Chapter Two: The Baron of New Horizon

Cheever West is a megalomaniac, self-appointed Baron of New Horizon, and absolutely not someone to cross. Jurin has been working for him as a Zeek runner since he aged out three years prior, and for some reason, Jurin has impressed the insane bastard. Cheever is a member of the notorious Syndicate Builders Guild or SBG, a think tank of sorts. At least, that is how I have come to think of them.

The SBG has always sat at the forefront of engineering and planning, directly responsible for almost all the major engineering feats of humanity. Its once-prestigious history culminated in a huge network of connections that reach beyond social and governmental jurisdictions. Cheever, while not being a genius, is well connected, and Jurin plans on using those connections to get me off, Titan.

The problem is such arrangements take time, which I am in short supply of. It’s been four days since I left the orphanage. And I’ve been hiding out ever since, avoiding Drafters, but it is only a matter of time before they find me. Every Drafter promises a better life, but those deals come at a cost. In all honesty, it’s more closely related to slavery than work, and it’s completely legal because some fat politician millions of kilometers away felt it would breathe life back into a dying community. I guess if you look at something from far enough away, it removes the moral obligation to be a decent human being. There is no hiding my disdain for it. Jurin and I have lost so many people to this drafting business.

Jurin stops at the front door of the apartment and starts rifling through his duffle bag, pulling a jacket out and handing it to me. “Here, put this on,” he orders.

I take the jacket and give him a puzzled look. "How chivalrous of you, but I’m not cold," I say sarcastically.

"Haha, smartass. That’s an Aug jammer. It will keep the Drafters from scanning you," he says. "I picked it up earlier."

I nod my head, wondering if the previous owner of the jacket had the same untimely end as our dear friend Tumbler, when Jurin grunts with laughter. "No, I didn't kill the guy who had it last," he says as if he had been reading my mind.

I slip the jacket on quickly and feel an immediate tingling sensation in my left arm, where my Biologically-Integrated Cybernetic System BICS is located. Although most people call them Augments or simply just Augs, the BICS was a wartime development that has been integrated into all of society. Now, for the most part, every newborn has one installed right after they leave the womb.

The Aug has become a cornerstone of our culture. Not only does it record your personal data, including financial information and contact lists, but it also keeps track of your health status in real-time, even alerting hospitals hours before you feel the slightest bit ill. It has revolutionized our understanding of healthcare in the sense that we can finally predict life-threatening conditions and prevent them from ever happening, but it comes at a cost. Authorities have the ability to remotely scan people at their discretion. In fact, that’s why the Drafters are so successful when hunting for new recruits. They simply sit back and scan entire crowds of people with little effort, sometimes even selling people’s personal data for a little extra on the side. Because of this, criminal organizations and governments, sometimes one and the same, have taken it upon themselves to develop Aug-jamming technology, and of course, the average person couldn’t afford such luxuries. I can’t imagine what Jurin had to do to get his hands on one.

“Does it fit?” Jurin asks.

“Yeah—” I respond when the tingling finally stops. “Jurin, what did you do for this?” He gives me a grave look; I really need to stop asking questions I don’t want the answers to.

Jurin pushes the door open. Rays of sunlight temporarily blind me. I hold up my forearm to block the brightness when the jacket starts to change color to match my outfit. “Pretty cool, huh?” Jurin says, “It reacts to light. It’s like smart micro-weave tech or some crap like that.”

“Kind of like a chameleon,” I respond, watching the dark brown spread to the rest of the jacket. “It even feels like leather.”

“Yeah, yeah, quit drooling,” Jurin says, taking a deep breath and letting out a cough.

I look out at the rest of New Horizon. From a distance, it looks like a beautiful, sprawling metropolis protected by a gigantic twenty-meter thick dome. But the truth is it's closer in relation to a festering sore. Like a giant organism that is already dead, but the cells don’t realize it yet. The northern quadrant is dedicated to the greenhouses and farms that used to produce enough food to feed hundreds of thousands. Now, the majority is used for drug manufacturing, with just enough food being produced to keep the people barely fed.

In the east, plumes of water vapor emerge from massive industrial power plants dedicated to water purification from Titan’s subterranean oceans. Air is manufactured from Titan’s naturally nitrogen-rich atmosphere and fuel processing from the liquid methane lakes that dot the surface of Titan’s northern hemisphere. In a way, Titan was always a goal for humanity, not only for technological achievement but also for Titan’s abundance of natural resources.

The southern district of New Horizon houses the majority of Horizon’s one and a half million residents. Massive skyscrapers intertwined with other buildings of varying designs and materials— from a distance, it would resemble a gorgeous formation of crystals emerging from the ground. But most of these structures were pieced together from scraps over the years as the population boomed without regulation.

Then there’s the financial district in the west, the ticking heart of Horizon’s commerce. Where the streets are adorned with filthy beggars, Zeek runners, Drafters, and prostitutes. It’s the true face of humanity’s greatest colony. There, nestled between a pair of dilapidated storefronts, is a brothel named Miner’s Rest. It happens to be one of the many brothels owned by Cheever West and, incidentally, Jurin and my destination.

My eyes continue to pan over the landscape of Horizon as Jurin attempts to summon transportation with little success. My gaze comes to rest on the tower at the center of New Horizon. If the financial district is the heart of Horizon, then the tower is the central nervous system, reaching from Titan’s surface to the apex of Horizon’s protective biosphere. Run by virtual intelligence, it’s the tower that maintains artificial gravity, atmospheric conditions, and even random weather generation. In fact, it’s the tower that made all of New Horizon possible in the first place, and ironically it’s the tower that allowed the freedom necessary for Horizon to become the cesspool it is today. No other Colony would have survived this level of neglect and disrepair, and now due to its success, all the colonies have retrofitted their own central tower.

A shuttle falls out of the sky, coming to a jarring stop just about a meter from the ground, kicking up plumes of dust in all directions. Jurin covers his mouth with his elbow as he opens the shuttle’s door and waves me in.

I run over and quickly slide into the transport, with Jurin following closely. He latches the door behind him with a forceful pull, shrouding the cabin in darkness until a holographic display pops up showing a digital map of Horizon. Jurin leans forward and highlights a gray square in the financial district. The words “Miner’s Rest” appear above it, along with the total cost of the fare.

He motions to pay the fee, but I grab his hand. “I owe you enough,” I say quickly, placing my left hand on the display. I feel a slight tingle in my arm as the screen flashes, confirming the payment went through. The shuttle jerks upward toward our destination. The words ‘Thank you for your service” blink on the screen several times before disappearing.

The rest of the ride is uncomfortably quiet; Jurin sits with a holographic screen hovering over his lap, playing some game where you have to match colored shapes in order to gain a certain amount of points before time runs out. I recognize it right away as the latest time dump for people with nothing more to do.

Instead, I bring up a vBook about the Great Civil War that I have been reading for a while. I was on the chapter about the Fall of Blitzkrieg, one of the last brutal battles of the war. I check the calendar, deciding to hold off on reading it until Blitzkrieg’s anniversary in about a month and a half.

Jurin lets out a string of curses and closes the display with a violent swipe of his hand. “Game cheats,” he mumbles under his breath, making me laugh. I return to my digital library, scrolling through some of the ancient books from long-dead authors, not seeing anything I’m really interested in. “Why do you read that crap?” Jurin asks. “I can’t understand half of it.”

“That’s cause they were written with different dialects of English. It takes a little bit to decipher, but after a while, it becomes second nature.” Jurin gives me a skeptical look. We all speak Basic, which is directly based on ancient English.

He slightly tilts his head. “But they aren’t interactive like modern vBooks.” He scoffs.

I roll my eyes. Interactive vBooks are amazing, but there is a certain level of adventure when reading an ancient book. It’s almost as if I’m living vicariously through the writer’s written words, a romantic notion that isn’t shared by many today. I continue to look through the library, finally succumbing to my indecisiveness and waving the display away with a simple gesture.

A moment later, the shuttle comes to an abrupt stop. Jurin quickly opens the door and pulls himself out. A display appears, flashing the phrase ‘Watch your step and have a nice day. As I crawl out of the shuttle, closing the door behind me, without warning, the vehicle shoots directly up, sending dust flying everywhere.

I take a second to adjust to my surroundings before noticing that Jurin was already making his way through the crowds toward a building with ‘Miner's Rest’ flashing on a massive holographic screen. I rush to catch up with him, avoiding puddles of God knows what. The ground was slightly vibrating due to the bass coming from the brothel. Several prostitutes were standing outside advertising their goods to passing bystanders; every now and then, one poor sot would take the bait and be led into the wolf’s den.

In all honesty, there is nothing extraordinary about Miner’s Rest. It’s a decrepit, poor excuse for a whore house; Cheever has at least half a dozen that are a hell of a lot higher class. But for some reason, he chose to make this one his main office.

Jurin gestures to the bouncer, who nods and opens the door, allowing us to pass. The main floor of the brothel is no more than a mob of sin and ecstasy. Mostly crowded with over-worked and underpaid Jovian Mining Corporation employees either heading to the Kuiper Belt or on a return trip. Most of them are drunk, high, horny, and looking to spend their hard-earned credits for a few fleeting minutes of pleasure, and Cheever is ready to deliver. As much as I may detest the Baron, he knows how to build and run a successful business.

Women surround the dance floor wearing little more than napkins, undulating to the electronic beat that pollutes the air. The smell is a refined form of musk and sex that leaves one with a desire to dry heave. Every part of my body tells me to turn and run, but I find myself keeping up with Jurin, who seems to have adapted to this environment, weaving methodically through the crowd as if people weren't there at all.

After several close calls with some wasted miners, we come to a stop in front of another large bouncer. Jurin makes a subtle gesture to the guard, who nods and places his left hand on the wall causing it to open, revealing a hidden elevator. We pile into the lift, and the wall seals behind us. With a lurch, the elevator jumps upward, making my nerves heighten with uncertainty; Jurin picks up on my angst.

"Don't worry..," he says in a futile attempt to quell my tension. “Cheever will do this. He owes me that much."

What does he mean by that? Could Jurin have fallen further than I thought? Could he have been more used to killing people than I wanted to admit?

The elevator chimed, and the doors slid open with a screech. Three guards immediately have us face the wall while they search us for weapons, removing Jurin’s revolver from his waistband. With a gesture, the third guards lead us to the massive pair of wood doors with an ornate set of carvings depicting what seem to be the seven deadly sins in action. A chill runs down my back as the impression that we are about to make a deal with the devil plants itself firmly in my mind. The doors swing open, and Jurin confidently leads me through the point of no return.