Rise the Renegade (Rork Sollix Book 1) (6 page)

Rork looked away.

“What about his meds? He needs meds!” she screamed.

The guards dragged her past the interrogation room. A heavy door creaked open, then slammed shut, the impact echoing through the block with a lonely finality.

Rork found the far, rear corner of the cell, below the narrow slit of window and collapsed into it. He closed his eyes. He’d be dead soon. The sickness would claim him.

It was fine by him.
May it come quickly. Jupiter, I just want to die now. I can’t stand it anymore.
His chest ached. The icy chill of the refrigerated cell leached into his toes and they cramped up. He ignored it. He didn’t care.

“We want to be pirates, like you.” It was the yellow-booted girl.

Rork kept his eyes closed. “Whatever you have now, it may seem like nothing to you, but it’s better than where I ended up.”

“The Cartel took our family, all forty-seven of them: uncles, cousins, our father and mother. The government knows. The EDF helps them. Those metal shacks? Five thousand people lived there. Now there is no one. We escaped but soon they will clear that area. And they took our papers.”

He looked up at the girl. She was simple and authentic, without pretension or accoutrement. “What’s your name?”

“Anju. My brother is Devi.” She kneeled down in front of him. “We will do whatever you command.”

Rork pointed to the left side of his chest. “Anorxoma. Right here. You know what that is?”

Anju nodded. She looked up at her brother.

“What if we can heal that?” Devi approached, his arms folded in front of him. He evinced an air of authority that contradicted his emaciated frame.

“It’s untreatable. You can have my body when I’m dead. I’m sure they’ll drop it on a scrap heap out there somewhere. Don’t worry. I’ll tell them I kidnapped you, too.”

Devi turned his back to Rork.

Anju stepped closer and touched his shoulder. “They’ll put us on the trainship to the mining outposts.” She smiled with pity in her eyes for him. “We’ll be dead, too.”

“Why did you kidnap us?” He opened his eyes and studied her face. He glanced at Devi. He sensed no danger from them.
Probably haven’t enjoyed a decent meal since they suckled at their mother’s breast.
“Cannibals?”

“How dare you!” Devi turned, his proud, square shoulders at attention. “We saved you.” He focused on his sister. “His reputation is too big for him.” He shook his head and scowled.

Anju squeezed Rork’s shoulder and held his eyes too long. “If you change your mind, we’re still ready to take your orders, Captain.” She stood up and walked over to her brother.

The heavy door clanged open. “Sollix! Visitor.”

Rork looked through the bars, among the feet of the other prisoners in the other cages. A pair of black boots stepped carefully behind the guard’s brown lace-ups. The prisoners’ feet turned in Rork’s direction and the room quieted. Rork stood and walked to the cell door.

It was the black-hatted man.

The guard muttered something and took a position a few steps away.

The black-hatted man removed his headgear and let it fall to the ground, revealing a hairless scalp. He withdrew his oversized sunglasses.

Anju gasped. “But...”

Rork studied the face. It was his own, only leaner and rosier. There was a deep scar that cut from the right corner of the mouth, up across the bulb of the nose and ended above the opposite eye. He shook his head. “No!”

“Yes.”

“They destroyed it,” Rork said. “I only barely escaped myself.”

“I fired the shot.” Jord’s face erupted in a proud laugh.

Rork narrowed his eyes at his older brother.

“Dad is alive, too.” He drew off his long, black gloves, one at a time and grasped them in his right hand. He put his fists on his hips.

Rork relived the moment of Jord’s and his father’s deaths. Barbary was firing on their home, a used space station they’d salvaged and repaired.

They were out beyond Titan then, on a trade swing to the settlements and mining outposts. Dad loved to see the miners’ kids get a decent meal for once and their parents have a few dalrots left over.

Barbary snuck up on them from the shadow side of Ganymede. Rork had nothing to return fire with. He yelled for Dad and Jord. When they breached the hull, he had to eject.

“Well, where is he, brother?” Rork smiled. “How is he?”

Jord sneered at his brother. “He wants to speak with you.” He withdrew a slim, rectangular screen from his coat and tapped it.

“Really?” Rork asked.

Gamil Barbary’s pockmarked mug appeared. It smiled wide. “I have your girl, Rork.”

Rork’s stomach clenched and tumbled. All strength drained from him and he grabbed tighter onto the bars to support his weight.

“Save this feed,” Barbary said to someone off-screen. “I want to remember the look on his face.”

“You’re a liar.”

“I picked her up myself,” Jord said through gritted teeth.

Rork’s eyes unfocused. Barbary. Jord. Dad. Lala. His mind spun. “You work for Barbary?”

Barbary closed his eyes, his head rolled back and he laughed.

Jord’s upper lip curled. He shook his head and looked away.

“Silence!” Barbary roared. “Your blue-haired babe is mine now, Rork. She will serve your punishment here with me, in service to the employees of Barbary and Sons Trading Company — mostly the men.”

“You’re dead, Barbary. You’re dead!” Rork felt his eyes moisten and he struggled to hold back the panicked tears. But they spilled over. He imagined his sweet Lala in Barbary’s hands.
No!
But the pictures played in his mind. “You bastard. You just couldn’t leave me alone to die?”

“Go ahead and die!” Barbary yelled. “Your girlfriend will pay your debts, with interest. We are done!” The screen turned black.

Rork clawed his hand through the bars at Jord but the turncoat stepped out of reach.

Jord fixed the black hat on his head, touched his finger to it and bowed slightly. “Brother.” He turned and left.

“Jord! Jord! Come back here!”

“D
ON
’
T
DO
that again,” Devi said with a reproachful glare. “It is better they think you care not to escape.”

“It’s only natural. He is a man in love.” Anju sighed.

Devi rolled his eyes. “Foolish woman.” He looked down at Rork. “Are you ready to get out of here now? How soon can your crew be ready?”

“What happened?” Rork asked. He searched his memory but nothing came.

“The guard beat you because you were acting like a fool.” Devi stood up and walked away from them.

Anju pressed a moist cloth to his forehead and Rork winced. She pulled it away. It was stained with blood.

“You will heal. Rest now.”

It all flooded back and the atmosphere grew heavier. The images of Lala and Barbary’s boys pounded on his head. She was strong but they were gutless bastards and they lacked any sense of honor or dignity. He tried to remember her smell but now that was slipping away.

Barbary and Sons would crush her spirit. They would beat it out of her, cheapen her grace and fidelity.

And he was stuck in this hole.

“Is he ready to fight yet?” Devi asked his sister. “A man does not lay down and take it, he does not run from a challenge to his pride.”

Rork repeated the words in his mind.
Silly boy. No clue how things really are.
But he needed that kind of defiance right now. The boy was a power source and he longed for a charge.

“How will you cure the anorxoma?” Rork crawled to a standing position and looked from Anju to Devi.

“Will you accept us as part of your crew?” the boy asked. “Will you teach us how to be pirates and to help the people?”

Rork snorted. “What makes you think I know how to help people?”

Devi turned. His face was bright now, the eyebrows relaxed and his eyes pleading. “We’ve heard your stories. Of how you steal from the Cartel and trade fairly with the people. About your father, Band Sollix.”

Rork suppressed a smile. “What have you heard, exactly?”

Devi gulped. “Your father won one hundred thousand dalrots and a Cartel executive’s slave in a poker game on Luna. He invested the money in merchandise for the miners. Together, Band and Rolata Sollix ran Sollix Fair Trading. They traveled around the system in an old cattle carrier, defying the Cartel monopoly by trading with miners and other settlers at fair prices.”

Anju swooned. “And he freed the slave girl because she loved him. And he loved her. They married and had many children.” She looked at Rork and sighed.

“Only two,” Rork said, “that I know of, at least.”

The room quieted. The prisoners in the other cells poked their heads through the bars, one next to the other. Those who didn’t merit a front row seat lined up behind them. Their eyes fell on Rork.

Devi glared at his sister. “The man asked me, not you.” He cleared his throat. “Band and Rolata Sollix singlehandedly cured malnutrition in the Outer Realm settlements. Miners began to turn a profit. They put their money together into cooperatives and started their own, independent mining operations.”

“Cartel don’t like competition!” said a prisoner in the next cell. “Cartels want to keep the good man down!” His face radiated endurance, and suffering.

His cellmates patted him on the back and mumbled their agreement.

Rork nodded at him.

Devi cleared his throat again, this time more loudly. The crowd quieted.

“The Cartel chose Old Man Barbary,” the boy continued. “He won the bid to stop the Indie Shift. He and his sons tracked down Band and Rolata. And their two children.” Devi looked at Rork and raised an eyebrow.

Rork straightened up and swallowed hard. “They said they wanted to do business. Dad was willing to do business with anyone, Cartel, government or Indie. Rich, poor, sick, hungry.” A tightness rose in Rork’s throat and he blinked his eyes.

“Tell it, man,” said the prisoner.

Anju extended a hand to him.

“They lasered him. They threw my mother out the airlock. I watched her float past the cupola, her body icy and bloated, bits of her floating alongside.”

The crowd of prisoners erupted in hushed chatter. “He killed your parents, man,” said the prisoner.

“Then Barbary fired on our home. I couldn’t find my brother. I jumped in an escape pod.”

“You abandoned your brother? He’s your brother, man,” said the prisoner.

Anju turned to the prisoner. “He thought they were all dead! He saw them die! And he’s no coward. We all know what he’s done to the Cartel since then!”

The certainty of a debt of revenge coursed through Rork’s body, filling him with an electric fury. He had to be well. Now. He would find the strength. He was getting out of here. Barbary had to die. He had to save Lala.

“W
IDER
! S
PREAD
them wider!”

Rork spread his arms and inched his legs farther apart. The chill air of the subterranean prison block swirled around him and a tremor ran from his gut to his taut neck muscles.

The gray-suited guard struck him across the back of his head. “I said to spread your legs wider, 93478921!”

Rork turned to glare at the guard but the goon struck the back of his knee. The pain was immediate. He spread his legs. “Happy now?”

The guard’s latex-covered fingers crammed in where he never expected anyone to touch him. He recoiled and clenched his guts.

“Finished. Move along, 93478921.” The guard waved him away.

“My name is Rork Sollix.” He turned to face him.

“You are holding up my line, prisoner 93478921.” The guard looked up at him. His puffy eyes just didn’t care. He had a job to do and a club to do it with. None of the rest mattered.

Another, shorter, guard grabbed Rork’s arm and pulled him along towards a heavy, metal door. Dark stains ran in odd patterns on the door. Bolt heads decorated its edges. A barred window let the gloom in. Not much more than half Rork’s height, the short guard stopped him. He pulled on Rork’s arms until the new prisoner faced opposite the wall where he was last abused.

A long wall of vertical metal bars greeted him. Behind it was the women. His eyes searched the smaller group and found Anju. She held onto the bars, her pert breasts exposed. She looked up at nothing in particular. Her eyes were red and her body trembled.

The small guard grabbed the top of Rork’s ear and jerked him forward.

“They already gave me the anal probe, little man,” Rork said, lunging forward.

“Just relax,” Devi said from behind him. “It will go easier for you.”

“Shut up!” the petite guard screamed at them both. He took a thin, white half-circle from a box next to Rork’s feet. He pried apart the prong-like ends and pushed them against Rork’s larynx. The device snapped around his neck and constricted.

Rork grabbed at his neck. It was too tight. He tried to shove a finger under it but the pain increased. He gripped the device with the tips of all ten fingers and pulled. Still it grew tighter.

“No!” Rork stepped backwards, tripped and fell into Devi. Devi’s head thudded into the cinder block wall.

Guards approached Rork from all sides, black sticks at the ready.

Rork struggled to draw breath. The edges of his vision darkened. He reached out for something to pull himself up with but there was nothing.

“Get up, prisoner!” the short guard yelled. The others beat him with their sticks.

Pain exploded in his gut, groin, knees and chest but only distantly.

The guards hauled him up and the short one wrapped his hands around Rork’s neck, around the device.

Why are they killing me?

The device loosened and Rork sucked in a deep breath, his eyes wide. He coughed and breathed again. The guards peeled away but two remained. They dragged him by his arms. His legs, useless, trailed behind him.

Metal groaned and Rork passed into a narrow, darkened hallway filled with vertical bars on both sides. Cracked and dirty, the concrete floors flowed under him like a stream.

They stopped. A cell door screeched open to his right and they tossed him in. He put his hand out to stop his fall. The door screeched again and the guard locked it.