Keldamar Prologue
An introduction to Keldamar, the frontier mining planet of KoDex, and the horrors executed within acceptable margins of efficiency.
The day she broke was the day they threw away her son. She never wanted him in the beginning. Had her mother been alive, her incessant pestering would have berated her for wanting to leave The Rim, for seeking a future where rolling over every hour of every night to dodge the rusted rain seeping through the ceiling was only a memory. When she had signed to KoDex, a child to her would have only served as a liability. What use was a kid on a mining frontier?
Keldamar was supposed to be a new beginning. For once in her life, she would have no allegiance to anyone. No mangled mother to guilt her. No passersby to beg for scraps of generosity. She knew the work would be hard, but for once, she would be able to stand on her two feet. Alone. To make something of herself.
But the company was harsher than any monsoon she endured on The Rim. A deluge of welts and sores filled her days. Layers of caked machine grease replaced her fingernails. Pulverized scoria smothered her cinnamon hair. At times when she marched back to her assigned shared quarters, after half a day deprived of sky, she would catch her reflection in a puddle and find a gargoyle. All the colors of life, desaturated to dull grey.
The first few years she spent on Keldamar, she tried her best. She tried. But eventually, fatigue won. Some days, she could not muster the will to saunter to the quarries. What was the penalty of extending her contract an additional six months compared to just one day of laying down. On those days, for some reason, she missed the leaky ceiling the most.
But the guards that corralled them took notice of her extended absences. Where the company only saw her as another number in their servers, they saw an opportunity. On one of those rain-yearned days, a few guards had taken an extended break to ensure the quality of the company’s assets and enforce the mission of the company. With a body and will as eroded as hers, her exhausted flesh was as pliable as clay.
Her son was a reminder of that day made flesh. His cries grated her weary memory with abhorrent flashes; the bite of cold metal on her bare chest, the hideous laughter that suffocated her. In desperation, she swallowed the last scrap of her pride. She coughed up her company credits and filed a complaint with KoDex HR. Ten months later, the company concluded its investigation. It deemed the charges inconclusive and the file was dropped, all while she now cared for the living proof.
Following those months, she often found herself gazing deeply into the monstrous equipment that swallowed her world. How easy it would be to unfasten her harness and disappear into the ore grinder. How quick it would be to slip through the poorly maintained railings and let the roaring plasma forge whisk her away. If she could at least make it look like an accident, then the company’s payout to her mother would at least have made her life worth something, if her mother was still alive. She would just be another maintenance cost, all within an acceptable margin of operation error.
Slowly, something within her changed. Reason eluded her, but one day, she began to think of her son more than an extra source of rations. No longer did his bawling interrupt her empty sleep. Instead, it dredged her from her nightmares. At night, his eyes would catch the glint of the meager arc light that burned by her bedside, and she would dream of stars and rain.
Once her son could walk, KoDex forced a wire brush into his hand. The cruel truth of children on site was not an oddity. Their origins did not matter; the company would make use of them all the same. At the end of her shift, her son would be carried out to the overheated equipment, made to crawl into machines to clear loose stones and scrape dust. She couldn’t bear to leave her son in such an empty place. With no incentive and compensation, she would forfeit her place in the meal queue so she could stay with her child. They would exchange phrases and chuckles. As a game, while inside the belly of an excavator, he would play a rhythm on the pipes as he cleaned. She would repeat it, knocking on the crusty chassis outside. It was such a simple thing, yet it filled her aching chest.
For too long, the company had stayed out of her affairs. So long as her ID showed up in the roll calls and stayed out of corrections, the great corporate KoDex machine barely considered her existence. But when her son developed grey lung at the age of only four, suddenly, the company deemed her unyielding requests for medicine abnormal and unacceptable beyond employee efficiency. And when her requests were denied, she fell upon the mercy of favors like she had a lifetime ago. And when the well of generosity dried up from increased oversight and fearful friends, the revolting dry heaves and coughs of her son compelled her to act.
How she expected to steal from a company that controlled everything about her life - her meals to her sleep to her purchases to her relationships - she did not know. A part of her knew she could not. But her heart urged her that any price was worth her son. Her heart landed her into corrections.
Three weeks of re-education, compliance training, and a revision of her contract for the fourth time. She howled against her cage for her son. She scratched at the fences and walls until she could see her fingernails again. In the final week of her corrections training, she had shredded her voice to a whisper and her fingers were reduced to bloody nubs. All she could do was tap her knuckles on the cement wall of her cell, vainly awaiting a rhythmic reply.
Upon her release, her son was gone. His body had been confiscated by the company as KoDex property. The last piece that her son even existed was a fine she received for the production of and improper disposal of biohazardous material. Though empty of tears for years, she found the strength to weep.
But now, the day had come. She did not need the alarms to awake. She did not need to save her company credits. She had spent every cent and ounce of sympathy to buy bribes, favors, and a bottle of water to rinse herself. As she marched to her shift inside her prison of conveyors and furnaces, her hair was free of grease. Tangled and wiry, singed at the ends, yet deep within the salt and soot stains from her years on Keldamar the faint fade of cinnamon still caught the violet light of the forges. The gaze of other slaves flickered to her. In their eyes swirled weary fear, but also, empty condonement. She met them with a determined scowl, and in the wake of her march, each of her fellow shackled clutched their newly fattened coin purses before quietly leaving their stations.
Her stride carried her past her typical assignment. Today, she clutched the severed hand and code of a company guard instead of searing valves. Using the stolen biometric, all obstacles before her folded. She cared not for the cameras recording her every advance. She disregarded the blaring sirens as she mangled the master controls of the forge core. As security stormed the room, she ignored her bleeding bullet holes and the orders they barked. Half conscious, she allowed herself a smile. Such a simple thing, yet it filled her aching chest.
Her work was done. The core convulsed from the strain of a critical meltdown. A city-sized factory was upended in a shockwave of lavender fire. For the first time in a century, it rained on Keldamar; a shower of slag and flame.