He stepped back, allowing the doors to close.

  “No rules?” I said nervously as the elevator began to rise.

  CHAPTER 4

  “And no surveillance,” Matt said, squirming on his side of the elevator capsule rising toward the orbiting prison. A small bump appeared under his coveralls, and he pulled the zipper halfway down so Shaq could crawl up from where he’d been hiding to Matt’s chest.

  “Damn Shaq, your claws are sharp,” he said as the Jagger jumped out, landing on my shoulder.

  Shaq turned around to face Matt, buzzed something neither one of us understood, and set about cleaning himself off with his tongue. While Matt’s earlier statement had led me to believe he had tucked in where the sun didn’t shine, his smell suggested he had been hiding elsewhere.

  “You need a shower,” I said.

  “Me?” Shaq buzzed as he stopped preening.

  “You too,” I told Matt. “He smells like your pits.”

  “Not my fault. He had to go somewhere.”

  Bright light forced me to squint as an aperture-like hatch above the elevator swung open. Then we were outside, the capsule accelerating as it climbed the wire. Under any other circumstances, riding an elevator to an orbiting space station would have been another amazing experience to add to my list. Instead, my nerves frayed a little bit more with each passing second.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “Don’t look at me,” Matt replied. “Getting sent to a penal station wasn’t on my bingo card.”

  “That was smart thinking back there with Sergeant Grist,” I said. “You handled him like a boss.”

  Matt shook his head. “I just pretended he was my dad. Hopefully it will keep us from getting our asses handed to us up there, but I don’t know. Something tells me being branded cop-killers might play better with the inmates.”

  “Maybe, but it won’t get us out of there anytime soon. Once law enforcement starts piecing things together, the rest of your story might check out enough to get us off the hook. Or at least put us somewhere a little nicer.”

  “Bro, we left Caprum because we were trying to stay out of jail. Now we’re in jail, probably for life even if the murder charges don’t stick.”

  Shaq buzzed, and while I couldn’t understand him, his tone suggested he was apologetic for killing the woman and the thug.

  “No way,” I said. “You did what we asked you to do. And you saved the courier so he could transfer the electro. It’s not your fault. It’s ours for not getting out of there faster. And Enigma’s for killing the guard.” I looked at Matt. “I really wish she hadn’t done that.”

  “Yeah, I get why she did, but maybe it wasn’t the best move for us.”

  “It might have been the best move for her,” I said, voicing my concerns about betrayal.

  “What do you mean?”

  I looked around the capsule, not convinced it wasn’t under surveillance, which was also why I had used Enigma instead of Alter to refer to her. Could Kasper Law Enforcement even run a penal station without observing anything happening on it? Wouldn’t it benefit them to eavesdrop on anything the prisoner’s had to say, especially on the ride up or down? I didn’t see anything obvious, but that didn’t mean much. Crossing the capsule, I sat next to Matt and leaned in close to whisper.

  “Did you see me chase after a bald guy in a brown coat who was chasing after the courier?” I whispered.

  “Yeah, I spotted Enigma pass you the gun so you could go after him,” Matt whispered back, catching on quickly. “I tried to exit stage left, but a second unit of guards intercepted me before I made it ten feet. I could tell Alter wanted to help, but there wasn’t much she could do. Did you catch up to the guy?”

  “Yeah, about five seconds after he shot the courier. You’ll never guess who turned up.”

  “Keep?” Matt asked without hesitation.

  “What the hell? How did you know?”

  “We don’t know that many people here yet that I would be able to guess anyone by name. Process of elimination. Keep killed the courier?”

  “Yup. To prevent the courier from delivering the slab.”

  “Okay. Something doesn’t make sense. I told Grist we were bringing the slab to Sedaya. But we brought the slab to Kasper.”

  “Right?” I said, unsure what he was getting at.

  “The guard said the slab belonged to Duke Nobukku. The noble who rules over Kasper. Why would you steal something from Nobukku, bring it to Cestus, and then have it transported back to Nobukku?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “That’s what I just said. Neither does Keep. What was he doing here?”

  “I don’t know, but here’s another brain twister for you, Einstein. He didn’t seem all that surprised to see me. In fact, when he saw it was me, he asked me if I wanted to help him save the galaxy.”

  “What?”

  “Apparently, Sedaya’s got his eyes on the Empress’ throne, and he’s up to no good trying to weasel his way onto it.”

  “The only thing that surprises me about that is that the Empress doesn’t have his number. Everything about him screams power-hungry evil genius.”

  “I don’t think he’s a genius. And I’m not convinced Keep was telling me the truth. He didn’t warn me the guards were coming. In fact, he delayed me there so they’d catch me with my blaster in my hand, standing over the courier’s corpse.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Yeah. I was thinking about this on the ride across the planet. What if Alter lied to us, and she and Keep are still working together? She gets us the job and tells Keep. He makes sure he’s there to lend a hand. He chases the courier, she conveniently passes me a gun, badabing badaboom, I’m framed for murder, and so are you.”

  Shaq buzzed, “Me too.”

  “Well, you did actually kill two people,” I replied.

  Shaq buzzed again. “That’s true.”

  “They get the eighteen million, Keep gets the ship back, and they fly off to whatever passes for Tahaiti here.”

  Matt laughed. “I can’t believe you just said badabing badaboom. Anyway, that’s a wild story, but I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “Keep waited twenty years to sell us a starship so he could steal some electro?”

  “Eighteen million isn’t some electro, it’s a lot of electro, according to Alter.”

  “It’s still a twenty year wait to earn a little scratch. There has to be more to it than that.”

  “He knew we would be here. How do you explain that?”

  “Maybe he saw the contract before you jumped him. He knows Alter is Enigma. It doesn’t mean he was here for us.”

  “Small world, maybe,” I replied. “Small galaxy? No.”

  Matt fell silent, giving the situation some thought. The elevator continued to rise, already high enough for the curve of the planet to be visible below. Still cool. Looking up, I could see the station looming much larger over our heads. We would be there in a few minutes.

  “Okay,” he said. “How about this? Keep left without paying the storage fees. He knew we would either surrender or escape. If we escaped, he knew we would need money. Electro. He also knows you’re dying, so maybe he knows you need a lot of electro, fast. He also knows who Alter is, so it figures he would guess she’d set us up with a high paying job. Since he knew about the slab and the courier, he might have guessed odds were good that we would turn up here, depending on how much work there is with that kind of payday. Another process of elimination, that’s all. But I still don’t think he was specifically here because we were here, or because Alter was here.”

  “I’m dizzy from listening to that,” I said. “Can you convert that into simple English?”

  “Coincidence,” Matt replied. “How about that?”

  “You really believe that?”

  “It works better for me than a twenty year wait for a single con. If we were talking a hundred million electro, maybe I would be more inclined to believe that was the endgame. Come on, Ben. You’re supposed to be the smart one. I’m the muscle, remember?”

  “Maybe I’m a little on edge because we’re about five minutes from being imprisoned in a penal station with literally zero oversight. Do you want to take bets on how long I last before someone drops the soap?”

  “I won’t let that happen.”

  “You might not be able to stop it. You heard what the thug said. We’re not part of a Family.”

  Shaq buzzed. “We’re family.”

  “He’s got a point. There’s three of us, and he can kill with a single bite. We just need to watch each other’s backs.”

  “And then what? We’re going to be here for the rest of our lives. That won’t be too long for me, but for you and Shaq?” I closed my eyes, fighting the sense of hopelessness and frustration. “You shouldn’t even be here. You should be back on Earth, singing at McRory’s.”

  “You don’t think Alter will try to break us out?”

  “I hope so,” I replied, opening my eyes again. “But I don’t know if she can. And what if my worst fears are right? What if she and Keep set us up and they’re both halfway back to Caprum or wherever in Head Case? Maybe it has nothing to do with the electro. Maybe they did it for some other reason.”

  “Then we’ll find our own way out of this,” Matt replied. “We don’t need to keep relying on her for everything. We’ll find them and take back our ship and our electro.”

  “You really think we can find our way out of prison? You heard what Grist said. No escape.”

  “I’m certainly not going to accept spending the rest of my life in the slammer, watching you die. We’ll find a way out or die trying.”

  The capsule slowed as it reached the bottom of the station. An aperture like the one below swung open, allowing the pod inside. It paused there while the outer hatch closed around the wire, an inner hatch opening to complete the airlock. The inner room was pitch black, leaving us unable to see where we had ended up as the capsule came to a complete stop.

  The door slid open. A series of lights appeared on the floor in a path leading down a long, empty corridor to another hatch.

  “I guess this is our stop,” Matt said.

  CHAPTER 5

  Matt and I stepped out of the capsule. I didn’t know what waited for us down the dark corridor before us but I was pretty sure I didn’t want any part of it. Not that there was anywhere else to go.

  I glanced back as the capsule dropped from the room, passing into the airlock, the hatch closing over it again. “We can do this,” I said, more for my own sake than Matt’s. He didn’t seem that nervous, which kind of bothered me. Maybe the reality hadn’t gotten to him as deeply as it had to me.

  Trying to keep a steady pace, we followed the lights down the corridor as they lit up, one by one, and then shut off behind us, one by one. My legs felt like rubber. My heart pounded. My lips and throat were dry. Near total silence surrounded us, only a slight hum reverberating through the floor.

  When we reached the hatch, two red lights flashed on, one on either side of the corridor, and I could hear the muffled blare of a loud klaxon coming from the other side, likely to clear the other inmates from the area. Or give them a chance to prepare for the newbies. A chill enveloped me, and I shivered beneath my prison clothes, Shaq shifting on my shoulder in response.

  When he buzzed, it sounded like he said, “Chill out.”

  The hatch groaned as it began sliding open, indicating how thick and heavy it was. That thickness became visible a moment later, nearly six inches of metal slowly grinding its way into both sides of the wall. My eyes narrowed as light began filtering in, enough to make things blurry without blinding me. My worst fear was a sudden sea of yellow uniforms closing in, pouring through the hatch to grab us and immediately turn us into a pair of bitches.

  There was no convict army waiting for us on the other side. Instead, a few prisoners passed by the hatch moving in opposite directions, ignoring the fact that the blast door had opened at all.

  “I think you’ve seen too many movies,” Matt said as I exhaled sharply. “Come on.”

  We stepped out into the adjacent corridor. A few more inmates were in the hallway with us, but they didn’t pay us any mind save for a quick sidelong glance as they passed. Most of their attention diverted instantly to Shaq, and I could see the curiosity in their expressions. While Alter had recognized him right away, they didn’t know what kind of creature he was.

  “You two.”

  The voice came from our left, and I turned my head as a large woman in red coveralls came toward us. Drawing parallels to prisons on Earth, I had assumed the place would be all men. How did women make it in here when there was no surveillance and no guards?

  A heavy vibration and echoing thuds pulled my attention away from the woman in red, turning my head in the opposite direction as a thick, bipedal robot turned the opposite corner. Shaped like a crab and painted drab gray, it had a slim row of lights across the top of its headless torso and a cannon at the end of each of its four arms. PSS-142 was stenciled across the front.

  So, there were guards. Just none of them were alive.

  The guardbot looked like it wouldn’t take shit from anybody. It stopped at the corner as if daring us to do something stupid.

  “Hello? New guys?” the woman said, regaining my attention.

  I wasn’t short. Yet, she stood nearly half a head taller than me, with olive skin, dark eyes, and a shaved head—her entire scalp lined with tattoos. I realized now that she was close that her bulk wasn’t from fat. She was a mountain of muscle. I suddenly felt grateful for the guardbot behind me.

  “Hi,” I said meekly, annoyed with my presentation as soon as the words left my mouth.

  “Hi,” she replied, revealing two rows of white teeth as she smiled. “Yeah. So, my name is Quasar. Unfortunately I drew initiation duties this week. Give a wave to Piece of Shit Sentry One Four Two back there. He’s making sure I fulfill my assignment.” She raised her hand, waving to the guardbot, her smile vanishing until she looked at Shaq. “Is that a blue gastrid?”

  Shaq buzzed in confusion. “What?”

  “No, not a blue gastrid,” I replied.

  “Did you dye a rat?”

  Shaq buzzed again, even more offended.

  “Not quite,” I said.

  Quasar shrugged. “Whatever. I’m surprised they let you bring that thing up with you. I guess that means it’s harmless. Anyway, I’m supposed to show you to your cell and give you a tour of the place. You know, make sure you don’t get in any trouble too quickly. Let’s see.” She picked up a small slab in a hardened shell clipped to her coveralls and pointed it at my neck. It scanned whatever the guard had burned onto it. “Hondo?” she asked, eyebrow raised. “That sounds like a bad cough.” She turned the device to Matt and repeated the process. “Stang.” She smiled at him. “Cool name.”

  “Thanks,” he replied, playing it smooth. “I think Quasar’s pretty awesome too.”

  “Sure is,” she agreed. She glanced at the device. “Cell forty-nine ninety-six. Not the best location, but you’ll have a decent view of nothing.” She had a deep, robust laugh that was more infectious than it had any right to be. Or maybe it was the tension releasing a little that caused me to smile. “Follow me.”

  I glanced at Matt before we fell in behind Quasar, tailing her back the way she had come. The guardbot stomped along the corridor behind us, keeping its distance but definitely watching our every move.

  “So, that thing follows you everywhere you go?” I asked.

  Quasar looked over her shoulder. “Nah. Just right now because I had to meet you two.” Her eyes drifted over me. “To be honest, you look kind of scrawny to be a criminal. You didn’t build a tiny robot that crawls through ventilation shafts and sneaks into private residences to steal the rich owner’s jewelry, did you?”

  “Uh, that’s very specific,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Quasar agreed, laughing. “I’m just messing with you.” Her face turned serious. “But did you?”

  “No,” I replied. “I didn’t do anything.”

  She started laughing again. “That’s the oldest cliche in the galaxy.” She mocked my voice. “I didn’t do anything. Uh-huh. Let me guess. Your rat dropped a turd in the Persephon Spaceport gardens.”

  “You can get sent here for that?”

  “It all depends on who your friends are. And aren’t. Fine, instead of asking what you did, how about what are you accused of? Although, accused doesn’t seem right either, does it, considering you’ve already been incarcerated.”

  “We’re smugglers,” I admitted. “We got caught smuggling. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Smugglers, huh? What were you moving? Narcotics? Illegal mods? Guns?”

  “Information,” Matt said.

  Qausar paused to turn all the way around, pointing at Matt. “Now that’s the real juice, isn’t it? Not just smugglers. High-end smugglers. I imagine you’ll want to meet up with the other cons in your Fam, eh?”

  “Are there a lot of other smugglers here?”

  She shrugged. “Not a lot. Not compared to the more run of the mill low-lifes and career criminals. But a few.” She glanced past us to the guardbot. “We should keep moving.” She turned and started walking again.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Do you belong to a Family?”

  She didn’t respond to the question.

  “What were you accused of?” Matt tried.

  “Nah. Not accused. I did it. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Believe it or not, I used to be a member of the Royal Marines.”

  “You worked for the Empress?” I asked.

  “Yup. On a Royal Sentry. Had some leave time while we were docked at the station. Went down to the surface, witnessed Baron Nivan trying to do something unsavory to someone who didn’t want it. I got involved, he got dead. That’s all the detail you get. I’ve been here going on twelve years now. The story’s old, and I’m tired of telling it.”

  “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “It’s not prying. Everybody’s going to ask you why you’re here. And you’re going to tell them over and over until the thought of saying it again makes you want to puke because all it does is remind you how you went against the system and lost. Because the house always wins, right? When you do what’s right to the wrong person you get punished.”