Rift

by Nathan Hystad

  He waited ten minutes, then counted another few out for good measure, before getting up and reinstating the air drive. It clicked on, and began air hissing back into his ship. He used a nearby console to activate the lights again, and he stepped over to the bodies, gun raised in front of him just in case.

  The bodies didn’t move as he lightly kicked them with a bare foot. He knew they were there to take the secret data messages, and kill him and Kat, but that didn’t keep him from feeling sick to his stomach. He’d been forced to kill them. The man couldn’t have been thirty, and the woman looked even younger. He closed his eyes and saw images of Marines much like these two, lying in pieces during the Mars riots from over a decade ago. He shook his head, clearing the memories from the forefront of his brain.

  He’d see what he could learn about them after. For now, Flint needed to let Kat know they were okay. He took their guns as a safety measure, stashing them away before plodding down the corridor toward the bridge in his bare feet. When Flint got there, he activated the hidden room, revealing Kat’s grim face.

  “Is it over?” she asked.

  Flint nodded and helped her above deck. Tear tracks had dried on Kat’s face, and he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

  9

  Benson

  Benson turned the music up as he stared out the window. He’d never grow tired of the slice of greenspace on Europa. The classical notes bounced off the walls of the chamber, giving him a near-perfect acoustical experience. As he leaned back in the rich leather seat, Benson caught a view of the magnificent storms on Jupiter through the wide skylight.

  Councilman Fairbanks loved his views, and Benson was glad for it. There were many perks to riding the coattails of the wealthy and powerful, and staying in this mansion was one of the top reasons he kept doing the work.

  Flint Lancaster was coming; of that he was sure. He tapped his holoscreen on and used his biometric passcode to bring up the tracking device he’d planted on Perdita. The ship looked like a hunk of junk from the outside, and not much better inside, but he knew the modifications were what allowed Lancaster to escape so many dangerous situations.

  He’d only been around the man for several minutes, but he’d seen a glimmer in Flint’s eyes that was rare these days. Benson could see why Fairbanks had a lock on him. Still, there were a lot of pilots, and the Eureka would basically pilot itself. There had to be more to it. Benson was the councilman’s right-hand man, but there were many secrets the old man never shared.

  Benson was okay with that, though. He lived a life far above his station, and because of that, he had nothing to complain about.

  Flint’s ship wasn’t moving. It was sitting dead in space, two days out of Benson’s location on Europa. “What the hell are you doing?” Benson asked himself. Maybe the guy was second-guessing his decision. He’d come around. Fifty thousand credits was a lot of money, and any smart man like Lancaster would understand there was plenty more to come if he came to Europa and accepted the job.

  He checked the time. His contact would be waiting for him.

  Benson activated the call, and a cloaked figure appeared in the 3D projector.

  “Shadow, it’s good to see you,” Benson lied. The terrorist leader was a fool. She wasn’t tricking anyone by wearing that cowl over her face. Benson knew exactly what she looked like. Her face was almost as unpleasant as her personality. But you didn’t get a terrorist to do work for you by insulting them, so he played along.

  “I wish I could say the same to you,” Shadow said, her voice far from ominous. “What is it you want?”

  “Do we have a deal?” Benson caught himself holding his breath. Fairbanks was clear they needed to stall the Earth Fleet. This was Benson’s way of making sure that happened. The old man would be pissed, but Benson could talk him off the ledge later. The mission was to cross the Rift, and this would help ensure they did just that.

  Shadow didn’t respond for a while, and Benson thought she might decline the job. There wasn’t much work for the group lately, and they were resorting to stealing food and supplies from low-end freights traveling from Earth to the Moons.

  “Make a decision. I can always go to the other guys,” Benson said, knowing this would anger the terrorist. The “other guys” were a sad group of militants who’d do anything for a few credits. Benson knew he wouldn’t hire them for this job. It was too big; this job needed the best.

  “Fine, but I’ll need double what you offered.” Shadow’s voice cracked slightly.

  Double. What an ass. “I can offer you another twenty-five percent. That’s final.” Benson loved pushing back against the leader of the Dark Earth group.

  “Fine. We’ll be there. Transfer half now, as per the usual deal.” Shadow ended the call, her image flickering away until the holoscreen was blank.

  Benson would send half, but he’d wait until morning. He didn’t like giving in to a slime ball like Shadow’s demands, at least not right away. They did need the group, and Benson was a little angry he hadn’t denied the additional funds. The Dark Earth group was desperate, and they would have attacked the Earth Fleet gathering for nothing. Shadow was greedy, and there was no way she’d get their secret location and not take the chance at a massive hit against the Fleet. Plus the salvage, if they pulled it off, would be beyond their wildest dreams.

  Benson turned his music back up and spun to look out the windows.

  CD6

  CD6 began worrying. Wren hadn’t been in her cell the first night he went to leave a message with her. He connected to the server and found out she’d been brought to solitary. The records didn’t say why. He was able to adjust the sentence from one week to three days, and hoped it wouldn’t be tracked back to him. It was the first time he’d dared attempt something like this, but he believed no one would notice, primarily because the guards weren’t programmed to do such a thing. No one would think to check.

  The ship with the new prisoners would be arriving tomorrow, and he hadn’t had a chance to speak with Wren about it yet. Would she thank him and be a willing participant in the escape, or would she stay here, giving him no real reason to leave the prison? He ached to abandon his post, and considered that he may have targeted Wren as an excuse for himself to leave.

  He didn’t belong here. Why should an android have such thoughts, dreams, and feelings? It made no logical sense. Nothing in the servers spoke of sentient AI androids. He’d tried to access the Interface, but as a lowly guard at an out-of-the-way mining prison, he wasn’t allowed entrance to the most basic Interface. He knew it existed, but there was a block. Notes in the prison server documented the Interface, but the links would die there.

  He thought about all of these things, trying not to calculate his odds of pulling off something so unheard of. Of course, there hadn’t been one as unique as CD6 before either. His shift was coming to an end, and he counted out the long seconds, each feeling like a lifetime. Wren would be in her cell, and he needed to find a reason to go to her. Finally, his internal clock told him the shift was over and to head back to his personal charging station. His model of android could actually make it days, even weeks without a charge if necessary, but protocol was protocol.

  His replacement passed him in the hall without so much as a courtesy nod, and CD6 progressed toward his charging station. Instead of heading down on the lift, he cut through the central circular room that housed the prisoners on different floors. He knew using the center lift would spell disaster, as no one was supposed to be using it for another hour.

  CD6 also knew there would be footage of him walking through the room, but who was looking? Regardless, he kept to the wall and entered the backup stairwell behind the prisoners’ cells. It would reach to the twelfth floor if one was so inclined. CD6 was not. He only needed to get to the seventh floor.

  He walked efficiently up the stairs, the action easy for his programmed robotics, even though he rarely needed to use steps. He quickly arrived on the correct floor, his internal coding u
nlocking the door as he approached it.

  The floor was oddly silent. CD6 had only been near the cells while they were empty, usually when helping an injured prisoner back to their cell for the duration of a shift. Now it sent a sinking feeling in his circuits as he slunk along the cell doors leading to Wren’s room.

  He scanned around, seeing no one nearby, and stepped to the energy barrier, which acted as a shield from anything passing out from within the cell. From out here, he could pass food or clothing to her. She was in a fetal position on her cot, her head facing the far wall of the cell.

  “5589.” CD6 spoke firmly, getting her attention.

  She came to but didn’t turn over. “What?”

  She sounded miserable. “Wren,” he now said, and she rolled over, nearly off the cot.

  “It’s you,” she said, sitting up now, and looking at the floor. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “I’m not sure to whom you refer.” CD6 really wasn’t sure.

  “Mara. Prisoner 3659. She went down while I was on shift. I tried to help, but they hauled me away.” Wren glanced up, and he saw a sadness deep within her. He needed to help this one. CD6 knew it wasn’t just him who needed to escape. She needed him.

  He hadn’t known why she was in solitary, but now he checked the server and did find that 3659 was labeled as deceased. Wren’s best friend. He struggled with the idea of a best friend: someone to confide in and trust. The concept was foreign to all androids, but CD6 understood only too well what he was missing out on by being a prison guard. “She’s no longer living.”

  Her head hung low, her hands on her knees while she sat. “What do you want from me?” Wren asked, not with anger as he might have expected, but with resignation.

  “We leave tomorrow, when your floor is sleeping. I have a plan.” CD6 watched his back and saw a glimmer of hope flash into Wren’s eyes before it quickly left.

  “How? You’re just a guard. I don’t mean to sound condescending, but come on… the two of us breaking out of a prison? You have to be kidding me.” Wren looked up, staring at him.

  CD6 didn’t know how to respond to this. She was probably correct in her assumptions. “I will be here. I am CD6. It will be your choice whether you come with me or not.”

  He turned, leaving her alone in her cell.

  Ace

  Ace hurt all over. The days had become longer, the training sessions stretching out and overlapping their meal times. Ten days. It felt like twenty. He swung his feet over the bunk and hopped down quietly. The rest of the squadron was still sleeping. There were fifteen of them now, still more than any other. Yellow had fourteen, and Serina seemed pleased enough with this.

  Ace left the room and walked down the hall. It was an hour before anyone would be getting up, and he felt alone as his bare feet slapped against the hard floors. The days had been starting with a ten-kilometer run, followed by sessions of squats, lifts, push-ups, and various other exercises, combined with constant insults and yelling from the instructors. All of this happened before they were allowed to eat. He now understood why so many of the recruits were dropping off like flies. The mental exertion was nearly more difficult than the physical, which was slowly killing the skinny boy as well.

  Ace had nowhere to go back to, so he endured. When he thought of it that way, two hours of body-aching pounding before you could feed yourself didn’t seem so bad. Either way, the food was always a great motivator, and he seemed to have no trouble making it through that section of the day.

  Now they were in weapons training for two hours in the morning, and he already knew more about the Fleet arsenal than he’d ever expected to. After a daily session of Capture-the-Flag, which became harder as the groups grew smaller, they’d break for lunch, and that was when the segmented training took place. Today, Ace was finally getting to the flight simulator. Buck claimed he’d puked when he was inside, but Ace was excited.

  He’d done the drop ship tests, even strapped an EVA on and walked the surface of the moon for a few hours. While it was all thrilling, he wanted nothing more than to feel the rumble of an EFF-17 under his body as he coursed through space.

  He walked on, lost in his own thoughts, before noticing the two thugs emerge from the side of the hall. He was too late.

  “What are you doing here, Skinny?” the bigger of the two asked. Ace recalled from the recruitment office on Earth that his name was Ceda. His buzz cut made his face look too big, his teeth oversized, his nose a limb on a tree.

  “Nothing,” he whispered. “Going to the bathroom.”

  “Is that so?” the other guy asked. He was shorter, but wider. Some of his fat had turned to muscle since arriving on the moon.

  “That’s so.” Ace didn’t want a confrontation, but these clowns were looking for one. He didn’t stand a chance against them, and as his bladder threatened to burst, he thought about running. That was the old Ace. “Let me through.”

  “Fine. Go ahead, Skinny,” Ceda said, and stepped to the side. The other giggled like he was a young school girl but didn’t make a move as Ace entered the bathroom.

  His hands shook as he entered a stall. A minute later, he was done, relieved of last night’s dinner beverages, and he listened at the door of the stall. He didn’t hear anything. They were stupid, but not dumb enough to attack someone at four AM in the bathroom. They’d be kicked out so fast.

  He opened the door and felt the punch to the gut before he saw them. Ace bent over, the air pushed from his lungs in a grunt. “Whhhh…” he started to ask as the other goon’s fist struck his face.

  Ceda’s voice: “That’s for cutting in front of us back on Earth.”

  Ace had fallen back, landing against the wall and sliding to the ground. The other one dragged him up by the collar of his plain white shirt, which now had blood dripping down on it from his nose. “And this is for being so smug.” He cocked a fist back, and Ace saw this one coming. The attacker might be big, but he was slow, and Ace was fast.

  As the knuckles flew toward him, Ace ducked, feeling his shirt tear. The guy’s hand struck the wall with ferocity, and he screamed out a loud cry. He sounded like an angered bear, and Ace took the opportunity to run.

  “You’re dead!” the injured boy shouted as Ace pumped his legs down the hall, back to his squadron.

  Serina was up when he got back, his heart pounding in his chest. She looked at him inquisitively before she put what she was seeing all together. She only said one word: “Who?”

  He pointed to the hall. “Two Oranges. You know them. The big ugly ones.”

  Serina nodded and walked into the hall. The rest of the squadron was awake at this point, some mumbling about it being too early, until they saw Ace with his bloody nose and ripped shirt.

  “Guys, let’s leave it. They aren’t worth it.” Ace was at the doorway, blocking the rest from leaving.

  The two Oranges walked by now, the shorter holding his broken hand.

  Serina stared at them but didn’t say a word. Big Face looked like he was about to taunt her but thought better of it, and they hurried down the corridor toward their room like reprimanded school boys.

  She came back into the bunk room and set a hand on Ace’s arm. “We’ll deal with them in the field. I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces when they’re sent home. You okay?”

  Ace shied away from her hand as she reached for his face. “I’m fine. It’s not broken or anything.” He wasn’t sure of this, because it was pounding fiercely.

  Nothing was going to ruin his day. Because today, he got to use the flight simulator. As he suited up along with the rest of the squad, he reached under his mattress and pulled his card out. The ace of clubs had been with him through so much, and he slipped it into his jumpsuit breast pocket.

  Flint

  “They’re dead!” Kat sounded surprised. The oxygen was back, and Flint had finally gotten dressed, happy to be wearing his boots and pants again. He imagined how stupid he must have looked, running around with a gu
n in his underwear while the ship was being boarded. But he was the one still alive, so he wasn’t overly hard on himself. He was happy to be back in his lucky boots, and wearing pants and a shirt again was a bonus.

  “That they are. Would you rather the alternative?” Flint asked his younger co-pilot.

  “Flint, what’s going to happen to us? You busted away from Mars like a guilty smuggler, took fire, and then killed two Earth Fleet Marines. This isn’t going to end well.” Kat’s voice was shaking more than she was.

  Flint wrapped an arm over her shoulder like a big brother would, and squeezed her to him. “We’re going to be fine. They won’t be able to distinguish what happened. For all they know, the Marines didn’t make it here.” Flint looked at the bodies and decided what needed to be done. “Their ship had a terrible malfunction.”

  “It did?” she asked.

  “It will.” He reached for the man’s ankles and began to drag him out of engineering and down the hall, toward the cargo bay they’d arrived in. He grunted in effort as he did so. The man outweighed him by at least thirty pounds and was much taller than he’d first thought, though the thick boots he wore added a couple of inches.

  Kat’s voice rang down the hall behind him. “Flint, I’m scared.”

  “I… know…” he said, dropping the man’s legs by the back cargo bay. The large metal slab he’d shut them in with was still down, and he crossed the room, using the console to raise it up again. The energy field still connected the two ships, and Flint decided they’d better wear EVAs for this part. Better safe than sorry.

  “Come on, kid. Let’s get suited up.” Flint left the body alone and followed Kat silently to the storage room, where their space suits were packed away.