Chapter 2
Prison Break
“Prisoner processing terminal to unidentified craft, please identify and transmit itinerary.”
The words hung in the air of the cramped shuttle cockpit between the two men, unanswered.
The two exchanged a glance, each immediately pointing at the other.
Silently, they drew their hands out and performed a high-stakes game of rock-paper-scissors.
The loser: Davik, holding a shaky gesture of scissors, and not nearly enough fire in his eyes to goad his co-pilot into a best-two-out-of-three.
“This is shuttle Delta-Six-Oh, facilities maintenance,” he began.
A nervous creak in his voice set him off kilter, but he pressed on.
“We’re scheduled to deliver a cryopod. There was a coolant leak in a unit on deck forty.
We were contracted out to bring in a replacement model and dispose of the defective unit. ”
Davik looked to his co-pilot, frantically gesturing towards the dashboard and mouthing a silent plea for help. His partner in crime, Drey, offered none. The cocky bastard just grinned, kicked his feet up, and shot an encouraging two thumbs up.
Another lengthy pause stretched out without a reply.
Davik fixed his gaze out the window, searching the orbital station below for any source of reassurance.
The spaceport they were approaching held nothing to ease his worries.
It was a bustling hive of activity of the law-enforcement variety, and no amount of optimistic thinking would shake the sensation of entirely justifiable dread.
“Delta-Six-Oh, we just need your itinerary data. You know. Arrival time, departure time, docking telemetry. Thank you for the illumination of your evening plans. Please, just transmit your itinerary.”
Davik swallowed his mortification before pulling up the interface to initiate the link. Drey reached forward to watch the screen before giving the nervous engineer’s dark, wavy hair a thorough, and somewhat demeaning, tousling.
“Attaboy, you’re doing great, kid. Really nailing it. Got your backstory down to a science and everything. Ain’t no way we’re getting pinched after that performance.”
“Don’t ‘kid’ me, Drey. You’ve only got a year or two on me, and I’m too freaked to do this big-tough-bully banter with you right now. I’ll let you get some good barbs in once my brother is off ice. Deal?”
The would-be bully made a derisive, eye-rolling, rumbling comment about greenhorns, but Davik was too busy keeping his stomach from crawling up his esophagus to notice.
Instinctively, he reached up to rub his throat to ease the feeling.
Not that he could feel much of anything along the metallic augmentation around his neck, but it was a nervous habit.
The metal wasn’t cold, but it still felt foreign, no matter how many years it had been since its installation.
The contrast between the cool-toned metallics and his deep brown skin was stark.
He made a mental note that he would upgrade the external plating to a color more complementary when he had the credits.
It was another to-do added to his endless string of plans, all the things he would fix when he found some semblance of normalcy.
Something that had never come to pass in his thirty-odd years of life so far.
All that would have to wait. The top priority was the task at hand: getting his brother home.
“Delta-Six-Oh, you are at the wrong terminal. Your itinerary has you listed to dock at the maintenance corridor. This is the prisoner processing terminal. Sending the correct telemetry to your link.”
Davik tapped the heading into the console and let out a shaky sigh of relief. The sea of law enforcement shuttles slowly fell out of view. Their new path took them towards a much less imposing bay on the opposite side of the station.
“See?” Drey said, barely keeping his amusement hidden.
“Everything’s fine. We’ve just gotta get in there, make the swap, punt Marius into the void, and get out.
You’re getting in your head about this.” To stress the point, he gave Davik a teasing tap on the temple.
“Just don’t vomit, don’t make eye contact with anyone who looks important, and stick by me. We’ll be fine.”
Drey was gruff, ex-military stock. Broad and looming, with black hair going prematurely gray in streaks at his temples.
It was cut in the same short-cropped style that everyone who had served in the Sol Forces got attached to.
It was short enough to show the dark carbon fiber lines along his skull, the standard color for military-grade augmentations.
The co-pilot’s seat creaked a bit as Drey leaned forward to stare intently at a readout on his console.
It was hard to make out his expression in the dark, and Davik couldn’t quite tell if he was taking a moment to be serious, or if the salty merc was just preparing another jab to lessen the tension.
The merc had been a staple in Davik’s life as far back as he could remember, but with how wrong everything had gone lately, he was finally seeing the cracks. Drey was more like him than the figure he had admired. He was just another stressed and overworked soul trying to survive.
This is the worst time to realize the fallibility of your co-conspirator.
The maintenance corridor was in sight, and to his relief, it was a far less daunting view than the law-laced maw they had almost walked into.
For the second time of the night, and hopefully the last, Davik opened the comms line and spoke with a renewed sense of confidence.
“Shuttle Delta-Six-Oh, requesting dock. Maintenance fleet. Sending itinerary.”
There was a pause, a click, and then a dry, bored voice replied over the comms.
“Yeah, yeah … Bay two is open. Don’t dink the airlock seals, please.”
The echoing hallway of the maintenance corridor amplified the squeaking wheels of their pallet jack to an uncomfortably loud level. That, or the rushing blood in Davik’s ears was making everything feel glaringly intense. It was probably the latter.
A pair of guards flanked the entrance proper, and they waved the two men down. The younger of the two guards gave them a look-over before pulling up a handheld scanner to check what they had in tow.
Giving the crate they were hauling a pat, Davik broke into an unprompted explanation.
“There was a coolant leak on deck forty, we’re here to swap out the pod and take the old one back for refurb—”
The woman with the scanner in-hand made a dismissive gesture, cutting him off mid-sentence.
“Yeah, yeah. You’re fine. This is the ice wing, not like we need to worry about you smuggling in anything fun. Sleepers don’t really run a risk of collecting contraband smut reels.”
“Aye, but if you have any,” the second guard said with a cheeky wag of his bushy eyebrows.
“Ah, damn, wrong box,” Drey said as he tapped the top of the crate. “This one’s just got a nuclear warhead. Next time, though, I’ll be sure to bring in some decent entertainment.”
It was fortunate that the sound of Davik’s stomach doing cartwheels was not actually audible.
This was the part of the work he hated. The “soft skills” of manipulation.
Incredibly useful, but it just made him feel ill.
Even when the stakes weren’t this high, he despised it.
Now that the stakes were astronomical, he wanted to heave.
“Don’t tease me,” the guard with the scanner said with a derisive eye-roll. “I haven’t had anything interesting to report in years.”
With no fanfare, she waved them along. No follow-up, no interrogation, not even a cursory glance at their identification badges. The badges that Davik had spent hours researching to ensure they looked authentic.
Instead of spiraling at the colossal waste of time he had spent, Davik resigned to following behind Drey as they walked in.
He kept his eyes fixed on his datapad, pretending to survey something that looked properly maintenance-worker-worthy.
He waited until they were in the elevator before sending a comms ping to their pilot aboard The Argent.
The sharp voice of his sister-in-law, Carissa, echoed in his comm.
“You just now got in? We’re cutting it razor-thin. Hustle.”
Punctuality was her specialty, and they were already behind schedule with the docking bay mix-up.
A dozen identical decks had passed their view through the clear elevator doors in the time it took him to update their timeline. The piping was tidy, everything neat and clinical. Just rows and rows of cryopods in a stark white hallway. The lack of grit to it made it feel crueler, somehow.
Each pod was another person locked away while the world passed on. Until their sentence expired, someone paid their bail, or luck favored them with amnesty. It was The Federation’s “Great Mercy” because, in their twisted morality, this was more humane than imprisonment.
We won’t let the world just spin on without you, Marius. Promise. We’re almost there.
The only variation between the gray lanes of prisoners was the occasional maintenance worker tending to something. Actual cryopod maintenance workers, unlike what he was pretending to be.
Most were Icthians, humanoids with semi-scaled skin and distinctly aquatic features. They all had unique markings, fins, and tendrils that looked a little like thick braids of hair. Some even had tails that surely must make putting their jumpsuits on an absolute nightmare.
Despite the diverse colors and markings, they all wore the same uniform, and they all wore that golden band that met at a diamond-shaped crest on the back of their necks. The bright, gleaming symbol of Sol’s peace: The Pactbind.
Davik rubbed the back of his own neck reflexively. His flesh there might be half mechanical, but it was blessedly absent of the intrusive device.