by David Ryker
“We need to exploit the situation created on the surface of the moon as a result of the meteorite strikes. I need your assistance to do so.”
So much for the emergency, Schuster thought. Not that it surprised him. It would have been stranger if it actually had been a real emergency, given how fishy everything seemed. He didn’t know Sloane personally, but they had interacted before and the technician had seemed nice enough for someone who held the keys to your cell, so to speak. Even made jokes on occasion. Now he was talking like an artificial intelligence module.
“So what exactly is the situation on the surface?” Schuster asked. Might as well keep prompting him, since he seemed to be in a chatty mood. “Did the strikes uncover a major palladium deposit?”
“No.”
Schuster raised his eyebrows to indicate he was waiting for more information, but Sloane ignored him. Apparently, this wasn’t going to be as simple as he had hoped.
“Uh… what did it uncover?”
“Something I need.” Sloane swiped away the holo image he’d been studying and pointed to a terminal in the nearby wall. “Use that work station to begin detailed mineral scans of the craters. We need data for another excursion to the surface to begin preparation for extraction.”
“What am I looking for?” Schuster asked as he sat in the hard polycarbonate chair that was bolted to the floor in front of the terminal.
Sloane’s eyes cleared for just a moment, and Schuster thought he saw a flash of the old Sloane in them.
“Something very unusual,” he said with a small, cryptic smile.
9
The single comms booth for inmates was located off the infirmary on the station’s fourth level. It looked somewhat like the terminal Dev Schuster was currently using: a screen, a control panel and a single polycarbonate chair, bolted to the floor. It wasn’t used often, since the process of messaging back and forth with Earth was painfully slow, even using cutting edge quantum teleportation technology. And many of the inmates had no one back home to talk to, anyway.
Geordie Bishop folded himself into the chair and waved at the panel to close the hatch behind him, leaving his guard escort in the corridor. Privacy was one of the few rights prisoners hadn’t lost as a result of the armistice, though Bishop guessed it wouldn’t have mattered if they had. If SkyLode gave a shit about monitoring inmates, they’d simply do it. It wasn’t like anyone could interfere—Earth was months away—and no one back home cared about prisoners anyway. Anyone with money was too deep inside the fantasies being beamed into their cerebral cortexes, and the billions without money were too busy trying to stay alive on the mean streets of the world’s teeming slums, or scratching food out of the depleted soil between megacities.
The screen twitched to life with blocky pixels as Bishop activated the comms link. This particular quantum teleportation technology was patented by SkyLode, which had poured billions into its development since communication with Earth was critical. The prisoners were allowed to piggyback on a signal at designated times during the station’s twenty-eight-hour cycle, though the quality usually left something to be desired.
An oval-shaped object shimmered for several seconds before solidifying into the pale, open face of Ellie Rosenberg. She was smiling, but Bishop thought it didn’t quite reach her green eyes. Her long auburn hair fluttered in the breeze that always seemed to blow on the city floor. In the background behind the old public comms terminal she was using, Bishop could see people wandering in the smog that choked the lower levels of Old Montreal.
“Hey, baby,” she said softly. Seeing her made his heart crack, and he bit down on the emotion with everything he had. It was times like this that really drove home the fact that he wasn’t just away on some mission for the Marines anymore. He was locked away for life, two billion miles from her.
“Hey,” he croaked. “Just wanted to see your face. You look good.”
There was a delay of several seconds before she responded. Even with cutting-edge technology, communications still weren’t instantaneous.
“So do you,” she said. “But you need a haircut—must be close to a quarter-inch long by now.”
He smiled and ran a hand along his close-cropped scalp. “I’ve decided to explore my horizons now that the war is over. How are things?”
Another delay and then her own smile faltered a bit. He knew instantly what she was going to say.
“Mama’s in the hospice,” she sighed. “Had to happen. There just isn’t enough food to go around.”
Ellie and her younger sister, Marion, had been taking care of their mother since the outbreak of influenza that struck the eastern seaboard of America and Canada in the first year of the war. It had travelled inland like a wildfire before World Disease Control created a massive quarantine zone that ran south all the way from Quebec to Mississippi. They managed to prevent a pandemic and create a vaccine, but there was no cure for the ones already infected.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is she comfortable?”
Another pause. “As comfortable as you can be in the hospice, I suppose. They get food and water, but they’re eight to a room now. A lot of them are near the end.” She swallowed hard and tossed her auburn bangs out of her eyes. “D’you mind if we talk about something else instead?”
“Sure. Like what?”
“The Adventures of Geordie and the Jarheads. What are you guys up to?”
It was moments like this that made Bishop wonder if the real reason inmates rarely used the comms was because they had nothing to talk about. “What have you been up to? Oh, you know, sitting in my cell, mining the moon. You? Just trying to work for food, keeping away from the rape gangs. Same old, same old.”
He wondered again whether there was any chance he was being monitored. Quinn had told him to be discreet in how he chose his words with Ellie. That wasn’t anything new, though—he’d had to do the same thing for five years during the war.
“We had a little action on the surface a few days ago,” he said. “Couple meteorites hit near us. Just about took out the Raft we’d come down in.”
Her image pixelated for a moment before coming back into focus. A few moments later, he saw her eyes widen.
“Whoa. You guys okay?”
“Just another fun day on Oberon.” He shrugged and glanced at the clock set into the screen. His five minutes were almost up. “Hey, El, can I get you to do something for me?”
Another pause, then: “Of course.”
“Can you check in on the Major for us? We’ve been wondering if he’s okay these days. We haven’t talked to him for a long time.”
She frowned. “Do you think he’d even recognize me? I’ve only talked to him a couple of times on video.”
“I’m sure he would. When you reach him, can you tell him to contact the station’s comms people?”
She nodded. Ellie knew that only approved people were allowed to send or receive calls to Oberon One. Inmates couldn’t just call whoever they wanted, and the general public definitely wasn’t allowed to just call in to the station. The technology was too expensive for SkyLode to let people use it whenever they felt like it, without paying.
“Sure,” she said. “Might take awhile, though. We lowly Earthlings don’t have access to SkyLode tech, Mr. Fancy Astronaut.”
Bishop grinned to mask the stab in his heart. “Nothing but the best for the folks on Oberon One.”
Ellie shook her head in mock exasperation, then sobered quickly. “Geordie, are you okay? Seriously, now.”
He knew he had to respond immediately or force her to wait even longer than she had to for the signal delay.
“I’m fine,” he lied. “Just miss you is all.”
“I miss you, too. And I’ll call the Major for you.”
“Thanks, babe. I love—”
The screen went blank before he could finish. His time was up. He sighed and motioned to open the hatch, then joined the guard in the corridor. As always, he felt cheated at the end of the call, and impotent beca
use he couldn’t do anything about it.
But as the guard escorted him back to the common area, he experienced something he hadn’t felt for a long time: hope. He’d accomplished his assignment, small as it was, and it felt good.
10
Oberon One’s gymnasium was designed specifically for people enduring long-term space travel, which essentially meant that SkyLode wanted its captive labor force to stay in the best shape possible for decades to come.
Because of the varying levels of artificial gravity on the station, all the exercise equipment was based on resistance rather than weight, and all the machines were bolted to either the floor or the wall. Treadmill tracks were built right into the floor itself, and there was a jungle gym apparatus near the lower-gravity center of the room for practicing how to get in and out of zero-G environments. Like the mess, the gym had a mezzanine level where a pair of guards stood watch.
The inmates usually stripped down to their underclothes to work out, and because the air couldn’t be vented outside, the gym tended to smell like a jar of farts stored in a locker full of dirty socks. The odor hit Quinn the way it always did as they walked in, though Maggott didn’t seem to notice. Then again, he usually didn’t smell much better himself.
It was 1400 hours, the time when Quinn knew certain key inmates would be in the gym with their entourages. He and the Jarheads usually reserved their workouts for early morning, in part because it was their habit from the Marines, but also because Quinn preferred to stay away from prison politics as much as he could.
Today, though, he was ready to dive right into the middle of them. He had no choice.
Maggott lifted his chin toward a dozen bald men who were taking turns on a group of spring-loaded pulley machines. These were the Southern Saints, a multiracial gang that was affiliated with an organized crime syndicate of the same name that spanned the southern half of the old United States. The Saints ruled the slums from the devastated wastelands of Nebraska through what was left of the Gulf Coast and into northern Mexico. Members—even their handful of female ones—showed their fealty to the Saints by keeping their heads and eyebrows shaved clean.
Their leader was a dude in his thirties known by the single name Ulysses. His dark copper skin and pale blue eyes hinted at a mixed ancestry, but no one seemed to know anything about his history. He ignored Maggott’s greeting and kept on straining against the cables that were putting his ropy arms to the test as his underlings watched and waited for their turns. Quinn had expected as much; Ulysses didn’t acknowledge members of other gangs, or anyone else he considered beneath him.
Ulysses’ chief lieutenant, a Latino fellow named Ruiz, nodded to show that the Saints recognized the Jarheads and they weren’t looking for trouble. He was almost as big as Maggott, but most of it was fat as opposed to hard slab muscle. Ruiz was the only inmate on the station who regularly went back for thirds of the slop they served in the mess.
In the center of the gym were the remainder of the Yandares, who were down to fewer than twenty members now. As far as Quinn knew, the two who had been taken away by Kergan and Sloane after the fight in the mess hall hadn’t returned. That didn’t really surprise Quinn.
Sally was doing an acrobatics routine in the lower gravity that was oddly elegant, given her psychotic nature and natural knack for violence. Quinn thought again that she looked somehow different after what had happened with the visions during their fight. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but she seemed almost diminished somehow, like a feral dog that’s been cowed into submission by abuse. The other Yandares looked bored as they went through their regimen of climbing ladders with just their hands, and switching from horizontal to vertical positions and back again.
The other thirty or so inmates in the gym represented the rest of the prison’s half-dozen alliances and smaller gangs. These were people who were aligned with each other, but also affiliated to a certain degree with either the Saints or the Yandares. Basically, they were considered to be under the protection of the larger gang in exchange for helping out in a fight and pledging their loyalty. Female inmates tended to gravitate toward the Yandares, but not exclusively. Both gangs were equal-opportunity employers, though all the official members of the Yandares were women who had served together on Earth during the war.
Out of Oberon One’s two hundred or so inmates, the Jarheads were the only group that was completely autonomous. It took more than a year’s worth of bruises and black eyes to get to that point, but Quinn and his men had finally let everyone on the station know that they didn’t consider themselves part of the general population. They weren’t criminals, despite their circumstances, and they weren’t going to align themselves with criminals, no matter what.
Until today, Quinn thought, frowning.
At least he wouldn’t be picking one side over the other. He just hoped that what he was about to do didn’t backfire and end up with the others ganging up against him and his men. The Jarheads could take on any of the inmates on Oberon One, but they couldn’t take on all of them.
Ruiz and a couple of the other Saints crossed their arms over their chests and sneered as Quinn and Maggott strolled over to them. Quinn knew it was just a show, but he also knew that they were ready to back it up if need be. He stopped a few yards from Ulysses, who stared past them as he finished his reps. His skin glistened like black marble under a sheen of perspiration, outlining every muscle and making him look like a statue of some forgotten warrior of another age.
Quinn waited passively for the leader of the Saints to acknowledge him while Maggott stood in his own intimidating stance to keep up appearances. Finally, after another couple of minutes, Ulysses let the cable handles drop and grabbed a small towel from Ruiz’s hands to wipe the sweat from his scalp.
“Why you botherin’ me, Bubba?” he said in his exaggerated West Texas drawl. “You need protection from them Yandares? I heard they’s whoopin yer Jarhead asses these days.”
Quinn kept his composure. It was all posturing; this was as much a show as a conversation.
“It was more of a stalemate,” he said evenly. “We gave as good as we got.”
Ulysses flashed a wide grin. “Yeah, cept I heard it was three on four.”
“Then you also heard that it ended up with two of those three being taken away by Kergan and one of the techies, Sloane.”
Quinn thought he saw something flash behind Ulysses’ eyes for just a moment.
“So what?” Ulysses shrugged and pitched the towel back to Ruiz, who caught it awkwardly. “That’s two less pains in my ass. ‘Sides, Kergan was probably just gettin’ some tail.”
It was an open secret that guards and inmates of both genders hooked up for various reasons, not the least of which was the isolation of space. But it was always consensual as far as Quinn knew. Favors were exchanged, sure, but no one got physically hurt.
“This was different,” he said. “Something happened to them before they were taken away. To all of us.”
Ulysses snickered. “Don’t go cryin’ on me, sugar. I just dried m’self off.”
A casual observer might have thought Ulysses’ response was charming, with his Southern drawl and devil-may-care tone. But Quinn heard the menace underneath it, and knew the man well enough to understand what he was really saying: Get to the point, asshole.
“You’ve seen Sally since the incident,” he said. “Does she seem like her usual self to you?”
Ulysses’ eyes narrowed. “Why do y’all think I give a single shit about the Yandares? I’d put Sally’s lights out right now if them guards wasn’t up there lookin’ at us.”
That was bluster, Quinn knew, but he also understood the point. The different gangs tolerated each other at best; they were far from being allies, and light years from being friends. Quinn knew what he had to do next: he raised a hand and motioned for Maggott to walk away. The big man did as he was ordered, leaving Quinn alone with half a dozen Saints. They all looked at Ulysses, confused by what
had just happened.
“You got a death wish, boy? You just burnt up your insurance policy.” He put the emphasis on the first syllable of insurance.
“I need you to listen,” Quinn said earnestly. “You may not like me, Ulysses, but I think you respect me. I’m a straight shooter, and I don’t get involved in prison yard political bullshit. I came to you because you’re as close to a leader as I’m going to find in this shithole.”
Ulysses eyed him silently, which Quinn took as agreement.
“I think we should talk about this alone,” he said. “Just you and me.”
“Uh-uh,” said Ruiz, puffing out his flabby chest. “No way.”
Ulysses turned to face the big man. “Get lost,” he said. “Now.”
For just a moment Ruiz looked like he might protest, but then he and the others ambled off toward the workout ropes, leaving Quinn and Ulysses alone. Above them, Quinn saw the guards—Boychuk, a musclebound but amiable meathead, and Ridley, an athletic brunette whom he might have found attractive if she wasn’t a sadistic bitch—glance in their direction for a second before turning their attention elsewhere.
“You got two minutes to impress me,” said Ulysses. “Then I’m gonna call those boys back and they gonna whoop you and that walkin’ tree you came in with.”
“Fair enough.” Quinn leaned in close. “This all started when the Jarheads went to the surface with Kergan and Sloane.”
He recounted the events on the moon and followed with what had happened in the mess hall afterwards. Ulysses listened intently but said nothing. When he had finished, Quinn wasn’t sure how the man would react. If Ulysses believed him, he’d have a powerful ally. If not, the best he could hope for was that the Saints didn’t declare war on the Jarheads.
“I saw you watching things that day in the mess,” said Quinn. “I think you knew something was up.”
Ulysses stared at him long enough to make him uncomfortable, before finally breaking out in a grin.