Boots of Oppression Read online

  We were then shocked when the Spitniks arrived aboard faster than light ships. There was no indication over the network that such a thing was even possible. I was just over two standards when they had invaded, so I have no recollection of the time. But the Spitniks came with soldiers. Lots of them.

  By the time I was eighteen standards and a legal adult, Spitniks had long since taken over almost everything. Businesses and industries of interest to the Spitnik were appropriated. A fancy way of saying those were stolen from us. What businesses the Spitniks ignored struggled, and many closed their doors. Most advanced schooling places had closed, leaving only a few elite schools open for those with extreme talent or those with Spitnik connections, and I had neither.

  Having four older brothers and two older sisters, I was the youngest in my family. My father had been a counselor at one of the schools that was ordered closed one day. Afterward, he found odd jobs to bring in just enough to cover food for the household. Until one day he just disappeared. We looked everywhere for him, but no one seemed to know what happened to him.

  Devastated, my mother cried for days and days. After she pulled herself together, she began searching whenever she could and never stopped. I don’t think she ever gave up hope, but she did what she had to for the family. She found work, earning a few paltry credits a day, cleaning toilets and sinks for a few of the Spitnik families living on our world. She came home late every night exhausted and depressed.

  My older siblings had all left as soon as they could to find their own way on our world while I tried for the next two standards after basic schooling to find work to help my mother. Jobs were scarce, but my brothers and sisters didn’t want to be a burden on the family. On the other hand, I had promised my mother I wouldn’t leave her. I spent most of my time looking for odd jobs or fishing or hunting to bring something home. Something to eat if nothing else.

  It was two days after I turned twenty standards, and I was along a rocky shoreline, having just settled on a spot from where to cast out a line. I had hoped to hook into something, maybe another sea bass like the one I had caught a few days prior not too far from the location.

  I casted the rig with the bait out as far as I could and let it settle down to the bottom in the deep water just off the rocky shore. A short time later, I felt tapping on my rod’s tip. I gave slack for a few seconds and then reared back to set the hook. My pole bent over, and I knew immediately it was a big one with the end of my pole throbbing.

  Then the line went slack and I swore. I reeled in line until I came to where it had snapped. I stared at it for a few seconds and swore again. I really needed to respool my reel with new line, but that would mean digging into the few credits I had in my pocket. Instead, I tied a new hook and weight to the line, baited, and reared back to toss it out again, hoping the next one was not so big.

  The rod was cocked back over my shoulder, but I froze the instant I glanced back.

  A pair of men in uniforms headed toward where I stood. Frickin’ Spitnik police. Dogs, we called them but not to their faces.

  “How are they biting?” the closest of the two shouted, acting all friendly and such. Even wore a smile. I wasn’t buying it though.

  “Just getting started.” I felt a slight quiver in my voice. I wondered what the hell they really wanted. The dogs were acting all friendly, but I wasn’t buying it. Badly out of character for Spitniks. I’ll admit I was really scared right about then.

  “Could I see your permit?” the closest dog demanded as he halted, standing less than two meters away.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, puzzled. “Permit for what?”

  “Fishing.” The dog stuck a leg up on the large rock between us and rested his hands on his elevated knee. He squinted at me. “You know you have to have a permit for that, don’t you?”

  “No.” I was stunned. “Since when does anyone need a permit to go fishing? Next thing I’ll need a permit to go crap.”

  The dog’s lips curved into a smile at my remark, but then just as quickly curved downward again. That’s when I was positive I was in deep trouble.

  “Those regulations came out over thirty days ago.” The dog leaned into his elbows while the second one rested a hand on a sidearm still in its holster on his hip.

  “I’m sorry. I never heard anything about needing a permit.” I made sure my hands remained in plain sight.

  “Well, I’m sorry too, but ignorance of the law is not an excuse to ignore it,” the dog said.

  “Look, I haven’t tossed my line into the water yet, so I haven’t really been fishing yet,” I lied. I was pretty sure they hadn’t seen me when my line was out. “I’ll go get a permit before I come back. Where do I pick one up?”

  “It looked like his line was in the water when I got here,” the second dog said. I glared at him. He was lying through his teeth – I knew by his shifting eyes he had not seen me fishing.

  “Well, you heard him,” the closer dog said. “You better come with us and we’ll get this sorted out.”

  I bent over toward my bait bucket, feigning to pick it up. Instead, I grabbed a handful of sand and tossed it into their faces. I turned and ran without a plan, leaving my fishing gear behind. I just felt like I had to get the hell away from there as fast as I could.

  But I didn’t get more than five steps before my back cramped up. The next thing I knew, my body collapsed onto the rocky shore – all my muscles frozen. I must have been as stiff as a surfboard. I bruised every part of my body from my fall on the rocks and had cuts across my face. There was a big goose bump on my forehead as well, but I felt none of that at that moment. I just felt pain as every muscle I owned cramped up tighter than a vice.

  “Cuff him,” grunted the dog holding the gun attached to the electrodes stuck into my back.

  The stunning stopped, and I folded up in half. The second dog twisted my arms behind my back.

  “Frick!” I loudly swore. “Damn! You dogs not even going to read me my rights?”

  “Coots have no rights,” the one who shot me with the stunner yelled.

  “Oh, he’s got rights alright.” The one who stood over me smirked. “You got the right to be beaten.” A fist landed square in my back in the vicinity of my right kidney. My back arched as I writhed in pain.

  “You got the right to be arrested.” The dog snapped the cuffs over my wrists. Then he rose to his feet. “And you have the right to be beaten some more.” My side exploded in pain as a boot smacked right into the middle of my ribcage. I planted my face squarely back into the sand of the beach. I turned my head to the side and spat out grains of quartz while my side throbbed.

  The one who kicked me then picked my head up by yanking the hair on the back of my head while the first one placed a scanner over one of my eyes.

  The next thing I knew, they had thrown me into the back of a truck already holding a half dozen other young men and two young women. None of us prisoners said a word as the truck carried us along toward our fate.

  That night I sat on a rusty bench in a musty cell along with about twenty-five other men. The women had been placed in a different cell. I did not sleep, wondering what the hell was going on while my head pounded and my side ached. The fishing permit thing sounded just, well, fishy. I was afraid for what the Spitniks’ true intentions were for us. For me.

  In the morning we were taken out of the cell and led out one by one, not much more than ten minutes apart. Those led out did not return.

  Then a guard pointed at me. “You’re next.”

  I pointed a finger at my chest.

  “Yeah you,” the guard yelled. “Don’t be a smartass. Now get the frick out here before I have to come in there and drag your sorry ass out.”

  Fearing what might be behind the door ahead, I slowly wandered out through the open cell door and toward the end of the hallway.

  A second guard shoved me ahead. “Speed it up. The judge, he don’t have all day.”

  In the room beyond the door, the light was mu
ch brighter, and I was forced to squint at first. Perhaps, that was more due to how dark the cells had been. A man in a large black robe sat behind a desk set up high on a platform. He stroked his long gray beard as he stared at an e-pad.

  “Put your eye to the scanner and state your name,” the robed man ordered without even glancing at me.

  I hesitated until one of the guards shoved me hard from behind toward the scanner in front of the platform.

  I looked into the lens and mumbled, “Alexardo.”

  “Full name!” the guard barked. “And speak clearly.”

  “Alexardo Triton,” I lied. Triton was a character from a book. A space sheriff who hunted down pirates. It was written back before our world even knew wormhole technology was even truly possible.

  “Mr. Triton,” shouted the robed man whom I guessed was the judge, “you have been charged with fishing without a proper permit, assault, and with attempting to flee from officers of the law.”

  “Assault?” I questioned.

  “Do you deny throwing sand in the faces of two officers at the scene?” the judge asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Then I find you guilty of all three charges,” the judge declared.

  Somehow I wasn’t surprised there was no lawyer defending me. Nor that the judge for the so-called trial had already reached a verdict.

  “I sentence you to three years in the Voondermere Labor Camp.” The robed man banged on his desk with a metal mallet. “Take him away.”

  “What? Three frickin’ years! For not having a fishing permit?” I cried.

  “Watch your language in my court, or I’ll add to your time.” The judge leaned over the desk and looked at me for the first time. “And yes! Three frickin’ years!”

  The guards grabbed me by my arms and dragged me toward a large door opposite from the one by which I had entered. I sort of just stumbled along, thinking about where I was headed. Stories circulated about Voondermere. Brutal conditions and little food. Many sent there had new charges added while in the camp, stranding them there until they died. Only a few managed to get out, probably only let out to circulate the stories of how bad it was in there.

  “Guards, just a moment,” the judge directed. The guards spun me around to face the judge while maintaining their tight hold on my arms. My head hung down. What more could the judge do to me? Add on more insults?

  “There is a way out for you, boy” the judge said.

  Despite my mistrust of the man, I lifted my face toward him and raised an eyebrow.

  “You can agree to join the Spitnik military. If you enlist, I’ll set aside your charges, and you’ll be sent to a training camp instead of Voondermere.”

  “Where do I sign?” I muttered, thinking it had to be a bad joke. Some sick sense of humor where in the end they laugh at you and say, “Nope. It’s off to labor camp for you.”

  But it wasn’t a joke. And that is how I came to be a soldier in the Spitnik military. That was enlistment recruiting technique, Spitnik style.

  After a quick physical exam upon which depended whether I went into the military or off to that labor camp, I was put aboard a shuttle and rocketed up to a carrier. From there I was shipped, along with about 10,000 others, to the Spitnik system and thrown into boot camp. It was called that, I think, because we were always getting a boot put up our rear sides. I later learned that the rest of the space on the carrier was taken up with food, rare metals, minerals, and other wealth from Riva Lontana.

  While en route they gave us physical and mental tests. Most of the “recruits” went to the GAT while I was among the lucky few who went to the Navy. The officer who delivered the news said I actually had some brains. I told him the Spitnik must have low standards, but then he asked if I would prefer going to the GAT division. I don’t know how the frick I managed to trick them into thinking I had any intelligence, but at least I would be aboard a ship rather than stuck in some foxhole somewhere with bullets flying over my head. At least, that’s how I had pictured GATs spending their time.

  Boot camp was quick, but it wasn’t easy. The first thing I learned was I was supposed to keep my mouth shut and do what I was told. Otherwise, there was the boot and I got it from time to time. I told you I wasn’t really that smart.

  But somehow I got through training, and, before I knew it, I was assigned to a destroyer heading to the desert world Bahram.

  I never got to say good-bye to my mother or the rest of my family. They probably still wonder what happened to me. Like my father, one day I was there, and the next I was gone.

  I felt I had broken a promise.

  Perhaps my father had been forced into the military before me, or maybe he got sent to one of the labor camps. Or maybe he had gotten himself killed, and his body washed out into Rivan’s endless ocean. The worst part was the wondering, the not knowing. And now my mother would wonder about me too.

  Chapter 3

  I stared at the battered and scarred world below through the viewport, but it was not my world. It once tore me up inside, but I no longer cared about what happened below. There was nothing I could do about it. Maybe someday I would have regrets about my small role in what was being done to this world. Maybe someday, I thought, I would feel a purpose other than just surviving until tomorrow. But right then I just worried about myself and getting through to the next day. I was numb to all else.

  With rust colored deserts covering everything between the tropic lines, this world looked like it had been bloodied and left for dead.

  Bahram meant Mars in one of the ancient Earth languages. Persian, according to one of the officers. And Mars was the god of war in ancient Roman mythology. So I guess it’s an appropriate name for this world.

  Maybe I’m giving you the wrong, or at least incomplete, picture of Bahram. It wasn’t entirely red and cratered. Around the north pole was a huge white zone, the Northern Ice Cap. The southern pole had a small ice cap as well, and around that ran a blue ring. The Southern Sea. South of the Northern Ice Cap and north of the Southern Sea were narrow bands of green that stretched out for roughly a thousand klicks toward the equator. But most of the world was one giant bloody-looking desert.

  Of course, what I saw with my unaided eyes were the impact craters from natural sources, asteroids and comets, and they gave Bahram the appearance that it had been beaten up. But if I could magnify my view, I would see tens of thousands of smaller craters the world had had been given from an unnatural source, bombing from the destroyer on which I was stationed and by Spitnik’s other destroyer also in orbit.

  As I said before I’m not from frickin’ Spitnik myself, and I wasn’t alone. It seemed to me only about half the enlisted military were Spitnik. Enlisted military. Hah! Now that’s a misnomer, if I’ve ever heard one since none of us not from Spitnik had volunteered, at least not willingly.

  The Spitniks were a different story. They didn’t tell us jack shit, but I had occasionally overheard random comments between them. At least some of them had willingly volunteered. They stayed to themselves almost exclusively, even if of the same rank as us, as if being born on Spitnik somehow meant being better than the rest of us.

  As I said I’m from a moon called Riva Lontana. That means “distant shore” in some other ancient language. There were so many ancient Earth languages; you have to wonder how they ever managed to talk to one another.

  A generation back my home world had been invaded too by the Spitniks and had become part of their empire. The Spitniks were ruled by their one political party and by Chancellor McShear. No opposition party. Only the will of the one party and the malevolence of their leader.

  I was too young back when the Spitniks arrived on my world to still remember freedom, but I had heard my grandparents describe what it was like before the occupation. My mother warned against repeating what I had heard. She told me to keep that between my ears, or I would end up in one of the forced labor camps.

  Riva Lontana, like all conquered worlds of the Spitniks, p
aid heavy taxes to support the expansion of their empire. They drained us. Rivans toiled, scraping by on little pay from the appointed governor and his minions in the Spitnik-run businesses that used to belong to us Rivans. Many of those who couldn’t find work begged in the streets.

  Scores of young people, myself included, were forced into the Spitnik military to serve them. They rounded us up in raids and then gave us the choice of serving in their military or spending time in one of their labor camps. Tough choice? Not really.

  Those like me, not being Spitnik, were all privates in the GAT or spacemen in the Navy, the lowest ranks. The most we non-Spitniks could expect was two promotions in the noncommissioned ranks, and that second promotion for a non-Spitnik was rare. You had to give a kidney or something to get that one.

  Pay wasn’t great, about the same as the state-sponsored work, but I had no expenses. Many spacemen spent their down time gambling away their pay in card games, but that was not for me. Especially since none of the card games ever seemed to be poker. I also had no real chance to buy anything either, so the credits just accumulated in some Spitnik bank account. I wondered if I would ever really be allowed to take my money out of that account. Spitniks had a way of laying claim to what used to belong to someone else.

  As I reflected upon it, I admitted my lot in life could have been a whole helluva of a lot worse. I could have been thrown into one of their labor camps, or I could be dead. At least, in the military, I got three good solid meals a cycle.

  I had been assigned to the Navy and stationed on the destroyer Spitnik’s Fist. It was one of two destroyers, along with three carriers, sent to Bahram. We had already taken out Bahram’s weak space force and bombed their military bases and their factories thought to be capable of producing weapons. I took what little solace I could from the fact that I wasn’t the one pulling the trigger on the plasma cannons or the tungsten kinetic rods.