Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales (Stars & Empire Box Set Collection)

by Jay Allan

  “Bet you’re right.” He gestured to a stool and plucked two shot glasses from below the counter. We clinked glasses and tossed them back.

  “Sorry about the way I came in,” I said. “I thought you’d sold us out.”

  “Reasonable suspicion.”

  “It’s different here.” I waved my arms at the quiet bar, but meant everything beyond it. “Money runs Earth, too, but they’re much sneakier about it. On Mars, it’s right in the open.”

  The old man poured another round. “When a place takes pride in living by the survival of the fittest, it’s not long before everyone’s grown some damn sharp claws.”

  “I used to have claws. Teeth, too.” I pulled a face, waiting for the deimos’ mucky flavor to fade. “Oh hell.”

  “You gonna puke?” he chuckled.

  “They would never have found that video if we hadn’t led them to you.”

  “Probably not. World going to end over it?”

  “It put a woman we were trying to protect behind bars.”

  He pushed the bottle back across the bar. “Sounds like you got further business with this.”

  “Can’t.” I stood and reached for my wallet before remembering I hadn’t bought anything. Instead I got out my omni and printed off the contact info for one of the disposables in Pete’s gear.

  “What’s that?” the old man squinted.

  “Honesty gets a man in trouble. You ever find yourself in it, call me. I have friends in high places.”

  “I get it,” Fay said in my ear.

  I waited till I was outside to respond. “Did you get the rest of it?”

  “We screwed up, didn’t we?”

  I nodded. “Want to make an even bigger mistake?”

  I jogged through a full dome before I could flag down a cab. It was past one AM when I busted into our hotel room, yelling for Baxter as I flipped the lights on and off over Pete’s sleeping face.

  “We’re going to break Shelby out of jail,” I said.

  “This instant?” Pete scowled.

  I stopped strobing the lights. “Well, no.”

  “Then why don’t you reflect on this plan until my alarm goes off.”

  I explained in blunt terms how our clumsy investigation had led HemiCo to the piece of evidence that sealed Shelby’s conviction. Pete stared at his hands while Baxter stared at me.

  “You’re serious,” Baxter said. “A jailbreak.”

  “It’s our fault she’s there.”

  Pete shook his head. “She’s only in lockup for six months. If we screw this up, she winds up with a life sentence instead. Why not leave her be? A half a year, it’s not so long to wait to get your life back.”

  I snorted. “Easy to say when it’s not yours.”

  Baxter punched his fist into his other palm. “A crime spree!”

  “I don’t like this conversion of yours, Rob,” Fay said. “You two are turning into a pair of conspirators.”

  “They didn’t play fair,” I said. “Why the hell should we stick to the rules? You jackasses kidnapped me, didn’t you? Shelby’s a whole lot more important to the colonists than I am.”

  “You can’t just opt out of the social contract whenever you don’t like the results!” Fay said.

  “Wrong,” Baxter said. “They’ve always treated us as property, not citizens. If a toaster broke you out of jail, would you try to handcuff it?”

  “Why would I own a toast-maker when I don’t even have a mouth?”

  “If it’s unanimous,” Pete said. “Including Shelby.”

  “We’re doing a lot of bad things,” Fay said, the usual brightness of its voice dimmed considerably. “At what point does that make us bad people?”

  “You’re the one with the brain made of other brains,” I said. The guilt they felt, could it be as keen as ours? “Can you figure out a way to do this without casualties?”

  “I don’t know! Every time I try to make a plan it’s tripped up by a thousand things I should have predicted before they showed up. And it’s exponentially worse whenever violence is involved.”

  “Do your best and don’t look back.” Baxter’s eyes lifted to the ceiling. “Now let us manufacture a plan.”

  * * *

  Baxter and Fay worked on various schemes. Pete scraped up equipment and maintained our escape route if HemiCo decided to call the AID down on us after all. In another ten days, Shelby would be allowed visitors; I volunteered to talk to her. Privately, I was insulted the others cared about her wishes. When I hadn’t wanted to do what they asked, they’d knocked me out and smuggled me off like an illicit bride

  Maybe they’d learned something since then. In any event, I’d been in Shelby’s position before, more or less, and if she had any doubts or illusions, I’d be most qualified to talk her through them.

  Past the heavy doors, scanning machines, and armed guards of the Creative Reform Services security center, which I passed without trouble (we’d dismissed hiding a camera on me, deciding not to take any more risks until the big day), you could almost forget it was a prison. An assistant served me coffee at a couch in the receiving room—it felt like I’d spent half my life in waiting rooms lately—and informed me Ms. Mayes would be allowed to see me shortly.

  Unlike the public center where Shelby’d been held pre-trial, every angle of the CRS facility was covered in cameras. A liability thing, I imagined, but Martians seemed to get much less finicky about your rights once you ended up in prison. All the cameras upped the difficulty factor. I would not be able to blurt, “Hey Shelbs, how would you feel if an angry god blasted this place to rubble as we skip merrily away to freedom?” Even so, no big deal. A thousand years ago, I’d made a career of subtlety in Milan.

  Shelby seated herself opposite me at one of the round tables scattered across the reception room. “You just can’t stay away.”

  “How’s prison?”

  “Restrictive.”

  I sighed theatrically. “If only I could take you away from here.”

  Amusement sparked in her blue eyes. “What makes you think I’d go for that?”

  “Is it the leaving you’d object to? Or the leaving with me?”

  “I wouldn’t normally be this forward, but you’re rushing away to another planet soon, and it turns out being locked up is socially liberating. When your cell mate tries to crawl between your bra and your skin every time you close your eyes, conventional etiquette goes out the window.”

  I cocked my head. “I thought this was a pretty safe place, all things considered.”

  “It is. I’m exaggerating.” She smiled at me, friendly, but with the suggestion it wouldn’t matter to her if she had to turn hostile. “So: are you trying to turn our professional relationship into a relationship? I think you’d be disappointed in this facility’s conjugal rules.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because the only rule is ‘No.’“

  “I mean about the relationship.”

  She shrugged. “You do most of the talking when your compatriots are here. You were there every day of my trial. And when you look at me, it’s like you can see right through me.”

  “I haven’t even managed to stare through your clothes yet.” I stopped myself. The conversation was getting away from me. I figured a swift wave of truth would clear up the interesting confusion arising between us. “You’re pretty. You’re brilliant. I get the idea you know what you want. Six months from now, when you’re out of work-jail and I’m done securing the freedom of a bunch of people I’ve never met, I’d be happy to take you out for a drink.” I made a face. “So long as it’s not deimos.”

  She tugged her uniform sleeve past her wrist. “You’re shorter than I usually go for.”

  “Well, I don’t normally see the hullaballoo about blondes.” I glanced toward the receptionist, who was busy fielding a call on his omni. A couple tables down, another inmate conversed with a man in quiet tears. “I need to change the subject now and I need you to think very care
fully about your answer.”

  “That almost sounds like a threat.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “How much would you give up to help draft that constitution yourself?”

  “Everything,” she said.

  “Evidently you’ve already given up your sense of hearing. I said think about it.”

  She shook her head, annoyed. “Offering to represent the colonists at all was a bad career move. I specialize in corporate labor law. If I take on Olympian Atomics and set a case precedent they don’t like, they’ll spend the rest of their life crushing me. In that fight, I’d put my money on the other guys. A company tends to outlast an individual.”

  “Usually.” I reached across the table. I patted her hand and she flinched. “If nothing else, we’ll take you with us to Titan in spirit.”

  I know enough to leave a woman wanting more. I got up, passed back through security, retired to the hotel. I opened the door and bumped right into Baxter.

  I scowled. “How long have you been waiting there?”

  “What did she say?”

  “She’s in,” I said. “Let’s do some crimes.”

  “Why in the world would we want a criminal?” Baxter said.

  “For the IDs,” Arthur said in that tone of his that was grossly impatient but too excited to get angry at. “They won’t let us on a flight without IDs.”

  “One ID. You’re just a toy.”

  “And if your body were more like mine we wouldn’t need to jump through these hoops this in the first place.”

  “Well, come on,” Baxter said. “Let’s find a bar.”

  The box was silent a moment. “Ah. Because criminals spend time at bars. How will you know which bar to choose? They’re not going to be wearing signs on their chests.”

  “Maybe they’ll have tattoos on their foreheads.” Baxter touched his earbud. “I suppose we’ll just have to ask.”

  The dome wall rose almost vertically from the soil before it began a pronounced curve about thirty feet up. The two of them followed the road around its rim to the north exit, a broad, tall passage that, so the engineers claimed, could be sealed at both ends in the event of a dome failure. In the 39 years since the first dome went up, including the Cor-Wars where the Baxter he’d been named for and all the other corporate soldiers had fought under those very bubbles, the city hadn’t had to seal off one. What if HemiCo got desperate? Could they?

  9

  The alarm raged through the Creative Reform Services detention facility before we’d even got to Shelby. It whooped an up-and-down cry of panic and fear exactly like an old air raid siren. Like they were trying to evoke some primal memory of hiding under desks while nuclear fire stripped the world to ashes. Like they meant to scare us.

  It was working.

  The plan, like all good ones, had been simple: Pete and I would go in as Shelby’s visitors while Baxter, whose artificial body couldn’t pass the security scans no matter how cunningly it resembled the real thing to human eyes and touch, waited outside with a rented electric getaway cart. Fay, tapped into CRS’ security network, would unlock a path back to the front doors while sealing off everyone else. We’d grab Shelby and run outside.

  Worst case, we’d have to karate chop a receptionist or a stray guard on our way back to the street. Baxter’s idling cart would then whisk us to the spaceport’s private gate, where a local pilot would rocket us to Fay, who’d be running interference the whole time, keeping CRS locked down and isolated—and ensuring nobody tried to do anything insane like seal us in a dome or cut off the spaceport.

  “Simple” was Baxter’s description, not mine. To me, it sounded like running through the heart of enemy territory with a limited number of exits, all of which could theoretically be blocked off from us. Fay assured me if we moved fast enough, no one would be able to react in time to pin us down. Even if it was wrong, and CRS had their shit together enough to get a security force to the spaceport—and how would they even know we’d be at the spaceport?—Fay could, as a last resort, respond with violent force.

  As the alarm keened up, freezing me in place as I shuddered like a dying engine, I was reminded, for the millionth time, how we don’t always get what we want.

  “That does not sound like a positive development,” Baxter said through our earbuds, barely audible over the whooping alarm.

  I sprinted deeper into the deserted reception room, as if expecting Shelby would materialize like an anti-mirage once I got close enough to see her. “What’s going on?”

  “Badness,” Fay said.

  “More badness.” Pete pointed to a door sliding open in front of us. He roundhoused the first face that showed itself. The white-uniformed guard collapsed in the doorway and tripped his partner onto the tile. With his face so close to my foot, I gave the tripped man a kick, then knelt to punch him out. Pete stripped them of their stunners and lobbed one my way.

  “To define ‘badness,’“ Fay said with a brightness that carried more curiosity than concern, “if they somehow knew about our plan in advance, they could have moved Shelby. She could be anywhere.”

  “They don’t know what you can and can’t monitor,” I said. “If they moved her, they’d have risked tipping you off.”

  “If they thought I was that powerful, why bother resisting at all?”

  “Because we can’t all be as smart as you! Now tell me what the hell to do here.”

  “Well,” Fay said, “abort, return to Baxter, and get up here with me. Or try to get to Shelby’s cell, which may or may not contain a Shelby. They shut me out by switching to a backup network, but I can still help you get to her cell.”

  The air raid siren switched off.

  “Okay,” I said, awkwardly loud in the fresh silence. “Which way?”

  “Straight.”

  We ran into the off-white hallway the two guards had come through, reaching a T-intersection. Fay told us to break left. On both sides, the doors flashing past us were closed, though I couldn’t tell whether that was CRS’ doing or Fay’s.

  “Convicts are through the next door to your right,” Fay said. “No, the next door.”

  It wouldn’t budge. Pete, who’d also stripped the two guards of their ID thumbsticks, inserted one into the maglock. On the other side of the door, the cellblock looked more like a whitewashed Pueblo cliff town than a prison. Cells were recessed into the six-story walls. A sturdy staircase was set into each corner of the open rectangular space in the vault’s center. Though the cells had the familiar bar-grille doors, the bed and toilets were concealed behind white walls. This mix of the punitive and the private—one room open to the eyes of all, the other hidden behind a wall; the airy space of the main floor, tiled in a geometric gray array; the narrow windows beaming bands of dusty red sunlight into the blacks and whites of the vast chamber—addled my senses with its schizophrenic contradictions.

  Two guards appeared from nowhere: one on Pete, one on me. Pete stepped into a side kick and arrested his meaty, goateed assailant mid-charge. The man flew to the gray tiles, wheezing and clutching his ribs.

  The other guard, the smart one, drew his stunner and shot me.

  My body went fuzzy and warm and swimmy, collapsing like the loose pile of organic material it was. I was peripherally aware of my side banging into the hard floor, then directly aware of nothing as my head followed suit.

  I came to tingly and numb. Two thoroughly beaten guards sprawled on the tile. Overhead, footsteps clamped on metal steps. Female prisoners filled the air with calls and questions and unintelligible hoots.

  Someone moaned. It was me.

  “What’s going on?” I slurred into my throat mike.

  “I’ve got most of the place clamped down,” Fay said, “but there’s a lot of staff I can’t account for, and their communications are regrettably functional. We’re going to have an interesting time getting to the spaceport.”

  “‘We’?” I coughed weakly. Tingling pins prickled my skin. “What about Shelby?”


  “Inside her cell. Wait, no she isn’t.”

  “Did they move her? Where is she?”

  “Outside her cell, where Pete just let her.”

  My head hurt like five bitches in a bitch boat, but my fingers and toes had started to twitch. I tried wiggling them (crashed on my side, I couldn’t see or really feel them yet), forcing my body back into mobility.

  “We should let all the others out, too,” I decided.

  “But they’re criminals!” Fay said.

  “This isn’t Sing Sing. This is a cushy pad for embezzlers and petty thugs. The only crime they’d commit on the way out is stealing any loose office supplies.”

  “They could hurt innocent people. That’s bad. I don’t want to do bad.”

  “Fuck bad.” I swung my stupid body to a sitting position. “It’s about survival now.”

  Feet rang on stairs. By the time Pete and a flushed Shelby descended to the ground floor, I’d pushed myself to my feet and discovered I could walk.

  “Spring the prisoners,” I said to Pete. “Let’s see these pricks stop us all.”

  “Every minute you argue is one more minute for CRS to react with terrible things,” Baxter put in. The murmur of street traffic filtered through his mike.

  Fay sounded sad and a little betrayed. “None of us can guess what these people will do once they’re free.”

  “Let them out,” Baxter commanded.

  A hum and a soft clink echoed from eighty-odd cells. Every set of bars cranked open, exposing puzzled female faces.

  “Be free!” I yelled into the wide chamber. “Trample any who stand in your way! Except us!”

  “Who’s us?” someone called down from above.

  “A bunch of people wildly out of touch with the notion of consequences,” Shelby said.

  “You said you’d do anything.” I bungled my way through a wing chun practice set, working the last of the tingle from my limbs. “We had a plan. It just went wrong.”

  “And now instead of just me behind bars, the entire enterprise will end up there.”

  “That’s a bad attitude,” I said. Pete helped the first of the prisoners down the stairs. Many stood in their cell doors, frowning down on the chaos below. Soon thirty women in identical white jumpsuits piped with red milled in front of us. I gestured back the way we’d come. “Through the front door.”