The first year of the reign of the Regent, Boniface of House Spheniscidae (320 AF) in the months of Faith, Virtue, Fates and Glory, on Canopus
A poor boy's dreams can decay and rust.
For years, as he learned and grew smarter and smarter, first a year, and then two, and then three years ahead of where he should be, with no sign of even coming close to stopping, he had also dreamed of someone who would fight back. Who not only would advance, but would throw a punch rather than kneel in abject submission.
Hopewell was as arrogant as they were foolish, owning all sorts of mines, nearly the equal of the smallest, least established Houses. In fact, up until how House Kendar ended up--though Salamah only heard it as one might hear distant thunder, for it didn't affect his life--out as the Imperial House, just several months ago, everyone expected that, very soon, Hopewell would take the jump to being a Minnow in the pond of the Galaxy, rather than a big fish in the tiny pond of Canopus.
And it had done particularly well the past nine years thanks to House Kendar. They had, unlike many noble houses, gotten themselves indirectly, periphially involved in House politics. They were, and would tell anyone who asked, Kendar's biggest supporters on Canopus. Canopus was hardly vital to the Empire, but having a small local lord in one's pocket can be quite helpful. Whatever the truth of the charges of House Kendar's corruption on a large scale, there was plenty of it locally. They had grown fat from the support of Kendar, had gotten contracts they didn't deserve, had meddled outrageously in every little thing on the planet they could, and lived and feasted like lords.
But their rise, so contingent on the reign of Kendar, was now halted. In fact, if Hopewell had been as loyal as they had sworn, they would have fought and no doubt been easily crushed. Instead they disavowed all of their old contacts, but without them, without the corruption they were--though who on the outside could really see it--only five years from complete self-destruction.
No doubt they were under enormous pressure but, after they did not immediately collapse following Kendar's fall, many assumed that Hopewell would continue as it had before, this only being a bump in the road. But, as time would come to reveal, this was not so. So, well, even the least important, least adult member of Hopewell was on edge, and to piss them off now was a royally idiotic move.
Still, Salamah can hardly be blamed for the way he stared at the wall, picturing upon it a thosuand violent acts. If all the political soothsayers couldn't agree, why would a seven year old boy know better?
He never, not in all his life, would have thought that one of his older brothers would be that fighter. They all seemed like one amorphous blur to Salamah, twelve and thirteen and fourteen and fifteen, young, rugged, handsome, obedient, and unlikely to win any prizes for intelligence. In that way, Marcus--for whom his little brother would be eventually named--was nothing special. He was energetic, perhaps, and sometimes even a bit combative. A bully even.
More energetic and vital, perhaps, but cut from the same cloth as his father, and already in Vocational (Mining) School, paid for by the Hopewells, where he would learn exactly what he needed to know to become his father, and no more.
He stared at the wall, and then down at his brother, barely breathing, in the bed. He had met three Hopewell retainers in the company of Tomas Hopewell, the young heir, doing some vandelism, likely to relieve stress. Two of the retainers were in the hopsital, and Tomas had broken bones from the fight--fair, if outnumbered, until the end--that had left the last retainer with no choice. Or at least, that's the story told, when he was dropped off outside their House--since his health-care wouldn't pay for it, since all the hospitals he could go to, they could afford, were owned by the Hopewells.
A non-fatal shock, they said, with an electric stun-device. His skin was horribly burned, right above his heart, and Marcus' eyes stared at nothing in particular. He might live, maybe, possibly, one of their cousins had told them--free medical advice from a nurse-dropout.
Salamah cried, didn't stop crying for days. Didn't stop until Marcus, who now had no school to go to, nor any hospital, nor any way to make even the least bit of income, woke up. Woke up and went about his day at home without seeming to be there. Marcus was never smart, but there was something empty, dull, dead about him as he went about his days. He neither blamed nor forgave the Hopewells, and wouldn't listen when his father suggested that maybe he could apologize, abjectly.
Salamah felt like he had seen it coming, had known that it was going to happen. One day, nearly two months later, while Salamah was at his Uncle's, Marcus wrote a ten-thousand word, badly spelled, angry, furious rant at the Hopewells, at everything they were, gotten into the bathtub, and slit his left wrist--he was right handed. And then allowed himself to at last stop holding on.
Salamah had returned in time to smell the sickly sweet stench of blood, to watch his brother's body being hauled away like useless meat, to copy down the rant into his own Device, to read later. He had been shaken, but oddly calm, as distant as his brother...but far more thoughtful.
In the night his father had broken into his room and deleted the rant, tried to scrub it clean, and so Salamah would only know the first several hundred words. His father, when Salamah had finished yelling at him, had said simply, "They can read these...if they found out..."
If they found out?! What, that they were monsters, that they deserved to be destroyed?! He had ranted until he was blue in the face.
And then his father had slapped him, hard, and left without saying another word.
Salamah studied programming, and within a week found a block which would mean that only if they were looking for a specific file, only if they knew it existed, could the Hopewells read it. And then he filled his folder with plans for murder. Within the first month he had found eleven viable ways, with every step listed, including where he got all the materials, and backup plans, that he could kill at least four Hopewells.
He was disappointed with himself.
Surely he could think of more than that! And the next month, he did.
Salamah had decided it was not over with the Hopewells, that it hadn't even begun. But he was not a fool, nor was he a hero or a fighter. He would wait, and then he would strike, and they would suffer, and then they would die.
But a poor boy's dreams can be of blood.
Cast:
Marcus Laurent, age 15: The older brother of Salamah, he is the first in their family to fight back against the Hopewells. It ends poorly for him.
Salamah Laurent, age 7: A boy who dreams of murder in the same thought that he dreams of light and knowledge. His childhood, dead at seven, has set him on a crash course with the darkest depths of the world.
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