wait for a response as she went to fetch a glass of water. "Sorry if I was too loud- or the music. We're on top of the Sugar Free Jazz, there's not much I can do about it. That was my roommate Klint…well not so much my roommate, I'm actually in between places right now. I just got back from a mission with SSR a few weeks ago- you know what SSR is? Of course you do, you were at the demonstration. Anyway, Klint works night at a porn shop- he hates it. Here." She handed him the glass of water and sat on the floor in front of him. "So he's just standing there and people actually come up to him and ask `do you have any child porn?' and he's like `get the hell outta here'. They make him keep a bat behind the counter just in case. It's crazy, he wants to quit and I think he just should. It's disgusting. Don't you think it's disgusting?"
"Who the hell are you?" Harper had finished his water and found his voice.
"Oh, I'm Sakin. Hi. Is that okay? Are you still badly hurt? Who are you?"
"I'm….Harper." He sat up in bed blearily, his head still ringing slightly.
"Well Harper," Sakin smirked at him and he realized how cute she was. "Are you fatally injured or will you live?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." He smiled back at her, hoping it was charming. She was really cute. She was small and fit, with porcelain white skin and big, expressive black eyes. She had long, dark purple dreadlocks. Harper knew the Sardonics were offshoots of the human race, but as far as he understood their mutations were largely on an unseen cellular level. Oh well. It worked on her. Unless she was using nanobots like Beka, which took away some of the mystery.
"Did you hear what I said?" Sakin was saying.
"Huh? What?"
"You can't stay here. Klint's not too happy. Hell, he's not too happy about my staying here. I just thought it was cruel to dump you off at a hospital somewhere. Do you need me to take you to one?"
"No, no, I'm good. Thanks." Harper stood up and put his boots on.
"Do you have a place to go? I could walk you home." She shrugged on a form fitting jacket that reminded him vaguely of the leather tendencies of certain crew members of the Andromeda.
"I'm staying at the inn at the space port. I think." Harper was a little surprised at how cold it became when night fell and the excitement was over. He and Sakin started walking down the still populated but now calm streets.
"I know where that is. No problem. You're not from central Tipiskaw are you? Staying at the spaceport inn and all. You're a Souther, aren't you? They always come up here for the skateboarding and then get the crap kicked out of them."
"No, I'm not from the South. I'm an off-worlder." It was sort of nice talking to someone who talked as much as he did.
"Really? Where, one of the drifts?"
"No," Why was he telling her the truth? Well, he did sort of hope that once they got to the inn she might spend the night with him, and telling the truth couldn't hurt that. Regardless either way, he'd never see her again, so he might as well. "I'm from Earth."
Sakin stopped in her tracks. "You're kidding." Oh, no. Now came the disgust and embarrassment that everyone displayed when they found out he was a mudfoot, like they couldn't see it before. Great. Now she definitely wasn't going to sleep with him, probably terrified about all sorts of diseases.
Well, hindsight is twenty-twenty, Seamus Z.
"I've…I've never met an adult Earther who got off planet. I mean, kids, little kids, but…how did you get off?" She looked away. "No, I'm sorry. It's none of my business. It's just…wow, what a coincidence. I just got back from Earth. We left a week before that revolution broke out. Did you hear about that?"
"Yeah…yeah I did."
"That's something. I wish I could have been there. I wish, well I wish it just meant more to the Dragons, you know? Here, let's sit." She gestured at a bench overlooking a barren park space. "Where on Earth are you from?"
"…Boston."
"Boston?! Holy shit! You're fucking with me! So, did you, like, just totally freak out when you saw that news feed or what?"
Harper's face paled slightly and he looked down a bit. "Well…yeah. He was my cousin."
Although talking about Brendan was still a little painful, even after all these weeks, it was almost worth it to see the look on her face. Almost. "You…no way. No way! That's…I mean…oh, jeez, I'm sorry man." Sakin surprised him by leaning forward and giving him a quick, close hug. "Wow. Man. Man. I was in Brasilia for three months, and in Beirut for a month before that. The Nietzsheans caught us, so we sort of had to leave, but if we had stayed for just a few more days…wow. That would've been something." She looked sideways at him. "I'm sorry about your cousin and all, man, but, you know, he's a galactic hero. And if he's still alive then he's a living hero, which is even better."
"Why were you on Earth?"
"Huh?"
"What were you doing on Earth?" Harper was changing the subject as seamlessly as he could. It didn't seem to bother Sakin.
"I work with the SSR. Teaching, mostly-"
"SSR?"
"Oh. Well. Society for Sentient Rights, stupid name I know. I hate it. But what're you gonna do?" Sakin slouched slightly on the bench, and Harper liked it.
"What do you do with them?"
"Well, we, we set up sort of makeshift open schools for the refugees, you know? Shit, Brasilia was full of them, a lot of them were moved off their land by the Dragons, or displaced by the Magog- but you know all that. I taught littler kids, mostly, how to read, and use technology. You know, maintain ships and all that. Some of them ended up getting jobs fixing shit for the Dragons, which is stupid, but it's better than in a sweatshop or slavery, right? But they caught us and…it doesn't look like we're going back to Earth anytime soon. Which sucks. But we also, it's not just Earth, right? I mean I've worked on Centauri and Betelgeuse 3, too. We do this thing…I mean sometimes young mothers there…well they know we're from Sardon, right? So they, like, foster their kids with us and we put them into the system here and they get adopted by barren couples…black market babies, I know, but it's all good, right?"
Harper smiled. He could tell Sakin was more than a little wired, which could only be expected given tonight's events. "Yeah, yeah, that's all good. That's really cool…I've never heard of anyone doing anything like that. I thought everyone just left us to stagnate and die." And occasionally get carried off on slave ships.
"Well, we've only been in existence for, like, ten years. It's hard work, you know. The Dragons recognize Sardonic ships so we have to be careful about how we get in- it's difficult. I've never met an adult Earther who made it off planet. That's amazing."
There was a moment of silence where the two stared off into the darkness and noisy silence of the city night, staring up at the planet's big bright sooty yellow moon.
"What…what was all that about? That riot? I mean I came down here to have a good time and I walked into a freaking riot."
"Oh, it's complicated. And stupid. It was a peaceful demonstration, those pigs put up that fence. They were asking for it."
"Why were you demonstrating?"
Sakin shrugged. "The Commonwealth signature."
Harper glanced at her, surprised. "You're against joining the Commonwealth?"
"No, no, not really. It's just…you don't know much about Sardonic politics, do you?"
"I know it's a peaceful, representative democracy."
Sakin actually laughed. "And if all government reports were true, there'd be a thousand fewer slave planets."
"True."
Sakin sighed. "The party in power- the Sardonic Democratic Union- has been in power for the last forty years. Before I was born. Since then…I mean, people have found stuffed ballot boxes, but it's easy to deny it, you know? All the other parties have all but ceased to exist- a lot of those politicians just disappeared. I've heard of a lot of people getting beaten or threatened for publicly supporting the opposition. Or what's left of it. And…well, a lot of the bigger companies here do business with the Drago-Kazov. The government's in on it, or some of it, anyway. Garments, textiles, stuff like that, they use slave labour." Sakin glanced around herself. "It's never been said out loud, you know? Or proven. But I know, at least. I mean, I've been to Earth, I saw it. You know what I'm talking about."
Harper nodded. His own experience with slavery under the Dragons supported that.
"And you can see it here, too. `Cause there's no jobs for us anymore. I mean, you have to be really educated to get a decent job here, and a lot of people can't afford it because their parents can't work." Sakin sighed, staring up at the moon. "There's no way our leaders told the truth to those poor bastards up there. There's no way they're going to keep any promises. And I've done my homework, you know- I know the Jaguars and the Dragons are always going at it. What happens if war breaks out again and we're called into it? And the Dragons call our bluff? What happens to us then?" She narrowed her eyes at the sooty yellow moon. "It's so easy for them. They're so happy up there in their fucking little palace. They don't see the danger."
"…shit," Harper said after a moment.
"Yeah."
They stayed like that, both brooding, staring up at the bright moon before them, for what felt like forever. Harper looked down and realized he was holding Sakin's hand.
"This is sort of nice-" He glanced at her face and realized she had fallen asleep.
Harper looked up at the moon and back down at Sakin, and decided that the moon had nothing on her.