The Omega Cage (2 page)

"Hit the lasers," Stark said softly.

Pig was about to backhand Maro again when he stopped. "Jesus, look at that!"

Maro heard him only dimly through the ringing in his ears. He tried to focus his eyes, and saw Pig staring out of the port. He raised his head, tasting the saltiness of blood from his split lip as he did so. On the other side of him, he was vaguely aware of Snake staring through the port also.

He saw several things at once: The prison itself, constructed of some dark, almost glistening material, unlike anything he had ever before seen. It crouched upon the ground like a predatory beast squatting on its haunches. There were other buildings and additions to the main structures, obviously man-made, but it was the wall itself that caught his attention first.

Then, suddenly, the air next to the wall was filled with lances of coherent red beams. Lasers, he realized. The pattern of the lines formed a tight net that would allow nothing larger than a bird to escape their touch.

In the middle of the brilliant display, Maro saw what had saved him from further abuse at Pig's hands; a small craft loaded with people, smoking and falling. The dance of fiery light continued as the thing fell, baking those on board, stroking their blackened forms with more heat, shining through the charred flesh with a ruby glow that was interrupted by frothy bubbles of the same color.

Maro tried to turn away, but found he was unable to do so. The execution held him with awful fascination.

The ship—it was no more than a stripped hopper plate, he realized—struck the ground just beyond the wall. The bodies tumbled off, some landing as much as fifty or sixty meters away. Parts of the roasted meat fell off when they hit.

The skimmer banked, and Maro could no longer see the results of the laser barrage. He knew, however, that no one could have survived it.

Behind him, Snake quietly said, "Stupid bastards. They never had a chance."

Pig, his face alight with a sick and twisted joy, grinned at Maro. "Welcome to the Omega Cage, pretty boy."

Maro leaned back in his chair and stared at his manacles. He had been interned before, but the reality of his situation finally sank in as he replayed what he had just seen. Escape wouldn't be easy.

It might take a white.

Chapter Two

The processing seemed almost perfunctory when compared to some other cages into which Maro had been filed. He already had the haircut, so they didn't bother with that. A bored guard ran Maro's left wrist under a viral scanner and the digital ID coded into the prisoner's pisiform bone made the audio squeal. On his scanner, the guard would be seeing a quick biograph appear: retinal prints, EEG patterns, history, and so forth.

"Maro, Dain," the guard said. "MMF, and life."

MMF: murder most foul. It had a quaint sound to it, Maro thought, a pre-space feeling that went along with colorful costumes and riding on beasts or under steam or fossil power. The sentence was worth a trip to the Omega Cage, though.

Ordinary murder—whatever that was—wouldn't do it. Maro had killed people in his time, though never for money and not without his own life on the line. This particular crime was a set-up; of it, at least, he was as innocent as an uncoded viral computer. He had enemies, though…

The guard interrupted his thoughts. "Pass him through. Standard chem wash and irradiate."

Pig grinned. "Strip, pretty boy."

Wordlessly, Maro did as ordered. He was in pretty good shape, despite the three months of lock-time before the trial. He had had enough room to do basic flex and kata in his cell, and he'd been in good condition when they had caught him.

If you'd been in top condition
, he thought ironically,
maybe they wouldn't have
caught you
…

"Inside."

The small room was windowless and dark, and the jets started spraying as soon as he was inside, even before the warped plastic door slid completely shut. Detox red first, with that alcohol-pine smell and the uncomfortable tingle on his bare skin. The crimson mist stopped, and was followed immediately by a yellow spray, probably some fungicide. He closed his eyes, but not quickly enough to keep them from stinging. The air now smelled like burning insulation.

Finally the chem wash stopped and a glare filled the room. Maro kept his eyes shut tight as the irradiant bathed him. Most of his internal flora would die from the radiation; he'd have diarrhea for a few days until he could grow more
E. coli
.

"Out," Pig commanded over a scratchy speaker.

The guard held a set of cheap, blue prison orthoskins and slippers crumpled in one hand. He tossed them at Maro. Pig said, "That's it, pretty boy, you're in." He turned and started to saunter away as Maro began to dress, adding casually over his shoulder, "You got gods, you'd better pray to 'em."

Warden Stark was on his feet, staring through the window behind his desk, when Maro arrived. Neither man spoke for several moments, nor did Stark turn to face the new prisoner. Either he was brave, stupid, or there was some kind of protective gear set up in the office, Maro figured.

"Zap fields," the warden said, still looking at the yard through his window, as though he had read Maro's mind. He turned to face the prisoner. "And the view is protected by five centimeter-thick densecris." He rapped the middle knuckle of his right forefinger against the clear material. It gave off a metallic tone, almost like a gong. "Somebody lined up on me with a jury-rigged rocket launcher, once. Didn't even crack the crystal."

Maro said nothing, only waited.

"The point is," Stark continued, "that I'm running things here until the Confed, in its wisdom, decides to send me elsewhere. And while I'm here,
everybody
answers to me. I'm a fair man. You stay out of trouble, mind your exhaust, and you stay healthy. You give me trouble, and I can turn you into puree, you copy?"

Maro nodded. "I hear you."

Stark nodded. "Good. I read your stats. You should have stayed in smuggling.

We've got a city full of killers here, and some of them could swat you dead backhanded without raising a sweat. You're here forever, Maro; get used to it. I see you've escaped from a couple of the backwater lockups where you were caught. That won't happen here."

Maro said nothing. He'd heard this speech before.

"You have something the Confed wants," Stark continued. "Information on Black Sun. They are sending a man to… discuss it with you. That doesn't matter.

You are mine until he gets here, and if you survive his questioning, you are mine when he leaves. Make it easy on yourself or make it hard, I don't care—it's up to you. That's all."

Stark turned back to the window, and Maro started to leave. The door slid open, and—"

The most beautiful woman he had ever seen stepped inside.

She was an albino. Her hair, worn down to the middle of her back, was as white as frozen CO2; her skin was smooth and flawless, and her eyes were an impossible blue, as icy as a glacier. She was maybe a hundred and sixty centimeters tall, and might go fifty-five kilos. She wore a prison orthoskin, as he did, but it had been tailored to her form, revealing a flare of hip and shoulder and breast that almost literally took his breath away. Of a moment, Maro found his heart pounding and his mind clutched by a surge of lust unlike anything he had ever before felt.

He had been with dozens of women, some of whom had been professionals at every aspect of sexuality to orgasm and beyond, but none of them had ever had the hard visceral effect this woman had on him now. He wanted to grab her, pull her to him and take her, then and there, and to Deep with the consequences.

Dimly, as from a great distance, he heard Stark say behind him, "Ah, Juete."

Shoo-et-tay
. What—?

A guard appeared in the doorway behind the incredible woman. "Let's go," he said. It took a second for Maro to realize the guard was speaking to him. As he left, he turned to stare at the woman before the door slid closed to hide her from him. He felt shaken, as though he'd been punched in the solar plexus and still couldn't quite catch his wind.

The guard looked at him and laughed, a nasty sound. He knew something Maro didn't about this, and, more than anything, the smuggler wanted to find out what it was. But he said nothing. He would be damned if he would ask and thus put himself in debt. He didn't want to owe anybody anything.

Not yet, anyway…

Stark moved to the albino woman, put his arms around her and kissed her passionately, thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth. She responded mechanically, like a robot whose timing was a second slow. He felt the usual stab of disappointment, but he continued the kiss for a moment before breaking off and smiling, not letting her see how it bothered him. Some day, he told himself; some day she would come to him willingly. He loved her, and therefore, given enough time, she would learn to love him.

"Who was that?" she asked. Casually, as if she cared not at all to know.

"Nobody," Stark replied, feeling a pang of jealousy. She was an Exotic, he knew, and it was bred into her genes what she did, but he still hated the idea of her with any other man.
Hated
it. But at the same time he felt his passion rising at the thought. He grew hard, visualizing Juete with Maro.

He took her hand and guided it to his crotch. She began to stroke him. After a moment, he saw the flush that showed she was excited too. Stark smiled. She might not love him, but he triggered her responses quickly enough.

"Take off your clothes," he said. "I want to see you."

Quickly, she complied. So pale, so beautiful, the thatch of downy white at her mons barely covering her labia— gods, he couldn't wait! Stark pulled her to him and lifted her from the floor, holding tightly to her buttocks as he pressed himself, still dressed, against her. Juete gasped at the fierceness of it, and he smiled into her white hair as he bit her neck.

The cell they gave him was not as bad as some he had been in. It was three meters by three meters square, close to the same height. The front wall was finger-thick durasteel diamond-patterned mesh; the two side walls and ceiling were ferrofoam slabs with stacked-carbon stringer cord bracing; the back wall was of that strange material that made up large sections of the prison. Curious, he moved closer and examined it. It was oddly featureless and nonreflective, looking as much like the still surface of a midnight lake as metal. He touched it, then snatched his hand away. It was surprisingly cold.

In one corner was a tiled squat, probably white once but now a dull gray. A single hole in the center of the slightly concave utility served as both excreta portal and drain; there was a showerhead mounted on the wall with a single button control.

On the opposite side of the cell was a cot, chain-folded against the wall to allow more space. No sink, no mirror, but an open-faced cabinet held a towel, a tube of soap, another of depil, and a roll of tissue.

Maro walked to the cabinet and pulled off several sheets of tissue. He then moved to the squat and dropped the pulpy paper into the hole. There came a slight grinding noise as the disposal unit kicked on. Standard prison issue.

Anything small enough to be shoved down that hole wasn't going to stop it up, not with an industrial-grade grinder working in it. Welcome home, Dain. Well, at least he wasn't going to have a roommate to deal with.

Abruptly, from across the corridor, Maro heard somebody yell, "New meat! Hey, copy all, new meat in the Redhead's dump!"

He looked up to see a fat, droll-looking man of about fifty T.S. standing at the mesh of the cell across the corridor, staring at him.

"The tag's Berque," the fat man said. "You got an unlucky dump, f'lo'man. The Redhead, he got cooked going over the wall this morning."

"I saw it," Maro said.

"Yeah?" The man who called himself Berque ran chubby fingers through his greasy brown hair. "So we all did, f'lo'man. The warden, he had it cast on full holoproj ten minutes after it went up."

"I saw it coming in. Live."

"Juicy, hey?"

Maro turned away. The look on Berque's face made him want to gag. He'd met too many people—women as well as men—who enjoyed watching pain and death. He remembered what Stark had said: this place was full of killers. Some of them might have been dropped-shot as he had been, but most of them had, no doubt, enjoyed their crimes. A careless move could get him killed. Not a pleasant thought, to die in the Omega Cage. Death came to everyone, and Maro never considered himself a coward, but it would be stupid to meet his end in this forsaken hole—and worse to do it as the result of being framed for something he hadn't done.

Across the way, Berque said, "Hey, hey, don't take me wrong! It was a terrible thing, terrible!" His tone of voice sounded sympathetic, but the shift was altogether too artful for Maro to believe in. Berque was a man to trust for less distance then he could be thrown one-handed, and one not to turn an unprotected back to under any circumstances, Maro figured.

He unfolded the cot from the wall and snapped it into position. His new bed was of slunglas struts and rip-stop synthetic cloth, he saw, and not likely to come apart without sharp tools and muscle. If he had the tools, he likely wouldn't need the cot's materials; still, it was something to keep in mind.

Maro stretched out on the cot. Not too bad. He was tired; might as well rest while he could. He triggered a mental relaxation drill and, in a few minutes, was deep in sleep. He dreamed of the albino woman—and other things.

Chapter Three

A hand wand, a goddamned short-range hand wand, was all he had had when it went sour. Maro hadn't wanted to spook the buyer, so he'd left his heavy
skjuta
neatly tucked away on his ship. The stubby automatic pistol shotgun held six rounds in its magazine, each shell loaded with five 9mm steel balls. He could have cleared the room with it and been gone.
If
he had had it—

Might as well wish for a tactical nuke
, he thought as he scrambled for the fresher. There were enough people in the dimly lit port bar to impede the cools' progress as they chased the four men and two women who'd been at Maro's table. The hand wand was low-powered and small, a sleeve gun whose pulse would knock a man senseless across a table, but outside of three meters, he might as well throw the fucking thing. As he cleared the fresher's door, he pulled the weapon and thumbed the safety off.