by Ginger Booth
“Are there no communications down here in a bio-lock?”
“This isn’t an official bio-lock,” Teke admitted, scrubbing his toes with the tarry soap. “Actually, if my boss finds out about it…”
“You and Cora don’t get along well,” Sass observed. “Have you worked for her long?”
“Hell, no,” Teke grumbled. “Just a short internship before university.”
“There was a university in Denali Prime?” the captain asked, surprised.
Teke paused. “Was?”
“This past month, we’ve been rescuing survivors all over Denali Prime,” Sass clarified. “No one ever mentioned the university. Where was it?”
She handed him her small tablet, showing the official Neptune map. The device could hardly contaminate him any further. For all Sass knew, maybe the tar soap would help the tablet, but she doubted it. Bakkra seemed to have an affinity for Mahina screens. The ‘soft’ measures at the native bio-locks couldn’t get rid of them. Ben and Cope’s liquid nitrogen cooler worked a treat.
Sass instantly regretted showing him the map, as the color drained from the youth’s face. His finger rested on the giant hole where Ben rendered his scrap steel. “That was the university,” he murmured. “Eight of my cohort came here. The rest…”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “We’ve been here for weeks. We saved nearly 10,000 people. We were leaving. But no one ever came to check out the stream. I had a feeling about this place.”
He handed her back the tablet. He’d pulled out a spare antenna from the top that she’d never noticed before. “Our comm frequencies are at 2.4 GHz.”
Sure enough, Sass soon reached someone in the Waterworks Department, who transferred her to Scholar Cora. “Cora! This is Sass. I’m fine, and so is the boy I fell in with, Teke. We cut the cable. You should be able to –”
“Where are you?” Cora demanded.
Sass turned the tablet toward Teke, presently on the throne getting rid of that emetic and everything else in his GI tract. “Bottom level cavern bio-lock,” he supplied dully.
“What?” Cora shrieked. “Teke, damn you –!”
“Stop!” Sass cut in. “Cora, please tell Clay immediately that we are safe and out of the river!”
“Fine!” And she hung up.
“Don’t worry,” Teke offered. “She’ll be down here to scream at me any minute now.”
36
When Ben agreed to this, he imagined something like a holding cell, a blank room, perhaps the indignity of an open-view toilet and being deprived of his freedom. No doubt the food would suck.
The fact that they never entered mountaintop Hermitage was a bad sign. Instead they were directed into an elevator shed, do not pass bio-lock, do not shed face mask, nor meet with anyone resembling police or a court of law. Local hunters escorted them off the Koala, their bakkra featuring deep blue spots unknown in Waterfalls, each ringed with a pale yellow oval that made them look like creepy eyes scattered across squat heavy muscle.
The elevator door opened onto a dark cavern. Kaz sucked in his breath with a sharp hiss. Ben glanced behind at him. His faint ocher markings, freshly instilled since they left the Thrive, seemed to throb instead of the more typical scarlet flash of anger, irritation, halitosis, and anything else that irked a hunter.
Afraid? Ben sure was.
The guards manhandled Ben and Cope to a heavy black barred gate. They lit truncheons – shock sticks? – and poked them through the bars. The smattering of unfortunates huddled on the wet stone floor shrank back to the walls. The inmates wore breath masks, but no tanks. Each prisoner’s faceplate attached to the wall by an air hose. The panel these plugged into allowed for as many as 20 prisoners to plug in with only a couple meters of hose apiece for a tether – no room to lie down.
The gate opened, and they were dragged to an otherwise unoccupied air panel. Cope’s mask was plugged in first, then Ben’s. The guards yanked their air tank harnesses off, then freed their hands.
The captors drew back to the gate with Kaz and Eli. Then suddenly the guards yanked off their monitors’ tanks and unplugged their hoses as well, and shoved them forward into the prison. The gate clanged shut behind them.
Kaz pulled Eli up from the floor where he’d stumbled, and pulled him to join the engineers, who hastily plugged them into the air panel.
Kaz looked relieved at first, then began to cough. Cope ripped his mask off to replace Kaz’s in a hurry, while Ben placed his mask onto Cope’s face. They swapped back and forth, while Cope tried other sockets, hunting for one that worked better. That didn’t seem to help.
Ben checked his mask on another tested socket and found that it worked. “It’s the hose end, Cope.”
“Got it,” Cope agreed, and cast around for something he could use to trim an air hose. Kaz handed him a jack-knife. Unlike the pair of engineers, who’d been searched and relieved of their belongings, Kaz and Eli were double-crossed at the last second. Aside from their air tanks, they had everything they carried still with them.
Granted, Kaz wore a small pouch on a loincloth, so that didn’t amount to much. Ben eyed Eli’s capacious cargo shorts with interest. But first he needed to keep himself and Cope breathing until they got another face mask working.
In less than a minute, Cope carved a shallow point onto the tube, and inserted it into the open socket Ben had verified as good. It worked. He simply kept that mask rather than hand it back to the hunter.
Saving the youth’s life accomplished, Cope shoved him on the shoulder. “So what the hell, Kaz?”
Eli squeezed between them, forcing Cope away. He did nothing to intervene on Ben’s side. Ben blew on the kid’s neck from behind, just to keep him unnerved. Kaz grimaced and shot him a glare.
“The question was,” Eli reiterated, “what the hell, Kaz?”
The hunter spread his hands in front of his chest, a gesture of surrender. “Selectman Aden has this scheme. One of you stays behind as hostage when Thrive launches. He wants to hold whoever Mahina wants back the most. Then they’ll send another ship.” He cast his eyes down. “We need what you people bring.”
“You need h-h-help, is what you’re saying,” Ben suggested, with the h’s blown onto Kaz’s clavicle. The kid squirmed away from him, bumping into Eli, and recoiled.
“Funny, that’s not how we ask for help on Mahina,” Eli observed. “From friends. Or even honorable enemies.”
Cope shot them all a grimace and sank to the wet stone floor at the base of the panel wall. “The kid’s a tool for assholes. Doesn’t matter.” Cope studied the rough-hewn walls, and the prisoners across the way, a couple dozen split between three air panels. “They don’t look too good.”
Eli stepped back from Kaz, with a final 3-part hand gesture of contempt, learned among the Winter Sloths. Kaz had the grace to look ashamed. He squatted down, reluctant to touch his rump to the the slimy stone, perhaps. Ben guided his air hose over their heads and bent down beside Cope, offering a hand of comfort on his shoulder.
Eli wasn’t after comfort. He brought an ampule out of his pocket, and loaded it into into a delicate powered hypodermic. He grasped Cope’s arm first, then Ben’s, and shot the drug into the inside of their elbows. Then he dosed himself and Kaz.
“According to Dr. Tyler,” he explained softly, “there are necrotic bakkra in Hermitage prison.” Kaz hissed in a breath again. “You’ve heard of this perhaps, Kaz?”
“I didn’t believe it,” Kaz denied. “They would dare! To a hunter of the Hurricane Rabbit clan!”
Ben supposed Denali rabbits were as ferocious as the rest. “Looks like they dared, Bunny Boy.”
Cope huffed amusement, and Eli crimped a smile. Kaz simply furrowed his brow, perplexed.
“I told her,” Cope mused. “I begged her. Not another prison. Three goddamn rego fucking worlds, and I’m in prison again!” He back-fisted the wall. Ben seized the fist and rubbed it.
“Do not break your skin down here,” Eli warned. He
glanced over his shoulder at the neighbors. “I saved another couple ampules. But you’ll notice some people over there – don’t look!” Of course they looked. “Dead white areas on their skin, with blackened weeping sores in the center. Some of them missing ears and noses.” He took a glance himself. “Looks like a couple need legs and arms amputated.”
Cope rolled his bald head toward Eli, not bothering to lift it from the wall. “What was that thing about bakkra?”
“Necrotic bakkra,” Eli repeated. “Uh, necrotic means… Kaz.”
Kaz swallowed. “It burrows into the flesh and kills it. The rot feeds the bakkra and the infection grows. Hunters clean thoroughly every day, and check for infections. These people are getting no care.”
Cope shook his head. “Phosphate Mine 1. An effing janitor job as a slave on Sagamore. And now this. I gotta tell you, guys – this is PISSING ME OFF!” He yanked his hand away from Ben’s ministrations and hunched forward, holding his knees. The fellow prisoners across the way shrank away, eyeing the new men nervously. “Congratulations, Kaz. Your prison sucks worst of the whole star system. Hell of a prize.”
Ben stood and stretched. Cope wasn’t in the mood to be comforted yet. There were predictable phases to his lover’s reactions to life’s little monkey wrenches. He was still on the nursing fury step. He’d proceed to something more constructive in a few minutes. “So tell us about this drug you gave us,” he invited Eli.
“Nanites, from Dr. Yang,” Eli replied, voice low again. “He’s not sure how powerful they are. If the necrotic infection gets into a cut, it’s hard to get rid of even by high amputation –”
Copeland spat at him, “Damn, I wish you’d speak English!”
Eli grimaced. “If it gets into a cut, it can spread to the bloodstream. These bakkra are particularly fond of the heart. If you’re cut, I’m supposed to give you a whole ampule directly into the wound. But he’s not sure it’ll work. These nanites aren’t reproductive.” He held up a hand to Cope. “They won’t multiply by themselves. Otherwise, I’d throw the hypo across to those poor sods.”
Kaz said tentatively, “But they’re criminals.”
“Like you?” Ben retorted.
“What else have you got?” Cope demanded. “You, too, Bunny.”
Kaz shook his head. “What is ‘bunny’?”
“Nickname for ‘rabbit,’” Ben supplied. “It’s an adorable little furry creature with big ears, that children love to pet. We eat them. Hand over your pouch.”
Kaz was reluctant until Eli inserted a finger menacingly into the side of his loincloth. Especially after the necrotic bakkra discussion, Kaz wasn’t about to risk losing his skimpy underwear. He handed the pouch to Ben.
“Saggy bubble kits, six,” Ben inventoried. “Two size large. Another jack-knife with corkscrew, scissors, and tiny screwdrivers. Vial of Hunter Joy.” He peered in and rattled the container. “Those aspirin?” Kaz nodded. “And four aspirin. Some sentimental junk.” He lowered the purse in disgust and handed it to Cope. “Whatcha got, Eli?”
“More bubble kits, pocket comm, hypo and two ampules, grav generator. Farmer Joy and a water bottle.”
“Hey, give me a hit of the Farmer Joy,” Cope demanded. “I’m feeling stressed.” He pulled off his boots and dumped his least favorite screwdriver, a utility knife, a lighter he used to check for gas leaks, and tubes of space-safe metal cutting gel.
“Ben, yank off that surveillance camera, will you?” the engineer requested. “Try to leave the wiring live and tug it off the ceiling for me.” He downed the gut bacteria pill with a gulp of water.
Ben claimed the grav generator, and proceeded to the end of his leash. Eli held the breath mask for him after he took it off and grabbed a lungful of air. Then he leapt up and grabbed the camera on the ceiling. His half-g weight didn’t budge it, so he switched his grav off and on again quickly. That snapped the screws, yet still allowed for a soft landing. He let go the camera on the way down, and headed straight back to his mask to breathe again.
Cope stood to study the thing, likewise stealing a breath, then stepped over to look. He began to smile evilly. Then he left the camera to dangle, and pried the air hose panel off the wall, carefully transferring their hoses around it. He studied the metal. “Not a great weapon,” he judged, but handed the panel to Kaz. “You’re on our side now, right? Fellow criminal?”
“Rego Hermitage sucks,” Kaz concurred, to demonstrate his mounting fluency in Mahina slang. “Screw Aden, too.”
Cope nodded. “I can break us out. Short on air. I can restore comms. We have contacts in Hermitage. So how do we want to do this?”
“What do you mean, gone?” Sass asked Clay. “Gone where?”
Scholar Cora and the penitent Teke kept her tied up in the bowels of AML longer than than she would have liked. And she couldn’t resist seeing their stockpile of 3rd gen star drive fuel. They had half the quantity Thrive needed, but could easily resume production. The rest was supposed to have been made at the University, which was perhaps not quite as careful to secure it against water.
Or perhaps the volcano eruption would have broken it open to the rain, no matter what the safeguards. No one survived to tell the tale.
But Teke was sure all they needed was to kill and bring two blimp here for their ‘fliver,’ something like a liver, and one pterry brain. From those, they could extract the missing bottleneck reagents.
The Waterfalls spaceport delivered Sass a fresh pterry brain nearly every day. And blimps were easy prey. They had asteroid harpoons.
All these discussions continued while Clay worked his way through the bio-lock. He’d just joined them in the fresh new daylight wall peeking out from the short cliff. Most of the facility was underground and significantly cooler than the average Denali dome. Though naturally everyone wore loincloths anyway. But not bakkra, which Sass was glad to hear were considered anathema to chemical facilities.
Clay filled her in on his tale of woe, that Selectmen Aden and Diego conspired to kidnap their engineers and hold them hostage against the next trip by a Mahina spaceship. They were afraid that after Thrive’s trip there would be no more for decades, as with the previous gap. They were certain the only reason Thrive was here now was to retrieve Dr. Yang.
“Who’d be so unreasonable?” Sass grumbled rhetorically. They got that right. “Where’s Gorey in all this?”
“Haven’t gotten through to Gorey,” Clay supplied. “Aurora’s tied in the hold. Abel sent his tale of woe to Hunter and Guy on Mahina, but that’ll take hours round-trip.”
Sass pursed her lips and turned to Cora, suddenly changing her expression to a gracious smile. “And you’re doing fine here? Happy to stay until we straighten this out?”
Cora nodded, unsure.
“Happy to stay until hell freezes over before we’ll go to Hermitage,” Teke opined. Cora elbowed him.
“We are not presently refugees,” Cora decided. “We would appreciate comms to the outside. Though I don’t know who we’d talk to if the University is gone.” The whole lab had taken the news hard. They were saddened by the surprise that their city was gone, of course. But the University was closer than blood relatives, their place in the world order.
Sass had asked whether they would prefer Waterfalls or Hermitage, or perhaps Neptune. She got the impression this enclave would consider whether to stay right where they were. Techno-mages for a planet, producing materials no one else could, in a world suddenly all too bereft of engineering and scientific talent, they might be able to call the tune. Their bunker certainly didn’t lack for any amenities. They’d spent their volcanic burial quite comfortably, rigging whatever they needed. Their winter harvest was fine, thank you kindly.
“We’ll be back,” Sass promised. “You and my engineers will love each other!”
“We’ll be here,” Cora agreed with a knowing nod. “And Hermitage won’t. Teke, sweetie, go see about restoring our sonics, won’t you?”
The teen grinned and sped awa
y.
37
“Captain Sass! Clay!” Aden greeted them in the spacious area where they first met. “I had not anticipated such an inordinate delay.”
The oily bastard looked stressed. Good, Sass noted. No Selectmen attended this audience remotely. She pointedly sat on the strawberry bamboo tray table that used to hold Gorey’s image. Clay took position at the farmer Selectman’s empty table, but opted not to test its strength.
“We expect our first word back from Mahina soon,” Sass shared. She lied. They had already received and previewed the video from MA. “But first things first. I wish to see my people, alive and in good health, and speak to them.”
“They are currently in –” Aden began.
“They are currently in a Hermitage dungeon infested with necrotic bakkra,” Clay completed his sentence. Sass shot him a smiling blink. If he wanted to play bad cop, it was fine with her. There was plenty to go around.
Selectman Viola recoiled. Surprised. Tor twitched uncomfortably. Dead meat, Sass mentally consigned the guilty. Clay directed his most earnest scrutiny onto Tor.
“Those rumors are entirely unfounded,” Aden attempted.
“Actually, I’ve spoken with my people in the dungeon,” Sass shared. “They sent a few closeup images of the necrosis.” She turned to Viola. “The one missing her nose and ear, and half her cheek and eye, is particularly repugnant. I don’t imagine she’ll survive long. Here, let me show you.”
Aden made a quick grab trying to prevent this, but Sass led Viola aside to show her the horror.
“Out!” Viola demanded in a strangled voice. “Get them the hell out of there! All the prisoners! Now, Aden!”
“Tor?” Sass inquired sweetly. “Don’t you want to see where you put my engineers? And my botanist? And an innocent Waterfalls hunter as well.” She pressed the image on the third Selectman. He turned his face away, gulping. “Gorey was most disturbed. So was – Ellia, was it? Your farm Selectman?”