by M. D. Cooper
Sam, Chab and Daria stood at the end of the corridor, watching her. Cara gave them another wave , then left the hab ring.
* * * * *
When the TSF hailed again, Cara responded from outside the Forward Momentum.
In the background noise of the channel, she heard Daria snicker.
Using her suit’s attitude thrusters, Cara rotated so she could look back on the Forward Momentum. The ship looked like an oil drum with engines from this distance, its scars and bumps smoothing as Cara moved farther away.
On the ship’s channel, Cara told Sam,
Checking the straps that fastened the weapons case to her utility harness, Cara answered,
Sam lit Furious Momentum’s main engine, followed by the two secondary thrusters, and blue and white flame stretched from the ship. The torch rippled in Cara’s faceshield, and then the Momentum was half-sized and receding, headed outsystem.
Cara turned so she was facing toward the TSF ship, a spear lined with spoked rings.
The commander grumbled and closed the channel. The TSF shuttle took fifteen minutes to reach her, followed by a grappling drone that grabbed the weapons case and pulled her back toward a waiting crew.
The silver flash of the shuttle grew in Cara’s faceshield, until its cargo door slid open on a brightly lit interior. The drone fired its thrusters, slowing them, matching spin with the shuttle, and then Cara’s view was flooded by light. She clamped her magboots down on the shuttle’s deck as two guards in EV suits grabbed her from either side.
Cara said.
The cargo door sealed. The environmental system hissed as the shuttle interior re-pressurized and filled with atmosphere. Cara’s HUD reported the air status.
The two guards unfastened the weapons case and attached it to the wall so it wouldn’t float around. Next, they pulled her hands around her back and handcuffed her. With another cargo strap, one of them attached her to the wall beside the case.
With her back to the wall, Cara glanced at the pilot’s seat, where another TSF soldier studied the controls.
Cara was surprised when the guard in front of her reached for her helmet and activated its release. The air tasted metallic as he pulled the helmet off her head.
The guards didn’t remove their helmets.
Cara snorted. She wouldn’t have dumped the atmosphere again. There was no point in wasting potential propellant.
The pilot took a large ring from his console and stood, turning so that Cara could see it was a collar.
she reminded him.
Another guard gripped her head so she couldn’t bite or turn away, and the pilot placed the collar around her throat. Cara was tense but she didn’t struggle. There wasn’t any point.
With a tap at the side of Cara’s throat, the suppression collar activated.
Nothing seemed changed at first. It wasn’t until she reached out to the local channel and found nothing, only the noise of her own thoughts, that Cara understood she was cut off from the outside world.
“And since I’m tired of listening to your smart-ass remarks,” the pilot said, voice muffled by his helmet, “let’s crank this thing up a bit.”
A buzzing sound built in the back of Cara’s head, a wave that grew into a tsunami. Before she could fully tell what was happening, a wall of white noise crashed over her mind, shutting out all thoughts.
PART 1 – PRISON
WHEELS
STELLAR DATE: 2.28.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: SolGov Senatorial Tower, Raleigh
REGION: High Terra, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
The final scene of the holoshow faded away, and Senator Folsom couldn’t help the smile that formed on his lips. Leaning back in his chair, he snapped his fingers, and a servitor slid a glass into his hand.
He brought the vessel before his face, still enjoying the small pleasures that came from being on High Terra. Glasses without lids being one of them.
Nothing like a smooth, consistent one g, he thought while taking a sip of the wine, savoring its flavor even more than the gravity that tugged him gently into his chair.
If Folsom were honest with himself, he would have admitted that full gravity was exhausting for his low-g-adapted body, but there was no way he was going to let anyone know that he felt uncomfortably heavy in the massive ring’s centripetally-induced gravity.
He rose from his chair and walked across his office—passing the words ‘Stars the Hard Way’ that hung in the air where the holoshow had been playing—to the wide, curved window, a breathtaking view of High Terra spread out beneath him.
It had taken more time to get used to so much openness than the gravity on the ring that encircled Earth. Eight hundred kilometers wide and wrapping around the planet at the geosynchronous orbital altitude, the ring had more usable surface area than the planet it encircled.
For someone who had grown up in the close confines of hollowed-out asteroids, the endless view took a lot of getting used to.
His gaze rose from the city of Diadem, seat of SolGov, to the planet that hung above, taking in Earth, the birthplace of humanity. The blue, green, and white marble may have spawned humans, but it offered no suggestions when it came to safeguarding their continued existence.
“No, that’s going to be on me,” Senator Folsom said. “Stars know that the rest of the senate isn’t going to do what’s necessary.”
For thirty years, the representatives comprising SolGov’s ruling body had gone round and round on the issue of the sentient AIs known as Psion, who had taken control of Ceres…. Even after the battle for Vesta, where Psion’s fleets had nearly taken the asteroid, inflicting heavy losses on both Terran and Marsian fleets before being driven back.
Too many in the
senate believed that the defeat handed to Psion at Vesta had been enough to show the AIs that they couldn’t stand against the combined might of the human militaries. They believed that Psion was no longer a threat.
Folsom knew that to be wrong. The attack on Vesta had been a probe, a test of how the human governments would respond, and what they would do following the attack.
It had been a diversion.
Turning back to his desk, he activated the console and greenlit the next phase of his operation.
I have a few diversions of my own in store.
CAUGHT IN THE HOWL
STELLAR DATE: 3.13.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Summerville Regional Justice Center, Jerhattan
REGION: Earth, Terran Hegemony InnerSol
The world vibrated, continuously out of focus. Sounds warped and murmured, and Inmate 2725 remembered nothing.
There was no escape from the buzzing that endlessly invaded and conquered her mind, as powerful a shackle as any iron.
She didn’t remember why she had entered the prison, but she no longer cared. Her crime no longer mattered. Concentrating through the buzzing was effort better spent on survival: food, sleep, walking the four steps across her cell.
When the bells clanged, her cell door slid open, and she joined the line of prisoners shuffling down to the work floor, where the buzz shifted, allowing enough focus for her to perform the tasks that varied every day.
When the work was finished, the buzz intensified, sapping all her remaining strength, and she followed the line back to her cell. Twice a day, a meal brick slid through the slot in her cell door, and she gnawed it like a rat.
When it was time to sleep, lights went out, and the mental haze shifted, dropping her immediately into unconsciousness. If she wasn’t already lying on her metal bed, she might collapse in the middle of the plascrete cell, waking from heavy sleep only when her neural net’s suppression adjusted for the new day.
Guards and other inmates were faceless blurs. The walls and floor vibrated around her whenever she left her cell. The world was a frantic scribble that never ended, colors muted and indistinct. If she had been able to hold thoughts in her mind, she might have smashed her head against a wall until consciousness failed, freeing her.
She had no idea how long she had been trapped in the mental shackles. For Inmate 2725, the thought of a present, past or future was lost in the constant vertigo. When she closed her eyes, the buzzing intensified, forcing her back into the vibrating world so that even her own head was no escape.
If she looked down at her body, she might have realized it was different than she remembered. She had never been tall, but now she was lean as a pit fighter, honed by the controlled diet and constant labor. Some days, her arms ached; others, her legs throbbed. At other times, she might squint to focus on her fingers and find them covered in fine scratches. Reality was no longer hers.
Her name had been swallowed by the buzz. She could look down at the number on her blue overalls and read her nomenclature. If she thought to do it, she sometimes read numbers on the chests of other inmates, but the information slid off her mind and failed to connect in any meaningful way.
When she slept, the buzzing took on voices she barely recognized. People shouted from other rooms. Words slid up the back of her neck, taunting her while avoiding her ears. Understanding escaped her. She knew people were talking to her, but she couldn’t understand meaning or emotion. She floated in a white space washed in sizzling noise. When memories did surface, faces were scratched out as if by an angry child. She was alone and empty.
She followed orders to wash her face, empty her bowels, change her overalls. She scraped her teeth across the hard surface of the meal bricks. She exercised and sat in the middle of the floor for days, facing the cell door.
Inmate 2725 was sitting on her metal bed, facing the opposite wall, when the slot in the door opened. She turned her head to watch a blurry red square fall through the opening. She noted object and tried to focus on the door, but the buzz in her head rose in a wave, overwhelming her.
What had she done wrong? Pressure built in her mind as the sound rose. She pressed her hands to the sides of her head and went to her knees on the floor. She squeezed her eyes closed, the sound pulsing against her eyelids. When she opened her eyes, she clearly saw a book with a plain red cover on the floor next to the door.
The book was crisply outlined. It hung in her vision like a lens, revealing a distant object. The world around the book still swam and jittered.
On her hands and knees, Inmate 2725 crawled toward the book. When she reached it, she slowly touched it with a trembling index finger. It was solid. The book was real.
Something about the book felt familiar. There were words on the cover, but she couldn’t make sense of them, though they were legible.
Having touched the book, she pulled back, sitting on her knees in the middle of the cell floor. She didn’t fear someone finding the book, exactly. It had never occurred to her to feel fear in the prison; the change was that she could make a small plan at all, that she could worry about her safety.
She tilted her head, staring at the book, and realized the buzzing in her mind had grown quieter.
She slid a half-meter closer to the book on her knees, and her mind was silent.
Inmate 2725 looked around the cell, seeing it clearly for what might have been the first time. The walls were the same grey plascrete she had always known, but now they were smooth and sharply delineated. She made out seams in the wall panels. She studied the sink and toilet as if she had never seen such marvels. A glowing drip of water hung from the faucet like a jewel.
She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself. She turned her attention back to the book.
Sliding backward, she experimented moving away from the book until the buzz started to rise again. The walls shimmered, and in another few centimeters, her mind roiled with vertigo.
It was the book. It was counteracting the prison’s control effect.
As she neared the book again, a sound on the other side of her door caught her attention. Someone was walking outside. She couldn’t remember having heard the scrape of a boot on plascrete so clearly…. In the same thought, she knew that wasn’t true. Her mind felt like an atrophied muscle. Her thoughts moved stiffly, words didn’t come quickly. There were no memories to draw on, though she knew that had to exist. They couldn’t have wiped her memory, could they?
The sound of boots grew closer. They were approaching her cell.
Without thinking, she grabbed the book and crushed it against her abdomen. She quickly unfastened her overalls and slid the book against her stomach as she sat on the metal bed. Its cover was warm against her bare skin.
For the first time that she could recall, the door to her cell slid open without the clang of a bell to command her upright.
Inmate 2725 sat on the metal bed and stared straight ahead, imagining the vibrating world, though the man that walked into her view was plainly visible.
She had almost forgotten what a human face looked like.
The man was wearing a grey uniform with a pistol at his hip. He had a heavy forehead with dark brows. She noted these details while staring forward, keeping her eyes unfocused.
The man stood with his hands in the small of his back, looking around the cell as if she were a statue. When his attention finally reached her, he squared off in front of her, adjusting his stance. He put his hands on his hips, looking down at her. There was a knife in a black sheath on his belt, opposite the pistol. The knife’s pommel was silver, in the shape of a cobra’s head.
He reached out and placed a hand against the side of her face. He touched her with a familiarity that filled her with confusion and then disgust. His hands quickly moved to the throat of her overalls and he unfastened the closure.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the cell door still open.
The book burned against her stomach.
The man pulled the
top of her coverall open and dragged his fingers down her throat to her clavicle. In a violent motion, he wrenched her coverall open wider and groped her hungrily with cold hands.
The phrase entered her mind with the clarity of a bright blue sky. In a lightning strike between thoughts, she knew she could perform the task, and then decided she wanted to.
Inmate 2725’s hand shot across the guard’s body, catching the handle of the knife in a reverse grip and drawing it free in a single motion. Blade down, she pulled the knife hard into the man’s side, just above his pelvis. A second jerk sank the blade to its hilt.
The man sputtered, eyes wide. He yanked his hands out of her overalls as he stumbled backward, grabbing for the blade’s handle.
She didn’t need to be told. Inmate 2725 drove her shoulder into the guard’s back, driving him against the wall. The sink caught him in the abdomen, and he bent over, grunting. She pulled his pistol free and pushed its muzzle against the back of his head. The man was already sliding into unconsciousness, blood running freely down his side. He slipped against the sink and sat heavily on the floor, legs straight in front of him. He had taken on the dazed expression that Inmate 2725 imagined she had worn just minutes before.
Leaving the guard on the floor, she quickly inspected the weapon she’d taken from him. It was a standard pulse pistol with half a charge.
She was about to walk through the open door when she paused to fasten the front of her overalls, shifting the book so it was snug against her waist. She listened for a few seconds, then cast a glance around the cell, which looked smaller now that she could see it clearly. How much of her life had she wasted here?
Despite the new clarity, her mind still felt stiff, a blank room lined by locked doors.
Holding the book against her body with her free hand, Inmate 2725 took the pistol off safe-mode and left her prison cell.