The two Midgaard wove their way into the center where two Akkadians were playing a game of shatralang, a game of surprising subtlety for prisoners but not so surprising for Akkadians. If you met an Akkadian, it was a pretty safe bet you’d heard him mention the game and, probably, heard him mention that it had been invented by his people.
Among properly civilized folk – Akkadians – silence must be kept while present at a match. It was a game of concentration and patience, making it a good way to get the measure of an outsider.
Rick approached the table but not obtrusively close. After a few moments, one of the Akkadians watching the match from a bench deigned to notice him and moved aside with a gesture.
Rick sat next to him, nodding his thanks but he kept his silence and watched the match.
The younger player seemed to have the best positioning on the board but the game was deceptive. There were hundreds of positions, dozens of avenues of attack and more chokepoints than were immediately apparent.
The older player glanced up at Rick for a brief moment and then returned to his game. His opponent had strong forces pushing in from both the north and east and a moderate-sized group of the older player’s strongest units were cut off by the northern thrust, leaving them unable to assist in the defense of his king.
Rick had no trouble in keeping quiet. He could see that the forces were cut off but he could also see from the younger player’s attitude that he was failing to recognize the danger.
“You left Zababa alive, I hope?” the older man asked.
It wasn’t until eyes began turning his way that Rick realized the question had been meant for him. He looked over his shoulder to where Tim was standing.
Tim waggled his head. “He was breathing when we shoved him over.”
“Good,” the older Akkadian said. “That’s good. He’s of use to us, occasionally.” His cut-off units, all mounted troops, turned north and galloped toward a pass leading to the rear enemy camp.
The enemy king was there, guarded too well for such a small force. His pasha, however, his senior advisor, was south of the pass and in danger of getting cut off himself by the sudden advance.
The capture of his pasha was well worth the risk of losing all the isolated enemy forces racing to stop him and so the younger player called him back with an irritated flick of his hand.
The older man revealed a wide grin as he reached out to the pass. Rather than issuing new demands to his mounted units, he reached beyond to where the pasha had suddenly changed color.
The younger man held his tongue but it was clear he now understood the true threat. His pasha had come too close to the royal harem, that hotbed of intrigue where only one son could live to take the throne.
The pasha was now an assassin. The king would die and all his forces would halt in place until the new king could be installed.
The older man now had eight turns to maneuver – eight turns before the younger man could do anything other than defend the ground he now held.
“Save game,” the older man said, then waved the holographic interface out of the way. “A good match so far,” he told his opponent. “We’ll carry on tomorrow.”
That was all he needed to say. His opponent got up and left. The spectators drifted away and he was the only one left at the table. He nodded Rick over.
“LRG?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Rick dropped into the seat that was still warm from the younger player.
The Akkadian nodded. “By now, I’d figured nobody would ever come. What took so long?”
“You’d have to ask Lanc,” Rick told him. “We’re here ‘cause we simply got tired of waiting.”
“An unsanctioned rescue?” The Akkadian raised his eyebrows. “I suppose that helps reduce the risk of a war breaking out but, still, if you don’t succeed, it could easily come to that.”
“Which is bad for business,” Rick pointed out mildly.
The Akkadian waved off the comment. “No need to point out the obvious. We won’t get in your way.”
“I was leaning more in the direction of you helping us figure out exactly where that ‘way’ is…”
A disbelieving smile played over the criminal’s face. “You don’t even know where she is? You came down here… got arrested… on a hunch?”
“We know she’s in this region,” Rick said.
The prisoner stared at him for a long time in silence. Just before Rick was considering saying something just to move things along, he finally relented. “You didn’t even know if she was in this particular prison?” the other demanded, “or even on Rykeria at all?”
“It’s the most likely place,” Rick said calmly. “Sometimes you just have to roll the dice.”
“By the gods, you’ve got some pretty large dice on you!”
“That’s the word around the coffee dispenser.” Rick leaned forward. “Is she here?”
A nod. “Been in segregation for the last four years, though, so I haven’t set eyes on her for a while.”
“Segregation?” Rick looked around at the various species and genders in the huge common area. At least five pairs were engaged in what they would probably call procreation. A few larger groups were also making a ruckus, one no more than thirty meters away.
Caligula would have loved the place.
“I’ve never known the Dactarii to be particularly prudish about their prisons.”
“She’s high value,” the Akkadian explained, “and she’s been in a lot of fights over the years. They don’t want her getting stabbed in the back by some chiari-faced asshole who failed to beat her in a fair fight.”
“So how do we get her out?”
“We?” The Akkadian scratched at an armpit. “When did this become a ‘we’ situation?”
“When I tell you that plan A, the ‘we’ plan, is a surgical strike.” Rick leaned back in his seat, tilting his head to look up through the network of catwalks and platforms that soared above the common area for at least a hundred meters. “Plan B,” he told the huge open space, “is more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants kind of affair… with explosives. Lots of explosives…
“Won’t be any guards left alive and all the prisoners will be turned loose to keep the locals too busy to interfere with our exit strategy. We’ll set a few free elsewhere anyway but we were planning to leave this place mostly intact…” He nodded at the lugal. “As a professional courtesy to the syndicate.”
He squinted at a swarm of security drones that wheeled and dove among the catwalks. “Otherwise, whatever network you’ve built up in here, prisoner alliances, suborned guards… It would have to be re-built from the ground up.”
The Akkadian waved him to silence. “Plan A, then,” he groused, then lapsed into silence, staring down at the table.
He sat like that for quite some time. Rick was on the verge of prodding him but his precog stopped him, just in time.
“There’s a brain-man comes in every now and then,” the crime-boss mused. “He’s from Oaxia, I think. Anyway, you could pass for him. He checks on the prisoners in solitary, makes sure they don’t eat all their soap in a single sitting… that kind of thing.”
“I can pass for him?” Rick asked dubiously.
“Are you kidding me?” The lugal let out an amused warble. “The staff are almost all Nasturtians. Bunch of xenophobic assholes, every one of them. They’d be doing well to tell you apart from Zababa over there… Oh, good! He’s awake!”
Rick looked over. The huge creature was sitting up now, one hand gingerly touching the side of his head where the embossed logo of the soap manufacturer was raised in red welts.
The Akkadian kingpin let out a low-pitched warbling chuckle. “He’s gonna have that mark for life. Everyone’s gonna call him ‘Quick-Clean’ from now on!” He’ll be no use to us here, now that you’ve humiliated him in front of everybody. I’ll get him on a transport this afternoon to a prison where we could use a little more muscle.”
He looked back at Rick. “We’
ll get you a med-tunic from the laundry. If you play it right, you can waltz right into her room.” A prisoner was approaching him but he waved him to a halt. “When do you need to see her?”
“As soon as possible. Solitary confinement works in our favor as long as we know where exactly she’s held. I just need to locate her and make sure she’s ready for extraction.”
“How about now?” the Akkadian lugal asked. He swung his gaze to the prisoner he’d halted and waved him in. “Take our new friend to see Sar for a med-tunic then lead him to the solitary block.”
Rick looked over at Tim. “Stay here.”
Tim’s head tilted back a fraction. “Are you sure it’s wise to go alone?”
“Hey, at least I’m not risking you as a proxy for my son, right?”
“Are you sure you’re not just protecting him by proxy?”
Rick’s eyes rolled, ending up at the kingpin. “Kids these days, right? So neurotic…”
Sar’s realm, sensibly enough, was in the bowels of the prison where chutes and gravity brought all the dirty laundry. Sar, as his name hinted, was another Akkadian, placed there to control that department’s contact with outside vendors.
If you were responsible for all incoming detergents and fabrics, you were well placed to control a major source of contraband as well.
“A med-tunic?” Sar said through a mechanical device that made up for his lost vocal chords.
Rick was mildly curious, enough so to throw a few precog questions at him without his knowing it. The trustee’s throat had been ravaged by another prisoner and he really didn’t like talking about it.
Fair enough! Rick forgot about his throat and accepted the tunic Sar was handing him. “Thanks.” He slipped it over his prison jumpsuit and nodded at the tablet in Sar’s hands. Any chance you’ve got a spare you can loan me?”
“Sorry, acquaintance,” Sar said in a tone that conveyed a lot more indifference than sympathy. “I need this one and my assistant’s has a faulty power cell. It’s not like these things are going to work for a regular prisoner anyway.”
“Which makes your assistant’s broken unit perfect for my purposes,” Rick told him. “I just need a prop, not actual access. You ever see a doc walk around here with nothing in their hands? They’d fidget, ruining their god-like self-image.”
Sar stared at him for a few seconds, then reached down under his counter. “I want this back!” He handed over a tablet.
“I’m planning to come straight back here as soon as I finish in solitary,” Rick assured him. He turned to his guide. “What’s the brain-man like?”
A shrug. “Not like they’d send him to talk to a nobody like me,” he said. “You ever meet a doc from Tauhento or Oaxes?”
Rick smiled and nodded, closing his eyes for a moment to get into character. He opened them, recoiling slightly in apparent disgust at the sight of his guide. He frowned, making a slight flicking motion with his right hand. “Well then?” he said peevishly. “Lead on!”
The guide grinned. “Right this way, oh pompous one!”
He led Rick up the steel staircase that corkscrewed its way up the open central area. Catwalks branched off from each level, leading to rows of cells. They climbed all the way to the top, level eight.
Rick nodded when his guide indicated the gates to solitary. He was too winded to say anything. The Akkadian gave him a wave as he turned and trotted back down the stairs.
It took a moment to catch his breath – doctors wouldn’t use stairs when they had access to staff elevators – and then Rick walked over to pound on the glazed doors to the solitary confinement block. To his consternation, the doors slid aside before he could knock, leaving him standing there with his fist in the air.
A guard sitting behind a control desk looked up at him quizzically.
Not knowing what else to do, Rick gave his raised fist a semi-triumphant jab in the air. “Right on time,” he congratulated himself obscurely. He waved at the inner door. “Here to see…” He held up his broken tablet. “…Gab…ee…yohla.”
He looked up at the guard who was coming around the end of his desk, holding his hand out toward the tablet.
“Well?” Rick demanded.
The guard stopped short. “Doc?”
“Are you going to open up or do I need to assess you as well?”
He was desperately running a series of precog questions, looking for a weak point in the guard’s daily life. Fortunately, he had the usual insecurities.
“She’s not having an affair,” Rick told him.
The guard’s eyes seemed to double in size.
Rick reached out and gave the guard’s uniform collar a light tug. “She was sending your uniforms out for a full wash’n’press, right? Nothing strange there, likes how her man looks in a uniform…”
The guard waggled his head. “Yeah, but now…”
“Now,” Rick cut him off. “Now she knows you have access to the prison laundry system, so she’s sending you to work with a wash bag, right? She put any of her own stuff in there?”
“Well, yeah…”
“Well, then? She’s not tired of you, she’s just got enough sense not to waste a ton of money and effort that can be put to use elsewhere.” He gestured at the guard. “It’s still no excuse for looking like a bag of wrinkles!”
“Hello, Doc. The prison laundry…”
“I have yet to see a prison laundry in the Republic that can’t press clothes. Slip the trustee a little backsheesh and you’ll be looking better than the warden. It’ll impress your supervisor. Someone who takes care of his uniform is more likely to be on top of every other detail of his job than some guy who looks like five pounds of turd in a ten pound bag.”
“Hey!”
“Can you tell me I’m wrong here? Get that uniform taken care of and I’m giving you a prescription while we’re at it.” Rick had managed to distract the guard from the broken tablet but now he was just enjoying the role too much to rush things.
“You’re going to send your wife a message. Tell her you’ve been thinking about her all morning. Get her to guess what you have in mind later tonight.”
The guard considered this for a moment then started typing on his wrist-pad. “You sure about this, Doc? We don’t usually talk like that.”
“You’re still not talking like that,” Rick said. “Not exactly. You’re leaving the details open to her imagination. Her response will give you a better insight into what she might like to see happen.” He gestured to the door.
“Let’s go see my official patient now.”
“Sure thing, Doc.” He stepped over to the door and held his palm up near the scanner.
The doors hissed open and they started down a long hallway of cells closed by cage doors. They walked all the way to the end where a cell faced down the length of the hall.
“I’ll leave the cell and main door open, if you don’t mind,” the guard said, waving his arm near the door scanner. “Need to hear if she attacks you again.”
“Sure,” Rick said, mildly concerned to hear Gabiola had been attacking the prison doctors.
A pinging sound caught the guard’s attention. He looked down at his wrist-pad and took a sharp breath. “Damn, Doc! I’m not going to show you her reply but… Hells!”
“Told you!”
“Yeah, but she’s probably just kidding.”
Rick held up his hand, thumb and forefinger close together. “Maybe a teeny bit, but you should take it seriously. She’s probably half serious so it wouldn’t hurt to tell her something like ‘it’s a date’.”
The guard nodded and started back toward his desk, typing on his wrist.
Rick watched him walk away, waiting till he was too far to hear any quiet words said in the cell. It would have been a waste of time convincing the guard Rick was a doctor if he then heard Rick telling Gabiola to get ready for extraction.
Partial waste of time, he told himself. He’d had some fun helping the guard with his relationship, assuming
, of course, that she wasn’t actually having an affair…
He turned and stepped through the door, not liking what he was about to find.
He caught Gabiola’s wrist, the jagged metal shiv in her hand only a few inches from his left eye. This was not how he’d imagined meeting his wife’s mentor.
He pulled on the wrist, bringing her close enough to grasp the other wrist. He was at a disadvantage. If she were an enemy, he would have been trying to kill her but he was dealing with Commander Gabiola, the legend who’d founded the Long Range Group.
He brought the two wrists together, bending the right one until the shiv dropped from her hand. She had her back to him while he held her wrists in front of her face.
Spooning essentially.
Legend though she was, he was far too aware of the curves pressed against him. This was definitely not how he’d imagined meeting Freya’s hero.
He let go of her wrists and pushed her to the side, sliding the shiv behind himself with his foot at the same time.
“No touchy feely,” she admonished with a grin on her face. “You’re not that kind of doctor!”
“Wait, Commander!” he hissed urgently, reaching out his right hand, palm toward her.
She skipped out the door, slid it shut and went skipping off down the hallway.
Whether or not she was aware Rick had precog abilities, her act had thrown him off all the same. He’d been so flustered that he failed to see his own predicament until it was too late.
It’s not like he could shout out their secret plan as she fled. The guard was sitting just beyond the open inner door.
He cooled down. The guard would bring her back. Rick would have to face his smug attitude but none of that would matter if Freya found this prison.
He watched through the bars. The guard would look up from his wrist pad any second now…
“Thanks again, Doc!” the guard said, still scanning a message from his wife. He didn’t even look up as she strolled out the glazed main doors into general population.
“Unbelievable,” Rick muttered in disgust.
Southern Abbey
Asymmetry Page 19
