Fractured Stars

by Lindsay Buroker

  He ignored the niggling notion that they would have already escaped if there was a way to do so.

  “Not that,” McCall blurted.

  Dash looked over his shoulder. He’d had his back turned to give her privacy—there were no separate men’s and women’s search rooms—but maybe there wasn’t any point when two leering asses with groping hands were in charge of the pat-downs. The men clearly liked their jobs, as they had demonstrated on Dash. He’d lingered in the doorway to make sure they didn’t like their jobs any more on McCall than they had on him.

  “Everything goes in the box except your underwear,” one of the men said, an iron grip on her bare arm.

  McCall was already stripped down to her underwear, and they were trying to pull a brass charm bracelet off her wrist, but she was fighting them. One man snatched for her wrist, but she kept yanking it out of reach, her arm darting elusively about like a writhing snake.

  The man growled and grabbed the back of her neck instead. She winced and stomped on his instep. Unfortunately, she was barefoot, and the man wore boots. He barely reacted.

  “Quit squirming,” he growled, tightening his fingers.

  Her eyes squinted with pain.

  Dash growled and stepped back into the room.

  “Let her go.” He attempted to use his telepathic ability to add power to the words. He occasionally met people with poor mental defenses, and he’d found his skills were just enough to manipulate them. He didn’t like doing it, since he knew that was one of the reasons mundane individuals feared Starseers, but in this case, he deemed it justified.

  “Sod off,” the second man growled.

  An uncertain expression crossed the face of the man holding McCall’s neck, and his grip loosened.

  “Let her go,” Dash repeated, holding his gaze.

  The second man started toward Dash, lifting a fist as if to beat him until he left the room. McCall took advantage of the lack of focus on her and yanked her neck away from the guard gripping her. She whirled and kneed him in the crotch, then darted away from him, her hand clasped over her bracelet. She snatched up her uniform—it had fallen onto the floor in the scuffle—and covered her chest as she stood next to Dash.

  He resisted the urge to put an arm around her shoulders, remembering how she felt about being touched—she would be even less enthused about it after being pawed over by those two. Besides, they weren’t out of trouble yet.

  Since the one McCall had kneed was wincing and grabbing his groin, Dash focused on the other man, the one who’d been less susceptible to his mental suggestion.

  “It’s just a trinket,” he said, lifting a hand as the thug stomped toward them, fingers still balled into fists. “It’s not worth much.”

  McCall shot him a dirty look at that comment, but Dash kept his focus on the guard, holding his gaze and trying to influence him with his mind.

  The man sneered. “Nobody gets to take anything in. Personal belongings just cause fights. She’ll be beat up within the hour by someone who thinks it’s pretty and wants it.”

  “What does it matter to you? I’m sure you don’t care if the inmates pound on each other.”

  The guard snorted, and Dash sensed that he was right, that the thug had enjoyed watching the inmate whipped earlier. He’d run out of this room to make sure to have a good view of the show.

  Dash curled a lip in disgust, wanting nothing more than to pummel both of these goons, but he could hear voices in the next room and was sure help would rush in if he tried. There were old boxy cameras mounted near the ceilings in the various rooms too. Someone kept an eye on the inmates at all times, no doubt.

  “Let her keep it,” Dash said quietly, again trying to slip coercive mental power into his words. “It doesn’t matter to you.”

  He was aware of McCall watching him and feared she would figure out that he had some mental talents. That he had the same mutated genes as the rest of the Starseers. She had believed she was weird. At least she was fully human in the eyes of the rest of the system. Those who’d driven Starseers underground after the war had been quick to label them mutants. Something less than human.

  “Fine,” the guard said. “Keep it. But promise me you’ll let me know when she gets pounded so I can come watch.”

  Dash made a rude gesture as he backed toward the door, pointing for McCall to go out first. She hurried to put on her uniform, her back to the hard eyes of the guards.

  Dash, already clad in his baggy tunic and trousers, a drawstring at the waist the only means of keeping them on, wasn’t surprised by the discomfort he sensed from McCall when the scratchy garments touched her skin. She’d received a size small and had the opposite problem he had, with everything being tight. Before they’d taken more than a few steps out of the room, she was plucking at the shoulders and thighs, looking like she wanted to take a sewing needle to the uniform. Or maybe a blow torch.

  He would have preferred she’d also received one that was too large for her, since the uniform, while not exactly flattering, did less to hide her figure than her usual loose clothing. He decided that he, being a gentleman, would not let himself notice that she had an appealing form.

  “More for the plant?” a bored worker with a clipboard asked of them. He carried a blazer pistol on his hip, along with a regular old billy club. More guards loomed in the background.

  Rose already stood beside the man. Dash nodded at her, though he had been careful not to introduce himself when Axton had been around and did not know if she knew he was with the Alliance. He had been given a captain’s rank in the organization and trained with the pilots occasionally, but since he had been undercover the last year, he was almost never at either of the main secret bases. It was unlikely Rose had ever seen him, but he hoped to draw her aside for a frank conversation later.

  “Yes,” McCall told the man firmly, plucking at her tunic. “Him too.” She nodded toward Dash.

  Despite the despair of the situation, he was pleased she wanted to keep him around.

  “This way. I’ll give you the tour.” The clipboard man’s voice was monotone. “Then show you your stations.”

  “What work will we be responsible for?” McCall asked.

  “Shoveling coal into furnaces.”

  “So you’ll be making good use of our advanced degrees.”

  The clipboard man headed toward an elevator and didn’t respond to her sarcasm.

  Dash decided not to mention that he didn’t have an advanced degree, just a pilot’s license. To receive that, he’d spent nine months in a civilian academy. He had spent longer training to fight with the Starseers home guard back at the temple when he’d been a teenager. His mother had thought he might be able to have a career with them based on his athleticism, since his mental skills had been too weak for most Starseer jobs. But the guards weren’t just muscle-heads. There were mental tests to pass as well as physical, and after four years of training, he’d failed the mind part. His mother had optimistically said they would find something else for him to do, but he’d known he would never qualify for another Starseer job, that his skills were too weak. And he’d been tired of the condescension from everyone else. It had been easier to leave the temple.

  They exited the elevator into a louder area, with clangs and the grinding of machinery sounding in the distance. McCall grimaced at the noise and twisted her bracelet. Heat blasted them, even more intense than it had been in the tunnels above, and the air smelled of grease and oil and burning coal.

  Their clipboard-toting escort pressed his palm to a scanner built into the wall by the elevator. Ensuring the doors wouldn’t open again without it? There weren’t any buttons, and Dash didn’t see any other way of calling for the elevator. Were there stairs somewhere in the facility that led back up to that main level?

  A scrape sounded, followed by the clickety-clack of a cart heading down tracks. Dash spotted several men in the back of an automated ore cart, including a couple of Axton’s former prisoners, those who had been
shunted off into the mining group. Their cart rolled into a dark tunnel and disappeared. Dash wondered if he would ever see the men again.

  The clipboard man led them into a cavernous plant full of bronze and iron with even the floors made from metal plates riveted together. The cement ceiling was high, and from far below, Dash got his first look at the balcony where the man had been tortured. He couldn’t see anybody up there now, but while he was looking in that direction, he spotted more cameras mounted on the walls. It was dimmer down here on the plant floor, and they weren’t that noticeable, but they were definitely there.

  Sneaking out of here would be a challenge, but he wouldn’t allow himself to believe it wasn’t possible. What would be difficult would be making it across the tundra. They would need the clothing those guards up top had worn, along with weapons, food, and ideally, some battery-powered heat packs to help keep them warm. It had been daylight when they landed, and even though the suns were wan and weak this far out, he had no doubt it got even colder at night.

  McCall looked up as they walked, not at the balcony, but at the Glastica—or was that just glass?—wall of a room full of computers. It was located halfway up to the balcony level but on the opposite wall. A man in a gray uniform sat at a console in there, focusing on his work and not paying attention to the goings on below, where men coated in coal dust shoveled the stuff out of bins and through the open doors of furnaces. The fires inside poured off heat, and the men’s faces were streaked from sweat running down their coal-dusted cheeks.

  McCall seemed more interested in the room up above than the furnaces.

  “You know what that is?” Dash murmured.

  She nodded. “Control room. They should be monitoring the amount of steam generated for the turbines and comparing it with the needs of the electricity users downstream, then sending down orders to burn more or less coal in the furnaces. I didn’t see power lines as we flew in, so I imagine everything is underground, but this seems like a big enough operation to provide electricity for more than one of the domed cities. It’s always a delicate dance for stations to create enough electricity but not too much. I’m guessing the infrastructure in here is as archaic as the method of generating electricity—” she waved to the men shoveling coal, “—and that it’s an on-demand system.”

  “Does that help us?”

  McCall hesitated. “It could. Let me think about our problem and get to know the layout of everything first. That doesn’t look like a prisoner up there, so it’s unlikely any of us will get stationed in the control room.”

  She sounded disappointed. Dash wondered what kind of havoc she could wreak if he could get her up there. He was encouraged that she knew something about how things worked here. All it felt like to him was a layer of one of the sun’s hells, like some Industrial Revolution scene from Old Earth where children toiled sixteen hours a day.

  “Well, well, well,” one of the coal men said, turning from his work to lean on his shovel as their group passed. He nudged another man stationed at the same furnace. “Couple of women.”

  His buddy grunted. “They’re old.”

  “Not that old.” The first man leered at McCall. “She would do.”

  Dash bristled and walked closer to McCall. She was so focused on looking around the plant, her eyes taking in the machinery and equipment rather than the workers, she didn’t seem to notice the workers or their attention. She did continue to absently fiddle with her bracelet as she gazed about, but Dash hadn’t observed that it was a nervous gesture—or only a nervous gesture. She seemed to habitually play with it.

  The two men jogged to the next station over, nudged two more men, and pointed at Dash’s group.

  Dash eyed their escort, wondering if he would stop trouble or if he would get out of the way and let the prisoners settle it among themselves.

  The clipboard man stopped in front of a furnace, the door shut and the fire inside burning low. A bin of coal rested next to it, two shovels thrust into it.

  “Got two spots available at this station. You can fight for who—” Their escort paused to frown at two men in prisoner uniforms walking up and whispering to each other. One was smothered in coal, but the other wasn’t. He carried a toolbox, so maybe there were other jobs one could be assigned down here.

  Dash snorted at the idea of staying here for years, doing one’s duty obediently, and working one’s way up the ranks to less draconian jobs.

  “Guard Thomas,” the toolbox carrier said, “you can’t put an old lady to work shoveling coal.” He saluted the guard with a wrench and also saluted Rose.

  Rose’s eyebrows twitched at the words old lady, but she did not speak. Dash sensed recognition from her, and he also thought he recognized the toolbox man. Someone else in the Alliance. Good. Dash would seek out the man later to chat, assuming the prisoners were given bunks and time to rest somewhere. He couldn’t imagine being chained to the furnace and told to sleep there, though he supposed it was possible. This wasn’t the Homerian Luxury Hotel in Perun Central.

  “I can so,” the clipboard man—Thomas—said. “She’s got hands, the same as everyone else.”

  “Nah, come on. I can show her the ropes for pipe repairs and how to test the gauges on the boilers for accuracy. We lost Haruto, so we need someone.”

  “We need more people on the furnaces,” Thomas said. “Overseer Holt said so.”

  “Looks like you got two able types right there.” The toolbox man waved his wrench at McCall and Dash.

  Dash almost commented, but movement behind him caught his eye. That group of men who’d said McCall would do had grown to six, and they were casually ambling in this direction.

  “I believe I would be better at such a job as monitoring gauges,” Rose said. “I don’t have any callouses for shovel work, so I’d be largely ineffective.”

  Thomas grunted but marked something on his clipboard. “Fine.”

  “We’ll show her the ropes,” the toolbox man repeated. “Come by and check up on us later if you need to.”

  “You know I need to.”

  The two men led Rose away. Dash hoped he wouldn’t have trouble finding her again later. Her and her new buddies if they truly were in the Alliance.

  “You ain’t gonna introduce us to the fresh meat, Tommy?” one of the grimy coal men asked, his group of six fanning out behind Thomas, McCall, and Dash.

  Thomas turned, a hand resting on his blazer. “You can handle your own introductions. I’m not a butler. Now, back off. You saw the lesson up there. You don’t want to be next.”

  “We know you only give lessons to people who screw with the guards. You all don’t care what we do to each other.”

  Dash wondered what occupation these brutes had held in their past lives that had earned them places in the plant. For that matter, what did occupations matter if most people here shoveled coal? Was more intellect needed for dumping it into the furnaces than for mining it? Other than gauges on the sides that indicated the heat level inside, Dash didn’t see a lot of sophistication to the equipment down here.

  “As long as the energy output stays up,” Thomas said. “We supply half the planet from here.”

  McCall’s eyes sharpened at that confirmation of her earlier statement.

  “People are counting on you,” Thomas added.

  Dash expected the men to snort derisively, but they all paused, their eyes growing glassy for a moment.

  “People are counting on you,” Thomas repeated. “Don’t forget it. If you’re going to screw around, do it during your off-time.”

  One man grunted. “Yeah, our copious off-time.”

  A buzzer went off, and McCall jumped.

  “Energy output has fallen off. Get back to your stations.” Thomas pulled his billy club off his belt and pointed at the row of furnaces.

  The men slunk off, but not before giving Dash and McCall long looks that promised they would meet again later. Dash sneered defiantly and did his best to look confident in his ability to pu
lverize them with his fists, mostly because he was sure fear would be preyed upon here. But he wasn’t confident that he could fight off six. Nor was he confident that there would only be six when they encountered the group again.

  “You’ve brainwashed them?” McCall asked Thomas when the others were out of earshot.

  “Just a little imprinting to make them more agreeable.” Thomas thwacked his clipboard against the coal bin. “Since you two are buddies, you can share the work here. Get this furnace burning hot. Temperature needs to stay in the yellow.”

  He pointed at the round gauge mounted near the furnace door. There were three zones painted in different colors, green for low, yellow for optimal, and red for dangerously hot. The needle currently rested at the bottom of the green. The gauge was as antiquated as everything else here.

  “If we need a—” Thomas looked at his clipboard, “—mechanic or an engineer of sewer systems, we’ll let you know.”

  McCall opened her mouth, perhaps to point out that wasn’t quite what she’d claimed her expertise was, but she closed it again. It probably didn’t matter. Though Dash’s humor was briefly piqued as he imagined a guard dragging her off to fix an overflowing toilet.

  “Get to work. Only six hours left until off-time. You’ve got a short day since you started late.”

  “Lucky us,” Dash said.

  Thomas ambled back in the direction of the elevator. The thugs shoveling coal into their furnaces watched him go, then smiled over at Dash and McCall.

  Dash wondered if the pack would wait until “off-time” to make a move. He also wondered how he would fight off so many of them. He looked in the direction Rose and her allies had gone, though they had disappeared from sight. Dash needed to make some friends down here and soon.

  “Definitely an on-demand system.” McCall ticked one of her short fingernails against the gauge.

  “Have you figured out how that can help us yet?”