The Fringe Wars

1.5

"I've got a broken ship and not nearly enough credits to fix it. Vym is the only one who can waive the penalty fee, and—if she's in a really good mood—loan me some credits."

"You are an idiot, Aramis Reyne."

"Desperate," Reyne corrected, holding up a finger. "That's an entirely different thing than being an idiot."

"Sounds awfully close in my book. Go right ahead. It's your gonads. Enjoy the torture."

"Ah, Kason. You always say the sweetest things."

The man waved him away. "Now, shoo. I've got contracts to line up before I head back home for United Day. Tell Boden if he wants me to bring anything back from Alluvia, he needs to stop by before morning."

"Will do."

Reyne left Kason's office and took the long way back to the Gryphon to delay sharing the bad news. The bitterly cold wind seeped through the seams between his goggles and hood. Everything else was covered by his puffy, thick anorak, its length covering his entire body, all the way down over his hefty boots.

Playa was the Collective's ice world, far from the temperate planets of Myr and Alluvia. Without the right gear, a man could face hypothermia in fewer than five minutes standing outside in its freezing temperatures.

His goggles iced up, and he walked alongside a wall to not lose his way. What little sunlight Playa days brought was long gone. His headlamp pierced bare inches of the icy slivers tearing through the wind. A blur of tall green anorak plowed into him, and he found himself slammed against the wall.

"Watch where you're going, fella," Reyne said as he pushed himself off the wall.

The eight-foot-tall stretch put his hands on his hips, indignant. "Wat you talk 'bout? Ain't no man."

"Oh. Sorry, ma'am. I couldn't tell through your coat."

She shoved past him. "Outto my way, viggin' out-worlda."

"Hey, I'm no off-worlder," he snapped back. "I'm a Playan, like you."

She ignored him, and ran off.

"Viggin' rude stretches," he muttered as he watched the rail-thin woman run into the wind. Playa's gravity was so low that colonists who couldn't afford gravity suits mutated over the generations. Folks called them stretches because they grew so tall and thin. After a couple decades in Playa's low-g without gravity suits, those colonists could never travel to another planet without their lungs collapsing and their hearts giving out under the pressure. They'd become fated to never leave their home world. Reyne imagined stretches would reach ten feet tall within a few more generations.

Even though Playa was one of the few Collective worlds to contain breathable air before terraforming, it had been more expensive and took more time to prepare the ice world to sustain life. After nearly two hundred years, there were still only three cities, the smallest population of any of the Collective planets.

Most citizens found no pleasure in making the long trip to the cold, dark planet. Kason was one of a few citizens to have ever stepped foot onto Playa. A wanderer at heart, he spread his time equally across all the Collective worlds.

The CUF was also an exception. A CUF ship docked at Ice Port every month for one very important resource—conscripts. By law, the CUF could enlist any able-bodied colonist into five-year service. Stretches were excluded from service, and fringe doctors could be paid to mark a person down as unfit for service. But, Reyne wasn't a stretch and had no money. He left Playa a week after his eighteenth birthday to serve a government he'd never seen or benefitted from.