The First Penitatas - Rejuve Day
#1 of The First Penitatas
It was a day years in the planning. Laws had to be reviewed and rewritten, Arbiters and Enforcers updated, specialist facilities constructed, and the general public informed and readied. There would be complications and confusions for months, sometimes years afterwards, but this day was the transition point - the day Taviksaad abandoned mortality and became a Rejuve society.
The natives had the advantage of other races to advise them; Humans, Drakonians, Jalaxians and more besides were present to help guide the transition, although the people of Taviksaad were determined to do things their own way. They would adopt the titles of the other races: Voluntaras for civilians returned to childhood, Medicalos for those rejuvenated to save them from sudden, accidental death; and Penitatas for those who were rejuvenated as punishment. The latter in particular was where they disagreed with how things should be done, for Kyyreni had never much believed in rehabilitation.
Kadan was one of the Kyyreni most responsible for the new age. He stood outside of a concrete bunker, which was surrounded by six towers arrayed in a hexagon. Beyond the mesh fence in every direction was nothing but sun-scorched desert. To Terran eyes, Kadan resembled a wolf, stood upright on digitigrade legs and with the fur colour, mane and tail tuft of a lion. His reptilian eyes were locked on a darkened doorway, squinting. A hand shielded his face from the fierce son, but the heat still made him bare his shark-like teeth. With any luck, the new justice system would mean he'd never have to leave the domes again.
In time, four prisoners and their Enforcer escorts emerged from the doorway and into the hateful wasteland. Three were male, looking much like Kadan, just thinner and more miserable. The fourth was a female, identified by her darker fur, lack of mane and absent tail tuft. Unlike the females of many species, Kyyreni women were of comparable physical prowess to the males. However, it was obvious that she had suffered far more in the cells below the soil.
"Welcome back from the dead," Kadan smirked. "Thurd's Marauders, I have the singular pleasure of informing you that you shall be among the first convicts to serve as Penitatas."
The men were unphased. Either they were ignorant of the reforms, which was possible given they had spent more time trying to ruin society than interact with it, or they were trying to appear stoic. The female, however, was obviously rattled. "You are to be taken to the rejuvenation facility in The City, where you will be returned to the age of five and sold to a registered buyer, who shall ensure that you pay for your crimes with blood, sweat and tears. I already have several prospective buyers lined up for-"
"Lady Sin?" the female whimpered. Kadan answered with a slow nod. Despite his duties, and knowing exactly what kind of scum the convicts were, he felt genuine remorse for the woman, and those who would share her fate.
Keeping his eyes locked on the terrified woman, Kadan drew his service pistol from its holster. "If you try to escape now, my men and I will gun you down before you reach the perimeter."
Ten seconds later she was dead, as promised. Now the men were frightened. It dawned on Kadan that only the woman had been a native; these were from Oraahnaj, on the Homeworld. They didn't know the local powers. They didn't know about Lady Sin. Now they did; their friend and colleague had chosen to die a coward, and condemn her immortal soul in the process rather than fall into the clutches of Lady Sin... and her last words had been "thank you."
The City was vast, built to house three hundred thousand colonists, and that was before the secondary excavations and surface extensions. It never had a name, nor did it need one. The primary dome was built before the terraforming process began, but it was three generations before the first Kyyreni settled beneath its protective lattice. Even now that the surface was livable, a true Taviksaadi lived in The City, or at least clung to her skirts.
The Hall of Correction was built in the junction between the districts of Outer Tenement and Vices, supposedly so that the criminal classes would not have to leave their dens to face punishment. While the Enforcers operated the site, they were officially acting on behalf of the Royal Slaver Company, who had a monopoly on the rejuvenation machines.
On Rejuve Day, the gates were opened to those who had acquired a licence to purchase a Penitatas. Some sixty Pennys had been prepared for sale, and awaited their fate in the unlit holding cells, three or four per cage. Most were Kyyreni, but a handful of other species were found in the huddled, frightened mass. None were older than seven, and most were five or younger.
Skal was one of these unfortunate souls. While he had done many questionable things in his short life, the Kyyreni boy's true crime was being on the losing side of a gang war. Lacking the wits, skills or reputation to be worth recruiting, he and a dozen others had been sacrificed to the Enforcers so the rest might start a new life in their new gang.
The boy shared a cage with three others; a female of three years who had been a man just hours before, and two fellow five-year-olds who were here for 'electronic crime', whatever that meant. They seemed to want to protect the girl, but Skal paid little attention to any of them. His only concern was his own fate and what, if anything could be done to make things easier for himself. In the darkness he could hear sobbing, mostly from the aliens - the Kyyreni had heat-sense to allow a passable vision of sorts in the lightless cages.
The door to his left hissed open and two Enforcers emerged, escorting a woman and her cohorts. Backlit as they were, Skal couldn't make out any features beyond size and fur colour, and from a distance the heat-sense was so vague he couldn't even make an accurate head count. Yet as the group reached the first cage the lights flickered into life, and a wave of terror washed through the Penitatas.
Lady Sin strode along the cages, the scars upon her face twisting her muzzle into a permanent smirk. She was, despite the rumours, an upstanding and lawful citizen, always operating on the bleeding edge of legality. Upon seeing her, the three-year-old gave a soft whimper and hid behind the older boys.
"Where is the Black Flag?" Lady Sin growled as her callous eyes scanned the cages. Skal didn't hear the reply, but from her expression he knew she was not pleased. "Then I want two replacements. She was promised to me, and I consider her loss a violation of contract!"
After a brief argument, it seemed the lady got her way. She came at once to Skal's cage, and gave the door mounted datapad her full attention. "This one raped a Lord's daughter? I want her. She'll draw a fine crowd."
The girl shrieked as the cage door swung open. One of the Enforcers stepped in and grabbed the tiny girl by the neck and hauled her out. She grabbed onto the bars and tried to stop herself being taken, but no child so young could offer any resistance. "Kill me!" she wailed to the men who bound her in chains. "Don't let her take me! Gods, please let me die!" A thick leather muzzle ended her screams, and she was hauled away while Lady Sin selected her next purchase. She took a Kyyreni girl of five, and a Human girl of six, both of whom were mute with fear after the earlier display. Then, at last, Lady Sin departed, and in her wake other buyers were permitted entry.
This was not Skal's first auction. He'd been on the other side of the bars back when he was thirteen, sweeping the crowd for unsecured cash-cards. The trick to that was never to take all that much - just a bit or two, something the owner would never think to query. He had earned nine tathl, an alright haul, when the market proper opened. It was mostly men on the block, and you never saw the young, attractive women; he learned later that brothels or private buyers paid well over odds to ensure they got their sex slaves, so they went from cage to owner with no steps in between. The Penny Auction was like that, too. The girls went first, and aliens too, leaving around forty boys of various ages to be taken by the throng. The procession was a vertical slice of the Taviksaadi people. There was a black-furred Nightsider couple who wanted a boy to fetch and carry for their business, and must have figured a Penitatas would be cheaper and more reliable than a thrall child. There was a Noble with a wild glint in his eye, the kind of man Skal and his peers called 'blood crazy'. It was safe money he wanted a Penitatas to torture. Had he been low-born like Skal, someone would have quietly taken him down to the service pipes and crushed his skull, or given him to a Raider captain with a bag of coin to make sure he never came back. Instead, he got to strut around in fine silks and indulge his madness. Perk of high status, clearly.
There were also quite a few aliens, the ones from Icara who had their own Penitatas system. That was about all Skal knew, but he listened to them talking as they inspected the cages and gleamed enough to know they didn't approve of what they saw. He tried his best to look soft around these prospective buyers, tearing up and whimpering like a cub half his new age. It didn't work, not for him at any rate. He was genuinely envious of the Penitatas who went home with those parents. They snapped up the last girl, a lizard of some kind who wept tears of relief as she was taken by a Human couple. She kept repeating a short, foreign phrase as they all left together, "thank you", Skal guessed.
And as quickly as it started, the sale ended. All the cages bar one were empty, and no-one else was coming. Skal sat alone in the little cell, with only the scents of sweat and fear to tell him the other cages had ever held others. "Hey!" he cried out as the Enforcers walked back towards the entrance. "What about me?"
"What about you?" the black-clad guard spat back. He left without a second glance, slamming the door and causing the lights to die. Skal was left alone, locked in a cold, metal cage whose only furnishing was a metal bucket in the corner and a drainage grill in the floor. He hadn't cried up until now, save as part of an act, but this was too much for the Rejuve to take. He sobbed aloud, and there was no-one left to care.
"A fine day's work, if I do say so myself. We've sold out in our first hour!" The proud declaration came from Avyyr, the representative of the Royal Slaver Company, a Kyyreni woman in her mid twenties who wore the red and gold of her organisation proudly. She spoke with a Tzajiian accent, and the cadence of her native speech grated the nerves of the locals. Kadan had known her for two weeks, and had come to the conclusion that Avyyr saw the entire world as a spreadsheet of costs and profits. She was the kind of woman who would have charged for the oxygen consumed in her presence if she could. He wished there was a word to describe women like her; "bitch" just didn't cut it.
"There's still a boy in the cages... ma'am." one of Kadan's men piped up. The pause and deference was due to Avyyr's damned raised eyebrow. That was the other thing that made Kadan's blood boil; she was a slave, and she expected - no, demanded he and his men bow and scrape to her. If she'd ever wore a collar, it must have been made of platinum and void opals. Turns out you didn't have to be nobility to live in luxury; you just had to be owned by a Guild so big it could buy nobility.
Avyyr clicked the fingers of her left hand, and a thin mechanical limb swung up over her shoulder to present a new datapad. She had four of the secondary arms strapped to herself, transforming her into a bizarre cybernetic spider. "Hmm, says here C6A3D77P0 is already bought and paid for."
"The boy is mine, yes," Kadan translated. "I thought it right I partake in the system to its fullest."
The Slaver shrugged the limb away. Now that she was satisfied no-one had left money on the table the conversation had outlived its usefulness. "Well, now that our first batch is shipped, I have other matters to consider. If I have your leave?"
"No you don't," Kadan growled, although he had no idea why; the bitch swept out of the room like she was the damn High Praetor of Tzajii herself. Kadan swallowed a vitriolic scream. Independence was supposed to get rid of people like her, yet still they remained, Homeworld scum treating the Colonies like underlings. Even their slaves looked down on Colonists!
He waited for the anger to fade some before turning his thoughts back to his impromptu purchase. The boy was still in holding, alone and afraid in the dark. Kadan gave a quick glance to the operations board and duty roster. A quiet day, all things considered; there'd be some fighting in Vices later, but that was Vices every night. Aside from a grade-2 in Blister, his men had nothing to do for at least three hours, and he'd be rotated off-board before the nightly shit-show's opening act. Well, what was the point of privilege if you didn't use it now and again? "I'm off-boarding now. Don't bother me with anything below a grade-4. Bast, rejoice! You're to blame for the rest of the rotation!"
Bast didn't bother to look up from his book. "One: fuck yourself. Two: want me to send a lad to fetch your new pet?"
Kadan shook his head, "Nah, I'll come back for him later. Let the little bastard cry some more."
Skal had been alone in the cell for what felt like eternity. He'd started to shiver a long while back, now that the passive warmth of the others had faded. Cells weren't meant to be this cold! He'd been in here before, back when it was just a local cell block. You went to Vices, got drunk or high or bored, and if you lost the resulting fights you spent the night in here. That was life. Nothing ever came of it - the bars, clubs and brothels of Vices wanted the ruffians out of the way, but they also wanted them back spending the next night, so the punishment was just a night sleeping on a hard metal floor.
At long last, light poured through the doorway once more. A single man approached, smelling faintly of smoke, narcotics and cheap alcohol. He didn't bother with the lights, instead marching straight to the cage and punching in the lock code. "Think of the upside. This will hopefully be the last time you ever sleep it off in this cell."
Skal gave a faint whine at the sound of the man's voice. Enforcer-Captain Kadan. This was bad news no matter how it was spun. Captains didn't bother with low-grade gangers, just like gang leaders didn't tangle with Enforcers - on both sides of the conflict, rank dealt with rank. If you were hauled up in front of the other side's leaders, it meant you were fucked beyond all hope of return.
"I'm your new owner, boy. Sorry about leaving you here so long, but I was busy scraping the remains of your friends off the wall."
"Fuck you!" Skal snapped, and was rewarded with a boot to the face. He went down hard, vomiting blood. Somewhere in the dark, one of his teeth rattled against the wall.
Kadan grabbed the boy by the scruff of his maneless neck and hauled him onto his paw-tips. "You were part of the 67 Crew. I lost three good men to you, three men who died because scum like you can't be happy beating the crap out of each other in the rough houses or out in the wastes where nobody gives a damn! I am going to made sure you suffer for those deaths!"
"I didn't kill nobody!" Skal wailed. For what it was worth, the claim was true; the men who killed the Enforcers had all been snapped up by new gangs now. Skal had left at least one rival with life-long scarring, but he'd never killed. Not that Kadan cared, nor presumably did the bars of the cage as Skal encountered them at high speed.
As he hit the ground, Skal lost control of his bladder. He didn't care. The tiny part of his mind that wasn't lost to pain and abject terror felt sure this was how he was to die. A heavy boot came to rest upon his tail, putting just enough pressure on to keep it pinned. "No..." he whimpered, "p-ple... no..."
"The law says I can't kill you," Kadan growled. "I have to keep you alive, give you a place to live and a bed to sleep in. I have to feed you and water you, and in five years time there has to be something I can drag in front of a review board so they can decide if you've suffered enough. If you haven't, then it's back to five you go and we do this all over again."
It was tempting to snap the boy's tail, but the fury that had carried him this far was beginning to ebb. Skal wasn't moving now. Breathing, yes, but not moving. "Fuck!" the Enforcer spat, and hauled the boy over his shoulder. Never let it get personal, his father had told him. Personal will kill you in the end. Well, if this hadn't been personal, what had it been?
Unfortunately, he now had to carry the unconscious cub out of the cells and past his own men to get to the motor pool. Four sets of eyes watched him march past, all fixed on his charge. It was Bast who broke the silence. "Wet floors, sir?"
"Wet floors," Kadan echoed in a low growl.
Bast smiled, and the others nodded in understanding. "We'll get right on that. Good evening, sir."
Much to his own amazement, Skal woke up again. His muzzle was bound shut, and he couldn't see out his right eye, but he was certainly alive.
"Don't squirm, and don't touch the patches!" a familiar voice snapped from Skal's right. He jumped at the voice, but had the sense to obey. "The patches will help with the swelling. It's some fancy offworld shit I got when I volunteered for the program. 'Nano-lotion' they called it. If I've done this right, you'll be good as new by tomorrow morning. Well, except your teeth, but new ones will come through soon enough."
As slowly as he dared, Skal tilted his head downwards. He was nude, with a few bruises showing through his child-fur. He gave his tail a tentative flick, and found it both responsive and free of pain. "I gave you a bath while you were out," Kadan offered as a justification for the boy's lack of clothing.
With more care than Skal expected, Kadan gripped the boy by the shoulders and helped him to sit upright. Moving brought fresh waves of pain, but the Enforcer didn't seem to care about the boy's whimpering. A bottle with a straw was offered, and Skal managed to open his muzzle enough to accept the offering of cold water. "We got off to a bad start," Kadan conceded. "The Icarans think that being a Penitatas is about reform. You spend ten, twenty, thirty years as a child being given a harsh, strict upbringing and eventually it'll stick. When it sticks, you return to society a reformed individual. Personally, I think that's a crock of shit. How about you? Do you think you'll ever be anything other than gang scum?"
Skal met his master's eyes for a moment. Where he an adult, he'd have spat something back at him, or just plain spat. As a five year old, he couldn't muster that kind of bravado. Just seeing the anger in Kadan's eyes was enough to make the Penny begin crying again. That might have been the best thing he could possibly have done.
To Skal's surprise, Kadan seemed to soften. With a huff, he stood up and stepped out of the boy's field of view, and Skal didn't want to risk turning his head. "There's two ways this can go. If you co-operate, then you won't suffer anything permanent. If you fight back... well, like I said, I only have to keep you alive. You've seen people live through a lot of things, right?"
He had. Gods, he had.
The room's illumination dimmed. Kadan returned into view carrying a padded blanket and a black bag, which he set down on the edge of the bed. From the bag there came a leather collar with fine metal lining. "This has tracking, a basic life monitor and tamper-detection. If you are ever where you're not supposed to be, or if that tamper alarm goes off, I do something that won't heal. Got it?" The boy nodded urgently, despite the pulsing pain it caused across his neck. Threat delivered and understood, he was eased down onto his side with more care than expected, and after the pillow took his head's weight the blanket was unrolled and tucked around him.
"You had- shit!" Kadan barked from the door. Somewhere else in the residence a shrill alarm went off. Kadan pointed at the Penitatas and spat, "you do not leave this room! Just go to sleep!" with that he rushed out, leaving Skal alone with his thoughts. Most of them were frantic and fearful, imagining what cruelties the Enforcer had in store. A part of him, a part that was still a grown man was already trying to take stock of the situation. That part listened to Kadan's urgent movements, to the sound of armour being buckled and a safe being opened and closed. Then the sound of the exterior door opening and shutting, just on the edge of hearing. Alone at last. Time to explore, perhaps? Scout, take stock, find a weapon... the adult mind was ready, but the child's body was not willing. Pain and fatigue were too much; even hunger had been silenced by the promise of sleep in a warm bed. Plan the escape tomorrow, the child-side said. Sleep now.
As Skal slipped away into rest, Kadan knew he wouldn't be sleeping tonight. It was an all-arms alert out of Blister, grade-6.
It was Rejuve Day, and the revolution had started.