Buttercup walked along the street toward the gate station in the center of the city, feeling more than a bit uneasy about how things went at the bank. She hadn't meant to give up her identity as easily as that. Julissa seemed nice enough, but it was all a bit sketchy speaking in code and arranging secret transactions.

She looked up into the sky, past the domed roof, beyond the atmosphere, to where the space station hurtled along somewhere in low planetary orbit. Sometimes at night she thought she could see it scooting across the sky, but with the dome and all its supporting girders in the way it was hard to tell. Bill Silver was up there somewhere waiting with the other half of her payment. She felt for Slack Dog's phone, sliding a hand along the outside of her pants over the boxy outline.

The streets were dead compared to most days. Police officers patrolled above in their floating cruisers, but the majority of the city's denizens stayed inside. She'd heard the broadcasters on the news urging people to stay indoors. Most listened to them. Everyone was afraid there would be another bombing.

They were probably all inside their homes huddled around their screens, watching the news stations for anything that might indicate what could happen next. Buttercup had never liked most of the residents of the city she lived in. She found them to be generally petty, small-minded, and anxious. As though they thought someone were always looking to take something from them.

Of course there were obvious exceptions—Hargrove had taken her in when he had no reason to. He'd even insisted on paying her rather than just having her work for food and lodging. Without him she might still be wandering the streets, scrounging for food, sleeping anywhere she could find to be alone. She wondered what she would have done today if she'd never been picked up. Or if she'd even still be alive. She knew what sort of options a girl on the street had after a certain age.

Buttercup hung a right onto Gateway Street, which would take her to the heart of the city, the central gate station. The city planners apparently weren't the most creative. Park Street, Main Street, Market Street—everything was simple, functional, and descriptive. Further down she could see the huge circular structure of the gate station. Thick columns were spaced evenly along the outside of the building, and between each pair of columns were sets of automatic double doors. 

The gate station was the city's only path between Surface and the orbital station. There were dozens of other cities on their planet equipped with similar gates, and each could be reached in an instant from any gate station. All of the planet's gates only worked over short astronomical distances—it was all they had been designed for. Instant travel between the planets was possible with the proper equipment, but there were no interplanetary gates left.

There were several remaining gates between the planets that shortened the distance between them but the majority of the journey had to be made the slow, old-fashioned way. She knew at one point there were incredibly powerful gates that could even bridge the gaps between stars, but they had been destroyed in the Interstellar Revolution along with the interplanetary gates.

Buttercup had read a wiki online about the history of gate travel. Decades of work went into those machines, and in a few instants of violence they were rendered totally useless. Scrap metal. Back when it was just Sol, before any of the other systems had been settled, great scientists discovered how to stabilize and manipulate infinitesimally tiny wormholes that randomly appeared and disappeared in space. They started very small—just enough to see through to the other side—and gradually the technology improved. Locations were charted, equations were written, and before long there was a database of locations all across the universe that they could observe from afar.

The next big breakthrough was the discovery of wormholes that opened near other Earthlike planets. By the time that happened the technology had improved to the point that the wormholes could be expanded wide enough and held open long enough to send matter through. They sent through drones and materials to build a sister gate to open the two points permanently, and humanity thus began its expansion across the so-called "infinite frontier." Colony ships were ferried through, easing the massive burden of human life on Mother Sol. It was the Golden Age of Expansion.

But in order for it to be properly considered a golden age, it had to end. Eventually the supply lines stretched far across the Milky Way, shipping valuable resources back to hungry Mother Sol and her closest colonies. It became unsustainable. Some settlements that would have otherwise been self-sufficient were forced to send so much they barely had enough for themselves. They attempted to use the proper bureaucratic channels, but Earth was far and the settlements had such distant voices.

Several colonized star systems revolted against Sol, having seen that they needed to act quickly to secure their futures. The crucial objective of each rebel cell was to take down the interstellar gate in each system—they were ludicrously expensive, and each system had only one at most. It was the perfect Goliath for the underdog resistance, so their first task became finding some good stones to throw.

As largely a confederation of laborers—miners, farmers, dock workers—they used what tools they had at their disposal. Asteroid wranglers supplied ammunition while others cobbled together slings made up of industrial-grade antigravity equipment. Biding their time, keeping to the shadows, the resistance seeded the asteroid belt with dozens of these gigantic gravity slingshots. And when the time was right, they started throwing stones.

The first system to successfully cut itself off by destroying its own gate was Buttercup's, the Luxar System. The system's interstellar gate had been built between Surface and the asteroid belt, and they never saw the first few shots coming. The initial barrage was partially destroyed by the planet's orbital defenses; the gate was damaged and disabled, but it was far from beyond repair. 

The Fleet stationed in the system took defensive measures to prevent more asteroids from being slung at them, but the rebels assaulted the gate in full force before reinforcements could be rallied. With the rebels engaging their warships and asteroids being flung at the gate, the Interstellar Fleet was kept busy long enough for another shot to get through—and the gate was smashed for good. 

The Luxar System was reinforced by the Interstellar Fleet after news of the rebel victory reached Earth. They managed to punch a few ships through, but without the sister gate there to hold the wormhole open their response time was crippled—and crucially, they couldn't retreat. It was a one-way flight for every soldier that got sent out there. The Fleet immediately got to work on repairing the gate, but their construction efforts were impeded by the guerilla-style resistance of the system's rebels.

No matter how many of the asteroid slings the Fleet destroyed, another they didn't know about would start lobbing rocks their way—and all the while the rebels worked on more. The asteroids they chose were large enough to be dangerous, but small enough that they were difficult to detect on approach. With the assault coming from all around the belt, it was impossible to predict where the next attack would come from.

Other oppressed systems threw their lot in with the upstarts, and soon what started as another rebellion to be crushed turned into the Interstellar Fleet fighting a war of many fronts, struggling to defend their precious interstellar gates. The ships they were sending to reinforce the fleets already in combat were too little too late, and many of the gates were destroyed along with a significant portion of the Interstellar Fleet.

Mother Sol saw her back was broken, and retracted what claws she had left. The Interstellar Fleet ships still left in the rebel systems surrendered. Earth still controlled the majority of settled star systems, most of which were near Sol. The colonized systems which revolted declared themselves independent. 

The first Interstellar Revolution was unarguably a success, but it came at a high cost. Despite the oppressive nature of Earth, cutting off all contact was a drastic measure which not everyone agreed with. A lot of people from the Core planets signed up with the Fleet when they came blazing in to quash the rebellion, and there were simmering resentments on both sides.

There was a lot of collateral damage done, most notably to the network of gates that created "roads" throughout the Luxar System. At times it was tactically necessary for one side or the other to destroy the gates. It took decades to rebuild them, and during that time a gulf developed between the more developed Core planets and the frontier-like resource planets beyond the asteroid belt Styx. It became much more difficult to transport supplies and equipment to the outer rim, so most people abandoned the frontier for the safety of the Core planets.

That was over fifty years ago. No one in the Luxar System really knew what became of Earth and its vast empire. Most people thought Earth maintained the silence out of choice, fearing that they might lose control of their colonies once again if their other systems were allowed to see the fruits of revolution. Others say they simply expanded their conquest of the stars to other planets, uninhabited planets which they could freely exploit, following the path of least resistance to greater wealth and power.

Buttercup stood at the base of the marble staircase in front of the gate station and looked up, following the lines of the thick white columns. The building had been around since the old days, before the revolution. The quiet was eerie. It had been a long time since she was last there, but what she did remember was the buzz of human voices, human footsteps. All she heard now was the occasional siren.

Find him, came Mother's whisper.

"Working on it," she said under her breath.

As if in response, Slack Dog's phone in her pocket pulsed twice. A text message. She tried to swipe it open and it prompted for the four-digit code again. A preview of the text scrolled across the top of the screen, but the message was short enough to be read in its entirety.

Buffalo Bill: Dock B46

Well, now she knew where she was going. She snickered at the nickname Slack Dog had given to "Buffalo Bill," wondering what it even meant, and walked up the steps to the gate station. Once she passed through the automatic sliding doors she approached one of the dozen or so ticket machines that lined the walls. Two guards stood shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the hallway to the inner station.

Buttercup poked some commands into the ticket machine's screen, and it presented a list of destinations and ticket prices. She clicked on the icon for a ticket to the orbital station's docking bay and back, and a box popped up on the screen with the amount: 250 CREDITS YES/NO. YES, she selected, and the machine flashed its red scanning light across her eyes.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PURCHASE, the screen said. YOUR TICKET CAN BE REDEEMED VIA RETINAL SCAN AT THE GATEWAY. HAVE A NICE TRIP.

The building was designed so that a person could gain access to a gate from any of its outside entrances. Regardless of where she had come in, she would continue toward the center of the building where the transport rooms were. Buttercup approached the uniformed guards. The two looked identical in their lightly armored navy nullsuits. They always wore nullsuits when on duty at the station in case they were needed up above. The guard on her right pulled something off his belt—one of the little spherical scanners she had seen the police at the hotel use.

He stepped toward her, clicked the scanner with his thumb, and raised it to eye level. It snaked out a little wavering tongue of red light that flicked up and down across her eyeballs. She flinched without meaning to. A viewscreen built into the inner forearm of the guard's suit lit up with her information and destination, and the guard flicked through her profile a little. They were so casual about calling up citizens' details.

"Going up?" the guard asked as he put the scanner away. His doppelganger remained silent, staring straight forward.

"Yeah. Dock B46," she said. "Can you tell me where that is?"

"Just go down the hall and take a right," he said and jerked a thumb behind him. "You'll see a map of the station when you get up there. You never been up before?"

Buttercup looked behind him. The hall was split in two along its length by blue ropes that hung between metal poles with round bases.

"Not since I was little," she said.

"Just keep going; you'll be shown to your gate, and they'll shut the doors behind you. It'll remember where you're going. The gate opens, you walk through, and you're there."

"Thanks."

"What made you pick today?" he said.

"Huh?"

"You know, to go up today with all this going on."

"All what?" she said, feigning ignorance. She didn't want to have to explain herself.

The guard just laughed.

"Don't worry about it, then," he said. 

The second guard hadn't moved for the entire conversation. The one she was talking to took up his position again opposite the other. Buttercup walked through them down the hallway, trailing her left hand along the velvety blue ropes that separated the hall into an entrance and exit lane.

Recessed floor-to-ceiling viewscreens on both walls displayed live feeds from cameras in what looked like other gate stations around the world. The screens were ordered by the time of day, with each time displayed tastefully near eye level underneath the city's name. The designs of the various gate stations were similar in function, but distinct from each other in their architecture and layout. Buttercup knew roughly where most of the cities were, and tried to get a mental image in her head of where each on would be on a globe.

Some were clearly artistically inspired, others more practical and bland, but the basics of every gate station was the same. Most gates were used to move groups of passengers, but some seemed to be for cargo transport. Each gate was built inside a thick-walled room and those that had access to the orbital station were separated by an airlock. The airlock system was in place as a precaution should the orbital station's gate ever somehow become exposed to the vacuum of space.

Both outer and inner airlock doors were opened by a doorman when the gate was ready for use. Groups of people would enter, a doorman would seal them in, and then the gate inside the room would activate. The doorman would wait a few moments for a green light to illuminate and open the doors again to an empty room, the passengers having offloaded at their destination. Then the next batch went in—or came out, since they could be used both ways.

Buttercup stopped when she got to the feed of Capitol City's gate station. It was a shot of cargo being auto-loaded into massive transport rooms. Tiny pallet bots swarmed to and fro like bugs, carrying gargantuan loads on their backs hundreds of times their own weight. The other screens shifted between different cameras, but this one was fixed. It gave the illusion that business was proceeding as usual despite the emptiness of the place.

She kept moving and took a right at the end of the hallway, following the signs. The other way was blocked and seemed to be where passengers would normally be filtering out of the building, walking the opposite way down the hallway she had just come from. There was no one today. She continued left around another corner and found herself in a long, wide room. The walls were lined with airlocks, maybe five on each side, distanced at regular intervals. The room had the appearance of a bank vault.

A bored-looking doorman straightened his back when she entered. He was younger than herself, and much shorter. He waved her inside the airlock he was holding open for her. She entered the tube-shaped room and smiled her thanks at him, noting the name on his badge—Juanito. He sealed the door behind them and excused himself as he slid by her to open the inner airlock.

"Lucky you," he said, turning the wheel. "You get the whole thing to yourself. Sometimes we really gotta cram you in there."

"Yeah, it's so empty in here."

"Well, you know Cap City folks," Juanito said. "Obedience is a virtue. The Governor asked everyone to stay indoors and keep gate traffic down while they search the city. They even cancelled the festival. Oh, but since you're going up there you should be able to see Orpheus. Down here he won't be visible again until tonight."

"Okay, cool. I'll take a look."

Juanito swung the door open and stepped to the side. He gestured for her to proceed with one arm, and Buttercup entered the transport room.

#

Click "external link" below to join the Hanlon's Reader email list at Substack:

https://jhanlon.substack.com/about

Author's note: This is the FREE version of my book, the raw first draft in its original form, unedited except by yours truly. For the fully polished and professionally edited $2.99 Amazon Kindle edition, visit this link:

http://a.co/0tdwdZ4