by Richard Dee
“Okay.” I had no choice. “When will you leave?”
“Tomorrow,” she said. And in the morning, when I awoke she had already gone. She left a note, ‘Dave,’ it said, ‘I’ll be gone a while, I have to catch up with Mother, she works as a surveyor and I need to find her. And I need to get my head around all the things that have happened. Don’t worry I’ll be okay and I’ll be back as soon as I can, Myra.’
I asked Griff if he knew, he was surprised. “Messinya and Myra weren’t close,” he explained. “Rixon was always her little boy and I think it annoyed Myra that she never really treated him like a man. She was always a tomboy anyway but it always felt to her like Messinya thought she was the son that Rixon hadn’t been.”
Ria seemed to have known for a while longer than I had about her going, she thought that it was brave of her to go and tell her that her son was in atoms orbiting a moon somewhere in the Rim. “I couldn’t do that,” she said, awe in her voice. “Myra is so strong, so sure of herself and what to do.”
Rixon always seemed like a man to me, but then, I wasn’t his mother.
“Did she tell you when she would be coming back?” I asked.
“She thought maybe six months.”
“Six months?” I couldn’t be without her for six months, the thought of a week or so had been bad enough.
I lost interest in the empty house after that, it didn’t feel the same, I started living on Freefall, and Myra called me a lot at first, then as the weeks turned into months it gradually got longer and longer between calls. I knew then that she wasn’t coming back and the thought depressed me. I threw myself into work, taking any and all the jobs I could, just to keep busy and stay away from Nova. When I was in the office I was miserable and distracted.
Ria noticed that my mood was deteriorating, to be fair it wasn’t hard, and one day after Myra had been away about five months, she grabbed me and dragged me into the inner office. “Sit down,” she ordered, shutting the door. “We’re having a little chat.”
It was then that I broke down and told her that I felt I had lost her. She reassured me, “Silly,” she said in the practical way she approached everything, “you men have such fragile egos. She’s fine, it’s just been a stressful few months for her, getting involved with you, getting the Freefall and then losing her brother. And seeing Griff lose an arm as well. She just needs time on her own, she talks about you all the time.”
“You hear from her?” I asked, annoyed. “She never contacts me, well only once a fortnight or so.”
She backpedalled, “Well we send messages, look, Dave, don’t worry, she’ll be back.”
About three weeks later, I was sitting in the office, sorting out the details of the next few trips when there was the sound of a car stopping outside. The door swung open and Myra appeared. She saw me and ran to hug me as I stood. We embraced for ages and I felt my spirits soar. Eventually, we broke apart and I looked at her. She looked pale and tired and different somehow, her eyes had changed, lost a bit of their sparkle.
“Are you alright?” I asked. “I’ve been so worried.”
“He thought you’d gone,” Ria helpfully added.
“You silly man,” she said. “I’m tired and I’ve been halfway around the Rim but I’m glad I did it. Messinya and I are getting on so much better now and I’ve finally got it all clear in my head. Rixon’s gone and I’m at peace with it. I know what I want.”
“What do you want?” I said, thinking, whatever it is, it’ll be worth it.
“You,” she said and grabbed me again.
I tried to talk to her about where she had been, but she would not say much except that she had found Messinya, told her and comforted her through the grief. Then Messinya had asked her to stay with her for a while, she was all the family that was left. Myra couldn’t tear herself away until the thought of me had made her leave; then the peace between them had threatened to fracture again.
“It was hard, emotionally hard,” she said. “I don’t want to bring it all up again; let’s just say we talked a lot and I realised that she just wanted to keep me with her, I was all she had left.”
“And yet till you said you were leaving I never knew she existed,” I had to say it, that was the one thing that had bothered me, Messinya had been so peripheral; then she was suddenly the most important person in the sector.
There was silence from Myra, as though I had discovered a guilty secret and I realised that I had said the wrong thing. “How do you get on with your parents?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you want to see them in similar circumstances?”
“You’re right, I guess,” I answered, my relationship with my parents wasn’t exactly conventional, perhaps it wasn’t up to me to judge. Myra glared until I gave in. “Sorry,” I said.
She smiled, “Okay, after I sorted Messinya out I had to take some time to get my head straight. I went into a meditation retreat, that’s why I didn’t call so often. That made me focus on what was really important, and then one day, I just felt ready to come back.” In other words, don’t ask.
And then things got so busy that we forgot all about it. We were facing the harvest, the busiest time of the year for the produce producers, the fruit and vegetables from New Devon were famed all over and it was a race to get them to the markets. I needed Myra with me, despite Benj and her contacts there were simply not enough people to do all the work. We were doing the jobs the stevedores normally did, such was the pressure on the port. We left the house, we could finish it later.
The pressure to ship the harvest coupled with the continual and never ceasing movement of the technology that New Devon produced made it even more manic. Time on the ground was non-existent; we were often discharging and loading at the same time. At least once we were full and away, we could only go as fast as we could go. And there was usually some extra produce left on board for the crew, which made a change from the usual boring food. If there were no immediate return cargoes we came back empty for the next load. Griff and Ria were glad of Benj; she had worked harvest before and kept everything on track.
At last the season tailed off, work got easier and we actually had a few days off with no job planned. We went back to the house and spent time there, just the two of us.
After a few days relaxing, Griff called us, a long trip had come up, it would mean nearly a month away and I was relieved when Myra said that she would come with me. I had to deliver a load of technology, weather conditioners and generators, to a planet called Deccan, it was a one way load; that was okay from our point of view because the fee more than covered the return empty but I didn’t want to spend that much time on my own; away from Myra.
We filled up with lots of good food and drink for the trip; hopefully we would be able to do a bit of sightseeing on the way home. We planned to make it into a holiday.
When we got to Deccan, we found that it was a new world they were setting up and had little to trade anyway, which meant that we were clear to make a lazy return to New Devon. We unloaded and sorted out the usual things, fresh water, garbage and a couple of small inspections outside the hull, all part of the never ending job of keeping Freefall in good condition.
The planet itself was quite different, mostly rocky with small seas and large ice-caps; it was cool and dry. It was ideal for the needs of the settlement, they were researching quantum engineering. In conversation the leader explained that the atmospheric conditions, low humidity and lack of a strong magnetic field were perfect for their experiments.
We had decided where we would go on the way back; there were several of the wonders of the sector that we could explore. We were just about ready to leave when we were approached by a systems engineer called Morrie Klein. He had been working on different planets for nearly a year and was desperate to get home. He said that he missed his family on New Devon and had heard that we were on the way back. Could he come with us? That put paid to our holiday. I talked to Myra.
“It’s okay,” she said. “He’s been away fr
om his home for so long; we’ve got to take him.”
I still tried to put him off; I wanted her to myself, to have this time while we could. I offered him passage at a ridiculous price and his face fell.
“I’ve not got that sort of money,” he said. “But I tell you what; I’ve got something else you might want.” He held up a glossy brochure. “Look!”
That was it, my selfishness was forgotten. “Let’s talk.” I was hooked, I knew I was helpless to resist.
Chapter Forty Four
I only had to consider it for a few seconds. The trip back at maximum speed would take us just over a week and it would be long enough for him to get the work done. Myra agreed to provide the missing piece that he needed to pay for his passage. Her input took all of a minute. He said that he needed twenty-four hours with Freefall totally shut down, so he could set up the hardware and install the main part of the software. The rest of the job he could do on passage. Myra wasn’t happy about letting him have the run of ‘her’ engine room but he promised to take good care of it.
“All the hardware has standard plugs,” he said and she nodded.
“I know all that, it’s just my engine room…”
“Don’t worry,” he reassured her. “I’m used to engineers; you won’t know I’ve been there.”
We used the time to explore Deccan in a ground car, taking a tent we camped in a secluded valley, cooked on an open fire and slept under the stars. It wasn’t the long holiday we had hoped for but would have to do.
When we returned, Morrie looked pleased. “I’ve got the unit working,” he said. “And all the main systems are cross-connected; I can tune it up on the way home.”
“I’ll go and have a look,” said Myra. She was gone an hour and I sweated, she was a perfectionist and I could imagine her trying to find fault. Morrie looked relaxed.
“It’s an occupational hazard,” he said as we drank tea. “Probably the worst bit of the job, invading someone else’s space.”
He needn’t have worried, she returned with a smile. “Sorry,” she said, giving him a hug. “You’ve done a very neat job, the wiring is all hidden and there’s only one extra unit that I could find, on the racks with the auxiliaries.”
Now it was his turn to smile. “Thanks,” he said, “but there are four extra units, I’ll leave it to you to find the other three.”
We were ready to leave so I went to the wheelhouse with Morrie; Myra was in the engine room. I called her after the ramp was closed and she started the engines and transferred power. Now was my chance to see if Morrie had made good on his part of the deal. I cleared my throat.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Hello, Dave,” replied Myra’s voice from the speaker. “What can I do for you?”
Morrie’s grin said it all. “I reckon that pays for your flight,” I told him, as the computer lifted Freefall off and set a course for home.
Over dinner, Morrie told us a bit about the projects he had been working on. I would have thought that a systems engineer would have had a quiet life but not Morrie. There was enough excitement in his tales for a lifetime; he seemed to have been involved in all sorts of adventures. There was a lot more to it than just installing hardware and getting it working.
Every day he worked on fine tuning and testing the new Nav system and in the evenings he told us more of his story.
Now, two days out of Nova, we came almost up to date. He told us that he had come to Deccan from Hulm. Hulm is the Federation’s prison planet and he had been upgrading the management software.
Myra’s eyes lit up at that. “Oh, tell us some stories about Hulm,” she pleaded. “The Federation keeps it all secret; we only get rumours and gossip.”
“I’m not supposed to talk about it,” he said seriously. “But you’ve been good to me so I’ll tell you a bit, but not tonight, it’s late and there’s a lot to tell. It’ll keep till tomorrow.”
I went to the wheelhouse for my nightly checks, Myra departed to the engine room for the same. Feeling a sense of déjà vu, I asked the computer for information on Hulm.
“Sure, Dave,” ‘Myra’ said. “There’s not a lot, most of it is classified.” It felt strange hearing Myra when I knew she was in the engine room. But on my solo trips it would be invaluable. Morrie had got me to fill out a personality survey and put the results into the system. Now the computer was starting to understand me and my sense of humour a lot better.
It was a lot more sophisticated than the system the Orca had been fitted with, although that one had attuned itself to me pretty sharpish, this one was more subtle. I thought that Myra might have had some input in the programming as well, a lot of her personality was there in the voice, not just the sound. I wondered for the first time who Nancy had been based on. I would have to ask Myra or Griff.
“Okay,” she said, “Hulm is the place where all the bad guys are kept. The whole planet has been turned into a fortress. There are widely spaced islands and the prisoners are segregated on them. The lower grade criminals live in supervised communities; they fend for themselves, grow crops and survive as best they can. There’s a gang culture, the guards keep out of it and leave the inmates to it. And they do actually get released at the end of their sentence, if they make it. As the severity of the crime increases the population are housed in more and more secure facilities. The worst are in solitary confinement in tunnels underground. They get allowed into sunlight once a month, always alone.”
Pretty grim stuff, even the small time criminals had to fight to survive.
Myra continued, “The planet is surrounded by armed defence satellites and patrolled constantly. It’s run by the Federation armed forces, they used it for training.” She paused for a moment. “That’s about it, but unofficially the word is they use the worst of the prisoners in live firing exercises.”
It sounded awful; I couldn’t help thinking that I would have ended up there if I had been caught before Basilan. No wonder the death penalty had been abolished; it wasn’t needed. Just the threat was enough to keep the Federation quiet.
After dinner the next day, we settled into our seats and Morrie carried on with the story.
It was all a bit disappointing; Morrie repeated a lot of what the Nav had told me.
“What about the juicy stuff?” asked Myra.
“What, you mean the tales of heroic hardened criminals fighting brutal guards, of brave resistance to hardship and injustice; all that sort of stuff?”
She nodded. “Yes please.”
“Okay,” he said and told us stories that the guards had told him, the grisly ends of famous murderers and robbers, rebellions squashed and escape attempts. And I recognised a few names from my days on the Moth, we had put them there. If I had been captured and sent there as a Navy deserter I would have been in more trouble than I had been with Rixon.
“Of course, a lot of what went on there is still secret,” he said. “I was kept in the control rooms and didn’t see much. But there was one other great story, a recent one too.”
“Go on then,” said Myra, eyes shining. “Don’t keep me in suspense any longer.”
“You know that they say no one has ever escaped from Hulm?” he said. We both nodded; it was common knowledge and part of the mystique, after all how could you get off a heavily defended planet? There were no commercial facilities; the whole place was locked down.
“Well it’s not true, there has been one, and I was there when it happened. A maximum security prisoner called Vlad Chenko. He’s the first person ever to escape from Hulm.”
Myra went pale. “Do you know him?” asked Morrie, noticing the change in atmosphere in the room.
“Heard of him,” I replied for her. “How did he get out?”
“Long story,” said Morrie. “He was in a fight in the prison and was thrown over a balcony. He landed on a table, it broke his back. He was patched up but the spinal fusion didn’t work, his spine was too badly damaged and couldn’t be repaired. He would need a wheelc
hair. The authorities weren’t going to bother, after all he was never going to be released but his lawyers argued for it and in the end he got permission.”
That figured, the Chenkos had a lot of clout and people on the payroll.
“On one of the fittings,” Morrie continued, “he was broken out by his gang; they were pretending to be the wheelchair makers. They had been several times before and were all supposed to have been checked out. They swapped him for a lookalike they had hidden on their ship. It was so brazen that no one noticed. When they left they just took him off-planet, easy as that. No one has seen him since.”
Chapter Forty Five
“That’s amazing,” said Myra. “Vlad Chenko was well known where we used to work; we heard that he’d been caught for something.”
Morrie nodded. “He’d been running a huge racket with his brother; apparently the brother disappeared around the same time as Vlad was arrested, he must have got wind of the way things were and scarpered.”
We knew the true story about that, but didn’t say. “How long ago did he get out?” I asked. Morrie screwed up his face and thought for a moment.
“About two months ago I guess; I’d been on Deccan six weeks so yeah, about two months.”
We speculated about it for a time, just for something to talk about, we couldn’t concentrate and really wanted to get Morrie out of the way to decide our next move. Eventually he turned in and we could talk.
“We need to get onto Griff,” said Myra. “He can put out some feelers. He has a great network of contacts; they can let him know if Vlad is sniffing around.”
“At least we will be arriving tomorrow. Two months is a long time, you could find anyone in that time.”
“Even legally,” said Myra. “And we’ve not been hiding; we’ve left a trail a blind man could follow, never mind one in a wheelchair with a grudge.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that the Chenkos would have had enough people still loyal after what we did to organise that sort of operation,” I said. “With no leaders left I’m surprised that they didn’t just melt away, join up with some other gang.”
