Chapter 5: Dawn

Readers' Choice from Ch. 4: [Torbus ignores any misgivings he has about the mission, figuring he's stuck as long as Colonel Jivo knows about his family  in Bothos.]

The vibro-mic in his upper cheek bone hummed rising tones in sync with Torbus' calm breathing. He had set his alarm for an hour before first-dawn but was already awake, having spent the night on the embankment of the reservoir rather than feign niceties with anyone at the outpost. The sweet smell of tackapples rode a cool autumn breeze across the water. Laying there looking up, with the easternmost curve of Sekora changing from the deep blue of night to a fierce violet, Torbus remembered going out to his family's orchard with his mother pre-dawn. They would uproot apple saplings by hand, which were grown inside each settlement's controlled biodome, like all imported crops back then. They germinated everything in Prakyun soil brought over on first-gen immy ships. Each spring an old sugran named Yiia came into town and helped Torbus and his mother wrap the saplings in cloth soaked in a solution that added a sugran-engineered protein to the plasmodesmata, making it possible to splice the saplings, roots and all, directly into the trunks of dirns. It seemed nostalgic now, but after the first failed harvest during high school he left a letter on the kitchen table saying he didn't want to be a burden and never looked back. 

Torbus bit down for a second to dismiss the alarm. Cool dew on the moss-like plant covering the incline wet his hands and elbows as he sat up. He shook off the excess drops and ran his hand through his hair. First-dawn was coming. Best to set off before the outpost came alive. Torbus passed through the messhall to refill his water and grab a few leftovers from last night's party. A few soldiers stretched out across three or four of the azure plastic chairs. It couldn't have been comfortable, but one woman's open mouth and slow breathing implied otherwise. The room reeked of alcohol-infused bodies and piss. Torbus scrunched his nose and swiped a handful of meal sticks from a shelf into his bag before shouldering it and heading for for the main gate. 

Two guards in untucked, unbuttoned uniforms leaned on the fence holding steaming thermoses. One with a shaved head and a thick beard looked at Torbus with piercing grey eyes and grinned. "Heard youin gunsa find lat bitch, yasa. Iss Broda Suin put her head onda pole in Valpon? Or somtin else better than?" 

Arms at his side, Torbus flashed both palms towards the guard in the sugran equivalent of a shrug, a habit from an adulthood living and working in Gurrat. "I'msa hunter only. Suin dun decide, ya."

Still grinning, the guard took a long sip from his thermos then lifted his chin towards the gate. "Iss unlock. Fuck off yusa. Hopin yu ga fuck dis up. Den Broda Suin ga lemme hunt down yusa, beeper." Torbus matched the guard's gaze until he reached the gate. Lacing his fingers into the chain-link fence, he leaned to the side and the gate squeaked on its track. He slithered through the double gate and started down the hill toward Valpon.

Torbus nearly trotted once he was out of sight of the outpost. He assumed Jivo had techs regularly pinging his smarfo from cell towers and relays so they could triangulate his approximate location, but with a crisp air cooling the sweat on his brow and the soft give of the moss-covered ground, he relished the illusion of freedom regardless. Longshadow¹ came about two hours into the hike. He rested. Sat with spread legs on the stump of a dirn and crinkled back the wrapping of a meal stick. Torbus palmed his smarfo and thumbed through the files Brother Suin had sent him on the target. His eyes picked out what he needed as he flicked the text. Eliza Nader. Human. Vahnist missioner of the Saebian Temple assigned to Delos and Gurrat. Last known location: small kaldis nut farm, eastern outskirts of Gurrat City. It wouldn't be difficult to locate her, not for him. Torbus waved the files closed, stood, and licked the last of the nutty protein from between his teeth. 

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Thick columns of steam, stained orange from the setting sun, coiled up from the boilers near Valpon's reactor. Torbus meandered past almost a dozen tractors and planters parked in two sloppy rows on the edge of town. Several of the heat sinks were still warm and clicked as they cooled. Angry shouting echoed across the small town. The calm of his morning hike dissipated like the steam as the barking voices started chanting. Torbus slid through an alley and leaned against the rear wall of the pharmacy facing the fallow field and what must have been the entire population of Valpon. In the center of the field was the cage housing the sugran bandit. The townspeople scurried around it like ants around a worm. Torbus lit a cigarette, partly to have something to fidget with and partly to mask the stench of sour zeko shit that permeated all of Valpon. 

A tall, broad woman in an antiquated brimmed hat corralled the townspeople into a circle to draw straws. The bustle from a moment ago died away and an unsettling silence blanketed the field. Torbus lifted the cigarette to his lips, but his hand shook hard enough to drop the ash dropped without. He exhaled and leaned back around the corner looking the opposite direction. The reactor steam snaked across the sky, now a deep red. A raw guttural howl snapped Torbus back to the field. The tall woman squared off in front of the cage, pressed something to the panel, and the lock snapped open with a crack.

CHOOSE (Leave a comment below or message me somewhere to  vote for which scene comes next.) [6/22/2023]

I) [Nervous or excited, a morbid curiosity with the sugran bandit's fate glues Torbus to the wall of the pharmacy. He can't help but watch the execution.]

J) [Frightened and disgusted, Torbus stamps out his cigarette and rushes back down the alley, away from the from the field. Away from the slaughter.

READER'S CHOICE [6/28/2023] = I

1. Longshadow marks the approximate midpoint of both first-dawn and second-dawn on Chellok when the sun reaches the lowest point in the sky at which it still outshines reflected sekoralight and casts the longest shadow of the day. On average it occurs two hours and forty-one minutes after sunrise. Between longshadows and especially at decima (noon), sekoralight from directly overhead casts almost no shadows. The timing and shadow length varies widely with longitude, with the most easterly longitudes receiving no direct sunlight during first-dawn and vice versa during second-dawn.