A Mercenary in Escrow

by Erik Wecks

  Deek didn’t even have to thumb through the box to find 52-08877. Unlike the other folders, which were an indistinct shade of beige, his file was a bright red. Deek’s heart was thumping as he pulled out the too-thin file and opened it. Inside lay a single sheet of electronic paper.

  The sheet sprang to life, and the face of Mr. Handa appeared on the screen. “Mr. Miller, you didn’t believe that we were going to let you destroy your contract, did you? We have removed it for safekeeping. Until your spectacular failure three years ago, we’ve always had an amicable relationship. Unfortunately, we can’t have you on the loose having flaunted our agreement. Such an eventuality would set a very bad precedent. I hope you understand, it’s noth…”

  Somewhere nearby, a siren started to whine. Whoop. Whoop.

  Mo sounded desperate. “Shit, Deek, what are we going to do?”

  “Give me a second, Mo.” Deek refused to be drawn into her panic.

  When he was ready, he spoke. “Okay, this whole operation is compromised. What’s my exit?”

  Wonk sounded completely shaken. “Deek, we’re not going to get you to the exit. We had you going up a floor to the main bay and getting a hardsuit and a jetpack. We can’t get you there. The elevators have already been shut down by the overlord.”

  “Freeze.” The high-pitched male voice cracked even as it screamed.

  Deek looked down into the young, frightened face of the night guard he had followed in the hall outside the vault. Even from twenty feet up, he could see that the kid’s force pistol was shaking in his hands. Deek wondered if he had even been trained on the thing.

  Deek slowly started to raise his hands away from the red file still yammering at him from on top of the file box. Without warning, he grabbed the box and threw it at the kid.

  He didn’t wait to see if he had hit the guard, but instead started running across the top of the row. The shimmer of a gravity distortion screaming by his head quickly told Deek this had been a poor idea. The shot made the I beam in the ceiling above him clang. Deek figured there had to be more than one guard in the room because the discharge had come from his right.

  He scrambled down the shelves into the next row. At about eight feet, he jumped and took off running away from the exit, hoping to draw the guards farther in. When he reached an aisle running perpendicular to him, he turned left away from the door and ran another eight to ten rows.

  Just as the hair on the back of his head told him that he had pushed his luck far enough, he made another left into a row, hoping that he hadn’t been seen. As Deek sprinted back toward the door, he kept imagining hundreds of black-uniformed guards in full armor entering the room. Reason told him this wasn’t likely. Between panting breaths, he asked Wonk, “So what am I facing here?”

  Adrenaline had driven all the fear from his tech. He was now in combat mode, all business. “I don’t think there are more than six guards on the whole station. At best, you might have one or two already in the vault with a couple more on the way.”

  “Okay, I can handle that.”

  Deek thought for a moment while he ran. “Mo, I can’t talk to you two any more. I just want you to know that I trust you. I’m sure they’re looking for you as well. They’re going to consider that I have accomplices. So radio silence from now on. I just want you passively receiving my video feed. I’m going to…”

  An energy shot from behind him grazed his right shoulder and knocked him to the floor. Deek tucked himself into a roll and used the momentum to barrel into a shelf full of boxes. He slammed the boxes of contracts into the next aisle and then slid through the shelves after them. It was only when he was up and running again that he realized his right arm and shoulder weren’t working the way they should have. Deek put the pain out of his mind and kept going.

  At the end of the row, he picked up a shelving bracket for self-defense.

  His biggest fear was that the door to the vault would be closed, trapping him inside, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. As he sprinted by, he pounded on the pad that started the doors closing.

  A shot rang out behind him and whizzed past. “Stop!”

  As he slipped out, he heard the door slam shut with a satisfying boom. He only had a few seconds. Turning, he used his good arm to throw the bracket at the security camera in the corner. Considering his left arm wasn’t his dominant hand, he got lucky. The heavy object crashed into the camera, smashing its lens.

  Deek looked around. On the wall in front of him, he saw what he wanted. With his good hand, he fumbled with the locks on the first-aid kit. With only one useable arm, it took far too many precious seconds, but in the end, he managed it. He grabbed the injectable that he needed and closed the case again. He couldn’t let it look disturbed. He was just finishing when the door behind him started to cycle open.

  As he took off running, he briefly held up the vial he had removed from the kit, making sure that his crew got a good look at the label. Then he shoved it in his pocket so that the overlord wouldn’t see it.

  There was only one use on a space station for oxygenated microparticles and adenosine. They’d panic, but they’d know what he had in mind.

  Exhale or Die!

  The hiss of the depressurizing air lock frightened the deep, animal part of Deek that wanted to breathe. There could be no more dithering. Secure had forced his hand. There was no other way out. He hoped he’d delayed things long enough for his crew.

  The pudgy guard squinted at him as he spoke into the small portal. His voice came through the nearby intercom. “Don’t worry, we aren’t going to kill you. We’re just going to get you out of there. You may feel light-headed or pass out.”

  When he had entered the lock, he had managed to jam the inner door closed with the manual overrides on the airlock, but Secret wasn’t about to come in after him until they knew that he couldn’t depressurize the whole station with the emergency override on the outer doors, so they had done the smart thing. They were partially depressurizing the airlock until he got confused by the lack of oxygen, and then they were going to blow the inner door open and get him. It was exactly what Deek would have done if the situation had been reversed.

  In the broom-closet-sized airlock, Deek’s spine tingled as he felt all the vast emptiness of space beyond the door behind him. When someone ended up in the void without a suit there were many, many things that could kill them. Contrary to an all-too-persistent belief, cold wasn’t one of them, at least for several hours. He would be long dead before his body cooled. He wouldn’t explode either. His skin could sort of handle the loss of pressure. He’d have some massive bruising from burst capillaries and temporary blindness but those could be fixed. It was the sudden loss of pressure that would make his blood start to fizz, or the creation of an embolism, or most likely hypoxia—a lack of oxygen—that would kill him. Deek patted his pocket to reassure himself that the injection was still there. He had something for the lack of oxygen. The other two not so much, but the bends didn’t kill you right away…most of the time. If all went according to plan, he would be on board the Li long before he died from the bends.

  As he stepped up to the portal, Deek’s feet ran cold. He had never been that great at keeping cool in tight corners, and this was as tight has he could recall. To compensate, he had learned a kind of mental judo. He didn’t try to keep calm. He just tried to direct his anger and fear in a constructive direction.

  Mustering up all the frustration that had been building since he got out of prison, he punched the button on the intercom with his right hand and screamed, “You can’t enforce a contract on a dead man! I’d rather die than be a slave to Tsunomo!” Spittle landed on the window. Deek thought it a good effect that added sincerity to his statement. Of course, the truth in what he said also helped him. He really would have rather died than been a slave, and there was a good chance he was about to get his wish.

  It seemed to have worked. The shocked, pudgy security guard on the other side of the glass stepped back and actually
drew his weapon.

  At the moment Deek had screamed, he had also jabbed himself in the left leg with a very painful injection of time-released oxygen and adenosine—the hormone that made mammals like squirrels and bears hibernate. The clock was ticking. He only had a few seconds before his brain function deteriorated, and he couldn’t let on what he had done. He shoved the injector back into the pocket on his jumpsuit and ran to the other side of the air lock. He broke the glass on the emergency release on the outer door and then the drug hit him. The world seemed to fade to a tunnel.

  “DEEK! DON’T FORGET TO EXHALE!” A familiar female voice screamed at him. He knew the voice, but he couldn’t put a name to it. The voice cared about him, so he did as the voice asked and then pressed the button.

  The explosive punch in the back brought his consciousness back to the fore. He tumbled, weightless. His vision blurred red, and a starless blackness engulfed him.

  Home

  Deek stirred. Heavy blankets covered him. Lights flashed by as someone moved his bed. He tried to roll over and almost screamed. His skin felt like he was being prodded with hot needles. His eyes burst open, but his vision was blurry. A mask on his mouth was giving him something cold to breathe.

  “Easy, Deek. We’re getting you into the auto doc. There’ll be time to talk later. Just rest. You’re doing fine for someone who walked in the void for seventeen minutes.” Deek felt something warm brush his lips. “But I like you because you aren’t completely sane.”

  This time he could put a name to the voice. He trusted her. Deek closed his eyes and relaxed.

  Mo continued, “As far as Secret Escrow is concerned, you’re dead. They transmitted a notice to Tsunomo just before we grabbed you. Welcome to a new life.”

  Deek reached his hand toward the voice. He felt Mo squeeze it. It hurt like mad, but Deek smiled, gave in, and drifted back to sleep.