Page 5 of Broken Triad
I let their eyes glance over me. They can see my body, but never my soul.
Now none of that matters.
What a strange sensation. To have all your worries, your concerns and deepest fears, all your plans, suddenly not matter at all.
Paulus left two days ago. Some important business meeting, he told us, but I could smell the lie. He took me aside in a hallway, before he left.
He raised his hand, to touch my cheek. I recoiled. Anger flashed in his eyes, but he said nothing. He just left.
I sometimes wonder if I had let him touch me, he would have taken me with him. My mother always said there was power in beauty. She truly loved my father, and he would do anything for us. She looked beautiful even as she died, ate up from the inside by a sickness no one could fix.
I don’t have any anger towards him, even though he was tricked, even though he was fooled and it put me into indentured servitude. What would be the point?
“You’ll still be young when you get out. You’ll still be young. I’ve got some youth left in me. I’ll work the mines. I’ll save up and buy out your contract. And when you come out, you’ll have a life. I promise you.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. Don’t worry.”
“I’m sorry.”
He broke down, crying then. I’d never seen him cry. Not even when my mother died. We speak on holo-vid once a month or so secretly, on the smartwatch he gave me that servants are forbidden to own, and each time he looked more gaunt, his muscles strong, his gaze hardened and set. Black soot covered his face, worked to the bone, not seeing the sun for weeks at a time. My life as a servant was far easier than his.
My mother told me beauty had power, and I should have listened to her. I should have let that disgusting old man touch me. Just a touch, and maybe I would be off this damned planet, instead of sitting here waiting to be ripped apart by Scorp.
The twelve of us, all abandoned servants, are huddled in the great hall. Only Katarina doesn’t wear the white robes. She was Paulus’ daughter’s athletics instructor, and she’s the only one without the blank look of terror on her face. I was surprised she came back to the city. Paulus was always cunning. She was one of the only people strong enough that she would have fought her way on the ship, seeing through his subterfuge. He sent her off to the Royal City for a long trip, and made his escape when she was away. Katarina’s got fresh bruises on her cheeks. No one asks what is happening in the Royal City, now that all the guards, police, wealthy and government officials have left, leaving us in chaos, but I know men. I know that there is a breed of them that will seek to gain power in the chaos, thinking of women like ripe fruits to be plucked.
Katarina is in her forties, wiry with a toned body, and someone thought she was an easy target. They thought wrong. I doubt whoever gave her that bruise is still living.
“The Aurelian Empire will save us,” I say, breaking the cold silence.
They wouldn’t forsake us. They wouldn’t let us die. The people on this planet, left behind, didn’t choose to declare Independence. It was done so long ago, citizens whose votes damned us without ever knowing it.
That’s the only thing that gives me hope. The pure white Reavers flying in, noble triads fighting back the Scorp and protecting us.
“There’s no one coming for us.” Letty says the words with vileness, like she enjoys dashing my hopes because she has none herself—then she breaks down and sobs. I want to go to her, and put my hand on her shoulder, but I know she’d push me off. She was always mean to me, sniping words and trying to get me in trouble, but I don’t hate her.
What would be the point?
“That’s right. There’s no one coming.” Rachel picks herself up with immense effort. Her voice shakes. “There’s no one coming, so we have to protect ourselves. We’ve got ten-foot walls, and they left in a hurry. They might have left weapons behind…”
“We’re all going to die. We’re all going to die… Scorp… the emergency broadcast said thousands… thousands… they left us to die…” Macey hasn’t eaten since Paulus left, and she was already skinny. She was the one who made the gardens beautiful, gardens that only Paulus’ daughter was allowed to see, guarding them jealously and not even letting servants in to attend to her there. Macey told me of the flowers and the trees, her eyes lighting up with passion wasted on Princess Bitch, as we called Brianna.
Each full moon, I’d slip out of the servants’ quarters, evading the guards, and climb the gates into the garden. It was always most beautiful then, the white lilies glowing under the light of the huge moon, pure and white as the palaces on Colossus.
“I won’t just wait around for it. Who wants to take a stand with me? I’m going to the armory.”
I’m filled with renewed respect for Rachel, but no one can stand against Scorp. I learned that from my holo-vid chats with my father. The anti-air batteries protect the Royal City, but not the settlements. The reports were controlled and censored, but Scorp land in the villages and mining settlements, killing dozens before the Royal City sends in troops to clear them out. Trebulous could afford orbital defenses and anti-air batteries spaced throughout the world now that they don’t pay the protection tax to the Aurelian Empire, but it’s cheaper to let people die.
The conditions are so bad that owners of the mines pay out once per three months to their workers…
Because they know some of their workers will die before they get paid.
I count myself fortunate to have spent a year serving in an estate. Things could be so much worse.
“How will you get in?” Summer asks her, her voice keen. She once opened up to me about why she signed a five-year contract. Her mom had her young, and then, years ago, had an unexpected pregnancy with the guy she was seeing, a guy who left the second she got the news. Triplets. They would have starved. Summer had been working long hours and studying at night to be an accountant. She signed up for five years, and the lump sum paid on signing would be enough to keep her mom and brothers safe, until at the end of the five years her bonus payout would let her have her future.
After telling me her story, she waited expectantly for me to confide in her, to tell her why I was here. I’m sure she heard rumors of my father. I just looked away. I think she understood.
Paulus made me wait on him personally. I worked a year under his lecherous gaze, and the cold, bitter anger of his wife, who made my life miserable, assigning me to wash dishes and scrub halls when it was supposed to be my rest time. I just put in my time, and every full moon, I’d find peace in the forbidden garden, looking up at the stars and knowing I’d get free.
