by Ginger Booth
Another four pirates made quick work of binding Kassidy and Jules’ hands. Sass agonized to watch Jules torn from Abel’s arms. The teen’s face was puffy and blotchy from tears. She sniffled. Despite her own tied wrists, Kassidy took her hand as they were shoved forward to walk after Lavelle. Sass smiled brief encouragement. She was happy to see Kassidy had her third eye camera affixed. That might prove useful, but only if they got off Sagamore alive first.
She risked the wrath of her herders to walk backward a few steps. She caught Abel’s eye for a slow nod, repeated for Wilder, then pointedly turned her chin toward the Thrive. Abel blinked slowly in acknowledgment. Wilder, suspended from Cortez, appeared in too much pain to think about escape yet. Internal injuries. That could take a while.
One of the guards jabbed at her with his rifle. She took the hint and turned just before she ran into a wall. She passed into the corridor behind Jules and Kassidy.
There would come a chance. Now wasn’t it.
Pierre burst into his father’s ballroom, and paused for his men to fan out beside him. The old spider himself sat on a velvet chair at the far end, an ostentatious red carpet leading to him as though to a throne. Footmen attended him in ridiculous splendor. Pompous ass.
The skinny footmen in their workaday costumes were ornamental. The ceiling guns, and security hidden behind the heavy ornate gilt mirrors, were not.
“Sire!” he cried out, and sketched a mocking bow. “We meet again.”
“Approach. Yes, how long has it been, Pierre? Ten years, twenty?” The elder Lavelle feigned boredom. “I was trying to recall. You were my sixth son?”
“Fourth.” Here’s a hint, mon père. If you can’t remember, you had too many children.
“Ah. And what is it you want?”
“To address the council. As I said!”
His sire shrugged. “The council appointed me to deal with you. My get, after all.”
Pierre stopped a few paces in front of the portly white-haired man, hunched these days where once he sat erect and intimidating as hell. The carpets and upholstery had faded alongside him. For all this faux splendor, the textiles and wallpapers dated from Pierre’s childhood. The red carpet lay bleached pink with age, a deeper red under the chair. Pierre doubted Sagamore could even manufacture replacements anymore.
“Trade on fair terms,” he replied. “Eight containers of bulk goods for each container refined from the rings.”
His father snorted. “Is that all?”
“Free the slaves. Treat them as equals –”
Arnaud Lavelle scowled in irritation. “This is hardly up to you, Pierre.” He pointed past his son. “Who are they?”
The captive women had caught up, Sass and the brown-skinned lesbian and the Thrive’s village idiot, the cook. “Captives from the Mahina spaceship,” Pierre replied, encompassing them with a wave. “The blonde was the captain. Sass Collier, approach. Explain your errand to Sagamore’s Minister of Peace.”
The damned woman brought her companions. “Greetings, mister…?”
“Monsieur Arnaud Lavelle. I am Pierre’s sire.”
Sass’s eyes widened in surprise. Then she barely ducked her head in acknowledgment, despite Pierre’s tutoring in the polite bows expected among Sagamore’s elite.
Though to be fair, he hated bowing himself. Even now, he could feel fury well up inside himself at the intransigence of the old man.
Sass said, “We came to Sagamore to collect a Mahina scientist, Genevieve Carruthers. She has knowledge crucial to the health of our people. We also hoped to learn about Sagamore. We can tell you about Mahina if you are interested –”
“We are not,” Arnaud assured her. “But Pierre called ahead. The scientist’s work here is done. She is gathering her things. An entire container worth. Which will be deducted from from your bulk foodstuffs, of course.” That dig was for his son.
“Then you can damn well keep the Mahina scientist,” Pierre fumed.
“That will not gain you additional payment,” his father assured him. “Nor will destroying gun turrets or making demands. You understand nothing, Pierre. You never did.”
“The rings produce valuable goods –”
“They are no more valuable to us than we already pay you.”
“Star drive parts. Posarium! Potassium! We could bring you enough to give medicines to everyone! Feed the slaves three times as much!”
“Which we will not do. You know this. You think you can change our social order by showering us with trinkets? It will not work.”
“It should!”
Arnaud lidded his eyes, in all-too-familiar displeasure. “How exactly do you propose to force us to change the world to your liking, Pierre? By throwing a temper tantrum? Breaking a dome? You killed hundreds of innocent slaves.”
“You hide behind them. You coward!”
Arnaud spread his hands in contempt. He turned to Sass. “We have no interest in Mahina. Take your scientist and go.”
“I took her ship,” Pierre countered this. “She’s a captive. The captives stay here.”
“I don’t imagine they will enjoy that. Ah! The scientist arrives. Take her and go, then.”
“I command two ships now, sire. I can blow this entire dome, destroy all your asteroid defenses!”
“To what purpose? Only slaves live near the surface. You’re the one who cares about their fate. I’m 100 meters below ground. Will you murder them all to reach me? The Butcher of Sagamore. Is that what you aspire to? Grow up, Pierre. You didn’t get your way.”
“Sire, look at this place! Exhausted fripperies! No one learns the technologies needed to replace them! The wealthy are so focused on defending their comfort, that you don’t notice Sagamore stagnates around you. Rotting. Sagamore is a dying colony! What if instead, we opened trade with Mahina –”
“Pierre, you are a fool, and you always were. You want these things, clearly. And you have them. You are free among the stars. Go forth and visit Mahina. They’re welcome to take you. But Sagamore will not change until people in power share your preference. You need to persuade. But instead you harangue us and break the china. This sways no one. Sagamore will change when other people care about your cause. And not before. Today is not that day.”
Pierre’s face burned. “You say that because you are comfortable. But 9 out of 10 here are suffering. How comfortable will you be when all of your technologies are gone, sire?”
“Do not presume to lecture me. I have explained. You do not listen. No one cares.”
His father seemed horribly sure that this was over, and he held all the cards. Pierre’s hands started to sweat. What of Raoul, his brother? Pierre had indeed called ahead. Gossamer’s attack was to coincide with an internal uprising. “How are my brothers?”
“Gerard is dead,” the old man said, actually saddened. “And Raoul, executed not an hour ago. Just minutes after you last spoke with him, in fact. Your uprising was snuffed before it began, Pierre.”
Pierre licked his lip. I have screwed up very, very badly. His last ally and favorite person on Sagamore was dead, his plan in tatters. If there was to be no insurrection to accompany his attack, entering this room may have been a grave mistake. “I mourn his death,” he breathed.
“Me too,” Arnaud conceded. “And I blame you.”
“I still demand to speak to the council!” Pierre attempted.
“No.” Arnaud rose and left the room, infuriating as always.
Pierre stood in shock, chest heaving.
“Regroup, Pierre,” Martin urged, halfway between the exit and the throne chair. “Back to the Gossamer!”
Pierre stared at the chair, its velvet faded pink on the seat, a deeper rose on the back, and a last trace of rich red peeking from crevices and below, threadbare spots on the arms. Seats pushed against the wainscoting looked the same. He wondered if his father had ever once thrown a dance in the pretentious chamber. The alkali reek of the surface was filtered out in the halls of the wealthy, the powerf
ul, the rulers of Sagamore. He smelled dust and decay, sweetened with honeysuckle.
Martin added, “Before they shoot you, Pierre!”
He was right. Yet Pierre hung suspended on the cusp, unable to admit his dreams were dead, his cause already lost.
The ceiling guns opened fire. They winged Pierre first, then Martin, the two farthest from escape. Two Gossamer guards fired back at the ceiling guns and mirrors while the others beat a retreat. Both died, blown to ribbons. Sass and her women cowered against the wall, out of the line of fire.
Shot through the thigh, Pierre staggered to his knees, gazing at Martin suddenly dead before him. Another laser hit him in the shoulder, and knocked him forward. His arm too hampered to break his own fall, he scraped his face on the carpet.
There was nothing he could do. Pierre closed his eyes to play possum, and waited for the end, his laser wounds burning agony.
37
With the rich eating all the fish, the average Sagamore paddy farmer was sorely malnourished and very small. Sagamore elites averaged 14 cm taller.
Ben trailed Abel and Copeland in a peculiar procession. Armed guards followed behind him, laser guns at the ready. The pirates handed them over to these Sagamore locals. If there was a way to break free, Ben didn’t see it at this point. For now he kept careful track of how to get back where they started.
Ahead of them dawdled several perilously thin men, maybe 10 to 20 centimeters shorter than himself and less than half his weight, though Ben was not a big guy. Not lanky like the gravity-challenged settlers of Mahina, the spindly men nevertheless stood bent over, barely reaching his waist. They wore tattered clothes and ratty canvas shoes. They steered faded yellow wet-mop janitor trolleys eerily similar to those employed at Mahina Orbital.
Several doorways and corridors past the entrance docking bay, their diminutive guides reached another industrial-sized doorway, its sides a couple meters deep. The doors stood open. But the inner frame was filled with a clear film of some kind which bellied out toward them.
The janitors waved them out of the way. They parked the mop carts in a row, nose to the film in the middle of the threshold. Ben felt very silly as he was guided to take hold of his trolley between Copeland and Abel. Copeland stared ahead looking grim. This inspired Ben to take a good look, squinting against the severe arc lighting within.
The zone under the strange plastic tent was perhaps 100 meters across. Within were fallen walls. Broken glass and shattered equipment. Red…blood, Ben concluded, as he spotted a severed hand. He swallowed.
A sudden szip sound startled him. He whirled back to look at their janitor guides. A new plastic wall had sprouted just behind them. He poked it with a finger, its rubbery surface giving like a latex balloon.
His poking pissed off their captors. The tiny men pointed ahead with waving gestures – go that way, dummy!
“Airlock,” Ben said wonderingly.
“Looks like it.” Copeland selected a broom out of his equipment. He leaned its rounded end against the film ahead of them, then put his weight behind it, but it didn’t give. Abel rummaged to see if he could find a sharper tool. Copeland simply broke the broom handle over his knee, and tested for sharpness.
“Do we know there’s air on the other side of this?” Ben asked aloud the moment the thought occurred to him. “I think this is where the Thrive shattered the dome. The fix-it zone.”
Abel nodded. “They’re making us clean it up. A fitting punishment, I suppose.”
The miniature janitors grew animated behind them, their yells well-muffled by the rubbery stuff, their lower-class Sagamore patois incomprehensible. The gist remained – go through and clean up!
“Hm.” Copeland extracted a roll of duct tape. By then Abel located scissors. Copeland used them on the tape first. Then he pricked a tiny hole, holding a tape patch ready to slap on it in case it grew. When he was sure the little hole wouldn’t grow, he stuck his nose closer and checked for air flow. “Smells like a slaughterhouse. And Sagamore.”
“But is there –” Abel began. Copeland hacked a slash with his broken broom handle, cutting a door for them. “Air,” Abel completed his thought.
“I just checked that.” Copeland continued on to slice a T-top over his vertical cut, then bent to do the same at the bottom.
Ben checked behind him. “The midgets approve. No, don’t shut the door! Damn it.”
“I kinda like it,” Copeland offered. “Sort of a pop-up airlock concept. See up there? A team in pressure suits is repairing the dome.” The broken dome lay well above their 3-meter tall rubbery balloon chamber.
The slaughterhouse miasma rolled over them. Ben retched but caught himself shy of vomiting. Then that severed hand caught his eye again and his control failed.
“I guess we’re supposed to clean this,” Abel commented. “Ben, you could start with that.”
“Gutter,” Copeland pointed out. “Have fun with that.” He rolled his cart into the partial circle, and started looking around, toeing through the debris.
Abel stepped out to study the solid wall they’d emerged from. “No air.”
“I’m breathing fine, man,” Copeland differed. He picked up a broken piece of wall board and studied its inner structure, then tossed it back to the floor.
“No ventilation, Cope,” Ben clarified, joining Abel in sad realization. “Yeah, maybe we better get cleaning.”
“Be my guest.” After a quick glance at the wall the other two seemed so concerned with, the engineer squatted to inventory his cart.
“Hey, Copeland, our lives are on the line here,” Abel complained.
“Caught that part, boss,” the engineer agreed. “Here.” He pulled out a box and sprinkled some powder on Ben’s puddle and the surrounding blood and vomit. The substance puffed into something like popcorn, absorbing the liquid. He pointed to Benjy. “Then you sweep into the gutter. Then you mop into the gutter. Guess you guys never cleaned an industrial mess before.”
“No,” Ben agreed. He got to sweeping. “Hey, it doesn’t matter what order? Like, we could clean around the edge? Look for air vents?”
“Beyond the bubble?” Abel asked. “Would that do us any good?”
“Yes,” Ben said. “Sagamore’s air isn’t breathable. And it’s damned cold out there. But it’s not space. The partial pressure is enough to keep our eyes from boiling out or…”
Abel, manning a push-broom, took his turn gagging. “Look away, guys.”
Ben did as he was told. A meaty thunk in the cleaning gutter was followed by a couple sheets of broken wallboard to hide whatever it was. He moved forward, sprinkling the absorbent powder, firmly ordering his brimming eyes not to cry. That sound brought vividly to mind that they might not be getting out of this. This might be their life.
What must it have been like for the settlers arriving on Vitality?
Ben mused, “Huh. I think I just met my grandparents.” Copeland, still examining their tools, frowned in question. “Think about it. To come all the way from Earth, looking forward to life on a new world. And to step out onto the regolith. No air to breathe. Not a tree in sight. Endless work ahead of you. One look at the urbs, all bald from cancer, dying, and you knew you’d get worse.”
Abel nodded slowly. “Good perspective. We’re going with your plan. Clean as we go, but walk the perimeter. Look for opportunities. Cope, are you ever going to help?”
Cope stood up from his crouch, studying a little packet. Then he waved it as a prize. “Bingo. Bubble kit.”
“Say again?”
“This packet generates one of these bubble chambers. Got three here. Bet your carts got ’em too.” The other two dove into the pocket he indicated on their own carts. “And now, yes, boss. I clean.”
Copeland sprayed another chemical on the floor Ben just swept, then swiped it with his wet mop. One spot required a second brief swish. Other than that he simply pushed brownish water into the gutter. The rubbery floor was left perfectly clean. “How to wash a floor.
”
“Good to know,” Abel acknowledged, duly impressed. “I’m on…gross objects, Ben sprinkle and sweep, Copeland spray and mop?”
They went with that division of labor, though Copeland also helped kick debris into the gutter because Ben was slow.
Halfway around the bubble, Ben stopped for a breather. Not that breathing was pleasant anymore. Fumes from the magical cleansers Copeland found added insult to the injury of diminishing oxygen in their workplace. As he leaned on his broom, something caught his eye across the dome.
“Hey guys. Do you see what I see?”
“Slave pits could have been worse,” Sass murmured, gazing around their cubicle. They had zero furniture except a dry bucket in the corner. The only light was Sagamore’s dim night sky through a grubby dome. Their space reminded her of modular high-walled offices before they laid the cabling.
Getting out of here would be trivial. Kassidy took a simple hop up, with a twist of her grav generator. She was studying the neighborhood. At a nod from Sass, Jules did the same on the opposite wall.
Once the laser fire ended in the throne room, some Sagamore guards cautiously fetched them out and brought them here, using a more industrial elevator than the passenger model they took down to Monsieur Lavelle’s lair. Pierre turned out to be less than dead, so they carried him along too. He lay on the floor now, unconscious where the local cops tossed him.
Sass’s first step had been checking him out. He was in rough shape, but his heart and lungs seemed functional. She figured he passed out from the pain.
They were fine, unmolested though confined. She got the definite impression that this holding cell was a temporary measure. Someone would be along soon to process them. Best not to be here when that happened.
“How’s it looking?” Sass asked softly. “We need to leave.”
