FountainCorp Security: Diaries of a Space Marine

by Watson Davis

  "It depends." Darnell felt ill at the thought of throwing good money after bad, at the thought of being this close to tying up these loose ends and blowing it. "How much are we talking?"

  # # #

  I found a corner in my cage next to Vanessa's and I eased myself down to the deck, my body aching, my face throbbing. The two Family thugs circled the cages.

  I whispered, "Status?"

  "I've been better, but I'm not as bad as I look," Vanessa said, her face swollen, fingers and toes twisted and dislocated, burns blistering on her legs and arms, her skin gaping in places, the ragged edges opening and closing as she moved. "I fucked up. I was trying to help you, help her."

  "You'll have other chances," I said. Manacles fast around my wrists, I held my hands out, holding my breath, not wanting to touch Vanessa's tortured hands, letting her hands find mine, find a way to touch without pain, or minimizing the pain, at least. "Where is the rest of the team? Are they safe? Do they know we're here?"

  "No, you don't understand." She shook her head, a globule of blood dropping from her lips, hanging down with a long streamer still connected to her. "I came alone, without backup. These fucks had no notion you were here until I started flashing your picture, asking if anyone had seen you. We're screwed because of me."

  "This is the hand we got dealt." I glanced at the thugs, wishing they would leave and give us some privacy, give us a chance to do something, but they stood their posts, staring at us with their black goggles hiding their eyes. "They realized I was here, and they were already hunting for me; they just didn't grasp I was the 'me' they were looking for. So let the guilt go and be ready."

  Vanessa lowered her head, greasy hair cascading over her shoulders, her back heaving with each breath.

  I peered past Vanessa at Santina in the cage on the other side. "How's the little one holding up?"

  "They brought her back a couple of minutes before you showed up." Vanessa raised her head, groaning, her body jerking to swivel around and stare at Santina. "Some LightDream doctors examined her, I think. She stopped speaking to me."

  “LightDream? Not Unity doctors?”

  Santina rocked back and forth on her cot, her skin pale, almost gray, her eyes dark and haunted, gaze unblinking, eyes unfocused, rivulets of sweat dripping off the tip of her nose. She scratched at her forehead, digging out channels in her skin with her fingernails, down her cheeks to her neck, clutching herself, scratching her legs, her upper arms, then back to her forehead, her movements growing more disjointed.

  "What's wrong with her forehead?" I pushed myself to my feet, stumbling along the bars of the cage, grasping them to help with my balance, and pressed my face against the cold bars. "Santina? Santina?"

  She did not respond.

  "I don't know." Vanessa, balancing on the side of her hand, pulling herself along the rough concrete floor, dragged herself across her cage, wincing and moaning each time she stretched her arm out, each time she pulled herself forward, lowering her head, not allowing the agony to deter her.

  The guards waited, their eyes unreadable behind their black goggles.

  "She's suffering bad." Vanessa inserted her arms through the gap between the bars, stretching up from where she sat on the ground, trying to touch the girl, to brush her broken fingers against Santina's leg, hoping to break whatever spell had the girl, to break through whatever trauma played through the poor girl’s mind, but Santina pulled away before Vanessa's hand reached her. Santina scrabbled into the corner, moving like an addict fighting through withdrawals, as far away from Vanessa as she could, still rubbing and scratching her forehead.

  "Can't you see she's sick, you assholes?" Vanessa yelled at the thugs, pouring all her strength into her voice. "Look at her!"

  A gust of air brushed over my skin, cold and painful, and I shivered, the shivers building, my teeth chattering. I leaned back against the bars, drawing my arms and legs in, looking for some warmth. I pressed my hands into my waist, brushing against the hard lump in the hem of my panties, wondering if it was time, if this was the best chance I was going to get.

  Clomp, clomp, clomp—heavy boots reverberated on the ferrocrete floor, splashing as they stepped in the puddles. A man's voice with a thick Family accent said, "Okay, gents. Time to move these wenches out."

  The two thugs who'd been watching us nodded. "Yes, sir."

  Fingers grabbing the bars, I lifted myself up, wedging my body in the corner, an ancient bit of myself awakening deep inside me. I’d known this was coming, but now that the time had come, I could not think straight, the fear inside me rising up in feral rage.

  I don't fear anything anymore. Right?

  The men invaded Santina's cell, a prison collar in their hands. She did not fight; she did not even acknowledge them. They snapped the collar around her neck, attached a control rod in the collar, and with a little tug, they guided her out through the door, her arms and legs lurching, hands rising to her forehead.

  "She needs a doctor." Vanessa crawled to the front of her cage.

  A high-pitched voice coming from the shadows said, "You'll all be needing doctors soon enough. I don't think I've seen a shoddier collection of cunts."

  I searched the darkness, my gaze hunting through the gloom, looking for the source of that damned voice, knowing who the voice belonged to, eventually finding her silhouette. I shuddered, trying to regain control, my lips inching back from my teeth, the hair on the back of my neck rising.

  Mercedez. I should have killed her when I had the chance.

  The men approached Vanessa's cage and eased the door open, keeping their attention focused on her. One of them entered, the collar in his hands, and bent down, settling the collar around her neck gingerly, brushing her hair aside, slipping the collar in, locking it in place. Vanessa did not struggle. She accepted it, head bowed.

  Mercedez's shadow inched closer, her features now hinted at by the dim light.

  The thug attached the pole to the collar and stood, backing out the door, tugging Vanessa by the neck. "Come on."

  "I can't." Vanessa crawled on her hands and knees, her actions hesitant, cringing away from touching her left knee on the ground, from placing her hands flat on the damp concrete. "I can't walk."

  "That's fine," Mercedez cackled, her hand rising to caress her face. "We can drag your filthy carcass to your new home."

  Vanessa scrambled to push herself to her feet, then hobbled a few steps, leaning on the pole to help her remain upright. The thug attached the pole to a crate, latching it in place. Vanessa groaned, trying to put pressure on her left leg, trying to stand straighter, her hand clasping the pole for support.

  The three men stalked up to the door to my cage, moving up with care and patience, all of them watching me, waiting for any movement from me.

  "You saw what she did to the cops?"

  "Yeah, but they were cops."

  One of them unlatched the cage, and another swung the grate open.

  "Step out peaceful-like, or we'll hurt the other two," said the one crouching in the doorway, motioning me forward. "Don't make this any more painful than it needs to be."

  I stared at him, looking into his eyes. I could take him. He knew it.

  "Don't make this any more painful for your friends than it needs to be," he repeated. "How about that?"

  I wanted to throw up, but I balanced myself against the bars with my hands, shuffling my feet forward; the man withdrew before me, the two others fanning out to the sides. I hopped through the door with my hands clenched into fists, muzzling my instincts, tolerating their approach, their reaching over me, placing the collar around my throat, snapping it into place.

  "Got her." He retreated, practically running away from me.

  The man holding the rod attached to my collar yanked on it, forcing me to shuffle forward.

  "This is no fun," Mercedez said from behind me.

  The muscles in my neck spasmed, the clamping ache shooting through me, my flesh burning, charring, the air sti
nking of sizzling hair and ozone. I twirled my body, throwing my weight against the bar, pulling the man holding it toward me. The electrical impulses increased, my whole face clenching up as sharp, searing pain knifed through my eyes. My lungs threatened to collapse, all the air crushed out of them. I had to make it stop.

  "Third Daughter!" the man bellowed, staggering toward me.

  I struck the rod with the shackles around my wrists, metal clanging against metal, the shackles cutting into my flesh, twisting this way, turning that way. The man lost his feet, and the other men hurled themselves at me. I rammed the shackles into one man's crotch, doubling him over, sending him to the ground.

  The intensity of the shock ratcheted upwards, and I shrieked my voice hoarse.

  "Stop!" Vanessa screamed, her head down, her fists against her thighs.

  The man lost control of the rod, ceding it to me, and I whipped it around, slamming the shaft against the third man's head, cracking his skull. He crashed to the concrete, limp, blood pooling up beneath his head.

  I spun toward Mercedez who was now on the other side of the cages, the light on her, all dressed in a skintight blue dress with a white lace tutu, a shotgun in her hand. I lunged toward her, holding the rod in my hands, but I couldn't think, could only listen to the crackling of my flesh, smell the stench of my smoldering skin, the misery so all-consuming that the edges of my vision grew gray, the world collapsing in around me until I found myself gawking at my knees, studying the floor between them, all my will, all my energy sucked out of me.

  Vanessa growled. Santina mumbled. I finally made out Santina’s words: "Keep going, keep going."

  "Third Father?" Mercedez sighed, tapping her temple. "It is as I told you it would be. She fought back. Please send down some more of the younger sons to give us a hand and clean up this mess."

  Switched On

  "What am I supposed to do?" Captain Lu spun her chair around, leaning over to peer down into the Command and Control chamber. "You want me to go blasting in there, ignoring the traffic controllers, and nudge some big, fat freighter out of its berth?"

  Edmund Motayen sat in his command chair, his elbow on the edge of the console, his heel thumping on the floor, his chin on his palm. His eyes narrowed, flitting over the incoming data, and he waved his hand in the general direction of the station. "I see open slips all over the damned place. Get us into one of them."

  "Yeah?" Captain Lu giggled. "If we were a commissioned mining ship or a licensed corporate ship instead of a disguised corporate ship, I would be on the horn to the appropriate people to clear me a path to one of them. We're not. So I'm not. You need to chill out."

  "Don't tell me to chill out." Edmund pushed himself to his feet and stalked over to the opening to the cockpit, ducking under loose cables hanging down, grabbing the edge of the portal, the metal connector between the two sections. He inserted his head up into the cockpit between Lu and Stemple, bellowing, "I want our boots on that Nemesis-be-damned colony!"

  "This isn't an authorized insertion, Edmund," Captain Lu yelled back, slapping him on the top of his head. "We can't just blow our way in."

  "Call them back. Tell them we have an emergency." Edmund whirled around, lifting his arms. "Tell them we're really thirsty and need a beer, or our atmo is fouled because Kevin took a dump and backed up the biohazard waste removal system, or something, dammit."

  "Come on, Edmund," Kevin shouted from the back of the command chamber. "That was one damned time! Give it a rest."

  Captain Lu leaned down to Edmund and whispered, "Climb back into the staging area and meditate or something. Figure out what you're going to do and where you go once we dock, but leave us alone and let us do our damned jobs."

  "Fine." Edmund retreated with raised hands, stomping away from the cockpit, advancing toward Kevin and Malordo who sat with him in the C&C room, both of them staring at him.

  "I got nothing, boss." Malordo gestured with her hand toward her display. "If they're here, their beacons are silent or jammed."

  "They're here," Edmund said, his voice dark and bordering on an animal's growl. "Any sign of the ship Dorothea came here in?"

  "No," Kevin said, shaking his head as he brought up a holo of the station. "Let me show you what I've picked up so far. The station government owns a small part of the station with only a meager ability to project force." He pointed to a section of the holo, the section lighting up, standing out from the rest of the display, expanding. "We've got a large LightDream section over here, the biggest corporation presence on this rock. There's a big-dog executive yacht in port; it's got some high-tech weaponry and would be a big threat in a tussle."

  "Whose is it?" Edmund stretched his arms up over his head, his hands gripping a beam, his foot tapping on the floor.

  "The ship is registered to the research division."

  "When the shit hits the fan, I want that ship monitored," Edmund said.

  "It's probably carrying a simple bodyguard detail, standard issue with those things." Kevin glanced over at Malordo, who was taking notes. "Over in the LightDream section itself, there are lots of freighters and mining ships. Not much direct firepower, unless they've hidden a Q-ship in among them, but enough tonnage to hurt us if they decide to ram hardware up our asses suicide-style. I have no idea how many boots they have on the ground here. The local station database is questionable."

  "How bad?" Edmund asked, his heart rate slowing, his blood pressure lowering.

  "The locals say there are only about 500 people working for LightDream here."

  Malordo snorted.

  "Yeah, like I said." He indicated another section, highlighting it. "Over here are some other companies with smaller presences with a few random berths and docks: Atlas, Eger-Khan, Aquilina, even some FountainCorp. But over there"—another section of the station lit up, the largest part of it, with tentacles stretching into other parts of the station. He shrugged—"This is all under the jurisdiction of the Gorovitz Family, including what appears to be a Family base. They've got several large vessels integrated into the architecture, their own complete terminal, and processing facilities."

  "I thought Families didn't like to be tied down to locations?" Malordo rose from her seat to take a closer peek at the holo.

  "Doesn't matter," Edmund said. "The Family leaves us alone, we leave them alone." Edmund moved his hand back over the now darkened LightDream section. "We need to identify who our enemy is, which of these jag-offs is a front for the Unity. I want up-to-date maps of those areas along with updated manpower estimates. I do not want us relying on crap neighborhood intel. Send down some drones to buzz around and do recon."

  "Yeah, well…" Kevin turned, smiling and glancing up at the cockpit. "You're going to have to convince Lu she needs to work a little harder at getting us a berth to operate from."

  Edmund closed his eyes, his lips pulling back from his teeth.

  "I heard you back there, soldier boy," Captain Lu barked from the cockpit.

  # # #

  Mercedez led us strutting like a peacock, her tutu fluttering stark white against the dirt and grime, like a queen of this underworld, like a triumphant general entering Rome to the cheers of the people… except these people, the dregs of the station's inhabitants fallen far from the upper levels, were social pariahs, physically and emotionally disabled, crippled by dark addictions, mangled in accidents, broken in fights—the unlucky and the unwilling. These people didn't cheer Mercedez. They glared at her, stared at us, some turning away, afraid to draw attention to themselves.

  I peeked about, catching glimpses of the street, the people, noticing this dump, that run-down diner, that faded sign. My heart thudded in my chest. I remembered this place. I’d resided here once long ago, so long ago I'd almost forgotten what it was like to live like a rat, to run, to hide, burrowing in the trash for scraps to eat, a runaway lured by the promise of love and adventure.

  Mercedez turned into a narrow corridor leading off the main thoroughfare, and waved to a slack
-jawed woman with a halo of flies buzzing around her head. Mercedez skipped and sang an off-key melody. The thug chaperoning Vanessa followed first, pulling her in, cursing her as she fell against a trash can, knocking it over, sending rotting banana peels and soggy paper spilling on the ground, joining the bits of lumber and metal already littering it.

  One of my chaperons went next, tugging on the pole connected to my collar, with another guard behind me shoving. I stumbled through, my feet slipping on the banana. I dropped to my knees, hand plunging to the ground, sliding beneath the papers, the escorts not allowing me to stop, to regain my footing, but I bounced up, pushing myself up from the edge of a wooden pallet, a sliver of wood in my fist, tucked against my forearm. I cradled it against my aching ribs.

  Santina came last, mumbling under her breath, shuffling her feet, her shoulders slumping, her chaperon yanking on her collar to navigate her through the corridor.

  Mercedez stopped us all before a battered door, its brushed silvery finish now a dingy gray, a painting depicting the name of the brothel—The Jealous Rose—fading on the door with a picture of a green rose surrounded by thorns. She laid her palm over the security panel, and the door slid open, letting the air pent up inside roll out, smelling of cheese and chicken and fried onions. My mouth watered against my will, my limbs trembling from hunger, my head growing light.

  "Home again, home again, who says you can never come home again?" Mercedez grinned at me. She disappeared through the door, and our guards trailed behind her, dragging us along.

  I slinked back into The Jealous Rose for the first time since I was sixteen, my soul cringing with each step on that black plastic mat, gawking at the sweating, dead-eyed girls working in the kitchens, drool hanging down from their lips as they stirred the kettles, glaring at the ovens and sinks crammed in together, aluminum countertops no one ever cleaned, with colonies of maggots crawling in graying chunks of protein dropped by uncaring hands to the floor. Gas flames flickered on the cooktops, licking at the bottoms of the pots and pans, grease sizzling and a girl with burns up and down her arms flipping strips of unnameable meat.