Gravity Capture

“The exercise today then.”

“Two heavies and a ship-of-line. I had everything ready to go before our CO came in. He’s had some combat time but you couldn’t tell. He makes easy mistakes. It cost us the engagement.”

“Yeah, I was there,” Hurricane said and smiled as Jena’s jaw dropped. “We were piggybacked onto Warspite when you guys showed up. I thought we did a pretty good imitation of the Seydlitz and her fighter group but, come on, we weren’t that good.”

“Try telling that to the good captain,” Jena said as anger raced through her. “Let’s just say he’s the type that thinks he makes all the right moves, even when he doesn’t.”

“Too bad. I’ve heard you can do a lot with an Intrepid-class.”

“He was with the blockade fleet during the Octavian intervention, I assumed he knew what he was doing,” Jena said. “How many sorties did you fly today?”

“Three sorties," He said. "On the last one we caught two squadrons of F-nineteen’s off of Kitty Hawk and some British strike bombers from the Home Fleet.”

“How did you do?” Jena said as she chewed before remembering her manners and lifting a hand to cover her smile.

“We caught them while they were borking some destroyers in the commercial lanes and clobbered them pretty good, that was the last one of the day. The 'twenty-eight is sierra hotel.”

"Shit hot, huh?" She said and lifted her glass for a bemused sip.

Hurricane shrugged. “If that’s how you want to put it.”

“I hope so. From the things I’ve been hearing, it’s going get a interesting when Transterran gets the injunction that allows them to start seizing Eurocon assets.”

“If they get the injunction.”

“You don’t think they’ll get what they want?” Jena said and pushed her plate away, her near-steak only half-eaten.

“I’m not a lawyer and they don’t pay me to worry about it." Hurricane said and checked the large Krono-Tek on his wrist, then his face fell. "I need to get going… post-ex debrief at eighteen-hundred. It’s been nice, Jena.”

Hurricane drained the contents of his glass and got to his feet. He gave his IDC card over to the steward robot and, despite Jena’s protest, instructed it to put the cost of her meal and the bottle of wine they had shared on his account. Her objections were token; he could afford it.

“I assume that we’ll get some leave time once we get to Mars, at least a day or two of it. I’d like to see you again.” He said and held out his hand.

“I’d like that.” Jena said as Hurricane took her hand, making her briefly think he was going to deliver a kiss to it. Instead he shook it gently, a pleasant deviation from the bone crushing grips she’d endured from other men.

“See you on Mars then.” Hurricane said and turned away, shouldering his way through the flow of people.

“Hey, flyboy.” Jena said and he stopped.

“Yeah?” He said over his shoulder and threw his hips back to avoid a steward-bot with a fully-laden tray.

“What’s the difference between God and a fighter pilot?” Jena said and smirked at the puzzled look on his face.

“I don’t know,” He said and shook his head. “What?”

“God doesn’t think he’s a fighter pilot. You get it?”

Hurricane smiled briefly and then was gone, making a bee-line for the lift, lost in the milling crowd.

***

SolMax Prison

Ajax pulled a tray from a spring-loaded cart of the same and queued up behind the rest of his block-mates in the slop-line. A scoop of rehydrated potatoes was slapped down onto the tray by a surly trustee, followed by a scoop of what was supposed to be meat. The only recognizable food group came from a fruit-bowl. The selection changed daily and each person in General Population got a piece. If the prison did something to make the Administrator unhappy, the first thing to go away was the fruit.

He picked out an apple and set it next to the rehydrates on his tray. Each meal was proving to be a new disappointment; near-meat patties smothered with rancid cheese served on buns long gone stale, small piles of undercooked noodles covered with tomato-flavored paste instead of sauce, the best he could do was not think about what he is eating. Each prisoner got the nutrients required by law, but they were served in the most unappetizing forms the Administrator could think of.

Ajax found an empty seat and tore his water-ration open. They put something in it to keep the inmates passive, he was sure. Water is all they were allowed, required, to drink. The guards in riot armor walking the shooting gallery overhead carried canteens but he never saw them refilled from the common supply.

"You're in my seat." Someone with a deep voice said from behind him. Ajax chewed a bite of synthetic spud and half-turned to see whom the voice belonged to. It was an obese man with a putrescent odor and an angry scowl on his flat, pock-marked face. In the exercise-yard, Ajax heard some inmates call him “Chunk.”

"There are other seats, friend. Find someplace else, I'm eating here." Ajax said. The inmates sitting around him shook their heads in disbelief and a few slid away to find new tables.

"I'm not your friend, shit-bird, and I'll tell you once more, you're in my seat." Chunk said and dropped a heavy hand drop onto his shoulder. Ajax wanted to pummel the fat puke and finish his meal, but rule number four prohibited fighting. One punch was worth thirty days in the DeepCore.

"Fine. Take it." Ajax said and suppressed the primitive voice urging him to smash, smash now. He picked up his tray and got to his feet but was spun around before he could get his back straight. The force of it nearly sent him off balance but his water ration and the remains of his meal clattered to the floor. Chunk set his tray down on the table and glared at Ajax instead of taking his seat.

"I don't think I like your attitude, shit-bird. I don’t like you at all." Chunk said and something inside Ajax snapped.

"Well, I guess today is my lucky day then, Chunk."

"Oh yeah? Why's that?"

"Because you stink. Is that because you're afraid to shower or afraid you'll drop the nozzle?"

"You just made a big mistake," Chunk said and delivered a push that sent Ajax stumbling backwards. "First I'm gonna hurt you, then I'm gonna take you down. You’ll be ass-meat for the prison hags before this shift is over."

Chunk balled his ham-sized fists and lunged. Ajax easily eluded the first rush, but to his surprise, a crowd had formed around the two. The guards will intervene after the first punch, Ajax could see that they had stopped pacing and were watching the exchange. He kept up the barrage while Chunk recovered.

"You'll have to do better than that, Chunk. The only thing I see you trying to catch is your breath." Ajax growled as he circled. The perimeter was closing as more inmates pushed in to see the action. Soon he would have nowhere to go.

"You're dead!" Chunk bellowed furiously. Rolls of flab jiggled as he came forward again. "You're dead!"

Ajax evaded the assault, but only barely. Chunk gathered himself for another rush but slipped on the mess that Ajax never had a chance to eat.

Chunk fought for his balance and Ajax saw his chance. He left forward and drove a foot into Chunk’s knee. He felt something go pop when the strike landed. Chunk howled in pain and dropped to the floor.

"Break it up!"

The fight circle was rapidly dispersed as the guards pushed their way in. Ajax managed to deliver a satisfying kick to Chunk's face before they arrived.

"Freeze!" A guard ordered from someplace close behind him.

"This guy threatened to kill me. I was only defending myself. You can ask these guys, they saw it." Ajax said as he froze in place.

"Quiet, convict! Get your hands up!"

"You claim self-defense. Is this true? Who will testify?" Brawny said as he pushed his way through the circle. The few that spoke up offered ignorance. Nobody saw anything, they all watched, but they saw nothing. Brawny faced Ajax and took out his barcode scanner.

"Prisoner five-one-nine-eight-three, you have been notified of the penalty for inciting violence and because you choose to disregard it, I will see it carried out."

"What! No! I didn't do anything wrong!" Ajax yelled as he realized the implication. He tensed as two guards grabbed his arms from behind.

"Log! Prisoner five-one-nine-eight-three! Code four! Transfer to DeepCore! Thirty days!" Brawny shouted to the computer that controlled the facility. It acknowledged the log update with a tone and made the necessary notions to the proper file.

"No! You don't understand. I was only defending myself!" Ajax howled in protest. “Ask your people! They saw it!”

"Save it for the core, convict." The larger guard said as he takes out his shock-rod, and rammed it into Ajax’s belly. The high-voltage charge cramped muscles from his waist to his chin and doubled him over in pain.

"Take him away." Brawny said and sternly directed his shock-rod towards the lifts. Chunk laughed as Ajax was dragged away hoisted, between the two guards, on his own petard.

Carbon-fiber cuffs kept Ajax's hands firmly secured behind his back and the two guards accompanying him had their weapons pointed his direction.

"So what do I do when my thirty days are up?" He said to hide his apprehension. The lift dropped down a shaft 4 kilometers long.

"Shut your bosh!" The larger guard said and elbowed him in the back hard enough to send him face first into the elevator door. Ajax felt his nose crunch and then something warm running over his lips. Nearly blinded by the reflex tears that flowed from his eyes, he wiped the stream on his sleeve and saw red.

"No gabbie unless gabbed to, understand, convict?" The smaller one said in a squeaky voice and rammed the stock of his rifle into Ajax's midsection, dropping him to his knees and then to the floor. Ajax felt the toe of a heavy boot slam into his side, blasting the air from his lungs, then another, and another.

"We stop being cozy when you break our rules." The larger one said as he delivered a final kick. While Ajax struggled to catch his breath, he noticed that the feeling of motion had stopped. When the lift doors slid apart, he got a rats-eye view of the DeepCore.

“That’s right,” The smaller one said. “So keep quiet or it’ll be more of the same.”

The elevator opened to an empty chamber separated from the rest of the level by a containment wall constructed of thick, gray bars. There was a one-way, revolving gate that only allowed passage from the vestibule into the level proper. The guards lifted him to his feet and threw him against the grid.

Ajax groaned as he fell against a metal bar, which opened a gash under his left eye. The larger guard pinned him in place with a forearm against his neck, grinding his face into the metal while the other unlocked the cuffs, then they spun him around to face them.

"Thirty days, convict," The larger one said. "You got thirty days to decide where you want to serve out the rest of your sentence."

"Yeah, and it only gets worse from here, so be good." The smaller one piped in as he stabbed a finger into Ajax's chest. Both guards laughed, then pushed him through the gate with enough combined force to send him stumbling out the other side.

"Wait!" A shrill voice called out from deeper in the level behind him. "Wait for me!"

The guards raised their weapons in alert. Ajax shuffled back until he touched coarse stone. Someone small and emaciated looking ambled out of the darkness and stopped at the bars of the containment wall.

"Don't leave without me." He sobbed and reached his spindly arms through the bars.

"Is that you, Sully?" The larger guard said as he lowered his rifle and took a closer look. "It is you. Boy, you look like rad-waste."

"No fuzz, Sully," The smaller one said and laughed. "If they ever let you out of here, they'll have to declare you a bio-hazard zone."

"My twelve days have been up," Sully said as he clasped his hands together and pleaded. "Take me back to the surface."

Ajax looked him over with the eye not swelling shut. The man was filthy. In fact the whole level smelled vile.

The guards smirked as they watched him, then the bigger one took the shock-rod off of his belt and used it to electrify the bars. Sully yelped and retreated.

"Your lift date was yesterday, Sully. You know the rules. You miss your lift date and you get left until the next guy goes up."

"No." Sully whimpered and collapsed against the wall.

"Thirty days, Utburd," The bigger one said, rapping on the bars with the shock-rod to get Ajax's attention. "Now you know the rules, too."

"Utburd," The smaller one said with a sneer. "Dookie-bird is more like it. Try not to get yourself killed, dookie-bird."

"Don't leave me!" Sully pleaded one last time as the guards filed into the elevator, but the doors slammed shut without him. The lights in the chamber went out when the doors closed. Ajax collapsed against the wall and in silence, let wretched tears rolled down his face. Four kilometers was a long way to fall.

Ajax picked up his head and the felt the tears falling from his eyes. There was a faint noise coming out of the darkness. It sounded like a wolf's howl and came from deeper in the level. Then he heard it again- it was primal and he shivered as a sudden chill passed.

"What the fek is that?" He said, surprised at how loud his own voice sounded. Then he heard others.

"Lupus is its name," Sully said from across the corridor. "It must have heard the lift come down. We have to go.”

Ajax followed the voice to where Sully crouched against the wall.

"What do they want with me?" Ajax said in quiet anger. It should have been Chunk dealing with this dook instead of him.

"They're the welcome wagon," Sully said. In the darkness, Ajax was unable to tell if he was frowning. "They got a fruit basket and a book of coupons for you."

"Those probably aren’t the only things," Ajax said. “I think I’ll pass.”

"Good for you," Sully replied. "Follow me if you want. I know some places where Lupus doesn't go."

"How do I know you're not going to take me right to him?" Ajax said, letting pensiveness creep into his voice.

"Because you're my ticket back to general population," Sully said. "If something happens to you it might be months before they send someone else down. Are you coming or not?"

"Yeah. It sounds like the place to be."

"Don't fool yourself, new meat," Sully said as he groped for Ajax's hand and placed it on his bony shoulder before he led off. "This is the DeepCore. You're only down here for thirty days. There's some things down here for life that ain't human no more."

"So what are you here for?" Ajax said. The wispy beard he saw before the lights went out looked more than a month old.

"Failure to follow directives with a damaging SolMax property on top of it," Sully grumped. “They really know how to stack on the bogus charges around here.”

"What did you do?" Ajax said and stumbled over a rock that Sully had avoided. His eyes were still adjusting to the dark the other man had long grown accustomed to.

"I left a present in the administrator's coffee cup while I was on kitchen detail," Sully said. Ajax could sense satisfaction. "You should've seen the look on his face."

"Was it worth it?" Ajax said as more howling echoed from the darkness ahead. Sully gave an amused snort.

"Oh yeah."

“So do they beat the shit out of everyone they bring down here?” Ajax said. “Or was it just me?”

“Only the ones that don’t get humble, meat.”

"New meat!" Someone shouted from far back in the corridor behind them. Ajax froze when he heard the voice. "We're comin' for ya, new meat! Ain’t no place ya can run!"

A boogeyman called from someplace in the darkness he was putting behind him.

"Lupus is probably mad as a hungry dog that you weren't where you was supposed to be when he got there." Sully said and cackled before breaking into a dry cough.

"How much further?" Ajax said as Lupus began howling madly, followed soon after by the rough voices of his pack.

"It's just ahead, meat,” Sully said as he started moving again. “Don't get your umbilicals in a tangle."

As Ajax's eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, he could see that the tunnels were smooth- industrial symbols and arrows had been painted on with a phosphorescent compound that faintly glowed.

"What was this place?" He said as they turned right and started down another dim, endless corridor. Wherever they were going, the air circulation seemed to be improving.

"Did you just fall off the boat, meat? Apex settled the first colonists here to work a mine,” Sully said as he felt his way along the wall. “Once they took out all of the Gadolinium they could reach, they closed the mine and sold it to SOLCorp. This is what's left."

Sully led him through a wide opening into what looked to be a large common area- Ajax heard the quiet buzz of conversation and infrequent laughter. All around him were dark forms huddled together. A few people lifted their heads to scrutinize them as they passed.

"It’s a regular town meeting.” Ajax said when he realized that there were over a hundred others clustered about. Sully found a open space and dropped with a sigh. Ajax lowered himself and leaned back against the hard stone wall. He felt more tired than he could ever remember.

"Lupus don't come here because the trustee won't let him," Sully said and curled into a ball. "Him and his boys are big and mean but we got them outnumbered. Remember that, meat."

"What's that?" Ajax said and stretched his legs out in relief.

"Even the lowliest, most insignificant slime has strength in mass, so be nice. You never know when you're going to need the help."

Ajax took a deep breath of the thick atmosphere and probed the gash on his cheek with grubby fingers.

“Thanks for the tip,” Ajax said, deciding that the bleeding had stopped. It would probably take a couple days for the swelling to go down. “That slime’ll get you every time.”

"You just remember our deal, smart-guy."

***

55 Cancri

Zebra Station

“Miller, I think we got a glitch in the system.”

"Gremlins again? We just had the system flushed." Senior sensor-tech Miller murmured to himself as the high, peeping tone that meant a contact had been detected came through his headphones. He reached forward to increase the gain from the deep search network and scrutinized the data-feed. Something had tripped the number 12, 22, 32, and 42 sensor-buoys, a displacement wave moving at full transit speed, slanting past the station. He stabbed at a button next to his screen marked "VTA" and sat back while the computer did its work.

"This has got to be an error." He said quietly. If the readings he got back were accurate, the contact had initiated transit from a point inside the Big Deep. Miller activates the signal analysis/recognition system and waited for the return. His eyes widened with shock when it comes back.

"Watch officer to station twelve. Watch officer to station twelve, please."

The alert signal came through his earphones again. Another contact had been detected, in transit, and on the same trajectory as the first.

"What is it, Miller?" Lt. Kelly, the officer on duty, arrived at his station in moments.

"Sir, I think you'd better see this. Two detects just tripped the outer DSS line at high transit speed. Initial event time is at H plus six and running. Vector analysis indicates that transit initiation came from someplace inside the rift. The only end system along that line is Pi Ursae Majoris. If that's their destination, they'll arrive there at H plus twelve-thirty-five."

Another detect, then another, triggered more alert tones in his headset.

"Contact, contact. Same as before. Initial event time is Hour plus six point zero seven, H plus six point zero eight, on the same trajectory."