THE EXILE PAMPHLETS

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

I know that is the risk you take reading this. The threat of spacing is not one to be taken lightly.

And so, I welcome you, valued reader.

Brave reader.

At this precious beginning I would like to take the opportunity to commend you on your curiosity, and to correct some misconceptions you might bring with you on this journey.

You have carried the heavy baggage of lies for long enough.

Some of you might be ready to free yourselves of those cumbersome shackles, and some might not. Others, undoubtedly, will be the propagator of this misinformation, keeping tabs on rumblings in “the Underground”.

That’s where they want to keep us. Keep me, and you, and the rest of the world. Underground. Under their rule. Under their boot.

Not anymore.

I have no doubt you’re here to learn more about the Galactic Jumpers, or the Relithium Miners, or even just for some small insight into the status of the Global Defensive Shield System (GDSS).

You wouldn’t be at fault for this. I sought it too, once.

Information is scarce. What little we can have has been restricted to the price of servitude in the Global Order (GO). Your life must be theirs before they give you anything. Already dying of thirst before a trickle of water will pass your lips.

It is our firm belief that this is wrong. A heinous crime against you.

Information belongs to everyone. After all, the acts of the great GO are carried out in your name, and mine, and those who have gone before us.

But with luck, and courage, not those who come after. It ends somewhere, and that somewhere can begin here, if you let it.

We are at the start of a wave of revelation they cannot control. It’s for this reason I have chosen to remain anonymous.

I’m not proud of it. We all have those in our lives that we must protect. In my case, not only must I protect those that I love, but also the brave souls who have contributed to this publication. And, ultimately, it’s not my story to take credit for.

This belongs to the people you will learn of today. The people in whose name you should fight. Names you already know have been sullied by the GO. Traitors, they call them. Incompetent radicals. Off-world terrorists.

For months I have striven to piece together the common aspects from various sources of how they met. Naturally, this information has varied wildly - ever dependant on who’s telling the tale. There are the sources you may have read yourself, the GO’s publicised inquiry perhaps. I urge you to set aside any preconceived ideas that this investigation may have led you to, and instead open your mind to the following interpretation. It has been sewn with the most genuine thread of truth from those present at the time.

I will do all in my power to ensure you remember their names for the right reasons before the GO can tell you mine.

It’s only by the grace of those willing to share their story that we will ascend from the ashes of tyranny. We will take back the best parts of us, the parts that make us human. And though these parts have been stripped clean from our species for the greed of the few, please remember, this is not revenge.

This is a manifesto.

Welcome to the Underground.

-*-

They met during the induction to the Academy, paired together against the backdrop of the first miserable morning of September. Fat rain beat against the building’s glass wall beside them, warping the pale white light just enough to let prisms of colour dance over their desk. Theirs was the beginning of a line, perfectly measured and placed throughout the hall.

It was one of those days that were filled with ‘tell your partner two interesting things about yourself’, and ‘using only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ find at least one shared interest from your childhood’.

In other words, it was the kind of day that Mila Hardeen abhorred. The premise of social inductions like this was enough to make her back teeth hurt. The sickening sweetness they were expected to weave into their voices caught her lungs in an unrelenting grip.

“Can’t fucking force people to make friends, can they?” Mila said, a mere heartbeat past being instructed to introduce herself. It slithered under her skin the way these functions just made claim to you, as if you could be opened up like a book and passed around. Assessed for anyone’s approval, picked up or discarded at will.

“Saffi," the girl said, her partner with the lilting accent and unreadable eyes. Her mouth scrunched up into a frown, which she aimed at Mila.

It was the kind of look that said ‘if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all’. It made her insides tighten just a sliver, and a nervous chuckle wound its way from her chest to her mouth. “Ah, no offence, I just mea-”

“I get it,” Saffi interrupted, turning away, looking across the room at the smattering of uniformed newbies eagerly leaning into their partners. The glass let in as much daylight as a building could, illuminating everyone for inspection.

Mila tucked a loose strand of hair back into her cap. She felt exposed, had expected nothing less from this place. So far it was just as unpleasant as she’d imagined. They may as well be trapped under a microscope slide.

She sighed. “Look-”

“I said, I get it,” Saffi faced her, “you’re not here to make friends. Don’t feel like you have to waste your breath explaining. Some people are just like that, no big deal.”

Mila baulked. “Like what?”

Saffi shrugged. “Unfriendly.”

“I’m friendly.”

“Okay,” Saffi said, a whispered laugh undercutting her words.

Mila clenched her teeth, biting back a response that wouldn’t serve her. “You don’t even know me.”

Saffi stared her down for a long moment. “Nope,” she popped the P, “not even your name.”

She flinched. As far as introductions went, this was not her finest. “Mila,” she conceded.

Saffi said nothing, just turned away again to inspect the room.

Mila looked the other way, taking note of the rest of her competition.

Whatever. In the grand scheme of things it didn’t matter. Connecting with recruits in the Galactic Order was not on her agenda. Especially people who willingly joined.

There were only two ways into the Order: you were either a Joiner or a Drafter.

Joiners were the nauseating kind; so filled with Terra-pride they’d sell their own mothers for a shot at glory. It was clear which recruits fell into this category. Age was typically a good indicator. Another was the uniform. She looked over at those with youth shining bright from beneath their clean, crisp blazers. Sparking with hope and superiority. Idiots.

They stood out a great deal from the Drafters. Those who had by happenstance fallen into tough circumstances: prolonged unemployment, petty crime, crossing the wrong person. Their hand-me-down uniforms were ill-fitted. Faces on the wrong side of weary. At least they had some humility.

Saffi herself didn’t shine with youth, she assessed the others with a critical eye. Didn’t lean forward with that simpering enthusiasm. But her uniform, well that was altogether too pristine for a Drafter.

A mystery then. That was fine. Mila wasn’t interested in either group.

Still, something in her stomach clenched when the icy blast of Saffi’s unyielding eyes closed off. Discarding her just a few moments after meeting.

It stung. She’d started it, but it irked her to be written off so quickly. Sure, it suited the core tenant of her goal, but it just wasn’t how she wanted to get there. Unable to stop herself, she snapped, “I suppose you’re here to make some lifelong buddies, are you?”

Saffi cast a glance toward her, smirked, and something in Mila’s tummy flamed the tiniest bit. “Well, when I sign ten years of my life away, I like to think I’ll get something in return.”

“Ah, a Joiner.” Mila sneered, disappointment settling heavily into her bones.

Saffi snorted. “Presumptuous.”

“What,” Mila looked her over. “A Drafter then?” she scoffed.

Saffi didn’t answer.

Mila clucked her tongue, got up to excuse herself to the restroom she didn’t need. Probably just another pride-filled recruit ready to bring glory to human-kind.

-*-

Basic was two years. A solid twenty-four-month block of blood, sweat and tears – or so the Galactic Order would have you believe. In truth, it was very simple; It suited some and not others. Trouble was, you wouldn’t find out which one you were until you were knee deep in pain. Too late by then. They already had your signature.

Commander Swint stood before them on the first real day of Basic. They’d been shuffled into a tiered lecture hall to surround the glorious war hero, oohing and ahhing at his every word.

All except Mila.

She’d recognised him immediately with a heavy spasm in her chest. The very same Commander Swint she’d heard about from her father’s lap as a little girl, her brother crossed legged before them, enraptured by his stories.

He’d told them all about the missions Commander Swint would piece together with precision. How they’d successfully jumped through the Soccadian system and mined every last gram of relithium. How the great Commander’s work had kept the world spinning one more day.

She saw it then, the way Jesse’s eyes had lit up. His hero telling hero tales. It was no surprise he’d joined just as soon as he was old enough. Regret clawed at her insides.

She’d been there when their father had told Jesse all about the introductory speech the Commander relished delivering to first years.

She could see now what she’d always suspected. He favoured dashing any hopes for an enjoyable experience. By the end, even the Joiners looked defeated, slumped over their desks, some resting their heads in their hands wearily.

Mila wiped the sweat from her palms onto her perfectly ironed uniform trousers.

“This is not college, recruits! This is Basic Training: you do not get a break between terms; you do not get holidays. You are here to learn, and to learn well. If you do not, you will die. The people relying on you will also die. There is no part of your training you can compromise on. Wipe away your tears and get on with it!”

She wasn’t sure how the old man managed it without a tooth left in his mouth, but she watched as his thick lisp sent a ripple through the academic hall.

He proudly went on for over an hour and a half, prattling about glory and grandeur. Getting lost in tales of his own brilliance, platoons he’d commanded, Jumpers he’d known. She’d hung on his every word as surely as the overhead lights sparkled on his medals. Flecks of spit flew from his loose mouth into the air in front of him, turning her stomach.

No one else seemed to be as revolted as she, and Mila took an odd comfort in that.

She wasn’t like them. She had been set apart from the rest. An island of her own making, just how she wanted it.

The power he still had disgusted her, and she’d been amongst the first to escape, racing toward the bathroom to lose her breakfast while the majority of recruits stayed to whisper excitedly in spite of all the ominous nonsense he spewed.

-*-

Their training included the essential building blocks for the Global Order’s primary objective: keep the G-rings on, or die.

That meant a heavy hand in mathematics, physics, and chemistry.

Understanding the atomic composition of relithium was essential, and how it was the perfect power source for failing G-rings. How G-rings powered the atmoshields, which in turn kept the things that needed to be stuck to the ground, well, stuck to the fucking ground.

It was complicated and intense. And Mila loved it. Loved the intricate nature of how the universe fit together, how everything had a purpose and a plan. Ultimately, she loved how the underlying principle of it all made sense – power the G-rings, or everyone and everything gets sucked out into space.

A wretched hangover from a civilisation hell-bent on ruining their planet.

It couldn’t have been better for her, to pick this part up with ease. Phase one of her plan would be a breeze: passing the academy, or, well, basic theory anyway. The mathematics of it fit together like the lego bricks she’d spent her childhood constructing with Jesse.

It didn’t take her long to notice that Saffi didn’t find it quite so simple.

In the pettiest way possible, she loved that too.

While Mila’s exam results bolstered her up into the ninetieth percentile, Saffi’s weighed her down to the sixtieth.

This was information Saffi didn’t seem to have a problem sharing, Mila found. It was baffling in itself for her to understand sharing results that were less than perfect, but to share them with someone you actively appeared to dislike knocked the wind out of her.

She’d bumped into her outside of the grand glass entryway, a self-satisfied smile plastered to her face at her result. She didn’t even care how obvious her pleasure was, until she crashed right into Saffi, pacing back and forth, her exam crumpled in hand.

They’d locked gazes after a moment of flustered apologies as Mila exited the building, and she’d felt the tiniest lick of shame burn up her back. Saffi’s eyes were welling with tears.

Unbidden, Mila’s feet pulled them away from the exit to a secluded corner of the bicycle shed. The cloudy plastic that covered it provided more privacy than they could hope for anywhere else.

Mila’s mouth was not as forthcoming as her feet. Something about being close to Saffi unlodged itself from her gut and stuck in her throat. She stood in a pregnant silence as Saffi’s features stormed through a plethora of expressions, settling finally into a sad downturn.

“They’re gonna kick me out.”

“Nah,” Mila shook her head. “They’d never. You’ll just be sent to a penal colony on some outer-rim moon instead.”

She had intended it as a joke, but when Saffi’s blue eyes spilled over with tears, Mila swore into the dirt. “Fuck. I’m sorry,” she held out her hand, “let me see. How bad could it be?”

Saffi handed it over freely. It was clear from the indents it had been crumpled and smoothed out more than once.

The basic science of it was sound, but the details were all wrong. It was clear Saffi understood the general process of what fueling the G-rings entailed, but compounds and elements were mislabelled, and atomic transformations were either missing or incomplete. Everything culminated in a conclusion that was sound in theory, but completely unsupported.

Saffi ripped the page from her hand with a despairing groan.

“Hey!” Mila protested. “I wasn’t fini-”

“You think it’s terrible.”

“I don-”

“You cringed the whole way through.”

Mila pulled the page back, began pointing at various parts of Saffi’s equations. “Look, look, all of this? This is fine. You understand it perfectly. It’s this. You’ve just skipped a few steps in the middle.”

“I don’t see ho-”

“Your formulae are fine, but your numbers are completely wrong. It’s actually kinda weird, how did you even get-”

Saffi sniffed and pulled the paper back again.

It wasn’t her problem, it really wasn’t. In fact, given the bell-curve nature of grading, it was actually a good thing that Saffi performed worse than her. The lower the better. Mila should be wanting Saffi’s grades through the floor.

Except, she didn’t.

There was something about her that seemed to stand out from the rest. She put on a good show with socialising, but Mila had watched her closely over the past couple of months.

Saffi would laugh at classmates’ jokes, but her smile would settle somewhere around polite. She’d have coffee with some of them and her eyes would wander, forever scanning the room, often stopping on Mila herself for just a beat too long.

The contradictions in Saffi’s behaviour formed a perfect storm to stoke the embers of Mila’s curiosity, whether ill-advised or not.

And so, she let the desperation on Saffi’s face shuffle its way under her skin. “Come back to mine, I’ll show you.”

-*-

Mila had led her to her campus apartment. Everyone was housed the same, a tiny kitchenette that just about met the bare minimum living standard, cramped living room, bedroom with enough space for one single bed and an ensuite. She knew Saffi would have the same, but there was a distinct pang of shame as she led her past bare walls and empty shelves. She’d given none of herself to this place, and, curiously, it made her feel self-conscious.

She had pushed that feeling down and ploughed through the first semester’s teachings in five hours. She explained it piece by piece to Saffi, who picked it up with little effort. Mila chalked it up to being another one of those curious contradictions: she excelled one on one academically, but not so well in a group.

It was an impressive feat to click with advanced astrophysics and chemical fusion - a surprising amount of progress for someone who had failed their first exam, and Mila couldn’t help the nugget of pride swelling in her chest.

“Well,” she stood from her spot on the floor, pushing a heavy textbook from her lap. “I think this marathon study session calls for another drink.”

Saffi laughed, rubbed her eyes. “Cheers to that.”

She popped the cap off two beers and made her way wearily back to the couch, where Saffi still sat reading her textbook. She passed her one and averted her eyes quickly when Saffi stretched, arching backward over the couch.

“Gods, I’m stiff.”

Mila chuckled. “Yeah, seating arrangements courtesy of the Global Order. Not the comfiest, unfortunately.”

“Hopefully their cockpits will be a fair step up.”

Mila turned sharply to look at her, “You want to be a Jumper?”

“I will be a Jumper.”

Mila narrowed her gaze. “Is that why you joined? To jump systems?”

Saffi pursed her lips. “Better than being a Miner, isn’t it?”

A laugh bubbled out of Mila, spontaneously and deep.

“Oh no,” Saffi groaned. “A Miner? You’re going for mining? Why?”

“Hey, don’t knock it!”

“I just don’t understand.”

Mila shrugged. She couldn’t tell Saffi the real reason, so she lied. “I just like it.”

A few moments of peaceful silence passed between them before Saffi turned her, locked eyes. “Thank you for this. Seriously.”

Mila turned to hide her flush, taking a swig of the beer. “Couldn’t have you doing manual labour for the next ten years.”

“You’re telling me,” Saffi cleared her throat awkwardly. “The only reason I’m here in the first place. Imagine going straight back to that sentence.”

Mila froze, pulled up short. “Wait,” she shook her head, “wait, you were drafted?”

Saffi just stared at her, gave a half shrug after a moment.

“But, but” Mila stammered, “you’re so well put together.”

She flipped her blond hair over her shoulder dramatically, batted her eyelashes. “Thank you.”

Mila rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed.”

Saffi narrowed her gaze, “What does that make you then?”

Mila clenched her teeth. Said nothing.

“Ah, Recruit then.” Saffi snorted, took a swig. “Bit of a hypocrite, aren’t you?”

Mila squared her jaw. She didn’t owe an explanation to anyone, least of all someone she’d just spent the evening helping.

“Why?” Saffi asked.

“Why what?”

“Why’d you sign up? You don’t seem to even want to be here. You’re quite good at it, don’t get me wrong,” she held her hands up in the air before her, “but you don’t really have the go get ‘em attitu-”

“It’s for my brother,” she blurted, though why she did, she couldn’t say.

Saffi raised an eyebrow. “What, he work here or something?”

Mila’s pulse began to race. She narrowed her eyes at Saffi. “It’s getting pretty late.”

“Uhh,” Saffi paused, shook her head, “sorry, we can ju-”

“You should leave.” She gripped her beer bottle tighter, scared it might slip from her sweaty palm.

Saffi recoiled, “Right,” she stood, awkwardly placed her beer onto the coffee table, and packed her textbook into her bag, “yeah, okay.”

Mila followed her to the door, her gait tight and sure. She let her out, careful to not meet her gaze until she pressed the door closed on her curious blue eyes. She locked the deadbolt with a resounding thud, before collapsing onto the floor, and dropping her head into her hands.

It was stupid. So stupid. She could have gone this whole day without anyone being the wiser. Without anyone having a single shred of information to explore.

She narrowed her eyes at the chipped wooden floor before her, focused on a grain, and reformatted her plan in her head.

Find out who in the Order killed her brother. Make them pay. No one and nothing else mattered.