by Tammy Walsh
I was a pirate. We functioned on probabilities.
Still, this was one bet I would not take.
And neither would anyone else if they had a single ounce of common sense.
I nodded and sprinted into the open arms of the hangar.
I guess I didn’t have an ounce.
My strides were long and ate up space as if my life depended on it which, unsurprisingly, it did.
I timed my breathing to coincide with my legs’ long strides. I didn’t stop, didn’t turn to look back over my shoulder, didn’t dare to even consider one of the guards had spotted me.
I ran as fast as my legs could carry me and right now, right then, that seemed enough for me to focus on.
I threw my arms back and used them to drive my legs even longer. I intended on obliterating a few speed records while I was making my break from the prison.
In one hand I clutched my device, holding it to one side like a shield, and in a strange way, that was what it was.
In my other hand was Agatha’s hand. She didn’t collapse or struggle to keep up. She was right there at my side every step of the way.
I didn’t check to see if I accidentally tugged her arm out of its socket. I didn’t check to see if she had lost her breath. These things were in my thoughts but I couldn’t be concerned with them right now.
She either kept up or she got left behind.
There was no middle ground.
My boots were monstrously loud on the floor. I wished they were silent the way they were in my mind.
The sound bounced and echoed off the back wall, toward the front of the room.
In my mind’s eye, I imagined the guards turning to see what was making all that racket.
Still, as much as my senses were telling me to look, I didn’t.
I daren’t.
It could knock me off my stride, could make me see things that weren’t there.
I couldn’t take the risk.
And I kept on running.
How Agatha was keeping up with me, I had no idea, but she was.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, we reached the closing door.
They were less than two yards apart now.
I had left it a little too late but hopefully, my device would still work.
I skidded to a halt and dropped Agatha’s hand.
I moved my device forward slowly, adjusting it again as the cajoling of the run had knocked it off-center.
I lined the cylinders up with the streaks of electricity, matching the grid pattern they created across the open door.
Once I was done with each side, I let out a breath and pressed the device into the latticework.
It hummed and crackled with power.
It sounded very dangerous—even to me.
I shoved Agatha behind me as a bolt of electricity splintered off the device and struck me.
It fried my shoulder in an instant and made my flesh burn.
I didn’t ease my grip on the device and shoved it further into place.
One by one, the shards of electricity lined up with the device’s cylinders.
Yes! It worked!
The device sparked, hurling another yellow bolt of electricity.
This one missed me and struck the rear thrusters of the shuttlecraft behind me.
“Is that it?” Agatha said between rasping breaths. “Now what?”
“I’ll show you now what,” I said.
I reached for the little lever and slid it across.
As it did, it opened up a small open doorway in the security field.
Was it safe? Would a random bolt of electricity strike me the moment I stepped through it? I didn’t know.
“Hey!” a guard bellowed. “Hey, you! Hold it right there!”
I planned on doing many things, but holding it right here wasn’t one of them.
I emptied my mind of all thought as I hopped through the tiny doorway and…
Emerged on the other side.
The air contained the same dusty dry “red” as it had inside the hangar but the air I breathed now was cleaner somehow, fresher.
The air only a recently-free man could savor because he was so used to living on the fetid stench of recycled air that’d passed through a thousand other lungs before reaching his.
But I was alone and Agatha wasn’t with me.
The doors were shutting one inch at a time and any moment, with less than a foot to go, they were going to crush my little device into oblivion and the doorway would no longer exist.
“Agatha?” I said.
She stood on the other side, the device forming a frame around her like a still photograph.
Even the expression on her face was frozen like a photo. It depicted a pained expression lacking certainty.
The only moving elements of the photo were the guards running toward her—toward the both of us—and the shrinking time she had to hop through that doorway before it was too late.
She had frozen, unable to move even a muscle.
I’d had months to decide what I would do once I met this situation. I had made up my mind a long time ago. And I still had a few last-minute concerns.
But that didn’t alter the fact I would jump through it.
She’d been thrust into this position for less than an hour and, although she no doubt had dreamed of escaping this hell, she probably never thought escape was possible, least of all that it would happen right here and now.
I didn’t know why she hesitated.
She had no more to lose than I did.
They wouldn’t confine her to solitary the way they would with me.
She had the opposite problem.
They would sell her to a pleasure house where she would be worked to death, first with the finest clients, then the middle-class ones, then the working class, and then finally to the lowest of the low.
And that was if she or one of her clients hadn’t already taken her life from her.
That was the future awaiting her if she kept on staring and didn’t even try to escape.
That was the future awaiting her if she stayed in this prison that she belonged in even less than I did.
She needed a helping hand.
Less than three inches remained before the door would crush the device and the window would shut forever.
I didn’t know why I cared so much that she should be on this side of the door than on that one, but right then, it seemed like the most important thing in the world.
I did something crazy.
I reached through the temporary doorway for her hand.
She peered at my red skin.
It seemed to form a crack in her hesitant mind.
“Come with me,” I said softly. “What do you have to lose?”
It was what she needed to hear.
She looked into my eyes and there, shimmering on the surface like on the pool of a rich and powerful fountain of life, I witnessed the same thing I had seen the night before when she peered at me through those long lashes from her pale and beautiful face, that undefeatable resistance that would never back down, would never surrender.
The strength I saw in her the moment I looked at her—the first real time I looked at her and not her broach—but really looked into her eyes and saw who she was.
She reached out a hand. It was small and dainty but I would never mistake the strength contained within this small lady.
Zaaaap!
The guards opened fire and the bolts struck the doors on either side of us.
Agatha leaped back to avoid the worst of the attack, further from my reach.
The door had less than an inch to cover.
I bolted forward and grabbed Agatha by the arm and yanked her through the gap and into my arms.
The door crushed the device, obliterating it.
The guards opened fire and their bolts struck the security grid but did not pass through.
On the other side of the latticework, I saw the face of a guard.
He was dressed like the others but he was bigger, stronger, a more formidable force.
I couldn’t make out his eyes but through the visor, I sensed him staring at me.
His armor was dented and damaged from countless fights and matched the scars I had crisscrossing my body.
I knew without a shadow of a doubt I would be seeing more of that figure, and for some reason that drew a cold shudder from me.
The doors shut the final few inches, wiping him from view, but very much not from my mind.
I shifted my focus to Agatha, who remained clutched close to my body and looked up at me.
I had risked my life reaching through that doorway to snatch her.
I had never risked my life for anybody before.
Nobody.
Why did Agatha have such a profound effect on me?
And why was I so afraid of it?
“Come on,” I said. “They’ll open the doors as soon as they can and begin searching for us. The further we can get from them, the better.”
Agatha
I was out.
I was actually outside the prison.
I giggled and caught my laugh for fear it might give away our position.
I still couldn’t believe Egara had reached through the narrow gateway and pulled me through, risking not only his chance of escape but his life.
He had saved me from the terrible lifestyle I’d been subjected to.
I had come up with coping mechanisms that allowed me to deal with the worst of the events of the past year, but they did nothing to prevent the horrible future coming my way.
I breathed in the air of freedom and immediately coughed, sputtering around a mouthful of sand and grit that clogged my throat.
Okay, so I hoped freedom would taste a little better than that!
The sand sucked at my heels and made traversing it difficult.
Each time I lost my footing, Egara was there to pick me up and help me across the rippling plains of the endless sand dunes that stretched into the far distance.
I could still hear the klaxon of the prison riots from here and I wondered if they would continue now they knew a pair of prisoners had escaped.
I doubted they were out after us already. They had an entire riot to quell and a prison to lock down before they would come looking for us.
They might wait for the sun to wear us down first.
It was doing an admirable job of that all right.
The sun was scorching and my lungs hurt.
I puffed and panted, more than I should have been if it was only due to the exercise.
I was fit—at least, I had been before I’d been abducted—and although I got a lot of physical exercise between the sheets at the prison, I still struggled to keep up with Egara.
His strides were almost twice the length of mine and it took some doing to keep up with him earlier during the sprint through the hangar.
My lungs still hurt from that exertion and my breaths were ragged and came haltingly.
I had never been asthmatic but I had friends who were and they sounded the same way I did now.
My breaths came haggard and raw as if one of my lungs had collapsed and couldn’t operate at full capacity.
Egara was there once again, his strong hand reaching out.
He pulled me onto my feet and force me onward.
For the first time since arriving on this moon, I wondered what the makeup of the air was.
Did they have enough oxygen on this moon to support humans?
I recalled the stories of other prisoners who managed to escape but were found dead outside the walls shortly after.
Was this the reason?
We had each come from different planets, different backgrounds and atmospheres.
None were native to this moon.
They wouldn’t be used to the atmosphere of this strange and hostile landscape.
We descended down a sand dune and found ourselves in a narrow valley between two huge mountains.
I reached the bottom and couldn’t take another step.
I bent over double and braced myself with my hands on my knees.
“Stand up straight, with your hands on your head,” Egara said. “It will expand your lungs and help you recover faster.”
I did as he suggested but for the life of me, I couldn’t tell the difference between standing like this and collapsing on the floor the way I wanted.
Egara marched up and down the valley as if our run over the sand dunes hadn’t affected him at all.
I hated him.
He peered at our surroundings, hands perched on his hips, frowning.
“I swear it’s supposed to be around here…”
“What… is?” I said around gulping mouthfuls of oxygen.
“A brook. According to the map, there should be one right here.”
“What… map?”
“The one my lawyer gave me before I was sentenced. It’s supposed to be right here.”
He stamped his foot, making a crunching sound.
Not what you would expect from very fine grains of red sand.
He got down on his front and peered closer at the rocks.
He fingered them and ran them through his fingers.
“These aren’t regular rocks.”
“No, they’re what… you would expect at the… bottom of a running… stream.”
He peered over at me, smiling, and dropping the remainder of the tiny pebbles.
“You said you were a historian. Not a geologist.”
I shrugged, finally able to stand without panting.
“I was a good science student.”
“Come on.”
He followed the narrow trail of rocks that ran between the sandy mountains.
“Maybe if we follow this, we’ll come to the stream I’m looking for.”
Our footsteps crunched on the gravelly pebbles and wound through the valley.
I was only glad it sloped downhill and not up.
I let gravity do most of the work, managing to catch myself with each step and avoid tumbling over flat on my face.
“I was thinking,” I said, finding my rhythm, “what happens if the guards come looking for us?”
“With any luck, we’ll be gone by the time they catch up to us.”
I hoped that was the case.
There were many rumors about this desert.
They called it the “Desert of Death.”
No prisoner who stepped foot into it had ever stepped out again.
I sincerely hoped we would not be joining their number.
Egara came to a stop around a blind corner and I almost crashed into him.
Before us, in a shallow pool of clear water that originated somewhere further up an adjacent slope, was a single stream of water.
“Oh, thank God,” I said.
I fell to my knees and placed my hand in the water.
I splashed it over my face and filled my mouth.
A hand slapped me on the back, forcing the water from me.
I coughed and glared up at the figure towering over me.
“What did you do that for?” I said, shaking off my wet hands.
“Don’t drink it. There’s no telling what the source of this water is. Maybe all water is clean and clear where you come from but not on this planet.”
I peered closely at the water with a measure of fear.
“You’re saying this water is bad?”
“I’m saying we don’t know. Here. Use this.”
He reached into his pocket and came out with a straw.
“How’s this supposed to help?” I said.
“It’s a filter,” Egara said. “It will clean the water as you drink it.”
I placed it to the water’s surface and glanced up at him to check I was doing it right.
He nodded.
I sucked the water through the straw, and already, I could taste the difference.
I wondered what I’d almost swallowed earlier.
/> It was dangerous enough drinking from an unknown source back home or when you were in a foreign country, never mind a foreign planet.
What had I been thinking?
As I slurped on the water, Egara got to his knees beside me and used his own straw to drink.
Sated, I leaned back on my ass and rested for a moment.
Egara got to his feet and tucked his straw away.
“Come on. We have to get a move on.”
“Can’t we rest here for a minute?”
“No. We have to keep going. That’s if we want to reach the shuttlecraft as soon as we can.”
I sat up.
“What shuttlecraft?”
It was news to me.
“The one my gang put here for me to use to escape after I got free of the prison,” Egara said.
I had no idea he had everything planned out.
By the look of him, I never would have thought he was capable of planning.
He looked much more of a fly by the seat of his pants kind of guy.
I was so exhausted, I got up in stages, as no part of my body was ready to carry out the entire movement just yet.
I rocked to one side, lifted one leg, placed a foot, and used the bent knee to hoist myself up into a standing position.
I stood up straight and wavered uncertainly before catching my feet.
I extended the straw to Egara, who waved his hand.
“Keep it,” he said. “You’ll need it later.”
“Why would I need it? You said we should reach the shuttlecraft soon.”
“Soon, but not immediately.”
I tucked the straw in my pocket.
I was excited at the idea of escaping this moon.
I had lucked out with coming across Egara when I had.
Or was I?
The truth was, I’d been shot at, chased, almost raped and kidnapped, and that wasn’t taking into account the situation I now found myself in.
Even if meeting him hadn’t been the greatest stroke of luck, he was still the best shot I had at getting out of the prison.
What other way was there to escape than this?
And why did he decide he would take me with him?
I was nothing but a liability.
I had no fighting skills, had no resources.
I was just another hungry mouth to feed.
It was then that I heard a rushing sound.
The stream was too small and pathetic to produce that kind of sound unless it widened around the next bend and turned into raging rapids, which I very much doubted.
