Cordova had explained, regretfully, that while she wasn’t a prisoner in a standard sense, the rebels couldn’t allow her to go home. The truth was that Hannelore didn’t want to go home. If she went home now, she would be exposed as a failure, along with the whole Tyler’s Star project. The Thousand Families wouldn’t throw her into the gutter to die — there were standards, even for the lowest families — but they wouldn’t allow her another chance to prove herself. She would be given a small stipend and expected to join the thousands of family members partying, drinking and drugging themselves to death. The only alternative would be to retreat into herself and mind everyone else’s business, like Great Aunt Grace. The memory of the long-nosed elder woman, poking herself into everything, made her shudder. She was not going to wind up like that.
“It looks like an ordinary asteroid habitat,” Hannelore said, as they passed through a small airlock and into a bustling crowd. She’d shopped at the great shops on Earth, yet there was something about the market in front of her that drew her attention. Great piles of clothes competed with books and datachip stores, while some of the sellers were openly displaying weapons or other illegal supplies. She picked up one of the books and discovered, to her surprise, that it was written in a language she didn’t recognise. The Empire had attempted to stamp out all languages apart from Imperial Standard, yet she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised to discover another language — or thousands of them — thriving along the Rim. “Or maybe…”
She saw Cordova smile as it sank in. There was nothing fake about the market in front of her, none of the urgent need to be fashionable surrounding the High City’s great shopping malls, or none of the fugitiveness that surrounded the shops for the lower classes. There was no fear in the air, no sense that the Imperial Tax Authority might descend on the shoppers to demand its cut of the proceeds, or that the Blackshirts might march into the compartment and arrest everyone just for being in the presence of subversive literature. The people living along the Rim or out in the Beyond might live in permanent fear, terrified that the Empire might one day discover them and send starships to capture or destroy their asteroids, but they didn’t let it wear them down. The kind of grinding, ever-present fear she’d sensed on other worlds simply didn’t exist here.
“Of course,” Cordova said, when she finally managed to put it into words. “The people here are free! They can do what they like and if they don’t like their companions, they are free to set up an asteroid habitat of their own and live apart from them. We have millions of different groups out here. Look!”
His long finger pointed towards a pair of short figures, moving from stall to stall. The two green aliens, almost child-like in their motions, seemed to be welcome on the asteroid, rather than being hissed at as they would be on most Imperial worlds. The Empire encouraged anti-alien feeling and racism, yet the Rim seemed to accept all comers. The two aliens, she noted through numb shock, were also doing the one thing that would guarantee them a death sentence back in the Empire. They were carrying weapons… and no one seemed to find that alarming.
She looked away, her gaze sweeping across the market. Now she knew to look for the signs, she could see that most of the people within view were also armed; indeed, she would have bet good money that the ones who appeared unarmed were actually carrying concealed weapons. They weren’t carrying stunners either, but outright weapons, ranging from pistols to submachine guns and even plasma rifles. She’d been told that the Empire had a monopoly on plasma technology, but like so much else she’d been told about the Rim and its people, she was starting to realise that that was a lie. There was an entire vibrant culture hidden away among the uncharted stars.
The sound of heavy footsteps and mechanical whirring announced the presence of a cyborg, striding through the compartment without concern. Hannelore felt sick as she saw how the metal implants had been worked into the man’s flesh, yet he seemed alive and unconcerned — and no one else seemed concerned either. The crowds parted to allow him to pass and he strode on into the heart of the asteroid without a backwards glance. On an Imperial world, he would have been arrested for improper — if not illegal — use of physical implants. Such technology was reserved only for the ruling elite.
“My God,” she breathed. Perhaps she wasn’t free of prejudice after all. “What was that?”
“That, my dear, was one of the Geeks,” Cordova announced. She wondered, suddenly, if he had arranged for them to encounter one of the cyborg-men. Or perhaps it had just been a lucky encounter. “If they had the freedom of the Empire, they would create great things, new technologies that might reshape the human race. But they don’t — that man would be under automatic sentence of death if he set foot on an Imperial world…”
“I know,” Hannelore said. She felt a sudden wave of… culture shock, she guessed. She was tempted to ask if they could return to the cruiser, yet she didn’t want to miss anything. She felt almost like a child on her first visit to a resort world. “What else is there here?”
Cordova grinned and walked her through the massive asteroid. Sanctuary had started life as a seven-kilometre nickel-iron asteroid, one that had been mined extensively before the rebels had moved in and converted it into a base of operations. Indeed, because of its semi-public location, it served almost as a regional capital for the Rim, with starships and crews coming in to sell their wares and pick up additional supplies. Hannelore guessed that those starships included pirates, but Cordova explained that, out on the Rim, the difference between pirate and legitimate trader was blurred. If the pirates were selling goods the Rim desperately needed, very few people would ask questions.
“We don’t allow slave traders here,” he explained, as they walked past a storefront advertising — of all things — farming equipment. “That’s not uncommon in parts of the Rim, but they’re not allowed to come here. Other than that… if they can sell whatever they bring, they’re welcome to come. It helps keep us all alive.”
Hannelore nodded slowly, her mind spinning. The Thousand Families might have been like the asteroid’s population, back before the First Interstellar War and their rise to supreme power. It almost made her heart ache for the days when simplicity and legality had been the order of the day, rather than the deeply corrupt edifice that bore down on the entire galaxy. The First Emperor, the man who had built the Empire only to be disposed by his over-mighty subordinates, was probably turning in his grave. His lips twitched. No one knew, at least according to legend, what had happened to the man. Rumour had it that he was still out there somewhere, waiting for the call to action, the call to save the Empire. She shook her head. It was just a legend, of course, probably started by the people who had quietly murdered their former Emperor. There was no way to know for sure
“Most of your crew wanted to join us,” Cordova said, as they entered a set of private quarters. Cordova, it seemed, maintained a residence on the asteroid, but the compartments were barren and dull. Hannelore understood. His real home was on his ship, surrounded by his loyal crew. “Where do you stand?”
Hannelore hesitated. As a loyal subject of the Empire — and as a scion of the Thousand Families — her duty was clear. She should denounce him to his face, demand transport back to Earth and refuse any further cooperation. That was absurd; Cordova would just laugh at her, no matter what she said. She was in no position to dictate terms, a lesson that one of her distant relatives on her mother’s side had taught her. He’d been taken alive by pirates and demanded his release, only to have his face slashed badly before he’d been ransomed back to his family.