The Hundred Worlds

by J. F. Holmes

  “So why don’t you start from the beginning and tell me how your boyfriend sabotaged the Tianlong and the Sternenkonig,” the woman asked.

  “Guilty as charged,” Danielle replied. Avery was stunned; she almost sounded like she was chuckling. “It’s pretty straightforward, really. We’d been tasked with surveying the Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu and Ganesha systems by the Indian representative on the Survey Council. You know they’re always pushing for start-up colony potential to relieve their population pressures, well, I used to work for MicroApple, and while that pays reasonably well, if we fucked up the mission, we were offered a bonus.”

  “Have you seen enough, Mister Avery?” Pratt asked.

  “I think I have.”

  “There’s more,” Pratt offered.

  “Such as?”

  “Did you know the ship’s log had been altered?” Pratt produced a pad identical to the one Danielle Crosby was scanning through at that very moment in another room. “The edits are rather clumsy, as you can see here, and here, and here, but there’s no doubt your captain fired on both the Tianlong and the Sternenkonig. They had shaped charges set – they must have been smuggled aboard somehow – and that sabotage killed your friend DeLancey and the Wheaton twins.”

  Chapter 6

  Captain Dorn’s jaw hurt. The bastards still had a dead-tree-pulp comm directory here, kept expressly for the purposes of battering innocent ship captains around the head?

  “If you’d just explain, Citizen…” he begged. WHAAMM, he saw stars again as his chair tipped over and he collapsed to the floor. His skull bounced off the deck and he felt his brain rattle.

  “I’m done explaining, Captain!” Guest said, looming over him. “You, Captain Mikael Dorn, are liable for the damage to your ship, for your dead crew members, and for these clumsily falsified reports. You’re a terrible pilot and a worse fraud, Dorn. Your ship limps home with this fanciful story about aliens battering your ship with kinetics? There are no space-faring aliens, you treasonous saboteur, and you won’t be leaving here until you tell me exactly what I want to hear.”

  “Buh its th-the-tuth!” Captain Dorn protested as he spat blood onto the floor. Citizen Guest leaned down over the desk, casting a shadow over the older man, turtled on his back and held in place by the binders on his wrists. He was pretty sure his wrist was sprained or broken from that fall.

  “You won’t be leaving here until you tell me exactly what I want to hear,” she repeated, then heaved the now-bleeding captain off the floor and sat him back in his chair. Blood dribbled down the front of Dorn’s uniform tunic, staining his undershirt. He’d bitten his tongue when his skull cracked on the floor and the blood was salty and gross.

  “I’m sorry it’s come to this, Captain, but wouldn’t you rather declare what happened, do the right thing, and clear your conscience?” Guest pulled up a video, showing a citizen seated in an office speaking to…the girls. “Don’t you think you ought to think of your kids at this point?”

  “YOU MUTHEH FUCKAH!” Dorn jumped to his feet, sending his chair flying again. His hands were still bound behind him, and the desk was splattered with blood and spittle as Guest jumped back herself.

  The hatch burst open and three more armored troops burst into the room. Dorn was cornered with his hands trapped behind his back. The first thug advanced, and Dorn surprised everyone, including himself, by snapping out a front kick that caught Bauer in the face. His life as a pilot and captain had left little time or interest for martial arts, and the surprise move put him off balance. Bauer recovered and dove for Dorn’s legs, knocking him flat. Dorn kicked more, and Bauer went down after a particularly painful bone-on-bone kick, shin-to-shin. Bauer’s partner turned him over onto his front, jammed his face into the deck again, and Dorn shrieked through bloodied lips as his freshly broken nose ground into the plating. He took one, another, and a third kick to the ribs, and thought he felt something snap there, too. His will to fight broken, they wrapped a two-centimeter spectra cable around his waist, another one in a figure eight around his feet, and clipped them together, trapping him in the fetal position. He lay on his side, his breathing labored, helpless.

  ***

  “So your helmets sealed and your sensor op is dead; what happened next, Danielle?”

  “Well, the explosion had completely fucked up our vector, we had bits of dead crewmembers being splashed all over the crew compartment, since the inertial compensators were already maxed, Avery was hollering from the rear half of the ship that DeLancey was dead, and I had brain matter in my skivvies. I fucking panicked.”

  “Do you know what the purpose of a trial is, Danielle? The…underpinning philosophy behind it, all the way back to the pre-digital age?”

  “To…see whether someone’s guilty of a crime?”

  “Wrong. It’s to see whether the person, or agency, in question can prove beyond reasonable doubt what it is alleging within the framework of the government’s legal rules and restrictions. That’s all. It’s got fuck-all to do with guilt or innocence. It’s why guilty people walk every goddamn day, and why sometimes innocents go to jail for crimes they didn’t commit. What I’m trying to say, Danielle, is if you want to make this work between you and Mikael, you need to start cooperating and telling us what we want to know, what we want to hear,” Farrell said. “Tell me what really happened –” Farrell got a distracted look in her eyes, jumped to her feet, and rushed out the hatch, not even closing it behind her. Crosby knew she’d be in deeper shit than she already was if she tried to leave, so she just sat quietly, and heard a muffled commotion going on, either out in the hallway or in the room next door. She heard stifled yelling, a clank against one wall, and a keening that didn’t even sound human. It froze her in her seat.

  Chapter 7

  Farrell slipped into the monitor room and cranked out forty pushups in thirty seconds, getting her heartrate up and popping a sweat. She turned to face Sutherland, who yanked a handful of hair free from her perfect braid.

  “Ready?” he asked. She paused for a moment, exhaled, closed her eyes for a second, then nodded.

  “Go.”

  Sutherland hauled off and cracked her one right in the mouth. He pulled his punch – he wasn’t trying to kill her, obviously, but the discoloration and bruising would sell it, and if she bled a bit, well, that’s what it took. She checked herself in the mirror and shook her head.

  “Again.”

  Sutherland looked at her closely, his eyebrows raised. It wasn’t that he didn’t like hitting girls; he didn’t much care either way. But Daphne was hot as hell, and he’d rather drag a six-thousand credit rifle through the mud than fuck up her beautiful face. Oh well, he thought, if that’s what it takes…and punched his partner again.

  She checked the damage in the mirror and nodded this time. Her hair was mussed and she had a pretty good shiner developing. She saw on the monitor that Guest had Dorn hobbled, and Danielle hadn’t gone anywhere. Good.

  “Get that last bit up. How quickly can you reskin Bauer to look like me?”

  “It’s already in the works.” Sutherland checked his screen. “Give me one minute.”

  Pratt entered.

  “How’re we doing?”

  “This is a no-go, boss. They’re going to squawk,” Sutherland said. “Avery’s pissed; when you played the edited audio, his heartrate spiked and so did his blood pressure. Thank you, spacer medical implants.

  “Agreed,” nodded Farrell. “We haven’t seen the slightest hint of cooperation. They still think we’re telling the wrong story; they haven’t even twigged to the ‘This Will Be Your Official Story’ bit. These scouts, you know, they’re the ‘independent, you can’t tell me what to do’ types. No sense of what’s best for the community, what’s best for everyone involved.”

  Pratt nodded. “Alright. Let’s wrap this up then.”

  ***

  “Sorry about the commotion there, Brooklyn,” Pratt apologized. “Dorn heard the same clip, but his response wasn�
�t quite so restrained. He attacked one of our interview team and had to be put into heavier restraints. What would you say if I told you there was a way for you to not only come out of this mess unscathed, but actually ahead?”

  Avery thought for a moment.

  “I’d say I’m listening.”

  ***

  Everything ached, everything was fuzzy, and Dorn was trapped on his side in the fetal position. Between the spectra cuffs securing his knees to his chest and his hands behind his back, any time he tried to move, the spectra cuffs cinched up even higher, threatening to crush his tackle.

  Three armored thugs clanged the hatch open and entered the cell. Two heaved him upright, linked their hands under his knees, and again at his lower back. Their arms formed a human chair-like shape they could use to heave Dorn off the ground and carry from his cell. He moaned in pain as his broken rib ground against itself, which was a whole new agony he hadn’t experienced yet.

  They carried him down the corridor, past the open hatch Crosby was in, and loaded up a shuttle to get him up to Nine-Two-Bravo, where the medical infirmary was found. Bauer went with – he was nursing a shiner not unlike Farrell’s, and relished any opportunity to tune up Dorn any chance he got.

  Chapter 8

  Citizen Farrell came back into the room, breathing heavily as though she’d just gone for a run, and sat heavily back in her seat. Her hair was mussed and her lip was bleeding.

  “What…what happened?” the Astrogator meekly asked.

  “Your boy-toy picked a fight,” Farrell replied, trying to maintain her composure. “Kicked me, can you believe it? What an asshole. They’re taking him to medical.”

  Behind her, two of the armored thugs carried Dorn down the hallway. She could see his face and uniform were bloodied, and he moaned in pain.

  “Here, see? He attacked my colleague, a woman no less, and kicked me. Tall, dark, and handsome indeed.”

  Danielle watched a thirty-second clip, showing Mika jumping to his feet and attacking his interviewer. Her own interviewer rushed into the room, too, and got a boot to the face for her trouble. A second citizen followed, and the lot of them went down in a heap. Danielle loved her some action vids, and this looked nothing like that – on the shows, the fighting was choreographed and smooth. This was ugly.

  “Let me make something perfectly clear to you, Danielle. Your logs are falsified. Your records are unreliable. Your career as an astrogator is over, because no one will ever hire some floozy who fell for her captain and got dragged into this…plot, whatever the hell it was you two were doing.”

  He paused to let that sink in, and then continued, “If you ever talk to anyone about what you experienced here, what you saw, what you did, you can bet the next visit you get will be someone you thought you could trust, and that someone will be there to take out the trash. It’s happened before. So shut your mouth, and go salvage whatever’s left of your pathetic life. You’re free to go.”

  Danielle couldn’t believe it. Just like that? They were letting her walk out?

  “Medical is opposite Nine-Two-Bravo. You can find your boy-toy there. Stand there and I’ll take the cuffs off.”

  Farrell removed the cuffs, one at a time, and made Danielle put each hand on her head as her limbs came free. Once both hands were free and Farrell had retreated a few feet, she spoke again.

  “Get going, I don’t want to see you again. And keep your mouth shut.”

  Crosby stumbled out of the room and headed off in the direction they’d dragged Mikael. She followed the corridors until she found a lift, then ascended one level and went back the way she’d come, eventually finding the infirmary. Brooklyn was already there, but he looked upset.

  ***

  “Torres didn’t make it,” Avery said tonelessly. “Too far gone.”

  “Where’s Mika?” Danielle asked. “They beat the shit outta him.”

  “Through there,” the engineer replied, and pointed the way. They went in and found Dorn strapped down to a gurney, hands, feet and head.

  “Was that as fucked up for you as it was for me?” Danielle asked, and Avery grimaced.

  “Yeah,” he replied, trying to keep his cool. Even now, she was still playing innocent.

  “They, they wanted me to say things, I didn’t know, they wanted me to tell them Mika destroyed those other ships! It was insane!”

  “I know,” Avery replied. “All I knew is, when I was in the back, everything was fine until it wasn’t. They showed me some logs that looked really bad, Dani.”

  Crosby looked at her engineer incredulously. “You can’t seriously believe…”

  “They told me not to talk about it, that I needed to get on with things,” he said.

  “They told me that too.” She nodded. “That my career was over, that I couldn’t talk to anyone…”

  “Shit,” he said, nodding.

  “You said it…”

  “Naw, you don’t understand, Dani, it’s just…”

  “What?”

  “What were their words? What did they tell you?”

  Dani thought for a moment, replaying the woman’s words over again in her head. Then, realization.

  “They offered me a job, Dani. Sorry.”

  The flechette thrower was pretty quiet, all things considered. Pressed against Dorn’s chest, the gas-powered pistol was barely audible as the darts turned his chest cavity into so much hamburger. Danielle’s mind went into vapor-lock, her jaw dropped, and Avery brought the pistol up and fired a second time from a meter away. He couldn’t miss.

  The second shot was louder than the first, but still not loud enough to cause immediate alarm. The astrogator dropped, her heart perforated by the flechettes as well. Avery pocketed the pistol and walked briskly for the exit, but not so fast that he drew attention. Another trick he’d learned growing up in the sprawl – he merely looked like someone late for an appointment, rather than a murderer fleeing the scene.

  He entered the main thoroughfare that was the Nine-Two passageway and saw Pratt and Bauer there waiting for him next to a shuttle cab. They were back in mufti, no armor, suits, or fedoras.

  “Is it done?” Pratt asked.

  “Yeah, I took care of it. She blabbed right away.”

  “Good. Give the chunk to Jack here, he’ll dispose of it,” Pratt ordered. Avery handed over the pistol from one gloved hand to another, then he stripped off the Ell-Tac gloves and pocketed them to burn later. Pratt sat in the front seat of the shuttle with the door open and ordered it to Three-One-Bravo, on the opposite side of the station. Bauer opened the rear door for Avery, and the young engineer stepped in and sat down. He gazed out the far window, lost in thought. He’d expected it would be harder to pull the trigger, but they’d betrayed him, Torres, the Wheatons, the crews of the Sternenkonig and the Tianlong, the bastards.

  The pistol coughed a third time, and the bundle of darts punched through the side of Avery’s head with ease, brains, blood, skin, and skull painting the shuttle’s back seat. Bauer carefully tucked the pistol into Avery’s hand, then closed the door as Pratt exited the front seat. With its doors closed and destination loaded, the AI routine whisked it away to the far side of the station, where it would eventually be discovered. The two nondescript men in their nondescript clothes entered a side passage, changed out of their suits, and stuffed the clothing into a burn bag, which they kept with them. They jogged down two service tunnels and up a ladder to reappear back on camera at Nine-One-Alpha, where the rest of the team waited.

  “So…what do you think is out there in the Shiva system, boss?” Sutherland asked.

  “Fuck if I know,” Pratt replied, shrugging. “Above my paygrade. The eggheads are pretty happy with the unmodified take from the Beowulf, regardless. Coffee?”

  “Coffee.”

  _______________

  Jamie Ibson is from Canada, born and raised in Ontario and now on the left coast. Spent some time in the CF reserves and went on a peacekeeping mission when he finished hig
h school. Now he serves in law enforcement and writes in his spare time.

  Debt Repaid

  by Sean McCune

  Chapter 1

  UNES Battlecruiser Isengard, Indera System – Newly Discovered, Hanger Bay 3,1430 hrs

  A voice bellowed, “Ten Hut!” followed by a loud, piercing whistle. Boson’s Mate First Class Henry Griffon ordered the assembly to attention in the gray hanger. Seven sailors and two Marines stood ramrod straight as the executive officer of the ship, or XO, tapped the display in his hands and spoke from the prepared script.

  “Attention to orders…” The XO dutifully and systematically read off the list of retirement details for each retiring military member. It had the usual thanks and appreciation for services rendered, with citations for everything, from actions in combat to unit awards for system efficiency improvements.

  The ceremony seemed to last forever as the commander went from person to person, presenting honors and congratulating them on reaching this milestone. But the whole thing slowed to a crawl as the man, now in front of Jack, kept making announcements and pinning medals on his chest, as well as spouting citations of merit; on and on it went.

  For a grizzled old Marine, Jack Quincy should have been used to the formalities, the pomp and circumstance, if you will. Of course the brass fell all over themselves over how well their people performed, but all Jack felt was out of place. He wasn’t there for the medals; he felt nothing but annoyance at the glad-handing. It was for his brother and sister Marines. The sailors he served beside. The people he’d come to know as family. This retirement ceremony was only reminding him more and more that he had to leave this family behind. He’d maxed out time in grade and service. He’d aged out officially. Now the young bucks were in charge.