by Wayne Basta
He had no desire to get into a situation where he might have to test the ship’s defenses, but he knew the shield and weapon would get him a better price.
When he finally reached the docking bay with the Cutty Sark, he found the ship sitting unattended with the cargo bay ramp down. Seeing the empty bay reminded Zeric that the Alliance officer had said they had confiscated the cargo as evidence. That included the cargo container he had snuck aboard in. Once their forensic teams began their work, they would quickly find his DNA all over the third stowaway crate and realize that Zeric hadn’t been a member of the crew. Realizing this redoubled Zeric’s determination to leave, and he immediately headed for the ship’s flight deck.
There, he found one of the more cramped spaces on the ship. There were three stations: the helm, the system operations console, and a weapons console. Zeric considered himself a fair pilot and knew ships such as these could be operated, with some difficulty, by one person. If he encountered any technical issues, he might be in some trouble. At first glance, though, the ship looked to be in relatively good condition.
Zeric moved between the operations and pilot stations as he began the startup sequence. The ship came to life with little protest, though he noticed with some dismay that the fuel gauge was only at forty percent. Like most civilian craft, the ship ran its fusion reactor off deuterium. The hydrogen isotope was reasonably cheap, but he doubted he could refill the ship’s tanks without setting off some alarm bells. He wasn’t supposed to leave the planet, after all, and the fuel he had would run the ship in dock for months.
As Zeric tried to calculate how far he could get on forty percent fuel, he suddenly froze at the sound of a voice.
“Going somewhere?”
Zeric’s first thought was that the police had figured out their mistake already. He decided to play innocent. “Um, no, officer, just checking the ship’s—“
As he turned around, he cursed his mistake. Instinctively, he reached down to his hip where he normally kept his pistol. That was when he remembered that he hadn’t gotten it back. He contented himself with raising his hands above his head.
Facing Zeric was the Braz he had shot earlier and who the Alliance officer had identified as the ship’s owner. What made the Braz instantly recognizable, besides his violet screfa and eyes, was the barrel of his SK-9 pistol once again pointing at Zeric’s head. This time, the Braz didn’t look surprised so much as angry. In Zeric’s mind, angry and armed were not two things that should go together.
“Looking for this?” the Braz asked, nodding toward Zeric’s weapon in his other hand. “Had you waited a few more moments at the hospital, they would have returned it to you. Since you are, after all, a law-abiding member of my crew.”
Zeric closed his eyes. “Go ahead, shoot me. Or turn me in. Let’s just get this over with.”
He sincerely hoped that the Braz did not take him up on the first offer. With reasonable confidence, he thought that if he got into the narrow corridors of the ship, he had a fair chance of overpowering the Braz. Zeric was not nearly as good at hand-to-hand combat as Gu’od, but he doubted the other man had any training. Though, given the way the Braz had drawn his pistol and taken Zeric out with a quick shot in their first meeting, he questioned how much of a chance he had at turning this confrontation into a hand-to-hand fight.
“I’m not going to shoot you. I did that already,” the Braz said, surprising Zeric. “You are going to tell me what happened to your friend and my sister.”
Sister? Zeric thought. So the Braz had been deliberately hiding a wanted criminal. Not many arrest warrants made it all the way out to this sector from the homeworld.
If the Braz’s real name hadn’t been identified, but the girl’s had, it meant he was either hiding her or had not gotten caught doing whatever it was she had done.
Either way, Zeric again rethought attempting to disarm the Braz.
“So your name isn’t Maaron Ocaitvik?”
“And your name isn’t James Franklin. Now that we’ve gotten the obvious out of the way, let’s go back to my question.”
Zeric considered the situation and decided that the truth wouldn’t harm him. The Braz already knew he had slipped aboard and tried to steal his ship. Admitting it to him wouldn’t make a difference.
He relayed what the Alliance officer had told him and what he knew about the girl and his friends, which was not all that much.
When he heard that the girl had been identified and arrested, the Braz’s face changed from anger to hopelessness, his horns shifting as he furrowed his forehead. The guns dropped slightly, and Zeric considered seizing the opportunity. But the chance lasted only a moment before the Braz spoke again.
“What’s your plan for breaking your friends out?”
This question took Zeric completely by surprise. “Um, what?”
“Your plan to rescue your friends. I assume you were getting ready to go break them out.”
“Why should I tell you?” Zeric retorted, not sure how to respond.
The Braz’s face shifted again to a look of icy determination, his violet eyes burning into his own. “Because you’re also going to break my sister out.”
If Maarkean thought the Terran had looked surprised when he burst onto the flight deck, the look he gave when Maarkean told him about breaking his sister out topped that. Terrans were always so expressive with their emotions. Yet, they were also wildly unpredictable.
Despite holding two weapons on the Terran, Maarkean felt uncomfortable. He was not a particularly good fighter. Until their meeting earlier, he had never shot anyone before, with a pistol at least. All his efforts in the military had been from the relative comfort of a ship’s cockpit. He had received training, but it had been years since he had been to a firing range. He had, however, spent countless hours practicing a quick draw. That had been enough, in most conflicts, to get him out of needing to actually shoot anyone.
That was until this Terran and his compatriots had tried to hijack his ship. Maarkean felt no guilt about having shot the Terran in that situation, though he admitted to himself the lack of guilt was due, in no small part, to having had his weapon set on stun. But now he found himself in a similar spot.
Trying to suppress his nerves, Maarkean spoke again. “I’ll ask again, how are you planning on breaking your friends out of prison?”
The Terran licked his lips before speaking. “I wasn’t.”
Maarkean considered him for a moment. “Of course. Now it makes more sense. When the Alliance caught you, you turned on them, played on Terran prejudices and got yourself released, leaving your friends to take the fall.”
“That’s not true!” the Terran blurted out. His face reddened under his Razors cap. “Those idiotic investigators played on their prejudices all by themselves. I woke up in the hospital next to you and just agreed with them when they assumed I was part of the crew instead of one of the criminals. So, yes, I let them think I was innocent, and I walked away, but I did not betray my friends!”
To Maarkean’s surprise, he found that he believed the Terran. His voice betrayed a hint of guilt, and the story felt all too plausible. It was, after all, almost the same situation he was in. He was just as guilty of a crime as Saracasi, yet his false ID had worked, and hers had failed. He had walked out of the hospital and away from the authorities, while she was arrested.
Despite still seething at the Terran for attempting to steal his ship and for getting him into this situation to begin with, he was suddenly glad he had not shot the man as soon as he came onboard. He knew he would be foolish to trust this man, but he also knew that they shared a similar predicament. It was true the man had admitted he was going to flee and leave his friends behind. But were it not Saracasi in prison, Maarkean wasn’t sure he would do any different.
Deciding a little gesture could go a long way, Maarkean lowered the pistols he was holding. His fingers never left the triggers, and he was confident he could bring a gun up faster than the Terran could
cross the space between them, but it was still a risk. Conversations at gunpoint never went very well, though.
The Terran visibly relaxed. Maarkean spoke first. “Let’s say I believe you. And let’s say I’ll overlook, for now, the fact that you’ve tried to steal my ship not once, but twice. We share a similar problem.”
“And what might that similar problem be?”
“Both of us were released when we shouldn’t have been, and both of us could find that error corrected at any moment. Your solution was to run before they figured it out. I can understand that; what is one man capable of doing?”
As Maarkean spoke, the Terran seemed to be listening. Maarkean was not foolish enough to think that he wasn’t simultaneously looking for any chance to jump him, but he pressed on regardless. “By every right, I should shoot you, throw you off my ship and get out of here just like you were planning to do. But I don’t have that option. I can’t leave my sister behind. Which means I have to find some way of getting her free from prison.”
Maarkean looked straight into the Terran’s brown eyes. “Legal options are, unfortunately, not open to me. And just like you, I face the question, what chance does one man have?”
The next moment stretched on into what Maarkean felt had to have been eternity. The Terran never wavered from his gaze, but Maarkean had no notion of what was going through his head. In his hands, the pistols felt heavy, and the longer the silence continued, the more Maarkean feared he would have to use them.
Finally, the Terran said, “What chance do two men have?”
Despite the skepticism in the Terran’s voice, Maarkean smiled. “I’d say the odds are about one hundred percent better.”
Saracasi awoke from the stun blast and was quickly hauled out of the hospital bed. From there, she was deposited into a small room. Three walls were made of stark concrete and one was made of metal bars. There were three uncomfortable benches running the length of the room and a public toilet in one corner.
Filled with a handful of other Braz and a few Terrans, the cell held little free space. Across a walkway stood another, similar room, holding a wider variety of species. The other room contained about twice as many occupants as her cell did. Clearly, Braz and Terrans got better treatment around here.
After only a short time, a group of six armed AIS officers appeared and started directing some people from the other cell out, one at a time.
Once about two-thirds of the occupants had been removed, the officers turned toward her cell. One of the male Braz officers sneered at her as he ordered her to exit. She ignored him as they escorted her out of the cell and down a narrow corridor. They walked past the group that had been taken from the other cell. She watched as the officers loaded the group into the back of a small ground transport.
From there, Saracasi was led into a small courtroom. The room contained no jury box, just a high, benched seat for a judge. She waited in the courtroom for several minutes, surrounded by her guards. The four men did not appear talkative, and she dropped any ideas about trying to engage them in conversation.
The door at the rear of the room opened, and a female Terran wearing a formal court robe entered. She took a seat at the bench and then addressed Saracasi.
“Please enter your name for the court records.”
For a moment, Saracasi considered how to answer that. The last thing she remembered was that she had been shot by a stun bolt and then had found herself in prison. She knew they would not tell her what charges she faced until she entered her name. If she told them the fake name she had been using, and they already knew her real identity, they could add perjury to the list of charges against her. Though, if they already knew her real name, perjury wouldn’t make much difference.
“Sarca Ocaitric.”
The judge barely acknowledged her. “Let the record show that the defendant entered a false name. Her true name is Saracasi Ocaitchi.”
A cold sense of dread filled Saracasi. She had suspected that her identity had been found out, but to have it confirmed brought forth the fears she had been suppressing. Everything Maarkean had tried to save her from was coming true, and she had no idea what had even happened to her brother.
“You are being held under warrant for treason from the world of Braz. In addition, charges are being added which include attempting to enter a world under a false identity, obtaining work under a false identity, aiding and abetting pirates in the attempted theft of the courier transport Cutty Sark, evading law enforcement officials, and perjury in a court of law. How do you plead to these new charges?”
Saracasi blinked as the charges were read. Half of them did not make any sense to her, but she didn’t have the presence of mind to truly consider them. “Not guilty.”
“As the original charge of treason carries the gravest stance and is the original warrant, the defendant will be remanded to the Olan Detention Camp until transport can be arranged to deliver her back to Braz.”
With that, the judge stood up and left the courtroom as quickly as she had entered. The entire proceeding had taken less than five minutes. Saracasi, feeling too stunned to process what was happening, found herself being whisked from the room and thrown into the back of the prison ground transport, which was already stuffed to overflowing with other prisoners.
The journey out to the prison felt like one of the longest in Saracasi’s life. She was jammed in between the transport’s door and an unwashed Kowwok. Every time they hit a bump, she faced a choice between banging into the metal wall or getting a face full of sweaty fur. When they started, she assumed the fur would be the better choice. Even if it smelled, it was soft. She soon realized that, with her hands shackled, she couldn’t wipe off the fur and sweat that transferred to her face. In the end, she opted for the head trauma.
The darkened interior of the transport made it hard to see the other occupants. Braz had better darkvision than most species, except Ronids. Even still, she could only determine a few species, but not any facial details. The space contained a few other Kowwoks, two Liw’kel, a Ronid, a couple Dotran and a few Notha. It took a few moments to realize she was the only Braz in the group and that there were no Terrans.
As an Alliance-controlled world, Sulas’ population was dominated by Terrans and Braz. However, compared with most heavily populated worlds in the Alliance, Sulas had a diverse population. Originally colonized by a variety of species over the course of a century, it had remained mostly independent. Each group had maintained loose ties to their homeworlds, but the planet had no had single governing body. Sixty years ago, that had changed when the Alliance assumed control during the colony grab. That conflict had eventually led to the Great Colonial War with the Dotran Confederacy.
After what seemed like hours of riding along fairly quietly, the transport stopped. Saracasi felt her anxiety increase along with the rest of the occupants. No one made a sound, as if they hoped the Alliance guards might just forget about them.
Several minutes passed, and the silence gave way to fidgeting. Finally, the rear doors opened. Light flooded the small interior of the transport.
The downside to having good darkvision was that the sudden light blinded Saracasi for far longer than it did anyone else. As she was hauled out of the transport and shoved forward, she couldn’t see any of her surroundings. After she had taken a dozen or so steps, her eyes started adjusting and she saw where the AIS had brought her.
The transport unloaded the prisoners into the middle of an open concrete space. Fences surrounded the space on three sides, and a high wall with a door stood on the remaining side. The prisoners were being guided toward the door in a less-than-friendly fashion.
The wall, topped with razor wire, spotlights and guard towers, extended a long distance in either direction from the door. Saracasi had never been in a prison, but she had heard all the stories. She felt sure she was unprepared to face it. The Black Market, and some of the other places she and Maarkean had gotten work, had been rough. You always had to watch you
r back. But even in those places, she had been armed, or there had been harsh consequences for anyone causing trouble. From what she had heard of prison, the strong did what they wanted as long as it was only to other prisoners. The weak survived by submitting.
Saracasi had never considered herself weak. But she wasn’t sure she was capable of doing what it might take to not be the one to submit. This had been the fate Maarkean had warned her about before any of the trouble had started. The things he had done to keep her from this had shown what he was capable of doing. She knew she didn’t want to find out what she was capable of doing.
Moved along by the guards, the group passed through the door and lined up along the inside of the outer wall. Guards immediately began shouting at them to remove their clothes. Other guards began moving down the line, putting their clothing into bags.
Some of the people began stripping as if they weren’t surrounded by dozens of strangers. The Kowwoks in particular had no issues with nudity; they only wore clothes to conform to other species, or when the cold was too much for even their fur to handle. The Dotran, being cold blooded, were the most displeased. They all immediately started shivering in the cold room.
For her part, being surrounded by Terran and Braz guards, Saracasi felt self-conscious as she stripped.
Some of the guards wore impassive, professional faces regardless of the prisoner from which they were taking clothes. They accepted the clothes and moved on without another look. One of the Braz males, however, was particularly obvious with his expression. He looked at several of the species with disgust. But some of the females, Saracasi included, he looked at with a lust that made her feel even more powerless than she had been feeling before.
When the guard got to the only Liw’kel female in the group, he stopped for several moments. Liw’kel were considered by many to be the most sensual and beautiful species, and this blue-skinned female was no exception. Terran and Braz in particular found the females hard to resist, as the three species were similar in size and skin texture. Under different circumstances, Saracasi would have found it difficult not to stare at this one, with her light blue color and well-shaped body.