Beyond the Rim

I sat for a while in the grayish room, dazed at the sudden turn of events. I had only been confined for three days. Had Zodiak changed his mind and sold me? If so, why would he let anyone take his ship? Was he taking me somewhere personally for some reason?

Not long into the flight, Zodiak sent me a holomessage, telling me that he had changed his mind about my punishment. He had received the results of the second zodium trial, and had decided to present it to the Senate. He had reason to believe others had gotten wind of it, and would reveal it before he did if he didn’t move quickly.

Where did I come in? Well, he needed to appease some allies, and to do so, he was presenting me to one of them as a gift. Not permanently; he would only be leasing me out for the rest of the duration of my punishment, nearly two months.

“And perhaps I have decided that you need more than just confinement as your punishment, in light of your recent escape attempt. Believe me, Senator Navarre is not as accommodating to her slaves as I am.”

The message shut off before I could ask if Stace had come along, and what had happened to Muriel.

Later, I got my answers. As I was sitting on the bunk that jutted out from the wall, a hologram appeared. It was Stace.

“Hi,” she said, waving to me. “I couldn’t get the doors to unlock, but I did figure out how to holocom you. Don’t worry, Daddy’s sleeping; by the time he knows, it’ll be too late.” She smiled deviously. “So, how’ve you been?”

I sighed. “Fine. You know, just hanging out.”

She laughed. “Yeah. It’s no fun being locked up. But now we’re headed to Center! We’re leaving Prime after all!”

“But I’m still a slave.”

“No, you’re not, silly.”

“But didn’t you tell your dad I was still your slave?”

“Oh, you have to kiss up to Daddy. I’m good at that. He was going to leave me at home, but I made him take me, threatened to go crazy for real if I didn’t get off the planet.”

“So—”

“So. We’re going to Center. You’ll love it there.”

“But I’m going to be leased to—”

“Yeah, to Kassia’s mom. She’s kind of a witch, but she lets Kas have some wicked parties.” She laughed again. “Seriously, I won’t let you stay there if I can help it. I’ll think of something.”

“You mean—”

“We’re going to escape. Center may have tight security, but there’s also lots of places to get lost…the underground…holes in the grid. Maybe I’ll get Kas to help us.”

“Go against her mom?”

“There’s no love lost between them. But I’ll think of a way, I promise. And then we’ll be free.”

“What about Muriel?”

“What about her?”

“Where is she?”

“Oh, she was sent back today.”

“She went back?”

“Yeah, the lease was up.”

“But it was only three days. It wasn’t a whole week—”

“Devlin, you missed two days. That’s how long you were out. We were all out. That was a serious stun.”

Muriel--lost again into the black hole of slavery. I hardly noticed when Stace disappeared in a shimmer of light, leaving me alone with my dark thoughts.

It was a three-day flight to Center, or Earth, as it used to be called. After people had discovered streaming, the ability to leap from one place to another by travelling through wormholes, the inhabited worlds had spread out from that central hub. Now the oldest inhabited worlds were Core worlds, and had infrastructure and civilization roughly on par with Earth.

I’d grown up on CW1237, a planet that had been recently reclassified as a Core world. But, though people there were generally civilized and didn’t have problems with crime like most Rimworlds did, we still didn’t have much infrastructure. It mostly consisted of scientific outposts scattered across barren ice deserts. I’d grown up far from Center and its cluster of inner planets, the bustling Sol system. It held a certain fascination for me; it was legendary, the place where humanity had originated. I’d been there once on a field trip to a college I had no hope of attending; all that stayed in my mind was an impression of light, motion, noise and color bombarding me. Confusing, but not without its allure; in fact, its mythical status rose in my mind after the trip.

Now I was returning. Its glamour had dimmed by the fact that I was a slave, but then, Stace had also given me reason to hope, and perhaps, at the place of my ancestry’s origin, I would find my salvation.

I didn’t get to see the descent to Earth, and it seemed like forever from our first halt at Customs Platform until we landed on firm ground. Then we sat there for a long time, and I had no idea what was going on. Stace darted in in holoform for a moment, then had to leave because her father was calling her. “Don’t worry, I’ll find you,” she said, and disappeared.

What seemed like hours passed, and then the guards came for me. They wrested me to my knees and injected my arm with a transponder. “This contains the imprint of Senator Navarre,” said Lance. “It is programmed to shock you into unconsciousness if you try to leave your new home, but won’t be activated until you arrive.” They put a temporary shock collar around my neck, which, they said, was used for the transport of unruly slaves.

Despite their manhandling, I felt a prick of satisfaction at being called “unruly”.

They took me out of the ship into a vast hangar, echoing with shouts, laughter, pings of metal, shifts of hydraulics. Level upon level of ships were stacked to the gray misty heights of the distant ceiling.

They shoved me into a pod, and we lifted off, zooming above the Earth. Restrained in the back, I could hardly see anything, but I caught a glimpse of the terrain beneath. Most of it was plains; I assumed it must be the Great Western Preserve, the swath of land between the two coastal urban centers of North America. Judging by the light and time of day, we were headed east.

An hour later, we reached Eastern City, lights glittering beneath us, windows glimmering orange with the setting sun. We skirted the outer ring of the great white Capitol. My heart leaped. Our Capitol, where all the laws were made, the heart of Center, its beat pulsing out to the farthest reaches of the stars.

We headed straight for a tall, needle-like building, an elegant quill-feather brushing the sky, shimmering like the iridescence of a waterfall. I’d never seen a building quite like it, but I recalled a description that matched it from school. The Coronade. It had once been owned by a solarskin baron, but after his monopoly on the new energy source had collapsed, he’d fallen into disgrace and financial ruin. Now it was owned by one of the senators, but there were so many I’d never been able to remember their names, only some of the more prominent dynasties.

Now, I realized, it was probably owned by the one who was leasing me. Senator Navarre. All I knew about her was that she was Kassia’s mother, and I didn’t have the highest opinion of Kassia.

We landed on a floating landing pad near the top and took a force-field bridge to the roof. A door opened, and we stepped inside.

It was a hexagonal room. The walls and floor were smooth and black, muted sparkles blinking faintly on the polished surfaces. In the center cascaded a fountain, concentric circles of water rising and falling in a steady rhythm from the depths of a round black pool.

“She should be here any minute,” said Lance. “We’ll leave you here; it’s not like you can go anywhere. The transponder is now activated.”

They removed the shock collar and stepped back out the door onto the forcebridge, then the door shut. I was alone.

I wandered around the room. It didn’t look like there was a door anywhere, though there had to be. The only thing in the room was the fountain, and I took a drink from it. It was cold and refreshing; I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything all day.

Then I sat down, and swung my hand around in the water in the fountain, water splashing onto the black marble. If Navarre minded, that was all the better; I didn’t want to do anything to submit to her.

One of the panels of the wall slid sideways. A tall elegant woman strode through, black hair bound up in a twist. She wore a plum-colored shimmering dress, and her high boots clicked toward me.

She regarded me for a moment, brown eyes searching mine as I looked at her unabashedly.

“Good, very good,” she said, in a low, controlled voice. Her eyes flickered from my boots to my face. “We’ll have to get you a new uniform.”

She touched the fabric on my arm; it was ragged and dusty from my imprisonment and long trip. Then, without warning, she ripped off the top latch in the back.

I grabbed her wrist and squeezed, her pulse throbbing beneath my fingers.

Her other hand flashed up to grasp my arm. Metallic fingernails stabbed into my skin, and I dropped her wrist. Then she grabbed my throat, her sharp nails pricking into it, forcing me to my knees.

“Don’t ever, ever do that again.” She released me.

Blood trickled down my wrist onto the floor. I pressed my palm to the punctures on my forearm.

She stepped back. “Yes, Karl said you were a handful.” A cold smile crossed her lips. “But then, that’s the kind I enjoy the most.”

I stood in front of her, working up the courage to gaze back with defiance.

“Take off the rest,” she said. “I want to see everything.”

My heart flipped over. No, I was not going to do that.

Her eyebrow arched. “Well, then. We’ll have to do it for you.”

She gave a voice command and three bots floated in. They had roughly human features, but they were silver, and had antigrav units instead of legs. Using their superhuman strength, their passionless faces intent on their task, two held me down, while the other sliced through my pants with its saw-blade hand.

They sliced through my underwear as well, and then Navarre stood over me, looking down with narrowed eyes. “Hm. Yes. You should do.

“Have him sent to my bedroom in three hours,” she told the bots. “I want to see how he performs.”

She left the room. The bots followed her out the door, taking the remnants of my clothes with them.