Serenity Amber

Apollo looked up as the gate to his cell crashed open. A hard faced man wearing the traditional maroon and grey of a guard gestured. Apollo rose and followed as the guard silently led him through the guts of Aenkarres.

Aenkarres was the largest prison in the Northern Creed, the massive country formed by North and South America after the Forest Wars. Housing the most violent offenders, each of the eleven blocks was filled with the worst of the worst, over fifteen thousand prisoners in all. Apollo really didn’t know what he was doing there, to be honest.

“Apollo Brendan?” The orderly asked.

“If you weren’t sure it was me,” Apollo asked, “Why did you get me?” The orderly ignored his comment.

“Go in.”

The guard had left, so Apollo pushed the slab-like door open, stepping into the office.

“Sit.” The man behind the desk ordered. The chairs were hard, cold and metal. “I know you haven’t a clue why I called you in here.” Apollo looked at the desk. Sloppy, stained papers were strewn about, a holo of a smiling family floated lazily above a wash of cigarette ash. The name burned into the front of the desk said “Callen Morento, sector supervisor”.

“Why, sir?” Apollo asked, wearily. Morento looked at him for a moment.

“You’ve heard of Serenity Amber?”

“I live in pit six, sir.” Apollo bit out. “The last thing I heard were the gates closing.”

“Good point.” Morento seemed nervous. Apollo didn’t know why, there were plasma autoturrets tracking him from the corners of the room. Apollo would have boiling holes in his body before he could get over the desk.

“Serenity Amber, the sixth planet in the Avian Nebula has been found to have earth like qualities. This is good, bad, and ugly. The Northern Creed wants the planet for us, you see, because it was our scientists that discovered it. Our allies, Fenwick Tundrans are the only Creed to have the technology to reach the Nebula, but last week it was discovered that Creed Orient has the same technology, salvaged from a crashed Tundran vessel.”

“How does this pertain to my life in this hellhole?” Apollo sighed. “You creeds have been on about this kind of stuff for ages.”

“Ah, that’s the trick, isn’t it? Well, the Northern Creed needs soldiers, badly. Starliners have already shipped hundreds of thousands of NC soldiers over to Serenity Amber, but we need more. And since the draft was abolished in back in ’fifty six…”

“The prettyboys won’t fight, so you are going to send the slime of society to fight the other Creeds for an unpolluted planet. Sounds fine, but why are you telling me personally? Make a blasted announcement. You gonna do this for every prisoner in here?”

“Can I discuss your case, Apollo?”

“Do so.” Apollo said. He crossed his arms.

“Why are you here?”

“I killed two peace officers, eleven soldiers and three jerks.”

“Yes. But what is remarkable is that you did it with so little. They had accelerators and armor, you had a six foot titanium pole and a boxcutter. You kicked one of them through a wall. A brick wall.”

Just like that, the glass wall in Apollo’s head crashed open, and the memories came flooding back. Memories that he had done his best to suppress, crush, forget.

It had been an icy November day. He was only nineteen. Leah was seventeen, pretty as the dawn; long, dark lashes setting off her creamy skin and sparkling green eyes, radiant when she laughed. He had been nervously fumbling with the velvet box in his overcoat pocket, cold fingers opening and closing the cream colored lid with a tiny click. They were walking from the coffee shop when he remembered his satchel, left on their table. He told her to wait at the construction site next door while he went and retrieved it.

He remembered the moment crisply, sharply, painfully. As the door tinkled shut behind him, one of the young bravos had Leah by the waist and was dragging at her white leather coat. The other had torn her hat off, and the third was laughing as he pulled rope from his pocket.

It was a sudden and quiet insanity that exploded in Apollo as he dropped his satchel. The pole leaning against the wall was in his hand a moment later, whipping through the air with incredible speed. Dark red blood spurted along its length as he wrecked the first youth’s head, the butt end destroying the second’s throat with a wet crunch. They fell, one screaming silently, one ragdolled, as the third wrapped the rope about Leah’s perfect throat, pulling tight.

“Any closer, man, and she’s dead.” Apollo had leaped forward, tearing the rope from the thug’s grasp with a furious jerk. He dropped the pole as Leah fell, catching her, before kicking the thug in the knees. The bone split with a snap, and the kid fell, shrieking. The pole wrecked his face a moment later.

The two peace officers on the corner didn’t care who attacked first: Apollo was a coratti, a second class citizen due to birth. The three boys were the children of the rich, and because of those two facts, when they saw a coratti attacking the three, they opened fire on both Leah and Apollo. Apollo was shot through the side, but Leah was hit six times. Before the two officers could reload, the pole had ruined their bodies and stolen their souls.

Apollo held Leah as she died, her blood staining the coat and his arms, his tears dropping onto her face and freezing.

And with that, Apollo’s soul died too.

Out of the nineteen soldiers that blocked the ends of the street moments later, only eight survived.

Leah went to heaven, the dead went to Hell, and Apollo went to Aenkarres.