The Cairo Accord

By Georgia Knight

Peace is a fragile truth, held together by the lightest of threads.

This is the first book in the Hadrian’s Gate Series.

Four years earlier…

Oblivious to what was heading her way, she peered through the window, taking in the new day. There was a silence sitting over the morning, a deeper silence than there should have been.  It was bright and fresh, but the heaviness in the air stole any joy from the view.  She was about to turn back to her breakfast when disaster arrived.  It came as a rush of burning air, shattering the window, firing shards of glass into her face.  Blinded, she did not see the ensuing inferno.  Her suffering was short-lived, the intensity of the flames incinerating her body in seconds.

Elsewhere, two friends, occasional lovers, walked hand in hand towards their workplace.  They chatted merrily, laughing at each other’s jokes, the affection between them strong.  That laughter was cruelly interrupted as the ground started to shake.  In horror, they jumped back, the pavement beneath them lifting.  Their hands slipped apart, leaving one to desperately look for the other.  The other had already gone.  Distraught and confused, the remaining friend searched where her partner had stood, but found only a heart-crushing shadow. As she panicked, that shadow grew, swelling into a great chasm of darkness that stole away her existence.

Nearby, a teacher was with her pupils.  The class was about to start.  She was unusually nervous; something had not felt right since waking, something in the air.  When the rumble arrived, it seemed preordained, as if expected.  It vibrated up through the floor, growling and groaning.  In a snap, the far wall buckled.  Dismayed, she saw the masonry turn to dust.  A ball of intense heat rushed through, quickly consuming the children sitting in its path.  She could do nothing as the fireball advanced, ripping up the infants, ending their dreams.

There was no time to understand the destruction.

There was no time to comprehend the horror.

The school day came to an abrupt end.

Chapter One

Tau Ceti had blazed hard for the last four days and it was sweltering.  Leah Macey emerged into the heat, pausing to give Pike a goodbye peck, before heading off to work.  Heavily pregnant, the heat was uncomfortable.  Working during the daylight cycle was a pain. Tomorrow, this part of the planet rotated away from the sun and it would cool.  That would make work more tolerable, but she could not wait to finish for good in a few weeks.  Then she would relish the daylight cycle and the time at home with her amazing man.  Despite the discomfort, as Leah headed to the office, she felt incredibly lucky.  She could not have been happier or more excited about the future.

In her rear view, she saw Pike wave as she pulled away.  He would be heading to the garden, where he would spend his day working with his insects.  She did not begrudge him the freedom his job offered; he deserved it.  Two years into their marriage, her love was as intense as ever, and the gift she carried in her belly only served to strengthen it further.  She took joy from his joy, and his kiss was all she needed to lift her spirits.  Leah headed to the citadel with her mood bouncing and her heart bursting with optimism.

Pike closed the front door.  The house would have been silent but for the whir of hidden fans fighting to restore the ambient temperature.  In the kitchen, he ordered up his breakfast and waited by the food producer.  A few seconds later, a gentle ping announced the arrival of a bowl of fruit and a chilled glass of juice.  He took both out on to the patio, much to the further annoyance of those ambiance controls.

At some point today, he would have to work.  For now, though, he was just going to sit amongst the flora and fauna and enjoy the sun.  In the two hundred years since humans had arrived on this world, they had significantly adapted the landscape.  Many of the plants and insects buzzing around were genetically modified versions of Earth species.  They shared the garden with a splattering of indigenous varieties, all perfectly balanced to complement each other.  The matching of eco-systems continued to be refined, and when Pike decided to be more industrious later, those sciences would be his focus.  As one of Tau Ceti system’s leading bio-architects, flowers and bugs were never far from his thoughts.

Munching on his breakfast, he looked out on the garden with admiration as well as scientific fascination.  This was his patch, his place in the galaxy.  It was a familiar place, where he felt safe, happy, and in control.  It was the place he and his beautiful, charismatic, intelligent wife called home.  In a few weeks from now, it would also become home to his daughter as their family swelled to three.

Life did not get much better than this.

+     +     +

Kayla McGann had once been that person.  She had once had goals, ambitions, friends, and enjoyed laughter and smiles.  That person had left long ago.  She had no idea exactly when and it did not matter.  Nothing mattered.  Nothing.  All she felt now was pain.

Most of humanity did not know of the planet Eropidous.  It sat in the Clintos system, in the outer reaches of the explored galaxy, beyond the dusty outer edges of the Hadrian’s Gate Nebula.  The tentacles of the Union barely managed to reach this place, like sun beams struggling to penetrate the depths of an ocean.  The descendants of the first pioneers, having established their own civilisation amongst these weak and dying stars, now shunned the rest of their kind.  Centuries later, this branch of humanity had lost pace with the social and technological advances enjoyed across the inner sectors.

Beneath the surface of a nearby asteroid, ancient machinery churned up the dust of disturbed minerals, making the air rancid.  Pumps kept the oxygen flowing, but barely.  To turn off those pumps would have brought suffocation to the men and woman who laboured in these pits.  Such a death would have been an escape for this forgotten workforce.  These wretched souls were here because they had either stepped the wrong side of the law, or simply fallen out with the wrong people.

Kayla had been here for years, but she could not recall how many.  Compared to some, she had survived relatively well.  Sometimes she could recall why her life in this hell continued when so many around her had perished, but other times she was fortunate enough to forget.  The work was exhausting.  In this age of technology, there was no need for such degradation, but this work was less about mineral extraction, and more about punishment.  It destroyed their hearts and killed their spirits, leaving many barely able to walk.  By suppressing any desire for life, it removed any desire for freedom.

Somehow, day after day, Kayla kept going.  Whilst the exertions left her drained and weak, she was not as emaciated and as close to death as most.  She paid the price for the extra rations, and it was a hard price, but around her, others would fall to starvation, never to rise again.   The guards would drag away the pathetically light husks that remained.  Prisoners regularly took their own lives too, and she often considered if she should join them, and escape the hell.  But, somehow, she fought on.  When everything seemed lost, something kept her going, an inner force perhaps.  Day after day she spent in the filthy pit, barely able to breathe.  Swinging, digging, hammering until her body had no more to give, until her limbs were shaking and her muscles screaming.  Hope had long since left her and after all the toil, the humiliation, and the degradation, Kayla McGann was no longer a person.  She was nothing more than an empty shell, housing a whole lot of pain.

+     +     +

At the equator, Tau Ceti warmed the deserts of Meridian Rise to an uncomfortable daytime mean of seventy degrees centigrade.  That had pushed the early human settlers towards the temperate zones.  The Macey residence was in the northern city of Paris, population just over a million.  Here the climate averaged a modest, if not humid, thirty, with manageable seasonal fluctuations.  The atmosphere filtered out most of the sun’s radiation too, which meant Pike could sit on his patio and enjoy the full pleasure of Tau Ceti’s rays on his face.  As Paris spun away from the sun at the end of the four-day solar cycle, the first grey hue of the impending night hung across the garden.  The sun was still warm, though, despite how low it was sitting in the sky.

With breakfast consumed, Pike could relax and check in on life beyond this paradise.  A quick tap on the metallic band implanted in his wrist and the status light flicked from amber to green.  His identifier was online.

“Media update.”

He yawned, legs stretching, back arching; that lovely morning feeling after a good night’s sleep.  His mind danced back to the previous evening’s bedroom antics and his smile broadened.  Leah was blooming, positively blooming.

“Let’s see what’s going on out there,” he said to the peaceful garden.

The identifier responded to his voice with a flickering light and then a dashboard appeared.  The projected image sat an easy arm’s length away.  A variety of videos and text headlines popped into view, cycling recent stories and articles whilst a news feed rolled beneath.

Pike watched for a few moments, digesting the streams, seeing what took his fancy.  It was the usual collection of low-level crimes, human interest, sports, and celebrity nonsense.  Nothing much happened in Paris.

“Meridian news.”

The feeds expanded to planetary updates.  Minor civil unrest in Baraz, but that city lay way down in the southern hemisphere and there was a huge desert in between.  Tragic story, nonetheless, with several injured in the riots and the storming of a Union compound.  The report was not clear on the condition of the injured, or indeed if they were rioters, or Union staff.  Either way, it was unnecessary, fuelled by the lies of off-world conspirators.

There was a link in the footage.  He reached forward, cutting through the projection with a pointed finger.  The scene of Union troopers holding back placard-wielding protestors flashed out of existence, to be replaced by scrolling text.  His identifier, feeding off his optic nerve, altered the background colour so he could comfortably read the words.

The media often exploited stories of popular uprisings and bloody rebellions on the outer worlds, drawing a comparison with the events in Baraz.  The comparison was a little extreme; a few placards and angry society workers did not compare to the murderous terrorists who plagued the frontiers.  Since the attack on Three Zero four years before, security had ramped up across the inner sectors.  Although there had been more recent minor terrorist attacks in nearby systems, none had ventured as far as Meridian Rise, and nor would they.  The Union presence was particularly strong here, and weapon controls were tight. The media, in pumping out anti-terror propaganda and sensationalising low-level, local unrest, generated outrage in the general population.  That outrage prevented support for dissidents from swelling.  For that reason, the propaganda got Pike’s approval.

Briefly, he swept out across the galaxy.  The identifier cast up a swirling image of stars that danced around his head like insects at a night lamp.  The next generation of the device, due from Beech Labs later in the year, apparently interfaced the main channels directly into the brain.  For now, he had to utilise his eyes.  He selected one story, much the same themes as the last, only at a galactic level.  The further from Sol, the worse the disorder.  Some systems seemed on the brink of outright rebellion.  In others, order was never fully established, and conflict between the Union and the pioneers simmered.  Further out still, were the Dark Zones, where the Union rarely ventured.  News designed to scare was all that filtered through from those places, tales of terrible regimes and despotic leaders ready to unleash merry hell on the rest of humankind.  He had little faith these horror stories were true.  Just more propaganda.  Again, it kept the politicians in power and guaranteed peace across these civilised sectors of the Milky Way.

Pike tired quickly, frustrated at the doom and gloom invading this beautiful garden paradise.  He tapped his wrist, and the identifier drew back the interactive projections, the images fading from existence.  He was alone with the bird song, the buzz of insects and the warmth of a benevolent sun.  This was his escape from the madness of the galaxy.  Somewhere battles raged and people suffered, but not here.  Here flowers grew and wives blossomed.  Life was good.

+     +     +

After a shift in the hell pit, Kayla McGann had little left, but as one of the stronger, she often had to help carry the weaker back to the cells.  Today was no different, and again she bore the weight of someone for whom the toil was just too much.  It was best not to become acquainted for there was every chance that this man, supported by Kayla and another, would not see the next shift.  He was barely conscious and his complexion a dreadful grey.  It looked like his escape from this terrible life was quickly approaching.

The lifts took a couple of minutes to ascend from the mines.  Crammed in tight, a huge stinking throng of detritus, the human termites were keen to get out as soon as the doors opened.  As they spilled into the white corridors of the prison complex, bright lights, a stark contrast to the pits, temporarily blinded them.  These lights glared every time, but in desperate and exhausted minds, they always managed to bring shock and distress.  A few cried out; Kayla was not one of them.

No respite was given for their sight to adjust.  The heavy thrust of their captors pushed them forward, away from the lift, freeing it to travel back for another load.  Kayla stumbled, banging into those around her, the weight of the man heavy on her shoulders.  He stank.  They all stank.  Revulsion at such things had long since left her; it had no place here.  They were animals now, reduced to the basics of survival.

Of all the guards, through the mists of her clouded thoughts, she noticed one.  He was staring in her direction.  Not today, a thought voiced, but it was a fleeting thought, gone as soon as it formed.  Other images and feelings came into her mind too, creating a confusing mix of fear and pain.  She staggered onwards, letting those feelings lurk in a part of her head that was somewhere else.  It was a part she chose to keep hidden.

The guard was moving towards her.  Kayla saw his advance but blanked it out.  Exhaustion made it easy to ignore what was happening, to bury it beneath the layers of damaged emotions this hell had created.  That warning voice and those suppressed memories were buried there too, down with what was left of the old Kayla. Her mind, numb from the endless slog, was denying the worst aspects of this nightmare.

Those voices, those feelings.  Lurking.  Niggling.  It was happening again, that dreadful thing was happening again.  When the guard grabbed her wrist, the feelings rushed to the surface, emerging as a scream.

A sudden crack across the face sent a blistering pain shooting down her cheek, silencing her.  Forceful arms dragged her from beneath the heavy man as others pushed, propelling her forward.  The grip tightened further as she was pulled clear of the crowd.  Despite the memories now firmly planted in her conscience, filling her with panic, there was no attempt to resist.  She knew what was happening and feared what lay ahead but she was powerless.  Protests would only lead to more pain.  Sobbing, she let them take her away from the other prisoners and into a side corridor.  She knew what they were going to do to her, and she could only hope it would be quick.

There were four of them.  A familiar man was leading her, with three more behind.  She had not seen the faces of the others, but she felt their shoves and heard the stomp of their heavy boots and the harsh squawk of their voices.  They spoke in the local dialect, as did all the captors, and she barely understood a word.  One was female though, that much Kayla could conclude from the tone, although even that was just a blurry realisation in an exhausted mind.

The pain at her temple was horrendous, what had they hit her with?  A fist or the butt of a weapon, it mattered not, her only concern was how much it hurt.  The sensation of blood on her face told of an open wound, probably a large one.  She had long since given up on appearance but somewhere deep within, the worry of disfigurement emerged.

They can fix scars, she found herself thinking, back there, back in the normal places, they can fix scars.

Normal places, though, were a long way away.  Normal places were where others lived in safety, in warmth, and with full bellies and comfortable beds. As the tears poured down her cheeks to mingle with the blood, she knew she was never going to see a normal place again.

+     +     +

He did not have the most productive of mornings.  The beauty of the garden entranced and he had briefly dozed.  When he decided to go back inside, it was almost lunch. There was a tightness to his skin courtesy of Tau Ceti.  The chilled temperature inside tweaked at the light sunburn; it was a pleasant, alive, kind of feel.

With work in mind, he headed to the lounge.  From here, windows overlooked an impressive, landscaped lawn and a walkway that ran down to the street, joining with the boundaries of other properties.  One of his neighbours was exercising in her front garden, behind a small picket fence.  He watched her for a moment.  Although double Leah’s age, pushing eighty, the neighbour was in good shape and there was little discernible difference in her physique to that of his much younger wife.  Such were the wonders of body-regen.  It was comforting to know that there was such a long and healthy life ahead.  He could hope to enjoy another hundred years until his body finally failed.  Plenty of time to watch his daughter and three or four generations beyond grow and thrive on the prosperous Meridian Rise.

Or on another world, he pondered and frowned.

Thoughts of travel beyond this planet often disturbed him and he had no idea why.  Any contemplation of visiting other worlds started to build anxiety.  Today’s was nothing more than a nervous flutter, but he had suffered episodes in the past where that flutter had grown.  Once, Leah had raised the subject of holidaying in another system, and this same feeling, starting small, had emerged.  Blind to her husband’s growing unease, ignoring his requests for her to change the subject, her holiday ambitions had continued unabated.  That tiny flutter, the same one now felt, had escalated.  He could remember vividly the clenching and unclenching of his fists as Leah carried on her travel fantasies.  Sweating profusely, words had failed him, leaving him unable to ask her to stop.  Finally, seeing his face and realising something was not right, the flow of words had ceased.

It was nothing more than a panic attack, he would later rationalise.  Then, just as now, he knew it was the thought of space travel that scared him.  It even manifested at the mere idea that his offspring might one day take to the stars.

With a reflective sigh, he moved away from the window.  He was enjoying the scene out front, but he doubted Leah would appreciate his voyeurism.  He headed to the study.  Almost certainly, his fear of space travel was the reason he had never left his home world.  Born and bred here on Meridian Rise, he fully expected to die here too.  Leah’s adventurous spirit would have to find another outlet.  Home was where his heart was, and he loved everything about this world, and everything about his life.

It was time to do some work.

+     +     +

Thrust into an incredibly bright room, the smell of chlorine hit her nostrils. She was in the showers. With pain heavy across her forehead, and gripped by fear, she could not find even a modicum of pleasure from the fresh spray that gently kissed her face.  She had been here before, several times, and she knew what was coming.

Compared to the grime of the pit, this room was incredibly clean.  That was how they wanted her, though. They did not want the filthy stinking animal they had dragged from the mines.  They wanted her washed and sanitised, like prepared meat.  That was how these butchers saw her, nothing more than meat.

The shiny white floor, soaked from the water mist, was slippery under her tatty and worn boots.  Dirt was already washing off them in two greenish-brown trails that ran away towards the drains.  A nudge in her back propelled her forward several steps.  Somehow, she managed to keep her feet, despite one leg sliding awkwardly away.

All four were in the room with her.  She could hear their voices, but she did not look back.  This was bad enough without meeting their faces.  Foreign words mingled with the sound of running water.  Even though she could not understand them, their sniggering mocking was obvious.  Kayla’s suppressed memories continued to surface as the water washed away the numbness of her thoughts.  This was an unwelcome return to her senses when she least wanted them, and it only added to her fear.  Numb would have been good, but with each passing moment, her lucidity was improving.

Another shove in the back forced a few more steps.  This time, with her terror now at new levels, she tried to fight the momentum.  With no grip on her boots, it was impossible to hold any ground.  Despite more slipping, she somehow managed to stay upright, waiting for the next inevitable push.  It came, and again, she managed to fight it, but now she was into the edge of the cascading water.  The spray of the shower was cold.  No doubt, they had set the temperature low to further humiliate their victim.  The water was running down her face and splashing around her ankles.  So, so cold.  Another push, much firmer, and now she did fall, hard.  Pain rushed up from her seat, knocking the breath from her lungs.  She rasped and rolled on to her side.  The cold soaked through her filthy trousers and tunic and bit at her skin, but any discomfort the chill brought was nothing compared to the agony in her lower back and stomach.

Writhing, trying to regain her breath, she felt them crowd around.  Their boots stood by her face, shiny, new, in stark contrast to the rotten lumps clinging to her own feet.  It was a military shine, water droplets glistening on the reflective black surfaces.  For a moment, there was a fear that one such boot might shoot forward and connect with her face.  It was a reasonable fear.  It was certainly within the repertoire of this evil gang; she had seen it done to others.  Thankfully, she escaped the kick.  Perhaps they had considered the head wound already inflicted was enough.  From that injury, a steady stream of blood spanned out, mixing with the mud and dust.  The trails turned the white canvas of the shower into a multi-coloured depiction of her suffering.

They tugged.  Gasping for air, she was powerless to stop them.  Hands clawed at the flimsy fabric of her tunic, pulling her like a ragdoll, tearing the clothes from her back.  As they dragged her further into the shower, water ran into her mouth and nostrils, making it even harder to breathe.  The sound of cloth ripping, and the sinister cackle of their vile words mingled with the deluge.

Soon, she lay naked.  They looked down on her, smirking at their prey.  Despite her weakened state, the agonising heave of her chest and the pain across her head, it was this humiliation she felt worst of all.  Those little voices returned, reminding her all too vividly that this was not the first time she had laid here like this.  Previously suppressed emotions now erupted, a parade of screams and cries queuing up.  But they could not escape the grip of her fear.  Instead, they erupted inside, adding to the desperation, making her wish she could die.

How many times had she wished that?  How many times had she looked at the mining machinery and thought about ending it?  How many times had she imagined the machines snatching her up and spitting out her mangled corpse?  Many.  Too many.  She had seen others do it, deliberately falling in front of the cutting blades.  Was it fear or bravery that kept her from choosing that way out?  Perhaps it took courage to face a future as dreadful as this one.  That courage evaded her now, though, as she lay degraded in the shower.  That courage belonged to the powerful person Kayla had once been.  That person would never have let them beat her like this.

Degraded, with worse to come.

The woman stood over Kayla and poured a liquid on her.  It was a heavy soap, clinical in its smell.  Before the soap could wash away, the woman knelt and roughly spread it over the naked wretch.  She showed no respect for the sanctity of the body.  As she washed, the hands caressed too, and pulled, and pinched, with all the desire of a lover, but none of the affection.  A hand squeezed a breast, too hard to be pleasurable, and another forced its way between the victim’s legs, pushing a finger into an unprepared vagina.  It sent another wave of pain through the already agonised body.

Somewhere inside, the old her screamed, but this time it was not in fear.  That Kayla, trapped in this situation by exhaustion, would never have accepted this degradation, this abuse, this humiliation.  That Kayla wanted to fight, and the scream was one of anger.  But no matter how much that old her wanted to stop this, no matter how much the old her bellowed, the woman on the shower floor was powerless.  Reaching down Kayla desperately tried to push away the invading hands, but she merely brushed the guard’s shirt, unable to muster the energy to put up any resistance.  She was not letting it happen, she told the old her, she was just unable to stop it.  She had nothing to fight with.  They were too strong.

There was the sound of belts unclipping and heavy clothes being tossed to one side.  One man grabbed her hair, pulling her head back, the pressure on the scalp multiplying the pain from the head injury.  Words were shouted in her face.  They were not words she could understand but they were yelled hard enough to force open her narrow eyes and make her look at him.  An ugly rage seethed down.  He spat, with such venom, such hatred.  The vile sputum hit her in the eye and ran down the side of her nose and into her mouth.  Repulsed, she was incapable of mustering even the slightest sign of disgust.  She had to let it sit there, unable to raise a hand and wipe it away.

They treated her like a toy.  The female guard helped to hold her down and part her legs whilst one of the men squeezed between them, roughly grabbing at her thighs, his sharp nails tearing at her skin.  Those wounds would heal quickly, but not the one left by his next act, the one that felt like a burning dagger entering her, ripping her open.  Such an act of wanton brutality.  They laughed as he rode her.  They laughed as he violently thrust, each motion killing another part of the Kayla that had come to this hellhole years before.  They even laughed as the three men swapped, laughed at the blood, laughed at the mess, laughed at the pitiful wretch beneath them.

They laughed.

Inside Kayla died, and then she died some more.

Chapter Two

The world swam.

One moment, she was awake, with snippets of voices speaking foreign tongues and lights so bright that they burnt through closed eyelids.  The next, she was floating away again, back to a grey place full of tormented dreams.

She knew time was passing, but not how much.  The grey times were longer and deeper than those with the bright lights.  There was panic and fever in the grey, and heat, so much heat she could barely breathe.  Hallucinations too.  The same nightmarish visions, over and over again.  Naked, bleeding, soiled.  On the floor of the showers, unable to defend herself, the guards crowding round.  In the hallucinations there were other faces too, some unfamiliar, some she knew.  Her family were present.  Her mum, her dad, her two brothers, witnessing the vicious rape.  They made no attempt to help, despite her desperate cries.  They showed no reaction to what was happening, their faces seemingly carved in stone.

Through the fever, she occasionally glimpsed the brightness.  When she did, she lunged towards it, desperate to grab hold, desperate to escape the nightmares.  This time, when the light burned at her lids, she ignored it, forcing them open.  Several blinks later and she was staring at a white ceiling.  The shiny arms of medical equipment imposed itself over her shivering body.

She was awake.

At least she hoped she was.  It felt real enough, felt different to the confusion and fear of the dreams.  She was conscious, she was sure of it.  It was not the first time she had found herself laid here either, but this time she was determined not to let go of that light and slip back into the grey place.

There were voices, two of them, speaking the dialect that had tormented her many times.  Mostly, she did not understand the language, but a few words had found their way into her vocabulary.  These were the one-word demands, barked orders, always accompanied with angry and hateful snorts.  Conversations though, like the one she could hear off to her right, were lost on her.

The voices were harsh, as was usual with these horrid people.  The abrasive and spiky tones matched the mean nature of her captors.  One of the voices was female, and it reminded Kayla where she had been prior to this white place.  In another room, equally white, attacked by guards, one of whom had been a woman.  The pain in her lower abdomen was testament to just how violent that attack had been.

Blinking several more times, she acclimatised to these different surroundings.  Apart from the feverish perspiration on her body, she was dry, and the sound of the showers was no more.  Although not entirely comfortable where she lay, it was softer than the tiled floor.  A faint smell of disinfectant had replaced the vile stench of chlorine and soap.  It smelled clean.  It looked clean.

As her vision focused, the clouds in her head dissipated, and she recognised the equipment looming above.  She had definitely been here before, and not just in those waking moments between her feverish nightmares.  That equipment was very familiar.  Even with her mind reeling from the remnants of hallucinations, for the first time in a long time she found memories.  They were only memories confined to this hellish captivity, not the much longed for glimpse of the times that had gone before, but at least she had some control over her waking thoughts.  She had found enough structure in her mind to drag forward these recent recollections.

Her previous visit to this place had been for the same reasons.  This was not the first time they had raped her, the bastards.  How many times had they fucked her so violently that she had needed bringing here?  With so many thrown into shallow graves, perhaps she was lucky they bothered to fix her up at all.  But, horribly, she knew exactly why they bothered.  They sent her here so at some point in the near future, they could break her all over again.  The larger food rations were all part of this game too.  As those memories stepped forward, she realised she had been here many, many times, trapped in a dreadful cycle of abuse.

There was a pause in the chatter.  Feet shuffled closer and then the conversation resumed.  This time, it was hushed.  As shadows fell over her, she realised it was too late to pretend she was still unconscious.  Gradually, the shadows turned into faces.  One was male, with a short beard, typical of these people.  The other, female, with a square, indelicate face.  Again, typical.  They were an ugly breed in every respect.

Leaning over, the two exchanged an indifferent glance, huffed, and then moved away, taking their conversation with them.  She doubted her well-being was of much concern to them.  Awake, so what?  In pain, who cared? Leave the piece of shit to wallow.

How long Kayla had lay here was unclear.  The area between her legs was sore, but the recollections emerging from beneath the hallucinations suggested it had been worse.  That meant she had been here for a number of days, time enough for the most severe pain to subside.  She wondered if they had operated down there.  Even though knowledge of life before captivity was still lost to her, she knew the medical care here was inferior to the standards of other places.  Any repairs made to her wounds had probably utilised out-dated techniques such as surgery and stitches.  The tears and contusions might be healing, but she would never be the same, especially as this was the umpteenth time her body had been through this.  Soon enough it would be back to the pit and the cycle would begin again.  Her current clarity of thought would then fade back to the opaque horror of before, until the next time they dragged her stupefied to the showers.

Was she alone in receiving this abuse, she wondered?  That was unlikely.

As Kayla tried to move her head to follow the voices, a cold plate pushed against her cheek.  There was a strap across her forehead too.  It pulled on her skin, the wound on her temple crying out.  Similar straps also frustrated attempts to lift her arms and legs.  The bindings prompted more memories.  She recalled this torture.  They would leave her strapped on this bed for hours on end, day after day, until they deemed her fit enough to return to the cells.

Unintentionally, she moaned.  It was a deep, woeful moan, surprising in its desperation.  Once again, the conversation ceased, and once again, footsteps headed towards her.

The woman with the square face glared down.  She wore a green tunic, the same style as the brown ones worn by the guards down in the pits, the ones worn by the rapists.  More flashbacks to the last time she was here, and she remembered that the green tunics administered the medicines.  It would have been inaccurate to describe that as care; there was none of that.  This particular nurse was not in those flashbacks.  Perhaps there was more than one medical suite, or maybe she was a new appointment.

“Vazar!” the nurse hissed.  “Vazar!”

It was not one of the few words Kayla knew, but clearly it was derogatory in nature.  She did not attempt to ask what it meant, or indeed to reply.  She lay in silence, averting her eyes from the aggressive woman.

“Vazar!”

Words from the man floated across, quickly and quietly spoken.  The nurse briefly looked at him, nodded, and then returned her venomous stare to the injured woman.

“Whore bitch!” she spat.  “Shut moaning whore bitch!”  It was not perfect, but the words clearly conveyed the sentiment.  Kayla continued to avoid eye contact, not wanting to incite further aggression.  There was enough pain already without bringing about more.

“The men,” the nurse continued, “they like you.  They want fuck with you.  They fuck you again, whore bitch.  I make you better down there but no pain relief.  You need to feel the pain.”  She began to cackle.  “Feel the pain so you remember how much you enjoyed it.”

Her comrade was laughing too.  His mischievous chuckle perfectly complimented the nurse’s own gloating torment.  Kayla knew that the person she used to be would have easily rode these words.  She knew that the old her, who dared to peak through as this period of consciousness continued, would have taken the abuse and toughed it out.  There was not enough of that old her around, though, and weak and beaten she feared every word.  The agony and humiliation sat heavy.  In a momentary lapse, she looked at the nasty, sneering face.  That was enough for panic to set in.  As their eyes met, she could do nothing to prevent another fearful moan.  Even as it rose in her throat, she knew that it would further anger her aggressor.

It did.  A hand shot forward, squeezing her cheeks.  The grip was vicious, Kayla unable to defend or shake it off.  Horrendous pain shot up the side of her face and she recalled the blood dripping from the wound on to the shower floor, mixing with the blood from her lower passages.  Whether the rapist had struck her with a gun or baton she was not sure, but the impact had left a bad cut.  With aggressive pressure applied, the location of the pain came into sharp focus.  It was just to the side of her right eye.  How close had the strike been to blinding her?

But she could see fine, more was the shame, as the nasty woman continued to pour down her vile scorn.  The squeezing hand forced Kayla to look at the hideous, angry face.

“You no noise, Earth whore!  No noise!  Or the men I call back.  Come fuck her like this, I say, come fuck her strapped down!  Take turns!  I can keep on fixing you.”

Square-face leant in close, cackling.  There was wickedness in the foul breath and angry spit that sprayed on to her pitiful captive.  So much hostility and so much hate, pouring down on the injured, wretched prisoner.

Kayla fought back the fear.  She fought back the pain.  She fought back the anguished sounds that wanted to escape.  A bed in a medical suite might have offered some respite from the hell of the mines, but it was clear that the nurse intended to torment.  Just like last time, the medical suite would be another kind of hell, torturing her back to health and back to her feet, forcing a speedy return to the labour pits.

The cycle of terror continued, there was no escape.

+     +     +

The square-faced demon was true to her word in all but the worst of the threats.  Although brought back to health of a sort, it was clear any treatments were given with the minimum of consideration for Kayla’s well-being.  The rate at which they forced her to get back on her feet was brutal, with no allowance given for recovery.  They cared only about returning another slave to work.

Three days after regaining full consciousness, they removed the shackles for the first time, allowing her to use the toilet without the humiliation of a cold contraption between her sore legs.  Barely able to stand, she was taken to a pot in the corner of the room.  With no privacy, she was thankful the gown covered her genitalia.  Showing she was capable of a few steps was enough to show her tormentors she was ready for the next phase.  Regretfully, she knew what that entailed.  The help they gave her in standing, and the strength they put back into her shaking legs, was just so they could accelerate towards that inevitable day when they could throw her back into the cells.

With increasing lucidity, the abuse suffered throughout her time in the medical suite fired her anger.  The anger brought reminders of who she was, and how she had come to be here.  Those memories, growing each day, were so important.  They created bridges to the past and offered vestiges of her old self.  They offered foolish hope too, a hope she could rediscover the person she had once been.  Foolish, because ultimately these bridges were destined to prove unstable.  The fragile ropes holding them would soon be cut, plummeting her into the turbulent river below.  For now, though, she could cling to those rickety structures and keep going.

From her captors, delivered in the usual abusive manner, she learnt that she had been unconscious for about two weeks.  Her wounds, or ‘dirty, stinking whore wounds’ as Square-face put it, were initially infected.  That explained the fever and hallucinations.  Quite how she was still alive was beyond her.  As the venomous words continued to point out, it was beyond her captors too.  There were plenty of off-world whores the guards could fuck, beat and leave to die, but someone wanted Kayla to live.  Keeping her alive was not born from charitable spirit, as that someone clearly did not care if she went through hell day after day.  They treated her with no pain-relief.  They forced her to stand whilst her legs and groin screamed at her to sit.  They soiled her food and forced her to eat it.  There was no let up.  Every minute of every day was as dreadful as the last and as desperate as the next.

She did get stronger, though, and the pain did lessen. She developed a skill for keeping her progress hidden so it was not obvious to the staff.  They wanted her to suffer; it was easy to continue to let them think she was.  As terrible practitioners, they were unlikely to spot the faking.

With gradually returning memories, Kayla was able to not only see how backwards the medical standards were, but also see their surprising lack of knowledge when it came to the technology at their disposal.  The identifiers worn by the nursing staff were the most obvious example of this.   Unlike Kayla, and the majority of the prisoners, the guards did not carry the tell-tale sockets, but presumably the likes of Square-face were deemed to be more educated.  If they were au fait with the full capabilities of the devices, however, it was hard to discern. The medical staff barely used them, and when they did, it was for the most basic of functions.  Kayla noted these things without any idea how useful such observations would later be.

Whilst they forced her back to strength, Kayla barely spoke a word.  They did not chastise her for the silence, preferring the sounds of their own tormenting voices, and any howls of anguish they could extract from her.  To begin with, she tried to stifle the cries, as they only prompted more cruelty. As time wore on, and she became stronger, the need to stifle reduced.  On occasions, she even added in moans for effect, to perpetuate the sense that she was still not yet ready to return to the cells.

They mocked those cries, with ‘whore’ and ‘Earth bitch’.   Although not from Earth, she did not correct them.  She realised that these people, whom she now recalled were the Kamdo, despised anyone from beyond the Dark Zones.  The feelings were mutual.

With each passing day, Kayla found she was able to escape the torment by losing herself in her improving memories. When left alone, bound to either the bed or a nearby chair, she increasingly found it easier to travel back.  Some recollections were full and vivid, and these she found she could draw out, delving deeper, adding in details.  All the memories were invaluable, both the good ones, of a safe and loving childhood, and the terrible ones, of that childhood smashed apart.  The hard years, years of conflict and battle, of anger and fear, all needed exploring.  Feeling those emotions over again, even if they hurt, was part of rediscovering the old Kayla.  She recalled coming to this place too, although there were dark gaps of rage and confusion.  The raid at Haram Galt was there though.  The gunning down of her comrades by Union forces echoed around the corridors of her mind as if it had happened yesterday.  Within that, the murder of her man, a cold-blooded execution, often filled her thoughts.  Years had passed, and for long periods, any memory of Malcolm Gomes had been lost to her.  Now, with those memories recovered, she realised just how much she missed and mourned him.

It was the anger though, not sorrow, which kept her quiet.  The seething inside preserved her and gave her a focus.  As the last remnants of infection left her body and strength returned, she started to remember who the old Kayla McGann was, and of what she was capable.  Despair still sat heavy, but small glimmers of hope poked through.  Anger fuelled this hope, and the need for revenge fuelled her determination.  The lengthy period of working in the pit might have lowered her spirits, but the hard graft had helped to preserve her physical condition.  She was a little undernourished, but as her moans and cries increasingly became fake, so her legs and arms increasingly found their honed power.  It was unlikely this return to health would ultimately serve any purpose other than prolonging her life in this hellhole.  But it helped her to find old Kayla, and she angrily clung to any snippets of who she used to be.

+     +     +

Humanity’s perspective on the universe reaches a place where the numbers become too big for easy comprehension, and the mathematics of probability is then the only way for most to understand.  Probability and chance are bedfellows, who jointly wrote the past, and secretly script the future.  For Kayla, the probability of ever escaping her captors was extremely small, she got that, but she also understood there was always a chance.  In a universe so mind-bogglingly huge, every event remains possible, and eventually, in one place or another, chance will see that event occur.  It was a theory from which she could draw occasional hope, despite the desperate reality of her situation.

So when, against all that probability, the chance presented, she gratefully accepted it without question.  That moment came just a few hours before a promised return to the cells.  It seemed Square-face had stopped believing the fake moans and decided that it was time for her to go back.  Told she would return to the pits later that day, they suggested Kayla prepare herself for a hello from her favourite abusers.

As always, there was one green tunic and one brown tunic present in the medical suite.  Although the nurses were her main tormentors, the guards certainly contributed, and the firearms they carried provided a constant reminder that any resistance would be futile. They had two weapons; a large rifle, strapped across their backs, and a much lighter handgun holstered at their hip.  With the day of her departure now here, Kayla looked back over her time in this torture chamber and wondered if she had missed an opportunity.  Had there been an occasion when she could have gone for one of the guns and tried to turn the tables?  She sadly concluded that it was now too late, and not even her philosophy of chance could offer any hope.

Except, it could, and it did.  Somewhere, someone was rolling the cosmic dice and she was about to be presented with an unexpected gift.  It came as the guard was strapping her back to the chair.  One arm was latched but the other had only been placed in the grip, and not yet fastened.  He was reaching for the clasp when the sirens sounded.  The dice were about to roll a double six.

Kayla had heard these sirens many times, nearly always when she was down in the mines.  Typically, they sent the guards shouting and scurrying, and, shortly afterwards, the sounds of weapons being fired would force their way through the shrill screeches.  Then the alarms would fall silent and a knowing unease would pass amongst the prisoners.  This alarm was likely sounding similar dissent.  It was probably another small skirmish in the pits and would be dealt with routinely.  Except, routine would not be the order of the day this time.  This time, the outcome would be very different.

Forgetting the clasp, the guard exchanged heated words with Square-face.  Stepping away from Kayla, he gesticulated towards the display screens that adorned the far wall of the room.  It was old technology, but it was easy for even the unfamiliar Kayla to guess what the glowing red symbols on the diagrams represented.  The symbols showed flash points, and they were everywhere.

The guard crossed to the screens and began to interact, scrolling and zooming, checking surveillance cameras, and listening to voice reports.  His broad stance and the chunky body of the nurse concealed most of the camera views from Kayla.  Square-face fired up her identifier and communicated with an unheard other.  Significantly, the two of them were both facing away from the captive.

As sudden as a lightning strike, the old Kayla slammed back.  Something switched inside and the person she used to be popped into existence. In that moment, the pain disappeared.  It was replaced by a determination that she was not going back to the pits, a determination that today, one way or another, she would break the cycle.  She saw the opportunity.  She saw that chance.  A cocktail of anger and hatred pumped adrenalin through her body.  Fear, which had been part of her fabric for so long, fell away, and her courage leapt forward.  Her thoughts screamed at her; it was now or never.

She glanced at her free arm; it was just sitting there, compliantly waiting to be secured.  Her other arm was held fast, but the locking device required no key.  It was clamped in place with a simple latch.  If both hands were fastened, they were effective restraints.  With only one fastened, they were pointless.

This was that chance.  It was the only one she would get.  If she were going to do this, it could not end up just a futile act of defiance.  She had to follow it all the way through.  Freeing her other wrist was only step one, she had to be clear that a step two and three would follow.  Going back to the cells could not be an option; this was do or die.  No hesitations and no stopping, not until they killed her.

Her plan was formulating quickly; there was not much time.  Scanning the room, she called on not only what she could see now, but also the observations from the days she had spent trapped here.  She considered every nook, every piece of equipment, every notice and sign.  The screens, although currently obscured, she had seen illuminated a dozen times.  When unobserved by her captors, she had studied them, absorbing the information she could understand, learning the layout of the complex.  Maybe the old Kayla had been there all along, hiding, pre-empting this opportunity, laying the groundwork for this moment.

There was no hiding now.  The old Kayla was firmly back in the room.  The guard had been foolish and complacent, gravely underestimating his prisoner.  Perhaps that was understandable, when presented with the fevered and weak woman, a victim of this hellhole’s brutality.  He had not seen the real Kayla McGann and did not know what she was capable of.

If it was now or never, it had to be now.

With all the confidence of someone who had seen it done a dozen times, she swept her free hand across to the latch and unhinged it in one swift motion.  Keeping her gaze fixed on the backs of her captors, she silently rose.  Days before, such an action would have wrapped her in agony.  Now, if there was any pain, it went unnoticed.

At the foot of the bed was a trolley.  On it was a collection of drugs and basic medical equipment, the kind not seen in the inner systems for centuries.  Amongst them, a two bladed implement caught her eye.  Blades were blades, no matter how ancient.  She snatched up the scissors without disturbing the equipment around them, looping her fingers into the bunny ears and gripping the handle tightly.  Without a sound, on light feet, she crossed the room.

This was Kayla and this was what she could do.  No whimpering, no moaning, no taking it like an Earth whore.  With her hand raised high, the muscles in her arm were taut, pushing against the cotton fabric of her white gown.  Hidden within this damaged body was a determined and fierce warrior.

She struck.  The first sound of her attack was a sickening, sucking thud, as the blades sank through the brown tunic high on the spine of the guard.  He forgot the screens.  He forgot the riot spreading across the complex, the red warning lights now appearing with increasing regularity.  In that moment, all he knew was the pain and the blackness suddenly surrounding his narrowing vision.  The room became shadowy.  When he heard the exclamation of his comrade, it seemed to come from a long way away.

Square-face looked bemused at the slumping guard.  Somewhere a thud had registered with her, but amongst the sirens, it held no meaning.  Then, simultaneously, she saw the implement protruding from between the man’s shoulders and the prisoner, standing there, bold as anything, as if she had a right to be free from her shackles.

“Get back!” the nurse exclaimed in harsh English.

It was a confused command in a confused moment as Square-faced tried to comprehend what was going on.  There were many things that had no right to be.  The alarms had no right to be sounding.  The prisoner had no right to be out of her bonds.  Her comrade had no right to be slumping.  And the shiny object had no right to be sticking out of his back, either.  What did she fix first?  What needed her attention?  How much trouble was there going to be when her superiors saw this mess?

In a panic, she reached for the scissors.  It was another gift to Kayla, who dodged beneath the nurse and unhitched the guard’s handgun.

“You stop this!” the confused nurse shouted, yanking at the scissors, ignoring the guard’s screams as she tugged.

Kayla took a step back, avoiding the eruption of blood as the weapon was plucked clear.  Square-face was not so lucky, the vile red liquid spraying her tunic and splashing on to her ugly face.  She just stood there, the blood-soaked scissors dripping in her hand and the guard writhing at her side, spurting pulse after pulse over the bank of equipment.  The nurse was stunned, lost amid the chaos.  Briefly, her tongue danced across her lips and she tasted the blood.

Kayla quickly familiarised herself with the snatched weapon.  It was simple enough, an old model, but basic and straightforward to use.  There was no time like the present to test it.

The guard had spun to face the room now, his legs sagging and his bloody back against the screens.  He seemed more aware of what was going on than the nurse did, glaring at his assailant with open eyes that jumped between her face and the gun.  Desperately he tried to free his shoulder arm, but the wound in his back rendered him virtually immobile, and the rifle was trapped between him and the console.  He would not have been quick enough anyway.  With one hand, confident she would handle the recoil, Kayla raised the sidearm.  Her mind danced back to the shower as she took aim.  She saw those brown tunics bearing down on her.  She saw the tunics removed and what lurked beneath.  She felt them entering, forcing themselves in, ripping her apart.  In that moment, with the weapon in her hand, it was not anger that gripped her soul.  As she pulled the trigger, it was an emotion more akin to glee.

The weapon dispatched a focused bolt of energy that tore a hole in the guard’s groin.  A shattering thud accompanied the shot as it ripped straight through the target and smashed into the plastic panels behind.  The sound reverberated around the small chamber, briefly drowning out the sirens but not the screams.  Indifferent to the anguish in the guard’s inhuman cry, Kayla’s next shot was not intended to end his suffering, she just needed him dead for the next stage of her plan.

The second bolt struck him clean in the centre of the face, just above his wailing jaws, shattering his skull and plastering more gore over the flashing screens.  It would take a long time for Kayla to get over her ordeals in this hellhole, if indeed, she ever would, but this was a step in the right direction.  She felt no remorse, only the joy of revenge.  Briefly, she hoped he had a large family, who loved him dearly.  They too could suffer for all the suffering she had endured.

Although shaken by the speed and brutality of events, the nurse was quickly realising standing open-mouthed was not the best course of action.  She needed to do something to stop the prisoner.  Witness to the emotionless execution of her comrade, she feared the gun would now turn her way.  The abuse given to the prisoner over the course of weeks made her a prime target.  The reality she might only have seconds to live hit home.  Instinctively, she lunged towards Kayla.  Two things were running through her mind as she did so.  The first was the panic button situated on the far wall.  Her identifier was still active, and communications channels were open, but she did not have time to stand and search for the emergency protocols.  The button opposite was her quickest way to summon help.  The second was a need to get the gun off the prisoner.  Weighing at least fifty pounds more than the slightly built, malnourished and injured woman, she would surely be able to overpower her.

The nurse’s belief she needed to act to save her life was false; Kayla never had any intention of shooting her.  Indeed, if she had wanted to, Kayla could have turned the gun in plenty of time to blow a hole in the advancing woman.  The assumption that weight would be an advantage was also a bad one; it did not allow for the vastly superior physique of the smaller woman, and the mobility limitations of a bulkier frame.

Square-face thought she had her, right up until the point Kayla lowered the weapon and curved her body to avoid the advancing nurse.  Deftly sidestepping, Kayla spun, following the momentum of the other woman, and smashing the weapon down on the back of her neck.  Dazed, the nurse staggered forward, before managing to steady herself against the bed.  Any steadiness was only temporary, however, as the prisoner passed the gun from her right hand to her left, freeing up her preferred fist.  Without hesitation, she dealt a hefty blow to the ear of the larger woman.  Dazed, Square-face clung desperately to the thin sheet, unable to prevent a second and then a third punch reigning down.

Kayla tossed the gun to one side.  She was confident she would not need it for now.  Fuelled by adrenalin, and encouraged by the healthy throb of her fist, she felt alive.  The old her was back.  Brimming with confidence and determination, ideas of escape were formulating.  She heaved on the nurse’s tunic, turning her tormentor.  That face, which had leaned so close, casting down hate and spit in equal amounts, now showed pain and fear.

“Call me Earth whore?” snarled Kayla.  “Call me Earth bitch?”

They were the first words to escape her lips with any volume in a long time.  It felt unfamiliar, yet liberating, to hear them.  How long had she only spoken in hushed tones, quietened by fear of the pit guards?  Too long, far too long.

“Tell me how I enjoyed it,” she said, louder, easing up the volume.  It was different to the voice of old Kayla.  It was harsh, gravelly, ruined by the dust in the mines.  Nevertheless, it was good to hear herself.  It was like an old friend returning.

“Tell me how you fixed me up, so they could fuck me again?” almost shouting now.  There was glee in every word, enjoyment in every syllable.

Square-face quivered, the evil tormentor shaking with fear.  Kayla released the grip on the tunic, smiled, and then smashed her fist into the nurse’s nose.  The crack, felt and heard, was glorious.  Red oozed almost instantly and the nurse began to cry.

“You’ve had enough for now,” Kayla smirked.  “Besides, there is already too much blood on this from your friend over there,” she tugged at the green tunic.  “I don’t want any more on it.  Take it off.”

The nurse was too stunned to comply, although her stumpy fingers did try to find the fastenings.

“I’ll do it,” said Kayla, pulling it open and slipping it over the shoulders of the shaking woman.

Stripped to her underwear, the full bulk of the woman was on demeaning display.  The under garments were grey and overly tight, pulling around her back and waist in the most unflattering manner, emphasising the rolls of fat the tunic had gone someway to hide.

“That is going to be far too big on me,” hissed Kayla, “fat bitch.”  Justifiably, her hatred was pouring forth.  The tables had well and truly turned, the jailed had become the jailer.

“Get on the bed!”  Kayla demanded.

“No,” the nurse gargled, blood still pouring from her nose, swamping her lips, and dripping on to her ample bosom.  “No, no, no.”

Despite the contrary words, she complied.  Flopping on to the bed as much to seek refuge as to obey, looking to rest her battered head and shaking legs.  No sooner had she laid down, than she was compelled to roll on to her side, coughing and spluttering out the blood that had fallen to the back of her throat.

Kayla was fine with her laying that way.  For now, she needed her alive and did not want her choking on her own blood.  Although less comfortable, the straps would be as effective secured this way.  Kayla pulled them extra tight around the bulky woman, just to make sure.

“Your identifier,” she said, “which version is it?  Which model?”

The woman on the bed did not reply, continuing to cough up a vile red mess.

“Which model is it?” she asked again.

That square face was distinctively less menacing than when it had first peered down at the injured woman.  She was trying to look towards Kayla’s voice, but was struggling to find her.  When she eventually did, her tearful eyes were humiliated and pleading.  Now that their positions were switched, this evil carer could not expect any compassion.

“Which model?” Kayla asked again, the aggression in her husky voice growing.  “Answer me or I’ll smash you!”

There was still no reply.  With growing frustration, Kayla snatched up the nurse’s wrist.  The arm was held at the elbow by the restraints, and when she twisted it to see the light of the identifier, there was a groan of discomfort.  The light was amber.

“Which model?” she barked.

Kayla realised that the nurse probably had no idea.  The design of the implant suggested the identifier went as far back as a six, possibly even a five.  Good.  That was helpful for several reasons, not least because it placed limitations on the security aspects of the software.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Kayla asked coldly.  “It means I don’t need you anymore.”

She took the second strap and secured it firmly around the nurse’s legs.  The straps would need to hold her tight for what was to come.

Crossing to the panel of screens, Kayla heaved the dead guard clear.  There was blood and worse everywhere.  Frowning at the mess, she removed her white gown.  That flimsy garment had covered her nakedness for an unknown number of weeks, and it stank.  Standing there in just a pair of filthy, thin pants, she realised she stank too.  Perhaps perversely, she took comfort in recognising her own stench, because it meant her self-awareness was back.  That shroud of survival desperation was starting to lift.  She had to check herself, though, for there was still a long, long way to go.  For now, survival desperation was still very much a required mode of operation.

Taking the gown, she wiped the remnants of the guard’s shattered head off a couple of the screens.  The images briefly fluttered, confused by the motion and slop.  With the screens clear, she could see the layout of the complex.  It took her a moment to identify and memorise a possible route out of this place.

Slipping into the green tunic was a necessary part of the escape plan.  Reluctantly, she accepted the horrible feeling of the Kamdo woman’s clothing.  Covered in the blood of a dead man and stinking of someone else’s perspiration was unpleasant, but it was the only way.  She tied the tunic tight at the waist, but not before concealing the handgun in the band of her pants.  It would not show; the tunic was ridiculously large on her.

One more part of the plan remained in this room.  Kayla needed a way to get through the security doors.  That solution lay back on the bed, bound, and pitifully moaning.

She returned to Square-face, wheeling over a piece of equipment she had noticed several days before.  Then, in pain and fear, the prisoner had fantasised about using this tool against her captors, but in a far less controlled manner than what she now had in mind.  If the nurse recognised what she wheeled, and realised its potential, it did not show on her dazed and bloodied face.  Kayla felt the need to explain:

“Your identifier is at least three generations old - probably all you are worth given how little you seem to understand it,” she taunted.  “Identifiers of that generation have lots of great security, but they lack the extra protection introduced from eight.  They cannot interface with your nervous system, you cannot ‘think’ them on, and they will not automatically detect when you are injured or dying.”

Kayla tapped the piece of equipment.  The nurse’s eyes flickered towards the white machine but without recognition.  She just saw a metre-high mount with a small electronic device resting on top.  Had she been able to focus, she would have known what it was, but the punches to the head had stunned her.

“The problem for you with that older version,” Kayla continued, “is that it has just enough security to stop me plucking it from your wrist and inserting it into my own.  It is backwards, like you and brains over there, but not that backwards that it would confuse my body for your fat one.  And that is your problem, you see, as I need an identifier that will fool your security systems.  A version three, I could have just taken yours as my own.  A version nine, any disconnection with your nervous system and it would be no good to anyone.  But a version six, well, from your perspective, that’s the worst.”

Now she got it.  Oh, how much she got it.  Like a light switching on, a wave of fear flashed across the nurse’s face.

“Nach!” she screamed.  “Nach!”

“I do not speak your idiot tongue,” Kayla hissed. “I probably could have taught myself it, the number of things your kind have shouted at me over the last few years, but I did not care to.  I did not want to lower myself to your primitive level.”

“No!” Square-face desperately switched.  “No, please, no!  I will help you!”

“Ah, like you helped me with these?”  Kayla swept up a dozen or so small painkillers from a nearby tray.  “These would have been so helpful when I could barely stand, when you were forcing me to walk with my insides screaming.  Screaming from the work you did down there, the butchery, with no anaesthetic, your idea of ‘fixing me up’.  Maybe you would like me to feed you some of these now, help you through what is to come?  Or even better, I could put you under, so you don’t feel any pain?”

Square-face was crying hysterically, her pants, already discoloured, were now yellow from urine.

“Oh dear,” mocked Kayla.  “With all you threw at me, I never pissed myself.  I guess that makes me better than you.  Do you want me to remind you what you said to me?  Feel the pain, you said, feel the pain so you remember how much you enjoyed it.  Pain relief for you?  Not a fucking chance.”

She hurled the capsules to the other side of the room.  The unabating sirens covered the rattle as they scattered across the floor.  They covered the sound of the clip too, as she snatched the tool from the stand.  After a couple of attempts, she managed to turn it on.  A bright arc of energy protruded about three inches from the end of the device.

“I have no idea how this works really,” she reflected, “I’ve only seen one used once.  That was a long time ago on a distant battlefield; it cauterised the wound as it went.  Hopefully, for your sake, this one does the same, or you will just bleed out.”

Kayla did not have time for more chat.  There were still dozens of red lights flashing across the console.  Images of rampaging detainees showed on many of the blood-smeared screens.  Although this riot was unusually large and widespread, there had been dissension on this scale before.  That uprising had still been quashed, with horrendous brutality.  It was only a matter of time before the Kamdo got this one under control too.  Her window of opportunity was likely to be small and could close any minute.

Positioning herself to avoid further staining of the over-sized tunic, she brought the tool to bear on the now screaming woman.  Square-face thrashed wildly, but to no avail, the straps holding her tight.  The energy beam cut into the flesh midway between the elbow and the wrist, high enough to avoid any damage to the identifier’s micro-fibre network.  The screams were inhuman now.  They were the ear-piercing sounds of someone at the very edge of the pain threshold, a place where the conscious mind pleaded with the unconscious to take over.  But it did not.  The nurse remained awake as the beam sliced through skin, fat, muscle, and bone with equal ease.  A sickening smell quite like no other filled the room.  It did indeed cauterise as it went, sealing both stump and severed forearm alike.  The dreadful process took about two minutes.  Even with her damaged perspective, by the end, Kayla found herself questioning if the merciless mutilation was justified.

When it was all over, Kayla loosened the straps and pushed the shaking, screaming woman on to her back.  She fastened her down again in this more comfortable position, leaving the non-mutilated arm free of any restraint.  Into that hand, the only one the nurse now had, Kayla placed several painkiller capsules.

“Remember me,” she said down to the bloody, quivering wreck.  “Every time you look at where your arm used to be, remember how you treated me, how your kind treat all the prisoners.  Find some humanity, it’s not too late.”

Kayla McGann took the severed limb and inserted it into the sleeve of the tunic.  Her own arm was folded back beneath the oversized garment, holding it in place.  The feel of the flesh was dreadful, but it was just another degradation to add to the list.  What she had now, though, was a way to get out of the complex.  As she headed for the door, it was not that scared prisoner who was leaving the medical suite.  She was traumatised and in pain, damaged in untold ways, but she was also determined and bursting with fire and fury.  The old Kayla was firmly back in control.

Chapter Three

President Chilake was mad as hell at one of his commanders and he did not know what to do about it.  As the presidential cruiser sped towards Titan, flanked by half a dozen class four defenders, he contemplated all sorts of punishments.  None seemed fitting and, importantly, he would never be able to enforce any of them. Chilake wielded the authority but, as many leaders through the annals of history had discovered to their cost, the military often wielded the power.  He was not going to punish one of his top commanders when galactic tensions were running so high.

He really did not need this bad news though; it was a public relations disaster.  It was four years since the terrible incident on Three Zero, but the attack was still fresh in the memories of every citizen in this system and the systems beyond.  This latest blow would bring all that collective mourning flooding back and open old wounds.

His stress levels were ridiculously high.  Already today, he had ignored the blood pressure warnings on his identifier a dozen times.  On top of all this, he had unhelpful domestic aggravations from his wife.  She had no idea what he had to face day in day out.  As head of the Union Council, it was just one problem after another.  Maybe, it was time to retire.

He sliced off another chunk of the fantastic protein cake, savouring the rich beef taste.  As usual, Chef had done a fantastic job.  Chewing thoughtfully, he peered out of the cabin.  Stars filled every inch of the dark panoramic.  The light of the sun was weak this far out, but still strong enough to glisten off the wings of one of the accompanying crafts as it tracked about a mile away.  The defender flew discretely at the lower edge of his field of vision, but the discretion did nothing to ease the sense of tension.  He had been in this job long enough to remember a time when such security had not been necessary.  That was a time before the terrorists blew up Three Zero.

Here, in Earth’s back garden, there had been no wars since the big one.  The peace of successive generations held strong.  Three Zero had been an anomaly.  Through social stability rather than the iron fist, the Union kept this wealthy sector safe.  Employment was as close to one hundred percent as it could ever get, commodities bountiful, and scientific and technological advances continued to make lives longer, healthier and happier.  Families thrived and the human race prospered.  The population of this system and its neighbours had a lot to smile about, and mostly they did, his own wife the exception.  The Great and Glorious Union of the Galactic Empire was by far the most peaceful and enlightened civilisation that humankind had ever known, and he sat atop it all.  Yet she still moaned if he did not message her regularly.  Heaven help him.

A light brighter than the other stars caught his attention.  He squinted into the darkness for a moment, considered using his identifier to help, and then decided his personal assistant would be easier.

“Chef,” he asked the empty suite, “what am I looking at out there?  At about eleven o’clock?  Is it a planet?”

“Yes, Mister President,” a light female voice replied, “it is Earth.”

“Ah,” he said, “I thought so.  It’s tiny from this far out, but I swear I can still see the oceans.”

“I am sorry to inform you that is not possible with the naked eye,” came the sweet reply.

“Yes, Chef,” President Chilake replied, “I sort of knew that.  You stick to the steaks, this one is delightful.”

“I will, sir, and thank-you.  A subtle shift in the enzymes used to generate the protein… and less salt.”

“Whatever, it works.  How long to Titan?”

There was a short pause before a reply, “At this velocity, one hour fifty minutes.  Traffic lanes in this part of the system are busy, but we could accelerate and arrive forty minutes sooner, if you wish?  You are in plenty of time for your next appointment.”

Union business.  The news he had to share with the rest of the council was not good.  He did not want to accelerate towards that frosty reception; this speed was fine.

“You know what, Chef?” he said.  “Sometimes I just want to stop this roundabout and get off.”

“Your analogy is understood, Mister President,” she replied.

“Good, and that’s why we get along so well.  Stay at this speed.  Put me on ‘do not disturb’ until we get there, I need some thinking time.  Change the ambience too, something more… mellow.”

“Yes, Mister President.”

The lighting in his suite gradually lowered and took on a lemon hue.  Gentle music drifted from hidden speakers and a soft cooling breeze kissed his face.  His food finished, he pushed the plate into the discard chute beside him.  Seconds later, a clear blue drink dispensed into a cup in his seat arm.  Ah yes, a blue lagoon, very mellow indeed.

+     +     +

Of the thirty-two council members, only eight were present in person and another twelve attended in holographic form.  The remainder made the usual feeble excuses.  As always, the outer zone representatives showed their contempt by their absence.

“I am sorry to deliver such worrying news,” the president said humbly, lowering his head to emphasise his contrition.

“We do not want an apology,” said Councillor Estevez, “we want an explanation.  The sector I speak for will not be happy…”

“No one will be happy,” interjected Councillor Bahir, “your sector, my sector, our sectors.  It is not a good news day, but it is what it is.  It should not have happened, but it has.  Now we need to agree what we do about it.  Recriminations will not solve anything.”

The president welcomed his friend’s calm reason.  Of Indian heritage, Iqbal Bahir could always be relied on to take the temper out of any situation.  This one, however, would not be easy to keep under control.

On cue, Estevez came back more vociferously.  “Not good enough!” she exclaimed.  “When this hits the media there will be outrage across the inner systems!  Outrage and fear.  People have memories and they remember Three Zero like it was yesterday.  We made promises in the aftermath, all of us.  Stamp out that terror, we said, eradicate the fear.  Now this.  It will not sit easy with the voter!”

On the floor of the small, raised auditorium, one of the holograms grew brighter as a distant contributor began to speak.  It was Councillor Lana Steph from the Pavo Sector, a neighbour at just twenty light years away.

“Whilst I agree in part with the honoured Councillor Estevez,” said Steph, “most of our tenures are relatively safe.  The voters do not directly elect us.  This does not mean we can ignore them, but we must base our decisions and actions on what is best for all the citizens under our protection.  We cannot allow political allegiances and vote winning rhetoric to guide us.  One incident, as terrible as this is, cannot be allowed to destabilise the entire galaxy. It is our responsibility to keep calm and to guide the Union in a neutral manner.  We should not get drawn into worrying about local politics and how constituencies will vote!”

Estevez scoffed and waived a dismissive arm at the hologram.  Lana Steph frowned before her brightness dipped.  Another was now expressing their views, taking on the luminosity.  The president watched on with disdain.  Even before delivering the news, he could have predicted the reactions of each of the galaxy’s top politicians.  They were not exactly the forward thinking, problem solving group of leaders the galaxy deserved.  They behaved like petulant children; posturing, blaming, gesticulating.

He looked around the circular chamber, splendid in rich oak and red leather, befitting the nobility of this grand institution.  Half of the room featured two rows of curved seating, thirty-two places in total.  The other half held a huge display wall for presentation purposes.  Beneath this was an eclipse-shaped red area where the holograms flickered and pulsed.  Dotted across the explored galaxy were numerous similar chambers, some planetary, some on satellites, some on board presidential class cruisers.  Wherever they met, rarely were there more than a dozen seats occupied in person.  Indeed, despite his thirty years in the job, there were representatives on this council he had never met in person.  This was actually a decent turnout; more than usual had made the effort to join in light form.  It showed the gravity of the situation.

Although he welcomed calmer interjections, the tempestuous Estevez was right about one thing.  If, or rather when, the media got hold of this, they would blow it up into a storm.  Following this meeting, he would speak to a particularly influential friend in the press and see if he could pull in some favours.  There was no way he could keep a lid on something this big for long, though.

In the meantime, Chilake had to try to keep things calm.  He had to prevent the more ambitious amongst this group from making a mountain out of this, hanging his leadership out to dry.

“You all have valid points,” he said, “and certainly Councillor Estevez expresses her concerns very strongly, and in truth they are concerns I share.  Explanations are needed, and I will obtain them, but for now the details are patchy and I can only tell you what I know…”

President Chilake paused to recheck his notes, projected by his identifier into the corner of his vision.  The text was not visible to others, the advanced application placing them directly into his visual cortex.  These were the original messages despatched to him the previous day, the catalyst for the Oracle calling this unscheduled council meeting.  His own mental annotations appeared alongside them.  He scanned until he found what he was looking for and then read that section aloud.

“Yesterday,” he began, “I received an urgent communication from Commander Meyer, protectorate of the sectors which neighbour the edge of the Hadrian’s Gate Nebula.  It came through the red channel, maximum encryption, for my eyes only.  It advised that the prisoner Kayla McGann had escaped her incarceration from the high-security facility.  You will all recall that McGann was the lover of the galaxy’s former most wanted, Malcolm Gomez.  We all know that she was convicted of mass murder four years ago for her part in the destruction of Three Zero.  She was given a whole life sentence, no parole.  Yesterday, McGann escaped from prison, forcing her way off the asteroid where she was held.  Details of the escape, how it was masterminded, who her accomplices were, remain unknown.  What we do know is that fifteen prison staff were mercilessly murdered during her escape.  Somehow, it seems, she orchestrated a widespread riot as cover.  It would appear four years of imprisonment have not changed this woman; she is as dangerous as ever.”

That last comment had not been in the brief, but it seemed an appropriate footnote to add.

“The secure unit she was held in was designated B327, also known as Petang Base, in the Kamdo controlled Clintos system …”

“Hardly secure then is it!” scoffed Estevez.  “Why would we trust those savages to hold her?”

“We have absolute jurisdiction over Petang under the Fifth Cairo Accord,” injected Councillor Potts from the hologram deck.  “It is one of many bases the Union hold in the sector.  The Kamdo co-operate and in exchange we minimise trade sanctions; I would imagine the base and prison are mostly staffed by Kamdo.”

The councillors accepted Potts’ words as accurate.  As one of the key diplomats involved in the drawing up of the revised Cairo Accord, he was best placed to know the terms.

Potts continued, “B327 is a large asteroid three hundred million miles from the only habitable planet in the system, Eropidous.  The asteroid has been mined for centuries under an artificial atmosphere, courtesy of Union supplied tech, but it is very remote…”

“Which is what made it ideal for a prison,” the president interjected, keen to conclude his brief.  “Escaping the security is one thing, a prisoner getting off that asteroid quite another.  Unfortunately, McGann is a resourceful woman, likely helped by others.  Reports are that she found her way on to a supply vessel. It is not clear if she took that vessel by force, or if it was waiting.  Either way, she escaped the asteroid.  The whereabouts of that ship are, at present, unknown.”

He paused and scrolled further.  Chef was still pooling intelligence for him.  If things changed, the electronic personal assistant would update the notes accordingly, but as he flicked through, he saw there was nothing new to report.

“The Clintos system and its neighbours are on high alert,” he said.  “Officials are in constant dialogue with the Kamdo regime seeking permission to send a fleet into the area, but at present the requests are being refused by our cynical friends.”  The last word he hung on for a moment, emphasising its ironic use.

“On a regular supply ship, McGann will not be able to move quickly,” he continued.  “It would take such a vessel three Earth weeks just to reach the edge of the system, and it would not be able to traverse to the next, let alone through Hadrian’s Gate and into Union held territory.  Therefore, the threat in the immediate aftermath is minimal, but we need to deploy the special measures open to us.  All nearby planets, outposts and stations will step up security on vessel movements.  As soon as we have an ID on the hijacked supply ship, if indeed it was hijacked, we will get it out to all security forces, governments, and other relevant agencies.  We will track her down.”

Estevez dramatically slapped a palm against her forehead.

“No way will this stay out of the media,” she said, exasperated, “a hunt of this scale… I can see the panic and protests already.”

“If we can keep it quiet for a few days,” Councillor Bahir reflected, “then we can formulate a communications plan, perhaps we can even enlist the help of the media, get them on our side.”

“The media and public opinion cannot be our primary concern,” the flickering rotund figure of Councillor Delaney stated.  “The priority has to be public safety.  We need our forces despatched to the system immediately on a ‘seek and destroy’!  How dare the Kamdo say no?  Who runs this galaxy?  Bunch of savages!  If we do not get on top of this quickly then we will lose her, lose the trail.  It is a big place out there, once lost we have no idea where she will next turn up and with what weapon to hand.”

“We cannot send forces into the Clintos system without Kamdo acceptance,” insisted Potts, “to do so would be contrary to the Accord and would be deemed an act of aggression.  Diplomacy would be set back decades.”

“Fuck diplomacy!” Delaney exploded, Estevez nodding vigorously in support, “we should not pander to the savages!  Their incompetence let her escape in the first place!  God knows why we left the galaxy’s most notorious terrorist with them.  What about the governance?  What about the checks and audits on the facility, the checks on the security?  What does Commander Meyer have to say about that?  His territorial command, I think you said?  This is a shambles,” he glared at the president, “shambles, absolute shambles.  When McGann reconnects with her old pals and starts to wreak havoc again, whoever made those key decisions will have a lot of difficult questions to answer!”

“Calm, please!” insisted the reasoned voice of Iqbal Bahir.

A murmur of disquiet rippled through the gathering.  With many side discussions now taking place, the volume in the room was starting to grow.  Old alliances were clear to see.  There was no doubt these disquiets would continue amongst those alliances in the days that followed, and many would cast aspersions on the president’s ability to lead.  It was nothing new.

Debate continued feverishly for some time and Chilake let it, sitting back in resigned indifference.  If not already in the thoughts of most, Delaney had introduced the idea that McGann might try to reunite with old associates.  Thanks to the events at Haram Galt, most were dead, but there were still some on the run.  She was a name capable of bringing dissident groups together.  That could not be allowed to happen.

Chilake had a solution in mind, or at least a measure that might help bring this to an end.  The Union had secrets, and plenty of them, and the whereabouts of some of McGann’s old friends were amongst the most guarded.  There were individuals reported dead when, in reality, they were living comfortably, secretly held by the Union.  Opening those files was certainly not an easy suggestion to make.  It was riddled in controversy and legal pitfalls. It was not something he was willing to go on record as suggesting, so he would wait until one of his more enlightened colleagues inevitably arrived at the same solution.

In the meantime, he flicked up his identifier and gave Chef two instructions.  The first was not encrypted; it was a simple message to pass on to his wife.  Say something romantic, he told Chef, confident his assistant would not let him down.  The second carried the highest level of encoding, issued under the authority of the Galactic President, leader of the Union of Planetary Systems.  It was a simple message, and carried a few simple words, two of particular importance.  Chilake hit send, and breathed out slowly, listening for those same words to now be uttered somewhere in the auditorium.  A few moments later, the bombastic Delaney did just that.

“We must invoke the Indigo Protocol!” the pompous man declared, clenching both fists as he did so.

A stunned silence fell over the room.  If others had been thinking it, they now did well to conceal those thoughts behind shocked expressions.  The protocol was highly irregular.  For many, it went to the red line and then boldly stepped over it.  It went to a place they never wanted to be.  Some of the junior councillors had buried their heads in the aftermath of Three Zero, hoping Indigo was nothing more than a rumour. Now they had to face the uncomfortable truth.

As the president let Delaney’s words sink in, a few showed the embers of embarrassed rage.  Surely, in this enlightened age, no authority would use such draconian measures.  Ironically, Chilake had been the one to outlaw the technology and science behind the Indigo Protocol decades earlier.  Now he was relying on it to save his presidency.

The president made no indication he had already instructed Chef to set the wheels of Indigo in motion.  If this all blew up, he would have this on record as Delaney’s suggestion.

“Those are grave words, councillor,” Chilake eventually said, playing the game, “but these are grave times, and we must consider everything open to us.  The Indigo Protocol is there for a reason.  It is a nuclear option, but we all know the threat Kayla McGann can unleash on the galaxy.  She is not just one woman, she is an army, an army that lurks in every dark corner and every seedy gathering place.  She is a virus secreted in every hidden file across the network.  The name of Kayla McGann can bring chaos and take down the governments that put us in this chamber.  Perhaps it is the nuclear option, yes, but, as repugnant as some of us may find it, myself included, it is the only option.”

He paused to scan the faces of his colleagues.  Some met his gaze, but most looked away.  As he took time to weigh up the mood of the chamber, he sent another brief to Chef.  She was to prepare the presidential cruiser and escorts for imminent departure.

“So, my friends,” he said solemnly, “it is with heavy hearts we should consider Delaney’s proposal.”

On the floor, the largest of the holograms creased his brow and opened his mouth to protest.  Either he lost the words or, more likely, his ego refused to let them out.  Overbearing to the end, he was unable to avoid the risk that ‘scapegoat’ would one day be stamped on his epitaph.

The president stood and pulled on the ceremonial gown that lay draped across the back of his seat.

“Please enter into the official log,” he said, his voice booming around the chamber, “that on this day, the council received a proposal from Councillor Delaney to invoke the Indigo Protocol.  This was in response to the escape of prisoner McGann.  If you can all cast your votes, please.  Yes, we shall invoke the protocol.  No, we shall not.”

With that done, he slumped back in his chair in a self-congratulatory mood.  That had played out brilliantly.  He watched the fearful faces as they toyed with their identifiers, logging on and making their preference a matter of public record. The president chose to abstain; it would pass without his vote.  They all valued the security of their peaceful systems and that came at a price.  As he waited, confident that the action taken would solve this current set of problems, he wondered how much of this he should tell his wife.  Should he tell her about the Indigo Protocol?  Should he tell her that three Union battlecruisers were already passing through Hadrian’s Gate and heading for the Clintos system?  Should he tell her of the protestations from the Kamdo High Command?  Perhaps he should just cut to the chase, and tell her that he and his fellow councillors were now all war criminals?

Maybe he would just say nothing, and instead, listen to how her day had been.

Chapter Four

With only three weeks to go, Leah Macey was feeling heavy and uncomfortable.  By putting on her best dress and a smile, she had hoped to hide her chronic indigestion whilst dining out with her husband.  Every time the discomforts gripped, she would point at something in the restaurant to draw Pike’s attention away, allowing her to grimace in private.  It was a game.  He knew exactly why a floral display was suddenly amazing, and she loved him for playing along.

It was almost four years since they had first met, in this very place in the centre of Paris.  Well, not this restaurant, but the open-air bar sitting alongside it.  This evening, with darkness outside, that bar had lost its appeal quite early, so they had moved indoors to eat.  At least Leah could do that, eat.  Avoiding alcohol when everyone else was merrily knocking it back was never fun.  At thirty-seven weeks pregnant, she had not enjoyed the long abstinence one bit.

This evening not only marked their anniversary, it was also her last workday ahead of the delivery.  She was filled with both excitement and trepidation.  In twenty-one days, they would be called to the delivery room, and two hours later their baby girl would be with them.  A painless procedure, her body as good as new.  She thanked heavens that they lived on a first world planet, and the only thing she had to fear was motherhood itself.  With Pike at her side, she would cope.  He was her rock, her partner, her best friend, and all the other cheesy things that romance wanted him to be.  He meant everything to her, and she knew she meant likewise to him.

As they finished off the last course, they reminisced back to that first meeting and how much chance had been involved.  Of course, most relationships develop through chance, but he had only moved to town that very day and she had been planning to move away the very next.   A small window of opportunity.  Their chance encounter had not been enough for her to immediately change her plans, with the job offer in the south far too good to turn down on the strength of one drink.  It took another three months of virtual chatting before the weekend meetings began, and then it was only a couple of months more before she decided to move back.  Within a year, following a remarkable proposal with a diamond ring fastened to the talons of a hawk, they had married.  Pike continued to surprise and excite her.  He was a good man, and she could not wait to make him a father.

Of course, life does not always go to plan.  As they gave their credit to their maître d’ and pulled on their overcoats, neither had any idea what was waiting for them in the chilly night air.  Events light years away were going to ruin their evening and make Leah forget all about her indigestion.

At first, the man in the black coat seemed like just another reveller enjoying the Paris leisure zone.  As they left the restaurant, he began to approach.  Leah noticed him heading in their direction but thought nothing of it.  Paris was a safe place; there were no threats here.  It was only when the stranger had closed to within a matter of feet that she noticed his intense stare and sensed something was wrong.  With an intimidatingly stern expression, his eyes never left her husband.  The crisp, white uniform shirt peeking out from beneath his coat made him look worryingly official.

Leah touched Pike’s arm.  He looked at her, and she nodded towards the stranger, who was now only feet away.  He followed her gaze and was surprised by how close the man was.  Pike took a step back and raised a hand with a half-smile, “Gee, you made me jump!”

The stranger did not return the smile, his face stony.  Two other men in identical clothing were closing from behind, but the couple, focused on the man before them, were blind to their approach.

“Pike Macey?” the stranger asked.

“Y-yes,” her husband replied nervously, “can I help you?”

The stranger turned to Leah.  He looked her up and down, the bump evident under her overcoat.  The frown he cast was one of disappointment.  When he next spoke, he did so with genuine sincerity.

“I am so sorry Mrs Macey,” he said, “truly I am.  You did nothing to deserve this.”

Suddenly, from behind, a hand clamped over her mouth.  Before Leah knew what was happening, she felt a sharp prick in her neck.  In the corner of her vision, another assailant, dressed in a smart black suit, had grabbed Pike.  As he was wrestled to the ground, she desperately tried to break free.  It was no good, her limbs were useless.  She felt the strength draining from her body and the lights from the bar started to swim.  Drugs, she thought, have they drugged me? What about the baby? And then everything went dark and she slipped away.

+     +     +

At the helm of the first Union battlecruiser to ever enter the Clintos system, Commander Meyer stood proud.  With the jump completed, and the flight technicians having confirmed normal space, he had instructed them to make haste towards their destination.  For the next two hours, Kamdo interceptors would try in vain to track the ship, but even at its cruising speed, they could not match the velocity of the interstellar beast.  Very few vessels could.

It was just over three hundred years since humans had found a way to traverse from one point of the galaxy to another.  Now, outside of the interstellar jumps, even regular space could be crossed at velocities pushing close to light speed.  The amount of energy burnt by the battlecruiser was phenomenal.  As it cut through the vacuum, it left a trail of shattered atoms in its wake.  These ‘rips’ were large enough that even the most rudimental of detection devices could pick them up.  The larger and faster the vessel, the larger the rip.  At these significant speeds, the rip from a ship the size of the battlecruiser could cause serious disruption to anything nearby.  As it approached asteroid B327, it slowed to avoid catastrophic damage to the base.  Meyer wanted the asteroid in one piece; he was looking forward to interrogating the Kamdo.

This ship had been despatched to find Kayla McGann.  He knew that questioning the natives would be pointless, but he would do it anyway.  Meanwhile, the technicians would scan the entire system, looking for any tell-tale signs of rips or energy trails.  That was pointless too.  It was two days since a small cargo ship had departed the asteroid, carrying the fugitive.  It was very unlikely there was any trace of it now.  The technicians would be thorough, they were professionals, but they would still draw a blank.  That was fine.  Whatever the official line, Meyer was not here to capture the terrorist.  The president was not the only one who issued orders.

As the magnificent vessel swept towards the asteroid, Meyer was standing on the bridge, watching the quaint Kamdo interceptors buzz around the battlecruiser’s forcefield.  Many of them would not make it back to base, having come in too close, the goliath smashing them apart. Others would limp home, to tell the Kamdo leadership what they had witnessed, to tell them that a Union flagship was in their territory. Deep space sensors would already know that, of course.

Protests would follow.  Some, no doubt, were already lodged.  There would be allegations of treaty breaches and cries that this was an act of war.  Here, in the heart of their territory, was the largest and most powerful craft humanity had ever built.  Gloating.  Defiant.  ‘Come and try, Kamdo flies,’ it cried, ‘come and try.’  If they had any appreciation of the firepower of this vessel, the Kamdo would have kept their inferior ships in dock and would not have sent their pilots out to die.  But the plans of the commander and his political allies relied on the foolish pride of the regime.  It relied on the expectation that these backwards savages would react aggressively to this incursion.

Along the side of the huge ship, bold yellow letters proclaimed its name.  Drawn from ancient literature, Aramis was one of four such vessels in the Union fleet.  Underneath the name, the motto “Strength and unity, long live the Union” was proudly proclaimed.  Those same words stood ten feet high over the entrance to the United Planetary Senate building in New York.  In much smaller text, they were also embossed beneath the insignia worn high on the left breast of Commander Meyer and the rest of the crew.  They were all immensely proud to wear that badge, although not all appreciated its symbolism.  The insignia was an amalgamation of a horseshoe-shaped laurel wreath, overlaid with a sickle and a perching dove, a branch clasped in the bird’s beak.  Inside the wreath, at the left side of the sickle, was a six-pointed star.  To the right, a crescent moon.  Below, there was a cross.  Light blue in colour, this was an emblem born from the fires of the last great human conflict.  It was a symbol of unity and peace.

Of course, Meyer knew that peace was a fiction.  Peace was not a natural state for humankind.  Wherever the sons and daughters of Earth went, there would be conflict.  There had been ever since they had first climbed out of the primeval slime and walked upright.  Politicians liked to claim this time was peaceful, but in reality, threats came from all directions.  The events at Three Zero had shaken the Union and had terrified the three hundred billion people who lived under its protection.  The aftermath had given a voice to the many factions across many worlds, even some in the inner sectors.  Those factions lurked in the shadows, ready to seize the moment and step forward, ready to bring death and destruction in the name of their anarchic cause.  The Union had to be ready for them.

And in the meantime, with revolution being seeded along the edges of the populated galaxy, here was an entire branch of humanity that seemed hellbent on challenging Union rule.  For two centuries, conflict with the Kamdo had been avoided through appeasement, with each successive Cairo Accord offering more and more concessions.  Commander Meyer did not like appeasement.  As protectorate of this sector, he had watched the Union give way to the demands of these animals.  No more.  It was time for his kind of diplomacy, the kind that involved huge, intimidating battlecruisers, with enough firepower to destroy a planet several times over.  This was the way to maintain peace, by showing your enemy the overwhelming odds stacked against them.

The president, commander-in-chief of all Union forces, saw things differently.  Chilake had given clear instructions, annoyingly recorded in Aramis’ log and against Meyer’s command file.  This was a search and recovery mission.  Under no circumstances were they to initiate an engagement with the Kamdo.  If aggression were shown, the Union’s response would be ‘proportionate but restrained’.  As far as Meyer was concerned, proportionate and restrained were both words very much open to interpretation.

“Ten minutes to destination,” a voice boomed around the control room.

A lead flight technician interacted briefly with her heads-up display.  “All systems green,” she confirmed.

“Petang base acknowledge our presence,” one of the communications team advised, “they are not happy about it, but they know we are here.”

“When are their kind ever happy?” Commander Meyer sneered.  A murmur of agreement rippled through his crew.  “Keep all the detectors on high alert, let’s make sure any surprise attacks are not a surprise.”

“Yes, commander,” an officer replied.  “There will be no mistakes, all weapons are primed as you instructed.”

“Good, good,” Meyer said smugly, “bring us in close and prepare to despatch the landing party.  The rest of us will just sit here looking pretty and wait for Porthos to arrive.”

As the huge craft slowed towards the asteroid, the Clintos sun reflected off its exterior.  The designers had enjoyed creating a spectacular gunmetal finish that now glistened and gleamed.  Despite the appearance, the battlecruiser had little metal in its construction.  It was made from the latest synthetics and plastics and the hull was impenetrable.  It could safely hang there, confident in the knowledge that nothing the Kamdo threw at it could do any damage.  The ultimate in Union decadence and dominance, Meyer was relying on it intimidating the hell out of the Kamdo.

As the Petang base came into view, the commander wore a huge smile.  Soon, two brother ships would join Aramis in these Kamdo held territories.  It was only a matter of time before the Union smashed open Hadrian’s Gate, and silence the Kamdo scourge once and for all.

Chapter Five

The lies of politicians ran deep across all the systems.  Propaganda, spun to influence the masses, polluted the airwaves.  There was no doubt Kayla McGann was a dangerous woman and capable of acts of extreme violence, the bloody interior of the medical centre was evidence of that, but in the escape from the prison no one else was injured at her hands.  Once the story broke, the political powers and media reported it very differently.

Before Chilake ordered Meyer to the Clintos system, and when Pike and Leah Macey were still blissfully unaware of the menace that would face them following their meal, Kayla had moved through the prison complex unopposed.  A bedraggled mess in a blood-stained tunic, she made her way to the docking bays.  The identifier on the appendage gruesomely stuffed down a sleave helped her navigate a path through the security systems.  The riot was intense, and, without doubt, that distraction assisted her escape.  With chaos all around, she went mostly unnoticed.  Of those she did encounter, they were generally too busy either running towards or away from the riot to notice another medic.  She was not the only one covered in blood, there were many clearly injured, with smashed up faces and awkward, pained movements.

The trouble was well organised and on a huge scale.  The Kamdo could be thankful the rioters never got near to the arsenal, their access to weapons limited to those they managed to take off fallen guards.  In the suppression, dozens perished, including six employees of the regime.  It would take several hours to get the whole prison back under control.  Blame fell readily on to the infamous Kayla McGann, and her infamy grew.  What was a little more fear when most citizens of the inner sectors feared her anyway?

Four years before, her image had filled the media for months during her arrest, trial, and subsequent detainment.  That pretty face, dark hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, appeared on every channel and in every bulletin.  She had very quickly achieved cult status, with numerous groups, dedicated to either hating or admiring her, springing up all over the galaxy.  Everyone knew that face.

When Messiah Ainge noticed the woman running across the loading bay, however, that media image was not the face presented.  This woman’s features were partially obscured by thick, unkempt hair, and the part of her face he could see looked gaunt, pale and, frankly, filthy.  What he first took to be a trail of dirt ran down one of her cheeks.  As she drew closer and he saw the state of the tunic, he realised that dirt was dried blood, matching the many stains that covered the garment.  With her in this terrible state, it was understandable he never made the connection to the infamous image.  She looked far from being a criminal too.  With the blood at first appearing to be her own, he took her to be a victim of the riot.  Her face and physique were distinctively non-Kamdo, but not all those who worked on the base were native.

“Hey, lady!” he called, his words echoing around the large and mostly empty bay.  “Are you okay?  Do you need any help?”

The sirens were audible here, but the volume was far less intense than inside the main complex.  When the alarms had first sounded, the operatives helping him unload had panicked, unceremoniously dumping crates, and running towards the exits.  Since then, most of his fellow traders had boarded their vessels, and several had left the base.  He was just lifting his cargo back into the hold and then he planned to depart too.  As he rushed to leave, the last thing he needed was someone else’s problems to deal with.  Yet, foolishly, he still called out to the woman.  He had no idea just how much trouble she would bring him.

Kayla had spotted the pilot long before he called to her.  Indeed, his initial hail did not make it through the din.  He was the only person she could see in the vast bay and that made him her only chance of escape.  She discarded the severed arm behind a parked shuttle and dashed towards him.  The gun bounced uncomfortably but remained tucked in her pants.

The pilot was standing alongside a Noche Pygmalion Three; she knew this from the lettering beneath the cockpit.  A long time ago, she had flown a different Noche.  His words were getting through the sirens now and she could hear he spoke English, so any instrument panels or virtual displays would likely be in her own language too.  If the pilot were not willing to assist her, she would take the ship anyway, and take her chances with the navigation controls.

Drawing close, she saw that he was not a tall man.  His skin was dark, his face lined with stubble and a large smile beamed out.  The fantastically white teeth and genuine warmth in his expression gave off a friendly, if not nervous, aura.  She was not in any position to be disarmed by his smile, and she was a long way from returning any of the offered warmth.

“Please,” she gasped, exaggerating her exhaustion, projecting vulnerability.  The sprint had tired her but not to the extent of the quivering, panting wreck she offered.

Messiah dropped the last crate at the foot of the short ramp and moved to meet the staggering woman.

“Hey there lady,” he said, reaching out, offering her a supporting arm. “You go steady!”

Standing this close, her odour was overpowering.  Confident she was not going to take a stumble, he hastily stepped back.  Panting furiously, her chest rose and fell beneath the tunic.  He could now see a gash on the side of her face, just behind her right eye, partially hidden by the mop of hair.  The wound did not look fresh, nor did the dried blood beneath it.  The splashes on her clothing, however, were recent, still glistening a vibrant moist red.  It was likely these were from a different injury, perhaps even a different person.

“This blood?” he asked. “Are you hurt?  Is it yours?”

She shook her head, the mass of dirty hair barely moving.

“Not mine,” she puffed, still in awe at the sound of her own voice, “others, dead, many dead.  You have to leave!  They are losing the base, prisoners everywhere…”

Messiah looked over her shoulder, worried.  Although other vessels, crates and containers blocked some of his view, he could see the shadows that marked the far end of the bay.  Having spotted the woman when she was already halfway across, others too could emerge and close that distance just as quickly as she had.  He would not be able to hoist up the ramp and be ready to go in the time it took a horde of angry prisoners to get to the Noche.

“Everywhere...?” he half repeated, half asked, still staring into those shadows.

“Everywhere,” Kayla confirmed, latching on to his nervousness.  “I tried to help some of the injured, but they came back, armed with weapons from the pits.  Some also have guns taken from the guards.  They are attacking everyone… I had to run… I had to get away.”

There was feigned panic now.  She let her shoulders drop, her head slump, and uttered faint whimpers from beneath the matted mess.

“No shame in that lady,” he said, his own voice breaking, his own fear not faked.  “I’m going to have to go, I’m not hanging around here any longer.”

“Take me,” Kayla pleaded.

Messiah dragged his gaze away from the shadows to find her eyes peering at him.  Two awesome green holes peeked from amongst the grimy tangle.  Those eyes were powerful, their plea hypnotising.

“No,” he said sharply, “no, no.  I cannot, I will not.  I do not carry passengers.  Just me and the autopilot, that’s the way I like it.”

She reached out with both arms and grabbed his wrists.  The last wrist she had held had been slightly less animate, but these arms, still attached to their owner, mattered just as much to her escape.  Whilst she would give flying the Noche a go, a willing pilot desperate to leave Petang provided a much safer option.  She needed him to be that pilot.

“If you leave me here,” she said, “then I will die.”  Her green eyes were wide and transfixing. “They will find me and kill me.  Or worse!”

The hold on his wrists tightened and he was surprised at her strength.  If he had wanted to snatch away, he doubted he could have.  Desperation, he guessed, provided the steel behind that vice like grip.

“They are raping the women,” she lied, a lie that popped into her thoughts with ease, “the female guards, nurses, others – I do not want to go through that!  Please!  Please take me with you!”

Messiah looked beyond her again.  Although her grip was deliberately confining his movement, he could still see the shadows, and still imagine a half-clad, angry mob rampaging towards his supply ship.  It was definitely time to go, and those green eyes left him with no choice.  He knew he was making a mistake, but how could he live with himself if he left her here?  Messiah was not always an honest man, but he was an honourable and kind man, so there was only one course of action he could take.

“I will drop you off at the first place we come to,” he huffed, jerking his hands free of her grasp.

An honourable and kind man, sure, but angry, nonetheless.  He had travelled alone for so long and there was a reason for that.  She threatened to unravel everything he had.  As soon as he found a way to dump her, she could consider herself dumped.

“Thank-you,” she said emotionally, her piercing eyes still tormenting his, “thank-you, you have saved my life.”

“And probably just fucked up my own,” he said, spitefully.  Then he was gone, snatching up the last crate and storming up the ramp, into the depths of the Noche.

Kayla McGann allowed herself a moment and a sigh of relief, then followed.

+     +     +

As they climbed the internal ladder up onto the flight deck, he let her take the lead.  He politely hung back, conscious of how loose her tunic was, before ascending.  His eyes still drew upwards, however, to look along her bare legs.  High on her inner thighs were marks that he initially mistook for dirt before realising it was heavy bruising.  The lighting was not great, but it was enough to see the black, browns and yellows of serious trauma.  The widespread and multi-coloured nature of the bruising was consistent with injuries suffered several days before.  He looked away, in both shame and disgust.  The mess high on her muscular limbs was unexpected and now he felt ashamed of his intrusion.  It would not be the last time he intruded, a combination of intrigue and concern now triggered.  Once on the deck, he headed to the cockpit area, where windows looked out across the loading bay.  He settled into the pilot’s seat, offering her the one alongside.  Strapping himself in, he reconciled that as she had invaded his world, so he had every right to invade hers. He needed to understand exactly whom he had brought on board his ship.

The clutter on the flight deck advertised that Messiah Ainge travelled alone.  Dirty clothing, discarded food trays, and pieces of mechanical junk cluttered the area.  Kayla did not care though; she was just desperate to get away from the prison.  She slid in beside him and started fumbling with the straps.

“You do not look Kamdo,” he said as he used the control panels to prime the engines, “if you do not mind me saying so.”

“I would have minded more if you had said that I did,” she retorted.

“Not a fan?”

“Not much, you?”

Somewhere beneath them, the roar of thrusters kicked in.  He considered contacting the bay controller for authority to launch, but with events unfolding, he suspected they were too preoccupied for such protocols.  He also did not want any further delays.  They might have been safely on board, with the hatch lifted and secured, but prisoners armed with powerful weapons could still do a lot of damage to a parked ship.

“I earn a living from them,” he said, “same as you, I guess.  What brings you to this shithole anyway?  Where are you from?”

Having copied his lead, criss-crossed straps now secured her to the co-pilot’s seat.  Ignoring his questions, she studied the instrument panel.  Some aspects were familiar, most were not.  Without a good teacher and the time to learn, flying the vessel would have been tough.  She was pleased to have not had to use the secreted weapon.

No one had sat in that co-pilot’s chair for a very long time and Messiah was not sure he liked it occupied.  With thrusters biting, he pulled back on the throttle.  The nose of the Noche dipped, the craft rising slowly from the deck.  He turned towards a bay door, edging forward until a large green light above encouraged him further.  When there was no movement in the doors, he had a moment of worry that perhaps the rioters had somehow damaged the auto-despatch software.  But as the Noche drew close, they opened, allowing the ship into the chamber beyond.  Messiah held a stable hover as the first door closed and the outer released.  Moments later, they edged forward, through the airlock and into space.

Kayla twisted her neck as far as the harness would allow and looked back at Petang Base.  At first, all she could see was the wall of the loading bays, each marked with a different symbol, similar to ones she had seen inside the prison.  They were the script of a language different to her own.  Then, as the bay doors became smaller, the barren rock of B327 came into view.  It filled the rear perspective, a seemingly endless mass of grey nothingness.  The Noche continued to pull away.

“What brought me here…” Kayla reflected, returning her gaze to the fore.  She was speechless at the brilliance of the starry vista ahead.

“…it’s complicated,” she eventually concluded.  “And you do not need to know where I am from.  Besides, next stop, remember?  You are dropping me at the next stop.”

Not only did Messiah want to know, he felt he deserved to know for saving her life.  It was distasteful to push the distressed woman though, so soon after her ordeal.  As he engaged the interstellar drives, she seemed far less distressed than the shaking wreck he had met only minutes before.  She had escaped the threat, he guessed, although he would have perhaps expected the desperation and fear to last at least until they were fully clear of the asteroid.  His own nerves were still on edge and he was keen to put some serious distance between himself and the trouble.

“The next stop could be days away,” he said, “I have not decided where we are going yet.”

She pointed out a small blue planet, about the size of a thumbnail.

“There?” she asked.

“Uninhabitable,” he said, “and no satellites or stations.  There are sparse pickings around here, with only one habitable planet in the system, and we are not going there.”

She frowned.  Travelling across a system in a craft like this was challenge enough; surely he could not contemplate going further?  Unless her understanding of the Noche’s capabilities were seriously out of date, any trip beyond the system would be a very long one indeed.

“Where then, in this?” she asked.

“Interstellar,” he proudly announced.

“Is it capable?  This is no more than a planet-hopper?”

There was one small bonus in having a passenger, Messiah realised, in that he now had someone to whom he could boast.  All the years of tinkering and upgrades seemed to gain added meaning and he relished sharing.

“The Noche Pygmalion Three was always capable of withstanding long distance, it just does not usually have the underbelly for it,” he smirked, his ridiculously white teeth on display again.  “But re-enforce the outer shell, add a few stabilisers, build a shift translator and an atomising overdrive and…”

“An atomising overdrive,” she repeated, unsure if the pilot was being serious.  Surely not.  The power of such a device would shake a small craft like this apart.

“It could not take the kick!” she exclaimed.

“When I say a few stabilisers… I lost a lot of valuable cargo space, but it was worth it.”

“Are you seriously telling me this thing can…?” she could not even say the word, it was too ridiculous.

“Jump?” he grinned.

“No,” she did not believe him.

“Yeah, sure does,” he said with cocky pride and a smile that seemed even brighter.  “I have not been able to eradicate all the internal disruption from the particle acceleration, but once at jump, the stabilisers do their job well and we can move around normally.  Stay strapped in for now.”

She tugged on the restraints, speechless, not trusting his claim.  If he was telling the truth, then he was an engineering genius.  She recalled the outside of the craft and felt let down by her own powers of observation.  No modifications had been spotted, certainly not those on the scale he claimed.  The tail had seemed a little bulky, perhaps, but nothing like what would be expected to accommodate the equipment described.

As he played with the controls, she just frowned on in disbelief.  When the note of the engine changed, and vibrations gripped the vessel, her disbelief moved to apprehension.  For a few horrible moments, she feared the craft was going to tear apart in a foolhardy experiment.  Even when he turned to her and spoke, his words sounded like the words of a lunatic about to send them to their death.  This defied everything she had ever understood about jump technology.

“I call her Spirit,” he beamed, “because she’s got plenty of it!”

As Kayla wondered how many times the maniac had practiced that line, she was thrown back in the seat by an invisible force.  The small supply vessel, all fifty metres of it, left the horror of the pits on asteroid B327 in the blink of an eye.  Within minutes, Spirit had exited the Clintos system.  When the battlecruiser Aramis arrived two days later, the small rip caused by the Noche had long since repaired.  Commander Meyer would, as expected, find no trace of Kayla McGann.

+     +     +

True to the pilot’s word, Spirit soon stabilised and the pressure subsided.  When Kayla unbuckled and tried to stand, a small shift in the gravity field made it feel like stepping on to a fast-moving escalator.  The sensation passed quickly, and she was then able to move comfortably around the cockpit, barring the junk that littered it.  Messiah had unbuckled a couple of minutes earlier and was lounging on a long couch to the rear.

She counted the harnesses along the couch; there were four.  There were also two sets of bucket seats fixed to each side wall.  That made enough seating capacity for a total crew of ten.  When boarding, she had glimpsed into the living quarters and hold before climbing the ladder.  Again, there appeared to be ample accommodation for several occupants, and the hold would carry a large amount of cargo.  Having witnessed the loading of one crate at Petang base, she wondered how big a task a full load would be for one man to shift alone?  Mammoth.  With all this room, and with the need for help, why did he travel alone?  There was something not quite stacking up here.

Yet she found herself trusting him, and trust was not something that even the old Kayla had given easily, let alone this damaged one.  Why did she trust this stranger?  The loner with the super-powered cargo ship?  There was more to him than was on display, but that was the case with everyone, and she was hardly an open book.  Deceit had gotten her this ride, after all.  That huge, beaming smile shone up at her.  Whatever did not stack up with this man, the smile was genuine, his warmth hard to deny.

“Messiah Ainge at your service, lady,” he said cheerily, “do you still doubt Spirit’s capabilities?”  He tapped the couch beside him.  It was not clear if he was giving the ship a pat of admiration, or if he was inviting her to sit.

“I have no idea how it held together, it should not be able to handle that,” she said, sliding into one of the side seats rather than next to the pilot.  As she settled, a sharp dart of pain stabbed between her legs.  The cushion was kind, but a wince still necessary.

Messiah acted as if he had not noticed but the stolen image of her bruised inner thighs leapt to the fore.  There was something else too, glinting in the lights.  That familiar circular hole on her left wrist.  It did not appear she was carrying her identifier elsewhere, so he presumed it had been lost in the struggle to escape, perhaps snatched from its clip.

“She’s small for a freighter,” he said, referring to Spirit, “but strong.  The trick is getting the materials light enough but still tough enough to do the job.  I know my materials.  The sub-atomic stabilisers too, my own design, they are the glue that holds her together.  It took me years of trial and error and some scary near misses, but we got there in the end.”

The pain still settling, Kayla only managed to nod back.  Suddenly she felt terrible.  Nausea swept over her like a heavy fog and she was reminded how ill she had been only days before.  Back there, with the clasps not secure and the guard and nurse with their backs to her, she had managed to push away the pain.  Now the discomfort was returning with a sharper venom.  Was this punishment for the efforts in escaping the base, or the impact of the pressures from the jump?  Possibly, it was a combination of both.  With adrenalin levels returning to normal, the pain was staging an unwanted comeback.  Other things were creeping in too, like the self-awareness of how bad she smelled.  Her stench would be hitting Messiah’s nostrils and likely permeating throughout the whole vessel.

“So, what is your name?  I’m not going to keep calling you ‘lady’,” he smirked, “especially if I don’t know that you are!”

It was badly judged humour; he knew that even before he finished the sentence.  Silence and a suitable look of indifference met his words.

“Oh,” he said, his smile never faltering, “well that’s fine, we can do that later.  For now, feel free to use my name and anything else of mine that takes your fancy.  Make yourself at home.  There are spare cabins below, take cabin two.  Freshen up and rest if you wish, you look like you could do with both.  We will be jumping for hours yet.”

‘Freshen up’ was clearly code for have a wash.   In all the time in the prison, the need for cleanliness was relegated below the immediate need to stay alive.  With freedom starting to feel possible, she was now desperate to get clean.  There was nothing she wanted more than to soak in hot water.

“Shower?  Bath?” she asked.

“Yeah, both.  I will get you some clothes too, they will have to be mine I am afraid. They will probably drown you, but they will be clean, and by the looks of the uniform they provide you with, you are used to wearing over-sized!”

Kayla tugged on the tunic’s gaping front as if to prove the point.  The garment repulsed her.  She was dressed in Square-face’s muck, and splattered with the blood of the dead guard.  In the sleeve, she had carried a freshly severed arm.  Her fingers could still feel the clammy touch of the lifeless skin.  Did it get any more disgusting?  She needed rid of this dirty rag.  She needed to wash away the Kamdo filth.

“And your face…” he said.

Anxious fingers tightened on the tunic.  The pain down below had occupied her mind, but on his mention, she now felt the sting beside her right eye.

“…I have medical supplies on board,” he offered, “I’d suggest you try to clean it up and then we can take a look?  But hey, here I am trying to tell the medic.”

“Yeah,” she said, acutely aware the wound was weeks old and probably beyond the skin repair she would have ideally received.  What kind of scar had the bastards left her?  A nice pretty one for her face it seemed, to match all the mental ones they had gifted her too.

“Down the ladder, the first door takes you into the living quarters, but you probably saw them on the way up. Try room two, and take your time.”

Kayla eased herself out of the chair, doing her best not to show the pain.  She did not do particularly well.

“Thank-you.”  There was no smile, even though she tried.  That was just too hard for now.

The tidying of discarded food containers occupied Messiah as Kayla carefully made her way downstairs.  He did not want her to think he was watching, even though he saw every grimace as she descended.  Poor woman.  Clearly in agony, she had hidden it well before.  In the first aid, there were powerful painkillers that would help, but he wondered what she had been through at the hands of those prisoners. There was something not stacking up, though. The kaleidoscope of bruising on her legs perplexed him.  Those injuries must have been inflicted long before the riot started, with all the prisoners locked away.  What had she not told him?

Messiah Ainge frowned and continued to tidy.

+     +     +

On boarding, the brief glimpse into the living quarters had offered her little, with what lay down that way shrouded in darkness.  As she now walked along the lower corridor, lights flashed on overhead, illuminating six doors, three on either side.  Etched on each of the first four was the word ‘chambre’, followed by a number.  As her captivity had proved, she was not a natural at picking up languages, but even she knew what that French word meant.  The words ‘cuisine’ and ‘gymnase’ on the last two were also easy for her to translate.

This was quite an impressive vessel, with both its flight capability and now its facilities exceeding the expectations set by its clumsy external appearance.  In the loading bay, she had just been desperate to get off the asteroid and would have taken a ride in any junk.  She had fallen lucky.  There would be time to explore the canteen later, but it might be a while before she wanted to use a gym.  For now, though, she was just desperate to get clean.  She tapped the pad at the door marked ‘chambre 2’.

On entering, her assumption that her untidy host occupied ‘chambre 1’ proved correct, or at least she could be confident he did not occupy this one.  It was pristine and virtually empty apart from two decent sized beds, bare of any linen.  There was a frosted door in the opposite wall where she presumed the bathroom to be.  Surprisingly, a light grey carpet covered the floor.

Kayla stood in the doorway for a moment, thinking about where she had slept for the last four years.  Those dark, cramped cells, where prisoners of both sexes had to fight for the stinking mattresses or sleep instead on torn sheets on the floor.  Although not overly lavish, this cabin was in fine contrast to those squalid conditions.  Just seeing comfort like this brought a wave of emotion that escaped in an anguished moan.

Admiringly, she looked down through cloudy eyes.  The toes of her grubby pit boots peaked out from beneath the green tunic, stopping a couple of inches short of the carpet.  They had lasted well, these boots, ridiculously hard wearing, moulded to the shape of her feet.  They had served in hard times and hard places, but they had no right to soil this virginal flooring.  She removed them, the stooping action intensifying the pain in her lower abdomen.  There was relief when she straightened again, her tired and filthy feet liberated.  That relief turned to bliss when she stepped on to the lush material.  Childhood memories flooded her head and she closed teary eyes.  Here were thousands of years of human heritage, in those grey fibres, in the heart of the Dark Zones… bliss.

“Erm…” it was Messiah, behind her.  She opened her eyes and turned.

“Sorry for disturbing you,” he said, “but I have these.  No feminine scents, but I’m sure they’ll do the job.”

In his hands, he held a cluster of cleaning liquids, soaps, toothpaste, even a toothbrush.  Mostly the containers were blue and black in colour, indicating the intended gender.  She did not care, gratefully taking them from him.

“My own supplies,” he said, “but obviously you are welcome to them.”

His kindness was starting to overwhelm.  It was not the generosity but more that she had not known such warmth for so long.  He did not need words to hear her gratitude for it was in the gentle sigh she exhaled as she clutched the toiletries to her chest.

“I’ll sort out some clothes and bedding and leave them in the room whilst you’re taking a bath.  When you have had a rest, you will find food supplies and comfy seats down in the galley,” he said.

He cast another award-winning grin and then left her to it.  She watched him go, overcome by it all, not quite believing she was away from the prison.

She took a step inside, the door closing behind.  The crisp, clean white and grey shades were glorious.  For a moment, she just enjoyed it.  She breathed deeply, letting her body rise, soaking up the positive vibes.  The prison medical suite had been this colour too, but there, the white had seemed cold and nasty.  It had been polluted by the evil of the Kamdo.  Here, it felt pure. A tear escaped and ran down her cheek.  She quickly blinked it away before any others followed.  Eventually she would cry, but not yet, not here, not until she could finally sit back and see that the bad things were at an end.  To get there she knew it would take more than just washing the Kamdo filth from her skin.  She would also need to be cleansed by justice, and that would go right back to those who had put her in the prison in the first place.  That would not be easy, and it would not be quick.  She did not think she would be crying those tears any time soon.

The frosted door beckoned.  A damn good wash would be the first step on the long road to redemption.  Light feet bounced across the carpet.  The bathroom was equally white.  At the far end, which was not that far given the room’s modest dimensions, was a sunken area where dozens of tiny holes peppered the ceiling.  This, presumably, was the shower.  A deep, inviting bath recessed into one wall, moulded from the same material that formed the shell of the room.  A toilet and sink unit sank back into the opposite wall.  There was no carpet here, just a moulded resin floor with dozens of drainage points.  She looked up and around.  Numerous water and steam dispensers betrayed that the room’s pristine appearance was not only due to infrequent use, but also an advanced self-clean system.

Kayla wasted no more time.  She placed the toiletries on the floor, found the controls for the bath, and tested the temperature of the water until it felt just right.  The sensation of it running on her skin took her back to a dark place, but she pushed those thoughts to one side.  She was not going to let them ruin this moment.  With an equal amount of disgust and glee, she tore off the tunic, hurling it into a corner.  The concealed weapon followed, clattering on top of the discarded garment.  Then she peeled off her filthy pants, ignoring the stains and smears.  Naked, she peered down at the frothing water.  A sift through the toiletries found some gel soap, which she added to the bath, the purple liquid swirling with the flow of water, agitating up a lather of bubbles.

The smell was gorgeous, and so, so fresh.  She stretched tall and breathed in the steam.  Her aches already seemed to be diminishing.  Looking along her body, she was amazed that when the opportunity to escape had presented itself, this emaciated wreck had pulled her through.  A momentary lapse by the guard, and she had been alert enough, agile enough, and courageous enough to seize the moment.  However, this was the body of a desperate, undernourished, and wretched woman. Her skin was worryingly pale, not white, a dreadful grey.  Ribs protruded from her torso and her belly sank inwards.  To a certain extent, the work in the mines had maintained the muscles across that depressed stomach, and on her arms, thighs, and calves.  Now, though, they clung to an ungainly, skinny frame, the smooth lines of the young woman lost.  There were dark marks everywhere too, not least around her upper legs, and between them, where the barbarous bastards had forced themselves.  In places, the bruises and dirt were almost indistinguishable, but in her groin, there was no mistaking the huge mess of brown and yellow beneath her skin.

“You Earth whore,” she mumbled to herself, “you enjoy the fucking, whore bitch?”

At some point Kayla would have to find the courage to take a good look and explore to see if there was any permanent damage.  She expected the worst.  Passing water stung and solids gripped her with pain.  Thankfully, on the starvation diet offered by the Kamdo, there was not much of the latter.  Things were not right down there, and she could only hope that in time her injuries healed fully.

There was one wound, however, for which she had received no treatment whatsoever.  Emerging from the ordeal, along with the thoughts about personal hygiene, worry about her appearance also started to surface.  The pain on the side of her face needed investigation.  Clearly, from the reaction of the Noche pilot, it was not a pleasant sight.

Above the sink was a mirror.  It was years since she had seen herself other than shimmering images in the pools of water in the mines.  The image flaunted by the media during her trial was the last reference memory of how she had looked. Wiping away the steam, she peered nervously at the reflection.  It was not that stunning face looking back.

“Oh god,” she moaned, “oh no.”

She was a mess.  Beyond the bedraggled and filthy hair wast a face so gaunt she barely recognised it.  Only those green eyes, dancing as they stared back at themselves, bore any resemblance to the person she remembered.  So gaunt.  Fuck you, square-faced bastards, fuck you.  What had they done to her?  What had they done?

With trepidation, she turned her face to look at the right side.  Blood matted her hair and remnants of a red flow still clung to her cheek and ear.  Could that bitch nurse not even have done something as basic as wipe that away?  She leaned in to take a better look, trying to separate the congealed blood from the gash itself.  Closer, the wound could be seen for what it was, a deep cut about an inch in length and sitting several millimetres wide.  It looked sore, and the sight of it seemed to intensify the pain.  A scar could have been prevented by the right early treatment, but now it was the inevitable consequence of such a wound. She knew she should not let this injury worry her, but Kayla had so much turmoil playing in her head at that moment.  It could have been far worse, she supposed, and she had bigger things to worry about.  Besides, there was no dint to the upper cheek, so she had escaped bone damage. It also appeared uninfected.  She would gently clean it and then take another look.  The right antibacterial creams and care from now on in and hopefully it would heal okay.

Time to bathe.  The shower received a reproachful glare as she lowered herself into the bath.  It might be a while before a shower was an option.  For now, a bath was the best way to soothe her shattered body anyway.  On getting in, the water held a nice, comfortable warmth.  She had taken care not to run it hot, she did not think her wounds would appreciate the shock.  How long was it since she had bathed like this?  Even before the prison, it had been a long time.

After washing as best she could, but not to a standard she felt anywhere near good enough, she briefly dozed.  On waking, the steam in the room had gone, the mirror cleared, and the water in which she lay turned cold.  A film of dirt covered the surface, and she could feel the grit beneath her bottom.

With her body now relaxed, it did not wish to be reminded of its trials and tribulations, and climbing out proved harder than getting in.  She managed though, of course she did.  Only a few hours before, this woman had shown incredible stamina to escape her captors.  A few aches were not going to beat her now.  Standing there dripping onto the floor she looked again at her reflection in the mirror.  Her hair still looked bedraggled but now at least it had some shine to it, and it was water, not dirt, which held it flat on her face.  It would need several more washes and probably most of it cutting off.  Pink patches showed on her face and, indeed, all over her body.  These flushed marks showed just how vigorously she had scrubbed her skin.  The most notable difference, however, was the wound on her face.  Now clean, the gash was clearly visible.  It was not pretty, but it was no longer the mess of congealed blood.

As for her other injuries, soaked they felt better, and she had washed and washed and washed where they had violated her.  There was still pain down there and in her lower belly, but it was lighter.  She breathed in the skin on her forearm, and the aroma of washing gel delighted her nostrils.  Beneath it, she could still detect the dirty rock and machine oil smell of the pits.  Perhaps that smell would never leave her.  Perhaps she did not want it to.

+     +     +

It was not for voyeuristic titillation that Messiah watched Kayla dress, it was concern.  That concern was two-fold.  On one hand, he wanted to know more about the woman he had let on board Spirit.  Was there anything about her that could threaten him?  On the other, there was a concern for her wellbeing, driven by her terrible condition and the injuries he had seen.

The first of these concerns quickly escalated as the cameras, secreted in the bedchamber, observed Kayla walking from the bathroom.  She was naked, her hair and body dripping.  As she crossed to one of the beds, going for the towel he had left there, the gun in her hand was clearly on display.  Initially he was confused, where had she gotten it from?  Then he remembered just how ill-fitting the green tunic was, and how easy it would have been to conceal a weapon beneath.

He sucked air through his teeth and zoomed in.  It was an old weapon but deadly, nonetheless.  It was certainly enough to finish him should she choose to use it.  The woman had not appeared to have bad intent, but appearances could be deceptive.  He had been stung many times with people not being quite what they seemed.

As he continued to observe, she carefully dried, and he saw again those bruises and that battered, emaciated body.  She looked like the victim of some horrendous incident; it was hard to believe she would be carrying a gun for anything other than protection.  Clearly, she had concealed it under that tunic as she had fled, a last line of defence should she be confronted with a threatening prisoner.

Pale and slight, her body glistened in the artificial light.  A man seldom looks at a naked woman without assessing her desirability, and Messiah did note that a less pallid and better-nourished version would be an attractive proposition.  She was muscular where muscles needed to be; her calves, thighs, buttocks, stomach, shoulders, arms.  The definition matched the petite nature of her body, and although clearly the lack of weight had led to some wastage, what was there hinted back to a physique that had been undoubtedly impressive.  A few weeks recovering and building up again and she would look great, and perhaps by then those terrible bruises would have gone too.

It was hard, however, to see beyond the severity of those marks on her legs and lower back.  Fainter bruises showed on her arms and high on her chest too.  It looked like she had taken a good beating or suffered a heavy trauma of some sort.  What had happened to her?  How did a nurse end up hurt like this?

Then he had it, and it was so obvious he cursed the air.  With the realisation, he ran back through all the evidence and found that it all stacked up.  An oversized uniform - the Kamdo did not give out over-sized uniforms, she had stolen it.   The lack of an identifier - it had not been snatched, she had not had one in the first place.  The malnourishment and bruising - signs of abuse at the hands of a harsh regime, the prison was notorious for it.  The concealed weapon - not there for defence, it was there to enable an escape.

“So, lady,” he said to the empty cockpit, “who exactly have I let on board?”

Chapter Six

The day after the escape, a cruiser departed from a space station two hundred miles above the surface of Titan.  It was no ordinary cruiser, and the six defender class escorts illustrated the importance of the passenger.  The shocking destruction of Three Zero had poured oil on the fires of insurrection that smouldered on many worlds.  President Chilake, thrown into the most difficult period of his tenure by the atrocity, now took no chances.  With McGann on the run, those with whom she had previously associated, and the cult of followers thrown up in the aftermath of her arrest, would all be raising their heads out of their boltholes.  They were a simple-minded bunch of potential terrorists, all ready to fall to her cause.

What had that cause been?  He knew, of course, he was president.  Few others did though, knowing only what they were told.  Feed the media, give them an enemy, let them fear the anarchy, let them see what awaits if they oppose Union rule.  They had fed the media pyre plenty immediately following Three Zero.  It was never the intention for the fire to burn in quite the way it did, but they had lit the first sparks.  When the public began demanding more and more it got out of control, the flames impossible to quell.  By the time the image of Kayla had hit the airwaves, it was an inferno.  The beautiful terrorist, the femme fatale, the one that spurred excitement in many men, and plenty of women too.  She was a media dream, and a propaganda nightmare.

Until the news came through yesterday, that was a nightmare he had thought he had woken from.  How the fuck had she managed to escape the barbaric prison regime of the Kamdo?  How had she survived the hard labour?  They were meant to not only keep her captive, they had been meant to destroy her spirit too.  He had been expecting to hear of her premature death at some point, not this.  That story, he had long since prepared: femme fatale dies in an unfortunate accident in the prison’s canteen.  Obviously, there would have never been mention of the hard labour, strictly prohibited under inter-galactic law.  It would have been a story of tragedy for a model prisoner, who was showing remorse for her evil deeds.  An accident involving an appliance, or perhaps an allergic reaction.  There would have never been a body to collaborate either way.

The president sighed and sipped his blue lagoon.  It had a kick.  Chef had obviously decided he needed a stronger drink following the stresses of council. Tomorrow he would provide that same account to the full senate.  He knew the explanation was woefully inadequate and he would have five thousand faces peering up at him as he fumbled through this monumental cock-up.  What strength of drink would he need after that?  Someone was going to have to pay for this.

“Fuck you, McGann,” he said to his quiet chamber.

It had been silent since his return.  The small crew had stayed out of his way.  Chef had stayed out of his way.  Kayla McGann had better stay out of his fucking way too.

“Get me Grayling,” he growled, “I want to speak to him immediately.”

Ryn Grayling was the head of Grayling Corporation, the largest media group in the galaxy, with dozens of brands across the most populated systems.  The corporation could directly reach the identifiers of a hundred billion people in less than twenty-four hours, and they had, when Chilake had previously asked them to.  That damn photo.  So pretty, such a media darling, such a misjudgement.  Grayling owed him, and when you owed the president, you had better pay up.

+     +     +

The councillor arrived back at his suite on Titan base just in time to watch the presidential cruiser and escorts depart.  Bright blue tails indicated the exhaust of the omega class jump engines, some of the most powerful ever designed.  Only the best for the president.

The observer sneered; he despised that cretin.  Quite how Chilake was going to get himself out of this mess was beyond him, but it would be amusing to watch him try.  There were many out for the president’s head already, this played the ball into the court perfectly, all set for a smashed return.  The next few days and weeks promised to be very interesting indeed.

Whilst the president ran, the rest of the councillors who had travelled to Titan were staying for dinner.  A good chance for bonding across the wide cultural divides.  A good way to play politics too, to have those candid off the record conversations over whatever alcoholic beverage took their fancy.  It would be an interesting evening, in luxury surroundings.  The base was less than twenty years old and was certainly one of the best venues this councillor had frequented.  There was no point being in power if there were not a few trappings along the way.

He watched the blue exhaust disappear into the distance.

“Enjoy your journey, boss” he said through gritted teeth, “enjoy it whilst you can.”

From behind came the soft whir of a door opening.  He turned to see his partner enter the room.

“Oh dearest,” he said, “glad you came.”

“I would never miss this,” the other man said. “How often do you get invited to such a place?  It’s a first for me.”

“And the journey?”

“Amazing, out of this world!  Literally!”

“Oh, so young,” the councillor mused, “oh to be twenty again with all the experiences ahead of me.  Seems such a long time ago.  It is a long time ago!  Seems a century has passed since I was that excited by a trip across space.”

Both smiled, knowing that was approximately the age difference, there being ninety-nine years between the two men.  Even in these enlightened times, that gap was quite an eyebrow raiser.

“Three restorations later,” said the young lover, “you still pass for fifty, easy.  I like my distinguished older man!  He takes me to all the best places and is soooo powerful.”

The picture of youth crossed the room; slim waist, square chest, unblemished skin, and fire in his eyes.  So beautiful, so desirable, so goddamn sexy.

“Are you going to show me just how powerful you can be?” he asked seductively.

The councillor laughed.

“You haven’t seen the half of it, dearest,” he said, “wait until I’m president.”

+     +     +

Later, whilst the young lover slept, the councillor came back to the same window.  The blue exhausts were now long gone and the space outside was empty, save for the fabric of bright dots light years away.  Some of the dots were stars, representing other systems in this galaxy.  A few of these twinkled in the glory of the Union’s empire, swarming with humans, out there busily forming new anthills, spreading civilisation further and further with each successive generation.  The rest of the dots, though, were way beyond the reach of technology.  These were distant stars or, further still, other galaxies, too far away for even the most advanced jump engines to navigate.  So much still to discover, so much still to conquer.

The number of planets found which hosted indigenous life was now in the thousands and grew year on year.  So far, despite the millions of species out there, the human race had encountered no other which came close to rivalling their own intelligence.  Just like some of the other creatures native to Earth, a few species exhibited rudimentary culture and communication skills, but they were a long way short of the supreme beings that now colonised their planets.

Out further?

The same random factors that created humanity must, somewhere, have thrown up a rival species.  To the councillor, this was humanity’s greatest threat.  It was a much bigger menace than those tribes establishing their barbaric civilisations in the Dark Zones.  Those were merely annoying flies, ready for squatting.  Similarly, Kayla McGann and her misguided followers could not harm the broader peace either, not really.  However, eventually aliens rivalling humanity would reveal themselves.  It was inevitable.  Only a strong Union would be ready to face that extra-terrestrial menace, only a strong Union with a strong president at the helm.

Expecting to find at least one message, the councillor tapped his identifier.  The message was there.  ‘Arrived as planned’, it told him, and then contained details of a secure communications channel.  He smiled, tapping to connect.  It took a couple of minutes for the channel to travel the hundreds of light years between Titan and the distant location.  Communications over such a distance required an incredible amount of energy to create and maintain. Thankfully, at the other end, where most of the energy was drawn, were the gigantic power cells of a battlecruiser.

“Councillor,” said a gravelly, familiar voice.

“Commander Meyer,” said the councillor, “good to hear from you, my friend.  I take it the verbal battering from the president has not pained you too much?”

“It was to be expected from a man with such a short memory and such a poor grasp on the situation.  The prison on B327 was his idea, against the council’s recommendations.  I was merely an agent in making it happen, he made the deals with the Kamdo.  If the idiot had listened…”

“Harsh words, my friend, are you sure this channel is one hundred percent secure?”

“Of course,” came the reply, the tone indignant.  Meyer was not a man easily questioned and the councillor should have known better than to infer that he would carelessly jeopardise their plans.

“My words are honest,” Meyer continued, “and if that makes them harsh, so be it.  You have used worse.  McGann is a nobody made into a somebody by Chilake’s stupidity.  He can try to blame the military for his mistakes, but he made the Dark Zones a no-go for us, him and that traitor Potts, and their feeble fifth accord…”

“We all know why it was the fifth,” added the councillor, “each one a watered-down version of the last.”

Meyer did not reply, and the connection fell silent for a moment.  The councillor felt the awkwardness.  His relationship with the commander was not one built on friendship; it was one of mutual respect and complimentary aims.  There was little warmth and the councillor suspected that Meyer was not capable of such a thing.

“I take it you are in position?” the councillor asked, breaking the silence.

There was a short pause, and then, “Aramis is in the Clintos system, fifteen miles away from the asteroid, deep inside Kamdo territory.  Porthos is due within the hour.  It will position itself inside the atmosphere of the habited world, Eropidous.  The five million barbarians down there will fear his presence.  Athos should pass through Hadrian’s Gate tomorrow, Earth time.  Final destination, well, you know where it is headed… the Kamdo will be in a frenzy, they will not know how to react.”

There was an uncharacteristic glee in his words.

From the safety of Titan, with three huge battlecruisers in striking range of the Kamdo Empire, the councillor could afford to feel triumphant.  Everything was going to plan.  Decades of appeasement were finally coming to an end.  When Athos arrived in the Cheonmin Major system, the Kamdo heartland, anything could happen.    All the pawns were in place.  It just needed that spark for the whole Cairo Accord to unravel and the president’s lies to become exposed.

“The first missile or energy weapon that comes your way…” he contemplated.

“Proportionate response,” said Meyer, “proportionate and restrained.”

“Those are your orders, commander,” smirked the councillor. “It is up to you to decide on what they mean.”

“In the midst of battle,” Meyer replied, “those at the front line have to make that call.”

“And their leaders have to back them.  Do as you will, you can rely on my support, and if all goes to plan you will reap your reward.”

It was time to end this discussion.  Secure or not, the dialogue was a huge risk.  The councillor looked across to the chamber where his lover slept.  He trusted the boy, but he would still not wish for this conversation to be overheard, the stakes were just too high.  Fortunately, the boy had not woken; he would have hated to have to take action to guarantee his silence.  No one would come between the councillor and the presidency, no one.

“We do this for the Union,” he said, “may the gods be with you, Meyer.”

“I would leave such religious nonsense to the barbarians,” the commander replied, “this is for the whole of humanity.  Strength and unity, long live the Union.”

“Long live the Union, my friend, long live the Union.”

+     +     +

As Porthos passed through the atmosphere of Eropidous, deep in the Clintos system, Commander Meyer readied for the arrival of a high-ranking official.  Although it was someone he knew well, the pomp and ceremony were important for the crew, both for those under his own command and those escorting the guest.  The landing bay was clear of all unnecessary personnel, but many were watching from overlooking gantries.  The small shuttle touched down flawlessly, a ramp reaching out until it kissed the edge of the red carpet.  Everything in Meyer’s world at that moment was perfect.

Seconds later, Commander Cholewinska appeared from the craft resplendent in her full officer robes.  They were similar in design to Meyer’s but tailored to fit her feminine form.  With splendid elegance, she descended and greeted her counterpart with a firm handshake and a polite peck on either cheek.

“Ana,” he said, “such a pleasure as always, welcome on board the illustrious Aramis.”

“Now, now, Commander Meyer,” she teased, “surely a vessel has to see service before it can earn the title ‘illustrious’?”

He could have anticipated such a retort.  Her own command, Porthos, was the only one of the four Union flagships to have so far engaged in any sort of skirmish.  Several months before, on its maiden voyage no less, it had encountered and then tracked the notorious criminal Hab Cyrus back to his hideout.  The space station from which he and his gang of pirates had operated for nearly two decades was swiftly despatched.  With it, half a dozen ships of various shapes, speeds and armament were also destroyed.  No one was allowed to escape; no one was allowed to survive.  Hailed as a major success against organised crime, Cholewinska and her crew were quite the heroes for a while.  However, time moves on, and with this mission in Meyer’s part of the galaxy, it fell under his command.

“I am sure, Commander,” he said, “all the fleet will earn their battle stripes in due course.”

“I would say that is a certainty,” she agreed with a light smile and a warm tone. “Good to see you, Elliot, I hope I find you well.”

“As always, Ana, as always.”

They made their way from the shuttle bay through the maze of corridors towards the commander’s apartments.  Vanity dictated the route, Meyer leading her passed the touches that made Aramis unique to Porthos.  Although very similar ships, each had their own design quirks.  Both were musketeers, he joked as they went, but not all musketeers were equal.  The character Aramis had more charisma, charm, and style, he argued.  Neither had read the ancient novel, so neither knew if there was any truth in his claim.  In reality, both vessels had features that were the playthings of architects, bored with the crisp functionality of the engineer’s designs.  On occasions, even the builders of deadly weapons succumbed to the whims of the artisan.

The apartments themselves were lavish and decorated to the commander’s own personal taste.  They consisted of three separate rooms, adjacent to the officer accommodation and tucked into the heart of the barracks.  Any enemy, in the unlikely event one got on board, would need to get beyond the crew before reaching this inner sanctum.

Alongside the personal chamber and the boardroom (labelled ‘war room’ on the original plans), was the formal dining room.  It was here that senior officers received Commander Cholewinska and the small delegation.  An extravagant dinner followed, full of exquisite, freshly prepared treats rather than the usual diet of synthesised food. Meyer was not passing up this opportunity to show how good his personal chefs were.  He was confident the cuisine would surpass anything offered by the rival commander’s kitchen.  Cholewinska politely complimented throughout from the opposite end of the thirty-seat table.  The presence of the two commanders was overpowering for those seated between them, who mostly just nodded and spoke in hushed tones, laughing at all the right points as the host and his guest exchanged repartee.

She played the game well, Ana Cholewinska, and he admired her for that.  Of course, admiration or not, there was still the sordid matter at hand.  He would deal with that once they were alone.  She would not have been sitting so relaxed if she had known what he had planned.

Dinner over, coffee finished, Meyer requested a private audience.  The officers left with salutes and wishes of good fortune to Porthos in future endeavours.  Everyone present knew such endeavours might be sooner rather than later.  It was a good dinner, and Meyer was proud of his command, they had been engaging, attentive, and witty throughout.  His ego did not recognise quite how much he and his counterpart had dominated proceedings.  He waited for the crew to go, hiding the impatience he felt inside, keen to drop the charade.

“So,” she said, “just the two of us.  I presume we will not be disturbed?”

“Strict orders,” he said, “barring a surprise attack or a mutiny, which of course will never happen, we will not be disturbed.”

She smiled, “You have loyalty in your line, and they hold you in the highest esteem.”

“They are very loyal,” he agreed. “They follow me unquestioningly.  They admire me; I demand it.  I demand it from everyone.  Loyalty and admiration.  What about you, Ana, are you loyal?  Do you admire?”

Her smile faltered and she averted her gaze, looking down at a now empty coffee cup.  A coy nervousness briefly replaced the steely resolve of this impressive woman.

Unobserved, Meyer plucked a knife from the nearby cheeseboard and dropped it to his lap, covering it with a napkin.  The woman opposite did not stay coy for long, but his hands were back above the table by the time she lifted her eyes.  When she looked back at him, her stare was defiant, any sense that his words had disarmed her quickly dismissed.

“You are the commander of a Union flagship,” she said, very matter of fact, “what is there not to admire?”

He liked her response, for it perpetuated this charade.  The invite to dinner, the red-carpet treatment, the tour around the vessel, all just a game.  Now, though, it was time for the game to end.

Meyer stood.  With purpose, he moved around the table towards his fellow officer, the knife concealed by his side.  She paid no attention to the harmless looking napkin.  Why would she?  She had no idea what he planned.

“Shall we go relax in my chamber?” he asked, rolling the knife handle in his palm.  There was no intention they would make it as far as the chamber, and there was no intention to relax.

She stood before he reached her.  With the ceremonial gowns removed before dining, they both now wore similar black shirts.  Hers tapered below her ample bosom, emphasising her curvaceous figure.  He looked her up and down, taking in the tightness of the clothing, admiring her body.

“Now, Commander,” she said, “and what would we possibly do in there?”  She was flirting, returning his appreciative glance, taking in the muscular physique under his own equally tight shirt.  “I hope you are not trying to seduce a fellow officer?”

She let her eyes linger on his, and then teasingly turned away, the curves accentuated by the smooth flow of her body.  With her back to him, he dropped the napkin to the floor.  In his hand, the knife pointed upwards, towards her shoulders.  Now in striking distance, he paused, looking down at the blade, and then the thick, shiny fabric of her shirt.

Breathing hard, her shoulders rose and fell.  Perfume, first smelled back on the red carpet, wafted to his nostrils again, overpowering the lingering aroma of food.  It was a fantastic fragrance and had tantalised him on the walk around the vessel.  A fantastic fragrance, for a fantastic woman.  The knife rolled in his hand, once, twice.  With the prospect of what was to come, a rare smile came to his lips.

He grabbed at her shirt, pulling the fabric away from her skin.  She did not stop him.  There was a gasp, a sensual release, a moment of excitement at his touch.  The blade came forward, the tip cutting through the shirt with ease.  Another gasp as the cold metal touched her back, this one in surprise, her body tensing and moving away from the unseen object.  As she recoiled from the cold caress, he swiftly moved the blade upwards, slicing the shirt all the way to the collar.  His free hand grabbed the material to steady and, with more effort, he sliced through the collar too.  The garment fell open to reveal her milky back.

“Seducing an officer and deliberately defacing an officer’s uniform,” she said, giddiness now unmistakable in her words, “now that is very bad Commander Meyer, very bad indeed.”

He tossed the knife to one side and moved closer, placing his hands inside the slashed shirt, low on her waist.  Marvelling at the soft sensation of her skin, he slid his touch forward, his fingers reaching for her flat navel.  No gasp, but a sigh, expectant in nature.  There was no hiding the desire in that sound.

“Having to play respectful commanders can be so hard sometimes,” he said, pushing his groin into her buttocks.

“I can tell,” she sighed, responding to his thrust with a playful one of her own, gyrating on his over excited trousers, relishing the feeling of what lurked inside them.

“It was a master stroke,” she said, “changing the plan so Athos heads to their home world, whilst we jointly occupy this system.”

“Well, we do need a solid foothold deep in the Dark Zones,” he mumbled, his lips dancing across her neck.

Her light hair was pulled into a tight woven bun, giving him free access to this tender place, and he let his mouth please her whilst he tugged the shirt clear of her shoulders.  He kissed there too, enjoying the smell and taste of her pale skin.  As promised, no underwear.  It had been hard to tell under the thick black fabric of the uniform, but she was good to her word.

“We can conquer system after system,” her words giddy, almost panting in excitement, “one by one.  Athos can take the home world, whilst we move inwards, cleansing the Kamdo scum planet by planet.”

“I like it when you talk dirty,” he laughed, kissing her neck harder.

Hands danced up her body, reaching her breasts, cupping them gently at first and then firmer as the urgency grew.  Fingers pinched at her nipples and she writhed in pleasure.

“If they could see us now, eh?”  She moaned, her eyes closed, enjoying his touch.  “Our troopers, our officers, our president…”

“The current or the new one?”

“Hmmm,” she squirmed delightedly, “whoever that may be.  I wonder if the history books will ever write about you and me, about this, about the eve of war and the dawn of the revolution…”

He kissed her harder, pinching her firmer, pulling her closer.  She pushed against him, reaching back, feeling for him, touching him, urging him to go on.

“I think we should fuck on the war table,” he sighed.

“Yes,” she gasped, “for the Union.”

A little giggle: “Yes, Commander Cholewinska, for the Union.”

+     +     +

The wind that blew down the mountain brought with it the smell of the manufacturing plants.  Some days the fumes tickled the back of the throat, other days they caused the eyes to sting.  Occasionally, the smell was bad enough to cause light headaches, even nausea.  Every day, though, it was windy.

That was just the way it was.

Frontier worlds start out as just that, exciting new frontiers to explore, but soon they become homes.  Pioneers start out as pioneers, but soon become settlers.  First generation struggles lead to second generation difficulties lead to third generation acceptance.  Nickel was fourth generation.  To Nickel, this was not a frontier world; it was simply his world.  He was not a pioneer; he was a son and a brother.  The harsh conditions of this cold rock, made harsher by the chemicals he breathed, were not struggles, for they were just his way of life.

His great grandfather had been one of the first settlers, a hundred years before.  Whilst still alive when Nickel was born, he died soon after.  Their only meeting was when the youngster was no more than a babe in arms.  Now in his seventeenth year, Nickel was a man.

The family home sat amongst a cluster of ramshackle buildings lying along the salty river at the foot of the mountains.  Three generations shared one roof in conditions other civilisations might have thought medieval, but with no experience of other ways of life, this was his norm.  A dozen people crammed into a hut, much as their earth ancestors had many millennia before.

The community numbered one hundred and seven, twenty of whom were Nickel’s kin.  It was a simple life.  It was a good life.  They hunted, they fished, and they foraged.  Food was occasionally scarce during the colder months when temperatures rarely got above minus ten centigrade.  In those hard times, they relied on modest summer harvests squirreled in underground storage pantries.  Despite a modest diet, they were generally a healthy community.  That was until the bronchial disease and creeping cancers struck in their forties and fifties.  Perhaps the low temperatures kept the more mundane bacteria and viruses at bay, but they could not prevent the real killers.

Acceptance of this life, and with no real desire for more, led Nickel and his kind to general happiness.  Unlike his pioneering forefathers, he had no benchmark against which to compare his humble and blighted existence.  He was not entirely without knowledge, however, of the broader human race.  Although his great grandfather was dead, knowledge and memories had passed down the line.  He knew how they came to be here.  He knew about humankind’s history, or at least the selective bits his ancestors had wanted him to know.

There were glimpses of the rest of the galaxy in the nearby city too.  Over the mountains and beyond the manufacturing plants lay a metropolis where many had witnessed technology that left them astounded.  Nickel was amongst those who had ventured beyond those mountains, to that city and the spaceport on its outskirts.  There was work there, and lodgings, had any in the village chosen it.  They had not.  Nickel had not.  It was a different life, but it held little appeal, offering little beyond what they had on the banks of the salty river.

Except, perhaps, that it lay upwind of the plants.

Nickel knew that the spaceport was a connection with his ancestry and that there were many other worlds out there amongst the stars.  He knew about interstellar travel, although none in this village had ever left the surface of the planet.  There was awareness of their own kind living on the nearby asteroids too, and of the mining that took place there.  Occasionally, overhead, the Clintos sun would reflect off a craft heading back from such an asteroid.  They would soar low over the mountains to the spaceport beyond.  Such sights never worried Nickel or his kin.  They just accepted them.

That was just the way it was, until the day it arrived.

That morning, as they emerged from their homes, generations of hate fuelled fear at the sight that greeted them.  Eropidous was never a warm world but the arrival in the heavens made that morning even more chilly than usual.  This early in the day the sun was too low to glint off the dark shape in the sky.  It did not need to.  The battlecruiser was clearly discernible without the sun’s assistance, hanging menacingly two miles above the ground.  Even at that distance, unable to obscure its full span with a shielding hand, the colossal nature of the craft was obvious to all.

Within minutes of the first villager rising and glancing out into the crisp morning, the whole community was awake and staring up at the sky.  Initially, they stood in silence, bar the odd diseased cough, expressions of concern spread across their faces.  Then someone mumbled suspicions and that mumble spread.  Neighbour turned to neighbour, brother to brother, sister to sister, all now shrouded in a growing panic.  Those fears spoken across the decades by the elders now proved well founded.  The enemy of their people were here.

One word permeated the villagers that morning, said in hushed tones, exhaled up at the sky in puffs of frozen breath.  In the language of the Kamdo, that word was ‘Spitak’.  Roughly translated into English, it meant ‘Betrayer’.  Those who had cast the Kamdo into the Dark Zones.  Those who had abandoned them to cold planets like this one, around weaker suns, forced to exist off the scraps of technology allowed through the blockades.  And those who had left them to live under the cloud of the dirty manufacturing plants, that threw chemicals into the air and burned their lungs.

Spitak.

Nickel stood amongst his kin that morning and craned his neck skyward with the others.  The intimidating beast scowled down.  He heard the words of his fellows and he knew what they meant, and he knew what the elders had foretold.  One day the sons and daughters of Earth would return to wreak death and destruction on those they had abandoned.  That day, the words whispered, had arrived.

The young man held no fear, even though he could feel it all around him.  He looked across at his father and found the older man already looking at him.  It was just a year since they had visited the city together, as demanded by the laws of the Kamdo.  The adults hid the purpose of the visit, telling them it was a trip to register and complete the census.  Whilst infantile imaginings of gift bringers and bogeymen always fell away long before sixteen, the census myth held strong, all the way to that special birthday.  Parents zealously protected this aspect of innocence, knowing the truth would destroy the childhoods that the Kamdo held dear.

The morning Porthos appeared in the skies of Eropidous, that particular father and son exchanged no words.  There was no nod either, or raised brow, or reluctant smile.  The meeting of eyes was enough to take them back to that registration room, where Nickel had gone to partake in the census, but had instead learnt a great truth.  That was the room of Ultimate Commitment.  There was one such room in every major conurbation across this world, and across the wider Kamdo Empire.  There, the sixteen-year-old boy had indeed signed, but not to say where he lived, or to say whom his parents were.  That, it seemed, was already known.  In that room, he had signed up to the Ultimate Commitment.

On that cold morning, whilst others spat tirades of betrayal up at the heavens, he stood in silence.  Two miles above, five thousand Union soldiers with an arsenal large enough to destroy every planet in the system, readied themselves for the return of their commander.  They waited confidently, looking down on the primitive world below.  Instruments mapped every contour, every cavern, every road, every building, preparing for battle.  However, they could not map what rested in the heart of every Kamdo adult.  They could not prepare for that.

The Ultimate Commitment.  The Ultimate Sacrifice.

Chapter Seven

The lights were hot and blinding, the constant buzz excruciating.  At some point, the restaurant had gone, and the cool evening had given way to this.  There was no freshness, no moisture in the air, it was so, so dry.  No easy breaths, only laboured, aching ones.  He felt trapped.  A debilitating panic gripped him, and he was unable to climb from beneath it.  Desperately, he tried to fill his lungs but found only short gasps.  Each one burned, burned like hell.  Where was he?

Someone was calling a name, but it was not his.  It was a name he did not recognise either.  Over and over.  Badgering him with two words.  That name, again and again.  That name, hassling when he could barely breathe.  Who were they, these tormentors?  Anger hid beneath his panic.  He wanted to strike out, but it was impossible.  Too hot.  Blind.  Stop.  Would it ever?  Would they ever?  Stop.

Where was Leah?  Was she with him?  If the damn light would dip, then he was sure he would find her.  His Leah.  She often told him he was going to make a great dad, and she would make him so proud.  She did not need to; he was proud already.  She was his rock, his guardian, the woman who gave up her job to be with him.  That first kiss, that first night, and the taste of what was to come.  Weekend visits.  Weekend sex and plenty of it.  She was here with him now, surely?  She had to be.  They rarely parted, only for work, but she had finished now, ahead of the new baby arriving.  It was only three weeks away.  A beautiful baby girl, blonde, like her mother.

Where was his wife?

He wanted to call out but there was not enough breath in his lungs.  Last seen in an overcoat.  Garlic.  She had tasted of garlic on that last kiss.  The food had been exquisite.  The company even better.  He loved her so much.

That name again, two words, hammering through the lights, crashing through the constant buzz.  Who was it they were looking for?  He did not know them.  He did not know them!

Garlic.

The man in the black coat.

A pain in the neck.  Insect bite?  Sting?  He had suffered enough of those in his time.  Bees, wasps, all the best pollinators had those wicked stings.  Had this one put him down?  He had seen that before, back at university, with young Brady.  The student has suffered an allergic reaction, whilst out doing fieldwork in the huge hydroponic farms north of Paris.  That bite had swollen to the size of an orange in no time, purple tentacles spreading along his veins, sucking the toxin towards his heart.  Brady’s eyes had bulged, his face contorting as he struggled to breathe through a constricted windpipe.  Shock.  So much pain in the poor boy. It had been touch and go but the drone had made it.  With no one else there to do it, Pike had administered the injection.  He had saved a life, quite the hero.  Where was his hero now though, to help him survive his own sting?

It was not a sting, and the bright lights and buzzing were something else.  That infernal name, over and over again.  No bees here.  No Leah here.  Only him.  And them.

The men in the black coats.

More memories now.  Not Brady, not university, even further back, back to his childhood on this world.  That cycle of four days followed by four nights was not meant for humans, but so many things were not meant for humans.  Unless, some argued, it was all part of God’s master plan.  Now a scientist, he could never accept that.  This planet had been populated three hundred years ago, scoped, landscaped, terraformed.  And then Noah’s ark had come from the sky, delivering whole new forms of life to mix with what was already here.  The botanists helped keep the flora stable, climatologists helped keep the atmosphere mild, and ecologists helped keep the ecosystems balanced.  It was important work, keeping those insects buzzing, keeping those bees stinging.

His parents had pushed him that way.  Jefroy and Myra had encouraged his studies, giving him the stability to thrive, except…

That infernal buzz!  Get out!

Memories of school, of childhood play, of scraped knees and virtual reality adventures.  Memories of rolling down hills.  Memories of snow when the scientists allowed it.  Memories of favourite toys, of stargazing with mum, of entertaining kid’s channels.  All real.  All buzzing.  He had never liked garlic as a child, but as an adult, here he was, craving the aroma, longing for his wife to be close so he could smell that pungent fragrance.  Right now, he just needed the comfort only she could offer.

Hot and blinding.  Blinding hot.

Stop calling that name!

Why did they keep calling it?

There were others in here with him now, in this hot place, the place that stole his breath, burning it from his lungs.  Different faces, different places.  Who were they?  He saw them, invading his thoughts.  Just shadows at first, but those shadows found form.

In the greenhouse north of Paris, Brady lay convulsing on the ground.  In the distance was the sound of the medical drone, dashing towards them, bringing the medicine.  It was getting dark, was night coming?  No, there was no darkness on Brady, so this had to be something else.  Perhaps it belonged to the shadowy figure that now stepped forward.  It was huge, made larger still by the body armour.  Was this a man, or a war machine?  A droid, perhaps?  Whatever it was, it did not belong here, amongst the cucumbers.  With disregard, the invader barged into a guttering of plants, sending the equipment and greenery crashing to the ground.  Brady was still convulsing.  The medical drone was still speeding.  This machine had no right to be here, this was not as it should be, but it did not care.

It was though; this was exactly how it had happened.  Pike Macey knew the man machine had every right to be there, it was the memory of Brady that was wrong.  The soldier, for that is who it was, was not the intruder in this memory.  The soldier was right where he always had been, and others were now joining him.  A small army, bursting through.  Were they the ones calling the name?  No, but that name was who they were here to find.  Were they the ones buzzing like bees?  No, but they were gathering like insects, crowding into the area, weapons ready to sting.  They scared Pike.  This was not good, not good at all.  Where was Leah when he needed her?  Where were Jefroy and Myra?

Garlic, he could still smell the garlic.  It was stronger than ever, but it was not from his wife, it was on the table before him.  The table was made from a polymer compound, a material common across the galaxy, printed in high volumes and broken down for re-use when no longer required.  It looked like a pioneer quality print; a quick, low energy production. On new worlds, entire complexes were built this way before a human even set foot on the planet.  It was ideal for throwing up temporary bases too.  Is that where he was?  A temporary base, perhaps, deep in the heart of a desert?

Garlic, on his fingers.  The smell was not his wife, Leah was not here, she never could be.  An array of utensils and foodstuff filled the table.  His hands worked amongst them, chopping, mixing, preparing.  He loved doing this, he remembered now.  This was not his job, but he did it anyway.  They laughed at him, but it was friendly laughter, and he was far more important to them than this.  Where were they?  Not a desert.  It was cold; he could see the freezing mist of his own breath.  Gloomy, shadows, artificial light.  A cave?  Hidden.  They should not have been found.  Someone had betrayed them.

The man in the black coat was there.  The man who had stung him.  There were others too, more agents in the same coats and the same suits.  Again, these agents were misplaced, they did not belong in that cave, just as the soldiers did not belong amongst the hydroponic greenhouses.  They were here, though, and they were the ones badgering him, tormenting him with that name, repeating it over and over again.

“Jed Luca,” they said, “Jed Luca.”

+     +     +

Doctor Schmidt spent most of her days secreted away at obscure outstations, rent-free.  Not that she would have paid rent for the sub-standard living accommodation.  A specialist, arguably the best in her field, and certainly a genius, she begrudged her treatment.  It was something she had to accept though, given she was outside the law.  Outstations or life in prison was the bleak choice she faced.

As the scientific lead on Indigo, the fulcrum of that project, to spend her life under permanent house arrest felt immensely unfair.  Without her, the project was nothing.  Decades before she had been a darling of the science community, now she was a pariah, frowned upon by her fellow neurologists.  It was so wrong.  Research was research, science was science and she deserved credit for her advancement of brain manipulation.  The luddites at the council, however, had made her work illegal and now she was in exile.  They still wanted her where they could see her, though.  They still wanted to be able to use her skills.  Under the clandestine protection of the Union, she was fed the crumbs from their table and forced to carry on her research in secret, waiting for the day when they would need her again.

During her house arrest, she had still gotten to experiment occasionally, and that had offered her some gratification.  Mostly, it had been small beasts, although once or twice they had sent a primate her way.  But the days when she had gotten to experiment on degenerate humans, in full knowledge of the Union, were long gone.  Chilake had moved to stop such activity on taking over the presidency, part of his ‘Ethical Cleansing’, as the media had so tastefully phrased it.  She had been outspoken on the cessation of her work at the time, and the backlash from the press had been furious, labelling her Doctor Death.  Decades of shuffling between outstations had followed.  Bunk beds, basic laboratories, and monkeys.  All that genius left to waste.

Until Three Zero.  That incident had, it seemed, flooded Chilake’s moral high ground. Suddenly, they had needed her.  Suddenly, they had wanted to call upon her genius.  And when they had called, she had served them well, even though her work had remained hidden from the rest of the science community and the rest of the galaxy.  That was such a travesty.  The puppet master had pulled the strings and cried, “come, little doctor, fix our problems.”  They had afforded her no respect, keeping her under armed guard, treating her like an embarrassment even when helping them out.  What could she have done, though?  Nothing.  She had had no choice but to do as they had bid, refusal would have brought worse consequences.  No sooner had she completed the work, they placed her back under house arrest, and she returned to a life of being shuffled between stations and outposts.  Once again, she was left to feel shunned, shamed, and desperately lonely.

Now, four years later, they called on her for a second time.  After all that, after treating her so badly, they had the audacity to ask for her help once more.  They now wanted her to rewind the clock.  They wanted her to, in their words, “fix what she had broken.”

That was all a matter of perspective, of course; she chose to see it as breaking what she had fixed.  Dragged from her bunk yesterday, she was told to pack quickly, and fired across the galaxy to the peaceful haven of Meridian Rise. Although the doctor had never visited this planet, it was a place she knew well, the northern city of Paris particularly so.

“Is he responding?” one of the nameless, soulless creatures in the black suits asked.  He was on the Union payroll, but there was no insignia on his left breast.  He was an impatient son of a bitch.

“It takes time!” she snapped. “Real memories need to be teased back whilst the fake ones are being unwound.  It is not a simple process!  Get this wrong and all you will have is a gibbering wreck.”

Doctor Schmidt returned her focus to the patient.  Lying on a theatre table in this makeshift operating room was the man the secret service had picked up the previous night.  He was familiar to her; she had met him four years earlier.  Since arriving at Meridian Rise, she had been working to reverse the procedure carried out that last time.

It had been eight hours of labouring under intense pressure. The agents came and went, but always one stayed, to stand guard on both their patient and the scientist.  Only twice had they allowed her a short break.  The second time they had almost denied her, but she had insisted.  She was tired, frustrated, and angry.  This was complex work, and the subject could not afford her making any mistakes.

Not that he would have thanked her for being diligent in this medical intervention.  The last thing he had known was a prick in the neck followed by a fainting sensation.  Now he lay stripped, heavily anaesthetised, head shaved, and all number of tiny monitoring and stimulation devices inserted into his skull.  One of these incisions had taken with it a multitude of tiny fibres, snaking out to connect with millions of synapses and neurotransmitters around the brain.  At the same time, a hoard of microscopic medi-bots busied themselves, severing fake memory connections and re-energising old ones.  The body would eventually absorb these bots, but for now, they did as the master programme instructed.  For hours, the doctor had watched the outputs, tinkered, teased, and fired coded impulses into the relevant receptors.  Her work involved the expertise of a specialist neurologist, the skill of an advanced programmer, and the touch of a talented artist.

Everything the patient was dreaming was by design.  His thoughts were a combination of real and fake, supplanted memories.  They were a mixture of who he was and who he had become.  Slowly the doctor opened locks closed four years ago.  She had a human mind completely in her gift, to do with exactly as she pleased.

“We need him back quickly,” the man in the suit pushed again.

“There are two whole people wrapped up in there,” she said, matter of fact. “Layer after layer of complexity, and I have to get everything to go back to exactly as it was, or we will leave the patient with, at best, extreme anxiety.  At worse, he will be left unable to function.  Confused, insane, or even in a completely catatonic state.  I do not think you want that.”

No, the suit did not want that, but he did not reply.  Instead, he looked at his wrist where his identifier presented the time.  This was taking far too long; they needed this man back and talking as soon as possible.

“Please,” he implored, “it’s important for the security of the Union that you complete this as quickly as you can.  No more breaks.  I will leave this room in an hour to file my report, and if Jed Luca is not conscious by then, both of us might have a problem.”

Chapter Eight

He turned off the camera, feeling a mixture of shame and anger.  It was not good that he had spied on her, not good at all.  It was not who he was.  Surveillance was one thing, but he had known she would be naked and at her most vulnerable, and that made it wrong.

However, the gun.  She was armed.

Messiah crossed the flight deck to a series of tall, narrow panels and clicked one.  The panel slid up.  In the storage space behind, a couple of slender energy bolt rifles were clipped to either side and between them three smaller firearms were stacked, still in their original retail boxes.  He opened the first of those boxes and took out one of the handguns.  It was brand new, never fired.  None of these weapons had been.  He checked the charge, which was strong, and familiarised himself with the firing mechanism.  Messiah was not a man who chose to carry a gun, although many of his associates did, but he certainly knew his way around one.  Confident the weapon was in good order, he took it back to the pilot’s seat and tucked it under the flight console.

Spirit continued to glide her way through space.  It seemed effortless, but navigation computers were calculating septillions of transactions per second, plotting the way through the very atoms of space, ripping a hole through the very fabric of existence.  Tweaks to the destination, and the computers made tiny alterations to the direction, gradually turning the craft a few degrees.  Even that subtle change was enough to bring low groans from deep within the vessel, and instrument readings briefly fluttered.  Otherwise, the change in direction went unnoticed.

Fleeing Petang Base in a hurry was a problem for many reasons, the unintended guest being only one of them.  The Noche’s hold was full of goods and the owners would not be happy, expecting a credit to hit their bank later that day.  There was only one place for him to go now and that was the closest place he had to a home.  At least there he would be able to take stock, quite literally, and decide what to do next.  There, he could also hide from those who might decide to come after what they felt he now owed.

First, though, he had the problems brought by his passenger.  Unless she had a damn good justification for sneaking that gun on board, he would be dropping her off long before they got to his base.  Once she had rested, she had some serious explaining to do.

+     +     +

Kayla McGann felt almost human.  After dressing, she sat on the edge of the bed for a while, breathing in her own freshness.  There was still a wispy fog of depravity and humiliation floating around, but for now, she could live with that.  This was a far better place than she had been for the last four years.

Although Messiah was not a large man, the clothes provided drowned her. Socks for much bigger feet hung loose, even with the heel pulled up as high as her calf.  The canvas trousers came the closest to fitting.  At least they rested at the ankle, but they still wafted wildly around her much narrower legs.  A thick, red-patterned shirt with rolled up sleeves hung off the rest of her slight frame.  Tucking it in as far as she could, the shirt’s tail formed a nappy between her legs.  It made up for the lack of underwear, she supposed, and provided some padding to a delicate, tender area.  Her host had provided a cord belt too, which tightened the waist, keeping the makeshift clothes in place.  Reluctantly, she had to slip the grubby prison footwear back on to her feet.

Dressed, she initially found a snippet of relief by seeing her reflection in the bedroom mirror.  It was not relief at how she looked, because she still looked terrible, but it was relief that the woman looking back was free.  She had never thought this day would come.  It was a momentary kick of positive emotion and it flooded her body with feel-good hormones not released in a long time.

That fleeting delight crashed, however, as she shifted the wild, damaged mass of hair to one side.  Her gaunt, drawn expression was sobering.  She wanted to tie the mop up, to keep it out of the way, but at the same time she was glad it was there, to hide her features.  The face that had turned the head of many a man or woman over the thirty years of her life was gone, and she wondered if she would ever get it back.  She closed her eyes and let her hair fall back into place.  The bath had lifted her spirits, but there was only so far it could lift them.

She moved to the bed.  Sitting, she dug deep, trying to reclaim that glimmer of confidence that sense of freedom had provided.  She focussed on it, dragging it forward, holding it tight like a precious diamond.  Here was another chunk of old Kayla.  It was not the same part of her found back in the medical suite; this was less the warrior, more the woman.  It was her drive and energy.  It was her self-belief.  It was her family.  It was the person behind the face that had shone from billions of identifiers across the galaxy.  She squeezed the diamond tight; she was determined that face would shine again.

How long had she been below deck?  A couple of hours?  She was not sure.  After the nap in the bath, that tiredness was creeping back.  It was tempting to lie down again, but no, not yet, not until she felt entirely safe.  Messiah had treated her well, but this was still a man who traded with her jailers.  Unless intergalactic treaties had changed in the last four years, trade with the Kamdo was restricted to essentials only.  She suspected he was breaking those embargos, why else would he have a ship kitted for a crew, yet work alone?  It was easier to keep secrets if there was no need to trust the wagging tongues of others.  She wondered what he had in the hold of this vessel.

It was time to go explore.  It was time to make sure that she had not leapt from the pan and into the fire.

Standing brought stiffness and a creak in the lower back.  She paused, expecting the movement to trigger her abdominal pains.  It was a relief when it did not.  The bath had worked wonders.  The diminished soreness allowed hunger and thirst to come to the fore.  Both feelings had been a constant for most of her captivity and she had learned to ignore them, but now she let them leap forward.  She welcomed such normal pangs with open arms, but the dull headache would only get worse if she did not quench that thirst soon.

She made her way to the canteen.  With low expectations set by the mess in the flight deck, Kayla was surprised at how tidy the room was.  Whilst not pristine like the bedroom, it was not littered by her host’s clutter either.

Along one wall rested three soft-furnished orange sofas.  These were a stark contrast to the two blue polymer tables and matching chairs that occupied the centre of the room.  On the opposite wall to the sofas were a number of appliances, all uniform white.  From the doorway, she spotted two food generators.  On closer inspection, trying both the touch controls and her croaky voice, they appeared to be either faulty or disconnected.  She tried the next appliance, which looked like a simple water dispenser.  The floating images of various fruits and a water droplet appeared.  On selecting the apple, a bright beam rapidly constructed a thin cup in the dispensing area, filling it with a green, sweet smelling liquid.  The process took about ten seconds.  She removed the beaker, put it to her lips, and tasted the contents.

After so long on a bland diet, the taste was incredible.  The chill and the sharp snap rendered her unable to control her face, which convulsed in pleasure.  It was obviously not fresh fruit juice, it was a chemically manufactured substitute, but it was still no doubt packed with vitamins, minerals, and all sorts of other goodness she desperately needed.  She threw back the cup and took another huge gulp.  A voice told her to take it steady, but she ignored it, taking another glug, and then another, until the drink was gone.

It was delicious, emotionally so.  She had forgotten how good things could taste.  The prison diet of stale bread, unappetising alien beans, and a watery mush would haunt Kayla until the day she died.  Like so many moments in the last few hours, the apple juice hitting her taste buds kick-started more memories, positive ones, from the time before the hell of captivity.  She was taking another step along the path that would take her back to her old self.

She was not just comparing to the last four years though.  The long soak in the bath, the lush carpet underfoot, and now this taste explosion were all things that surpassed her life before the events at Haram Galt too.  These things belonged further back, before she had fallen into the arms of Malcolm Gomez, when she was with her family on the plantation.  The tingle in her eye she blamed on the kick of the drink and blinked it away.

Two more apple juices were quickly consumed.  After the third, the gurgling in her stomach was noticeably worse, causing her to consider what the tempting fourth might do.  That was enough for now, if not too much already.  She needed to build her strength slowly.  Her body would not cope with a sudden return to the world of plenty.

Perhaps she should rest after all.  Accustomed to only a few hours snatched sleep, disturbances from guards and other inmates the norm, she had survived in a state of perpetual tiredness.  She had forgotten what good sleep actually felt like, much as she had forgotten the taste of apple juice.  Her body needed more than the snooze in the bath.  It needed to lie on a soft bed and not wake until she was fully refreshed, whether that was six hours, twelve hours, or two days later.  Her body was giving her the signs and she needed to heed them.

First, however, there was the matter of the pan and the flames.  Had she swapped one bad place for another?  Reluctantly, she bid goodbye to the drinks dispenser and left the canteen.  Striding back along the corridor with purpose, ignoring the draw of chambre two, she headed for the hold.  Just what was Messiah shipping?  What contraband made him feel the need to work alone?

It was dark as she entered.  Her movement triggered low-level lighting, dispelling the black, casting eerie shadows across the crates and equipment.

A kick of the first crate produced a hollow clunk.  Stooping, the top of the container level with her knees, she rattled the lid.  Not surprisingly, it held firm.  A two-handed push on the side of the crate easily shifted it a couple of inches.  Whatever was inside was quite light.  She tried another couple.  Again, the lids held firm.  The fourth, however, yielded, lifting to reveal a mass of white foamy balls, each about the size of a thumbnail.  She ruffled the top few.  As expected, they clung to each other, their special surfaces bonding.  Made from a biodegradable, fungi-based substance, they were lightweight, flexible, and soaked up moisture.  Their shock absorption qualities, enhanced by the way they clung together, made them a commonly used and incredibly effective packaging material.  But what were they hiding?  What was Messiah’s precious treasure?

The bonds easily parted as she sank her hand, searching.  After a few seconds she was about to conclude that this crate was empty when she touched a cold surface.  She pushed further into the balls, wrapping her fingers around the object.

On entering this hold, she had not doubted there would be contraband. Legitimate traders did not trade with the Kamdo; they used Union channels.  Legitimate traders also avoided the Dark Zones like the plague.  Legitimate traders did not go to the effort of hiding jump class technology inside a planet hopper either.  The only question - what kind of contraband would she find?  The answer was literally in her grasp, and she recognised the object even before drawing the gun from the crate.

“Naughty, naughty,” she said disappointedly.

He had treated her so well.  He had likely saved her life.  Yet here was evidence that he was dealing arms with the square-faced scum who had tortured her for the last four years.  Weapons from this very vessel may well have been the ones used on her fellow prisoners, or indeed the one she had used to dispatch the guard in the medical room.  A conflict of emotions raced through her body and the disappointment quickly started to turn to anger.  What did she do now?  Rational thoughts became clouded as she mulled over the object in her hands.

Although she had brought a similar weapon on to the Noche, that had been through desperation.  These crates, full of dangerous merchandise just like this, were feeding a regime she despised.  It was a regime that had violently abused and raped her.  How could anyone deal with such creatures?  What kind of animal could cosy up to such beasts?  If he chose to sell guns to the Kamdo then he had blood on his hands and he could not be trusted.

Yet…

So many things contradicted that assessment.  She felt safe with him and he had been so kind and trusting.  Was she being bamboozled by his apparent generosity, and hoodwinked by the lush carpets, fragrant soaps, and delicious apple juice?  Was a little bit of luxury, after all the years of depravity, idling with her thoughts and clouding her judgement?

A gunrunner was a gunrunner.

A friend of the Kamdo was an enemy of Kayla McGann.

There was no room for any ambiguity on those things, no room at all.  She only had to let her thoughts dance back to the guards tearing her apart on that shower room floor for any confusion to become clear.  To see it any other way was impossible, for that would mean forgetting about the constant pains in her belly and groin or ignoring the bruising or the gash above her eye.  She was not ready to forget and would never be able to forgive.

It was time for Messiah Ainge to do some explaining.

+     +     +

As Spirit soared quietly through space, Messiah had tidied, clearing the flight deck of his clutter.  He had made the effort before seeing she had brought a gun on board.  Now, slouched on the couch seats, he was not sure he should have bothered.  Knowing that at some point she would return to the flight deck, he was considering how best to challenge her over concealing the weapon.  He wanted to be ready.

Having climbed the ladder to this upper cabin a thousand times, he knew every creak.  The bottom rung squealed like hell and often he would skip it completely, stretching up to the next to avoid the sound.  She knew no such technique and sure enough, about three hours after she had left, he heard the rung protest under her feather weight.

He moved quickly.  By the time she had reached the top, he was in the pilot’s seat, pretending to read the instruments.  As she stepped on to the flight deck, he spun the chair to face her, his right hand resting only inches from the weapon he had hidden earlier.  What he intended to say and how he intended to say it was all prepared and set to go, but rehearsals or not, this play was not going to go to plan.

“Feel a bit more like yourself?” he asked pleasantly.

There was no change in his manner towards her.  He still beamed, those brilliant white teeth a contrast against his dark skin.

She was not smiling back, but he had not expected her to be. Despite the holes in her story, and what she had hidden from him, this was clearly still a woman who had been through the wars.  No sympathy or pity could be allowed to weaken his resolve, however.  That resolve rested beneath the navigation panel only inches from his fingers.  Life had taught him the hard way that he gave his trust far too easily.  It was Messiah’s naive failing, and even when it had cost him so dearly in the past, he still did not always learn.  This time, though, looking at the woman in his oversized clothes, he pushed away the sympathy and pity.  It had no place here and he had to ignore it.  He had to.

There was no response to his question.  She just stood there, staring back.  She looked brighter, cleaner, more human, and the stench that had hung around her did not waft across to him.  The clothes provided had been fashioned into something presentable and were certainly an improvement on the blood-stained tunic.  The mess on her forehead was gone too, the dried blood washed away, leaving a red gash.  Whilst the wound was still ugly, it did not look anywhere near as serious as it had before.

These improvements in appearance, however, were not the most noticeable change in her.  Her entire demeanour seemed to have shifted.  Standing confidently, her cold expression flooded the flight deck.  She looked four inches taller, twenty points smarter, and thirty pounds stronger.  It was a face not to trifle with.  This was no longer a distressed nurse fleeing for her life.  If this had been the face presented back in the loading bay, he doubted he would have been so eager to help.

He waited.

She stared.

Eventually, he had to break the silence.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“You trade with the Kamdo,” it was a snarl, there was no doubt about it.  “Why would you do that?  What do you trade with that scum?”

Ah.  He saw the problem straight away.  She had been exploring, of course she had.  Most would have satisfied themselves with the bath, the bed, and maybe a visit to the canteen, but clearly, she was not most.  He should have foreseen this.  Perhaps he had, perhaps that was another reason there was a weapon tucked under the console.

“You’ve been in the cargo hold,” he said, realising there was no point in playing any games.  The face staring back at him was not in a playful mood.

“You are running guns,” she said. “You are a fucking gunrunner.  To them!  To the Kamdo!  Do you know how evil they are?  How nasty and cruel?  You sell them guns.  They kill people with those guns.  You are the lowest type of criminal…”

“And you work for them too,” Messiah cut in, “or have you forgotten that?  Nursy?  You work for the scum too!”

Fury erupted across her face, her eyes narrowing to two angry pinpricks.  It was not her blown cover that enraged; in the heat of the moment she had forgotten that cover even existed.  The anger was because he had turned the tables and highlighted her own lies.  By her side, fists clenched and unclenched as she considered her response. This was McGann. She was always fighting.  Years and years of endless fighting.  She only knew one way.

When it came to the crunch moment, Messiah was not ready, or merely not fast enough.  He saw the rage building.  He saw the clenched fists.  He even saw her reaching behind, into the cord belt.  He saw it all, but his reaction was snail pace by comparison.  In the time it took her to have the gun drawn and pointing straight at him, he had not even considered going for his own weapon.

“Hey, look…” he said, his voice breaking on the second word.

No more words would follow, his throat clamming up.  The gun she held was a model he supplied.  It still had the retail tag hanging from the barrel.  He knew the weapon well and knew what it could do.  If she pulled that trigger, it would despatch a concentrated bolt of energy capable of ripping a hole in a man’s chest.

“No, you look!” she snapped menacingly.  “You have figured out I was only playing doctors and nurses, well done you.  They were not exactly serious practitioners either!  So what?  So, you caught me, but I still have the gun.  I appreciate your soap and water, but I do not appreciate being lied to…”

“I never lied…” he found a croak of a voice.

“You never told the truth either,” she spat. “You never told me you were illegally running guns.  You never told me you were in bed with the Kamdo.  Gunrunning!  High stakes, Mister Messiah, or whatever your name is.  Nice guys do not play in poker games with those kinds of stakes.  So, what are you?  Career criminal?  Part of a gang?”

“Hold on,” he said, gesturing for her to lower the pistol.  It was a futile gesture, and his hand was shaking terribly.  “Hold on, please, just hold on.  I am not in any gang, I am not a gangster.  I run a few illegals to pay the bills and stay alive in this godforsaken part of the galaxy, it’s the way it is out this far.  Besides, who is calling who a criminal here?  You are not on the Kamdo payroll, that much is obvious, so I’m guessing you were a prisoner in there.  The Union only send the worst of the worst to places like that.  So, who exactly are you, lady?”

His unsteady voice failed to convey the anger, only the fear, but at least he got the words out.  That irrepressible smile was now nowhere to be seen, and the temptation to reach for his own gun was strong.  But so was the danger in her eyes.  He had seen how quick she was.  There was little doubt she would pull that trigger before he got anywhere near retrieving his weapon.  He had to remain calm.  He had to try talking her down.

“I am asking the questions,” she scowled.  “I have already told you that you do not need to know who I am, and you will not be finding out.”  Briefly, her eyes danced to the view from the cockpit window.  “Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere safe,” he said, “please believe me, I mean you no harm.”

“What else do you trade?” she asked angrily.  “Drugs?  People?  Is that what I am now?  Another commodity?  Are you taking me to a meat market?  Is that why you were so keen I cleaned myself up?  No one wants to rape a stinking woman!”

Her words were irrational.  Even as she said them, it seemed to Messiah that she did not believe them.  The trade she described did occur in dark places across the galaxy, as it had since the dawn of the human race, but it was still a huge leap from finding his cargo to assuming he was looking to enslave her.  She had just escaped one type of slavery, so to fear another was perhaps understandable, even if not sound.  Despite her steely exterior, there was clearly fear at play in her actions.  The hell of captivity might have made her hard on the outside, but what was going on inside?  Fear was a dangerous emotion, and it made the weapon in her hand even more perilous.

“No,” he insisted, “of course not!  I only trade in small scale firearms …”

That last bit was a lie, but his face did not falter.  Thankfully, his expression was so riddled with worry he was unable to betray much else.  He could not draw his eyes away from the gun.  One blast would almost certainly kill him.  The energy bolt would blow a hole where it struck, harmful enough, but as the energy dispersed through his body it would burn tissue, nerves, and organs alike.  All he could imagine was the barrel glowing red, and then his world turning black.  It would happen in a second.  The pain would be horrendous, even if short-lived.  He did not want to die. He did not want it to just end and there be nothing more.  The weapon was not lowering.  It just hung there, menacingly.  This shit was real.

“Look,” he said, his voice shaking badly, “please, put down the gun and let’s talk.  You are not going to kill me.  You need me to pilot Spirit.”

“I have flown similar,” she replied, “I could fly this.”

That was not a response he expected, and it further unnerved him.  This was no ordinary Noche and he did not believe she could pilot it, but if she believed she could, it made him worthless to her.

“With jump technology?” he asked.  “I doubt it!”

He tried to interject enough scoff into his words to make her think twice, to undermine her confidence.  Instead, he probably just emphasised his own anxiety.  The gun still did not lower.  She held it assuredly, like someone who knew how to use it.  How many times had she held a gun before?  How many times had she used one?  This was a woman who had just escaped from a maximum-security prison, a place reserved for only the most hardened criminals.  That green tunic was covered in blood.  He had assumed it had gotten there helping the injured, but now he realised the folly of such an assumption.  Just how had she shaken off captivity and made it to the loading bays?  What death and destruction had she left in her wake?  It was unlikely that any escape had gone unchallenged, even amid a riot.  She would have had to fight her way out.

This was no ordinary criminal; ordinary criminals did not end up in a prison in the heart of the Dark Zones.  For the Union to put people this far out, they considered them too dangerous to imprison closer to the civilised systems.  This woman was desperate and running.  She had fought, murdered, and tricked her way off the asteroid and now she had him in her sights.  If she thought she could fly Spirit, why would she not just add him to her death toll?

As his anxiety levels spiked, he panicked.  Fear took over.  Instinctively, without thinking of the consequences, his hand reached to the side and grabbed at the concealed gun.

The end of her barrel did not glow red as he had imagined, but there was a bright flash.  At the same time, he felt a tug and intense heat on his arm.  A split second later, he heard an almighty crash.  There was the briefest pinch of time to consider if he had been shot, and then the whole flight deck seemed to contort around him.  He saw Kayla suddenly lift off her feet and then there was another flash, this one more brilliant and blinding.

Then nothing.  Blackness.  Everything just stopped.

+     +     +

The Noche dropped out of jump.  For the two on board, it felt like a dead stop, but it happened over a distance of several million miles.  As the vessel slid through the dark void, powerful computers frantically calculated the molecular adjustments necessary for the stabilisers to maintain the integrity of the hull.  Thankfully, they managed to hold the ship together.

Kayla had never intended to hit Messiah with the shot.  She had only wanted to warn him and prevent him getting to the concealed weapon.  Quite where she had intended the blast to go, though, was unclear.  She had not counted on it striking the edge of the instrument panels, blowing a hole in one and sending a ripple of energy careering through others.  The Noche’s jump drive disengaged immediately and without the ability to bring the vessel to a controlled stop, the emergency systems dragged the ship back to normal space.  It was a miracle of engineering that under such cosmic forces, the ship did not rip apart.

It was also a miracle that the two inhabitants, both thrown across the flight deck by the sudden change in the craft’s velocity, avoided serious injury.  Spinning as she went, Kayla was hurled backwards.  Her forehead smashed into one of the walls, knocking her unconscious.  The pilot briefly blacked out too but was back a couple of seconds later.  Thrown from the pilot’s seat, his chest collided with the control panel, bruising a rib, and leaving him breathless.  There was also pain in his elbow and, when he looked, he saw charring to the shirt.  It was a minor burn from the flash of the pistol blast.  Boy, that had been close!

Importantly, he was alive, and the prevailing thought was relief that the blast had only grazed him.  The relief turned to panic though as a barrage of loud alarms and red flashing strobes filled the flight deck.  Warning lights he had forgotten even existed were illuminating the control panels.  This did not look good.

“The jump,” he gasped.  He used the pilot’s seat to pull himself up, wincing at the pain in his chest.

With most things bolted or moulded to the craft’s structure, there was little visible sign of the violent stop, apart from the woman sprawled to his right, the gun lying at his feet, and a few strewn items of junk he had not tidied.  He intuitively knew what had happened.  The smouldering panel by his side was one tell-tale sign, the notable absence of the engine’s gentle throb another.  They had stopped.  Through the windows, he could see stationary stars instead of the usual streaky blurs that accompanied a jump.

The smell of burning electrics made him cough.  On looking closer at the mess beside him, he let out a desperate moan.  Not only were several panels in complete darkness, the panel next to where he had been sitting had a large gouge cut into it, through which he could see the glowing embers of damaged circuits. In those embers, the remains of a weapon still sat, now misshapen and moulded to the plastic lip that had concealed it.  She must have been only a matter of inches from blowing his arm from his shoulder.

“Stupid!” he cursed.  “Stupid!”

He bent to pick up her dropped gun; the movement was not easy after the whack in his side.  She had taken a heavier blow, a large abrasion evident on her forehead.  The wound by her eye had not taken kindly to the impact either and was bleeding again.  Despite the last few moments of madness, he still felt pity for the woman.  Pity was not going to change the situation, however.  She had been a rash fool.

He checked her pulse.  It was strong and her breathing regular.  To his misguided sympathy, that was a relief, but it also meant she might soon regain consciousness and wreak more havoc.  This time, he would be the one with the gun.  He quickly patted her down, to make sure she was not carrying another.  She was clean.

He left her side and returned to the pilot’s seat.  The energy bolt had disabled a large section of the instrument panel.  Sliding beneath the console, he saw that the blast had thankfully not sunk too deep and most of the circuitry looked intact.  The breakers had done their job and prevented the energy surge spreading, but a quick scan did reveal several systems offline.  Those included life support and navigation.  Fantastic.

Already, self-repair nano-bots were busy doing their job.  He could not see them, but he could see the low, green light they emitted as they danced across the network of fibres.  When he re-emerged from beneath the console, a few previously extinguished instruments were already re-illuminated.  As he watched, another couple flickered back on.  Around the blast hole, a green light revealed more bots steadily rebuilding the damaged housing.

He resisted early optimism, knowing all this could be a false dawn.  The nano-bots used an incredible amount of energy and these were big repairs.  It would be touch and go whether they could complete the repairs before the depletion of the energy reserves. Keen to preserve as much power as possible, he turned off the alarms and dropped the lighting to emergency levels.  They were too far from a sun or other energy sources to recharge.

“Light years from anywhere,” he pondered, “no idea where, no jump capability, for all I know oxygen could be leaking and low… we will not know we are dying until the dizziness and by then it’s too late.”

“You should not have gone for the gun,” a groggy voice said.

He visibly jumped and turned to face her, his tender torso screaming at the sudden movement.  She was sitting on the floor, cradling her forehead with one arm whilst the other leant to the side, steadying.

“Do you realise what you’ve fucking done?” he asked angrily.  “If I cannot get her going again, we are in big trouble!  We almost certainly need the jump back online too, as the chances we are near a habitable system are low.  You might just have killed us, you stupid bitch!”

“Don’t call me that,” she moaned.

Her head was throbbing and the room spinning wildly.  It was impossible to focus.  All she heard was that derogatory word and it transported her back to the medical suite with her square-faced tormentor.

“What?” he said.  “Which one?  Stupid?  Or bitch?”

“Do not call me that,” she said again, this time with more aggression.

The strength of her own voice gave her false confidence, for when she tried to stand, she found nothing but a swimming sensation.  One of the crew chairs broke her fall and she clung to it, somehow manoeuvring her backside on to the cushioned seat. With soothing hands, she rubbed at her temples, slumping forward, disorientated and in pain.

“Do not call me that,” she muttered for a third time.

Messiah wanted to push on and continue his verbal assault on the woman.  Damn, she deserved it!  Anger and fear burned inside, and he needed to exact retribution for this dangerous predicament.  He wanted to strike out whilst the target was down, smashing home with vicious words, but he could not. That sympathy was back again.

Only a few hours had passed since he had first seen those green eyes peek out from beneath that matted hair.  They had been eyes of desperation.  Was it all part of her act?  Partly, perhaps, but not entirely.  Those bruises, the malnourished frame, the hatred for her captors – none of those things were an act.  What had this woman been through?  What suffering had tormented her to this point of desperation, where she would endanger her own life so irrationally?

“Are you okay?” he asked, the snippets of concern winning.  He cursed being such a soft fool.

“No,” she said, “do I fucking look okay?”

He huffed: “No, you’ve looked terrible from the moment I saw you.  Tell me what happened back there.  Tell me what made you shoot at me.”

“You are a gunrunner,” she winced, “and you looked like you were going for a weapon.  I was hardly going to let you get there first.”

“I would have never used it,” he said calmly and reluctantly.

His words held such modest honesty.  Even in her current state, a debilitating headache clouding her mind, she could hear he was telling the truth.

“Who are you?” he asked softly.

“I can’t,” she said.

She pressed her hand harder against her forehead, a pained grimace crossing her face.  The empty identifier socket caught the light and selfishly he moved to activate his own, to check his aches were nothing more than bruising.  Then he remembered the contents of one of the many boxes tucked away behind the wall panels and decided he could wait, she needed checking over first.

His earlier tidying had mostly involved putting items out of sight, but in doing so, he had come across a variety of useful things accumulated over the years.  Treasures, memories.  Amongst them was a collection of identifiers, hidden in a box.  He retrieved it and showed the contents to Kayla, his triumphant face in stark contrast to her own painful wince.

“No,” she said, the wince turning into alarm, “you can’t plug me in.”

It did not take a genius to figure out what she meant.  A prisoner on the run did not want to put their genetic signature on the network; it would be the first place they would look.  No doubt, search worms were already scouring the channels, looking for any sign of the fugitive.

“It’s fine,” he reassured, plucking a piece from the box.  “This one is a third generation, quite basic, no DNA recognition, no tracking or snooping software.  Totally anonymous.  It still contains many useful programmes though, including self-diagnosis, and that’s what you need right now.  We had better make sure that bang on the head is nothing serious.”

She was not in a position to argue.  For the first time in a long time, an identifier was clipped into her wrist.  Although there was no sensation from the device, her psychosomatic response was one of repulsion.  She would have ripped it from her body and tossed it to the floor, had she been able to move her hands from her pained forehead.  Through narrow eyes, she saw the light flicker green.  Rational thought told her that third generation was fine, it would not be referencing her DNA on the network database, lighting up a million flags all over the galaxy.  There was little room for rational thought, however, with her skull shrouded in this painful hue.  From the skin on her arms, the calming, alluring scent of bath soaps tried their best to infiltrate her thoughts.  She tried to cling to the hope the pleasant aroma offered, but there was too much pain and it was too easy for all the desperation to overpower.  She was damned, it seemed, to take one-step forward and then two steps back.

Messiah activated it on her behalf.  He bypassed all the set-up to save time.  She could do that later, if Spirit’s life support systems restored quickly enough for there to be an actual later.  In the diagnostics tools he found the medical menu, pausing over the full assessment option.  Having seen the poor state of her naked body, perhaps that was something for later too.  He did not think the results of such an assessment would help this situation.  Instead, he focused the programme on the part of her body most urgently in need of attention.  The light began to flash as the device connected to her nervous system.

“What’s the verdict?” she moaned.

“Well,” he said, scanning the projected display.  “Spirit is fucked, so this may all be irrelevant, but for now… you have a minor concussion.  There are no bleeds or significant swelling.  No injury to the brain, which is good because you are one crazy bit…” a pause to consider his choice of word, “…crazy lady.”

She made a noise that could have been a stifled laugh, or, indeed, a huff of annoyance.  “Don’t call me that,” she said.

“I didn’t.”

“Good.”

He turned off the projection and dropped into the seat beside her, the pain in his sides making him bend double as he did.  Later, he would use his own identifier to confirm there were no fractured ribs, but it would take a while before the discomfort faded.

“I’ll swap you pain relief for your name?” he said.  “If we are going to die together, I want to at least know who I am drawing my last breath with.”

She managed to move the hands from her forehead to peer at him from beneath the black mop.  Her green eyes, just slits but nonetheless piercing, met with his.  This was how she had managed to get on board in the first place.  What a bad move that had turned out to be.  Tricked by a pair of needy, sorrowful, female eyes.  Gullible idiot.

“Kayla,” she said hesitantly.

“Kayla?  That’s a start.  Kayla who?”

“That’s all you are getting.”

Messiah nodded.  “You’ll want something for the pain?”

“I’ve wanted something for the pain for four years,” she said.  “Yes, yes please.”

He brought over a standard medi-app, gently applying its smooth surface to her forehead.  Seconds later, the pain began to subside.

“I was not trying to kill you,” she re-asserted, “but you are running guns.  For them.  What kind of person would do that?  I cannot trust anyone who provides them with weapons.  What they do to humans is beyond evil.”

“They are human too…”

“Barely!”

There was a time when she would have attacked racial intolerance, when it appalled her to the point of taking up arms against it.  That part of her, the part that defended the weak and fought for justice, was gone.  They had killed so much of who she had been, leaving no capacity for anything other than the fight for survival.  She was aware of what she had lost and how much she had changed.  Flickering lights on the damaged flight console caught her attention.  She could not believe how reckless she had been.  They had made her do that, those Kamdo scum.  The rational, measured, principled old Kayla would never have been so rash.

“They beat me,” she said, “they starved me.”

He averted his gaze and then thought better of it.  The power in those eyes did not deserve to be ignored.

“They spat at me.”

The eyes widened and she let the medi-app fall away from her forehead. There was no rage in her, not like before.  This was controlled, it was calm, it was unemotional.

“They left people to die, those who were too weak to work.”

Not a single blink from those startling green eyes.

“They humiliated us, made some fight for sport, and made others do unspeakable things.”

Kayla paused.  He thought he saw tears but then she finally blinked and if there ever had been any water there, it was gone.

“They humiliated me.  They raped me.  Repeatedly.  They raped me.  Took it in turns.  Both holes.  They tore me apart.”

Now Messiah had to look away.  He rolled his gaze to the ceiling as if it were the heavens and uttered prayers to a god he did not believe in.

“And then they butchered me,” she continued.  “When I was at my lowest, when I was in pain and humiliated at their hands, they took it further.  They stitched me up like an old teddy bear.  I dread to think what mess they have left, but the toilet hurts like hell.”

“The riot?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing to do with me, but I wish it had been! I took my chance though.  Killed one of them and made the woman who had butchered me pay for what she did.  That felt good!”

Messiah stood and surveyed the flight controls.  He took nothing in, unable to focus on assessing the repairs.  Other damage of a far more personal nature was occupying his thoughts.  The poor woman.

“And you sell them guns,” she sighed.  No venom now, not towards him, just a despairing acceptance of the bad situation.

“I’m sorry,” he eventually said.

“Sorry will not bring my fanny back, will it?”  That came with a chuckle, but it was humour fringing on hysteria.

“Why were you in there?” he busied himself with a few idle checks on the instrumentation, avoiding eye contact.

“Not guilty,” she said, only she knew in the eyes of a corrupt galactic government and the misled masses, she was.  “I am guilty only of fighting for what is right, for noble causes, if there is such a thing.  After the last few years, I am no longer sure there is.  I believed there was though, the old me did.  I believed that right and wrong mattered and that I was on the side of the right.  Life, I got.  Life without parole.”

“Only heavy crimes carry such heavy sentences.”

“Or famous ones…” she lamented.  “Crimes that they want to suppress, to make sure that others do not follow suit.  Sentences are not only there to punish; they are there to deter others.  I was a show.  No doubt, they would have executed me if the constitution allowed it or they could have got away with it.  They executed others, unnoticed, below the media radar.  Hard labour at the edge of the explored galaxy was the best they could do with me.  I survived four years in there.  I would not have survived another.”

Messiah danced back through his own timeline, to points four years ago.  Along the way he pieced together his past with corresponding news events, wondering if any of the information she had given so far offered clues to her identity.  Spending life amongst the stars played havoc with anyone’s timeline - no seasons to cling to, no regular days and nights, time moving differently across different worlds.  Although standardisation around Earth’s time system helped, it still led to lots of guesswork on exactly how much time had elapsed.

As he dredged his personal archives, something jumped out.  It was an event that stuck a dagger in the heart of humanity, and it was easily recalled.  A huge media storm had followed the incident and thrown out heroes and villains a-plenty, none more so than one particular player.  There was no name remembered, only an image, spread across every channel for months.  When he looked at the gaunt woman sitting across from him, she bore no resemblance to the image in his mind’s eye.  It could not be the same woman.  In a galaxy this large, with hundreds of billions of people crawling all over it, no doubt there were many criminals that the Union felt worthy of the Kamdo treatment.  Unless she told him, or unless he spent days trawling the network, he was not going to find out any more about the deeds that had put her in prison.

“Are we going to die here?” she asked, calmly.  “After escaping hell, do I get out, only to lose the fight here instead?”

Messiah frowned and glared at the controls again, perhaps hoping a stern face might influence the efforts of the auto-repair systems.  Certainly, the desk held more illumination than before and, able to focus again, he could see that the life-support panels looked restored.  He ran a hand across them, plucking up a holographic projection of dials and readouts.

“Oxygen is flowing normally,” he said.  “That means if we are going to die here, it will be from starvation.  With the enzyme and protein stores as they are, there is enough food on board to keep us going for a while, possible even a couple of years.”

Another part of the panels flickered spasmodically.  It was likely re-booting or running a self-diagnosis programme.  Next to it, the navigation section continued to bask in the neon glow of the nano-bots.  The hole cut into the console by the energy beam was now noticeably smaller than it had been.  With pinched fingers, he drew up a colourful stellar map.  Expanding out, it surrounded him in a kaleidoscope of dancing stars, a tiny representation of the Noche resting at the centre.

“No man’s land,” he said, trying to find a familiar reference point.  “We are sitting between systems.  Two years might sound a long time, but without the jump we could spend two hundred trying to get to the nearest star.”

“Any outposts?” she asked.  “Any passing ships?”

“No outposts showing, they do not tend to put them out this deep.  Unlikely anyone will pass and even if any do, they will almost certainly be in jump mode so they would not spot us.  Chances of a random encounter with another craft are infinitely small, infinitely.  We could end up just drifting here, undiscovered, lost forever.”

It was a sobering thought.

A glance under the panels, however, revealed a more positive outlook.  The minute arcs of light dazzled everywhere as the tiny workers reconstructed from the patterns stored in their programming.  Optimism forced its way through his anxiety, and he considered whether to share the good news with Kayla.  Perhaps she needed to feel the threat a while longer as punishment for her reckless behaviour.  Despite her responsibility for his pain and costing him a fortune in repairs - the nano-bots consumed in a reconstruction of this scale were expensive - it was just not in his nature to cause distress to others.  Besides, it was hard to conceal his relief.  When he looked back at Kayla, his broad grin had returned.

“We might just be okay,” he beamed.

A smile danced across her dry lips, briefly lighting up those ashen features.  In that moment, he glanced a beauty that the grey complexion and thin face concealed.  That beauty poked at his memories and he thought again of the media frenzy from four years before.  No.  In his desire to know more about his passenger, he was simply making huge leaps and falsely connecting two unrelated dots.  This was not that woman.  It could not be.

Could it?

“That’s good!” Kayla said.  “Genuinely, I am sorry I caused this mess.  I guess neither of us is the right side of the law.  I have been through a lot and my head is all over the place.  You trusted me enough to let me on board and you have treated me well.  Maybe I should trust you back?”

“It would be good if you did, Kayla,” he said, his smile broadening, the warmth in his kind face easing the tension on the flight deck.

He kept the smile there, despite the uncertainty behind it.  It was best to keep his suspicions hidden for now.  He could forgive her the deceit to escape the Kamdo and trick her way on to Spirit.  He could even forgive her foolhardy discharge of the gun and the damage it had caused, including nearly ripping his arm from his body.  What he could not do, however, was shake that glimpsed face from his head.  There was a growing certainty it was a face seen before.  If this was that person, the woman responsible for the atrocities at Three Zero, that was something beyond forgiveness.

Chapter Nine

“Locks upon locks!”  Doctor Schmidt screamed at the men in black suits.  “I told you!  Locks upon locks!”

“The subject is conscious and restored,” the head suit replied, “that is all we need.”

The doctor waved a dismissive hand; they did not get it.  Whether he was conscious was irrelevant, her concern was completing the process and they had taken that from her.  Silenced for years, hidden away like a mad old woman, wheeled out at Chilake’s demand, and they had not even given her the respect and time to allow her to finish her work.  She was furious.  Her life’s work was incomplete, and they were denying her that legacy.

“I need more time with him,” she said, “to complete the removal and restructuring.”

“Can he answer our questions?” the suit asked.  “Yes, you said.”

“Yes!  No!” she replied confusingly.  “It will damage him to do so.  He will be left trying to reconcile two personalities in one head, two conflicting sets of memories.  Any answers you receive may be jumbled and the longer he battles the conflicts the more damage it will do to the memory synapses.  You will destroy his mind completely.”

“He has limited long-term value.  We just need to extract what we can from him as quickly as possible.  Will he be able to answer our questions or not?”

Frustrated, with fists clenched by her side, she turned away from them.  This was as close as she was going to get.  She was aging and had little hope of a body regeneration.  Even if she managed to stay on a planet with the medical tech levels of Meridian Rise, there was no hope of finding the necessary funds for the procedure.  It was hardly like the Union would agree to fund it!  And so late in her life, facing her mortal dusk, she was about to be cast aside again.  It would not be long before she was returned to another cold outpost on some godforsaken ice-world, and she would be lucky to survive another year in those conditions.  This had been her last chance to perfect her life’s work.  It had been her last chance to prove she could put a subject back to exactly where he had been before, to remove the false memories as if they had never existed.

“Can he answer our questions?” the suit demanded to know.

“Yes!” she screamed angrily. “Yes!  Yes!  Yes!”

Behind her, the suit nodded, casting a wink to his colleagues.

“Thank you, Doctor Schmidt,” he said smugly.  “Thank-you so much.  I doubt we will meet again, but it has been a pleasure working with you.  If you can just wait here, we will bring you some refreshments to see you through to your transport arriving.  The Union is grateful for your continued co-operation.”

She heard the door open and footsteps shuffle away, but she did not turn round.  The last shuffle was the head suit.  He paused before leaving, saying back to her, “Long live the Union.”

With an unseen roll of the eyes she dutifully replied, “Long live the Union.”

The door swished closed.  It locked with a distinctive click.  She was alone with her thoughts, her anger, and an over-whelming sense of failure.

+     +     +

They had left him alone in a small room.  Apart from a rudimentary bed and a tiny table, it was empty.   He had seen the agents leave, all of them, he had watched them walk through the door.  There was no one in here with him, no one at all…

And yet, there was someone sharing the bed.  He could feel them, they were sitting so close they touched, their weight resting on his arm.  Struggling with a stiff neck, painful where the needle had gone in, he slowly turned.  There was no one there.  Whoever was pushing on his arm, they were invisible.  Jed could see straight through them, but that weight was undeniable.  He did not like this one bit.

Had he been asleep?  No, it was more than that.  He had been unconscious.  And he had been on a trip.  But where?  It was far from this place, somewhere hot and dry.  That other one, the one on his arm, knew where.  The apparition leaned in close.  It whispered of people and places, of feelings, of hopes.  It whispered of Leah.

Jed cared nothing for whispers.

There was the small issue of the rebellion at hand.  At least, there had been before that hot, dry place.  He tried to remember what he had been doing, but it hurt, and the pain clouded it out.  The apparition leaned in closer still, the weight on his arm heavier, the sound of buzzing bees filling the cell.  There was a strong smell of garlic too.  Was that Leah?  Where was she?  Where, more importantly, was Gomez?  Where was Kayla?

Pain exploded across his chest and he screamed.  Outside the cell, he heard voices and movement.  They were watching him.  That was why he had to focus and ignore the apparition.  He had to be in the here and now.  The ghost on his arm, the whispers, the smells, and even the fucking buzzing bees did not matter.  They all felt like they did, each of them important in their own way, but he needed to ignore them.  The threat was here, waiting outside that door.

The man at his side leant in again and whispered a name.  Pike.  Now that was someone that really did matter.  Jed Luca tried to push the apparition away, but he would not leave.  This is a good place, Pike told him, and we like it here.  They could stay awhile, have some food, enjoy the flowers.

“No, I don’t want to!” he screamed at the empty room.

The bees mattered too.  It all mattered.  He might not want it to, but it all fucking mattered.

He focused.  It hurt like hell but from somewhere he found the energy to stay in the here and now.  The room snapped back, and the ghost was gone.  There was no smell of garlic, just a hint of detergent.  There was no buzzing either, only the rustling from behind the door.  The whispers fell silent, the muffled voices of those outside replacing them.  Only the horrendous pain remained, reminding him just how fragile this reality was.

“Come on then!” he shouted angrily at the door.  “I’m sick of waiting!  I’m ready for you!”

“I’m not!” Pike interrupted.

He ignored the unwelcome visitor.  This was a game, and a cruel one at that.  He wanted none of it, none of the wicked lies.  Jed held on to his focus.  Now was good.  Here was good.

“Come on!” he screamed again.

There was more noise from behind the door and then, unexpectedly, it slid to one side.  He sat up tall, surprised someone had answered his calls.  Three men in black suits entered.  They were remarkably well-groomed.

“Tell us your name,” the middle agent asked.

“Jed Luca,” he said, without hesitation.  “You know that; stop playing games.”

“And who is Pike Macey?”

He thought of garlic and the apparition.

“I have no idea,” he said, calmly.

Somewhere, Leah was crying but she was no longer his concern.

“I am Jed Luca,” he repeated, “and you must be the Union scum who locked me up in here?  Am I next?  I saw what you did to Gomez!  Are you just toying with me until it’s my turn? No more games!”

“There are no games here, Mister Luca,” the man in the middle said.  He wore a self-satisfied smile with his suit; something was going to plan.  “The time for games has long gone, as is your friend, Malcolm Gomez.  He has long since turned to cosmic dust.  No more games, Mister Luca, now we mean business.”

The men advanced further into the room.  Somewhere, Leah was crying for her unborn baby.  Beside her, the invisible Pike sobbed too.  This was wrong, all so very wrong.

+     +     +

Five blue lagoons were probably two more than sensible prior to the senate, but hey, he was president.  They certainly made for a shorter meeting, or at least it felt that way, although the four-hour agenda ran its full course.  Mostly, it was process, with several days of sub-committees and forums to follow.  Today’s meeting received notification of new appointments, confirmation of regulations passed by the different sector parliaments, ratifications of previous rulings, and reference to upcoming bills and events of significance.  Routine, for the most part.  Nothing too controversial.  Until, of course, the escape from Petang Base raised its ugly head towards the end of the agenda.

By then, the alcohol had mostly worn off and the micro sleeps taken in the earlier parts of the meeting had passed.  As such, he was able to provide a coherent, competent, and comprehensive response, or at least it played that way to his own ears.  Everything was under control.  No need to overreact or be alarmist.  She would be found.  Union forces were on the hunt and the Kamdo regime, although not entirely happy about the situation, were cooperating.

The anonymous nature of the questioning which boomed around the huge senate chamber, spoken by the same regal voice, allowed for the timid to be brave.  Allegations of acts of aggression and assertions flagships were unnecessary, criss-crossed with contradictory calls for more actions and heavy criticism of the Kamdo role in this fiasco.  Cliché after cliché flowed from the floor and he absorbed them all calmly.  If this were all they had to throw at him, they could throw it all day.

The murmurings continued long after the computerised announcer had ceased to share the comments.  With nearly five thousand representatives gathered in the high-sided, circular auditorium, a few conversations could soon build into a low drone of chatter.  As with the upper council, not all senators attended in person.  There was a healthy turnout though, either in the form of holograms or through the permanent ambassadors who represented their systems here on Earth.  With the escalating volume of conversation, only the anonymous boom of the speaker would be loud enough to call for silence.  There was no need, however, with the session drawing to a close.  The president was happy they continue to prattle to each other if it meant no one was prattling at him.

So, they were disgruntled about the McGann situation, so what?  The president was disgruntled with many things as well.  There was too much militant activity in several of the younger systems, with many showing contempt towards the rule of the Union.  The leaders of these frontiers seemed reluctant to step forward and openly condemn rebel causes.  The spread of humanity was large, incomprehensively so to most, and it needed a framework of laws and authority to bind it and maintain the peace.  The Union provided that; without it, there would be chaos and wars without end.  The representatives of those same systems could throw out all the criticisms they wished, and they could quote tales of alleged atrocities, prisoner mistreatment, concerns that officials were abusing their positions, but none of that mattered to him.  The disregard they showed for the rule of the Union was the issue.  Ironically, the same sectors who had allowed the likes of Kayla McGann and her associates to wreak havoc were now the ones condemning her escape.  Oh, how short their memories were!  They did not see that the renegade diseases they allowed to fester in their cities could soon turn to epidemics.

In both the senate and the council, there were elements who felt that a swift military clampdown on those systems was the only answer.  Chilake was not a military man, he was a politician, and politics fed off the whims of public opinion.  If he wanted the majority to stay behind the Union cause, then waging unjustified war was a risky strategy.  It could create martyrs and the unrest would spread in their name.  For now, rioters were seen as a nuisance, and those who took stronger action were seen as terrorists.  Launching an unjust conflict could turn those terrorists into freedom fighters.

The Kamdo, however, did offer a different proposition.  These descendants of the Koreans had chosen to isolate themselves from the rest of humanity many generations ago.  Now, they were regarded by the rest of the galaxy with distrust, despite the stability brought through the Cairo Accord.  The president was not naïve and recognised that a conflict with the Kamdo could have a galvanising effect on the people of the empire.  His decision to despatch the battlecruisers, to dance towards such a conflict, had that in mind.  However, the hawks could not harangue him into a hurried war, any more than he would succumb to calls for further appeasement from the pacifists.  It was a fine balance and a tough call, and he really did not know which way it would go.

As he left the auditorium under the usual armed guard, he spotted a familiar, friendly face.  It was only twenty-four hours since he had seen him last, when the glow of Titan had illuminated the council chamber.  Although the council members all sat in this lower house, it was rare to encounter one amongst the mass of system representatives.  Rare and uplifting after the pressure of five thousand pairs of eyes bearing down on him.

“Ah, my friend,” the president said warmly.

The guards recognised Councillor Iqbal Bahir too.  They parted to let the men embrace but watched with a healthy suspicion.  This place had seen audacious assassinations before; it was always a threat.

“A hard session, challenging times,” said Bahir, with a smiling resignation.  “You did well in there given the circumstances.  They were after your blood.”

Chilake shrugged.  “It is the nature of the job, I should expect nothing less, and they are here to be the voice of the people they represent.”

“Very magnanimous,” his friend replied.  “I agree that many attend for that reason, but, alas, some are here for far more self-serving purposes.”

The two men continued to walk away from the auditorium, guided by the guards through the throng of senators, ambassadors, and aides.

“The purity of your politics has always been refreshing, Iqbal,” said Chilake.  “If only everyone shared your ideals.  One day, you would make an excellent president.”

Bahir laughed.  “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, “that is not in my plans, too much profile, too much pressure, too little time at home.  I am happy where I am and planning a nice retirement.  Besides, you are not going anywhere.  There are a couple of more decades in you.”

“Perhaps if I find a good enough body rebuild!  This one is well beyond its expiry date.  I need a good dose of regen to kick start these stem cells.”

They were away from the communal areas now and the guards loosened their cordon.  It allowed for a more private conversation.

“But you are not planning on going anywhere, are you?” the councillor asked.  There was genuine concern, which was nice for the president to hear.

“And leave the galaxy in the hands of a warmonger like Delaney, a hot head like Estevez, or pacifists like Steph or Potts?  Not likely.  The timing would not be good either, not with McGann on the loose…”

Doubt showed all over the councillor’s face.  His eyebrows raised slightly to ask a silent “are you sure?”

President Chilake placed a reassuring hand on the arms of his oldest political ally.

“Have no fear,” he said, “I am going nowhere.  Not now, not until this little crisis has blown over, and not for a good few years then.  I still enjoy the job far too much and retirement means I would have to spend more time with the wife.”

The two men shared a laugh.

“And less with Chef,” encouraged Bahir.

“Ha, no, she’ll be coming with me into retirement anyway. I could not cope without Chef!  Are you heading off straight away?  Join me for dinner on the cruiser if you wish?  See what delicacies she dishes up this evening?”

Bahir considered the offer for a moment and then nodded.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “that would be good.  We have plenty to talk about.  Plenty from today.  The mood amongst the senate is not good.”

“Never is.”

They entered the lift that ascended to the landing bays.  This was the presidential lift, straight up to the cruiser.  Another security measure, although the ornate décor and fittings suggested that more than a touch of vanity had also influenced the design.

“It’s getting worse, Denvour, we cannot dismiss the growing unrest.”

It was rare to hear his first name, let alone the full version.  His wife called him Den but seldom did anyone else opt for anything other than his formal title.  This friendship went back a long way though, back before Denvour Chilake became president.  Between these two men, first names were fine.

“There are systems out there laughing at the Union,” the councillor continued.  “They have been waiting for an opportunity like this.  Governments will latch on to it and blame the council, they will point to antiquated out of date institutions, and they will call for change.  Anarchists will rally to that call.  And with McGann back in circulation, perhaps they will find a dangerous cause to follow.”

This was nothing the president had not already considered.  He politely nodded in agreement, allowing his friend to explain his assessment of the situation.

“We cannot just sit back…” Bahir mused.

“And we have not,” said Chilake.  “The musketeers are all now deep in the Dark Zones and they will hunt her down.  We have invoked The Indigo Protocol and I am hearing positive progress reports.  Our forces in those dissident systems continue to strengthen.  If the local governments cannot take control, we will do it for them.”

“But will it be enough?  What if we do not find McGann?  What then? What if the anarchists become more organised and unite across the systems?”

The president laughed.  “My dear friend, they cannot even unite across the same planet!  They are mostly just disillusioned, unemployed kids – bored, dissatisfied, angry at the system.  We have given them nothing to believe and we have let them see the Union as the enemy, but we can fix that.”

Chilake smirked at the councillor:

“Do you really think I would send out three of our finest battlecruisers into the Dark Zones to find one woman?  Do you really think I would slice though the terms of the Cairo Accord just to stitch it back together again?  The Accord is gone, my friend, we will never see it again.  There is a sure-fire way to unite a people, and that is to give them a common enemy.”

“You mean war?” asked Bahir reluctantly.

“Hopefully, it will not come to that, but the Kamdo have no right to dictate to the Union.  Those are Union territories, and we will bring them back under our control.  Securing them and making the Kamdo heel will lift the mood of the people and rally them to the righteous cause of the Union.  We must never forget why these so-called ‘outdated institutions’ exist; we are enjoying the longest peace in history.  The Kamdo flames threaten to burn that peace; their fire needs to be extinguished.  If that does necessitate war, then so be it.  It will be swift and decisive.  Long live the Union.”

Councillor Bahir could not bring himself to smile back.  These stakes were too high, far too high.  “Long live the Union,” he quietly replied.

+     +     +

An initial scan of the Clintos system had revealed a few small vessels and a couple of transporters but nothing to match the one in the grainy images captured in the cargo bay at Petang Base. Although that ship looked incapable of jump, it was unlikely McGann had planned an escape in a vessel that could not, so Meyer was assuming they were no longer in this solar system.  On the slim chance they were still in the neighbourhood, hiding in the gaseous atmosphere of one of the outer planets, or on an asteroid or moon, drones had been despatched.  But he did not expect to find her any time soon, nor did he wish to.  The ongoing search was a charade.  The longer she remained on the run, the more anxious the inner systems would become, and the more readily they would accept the military remaining in the Dark Zones.

Therein lay the truth; this was about much more than one fugitive.  The descendants of the explorers who had first pushed beyond the edges of the Hadrian’s Gate Nebula had chosen to segregate themselves from the rest of humanity.  If they had simply hidden away, hoping to go unnoticed, quietly forging their own future and civilisation, then they would have been left alone.  However, the threats and scorn they threw towards the Union and the inner systems was relentless, and not the behaviour of a regime looking for the quiet life.  This was no different to many cultural clashes since the dawn of time, only now the threat came from another part of the galaxy and not across an ocean.  Even the Cairo Accord, which had not only allowed the Kamdo the right to self-govern, but had also opened up trading channels for more commodities to reach this region, had done little to silence their perpetual derision of the Union.

Six hundred light years away, the senate continued to watch on, meeting the icy threats with soft diplomacy and feeble sanctions.  What choice had they, the liberals would argue, with the Union’s authority stretched and challenged on many fronts?  The Kamdo were out of sight and as far away from Earth as humanity had ventured.  Out of sight, out of mind.  They were held at arm’s length by the safety of distance and the knowledge that their technology was significantly inferior.  Kamdo propaganda spoke of destructive new weapons, incredible scientific advances, and the might of their glorious empire.  It was useful rhetoric in keeping their regime intact, but those weapons did not exist, their science was backward, and any glory only existed in the heads of their despotic leaders.  There was no military threat coming from a civilisation with so few vessels even capable of jump, but their hostility could not go unpunished.

Here, in the Kamdo back garden, sat Commander Elliot Meyer.  Whilst not welcome by the locals, his deployment did have the support of most of the upper and lower chambers. To the commander, Union appeasement of yesteryear had built towards this moment.  More than any time in its modern history, humanity needed an enemy to rally its thousands of diverse cultures and societies.  A mystique shrouded these distant Kamdo tribes, and that allowed the politics of fear to thrive, providing humanity with a common enemy.  The peoples of Earth and the civilised systems were self-righteous about their way of life, as sordid and materialistic as it often was, and longed to protect it against the threat from beyond Hadrian’s Gate.

Across the millennia, human eyes had gazed to the sky, wondering if an alien menace would one day appear.  Exploration of the neighbouring stars had pushed the alien threat further and further away.  Now, the politicians needed new justifications to keep increasing those military budgets and to justify strengthening the Union’s mighty defence force.  History was littered with the same political strategy.  The masses never learned.  If there was no alien threat, create your own aliens.  The mysterious, sinister Kamdo fitted that bill perfectly.

When the showdown with this enemy came, be that in hours, days or weeks, the boastful claims of the regime would be shown to be paper bags, blowing in the wind.  Politicians would shrug off the one-sided massacre that followed.  Some would protest and cry foul, but mostly the masses would be indifferent, going about their safe lives much as they had before.  History always allowed the victors to move on, trampling over the bodies of the dead, looking for the next civilisation to demonise and then annihilate.

The funding that such tensions and conflicts released paid Elliot Meyer to sit in the commander’s chair of the most formidable killing machine ever built.  For that reason, and the many other trappings of power that went with this job, he was happy to play his part in the politicians’ games.  Excited, yes, at the eruptions about to tear through the council, ripping the president from his post, but not as enthusiastic as he was for the glory to come.  He could not wait to unleash the force of Aramis.  He was eager to fire that accelerator cannon, or launch the nuclear torpedoes.  The prospect aroused him as much as Ana Cholewinska had the day before.  The idea that he could destroy an entire planet made him want to explode.

In the distance, to the side of the Clintos sun, glowed Eropidous.  This far out, the planet appeared tiny.  Earlier, through a long-range scope, he had observed Porthos entering the atmosphere.  Now, that ship was a dot on the display before him.  As it hovered menacingly, he trusted it was terrifying to the primitive inhabitants below.

Intimidating.  Waiting.  Provoking.

Soon.

It was only a matter of time.

+     +     +

Halfway across the system, Meyer’s lover stared back at a similar display showing a similar sized dot.  Although their passion was wild, she was not observing the much-magnified image of his battlecruiser through the clouds of desire, but with the cold, unemotional resolve of a Union commander.  She wanted to know Aramis was still there, where it was meant to be, and that it had their back.

Of course, her plan was clear, and they would not need the support of the other ship.  The first sign of aggression from below and the fireworks would start.  If no aggression came, then there were plenty of ways to incite it.  Ultimately, there was only one-way this was going to end, with the battlecruisers leaving this system ablaze, before moving on to the next.

Ana Cholewinska believed her command and this crew were as much pioneers as those first settlers.  Whilst humans had been in this system for many years, the Union had seldom ventured this far.  This mission put them on the brink of expansion.  With the firepower at their disposal, they would clear the way for the Union to bring forth new colonies, consigning the scourge of the Kamdo to the history books.

She turned her attention from the distant Aramis and gazed instead on the planet below.  What a rocky mess it was.  The landscape was similar to many of the galaxy’s habitable planets, similar, indeed, to the first planet colonised.  That one had glowed red due to the high iron content in that Martian soil.  This one had a green tint, a planet rich in the worthless glauconite mineral.  Mars had been terraformed over two hundred years.  With today’s technology, a planet like this, with a stable atmosphere, greenhouse gasses and water, could be terraformed in a matter of months.  She imagined watching the planet evolve before her eyes, the explosion of life thrown outwards from the embryotic funnels to spread flora and fauna all over the globe.  Within two years, Eropidous could be home to millions of her kind.

Pioneers.  A noble cause to believe in.  When she set fire to the primitive civilisation below, it would be for the greater, long term good of the human race.  There would be no guilt at the deaths of men, women, and children.  With such strength of conviction, there was no place for any sense of remorse.  That conviction was her coffee, sweetened with a heavy splash of psychopath.  It was a drink she and Meyer enjoyed in equal doses.

Like all good psychopaths, she even recognised herself as being one, and did not care that she was.  Her actions were right for humanity but, more importantly, they were also right for her.  Porthos would go down in history as the flagship of a great armada and Commander Cholewinska would sit alongside Sir Francis Drake and Captain Valarra.  She conveniently ignored that both those historical figures had been defenders, not aggressors.  Fame, infamy, same thing.  Either way, successive generations would recall her command and the decisive destruction of the Kamdo.

Barbarians, the lot of them.

At this altitude, with the naked eye, the only sign of life below was the occasional spark of sunshine glinting off distant buildings.  There were a dozen or so ramshackle centres large enough to call cities, but much of the population lived in small settlements.  The cities could be levelled from up high, removing a large chunk of the population in less than one of this planet’s rotations.  However, unless they simply burnt the planet, total eradication would only be possible through ground occupation.  That was an equally enjoyable prospect.

Porthos’s previous excursion against a bunch of criminals had merely tested the odd system and given her troopers a taste for blood.  This was a different proposition.  This was on a much larger scale.  Soon, this crew would come of age.

Long live the Union.

+     +     +

The Ultimate Commitment.

The Ultimate Sacrifice.

Spitak were here and the Kamdo were preparing.

Nickel was amongst them, as was his father and every other able-bodied adult from their village.  Only the old and mothers of the young avoided the draft.  They had travelled through the previous day and night, resting in short spells to eat and replenish their water from a clear river upstream of the manufacturing plants.  Now at the training camps, it was evident that those plants had been producing more than steel and plastics.  They had been busy building the defences of this world.

With no room for sentiment, those groups arriving were quickly sorted, separated, and sent to different parts of the camp.  Nickel bid an emotional but tearless goodbye to his father.  It was a man hug in appearance, but a heart-wrenching pain inside.  In that moment of parting, their eyes met.  Both knew that it was likely the last time they would see each other.  The young man broke away, turning from his kin.  He did not look back.  For as long as the gods chose to keep him alive, the other soldiers were now his family.

There was no more emotion; ahead lay his destiny.  It was a destiny shared with those who crowded around.  The Spitak had arrived in their skies, and the time had come.

The Ultimate Commitment.

The Ultimate Sacrifice.

Chapter Ten

Having secured the hold and the weapons, including the one she had brought from the prison, Messiah allowed Kayla to go back below deck.  This was shortly after the pilot confirmed life support was fully functional and the navigation systems would soon be back online.  She would need to return before jump, but he would call her.  That would be in about three hours.  He recommended she try to get some rest.  Pain relief had eased the headache, so she was hopeful she could.  He suggested, with a smile, rest might help calm her irrational urges.

Any humour in his comment was lost on her and, worse, it caused frustration.  The anguish she felt was no laughing matter.  To give the man some credit, she had shot at him and almost left them stranded in deep space, so perhaps he deserved the right to crack the odd joke.  Whilst she was not amused, Messiah’s determination to remain warm and positive was startling, if not also a little overwhelming.

Now, lying on the bed, she was struggling to sleep.  Still clothed and the lights on bright, she was trying to emulate the conditions in prison, but the bed was far too comfortable.  There was also no vile aroma and a lack of pitiful moans from fellow inmates.  She guessed this safer environment would take some getting used to.  It was all too much.  Everything that had happened, the escape, the bath, Messiah’s warmth, it was all too much.  Until she could get her head around those things, perhaps the comforting embrace of deep slumber was beyond her.

Whilst in the pits, she had nearly lost her sanity on several occasions.  Now supposedly safe, she felt no closer to retaining it.  Perhaps, accepting this ship was truly safe was part of the problem.  Cast adrift in deep space with a stranger she knew nothing about, and with Kamdo and Union forces undoubtedly trying to track her down, it was impossible to feel secure.  Where would she find that sanctuary?  Where was that haven where she could stop feeling anxious, and stop looking over her shoulder?  Where and when?

She knew the answers - nowhere and never.

In truth, any sense of feeling safe had died many years before her imprisonment.  It had died way back, even before the incident at Haram Galt.  The day she witnessed the murder of her parents was the day that any sense of security left that poor young girl.  It had never returned, and never would.  The Kamdo may have beaten, raped, and humiliated her, but she was already beyond help when they got to her.  They took her fight, but they did not start the battle.

Still, she could not sleep.

With her eyes closed, her mind was awash with horrible memories of men standing over her whilst water filled her nostrils and mouth.  At one point, she had to sit bolt upright on the bed, the sensation of drowning too real.  After that, the eyes stayed open; she was too scared to close them.

Kayla had seen many people crumble in detention.  Strong ones too, ones who came to the prison full of bravado and bluster.  Macron John stood out, about a year into her sentence.  The guards heralded his arrival, positively relishing it.  By all accounts, he was a violent man, and certainly he acted that way at the start.  Something of a hired gangster, a protector of the unscrupulous, he set about carving quite a niche in the prison pecking order.  It was no ordinary prison, though, and the ability to bully his way up the hierarchy only went so far.  The guards would often ignore inmate on inmate violence and Macron certainly thrived on that, but the guards did not allow a prisoner to ignore the rule to work. The blind eye the guards showed to his thuggish actions was mistaken as permission to refuse to go down the pits, and when he mistook their baton taps as play, and he tried to play back, that was the day she saw the big man crumble.

They gave him a beating the likes of which she had not witnessed before.  They did not stop when the screams did; they carried on.  Eventually, they left a bloodied and disfigured mess on the cell floor.  He was never the same again.  Subsequently, those menacing eyes rarely managed to lift themselves from the boots of other inmates.  When they did, a shattered soul peered out from those shattered sockets.  If that man, so strong and confident, so powerful and arrogant, had crumbled, then she knew she could too.  The right mix of fear and hopelessness, which were all they left Macron with, could bring anyone to their knees.  Many months later, the one-time hardened criminal, hung himself.

They had come so close to pushing her to that point.  So close.  Now, she supposed, she was like the survivor of a crash, crawling away from the flaming wreckage.  She was in pain from injuries, probably scarred for life, traumatised by the scenes of horror, and barely breathing, but she was alive.  And alive, she faced a choice.  She could be the way Macron John was, until she finally put that makeshift noose around her neck, or she could be alive in the way Kayla McGann knew she could be.  The warrior, the soldier, the brave and fearless woman who had loved as vigorously as she had fought.

Her thoughts turned to Malcolm Gomez.  An arm covered her eyes even though there was no one to see and no tears to flow.  As she had on many nights since Haram Galt, she told herself now was not the time to mourn.  Instead, she just sighed.  It was a deep, sorrowful sound that ended in a gentle whimper.

She had to trust Messiah.  There was no other choice.  He had not only shown her kindness, he was her only way to find that safety too.  He was whisking her to his haven, wherever that may be.  If there was ever going to be a time to mourn then perhaps that was where she might find it.  Once the Noche was functional, and jump engaged, she hoped he would take her as far away from the Kamdo as possible.  Maybe, with several systems between her and the barbarians, she might then start to feel safe.

Of course, that probably meant taking her closer, or even into, Union space.  Closer to those who had imprisoned her.  With light years of void and an untold number of systems out there, if she hid away, they would never find her.  She was not sure, however, that hiding was her intention.

Inside, deeper down, below the fear and anxiety, resided all the anger and hate.  Those emotions did not want to run and hide.  Those emotions wanted to take a laser to more appendages, especially those of her rapists.  They wanted to do even worse to those responsible for sending her to Petang Base.  And for those responsible for the massacre at Haram Galt, there was no revenge horrific enough.  Her anger and hate wanted to rush back to the Union heartlands and remind them just who Kayla McGann was.  She wanted to remind them who Malcolm Gomez was too, and her other fallen colleagues, and make the Union pay for what they had done to her parents.

As she lay there, smelling the fragrance on her arm, a hint of the pit lingering beneath, she tried to conjure up Malcolm’s face.  She found part of it but could not see the rest.  That hurt.  Instead, she remembered other aspects of the man, ones that came more readily.  The light brown shirt that fit so snugly, his muscular chest and arms pulling at the fabric.  His voice, soft to her, strong and dominant to others.  The way he kissed her neck, the way he placed a hand in the small of her back when standing nearby, the way he would pull back her hair when they made love.

For a moment, that anger and hate wanted her to remember that horrible day.  It tried to drag her from the nice thoughts to the dreadful ones, back to Haram Galt and the horror of seeing her best friend murdered.  One day she would return there, she knew that, just as sure as she knew Kayla McGann would never hide.  Eventually, her thoughts would turn only to that revenge.  It was inevitable.  For now, though, she pushed away the negatives, and clung to the sweetness of his kiss, his touch, his warmth inside her.  Oh, how she missed that man.  She missed him so much.

Shortly after, Kayla finally slept.

+     +     +

The complete architecture of the Noche was programmed into the microscopic machines, right down to molecular level.  Their ability to rebuild the entire vessel was limited only by energy and time, and that had been the worry.  Unable to direct the nano-bots once started, he had to hope that their inbuilt prioritisation recognised the importance of life support, and thankfully, it seemed they had.  With time pressure removed, and energy levels high, it was only a matter of time before navigation was restored.

Kayla had taken his encouragement to go get some rest.  He sincerely hoped she was sleeping and that she would wake less volatile.  Exhaustion had shown in her face, her stance, even her speech, and that much fatigue affected a person’s rational processes.

Casting aside any temptation to snoop again, he instead turned to his identifier.  More specifically, to the version ten he kept secreted beneath the flight console.  Everything on Spirit had a hiding place, a necessity with pirates and Union patrols posing equal threat.  The identifier had been concealed close to where Kayla had blown a hole in the panel.  Thankfully, it survived unscathed.

He unclipped the earlier version and went to replace with the ten.  A pause, to consider the risk of activating and letting in the whole net.  Although the sheer scale and the billions of users accessing at any one moment would cause a confusion of data for any tracking system, there was a small chance an algorithm would find its way to him.  No doubt, once spotted, any trace programme would be swift at locking on.  There were dozens of business associates out there wanting to chat about failed deals, and there were plenty of creditors eager to be paid.  He did not go online lightly, but if he wanted the access the version ten offered, it was a risk he would have to take.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s see who you are, lady.”

His fingers tapped and the air before him filled with images and words.  He muted the volume, not wanting the sound to reach his guest below.  Discovering he was researching her would hardly be conducive to keeping her calm.  It did not take him long to find what he was looking for.  That was good, the less time on the open network, the less time the algorithms had to find his signature.

Just a couple of searches and he had it.  There were not many Kaylas incarcerated at Petang Base, in fact, there was only one.  On the second attempt at spelling her name, up popped the notorious image he had tried to recall earlier.  Without this visual, relying on an imperfect memory, he had struggled to find a likeness to the dishevelled woman met in the loading bay.  Now though, with the three-dimensional projection, rotating to the right, and then to the left, there was no mistaking this was the same person.

Kayla McGann, partner to the terrorist Malcolm Gomez, arrested when Union forces stormed their hideout at Haram Galt.  Gomez was taken down in the raid, as were most of the criminals and mercenaries who had rallied to their cause.  McGann was one of only a handful taken alive and her trial and subsequent imprisonment had played out across the media for weeks.

Messiah could not deny his own interest at the time.  It was not long after he had started his own dealings with the Kamdo, so her incarceration at Petang was a particular fascination.  Time moved on though, as always, and she had slipped from his memory.

Her striking beauty in the projected image was undoubtable.  It was reasonable he had not recognised this as the person below deck.  His passenger’s pallid complexion, unkempt hair, and dried and cracked lips were in stark contrast to this media darling.  The cheekbones were still there though, along with the strong line of her nose.  But it was the eyes that clinched it.  Those deep, intense, green pools that had drawn him in on the asteroid were now staring back at him.

“Ah, fuck!” he cursed.

What had he done?

The pilot buried his head in his hands and let out a woeful moan.

What the fuck had he done?

The hunt for Kayla McGann continues in …

Episode 2:  Three Zero