“Oil is god. The people of the past tried wind, water and minerals pulled from the earth, but nothing satisfied the demand for energy like oil and eventually it became their god-provider.”

  Alec looked up at the countdown clock, three minutes. It was broadcast in large, forty-foot-high projected numbers that stood out amongst the tangle of fibrasteel pipes and Sappers, pumping this backwater planet for oil. Cables woven through the structure connected the large hexagonal frame to the large driving ramp which headed, apparently, into nothingness.

  Alec hated this part of the wait, as it was too short to plan out his next contract but long enough for his mind to wander. He corralled his thoughts by adjusting his broad leather hat. It was in the style of the ranchers on his home world, from a time long forgotten. Wide-brimmed with a braided leather cord, the only thing out of place was a small plastic bead braided within a sacred spot in the centre of the brim. It was for a child time had long forgotten, but Alec had not.

  The huge clock punched past the one-minute mark, and a sharp noise echoed across the site, a signal to the Sluggers on the platform that the engines of their rigs could be started. Despite the price of burning fuel; everyone needed to be ready in case things went from bad to worse. Back when the Company tore the first Rift, a superenergy centre had collapsed and thousands of lives were lost. That was when the oil baronhood had partnered with the Company, and rift travel had been born. The Company's CEO, a man of baronial blood and military experience, personally entered the first rift. His discovery of the first habitable universe outside of earch granted him control of even more of his beloved oilfields. God-provider. Now the Company moved from planet to planet, colonizing and drilling as it went.

  The planet Alec was leaving was a perfect example of the ruling barons’ path of destruction, as well as the Company’s cockroach-like resilience. Just past the stretch of barbed wire surrounding this meagre Rift-station were dusty fields filled with ratfillo—nasty animals as large as a slugger's tire with teeth that could bite through all but the toughest materials. Almost impossible to farm, but one of the only sources of protein that saved the barons and thier cohorts from eating the synth-meats their workers could afford. The dark ratfillo silhouettes were contrasted against a smokey teal sky full of stars. This planet, in its prime, had been filled with sappers until they smogged the skies and when the oil was gone, so was their once pristine atmosphere. It would make the already complicated life of paying the Company taxes and supporting the baronhood almost impossible, a miserable lifetime of servitude to the new gods of humanity.

  “As it provides, so it doth take away.” Alec muttered bringing his gaze back to the Rift Station and the Grounder crew. Those poor sots had the worst jobs, a ratty collection of runaways, stowaways and throwaways. Life expectancy was short, but it came with lodgings and meals, which on most Baronhood planets, set you up as much as the standing militia. As he watched, two older men heaved a large cable onto a younger boy's shoulder. He was poised like an athlete, his eyes fixed on the dark goal at the end of the ramp. The countdown hit thirty seconds, and the sound of a large emergency horn began to puncture the air. Around his smaller vehicle, the large tankers began to rev their engines.

  Unlike the large oil sluggers beside him; his sleek ride was a leftover from the automaton wars centuries earlier. Six wheels on adjustable limbs stretched out from the living quarters and cockpit area, giving the impression of a viscous spider. It was one of a kind.

  One of the Sluggers driving a particularly large oil-slug next to Alec's personal vehicle sneered down at him. Clearly, they assumed he was some rich asshole. Only a member of one of the Baronhood families could operate a personal vehicle that was not required to haul through the rift.

  Alec preferred they think that. Who and what he was had faded into legend a thousand years ago. Knowledge of his existence was now a closely guarded secret know only to the Barons and their closest advisors. Alex snorted, in truth he was as much indentured to the ruling class as the poor castaway getting ready to ground the rift.

  During the taming of this Automaton, Alec had removed its access to any part of the control cockpit, save for a small communication radio. He reached forward and toggled the switch.

  "Quip, gotta sensor reading on the grounder down there?" Alec's voice was calm and measured, but something in the fleshy part of his guts twisted. His hand went subconsciously to the small plastic bead on the brim of his hat.

  "I think we've learned by now that when you ask me that, I'm going to find something interesting,” came the reply. The voice of the machine somehow came off annoyed. as if it had better things to be doing than responding to Alec. It didn't.

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  "His heart rate is significantly stressed,” Quip reported. “Brain patterns suggest distraction, and the two men behind look like they expect him to die.”

  "How'd your sensors pick that up?”

  "They didn't, the two men are laughing at the boy as I imagine I would if I had a face and form that was not a six-wheeled monstrosity.”

  Like him, the vehicle Alec drove was also one of a kind, modified by him but in a way that made it more innocuous, much to the vehicle's chagrin. Alec had named the Automaton "Quip" but never told anyone else for Quip was an illegally sentient entity. It had taken Alec an excessive amount of time to tame and train Quip and put him to work. Without Alec, Quip would have sat dormant on its six all-terrain tires, unpowered and rotting away on a backwater swamp planet.

  Over the years, they had learned from each other but so far it did not seem they liked each other. Still, they were essential for each other's survival, so they made a pact to cooperate. Even so, Alec had installed the override system for when he grew tired of the ever-present sentience and its annoying appraisals of their surroundings.

  Alec looked at the ramp below, surprised that the young grounder appeared to be staring back him. Behind the boy, one of the colliers shook his head and waived a more veteran-looking grounder into a backup position. New grounder training worked on a pass-or-die system. Alec hated training days. He honked the horn, and the boy, startled, reset his position as the clock struck ten. The emergency alarm became a single blaring note that would wake towns miles away. Once the rift opened, the boy had only a minute before it would become unstable.

  If the boy was successful the cable he carried would tune this rift to whichever planet was programmed by the corresponding station on the other side. Without the proper tune, a Rift-storm would occur and the grounders would be ripped apart, cell by cell. Some survivors claimed they passed through unstable rifts into other planets but Alec didn't believed it; he'd seen more blood on unstable platforms than magic disappearances. The slugs and drivers were always kept well enough away during an rift opening for this very reason. In the early days, one misguided distraction had led to the deaths of thousands. Now, every rift station was built at least two kilometres from the nearest community.

  The countdown alarm grew even louder and Alec reached for the volume knob and turned it up. His choice of music had a heavy, grinding bass line to drown out the rift alarms and other less enjoyable sounds, should things go bad for the grounders. His music also provided a defense from the pinhole headaches of rift travel.

  Grounders had much worse to deal with. Alec had asked a Grounder what it was like jumping through a Rift and the man had only laughed and rubbed a scar on his forehead in an ominous knowing way.

  The clock hit zero and the boy began to run. He was a fast one. Grounders trained all day, every day, even if there was no rift opening that day. The sweat ran down his back, as the long cable snaked behind him, the two Coilers behind him feeding him more line to keep it slack. The grounder was the line between stable crossings and utter chaos. The boy leaned into his run, and ahead of him, sparks flared as the rift crested, meeting in the middle like rippling water rolling in reverse.

  Alec pre-emptively turned on the cockpit wipers. The poor boy better hope the grounders on the other side were just as fast. If they weren't, the results would come washing back like bloody firework. The rift opened with a bright purple arc and Alec could see a dusty planet on the other side of the rift like looking through foggy glass. The team of grounders reached out and pulled the grounder through, two immediately dragging the end of the cable and plugging into their station's frequency resolver. The rift stabilized and Alec realized he had been holding his breath. Punching his rig into gear, it lurched forward. A successful contract was on the other side and that meant payment. It wouldn’t be enough. It never was. He needed to secure a new one and as the Baron's harbinger of vengeance, he had no choice.

  Or did he?

  The question always came to him in-between his missions. It had persisted a thousand years without answer, but lately had begun to take on an ethos of its own deep within his mind.

  Although his body had been genetically and mechanically modified, he liked to think his mind was still human, or at least still connected to the human being he once was, back before the Singular Government required an effective deterrent to keep worldwide leaders in line and quell any thought of revolution. He was created during that time, crafted through a long and painful process now forgotten, a weapon of perfect vengeance—deadly force with armaments and physical prowess, but that was not his actual deterrent, it was merely a part of his armour.

  His most potent attribute was incredible reasoning powers that arose from the ability to live forever with the aid of the Amaranth Elixir. Over time, with a dispassionate and dedicated study of the methods to ensure their target realized and measure of torment for the offence they had committed.

  None of those contracts brought him any satisfaction. That only came with the ecstasy of the Aamaranth rushing through his Veins. As if on cue, the gap in his elbow began to itch. The last contract had taxed his Aamaranth reserves more than he wanted, and the upcoming rift jump wouldn't help. The last vial buried in the fleshy part of his elbow only had a single line in it. He had burned through six vials in the past three days.

  With the rift open, his payment from the Baroness of the wine planet would be awaiting him through this rift jump. She would replenish his supplies as payment once he accepted the next contract. The job had promised twice his regular pay, which meant there was a greater level of danger.

  Alec smiled at the thought.