Kzine Issue 18

by Graeme Hurry

  He’d had them put barbed wire up on top the fence around the tower. I had to smash the padlock on the gate to get in.

  I stepped over the soft little body of a bluebird that had hit the blades.

  I walked up to the turbine. Felt it pounding inside me, like a second heart.

  I sat down in front of the tower door, the axe across my lap, and waited.

  HONOUR THY FATHER

  by Charlotte H. Lee

  Chop, chop, chop. Feed them, then she could feed the kids and herself. After that maybe they’d let her feed the rest of the crew. Myra kept her eyes on her blade, mentally stamping out the millionth temptation to put it to the use she wanted. A vegetable knife wasn’t the right blade for throwing anyway. Now, a paring knife threw well. Really well. She wasn’t allowed to have one though.

  Two of them stood against the star yacht’s galley bulkhead behind her. They were out of reach for anything but a throw, and they kept a sharp eye on her now. Sharper than the boning knife she’d run through the first guy’s eye. Lucky for her their captain wanted her ransom more than he’d cared about the thug he’d had watching her. These two were scrupulous about keeping their hands to themselves; an improvement.

  Myra tossed the onions into the skillet and gave them a stir. From the corner of her eye she could see Adara and Nadarshan, slumped together in the crew dining room, drowsing. The time for tears had long passed, and boredom had overcome fear. It would be at least another day before any possible response to the ransom demand. The pirates hopefully didn’t expect it would be only hours more than that before Andhak security retainers got to them.

  Holding her shackled wrists up, she pointed at the cooler. The thug on the right gave a nod of permission, and both raised their rifles. Inside the cooler her breath clouded before her and she bit her lip in indecision. They were going through her carefully stocked galley too fast to last the entire ten days to the ransom deadline. She wouldn’t tell them that, though. She’d known the yacht crew most of her life and couldn’t bear to see any of the remaining six slain to conserve food. Father’s men would bring extra food with them—it was standard operating procedure—and give them enough to make the next supply port. Either what she had would last until they arrived, or the crew wouldn’t be alive to need food.

  Behind her the onions sizzled, overlaying the unwashed stench coming from the bulkhead. She stacked the potatoes and yogurt on the chick pea bucket, keeping her thoughts on the here and now of cooking for twenty-five, refusing to think of what they might do to her children if she didn’t provide a decent meal.

  * * *

  “Ms. Andhak, this is a delightful meal. Why don’t you join me?”

  Myra shrugged as if it were no matter to her and sat. A lifetime spent pretending she had no interest in the meal before her kept her from falling on the plate and shovelling it into her mouth with her fingers. She shook out her napkin, taking her time to smooth it out. At last she looked up, the cold amusement in her captor’s black eyes stiffening her resolve to show no fear.

  “You will understand that I cannot allow your bonds to be removed.” He picked up a spoon and used his naan bread to push a mouthful onto it, seeming to be completely at ease in her lavishly appointed private dining cabin despite his rough clothing. “It is good that your culinary repertoire is limited to things that do not require a knife at the table, though it might get boring. Let us hope that Andhak’s response will be timely and mutually satisfactory so that we can enjoy roasted meats again.”

  Myra gave no response and kept her face bland. It was awkward to eat with bound hands, but she pretended to dignity. The demon she was eating with wasn’t much different than the demons she had to break bread with at her father’s table after all. Only the quality of retainers differed, it seemed. This man’s payroll funding was apparently limited to obvious Shudras, so he belonged to either a family in decline, or one on the rise. In either case, they would be no match for her father’s Kshatriyas sure to follow on the heels of the initial response. You could train a person for a lifetime, but that could not replace generations of careful breeding for talent and discipline.

  His table manners were impeccable, she noted. A family in decline, then. Or, perhaps he was from a junior branch, raised to the family standards but without the privilege.

  “Have you ever been to Satisar?” she asked.

  He cocked his head at her, a sardonic smile playing about his full lips. “I have not. I have heard that there are rooms made of diamond in Shiva’s Palace. Have you seen them?”

  Myra shook her head. “I have been there, but they aren’t diamond. The windows are panels of water with cut glass inside. They fill the rooms with rainbows when the sun strikes them.”

  “I see.” He took another bite and sat, chewing neatly, calculating eyes resting on her. Despite herself, she had to admit that he was astonishingly handsome. Thick black hair swept back from a high forehead, evenly spaced eyes, and a long, thin nose. The heavy jaw line came to a sharp point of a chin which was marked by a cleft. Her husband had not been handsome, but his wealth and connections had made that immaterial to her father, overcoming even his prejudice against breeding outside the upper families. That wealth was hers now, and Father trusted her to keep her interests in line with his. He also seemed to be accepting the children as her heirs as the price for Dhanu’s death.

  The door to the cabin slid open, and her fourteen year old twins were marched through with their heads held high. Pride could not hide their fear from her eyes, but their captor didn’t let on that he could see it so maybe they were getting better at it. They bowed their heads to her, Adara moments before Nadarshan, just as they had left her body. Rough hands pushed them into seats across from her, and plates were set before them. A twitch of the pirate’s fingers sent the henchmen from the room, the service trolley listing from the damage to its rear portside wheel.

  “Please, join your mother and me for supper. She made it with her own lovely hands.” He lifted his wine glass and tipped it to her before taking a sip, a flash of something she couldn’t define in his eyes. The twins looked to her and she inclined her head in assent. Movements made clumsy by the shackles, they clung to the rituals of table manners as drowning men to a spar of wood, and ate silently, their eyes on their plates.

  * * *

  Myra pulled the twins tight to her, tension singing so loudly through her veins that she didn’t notice that Nadarshan didn’t resist. The blaring of the proximity alarm cut short and the man hulking over her shouted at them to get moving. Her knees trembling, she herded the children through the hatch, veering sharply right to keep out of reach of a second wild-eyed brute hovering outside. Adara stumbled and the girl’s full weight fell onto Myra’s forearm, driving flames of pain up to her shoulder. When they had been smaller, Myra had teased them with demands to stop growing so big in one breath, then demanding they grow big enough to not need her to provide for them in the next. Her traitorous heart made those demands now in earnest, though she would never admit to it if she lived ten thousand years.

  The passage floor shook violently beneath them, and all three of them fell in a heap, Myra biting back a scream as her left hand hit the decking and jarred her already burning shoulder. In the next heartbeat, one of the thugs behind them was dragging them back to their feet, and shoving them on. The children crowded close to her, but she kept her arms free. She needed to trust that they knew what they had to do, and they would keep their heads. She had to trust that the drilling they’d had from the time they could walk for this exact circumstance would keep them alive. Beside her, Adara was already mastering her breathing and Myra began muttering the Jata chant for Nadarshan. By the third line he joined her, his breath steadying with each step. The floor shook again, though with having their arms free this time they were able to keep their feet. Onward they were driven, Myra’s breath catching when she realized they were headed to the airlock.

  He was waiting for them at the hatch, his eyes
burning like black fire in a face chiseled from stone. Lips pressed, he gripped Myra’s weakened arm and dragged her to his hard chest. His breath was hot on her face while he twisted her left arm up her back, and she squeezed her eyes closed to keep tears of pain from spilling while her shoulder screamed agony.

  “I should have known House Andhak would not keep his word. Even for his daughter and grandchildren.” Pirates should have bad breath, not breath smelling of fresh lemon and mint was all she could think of in response. She said nothing.

  Another shudder rippled through the decking, but this time it was accompanied by a low groan that rumbled on and on. Myra’s eyes flew open and she struggled to turn to her children, but she couldn’t break from his grip on her. He twisted and tossed her into the lock. Myra’s barely kept from biting her tongue with the force of her backside landing in the center of the lock, windmilling her arms to gain her balance. First Adara, then Nadarshan followed her in, both landing hard on hands and knees. He stepped through, but before he could get the hatch door closed, the hull breach claxon shrilled and his men were at the door shouting to be let in, struggling to keep him from closing it against them.

  They were losing air, and fast, if the rate of swelling in her chest was any indication. She crawled to the twins, cradling her left arm, searching both their faces for any sign that their lung-liners weren’t responding to the dropping air pressure. Their even colour gave her the reassurance she sought. Neither of them had been through pressure loss before, and she pinched her nose closed as a reminder. Adara’s nod was only slightly less jerky than Nadarshan’s. She sucked in one last gasp and held her own breath, feeling the lung-liner moving, expanding, closing off her throat. She imagined she could feel the symbiotic liner drawing its energy from the lights above to bolster hers, working to exchange the carbon dioxide for oxygen in a process almost as old as Mother Earth. She pulled back the twin’s sleeves, watching to make sure the skin paled, then turn grey as the outer layer of their liners hardened to approximate normal air pressure. She drew the children’s heads close to hers, despite no longer being able to feel their warmth against her own hardened liner. They had twenty minutes—no more—thanks to the liners. The Shudras wouldn’t have that much, and the children had seen enough death this trip.

  The thugs collapsed in a heap, their faces ballooning with the loss of pressure. Her captor was pushing them out of the way of the door, his face as grey as the twins’. She warred with herself about helping him until she leaned back to look at her babies’ faces. Frightened, yes, but not panicked. Myra scrambled across the floor to the door. Bracing her back against the hatch frame, she shoved the limp, expanding bodies out of the door’s path with her boots. She wanted to grunt, groan, close her eyes, or shriek but she knew better than to surrender the liner’s protection. Finally, they managed to get the bodies clear and she scuttled back. He swung the door shut and spun the bolts home.

  He looked from her to the children then strode to them, ignoring her entirely. Gripping a child’s arm in each hand, he hauled them to their feet and dragged them to the other end of the lock. Myra staggered to her feet and ran after them, silently swearing at him. If he’d grabbed for her she could have struggled with him, slowed him, giving their rescuers enough time to get to them. Instead he’d used her children as bait, knowing she’d follow on her own, rescuers be damned.

  The lock door swung into the pirate’s docking tube without any command from him, and he pushed the kids through. They stumbled forward, looking back over their shoulders at her. Myra set her mouth in a grim line as she followed them, her yacht’s airlock door closing behind her. They weren’t done with the pirate yet, it would seem. Air rushed in around them, their outer liners softening and fading back to translucence as the pressure crept up. The atmospheric gauge chimed and lit green, and without a word, the bastard swung open the hatch and strode through, leaving them to follow or not. Gathering the children up with her eyes, she led them through the hatch into the waiting arms of the pirate crew, wincing against the sudden prick of a needle into her injured shoulder. Later she couldn’t have said which had come first, the buzzing or the blurred vision, but in the end it all faded to grey silence.

  * * *

  Waking up from a fold-tube sleep is different for everyone, but for Myra it was like waking up naturally from a deep, dreamless, and restful sleep. However long they’d been asleep, it had been long enough for her shoulder to heal, and that realization brought memories back in a flood.

  Blinking to bring her sleep blurred vision into focus, she peered through the fold-tube’s window. All the tubes she could see opposite her appeared to be empty, which had to mean that the surviving pirate crew were already awake and the ship could be anywhere. Who knew how many jumps they’d made? They were as good as lost until and unless the pirate submitted a new demand to her father. She had no love for her father, but at least she’d had freedom and, as long as she operated within the boundaries he set for her, the power to live her life without his direct interference in her social affairs.

  Not that affairs was really the right word choice, she thought, squeezing her eyes in frustration. She’d vowed to never live in fear of a man’s hand again after she’d succeeded with Dhanu’s assassination. And yet here she was, in the hands of another man who meant to use her for his own gain. Fighting the urge to scream in frustration, she dragged in a breath through her nose, filling her lungs to bursting, then let it out with a growl.

  How long were they going to leave her in here? A grinding rumble from the vicinity of her belly announced its emptiness. She brought her hand up to rub at her eyes, not really surprised to note that her fingers were shaking.

  Minutes later, when still no one had come to release her, Myra started feeling around the inside of the tube. There had to be an emergency release somewhere. What if the pirates had been caught, everyone on board was dead, and the ship nothing but a drifting hulk? What if she was stranded, trapped in this technological coffin? The sound of her whimper surprised her, and she choked back the rising panic. It wasn’t until spots began to dance on the window that she realized she’d been holding her breath. Her trainer’s voice echoed in her head, voice stern and laced with scorn, berating her for giving in to fear. The Jata chant came unbidden to her lips, the gentle lilt of the syllables working as an anodyne across her frayed nerves, soothing her ragged breathing, and purging the adrenaline from her blood.

  With fingers almost steady, she resumed her search for the emergency release and found it behind the small of her back. Straining up onto the tips of her toes, she was able to pull the handle high enough that the fold-tube door hissed open, then slid to the side. Gripping the edge of the tube she stepped through, peering from side to side. The bay was empty, and only two other tubes to her right were sealed. She strode to the tube next to hers, the back part of her brain noting the slightly lower than normal gravity. Odd. They were either on an old, tumble-down station or a planet. The compartment smelled only of burnt dust and stale sweat, which offered no clue.

  Adara was in the tube next to hers and, as usual when waking from fold-tube sleep, grey and groggy through the window. The tube’s admin panel showed her vitals as normal, though the girl’s blood sugar was low. Not surprising since the shaking in her hands spoke of her own low blood sugar, too. A quick twist of the latch and the door hissed open then slid aside. Adara fell forward. Myra caught her and guided her to the low steel bench that ran the length of the compartment between the tube rows. She squeezed the girl’s arm, told her to stay put, and hurried to the last occupied tube. Nadarshan was just blinking awake, though he seemed aware. Myra released him from the tube and helped him to the bench beside his sister. Adara seeking Nardarshan’s hand gave Myra as much comfort as it gave the twins, and all three breathed easier.

  “I don’t know where we are yet,” Myra said in response to their unspoken question. Adara nodded quietly, drawing a deep breath. Nadarshan swallowed and nodded jerkily. “I’m goin
g to have a look around, and see if I can find us something to drink. Stay here.”

  Their tubes had been roughly in the middle of the bank so, after a mental coin toss, she struck off to the left. All she found at its end was a long, blank bulkhead, broken only by pipes and cables. Pivoting, she was about to retrace her steps when her eye caught a white cross in a field of red. She rummaged through the med cabinet, gusting a sigh of relief when she found a stash of protein bars and wake juice. She gathered up three of each and toed the door closed. She hurried back and had them open the drinks first. Pleased that they didn’t have to be told to sip slowly, she sipped at hers, grimacing against its over-sweetness.

  Just as they finished their bottles, the sound of a hatch lock grinding open announced that they weren’t the only souls aboard. Myra rose to her feet, instinctively placing herself between the approaching voices and the twins. Two men rounded the end of the tube bank and stopped short. A bewildering mix of emotions pressed at her at the sight of the pirates’ captain, surprise replacing his usual haughty expression. The clatter of a tray and utensils hitting the deck announced the arrival of the prisoners’ meals. Myra’s nose twitched at heady aroma of fresh bread, and chagrin trickled in through the adrenaline at the sight of the golden buns rolling across the grimy deck.

  “It seems my timing is only nearly perfect,” her captor said, his lips spreading in an ironic smile that did nothing to warm his ebony eyes. He waved a hand at the bread. “You’ve had your wake juice already, but if you come quietly with me I can get you something better to eat than emergency rations.” His eyes captured Myra’s and they warmed with seemingly genuine humour. “After all, you fed me well, so the least I can do is return the favour.”

  Seeing no purpose in refusing his demand, however courteously phrased, she nodded and gestured to the children to rise. Senses on full alert, she followed the pirate, ignoring his two companions trailing them. The metallic echo of their footsteps broke off when they left the dubious security of the ship’s airlock and onto the paved landing pad. The heat and humidity of a sub-tropical climate in full summer wrapped its arms around her, almost as overwhelming as the sudden brightness of full sunlight. She let its warmth seep into her sinews without complaint. It may be the only nice thing to ever happen again. The perfumes of a dozen different flowering shrubs rose up from the edges of the path leading from the landing pad, the blue-green grass ringing the paved square already recovered from the craft’s gravity field. A few hundred meters ahead of them a gated arbor wreathed in grape vines obscured the details of a red-tile roofed villa surrounded by tall prickly hedges. Paradise in a nest of vipers. What precious little peace the sun had afforded her evaporated with the thought.