a very bad day gets worse

Lomax wanted to scream. He had tried to follow it all, but it was too confusing. He had watched Vince open the kitchen door, gloating over his plans. There had been something, a white fog of some kind, then an explosion that had shattered the cameras in the hall. Then they had poured out of the hall door into the arena, and Nika had smashed her way into the animal storeroom.

He had directed men from both inside and outside his area, but some of them were damn good shots, and seemed to know where every camera was. Then he'd gotten reports that the animals were loose and running amok on the station. Damn it, not even the palms he'd greased would keep this quiet! He would end up paying a lot, and probably have to kill every one of the goddamned things, or the Rangers might decide to take official notice.

That could be... painful for a long time.

If that hadn't been bad enough, those people, went and freed, then armed his gladiators! Sure they only had swords, knives, spears and staffs, but following in the carnage of the animals released earlier, they were cutting, and now that they had begun grabbing weapons from bodies, blasting their way toward the Outland docks, where they could claim asylum. There were half a dozen ships, all hyper capable there. He should have killed those Ballroom bastards rather than keep them for his play, because they were the ones leading that charge.

But he was more worried about the ones he'd just taken. The little firebug, the bitch who'd disrupted his whorehouse, Ncamisile and Sasha, he especially worried about those two. They had left the gladiator's quarters, then dropped completely off the camera net. He ground his teeth. He wanted the lot of them captured and when he did, he'd personally feed them to the menagerie he'd have to restock with his own hands! Did they even know how much they had cost him just freeing all of those animals? Not only reputation, but think about the money! That Säbel-Löwe he'd just gotten through customs (On their endangered species list!)all the way from New Berlin had cost as much as the Hexapuma, Kodiak Max and Earth Tiger combined! He wanted blood!

They had been off the screens for ten minutes now. Ten minutes they could use to get anywhere on the sta-

He stopped. He hadn't seen much when they were freeing the gladiators. But the woman had stuck her tongue out in reply to the Ballroom man. Then they had headed out and split up. But the ones he wanted to find had vanished off camera right after they reentered the arena area. Where did he not have cameras?

The air vents. They had to have climbed into the air vents! That meant in ten minutes they could be... He hit the button on his com panel. "Ramsey! Get my ship warmed up. File a flight plan to... Corregidor. Tell orbital control I have to leave in a rush. Buy the earliest slot."

"Yes, sir."

"And contact my mouthpiece. Have him cover this up as best he can, spend what he has to. Have him send me a message there when he has. If he can't, he's to relocate there."

"Yes sir."

He opened his safe, and took out his personal weapon, a Sollie made needle gun. He'd pick up a couple of his guys en route to the old dispatch boat he had bought, and when they were caught or killed and this blew over, he'd come back. He stuffed his briefcase with the bearer bonds and stock certificates in the safe.

There was a polite knock on the door, and he shouted he was coming, as he came around the desk. He opened the door, and had a moment to see the small bitch that had started this ball rolling, then grunted as she kicked him in the balls; hard.

He sagged to his knees, and the woman broke his thumb as she took the needle gun. She looked at it, flipped the safety off, and aimed it at his right eye. "Any last words?"

"I have money." He gasped around the pain.

"I would have expected this...sihlama to use that first." Nika commented from where she stood. "It means used shit." she translated helpfully. "I think something better than that is needed."

The barrel was close enough she could have put the round through the pupil of his eye into his optic nerve without hitting the orbit bone. "And a ship, I have a ship! It's docked at my personal slip right down there!" He motioned toward the right hand end of the hall.

"As much as you want to kill him right here, we could use a ship to escape." Henry said from behind her.

"Yeah." She cocked her head, then moved the gun. "But a son of a bitch like this probably has a code to unlock the navigational data base, or to allow it to drop the docking clamps. So I think he had best come with us."

"Maybe not all of him." Sasha commented. Of them all, only she had brought a knife, hell, she carried a bloody short sword! She was testing the edge, looking at him speculatively. "If it's just a palm or thumbprint, we could bring his hands along-"

"No, voice recognition! You need my voice! You need me alive!"

"Nika?" He felt a hammer like hand club him into unconsciousness.

Nika picked him up, threw him over her shoulder, and then pointed the same direction. "He did say that way, correct?"

They loped down the hall. It had been dusty and moldy in the air vent system, but it had gotten them less than a hundred meters from where Lomax had been in his office. Most of the people they might have had to fight were now behind them. They came around a corner, and ran right into two men in Brown and green uniform colors. Henry moved into the man on the right as Lori went after the man on the left. If they had tried to use their hands, they might have stood a chance, but the man Henry attacked tried to raise the large weapon in his hands, and his partner dropped the flat drum he held in one hand to go for his rifle.

They didn't live long enough to regret their decision.

"Wait." Nika handed off her burden to Sasha. "Oh you beauty." She whispered as she picked up the weapon. "Plamya grenade launcher. They still have these in service on Novaya Rodina."

"Isn't that planet in the Old League? Settled by people from the old Soviet Union?" Henry asked.

"Second Soviet Union." Sasha replied. If the limp body was a problem, she didn't seem to notice. "That planet you're thinking of is merely Rodina, Motherland in the old Russian language. But some felt the idea of Communism didn't get a fair chance, so they settled Novaya Rodina not far from here." She looked at the weapon. "The one thing they brought were the diagrams of the weapons of that long ago time. It was good that they did; economically the planet is in the toilet after only three T centuries, so they make their money by selling off the weapon designs they can't build anymore." She sighed. "I gpt there, expecting something better. What do I find? Farms, with the Commisars still dictating from the cities! Nekulturny."

Nika gathered the weapon up. While the man carrying it had been struggling with the thirty plus kilo weight, she lifted it as if it weighed nothing. "3cm grenades, 400 rounds per minute at full automatic. Thirty rounds per belt, with the drum magazine instead of the standard belt." She sounded like a kid at Christmas. "Compared to a Sollie design, it's a piece of junk; too heavy." She mused looking at the base of one of the grenades. "Standard shipboard fragmentation. If the idiot had actually gotten a chance to fire it, he would have blown himself to hell along with us."

"Where did a criminal organization buy these?"

"They didn't." Sasha pointed at the bodies. "Ranger Seguin colors. Local police on the station rotate through the Ranger's Guard detachments."

"So we just killed two cops?" Lori asked.

"Just another band of thugs out here." Nika replied, throwing the weapon to her shoulder like an oversized rifle. "Who do you think Lomax was paying off for the use of the entertainment channel for the games? Everyone who ended up as a Gladiator or animal food disappeared long before they met their fate. All thanks to Seguin. When you were 'tried', Seguin notified your ship that you were arrested. Judgment is swift out here, and Beowulf only sends a ship once a year, so if your complains, so what? Both you and Henry probably died in a shuttle accident en route to your trial, they just took a large enough skin sample to get DNA so they can verify it from the wreckage." She snorted. "They have a lot of shuttle accidents here. Way too many to be believable."

There was an explosion behind them, and they all jerked around to face it.

"I think Ranger Seguin has been catching too much flak from the League. Lomax tends to hold a grudge and has all the restraint of a rabid dog. Maybe he pissed off too many Sollie companies, but every one of us," Nigel waved at Nika and Sasha, "and all of those who are escaping the other way were already reported dead, so there are going to be a lot of explanations demanded, probably by OFS warships. All the idiot did was speed up their schedule for assimilating Eyes of Texas.

"So Seguin has decided to clean Lomax's clock, blaming it all on him in the hopes that the OFS will be satisfied, and we've not only caused this mess, but are caught in the middle, so we have to die and have bodies left to show them." He commented. "So if we could pick up the pace a bit?" Lori snatched up the bandolier of ammo drums along with the rifle (An AK74 knockoff, probably from the same planet)and it's ammunition, handing them to Sasha, and led the way.

Their luck ran out a few hundred meters further on. She opened the door, squawked in alarm, and back pedaled into the others as a huge bullet blew through the door and ricocheted off the wall.

"So we can't go that way." Shasha commented.

Henry jerked his thumb toward their back trail. "We sure can't go that way."

Lori sighed. "Darwin Awards time, and this time we lose and have to start over."

"Start over?" Nigel asked.

"I'm a Buddhist. You start over by being reborn."

He looked at her as if expecting she was joking. "I'm a Christian, and playing a harp for the rest of eternity has never been my ideal." He looked at Nika, who was looking up rather than in either impossible direction. "Nika, have you already accepted death?"

"I was thinking of another way out." She motioned. They all looked up, at a catwalk mounted on struts from the ceiling five meters above.

"Great, how do we climb up there?" Lori asked.

"How much do you weigh?" Nika asked.

"Hmn? About forty-two kilos-" Nika had set down the grenade launcher, and snatched Lori up, throwing her straight up. Lori squawked again, hands desperately trying to find something to grab on. There was a bar, and her hands caught it, chest slamming on the catwalk itself, leaving her dangling in midair from the railing.

"Damn, it worked!" Nika cried out gaily. "Oh, and you lied. Forty-two kilos my ass."

Lori glared at her. "When we get out of here, you and I are going to sit down and discuss what the word communication means."

"If you hook your legs around the bar like the catcher on a trapeze, I can throw the rest of you up there."

Lori got into position before she recognized the flaw in the logic. "But what about you?"

"No one else is strong enough-"

"I know that! But when we're all up here, what about getting you up here?"

"Not going to happen. Catch." Nika picked up Jade, and flung her up where Lori could catch her and guide her to the catwalk.

Lori cursed. "We've gone through too much to just leave you here to die."

"Uh, Lori-"

"Not now, Jade!"

"Someone has to stay behind and keep them occupied. I got elected." Nika looked around, grabbed Nigel, who was the next in size, and flung him up.

As he crawled upward, Lori still wasn't done. "Damn it, we get out together or not at all."

"I say, Ducky, we could-"

"Shut up, Nigel!"

Nika motioned to Sasha. She looked up, slung her rifle, and Nika dropped down with her hands clasped. The smaller woman stuck her foot in the cupped palms, and was flung up high enough that she caught the rail on her own, swarming upward.

"Damn it, why aren't you listening to me?" Lori screamed.

"Lori, we can-"

"Stow it, Sasha!"

Below Henry was standing with one foot in the large hands, and an instant later, was up on the catwalk. Lori wanted to scream. "I am not letting you die alone!"

"Lori-"

"Not now, Henry!" Below her Nika had dropped Lomax, and using her own belt and his, made him a bundle with ankles and wrists tied together.

"Henry, help her." The man was flung up like a sack of garbage, and Henry caught the strap, slamming into the catwalk as he took the weight. Lori put her hands under him, shoving upward as Henry pulled the body up.

"Nika, damn it!"

"Hoist a pint for me, kid."

A hand snaked the needle pistol out of her belt as she dropped back down. Nika had already gone prone, aiming the weapon back down the hall. Someone stuck his head around the corner, and ducked back as a grenade flew, blasting the end of the hall into wreckage. She rode the recoil as she sent six more after it in the next second.

"We're going to die, you know." Nika commented, changing out the spent magazine and slapping another home.

"No! We're all getting out of here, or none of us!"

"Acceptable losses." Nika replied. Lori felt for a gun on her belt, but they had been throwing the empty weapons aside as they ran, and someone- She looked up. Where the hell was-

"Excuse me." She spun, the hammer in her hand, ready to throw, and stared at Nigel.

"I am sure you had this stirring dying speech to give. But if you don't want to ride the ship down in flames, maybe we should get a move on."

"How..."

"Didn't you think that the catwalk had to connect from room to room? I just took your needle gun and cleaned out the team ahead of us." He motioned. "Remember the comment you made? About communication? Maybe you should practice what you preach."

Lori stood. "You son of a bitch!" She slapped him, then grabbed his collar and kissed him. "Move!"

He stared after her, then was snatched up by Nika who also gave him a kiss on the cheek. She looked back. "Coming?"

"Oh, right, right." He stopped at the first body, picking up a bandolier of hand grenades. He looked at one, changing the setting on it from S (Safe) past the ten one second marks, to the letter I (Impact). Then he flipped it so the striker was down, and jammed it beside the handle of the door they had just passed and thumbed the activator before following.

A destination

The last bit was almost easy; especially when Nigel left a surprise at each door. They marveled at not only his fiendish delight, but also in his sick sense of humor. One grenade had been stuck under the body of one of the men who were still ahead of them, but with the pin pulled, and set for a one second delay. Another set to impact hanging by a spider's web crossing the hall. The Ranger's men had discovered that pushing too close got them killed, so they were in pursuit, but not pressing too hard.

Nigel had been ecstatic when they passed through a hydroponics section right before the last cargo space. He had dragooned everyone into helping as he dumped bags of fertilizer into an empty mixer vat, poured in a barrel of corn oil and another of fish oil (think of it, Fish and Chips from Hell!) from the cargo space, then turned it on. "When it mixes, it will get thicker, and the engine will seize up and shut down." He explained absently. Taking his last two grenades, he put one on either side of the passage between the mixers with one flush up against the barrel, the other jammed into a cubbyhole on the opposite side.

"Do you go anywhere without blowing it to hell?" Henry asked as he was wiring them into place.

"Of course I do." Nigel replied equably. "Sometimes, I burn them down instead. There, let's go."

They came into the dock, and before them were two men and the boarding tube. Lori used her now thoroughly mangled hammer to take down one, Henry moved in, and a flurry of motion later, was standing alone. They ran past the still moaning men. "Me first." Nika dropped the grenade launcher; there were only two rounds remaining anyway, and dived down the tube. There was a brief scream of alarm, then she shouted that it was clear. Sasha threw the now awake but bleary Lomax up the tube, and dived after. Jade went, then Henry, followed by Lori.

"You left the gun back there!" She shouted at Nika, who stood by the hatch ready to close it.

"Of course I did. You didn't kill either of those men, and one of them will probably try to use it." She closed the hatch, then it reverberated as the last grenades exploded not in the ship, but in the tube. They could see the tube ripping away, the two men flying into space. "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."

They ran through to the bridge, where Lomax had been seated at the navigation console. When given a choice between being thrown back off the ship into space, he spoke into the security system, and she hummed to life. They blew the docking clamps, and the good ship Palomino pulled away from the station into even more madness. On the opposite side of the station, all of the merchant ships had already broken free, and were outbound. The navy (A couple of LACs) were trying to force them back to the docks, but the airwaves were filled with captains threatening to bring the OFS back in force if any were fired upon, and in the confusion, the warships didn't even know which of them might have escapees on them. Palomino was lost in the confusion, and made her transit into hyper before the first message reached her ordering her to return.

"Merciful Buddha, I'm glad that's over." Lori whispered as she stood away from the helm. As the only qualified bridge officer she had first set the destination, then taken the helm. The last they had seen of the station was when an explosion ripped part of it apart behind them, Nigel's going away present. "Now, do we actually have a destination?"

"Verdant Vista." Henry commented.

She stared at him. "Wait a minute, we go through all if this hell to rescue a slave, and you want to go to a planet run by slavers?"

He sat her down at the communications panel and ran the news from the day before. The Audubon Ballroom had organized an attack, and captured the station at Verdant Vista, and some fresh faced girl had stopped the slaves below from slaughtering too many of the overseers. Then a coalition formed from a flotilla of Sollie destroyers from the Maya Sector and a lone Manticoran heavy cruiser had forced a Mesan task group to back down instead of suppressing that rebellion. It had happened almost two weeks before, but someone in that group was probably still in orbit. She grinned, going back to the navigation console, and set the course.

"Where's Jade?"

"I left her in the berthing area." Henry told her.

"Then if you take over here, I will see to her." She nibbled at her lip. "The first few days after they freed me were rough. I think I can keep her together until we get some medical support. If nothing else, we can sedate her for a while, or at least tranquilize her."

She stood, walking aft. Jade wasn't in any of the cabins, or the mess hall. She began searching, then opened the hatch leading to the tiny sickbay. She screamed for help, but it was already too late.

Lori stared at the bulkhead, deep in misery. She couldn't make herself go back in there. She'd go mad if she did. Jade had used a fruit knife from the galley; modern medicine didn't use a lot of actual metal blades beyond Eyes of Texas these days. Maybe she had gone there originally for one, but the kitchen utensil had done quite well enough. But once she had chosen the place, she had returned, and there, alone, she had slit her wrists. While they were in the midst of their escape, she had found her own way out.

Nika came out, and gently handed her a pad. She stared at it uncomprehending. Nika took it back, activated it, and handed it back.

I'm sorry.

I know you said you would die to save me, and you have saved me; never forget that. But you can't be there every second of my life, and the idea that I might end up back in that nightmare is like a weight on my shoulders.

'Freedom is terrifying. How do you stand it? Part of me even now wants to go back to what I understand, as insane as that thought is. Or go on. Somewhere I won't be so afraid. So if I am truly free, I have the right to make this choice.

I'm sorry. But it is my choice

Lori still couldn't deal with it years later. Nika had to rip the pad from her hands as she cried.

New missions

The dispatch boat came over the hyper wall, and headed toward the planet. There were few ships there at the moment, a Sollie light cruiser, a pair of smaller ships that might be frigates, and a huge monster cruiser that read HMS Gauntlet. One of the frigates was charging toward them like a pugnacious chihuahua. Lori was in the captain's chair.

"We're being hailed by... ASLF Pottawatomie Creek?" Sasha said, confused. The name was badly mangled because she had never heard of it.

"Bring it up."

"SS Palomino, this is Pottawatomie Creek. If you're under a Mesan registry, you are ordered to depart immediately, or your vessel will be seized as a legitimate prize."

"Recording"

"Recording, Lori."

"This is no longer Palomino, we seized her in the Tahoe system, Eyes of Texas during our escape from there." She shrugged. "Haven't come up with a good name yet. We have a delivery for the Mantie Cruiser."

"On the chip!"

"Send it." The delay was ten minutes at this range, but was becoming shorter. 19 minutes later, they received Pottawatomie Creek's permission to close. As they reached two light minutes, They received a message from Gauntlet.

"HMS Gauntlet, Lieutenant Gohr here. The Pottawatomie Creek said you have a delivery?" The woman looked at another screen. "We have no contact in that system, or that planet."

"Understood. Have you heard of a Manticoran ship named Castle View?"

The reply was cold. "Yes, she was lost over four T years ago to pirates."

"We have the man who admitted to slaughtering her crew, captured on the station over Eyes Of Texas. Where do you want him delivered?"

The next face was a man. He looked out of the screen as the delay became short enough to allow direct communications rather than recordings. "This is Captain Michael Oversteegan, commanding HMS Gauntlet. You say you have the man responsible for those barbaric acts?"

"Yes, captain. Along with the recordings he made of the deaths of all those people, and the gladiators he had fighting in his arena. A number of them escaped at the same time we did, but we aren't sure which ships they left on. It was rather hectic there at the end. Where do you want him?"

"We'll take him aboard when you reach orbit." He motioned to someone else. "Our cutter will be there in a few. The reward, it seems is yours."

"Reward?"

"The ship belonged to the Hauptmann Cartel. Klaus Hauptmann has placed a reward of 50,000 Manticoran for any information leading to an arrest and conviction for each of the crew members. I think delivering the man responsible has an additional reward." He looked up and back, nodding. "Our cutter is en route. Gauntlet clear.

Goodbye, and Hello.

Lori was in a deep funk as she rode down toward Beacon. The first time she had made this trip, it was in the company of her friends, and the body of Jade. She cleared the ship, and was met by a ground car that took her to the medical center. She walked through the hospital rooms, looking at the faces of her genetic siblings. Some were unconscious, sedated to stop them from harming themselves. A couple were awake and coherent, and they cried when she introduced herself. That reward from years ago had been almost 3 million Manticoran dollars, and instead of splitting it, the others had offered to join in her crusade. The three Ballroom people from the station had joined her crew, but not that tighter family yet.

She held the hand of Lotus, the one of her own batch for a long time. She kept seeing another face, a slightly younger face in it. She was on suicide watch, as Lori should have done with Jade. As she watched, the woman's eyes opened, then turned to look at her. "Hello. I'm Lori." She felt tears in her eyes. "I'm your sister. I promise you, no one will ever hurt you again. Hold that in your heart, because you will live long enough to believe it." The woman merely shook her head, and closed her eyes again. Lori stood, kissing her gently on the cheek, and left.

She made the one pilgrimage she reserved to herself alone. There was a small cemetery inside the city limits. With Mesa no longer grinding up the bodies for pharmaceuticals, the slaves had reintroduced the idea of actual coffin burials here. She knelt, resting her hand on the stone that simply said JADE with the date of her death.

"We found some more of our sisters, Jade. I just wish you had waited long enough to meet them." She whispered, laying the small bouquet of flowers on the stone. She could almost feel a ghostly hand on her shoulder, and a voice so like her own whispering back.

I know. I wait for all of you to eventually join me in peace. But there are more, so I will leave you to it. Give all of them the same gift, and I pray they use it more wisely than I.

She stood, turned, and strode out through the gate. She had more to save.