by R. M. Olson
“That’s the plan.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Never stopped us before.”
He was silent again for a moment, but she recognized the gleam in his eye.
She had him.
“No more prison cells,” she whispered. “You want out, right?”
He nodded, in a stunned sort of way.
“Well?”
A slow grin spread across his face. “You know we’re all going to die.”
She shrugged. “What’s life without a few gambles?”
“As I recall, the last time I gambled with you didn’t turn out well for me,” he said. He was clearly trying to keep his voice stern, but she could hear the familiar mischief sparkling under his tone.
“Yeah, well this time we’re on the same team. And if you recall, I always win.”
“Because you cheat.”
She shrugged and grinned at him. “Anyways, we’ll need some things from the guards. How much more cat piss you got?”
“Besides what you cheated off me the other day? How do you even cheat at fool’s tokens?” He shook his head, but his grin was almost as wide as hers, and the spark of crazy in his eyes that she’d noticed on their first meeting was back. “I must be insane myself,” he grumbled. “Alright, what do you need?”
Jez checked the packet she’d stowed carefully under her uniform.
Hopefully it was in a place she wouldn’t get hit.
Well, with luck, she wouldn’t get hit at all. Although that might take a hell of a lot of luck.
She straightened her jacket, put on her jauntiest grin, and sauntered out into the courtyard.
Her heart was beating far too fast.
She shouldn’t be so afraid of the stupid guard. That’s all he was, a guard, and she’d had plenty of people mad at her before. Hell, Antoni had been mad at her before, and he was a lot bigger than that brush-pig over there.
But something deep inside of her whispered that she should be afraid. That she should be very afraid. Because true, Antoni had been angry at her before. And he’d beaten her up before. But he’d never actually tried to kill her.
This guard clearly intended to.
She swallowed hard. Didn’t matter, she’d be fine. She had no intention of letting him try.
He was already glaring at her across the courtyard. She strolled casually in his direction, glancing around as if she hadn’t caught sight of him yet.
Three other guards were standing on the other side of the courtyard, but they were looking in the opposite direction.
That wasn’t ideal. Still, she could shout pretty loudly if she had to.
The guard was still watching her, his eyebrows drawn threateningly. He seemed irritated she hadn’t noticed him yet.
She wandered a little closer, still looking everywhere but at the guard. At this point, if she’d dripped water on his uniform, it would probably have started steaming.
She paused only a couple meters from him.
“Solokov,” he hissed. She glanced around innocently.
“Solokov!” he snapped, a little louder.
She shrugged, and looked back up at the sky.
“Jez!”
This time she did turn around.
“Oh, hey!” she said with a grin. “You still around?”
“I told you. I’ve been watching you. And I will be watching you.”
“Did you tell me that?” She shrugged. “Must have forgotten.”
His face was flushing dark, his eyebrows lowered so far she could hardly see his eyes underneath.
“Maybe you need a reminder.”
“Guess I do,” she said. “Course, that would depend on you being able to remind me anything. Honestly, the only thing I remember when I see you is why I’ve always thought brush-pigs were the ugliest—”
“Damn you,” he snarled, grabbing for her. She slipped out of his grasp, and he swung his shock-stick. It caught her hard beneath the ribs, knocking the breath from her. She staggered backwards, gasping for air, and he stalked forwards after her.
She glanced desperately backwards. The other guards hadn’t noticed anything, and she couldn’t scream, couldn’t even make a sound—
He lashed out again with his stick, and this time she managed to fling herself to one side. It missed her by centimetres.
“Help,” she gasped, choking in a breath. “He’s trying to kill me.”
Damn. It wasn’t nearly loud enough.
He grabbed for her again, and she jumped back, but not quickly enough. He caught her by the shoulder and jerked her forward.
She drew a breath into her bruised lungs and screamed as loudly as she could.
“Shut up,” he hissed. “Not so tough now, are we?” He drew back his fist, and she screamed again, a pathetic wail that made the entire courtyard turn and look.
It was too late. He was going to break her damn face, he was going to kill her—she closed her eyes and turned her head away and waited for the blow.
It didn’t come. Instead, a stern female voice snapped, “Zhurov! What’s going on?”
The hand on her shoulder released, and she collapsed into a pathetic heap.
“Zhurov. Warden doesn’t want more paperwork.”
Jez glanced up quickly. Zhurov was glowering at the new guard, but didn’t seem inclined to push his luck. At last he turned and stalked off across the grounds.
Jez stayed where she was, her muscles shaking with relief. She felt inconspicuously under her prison jacket to make sure her package hadn’t broken.
“You, prisoner,” said the guard, without any noticeable thawing in her tone. “Aren’t you the one who keeps getting into trouble?”
Jez raised her face and managed a grin. “Nah. I’m basically an angel.”
The woman was glaring down at her, tight-lipped. “Listen,” she said. “You picked the wrong guard to mess with. I’ll switch you into the other sector, because I don’t want the warden after me when you die, and she has to deal with the high-ups.” She leaned closer. “But this is the last time. Lady have mercy on your soul if you end up back here again.”
Jez got slowly to her feet, brushing herself off, and fought back a shiver.
She guessed the Lady had better get busy, then.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TAE, SECTOR 2, Day 7
“Guard!” hissed one of the prisoners, a young woman named Anya. Tae grabbed a handful of long, thin pipes and shoved them into a packing crate, then snatched up a bolt and bent over his grinder. His hands shook slightly.
Behind him, the prison guard’s footsteps approached, and slowed. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to steady his nerves. But the footsteps resumed their pace, continuing on down to the end of the table.
Tae blew out a breath of relief and glanced over. Ivan, in the station beside him, winked.
“Not bad, as long as you have an early alarm system,” he whispered. He bent and pulled a handful of pipes back out of the packing box, and held the edges up to the grinder, and Tae managed a slightly shaky smile.
He wasn’t used to trusting people. He really wasn’t used to people helping him, especially people he didn’t know.
But if they were planning on breaking out an entire prison—Ysbel had been right. They weren’t going to pull it off on their own.
Tae lifted a pipe out of the box and held the edges up against the grinder, sheering off the non-reactive coating, then held them just close enough to heat the metal without grinding it all the way off. He pushed gently against the grinder surface, bending the ends in on themselves until he’d closed the end off completely, and a sharp sliver, shaved partially off, protruded from the inside, then he set it off to cool.
It was ingenious, really. Ysbel was making sealed cartridges, with the two explosive components separated inside the cartridge. Drop the cartridge into the smaller pipe, so that it fit snuggly but couldn’t fall through, jam the smaller pipe into the larger closed off pipe, with its internal spik
e. The spike penetrated the cartridge, the components mixed, and suddenly you were firing a primitive, but highly lethal, heat gun.
Leave it to Ysbel to come up with a weapon that would be so deadly, and so very easy to mass-produce.
“You’re good at that,” Ivan muttered, looking ruefully at his own pipe.
“Just smooth down the smaller pipes,” Tae whispered. “Leave the bigger ones to me and Anya.”
“Because you’re techies?”
Tae gave a small smile. “Considering there’s nothing else for us to use our skills on, since this damn system is too old to hack.” He dropped the cooled pipe into the box and pushed it under the table. Ivan caught it with his foot and shoved it farther.
“Guard!” Anya hissed. Tae swore and shoved the pipe he’d just picked up back underneath a pile of bolts.
The guard stopped behind them. “I saw you’d finished a box,” he grunted. “Give it here, I’ll take it back.”
Tae and Ivan looked at each other.
“Quickly!” The guard tapped his shock stick against his leg impatiently.
Slowly, Ivan bent and pulled the heavy box from under the table. The guard pulled a small antigrav from his belt and bent to fasten it onto the box.
Ivan’s face was pale.
He had a right to be. When they opened a box of bolts for inspection and found it filled with makeshift pin-guns …
Tae was gritting his teeth so hard his jaw ached. Five seconds was all he needed—
One of the prisoners across the table from them dropped a sheet of metal with a loud clang. The guard started and glanced up.
Tae stooped, touched his com to the antigrav, and typed something quickly. As the guard turned back, he dropped to his knees, feeling around on the floor.
“Sorry,” he muttered, “dropped my piece.”
The guard shook his head and reached for the box. He tried to lift it, swore, pulled off the antigrav, and hit it against the table. He frowned at it, shook his head, and moved off, muttering about the damned ancient tech in this place.
Ivan, face still pale, shoved the box back under the table with his foot. A moment later, there was a scraping sound as someone pulled the box out of sight. Tae watched the prisoners across the table from him closely. Someone dropped a tool and bent to retrieve it, and someone else bumped into them. There was a small scuffle, some swearing, and then the prisoner who was in charge of dolling out the parts to be ground rolled her cart past.
And the box was gone.
Tae let out a breath and caught Ivan’s eye. Ivan shook his head ruefully.
“Quick thinking.”
Tae smiled reluctantly. “I guess we’d better get to work to have a box of actual parts ready in case the guard comes back.” He paused. “Your friends are fast.”
Ivan returned his smile.
“I’m in prison for organizing protests. Doesn’t sound like much, I know, but in this system—you’d be surprised at how many large, bulky items you have to get past officials in order to stage an effective protest. Those will be in Tanya’s cell before lunch.”
They’d chosen her cell because it was larger than most, with three people, and least likely to be inspected by the guards.
Tae smiled reluctantly. “At this point, I wouldn’t even question.”
“Speaking of which, how did your smuggler friend smuggle this many boxes of plumbing pipes over here?”
He sighed. “I don’t think she did. I think she smuggled distilled alcohol over here, and her fence set up the deal.”
“Ah.” Ivan said, smiling slightly. “Not a bad idea, really. I’m not sure why we didn’t think of something like that when we were on the outside organizing protests.” He picked up another pipe and held it to the grinder. “Speaking of which,” he said, in a voice barely audible over the whine of the machinery. “I’ve been thinking. We need to deal with the weapons on the walls.”
Tae closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the beginnings of a headache at the back of his head. “I’ve been working—”
Ivan shook his head. “No. That’s not what I meant. I told you, no one has successfully hacked into the weapons system in this prison, and believe me, they’ve tried. But if your plan is going to work, the guards can’t be able to break up a riot with the wall guns.”
Tae sighed.
That was the one problem they hadn’t been able to solve. The problem that, again, would depend solely on his ability to hack into a system that was impossible to hack into.
“But listen.” Ivan bent closer. “I’ve been watching since I got here. I guess you could say it’s a holdover from my protest days—you need to know if the officials have a way to just kill you all outright, or if they’re going to have to come in and arrest you.” He paused and put down the pipe he was working on, tracing a rough map into the metal shavings on the worktable top. “See? Right here. In every compound. If we could get the doors open between the compounds, then right here is sheltered from the guns.”
Tae stared for a moment. “I—are you certain?”
“Where the guns are now, in the towers—see? They can’t use their full potential range of motion, because they’re set into the tower doors. Unless they can move them out, but you told me—”
“I can’t promise anything,” said Tae slowly. “I can’t get into the system. But I haven’t seen any path for commands for moving the guns, only for bringing them online, aiming, and firing.”
Ivan gave a satisfied smile. “That’s what Anya said as well. She’s been poking at the weapons system since she got here three years ago,”
Tae breathed out slowly, feeling lighter than he had in a very long time.
For the first time since he’d met Masha—no, for the first time since he was fifteen, and Kira had died and he’d become the de-facto leader of the starving band of street kids back in Prasvishoni—they had a plan that didn’t depend entirely on him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LEV, SECTOR 1, Day 8
Lev stared at the eight-year-old over the holoscreen.
She stared back at him.
She was clearly better at this than he was.
He glanced over to one side, and shook his head in slight irritation. Why was it when Tanya needed a baby-sitter, she immediately thought of him?
“What’s your name?” the girl asked at last. From the unimpressed look in her eyes, he assumed she’d given up on leaving any meaningful conversation-starting to him.
“I’m Lev,” he said.
Tanya and Ysbel were sharing notes over Ysbel’s com about the weapon preparation. Misko was asleep.
Which left him, apparently, to babysit Olya.
He hadn’t been around someone who wasn’t an adult since he’d gone into university at age thirteen.
“My name’s Olya,” she said.
“Hello, Olya,” he replied, since some reply seemed to be expected.
How did you talk to eight-year-olds?
“So, Olya. What did you do today?”
She looked at him as if he was stupid.
In fairness, it was a stupid question.
“I did the same thing you did. We’re in prison.”
“Ah.”
“And what did you do today, Uncle Lev?”
He frowned. Uncle? That was new. Still, Tanya would have had to tell them something.
“I thought you already knew what I did today.”
“Of course I know!” she said in exasperation. “But Mamochka says I’ll get in trouble if I listen to what she and Mama are saying. So I guess I have to talk to you. And you don’t have anything to talk about.”
“Well. Why don’t you tell me something you want to know about?”
She frowned at him for a moment, thinking.
“Can you tell me what it’s like to fly?” she asked at last, a little wonder in her voice. “I haven’t flown. At least, Mamochka said I did when I was very small, to get here. But I don’t remember.”
He smiled. “I have
a friend you should meet sometime. Her name is Jez. She loves to fly. When we get out of here, maybe she’ll let you come sit in the cockpit.”
“Do you ever sit in the cockpit?”
“Sometimes.”
He felt a sudden longing to be there again, Jez humming to herself, badly out of tune, as she worked the controls, the calm emptiness of space around of them, how everything felt peaceful. Or, at least, as peaceful as anything felt when you were in close proximity to Jez.
“Well, I do want to fly a ship,” said Olya at last, decisively. “But what I really want to know is how they work. And why they can fly so fast, and what kind of fuel they use, and how you go through a black hole. And how the gravity in a black hole works, also. Because I know how gravity works, but Mamochka said it’s different there, and it bends time or something, but she couldn’t explain it to me. She told me to stop asking questions.”
“Well,” said Lev, trying to keep the amusement from his tone, “I might be able to answer a few of your questions. If you’d like. But what are you going to tell me in exchange?”
She paused for a long moment. “Do you know I can get to the other section through the library?”
He stared at her. “What?”
She looked smug. “I can climb through. I found it last year.”
“Olya.” He could hear the excitement in his own voice. “This is important. Where did you get through?”
She gave him a skeptical look. “First, you have to tell me about black holes.”
By the time Tanya and Ysbel finished their conversation, and Tanya’s face appeared in Tae’s com, Lev had almost talked himself hoarse. Olya, however, was looking ever-so-faintly impressed.
“Goodbye, Olya,” he said. “It was a pleasure talking with you.”
“You’re actually kind of smart,” said Olya grudgingly. “Goodbye, then.”
He hit the com and turned to Ysbel. He couldn’t hide the smile on his face. “Ysbel. I think your daughter just solved a whole lot of our problems.”
Ysbel was already asleep when something clattered against the bars of the cell. He jumped, his heart rate spiking, then the lock clicked and a dark figure slipped through the door.
