Breakout

by David Ryker

  And he could feel a rictus grin frozen on his face as he watched the carnage below. This was good. This was right.

  “What the fuck?!”

  Quinn felt the floor turn upside down for an instant as Maggott’s deep bass voice startled him out of his reverie. He grabbed onto a handle in the wall for balance while Bishop and Schuster also pitched forward in their seats. They all seemed to be emerging from the same dream, blinking uncomprehendingly, their chests heaving.

  “Are you all right?” Quinn croaked. “What happened?”

  Schuster’s eyes were wide. “I just had the craziest dream…” he breathed.

  “Me too,” said Bishop, running a shaking hand over his shaved skull.

  Maggott was practically vibrating, but hadn’t said a word since his outburst. Quinn thought he’d never seen the man look so shaken before, even in the heat of battle. Rivers of sweat streamed down his forehead into his thick, pelt-like eyebrows.

  “Stand down, Maggot,” Quinn said softly. “Rah?”

  The big man nodded. “Yeah, I got it,” he said, his voice thin and breathy.

  Quinn looked over at Kergan and Sloane, who stood expressionless, scanning the cargo hold.

  “Attenuation achieved,” said Kergan. “These four are failures. Leave them.”

  For fuck’s sake, Quinn thought shakily. We save their lives and he calls us failures.

  The other men didn’t seem to hear the guard. A few seconds later, Kergan and Sloane left for the cockpit without another word, leaving the men alone to deal with the aftermath of their visions.

  It wouldn’t be until much later that Quinn understood what Kergan’s words had actually meant.

  4

  The food the prisoners were served on Oberon One—mostly seaweed and tofu pretending to be something else—tasted like shit at the best of times. Quinn and his men had learned to deal with it, just like the rest of the inmates, but something was different this time. Even now, hours after they’d returned from the surface, none of them had touched their evening meals. Even Maggott, who could usually put away two helpings, simply drew circles in the slop with his fork. The other two hadn’t touched their utensils since they’d sat down in the mess hall.

  “I just can’t shake it,” said Bishop. “It seemed so real, y’know?”

  Quinn nodded. They had compared notes earlier and discovered that their visions were eerily similar, though the details varied. Where Quinn had been mowing down unarmed innocents with his MAG-7, Schuster had been watching wolves tear apart terrified people on the streets of Mumbai. Maggott had seen himself dropping a huge boulder on a man’s head. Geordie Bishop, the most quintessentially Canadian person Quinn had ever met, had watched himself drowning puppies in a water ration can, laughing the entire time. Quinn knew his friend well enough to realize just how badly that must have shaken him.

  The mess hall, like all central areas on Oberon One, was laid out in a circle due to the centrifuge that supplied the station’s pseudo-gravity. The center was walled off, with a locked access hatch that allowed zero-G travel between the various levels. There were twenty molded polycarbonate tables in the mess, room enough for up to eighty of the hundred and seventeen inmates to eat at once, so each meal had two sittings. Food was dispensed from wall units that were fed by a zero-G dumbwaiter sending the food up from the kitchen below, so that there was no interaction between the cooking staff and the inmates.

  Above them, a mezzanine allowed for officers to keep an eye on their charges below. Everyone who worked on the station was technically designated as a guard, in order to be allowed to carry a weapon, though the ones who actually dealt with the inmates were classified as “officers.” They were the ones who maintained order, by any means necessary.

  “I haven’t seen Kergan since we got back,” Quinn said in the hopes of changing the subject away from their nightmares.

  He glanced up at the mezzanine and saw Holden and Tait, a pair who were often assigned together, in their brown uniforms. Each carried a stubby shock rifle that fired balls of electrically-charged metal dust, which could incapacitate a man instantly. Each weapon was keyed to the thumbprint of a particular officer so that inmates couldn’t use them in the event of an altercation.

  “Maybe the warden chewed him out and put him on report,” said Bishop, obviously relieved by the distraction.

  “I doubt it,” said Schuster. “Farrell doesn’t give a shit about putting us in danger. If what I think happened actually happened, he probably gave Kergan a promotion for uncovering a potential mother lode.”

  It was well known among inmates that most officers lusted after higher positions in the SkyLode corporation, and that their jobs were the best way to get their foot in the door. That translated in a number of ways: some of them were constantly distracted because they were trying to think up ways to impress the warden, while others went out of their way to be exceptionally cruel taskmasters to the prisoners because they believed it was the only way to get noticed. Kergan was one of the latter.

  Quinn spooned some of the green slop from his tray into his mouth. He thought he was past being appalled by the taste, but no, it still got to him, and he grimaced.

  “P’rticularly lovely today, innit?” Maggott grinned. “Just like me Nan used to make when I was a lad. I ‘ated her.”

  Quinn grinned in spite of the horror in his mouth. He knew Maggott had adored the grandmother who raised him until she passed away when he was fourteen. After that, he’d lived on the streets of London, fighting to survive in the aftermath of the Great Meltdown that had devastated the U.K.’s economy for the better part of a generation. His size, of course, helped a great deal. His Nan had told him he was descended from Reivers, a line of giant Scots who raided along the border between their country and England for centuries.

  “I’d give my left nut for some curry,” Schuster sighed before wrinkling his nose and stuffing a spoonful into his mouth. Quinn thought if he had a dollar for every time he’d heard that, he could bribe his way off the station.

  “Hell, I’d settle for maple syrup,” said Bishop. “Anything that could cover up that stanky seaweed taste.”

  “They call it umami,” Quinn said with mock gravity. “It’s a delicacy. People on Earth would kill for what we’re eating right now.”

  “Wouldn’t ‘ave to kill me,” said Maggott. “I’d spoon it into their bloody mouth for ‘em.”

  It was the usual banter among the Jarheads, as their group was known by the other inmates. Joking helped pass the time on Oberon One, and God knew the four of them had nothing but time on their hands. They’d been tried and sentenced together after the events that led to their court martial at the end of the Trilateral War. The fact that they were innocent hadn’t stopped the hastily-formed tribunal from convicting them of gross dereliction of duty in a trial that lasted a single day. And they were far from the only prisoners on Oberon One who were victims of the same kangaroo courts.

  Those had been strange, dark days at the end of the war, when politicians and oligarchs jockeyed for position in the fragile new government that was formed out of what was left of the three factions. Quinn and his men had all served in the Marines of the United Free Territories, an alliance between the United States, Canada, Mexico, Western Europe and China. The other two factions were the Allied States, which consisted of Eastern Europe, Russia, Western Asia and South America, and the Indus Alliance, a partnership between Australia, Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea and India. Africa and the Middle East had been consumed by their own internal strife for decades and had been left largely out of the war. Quinn often thought that, if the world had still relied on fossil fuels, those two blocs would have had no choice but to pick a side or risk being conquered. But the advent of cold fusion in the 2050s had changed the game completely.

  The alliances had all formed during the Trade Wars of the late 2060s and early 2070s, which saw the divide between the rich and the poor widen to a point that modern society had never seen befo
re. A relatively small number of corporations controlled the economy and constantly fought for supremacy, while the middle class moved from their suburban homes into increasingly smaller urban apartments, where they spent their days plugged into cortical reality to escape the real thing. Mechanization had led to massive unemployment worldwide, leaving billions to scrounge out a living on the chaotic streets that were crawling with organized crime, poverty and violence.

  That was where each faction’s military invariably drew their troops from, with the promise of three hots and a cot. Napoleon Quinn and his companions had all been raised in poverty; Quinn himself was from New York City, which, except for Manhattan, had been left little more than a slum in the aftermath of the Trade Wars. Geordie Bishop grew up in slightly better circumstances in Montreal, but his family had still been packed into a tiny apartment and were always one day away from the streets.

  The war had given all of them a purpose, and they’d all risen to it. They fought gloriously, like warriors born, and for a while, it seemed as if they might escape their pasts and carve out a life in the new world that was emerging after the armistice. But it was all snatched away from them in a day, and now, two years later, they were here, in a station orbiting a moon almost two billion miles from Earth.

  And they were eating slop.

  Maggott took a deep breath and shoveled the remains of his tray into his wide mouth. He was a huge man with a correspondingly huge appetite, and it had to be fed, taste buds be damned. The others followed suit, reluctantly accepting the fact that they’d regret it later if they didn’t. It would be another six hours before they’d eat again.

  Quinn had just stuffed his last forkful into his mouth when something connected with the back of his head and sent it pitching forward toward his tray. He caught himself an instant before his nose connected with the remains of his food. As always, his natural response was to turn and confront the person who had attacked him, but, as always in Oberon One, the urge passed just as quickly. Rational thought kept you alive in prison, while gut reactions could kill you.

  He saw Maggott bolt up from the table, a snarl on his wide face.

  “I’ll fookin’ kill ye, bitch,” he growled.

  Quinn got to his feet just as quickly and held up a hand. “Belay that, Corporal! Sit down.”

  Maggott’s eyes flashed hotly, but he followed orders and took his seat again next to Schuster. Bishop watched the situation with a wary eye, and Quinn knew his SIC was ready to act if need be.

  “Goodness, did I do that?” said a sing-song voice from behind Quinn. “Me so solly.”

  Quinn bunched his hands into fists and then stretched them out again as he turned to face the source of his irritation, a woman in an inmate’s jumpsuit that fit her like a saddle on a sow, who barely came to his chin and weighed about as much as Maggott’s left leg. She was flanked by a pair of women about the same size, and all three of them were giggling like schoolgirls. To an outside observer, it would have looked like a schoolyard case of girls teasing some boys they secretly liked—assuming they were all in prison, that is.

  But Quinn knew nothing could be further from the truth. He leveled a steely gaze into the middle woman’s huge, dark eyes.

  “Today isn’t the day to test me, Sally,” he said in a flat voice. “This can end now and nobody will get hurt.”

  Sally’s mouth stretched from a tiny dot below her sharp nose to a wide grin that spread almost across her entire face. Like her companions, she had been genetically modified and surgically altered to resemble the perfect Manga female. The effect had unnerved Quinn the first time they crossed paths, but he barely noticed it anymore.

  “None of us will get hurt no matter what,” she said sweetly. “So why would I not test you?”

  “Kergan isn’t here to protect you today.” He turned his body slightly so that his left side was hidden from the women’s line of sight.

  “Kergan is useful in keeping us off report, but we don’t need him to win a fight. You know that.”

  Unfortunately, Quinn did know that. Known as Senpai Sally, the woman was the leader of a small cadre of inmates called the Yanderes who, like her, had been physically modified and rigorously trained by a shadow arm of the Indus Alliance military from an early age to be the perfect honey trap agents. Their svelte frames hid wiry strength, and they had years of martial arts training that made them the equal of just about any male on Oberon One.

  And despite their coquettish demeanor, they were borderline psychotic.

  Quinn thought fast. “It’s four against three. We have the advantage.”

  Sally’s grin widened to the point where it all but bisected the lower half of her face. The effect used to rattle Quinn to the point of distraction, but not anymore.

  “Then what’s the problem?” she asked. “Come on, big boy. Give it to me.”

  All right, he thought with a sigh. You asked for it.

  His left hand emerged from his hidden side clutching the polycarbonate fork that had come with his tray of food. It sailed toward the woman’s huge eye with the practiced thrust of a trained assassin, but she’d been expecting it and easily pivoted to her right so that it sailed harmlessly through the space where her head used to be.

  Quinn had anticipated the move and stepped forward to keep himself balanced. The move had been a distraction so that his men could get into position, and it worked: Schuster leapt to Quinn’s side while Bishop and Maggott took on the pair on either side of Sally.

  After two years inside, these types of altercations were second nature to them all. Someone did something you didn’t like, you challenged them. If you were challenged, you fought back. Quinn and crew didn’t instigate fights, but they had no problem finishing them. They sometimes hobbled away, bent and bloody, but they had never been defeated.

  As soon as they saw what was happening, the two dozen or so other inmates in the mess quickly rose from their seats and circled the combatants, shouting encouragement. Boredom was rampant on Oberon One, and watching the daily beat-down was about as good a substitute for a cortical reality video as they were going to get in lock-up. It also kept the guards in the mezzanine from having an easy sightline to the fight, which prevented them from ending it early with a charged blast from their rifles. Not that most of the guards ever bothered—they were usually more than happy to let the prisoners work things out themselves and send in the medics afterwards as needed.

  Kergan was the exception to that rule. He actively intervened in any altercations he saw, and he always managed to work in a few shots of his own during the altercation. He knew full well the inmates wouldn’t dare strike back.

  Maggott tried to grab his opponent in a bear hug, but she darted out of reach easily. While he was off-balance, she used his knees as a stepladder and climbed him like a monkey, stopping when she’d planted her feet firmly on his hips and grabbed the collar of his jumpsuit with both hands.

  Realization dawned in his face a fraction of a second too late, as the woman brought her forehead down on a steep angle and drove it into the bridge of his nose with a sickening crack.

  To Quinn’s right, Dev Schuster was blocking a flurry of blows from the woman he was covering. She was taller than the others, matching him in height, and shouted a piercing “kiai!” with every strike. Schuster may have been the brains of their group, but he was no slouch in a fight and was holding his own. That gave Quinn and Bishop the opportunity to team up on Sally, who was by far the deadliest of the gang.

  She circled around them like a jungle cat, her huge eyes never leaving theirs. Quinn knew he and Bishop were on the defensive—her speed was naturally enhanced to a degree far beyond their own, and she’d been trained since she was a toddler. The only saving grace Quinn had noticed in their previous altercations was that Sally didn’t appear to have a taste for blood; all she wanted was a good fight, and once she’d satisfied that urge, she’d move on. If that meant some bruises for him and his men, it was a small price to pay.

>   But he was determined that they’d get their own shots in first.

  Quinn nodded almost imperceptibly, but Bishop picked up on it instantly and headed for Sally’s blind side. She turned toward him with the speed of a striking cobra, which gave Quinn his opening. While she was occupied with snapping her right foot into Bishop’s left knee, Quinn dropped to the floor and swept at her supporting leg with his arm. It was too late for his friend—Quinn heard the blow connect, followed by a sharp yelp of pain—but it had the desired effect. Sally’s standing leg flew upwards until her body leveled out horizontally before dropping to her back on the stainless steel floor. A whoofing sound escaped her as the air was knocked out of her lungs.

  Bishop was on the floor as well, clutching at his knee and grimacing, but Maggott had made some progress with his own opponent. He had her short hair clutched in one of his fists as she rained ineffective blows down on his massive arm. He twisted her back and forth to keep her from getting her footing and launching a kick at his groin. Schuster was still managing to block two strikes out of three, though he had a trickle of blood running from his nose, and it looked like his opponent was starting to tire out. With luck, all three would be ready to pack it in soon and move on.

  Quinn faced Sally, who had somehow kipped back onto her feet despite having the wind knocked out of her, and raised his fists to either side of his head in a ready stance. But before he could think about his next move, he saw movement from the corner of his eye. He had a split-second to decide whether it was worth taking his eyes off Sally to see what this new sight was, and he chose to ignore it. If an attack was imminent from his blind spot, he had to have faith that one of his men would catch it. If not, he’d go down.