Rise the Renegade (Rork Sollix Book 1) Page 5

  “Why did you kidnap us?” He opened his eyes and studied her face. He glanced at Devi. He sensed no danger from them. Probably haven’t enjoyed a decent meal since they suckled at their mother’s breast. “Cannibals?”

  “How dare you!” Devi turned, his proud, square shoulders at attention. “We saved you.” He focused on his sister. “His reputation is too big for him.” He shook his head and scowled.

  Anju squeezed Rork’s shoulder and held his eyes too long. “If you change your mind, we’re still ready to take your orders, Captain.” She stood up and walked over to her brother.

  The heavy door clanged open. “Sollix! Visitor.”

  Rork looked through the bars, among the feet of the other prisoners in the other cages. A pair of black boots stepped carefully behind the guard’s brown lace-ups. The prisoners’ feet turned in Rork’s direction and the room quieted. Rork stood and walked to the cell door.

  It was the black-hatted man.

  The guard muttered something and took a position a few steps away.

  The black-hatted man removed his headgear and let it fall to the ground, revealing a hairless scalp. He withdrew his oversized sunglasses.

  Anju gasped. “But...”

  Rork studied the face. It was his own, only leaner and rosier. There was a deep scar that cut from the right corner of the mouth, up across the bulb of the nose and ended above the opposite eye. He shook his head. “No!”

  “Yes.”

  “They destroyed it,” Rork said. “I only barely escaped myself.”

  “I fired the shot.” Jord’s face erupted in a proud laugh.

  Rork narrowed his eyes at his older brother.

  “Dad is alive, too.” He drew off his long, black gloves, one at a time and grasped them in his right hand. He put his fists on his hips.

  Rork relived the moment of Jord’s and his father’s deaths. Barbary was firing on their home, a used space station they’d salvaged and repaired.

  They were out beyond Titan then, on a trade swing to the settlements and mining outposts. Dad loved to see the miners’ kids get a decent meal for once and their parents have a few dalrots left over.

  Barbary snuck up on them from the shadow side of Ganymede. Rork had nothing to return fire with. He yelled for Dad and Jord. When they breached the hull, he had to eject.

  “Well, where is he, brother?” Rork smiled. “How is he?”

  Jord sneered at his brother. “He wants to speak with you.” He withdrew a slim, rectangular screen from his coat and tapped it.

  “Really?” Rork asked.

  Gamil Barbary’s pockmarked mug appeared. It smiled wide. “I have your girl, Rork.”

  Rork’s stomach clenched and tumbled. All strength drained from him and he grabbed tighter onto the bars to support his weight.

  “Save this feed,” Barbary said to someone off-screen. “I want to remember the look on his face.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “I picked her up myself,” Jord said through gritted teeth.

  Rork’s eyes unfocused. Barbary. Jord. Dad. Lala. His mind spun. “You work for Barbary?”

  Barbary closed his eyes, his head rolled back and he laughed.

  Jord’s upper lip curled. He shook his head and looked away.

  “Silence!” Barbary roared. “Your blue-haired babe is mine now, Rork. She will serve your punishment here with me, in service to the employees of Barbary and Sons Trading Company — mostly the men.”

  “You’re dead, Barbary. You’re dead!” Rork felt his eyes moisten and he struggled to hold back the panicked tears. But they spilled over. He imagined his sweet Lala in Barbary’s hands. No! But the pictures played in his mind. “You bastard. You just couldn’t leave me alone to die?”

  “Go ahead and die!” Barbary yelled. “Your girlfriend will pay your debts, with interest. We are done!” The screen turned black.

  Rork clawed his hand through the bars at Jord but the turncoat stepped out of reach.

  Jord fixed the black hat on his head, touched his finger to it and bowed slightly. “Brother.” He turned and left.

  “Jord! Jord! Come back here!”

  8

  “DON’T DO that again,” Devi said with a reproachful glare. “It is better they think you care not to escape.”

  “It’s only natural. He is a man in love.” Anju sighed.

  Devi rolled his eyes. “Foolish woman.” He looked down at Rork. “Are you ready to get out of here now? How soon can your crew be ready?”

  “What happened?” Rork asked. He searched his memory but nothing came.

  “The guard beat you because you were acting like a fool.” Devi stood up and walked away from them.

  Anju pressed a moist cloth to his forehead and Rork winced. She pulled it away. It was stained with blood.

  “You will heal. Rest now.”

  It all flooded back and the atmosphere grew heavier. The images of Lala and Barbary’s boys pounded on his head. She was strong but they were gutless bastards and they lacked any sense of honor or dignity. He tried to remember her smell but now that was slipping away.

  Barbary and Sons would crush her spirit. They would beat it out of her, cheapen her grace and fidelity.

  And he was stuck in this hole.

  “Is he ready to fight yet?” Devi asked his sister. “A man does not lay down and take it, he does not run from a challenge to his pride.”

  Rork repeated the words in his mind. Silly boy. No clue how things really are. But he needed that kind of defiance right now. The boy was a power source and he longed for a charge.

  “How will you cure the anorxoma?” Rork crawled to a standing position and looked from Anju to Devi.

  “Will you accept us as part of your crew?” the boy asked. “Will you teach us how to be pirates and to help the people?”

  Rork snorted. “What makes you think I know how to help people?”

  Devi turned. His face was bright now, the eyebrows relaxed and his eyes pleading. “We’ve heard your stories. Of how you steal from the Cartel and trade fairly with the people. About your father, Band Sollix.”

  Rork suppressed a smile. “What have you heard, exactly?”

  Devi gulped. “Your father won one hundred thousand dalrots and a Cartel executive’s slave in a poker game on Luna. He invested the money in merchandise for the miners. Together, Band and Rolata Sollix ran Sollix Fair Trading. They traveled around the system in an old cattle carrier, defying the Cartel monopoly by trading with miners and other settlers at fair prices.”

  Anju swooned. “And he freed the slave girl because she loved him. And he loved her. They married and had many children.” She looked at Rork and sighed.

  “Only two,” Rork said, “that I know of, at least.”

  The room quieted. The prisoners in the other cells poked their heads through the bars, one next to the other. Those who didn’t merit a front row seat lined up behind them. Their eyes fell on Rork.

  Devi glared at his sister. “The man asked me, not you.” He cleared his throat. “Band and Rolata Sollix singlehandedly cured malnutrition in the Outer Realm settlements. Miners began to turn a profit. They put their money together into cooperatives and started their own, independent mining operations.”

  “Cartel don’t like competition!” said a prisoner in the next cell. “Cartels want to keep the good man down!” His face radiated endurance, and suffering.

  His cellmates patted him on the back and mumbled their agreement.

  Rork nodded at him.

  Devi cleared his throat again, this time more loudly. The crowd quieted.

  “The Cartel chose Old Man Barbary,” the boy continued. “He won the bid to stop the Indie Shift. He and his sons tracked down Band and Rolata. And their two children.” Devi looked at Rork and raised an eyebrow.

  Rork straightened up and swallowed hard. “They said they wanted to do business. Dad was willing to do business with anyone, Cartel, government or Indie. Rich, poor, sick, hungry.” A tightne
ss rose in Rork’s throat and he blinked his eyes.

  “Tell it, man,” said the prisoner.

  Anju extended a hand to him.

  “They lasered him. They threw my mother out the airlock. I watched her float past the cupola, her body icy and bloated, bits of her floating alongside.”

  The crowd of prisoners erupted in hushed chatter. “He killed your parents, man,” said the prisoner.

  “Then Barbary fired on our home. I couldn’t find my brother. I jumped in an escape pod.”

  “You abandoned your brother? He’s your brother, man,” said the prisoner.

  Anju turned to the prisoner. “He thought they were all dead! He saw them die! And he’s no coward. We all know what he’s done to the Cartel since then!”

  The certainty of a debt of revenge coursed through Rork’s body, filling him with an electric fury. He had to be well. Now. He would find the strength. He was getting out of here. Barbary had to die. He had to save Lala.

  9

  “WIDER! SPREAD them wider!”

  Rork spread his arms and inched his legs farther apart. The chill air of the subterranean prison block swirled around him and a tremor ran from his gut to his taut neck muscles.

  The gray-suited guard struck him across the back of his head. “I said to spread your legs wider, 93478921!”

  Rork turned to glare at the guard but the goon struck the back of his knee. The pain was immediate. He spread his legs. “Happy now?”

  The guard’s latex-covered fingers crammed in where he never expected anyone to touch him. He recoiled and clenched his guts.

  “Finished. Move along, 93478921.” The guard waved him away.

  “My name is Rork Sollix.” He turned to face him.

  “You are holding up my line, prisoner 93478921.” The guard looked up at him. His puffy eyes just didn’t care. He had a job to do and a club to do it with. None of the rest mattered.

  Another, shorter, guard grabbed Rork’s arm and pulled him along towards a heavy, metal door. Dark stains ran in odd patterns on the door. Bolt heads decorated its edges. A barred window let the gloom in. Not much more than half Rork’s height, the short guard stopped him. He pulled on Rork’s arms until the new prisoner faced opposite the wall where he was last abused.

  A long wall of vertical metal bars greeted him. Behind it was the women. His eyes searched the smaller group and found Anju. She held onto the bars, her pert breasts exposed. She looked up at nothing in particular. Her eyes were red and her body trembled.

  The small guard grabbed the top of Rork’s ear and jerked him forward.

  “They already gave me the anal probe, little man,” Rork said, lunging forward.

  “Just relax,” Devi said from behind him. “It will go easier for you.”

  “Shut up!” the petite guard screamed at them both. He took a thin, white half-circle from a box next to Rork’s feet. He pried apart the prong-like ends and pushed them against Rork’s larynx. The device snapped around his neck and constricted.

  Rork grabbed at his neck. It was too tight. He tried to shove a finger under it but the pain increased. He gripped the device with the tips of all ten fingers and pulled. Still it grew tighter.

  “No!” Rork stepped backwards, tripped and fell into Devi. Devi’s head thudded into the cinder block wall.

  Guards approached Rork from all sides, black sticks at the ready.

  Rork struggled to draw breath. The edges of his vision darkened. He reached out for something to pull himself up with but there was nothing.

  “Get up, prisoner!” the short guard yelled. The others beat him with their sticks.

  Pain exploded in his gut, groin, knees and chest but only distantly.

  The guards hauled him up and the short one wrapped his hands around Rork’s neck, around the device.

  Why are they killing me?

  The device loosened and Rork sucked in a deep breath, his eyes wide. He coughed and breathed again. The guards peeled away but two remained. They dragged him by his arms. His legs, useless, trailed behind him.

  Metal groaned and Rork passed into a narrow, darkened hallway filled with vertical bars on both sides. Cracked and dirty, the concrete floors flowed under him like a stream.

  They stopped. A cell door screeched open to his right and they tossed him in. He put his hand out to stop his fall. The door screeched again and the guard locked it.

  Rork stood up, dusted himself off and examined his lone cellmate. The man sat cross-legged on the cold concrete, his eyes closed, facing toward the door. His ragged, cinnamon skin and bushy aluminum-colored beard gave the appearance of aged youth. Yellow flowers, arranged chaotically, encircled him and on the wall behind him a luminescent orange sunrise gave off dimmed hope.

  The hallway lights came on, burning bright.

  Rork turned away and covered his eyes. The neck ring pulsed hot. It tightened.

  “Do not look into the light that is too bright for you,” the old man said. He giggled like a toddler with a new pet.

  A dull headache took root in Rork’s temples and that electric charge stirred in him. He coughed. He needed those meds. “What?”

  The old man smiled and bobbed his head from side to side like an Alzheimers patient. “You have looked too brightly into the lights, big lights, and now they burn you. Is that not right?”

  Does he know me?

  Behind him, thin metal rattled with a watery echo. Rork turned. A white, plastic cart floated by, rounded white lights on the bottom of it casting a pure light in sharp diagonals around him. A guard walked behind it.

  “Eat purely and your being shall be pure,” the old man said. “But eat this crap and it really wears you down, man.” He giggled.

  Rork looked down at the floor. Two dented and scarred metal bowls sat on the uneven floor. There was something in them. Foamy and gray, something twig-like stuck out of each one. He locked eyes with the old man. “Don’t tell me that’s supposed to be food?”

  “What is and what is not — this is a question only the observer can decide for himself. Please bring one bowl to me, Captain Rork.”

  Rork went to one knee to pick up the bowls and carried them over to the old man. They were ice cold, fresh out of refrigeration. He handed one bowl over and smelled the other. It gave off a thick farm odor, a vomit-worthy haze of cut grass, cow manure and pesticides. He returned his to the door.

  “Are they going to issue me some clothes?” Rork asked.

  The old man held the bowl up to his mouth with one hand and clipped his nose shut with the other. He poured the noxious stew down his throat in one swift move.

  The lights clicked off and a metal door screeched, then slammed closed. The echo bounced around before silence returned.

  “How do you know my name?”

  The old man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shuddered, then burped. He gestured for Rork to return his bowl and Rork complied.

  “The spirit requires not of material comforts but the body requires sustenance.”

  “I don’t speak in riddles, old man.”

  The old man giggled. “Nor do I! May I have your bowl, if you do not plan to eat it?”

  Rork grabbed it and brought it over to the man.

  The old man reached for it and Rork raised it higher.

  “Answers.”

  The old man sighed. “The right question is infinitely more valuable than all the answers in the universe.”

  Rork snorted. “You are?”

  “I am Zero. Some wish me to accept titles, but I cannot.” He reached for the bowl.

  “Like the number?”

  “Or non-number, depending on your perspective!” Zero giggled.

  Rork held the bowl higher. His stomach rumbled but he wouldn’t eat this slop. “How do you know me?”

  Zero spread his arms and looked from side to side. “We all know the story of Rork Sollix, the unstoppable pirate. You are very well received among my people.”

  “Your people?”
/>   “Just people: regulars, put-upons, those bound, slop-eaters, miners, slaves, prisoners.”

  Rork handed him the bowl and he downed it just as before. Rork returned the empty container to the space under the door.

  “Take my life, you may, Rork Sollix, but to possess my spirit, a harder labor is.”

  Rork hugged his arms to himself and rubbed his hands against the opposing biceps. “How about some clothes here, guard!”

  “No, no, no. Violence will not get you want you want.”

  “What violence? And why would I take your life?” Rork brought a knee up and into his chest, then the other, jogging in place.

  “Comfort is a state of mind. Adapt your feelings to your surroundings and you will—”

  “Enough!” Rork buried his head in his hands. I’ll just escape. It’s that simple. He replayed the entry procedure in his mind. If he could escape and enter at will in space, he could do it on Earth.

  One man can do anything. One man, among many. The idea popped into his mind. Among so many, there must be at least one with years spent planning an escape. Rork need only find that man. He would provide the escape plan. He would know the vulnerabilities. Rork would provide the final exit to space. He opened his eyes, a new confidence giving bounce to his muscles.

  Zero appeared at Rork’s side, a pair of orange pants folded neatly in his outstretched hand.

  Rork stepped away from him. “What? No. I have nothing to trade.”

  “You will simply be in my debt. Everyone here is in debt, to Barbary or other Cartel members. That’s why we are here. What is one more?” He set the pants on Rork’s shoulder.

  Rork grabbed them and shook them. Specks of dust fell out and moved on the floor. He tossed the pants back. “No, thanks! I came in clean. I’m going out clean.”

  Zero caught his pants and put them back on. He returned to his perch, crossed his legs and closed his eyes.

  “Why are you here?” Rork asked.

  “Time to recharge the soul, young pirate.”

  “How did you get all these flowers in here?”

  Zero cracked an eye, a look of irritation on his face. “Young man, I do not wish to be disturbed during my spiritual retreat. If you require this much attention, I will be obligated to recommend your transfer to the children’s cell.”