The Omega Cage (3 page)

The window was cheap plastic, impervious to the occasional drunk who might pitch a glass at it, but not designed to withstand a major assault. Maro tore the fire extinguisher from the wall over the stagnant urinal and threw it. The clear plastic window popped out in a single piece and clattered outside on the alley's surface, followed by the heavy cannister. Maro didn't hesitate, but ran and jumped for the window. There would be cools at the entrance and exit, but maybe they wouldn't think to cover the fresher. It was his only chance.

The opening was tight; he scraped one shoulder squeezing through. As he dragged his hips over the sill he heard somebody yelling behind him.

"Police! Hold it!"

He didn't try to turn, but continued through head first. Fortunately, the window was high enough so that his feet cleared the opening in time for him to tuck and roll as he hit the alley's floor. He would have sprinted away, but he knew the cool would get a shot through the fresher's window before he could get past the mouth of the alley. So instead of running, Maro finished the roll, banging his hip on the fire extinguisher, and shoved himself back against the wall in a crouch.

He slammed into the fake brick under the window and dropped to a sitting position, then looked up.

The cool was beefy, but fast. He jammed his right arm and shoulder through the opening, followed by his head. Too big to get through, Maro figured, but small enough to use the handgun he clutched. A 6mm needier, probably loading shocktox.

Before he could look around, Maro raised his hand wand and thumbed the firing stud. The flash hit the cool and he screamed and fell back into the fresher, dropping the needier. He'd be numb everywhere the hand wand's electronic bath touched him, but he hadn't taken a full body jolt. If he had a backup piece, his left arm was still good—

Maro snatched up the fallen needier and ran. The reflected light from the huge ringed gas giant that dominated the night sky made it impossible to hide in the shadows. Nobody was watching the alley, but when he cleared the end at a dead run, a cool leaning against a flitter spotted him. He went for his sidearm, but Maro raised the needier and fired it on full auto, waving it back and forth. At least one of the hail of flechettes got past the armor, for the cool doubled up in sudden paralysis and rolled onto the hood of the flitter.

The needier in his hand started to beep.
Ah, shit
! He hadn't thought the police on this one-rocket planet would have personally coded hand weapons. He flung it away into the darkness; in another ten seconds it would be a puddle of molten plastic and metal. He was lucky he'd managed to fire it at all before the self-destruct circuit was triggered.

His ship, he had to get to his ship! The planet didn't space much of a navy; if he could lift and clear air defenses, he could outrun their lumbering cruisers. This port city of Kito Mfalme—King's Jewel, the natives called it—had the only spaceport in the western hemisphere. Once he got to his ship, his chances would be vastly improved.

As Maro ran through the dim streets, he wondered which of the others had turned them in. It
had
to be a set-up. Benares wouldn't have done it; he was going to make a nice profit and money was his god; Lunt wanted those contraindicated virals so bad he would have thrown his balls in as part of the deal, so he couldn't see Lunt opting for cool interference; that left Morrel and the two women, none of whom Maro knew. It must have been one of them. All had been vouched for, of course, but that meant little. Obviously.

He had deliberately hangared his ship in the run-down section of the port, the part that had once been a military section and was now gone mostly to rust and warp. Aside from being poorly lit and watched, the hangar backed up to the perimeter fence. Before leaving the area, Maro had rigged a roll-up cable and extender from the hangar roof, set to a sonic switch. A good smuggler tried to cover as many of his bets as possible. He grinned as he thought of it. Always leave the back door open, old Vickers had taught him, and that's what he'd done.

The place he had chosen lay in the dark between two pools of HT light. Maro looked around, saw that he wasn't being followed, and took a few seconds to catch his breath. The three-meter-tall mesh fence, despite its age and apparent lack of maintenance, carried a heart-stopping electrical charge. Such current discouraged climbers, but he had allowed for that.

Maro took a deep breath and whistled: three short notes, then one final long note.

From the roof five meters above him, the extender clicked on and a plastic rod telescoped outward. After a moment a thick coil of synsilk rope began to extrude from the end of the extender like paste from a tube. It only took a few seconds for the rope to reach him. Maro began to climb, hand over hand. He was a good meter away from the fence, but he moved carefully despite that.

Once on the roof, it was easy enough to retract the extender and climb down the rope on the inside of the fence. On the ground, he moved cautiously around the hangar. It was quiet inside, and only walkway lighting cast its faint glow along the floor. There stood his ship, the
Volny Vickers
, a converted minesweeper that looked as if it was due to be cut up for scrap. Right now, however, he could not imagine anything looking better to him.

He wasn't scheduled to leave for a week, so there was no dins working on his ship. He had enough fuel to reach either Mtu or the Green Moon, and no one on either of those worlds was looking for him. From there he could bend space and head for either the Nazo System or the Svare Star Group, leaving the Bibi Arusi System behind like a bad memory.

Maro cycled the lock open, ordered the computer to begin powering up, and headed for the control room. Once in his form chair, he felt a thousand percent better. "Calculate a polar slingshot orbit," he told the computer.

From behind him, a voice said, "Going somewhere, cool killer?"

Maro was very careful not to move.

"I ought to burn you where you sit," the voice continued. "They don't like murderers in the King's Jewel. Especially when you kill one of their own."

"Can I turn around?"

"Yeah—slowly and with great care."

Maro turned the form chair and found himself facing a tall and aristocratic-looking man, wearing a skinmask and holding a heavy-bore pellet pistol pointed at him.

"That officer you shot in the fresher died, you know."

Maro shook his head. "No way. Nobody dies from a hand wand pulse, especially a partial flash on low power."

"Sue the manufacturer. He's dead and you did it, as far as the local police are concerned."

Maro stared at the man. Why would a cool care if somebody saw his face?

"You're not police. Who are you?"

The face under the mask grinned. "Clever boy, aren't you? But not so clever as to avoid treading in places you'd been warned to avoid, eh?"

Maro took a deep breath. "Black Sun," he said.

"We don't like that name much. We prefer to be called the 'Corporation.' "

"You set me up."

"Let's just say that you freelance smugglers are going to have to learn company policy—and you're this week's example. You are going to go away, Maro. As far away as one can get."

Maro gathered himself. Maybe he could distract the man. He was only about three meters away—

"Don't bother," the masked man said. "I'd just as soon shoot you, though my orders didn't specify that option if it could be avoided. No, we need our show trial and conviction. That way you get to live—for a while, anyway."

"I could ask for a truthscope," Maro said. "I could lay this out for them."

The masked man laughed. "Who do you think would be running the 'scope? We own the brain scramblers on this planet. We own
lots
of things on this planet.

You'd be better off to keep your mouth and mind shut, Maro, and take your loss gracefully. The Corporation would prefer that its name not come up, if you copy my meaning?"

Maro slumped back into his chair. They had him. They'd gone to a lot of trouble to get him, and he felt the power of it all around him. "Yeah. I copy."

The skinmask smiled. "Good. Nice to do business with a reasonable man. And nothing personal, you understand?"

"Sure. Nothing personal."

"Fine. You can get up. Get up. Get up. Get up…"

"—get up!"

Maro came out of the dream sweating. For a beat, he didn't know where he was—then it came back all too quickly.

A guard stood at the door to his cell, a big man who, from the look of the muscles swelling his uniform orthoskins, had spent more than a little time on a heavy-gee world. He had a face that practically radiated hate, deepset eyes under thick blond eyebrows, and a sneer that showed several perfect teeth.

The dream was the same as the memory, and he'd revisited both dozens of times in the last three months. Better, he knew, to face up to this unpleasant present than to dwell in the unchangeable past.

"They call me Lepto, when they speak to me," the guard said. "And they don't speak unless I give them leave. You understand what I am telling you here?"

Maro nodded.

"That's good, fresh meat. Come on. We're going to the yard, you and me, and I am going to see how much they chew on you out there before I pull them off.

You give me a good show, meat, and I don't let them kill you. You curl up too quick, and maybe I kill you myself. You understand what I am telling you here?"

"I understand."

"Good. Let's go."

The augmented image of Karnaaj peered at Stark from the video transceiver.

White Radio did not transmit in color, for technical reasons having to do with FTL pulsations that Stark did not understand, but color was added on either end by computer. Sometimes, however, the computer enhancement seemed to be a little off, giving the subject a dead tone, as if the skin were lacking blood. With Karnaaj, the image always seemed to be that way, no matter what the computer did.

The voice came across fifteen light years. "I shall arrive there in three weeks,"

Kamaaj said. "Keep Maro alive until then. I would prefer that he be in a… receptive mood when I question him."

Stark stared at the Confed agent. He hated the man instinctively, but was careful not to let any of that show. "In other words, you want me to soften him up."

"Just so. But be warned. According to our psychological records, he has some kind of mind control technique that renders him immune to many forms of persuasion. He studied with some religious group called the Soul Melders for a time. Breaking him could be tricky. A wrong move and he might be lost to us.

We would not want that."

"Of course not," Stark said.

"I see we understand one another."

Oh. I understand you well enough
. Stark thought.
You are worse by far than
most of the scum behind my walls
. Aloud, he said, "Yes."

"Then I shall see you in three weeks. Discom, Commander. ''

Stark did not reply, but reached up and waved the unit to darkness. He swiveled in his chair and stared out at the yard; then, abruptly, he turned back and touched a control on his com unit, set flush into the top of his desk. After a moment, Lepto's voice grated over it.

"Yessir?"

"Make sure that the prisoner Maro is able to leave the yard under his own power after the initiation. We have been ordered to keep him in one piece."

"Yessir." Lepto sounded disappointed.

Stark looked past the desk to the far wall of his office. Juete, still naked, lay sleeping on the couch. She might be tired, but it wasn't from their lovemaking, he knew. She could exhaust him totally and still have more energy than he'd had when they began. There was so much about her he didn't know, and so much he wanted to learn. She was a prisoner—guilty, like so many others in the Cage, of murder—but she was different, ah, so different! For, despite himself and his knowledge of the magic her pheromones worked. Stark loved the albino Exotic.

It was more than sex, he was sure of that. He wanted to do things for her, to take care of her. When and if he ever left Omega, she would be going with him. He'd already had her sentence commuted, even though she was unaware of it. That had cost him, both in money and in favors, but it had been done. Only a few people knew of it, aside from himself, and no one inside the Cage.

As he watched the sleeping woman, he thought about Karnaaj's impending visit.

That man could cause a lot of trouble. He would have to see what he could do to make Maro more pliable; however, from their first meeting. Stark did not think that would be a particularly easy task. It didn't matter if it were easy or hard, though. He would do it. One way or another.

Chapter Four

Although Maro had never done any hard time—only short stretches in local locks—he knew people who had spent large portions of their lives in major prisons.

He had heard the stories, some true, some apocryphal, and he had an idea of what his first visit to the yard might be like. It was there that a man's measure was taken. Or, as in the case of a cosexual and cospecies prison like the Cage, it was where a woman or mue would be sized up. It was an old game, barely civilized; an initiation, ofttimes brutal, into the pecking order.

As Maro walked into the yard, followed by the giant guard Lepto, he saw the sideways looks and quick glances that came from the prisoners. He took a deep breath. This wasn't going to be fun, but he knew that his status from here on would depend on how he acted and reacted.

"This is the yard," Lepto said. "Good luck." Then he turned and lumbered off.

There were a lot of ways he could play it, Maro knew. He could approach somebody and start a conversation. Or he could keep moving, to discourage someone else from doing the same. Perhaps he could find a corner and so protect his back. Or maybe he should just stand where he was and wait. In the long run, it probably wouldn't make much difference.

He decided on the latter course. Whatever procedure the inmates had devised for checking out new meat would swing into action no matter what he did, so there was no sense in delaying the inevitable.