False Horizons

by CJ Birch

  My exit from the prison was much easier than my entry. A lot less stressful. Tup hadn’t been lying when he said he could leave anytime he wanted. He messaged the gorillas from an intercom system in his cell, and they released him immediately. It took a few moments for my brain to overcome the paranoia that this might be a trick. After a few seconds, my train of thought switches back to how the hell we can get past the shield without getting our asses fried. I ask Tup about it as we walk the last of the dark prison hall.

  “She’s lying. That’s how they control people here. But it’s not true.”

  “What if it is?” I ask.

  “I grew up on this ship. I’d know if they had that sort of control over us.” We reach the gorillas, and Tup waves to them. They, in turn, salute. I look back when we’ve walked a few meters. They’re not even watching us. That was much easier than I thought it would be. I was expecting to be running for my life at this point in the process. I even stretched beforehand just in case. It’s a little too easy, which has me worried again. Cameras are everywhere. Any second an alarm’s going to sound.

  “Stop your worrying. Everything’s under control,” Tup says.

  That sentence is probably the worst sentence in the history of sentences. It makes me even more convinced Veera wasn’t lying about the shield. “Couldn’t they program something to interact with our implants?”

  “Implants?” Tup stops us. The lifts are only a few feet away. One short ride and we’re on the flight deck. “What implants?”

  I show him my arm where they injected mine, right above the wrist on my left arm. “When I arrived, they put it in.” You can’t see it or feel it anymore. But I know it’s there. I watched them put it in. I’m sure if I have one, everyone does.

  He waves me off. “You may, but I sure don’t.”

  “How do you know they didn’t put it in when you were born?”

  “My mom would’ve told me.”

  “What if she didn’t know.”

  He taps my head. “You got some serious trust issues.” He steps forward and motions me toward the lift. “You’ll have to recall it. If I do, all sorts of alarms’ll go off.”

  I fold my arms. “And why’s that?” He has brawn, I’ll give him that, but he seriously lacks brains.

  Yet he looks at me like I’m the stupid one. “When I wave my hand over the pad to recall the lift, it’ll alert the system I’ve escaped prison. I got all the access codes, but I can’t use my palm to open anything.”

  “And what do you think it is about your hand the system reads?”

  He waves his palm in front of my face. “My print.”

  “Really? This magical pad can, without a camera, recognize your palm among all the others?” He studies his palm. “What’s more likely? That when you quickly wave your hand in front of this sensor it reads your very detailed print or that you have a device in your wrist that it reads when you’re close?” He actually has to think about this for a second. I wave my hand, facing backward in front of the sensor. The door to the lift opens. I huff and drag him in. I hope he’s a better pilot than a thinker.

  We reach the flight deck, and a ball of dread settles in my stomach. We need a solution before we get onto one of the ships, or we’re never going to make it out alive.

  The deck stretches out before us, three stories high. Neat rows of pilot ships decorated in red and white and silver line either side. They look sleek and fast, and I can feel my escape slipping.

  Tup walks to a console and begins pulling up documents. The place is empty, which surprises me. Shouldn’t there be mechanics working on broken ships? Yet they haven’t been to war in a decade, so the only things these ships are used for is small trading and mining missions.

  “Over here. This one looks good. I checked its record. Wasn’t serviced too long ago.” Tup walks toward a ship halfway down the line.

  I follow as quietly as possible. “Where is everyone?”

  “Everyone who? The flight deck is automated. Robots do all the work.”

  “Isn’t it monitored?”

  He stops. “You’re starting to sound like you don’t want to go.”

  “Of course I want to go, but I also want to survive leaving.” I wave my hand around the empty bay. “This is all too convenient for me.”

  “You don’t like convenient? Trust me, as soon as we’re out those doors,” he points to two large doors at the end of the hall, “we’ll have plenty of inconvenience. The Avokaado has at least five hundred cannons and twenty-seven missile launchers. We’re going to have to dodge every one of those, not to mention the scrambled manned ships after about,” he looks up at the ceiling, calculating, “three minutes, give or take a few seconds.”

  Christ. What did I just get myself in to?

  “You still want to leave?”

  “Of course she does. We both do.”

  I turn toward the booming voice. Sarka is strolling through the concourse, cocky as all get-out.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Ash

  I wake up in a deserted corridor on the Persephone, my brain feeling like it’s filled with water sloshing from side to side. I try not to move. The blaster is gone, along with Vasa. Shit.

  Without wasting another moment on self-pity, I pull myself up the wall and scramble toward the airlock. He’ll be heading back to the Kudo as fast as he can. The bastard’s probably going to ask for asylum.

  I get to a commstation and message Hartley to seal the airlocks. It won’t stop Vasa for long, but at least it’ll slow him down, hopefully with enough time to grab him. My next call is to Yakovich, who I hope is on board. When I reach her, I ask her to bring an extra blaster. Two against one is fairly good odds, although, with Yakovich, I’d be happy with just her on my side. She doesn’t even need to be armed. I once saw her take out a corporal in a bar on Alpha with only her hands. He was a big guy too, and she just dropped him.

  I have one stop to make before I meet up with Yakovich. I find the doctor in his office hidden behind several monitors full of data. He looks up when I enter and smiles.

  “It’s good to see you took my advice.”

  I look down at my clean, pressed uniform. “It beats running around looking like I don’t bathe. Listen, I need to know if the trackers you implanted in the crew would still be transmitting.”

  He purses his lips. “Yes. It would be faint at this point, but you could still get an accurate reading.”

  “Good. Can you pull up the location for Vasa?”

  He digs through the pile of tablets in front of him and zeroes in on the one he wants. “I thought he was locked up in a cabin on the illya’s ship.”

  “He was, but I decided to move him to the Persephone.”

  “Alone?”

  I look away. I don’t need him getting on my case too. I was stupid, and Yakovich is going to have a fit over this. I was so focused on getting that information from Vasa that I let my guard down. He wouldn’t have gotten away if I hadn’t collapsed, which is another thing we’re going to have to address once we find Vasa. What the hell was that? I heard Sarka, but after my brain short-circuited, I heard nothing. Yet now I have all this extra information in my brain, and I have no idea where it came from. This isn’t the time to bring it up. First, I have to get Vasa back before he gets off the Persephone.

  The doctor pulls up a schematic of the ship and hands me the tablet. “He’s the violet dot.” It’s moving fast along a corridor on the deck above the airlock. I check the legend to see which color Yakovich is. Her orange dot is standing stationary in front of the airlock. Did I tell her Vasa’s armed? Shit. I can’t remember.

  I throw a thank you at the doctor as I rush out of the med center. If I cut through the forward service passage, I might be able to get to Yakovich before Vasa does. He must have taken a roundabout way to reach the airlock.

  I scramble down the corridor clutching the tablet and stop at the service hatch. It’s cramped and painful to climb through, but the passage cuts
through half the ship. I tuck the tablet into one of my cargo pockets and duck inside, then crawl as fast as I can. Every few meters I hit my head or catch my knee on the rough grate. When I come to the other side it’s with a few scraps and bruises, but quicker than expected. I open the hatch and slip out. I’m two decks above Yakovich. Now I just have to hurry down the chute and hope I get there before Vasa gets the jump on her.

  When I make it to the chute, somebody’s already climbing down. It’s Vasa. The blaster isn’t in his hand, but I can see it stuffed in his uniform cargo pocket. I hesitate for only a second before grabbing the sides of the ladder and sliding down. The bars whiz by, and when I slam into Vasa, he flies backward and we crash to the floor with a loud thud. All the air flies out of my lungs, and I lie there stunned for several seconds.

  Yakovich hobbles around the corner. She’s wearing a small brace on her knee joint. “Holy shit, Ash. Where the hell did you come from?”

  I point up.

  She hauls me off Vasa, who’s out cold.

  “A bit much, don’t you think? It’s only Vasa.”

  “He’s armed.” I poke around until I find the pocket with the blaster in it.

  Yakovich grabs it from me. “How’d he get this?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “He got this from you, didn’t he?”

  I grab one of Vasa’s arm. “Help me drag him to the brig. You can lecture me about moving a prisoner on my own along the way.”

  “It is against regulations.” She grabs his other arm. “You see why, right? What if he’d killed you?”

  “I only had a sonic blaster. The best he could do is put me out.”

  “And while you’re incapacitated he could stab you with a knife or shoot you with a gun. That would kill you. This is someone who’s already admitted to trying to kill you at least twice before.”

  I knew this was coming. I can tell myself all this, but for some reason when someone else points out your shortcomings they sound so much worse. The way she’s going on, you’d think I was a first-year aviator, not the first officer and acting captain.

  “Okay. I get it. I screwed up. I wasn’t expecting to pass out, which is how he got the gun from me,” I say.

  Yakovich looks over at me with concern. “Why’d you pass out?”

  “I’m not sure. I needed to deal with this first. After the doctor checks Vasa over to make sure I haven’t broken anything important, I’ll have him look at me.”

  Yakovich stops. “That’s a good point. Maybe we shouldn’t be moving him anywhere. What if you broke his neck and we’re making it worse?”

  “Then he’s shit out of luck. We don’t stop until he’s in the brig.” That’s all the convincing Yakovich needs. I think she took it personally that he slipped by her notice. She has a lot of pride that way.

  We continue to drag Vasa down the hall. His body makes a strange swooshing sound as it glides over the metal floor. After a few moments of silence, Yakovich asks, “Where do you think he was heading? Back to the Kudo? Why?”

  I have a choice now. I can fill Yakovich in. I’ll eventually have to tell people what I discovered. Or I can hold on to it a bit longer until I finish questioning Vasa. At this point, Yakovich is already involved. I decide it’s best to tell her.

  “I think I know why he was heading to the Kudo. My father sent me a communique with some…” I slow a little. This is the part that won’t be easy for people to take: the fact that I had this knowledge in my hands when it would’ve mattered and I did nothing because of my own stubbornness. “Some information about our mission.”

  We stop at the chute.

  “How are we going to get him down?” she asks. “There’s no way I’m carrying him.”

  “We’ll have to put him in an empty cabin until he wakes up and can get himself to the brig.” Shit. I want Vasa locked up. The idea of him free for even a few minutes makes me uneasy. What if he gets the jump on us again and escapes before we find out if he’s an agent for the Commons?

  I point to a door a couple of meters farther. We dump him on the bed, and I call the doctor to the empty quarters.

  “You were saying about getting a message from your father?”

  I sigh. “Yes. I set it aside and forgot about it.” Not an actual lie. I’m only omitting the fact that I’d already decided not to watch it. “According to him, the Posterus was never meant to be a generational ship. We were all some sort of payment to save the rest of the Belt. Captain Wells discovered the same thing. Not only that, there’s a possible agent on board this ship who’s been communicating through encrypted messages with Gladwell.”

  Yakovich looks down at Vasa with horror in her eyes. She doesn’t need to ask the question. I nod. “I’m not one hundred percent sure. That’s why I wanted to question him. And not on the Kudo, in case they were listening. They might have something to do with why we’re in this galaxy. I don’t think it was an accident. Nor was it an accident that we found that planet. Vasa set this all up.”

  “Why? What possible incentive could he have for screwing us over?”

  I shrug. This is why I want to talk to Vasa. I need to know for myself how he could do this to us. I don’t know him that well. I mean, none of us knows anyone that well when you think about it.

  The doctor enters carrying a med kit. “What happened?” He doesn’t spare a glance toward Yakovich and me. Vasa looks fine, lying on the bed like he’s passed out from too much fun.

  “I slammed into him on the chute ladder.”

  Dr. Prashad stops what he’s doing and spares me a hard look. “And that was necessary?”

  “Yes,” Yakovich and I say in unison.

  He leaves it at that and continues to check his pulse and feel along his limbs for broken bones. “You’re lucky. It doesn’t appear that he’s seriously injured.”

  “Can you wake him up?” I ask. “I want to move him to the brig.”

  “You can’t wait until he revives on his own?”

  “There’s a bed in the brig. It’s mildly comfortable.” I should know. I spent a day there a few weeks after I signed on. Part of my adventure with mind knots and memory loss. I still can’t remember anything from that missing time span, and that’s the scariest thing I’ve ever had to deal with.

  “I don’t recommend waking him up, but I can.”

  “We’re short on time. We need to ask him some questions.”

  “I can’t promise he’ll be coherent.” The doctor takes a syringe out of his med kit and rolls up Vasa’s sleeve. “It’ll take a few minutes for it to take effect.” He sticks the needle in his arm, and I look away. I wouldn’t call myself a squeamish person, but I hate watching that stuff. “I’ll stay until he wakes. I want to do more thorough tests later to make sure he doesn’t have brain damage or swelling.”

  With all of us standing around Vasa’s prone figure, I feel like I’m at a wake. Only I’m not about to say something nice over the body. Part of me thinks he deserves death. I read that they used to kill people as punishment. They’d hang people by their necks and drop the floor out from under them. If you were the person swinging on the noose, you hoped your neck broke. It definitely wasn’t the most gruesome method they used for capital punishment, but I always thought how frightening it must be to have to wait for someone to pull a lever with the only thing going through your mind the hope your neck would break.

  Vasa groans. Yakovich draws her gun.

  “Is that necessary?” the doctor asks.

  “Yes,” Yakovich and I say at the same time, again.

  Dr. Prashad shakes his head and packs his supplies. When he’s gone Yakovich asks, “Do you want to ask him questions here or wait until we’ve made it to the brig?”

  I want him in the brig as soon as possible, but I also don’t want to risk missing out hearing what he has to say. What if something else goes wrong? “We’ll ask him as soon as he wakes up. Then we’ll move him to the brig.”

  Vasa groans again and opens his eyes
. He touches his head. He has a goose egg forming above his eye.

  “Hey.” Yakovich waves her blaster to get his attention. “You awake?”

  “What the hell happened? My head feels like it’s twice its normal size.”

  “You had an accident on the chute. Now, before we were interrupted, you were going to tell me what the hell we’re doing here in this galaxy and what your part was in it,” I say.

  He looks at Yakovich, her gun, and then over at me. He tries to sit up, evidently thinks better of it, then lies down again. “You won’t leave me behind?”

  I try to make eyes at Yakovich to play along. I forgot to fill her in on that point. She picks up the thread perfectly. “Depends on what you tell us.”

  I purse my lips to keep from smiling. “Why don’t you start from the beginning. What was your mission?”

  Vasa licks his lips and stares up at the ceiling. He digs his thumb nail into his palm. “When they approached me, they said it was a special mission and that the future of our species depended on me. But as they explained it to me, I realized—I said no at first. I did. I swear.”

  Yakovich waves her gun at him. “She didn’t ask for your justifications and excuses. Give us the facts.”

  He pushes himself into a seated position to get a better look at us. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. There wasn’t supposed to be an explosion. They said it was going to be—”

  “The facts.” Yakovich kicks the bed. “What was the mission?”

  “The 45,000 chosen for this mission were tribute to the illya. To stop them from taking any more from the Belt.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Jordan

  “You are not coming with us,” I say. Sarka laughs, which only infuriates me more. “If you come back with us, you’ll be tried and imprisoned. Why would you want that?”

  “I don’t plan to stay around for all that. Tup here has a ship. I’ll go with him.”

  “I doubt Tup wants you with him.”

  We’re squared off against each other. He towers over me, but I hold my ground, hands on hips, jaw thrust out.