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THE RUNAWAYS by Adrian Bourdy
©️Adrian Bourdy, 2025
CHAPTER 1
You would think that a seasoned naval officer like me could keep her dinner down while riding a simple shuttle into orbit.
You would be wrong.
So there I was, barfing a wonderful chimble-patek melange all over the tiny suction hole they dared to call a toilet.
‘Is she going to be okay?’ I heard someone ask Manaat behind the paper-thin bulkhead that separated me from the thirty-or-so passengers who were no doubt enjoying every sound I was making.
‘Yes, yes, don’t worry,’ he sighed. ‘Weightlessness always makes her sick, sadly.’
‘Really?’ the child’s voice gasped.
‘Yes. It messes with her stomach in a way I have rarely seen before. And I’m a medic, so trust me when I say I’ve witnessed a lot of strange reactions to—’
‘No, I mean has she really been to space before? And…. And you too?’
Sometimes Manaat forgot that Sa12 was a remote, backwater world. The kind where flying into orbit was anything but usual. Most of the people around us had probably saved up for at least half a cycle before they could afford the trip. Which is exactly why we had chosen this planet as the perfect place to lie low while we rebuilt our lives.
Lying low meaning we shouldn’t be flashing our pasts out in the face of the first curious kid that came around. But Manaat just couldn’t help himself. I mean, the mouth on that man….
‘Y…yes we have, but…’ he said, realizing his mistake and stumbling over his words as a result. ‘Well, just a few times, you know.’
‘Wow, you’re so lucky!’ the child exulted as the vacuum sucked half my face off along with the rest of my dinner.
Zero gravity was a nightmare for me, but zero-gravity toilets were even worse. In order not to cause a critical failure in our small shuttle, I had to control my spasms in sync with the thing’s fill-close-vent cycle. This increased my sickness and the agonizing soreness in my throat.
‘It’s my first time. Ever since the administrative station arrived I have dreamt of visiting it. So I worked really hard for the standards, and I got selected! Can you believe it?’
‘I can, little one. You seem really smart. What position did you secure?’
‘First percentile, third decile!’ the boy—as I assumed he was—proudly answered.
First per…that’s awful, so why is he bragging? I asked myself. And then I remembered that Damariis love to complicate things. When evaluating people, they count backward. Therefore, first percentile, third decile actually meant the boy had done better than ninety-nine point seven percent of all participants in the standards for that quartercycle. And since there must have been a few million of them, that was quite the achievement.
I could almost hear Manaat’s gasp. He had always been so proud to have scored inside the third percentile on the standards, and then this kid from the Galactic Arm’s asshole just casually reveals that he had beaten him. I chuckled in delight as I imagined him wiping the haughty-scholar look off his face. In fact, it amused me so much that I missed one toilet cycle and found myself desperately holding the next gag in my throat. But it was worth it!
‘Can you believe it?’ the kid repeated. ‘It got me accepted to 3A, right on Damar Station! I’m going to fly on a real starship, in a g-wave and everything! Have you been in a g-wave before? Oh, I’m sure you have. But still, can you believe it?’
3A, the Academy for Advanced Administration, where all the Damarii Tyranny’s high-ranking officials come from. Impressive. This braggy little boy might become a Governor someday, or a Magistrate, or even a Vizarch…. It was said that the Tyran’s Chamberlain, Stator, had attended 3A in his youth and graduated top of his class.
Oh how Manaat—who was only a medic—must have hated the little lad.
Or not.
‘That is a tremendous accomplishment, little one,’ I heard him say.
I had almost forgotten how good a person Manaat was. How he was genuinely able to share the joy of others, to celebrate their successes as if they were his own.
The opposite of my competition-driven self.
Some days I struggled to grasp what he’d found in me to love so much. On those days—bad days—I often started to question where my feelings for him came from.
Did I like him as a person or did I just like the fact that he loved me so much?
On those days I hated my own cynicism.
<<Darling, are you feeling a little better?>> Manaat subvocalized through my neurex. <<We’re almost there.>>
<<Nice of you to check on me!>> I snapped. <<<And don’t let me interrupt you telling our entire life story to some random kid. Come to think of it, you haven’t told him why we’ve gone into hiding yet!>>
‘What about you? Why are you flying to the station?’ I heard the boy ask.
‘Well…we…’ Manaat mumbled as I plunged my head into the toilet once more. ‘We’ve decided to procreate, so—’
‘Congratulations! You’re going for the permit, then?’
‘Exactly.’
Yes, you read that right. A permit. Those Damarii administrative freaks make you study and pass an evaluation before allowing you to have kids.
Where I come from, that would have been considered an unacceptable attack on basic individual rights, but the Damarii…have their own way of looking at it. To them, uncontrolled procreation leads to stray kids everywhere, which in turn leads to criminality. Basically, a burden on the whole Tyranny. As a consequence, they want capable parents. With the definition of capable consisting of a lot of ever-changing parameters.
One of their obsessive bureaucratic nitpickings that gave me nightmares.
I mean, you could have had a kid on your own without a permit. It was even how the majority of people procreated on this half-savage planet. But the poor thing would never be recognized by the system. It would get the passive-aggressive version of a relationship with Damarii administration its entire life. It would get registered, but not as a subject of his Divinity the Tyran of all Damariis. It would be eligible for menial work, but never for anything that matters or pays much. It wouldn’t even get a neurex! How’s that for a step back toward our animal roots?
Basically, the child would have the same legal status as a slave. And this was precisely the argument Manaat had used to push this permit nonsense on me.
Personally, I had ruled out the possibility of having kids as soon as we went into hiding. Too risky. Too much that could—and inevitably would—go wrong.
But Manaat….
Everything had been so hard on him. My predicament, our escape, far away from his home and family, the loss of his patients, his license, his life.
Well, not literally his life, since he decided to follow me, knowing what it would mean. But there’s knowing, and there’s actually experiencing it. And I have to hand it to him: he did try to make the best of our situation. He became an unlicensed therapist and helped people while he himself was struggling. He tried very hard to hide his despair.
Although you can’t fool your soulmate, can you?
So I decided to grant him the one wish I had always refused: a child.
But I must admit, I hadn’t been very clever about the steps that followed. When I began talking about procreating with Manaat, I thought he would agree to wild procreation. You know, the ancient, dirty way. Or as it was known in our new neighborhood: the only way. But no, Mr. Manaat couldn’t live with that. And as I thought about it—after the fact, sadly—it dawned on me that a person trained by Damar Station’s Medical Faculty couldn’t accept natural procreation. He had been brainwashed. Or, more accurately, conditioned to believe there was one method, and only one, to create life in a civilized fashion: in a carefully controlled artificial matrix.
I knew this was a risk, but my mistake had been to believe I could talk him out of his training.
Then, once I had gotten the ball rolling, it carried me along with it. Manaat threw counter-argument after counter-argument at me, sent me medical studies, graphs, entire theses…and I gave up.
The matrix thing actually increased the need for a permit. It was a requirement to be assigned a breeder. A cycle and a half ago, this planet didn’t even have an administrative station, and the black market for procreation papers was very active. But now? Forget it. The whole process was locked into well-oiled Damarii machinery. There were still a few dark corners here and there, where you could pay for under-the-radar matrices, but that was a conversation I didn’t even dare try to have with Manaat.
Anyways, here we were. Flying to the administrative station. Gambling with our lives to get a fracking breeding permit.
‘That’s why we’re going too,’ another voice said.
‘Oh, are you? What session are you registered for?’ Manaat joyfully inquired.
‘Hmm, let me check…. C-shift, tenth session, blue group.’
‘Lords of the universe, exactly the same as ours!’
‘Really? That’s so great. My name is Kellyi.’
‘Glad to meet you, Kellyi. I’m Manaat, and over there is—’
‘It’s not a coincidence, you dusthead,’ I growled, floating out of the toilets. ‘The station has an entire planet to civilize. That means millions of people will be applying for a permit over the next few cycles. And even then, ninety percent of the procreations down there will still be wild. Don’t you think they would bundle each group together in the same shuttle to make it manageable? I’ll bet everyone here is C-shift, tenth session, blue group.’
As I scanned around me and caught a few nods of agreement, as well as a handful of wide-eyed, shocked faces.
‘And him?’ Manaat retorted, his eyes two blades ready to cut through my attitude. He was gesturing to the kid next to him, floating an inch above his seat—the crew hadn’t even strapped him in properly. It was indeed a boy, but even younger than I had thought.
‘He’s the planet’s wunderkind,’ I shrugged. ‘I’m sure nobody there has scored that high on the standards for a long time. Maybe ever, since the station just arrived. So they must have slipped him in the first available shuttle. Isn’t that right, kid?’
The boy extended a wide grin, all teeth on display, betraying his lack of proper Damarii manners. ‘That’s right, ma’am! I’m the first Satian to score above the fifth percentile. I know it’s only the second time the standards have been held here, but still, can you believe it?’
There were a few gasps from other passengers. Nobody seemed to have realized until then what the kid had achieved.
‘I’m so excited about this,’ he continued, watching the planet below. ‘It’s my first time seeing my home world from space, and I hope I’ll get to see many more!’ Then he turned toward me. ‘Did you know Sa12 is the only planet in the Tyranny that revolves around its star exactly ten times per standard cycle?’
Braggy little dustfucker.
‘You’re quite the encyclopedia, aren’t you?’ Manaat said, smiling.
I tried to refrain myself from correcting the lad. (I really did. I swear!) But some days, I don’t know…I just have to pick a fight.
‘Actually, it’s ten revolutions, one period and three spins,’ I hissed at the boy.
‘Y…Yes but you know…it’s very close!’ he defended himself, physically recoiling against the hull.
‘Yeah, well. Very close can be the difference between life and death sometimes, kid. Especially in space. And for your information Sa12 as a whole is not considered to be part of the Tyranny. Or did you miss the Ÿ enclave down south? Why do you think our administrative center is a station and not on the ground like on real Damarii planets? Hmm? I hope they’ll teach you accuracy at 3A.’
‘Izbel!’ Manaat barked.
‘What? It’s true! He’s a bit young to be a show-off, isn’t he? He needs to learn to—’
Finally taking in the atmosphere of the cabin, I swallowed the remainder of my sentence.
My beloved shot me one of those reproachful glances that heralded a full-on dressing down for later.
I looked around, saw equal condemnation on a lot of faces. Some even displayed genuine hostility. I sighed, looked at the kid, who was holding back tears, contemplated apologizing, quickly decided everyone had heard enough from me, and floated to my seat next to Manaat.
As I strapped myself in, I could feel his infuriated stare.
<<And I’m sure you told yourself that I was the one attracting unwanted attention,>> he subvocalized.
Sometimes, when they are very strong, a neurex feed can even convey emotions. This was one of those times. And, needless to say, what I received wasn’t pleasant.
I decided not to speak or send anything back through our private feed. There was no getting out of this fight. I just stared at the toilet’s bulkhead with empty eyes, fought the sickness that urged me to rush there again, and waited.
After a moment, Manaat let out a long sigh, turned to the old agür-looking woman he had been speaking to a while back—Kally, or Killy, or Kellyi, whatever—and said: ‘Well, as I was saying, this my darling mate Izbel.’
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