Tyche's Hope

by Richard Parry

  “My accounts are empty?” said Hope, then clamped her mouth shut. You’re still asking questions.

  “Your accounts are a dry well. Your console’s been scrubbed. A data feed leads from you to an accomplice. Who we have in custody.” He jerked a thumb towards the screen. “Five million coins are missing.”

  “There was a virus on the console,” said Hope.

  “Of course there was,” said Cesar. “You’d have to be a colossal idiot to do this kind of thing manually. It gives you no plausible deniability though. We’ve found your tampering fingerprints all over the code.”

  “I hate other people’s code,” said Hope. Gah. Well, at least it wasn’t a question. “I found the virus last night. Or this morning. What time is it?”

  Cesar’s eyes went to the spider bot, which still hadn’t done anything. “I guess technically you did find it last night. And every night before then, hmm?”

  “What? No.”

  “How are you doing it, Baedeker?”

  “Doing what?”

  Cesar slammed his hands on the table between them, making Hope jump. “Don’t play the fool with me! How are you fooling the spider bot? Is it some kind of Engineer’s trick?”

  “What?” said Hope.

  Cesar roared, leaping across the table. Hope’s chair was knocked backward, her head ringing against the floor. Cesar’s bulk was above her, holding her in place. He put both hands around Hope’s neck. “I will wring the truth from you! You’re a terrorist against the Republic! We can put you down like a rabid dog if we want—”

  There was a soft chime Hope could barely hear over the ringing in her ears and the pounding of her blood, and Cesar froze. He looked at a cam, then released Hope. She coughed, trying to grab a little air while the going was good. Natsumi’s voice came through the room’s intercom. “Commander Grosvenor, I’ll remind you that we need information.”

  “Natsumi?” rasped Hope. “What’s going on?”

  The intercom clicked off. Cesar stood, then hauled Hope’s chair upright. He walked back around the table, seating himself. “Where were we?”

  “You tried to choke me,” said Hope. “Actually, you were choking me. You weren’t trying to. You were really doing it.” She blinked. Maybe this was a nightmare? Maybe someone had spiked her drink at the bar? It seemed much more vivid than other dreams she’d had. Hope scratched that possibility off her list. It was nice to want things.

  “I was just getting started,” said Cesar, a nasty smile on his face. “You came in here, the great Hope Baedeker. Top of your class. Hell, the way they told it, top of every class. Graduated. You were the great aspiration of a new Republic. Overthrow of the old regime’s memory. A replacement for people like me. And you know what?” Hope shook her head. “You’re just as bad as any other criminal.”

  “I’m not a criminal!” said Hope. “I’m an Engineer!”

  “You were,” said Cesar. “You’ll never be one again.”

  “Could it have been someone else making it look like me?” said Hope.

  “It’s your personal console, Baedeker. Your unlock codes. You’ve got the only account on there. You tell me.” Cesar leaned back, looking like a cat that just had an OD on cream.

  Reiko, thought Hope, then felt traitorous. Rei-Rei would never do something like this, would she? “My, uh, wife,” said Hope.

  “That’s low, even for scum like you,” said Cesar. “Trying to throw your wife to the wolves?” He tsk’d. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Here it is, Baedeker. Tell us where the money is. That’s the most important thing. Tell us who your other accomplices are, other than Harford, because no way this is a two-person deal. And then maybe we’ll talk about how much hard time you do on the crust below, mining metal for the station that could have been your dream project.” He stared at her.

  “There were those people,” said Hope.

  “Are you trying to be funny?” said Cesar.

  “Andy and, I think, Kim. I think that’s what their names were,” said Hope.

  About three hundred emotions flitted across Cesar’s face, going through shock, disbelief, traveling down the tunnel of fear, and arriving at hate. “Agent Hayter and Agent McGuigan are both dead. They were not involved in your schemes to extract wealth from the lawful citizens of this fine Republic.”

  “They worked for you?” said Hope. She blinked a couple of times, working the problem. Things in her head that weren’t supposed to go together clicked. “You’re in on—” and then she stopped talking, because about a million volts went through her arm from the spider bot. She convulsed, bit her tongue, and tasted blood. Something hit the side of her head hard, and she blinked to clear the stars from her eyes. The floor. That’s what hit you in the head. You fell off the chair after Cesar stunned you with the little robot, and now you’re looking at scuff marks and dust.

  She could see Cesar’s feet coming closer. He leaned over her. “You’d best be careful what you say, Baedeker. Things are bad for you right now, but they can get worse. Mining rocks on Triton is better than being dead. You get me?” He didn’t wait for Hope’s nod, walking to the door, speaking to someone outside. “Get her out of here. I can’t stand the sight of traitors.”

  • • •

  The cell looked ordinary to Hope’s eyes. A toilet was built into the wall. There was a polished piece of metal above it that served as a mirror. A single bunk, no sheets on account of the suicide risk, was attached to the wall opposite the toilet. The exit wall was a clear piece of transparent glass, no privacy screen enabled. She felt the eyes of cams on her, watching as she cried, alone.

  Rei-Rei. Where are you?

  Reiko was gone, that was clear. Possibly having taken all of their shared coins. Hope didn’t know who was trying to bring her down, but she didn’t want them to get to Reiko. If Cesar was in on this, he’d find her. He’d find Reiko, and hurt her, just to get Hope to admit to something she didn’t do.

  Hope had to get out of here. She had to. There were only a couple of problems between here and there. The first was that her rig wasn’t here. The second was she had no friends here, not a one.

  She was going to die, or at least mine rocks on Triton for the rest of her life, which was likely to be a long time because she was twenty-two years old. Hope curled up on the bunk and cried some more.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WHEN HOPE WOKE up, it was to the scuffle of footsteps and a not insignificant amount of swearing. She sat up on her bunk, looking out through the clear door of her cell. On the other side, a man with a gold hand was being wrestled into a cell by two guards. Nate. Nate was being arrested and put in the cell across from her.

  The pirate is in here. With me.

  Nate got an arm free, swinging his metal fist into the face of one of his guards. The guard went down as a shower of teeth flew from his mouth. The other guard punched Nate in the stomach, doubling him over, before pushing him into the cell and slamming the clear door closed with a beep of electronics. The guards left, one helping the other, both looking upset about their encounter.

  Hope was up against the clear wall of her cell, hands pressed against the glass, before she realized it. “Nate?”

  “Heya, Hope,” said Nate, then winced. He touched his split cheek with careful fingers. “Those assholes. Still, I made ‘em work for it.”

  “You … why are you here?”

  “Come to get you, of course,” said Nate.

  “But. But. You’re in jail. And they want me dead or mining rocks on Triton forever.” She blinked rapidly. “You’re in jail with me.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. Right.” Nate leaned against the glass wall of his own cell. “That’s a technicality.”

  Hope wanted to hammer the glass. She took a couple of deep breaths instead. “You can’t break out of a jail like this. I mean, it’s not really a jail. It’s for people who party too hard. The real criminals go down to Triton. But you can’t break out. Not without tools.” She rubbed at the spider bot, st
ill stuck to her arm. Her skin itched where the fangs bit her skin. “We can’t get out.”

  “Of course we can,” said Nate. “All you need is a little luck.”

  “Where’s El?” said Hope.

  “Doing Helm stuff,” said Nate, in a way that Hope found vague and unconvincing.

  “How. What. Or why?” said Hope. “Any of those.”

  “Okay,” said Nate. “I get this is your first prison break, right?”

  “Prison break?” said Hope.

  “Yeah,” said Nate. “In about five minutes, those guards are going to come back with friends. Here’s what’ll happen.”

  • • •

  When the guards came back, they came loaded for bear. The original two — one with a swollen mouth and a very, very angry expression — plus four of their friends. They came equipped with shock rods. They came equipped with blasters. They came wearing body armor.

  They ignored Hope, focusing on Nate’s cell. Nate was close to the glass door. “How you guys doing?”

  The one with the missing teeth said, “I want first shot.” His mouth wasn’t working right, so it sounded to Hope like he said, Iwonfrssssshut. The guard opened the cell door.

  Hope coughed, then screamed, “Help!”

  One of the guards turned to face her. “Quiet, prisoner, or you’ll get yours.”

  Hope clawed at her throat, then fell back onto the floor of her cell, feet drumming against the metal beneath her. She clawed at her cot, trying to get upright. She heard a guard say, “Hey. That prisoner’s in trouble.” The door of her own cell unlocked, and she looked to see if someone was coming to help or hurt her. Two guards entered, stun rods at their hips, as they hurried to assist Hope as she convulsed in a seizure.

  As the guards went to see what was up with Hope, Nate stepped outside his cell, planting the fist of his metal hand into the face of the guard whose teeth he’d knocked out earlier. Another guard, attention torn between Hope and Nate, took a fist in the side of the head, dropping like a stone.

  A third guard, wise to the threat of an angry pirate, swung a shock rod at Nate. Nate caught it in his metal hand, the volts discharging in a shower of blue-white. Nate tore the shock-rod away from the guard, reversing it, before setting about himself with a purpose.

  While this was happening, a guard who’d leaned down to check on Hope turned to see what the commotion was about. She used that opportunity to help herself to the stun rod at his belt, then sat upright. “I feel much better,” she said, and touched the stun rod to the guard’s body armor. He leapt up, muscles convulsing like he’d been hit by lightning, which was a close approximation of what was going on, and crashed against the metal lip of Hope’s toilet.

  Hope zapped the second guard near her with the stun rod, blue-white light dancing along the man’s teeth. Hope winced as he fell back, foot jerking spasmodically. She clambered to her feet, seeing Nate wrestle with a final guard. The guard had a shock rod out, and they were straining against each other. The shock rod’s tip was sparking as it moved down, down, slowly down towards Nate’s leg. It hit, and Hope expected him to go down like a poleaxed steer.

  That’s what the guard expected too, relaxing at a crucial moment, which allowed Nate to take the stun rod and electrocute his opponent.

  “Uh,” said Hope. “Are you a robot?”

  “What?” said Nate. “No. Metal leg.” He tapped his leg for emphasis. Tink-tink. “I love it when a plan comes together,” he said, just as the jail’s lighting switched from white to red. An angry alarm sounded. The plan he was referring to, as he’d explained it, was this:

  First, the guards who he’d roughed over would come back looking for revenge.

  Second, when they came back, fully armed, Hope was to fake a seizure. When she said she didn’t know how, he suggested she learn fast.

  Third, when the guards arrived, they would be distracted, but also replete with weapons.

  Everything came together roughly along those lines, which left Hope and Nate surrounded by unconscious guards and spare weapons. Nate helped himself to a guard’s blaster. He offered another to Hope, but she shook her head. They’re just guards. Sure, they worked for Cesar, but that didn’t mean they were all bad people.

  Instead of taking the blaster, Hope searched the guards, fishing a pocket multitool from one of them. It was a basic unit, the kind you could get from just about any store. It had a few micro power tools inside and a meager laser cutter, but it would do. She also scooped up a stun rod. Nate looked at the multitool and said, “What’s that for?”

  “So you don’t need to kill everyone we see,” she said, nodding to the blaster.

  “They’re trying to kill us,” said Nate, and the expression on his face suggested surprise she hadn’t picked up on this particular point.

  “I don’t think so,” said Hope. “This is a small jail for small crimes. It’s where drunk people sleep until they’re sober. The plans call it a ‘processing facility.’”

  “They’ve got blasters,” said Nate, holding up the blaster he’d taken from a guard.

  “They also have stun rods,” said Hope. She looked up at the roof. If her memory was correct … there. An access panel was set a little high for her to reach. The contents of the access panel, plus the robot attached to her arm, would help the guards make it out alive. “Can you give me a boost?”

  “We need to hurry,” said Nate.

  “Things take as long as they take,” said Hope. “Sometimes they seem to take a long time, but it saves you time in the future. Like the Number Four booster. We take time to fix it, and then it saves us more time later.”

  Nate blinked. “Number Four booster?” Hope didn’t respond, pointing at the ceiling. “You don’t make a lot of sense,” he said, but cupped his hands, metal interlacing with flesh and blood. Hope put a foot there and he hoisted her up. She got out the multitool, removing the ceiling panel.

  “Ah,” she said.

  “What?” said Nate.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she said. She dropped a screw by accident. “Sorry. There’s a series of conduits here. Some of them house power lines. Some of them house water.”

  “Some fool put power and water next to each other?”

  “I know, right? That’s not the crazy part. The crazy part is that they’re not shielded well.” Hope dropped the ceiling panel. “Here we go,” she said, running a finger along a piece of conduit. She pulled out the multitool’s laser cutter, firing it up. Plastic melted and burned as she sheared through the insulation. “Budget cuts, I guess.” Hope pulled two pieces of wire, shorting them together. There was a shhhhhfzzz of sparks, and then the sprinkler system in the jail kicked into full gear, water raining down like it was typhoon season.

  She clambered down. “There,” she said. She had to raise her voice because of the noise of the water.

  “Why is it raining inside?” said Nate.

  “So you don’t have to kill people,” said Hope. She started down the corridor, turning the multitool on her spider bot as she walked.

  “Hold on,” said Nate. “Let me go first.” He held up his blaster. “In case the water doesn’t melt the guards.”

  “Ha,” said Hope. “That’s not what the water is for.” She removed the housing from the spider bot, found the release contact point, and shorted it with the multitool. The small robot spasmed, releasing its fangs. Hope sighed in relief, pulling it free.

  “Okay. What is it for?” said Nate. He stopped by another cell. “Let’s get this guy out.”

  Hope looked inside, taking in a man the size of a bridgeliner. He was covered in tribal tattoos, and wore a leather vest. All of him was wet, a small ocean of water on his side of the door as well. “Okay,” she said, readying the multitool.

  Nate held up a guard’s access card. “This will be faster.” He swiped the door open for Leather Vest.

  The giant stepped outside. “Much obliged,” he said, and then ran off down the corridor. Right into the appro
ach of a bunch of guards. Hot, white blaster fire fzzz’d in the deluge of water. Leather Vest was immolated in a fraction of a second, all the component pieces of meat that made him up separating. They came down in hissing, steaming piles in the water that was now five centimeters deep.

  Nate fired a couple blasts at the guards, who ducked back around the corridor. “Now what?”

  “It would be useful if you could stop them shooting me for just a couple more seconds,” said Hope. Nate fired his blaster down the corridor, keeping the guards at bay. Hope pried open the charge pack of the stun rod, releasing the cartridge. She quickly stripped the wiring free, huddling over the electronics to protect them from the water. She used the multitool to connect the stun rod’s charge pack to the spider bot’s own battery, significantly increasing its potential power output. Then Hope pried away the limiter from its fangs, designed to prevent the small robot from delivering too much juice, and then popped its sensor array free. She eyed it critically, water still cascading around her. It’s not your best work, Hope. It’s not far from your worst work. But you’re out of time. Hope jammed the multitool into the spider bot’s casing, awakening it. It’s legs clutched air, wanting a target.

  She grabbed the empty stun rod from the ground, holding it by the insulated handle. Hope held it up to the blind spider bot, which was clutching at the air. Its legs found the stun rod, clamping on, trying to bury its fangs in. Electricity danced across the surface of the stun rod.

  Hope looked down the corridor, wishing she had time to do the math, then tossed the stun rod. It tumbled end over end, bounced off the wall at the end, and splashed down out of view. There was a massive crackle accompanied with the actinic blue-white of discharging electricity, a few screams and shouts, and then silence. Hope walked past Nate and his wide-eyed stare, and around the bend in the corridor. She made it to the pile of unconscious guards before he caught up.