by Jaleta Clegg
Someone rolled me over. Something wet and cool slipped over my face, wiping away grime and blood.
“Doesn’t look too bad,” that someone said. The voice was teasingly familiar. My brain sluggish brain couldn’t figure out why.
“So who is she?” someone else asked.
More cool and wet on my face.
“No insignia, no ship’s patch, nothing,” the first voice said. “Could be from just about any ship.” The cool wet thing patted my cheek. “Wake up and talk to us.”
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to face the nightmare anymore. I wanted to hide in the darkness for a while longer. Whoever the voice belonged to wasn’t going to let me.
“Let me look.” A new voice, female, soft but commanding.
More hands tugged at me. They touched bruises and I groaned.
“She must have been the runner they were chasing,” the second voice put in.
“And they beat her quite thoroughly,” the female voice answered.
The cool wet thing brushed over my face again.
“Wake up,” the first voice said.
“I don’t want to,” I muttered.
The voices paused, the wet thing dripped water onto my face. I gave up and opened my eyes.
I lay on my back, looking up into a scraggly tree and beyond that at the sheer cliff on the far side of the valley and a sky that glowed purple. I shifted my attention lower down. I was surrounded by several people. The female voice belonged to the medic in Patrol silver kneeling on one side. On the other, holding a dripping scrap of cloth, was the owner of the familiar voice. I’d seen his face in pictures. I’d heard his voice on his recorded ship’s log. I wasn’t ready to face him yet. Darus Venn, the father I’d never met, knelt on my other side wiping my face with a wet cloth. I closed my eyes, I didn’t want him to see anything in my face. I wanted to wait, to find out who he was. I wanted to stay under control. Why had he left me on Tivor in the orphanage? Why had he abandoned me? The thin voice of the abused child I had been asked the questions in my head.
“Want to tell us what happened?” the second voice asked.
I opened my eyes again. An older man, wearing Patrol silver, stood over me. He watched me with his head on one side, eyes curious. He had his collar open, I couldn’t see what insignia he wore. As if it mattered here.
“They caught me and beat me up.” My voice was hoarse. I coughed and rolled onto my side. My ribs that I’d cracked only a month and a bit earlier were sore again. I promised myself that I was going to make sure I was completely well again before I got mixed up in something else. As if I could keep that promise. I seemed to draw trouble without even trying.
I sat up, helped by the medic. The man standing over us watched me. My father—no, call him Darus, keep him at a distance—Darus moved back, wringing out the scrap of cloth.
“So, what did you do to land you in the troublemaker’s pit?” the standing man asked. “Runners usually aren’t kept alive.”
“What does that mean?”
Another man handed me a crude cup made from thick leaves woven together. It was full of water. I stared dumbly at it.
“Did they hit you on the head too many times?” Darus asked. “Drink it, you sound like you need it.”
I drank it.
“You cause trouble, they dump you in here with us,” the standing man explained. “Depending on their mood, runners are usually made into examples. Very rarely, they dump them in here. Tylor over there was a runner.” He gestured at the far side of the clearing.
Tylor waved. He was older, his hair a grizzled gray. His uniform was battered and stained. It might once have been silver but now it was mottled gray.
“They broke his legs. He limps now,” the standing man continued. “They left you in one piece. Because you’re a woman?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t want a verbal battle with anyone. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to wake up in my ship.
“Then who are you and how long have you been here?”
“Dace,” I said. Darus wouldn’t recognize it, I’d changed my name after I left Tivor. “From the trading ship, Phoenix Rising. I’ve been here about a week.”
That got their attention. I could almost see their ears stand up. The others shifted closer.
“What date was it when you crashed?” the medic asked. I told her.
“Twelve years,” Darus muttered and shook his head.
“What did you do?” the standing man continued questioning me.
“I didn’t get sucked into their trap, until today.”
“You were loose? Out there?” A man in black crowded closer. Patrol Enforcer, lower ranking, and not nearly as big as most of the Enforcers I’d met.
I nodded. They watched me. I felt like an exhibit in a zoo.
“Darus Venn,” Darus said and stuck his hand out to me. “Captain of the Trailblazer.”
“I know,” I said, taking his hand briefly. I pulled my hand away. “I found your ship and listened to the log.” His ring on my finger felt as if it weighed tons. He didn’t notice it, though. I wrapped my left hand into a fist, hiding it. I wasn’t ready to tell him who I was. Not yet.
“You found our ships? What shape are they in?” He knelt down and faced me. “Commander Greyson Hovart,” he added.
“Can we get out?” someone else asked.
They peppered me with questions about what I’d seen, what I knew, where we were.
“Shut up and let her think,” Darus finally shouted.
They shut up. I pulled my knees to my chin and tried to think. The papers in my pocket crackled. The golden men hadn’t searched me, they hadn’t taken anything from my pockets. I unsealed my breast pocket and pulled out my papers. I smoothed the top one.
They leaned forward.
“A map?” Commander Hovart asked.
I flattened it in what remained of the light.
“The canyon,” I said, tracing the rim. “Green are ship transponders.”
Commander Hovart picked it up and held it tilted to catch as much light as he could.
“I penciled in the ships that were too damaged to respond.”
“And made notes on the others, I see,” he said. “Good job.”
“What good is it going to do us?” the thin Enforcer put in. “We’re never going to get out of here. The ships may as well be in orbit around Tortalis.”
“Shut up, Wex,” Darus said.
“I’m not going to stay here and rot. I was trying to find a way to get my crew out and get off the planet.” I shuffled another paper out of the stack. My head throbbed. I had a hard time seeing and not just because of the dim light. I squinted at my notes.
“What’s that one?” Commander Hovart asked.
“Scan results.” I handed him the whole pile. “And other things I thought might come in handy.”
He took the papers. Several of the others crowded behind him. I started emptying pockets. I had a medkit somewhere and was feeling lousy enough to risk using a pain patch. I avoided them when possible because I was very susceptible to side effects, including a worse headache than the one I currently had.
I slowly grew aware of the spreading quiet around me. They watched me pile things in front of me. It was quite a pile.
“You got a few blast cannons in there, too?” Darus asked.
“Won’t do any good. Clark tried to use a blaster on them. It melted in his hand.” I reached into my last pocket and pulled out the stunner.
“What’s a trader doing with blasters?” Commander Hovart asked.
“Surviving,” I said. “You want to make an issue of regulations?”
“Rather a moot point, isn’t it?”
“As long as I don’t take them off the ship, it is none of the Patrol’s business anyway.” Technically I was correct, although anywhere except the Fringe, it was illegal to even own a blaster. I stuck with the outer edges of the Empire where the laws weren’t quite so strict and the docking fees were much smaller.
“Defective blaster?” Darus dragged the conversation away from dangerous areas.
“I checked them personally just a few days earlier. It’s one of the fields on this planet. Along with the tractor beams and others that make it impossible to lift ship or send a message.”
“The energy signatures are weird,” a new person spoke up. He held one of the sheets close to his face. “Strange variations on the norms.”
“Don’t mind Lovar,” Darus said. “He’s not quite sane, but I don’t think he ever really was. One of the best scan techs out there, though.”
The medic opened the medkit. She lined the contents on the ground.
I put the stunner on the pile, except there wasn’t a pile anymore. Everything in it except one ration bar had been snatched up to be examined for any possible use. The stunner didn’t even touch ground before someone grabbed it. I took the ration bar and opened it.
“Here,” the medic offered me a pain patch. “Liusha Madrec, from the Cygnus.”
I took the patch and put it on my arm. The others shared out my other three ration bars. I broke off a piece and passed mine on.
“Don’t they feed you here?” I asked.
“Usually; crumbly tasteless stuff that keeps us alive.” Darus broke off a piece, then passed it on. “This is good compared to the brick stuff. They didn’t give it to us today. Probably because they locked everyone up while they were chasing you.”
I sucked on the ration bar piece. The pain patch helped, I didn’t ache quite so much. I winced as I accidentally licked my split lip. I had two items I hadn't pulled out. The picture of my mother still rested over my heart, in an inner pocket. My lockpicks were in an inner ankle pocket. After Commander Hovart’s comment about my blasters, I didn’t want to hear what he’d say when he saw the sophisticated set.
I found it hard to believe I sat next to my father. I’d dreamed about meeting him for years at the orphanage, until I’d grown old enough to stop daydreaming of being rescued, until I’d become angry enough to find my own way out.
Did I want him to know? What would I say? Hi, I’m your daughter, why did you abandon me? Or should I say anything at all? I ran a finger along the wide collar the golden men had put on me.
Commander Hovart pulled the others into a huddle with my maps in the middle. They talked quietly but intently. Other pieces of my equipment changed hands as they talked.
“There’s more stashed,” I said.
They stopped talking and looked at me.
“I left it under a bush at the bottom of the trail to the top, the northern one,” I said.
Darus tilted his head. “What did you do? Raid all the ships?”
“There were only two with anything worth raiding,” I answered. “The golden men, whoever they are, stripped the ships of anything they could carry. They left all the equipment and anything in locked bins behind. I found a Patrol scout with its hatch locked. An old override code got me inside. My ship wasn’t raided. I left the doors closed, I couldn’t figure a way to lock them behind me, so I rigged them. Connect two wires and the doors will open again.”
“Who did you say you worked for?” Commander Hovart asked in a strangled voice.
“Myself.”
“Patrol undercover agent?”
“No.”
“If you say so.”
“What’s to stop us from leaving tonight?” Tylor asked. “Even with a bum leg, I’d still give them a good run.”
“When did you do these scans?” Lovar, the scan tech, pushed the papers under my nose.
“Several days ago,” I said through a sudden wide yawn.
“No ships coming in then, the last was ten days ago.” Lovar started muttering in technical terms I didn’t understand.
Commander Hovart watched me with a suspicious look on his face. He picked up the sheet of coded mem paper from the pile. “What’s this?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. I found it on a ship. The Tommy Ruiz.”
He looked thoughtfully at me for a while longer and then pinched the corner of the page. He spoke a string of code, then frowned when nothing happened.
“Voice coded, probably. It won’t do us any good.” He handed me the mem sheet.
I watched him walk back to the group around the map. He thought I was Patrol and everything I did only seemed to convince him of it. It didn’t really matter, did it? I was too tired and in too much pain to care what he thought. If it helped, he could think I was a Fleet Admiral. I tucked the mem page in a pocket and leaned back against the rock.
I thought I was dreaming when I started to hear clicking. It sounded like a signal call in the old pulse code. I opened my eyes.
“Hush,” Hovart said, holding up his hand.
The clicking carried in the quiet night. It was answered by another set of codes from even closer nearby, and followed by another farther away.
“It’s the others,” Wex said, his thin face and bulging eyes looking happy. The clicking continued for a few minutes. “Identity codes. Alpha group, beta group, gamma. Give me a stick.” He held out his hand.
Darus stuck one in the open hand. Wex took the stick and tapped loudly on the tree. A rapid series of clicks echoed through the tangled trunk
The night was silent as the clicks died away. Wex held up fingers as he counted off seconds. He hit three and the night exploded into clicking. It slowed gradually. Wex tapped out more clicks. The answers came back singly, some near, some farther away. Wex kept tapping.
“Take notes, someone,” Wex said, intent on his tapping.
Commander Hovart took one of my sheets of paper and my stylus and crouched next to Wex. Wex started naming ships, listing names and ranks, and adding another identifier that I guessed told where they were in this trap, which group they worked with.
I listened to the list, names I didn’t know, and felt my eyes sliding shut. Tomorrow, I would demand my stuff back. Tomorrow, I would demand to be in on the planning. Tomorrow, I would wake up on my ship lightyears away from here. Tomorrow, the Emperor himself would congratulate me. Tomorrow. . .
I was half asleep, with weird dreams chasing themselves through my head, when a familiar name jerked me awake.
“Jasyn Pai, pilot, Phoenix Rising, alpha group,” Wex said.
“She’s still alive,” I whispered. Relief flooded me.
I waited, listening for Clark’s name. It didn’t come.
Wex started tapping. He paused, and turned to the man next to him. “What was your ship, Tanru?”
“Antarres Prime.” Tanru was a big man, dressed in black. His skin was almost as dark. His pale silver hair floated in a thin cloud around his head. “Combat specialist.”
No surprise why he was in the troublemakers’ camp.
“You look dead,” Darus said to me. “Get some sleep.”
“Where?” I was still half hoping to hear Clark’s name.
“Anywhere you want,” Darus answered. “There’s a stream over that way to wash in. And a spring over there for drinking.”
I got up, wincing at my bruises, and got a drink before finding a spot more out of the way with softer ground. I fell asleep listening to Wex tapping out messages.
Chapter 17
They were released from the cave into late afternoon. The lights blinked off as the door ground open. The golden men lined up outside, with wands ready. As the prisoners came out of the cave, they were separated back into their groups. The golden men knew who went where and enforced it when necessary with a touch of a wand.
Clark walked out with the rest. They’d planned what they could, but mostly they had talked. With few reference points in common, they barely knew where the other groups were in relation to each other. They hadn’t come up with a workable way to communicate either. Chances of escaping seemed as far away as ever.
Jasyn hadn’t been there. He’d watched others find crew mates and friends with a jealousy that surprised him in its intensity. He didn’t care if she kept her cabin
hers, he didn’t care that she didn’t talk easily to him. He’d give her all the space and time she wanted if only he could see her again.
One of the tall men pushed him into line behind Joli and Enuri. Others were pushed into line, faces grown familiar over the days. The golden men herded them down paths to the familiar enclosure of thorn and rock. They were shut in. They spread out, claiming territories much as before.
“Do you think they’ll feed us?” someone complained in a whiny voice. “No breakfast, no dinner.”
“You really like that brick stuff?” his neighbor answered. “I’d sell my left arm for real food again.”
“Shut up, both of you,” Erlich, another Enforcer, said. “Where’s Jerrus?” He looked around. His gaze found Clark. “You killed him, didn’t you? Didn’t you? You wanted to be leader so you killed him. Trader scum.” He spat. The glob landed next to Clark.
Clark stood. Erlich wanted to fight. Joli, Enuri, and Wade lined up behind him. Most of the rest of the group drifted close.
“I didn’t kill Jerrus,” Clark said. “He is dead, yes. They did it with their wands.” He nodded at the thick fence of thorns.
“Because you pushed him into it.” He stepped closer to Clark, using his slight advantage in height to loom over him. “You couldn’t stand that he was in charge here. You wanted his power. You want us all dead, don’t you? Except for your friends. You came in here to cause trouble, to get them angry with all of us.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. Jerrus is dead, so now I’m the one in charge. Do you hear me?” He screamed at the circle of watching faces. “I’m in charge. You do what I say!”
He turned suddenly, fist out, and caught Clark on the jaw. Clark landed on his hands and knees, jaw aching. He tasted blood inside his mouth.
“Stop it, Erlich,” Joli shouted. “We shouldn’t be fighting each other. We should be finding a way out of here.”
Erlich turned on Joli. “You’re a disgrace to your uniform, conniving with trader scum.”
“You’re the disgrace, Erlich.”
Erlich swung again, this time at Joli. She ducked away, one leg swinging high. Her own blow caught the larger man across the middle, twisting him around and dropping him to the ground. Erlich groaned.