Galaxia

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “I’m going right to my major on this!” Chopra yelled, not backing down.

  “Tell your fucking major whatever you want! I’m telling you now, Chief Warrant Officer, if you value your career and if you don’t want to spend time in the brig, you will cease and desist. You will not attempt to interrogate her. I will be checking back, and if you fight me on this, your pathetic life, as you know it, is over. Do you understand?”

  Michi could see the anger warring on Chopra’s face, but he bit it back down and said, “I understand.”

  “Len, I want you to stand here until Doc arrives. Get her treated. Then I want someone in here every day to check up on her. Sams, come with me. Let’s see who else in this hellhole thinks he’s above the law.”

  He didn’t bother to look back at Michi as he and the first sergeant stormed out. Michi tried to process what had just happened. Henderson looked scared as he tried to remain unnoticed. Chopra on the other hand, was a volcano about to explode. He glared at Michi with pure hate. If not for the other Marine standing in the room with the doser in his hand, she was sure he would take out his anger on her.

  They all stood like that, without moving, for at least 20 minutes before a Navy doctor and two medics, nurses, or whatever they called a medical assistant came in and began to assess her. They left her on the table, but cleaned and disinfected it before starting. They cleaned and dressed her stab wound, then moved to the arm, cleaning it up before sliding it into a portable regen unit. The doctor told her it should heal within a week. The hand, though, was more serious, and they decided to put her under for prep surgery prior to regen. They put up a medical curtain to isolate her hand as they prepped it. That gave Chopra a chance to step up and kneel, so his mouth was against her ear.

  “Don’t get too comfortable, there, missy. Word is that the Marines will be leaving soon, and then there won’t be any Captain Lysander to protect you. Your ass will be all mine,” she heard before the anesthesia pulled her under.

  Chapter 35

  The next week went by in a blur, or was it dragging by slowly? Michi couldn’t decide. She was mostly left alone. Each morning, Chopra came by and formally asked her if she had any information she wanted to share. Each time, after Michi said no, he simply turned around and left.

  A Marine came by once or twice a day, checking, but not speaking to her. The doctor and his team came by twice to check on her progress. Someone brought her meals and took away her empty plates and full honeypot. The rest of the time, she was alone.

  The regen chamber on her arm was removed, and except for a tiny scar that the doctor said would fade, she would never have known she’d been shot. Her concussion would take a full regen, which was not available to her in her situation, but the effects faded, and the doctor pronounced her fully recovered. Physically, the only thing that was still wrong was her finger. Only a small portion of the finger had been lost, so after surgery, the regen should only take a little less than a month.

  She’d been issued an orange jumpsuit, and she was no longer cuffed to the bed, but she still spent the hours lying on the table, albeit with a thin blanket between her and the surface of the metal. Things were much better than her first conscious hours in the cell, but mentally, she felt worse. With free time, her mind was on the 1,300 men and woman who had followed her to their deaths. She thought back to all her actions since Franz had been murdered, wondering what she could have done differently.

  She realized that she had fallen into depression. It would seem natural, given her situation, but she was afraid that this was something deeper, something clinical. She knew she could fight it. In the flicks, prisoners spent solitary doing pushup or writing. She did neither. She just didn’t have the energy. It was easier to lie in bed and stare at the lighting in the ceiling.

  She was lying there when two Marines burst in.

  “Get up,” one of the Marines said.

  She stared at him stupidly.

  “I said, get up!”

  He came over as if to help her.

  “Why? What’s going on?” she asked, a trickle of fear awaking in her.

  She’d contemplated suicide a few times over the last week, but when something actually threatened her existence, the survival gene kicked in.

  “We’re moving you, so let’s go,” he told her.

  Moving me? What the hell for?

  “Why? What’s wrong with here?” she asked.

  Images of her being taken out into the forest and shot in the head flooded her mind. She resisted, pulling back from the Marine’s grasp.

  “Look, I don’t give a flying fart if you come or go, rebel lady. As far as I’m concerned, the fuckdicks can have you . . .”

  It took a second for Michi to realize he was referring to the FCDC officers. “FCDC.” “FuCkDiCks.”

  “. . . but the captain says everyone in this building’s gotta go to the main jail. So, it’s up to you. We’re leaving this planet in two hours, so we don’t have time to sit here and convince you.”

  “Come on, Tse Han, let’s just forget her,” the other Marine said.

  “You’re leaving?” Michi asked.

  “Yeah. The rebellion is crushed here, and things are acting up in—” he started before the other Marine cut him off.

  “Opsec!”

  “Oh, yeah. No matter, lady, we’re leaving, so it’s up to you. I ain’t gonna be dragging you to the trucks.”

  The image of Chopra leaning in, telling her after the Marines left, her ass was going to be his, invaded her mind. She shuddered. There was no real decision to make. Even if it were a bullet to the head, that would be a better choice than letting that psychopath get his hands back on her.

  “No, I’m coming with you,” she said, jumping off the table.

  The two Marines led her out into the hallway. Other Marines and prisoners milled about. Michi recognized Max Vickery, the colonel who had led the river commandos in the attack, but she didn’t have time to talk to him. Within minutes, they were pushed past several unresisting FCDC guards and out into a courtyard where a hover-truck waited. It was nighttime, which surprised Michi as she could have sworn it was noon at the latest. The Marines told them to get inside the truck, pushing those who were slow in climbing up.

  A hand pushed her ass just as she was clambering over the tailgate, and she was sent sprawling into a body already in the truck.

  “Sorry,” she said automatically.

  “Michi! It’s good to see you. We thought you’d been killed,” Loski Sonutta-Lyon said. He’d been one of the main planners for the attack.

  “I think most of us did get killed,” she said bitterly. “What the hell happened?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I was back with the forward command, and without warning, we were surrounded by Marines. We could hear the fighting up forward, but there was nothing we could do.”

  The truck rose off the ground, and then pulled into a smooth forward motion. There were a few exclamations of fear. Evidently, Michi was not the only one who didn’t totally trust the Marines.

  Michi wanted to shout at Loski. She wanted to blame someone for the debacle, and it was his plan, his and Kyne’s, that they had tried to implement. She didn’t want to blame herself for being the catalyst who got the whole thing rolling.

  He looked horrible, though, and her anger faded.

  “Was it bad for you?” she asked.

  He shuddered. “Yes. It wasn’t good. I see they got to you, too,” he said, pointing at the small regen chamber over her hand.

  “I was this close to getting Propoxinal,” she said quietly. “I would have if Captain Lysander hadn’t come in the cell.”

  “You’re lucky. Kyne got it. They took me to see him, and his mind was gone.”

  Kyne was the other planner for the attack. If he was given the drug, they would have peeled back the layers, extracting all he knew. In his position, he’d known a lot.

  The two sat silently in the truck as it took them to who knows where?
Michi was just about to open her mouth to ask Loski a question when the truck came to a stop and lowered off hover. The two Marines who had been sitting in the back jumped out first, then shouted for everyone else to get out, too.

  Michi poked her head under the tarp and was relieved to see the city jail. She would have never thought that seeing a jail and being about to be taken into it could ever be a relief, but it was much better than a ride out into the forest.

  A Marine stepped out of the front entrance with another man and addressed the group. “I am Gunnery Sergeant Franco Torioko, and this is Desk Sergeant Wisuski of the Tay Station city jail. We are going to get you processed as quickly as possible. The jail is extremely overcrowded, so there’ll be many of you to a cell. But for you 34 people, I think this is a better alternative than had you stayed where you were.”

  Michi looked around, wondering if she could slip away in the darkness. A number of Marines were in back of them, though, looking alert. She didn’t know what she would do if she got away, so it made more sense to get inside the jail where she would be relatively safe—she hoped.

  Chapter 36

  After two days, Michi was almost missing her solitary confinement—almost, but not quite. She was crammed with 15 other women in a four-person cell. The single toilet in the corner was continually plugged, and combined with 16 sweating bodies, the smell was pretty rank.

  Tempers were testy as well. When Michi stepped on one woman’s foot while trying to get to the toilet, that woman had jumped up, blaming Michi for getting them into this mess. Normally, Michi might have faced down the smaller woman, but her guilt factor kicked in, and she just absorbed the abuse.

  More than a couple of the women remarked on the regen chamber on her hand, saying it was proof of special treatment she was getting. Several of them had been hurt and had received treatment, but not to the extent of regen. The company was not going to fork out the cash for that for indentureds, particularly indentureds who had taken up the fight against them.

  Two of the women incarcerated with her had also been in her assault force. Both had been with about fifty who had surrendered to the Marines. One of them, Tamika Dilliard-Smith, said she had seen Colonel Hannrahan go down, his head blown off of his shoulders. Michi hadn’t really liked her so-called assistant, but she shed a few tears at the news.

  At least the FCDC interrogators had left them alone so far. Michi thought it was because of too many witnesses. If she was taken, others would know it. If she “disappeared” or came back a vegetable, others would know it. She had no doubt that the fuckdicks—how she loved that term—would be trying to come up with a plan to isolate them, but for now, she was relatively safe.

  So when the cell door clicked and swung open on the second night after her arrival, Michi looked upon that with extreme suspicion. What better way to isolate their prize prisoners than to let them go and then capture them again? If she was not taken back to their communal cell, the others could be told she had either escaped or had been killed in her recapture.

  The other 15 women got up and approached the door, buzzing on what it could mean. Two women frankly said it was a trap, and they sat on one of the bunks, refusing to get up. Several other women cautiously stepped into the main corridor.

  From down that corridor, Michi heard a voice call out, “Look at the guards! They’re locked in!”

  Despite her misgivings, Michi had to see. She pushed past several of her cellmates and out into the corridor. From each cell, both men and women were gathering outside. At the end, where the guards controlled the cells, about 20 prisoners were gathered, several pointing and laughing. Michi made her way down the corridor to see for herself.

  The guard station occupied what would have been the first cell in line. However, the wall was reinforced glass, and inside were chairs and the control panel. Each cell was under 24-hour observation and could be controlled as far as locking the door, turning off the lights, and even administering knock-out gas. Only now, none of that was happening. Inside, three guards were standing, looking at the prisoners. One was holding a handwritten note that said:

  Get back to your cells now!

  In back of them, their control panel was off. None of the feeds worked. To make things worse for them, the red light on the door leading out into the main corridor was flashing. They were locked in.

  Michi looked at the others. Was this a trap? Even if it was, she knew this could be her chance. If she left, they would still have to capture her again, and she wasn’t going to let that happen. One way or the other, she was not coming back alive.

  Two of the men pushed open their wing door, and it opened into the main corridor. In a rush, about forty of them poured into the main corridor. Down on the far end, there was only a set of double gates before leading to the holding room and the outside.

  From other wings, people started trickling out. It looked like every cell in the place had been opened. Starting slowly, then gathering momentum and people, the tide of prisoners rushed the double gates. If they were locked, Michi figured people would get crushed in the press, but it was too late to worry about that. The mob wouldn’t be stopped.

  The gates were open, though, and within moments, the leading edge of the mob was out in the darkness. Several people were out and about, and they ran when confronted with the mass escape. Two jacks came around the corner, saw the mob, and turned and ran. They would report what they had seen, however, so time was a-wasting.

  Michi looked around her. There had to be 200 prisoners outside the jail now, and more were still coming. Michi knew she had to get out of there, so she started running. She didn’t have a destination; she just needed to get as far away from the jail as she could.

  She started running out of breath within five minutes. The time she had spent as a prisoner, and her refusal to exercise, was taking its toll. She recognized the Tennyson complex and turned into it. Doug had been able to control it, so maybe others had as well, keeping surveillance out of it. She was winded, anyway, so she had to stop.

  Michi crept past one of the broken-down entrances and looked around. She wasn’t sure of the time, but there were a number of people going about their business. Her orange jumpsuit made her stand out, but so far, nobody seemed to take overt notice. When the word was passed, however, and a reward offered, she was sure that some of the people would suddenly recall the orange-clad figure skulking around in the night.

  She knew she had to get out of sight for awhile and plan out what she wanted to do. Each complex had a small retail section, and she made her way in back of the line of stores. She thought there might be something that had been discarded she could put on to get rid of the jumpsuit.

  She cautiously approached the first dumpster, looking to see if anyone was watching her. She grabbed the lid and lifted.

  “Shut that thing!” an orange jumpsuited man yelled back up to her from where he was lying inside.

  She dropped the lid, her heart pounding. How had he gotten there so quickly? She must have really gotten out of shape. She moved down two more, then slowly lifted up the lid. When no one yelled out, she slid inside.

  There was restaurant refuse in the dumpster, so it stunk with rotten food. She didn’t care much about that as she rooted around in the darkness, feeling for clothing. To her surprise, she felt something right away. Running her fingers over it, she could tell is was a shirt. It was a little difficult to get it on with only one working hand, but she managed to pull it over her jumpsuit. It had some slime on it, but it would do, she hoped. Now she just needed something for her legs, and she could get out of there and move on.

  She felt something and pulled it out of the garbage, but she thought it was another shirt and discarded it. If she didn’t find anything soon, she would have to bail and just hope the shirt she’d found would be enough.

  She was down in the far corner of the dumpster and had put her hand into something particularly disgusting when the lid of the dumpster opened.

  She wheele
d around ready to attack, one-handed or not, when a voice asked, “Michi? That you?”

  Doug and Tamara were standing there, concerned looks on their faces.

  “Shit girl, get out of there. We’ve got to get you out of here and hidden,” Tamara said, relief evident in her voice.

  For Michi, she was not sure if she’d ever seen such a welcome sight in her life.

  Chapter 37

  “Get out of bed and do something,” Tamara said.

  “Easy for you to say,” Michi grumbled. “You’re not stuck in this cage.”

  “Look, I know it’s tough, but hang in there. We’ll figure out something. Doug will come by at lunchtime, and maybe we can both be here for a nice dinner. I’ve really got to go, though.”

  She kissed Michi on the forehead and then left for work.

  Michi turned over and pulled her lone sheet over her head. She knew she shouldn’t take it out on Tamara. She owed the two of them too much. But she had no contact with anyone else, so that left only her two friends.

  It had been the two of them who had sprung her from captivity. They had scoured the lists for her name among the dead and captured. Doug had finally found reference to her on some company docs and her transfer to FCDC custody, but he couldn’t pinpoint a location nor anything else. The FCDC security was just too tough for him to hack. They had been surprised and overjoyed, then when she turned up as a transfer to the city jail. It hadn’t taken Doug long to pinpoint her, even hacking into the surveillance inside her cell.

  Between the two of them, they had considered and rejected a number of plans, finally coming up with taking control of the jail, then locking in the guards while opening the prisoner cells. The hope was that so many people would escape that it would overwhelm the jacks, giving them time to locate and isolate Michi. Using the same technology as he had once described to Michi, he had programs scanning all surveillance cams looking for her body and gait. Michi had changed through the course of her abuse, but after several false hits, the two friends saw Michi enter the complex and walk in back of the shops. Surveillance was down in the back access, but Tamara had been sure that was her, so they had rushed to find her.