by Chris Bunch
“Possibly making those expenses on a soldier’s pay made Captain Goodnight go spectacularly bad. He used his talents to become a burglar, a jewel thief, quite a good one, in fact. He was caught, court-martialed, thrown out of the service, and sent to prison.
“He escaped, and set about a string of robberies, very cleverly put together, very skillfully done.
“Goodnight has never been caught again.
“Until three weeks ago.
“He decided to steal some fabulous jewels on a backwater planet named Tormal. Unfortunately, he was caught.
“Even more unfortunately, it seems that Captain Goodnight didn’t do his homework adequately. He generally hit targets that were easy and, just as important, on worlds where his punishment would be fairly light.
“Not so on Tormal, which has some fairly barbaric laws.
“They’ve quickly condemned him to death, which will be by slow strangulation.
“He now languishes, all appeals denied, in his death cell, to be killed within the month.”
“I think I see where this is going,” Riss said.
“As do I,” Grok said.
Jasmine smiled.
“I love working for people who are intelligent. It would seem to me that all you would have to do to win Reg’s, and hence Transkootenay’s, undying love and gratitude, would be to break Chas Goodnight out of prison.”
“Lovely,” Baldur muttered.
“Plus,” Riss said, “you notice how it’s suddenly become ‘you’ instead of ‘us?’ ”
EIGHT
Tormal may or may not have been colonized peaceably, but at one time in its past it must have had some formidable enemies.
The great fortress, now Tormal’s maximum-security prison, sat atop a mountain crest like a great spider.
Friedrich von Baldur looked at it dubiously as their hired lifter approached.
“Guess we can give up the tunnel idea,” he said.
“Sssh,” Jasmine King said as the com crackled on.
“Unknown aircraft, this is Tormal Citadel,” an obviously synthed voice said. “You are entering a forbidden zone. Identify yourself. Over.”
Baldur scrabbled for, found a microphone, keyed it.
“Tormal Citadel, this is lifter, uh …” He saw the vehicle ID on the dash, read it back. “Two passengers, from Alliance Prisoners Aid, cleared by the Alliance Consulate and Tormal Corrections Authority.”
There was a pause, and Baldur busied himself with a camera as they closed on the fortress.
“This is Tormal Citadel. Landing approved. Your controls are now under our direction. Do not attempt to make corrections, for fear of being fired on by automatic devices, now tracking your ship. Clear.”
“Very good,” Baldur said with satisfaction. “Did you notice, not one single real person talked to us?”
He smiled sharkishly.
Jasmine looked bewildered.
• • •
“Condemned Row …” the speaker blared. “Prisoner Goodnight, Chas. You have visitors. Cell door coming open.”
And the door to Goodnight’s cell slid open. A small, wheeled robot buzzed down the aisle, stopped at his cell. A green light atop it began blinking.
“Who’s visiting me?” Goodnight wanted to know, but the robot just blinked.
“I’ll be dipped,” he said, and bounded out.
The other prisoners on Death Row came to their cell doors, which appeared to be unbarred glass, with an opening along the top.
“Guess the real truth is coming out, boys, on just how bleedin’ innocent I am,” Goodnight said as he followed the robot.
“Prob’ly gonna geek you early,” someone came back.
There were boos, some cheers, a lot of grins. Goodnight had taken care to make himself popular since he’d been condemned to death. No one who’s ever been in jail makes enemies out of his fellow cons without good cause.
The robot took him to a lift, and he dropped calamitously downward. Prisons don’t much care about whether or not inmates’ stomachs get unsettled.
Death Row was on the top level of the fortress, and the prison’s entrance/exit was on the ground floor.
He was escorted by the robot into a room with a plas wall down its middle. On either side of the wall were tables and chairs. A microphone and pass-through were in the middle.
Set unobtrusively in two walls, high up, were two monitors.
On the far side of the wall was a silver-haired man who could have been a diplomat, and the most beautiful woman Goodnight had ever seen.
Goodnight looked at them, and hid his disappointment. He didn’t know who he would have wanted to see — maybe his brother? No. What would Chas have to say, other than confess failure to Reg? That’d be hard, since Reg had always looked up to him, he thought, even if the two were always competing.
“I don’t know you,” he said cheerily, sitting down.
“Hasford Klinger,” the man said. “Of the Alliance Prisoners Aid. And this is my assistant, Choly Wells.”
“I’ve never heard of your organization, sir,” Goodnight said. “And the one time I was regrettably incarcerated, no one came to see about my welfare.”
“The Alliance, sir,” Baldur said, “is constantly growing, changing to meet the needs of its citizenry. We like to think we represent a kindlier, gentler part of the great galactic civilization.”
Goodnight decided that Klinger was certainly what he claimed to be. No one but a bureaucrat working for some Warm & Cuddly Organization could make a speech like that without vomiting.
“I’m surprised to see you, in any event,” Goodnight said. “Are you bringing fruits and candies, perhaps? Or flowers?”
He looked at “Choly Wells,” thought wistfully of conjugal visitation privileges, shut off that train of thought. Miss Wells, if she was available, would certainly not be interested in a bearded, scruffy man about to get his neck squeezed.
“We are not in the business of providing small comforts, sir,” Baldur said.
“No,” King added, “we ensure that a prisoner who is not a member of a planetary society is given all the rights of a native, and that no discrimination is made against him.”
She opened a briefcase, took out a thick document.
“This is the first item we’d like you to read and if you can agree with the statements made, you initial each page. There are three copies.”
She passed the document to Baldur, who flipped through it.
“Yes, this is the standard form,” he said. “I’d appreciate you signing where marked, and initialing all other pages.”
Goodnight started to lose his temper.
“I came down here, out of a perfectly good erotic fantasy, so that you can be sure I’m going to be killed in an ethical manner?”
“Now, Mr. Goodnight, I know you’re under great strain,” Baldur said. “But our having this document conceivably can open other doors.”
“Such as appeals to the government for clemency, offworlders who might wish to protest the circumstances of your sentencing, possibly even stays of execution,” King added.
Goodnight stared to stomp out.
But he saw the tiny sideways movement of Baldur’s head.
“All right.” What did he have to lose, and besides, this’d make a good story for the other doomed ones. He went to the pass-through. Baldur opened the cover, put in the document, took an ornate, metal-worked pen from his pocket and set it on top of the ream of paper, just as King was seized with a spasm of coughing.
Both men turned to her, concerned.
“Are you all right?” Goodnight asked.
“Just … just a bit of an allergy,” she managed. “I’m not used to Tormal’s air yet.”
Baldur patted her, while Goodnight wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her.
Baldur waited for the pass-through to cycle, but nothing happened.
He swiveled, looked up at one of the eyes.
“Well?”
There was a click, and the pass-through carried its cargo through to Goodnight’s side.
Goodnight started to pick up the document, but, as his hand moved underneath it, he felt something. Something that felt most familiar, something that definitely shouldn’t be there, absolutely shouldn’t be provided by a Prisoners Aid representative, unless said representative was working to the extreme limits of his job description.
Two fingers curled the bester battery into his palm, and he picked up the pen atop the document.
Taking it out, he slipped, and dropped the sheaf of papers.
By the time he scrabbled them up, the battery was safely tucked in a turned-up cuff of his prison coverall.
“Well,” he said, voice suddenly oozing friendship, as he began signing and initialing pages, “I’m sorry if I was less than polite when you came in. I sincerely hope that this won’t be the first of your visits.”
“As do we,” King said, taking out another form. “Next we have some questions I hope you won’t mind answering. First is your cell comfortably located?”
Her last word was slightly emphasized, and Goodnight caught it.
“Yes, yes it is. It’s right up under the roof, on the eastern side, so it gets the benefit of sunlight.”
“That close to the roof, are you bothered at night by the guards’ movements?”
“No, that’s no problem,” Goodnight said. “Everything’s automated, so except for the whir of machinery, that’s not bothersome.”
“Are there others in the Condemned section?”
A buzzer went off, and a metallic voice said, “That is not a permitted question.”
“Oh,” Jasmine said, “I’m sorry. Let me move to the next one. Are you fed in your cell, or are you permitted to associate with others?”
“The ten of us on Death Row eat together,” Goodnight said. “There’s a small rec room we’re permitted to use during the day, and that’s where we get meals, which come up from the kitchen on — ”
The buzzer went off, somewhat belatedly. “That is not a permitted answer. Any repetition of these breaches, and your visitors will be required to leave.”
“Which we would not want,” Baldur said. “Since we prefer to make our visits when it’s convenient for Prisoners Aid, as well as this Institute.”
King turned a page.
“What is your diet, and are you happy with it?”
• • •
The four listened as Goodnight’s answer played back from the recorder that had masqueraded as Baldur’s ornate pen.
“It isn’t bad,” the voice said. “There’s enough of it. Most of it’s pretty starchy, so I’m putting on weight. I work out when I can, and — ”
“Very good,” Riss approved. “Do you think we have enough?”
“We do with what Jasmine has, I think.”
King obediently swiveled a computer screen. “I just happened to find this in Government Historical Publications. It’s a floor plan of that fortress, back when it was a fortress.”
Riss studied it, nodded.
“We can do something with that,” she said. “Assuming our pet idiot won’t shove his battery up his heinie and run amok before we bust down the doors with the rescue squad,” she said.
“I found it very interesting, not to say comforting,” Baldur said, “that the security system, particularly those four gun turrets on the roof, is almost completely automated.”
“I do not understand,” Grok said. “Robots do not take naps, or show up with hangovers.”
“True,” Baldur said. “But all they can do is what they are told to. Surprise them a little, and it takes a while for them to either flip to another program, or else whine for a human supervisor. A good example is their rather birdbrained Landing Control System.”
“Ah,” Grok said. “Of course.”
“Which brings us to you, my fine-feathered electronics specialist. I think we shall need some surprises, which I shall suggest, and I am sure you’ll have even more sophisticated alternatives,” Baldur said. “And we shall need them rather rapidly, since sooner or later somebody at the dozy Consulate is going to route our credentials on up, and find out there doesn’t seem to be anything called the Prisoners Aid Society.”
“I’ve managed to round up some surprises of my own,” Riss said. “While you two were out playing pious pilgrims of the cosmos, I was lurking around some barrooms.
“Do you know, no matter how tough a system’s security is, how careful their gun laws are, if you have money and a day, you can always acquire whatever artillery you need? Although, I’d still rather bring my own machine gun to the dance.”
“Unless the provider is doubling for the government,” Baldur agreed.
“A little care,” Riss said, “generally keeps you from being trapped.”
“I didn’t know the Marines taught you how to buy illegal arms,” Jasmine said.
“They don’t,” Riss said. “But some of us keep our ears open when we’re covert, and learn from others.
“I’ve found a man who is absolutely in love with money, says he can get anything.
“With what you’ve got, I know what I need.
“So the day after tomorrow might be a good time to go operational.”
“How,” Baldur persisted, “will you keep this contact from selling you out, after he’s made the last delivery? It is unfortunately common for a criminal sort to be dishonest, selling the customer what he wants, and then set him up for a fall once payment has been made. The illegal materials go back to the criminal for sale to another sucker, and he also gets points with the law for helping them.
“The only one who loses is the poor buyer.”
“Right,” Riss said. “And I don’t trust this little bastard any more than I can discus him.
“So what I’ll do, when I make the final pickup,” M’chel said, “is put in for the biggest buy of all. I’ll give him half … sorry, Grok, for thinking so freely about your money, like you were the government or something. I’ll only pass across say twenty-five C in front for something that’ll be sure to have every lawman in the system wetting his little panties. Delivery to be made, oh, two days after we’re either gone or in a cell next to Goodnight.”
“What’ll that be?” a fascinated Jasmine asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps a pocket nuke, and instructions to the statehouse or whatever they call it around here,” M’chel said carelessly.
“Gad,” Baldur said in mock shock. “I have been nurturing a viper at my bosom!”
NINE
“At least we have something I can fly,” Jasmine King said, checking the controls of the luxury lim they’d rented.
M’chel Riss noted her voice was a little shaky.
Riss made sure her own voice was calm, reassuring.
“We just want you to be happy.”
Jasmine managed a smile. “Sorry … but this is the closest I’ve been to the action so far.”
“See the advantage of working for a small company?” Riss said, grinning. “Before too long, you’ll be overthrowing whole governments with a smile on your lips and a song in your heart.”
While M’chel spoke, she was sliding blaster charges into bandoleers, and laying them out beside the weaponry she’d assembled.
Each member of the team had a hand-held blaster, more than a thousand bolts per gun, fighting harness, assorted grenades, launchers, protective vests, masks, and coms.
Not far away in the hastily rented warehouse snored the lim’s driver. He’d been gassed and tucked away.
“Should we not have killed him?” Grok said. “Gas is unpredictable.”
“Not that unpredictable,” Baldur said. “Besides, the fewer bodies we strew about, the more kindly a judge will look upon us, should we fail.”
“I do not intend to fail,” Grok said firmly, making the last checks on several small pieces of electronics he’d bought and modified for their mission.
“I am ready,” he said, draping bit
s of weaponry about his frame.
“Then shall we go on about our business?” Baldur said, doing the same.
King started the lim’s drive, and the other three clambered in.
The warehouse door slid open, and Jasmine took the lim out at a slow hover, then lifted into the darkening sky.
They flew out of Tormal’s capital keeping to traffic lanes, and within specified height/speed limits.
No one in the lim spoke, caught in their own thoughts.
Riss’s mouth was dry, as it always was before action.
“Ten minutes to the prison,” Jasmine announced.
“My systems are ready,” Grok said.
Minutes crawled past.
“Go into your act, Jasmine,” Baldur said.
King keyed a mike.
“Anybody … help! Help! My driver’s collapsed, and I can’t fly this thing! Help! Oh, please, help!”
The com began squawking as various Samaritans tried to cut in. Jasmine ignored them.
“Oh, help! I see … there’s some kind of building ahead of me … I’ll try to land it on that.”
An overriding blare came:
“This is Tormal Citadel! You are entering a forbidden zone. Identify yourself. Over.”
“Help me, Tormal! I don’t know what my lim number is … but I can’t fly, and I’m afraid to crash! Help!”
“This is Tormal Citadel. I repeat, you are entering a forbidden zone, and will be fired upon if you do not change your flight pattern.”
“I don’t know how to do it!” Jasmine moaned, letting a note of panic creep carefully into her voice. “Oh, please, don’t shoot me! I don’t want to die!”
“They’re ranging on us,” Grok said. “Proximity five kilometers.”
But Tormal Citadel stayed silent for a moment.
“As I said, robots perplex easily,” Baldur said. “But you might want to perplex them a little more, Grok.”
“Oh, help me,” Jasmine said, artfully playing with the controls, and the lim obediently flopped from side to side, clearly in the hands of an incompetent pilot.
Grok touched three sensors, and a blast of static roared across the standard emergency frequencies, further confusing the situation.
A second device, originally intended to intensify radar imagery, went on. After Grok’s fiddling, it now cast three images of the lim toward the prison.
