Escape Velocity

by Jess Anastasi

  He glanced back down and told himself he’d lost his mind. Solving his little patrolling-guards problem with an explosion was ridiculous. If a few gunshots would bring the rest of the prison guards down on him, then what would a detonation do? Plus, he didn’t know how volatile the stuff was. He’d be just as likely to blow up himself or the entire goddamn prison complex. Except the fatalistic side of him didn’t care. The pessimistic part of him that had already decided he was going to die here told him to light up and blow as many of the CSS bastards to hell as he possibly could.

  He shoved the semi into the back of his pants, and then, with shaking hands, reached around and snatched the torch down from the wall. For a split second, he waited to see if any of the nearing guards had noticed his move, but they were laughing at something, their voices rising in an echoing ruckus.

  Bending over, he picked up the half-full tin can and stepped far enough away from the corner to launch the container down the hallway. He finally got the guards’ attention as it bounced, splattering the walls and the two guards at the front with dark, oily liquid. One of them brought their gun up, but Kai had already flung the torch.

  As it landed, he didn’t wait to see the results, but threw himself behind the corner opposite to where he’d been standing. His heart hammered hard enough against the inside of his chest to break his no doubt weakened ribs.

  The guards shouted, their yells abruptly cut off by a deep whooshing sound. All of the air seemed to get sucked from around him, and he hunched down as a superheated wave blasted past him a second later. There hadn’t been a deafening boom like he’d expected, and it seemed the actual flames had mostly burned themselves out at the source. A quick check over himself revealed nothing on fire.

  The next breath of relief he took caught in the back of his throat, the air acidic with smoke and the scent of burning flesh. He coughed, yanking his shirt up over his face as he scrambled to his feet.

  For a second, he’d forgotten about his damned leg. But the sudden movement and resulting lance of pain reminded him with sickening force as he lurched into the wall to stop from pitching over. But he didn’t stop. Because somehow his luck was holding, and maybe the fire would distract the guards from noticing his escape.

  At the end of the hallway, the square of sunlight turned out to be a barred window. The hallway ended in a T, the branching corridors running the perimeter of the prison, with more barred windows at regular intervals. A rusty siren echoed from somewhere outside, causing some of the other prisoners to start yelling.

  With absolutely no clue where anything led, he turned left again. Halfway along this hallway, there was a square, squat container overflowing with he-didn’t-want-to-know-what, sitting beneath a hatch marked waste.

  By the time he reached the end of the corridor, his breath was sawing in and out of his lungs, drying the back of his throat. He paused at the corner and snatched a look around, cursing under his short breath as he saw another patrol of four. Worse, they were stationary for the moment, waiting for a second patrol to catch up with them. That would be eight coming his way once they started moving. He turned around, headed back the way he’d come, intending to see what the opposite end of the hallway presented.

  However, as he passed the halfway point with the waste container, he hesitated. The hatch wasn’t exactly big; a kid would manage down it easy enough. But an adult? It would be a tight fit around his shoulders, but then again, starvation had definitely slimmed him down. It was an unlocked, presumably unguarded, opening to the outside, and probably his best option.

  Kai clambered awkwardly onto the side of the container, holding his breath against the revolting smell—worse than the usual dungeon scent constantly lacing the prison air. It took two attempts to get his injured leg up, and he swore at himself in growing frustration, knowing his time was running out. If not for the goddamn gimpy leg, he could have been gone from here by now, and not half-out-of-his-mind from pain.

  At last, he got his legs positioned and then shuffled forward, getting his thighs and hips in until he was sitting on the edge like an oversized kid on a slide. Exhaling hard, he gripped the outer lip and propelled himself inward. His shoulders scraped the edges like he’d guessed, but he still slid down slowly. After an impossibly long few seconds, his feet hit nothing but air, the rest of his legs following.

  Ah, hell. He hadn’t considered what kind of drop might be between the end of the chute and wherever the waste ended up. But with nothing to grab onto, he couldn’t do anything but keep sliding. His heart skipped a few rushed beats and then froze on him as he left the chute altogether. Sunlight blinded him, and a second later he landed with a plop into a pool of thick, chunky liquid. Luckily it wasn’t deep, and he ended up sitting chest-deep.

  If the smell of the container inside had been bad, then this was horrific. Outside, under the sun, whatever waste had been sent down here had ripened to an indescribable sinus-stripping foulness. He gagged and struggled through the slop. The decomposing torso and arm he pushed out of his way confirmed what he’d been hoping wasn’t true. Shutting down his mind, he waded to the edge and clambered out of the muck.

  He couldn’t breathe without gagging on exhale, and he stumbled away from the refuse, almost tripping over a roll of barbed wire. He looked up, finding himself on the far side of the prison. He’d studied enough aerial photos of the CSS’s Enlightening Camp to know the outside layout in his sleep. This side of the prison was inapproachable for someone trying to get in. A few feet beyond him, a waist-high razor-wire fence had been built on top of rock, which dropped off in a sheer face down to a fast-flowing river. Beyond that was thick forest for miles, which eventually ran into the battlefront.

  He’d gotten this far, but the pain and physical exertion were taking their toll, plus a gut-clenching sickness had taken hold now that he was covered in the stench of rot. But instinct told him he had to keep going until he couldn’t move any more, until death was the only freedom he’d find.

  He stumbled toward the razor-wire fence, cutting up his hands as he went over it and not feeling a single slice. The rocks beyond were slippery with the wind-whipped spray coming up off the river.

  He sat down on the edge, breathing the fresh dampness, and the darkness of the prison fell away from him, like shedding a robe. He’d done it, escaped into free air and warming sunshine.

  A shout sounded from behind him, putting an abrupt end to his enjoyment of the brief escape. He looked over his shoulder and shaded his eyes against the morning sun. One of the guards on the roof had spotted him. Beyond that, black smoke billowed into the otherwise clear blue sky.

  The guard rounded the roof toward him, and Kai turned back to the river, staring down past his feet to the rushing water below. He’d heard drowning wasn’t a bad way to go. With only a slight push, he slid off the edge of the slippery rocks, plunging down into cold, blue-green oblivion.

  Chapter Two

  Valiant Knox

  In Orbit around Ilari, Brannon System

  Sacha slapped a hand over her hip as her med-comm vibrated with furious insistence for the third time in as many minutes. Trying to keep her movements subtle, she pulled the device off her belt and looked at the screen.

  Code Alpha-Red, med-lab Lima-One-Niner.

  Doctor Macaulay glanced over at her as she pushed her chair back from the conference table and stood in a rush. Adrenaline spiked as her mind leaped ahead to what sort of scenario could have caused an alpha-red code, only reserved for when high-ranking personnel were in an extreme medical emergency. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d attended an alpha-red.

  “Doctor Dalton?” Macaulay murmured just loud enough for her to hear, but they’d still managed to catch the attention of everyone else in attendance. On the large screen at the front of the room, the surgeon stopped talking, interrupting the sub-space conference between the Valiant Knox and Earth.

  “Is there a problem, Doctor?” The on-screen surgeon asked, his tone of
voice indicating she better have stood up for a damn good reason, or she’d be slapped down to field medic assistant faster than a ship in hyper-cruise.

  “Yes, actually.” She cast a quick look around the half a dozen other doctors sitting at the table. “Has anyone else got their med-comm on?”

  Heads shook, along with a few shrugs.

  “Med-comms were supposed to be off for the duration of the conference,” the on-screen surgeon said in an ominous rumble.

  Sacha flashed her med-comm at Macaulay, who dropped his mag-pen and straightened in his seat.

  Before he could say anything, she sent him a stubborn frown and murmured, “You placate Doctor Uptight and I’ll get on this. Switch your damn med-comm on and I’ll page you if I need help.”

  Macaulay started to argue, but the on-screen surgeon trumped him by demanding an explanation. Sacha didn’t wait around to see how that panned out, but hauled butt out of the conference room and down the short corridor from the medical offices to the remedial facilities. As she scooted through the quarantine air-lock doors, a group of nurses and doctors standing outside med-lab lima-one-niner marked her destination.

  She paused to shove her hands in the sani-unit and then snapped on a pair of gloves.

  “What have we got?” She elbowed the nearest nurse, who turned out to be one of her friends, Cassidy Willow.

  “A prisoner of war just brought up from Ilari. A patrol found him three clicks from the CSS’s Enlightening Camp.”

  “A POW? Then why the alpha-red code?” She shouldered her way past the medicos gathered in the corridor. “Who is it, Lieutenant Shaw or Officer Lourdes?”

  “Neither.”

  That one word brought Sacha up short just before she reached the doorway.

  She looked back at Cassidy. “Shaw and Lourdes are the only two POWs the CSS have.”

  Cassidy shook her head, eyes glinting with a curious mix of amazement and sadness. “It’s Commander Yang.”

  Sacha’s heart stopped. The damn organ totally flat-lined on her and for a second everything went black. A hand wrapped around her bicep and she shook her head, willing her vision to clear. She’d never fainted in her life, but Jesus had she come close then.

  “Sacha, are you all right?”

  As everything came back into sharp focus and her brain kicked into high-gear, she focused on Cassidy’s concerned expression.

  “I’m fine. What’s Commander Yang’s condition?”

  Her friend let her arm go and moved back half a step, then turned to another nurse nearby and grabbed a datapad, her manner all business. Sacha grasped hold of that professionalism and forced herself to disconnect.

  Cassidy ducked her head to read from the datapad. “Commander Yang is not conscious at the moment. He’s suffering dehydration, malnutrition, avitaminosis, cirrhosis on his liver, and a malformed leg that was broken and healed without medical attention. There are other minor issues, but those are the main concerns right now.”

  Sacha took the datapad and scanned over the display, noting the commander’s vitals and other important factors. “All right, the automated med system can start taking care of the internal problems, that’s all fixable. But we’ll have to take a look at his leg.”

  She handed the datapad off and steeled herself, locking down her emotions as she made her lead-filled legs carry her forward into the room. Two other nurses were there, assisting the three lower-level doctors swarming in controlled chaos around the commander’s bed.

  Sub-Doctor Archie Moore looked up, relief crossing his face when he spotted her approaching the bed. “Doctor Dalton, we’ve been paging you for—”

  “I know, I’m sorry. I was in that Earth-link sub-space conference. You’re lucky I flipped off the rules and still had my med-comm on. Where are we up to?”

  Moore stepped back and Sacha got a clear view to the bed.

  Kai. Oh god.

  Shaggy black hair and a thick scruffy beard obscured most of his face. But what she could see of his features were battered, the skin a sickly gray. Scars he’d never had before puckered in white slashes. His body was lean, too thin, the loss of muscle mass obvious. All over, he was dirty, banged up, and in horrific shape. The broken leg was obvious in the shocking angle of his calf.

  She clenched her fists, forcing the swelling tsunami of emotions down. The surge battered at her training, at every inch of practiced gloss she had. But she fought back the distress with the knowledge that unless she wanted to get tossed out to the waiting room, she could not react in any way, shape, or form to the horrible sight in front of her. If she so much as blinked wrong, they’d bring up Macaulay or Donavan to treat Kai and she wouldn’t get a ring-in.

  She only caught half of what Moore said as she dragged her attention back to him. But she trusted the medico staff on the Valiant Knox, knew they’d have a firm handle on this, especially considering it was their commander lying in that bed.

  “Thanks, Moore. Now let’s see about that broken leg.” She skirted around to get a closer look at Kai’s lower right calf. With a quick, assessing glimpse, she checked over the half a dozen or so machines hooked up to him. Some were simply monitoring, while others were repairing internal injuries and providing much-needed sustenance to his nutrient-starved body.

  She bent down and touched his foot, searching for signs of vessel damage or indications the nerves might be compromised.

  One of the machines let out a series of staccato beeps and she straightened, the alarm indicating Kai was regaining consciousness.

  “Commander Yang, are you with me? You’re back on the Knox, sir. We’ve got you in Doctor Dalton’s med-lab.” As Moore leaned over and flashed a light in front of the commander’s eyes, Sacha straightened.

  Kai rolled his head away from Moore’s grip. The shadow of a familiar scowl that crossed his face made Sacha’s heart spasm with a bittersweet elation. The urge to move closer to him tugged deep within her, but she made her feet stay right where they were.

  Kai dragged a hand over his face, before blinking groggily and then widening his eyes. “Amos.”

  The word scraped out hoarse and he cleared his throat. No one in the med-lab moved or made a sound. Sacha held her breath as the tension in the room ratcheted up.

  Kai swallowed. “Amos didn’t make it.”

  It took a second for Sacha’s mind to make sense of the words. Sergeant Amos Claus. He’d been down on Ilari with Kai when the two men had disappeared, assumed KIA.

  Killed in action.

  Those three words had sent her into a desolate nightmare, one that had just kept getting worse. Until today.

  Moore moved first, breaking the thick atmosphere set into the air of the room.

  “Commander Yang, tell me where you are. Do you know what year it is?” Moore tried to flash the penlight in his eyes again, but he swatted the sub-doctor away with a surprisingly agile movement.

  “You just told me I’m back on the Knox and I’m guessing it’s Twenty-Four-Thirty-Six.” His voice might have been scratchy, but he sounded like the commander who’d fearlessly held the Ilari line these past five years. The same commander who could send a new recruit running with a single, well-aimed glare. The man she’d gotten trashed with on more than one occasion in the officers’ lounge, laughing so hard at the way the poor newbies fell over themselves trying to please him. “But I don’t know exactly how long I was in that prison.”

  “One year, four months, and three weeks.” Sacha hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but the words tripped over her tongue before she could catch them. All of the doctors and nurses in the room paused to stare at her.

  Great way to stay detached. She’d bet her next year’s worth of paychecks no one else knew exactly how long ago Commander Yang had gone missing.

  “Sacha?” If his voice had been hoarse before, now it came out so rough, the sound made her eyes sting. Or maybe it was the fact she’d never thought to hear him call her name ever again. She met his topaz-brown eyes and her heart p
ounded against the insides of her ribs with aching intensity.

  She forced a smile and swallowed over the band of emotion choking her. “Hey there, Commander. You’ve caused a riot around here. Not every day a man returns from the dead.”

  His gaze sharpened on her. “Someone in personnel got it wrong, ’cause I sure as hell never died.”

  For a long moment she held his gaze, until a single drop of moisture gathered at the edge of his sooty black lashes and rolled slowly down the side of his face.

  Her heart clenched and then ached. God. How much more of this could she take before she broke and gave into the impulse to sob all over him and thank the powers-that-be he’d come back to her alive after all this time?

  With a small sniff and a damn large helping of determination, she forced her attention down to his mangled leg.

  “Moore, we’re going to have to re-break this leg before putting it in the bone-mending cylinder. Get me a shot of hyproxen. That’ll put him out cold and keep the pain manageable.”

  “No!” Kai reared up, jerking the various cords attached to him. Moore and a male nurse caught his shoulders and tried to urge him back.

  Anger and indignation roared through her at the sight. Sacha hip-and-shouldered the male nurse out of the way. Couldn’t they see how panicked Kai was? After everything he’d been through, horrors that she didn’t even want to begin to imagine, the two men getting physical with him would only make things worse.

  She leaned over and shoved Moore back a step, before catching Kai’s face, his beard scratchy and springy beneath her palms.

  “Kai. Kai, look at me.”

  His thrashing subsided, but his breath heaved in and out of his chest as his wild topaz gaze clashed with hers.

  When she had his attention focused solely on her, a relieved breath rushed out of her. “It’s all right. Just tell me what you want and we’ll deal.”