by RJ Johnson
“You ain’t a kidding,” another of his fellow miners pushed his buddy aside and drubbed his chest with his pointer finger. “We saw you in the ring.”
A third stepped forward menacingly, “Because of you, all our bets on Chau were invalidated.”
Meade, still swaying, wasn’t entirely sure how many moles were actually confronting him. He knew he was seeing at least double, but he might’ve just been looking at one guy wrong.
“Can’t help the ZFC judges my friend. All I did was go out there and get pounded into raw hamburger, or didn’t you notice?” Meade said, indicating his right eye where Chau had cut him open. The wound had been sealed with Dermablast – the medical compound wouldn’t leave a scar, but even modern medical science couldn’t do much about the enormous mouse that had formed around his eye.
“Not how I see it,” the first miner said as his crew surrounded him. “Judges say it was you that caused all the confusion in the first place making us lose our bets. If you knew how to follow rules, I’d have my money and all would be as it should be.”
Meade knew there were times when he should keep his big fat mouth shut, but he wasn’t the best at figuring out when those times were.
Meade looked the miner up and down and shrugged, “I dunno if your wife would agree. She sure appreciated being in the arms of a man that didn’t have a face which looked like it was carved by a retarded ORI driller last night...”
“You son of a bit…” The mole lunged at Meade along with his buddies.
Meade’s reflexes had been dulled by the excellent whiskey Emeline brewed in her stockroom, so he wasn’t as fast as he should have been. Fortunately, the moles attacking him were nearly as blotto as he was making it easy enough to step aside and trip the mole lunging for him who landed unceremoniously in a pile next to him.
Unfortunately, he was not graceful enough to stop the mole’s friends from pushing him into the bar and throwing punches at his already bruised and broken ribs.
Meade cried out in pain as they beat him for his smart mouth. Meade couldn’t help but laugh as he fell to the ground and the moles began to kick him mercilessly, the sharp toed boots kicking at his soft stomach and midsection.
Suddenly a shot rang out, and the crowd parted. A woman with closely cropped blonde hair, wearing a Coalition Officer’s uniform lowered her gauss pistol. She aimed it at the miners attacking Meade.
“All right boys, time to go home,” she pursed her lips and cocked her head at the miners who stared at her.
“You’re in the wrong neighborhood blue bell,” the miner said through clenched teeth.
The woman shrugged and moved her Gauss pistol, aiming it between the man’s eyes.
“You sure about that?”
One of his friends moved a hand towards his ArmBar.
“Nu uh,” she said, firing quickly. A hole the size of a quarter appeared in the man’s hand. She fired again and his ArmBar exploded in a shower of sparks. The miner howled in pain and clutched his smoking, ruined hand.
Emeline burst out of the backroom holding a shotgun, aiming it into the crowd. She saw Meade on the ground, the Coalition officer detaining the moles who were attacking him and the crowd around them making their way to the exits. She groaned and lowered her shotgun.
“I always can depend on Jim to keep the peace in my place.” She turned towards the blonde Coalition officer, making sure she kept the shotgun aimed towards the ground. “Officer, are you going to call this in? ‘Cause we like to deal with these sorts of things internally on E-Block.”
The blonde woman holstered her weapon and indicated the floor was Emeline’s. Emeline nodded her thanks.
“Time for you to leave gents,” Emeline said while not so gently prodding the mole on the floor. “I’d tell you to please come again, but the reality of it is that if you darken my doorway again, you’ll need a corpsetaker instead of a medic. You read me?”
The moles helped their friend up off the floor, and he turned, furious at Emeline, until he saw something in her eyes and the fight suddenly left him. The third mole was still wrapping his hand up, hoping to stem the blood that was freely flowing into a handkerchief he had taken out. All four of them were cursing and mumbling at the Coalition officer, but didn’t dare to raise their voices. Coalition officers had a lot of leeway when it came to dispensing deadly force and none of them wanted to give her an excuse.
Meade was lying on the floor, clutching his head and moaning. Emeline moved over to him and was joined by the blonde officer helping him up off the floor and back onto his barstool.
“Jim’s had himself a rough night,” the blonde woman observed.
Emeline cocked her head at her, “You know Meade?”
“Our paths have crossed,” the blonde woman said mysteriously. Emeline couldn’t help but wonder what THAT meant; Meade wasn’t exactly tomcatting his way around Mars, but she was never exactly sure what was going on in that fool cowboy head of his.
“Any idea why those moles attacked him?”
The Coalition officer shrugged, “I heard them mentioning something about bets that didn’t pay off.”
Emeline snorted, “With Meade that could mean just about anything.”
“I believe they were referring to his Zero-G fight earlier.”
Emeline nodded and put Meade’s hat back on his head. He moaned gratefully.
“He took a beating and won, but the judges didn’t see it that way.”
“He won fair and square,” the woman insisted. “And I can prove it.”
Emeline’s eyes narrowed, “And you are…?”
The blonde woman shifted nervously. “My name is Lieutenant Sarah…” she paused, “Gonzalez.”
Emeline’s eyes widened in shock, Sarah Gonzalez was the daughter of Captain Gonzalez, the man who had become an instant celebrity after being accused of treason and the deaths of over six hundred people on his ship. The saturation coverage all over the Wireless had made a pretty convincing open and shut case against the disgraced Captain. The jury had agreed, sentencing him to six hundred consecutive life sentences in Enzeli prison.
The prosecution’s case had been largely based on the fact that the Captain’s personal ArmBar codes were used for the terrorists to gain access to his ship and blow it up. Those codes could only be used if the DNA of the person wearing the ArmBar matched what was on file. The motives of the terrorists were never discussed, but the media didn’t like to concentrate on incidentals like motivation, which weren’t exactly good for ratings.
“What do you mean you can prove he was cheated?” Emeline asked still suspicious of the Coalition woman. “Why the hell should I believe the daughter of a traitor?”
“My father didn’t betray anyone!” Sarah said, snapping back at her. “He served the Coalition honorably for over forty years.”
“People serve money,” Emeline said cynically. “I’ve seen it a hundred times; the right kind of bribe makes anything possible.”
“My father was the kindest, gentlest, most respected captain in the fleet. You don’t give that all up on your last run, days before retirement,” Sarah insisted. “He was framed.”
“Hard to frame a guy when personal ArmBar codes are used,” Emeline said skeptically. “Besides, what do you want with Meade?”
“I wanted to ask if he’ll help me and my father. He knew… knows my father,” Sarah said, holding back tears.
Emeline raised an eyebrow and considered the news. Meade would want to hear this. Emeline moved back behind the bar and grabbed her soda fountain gun. She selected the water option and sprayed Meade, waking him up.
“Jesus Em!” Meade said irritated. “Can’t a guy get some sleep around here?”
“You got a visitor,” Emeline tossed him a bar rag and pointed at Sarah Gonzalez.
Meade wiped his face off and turned to see the blonde woman next to him. “Sarah!” He cried out, “Good God woman, how long has it been?” He stood, swaying slightly and gave her a drunken hug.
<
br /> “Long enough for me to grow breasts and get a real job,” Sarah Gonzalez replied, pleased to see that he recognized her.
Meade lowered his voice, and drew away looking into her eyes, “I’m sorry about your father. Raw deal that.”
Sarah grasped Meade’s hands and looked him in the eyes, “He needs your help Jim.”
Meade shook his head. “I don’t know what I can do. I’m not the best at helping folk break out of jail. That’s sorta outside my field of expertise.”
“That’s not what I need,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “I want you to pay off your debt to Alexander Laszlo.”
Meade snapped his head up hearing the warlord’s name, “How did you know about my…”
“Everyone knows your story by now,” Sarah said. “Your fight is all over the wireless. Some journalist from Channel Ten interviewed your bookie who said you owed money to him.”
“I owe money to lots of people,” Meade scoffed.
“Coalition records showed me that the money man your bookie introduced you to is backed by Laszlo,” she said frowning. “It’s not exactly rocket science.”
Meade drummed his fingers on the redwood bar, enjoying the feel of the smooth wood. “Sounds awfully generous of you, I’m not gonna deny I need the money, but what do you want?”
Sarah Gonzalez held up a thin thumb drive and offered it to Meade. Meade accepted it and inserted it into his ArmBar. The display popped up with a prompt asking if Meade wanted to run the program on the disk.
“What’s this?” Meade asked.
“It’s a simple scanner program,” Sarah replied. “Some of the latest tech from the Coalition nerds. All I need you to do is run that program when you get near Laszlo’s ArmBar and it’ll download a copy of his data and delete all his files.”
“Hard to take files off the cloud, Sarah,” Meade interjected.
“Not with this, it’s viral dependent data. Any data with the same hashtags located in the cloud will have all its paths altered or deleted. It’s like trying to find the right needle in a stack of needles the size of Mars… pretty much impossible. Plus, all I really need is for you to slow him down long enough for me to do what I need to.”
“Which is…?” Meade questioned.
“Prove my father’s innocence,” Sarah Gonzalez said, setting her jaw in determination. “He was framed and I believe Laszlo had something to do with it.”
“Why Laszlo?” Meade asked. “News seemed pretty clear that it was your dad’s codes that opened up the hatch for the terrorists. Sorta hard for the man to frame up your dad, what with his alibi of on being on Mars at the time and all.”
She shook her head, “No, you don’t understand. He sent those terrorists to steal something from the Madera. I don’t think anyone was supposed to know they were even there.”
“Start from the beginning,” Meade said. “Let me get straight first if you don’t mind…”
Meade reached into his pocket and found what he was looking for. He withdrew a small vile of blue liquid, uncapped it, and drank it down.
“Thepazine is my own personal savior,” Meade said, smacking his lips. He could already feel the medication clearing his head from the alcohol’s effects. His balance was improving, and the world was beginning to slow down its mad spinning. Soon, he’d be able to pass even the most stringent sobriety tests. If there was one thing the Coalition did right, it was their hangover cures.
“Tell me first why you think Laszlo has anything to do with your father’s incarceration and the crash of the Madera,” Meade said, once the vial’s contents had taken full effect.
“Process of elimination mostly…” Sarah said.
“What do you mean?” Meade asked, putting his feet up on the bar.
Sarah began ticking off each of the warlord’s names on her fingers, “Palmetto doesn’t involve himself in terrorism. Sure, he’s a scumbag fixer at the casinos, traffics women, runs drugs, but he’s no terrorist. His file confirms as much.”
Meade raised an eyebrow. He was curious what must be in the Coalition’s file on Palmetto, probably some very heavy reading.
“Logan O’Donnell runs his protection rackets all over New Plymouth, but from everything I’ve heard and read about the man, he’s an honorable sort for a warlord.”
Meade nodded at that one. O’Donnell didn’t need terrorism to achieve his goals. He had plenty of muscle and money for that.
“Lyndsay and the rest of his crazies over at the Brotherhood of the Abyss might use terrorism to accomplish their goals, but I can’t see how they could get the resources for such an attack let alone what they would gain by crashing a transport from the Homeworld.”
Meade shook his head, “What about the Gun Runners?”
Sarah shook her head, “They were the first I considered actually. After all, they’d be the most likely to have access to the kind of equipment the terrorists used, like the camotech.”
Meade whistled, “News didn’t say anything about Camotech being used. Where’d they find it that? I thought all camotech was destroyed.”
Sarah set her jaw in determination, “My father told me about it. That’s why I think Laszlo is the one who set my father up – or at least, he knows who did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Laszlo was former Coalition…” Sarah began.
“Wait,” Meade said, surprised. “Laszlo was one of yours?”
“Was being the operative word,” Sarah said. “Once the Last War ended, he immigrated to Mars and it’s suspected he took his ship’s compliment of Last War tech with him.”
“All the major war tech from the Last War was destroyed,” Meade said. “No wants a repeat of what happened, which is why we lost all sorts of cool ways to kill people.”
“Just because something was made illegal and suppressed doesn’t mean it still doesn’t exist out there for a person with the right sized bank account.” Sarah said.
Meade chewed his bottom lip and thought it through. Sarah was making a convincing argument, besides, when had he ever turned down easy money, let alone fifty grand?
“You know my loan was fifty thousand, right?” he asked.
Sarah opened her ArmBar and immediately transferred the credits, “It’s yours, whether or not you get the info I need.”
Meade’s eyes widened, “Where did you get all this? Coalition officers don’t make this much…”
“I mortgaged the ORI claim my father had out on the Martian plains,” Sarah said, looking at Meade with her wide blue eyes. “I’d do anything to get him out of that hellhole. He’s already been interred for three weeks. That’s what? Nearly two and a half years in his mind?”
Meade closed his eyes and shook his head. The Coalition had found themselves with a problem with criminals after immigration to Mars had begun in earnest. At first, society had sent their dregs to colonize Mars, but, law and order was not easy to enforce far from the central power of the Coalition. The lack of any real law on Mars made it difficult for many to get a fair trial. Most criminals who found themselves in caught up in the Coalition’s legal system were often left to rot within the Coalition’s “Enzeli” jail system.
The Enzeli jail system was a godsend for law and order types, and a nightmare for criminals. Without any real jail facilities to speak of, punishment still needed to be meted out and they needed to serve their debt to society. That’s when the Coalition decided rather to invest in building a central jail system that would house, feed and care for prisoners. But this was no ordinary prison – no, criminals were put into suspended animation and hooked up to the virtual prison system - A giant sandbox filled with the worst New Plymouth had to offer.
This virtual prison was no cakewalk and was little better than a free for all for the absolute worst Mars had to offer. In order to keep the Martian prison from overflowing, jail sentences were experienced by the users at an incredibly accelerated pace - so for a man who was supposed to serve a fifty year sentence, might only have to spend a
few months in real time lying on his back hooked up to the Coalition’s Enzeli jail. The accelerated pace that kept the criminal’s brain humming with high activity for months at a time. Unfortunately, that did something to their personalities and every man who entered the Enzeli jail never returned the same.
After leaving Enzeli most offenders rarely committed another crime – but that’s only because they could barely function, their brain turned to mush because of the high demands placed on it during their stay. The longer someone was in jail, the less able they were to take care of themselves after they got out.
A five thousand square foot warehouse down by A-Block had been converted into the prison where more than ten thousand prisoners were currently serving their time inside. The average sentence was five years, and the majority of prisoners spent less than two weeks in suspended animation.
The sentence for Captain Gonzalez had been the most severe in Coalition history. The judge had found that the Captain acted with gross misconduct and found him guilty of treason. Usually an offense that severe came with the death penalty, but Captain Gonzalez’s long record of service earned him the distinction of being sentenced to serve six hundred consecutive life sentences. He would be in the Enzeli prison for the next five years in real time as experienced by the citizens on Mars, but the captain would experience it as an agonizingly slow process, living through each day of a six hundred year sentence inside his head for what would seem like an eternity.
“Don’t seem right somehow,” Meade said, almost to himself.
“It’s not,” Sarah said. “Someone set him up, someone powerful enough to fake his DNA coder to frame him and I want to know why.”
Meade chewed his bottom lip and thought about what Sarah was offering. He certainly wouldn’t be doing himself any favors if he aligned himself against the Coalition – not that he cared naturally. As a Runabout, he was a man without a flag, someone who didn’t care what the hell the Coalition or Consortium was doing on a day-to-day basis. Politics wasn’t his forte. Far as he was concerned, no matter the party, bureaucrats were all the same, fat, greedy pigs who had their hands in all your pockets.
