Ivar's Prize

by Amy Pennza

  Ivar’s Prize

  Amy Pennza

  First edition published by

  Scribble Pretty Books November 2018

  1st Kindle Edition

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Copyright © 2018 by Amy Pennza

  Cover design by Croco Designs

  Edited by Venessa Giunta

  All rights reserved.

  Created with Vellum

  To Rich. Of course the first one is for you.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  1

  “Does the prisoner have any last words?” The ritual statement, spoken in the droid’s dull monotone, echoed through the launch chamber.

  Nadia struggled to turn her head, which, like the rest of her, was immobilized by the force field hovering over the hard metal restraint table. “Is Spencer still here? I’d like to talk to him. That is, if it pleases the court.” Meek, contrite—that’s what they wanted to hear, at least according to her lawyer. Not that he’d been much help.

  A dark-robed figure stepped into her line of vision, and the somber-faced head magistrate stared down at her. “You have five minutes. No more.”

  People shuffled out, and the sound of booted feet clanged on the metal deck. The droid, which wore the generic uniform of a ship’s steward, dematerialized in a flash of light.

  Nadia glanced around wildly. “Spencer? Spencer?” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded panicked.

  “I’m here.”

  She exhaled a shaky breath.

  He looked down at her prone body and the restraint table beneath it. He swallowed. “Nadia…”

  “Listen,” she said. “Spencer, we don’t have much time. I need you to go, now, and contact your father. The magistrate panel won’t be able to ignore him, not with him being on the Council. I know he can help—”

  “Stop it, Nadia. You’re not making any sense.”

  She turned her head the meager few inches the force field would allow, straining to see more of him. He’d positioned himself far to her right, and his face was half obscured by the shadows cast by the bright lights shining down on the restraint table. “I’m not making any sense? This is crazy. I shouldn’t even be here.”

  He sighed and pushed a hand through his dark hair, the movement making the officer’s insignia on his chest wink in the light. “What’s done is done, Nadia. You know that. You pleaded guilty! What could my dad do to help?”

  Panic slithered up her spine. “You said we were in this together, Spencer. You said you’d help me. Aside from hiring the lawyer, you’ve done nothing. You didn’t even show up to the trial. I—” She bit off the last sentence before her voice could break.

  “Nadia, come on. You know I had to stay away. It would have meant death for my career to be seen at that trial.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Death for your career? They gave me an actual death sentence, you asshole, and you’re worried about your career?” Her voice had risen as she spoke. It ended on a shriek that echoed around the chamber.

  He winced and glanced over his shoulder. “Keep your voice down.”

  “I’m sorry. Was I being too loud? Maybe it’s because I just found out my fiancé is a lying sack of sh—”

  “Will you be quiet?” He leaned over her. His nostrils flared, and his pulse jumped in his throat. “You want the truth? Fine. My dad said no more chances. He threatened to turn me in.”

  “So you decided to let me take the fall? To abandon me?”

  “What good would it do for both of us to suffer?”

  If she could have, she would have jumped off the table and slapped the self-righteous look right off his stupid face. The force field kept her completely rigid, but she fought it anyway, the struggle making her muscles cramp. Normally invisible, the force field shuddered into view. Its light blue sheen surrounded them like a thin, pulsing bubble.

  Spencer glanced up at it. “You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep fighting the field.”

  “It’s not me you should be worried about,” she growled. “You’re lucky they gave me a death sentence, because so help me—”

  “Stop saying that. The death penalty was abolished a century ago.” He straightened and jerked his uniform jacket down.

  She forced herself to take deep breaths. If she hyperventilated, she’d pass out, and she definitely needed to stay conscious for what was about to happen. She spoke calmly and slowly, as if she were talking to a toddler…or an especially dense adult. “Spencer, a life sentence on Tolbos is a death sentence. It’s a dead world filled with convicts and garbage. There is no Council presence there. Just degenerate warlords who fight constantly to rule over all the other degenerates.”

  He pressed a palm to his chest, his eyes beseeching. “Which is why I must stay out of this! If anything happened to me, it would kill my mother. I know you don’t understand, but—”

  “I understand.” White-hot anger burned in her veins. “It doesn’t matter if I die, right?”

  His eyes moved down her body again. “You’ve got certain…assets you can take advantage of,” he muttered. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  “Get out.”

  “Nadia—”

  “Get out.”

  Spencer sniffed. He opened his mouth to speak, but the droid materialized next to him, a placid smile on its face.

  “Ensign Williamson,” it said, its voice now that of a pleasant butler or concierge, “I’m afraid I must ask you to leave. The five minutes is up, and we need to prepare the prisoner for transport.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Nadia saw her fiancé give her a lingering look before he whirled and strode from the chamber.

  The droid watched him go, then stepped next to her. It waved its hand over the force field, and the table tilted slowly upright, bringing the transport pod into view. The droid waved again, and the table moved forward as the heavy pod door slid open with a hiss.

  “Are you comfortable, Prisoner 757?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Prisoner 757, this is your first warning. Any further use of foul language will result in disciplinary action.”

  Nadia bit the inside of her cheek. She’d learned all there was to know about droid “discipline” over the past three weeks. The night of her arrest, she’d pounded on her cell door, demanding to see the ship’s commander. After several warnings to keep quiet, the security droid had calmly reached out a finger and tapped her forehead, sending a jolt of liquid fire through her skull. She’d stumbled to the ground, retching and moaning helplessly. After that, she’d become a model prisoner.

  “Much better,” the droid said, locking the restraint table into place. It pressed a button and the air pressure in the tiny pod changed as the door slid shut behind them. The droid closed its eyes. A wave of light undulated over its body, and it slowly morphed into a black-haired woman. The moment the woman solidified, she cast a sunny smile down at Nadia.

  In a light, melodic voice, she said, “Prisoner 757, welcome to your flight to the prison colony Tolbos. It�
��s the fifth day of June, Council year 2217. I’m here to administer your transition injections. Do you have any questions?”

  “Yes. Are you on memory mode?”

  The droid’s smile didn’t waver. “No, I am not.”

  “Good. Then fuck off.”

  “Prisoner 757, this is your first warning. Any further use of foul language will result in disciplinary action.” This was delivered with the same irritatingly bright smile.

  “Sorry,” Nadia muttered. “Couldn’t help myself. Sort of having a bad day here.”

  The droid ignored her. It turned and busied itself at the instrument panel set in the wall. Nadia sighed as much as her crushed lungs would allow and let her gaze wander around the pod.

  It was unlike any kind of transporter she’d seen before. Small and dimly lit, it looked more like a storage closet than an intergalactic shuttle. Was this thing really capable of getting her safely through space? She started to ask the droid, but it swiveled around, its wide smile still in place.

  “Excellent,” it announced. “We’re ready to begin.” It raised both hands and made a pushing motion in the air over her midsection. The force field peeled away from Nadia’s upper body. The unbearable pressure lifted, making her muscles spasm. The droid watched impassively until they stopped, then leaned over and drew its finger down the front of her prison top. The material parted and fell to the sides, exposing her breasts and stomach. Nadia shivered in the cool air and felt her nipples contract.

  “Administering lung modification protocol now,” the droid said, its voice directed more toward the pod than Nadia. It produced a long, silver tube, which it held horizontally over her quivering stomach. Without warning, two wickedly sharp-looking needles snapped out of the tube, and the droid plunged the device down, driving them into Nadia’s midsection.

  Millions of tiny fingers scrabbled through her lungs, scratching at her tender insides. She screamed, but her breath was cut off as her lungs were pumped with artificial air. Her rib cage swelled. Blackness crowded at the edges of her vision. This was it! They were going to kill her!

  The droid continued smiling down at her while a loud hissing sound grew louder and louder, filling her ears until she thought it was coming from inside her own head. Her last memory was of the droid saying calmly, “Begin countdown to launch.”

  2

  What is that noise? Nadia tried to ignore it. She was having the most wonderful dream. She was on Earth again, in the shopping district in Paris, and she was looking at wedding dresses. The woman at the counter had said white was definitely out this year, which was disappointing. Ivory tended to make everyone look so sallow.

  There it was again! Like a strange howling or the rev of a plasma engine right before takeoff. Nadia squinted against the sound and tried to turn over, but her blanket kept catching on something. She gave up and settled back into her dream. The dresses hung like a row of tall flowers, each one more beautiful than the last. How was she ever going to choose? She wished Spencer could have come along to help.

  She opened her eyes. Spencer.

  “That dick.”

  Reality crashed in, scattering the last traces of the pleasant dream. She promptly launched into a violent coughing fit. Her lungs felt like they’d been sandblasted. She sat up, grateful that at least the force field was no longer in place. Still coughing, she swung her legs sideways to dangle off the edge of the restraint table.

  She took a deep breath, then another, trying to ease the burning in her chest. Lights flickered, making it difficult to see. She gazed around, wondering how much time had passed since she’d landed.

  Or crash-landed, she thought. From the looks of it, she was lucky to have survived. Wires dangled from the ceiling like long black snakes. A few steps away, the metal decking had buckled, creating a huge gash in the floor. The restraint table was the only thing that looked like it had made it through the descent intact.

  The shield was still on the pod’s small window, so she couldn’t look outside to get an idea of her surroundings. With a start, she realized she didn’t even know the coordinates for Tolbos.

  The magistrate panel hadn’t deigned to tell her what to expect on the journey—or after. Another coughing fit seized her. Anticipating pain, she hunched her shoulders. The searing rawness was gone. She sat up straighter and took a few deep breaths. No burning.

  “At least the lung modification worked,” she said, her voice echoing off the pod’s metal walls. It sounded a little husky but otherwise normal. She pressed a hand to her stomach and then slid it lower over her abdomen. Prisoners had to undergo the modification—that was necessary for survival. But the Council also sterilized all convicts sentenced to the planet, and that was pure punishment. Tears smarted in her eyes, and her throat grew thick. She hadn’t particularly longed for children, but the knowledge that she couldn’t have them was like a weight in her lungs.

  She blinked rapidly and scrubbed her hands over her face. It did no good to think about it now. At least she wasn’t in any pain.

  She hopped off the table. A wave of dizziness assailed her, and she clutched the metal edge before she could crash to the floor. The table creaked as she leaned most of her weight against it. Okay, so maybe that initial physical assessment was a bit premature.

  Nausea made her eyes water. Waves of it rippled through her, and her mouth filled with saliva. The dizziness was probably a combination of adjusting to her modified lungs and shifting positions too quickly. And the flickering light wasn’t helping.

  Bracing herself against the edge of the table, she shuffled forward until she could reach the small instrument panel. Pods were self-piloting, so the controls were basic, but there was an override button that redirected power to the overhead lights in emergencies. Big and bulky by design, it was usually smack in the middle of the various switches and controls. She fumbled in the dark for a second before letting out a little crow of triumph when her fingers brushed the oversize button. She flicked it, and light filled the pod.

  “That’s better.” Smiling, she hit the button to lift the shield from the window. It retracted with a zipping sound, revealing an alien nightscape.

  She leaned over the instrument panel and peered out the window. Before her lay an unbroken expanse of gray-tinged sand and rubble. It was difficult to make out colors in the dark, but she knew from the two-day science lesson she’d been forced to endure during her training at the Academy that Tolbos was a dull brown during the day.

  Although not technically a dead world, it had no organic life besides a species of short, scrubby tree that somehow survived without direct access to water. Scientists’ best guess was that the trees pulled what they needed from the air, which contained a mix of oxygen, nitrogen, and a gas entirely unique to Tolbos. It was deadly to humans.

  That was, humans whose lungs hadn’t been modified to inhale it. Nadia drew a shaky breath. The lung modification she’d undergone was irreversible, which meant she was now a permanent resident of this dusty, forgotten corner of the universe.

  Well, not entirely forgotten. When the first exploration teams had surveyed Tolbos, they’d nearly dismissed it as another Mars or Tepetua. Then one of the surveyors had decided to be cute and carve his initials into the side of one of the many caves that dotted the planet. As he’d finished the last letter, his knife had struck something solid—so solid it had shattered the blade and nearly cost him his arm.

  That was how the Council had discovered Tolbos had much more to offer than just ugly trees. The planet was rich in kaptum, a rare substance that acted like a solid when touching another solid object, but transformed to a malleable liquid when it encountered the right combination of heat and moisture. Although officially classified as a metal, it didn’t act like other metals—or anything else in the worlds humans had explored.

  Through a combination of luck and experimentation, scientists had discovered that the human body was a near-perfect environment for kaptum. No one really understood why, but somethin
g about the external temperature of the skin, combined with sweat and natural oils, allowed the temperamental substance to quickly switch back and forth from liquid to solid, meaning it could be infinitely reformed for endless uses, particularly weaponry. Although the Council tried to regulate who was permitted to use it, a thriving kaptum black market had sprung up on Earth and a few outposts on colony planets.

  Kaptum existed in various other places in the known universe, but nowhere was it as plentiful as Tolbos. The problem was that mining it was exceedingly difficult and dangerous. Blasting through the rock was out of the question, since kaptum exploded when overheated. That left old-fashioned mining techniques, which led to cave-ins and landslides. Extracting it from the hard Tolbosian soil also created mine tailings and pollution.

  Within a few years, Tolbos had been well on its way to becoming a garbage dump. Eventually, the Council decided to conserve its resources by combining Tolbos into both garbage dump and prison planet, with the prisoners doing the unpleasant job of mining kaptum. Uninterested in supervising the prison population, the Council had withdrawn its forces, and the mines had been quickly seized by the most powerful prisoners.

  Despite the warmth of the pod, Nadia shivered. The magistrate panel had sentenced her to hard labor, which meant she’d received no food or supplies. It was up to her to find the nearest mine and report for work. Her knowledge of Tolbos might be limited, but she knew that the prisoners who mined the most kaptum received the best rations. If she wanted to survive, she needed to start working before she became too weak.

  Unfortunately, Tolbos wasn’t exactly pedestrian-friendly. The terrain was one unending stretch of rocky brown dirt and sand, with the occasional small mountain or hill. To make things even more difficult, the mines were all located underground, which meant she probably wouldn’t see one until she was right on top of it. And she had to find one, or else she’d quickly become dehydrated. Water was extremely rare on Tolbos, which saw rainfall just once every two or three years. Once the planet’s twin suns rose, it would be a battle to keep from sweating herself to dehydration and a quick death.