The Star 1

"Bart, your wife has safely given birth. It's a boy," the doctor said as he handed the child over to his exhausted mother.

The excited and overjoyed man looked at his child. "It's been hard on you, my dear Cassandra. Thank you for giving this gift to us."

The woman weakly laughed. "This 'gift' is going to be a handful. I can just feel it."

The doctor looked between the raven haired mother and her brown haired husband, both with different shades of brown eyes. The child was delicate and pale. Downy and just slightly curly frost color hair framed a face with blue/green heterochromatic eyes from birth.

He said in an assuring tone, "Children conceived around the time of the Burning Sky event are notorious for being born with some signs of atavism. What has been a cause for concern in other regions hasn't held true in these parts... There might not be a cause for concern but you need to report if your child shows signs of abnormal growths or exhibits dangerous phenomenon around him as soon as possible. Not only for your sake but for your child as well.

"Mutations in the surrounding area have held remarkable stability in comparison to other impact vicinities but that won't keep people from being people. Patient/ Doctor confidentiality is still a thing around here but people will be able to tell fairly quickly that your son is one of the meteor touched. I would advise a regular monthly visit for the next year and three month follow ups until further notice."

Cassandra said, "We may be better off than some but we can't afford that many clinic visits without an 'actual' reason. If you want to see our baby boy for observational purposes, you're free to call on us at our home after hours, Rupert."

Repressing his own anxiety, Bartholomew said, "It might not be much of a consolation prize to your regular fees, Burt old sport, but I have enough of the aged scotch my father left behind to keep your friendly visits well lubricated for a year or two. If it's just for a peek in to ease your conscience, surely that's not too far of an imposition for your childhood friend, is it?"

The doctor removed his precious wire frame glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Alright, Bart. Consider my sympathies cheaply bought but you come toting tools with a smile on your face and fire in your backside if I need help with a few repairs around my office. It's only fair...And as I recall, you're awfully fond of my father's brandy. So, you already owe me a 'little' of your inherited scotch."

Cassandra sighed. "While you two jockey for some leverage on each other's top shelf treasures, I've decided to name him Sonny. Any objections, dearest?"

She shot her husband a pleasant smile that still managed to put some chill in his heart.

Bart said, "But I thought... Of course not, dear."

With a gentleman's agreement between the engineer and doctor, Sonny's new family wouldn't go belly up financially. Following the regulations for children born with signs of meteor induced mutation were expensive unless the family gave them up to the state. They'd also be able to keep it low key, saving their precious first born from being the target of discrimination.

As time went by, wagging tongues made a much different guess as to the nature of the friendly doctor's regular house calls. After all, the man was a sandy blond with blue eyes. In time, Bartholomew also sometimes wondered if his friend Rupert had made a house call while he was away fixing a coil generator for the second ring of the colony.

The thought stung but it wasn't as painful as it might have been for some. He would ignore the betrayal and just try harder to have another kid, grateful his wife had his childhood friend waiting to pick her up from a potentially bad fate if something happened to him. Life on Terra Capri was harder than some of the other deep space colonies.

The inner ring could almost passed for civilized. Those privileged to live there had access to electricity, indoor plumbing and other amenities that reached post industrial age standards. With the lack of resource funding their founding ancestors had nearly 300 years prior, there had been a severe lack of high grade tech.

With the added threat of mutated people and wildlife after the Burning Sky event, it was bound to get worse. Without the handful of bootleg engineers like himself to keep the slowly slipping status quo, the second ring would have devolved to a much different kind of colonial times. Several groups of people had already started ranging outside of their crumbling colony to set up nearly dark age level, barony style territories.

Bart furiously hoped that the Deep Space Union vessel scheduled to arrive in the next ten to fifteen years would come with a sponsorship contract for military grade equipment to tame the wild planet with. He also hoped the terms of that contract were something the upper echelons of the colony could swallow before their whole settlement went dark ages and completely lost the right to negotiate at all.

The world's challenges had proven too much for the predominantly human colonists to overcome. In that darkest of circumstances, they'd be labeled 'native' and lose Union membership. Without independent status, they'd be just another 'chicken coop' for Alliance military and merchant caste exploitation. It was a situation many had feared they were intentionally being backed into anyway. If so, the ones pulling the strings in the background for the last hundred or so years had done a great job.

***

"Daddy, why would the Union give up on a planet just because it didn't have educated people? A place where people can live is worth a lot, isn't it?" Sonny asked during a rare moment where his father took time to teach him and updated the kid's workbooks.

Despite doubts over Sonny's blood ties to him, Bart had grown fond of the boy. From as early as three, Sonny showed an incredible capacity to learn. Sometimes, it almost seemed more like the boy was remembering something forgotten. In a moment of reflection, Bart decided to pour all the learning he could into the kid.

What started as an insurance plan for the younger sibling on the way had turned into the affection a teacher had for a bright pupil. If not the warmth of a father's love, it was pretty close from a kid's perspective. It helped a great deal that the five year old seemed as excited about being a big brother as he was about the prospect of having a true living heir. Bart had started to worry if he was capable until his wife told him the good news.

Bart said, "The Deep Space Union exists only because the Alliance doesn't want to waste resources policing the scattered colonies of the Black Zone. It's not really worth it to them. That doesn't mean that groups within the Alliance aren't interested. An official Alliance colony and a claimed territory are two very different things.

"The treaty between the Alliance and the Union states a colony considered to have gone 'native' is a case of negligence. The Alliance can step in to provide assistance at the cost of that planet belonging to them as a territory. The Union would love to stop that from happening, I'm sure.

"The problem is, the Union has its hands full keeping their net of planets connected together and dealing with greater threats. Pirates, aliens incapable or unwilling to make peace with the colonies and an ever increasing number of previously unrecorded diseases keep their hands full and tied to do much else."

Sonny stared into the distance. Bart had learned that it wasn't the kid's mind wandering but just the opposite. When presented with something hard to understand, the boy would kind of shut down for a little bit and then re-frame what he knew. It was like the kid could make the very most out of every little bit he was told. Bart's doctor friend had said that the kid was just taking advantage of the more flexible mind children had. It was pretty amazing but nothing overly special in the broad sense.

"What's the difference between colonies and territories?" Sonny asked.

Bart's face turned grim. "What's the difference between the inner ring of our own colony and the outer one? The only difference that matters is privilege. The pretty box of privileges in this case is labeled citizenship. As previous citizens of the Union, people in territories have to earn Alliance citizenship or earn passage to another Union colony."

Sonny stared into space again, then said, "Union is Alliance."

Bart started chuckling at the absurdity but then stopped, as what that statement meant sunk in. He couldn't deny the logic or benefit the Alliance had created for itself if it were true. It would mean an ever renewing supply of practical slave labor and soldier fodder while maintaining the facade of benevolence to its own citizens.

Malcontents had a 'second choice' that would have them voluntarily leaving rather than inciting rebellion. And with its loose, far spread body, the Alliance could secretly pick here and there at the Union to keep them from knitting any tighter and becoming a real opponent... ever. Better yet, the Deep Space Union can and did deal with several dangers, insuring greater safety to inhabitants of the Alliance's Green Zone.

"Sonny, you can never repeat that again," Bartholomew said with a pained face.

Startled, the boy agreed.

***

Over the next year, Sonny basked in the approval of his father. He took it upon himself to even reach out to Rupert, expanding his knowledge and ability when Bartholomew was too busy to update his workbooks. It would be some of the last beautiful memories the boy would have for some time to come.

Six months after Vincent was born, still sandy haired and blue eyed, Rupert tried to explain that it could take years for a child's features to match the father's but Bart wasn't stupid. It wasn't just the hair and eyes that likely would get darker with time, it was the guilt in the eyes of his wife and friend that they couldn't keep hidden. Bart demanded paternity tests from another clinic.

It may have seemed like a logical decision. Infidelity wasn't a crime at their colony but the consequences of the test proved to be dire. As it turned out, Sonny was Bart's but abnormalities in Sonny's DNA were uncovered. Vincent wasn't but when Rupert revealed an older test of Bart's, the reasoning behind the madness unfolded.

Bart was sterile. The years of exposure to certain faulty equipment had taken its toll. Sonny was a bit of a miracle and making it to term, happy and healthy, were probably due to the meteor's influence. But with Bart's strong and insistent desire to have another child, Cassandra had felt cornered to provide one, even scared of being set aside if she couldn't. It didn't help that Bart hadn't exactly been faithful either after becoming obsessed with having another kid.

From there it turned into a long morality lesson Sonny wasn't emotionally equipped to understand at that time. What he did understand was that his status as a meteor touched mutant was no longer a private matter. After all, Bart didn't have a friend in the other clinic to enforce confidentiality.

The few playmates the boy had, disappeared under the disapproval of their parents. Faced with heartbreaking decisions no matter what she did, Cassandra filed for a clean divorce and left for Rupert's household with Vincent. Burt wasn't exactly the faithful type to begin with but the doctor took to fatherhood well and that was enough for Cass. It had to be because she had been robbed of better alternatives.

Although Bart had become a more affectionate man towards Sonny, he was coming apart at the seams. Years worth of community pressured evaluations for Sonny had been reduced into a few months, wiping out the man's savings that had already been voluntarily split with Cassandra. To compensate losing most of his nest egg, he took to working long hours, taking in a widow with a nearly grown boy of her own to look after Sonny.

The boy didn't like his new big brother or mom much and expressed that by pretending to have difficulty remembering the names of his new family. As his father escaped reality into work, Sonny did the same with his studies and tinkering. Perhaps because of remorse or genuine compassion, Cassandra and Rupert frequently sent the boy little care packages of books and bits of things to help Sonny fuel his own budding passions.

Fortunately, he was a quick learner because he rarely held onto things for very long before they would disappear mysteriously. The widow blamed it on Sonny's 'irresponsible and absentminded' behavior. Since Bart's step son kept the kleptomania within an 'acceptable' bounds, the busy man didn't do much other than warn the teen not to cross his bottom line.

Under the new equilibrium of home life, Sonny's childhood reached a sustainable mild misery for nearly another year before another inevitable tragedy struck. Overworked and emotionally overwhelmed, Bart died from a coil core explosion. His postmortem assets couldn't be held liable because the pieces had been 'out of warranty' for longer than Bart had been alive but Sonny knew it was likely a moment of carelessness.

The second ring section that didn't have any electricity wouldn't care about facts anyway. The bootleg engineer who had been a 'hero' to the second ring for years would become an incompetent villain overnight. With potential replacement generator coils still nearly a decade away, hatred had to have an outlet.

The moment news had come to Sonny's house, his step mom and brother started ransacking the place for all it was worth. They wanted to make sure anything of value was stored at family members' houses before the last will bequeathed assets to Sonny. He would have been a ward of the state before nightfall if it wasn't for a stipend provided by Bart's remaining nest egg.

It would take a few weeks for emergency release of that stipend to be pushed through. After that, Sonny would be left with nothing of value. His stepmother assured him that he'd not be abandoned as he was subtly asked about possible secret stashes of 'rainy day' valuables. Were he not smart enough not to snowball them into thinking he believed their tissue paper thin lies, he would have laughed in their faces.

Claiming his very real grief as excuse to take an afternoon nap, Sonny woke up in the middle of the night and waited for his step brother to nod off in the living room chair. The step mother wasn't dumb either but her mistake was trusting her son to keep an eye on Sonny during the night. He had shown the teen a secret stash after the stepmother went to bed, alright. Pity for the cunning woman, it was the booze stash Bart hid from Cassandra.

He sneaked out of the house as quietly as he could and made his way to the emergency shelter in their back yard. Overgrown with weeds, it had been easy to overlook and no one would have guessed that Bart and his son had been using it for years. His father had turned it into a hideaway den but let his son use it as a secret fort for months before the two newcomers had entered the picture.

Bartholomew may not have stood up and laid the law down to his older wife and stepson but he wasn't completely blind to their natures to begin with. He ordered Sonny not to play back there or mention it to anyone before he had brought practical strangers into his home. He may have been desperate for a live-in caretaker and falling apart but he had the sense to keep the most important things locked away.

Taking the bed knob from his pack, Sonny unscrewed it to reveal a key and a small bottle of rust remover lubricant. Seeing the small bottle of his dad's 'secret weapon' and taking in the familiar scent that lingered on Bart almost cause Sonny to lose it again but he pushed on with a quivering lip. Applying it to the lock and the small door's hinges, he waited in a state of paranoia for a few minutes before giving it an experimental pull.

Finding the hinges 'quiet as a mouse', he slipped inside and collected the most important items up to what he could reasonably carry on top of his pack. The last thing he picked up was a small case. Inside was a small, two chamber pistol and a handful of silvery bullets in pristine condition.

It was a collector's item handed down through four generations of men. Despite being kept in perfect condition, it hadn't been used in over a hundred years. As he loaded the two chambers, Sonny prayed it would keep its peace for another generation. He didn't know if he could aim it at another person and pull the trigger anyway. Sadly, he was about to find out.

"What did I say, my boy. You don't have to catch a rat or learn how to speak its language. Just shake it up a little and let it go. It'll run to its nest every time," a detestable woman's voice declared as her son chuckled drunkenly.