by Jaleta Clegg
The orangish light of the sun crept past the clearing and up the far wall of the canyon. The guards came alert and shouted at them to stop. They dumped the cauldrons into the contraption. The woman working with Jasyn pulled her away from the fire pits and the heat. The guards rounded up the prisoners and herded them around the contraption. They were each handed a pale colored brick. The line moved past the giant contraption, trudging into the jungle.
Jasyn sniffed her brick. It didn’t smell of anything much. The woman walking next to her nibbled hers. Jasyn tried a corner. It was crumbly, pasty, and bland. Her belly rumbled, telling her it had been much too long since her last meal. She ate the brick, one thick bite at a time.
The silent line of prisoners marched along a beaten path.
“Better with water,” the woman whispered. She had half her brick still in her hand.
Jasyn tried to swallow and had to agree. The brick wasn’t dry, but the heat had been intense and they had not been given anything to drink.
They were taken to a wall of thick bushes. Thorns grew from each branch and twig. The guards pulled a section free, then herded the prisoners inside. They shoved the bush in place, shutting the prisoners in a wide clearing, maybe thirty feet across. A sluggish stream crawled along one side. The sunlight overhead faded.
The woman pulled Jasyn to one side. “We can talk now, as long as we’re quiet about it. Upstream end of the water is for drinking. If you need to go, use the downstream end.” She pointed.
Someone had rigged a ragged blanket over the end of the stream. That was the only privacy inside the clearing. Jasyn sank down on the ground.
“I’m too tired,” she said.
The woman shrugged before crossing to the stream to drink. Jasyn watched her dip her brick into the stream. The woman nodded to several others as she came back. She wore a faded gray shipsuit without markings or insignia. Her hair was dark where it wasn’t streaked with gray. She wore it pulled back, tied off with what looked like a strip of cloth from her shipsuit. She saw Jasyn watching and gave her a half smile, a quirk of her mouth that had little humor in it.
“Welcome to hell,” she said as she sat by Jasyn.
“Is that what they call it here?” Jasyn rubbed her aching arms.
“Close enough, those who still talk anyway.” The woman pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “We saw your ship last night. Some of us keep hoping it’s a rescue.” She broke off a piece of the food brick, nibbling it.
“How long have you been here?” Jasyn asked.
“What’s the date?”
Jasyn told her.
The woman shook her head. “Eight years and a bit.”
“You’ve been here over eight years?”
“Some have been here much longer.”
Jasyn gave in to the despair she had held back. If they’d been here years, what hope did she have of ever getting free?
“What’s your name?” the woman asked. “What ship?”
“Jasyn, from the Phoenix Rising.”
“Never heard of it.” She held out one thin hand to Jasyn. “Roz, originally an engineer for the Nueva.”
“Never heard of it,” Jasyn said and took the woman’s hand.
“Trading ship for Hebrides Trading,” Roz said. “We started out with a crew of twenty. I haven’t seen most of them for a couple of years now. At least that long, it’s hard to tell when all the days are the same. What about your ship?”
“There were three of us. Very small independent trader.”
“What brought you on the Kumadai run?”
“Taking medical supplies from Toko to Parrus.”
“Ah,” Roz said. “With a big bonus to get you to even consider it. You haven’t traded in this sector before, have you?”
Jasyn shook her head. “I plotted the course. It looked safe enough.”
“And probably would have been if you’d ignored the distress beacon. We fell for the same trick.”
“So what is this place?”
Roz shrugged. “Hey, Taffer,” she called softly. “Come explain to the newcomer what this place is.”
A thin man, the one in Exploration blue, came over and settled next to them. Some of the people in the clearing followed him. Half of the people in the clearing ignored them, curling up on the bare ground to sleep or just staring at nothing.
“Taffer Jeffs,” the man said, introducing himself to Jasyn. “Off the Exploration ship Deep Water.”
“Jasyn Pai, Phoenix Rising,” she repeated.
Others introduced themselves, stating names and ship names. She was surprised by the number of different ships they represented.
“Tell her your theories, Taffer,” Roz said. “He studied linguistics and culture, though I’m still not sure why the Patrol sent his ship out this way.”
“We were on our way somewhere else,” Taffer said. “Shortcut through the Kumadai run saved us at least a month of travel. What year did you say it was?”
Jasyn told him. There was a collective sigh from the group.
“That long,” Taffer said. “I guess the grant money for Dadilan went somewhere else.”
Jasyn twitched in surprise.
“You know of the place?” Taffer said. “It’s not restricted anymore? I didn’t think they’d open it up for trade that fast.”
“It’s not open,” Jasyn said. “I had a friend who spent some time there.”
“Tell her your theories about this place,” Roz prompted.
Taffer settled back. Overhead the last of the sunset was drowned out by a purplish glow.
“I’m just guessing,” he started. “From what I’ve seen, which isn’t much, this was a colony that went wrong. I haven’t quite figured out how the collars fit in, or some of their other technology.”
He droned on, lecturing. He brought up studies that had been done elsewhere and quoted scientific papers of twenty years ago. Jasyn found herself falling asleep long before he finished.
She dreamed twisted dreams that night. Taffer lectured her while the golden men watched, their wands held ready. The words Taffer said wouldn’t make sense. The golden men raised the wands, one told her she had to understand. She saw Clark beyond them. She lunged for him, hands held her back. And Clark was gone, the dream dissolved into fragments. She woke chilled and aching on the bare ground. The sky overhead was a dull purple. She rolled over and saw Roz watching her.
“Bad dream?” Roz asked. “We all have them. Who’s Clark?”
“My husband.” The word was still new to her, she suppressed a shiver of longing. She wanted Clark here, wanted to know he was still safe. She missed him fiercely. She blinked back sudden hot tears.
“He’s here?” Roz patted her arm.
“They took him away,” Jasyn said, her voice small and full of pain. She wanted to take back the last weeks. She wanted the last day with Clark to have been better. She regretted her stupid, pointless anger.
“I was supposed to be on my last trip,” Roz whispered. “Justen was going to meet me on Parrus. We had the arrangements all made. I wonder what he did when I didn’t come.” She wiped her face with her hand. “I haven’t told anyone that before.”
The camp slowly woke. The purple glow fizzed as it blanked out.
Roz sniffed and wiped her nose. “If you want any privacy at all, you’d better move.” She walked quickly across the clearing to the stream.
Jasyn stood. Her muscles protested each movement. She hobbled to the stream. The water had leaves and twigs floating in it. She was thirsty enough that she made herself ignore them. She drank and splashed water over her face then stood in line to use the curtained part of the stream.
The golden men pulled back the thorny bushes. The prisoners shuffled into line, no one talked. The golden men marched them to the clearing with the pots.
Jasyn bit back a groan as she lifted the heavy pounding stick. Roz was with her at the cauldron. Taffer fed the fire underneath. None of them tried to whisper.
They lined up and were issued a brick of food and given a short few minutes to eat it. The whole process with the pots and plants was repeated. The day wore on in an agony of constant pounding. By the time the golden men called a halt for the day, Jasyn was so tired she could barely move. Her muscles burned with pain. She shuffled into line and got her brick of food. They were driven back to the thorny barricade and shut in for the night.
Jasyn stumbled, more tired than she could ever remember. She forced herself to drink and wash her face in the sluggish stream. She waited her turn behind the blanket, then settled next to Roz.
“I don’t want to ever move again."
“You’ll get used to it,” Roz said. “The first few weeks are the hardest.”
“I don’t want to get used to it. I want to go home.” I want Clark, she added to herself. And Dace. And her ship. “Hasn’t anyone ever tried to escape?”
“Quite often. There were three of them just a few months ago. They were caught and staked out in the main clearing. They made us walk extra miles every day just to see them. It took a week for them to die.”
“But if we all—”
“Do you think it hasn’t been tried? At night, they aren’t there, yes. There’s only a thick wall of thorns. But where would you go? The force shield keeps us in the canyon until morning. And even if you did get loose and managed to keep away from them until the shield opened, where would you go then? The ships can’t lift. We landed at evening. We tried to take off and burned out the main core. It’s hopeless. All we can do is wait.”
“I’m not spending my life here,” Jasyn said.
“The rest of us felt the same way, at first. You’ll either adapt or you’ll die.”
“Roz, leave her alone,” Taffer said, joining them. “She’s right. We have to keep trying.”
“And keep dying.”
“The three they staked out were part of her crew,” Taffer said to Jasyn. “We’ve been trying to find a way to communicate with the other groups. Downstream a ways is where they grow the plants. I’ve been trying to send messages to them by floating them in the stream.” He settled on the ground. “As far as I can tell, we now outnumber them about ten to one. There have been more ships the last few years than ever before. So our biggest problem is finding a way to deactivate the collars. Without them, we could overpower the guards and steal the wands.”
“You still have to find a way to lift off,” Jasyn said. “Our preliminary scans showed some kind of tractor beam that kept us pinned here. The coms were all jammed, too.”
“Well, then.” Taffer picked up a stick and started marking in the dirt. Others crowded closer. Roz snorted and moved back.
“First,” Taffer said. “We find a way to remove or disable the collars. No, first we find a way to communicate with the other groups. So we can coordinate things. Then we deal with the collars. After that we have time to figure out how to shut off the beams. And then we can go home.”
“You’ve been trying for years to find a way to communicate,” Roz said. “Why should it be different now?”
“Don’t give up, Roz.” Taffer shot a glance at the handful that hadn’t joined them. They sat hunched and staring at nothing. “You either keep hoping or you become like them. Most of them die within a few months,” he added to Jasyn. He dangled his stick between his knees, looking at the scratches he’d made in the dirt. “Maybe if we could find something to write messages with, it would help.”
Jasyn reached in her pockets. She had started carrying things around, a habit of Dace’s she had picked up without meaning to. The golden men hadn’t gone through her pockets. She pulled out a handful of assorted things and spread them on the ground.
Taffer grinned. He picked up her short nail file and turned it over in his hands. “They’re getting sloppy, Roz. Look what they didn’t take.”
It wasn’t much, the nail file, a tube of lipstick, a handful of small coins, a comb, three elastics from her hair, and her pocket com unit.
Taffer picked up the com unit. “Ruttie, see what you can do with this.”
A thin grizzled man crawled over to them. Taffer handed him the com. Ruttie turned it over in his hands. He flipped it on and scanned through the frequencies. There was nothing but thick static. Ruttie popped off the back.
“He doesn’t talk much anymore, but he can do anything with equipment,” Taffer said to Jasyn. He opened the tube of lipstick and frowned. “Linna, do you still have that bark?”
A blond woman nodded and fished under a scrawny bush that somehow managed to live in the clearing. She pulled out a roll of rough bark.
“It’s waterproof,” Jasyn said. Taffer rewarded her with a wide smile.
Jasyn forgot how tired she was. Within a few minutes, Taffer had anyone willing to help busy with something. Several worked on peeling apart the bark into thin sheets. The woman, Linna, wrote careful messages on the sheets with the lipstick. Several others found thicker sheets and carvied messages in them with Jasyn’s nail file. Ruttie had the com unit dismantled and spread over the ground. Taffer handed off the coins and two of the elastics to another group. Jasyn kept the last elastic and her comb. Her hair was a mess.
“The light will be gone soon,” Roz said.
Jasyn moved closer to the other woman. She held up her comb. “How long has it been since you’ve actually had one to use?”
Roz looked away.
“Tell me about your crew.” Jasyn waited until Roz started talking, then quietly combed the other woman’s hair. Any escape would have to include everyone, Jasyn decided. Nobody should have to live as a slave.
Chapter 9
I sat in the open hatch of yet another stripped ship and made notes. The papers and maps I’d printed frayed around the edges. Five days and I’d covered close to fifty miles and checked twenty six of the ships. I was tired, hungry, and sick of my own voice. I wanted to talk to someone else. I wanted to know that Jasyn and Clark were alive and well. I wanted off that planet. I hated the sharp smell of the plants I walked through.
I looked back the way I’d come during the night. My trail was plain across the rolling landscape. The brittle plants had shriveled and died where I’d walked. I finished my notes, yet another empty ship marked and noted, and tucked them away. At least most of the ships still functioned. Only a few were so broken that they’d never fly again. One of them I hadn’t tried to investigate, not after finding the first body. It was years old, the body mummified in the dry wind. I hadn’t wanted to see any more on that ship. I’d crossed it off the list.
I sat and watched the sun rise.
What would Tayvis do in this situation? He was trained for this. He knew how to survive on primitive planets. He would know how to move across the landscape without leaving a trail a blind rat could follow. He would have a plan by now, one a lot more workable than the vague one I’d come up with.
I still had thirty miles to cover and more ships to check. So far I had three different caches along the canyon rim, items from the Patrol ship Tommy Ruiz. I hadn’t seen any of the golden men after that first day when they took Clark and Jasyn. I found traces of new paths, though. So I holed up in ships during the day and traveled at night. If it was the golden men making the paths, then I was safe as long as they didn’t find me during the day. They went back into the canyons at night. If it was someone else, I hoped to find them. They could help me find a way to get the others out.
I looked back the way I’d come. I could just see some of the ships over the rise. Those that still functioned, or would with very minor repairs, I’d left closed with all systems on standby. I’d rigged the doors like the
first ship. A few seconds with a screwdriver and the doors would be functional again. A few minutes without the screwdriver and they would still be operational.
The purple glow of the force shield faded as the sun rose over the flattened plain. Shafts of orange red light poured over the desolate landscape. It was time for me to get the door closed and hide for the day. I smothered a yawn.
This ship, a small Patrol cruiser, hadn’t been here long. According to the log, at least what I could get open, it had crashed only a few months before. Maybe its food storage banks would have something more edible than ration bars.
I stood and stretched. It was strange. None of the deep storage items, like the freeze dried foods, had been touched. Locked storage bins had been bashed open or left, battered but still intact. Any loose items were gone from the ships. The doors were left hanging wide open.
I hit the button for the airlock and let the door close. The layout of the cruiser was a lot different than my ship, but still familiar. I’d spent several months training in one very much like this at the Academy. I stepped out of the airlock and into a small room. Rows of empty hooks showed where the vacuum suits had been. The storage bins underneath hung open and empty. I crossed the room and opened the door.
The lower deck had two main hallways. One went fore and aft, giving access to engines and the upper level. The other crossed starboard to port and was lined with storage rooms and crew quarters. I’d been through every bin in the place and all of them were empty. I had my pick of fifteen different bunks.
The upper deck had the cockpit which was designed for a minimum crew of seven, a small mess hall and galley, and quarters for the captain and his seconds. Everything up there had been taken, down to the polished brass cabinet handles in the captain’s quarters.
