...Fae motioned for Scott to sit on a chair by the door. He complied, powered down his exo, and listened. 

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A thousand years ago, sixty families set out from Ursa Prime on the Woebegone, the system's mothership and the flagship for the Ursa Majors. They lived on the ship for generations while traveling to a new and promising world where they would start a colony and a new life. But there was an accident, and the ship was forced to rift into unknown space. To the outside world the Woebegone was lost, its fate unknown. The colonists, however, found hope in a life-giving system where they discovered a rare planet that was never too hot or too cold and full of natural bounty. They named the planet "Perfect" and made their first home at the place called Woebegone Bay.

In the years that followed, the Ursa Majors prospered and built happy, thriving communities. They numbered almost ten thousand when the skinnys arrived with the Empire and the Alpha Leonis Trading Company.

The skinnys were welcomed by the first peoples, who soon realized that the new arrivals represented an end to the life they had enjoyed before. Uninterested in entreating, the skinnys adopted a policy of acquisition, rendering void any rights that had come before. And, while the skinnys were intimidated by the heavy size of the Ursa Majors, the heavys were no match for the power granted by high-tech weapons. Soon the mining platform arrived, and the heavys were taken from their homes and forced to work as slaves alongside robots. When they wouldn't work, they were shot or beaten and left to die.

The skinny raiders settled behind the small group of huts nestled in shoreline hills. The dark of the moonless night made the perfect cover, and the company's miners were well equipped with night vision capabilities built into the armor of their exos.

The administrator had provided assurance to the directors back on Pan that all labor was voluntary. What he didn't tell the directors was that he only gave the heavys one choice: comply or die.

"Let's get some heavy!" Poole rallied the raiders and rushed out over the hills toward the huts.
The fight offered by the men and women in the huts was fierce, given that they had been surprised and had only clubs for defense. 

The burning huts provided a hellish light for the group of skinnys ringing a frightened man, woman, and boy. They laughed at the sport as Poole pulled up the head of the kneeling man. 
"Comply?"

The man spat. His breathing was labored from the beating he had already received. 
When Poole slapped the heavy's face, his exo's gauntlet tore skin.

The boy jumped and ran at Poole, knocking the captain to the ground. An energy bolt caught the boy in the back and he fell. The man and woman cried out.

Another bolt silenced the man.

The skinnys dragged the screaming woman off into the darkness.

"I saw it all that night when they killed my father and brother. When they dragged my mother away like an animal."

Scott sat transfixed by Fae's story. His chest had become tight and he felt like pulling off his chest plate so that he could breathe.

 "In time, our numbers had shrunk to less than those of our founding colony. Those of us who had survived gathered to plead with the skinny administrator, Captain Poole, so that we might return to our ancestors in the stars. But the captain laughed at us and sent us deeper into the mines, until, one by one, we died like the petals of a flower pulled from the stem.

"You wanted a story, skinny demon? That is our story. But it doesn't end there. I will die soon, too. But that is my story."

Time had stopped for Scott as if it were weighted down by the crimes of the skinnys. His people. At that moment, he knew there would be nowhere he could run where the label would not follow; she had called him demon.

The shock faded, and Scott gathered himself. He thanked her for her story and said goodbye to Rhyme.

...