Rise the Renegade (Rork Sollix Book 1) (9 page)

They flew down steps, Rork’s gut and aching ribs bouncing against the heavy shoulder, the sound of many footsteps behind them, muffled yells and the cracks of pulse pistols. He rubbed his hands together, hoping to free them. He shook his head from side to side. The hood loosened, he was briefly upside down and his feet found solid ground once more. His hands found freedom. He removed the hood and drunk deep of the less odorous air.

“Are you a man of your word?” Zero put his face close to Rork’s in the darkness.

The guard who put the hood on him organized the children into lines behind Zero.

Rork raised an eyebrow and inclined his head towards the guard. “Can he be trusted?”

“The question is whether we can trust you. Will you keep your word, pirate? We have already taken a great risk for you. Now your vow you shall repeat, so that the agreement is clear.”

Boots stomped nearby. Rectangles of light squeezed in through the door to Rork’s right. The children finished lining up.

Zero smacked him across the face.

“What!” Rork searched for a way out. The space was tiny. He spied no other exit.

“You promised to take the children out of here and to carry me from port to port so that I might preach the word of the Universe. In return, Faraj and I will get you safely to your ship.” Zero offered him his right hand.

Rork took the guru’s hand and shook it.
My ship. We’ll just have to interpret that term rather loosely, won’t we?
He suppressed a grin. “Now, how are we getting out of here?”

Zero relaxed his shoulders and looked at Faraj. He opened his mouth.

“Wait. Where are Devi and Anju?” Rork counted the children. Two rows, eight per column. Most were clad in upside down nylon bags. Others wore only underwear. He spotted one with a pair of sandals made from recycled rubber tires. But not one was over the age of ten.

“Those old enough to work in the colonies, they culled those children the morning after your foolish escape attempt.”

“Don’t lay that on me!” Rork pursed his lips. He owed those two kids and he didn’t like being in debt.

Footsteps sounded outside and the door whipped open, smacking Rork in the nose. He recoiled and closed his eyes.

Jelara faced him in the tiny closet, a pulse pistol aimed at his forehead. The fat man smiled. He glanced at Zero.

The children gathered around Zero. Faraj found a spot next to the guru and looked down at the floor.

Rork rolled his eyes. “What good is your beast if he won’t fight?”

Jelara focused on Rork. He pushed the barrel of the pulse pistol into the space between Rork’s eyebrows.

“We can pay you,” Zero said.

Jelara smiled wide, his browned teeth appearing above his blackened lower lip. He laughed and his hot breath spewed into Rork’s nostrils.

Rork exhaled in a burst through his nose. “We’ll take you with us.”

Jelara burst out laughing. “And be a liar to my son?”

 
Rork raised his hand to cover his mouth and nose from the jailer’s contaminating spittle but Jelara pushed the barrel in deeper. Rork clenched his fists at his sides.

“Leave the rats here. You two,” Jelara said with a jerk of his head towards Zero and Faraj, “out.” His eyes swiveled as he kept his head fixed on Rork.

Rork practiced the maneuver in his mind. He took himself out of the path of the pulse pistol but exposed the children. Zero met his eyes. Rork looked at the children then back to Zero.

Zero grabbed the oldest child’s shoulder and pulled the girl towards the door.

“Will it be Sergeant Jelara after this? Or will they blame you for our escape?” Rork asked.

“Stop.” Jelara’s eyes did not leave Rork’s face but they glazed over and lost focus.

It was his chance. Rork hopped to his right, out of the path of the pulse pistol. He grabbed the weapon and twisted it away from the fat jailer.

Jelara fired and light burst into the room through a small, circular hole in the wall opposite the door. Rork rocketed his elbow into Jelara’s nose and the jailer’s head crashed into the open, metal door with a hollow bang. He collapsed to the ground.

“We have to go now.” Faraj guided the children out the door, his gentle hand falling on each one’s shoulder in turn.

“The beast speaketh!” The thrill of his victory rose over Rork and broke. He balled his fists and threw his shoulders back. “We’re getting out of here!” He looked around the door at Zero.

Zero nodded. He narrowed his eyes and his mouth tensed. “I assume you know how to rappel?”

Rork’s face fell. “What’s that?”

R
ORK
SLIPPED
down the rope again. The palms of his hands burned. He hung a dozen or more meters above the ground, next to the high outer wall of the prison. Stained white paint peeled in fist-sized chips at the slightest touch. His body ached, from the pulled muscle at his waist and his bruised ribs to his overworked biceps. He held himself steady, gasping at breath and unsure what was worse — the physical exertion or the sheer terror.
Why couldn’t I have been captured in space, or anywhere low-grav, anywhere at all?

A small boy, his Mickey Mouse voice going on excitedly about something, crawled onto Rork’s back, then down his legs and back onto the rope again. Two friends quickly followed.

“Hey! One at a time!”

The first child hit the green grass below him, next to a half-buried boulder. Rork groaned. He looked straight up. Another half-dozen kids flowed down, one hand over the next, too quickly for him to perceive the individual movements.
They were raised in high-grav. It’s not my fault.

“Hurry up!” Zero hissed from below.

“It’s not my fault!” Rork let the rope slide through his crossed feet. One arm let go, he slid gently down, then the next.

A half-dozen adults tiptoed around the corner of the wall. They wore long, bleached white gowns. The children ran to them.

A child put his bare little foot, toes wiggling, on Rork’s scalp just above the pirate’s forehead. Rork, in an instinctual panic, brushed the tiny toes away, lost his hold and plunged toward the ground.

Damned high-grav.
The boulder came up fast and Rork focused on its thin middle ridge. He reached to his wrist for his flight controls but they weren’t there. He hit the grass face first, his right arm smashing into the edge of the boulder.

Small children rained to the soft earth in front of him. Each turned and rushed to the group of adults. “Mama,” one whispered.

Rork wanted to just lay there and sleep. But he forced himself to his feet and lurched forward. His arm was tingly but mostly numb. He found Zero and turned him around. “How did they know to come here?”

“Faraj told them.”

And who did they tell?
“We have to get to the spaceport.”

“First, the little ones.” Zero inclined his head to Rork. “You are now known as a liberator of children. Salute you, they do.”

A bald man, his face a maze of collapsing flesh trotted over to Rork, kneeled in front of him and kissed his hands. “Thank you! Thank you!” he whispered.

Rork looked down at him and tried to imagine what the old man felt. His eyes clouded up but he pushed it away. “They have to get out of here, fast.”

Zero looked at him, his face empty.

“Tell them. Jelara will be out here any second.”

“You must receive their gratitude in order to close the circle.”

Close the circle?
Rork opened his mouth but the parents swarmed him. They bowed to him and he bowed back.

Zero grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the throng. “The Universe smiles on us all. Do you see it now?” He turned and sauntered down a narrow alley toward the skyscrapers of the central city and away from the prison.

Rork jogged after him, his feet barely lifting off the ground. “What about Faraj? And can somebody get these chains off of me?”

They passed an empty cross street. Police huddled around a barricade of wood and wire to their right. Rork looked both ways and sprinted across.

“Our fates, intertwined they are now,” said Zero. They passed a small tree, its flexible branches curving down over them like an overprotective umbrella. Zero rubbed one of the orange and black flowers and the branch’s leaves fluttered down around them.

“Just do everything I say and we’ll be fine.” Rork ran to the next cross street and looked both ways. “Is your bodyguard coming or not? And maybe he has the keys—”

Zero came up behind him. “Faraj will protect the children on their journey. He will join me when he is able.”

A blue police car zoomed over them and toward the prison. Another vehicle came to a stop on the cross street. It turned and blocked the way.

“I don’t know these streets. Do you?” Rork asked.

Zero sat down, cross-legged, next to him, closed his eyes and began to mumble.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rork grabbed the mystic’s matchstick arms and pulled him up but he was unnaturally heavy.

He let go. He looked around the corner again, then stepped out and walked to the sideways police car. He opened the door and sat down in the driver’s seat.

The dashboard was simple. He spotted the speed indicator. The car’s charge was full. He pressed the red start button and a slight vibration rumbled through the steering wheel under his hands. He moved the accelerator under his right hand to the drive setting. The car drifted forward and knocked down a corrugated metal wall.

“Hey!” Two police officers ran toward him from his right, hands at their waists.

He stared at the car controls, his mind a jumble. He tried to recall how these things worked but he’d never driven one before.

A spark exploded in the ceiling upholstery in front of his head and a light breeze cooled the sweat on his brow. The cops were just a few meters away now.

Rork shifted the accelerator to the reverse setting and twisted the wheel. The car shuddered and inched backwards.
Why can’t I get this to work? I’m a pilot for Jupiter’s sakes!
Rork kicked the floor and he bounced back and forth. The spark of a clue lit in his mind.

The two police arrived at the co-pilot’s window and pointed their pulse pistols at Rork through the closed window. “Turn it off and get out with your hands in the air!”

“Just taking it for a spin, officer!” He put his hands up, his body rigid, ready to move. But he couldn’t move faster than the speed of light. That was out of the question. They’d replace his eyes with smoking tunnels before he reached the door.

“Get out of the vehicle!”

Rork’s eyes alighted on the cabinet in front of the co-pilot’s seat. It might hold a weapon.

From behind him, a familiar voice rang out. “Blessings to you, keepers of the law and defenders of the peace!”

The police officers’ eyes moved. Rork let his foot off the brake. He reached for the co-pilot’s cabinet, popped it open and pulled a shiny pulse pistol from it.

Rork shot through the front glass at one, then twisted his body to the side and fired again at the other. Their dead bodies hung in the air a millisecond, then collapsed backwards to the pavement with a wet thump.

The car crunched the metal shack on the other side of the street and Rork stepped on the middle pedal. He fell forward again, then back. He put the car in drive, turned the wheel and pulled the car back on the street, facing away from the dead cops.

Zero opened the co-pilot’s door and climbed in. He stared at Rork, his eyes wide, and shook his head.

“God sits in the temple of every human being!”

“I had no—”

“To slay another is to enslave yourself!” Zero crossed his arms and looked out the window.

“They meant to kill me. Or to take me back to Jelara and that cage.” Rork tapped the metal cuffs on his wrists. “I will die first and if I can kill a hundred of them along the way,” he said jerking a thumb behind him at the dead police, “then so much the better.”

Zero looked at him, the fragile man’s eyes red, a tear arcing down his cheek. “To be party to killing is to render invalid every word that proceeds from my tongue. I would rather spit upon the Universe itself and take my own life, as humble as it is, than to take another’s life, no matter their suspected crime.”

“What do you mean, ‘suspected crime?’ They missed the first time but they aimed to kill me. Think of how many people we would protect and help by taking out a hundred of these goons? There is nothing wrong with it.” He stepped on the accelerator pedal and the car jumped forward. Ahead, the narrow alley curved to the right. He moderated the pressure of his foot and his body jerked forward.

Zero sobbed then cleared his throat. “Of what use is a free body without a mind freed from the primitive dictates of violence? You must see this.”

Rork guided the car around the curve of the road. A police roadblock awaited them. Sparks exploded on the front viewport. “See if you can get God to stop their shooting!” He ducked down and pulled back on the wheel. The car pitched up and over the roadblock.

Rork’s stomach fell. He sat up and smiled. “We did it! Now where is the spaceport?” He looked over the dashboard and past the front of the vehicle, then to the left and right. “Do you know?” He turned the wheel right and the vehicle rolled gently to the right, left and it rolled again. He howled with laughter.

Zero held his hands over his face and refused to speak.

Rork studied the control panel. In the middle, between him and Zero, a thin black panel flashed the words, “Voice Ready.”

“Destination, Delhi Spaceport,” Rork said. His eyes closed of their own accord and he lurched forward, hitting his head on the steering wheel. “Ow!”
Must stay awake.

“Destination accepted,” a female voice responded.

The car slowed, rolled gently right and headed in the opposite direction. The brilliant dome of the spaceport lay ahead. Landing platforms, some open, some sealed, branched off above the dome in a geometric if tree-like pattern. Ships came and went in straight lines.

“We did it!” Rork grabbed Zero by the shoulder and shook him. “We’re getting out of here!”

Zero refused to stir except for the mute movement of his lips.