by R. M. Olson
But at the end of the day, if he was being honest, those weren’t the things he was taking into consideration right now. The simple fact of the matter was, he couldn’t keep doing this. He couldn’t live for the next however-many years with the thought of Ysbel’s children haunting him. He couldn’t.
And so, for that, to assuage his own guilt, he’d gamble his friends.
Of course he would.
He gave a small, bitter smile. And they’d go, willingly, because they trusted that he’d somehow have a plan to make it work.
“Well. I guess our timeline has moved up,” he said at last.
The tension in Ysbel’s posture relaxed, her shoulders dropping, the relief obvious in her face.
“So,” she said. “What do we do next?”
Lev sighed and pulled up the holoscreen on his own com. “Honestly, Ysbel, I have no idea. I’m willing to go in. But I won’t try to talk anyone else into it. You make your own decisions on this. Ysbel?”
She looked at him as if he were slightly mad. “If you want me to not go in,” she said in a reasonable tone, “you’d have to kill me or put me in a coma. And considering that I do not think anyone in this crew is capable of either of those things, I’m coming.”
To be fair, it had been a stupid question.
“Tae?” He already knew the answer. But he had to give him the chance to back out. On the off-chance he’d take it. Of course, there was no way they’d succeed without him, but on the other hand, there wasn’t much of a chance they’d succeed with him, either.
“I’m in,” said Tae dully. He sounded as tired as he looked.
“Masha?”
She was still standing by the door, lips pressed tightly together.
“Lev,” she said at last. “You know my position. This isn’t just foolhardy. This is walking all five of us into a death trap. You and Tae both have explained to me that it’s not possible to do this on short notice. Believe me, I want Ysbel to have her family back. I hate the idea of children locked up in a prison planet as much as any of you. But someone here needs to be realistic. This is an impossible mission, and there is no way we can pull it off. All we’d be doing is throwing our own lives away, and getting nothing in return.”
“We’ve done impossible things before. We could save them, maybe,” said Ysbel in a low voice. She sounded lost, and her tone cut him like a knife.
Masha sighed and shook her head. “Ysbel. I understand. And I know you believe the risk is worth it for yourself. But do you believe the same for the rest of this crew?”
Ysbel was silent.
Lev glanced around again.
But it didn’t matter. When push came to shove, he’d discovered, he was a selfish bastard after all.
“I’m afraid that’s not up to Ysbel,” he said, forcing his voice to remain calm. “Ultimately, it’s not her decision. Masha, I understand your concerns. In other circumstances, I’d agree. But I intend to do this, with or without your help. I’ve made a promise to Ysbel, and I intend to keep it.”
There was a moment of silence, and he steadfastly refused to look in Ysbel’s direction. He wouldn’t be able to handle the look of gratitude on her face.
“If you’re set on doing this, I’ll come,” Masha said, reluctance clear in her voice. “I spent an inordinate amount of time and effort to bring you together, and I have a vested interest in your remaining alive. But I can only hope that at some point you will come to your senses. If we’re caught, they won’t lock us up. They’ll kill us.”
“Well, I’m in,” said Jez loudly, dropping her chair back on four legs with a loud thud. “If Masha’s against it, it’s probably right up my alley.” She flashed Masha a wide, dangerous grin.
Masha gave a tight shake of her head, her face cold.
Lev sighed. “Well Masha, it looks like you’re out-voted.”
“So it would appear,” she said thinly. She turned to Jez, and Lev sat forward in his seat, waiting for the inevitable explosion. “Jez.” Masha’s voice was cold. “For now, it appears, we will have to work together. But I expect to revisit our conversation once we’re out.”
“Yeah? I’ll be looking forward to it, you bastard.” Jez smirked and stretched luxuriously. “Well then, now that’s out of the way, let’s go break someone into jail.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CRATE HAD been used to store cattle of some sort, Ysbel assumed from the smell of it. Tae had grumbled when she’d asked him and Jez to help load it onto the ship when they were gathering supplies on the zestava, but she’d ignored him.
Things like this always came in handy.
“This good?” asked Jez. Ysbel nodded.
“Stand back.”
Jez grinned airily and strolled to the other side of the room.
“Farther.”
Jez raised one eyebrow, but did as she was told.
For once.
Ysbel watched with a mixture of irritation and affection until she was out of the way. Maybe the idiot had some sense of self-preservation after all. She tapped her ear, and Jez rolled her eyes, but shoved in the ear protection Ysbel had given her. Ysbel waited a moment to make sure she’d actually stay put, then she touched the control in her hand.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the world exploded around them.
Ysbel squeezed her eyes shut for a second to block out the jag of light seared across her vision, then coughed and waved the smoke away from her face.
Not bad for a first try. The supplies she’d bought in the zestava weren’t as low-quality as she’d expected. An explosion like that would probably take out a force-field, given enough hits.
Across the room, Jez was doubled over coughing, her mouth moving in what were unmistakably swear words.
The crate was gone. Instead, the air around them was filled with a haze of charred prefab dust.
Ysbel pulled one earplug out.
“Thank you, Jez. That was all I needed you for.”
Jez had already removed her own ear plugs. She’d recovered from her coughing fit, and, apparently, her swearing fit, and now she was looking around at the hazy room with stunned delight on her face.
“Can you make my ship a gun that does that?”
“I did. I installed it when we were planet-side.”
“What? Can I shoot it at something?
“No.”
“That was fantastic. I think I love you.”
“Piss off, Jez.”
She smiled grudgingly despite herself.
She still wasn’t sure when this stupid pilot had become something like a friend.
Jez wandered over to where the crate had stood moments before. “What did you do to it?”
“I was just checking my supplies.”
“And?”
“And I vaporized it.”
“Oh.”
This was good. If she could smuggle in her supplies, she could do a lot with minimal equipment.
But …
She shut her eyes for a moment. Tanya was there, behind her eyelids, like she always was. Every dream, every daydream, every other thought was occupied by the willowy woman with long brown hair and limpid blue eyes and wistful smile, a small, determined girl with dirt on her face, and a chubby, solemn toddler. Not a small girl anymore. Not a toddler. But hers. Her life. Her whole heart.
And now they were so close. So close that she could almost touch them. Thanks, in no small part, to the transport chip this ridiculously-irritating pilot had cheated off someone in a kabak.
She’d never not be grateful. And she couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong.
“You could make me a gun out of that. That would be amazing. And besides, it would be really useful. What if we have to shoot someone when we’re breaking onto the prison planet? Something like this, they’d never know what hit them. No one else would even know anyone had been there. You’ve got to admit, it would be amazing.”
Jez was still talking. Jez was always talking.
“Nope,” she said, looking back at Ysbel. “My sweet darling is ready. She’ll do whatever I tell her to.”
“Good,” Ysbel grunted. “That had better be true.”
“Ysbel. It’s my ship.”
“And I’m sure it’s missing you. Why don’t you go back to your cockpit?”
“Ah, she’s not jealous.”
“I wish you’d do whatever I told you to.”
Jez laughed loudly, head tipped back and snorting.
“It wasn’t a joke, Jez.”
Jez recovered herself, wiping tears of hilarity from her eyes. “I mean it, Ysbel. I really, really need a gun like that. You could mod my heat pistol.”
“Jez. Please shut up.”
“But—”
“Shut up.”
“But—”
“Please stop talking.”
Jez let out a long-suffering sigh. “Fine. Use me for my muscles. I don’t care. Hey, I think I’ll go check on Tae. You think he needs a hand?”
Ysbel was almost tempted to let her go. Still, Tae didn’t deserve that.
“Look. You go back to your cockpit. You go through your protocols one more time. And—” she took a deep breath. “And I’ll keep Masha busy for a few minutes so you can run some flight tests. OK?”
Jez looked like someone had just handed her a full bottle of sump and a weekend off.
“Now please go away.”
Jez gave a mock salute. “You got it, cap’n.” She turned and strolled out of the room, calling back over her shoulder, “I need fifteen standard minutes. You promised.”
Ysbel sighed. She was probably going to regret this. Still, she would have regretted having the pilot in the room with her for the next fifteen minutes much more, so there was that.
“Masha,” she called over her com. “Can you come in here? I’d like to ask you something.”
When they convened in the mess hall a standard hour later, Lev still looked pale, and Tae was nursing a bruise on his elbow and scowling darkly at the entire room.
Ysbel felt a slight tinge of guilt.
Still, Jez was probably right that she needed to put the ship through its paces at some point.
Masha glared daggers as the long-limbed tousle-haired pilot dropped into her seat, pulling up one knee and stretching her other leg out in front of her luxuriously.
“You could have warned us, Jez,” Tae grumbled.
“Well, but then Masha might have stopped me,” she said, without a hint of remorse. “Or tried.” She grinned at Lev. “See? Genius-boy’s getting used to it. Bet he didn’t even throw up this time.”
“And that, Jez,” said Lev through his teeth, “is a bet you’d lose.”
“Ah, come on. You know you like it.” Jez tossed him a packet of rations and grabbed one herself, ripping the packaging open with her teeth. He rubbed a hand over his face, and Ysbel bit back a smile. Tae rolled his eyes and grabbed the carton of meal rations from the food stores.
“Here. In case anyone other than Jez wants to eat.”
Ysbel smiled at him slightly as she took a rations packet. He was the youngest of them, but somehow he’d become the de facto parent of the group.
“Alright. Once again, what do we have?” Lev asked, ripping open his own rations packet.
They’d been at this for four days now. Every time there was more than one of them in the room it was the same question. But the list on the holoscreen Lev pulled up in front of him was still depressingly short.
Masha crossed to the supplies cupboard, and pulled out a heavy bundle of beige work smocks.
“Here,” she said, dropping it on the table. “If we’re going to talk while we eat, please get to work on these as well. The prison uniforms are the same colour, thank goodness, but you’ll have to cut them to the right shape.” She still looked disapproving, but she hadn’t said anything to convince them to change their minds. Perhaps she knew it would be futile. Or perhaps, knowing Masha, she knew something the rest of them didn’t, and had no intention of sharing.
The thing was, Ysbel couldn’t help but agree with her. This mission was an absurd risk.
But she had to go. And despite the guilt that gnawed at her every time she looked at the others—she needed them. If there was even the smallest chance that they could get Tanya and her children back, she needed them.
Tae picked up a smock, still scowling. “Nothing new. I’ve been trying all day to even crack the system, and I made it down maybe one more line of the web. But I think I may be in deep enough that I can try for the prison records tomorrow. I did get our wrist coms plugged in. They’ll read as prisoner ID bracelets.”
Lev sighed. “Well, that’s better than it was yesterday. Jez?”
“Ship’s ready to go,” the pilot said, pushing the last bite of rations into her mouth. “Good thing I put her through her paces to test her today, right?”
“That wasn’t a test,” Tae muttered.
“Yeah it was. I was testing to see how fast you could get into your harness.”
For a moment Ysbel thought Tae might try to punch the pilot. She wouldn’t have blamed him, honestly.
Jez grinned, and grabbed a smock from the pile on the table. “Hey, I figured out how to get us on the supply transport to get us in the doors. In case you were wondering.” She pulled a ship’s knife from the magnetic case under the table and started hacking at the hem of the garment with a noticeable lack of finesse. “I still bet I could fly us in to the transport ship, though, when they fly them out, and we could grab them from there.”
Lev sighed. “And, as I’m almost certain I already told you, they will have more than a dozen armed escorts, and even if we could get past them, prison policy is if there’s a hint of a security breach, the prisoners in the transport are neutralized, which tends to be another word for killed. They’re trying to discourage breakout attempts, apparently. And before you ask, we’re also not going to just fly the Ungovernable in and blow the prison up, because again, the prison would immediately go into lockdown and, it would likely lead to a similar outcome, at least for the prisoners we’re interested in extracting.”
Jez looked momentarily sobered.
Lev paused. “Unfortunately, I don’t have good news. Masha managed to get me some rudimentary prison specs. I looked up their force-field—there’ll be no communicating out from inside the prison. Inside, yes, with Tae’s tech. But not past the field. Our plan to have people on the outside with backup isn’t going to work.”
Ysbel shifted in her seat. Her heart was beat painfully fast.
She couldn’t afford to get emotional. Not now. This had to work, and she had to be thinking logically.
“So what does that mean?” she asked, her voice somehow measured.
Lev looked at her, then turned to the others. Whatever it meant, he was clearly reluctant to say.
She half-closed her eyes, trying not to let the strain show on her face.
It didn’t matter, in the end, how impossible it was. If the others didn’t agree to help, she’d go in by herself.
“It means,” he said finally. “We’re all on the inside.”
Jez sat up abruptly, dropping both the smock and the knife. “Wait. What?”
He spread his hands. “I’m sorry, Jez. I can’t think of another option. We’re going in blind. We can’t make more than a skeleton of a plan out here, because we have no idea what we’ll be facing. We have to work from inside the prison.”
“You mean I have to go back into a prison?” She looked panicked. Lev shook his head.
“No one’s going to make you go anywhere, Jez,” he said. “But at this point, anyone who’s in on this will be inside. That’s all I’ve got. We need Tae—none of us can get into the systems without him. We’ll need me on the inside,
because I’m the only one of us who will be able to get us back out. We need Ysbel for more reasons than one—she’s our weapons and explosives expert, she’s the one Tanya will trust, and also, she’d probably blow me up if I tried to stop her. Masha, you managed to talk all of us into pulling a heist on Vitali. We’ll need you in there if we want a chance of getting information from the guards. And Jez—” he paused. “As I said. I won’t force you to come. I doubt I could if I tried. But of all of us, you’re the only one who’s broken out of prison. We’ll need what you know, and what you can do.”
Jez stood abruptly. “I’m a pilot. I fly things. That’s what I do.” She was breathing quickly, eyes narrowed, and Ysbel watched her with a sudden pang of sympathy, mingled with guilt.
She never would have believed, a month ago, that the crazy pilot would even have considered it.
She opened her mouth, but Masha spoke first.
“Perhaps it’s best if Jez stays behind.” Her voice was cold. “My motive is, as it always has been, is to keep this team from being killed. And to be honest, I’m not certain having her there will advance that aim.”
“Shut up, Masha,” Jez snapped. She took a deep breath, clearly trying to keep herself under control. “Fine. It’s just a week. A week at the longest, right?”
“Jez. You don’t have to—” Ysbel began. Jez turned on her, glaring.
“Ysbel. Piss off.”
Ysbel almost cracked a smile, them found herself swallowing a lump in her throat.
“If we don’t find Tanya right away, or if things go sideways, our backup plan will be to get out when the supply ship goes out. That gives us a week on the inside.” Lev glanced at Ysbel. “I’m sorry Ysbel, but that’s the best I can offer.”
With or without Tanya.
Well. It didn’t matter, really. She’d go in, and she’d come out with Tanya and Olya and Misko, or she wouldn’t come out at all.
She nodded slowly, and picked up a smock of her own. “I would not ask any of you to stay longer than that.”
He gave her a sharp glance, as if he’d caught the words she hadn’t said, but he didn’t comment.