by P. N. Elrod
“That must have been a first for you. I’d about given up. Good thing I took a direct route.”
“Yes, I’m delirious with joy.”
“How’d you get so damp?”
“The water’s running. It’s even hot.”
“Brilliant. I’ll have a drink and you can figure out how to get us some real food.”
“I’m bathing.”
“Right, s’wonderful thought, I’ll join you.”
She gave him a look.
He choked on his latest swallow. “Uh—I mean—just leave some for my turn.”
“Gladly.”
He eventually hobbled toward the washroom. Kella remained, and found herself glaring at the control node.
The System interrogators at Riganth had ended the more obvious and painful forms of questioning months ago. When she’d physically recovered, they switched to subtler experiments that robbed her of sleep and left blank patches in her memory. On the last occasion it had taken her a full morning of concentrated and miserable effort before she remembered how to pull on her clothes. At the time it seemed unimportant, but when the drug-induced chaos in her head cleared, the implications of the lapse frightened her as few other things could. For all that she was more or less intact, meaning that the System had a use for her, favoring that over a clean execution. It might have been better to have been killed instead of captured.
But whatever they’d planned had been cut short by the prison break. As she dodged through the confusion and fighting, searching for an exit leading to sky, she’d picked out the familiar face and form of Farron among the drug-dazed inmates. His usefulness balanced his liabilities; she grabbed his arm and led him unresisting through the melee and into the wastes.
Providing he was still willing to be led, it had been a good decision; she needed his hands and undamaged mind to manage the technical problems that certainly lay ahead.
But how to manipulate him into doing things without giving away her own deficiency?
Kella became aware of the massive unnerving emptiness around her. The place was utterly silent. The walls were too far away for comfort. She quit the lounge, following the sound of Farron’s cough. He’d claimed a room for himself and fallen asleep on a bare bed.
The smaller space made it easier to breathe. She explored a little more, found a washroom, and stripped.
The shower was hedonistic.
It was an illusion only, but she felt as though the abuses of the last few months were being scoured from her body by the almost painfully hot spray. She emerged, pink, puckered, and a little unsteady from the glorious heat.
No towel for drying, only an airflow mechanism activated by buttons that she had to ignore. Leaving wet footprints, she quit the room to look for something to wear. Her prison clothes were disgusting. No amount of cleaning would remove the stink of the place from them. She left the old coverings like a discarded skin.
She checked again on Farron, who was sprawled on his face now, oblivious to cares for an indefinite period. He coughed in his sleep, and his hands twitched from some deep dream. He’d be out for hours.
Naked, but not feeling vulnerable, she returned to the lounge and a line of dispensers along another wall. They appeared to be stocked with the usual packets of generic wearables and other supplies. The stuff was cheap, stored small, and was easy to recycle when it wore out or got too dirty for normal cleaning: a quartermaster’s dream.
The only thing between her and the satisfaction of new garb was a damned power switch.
Her mouth went dry. The labels blurred and vibrated, mocking her hesitation. She licked her lips, shut her eyes, and stabbed at it with an inner scream.
She opened her eyes, shaking. But . . . nothing terrible had happened. Gulping air, she slumped a little, enormously relieved. Maybe she’d be able to beat this, after all.
The control board lit, the info-screen came alive. It was like the one for the mess, but without security protocols. Food sources had to be protected from contamination, clothing did not.
Words appeared on the screen: Welcome, Citizen. Please stand on the scanner pad for sizing.
She did so without any symptoms surfacing. Evidently the conditioning was to suppress the ability to initiate action, not interfere with obedience to orders.
The machine scanned her in silence. The screen refreshed: Thank you, Citizen. Please make your choice!
Pictures of various items appeared. Anything she picked would fit.
But she could not raise her hand to tap the screen. She spoke her choice aloud, but nothing happened. Her voice wouldn’t be in the system or the option was not active.
What harm would befall her if she touched the screen?
Absolutely none.
But she hesitated, fearing. . .something. This was self-preservation fear, the sort that kept you from stepping off a cliff. Staying put, not moving was safe. Taking action would kill her.
Intellectually, she understood that she would not die, but not emotionally, which was ironic. She’d trained to be free of such impediments, learning to use emotions as camouflage, to manipulate others, but not be their victim. The System techs had somehow bypassed that, conditioned her with chemicals and possibly aversion therapy to render her helpless.
What was done could be undone. They’d not completed things. Cracks were there. She just had to act and not think about it.
Right. She fixed on a garment: generic tunic and pants, the kind worn by millions of others. Color didn’t matter, though here it would likely be military gray or black.
Walk it off.
She took a turn around the room, making herself remember something from her life that pre-dated Riganth. She’d been aboard a courier vessel, sharing a meal with others in a cramped mess room, pretending to get a joke. Farron was one of her shipmates. He always had a joke; people liked him on sight. Kella had studied him, trying to figure out how he achieved that without effort. It was a useful quality.
Passing the display screen, she blindly slapped at it.
Coming to no harm.
The wall unit whirred and out popped a packet. Tearing it open, she found it was not what she’d expected.
Sleepwear—only it was much too short for warmth, semi-transparent, and edged with ruffles. She gaped at it, baffled, then the first genuine laugh she’d had in years escaped to assault the air.
* * *
Morning came when she woke. Kella hadn’t meant to drop off, intending to explore, but her body simply shut down. She was on the floor, her back to the wall of machines, and jerked awake, disoriented. It was strange to be in a warm, silent place, dressed in clean clothes with fresh, filtered air to breathe.
She sat up, noted a number of new aches, muscles stiff from the previous day’s forced march. Stretching helped.
The laughter brought on by the absurd results of her blind selection had had a relaxing effect, and she was able to slap the screen in a quick and random way. As long as she didn’t think about it, it wasn’t so bad. Of the many things that popped out she donned a System officer’s black combat fatigues, which afforded durable freedom of movement. No need for underclothes. She was almost as flat-chested as Farron, having lost weight and muscle tone at Riganth.
Footwear was less complicated, with fewer choices: scuffs or combat boots. With her blisters gone she sealed on the boots and felt ready for anything—within reason.
She had another look at the control node for the food dispensers, but gave it up as too complicated. Raw nutrient was good enough for now. If Farron got hungry he could cheat his way in to get a properly flavored meal.
Kella fed in solitude if not complete silence. Farron’s coughing was harder and more frequent. He moaned between bouts, which informed her he was awake and not enjoying it.
He looked far more miserable than when they’d slept in the open. His cough was thick with congestion.
“Hello,” she said.
He looked up dully, flashed his eyes wide then relaxed. “
What a start you gave me. I thought you were one of them. Where’d you get the clothes?”
“Uniform,” she corrected.
“I can see that, but have you noticed it’s not for our side?”
“Are you hungry?”
“Donno, let me wake up first.”
She had to help him sit. On top of the chronic prison stink she caught a strange sour taint. His hands trembled. His face had a slick yellow tinge, the kind one got from serious illness and not confinement. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing, I’m just tired, a little rest and I’ll—”
“Fever?”
“What?”
“Don’t lie, Farron, you’re not good at it. Have you a fever?”
“I think so, everything hurts.”
“Do you know what it is?”
He shrugged. “Something making the rounds in our section.”
“What’s the treatment?”
“Nothing. You got better or didn’t.”
“Was there a treatment?”
“Immuno boosters and anti-virals for the guards; the rest of us got more pacifying drugs, so no one cared what happened. Three of my cellmates died; I suppose it’s my turn now.” He said it in a matter-of-fact tone, expecting no sympathy or reassurances and getting none.
Kella was not a happy woman. “I suppose there’s a better-than-even chance that I’ve got it, too.”
“Probably. Does the back of your throat tickle?”
She felt her expression go more grim than usual.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“I’m having a look ’round. Rest and drink as much water as you can.”
“When you coming back?”
“Stay in this area.”
“Kella—!” He broke off, doubled over by his cough.
She walked out.
* * *
Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.
The sound of her footfalls seemed to fill the empty, silent corridor. She stopped at critical intersections to check maps and kept the pace quick, finding a lot of locked doors. A few looked worth investigating, but could wait. Basic aid boxes were on the walls at strategic points next to fire extinguishing equipment, but their contents were for emergency trauma, not sickness. They had bandages, painkillers, stims, and respirators; the latter two might be useful to help Farron, but the anti-virals they needed were elsewhere. A complex of this size had to have a med-unit; it was only a matter of time before she found it.
She cross-sectioned the wing she was in, then took a connecting hall into the next area, which was central to the complex.
A single turn and she was abruptly facing the med-unit entry, its double-doors invitingly wide. She’d have gone right in if not for the bloodstain covering a substantial portion of the floor.
The red had dried to a rusty brown, but time had not mitigated its disturbing nature.
Her heart thundered loud enough to echo off the walls, or so it seemed for the first few seconds. Kella backed up, listening, hyper-alert, but whatever had happened here was long over.
She picked out footprints that had tracked through the stuff. Two sets, with drag marks between, led into the unit. One person injured, with friends to haul the body in for help. But the loss of that much blood. . .the injury had to have occurred on the spot.
Those open doors in the reactor section and drone quarters—she should have paid more attention to them, to what they signified. She should have been doing anything but lazing around stuffing her face and—
Never mind that.
She forced her scrambled thoughts into order.
All right, the System techs were here. She’d expected that from the gossip among the Riganth guards. It had been just another bit of useless information to her until a Resister assault group had dropped on the prison and blown everything wide open. Too far from the break to make contact with them, she’d seized a less likely route out by coming to the base. A risky move, but official attention would be focused on the fleeing Resisters, not on an incoming tech crew.
The techs would have a proper ship—not just a small, short-range shuttle—one with the kind of automatics that would allow even Farron to navigate them clean away.
Its accompanying techs would be no problem for Kella; she still retained her unarmed-combat abilities. The ease and speed with which she’d killed one of the Riganth guards was proof enough of that. Her plan had been to stay low and take out the crew one by one.
But the bloodstain was a complication.
Were the techs feuding amongst themselves? That hardly seemed likely. Had another prisoner gotten inside the base? For all she knew Riganth was full of bright specialists like herself, each one with access to the same gossip and also hell-bent on escape. Perhaps someone less crippled than herself was running loose here.
Competition was the last thing she wanted. The techs were now on the alert, blasters charged and ready, clogging the comm channels with calls for help.
Which should be here already.
The stain was at least two days old. Riganth would have sent a small guard party to look things over. She and Farron hadn’t exactly been cautious. A quick check of the base computer would reveal their power consumption and thus their location. What had delayed their ignominious recapture?
This flashed through her mind as she checked the walls, ceiling, and floor. All sported the near-invisible thready scarring of blaster fire. The stuff was hell on human tissue, but caused little damage to non-organics, which made it a good choice for space travelers. Internal ship combat was tricky enough without causing undue damage to the systems.
Behind her, she found a ragged line marking missed shots that extended as far as the corner she’d come around. Someone had waited just out of sight there, ambushed three people, hitting at least one. They’d returned fire, dragging their companion to cover. The attacker had retreated . . . and could be anywhere in the complex.
She briefly thought of running back to warn Farron, but dismissed it as a waste of time. That was sentiment or friendship or whatever they called it, and would only delay her. He was fine where he was.
Kella went through the entry, following the blood trail to a trauma station. Here it pooled, indicating that the victim had bled out. The trail eventually she led her to the body, sealed in a stasis-bag, in cold storage. No need to open it, she wasn’t curious. All that mattered was that she had one less target to remove.
The last marks of blood went to a sterilization alcove. The dead one’s companions would have cleaned up, perhaps acquiring fresh clothing from the dispenser unit. It was active, left on standby.
Where had the three come from? How many remained? The last wall map indicated a large gray area ahead. Though the labeling remained dark, she was certain—having eliminated other options in the color coding—that meant hangars and the ship she wanted, the ship she absolutely had to take.
Much as it grated her to leave her back vulnerable to the mystery shooter, it was better to keep moving forward.
* * *
Shivering, Farron tried to find a comfortable position for rest and failed. His limbs twitched, his joints ached, and coughing was a painful bore. His chest and stomach felt like he’d been in a sparing match with a couple of stones and lost.
And dammit, he was cold.
He gave up trying to sleep and tottered into the lounge. He puzzled over a number of packets scattered around a dispenser, then remembered Kella’s fresh black uniform. What was it with women and clothes? So long as he was there he punched an order for a bed blanket. It popped out, looking small until he opened the package and contact with the air expanded it.
That’s comfort, he thought, pulling it around his shoulders. Real fabric, what a luxury. Riganth used plastic sheeting. Easy to clean, but always too hot or too cold, with a danger of suffocation by accident or design if your cell mates didn’t like you. Now that the tranqs were out of his blood, he wondered how he’d ever lived through it.
I o
we you, Kella.
He held no illusion that she’d rescued him for any other reason than that she had some use for him. She was one of those types that didn’t have or try to make friends. He didn’t understand them, but knew how to work with them. So be it. Whatever her motive, he was glad it got him free of that pit.
Ah, but for how long?
He owed her, but she was still an Elitist bitch. Always doing what’s best for herself and the hell with everyone else. It was just like her to run off and leave him to die, same as on the ship when the System dreadnaught had surprised them. She’d been doing her damnedest to get into one of the shuttle pods and escape. Fat lot of good it would have done had she made it. The other ship would have either yanked her back in with its tractors or blown her up. Good thing he’d been around to tap her behind the ear just hard enough to save her from herself.
Of course, after her time in Riganth, she might not thank him for the favor.
That had been a surprise, seeing her tagged for interrogation. It only happened when you were not what you seemed and the computers found you out. For all he knew she could be Spec-Ops or something even more secret and nasty. He’d been taken away because he hadn’t been military and they wanted to know why. Probably disappointed to find he wasn’t a spy, only hired help; they’d simply shuffled him away with the other mundane prisoners. To be forgotten.
Until the break . . . when Kella plucked him from the milling herd.
Why? She’d have a use for him, but Ops agents were supposed to be the best, trained to specialize in everything. That was their legend: inhumanly self-sufficient, ready for any emergency. Maybe she’d figured out who had tapped her and had dragged him away for the satisfaction of watching him die. If so, then she was missing the best part of the show.
He coughed his way to the main control node and, after a try or two, cheated into the system. Any 4K-day-old tech knew a few basic shortcuts. Most outgrew the phase, but Farron had kept up, learned the more difficult code cracks. It’s what made him good at his work, back when he’d had work. He brought up the power and looked over the food choices. He wasn’t hungry, but a hot drink would help. Some kind of soup or tea or—