Belt Three

‘What happened?’

‘I think you blacked out for a moment.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

He held the pilot’s gaze. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’ He nearly told her that it was his fault, but then stopped himself: she would respond that it wasn’t, and he would be fishing for her forgiveness for what he was about to do. These were her last moments as a free-willed human being and he had no right to make them about him. Instead, he said, ‘you were the best pilot I’ve worked with, and it’s been an honour flying with you.’

There were tears in her eyes, but she managed to smile.

There was a noise outside the door. It sounded like the pirates had reached it, and were preparing to blow the lock. There was no point resisting now. Jonas pressed the door release.

A pirate walked in, a large man dressed in an armoured vacuum suit. A servitor; he walked with a robotic gait, and his face inside the visor was expressionless. He scanned the room with a pistol and then fired quick bursts at Jonas and Ayla.

Jonas’s muscles seized up painfully, rooting him to the spot. A nerve gun, set for paralysis. He could move his eyes and facial muscles a little, but nothing else. The servitor lowered the gun and gave a hand signal to someone in the corridor.

Captain Keldra strode into the room, followed by a second servitor. She was tall, and from the way she was built Jonas guessed she had been raised in at least half gravity, probably more. She wore a yellow armoured vacuum suit, but her helmet was clipped to her belt, leaving her head arrogantly unprotected. She looked around the room critically, then pointed at Ayla.

‘Spike her.’

Jonas could see the helpless panic in Ayla’s eyes as the first servitor produced an enslavement spike and walked up to her. The servitor held the spike to the back of her neck and there was an unpleasant organic sound as it injected a servitor implant. Her eyes moved wildly for a moment, and she twitched, muscle spasms fighting against the paralysis, as the servitor implant systematically destroyed her higher brain functions and installed its own tendrils in their place. The pirate servitor touched her with an anti-paralyzer but she remained motionless, her mind gone.

Keldra pointed at Jonas. ‘Search him for weapons, and cuff him.’

The first servitor kept Jonas covered with a nerve gun while the second patted him down for weapons, put a pair of cuffs on his wrists, and then released him from the paralysis. Keldra watched smugly.

‘Make sure your ransom is worth more than the trouble you give me,’ she said.

Jonas nodded silently. He intended to cause her a great deal of trouble – and she’d be getting no ransom, in any case – but for now he had to bide his time.

Keldra’s nerve gun dug into his back as she marched him around the orbital corridor. Any last-ditch resistance the crew had put up was over, and pirates were already beginning to strip equipment from the walls. The pirates were all servitors; he couldn’t see any free-willed humans among Keldra’s crew.

They passed a group of newly mind-wiped mining foremen putting on vacuum suits in preparation for the transfer to the other ship. Keldra prodded Ayla to join them. Now was the moment. Jonas waited a calculated second, and then rushed forward as dramatically as he could.

‘Ayla! Where are you taking her?’

Keldra grabbed his arm and brought him round to face her. ‘Oh, was she yours?’ she asked. ‘Was she special?’ The cruel smirk was back on her face, as he had hoped. ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure I can find a buyer for a pretty young thing like that.’

She let out a little snorting laugh and undid his cuffs as a servitor pushed a patched and blood-stained vacuum suit into his hands. Jonas kept his eyes on Ayla for as long as he could while he donned the suit, trying to look desperate and dejected. He had to let Keldra think she could use Ayla to hurt him. From the smug look on the pirate’s face, he thought he had succeeded.

They climbed a ladder to the centre of the cargo bay, their weight dropping off until they were in microgravity. Across the gap, the Remembrance of Clouds kept station with the Dancer, its two grav-rings casting spokes of shadow across its cargo bay. The Dancer’s bay was emptying as Keldra’s servitors sent cargo containers along the lines to the pirate ship. She put the cuffs back on Jonas and then clipped them to a personnel transfer line. As it hauled them along, they passed a pair of servitors manoeuvring uranium ore canisters across the gap.

‘You should have fought,’ Keldra said, suddenly.

‘What?’ Jonas said.

She pressed the nerve gun against his back. The shock couldn’t penetrate the vacuum suit, but the pointed tip of the weapon pressed in painfully. ‘You ran,’ she said. ‘You people always run. You should have fought.’

Chapter Two (#u07380660-f6c8-5767-815e-6d31e168627f)

The prison cell was a converted cargo container a few metres wide. There were three light strips in the ceiling, but only one of them worked, so the room was filled with an eye-straining half-light. A hard-angled metal bed was bolted to the floor, and in the corner was the sealed box of a chemical toilet.

Jonas got up slowly, still nauseous from the nerve gun paralysis, and rubbed his wrists where the cuffs had dug in. He felt heavy: he estimated the ring’s gravity was close to one gee, much more than he would have expected on a pirate ship. There was a little barred window in the cell door, through which he could see a brightly lit corridor and a security camera bolted to the opposite wall. He pressed his face to the bars to see as far as he could into the corridor, but he couldn’t see any guards, or any other sign of life. The only sound was the faint rattle and gurgle of the ship’s systems.

He lay down on the bed. After what he guessed was an hour the vibration changed in tone, and the room seemed to tip sideways as a gentle new acceleration dragged him towards the wall. The Remembrance of Clouds was unfurling its sail and pulling away from whatever it had left of the Coriolis Dancer.

Sometime later he heard footsteps in the corridor. A slot at the bottom of the door opened and a tray of food slid in. He waited, but the footsteps did not depart. When he sat up on the bed he saw a face, dark against the window.

‘You should have fought,’ Keldra said.

He didn’t move. He had expected her to come to gloat, although he hadn’t expected her so soon. He glowered up at the door for a moment but said nothing. He wanted her to be angry at him, and for now the best way to achieve that would be to ignore her.

‘Eat!’ she commanded.

‘What have you done with Ayla?’ he asked.

Keldra let out a snorting laugh. ‘Eat!’

‘If you want obedience, why don’t you spike me?’

‘Don’t tempt me. I bet your family would pay something just for your body.’

Jonas went to the tray and picked it up. Keldra’s face was close to the bars. He examined her, keeping his face controlled.

‘If you spiked me, you’d have no one to talk to,’ he said. ‘We’re the only free-willed people on the ship.’ A subtle movement of her eyes told him he was right.

He sat down and began to eat. It was the tasteless, nutritious slop that servitors were fed. He grimaced, deliberately, as if he were used to only the finest true-born cuisine.

‘You should have fought.’ Keldra banged on the door, making him jump. ‘Look at me!’

He lay the spoon across the bowl and sat up haughtily. ‘You have no right to keep a true-born like this.’

That set her off. ‘You think you’re better than the rest of us. You’re not. You’re just a spoiled ruling class.’

‘You’re just a clone. My ancestors walked on Earth.’

Keldra thumped the door again, making the cell rattle. ‘You know nothing about Earth! I’m closer to Earth than any true-born. I’m a genetic duplicate of someone who lived on Earth.’

‘You’re a clone. What’s your name, clone? Your full name?’

‘To hell with you.’

‘You don’t have a name. You have a serial number. You were made.’

Keldra was leaning close to the bars, as if she were the one locked up. She seemed like a caged animal that might tear the door open at any moment. Making her angry was almost too easy. Had she come down here looking for a shouting match?

‘I’ll tell you my name,’ she said. ‘Keldra 2482-Pandora-33842, Engineer.’

Assuming it was true, that made Keldra 28-years-old. He hadn’t heard of Pandora, but there were a lot of minor Belt Three cities he didn’t know.