Asymmetry

by A. G. Claymore

  “Or mine, perhaps?” Jacubus put in. “As the elder, I inherit.”

  “Face it, brother -- I inherited the brains, you got the looks.”

  “Don’t fall for that line, Jacubus,” Tim advised. “It’s pretty clear she got both.”

  The smuggler’s face darkened. “You stay clear of my sister!”

  “There you go!” Tim encouraged him. “Chase the guys away from her so it only leaves your descendants to take over. Smart play!”

  “Nonetheless,” she cut her way back in, “the value of what you’ve already given us is enough to ensure our gratitude. The potential value of a further relationship is almost impossible to calculate.”

  “That’s a good point,” Rick said, his sense of mischief tingling. “If we’re going to travel together for a while, we should make the best use of our time. Jacu,” he said, dredging up the diminutive used by Uridan earlier, “how about you ride with me and Thorstein while Tim stays on this ship with your sister? He’s very good with systems.”

  “I could probably help with your security protocols,” Tim offered eagerly. “Your system is pretty easy to hack.”

  “Excellent,” Rick said with an air of finality, knowing the smuggler was squirming to find a way to protest the arrangement without insulting his new allies. He clapped Jacubus on the shoulder and turned him aft toward the boarding stair they’d entered by. “You can fill us in on local politics,” he said as they started walking, “and Tim can perform some penetration testing with your sister.”

  It was almost a comment too far but Rick managed to forestall a complete blowup by asking a few pertinent questions on the way out of the smuggling vessel.

  Tim watched them leave, hoping his ears weren’t as red as they felt. He racked his brain, trying to think of something to say now that Rick was no longer there to keep the conversation moving.

  “Your boss is a bit of an ass, isn’t he?” Mieke asked. “I kind of like that about him. Watching him needle my brother was exquisite!” She laughed. “Oh, Divines! When he said penetration testing, I honestly thought Jacu’s head would explode!”

  At least she’d diffused Rick’s loaded comment. Tim’s brain began to unclog. He’d been around attractive girls before, even been in a relationship, but, at his age, such things tended to happen more by accident than by design. Just concentrate on the reason you’re here, he told himself.

  “Yeah…” Wait, respond to what she said first, dumbass! “Most times, I can’t tell if he’s acting dense or if it’s for real.”

  “How’d you end up working for him?”

  “My dad grew up with him. When it came time for me to learn about fleet operations, they arranged for me to act as Rick’s adjutant.” He shrugged. “We try to avoid training under close family. Too much temptation to go easy on us.”

  Mieke stared at Tim. She kept staring and it was making him squirm. “What?” he finally asked though, he already knew what she’d say; he was just playing for time now.

  “You just said your dad grew up with Rick,” she said flatly. “Judging from Rick, I’d say that makes your dad, what, twenty-five?”

  Tim abandoned his attempt to frame a response, relieved that she was on the verge of sorting it out on her own. Luckily, the smugglers seemed to know quite a bit about the outside Universe, even if the normal citizens were content to pretend it didn’t matter or even exist.

  Her eyes grew wide and she leaned back slightly, one hand coming up to the base of her throat. “You’re one of those eternals?”

  He nodded, waiting for the inevitable question.

  “How… old… are you?” she asked tentatively.

  That she was nervous about his answer seemed to be an encouraging sign for Tim. “Almost nineteen,” he told her.

  “Years, or centuries?”

  “Years.”

  She made a face. “I meet an eternal and he’s only eighteen years old?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, “the fact that we all have long lives still means we have to be born at some point and, not to brag, but I was born at a pretty young age.”

  She chuckled. Gesturing forward. “Let’s get ready for takeoff.” She sat in the command chair.

  “I’ll handle the helm from here,” she told him. “We saw you fly past and decided to follow you. Didn’t have time to recall the crew from their homes ringside, so we’re on our own. Why don’t you look after sensors?”

  The ship lifted off from the yard and began a steady ascent. Tim opened a holo and tied it to the external sensors, making sure the scout-ship was keeping up.

  “You have to admit,” she said, “that it’s odd to meet an eternal at such an early point in his lifespan. Your average age must be, what, two thousand years?”

  “Fair enough,” Tim conceded, “but it’s closer to two and a half thousand.” Oh, sure! Make it even worse, dumbass! He couldn’t help but feel that their vast difference in lifespan had just drawn an invisible curtain between them.

  Even though he knew it was for the best, he still couldn’t help but feel disappointed. She was undeniably attractive. He was imagining wild scenarios where they discovered that hers was the first non-human species they found that could survive the inoculation that conveyed the long life of the Midgaard.

  He forced himself to concentrate. “I’ll start looking into your security protocols,” he told her, switching his view from sensors to internal systems commands. “Might as well get that done while we travel.”

  Emergence

  “Rykeria is a few hours further in-system from here,” Jacubus told them, “but you’ll never reach the surface without getting arrested.”

  “That sounds like fun!” Rick brightened considerably.

  Tim sighed. “What happened to waiting for the fleet?” he asked plaintively. He caught Mieke’s quizzical look and spread his hands as if to say it was beyond his control.

  “No,” Rick countered, “think about it. When the fleet arrives, they’ll be running blind. All they know is that Gabs might be on Rykeria. A planet’s a big place, y’know.”

  “You want them to lock you up so you can find out where she is?” Thorstein asked.

  Rick grinned at Jacubus. “Notice how he says you and not us?”

  “You might also notice how I’m not prone to hair-brained schemes,” Thorstein added archly.

  “Still…” Jacubus squinted at Rick thoughtfully. “…It might work well enough. If they have Alliance officers, they’d likely keep them together in the same facility.”

  “And every single Alliance prisoner will have a jamming unit grafted to the side of his or her head so they can’t broadcast their position to passing ships,” Thorstein said dismissively.

  “A great teacher once told me that you have no luck unless you actively put yourself in luck’s way,” Tim pointed out.

  “Really?” Thorstein grimaced in disgust. “In all the time I was teaching you fools, that was the one time you stopped ogling the girls in your group long enough to pay attention?”

  “Actually, it was because of Cara that your lesson sank in,” Tim admitted. “I was making some progress until I got tapped to come along on this rump-humped errand.”

  “Kid’s right, Thor.” Rick threw a sidelong glance at Tim. “Not about Cara, necessarily – that’s none of my business – but he’s right about luck. I’ve got a good feeling about this!”

  The Slam

  Rick snarled unintelligible vitriol at Jacubus’ back until one of the guards hammered a rifle butt between the Midgaard’s shoulder blades. He’d seen it coming and contrived to stumble just before the impact, avoiding most of the impact’s force.

  He went down as if he’d been poleaxed but he still managed to hiss more invective at his smuggler ‘ally’, who replied with a casual gesture over his shoulder; the first and third fingers of his right hand held out.

  The other guard looked at Tim, who simply shrugged.

  “Do I really need to act up for you to hit me?” he asked.
“I assumed it’s just a part of the whole ‘welcome to Rykeria’ thing.” He doubled up around the butt of the second guard’s weapon, managing to cheat it of most of the impact, but it still drove the breath out of him.

  “Thanks,” he wheezed. “I’d hate to…” He didn’t get to finish because the guards, both of them large Nasturtians, grabbed the prisoners by their feet and attached manacle drones.

  Rick and Tim were both lifted into the air by their ankles. The guards started down the hall and the two new inmates hovered along behind them. The doors at the end of the hallway opened in concert with a loud buzzing alarm and they both floated toward a long pool of greenish liquid.

  The pool was roughly ten meters wide by thirty long and there was an opening in the floor at the near end. Two Nasturtians sat at terminals near the opening and they both got up, grabbing wicked-looking knives from their desks.

  The prisoners came to a halt over the hole in the floor. The Nasturtians approached, blades held out toward the newcomers.

  Tim knew he wasn’t about to be disemboweled but saw no reason to make such an advantage obvious. “Whoa, there, gorgeous!” He admonished the amber-hued staff-member in Dheema. “You’ve got me mixed up with some other guy! I’m sure I would have remembered… Hey now!”

  She sliced her knife up the front of his under-armor suit and yanked it away with a practiced ease.

  “Ah…” he said, the tension gone from his voice. “This is a little more forward than I’m accustomed to but I’m willing to give it a shot!”

  She glanced up from his face to a region that was usually below it. Her stony expression finally cracked into a smile. “Not quite ready enough,” she told him in English with an accent that Tim had learned to associate with a place known as ‘New England’, though he’d never seen Earth.

  “Maybe I’ll drop by the infirmary later and see if there’s enough of you left, Romeo.” She dumped his suit down the hole in the floor and pressed a button with her foot.

  “No… wait…,” Tim blurted before a mouthful of green goo choked the breath out of him. He was being dragged by the manacle drone, feet first, through the long pool of goo. He didn’t even have time to take a breath first.

  It might have been longer than thirty meters. It certainly felt that way and Tim had swallowed at least a half-liter of the acrid-tasting slop that probably served as a disinfectant for new inductees.

  The goo went other places as well, but that was best left unmentioned.

  He found himself hanging over a grille at the far end, the disinfectant sluicing off his body and through the metal grating. He was just about to throw up when the manacles released him and he had to twist like a cat to avoid smashing his head.

  He landed on the cold metal grille and retched up at least half of what he’d swallowed. Strong hands grabbed him and shoved him into a toilet stall where he suddenly recognized the need to conduct urgent business.

  He staggered out of the cube to find Rick putting on a brave face in front of the guards.

  “Do we have to pay extra for that?” he asked, nodding toward the pool. “There’s this place on Falsettia-4 where they do something similar but they’ll charge you a week’s wages…”

  The guard’s smug smile turned sour and he shoved Rick toward a wide opening beyond the toilet stalls.

  A strong blast of air from the top frame of the door did a half-decent job of drying them but it left a sickly greenish hue to their skin. Fits my current mood, Tim thought, then stumbled down the steps at a shove from one of his impatient guards.

  Who puts stairs just inside a door? he thought irrelevantly. They descended three steps into an octagonal room with a counter along the left side.

  Another Nasturtian stood there. He eyed up Rick, turned to a shelf and took out a medium-sized duffel.

  “One jumpsuit,” he announced in a bored drawl, “one blanket, one towel, one pair sandals and one bar of soap.” He grinned evilly at Rick. “See that you keep a good grip on that.”

  “One jumpsuit,” he repeated for Tim, “one blanket, one towel, one pair sandals and one bar of soap.” He gave Tim a once-over. “Won’t matter what you do with the soap…”

  “Wait,” Tim cut him off. “I don’t get it. Are you insinuating that I’m going to be the recipient of unwanted attention or are you saying I’m too ugly to draw that kind of harassment?”

  “I…”

  Now Rick cut him off. “I think he’s saying you’re too ugly.”

  “The nerve of him,” Tim said angrily, already being dragged toward the next door by a guard. “Like he’s any great treat!”

  The benches in the next room hinted it was time to get dressed. The guards waited, radiating boredom that almost overpowered their body odor.

  When both men were dressed, a large door slid open and they were waved into a small, five by five meter room with a corresponding door on the far side. The first door slid shut, finally separating them from their chaperones. The second door hammered open, letting in a wave of noise and stink.

  The semi-washed bodies of several dozen different species made an exotic kind of stench even through nostrils half burned by the disinfectant.

  A few of the inmates were hanging around the entrance, eager to see who the latest unfortunates were and three or four of them went loping off down different corridors, presumably to notify their bosses that there were new arrivals to exploit.

  The word ‘eternals’ quickly emerged from the buzz of voices. Clearly, there were guards here with a side-hustle in keeping certain inmates informed.

  The result was the usual mix of awe and resentment. Some stared at the two prisoners who might actually out live the prison.

  Of course, there were more than enough who just threw whatever was close to hand.

  Rick and Tim walked as though there was nothing odd going on, mostly. They made the occasional course-correction to avoid larger items such as chairs or bars of soap.

  The rain of missiles and the shouting trailed off as a large person – a species neither man had encountered before – came lumbering out from one of the six high hallways that radiated out from the central common area like underground ravines.

  Tim leaned down and helped himself to a couple of the larger bars of soap. He opened his duffel and dropped them into his towel, draping the ends of the long strip of cloth out the top.

  “I’m in a generous mood,” the large alien rumbled, “so I’ll let you decide which one gets to work for me.”

  Rick looked up at the chuckles that ran up the seven levels of catwalks. There was some inside joke at play here and probably not a pleasant one.

  Tim was evaluating options while Rick asked what would happen to Tim if Rick took the job. Side of the head, just below the ear seems to be the weakest plates in his skull, Tim discovered.

  “You get to cook him for us,” the alien boomed. “Play your cards right and you might get a taste of roast eternal yourself!”

  “All your friends your size?” Rick asked.

  A smug grin. “Yes.”

  “Don’t think one of us would fill your crew,” Rick mused, scratching idly at his backside. He grimaced apologetically. “It’s that damn disinfectant,” he told the alien.

  “Oh!” He brightened suddenly. “Here’s an idea… They could eat you instead!” He stepped to the side and Tim came forward, swinging his towel like a sling but backhanded. He gave it two rounds, all the strength of an archer’s upper body going into the final swing, which he angled sideways.

  The two bars of soap in his towel hammered into the side of the big alien’s head but he didn’t go down. He just stood there, staring at them.

  Both men looked alarmed but then their expressions cleared and they exchanged relieved smiles. Rick put a hand on their opponent’s chest and gave him a firm push.

  The creature toppled over, his head striking the floor with a sickening thump.

  The inmates crowding the catwalks were silent.

  “Well that�
��s us properly introduced,” Rick said, looking up. He nudged Tim. “Let’s go find the Akkadians before the surprise wears off.”

  They started walking but Rick stopped again. “Don’t forget your duffel! Gods only know how long we’ll be stuck here and you don’t want to lose your shit.”

  “Figuratively and literally,” Tim muttered, going back to collect his bag. “So where do we find the Akkadians, assuming there are any here?”

  “Don’t know where they’ll be,” Rick admitted. “We just gotta walk around like we know what we’re doing and, sooner or later, we’ll bump into them.” He eyed his young protégé. “As for whether they’re here, you actually have any doubts? A prison this size, there’s a lot of business to be conducted for the syndicate. They won’t pass it up.”

  Nor did they. The two Midgaard found a group of Akkadians occupying several tables near the center of the large common area.

  They were slightly shorter, on average, than the Midgaard but stronger in build. Their hair was pale, nearly white, but their skin tended very dark, giving them a striking appearance.

  The Akkadians didn’t rely on brute force, like the unconscious creature lying on the floor forty meters away. Their strength lay in their organization.

  At the end of open conflict with the Republic, Commander Flemming had put a great deal of effort into building links with the various organized crime syndicates on Republic worlds. The Akkadians were one of the strongest because they never passed up a good opportunity.

  Even on a remote world like Rykeria, where it was extremely unlikely for an Akkadian to even visit, let alone get arrested for anything, they had a strong presence. It likely meant that they’d been sent here specifically to set up shop in the prison.

  And that meant they were probably working hand-in-glove with local enforcement.

  “Afternoon,” Rick greeted one of the Akkadians on the outer edge of the group. “Looking to talk with your lugal.”

  “So talk with him,” the Akkadian grunted, barely glancing up from his holo-tale.