by R. M. Olson
He looked down at it dully, then dropped his head back into his hands.
Click. Click-click-click. Click-click.
Without his conscious thought, his brain caught onto the familiar patterns.
Pilot’s alphabet.
T-a-e-y-o-u-i-d-i-o-t-a-n-s-w-e-r-y-o-u-r-c-o-m. You are an ugly bastard and your mother probably washed her face with ship’s grease. Hey Tae what do you call it when a swamp rat and a bureaucrat get into a fight? Hey Tae. Come on, you idiot. Answer me. I’m getting sick of tapping all this crap out and I can’t think of any more jokes. Also did you know that Lev took my alcohol? If he hadn’t, I’d offer you some. Although it actually did taste like cat piss. Hey! Tae!
He sighed and tapped his com, too weary to argue with the force of nature that was Jez.
“Hey!” The pilot’s voice crackled over his earpiece. “You took your time answering! I thought I’d get blisters on my finger from all that tapping.”
“Jez,” he said in a dull voice. “Shut up.”
“Nope. Not going to shut up.” She paused. “Lev is basically frantic, but Masha told him to leave you alone. Of course, I don’t ever listen to Masha, so I thought I’d call you on the private line. You OK?”
“I’m fine, Jez.” He didn’t have the energy for this. But nor did he have the energy to get her to stop talking.
She was quiet for a moment. “Hey. Tae. Listen. This isn’t your fault.”
Finally, for the first time since Tanya had given them the news, he felt something. Anger. Bright and hot and scorching.
“Shut up, Jez!” he snapped furiously. “Just shut up. Don’t you get it? You’ve been killing yourself in here. You’ve been getting into trouble, and getting beat up, and getting drunk, and do you think I don’t know why? I promised to get you out. I told you I would. And I can’t. OK? We’re stuck here. I failed, and you’re stuck here, and Tanya and Ysbel are going to be able to see each other through that damn glass maybe three more times before we get carted off and sedated. OK? You’re never going to see the Ungovernable again. And it’s my damn fault, because I couldn’t get you out like I told you I would. Do you get it now?”
For a moment, there was silence on the other side of the com.
Good. He kicked his foot savagely into the corner of the bedpost, the pain of it almost welcome.
Maybe the damn pilot was finally figuring out what had happened. What he’d done.
“Hey, stupid,” she said at last. “What, you thought you were supposed to get us out all by yourself? What are you, grand general king of the whole system? Come on. So your thing didn’t work. OK, so good thing Lev is here, and Masha, and Ysbel, and me. You got us in, didn’t you? You convinced Tanya to come meet Ysbel. So now she’s on our side too. You thought you had to do all the rest of it too?”
He stared at the com, frowning in confusion. Had he misheard? He swallowed, suddenly at a loss for words.
She should have been furious. He’d hoped she’d be furious, because the other option was that she’d break down crying, and he didn’t think he could handle that right now.
“Tae? You there? Do I have to start tapping crap out in pilot’s alphabet again? Because I can. I’m good at it. I can be super annoying if I want to be.”
“I know that,” he murmured reflexively. “I—but I can’t—”
He could almost hear her rolling her eyes. “Come on. Stop being stupid. If you can. Not sure you can help it, I guess. I mean, we can only do what we can do. But still. This is pretty dumb, even for you.”
“I—”
“Look.” She sounded serious, for once. “Tae. You’re really, really good at what you do. I mean, I’ve never seen anyone who can do what you can do. But—there’s only one of you. I mean, no offence, but there’s a reason Masha got all five of us together. If she’d only needed you, you honestly think she’d have put up with me?”
She had a point.
“Hey, so I’m going to put you on the general line.”
“No, Jez, wait—”
“Hey everyone,” said Jez, “got Tae on. Guess he had some stupid idea that he was supposed to save us all, all by himself. But I talked him out of it.”
“Tae?” said Lev. Tae had expected anger, or maybe disappointment.
Instead, he sounded almost frantic with relief. “Tae. Are you alright? I would have called, but Masha said—”
“You listen to what Masha says?” drawled Jez.
“Jez,” began Masha warningly.
“Too bad I’m not in your sector, right Masha?” she said, the smirk clear in her voice.
“Jez, shut up. Tae. Listen,” began Lev.
“No,” said Tae, fighting down the nausea in his stomach. “You listen. I’m—I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, Ysbel. I’m sorry, all of you. I thought—”
“You thought what?” Lev sounded honestly confused. “I couldn’t find the specs for you. I wasn’t expecting you to perform a miracle.”
“I—but—”
“You idiot,” said Ysbel. Her voice was still hoarse from crying, but she seemed to have regained her composure. “This is not your fault.”
“I—”
“Listen, Tae.” It was Tanya’s voice this time. “I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you, except that you let me see my wife for the first time in five and a half years. I don’t know these other people, but I do know my wife. And believe me when I say, she would not have assumed that you would do this whole job on your own.”
He sat staring at his com, not entirely sure that he could speak even if he wanted to.
They should have been angry. They should have been yelling at him, swearing at him. He plaguing well deserved it. They’d been relying on him, and he’d failed.
Why the hell were they being so nice?
“Tae?” It was Lev again. “Are you still there.”
“I—”
There was a moment’s pause. “I’m sorry, Tae. I was putting too much on you, and I was doing it because I felt guilty that I wasn’t able to do what you needed me to do. That was my fault.”
“I—but didn’t you hear Tanya? We’re not going to make it out. I can’t get us out.”
There was a moment’s pause. Then Masha’s brisk, pleasant voice came through the com.
“Then I suppose the rest of us are going to have to start pulling our weight. It would probably be good for you to get at least one night’s sleep, since I’m fairly certain you haven’t had one since we arrived. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think I could do without a repeat of last time, where you were passing out from exhaustion as we were trying to make our escape.”
“Yep. I had to catch you like three times,” said Jez. “And, not to be insulting or anything, but you’re not the easiest person to haul around when we’re running for our lives.”
“I—” that seemed to be the only word his brain would produce at the moment.
“Masha’s right,” said Ysbel. “The rest of us are going to have to start pulling our weight around here. Don’t worry, Tae. We’ll get us out. I’m certain there’s a way.” She paused, and for a moment her voice choked up again. “Tae. I—thank you. Thank you.”
She didn’t say for what. She didn’t have to.
Tae swallowed down the lump in his throat.
He still felt somehow unmoored, as if the ground had come out from under him. But—but something that felt like a weight, that he hadn’t known he’d been carrying but had been almost crushing him, had been pulled off his shoulders.
He wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He wasn’t entirely sure who he was, if he wasn’t the one that every last damn person depended on to fix everything, and make everything work, and save everyone.
But—he felt like he could breathe, for the first time since they’d promised Ysbel they’d save her family.
“We’d best be getting back,” came Lev’s voice at last. “We’ll talk this over from our cells. We’re not getting out on the transport shi
p, so we’ll have to think of other options. But we will get you out, and the kids.”
Tanya and the kids. Chips implanted into their heads, and he couldn’t hack them. But Lev seemed certain that there would be a way, although in fairness Lev had never suffered from a lack of self-confidence. Still … chips implanted into someone’s brain. They’d have to have used—
“Wait,” he said quietly into the com. He almost couldn’t breathe. “Wait a minute.”
“What?” asked Lev.
“What if—Tanya, when they planted that chip into your head. What did they say?”
“They told me that if I left the prison walls, it would cause an electric pulse that would kill me,” she said, sounding slightly confused.
“OK. OK.” His mind was racing. An electric pulse. Everything here was old tech, but this had to be new. At least, within the last fifteen years or so.
“Did they say anything about how long they’d been doing this?”
“No. But I heard from the other prisoners they started this about five years before I got here.”
Ten years ago. That narrowed it further.
“And what do they do when people have to transfer between prisons?” he asked. He was almost holding his breath.
“I think they have a device that turns it off. I’ve seen it when they transfer prisoners before—there’s a wand they put up to the side of their heads and input a code. I believe the warden has to request it from Prasvishoni a day or two in advance, and it only works one time. That’s all I know. But we can’t wait for us to be transferred. They only take it off right before they load you into the ship, and you’re guarded the whole time. If you tried anything then, they’d shoot us, and then you. You could not get me out, and you’d lose your chance to escape yourselves.”
“No. We can’t,” he said slowly. “But—Tanya, I’m almost certain I know what tech they used. Here’s the thing—if you went out, crossed the walls, it would send a shock that would kill you. If you and the kids went out, it would kill all three of you. But—if two thousand people went out at the same time? Even two hundred? If they all stepped across the line at the same time, the shock that would kill you, or kill all three of you—it would be just a twinge. Not even enough to cause a headache. The system would short out, even if they have capacitors that are much bigger than anything I’ve ever seen.”
There was a long, long pause on the other end of the com.
“So you’re saying we break the whole prison out?” said Ysbel at last.
“Yes.”
Another pause.
“It could work,” said Lev at last, that thoughtful tone mixed with repressed excitement back in his voice, the one that always came when he was thinking hard about a new and interesting problem. “I think that just might be possible. We’d have to come up with a new plan, but—”
“What if I made them weapons?” asked Ysbel suddenly. “I could probably do something with the materials I brought. I meant to make explosives, but I could modify.”
“I could help,” said Tanya instantly. “We’ve worked together before.”
“Yes,” said Ysbel, and Tae could hear the fond smile in her voice. “Yes, we have, haven’t we? I couldn’t make enough to arm all the prisoners, but after whatever Lev did, it would be easy to start a riot, and then take some guards hostage when they came down to break it up. That may be all we’d need.”
“We’d need to be able to pass materials back and forth,” said Lev. “There’s no way around it. I’ll have to think on that. There’s got to be a way—”
“I could do it,” said Jez suddenly.
“What?”
“I could smuggle stuff back and forth. I mean, I’ve already been kicked out of a section once.”
“Yes, Jez,” said Lev patiently. “But that was because your former cellmate was trying to kill you.”
“Well, she’s still there, isn’t she? And on this side there’s a guard that wants to kill me. Shouldn’t be hard, I’ll just have to make sure he tries it in front of one of the other guards.” She paused a moment. “One of the other guards that doesn’t also want me dead, I mean.”
There was a moment’s pause as everyone contemplated this.
“Jez, that’s a terrible idea,” said Lev.
Tae was inclined to agree.
“No it’s not. Look, I’m a smuggler, OK? Let me do what I’m good at. If you don’t, I’ll do other things that I’m good at. Like getting drunk. And getting into fights. And giving Masha an aneurism.”
“Jez—”
“Relax, genius-boy. I’ll be fine.”
There was a momentary pause, and Tae could imagine the look on Lev’s face.
He clearly was trying to hide the fact he had a crush on the pilot. Tae wondered if he knew just how badly he was failing.
“Please,” said Jez at last, her voice serious. “I—need this.”
“Fine,” said Lev at last. He was clearly unhappy with the decision. “Fine. If that’s our only option, we’ll have to take it. But I’ll be thinking of ways around that, and if I find one—”
“Trust me, genius-boy, you won’t find anything better than me. I’m a damn smuggler, remember?” She was clearly grinning, and clearly enjoying herself.
Tae shook his head, a small smile on his lips for the first time since he’d arrived.
“Alright, this is all very productive, but we need to get back to our cells,” said Masha at last, a strange tone in her voice. “If a guard finds us here, all the planning in the world won’t help us.”
He tapped his own com. “Masha’s right. Best get back. Tanya, your cell door—”
“I know. It will lock when I close it.” She paused. “Thank you, Tae.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“It was very, very far from nothing,” she said quietly.
“Come on,” said Masha. “Time to go. Tanya, I’ll leave you with my com. I can use Tae’s if I need to communicate.”
Masha arrived back in the cell a few minutes later. She gave him a look which he hadn’t seen on her face before—almost soft.
“Tae,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry. For letting you think this all depended on you.”
He stared at her, once more rendered speechless. At last he muttered something incoherent.
She gave him a smile that was almost fond. “Get some sleep, Tae.”
And for the first time in a very long time, he did.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JEZ, SECTOR 1, Day 7
Jez had been basically an angel since the night before—she hadn’t insulted the guards who’d come through for prisoner counts, he’d held her arm up to the bars so they didn’t have to come back twice to try to read her prison bracelet, she’d avoided shouting crude words at the prisoners across the hall who looked at her in an odd way, and since lights out, she hadn’t sung one single rude song at the top of her lungs.
The effort had almost killed her, but then again—
Then again, the sight of those kids last night, the look on Ysbel’s face when she’d seen her wife for the first time—well, she had to make this work. That was all.
Anyways, even being locked up seemed easier when there was finally something for her to do.
When the guards came for the prisoner count the next morning, she stood like a model prisoner, waiting her turn. No one even swore at her before she reached the mess hall, which at this point was a record.
When she got in, she glanced quickly around for Radic. He was standing in the food line, and she managed to bump into him before they got their food. He dropped his dish and swore, turning around to glare at her, before he realized who it was.
He stared at her, then grinned. “You’re out.”
“Yep,” she whispered, with an answering grin. “Hey. I’ve got something for you, if you’re in.”
He frowned at her cautiously. “What?”
“Stick-in-the-mud.”
“Tell
me what it is.” His tone was slightly irritated.
“I’ll tell you. It might take a few minutes.”
He glanced around quickly, then jerked his head in the direction of a table.
When they were sitting, he leaned forward. “What is it?”
She leaned closer. “What would you say if I told you I was breaking out?”
This time he did frown. “I’d tell you you were crazy. There’s an acceptable level of crazy. And there’s the level that will get you killed. I know you hate it in here. But you can’t let them—”
“What if I told you some friends and I had a plan to break everyone out?” She watched his face, grinning.
His reaction was just as gratifying as she’d imagined. His jaw dropped comically, his eyes widening and his face going two shades paler than it had been.
“Wha—”
“Told you it was good,” she said with a smirk.
“Kid! That’s not good, that’s crazy! They’re not the same thing, even though I think you think they are.”
“Hey. It’s not just me. You know Tanya?”
“That woman I told you could take you apart with her bare hands?” His voice was rising now.
“Same one. Anyways, she’s helping us.”
“Us? Who’s us?”
“You know how you were saying you hadn’t seen me here before? And you were a bit surprised?”
“Yes, because someone as absolutely crazy as you is usually pretty high on the radar.”
“Well, I wasn’t here before a week ago. We broke in, my friends and I. Because we were trying to save Tanya. Because she’s married to one of my friends.”
“She’s—wait. Tanya’s married to that mass-murderer.”
“Yeah. That’s the one. Ysbel.”
He seemed to have lost the ability to speak. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but nothing came out. When he finally did manage to speak, his tone was slightly awed.
“Jez. I thought you were insane before. I had no idea.”
“Most people don’t,” she said cheerily. “So. What do you think? You in?”
“I—” he glanced around him at the mass of prisoners. “You said you’d get everyone out?”
