"What do you think, Nova?" said Aart.
Nova sat up straighter against her wall and laid her hands in her lap. "Lost colonisation ship."
"You think that actually happened?" Tanguin said.
"Why not? It wouldn't be the first planet I'd been to that had gone native. Earth sent off colonisation ships with no way of getting back, one-way tickets. Maybe one of them ended up here."
"What a ride," Aart said.
"That doesn't help us get out of here," Orion said.
"Are any of the bars on your cells breakable?" Nova asked.
"Nah, first thing I checked," Aart said. The rest of the Hunters echoed his reply.
Nova rested her head back against the wall. If they couldn't break through the bars they'd have to come up with another way of getting free.
Gus rolled his shoulders. "I am not going to waste away in a prison on some class five planet."
"None of us will," Orion said. "We didn't put all that effort into breaking free from the Confederacy only to end up here."
Aart chuckled. "Maybe Nova planned it. Did you come to like prison life during your time on Ankar?"
Nova snorted. "I had actually hoped never to see another prison cell ever again. Now here I am after what, two days of freedom?"
Tanguin frowned and shuffled closer to the front of the cell, her cybernetic eye whirring. "We're not alone."
"That guard hasn't moved an inch since we got here," said Gus.
"I don't mean him."
She slid her eyes back to the motionless guard. Past him, behind the metal ladder, another cell lay shrouded in gloom. Nova squinted and leaned forward as a deeper shadow shuffled in the darkness. The strange man sat in the exact centre of his cell with his legs crossed. His open eyes gazed past Nova's cell, unseeing, as if lost. Bruises and dirt covered his skin where it poked out from his torn brown cloak.
"What a sneaky bastard!" said Aart, crawling to the side of his cell and pressing his face between the bars, only an arm's distance from the stranger.
"He's so quiet I don't think I would ever have noticed him," said Gus. "Bloody dark place."
"Maybe he's spying on us?" said Tanguin. "That's what I'd do."
"Maybe," said Nova. "Keep an eye on him."
"Both of them," said Aart.
Gus leaned back and closed his eyes. "We'll take it in turns to keep watch. We don't want these bastards sneaking up on us while we're asleep."
Tyra nodded. "I'll take first watch. I'm not even tired."
"Good, because I'm exhausted," said Orion.
Nova had to agree. She'd barely stopped since her mad dash out of prison and every muscle ached. Her eyelids drooped and blurred her vision, scratching her eyes like they'd be covered in sandpaper. She nestled into the corner of her cell and let her head rest against the wall. Her eyes closed and she dropped asleep.
CHAPTER THREE
"Time to wake up."
Tyra's voice broke through Nova's dream, her eyes snapped open and her hand whipped to her empty holster, shoulders tense. Her muscles tensed in readiness. Shadows moved on the ladder, a figure climbing down with a tray of what looked like food.
Nova's stomach rumbled. How long had it been since she ate?
The new guard stopped at Nova's cell first. He slid a smaller tray under the bars and then moved on. A sword swung at his waist, moving in time with the black ponytail draped down his back. He shoved food at each of the Hunters before stopping in front of the stranger's cell, there he pushed the tray in and spoke.
The ragged prisoner replied and shoved the tray back.
The guard yelled and kicked the ground, sending a spray of dirt over the prisoner and the tray of food. He stomped away and climbed the ladder, slamming the trapdoor closed behind him.
The prisoner shuffled back out of the light and away from his food, resuming his glassy-eyed vigil.
"What the hell is this?" said Aart.
Nova pulled her tray closer; it was made of thick grass woven together to create a kind of checker board. A pile of white chunks that almost looked like meat quivered as she moved the tray, wobbling like jelly.
Green stalks created balls of slime like a heap of seaweed beside the white chunks. Altogether the food took up less room than one of her fists.
"We're supposed to eat this?" said Gus. "We'll probably die from poisoning."
Orion shrugged. "I've eaten worse."
Tanguin's face looked green in the dim light. "You first then. I'm sure you've all eaten all sorts of things in the field. Not me, give me a nice bowl of purple and that's quite enough for me, thank you very much."
"Alright, I'll try it. If I die, make sure you take care of my ship."
Orion dangled a quivering white chunk over his mouth and let it drop, snapping his teeth shut around it and chewing. His face screwed up as soon as the food hit his tongue and he spat it out with a splutter so that it landed on the dirt a few feet away. He kept spitting small drops of saliva and wiped his tongue on his sleeve.
"That. Was. Disgusting!"
Nova poked a cube with her finger and it wobbled. "What did it taste like?"
"Like a rotten corpse!" Orion yelled.
Nova's eyes flickered to the guard. He'd flinched when Orion spat out his food, it was barely a movement at all but compared to his absolute stillness of before, it was something.
"Do you feel sick?" Tanguin asked.
"Yes. I don't think I'll ever be able to eat again. That thing's going to be stuck to my tongue forever."
"You know what I mean," said Tanguin. "Do you think it was poisoned?"
Orion ran his hand over his tongue. "I don't feel faint or anything. I didn't eat much of it though."
"We don't know how much longer we're going to be stuck here," Nova said. "I think we might have to get used to it."
"Easy for you to say, you haven't tried it yet," said Orion.
Nova shrugged. "Here goes."
She grabbed a sticky chunk of white flesh between her fingers and lifted it towards her mouth. A deep breath brought the scent of raw fish and rotting meat rolled together and bile rose in her throat. She swallowed the bile and opened her mouth, dropping the chunk onto her tongue. As soon as it landed she clamped both hands over her mouth and pinned her lips together.
Orion was right. It tasted like rotting fish and the flavour leaked into every corner of Nova's mouth. The squidgy chunk burst over her tongue in a wave of cold juices before she could swallow. It slid down her throat like a cold, wet, sponge.
The taste clung to her tongue and gums, refusing to be washed away, and bringing new waves of bile up Nova's throat. She swallowed three more times before she trusted herself to open her mouth. "That was the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten."
"I can't wait to try it," said Aart.
Nova swallowed again, trying to keep her face expressionless. "I'm not dead."
"No, but after eating that thing I bet you wish you were," said Orion.
"We can do this," said Nova. "Trust me, if this food doesn't give us the urge to get out of here then I don't know what will."
One by one they each ate a piece of the white meat with varying degrees of success. Aart's face turned pale and, like Nova, he had to clamp his hands over his mouth. Gus's mouth twisted but he swallowed without gagging while Tyra stared at her piece for a full minute before throwing it into her mouth and pinning her eyes closed.
"You're up, Tanguin," Orion said.
Tanguin's face paled in the dim light and a sheen of sweat shone on her forehead. Her cybernetic eye swivelled around the prison. "I don't think that's a good idea."
Nova shuffled closer to Tanguin's cell. "You can do it. We all need to keep our strength up."
Tanguin glanced back at Nova and her mouth twisted in a grim parody of a smile. "I feel sick just looking at it."
Tyra grimaced. "Unfortunately it tastes worse than it looks. But if I had to eat it, you do too."
Tanguin took a deep breath and snat
ched a piece from her plate, hurling it into her mouth with one fluid motion. Her eyes bulged as it landed on her tongue and her face twisted. She leapt to her feet and lunged for the waste bucket, landing beside it just as vomit surged out of her mouth. It splattered against the bottom of the bucket and some dribbled down the sides.
Tanguin pulled the bucket closer, stomach heaving.
Orion shook his head. "Damn."
Tyra's eyes traced over the coloured mess. "Lovely."
Tanguin hung her head, sweat dripping down her face.
Nova kept her gaze on Tanguin but out of the corner of her eye she noticed the guard twitch, turning slightly towards Tanguin and frowning. Nova tried to gauge what it meant. Was it because he was waiting for them all to die from some kind of poison? That didn't feel right. The way his mouth twisted, it was almost like he was embarrassed. She frowned; there was no reason for him to be embarrassed about Tanguin throwing up. It didn't make any sense.
She shook her head and filed it away to consider later. "Alright, Tanguin?"
Tanguin nodded, wiping the back of her hand over her mouth.
"That could have gone better," Orion said.
"Maybe the second one isn't so bad?" Aart said, placing another chunk in his mouth.
He ate two more before his face turned green and he had to sit quietly in the corner of his cell, lips pinned together. Nova managed two pieces and even that was two pieces too many.
"The green ones taste better," Gus said.
Nova pulled a stringy piece of green vegetable from her plate. It dangled in the air before her, glistening. She shut her eyes and closed her mouth over it, letting it cling to her tongue like a green worm. It tasted like nothing, as if she'd been given a green piece of thickened air. Stringy fibres clung to the roof of her mouth but no matter how much she chewed they wouldn't break, staying in a thick tangle against the roof of her mouth. After what felt like hours she gave up and spat the stringy ball back to her tray. It had lost all colour and clumped together like the tentacles of a jellyfish.
She grimaced. "I wouldn't call that better, so much as less bad."
They each tried the green strands, spitting out the fibres.
Orion grimaced. "That was an educational experience."
"Don't even mention it," Tanguin said, face still beaded with sweat.
"He mustn't like it either," Aart said, nodding to their fellow prisoner.
"He still hasn't moved," Gus said. "It creeps me out. No one can sit in one place for this long; what if he has to piss?"
"Speaking of," said Orion.
He got to his feet and sidled to his bucket, facing away from the rest of the prisoners. The quick zip of his fly coming down filled the prison, followed by the steady rhythm of liquid hitting the bottom of the bucket.
"This is closer than I ever wanted to get with you," said Tyra.
"I guess we'll be seeing a lot more of each other," said Orion with a grin, sitting back down. "Shame they don't have any sinks though."
Nova shook her head. Orion always seemed to be able to keep a happy face no matter what was going on around him, but he was right about the sinks; her hands already felt covered in filth, and they reeked of the sticky, white meat.
She pushed the tray away from her towards the bars and settled with wiping her hands on her trousers.
"I'll take the next watch," she said.
The others grunted and settled against the walls of their cells, lost in thought.
CHAPTER FOUR
Nova lost track of time in the constant semi-darkness of the cells. She counted the number of meals they brought down but sometimes it felt like days between meals and other times it felt like only a few hours. She knew they could be doing it deliberately; taking away a person's sense of time was a tried-and-true method of torture. She'd never understood it before, but in the last few days it had become all too clear.
She ached to know how long they'd been trapped. She hoped that Crusader and Cal were working on a way to get them out. The food was the same every day and Nova and the other Hunters were quickly wasting away. Nova's clothes hung off her in loose folds and her pants slipped down every time she stood up.
"I wish they'd bring us more, even if it does taste like crap," Orion said, shoving away his empty tray.
Nova grimaced, remembering how she'd pushed away her tray on the first day having barely touched anything. Her belly ached for those sticky white chunks now.
Tanguin's skin went from pale white to pale green and back again and she had to lie down after every meal, but at least she was eating it. Purple circles ringed her eyes and she spent most of her time shivering, teeth chattering, even though Tyra held her close and leant her clothes.
"That's the twenty-eighth meal," Aart said, gouging another line into the wall of his cell.
"Assuming two meals a day, we've been here two weeks," Nova said.
"But there's no way to be sure of that," said Tyra, her arms wrapped around Tanguin who seemed asleep.
Nova shrugged. "It's the best we've got."
Orion groaned. "And we still don't have any kind of way out of here. Great."
Nova bit her lip and frowned at Tanguin. "We have to do something. Soon."
Tyra nodded and shared a dark glance with Nova. Tanguin wouldn't survive for much longer.
Nova could help but feel responsible; Tanguin could easily have left The Jagged Maw and gotten a job with the Confederacy. She would never have had to sneak past the border and she'd be safe in some luxury apartment in the Inner Galaxies, as opposed to dying in a prison cell on some planet past the border.
Nova took a deep breath. She had to keep Tanguin alive, not just because she was a friend but also because otherwise she'd be consumed with guilt. She tried giving Tanguin extra portions of food but she refused to take them. She barely spoke, just stared vacantly and shivered.
"This is bullshit," Orion said. "We can't live like this. Are we just going to wait here to die?"
"I was hoping Cal would come up with something," Nova said.
"The ships and your bloody robot have had two weeks," Orion said. "If they were going to do something, they would have done it by now."
"We don't know what's going on out there…" Nova said.
Orion climbed to his feet, fists clenched at his sides. "So we wait to die?"
"No. We—"
"It's time to do something," Orion said.
Nova tensed and got to her feet.
"Oi, you!" Orion said, striding to the front of his cell and holding out his arms. "Oi! Monkey guard! Come here. You good-for-nothing sack of meat."
Orion spouted more filth but he kept his tone light as if he was having a casual conversation with a friend. The words and the way he said them, were completely at odds. He waved at the guard and gestured for him to come closer.
Nova's stomach tightened. If the guard could understand what Orion was saying then they were all in serious trouble. She kept her eyes firmly locked on the guard and the other prisoner, who showed no sign that he could hear Orion; he was still sitting in the middle of his cell with his arms and legs crossed.
The guard frowned at Orion, one hand on the hilt of his sword.
"Yes you. You ugly son of a whore," Orion said, just as sweetly. He gestured again for the guard to come closer.
He pointed to his eye and then waved again for the guard to come closer. "I've got something wrong with my eye."
The guard glanced up at the trapdoor. His mouth turned down and he danced on the balls of his feet.
"C'mon you son-of-a-bitch. My eye."
Orion howled more loudly, making a scene which would have made any street performer proud.
The guard took five long steps to Orion's cell. He barked seven clipped words and waved his hand.
"I don't understand your stupid language," Orion said, clutching one hand to his face.
The guard leaned closer. He grabbed hold of Orion's wrist through the bars and pulled his hand away from his
face. He repeated the seven words.
Orion grinned. "All better."
He twisted his wrist and snapped his hand down onto the guard's arm, gripping tight. He used his free hand to reach through the bars and grab the back of the guard's head, ripping both of his hands towards his chest so that the guard's face smashed into the bars with an audible crack.
Nova winced as a fountain of blood spurted out of the man's nose.
The guard wobbled and then slid down the bars, unconscious. Orion pulled his limp body closer to the bars and ran his hands along the man's belt. He came away with a ring of keys clutched in one hand that jingled softly in the small confines of the jail.
Orion thrust the key into the door of his cage and turned. The rusted lock clicked into place and he pushed the door open, taking the guard's body with it across the floor. Orion stepped out into the main hallway.
Their fellow prisoner erupted to his feet. He lurched to the front of his cell and yelled at the top of his lungs. He screamed louder than Nova would have thought possible, given that he hadn't eaten for days. He bellowed towards the trapdoor with a desperate string of words.
"What the fuck are you doing!" Orion yelled.
He ran down the short hallway and smashed his fist through the bars. The prisoner's voice died in his throat and he slithered to the floor.
Too late. Voices and pounding footsteps hammered above the trapdoor.
"That hairy-arsed bastard," Orion said.
He fumbled with the keys and shoved one into the door of Nova's cell. It didn't turn. He pulled it out and picked another key. It took three tries for him to get it into the lock because his hands were shaking so much.
It clicked.
The trapdoor above burst open and flooded the jail with bright light. Voices bellowed from above and a heavy weight fell through the air, landing on Orion's back. He collapsed to the floor, buried under a mountain of bodies.
Nova rushed for her cell door, slamming her shoulder against it. It opened an inch but someone dived against it from the other side. They shoved it shut, slamming it against Nova's shoulder, and thumped the lock home.
Stranger Page 2