by Wesley Chu
“No.” Elise pointed at the entrance. “We go in.”
“How much do we have to pay for passage through their building?” he asked.
“We’re not passing through,” Elise said. “I negotiated for food and two floors on the upper level. The Flatirons own the entire building from this floor up.”
“How is that possible?” Rima asked. “Do they have that many in the tribe?”
Elise shook her head. “They’re a large tribe, slightly larger than us, but not much. They destroyed all the connecting passages above and guard this floor like a fortress. They use the above floors for farming, much like we did with the Farming Towers back in Boston.”
“Why are they letting us in, then?” Eriao asked.
Elise pointed at several of the crates being carried by the Elfreth. “Bring seventeen of the medical supply crates, including all the equipment for treating burns, and leave them in the hallway. They’re no longer ours. Also, hand over thirty powered blaster rifles with chargers.”
“Oldest,” Eriao said, alarmed. “That is a high price to pay.”
She sighed. “I know, but we need the respite.”
Franwil nodded. “It is a high price, but worthwhile if we have found a safe haven where the Co-op and those other wastelander dogs cannot nip at our heels, even for a little while. I trust that you and their teacher came to a good permanent accommodation?”
Elise sighed. “Accommodation, yes. A permanent one, no. We’re only allowed to stay for ten days.”
EIGHTEEN
RIOT
For the second time in less than a year, that bastard James Griffin-Mars had turned Levin’s life upside down. It was becoming a habit, though Levin was hard-pressed to argue that breaking out of prison wasn’t going to be an improvement. He guessed it’d have to depend what was waiting for him outside.
The main reason it took so long to plan the riot to distract the guards wasn’t actually because starting a two-sided riot took planning, it was because the Apex and the People had to negotiate the terms for the fight. In the end, the best Levin could do was ensure that neither side would use weapons and that the riot would end as soon as they were gone. He hated himself for abandoning the People. The two groups also committed to keeping the peace, though that promise was probably only good up until Levin and Cole got off-moon. He had had to try, though.
“I don’t want to hear it,” 461 said, shaking his head when Levin tried to apologize to him personally. “I don’t want to hear about your ass abandoning us or not keeping your promise. If you get a ticket out of here, you take it. That goes for any of the boys. Have to be an idiot not to.”
“They’re good men,” Levin said. “Keep them safe. As long as you stick together, you’ll be all right.”
“Don’t worry about us in the clink, free man,” 461 replied. “Someone out there thinks you’re valuable enough to bust out. You just make sure you do what you set out to do.”
“I’ll come back for all of you someday,” Levin said.
461 smirked. “Don’t make another promise you can’t keep, boss.”
Levin put a hand on 461’s shoulder. “We’ll meet again, my friend.” The men he led, he didn’t know who they were before they came to Nereid, but he knew who they were now. These were good people. People worth redeeming. He stuck out his hand. “Levin Javier-Oberon.”
“Pardon, boss?”
“That’s my name. Each of us, we’re more than just numbers. I think it’s time we remember that.”
461 hesitated, and then shook Levin’s hand. “Iro Bami-Earth.”
“From Earth?” Levin said, surprised.
Iro nodded. “The Colorado underground colonies, actually. It’s why my skin is as pale as a spaceborn. Got pinched when I was young robbing a food corporation’s delivery transport. Was starving. Accidentally killed a guard when I hit him.” He looked down at his beefy hands. “Didn’t mean to. I was big even as a kid.”
Levin understood. He had no doubt several of these people’s stories were similar. Times were hard, and it brought desperation out of those who might not have committed any crimes otherwise. Funny, he hadn’t thought this way before he came to Nereid. The penal colony had reformed him, but not in the way it had intended.
The riot erupted after the meal that night. It began with a wink, a nod, and then a hard right cross from 461 that intentionally missed one of the Apex captains. With tensions on both sides boiling over, it didn’t take much for the staged fracas to turn into a real one.
Levin watched the chaos unfold. Watched as several of his people were bloodied, and as the violence spread from inmate to inmate like wildfire. Soon, the entire commune was a battlefield. James, still with Raets’s paint over him, pretended to try to quell the riot. He made a pretty good show of it, using the big man’s arms to pull the inmates apart and knock them on the ground. Then, Cole dove off one of the dining tables and jumped on top of him. More of the Apexes followed suit until he was buried beneath an avalanche of bodies.
That set off all the guards. Usually, when fights broke out, the prison guards were content to spectate. If it got bad, they usually would just vacuum out the air until the prisoners passed out. However, if one of their own was in trouble, the others would soon come down in full force.
Standing in the midst of the fracas, James made his presence known as he pretended to be in serious trouble. He shrieked for backup at the top of his lungs as he made wide clumsy swings at the inmates surrounding him. The inmates had been instructed not to touch him, but some of them must not have gotten the memo. Those unfortunate fools who took it too far—all Apexes, as far as Levin could tell—were handled by James with extreme prejudice, which made the scene only more realistic.
From a professional auditor viewpoint, if Levin were grading James’s performance, he would have said the ex-chronman was overacting a little. The guy James was impersonating looked entirely too amateur, and the way he pitched the screaming was a bit too frantic. He was also beating the inmates who got close too efficiently. A regular guard wouldn’t have had his skill, and his actions should reflect that. Also, a real guard in this situation wouldn’t have had the breath to keep shouting this loud while fighting at the same time. To be perfectly frank, Levin was disappointed in this Tier-1’s performance. Not that it mattered. Not anymore.
James did his job, though. The penal colony guards must have raised the alarm, because a few minutes later, the two double-door entrances on both sides slammed open and several rows of guards, clad in riot gear four shields wide, charged into the commune. They barreled into the crowd of prisoners locked in step, indiscriminately swinging their pain sticks.
The inmates were ready for them. No sooner had the doors opened and the guards streamed out than the inmates stopped fighting each other and turned on them. The guards weren’t ready for the coordinated attack and were pushed off to the side, away from the entrance. The rest of the inmates charged through the security doors. They were met by another locked double door at the far end of the corridor and pounded at it futilely.
James, still painted as Raets, appeared next to Levin. They signaled to Cole, and together, the three of them pushed their way to the front of the crowd. “Stand back,” he said, pulling the men next to the door away from it.
Levin nodded at James, who approached the door and placed his hands on it. A yellow glow leaped from his palms and blew the doors outward, ripping the panels off their frame and flinging them into another group of guards on the other side. The mob surged forward. James signaled to Levin and Cole, and together, they broke away from the main crowd, moving down a side corridor and up through a maintenance stairwell.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Cole asked.
James pointed at his head. “Mapped it out the day I got here. Let’s go. We can hijack one of the transports before Amazon security arrives.”
Cole stopped. “That’s suicide. We can’t outrun anything with a transport. They’ll blow us out of sp
ace.”
“Shut up and keep moving,” James growled, hurrying them along. The sounds of the fighting faded as they continued to the surface. Six flights up, they ran into four guards positioned at the hangar doors. James held up a hand and, with a kinetic swing, swept all four aside and slammed them into the walls. “Keep watch,” he said, as he used his exo to pry open the thick bay doors.
Cole ran to one of the unconscious guards and picked up a rifle. He walked over to the next unconscious guard and jabbed the barrel into the man’s forehead. Levin knocked his arm away as the rifle discharged harmlessly into the air.
“Stop! What are you doing?” Levin said, spinning him around and grabbing the front of his shirt.
Cole pushed Levin backward and pointed the rifle at his chest. The two froze. “I should,” Cole said, his voice low. “It would serve you right. You sent me to this hellhole, your own flesh and blood.”
Levin held his ground and gave his nephew a resigned gaze. “Is this how you really want this to end? Do it, then.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” James said, his focus still on the doors. “Levin’s a bastard, but he’s the only reason you’re getting off this rock, boy.”
For a second, Cole looked like he was going to pull the trigger anyway. Instead, he spat and pointed his rifle down the hallway. “It’s not over between us.”
Levin picked up one of the other rifles and took position next to him. “I doubt it ever will be. We’re family.”
“I have no family.”
“Your mother disagrees.”
“You should have just left me in the Ming Dynasty—”
“Will you two just shut up?” James snapped, looking their way and rolling his eyes. “I swear, if you guys keep this up, I will just cryo both your asses until we get to Earth.” The bay doors began to creak as James’s exo pried them apart. A second later, the doors were forced open just wide enough for each man to slip through sideways. “Come on.”
Levin slipped into the massive hangar first, followed by Cole, and then James. Right away, a barrage of weapon fire hammered the bay doors. Levin grabbed Cole just as the man came through the crack and pulled him to the ground. They scrambled behind a stack of metal containers.
“Exo on the far wall,” he called as James appeared last through the door.
At least three guards were converging on them. The guard with the exo floated in the air, a green glow surrounding him. It was a security exo specializing in crowd control. Levin had fought against these before, though he wasn’t sure if James had had the experience.
“The exo is powered for multiple coils,” he called out.
“Don’t worry about me. Get that ship up and running,” James said, launching into the air and putting himself between the exo guard and the transport.
The last thing Levin saw before turning away from the battle was thirty thin strings of coils leap out of the guard and shoot toward James. In response, James summoned ten or so of his own yellow coils and moved to intercept.
Levin pulled Cole to the hatch of the transport. “Take out the guards. Keep them off James.”
Cole moved to the belly of the craft and engaged the three guards, taking one of them down as they ran toward the ship. Levin entered the transport and got to work. It was an old Valiant model, easily three hundred years old. Simple and slow, but efficient and reliable, basically a giant flying container with a tiny engine. They weren’t going to get very far in this tub. Cole wasn’t wrong earlier about James needing more than a ship to escape the penal colony. He hoped James had a better plan than to try to escape in this thing.
Levin ran the length of the box-shaped transport into the tiny cockpit. Outside the three front slits of windows, he could see flashes of green and yellow lighting up the room. Those green coils were everywhere, seemingly filling up the entire hangar. He hoped James could pull this off. The ex-chronman could take care of himself, but who knew what shape he was in after having spent so much time as a fugitive.
Levin got to work on the transport’s startup sequence. The good thing about cheap, reliable ships was that they were as basic as they came. Besides fairly simple navigation and a minimal shielding system, the rest of the ship was nothing more than thrusters, steering, and life support, something Levin could have built while an initiate at the Academy. There wasn’t even artificial gravity or central heat; the cockpit was outfitted with only an electrical heater. Basically, this thing was a miserable ride. However, it’s simplicity made it a cinch to start. Within a few seconds, the rear thrusters had rumbled to life.
Levin ran back to the container side of the ship and shouted down at Cole, “Get in here and close the hatch.” He ran back to the cockpit and looked out the window. Those green coils were still everywhere, and there wasn’t a hint of yellow at all. Levin couldn’t see the fight outside clearly, but he worried that James might actually be losing.
Well, nothing could be done for him now. If James survived, they had a chance. If he didn’t, then they were all as good as dead. That green exo guard could easily drag and ground the transport, though even if they managed to escape the hangar, they wouldn’t get very far.
It had been years since Levin had had to pilot a ship, and this damn thing was wide as a star base and responded just about as well as one. He lifted the transport up and maneuvered it—if one could call driving this ship that—to the center of the hangar. He nearly careened into another ship as he turned it toward the exit. The turning speed of this thing was painful. The transport rumbled forward, floating across the length of the hangar slowly to the launch-way. James must still be fighting, since green coils hadn’t pulled the ship back to the ground.
Levin felt every second tick by as the transport made it past the air shield of the hangar to the runway outside. As the ship made the final turn, his heart fell. The exterior bay door was closed. He checked his console for weapons; there were none. The shield arms of the transport were barely strong enough to take a solar flare, let alone crash through those external hangar doors. They were trapped.
Off to the side, he saw a flare of yellow, and then James streaked toward the exterior door. He must have not only survived the fight, he must have knocked the guard out of play. James motioned for Levin to hold and began working on the door.
Levin felt his palms sweat as James flitted from the right bay door to the left. This was taking too long. He was surprised the hangar wasn’t being flooded with more guards; the riot must still be taking most of their attention. He silently thanked the People again. He’d keep his promise to his men somehow. One day.
Eventually, James was able to crack the mechanism locking the doors shut and push them open. As soon as he flew into the transport, Levin punched the ship and took off. A few minutes later, in a very rough ride, they cleared Nereid and were shooting off into the blackness of space. Twenty short minutes later, the radar began to blip.
“Two incoming Amazon drone ships on intercept within ten minutes,” said Levin.
Cole leaned over the console and looked over at James, panicked. “What’s your plan now, chronman?”
James muttered, “We’ll cut it close. I hope this tub bought us enough distance for my exo levels to last us the rest of the way. How far are we from the Kuiper Belt?”
“Not close enough to make it before those drones come,” said Levin.
“We don’t need to be. Set a heading for the opposite direction.” James signaled for them to follow him. “Let’s go.” He threw his atmos over Levin and Cole and carried them off the ship. Floating in space, they watched as the transport continued its casual path away. James pulled the two men in close and shot toward the Kuiper Belt.
“Stay close and quiet,” he ordered. “I’m going to power down and we’ll wait them out. Attack drones shouldn’t have powerful enough sensors to find us, but you never know.”
No sooner had James lowered his atmos than the three of them felt the cold creep of space wash over them. The ex-chr
onman was maintaining just the minimum levels to keep them alive, but not much else. Breathing became more labored as the three clung to each other for warmth. Levin was starting to feel his consciousness fade by the time James finally raised the levels.
“Now what?” Cole grumbled. “We’re trapped out here without a ship on the fringe of Neptune. What the abyss do we do now?”
James gave him a flat stare. “I’m a Tier-1, boy. I always have a plan.”
NINETEEN
THE DOCTOR
James almost had to eat his words. It took the Frankenstein much longer than anticipated to find them in the Kuiper Belt. By the time he caught sight of it, moving sporadically toward them, his levels were down to eight percent and he was starting to doubt that they were going to make it.
When the Frankenstein came into view, James nearly whooped for joy, except that his throat was so dry he could get only a squeak out. Their little band of jailbreaks had spent over two days floating in space waiting for Grace to find them. In order to conserve energy, James had kept his bands powered to a bare minimum. The three of them spent many long hours of breathing hard and freezing their asses off. None of them had eaten, and they were all experiencing severe hunger pains. For some reason, and James took full responsibility for this, none of them had thought to pack food. Fortunately, Levin had had the foresight to bring a canteen of water; that had been their only sustenance.
Needless to say, tempers were short.
Cole squinted. “Is that a ship or a magnetic meteor that passed through a junk heap?”
“It’s your ride home, you little prick,” James huffed. As far as he was concerned, the only people allowed to laugh at it were the people who had built it. He checked his levels: they should make it in time; he hoped they made it in time. That was, assuming Grace was able to pilot the Frankenstein to their position. He watched as it maneuvered around an asteroid, making an arc that was too wide. It just managed to stop right before it hit another asteroid, make a slow pivot, and then speed toward them.