Xeno Core

There is no excess room set aside for the storage of criminals aboard Kalibern Station. Upon being deemed guilty of a crime against their fellows, the condemned must instead labor for the good of those they had wronged. Work crews are careful not to place too many offenders together; trusted workers must keep the troublesome elements under direct supervision.

The crew I'm watching now are laboring to extract valuable materials from the raw rock of our home. Precious aluminum compounds fill storage containers as fast as the workers can break it free from the stone binding it in place. The drills they use are large and dangerous, but crew leaders carry devices that allow them to remotely shut down any unit they deem necessary to still.

The suits of those here to redeem their past failures are kept purposefully default. The Tserri love of ornamentation and personalization is denied to the forced laborers. It helps to distinguish them from the regular members of the work teams. Only numbers written in the Selber script adorn the plain yellow suits, each corresponding to an easily accessed shut-down signal on the control rods carried by the overseers.

A valid precaution, as even now two of the quarrelsome workers have come to blows. Sparks fill the air around them as the drills they wield strike and skip across their armor, screeching and smoking due to the strain. The armored vacuum suits they wear protect them from any real harm, but the delay will cause disruptions all throughout the station.

The leader shuts down all the tools in the vicinity, to remove them as options for the two fighters, and the rest of the crew surround them in a loose ring. At their leader's urging the noose tightens, though the brawlers take no notice.

Another signal from the crew leader's device causes the second generation suits the combatants wear to lock in place. As soon as they stop moving, the circle of crew around them drags the two apart. No doubt additional fines will be issued against them, further lengthening the time they must serve to pay off their debts.

Not very fair, but it is far kinder than the executions they would have earned if they were casteless laborers of my own people. Service there is seen as a way to earn distinction, potentially even an invitation to a caste-sponsored spawning pool. However, with as precious few spawn as these people seem to produce, their evolution has taught them to value individuals quite dearly.

Even these rough living individuals are in a better position than those poor creatures of Gelen's fleet. We already weren't sending them enough to eat, but with the recent setbacks they receive even less from us. I haven't any idea how much Matron Bell is shipping up to them, nor what debts they are incurring in order to feed themselves.

The metals this crew is digging up will be put to use creating additional aquatic farms. Despite the constant work to increase the yield, there still never seems to be enough food for everyone. Shipments from Honus still arrive almost daily, packed full of frozen meats and dry grains. They leave again full of textiles and small devices, trade that favors the planet bound.

On rare occasions the surface of the planet reveals itself to the array of scanners built into the outer surface of the station, though usually little of interest presents itself. Broad swathes of the planet remain uninhabited, with only the one major city and a few small farming settlements taking up little of the available land. Today the view is subtly different than the last good sighting I had taken.

Large causeways, visible with only minor magnification, are under construction, stretching between the smaller outposts and the central hub of Centra. Not only that, but much larger patches of the refractive native flora have been cleared, presumably for more farmland. Checking a few recent logs shows that a pair of passenger vessels have recently been through the system, dropping off new colonists eager to wrest a living from foreign soil.

The influx of farmers are surely here to take advantage of both the rich fields of the planet as well as a captive market. The Tserri fleet has little option but to purchase anything they can, even at increased prices. The debt they are accruing will take much work to redeem.

Small vessels of an assortment of designs stream between the world below and Kalibern. Most of the traffic still lands in Centra but a small portion of it now diverts from the main flow and makes ground in the easternmost of the growing towns along the rim of the cultivated region. The density of overlapping local signals makes it difficult to make out any detail, but it is evident that the population is expanding almost as rapidly on the surface as above it.

I've never been on one world long enough to see them as anything more than staging grounds for battles or invasions, yet my prolonged stay in Honus system has gifted me new insight. Though their behavior is often strange to me, these are the kinds of people I had spent my life fighting to protect. Peaceful, hard-working people only interested in making a better place in which their young may thrive.

Even the Tserri are but victims, played false by an unknown intelligence acting for its own inscrutable interests. No longer driven to war against the Selberfeld Imperium, they are, generally, happy to pursue peaceful occupations. Those troublemakers serving among the work crews would have been content if only they had food enough and some forms of entertainment or expression.

Donan and a recruit arrive to escort the two from the mining site, laughing at some joke between them. They quickly regain a more serious demeaner once within the dimly lit work area. The crew leader greets them and leads them to the troublemakers. Their drills sit nearby the pair, next to the harvested ores. A disgruntled older Tserri watches over them and is relieved to be freed to return to his work; his pay is related to the amount of stone hauled each day.

Neither offender seems eager to add more charges, and more forced labor, to their problems and are cooperative. They follow the officers up the tunnel, heavy suits sending deep reverberations through the stone. The roughhewn tunnels wind through the guts of the rock, following seams of mineral deposits. At the moment they are nearly airless and will remain so until construction teams are able to install ventilation ducts.

The workers remove their suits upon arrival at the checkpoint separating the breathable parts of the station from the work zone. Their damp fur must reek of organic musk, and I'm again thankful for my essential distance from the sights I observe. After only a little convincing, Donan allows them to clean up before continuing their escort duties.

Construction teams vehemently refuse to install cameras in the rest areas, so for all I know they might busily rub themselves with wet sand and excrete a fresh coating of fur. The amount of fur regularly in the showers' water filters lends credence to my theory, though the lack of sand is hard to explain.