by Rachel Ford
“We have nothing,” the father assured me. “Please go. We’re trying to sleep.”
I feigned anger. “A sip – a sip is all I need, friend.”
“We have nothing,” the woman repeated.
“Move along,” the younger man added.
“Lies!” I snapped. “Lies and insolence! Do you know who I am? I’ll not be lied to by landrats.” My conscience pricked at heaping such abuse on desperate strangers. But their temporary discomfort served my larger goal: the constables were taking note now, weighing the situation to see if it merited intervention.
“I’ll not stand for it!” I roared. “Give me drink, or by the gods, I’ll take it for myself.” I threw the bottle against a tree for emphasis, and it shattered into pieces in a glorious explosion of noise.
That was the touch I needed to draw the guards. The family retreated, and I staggered after them, shouting as I went. The constables headed my way.
I continued the act as they arrived, pretending first to surprise and then to anger as they arrested me. “By the gods, who are you to touch me?” I thundered. To the baby-faced constable reading me my rights, I snarled, “I’ve been navigating these skies since you were in diapers, son.”
I made one hell of a mean drunk, and the guards bought it. Before I knew it, I was being carted off to cellblock delta, the holding wing for drunks and other nuisances. I continued my ranting the whole way; so when I uttered the phrase “by Saint Erling’s beard” among my curses, the constables took no notice. It was just more rambling from the belligerent drunk in custody.
Bridge, on the other hand, had been tuned in all the while via the comm unit secured in my bun. “By Saint Erling’s beard” was the signal I’d set; and as I was I dragged deeper into the bowels of the Citadel, I was secure in the knowledge that Driftwood was set upon its task.
A minute later, an overhead sounded. “Code black in Legal District. Repeat, code black!”
“Shit,” one of the escorting officers fumed. “Brek, take this idiot to holding and get your ass on the transport. Valders, you’re with me.”
“Yes sir,” Baby Face – Brek – answered. The others ran off to handle the code black – the one Bridge had caused, with a few well-placed missiles to the Museum of Legal Histories – leaving Baby Face to my tender mercies.
A few minutes later, and the young man was unconscious, tied and gagged in a cell where I’d left him. He’d been surprised, certainly, to see a staggering drunk become sober in the blink of an eye, but, a headache notwithstanding, he’d be none the worse for wear.
I headed deeper into the prison, toward cellblock beta. A few prisoners, roused by the code black, watched me pass. Some cheered me on drunkenly; others turned toward their bunks, as if afraid to be witness to whatever was going on.
There was no visual transition between Delta and Charlie – the walls were the same drab, windowless grey, the cells were the same tiny boxes of steel and concrete, outfitted with a bare cot and a toilet. It was the smell that signaled an invisible border. Delta had reeked of body odor and bad liquor, punctuated here and there with the acrid smell of vomit.
Charlie smelled of something else entirely. The odor of flesh – burnt, torn, rotting, bleeding – drowned any other contenders. I had gotten a few steps in before I registered the smell, and then it hit me, like a punch to the gut.
“Fuck.” There was no mistaking the maiming wing. I pinched my nose, and pushed on. I could feel my pulse pick up. “Keep your shit together, dammit.”
I gritted my teeth and kept at it. According to the schematic, Beta was just around the corner. I was almost there. “Keep it together.”
My legs were trembling, and my breath was starting to run ragged. I focused on the distance. It was only half a dozen cells until I was out of here.
I made it past the corner. The odor didn’t improve, but knowing that the priest was at hand, that I’d reached Beta, at least gave me something else to focus on. “Falgir,” I hissed, racing down the hall and checking the cells I passed. “Dammit priest, where are you?”
I found him fourteen cells in. He watched me for half a second with blank eyes. He looked much the same as I’d seen him earlier, just wearier and sadder up close. “Agata?”
I nodded. “In the flesh, priest. Now let’s get you out of here.” He continued to stare, still confused. “I’m breaking you out,” I explained. “But we have to move. How do I open this cell?”
“They’ll catch you.”
“Let me worry about that, Edlin. How do I open the cell?”
He frowned at me. “There’s a control room down the way, past the pit.” The pit, I guessed, was cellblock alpha, where they kept those deemed dangerous. “They radio in when they want a cell opened.”
“Alright, I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.” If he realized I was joking, he made no sign of it; he just watched me go.
Although I couldn’t see anyone from my current vantage, I clutched Baby Face’s gun tightly as I scurried through the rest of Beta. The transition to Alpha was delineated only by the change in cells. Great, solid doors with peephole windows, all shut, lined the way. There were six on each side, all silent as a tomb.
I saw the control room – a large office, with weapons-proof glass windows, that filled a chunk of what otherwise could have been block alpha. In my schematic, it had been listed as overflow cells. It was, I realized, a miracle I’d made it this far relying on that piece of paper.
There was a man in control room, decked out in the accoutrements of a senior constable. His focus was – had been, I assumed – directed to a set of screens displaying fire and smoke. He was monitoring the code black.
I crouched, moving as quickly as I could. I was shaking now, as much from nerves as the fluttering, and my breathing was very heavy. I paused at the door and drew in a few deep breaths. Then I readied the pistol and swiped the badge. A high-pitched beep sounded, and the constable turned to see who was entering the control center.
I fired, and he fell into a weapons-induced nap.
I took a moment to survey the room, ignoring the displays he’d been preoccupied with. I focused instead on the control panels on his desk. The cell controls were governed, I saw, by a bio scanner. Dammit.
Grunting, I dragged the constable’s leaden body toward the panel. With enough effort, I was able to hold him in place long enough to swipe his thumb. The control panel flickered green, accepting the thumb-in. I sighed in relief and let him slump to the ground.
Once in, the controls were straightforward. The screen allowed you to select the cell or cells you wanted, or entire cellblocks. The controls toggled the locks and doors.
Impulsively, I selected all the cellblocks. I couldn’t know if the prisoners I was releasing had somewhere to run to – my ship would barely accommodate the priest and myself – but at least I could give them the option: to run if they wanted, to stay if they preferred.
I initiated the unlock and open sequences. Red warning lights flashed in the hall outside the control center, and the doors began to swing open.
I drew a steadying breath and headed back to Alpha. The priest was waiting for me. “You did it,” he said, with mild surprise.
“I did. Now come on. We need to get to the roof. My ship will be waiting for us.”
“Alright. Lead the way.”
I nodded, more confidently than I felt. The schematics had already been wrong once; I only hoped the building hadn’t changed stairwells and elevator shafts since the original blueprints were drawn up. “This way, priest.”
The elevator, luckily, was exactly where it was supposed to be, back near the entrance to the prisons. Despite all that he’d endured, Edlin made good time and offered no complaints. He was contemplative but not dazed. I couldn’t gauge what he was thinking, and this wasn’t the time to figure it out.
We passed a handful of prisoners in the process of escaping, but no constables. It wouldn’t be long, I knew, but for now at least they were not awar
e of the prison break.
Baby Face’s badge buzzed us into the elevator, and I punched the button for the roof level. A red flash and a loud buzz signaled that the command had not been accepted.
“Fuck.” Fighting back the panic that threatened to overtake me, I punched the top floor. That too elicited a negative. My hands were shaking now. I tried the next floor.
The elevator controls flashed green, and we were moving. I released my breath, realizing that I’d been holding it.
“You alright?” Edlin asked beside me.
I tried not to jump at the unexpected sound of his voice. “I should be asking you that, priest.”
“I’ll live,” he said with the ghost of a smile.
I smiled too. It was good to see the old Edlin, even if just a flicker of him, again. “Me too. This badge must not have high enough clearance to get to the roof. We’re going to have to find a staircase. There should be one west of where we’ll get out.”
He nodded. “There’ll be guards.”
“I anticipated that.” I lifted the pistol by way of demonstration, and he nodded again.
The elevator doors opened, and I peeked my head out. The immediate vicinity was clear. “Let’s go.”
Our good fortune quickly ran out. We’d barely gotten half a dozen steps before a constable stepped out of a side room. He wasn’t looking for us – he was as surprised to see escapees as we were to see him – but he went immediately for his sidearm. I barely got a shot off in time. He went down, and Edlin had the foresight to grab the downed constables’ weapon and several ammo cylinders.
The commotion, meanwhile, had drawn the interest of a handful of constables. The priest stunned the first to emerge, and we both dispatched the next few. As far as I could tell, no one had a chance to set an alarm yet.
“We need to go,” Edlin advised, pulling me forward. “There will be more of them.”
We reached the west stairwell. My lungs already seemed stretched beyond capacity, and with the extra exertion they felt near to bursting.
The priest stopped at the top of the stairwell, ostensibly to review our next step. “They say the Inquisitor has Metal Men up here. A gift from the High Priest of the Technotheists.”
I nodded, grateful for breather. “I have,” I said between breaths, “a contingency plan.” Working quickly, I unwrapped my hair covering, and pulled the bun down. Nestled safely among the bound tresses were three tiny silver orbs, right where I’d left them.
“EMP’s,” he nodded approvingly.
The orbs were military grade electromagnetic pulse grenades. There were supposed to be two Metal Men here; I brought one for each, plus a spare. It never hurt to be prepared.
“I’ll take one,” he said. The comment took me by surprise, but I handed him a grenade all the same. I forgot, sometimes, that the priest had been a soldier.
“Let’s go,” I said. I could have rested for an hour, but time was of the essence.
“Carefully,” Edlin cautioned. This floor would be the most heavily patrolled in the building, and there was no sense giving ourselves away.
“The hatch to the roof should be north of here.”
“Alright.”
We moved out, crossing paths with a handful of agitated guards along the way. News of the prison break, I assumed, must have reached them. Still, we made our way unscathed. We had nearly reached the roof access point when the metallic voice of one of the automatons reached us.
“Attention constables. Infrared sensors detect unauthorized persons on Level Alpha. Terminate with extreme prejudice.”
I could feel the hairs on the nape of my neck stand up straight. There was something hideous in their inhuman, remorseless call to murder. Instinctively, the priest and I ran for the hatch.
We reached it, and I was wrestling with the mechanism when the first Metal Man came into view. It was a thing of both beauty and terror, sleek and humanoid, standing about the height of a man but equipped with a variety of appendages – all presumably to inflict hurt on people like us. It moved rapidly, but had gone absolutely silent, into some kind of stealth mode.
Edlin was ready, having watched the machine’s shadow round a corner, until the perfect moment to throw his grenade. A flash of light, a sizzle of burnt circuitry, and the electronic enforcer ground to a halt. For all its advanced programming and technical wizardry, these so-called pinnacles of human evolution were stopped as easily as their creators. The priest, I suspected, must have been one hell of a soldier in his day.
With an effort, the heavy door finally came open, revealing a long metal ladder. “Let’s go,” I called.
“You first,” he said.
“Dammit priest, move!” This was my rescue op, after all, and if only one of us were going to get out of here, it was going to be him. He didn’t argue, grabbing the ladder and hoisting himself up. I followed, keeping an eye below.
Climbing a ladder with a gun in one hand and grenades in the other is damned slow going, and every second we spent in that shaft seemed like an eternity.
Edlin had reached the roof and heaved open the hatch by time I saw it: the second Metal Man, sticking his metallic arms into the tube. I dropped not one but, fumbling in the moment, both grenades. A blast of fire screamed up the shaft toward me as I scrambled for the top. The Metal Man was equipped with flame throwers, probably for shock and horror value as well as for imprecise targeting situations like the present. They could terrify a crowd, or deliver wide ranging damage, as needed.
My grenades went off a few moments after the first blast of fire. I could feel the priest seizing me, pulling me out of the shaft; I could feel flames licking the soles of my boots, singeing my clothes and heating my flesh.
The next thing I knew, I was on my back looking up at the stars, a foot or two from the shaft. The priest was already pushing onto his feet. From what I could tell, aside from a bit of singeing, neither of us were the worse for wear. I sat up. “What happened?”
“You almost cooked. Lucky the grenades went off when they did; I don’t think I could have gotten you out in time otherwise. Now, let’s get to that ship.”
I shook myself from my shock, and stood. “Good idea.”
Bridge had been discreetly tracking our movements, and had Driftwood waiting, right on cue.
“Welcome aboard, Captain,” it greeted as we embarked. “And Mr. Priest. We’ve been expecting you.”
“Thanks Bridge. I owe you.”
“Not at all, Captain.” The hatch closed. “Shall I initiate escape protocol?”
“Hell yeah.”
That was the easy part. We had a head start, and my knowledge of the dustbowl made shaking pursuers a walk in the park – a radiation-filled, pirate-infested park, granted, but at least we weren’t taking on battle cruisers.
I surrendered my bunk to him, and the priest spent most of those first days asleep in it. He didn’t talk about what had happened. I didn’t press him. He needed space and time, and he’d have it. Once we shook the cruisers, I slept a lot too, dozing in my chair while Bridge operated the ship.
We were about a day away from port when Edlin emerged, look rested and less haunted. “Where are we?”
“Outside of ‘charted space,’” I said with a smile. “Close to a place I’ve been before. A planet, off the radar, full of refugees like us. I used to do cargo runs for them. We’ll be safe here.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “That sounds nice.”
I nodded too. We’d be outlaws, but we were off the beaten path, safe and free. And that did sound nice.
“I don’t think I’ve thanked you yet,” Edlin said after a moment.
I scoffed. “Someone had to look out for you, priest. That god of yours obviously wasn’t doing it.”
He smiled, offering pointedly, “Wasn’t he, though?”
I shook my head and laughed. “It’s good to have you back, priest.”
“It’s good to be back, Agata. It’s good to be back.”
About th
e Author
Rachel Ford is a software engineer by day, and a writer most of the rest of the time. She is a Trekkie, a video-gamer, and a dog parent, owned by a Great Pyrenees named Elim Garak and a mutt of many kinds named Fox (for the inspired reason that he looks like a fox).
You can follow Rachel on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/rachelfordauthor/
She is also on Twitter @RachelFordWI and Instagram @RFord191
More from the Author
Tribari Freedom Chronicles series:
Catalyst, novelette. Ebook and audiobook – available now
Uprising, novel. Ebook and paperback available now. Audiobook coming soon
Liberation, novel. Ebook and paperback available for preorder
Time Travelling Taxman series:
T-Rexes & Tax Law – ebook, paperback and audiobook – available now
UFOs & Unfiled Taxes – ebook and paperback, available for preorder. Releases March 15th. Audiobook to follow
MarvelousCon & Tax Cons – ebook and paperback, available April 19th. Audiobook to follow
Also releasing soon:
Mission to Mitrak (military sci-fi novella) – ebook and paperback, available for preorder. Releases April 5th. Audiobook to follow
Prison Break is also available on audiobook
