Heems is an energy vampire, a parasite. Working as a doctor on dwarf planet Eris, Heems feeds on xeir unknowing hosts -- Eris's sickly hospital patients -- by draining their energy with a single touch.
Caused by a tragic glitch in xeir meatware, th...
I tend to my patients in a daze, heart racing and eyes darting at the slightest movement at the edges of my vision. Every few moments my breaths halt in my throat in fear that a warden will burst into my little X-ray clinic in the hospital and burn my face off with a pulser.
When my shift finally ends I dash back to my pod; throwing my possessions into a backpack takes all of three minutes. My counterpressure suit catches on my clothes in my haste to wrestle it on. My untethered airtank and helmet swing wildly against my back as I slam my pod door behind me and scramble to the garage.
I punch Eris Spaceport's coordinates into the nav system of the battered hov I bought from a dying miner when I arrived in Eris-1 eight months earlier. My destination: anywhere but Eris. I've fed on too many of this Dwarf's sick and dying to be safe from its wardens. At best the woman I drained has died in the alleyway, and I'm a murderer. At worst if she hasn't died she'll tell the wardens what I did to her, and I'll be hunted across Eris's six cities until I'm caught and executed.
That's what I deserve. I'm a monster.
Escape is my only hope. I'll go to one of the other Dwarf Planets. Pluto ideally, but I'll settle for Haumea or Makemake. They may all have smaller colonies and mines than Eris, but us Eris-born have an advantage over their doctors — meatware. Whatever meatware glitch has turned me into an energy vampire, I'm still radiation-resistant, unlike workers on the other Dwarfs. No need for me to go underground every six months to recover from mounting radiation sickness like the unfortunate residents of Pluto or Makemake. The Pluto colony governors will beg me to join any city of my choice; us doctors are spread too thinly around the Edge to be scrutinised, especially radiation-proof ones. Another Dwarf Planet, another fresh batch of weak, sickly miners and foundry workers. I'll just take a little. I won't hurt anyone. I hope.
Holy Shiva-Shakti.
I'm a fucking parasite.
The meandering network of hovway tunnels between Eris-1 and the Spaceport is decorated by the domes of crumbling fuel stations and hotel complexes. Any one of them could be patrolled by a warden. My lenses tell me that none of the nearby fuel stations have ammonia cannisters for sale. My hov's fuel indicator flashes in amber; it's running dangerously low on ammonia.
Two ammonia stations glow pink in my lenses, both of them located out on the barren sandflats beyond the domes and tunnels of Eris-1. My hov needs that ammonia. Besides, if I brave the sandflats to the Spaceport there's no chance of being stopped by a bored warden patrolling the hovway tunnel system.
Ignoring the tunnel map blinking in pink on my retinas, I set coordinates for the hov to take me across the uninhabited Eris dirt, usually only traversed by unmanned mining rigs and lumbering metal ore transporters. I have a decent counterpressure suit and my hov is robust despite being old; I can brave Eris's wilderness. I'll be OK.
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