Starpiercer: Sunlight's Edge

CHAPTER I: LIEM I

Chapter I
LIEM I

The early noontide sun beat down onto the terraced settlement with a heat and intensity that rivalled what it must have felt like to stand a few feet from a burning house, and Liem wasn't supposed to be out here.

In fact, he was supposed to be working. Everyone else was finishing up their lunch in their sealed habitats, or going back to their stations, but he'd hidden himself away in the shaded, leafy solitude of a tomato growpit, adding a few extra minutes onto his meal break. He knew he shouldn't be out in direct sunlight this close to noon, but he didn't care. He was almost fourteen. He'd go back to work when he felt like it. Besides, the fertilizer room stank to high heaven, and didn't make for a very appealing dining place.

"In your last message," he began, holding his rig up close to his mouth. "You said that you would like to see real sunlight someday." He glanced up and squinted. A quarter of sky was taken up by the star Tyluset and its blazing corona. He sat down, his back against a low wall of white glassine, and reached down to idly pick at the dirt as he talked. It was nice and cool in the shade "I'd wager it wouldn't be too much to your liking. The sunlight here almost hits you like a brick." Above, Tyluset glowered down at him like the eye of an angry god. He scooted a little further into the shade. My grandfather said once that when our ancestors first came to Tylo, it was from Cyrene. He said that there, the sun was warm and pleasant, and the breezes cool." As if to punctuate his point, the tomato plants around him, walling him off in his private little world of dirt and leaves rustled, and a hot, dry breath of wind, like a gust from a smelting furnace grated across his face, tousling his hair. "Not really the case here." The rig strapped to his wrist dutifully turned his worlds into text as he spoke, and he turned his arm slightly, to check the word count on the screen.

He wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead. "Right now, it's the middle of the day. Work just started, but it's too hot to be outside." He paused. A few feet away, an imported housefly, no doubt also sheltering from the oppressive heat of Tylo's too-close sun landed on a tomato, and rubbed its forelimbs together. He shooed it away, but made sure not to hurt it. Bad for the ecosystem.

"Honestly, it feels like we live in two different universes. You told me that you'd never seen real sunlight, and I've never seen a real city. I couldn't imagine what it's like on Steelfall. Towers everywhere. People everywhere. Ships coming and going. Sounds exciting." He paused, and sifted a hand through the dirt as he talked. It was cool with moisture, and soothing on his skin. "Then again, Tylo probably sounds exciting to you. Sunlight, plants...the cities at the north pole even get pure rain every couple of years. Not that it really does anything." He smiled sadly at the plants around him. "They say that it'll take another four hundred years to get the terraforming really going at this rate." He paused, He didn't want to talk about work. Tracy, even though she was light-years away, was the only girl he'd ever spoken to that he hadn't spent his whole life around. He could count the number other girls his age in Filhab Seven on both hands and still have a finger left over. And having known them his whole life, it made the idea of having any sort of interest in them...strange, to say the least. He'd kind of liked Rara, but she'd spent every last chit she'd earned since joining the workforce for a ticket offworld. He hadn't heard from her since.

"It's really not that bad here though. Kind of nice. Only three hundred people in our habitat, so it's got a nice sense of community. But I'd sure like to see a city someday." He paused. "Hey, I've got an idea. I'll send you a picture, and you can send me a picture of Steelfall. It'll make the message a bit shorter, but you know what they say about pictures." Some ancient proverb from the Lost Homeworld, half-remembered from lessons he'd always slept through. Something about a thousand words.