A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  “Velocity point-one cee,” reported Mzinga. His voice trailed off; Ng heard a gasp from several of the crew.

  She couldn’t blame them.

  The main screen filled with the dark mass of the asteroid now held firmly in the focus of all three forward ruptor turrets in tractor-pressor mode, its edges flaring brightly as stellar dust and ice tore into it at 31,000 kilometers per second. Sun-bright plasma plumed off on all sides, dissipating instantly; it looked like the eclipse of a sun at the moment of totality, only raggedly elliptical rather than perfectly round.

  “Ablation within expected parameters,” reported the ensign at one of the engineering consoles.

  “Telos!” Rom-Sanchez breathed. “I wonder what it looks like in-system.”

  “‘The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch. . . . ’” Sebastian Omilov’s voice was gravely resonant. As Ng swiveled her pod around, he smiled at her. “Forgive me, Captain. I’ve been dipping into a book the High Phanist gave to me, and that sentence stuck with me. At the time it didn’t seem proleptic.”

  “That’s AyKay, Chival Omilov. It does fit.” She felt the tension on the bridge relax a little at the distraction, so she asked, “What’s the book about?”

  Omilov laughed. “The High Phanist told me people have been arguing about that for several millennia. But this particular part is about the end of the world.”

  “Very appropriate,” Krajno said, smiling grimly.

  Omilov quirked an eyebrow. “How is that, Commander?”

  He motioned forward. “In about ten minutes, when the wave front from this ‘great star’ reaches them, there’s a whole shipload of Rifters who will probably feel that the same way.”

  ABOARD THE SAMEDI

  Tat’s fingers shook as she picked up the ampule for what must have been the tenth time in the past hour and rolled it between her fingers. The minute red-striped dyplast cylinder glinted in the subdued light of her cabin. She hated using brain-suck for noderunning; not only was it dangerously addictive, but the feeling of isolation from all things human was terrifying for a Bori.

  But she might not have any choice. She looked up at the imager relay from the bridge. Even at this remove, she could almost smell the tension and fear. Fasthand was compulsively cracking his knuckles; Moob’s shoulders jerked at every minor detonation of the captain’s joints.

  Creote’s console bleeped. “It’s Neesach.”

  “What’s wrong?” the captain snarled as the shuttle navigator’s face windowed up on the main screen.

  “We got engine trouble here, Cap’n.” Neesach didn’t speak to the imager. “Lufus says we’ll get it down but we’ll need a few hours before we can lift.”

  Everyone knew she was lying.

  “Put Kaniffer on!”

  Neesach looked away, then shook her head as the pilot’s voice came through. “Gotta get this thing down.”

  “Kaniffer, you blunge-sucking, logos-chatzing son of a Shiidra brood-fouler, if this is one of your damned angles . . .” Fasthand’s voice choked off as another window bloomed on the screen, revealing Morrighon’s face. “Is there a problem?”

  In the other window, Neesach’s long face blanched.

  “Just a little engine trouble,” Fasthand replied between his teeth. “Everything’s under control.”

  Morrighon turned away from the screen; Tat heard some rapid-fire Dol’jharian. He was talking to someone on the shuttle, using a parallel com-stream over ship’s systems! She stabbed at her console again; another code-splatter, and another! Maybe now she’d have enough to work with. She launched two more sniffers and threw them into the node-space pointed to by her monitors.

  On the bridge, a panicky shout erupted in the background, relayed through the shuttle’s bridge from its engine compartment. Tat recognized Bugtul’s voice. “What’re you doing, you chatzing . . .” His voice choked off; she heard a dull thumping sound, then another voice in heavily accented Uni.

  “Shiidra-blunge, you would to say? Little finger? Here are ten for you!” That was followed by a crunching noise, and the thumping stopped.

  The voice then spoke in Dol’jharian.

  Morrighon said smoothly, “Your Rifters sabotaged the engines, hoping to gain time to record the death-throes of the Panarchists. The dead tech was only moderately successful. It will require no more than four hours to repair.”

  On the screen Neesach Kaniffer shifted her frightened gaze from side to side, her green-dyed hair wild, then leaned forward. Tat guessed she was desperately keying her console.

  “Locking down will do you no good,” said Morrighon. “But if you return the shuttle with our people, I will turn you over to your captain for discipline, instead of to the Tarkans.” His attention shifted to Fasthand. “Captain, ready a missile, surface detonation, twenty megatons. Assuming they do indeed manage a safe landing, if they do not lift off in four hours, destroy the shuttle.”

  Then his twisted features sneered. “Let them make their recording. It may have some value.” His window dwindled and vanished.

  “Captain! You gotta do something!” Kaniffer’s face finally windowed up; his voice was almost a sob.

  “I gotta do nothing, Lufus, until you bring that shuttle back.” Fasthand slapped the com off.

  Tat put the ampule down and turned back to her work. She had more time now; she’d hold the brain-suck until she truly had no choice.

  o0o

  The whine of the shuttle engines suddenly changed, growing rougher, and the little craft bucked, provoking another coughing fit from Padraic Carr. Gelasaar held him until the spasm passed, as one of the Tarkans tabbed the com and spoke into it without taking his eyes off his prisoners.

  From the communicator burst a stream of Dol’jharian. Gelasaar cupped his ear to clarify it; what he heard accelerated his heartbeat. He glanced at the others. They, too, had understood. Four hours! The only question was, what would the Dol’jharians do now?

  “Should be one of the more successful vids in history,” Padraic Carr commented. “I wouldn’t mind my share of the royalties at all.”

  “I don’t think the Dol’jharians care about vids,” Ho said softly.

  The Tarkan at the com began pounding at the inner lock controls, cursing.

  “The Rifters seem to have locked down,” said Kree. “It may not be up to the Tarkans now.”

  The guard turned away from the lock and motioned with his jac. “To your feet,” he said. His heavy accent made the words barely comprehensible.

  They stood, their heightened alertness conveyed in subtle sign. The time had come.

  Kree stepped toward the Tarkan, his hands palms-out. “You want me to take a look at that lock?” He spoke in Dol’jharian.

  The Dol’jharian glared at them; the other backed away slightly, his weapon tracking the group.

  “I know this type of shuttle,” said Kree. “Surely you don’t want the Rifters remaining in control?”

  The shuttle bucked again, more violently. The Tarkan jerked his chin toward the lock and backed away.

  Carr squeezed the Panarch’s hand, stepped away from his side, and began coughing painfully. He stopped and put his hands on his knees, breathing heavily as he finally controlled the cough. The Tarkan watching Kree glanced over, while the other watched dispassionately.

  Carr wiped his mouth and addressed the Tarkan. “Do you know who I am?”

  The Tarkan jerked the muzzle of his jac upward in warning. “Yes. You are Carr.”

  “Firez’hreach i’Acheront,” the admiral corrected. “The Soul Eater of Acheront.” The Tarkan’s eyes widened; Carr smiled. “Oh, yes, that Carr.” He stepped deliberately toward the Tarkan. “I ate many souls at Acheront. None of them walk the Halls of Dol. I hear them crying out, at night, but I do not answer them.”

  The Tarkan’s jac wavered, then he raised it, pointing it straight at Carr’s chest. The other Tarkan watched, his face blanching; he didn’t notice little Matilde Ho
inching closer, while Mortan Kree worked noisily at the lock.

  Carr slapped his chest. “Yes. They’re all in here, tarku ni’retor, and I grow tired of their mewling. Will you let them out for me?”

  He opened his mouth wide and emitted a gargling hiss. Gelasaar’s scalp prickled: it was a horrifying sound. The Tarkan stood stone-still until Padraic Carr calmly reached out, as though he had all the time in the world, and grasped the muzzle of the Dol’jharian’s jac, pulling it into his chest.

  The Tarkan pulled the trigger convulsively. The jac discharged, a spot of light flared in Carr’s back. He threw his head back in agony, his hand welding to the finned radiants in a sizzle of flesh. The Dol’jharian stepped back, his face drained of color, pulling Carr toward him as the admiral’s hiss became an eerie shout forced from him by the explosive boiling of the blood in his lungs and a red spray shot from his mouth, blinding his killer.

  The Tarkan yanked futilely at his weapon, horror distorting his red-smeared face as the flaming corpse of the Soul Eater stumbled after him. Then Gelasaar moved.

  The Ulanshu Kinesic was swift and merciful. The Dol’jharian slumped to the deck with a broken neck at the same moment Mortan Kree turned away from the lock and shouted to distract the other.

  Caleb launched Matilde through the air at the guard. She twisted, lithe as an acrobat despite the sling on her arm, and slammed one heel into his throat. His jac flew wide as he fell dying, choking on his broken larynx. Kree knelt by the Tarkan and twisted his head quickly.

  Gelasaar gagged against the stench of roasted flesh as he reached down to gently close Padraic Carr’s eyes. You have your peace at last, old friend.

  He picked up the Tarkan’s jac and turned away. It had been so easy. Panicked shouting erupted from the com; it was Uni. But there had to be other Dol’jharians on board somewhere.

  He remembered the last words spoken as he boarded the shuttle: “I have not ceased my studies,” he had said to Anaris.

  Nor have I.

  He whirled around. “Mortan! We’ve got to get to the engine room, quickly.”

  Kree raised the jac he’d taken from the Tarkan, adjusted the aperture, and motioned them away from the inner lock. “I hope this is only a computer lockdown,” he said. “If it’s manual . . .” He triggered a thin thread of plasma, once, twice, three times at widely separated places around the lock. It hissed open.

  The Panarch handed his jac to Caleb. “Guard our rear. All of you, follow me.”

  They pounded into the shuttle.

  The ship was small. They reached the engine compartment as the shuttle grounded with a shuddering thump. The compartment door yielded quickly, but a bolt of energy lanced out, spattering against the opposite wall. From inside reverberated an intense whine.

  Matilde Ho blanched. “They’ve thrown the engine into supercrit. We haven’t much time to stop it.”

  Kree waved them away from the hatch. Then he crouched down, motioning Caleb over. “I want you to lie flat, and shoot from the floor at the firestop in the ceiling. On the count of three.”

  He backed away, resetting his jac. “One.”

  Caleb began to squirm into position.

  “Two.” The others backed away from the hatch.

  “Three.”

  Caleb rolled onto his back in the hatchway and shot, upside down, at the firestop. A thick spray of foam erupted, and then Kree triggered his jac on wide aperture, converting the spray to scalding steam. A man jumped to his feet, screaming in agony as he fired his jac wildly. Then he slumped in charred ruin.

  The firestop shut off as the heat source was removed. They ran in, Kree to the engine console, followed by Matilde. As she tapped one-handed at the keys, Gelasaar turned to the others. “Caleb, give me your jac. Go with Yosefina and take the bridge.”

  They ran out. He turned back to Matilde, who looked up from the console at him.

  “Well?”

  “More than four hours now,” she said.

  o0o

  Kaniffer watched Neesach give the manual hatch lock to the bridge an extra twist, and then turned back to his piloting with a sigh of relief that stuck in his throat when she gasped.

  He followed her gaze to the secondary screen relaying the image from the lock, and amazement stunned him as the elderly nicks disposed of the Tarkans in a neatly orchestrated flurry of action.

  “No,” he breathed. Neesach rushed to her console and switched to a view of the engine room as the Panarchists blew the inner lock and poured through into the ship.

  His heart banging against his ribs, Kaniffer brought the ship down in the clearing he’d chosen, the distraction making the landing rougher than he’d intended.

  The action in the engine room was just as rapid, and terror thrilled through Kaniffer at the casual competence of the men and women he’d so calmly dismissed as worn-out politicians.

  Neesach was frantically tapping at her console, her green-dyed fingernails glittering. She looked up, and the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach intensified at her hopeless expression. “They’ve got everything except life support, the plasma cannon, and the outer lock door,” she reported. “And the hatch here.”

  “Everything? Even communications?”

  She nodded. “And the engines and the shields. Everything.”

  Kaniffer tabbed his console, and the viewscreen slowly revealed the entire clearing in which the ship had landed. There was no sign of the Gehennans yet.

  Neesach’s screeching laugh sounded like the death agony of some small animal. “Oh! We still got the external imagers!” The screech altered to tearing metal. “Let’s figure out some way of pushing the geezers out the hatch.”

  Her sneering emphasis on the word “geezers” griped at Kaniffer, who was beginning to suspect that they’d been set up.

  “You always were one for the angles,” she continued. “I’ll be real interested to see how you work this one.” Her screechy voice quivered.

  He didn’t reply; he was afraid his voice would sound the same.

  o0o

  Londri slid off the back of her drom and followed Gath-Boru up to the brow of the hill, ducking low to avoid sky-lining herself against the growing dawn light. They crawled the last few feet and she cautiously poked her head up over a low tangle of oil-brush.

  Her heart gave a great thump at the sight of the gleaming machine crouched in the meadow below.

  “Look at all that metal,” the scout with them breathed, her voice reverent.

  “With that in our possession, no one could stand against the Crater,” Gath-Boru whispered.

  The Ironqueen was silent. Now she knew what fallen fortress the Oracle had meant. And it was truly a means to defy fate, to escape the world-sized prison they were condemned to.

  “It’s more than just metal,” she whispered, though her throat hurt. She knew that without Stepan’s tutoring, she would have reacted the way the scout had, seeing the flying machine just as a valuable lump of metal, or as in Gath-Boru’s eyes, a means to power. “It’s freedom.”

  “It’s been there for almost an hour now,” said the scout. “They never land that long. I don’t think it can fly anymore. Tetri said it came down hard, and she saw a landing once.”

  “They’ll fix it,” Gath-Boru said. “We must attack now.”

  Londri turned as another figure crawled up beside them, breathing heavily: Stepan. “Don’t be silly, General,” he said. “They’ve got weapons that can melt steel like ice.”

  “I know that. But you have also told us, as have other Isolates, that usually those weapons cannot fire below a certain angle. If we get close enough . . .”

  “And blind them with smoke,” added Londri.

  Stepan shook his head. “Maybe, but they have eyes that can see in total darkness, like the sapper-wyrm that strikes at the heat of a body. Still, a lot of hot fires, with smoke, might confuse them.”

  Londri turned to the scout. “Go back to Oberauken Vre’Ktash and have him bring up the Fir
st and Fourth Artillery. They’re the closest. And two companies of sappers. Have them gather as much oil-brush as they can . . .” As she continued with her orders, deploying her forces to hold off the Tasuroi and deal with the grounded vessel, she peered back at the machine.

  The scout sketched a salute and slithered back down the hill until she could stand up and run back to her drom.

  Londri turned to Stepan. “Counselor, I need you to approach Comori under flag of truce. Tell him he can keep the twins in return for his help in capturing the sky vessel.”

  “Aztlan will be wroth,” said Stepan.

  “Tell Tlaloc he may have one fertile woman captured from the machine, or two potent men.”

  A flicker like distant lightning briefly illuminated the clearing. Gath-Boru groaned. “The Weathernose promised a clear day. Rain will bog down the artillery and damp the fires. And it’ll make it even harder to deal with the Tasuroi: the spore-tox won’t work.”

  They looked up. The eastern sky paled, though they saw no clouds. The flicker repeated, and yet again, not from the horizon, but from overhead. Londri rolled onto her back and gasped. High above, a new star flared, not quite as bright as the first, but steady, and around it vast wings of pale light, trembling on the edge of color, reached out in an immense curve.

  Then, for the first time in her life, she understood what Stepan had taught her about the worlds above, and the vast space through which the people of the Thousand Suns strode like gods. She was not lying on the ground, but clinging to a toppling wall, exposed to infinite space as something approached beside which the whole expanse of her hurtling world was but a clod of dirt.

  A sound pulled her gaze from the heavens, and the vertigo left her.

  Stepan wept quietly, watching the sky as he thumbed the tears from his eyes.

  She touched him; he shook his head.

  “Not sorrow, not sorrow,” he choked, his heart so full he feared it would burst from his chest. “That can be only one thing, nothing else could generate so much energy.”

  “What?” she asked, confused.