by Star Wars
Since his arrival here, he had been matched a total of five times. He had triumphed in the first three of those matches, providing speedy, deliberate kills. Still strong and fast, with reflexes honed over three decades of fighting, he’d dispatched his opponents quickly, and even enjoyed a brief moment of celebrity among the population.
The fourth match, however—against a Kaleesh whose tusks were sharpened to surgical points—had not gone as well. Those tusks had gouged into his chest wall, puncturing his lung. Artagan had managed to snap one of them off and use it against the Kaleesh in a stroke of good luck. Once again he’d emerged battered but victorious.
And the fifth match—
The fifth match had nearly killed him.
He’d been pitted against a Klatooinian, and he’d known right away that he was in trouble. Two minutes in, the thing had smashed him in the temple so hard that Artagan had almost lost consciousness. The pain was worse than anything he’d ever experienced, and amid it all the beckoning promise of unconsciousness had been so seductive that Artagan had actually wanted to leap down into it, if only for a brief reprieve. Only the notion of leaving Eogan alone here, unprotected amid a sea of predators, had kept him from blacking out completely. Rallying, he had managed—barely—to hold on long enough to twist the Klatooinian’s battle-axe away and bury the blade in his opponent’s skull.
He had not been matched again.
But the damage was done. The Klatooinian’s blow to his skull had capped off a career of closed-head injuries and concussions, and ever since then, Artagan suffered chronic migraines, nausea, and night sweats. His vision, once his greatest asset, so keen and clear that he’d been able to see an ambush reflected in his opponent’s pupils, had gone foggy around the edges; sometimes he awoke to dazzling halos of opalescent light, auras that he’d come to associate with the onset of excruciating pain. He’d developed a slight tremor, and once, two months ago, he’d had a seizure, thankfully after Eogan had already fallen asleep. When the boy had rolled over in his bunk and muttered sleepily to his father, Artagan had assured him it was only a dream. After that he’d smuggled a spoon out of the mess hall and slept with it clamped between his teeth, just in case it happened again, to keep him from biting his tongue.
These days, whenever he was out among genpop, he kept his hands tucked in the pockets of his prison uniform to hide the way they trembled. He hid that from the boy as well—although how successfully, he didn’t know. All the strength and poise and confidence that he’d brought to the ring were gone. Some mornings he could barely see straight, let alone fight. In his fifty-fifth year of life he’d become what the other inmates referred to as a knockout mouse, a former champion who’d hit the ceiling of his abilities and was waiting for the inevitable final bout.
The one that would kill him.
“Heard you were looking for me.”
Artagan half turned, hands still tucked in the front pockets of his prison tunic, and saw the grizzled old guard, Voystock, standing just behind the semiopaque mesh of wire and transparisteel, blaster in hand. How long the CO had been standing there, Artagan didn’t know. He hadn’t heard him approach over the noise of the gallery.
Leaning backward, careful to keep his eyes on the crowds of inmates passing in front of him and not to move his lips, Artagan spoke just loud enough to be heard. “Appreciate you coming.”
“Skip it,” Voystock said. “You got something for me or not?”
Artagan’s right hand came out of his pocket to reveal a finger-thin stretch of polymer filament string, carefully coiled. He slipped it through the mesh, into the guard’s waiting palm. Voystock took the string, shook it out and stretched it out in front of him, scowling at it.
“What the kark is this?”
“The item that we spoke of earlier.”
“You promised me thirty thousand credits,” Voystock sneered. “Told me you had an offworld private bank account with an untapped balance—”
“Officer, look at what I gave you. What do you see?”
“A piece of string,” Voystock said. “A lousy stretch of thread you pulled off your shirt cuff. And another maggot trying to weasel his way out of getting matched.” He tossed the filament to the permacrete floor beneath his boots and was already turning around to disappear back to wherever he’d come from. “You waste my time like this again and you aren’t gonna have to wait for your next bout to get your ticket punched. You understand what I’m telling you, you worthless puke?”
“Wait,” Artagan said. His head was starting to ache in that old familiar place behind his left eye. “Just look at it. Please.”
Something of the desperation in his voice must have given the guard pause, because Voystock stopped, leaning down to pick up the filament again and holding it up for a better look. The glow of recessed lighting shimmered off the array of tiny knots tied throughout the filament, whole clusters of them, none any bigger than the glint of light reflected in the guard’s suspicious gaze.
When Artagan spoke again, his voice was quiet and patient.
“There are over six billion different knots in the galaxy, Officer Voystock. Each one reads like a specific deformation of a circle in three-dimensional space, as unique as individual letters in an alphabet.”
Voystock grunted. “Is that supposed to mean anything me?”
“What you’re holding in your hand is called a khipu,” Artagan said, “also known as a talking knot. Any droid with the most basic analytical drive will be able to unravel each knot’s linking integral. It shouldn’t take more than thirty seconds. You’ll end up with a twenty-one-digit number.”
“What, like a code?”
Artagan nodded. “The first twelve digits of this khipu make up the ID reference for the orbital account off Muunilinst with a balance of thirty thousand credits. The last nine are the password to access all those funds.” He flicked his eyes up at Voystock. “See for yourself.”
“Knots.” The guard snorted, but he slipped the filament into his own pocket. “You’re as crazy as a mutant womp rat, old man, you know that?”
Artagan smiled thinly. “You wouldn’t be the first to make that observation.”
“Say you are telling the truth,” Voystock said. “You want to tell me how a washed-up chunk of mynock dung like you gets his meat hooks on that kind of cash?”
“Winnings,” Artagan said. “Saved up from fifteen years of fights.”
“There’s no way you could make that much in pit fights.”
“I was saving for my retirement.” Artagan cocked a bushy eyebrow at the gallery and its inhabitants. “I never thought I’d be spending it here.”
“Retirement, huh?” This time Voystock actually chuckled. “You got a funny way of looking at things, old man, you know that?”
“Perhaps we both do.”
“How do you figure?”
“We both spend our days walking around this floating slice of hell,” Artagan said. “Just on different sides of the wire, that’s all.”
Voystock glared at him narrowly.
“Yeah, well, one big difference between us is, I’m not walking around with a bomb inside my heart,” he said, reaching down to the flat-pack dropbox on his belt. “Six digits, and down you go permanently. Maybe you could use a reminder of that.”
“Wait.” Artagan looked at him, eyebrows raised. “If I’ve done something to offend you …”
“You know I don’t even have to justify this to the warden?” A narrow, almost cunning look stole over Voystock’s face, something that couldn’t really be called a smile. “All I have to say is that the prisoner posed a threat. No board of inquiry, no paperwork. Shoot, I don’t even have to report it. That’s how disposable you are.” He leaned in. “Where’s your kid?”
“Now just wait a moment.” A sudden bolt of panic shot across Artagan’s face. “What are you doing?”
“Just a little demonstration.” Voystock reached down to his dropbox and tapped a series of digits onto the console
. “Your boy is Inmate 11033, right?”
“Please, don’t—”
Voystock shrugged. “Too late.”
He hit enter.
Artagan didn’t move. Two meters off to his right, a Vulptereen inmate who’d been leaning with his back to the wall went suddenly rigid, and then his tusked face went abruptly slack. Knees buckling, he slid down against the wall and crumpled to a heap on the floor of the gallery.
For a moment, the other prisoners in the area gave the Vulptereen a sidelong glance, then went along with their business as a clanking, balky class-five Treadwell droid rolled over, hooked its manipulators to the corpse’s ankles, and began to drag it away.
“Whoops.” Voystock shrugged. “Must have typed the numbers in wrong.” He flicked his eyes up at Artagan. “Next time I’ll make sure I get ’em right.” The CO returned his attention to the khipu, running his fingers over the cryptic arrangement of the knots. “This better be legit.”
“It is.” Artagan’s skull was pounding so hard that his eyeballs felt like they were going to squeeze right out of their sockets, and more than anything he yearned for the silence and darkness of a quiet corner in his cell. But the canny part of him realized that any indication of weakness might ruin the faint flicker of trust between himself and the guard.
“If you’re yanking me on this,” Voystock said, “it’s not going to end pretty for you or your boy. You see that now, don’t you?”
Artagan just nodded. “Just take it.”
The CO’s eyes narrowed. “And in return, what? You want me to make sure you don’t get matched again? Protect that youngling of yours?” He shook his head. “Word is you’ve been training him hard on your own, trying to teach him the Fifty-Two Fists, get him ready for his first match. You think he actually stands a chance in there?”
Artagan drew in a slow breath through his teeth. Releasing it seemed to cost him something deep and heartfelt that he would have preferred to keep to himself indefinitely.
“No,” he admitted in a voice barely above a whisper. “The boy’s not a fighter—a blind man could see that. He’s fast enough, I suppose, and he’s growing stronger every day … but he’s no killer, and that’s not something you can teach.” It hurt to say these things out loud, all the terrible certainties that he’d mulled over in private, night after sleepless night, but it was also a relief to give them voice and hear them spoken aloud. “And I know there’s nothing you can do to keep either of us from being matched again. That’s well outside your scope of influence.”
“So what then?” Voystock glared at him, visibly annoyed. “You can’t honestly tell me that you’re just handing over your life savings to me for no reason.”
Artagan shook his head. “Not at all.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I want something much bigger,” Artagan said. “I want you to help us escape.”
6
THE WHOLE THING RUNS ON BLOOD
Twenty minutes later Sadiki and Vesto Slipher were taking the turbolift down through the levels of Cog Hive Seven, the Muun standing quietly on his side of the lift with his hands folded together and the same slight, inscrutable smirk on his lips. Seeing it now, Sadiki found that she didn’t like that smirk any more than she had twenty minutes earlier.
“Our loan payments are up to date,” she told the Muun. “I really don’t see why the IBC should have any reason to investigate our operations here.”
“Investigate is perhaps too piquant a word,” Slipher said, gazing placidly at the lift’s readout. “You may consider this a routine audit, if you prefer.”
“And is it standard protocol to dispatch top-level executives on routine audits?”
“Mm.” The Muun beamed at her as if conceding some minor point. “I see. In fact, to be perfectly frank, Warden, Cog Hive Seven is something of a unique case in the IBC’s Outer Rim portfolio. Of course, there’s no question of your profitability or the ongoing security of our investment here.”
“So if we’re all so in love with each other,” Sadiki asked, “why the sudden interest in our operation?”
“Oh,” the Muun said, “I assure you, there’s nothing new about our interest in Cog Hive Seven, Warden.” The lift began to slow down. “If anything, the IBC has always been highly sensitive to the unique particulars of your rather spectacular success out here in the middle of nowhere.” The smile returned, as pleasant as ever. “After all, what you’re doing here is another form of gambling. Yet unlike the casinos, podracing courses, and sabacc parlors that the IBC bankrolls, your operation never seems to have a bad fiscal quarter—not once. To be perfectly frank, we’ve begun wondering how you’ve managed a profit margin on such a sustainable basis.”
“You make that sound like it’s a bad thing.”
“Of course not.” Something sharpened in the Muun’s gaze. “But wouldn’t you agree that if something seems to good to be true, it probably is?”
“Too good to be true?” Sadiki cocked an eyebrow. “Well, in that case, take a look.”
The lift had stopped completely. As the doors opened, she gestured for him to step out onto the open scaffolding and couldn’t help feeling a twinge of amusement as Slipher’s eyes widened slightly, losing their veneer of detachment.
Below them, a herd of inmates burst into the gallery, snarling and jeering, shoving one another aside, feet clanging on the steel gallery floor as they formed an open circle. In the middle of the circle, someone was screaming.
“Ah,” Sadiki said, “the morning festivities have already begun.”
Directly underneath them, thirty yards down, three inmates, all of them human, with shaved heads and thick beards, were holding a fourth prisoner and beating him savagely with what looked like long shafts of sharpened bone. When the victim fell to his knees, one of his assailants hoisted him back up again while another plunged the sharpened bone spear directly into his chest, shoving it through so far that it burst out between the inmate’s shoulder blades in a spray of blood and shattered vertebrae.
“Oh,” the Muun said thickly. “What …?”
“Bone Kings,” Sadiki said. “Along with the Gravity Massive, they’re one of the biggest gangs in the Hive.” She shrugged. “Every so often, tensions boil over.”
The Muun considered this for a moment. “How can there be any allegiance within the gangs when one member might be matched against another at any given moment?”
“We screen for that,” Sadiki said. “The algorithm factors in sociological variants as well as physical ones. Actually, we’ve discussed the idea of pitting entire crews against one another.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. The prospect of a crew-on-crew tag team brawl, for example, between certain members of the Kings and the Gravity Massive could be something that the gambling community has never seen before. It’s already generated significant interest with some of the odds-makers.”
“I can see why,” the Muun said. He had to raise his voice to be heard: down below the impaled prisoner was somehow shrieking louder. His gurgling cries only brought laughter from the crowd, whose response in turn seemed to encourage the three Kings to greater frenzies of violence. Howling, they yanked their weapons loose and stabbed their victim again until he collapsed, sagging forward, his broken frame dangling on the end of the makeshift spear like a twisted puppet. A great cheer went up from the mob of prisoners, and then as suddenly as it had begun, the assault was over, the other inmates drifting away, leaving the three Bone Kings to bend over the mangled corpse of their victim.
“Now what are they doing?” Slipher managed.
“Deboning.”
“I …” The Muun swallowed audibly. “I beg your pardon?”
“They rip the bones out,” Sadiki told him. “Sharpen them on the walls, carry them around in their sleeves, that sort of thing.”
“And you permit that as well?”
Sadiki shrugged. “Every standard week or so the guards will search the cells and confisca
te whatever they find.”
“I see.” The Muun nodded. “I suppose it’s all great theater.”
“Oh no,” Sadiki said, “it’s not theater at all. That’s one of the reasons that gamblers can’t seem to get enough of what we do here. Face it, Mr. Slipher, in a galaxy where so much has become virtual or simulated, what we offer is as real as it gets. We’ve actually discussed the possibility of offering VIP packages to high rollers so that they could come and watch the fights in person.”
“Here? To the prison itself?”
“We’ve had real interest from communities as far away as Coruscant.”
“Well.” The Muun was nonplused. “It seems that you’re just a font of brilliant ideas, Warden.”
“Not just me.” Sadiki nodded modestly. “Although I do like to think of this place as a crucible from which true superiority emerges, and everyone profits. The Rattataki people have a particularly memorable way of putting it: Chee moto, mando sangui.”
“Meaning?”
“ ‘The whole thing runs on blood.’ ”
“A provocative sentiment,” the Muun said, looking down again as the three inmates turned and fled with an armload of bloody bones, leaving the shapeless, scooped-out mass on the steel floor behind them. “They’re amazingly fast, aren’t they?”
The Muun shuddered. Although the catwalk where they were standing was enclosed in a thick layer of protective transparisteel, the overpowering smell of spilled blood, dirty fabric, and airborne bacteria hung permanently in the space around them.
“A little bit different from the sabacc parlors on Lamaredd, isn’t it?” she said.
A new possibility seemed to have occurred to Slipher. “Can any of the inmates see us up here?”
Sadiki shook her head. “Not from this angle. We have guards stationed at various posts around the upper scaffolding, and cameras down below.”
“And you just allow them to wander freely like that?”
“Free is hardly the word,” Sadiki said, and checked the chrono display on her tablet. “They’re always watching each other, and we’re always watching them.”