Liberation Read online

  Liberation

  Tribari Freedom Chronicles, book three

  By Rachel Ford

  Chapter One

  “Tell me, Protector: how do you want to die?”

  Tal Imari kept his eyes on the rock he was sorting. His ears burned, tracking the movements of the group behind him. They were close. Not close enough to touch him – yet – but close.

  “I’m talking to you, Protector.”

  He glanced behind, now. Avoidance was no longer an option. Never by choice, he’d played this game one too many times to be in doubt of how it worked. Nor did he need to see the other men to know who was speaking, or who would be with him.

  It was Ket Ibar, and the three roughs who shadowed him: Manis the Mute, Trel Triden, and Fat Cal. Ket was watching him with a familiar grin. It had been a few days since they’d tangled, and the other man was itching for a rematch.

  Tal held onto his hand axe. He’d use it, if he had to. There’d been a time when the thought of smashing another Tribari’s skull in with an axe would have chilled him to the core. But that had been before Zeta. That had been before he’d been sent to this frozen penal colony, before he’d been surrounded by murderers and rapists and criminals of every stripe. “I’m working, Ket. Leave me alone.” He said it numbly, going through the motions but knowing full well it would make no difference.

  Ket’s grin broadened, his eyes darkening from their usual gold to an eager sandy brown. He nodded, and Manis and Cal descended on Tal.

  The protector – former protector – stepped to the side, so that his back was to the tunnel rather than the wall. He raised his axe.

  Cal reached him first. Despite the nickname, he was far from fat. Maybe in his days on Central it had been otherwise. Nowadays, on Zeta colony, he was as lean as anyone else. Despite the ravages of cold and hunger, he was still huge, with a giant barrel chest and a good foot of height on the rest of his party.

  Manis was shorter, but stockier. And mean. On Central, Manis had been a low-level black-market dealer. Scuttlebutt was that he’d threatened a protector on the take, and they’d cut out his tongue to keep him from talking. It was a brutal kind of efficiency, as symbolic as it was effective.

  Tal couldn’t say if the rumors were true or not. What he did know was that – somehow – Manis had lost his tongue, and he had an abiding hatred of protectors. A hatred that, with no better outlet, came to focus on Tal these days.

  He swung his axe for Cal, warning, “Back off.”

  The other man hesitated, but Manis pushed on. Tal brought his axe back up, swinging for the mute now.

  It was at this precise moment that a broad arm wrapped around Tal’s throat, and a great hand seized his weapons arm. His attention shifted as he felt pressure increase on his trachea, as his breath was suddenly arrested. He grabbed for the arm, fingers clawing at his unseen attacker. Manis wrenched the axe out of his hand.

  They struggled for a few moments, Manis and Cal throwing a punch here and there to subdue him. Ket walked forward, with Trel close on his heels. The former was smiling. “I found a friend of yours, Protector. I thought you’d like to get reacquainted.”

  “Remember me?”

  He shivered at the voice in his ear. He was choking with oxygen deprivation, and panic was seizing at his consciousness. But Tal Imari would always recognize that voice.

  Efron Engel. Efron had been one of his toughest cases, not just tough to crack, but tough to work. A brutal serial rapist, Engel had left a trail of battered and tortured women and men behind him on the Tribari home world, Central.

  He’d been the one to interview those who had survived, to hear the grim details time and again, to visit the grisly scenes of the crimes as he pursued this monster.

  It had been a long time since Tal prayed. But in the moment, he prayed with all the frantic desperation of a man who feared worse than death. He struggled harder, kicked and clawed and writhed with every last ounce of strength.

  And all the while, Ket kept smiling. “I knew you two would want to meet again. Well, Efron, we’ll leave you to it. My men’ll watch the tunnel. Just to make sure no one interrupts your reunion.”

  “Please,” Tal choked out. He had had no quarrel, no prior dealings, with Ket and his men. They’d picked him out because he was – had been – a protector. He’d been a target to men like this since he’d stepped foot on Zeta. Any disgraced constable would find himself in the same situation. He’d taken his beatings when they’d come, meeting out what violence he could in his own defense. But this?

  This was a horror he’d not anticipated.

  “Careful,” Ket warned. “I think he likes it when you beg.”

  Efron chuckled behind him, and Tal shivered. It was true enough. He remembered the criminal profile. He remembered the stories Efron’s victims told. “Ket,” he gasped. “Don’t do this.”

  But Ket Ibar was already heading down the passage, his minions in tow. Tal was beginning to lose consciousness. He pulled at Efron’s arm, catching a half breath here and there. It was enough to keep the blackness at bay, but not enough to free him.

  He could feel the other man’s legs behind him, and stomped, hard, where he thought his feet would be. He hit something fleshy, and Efron grunted. He pulled again, and this time managed to wriggle out of the headlock.

  He spun around, taking great, gasping breaths as he went. Efron’s eyes burned ruddy with anger and – he felt sick at the sight – desire. Tal stumbled backwards, putting distance between himself and the rapist as he tried to recover his breath.

  Efron followed, slowed by no such weariness or injury.

  Tal darted for the hand axe. It lay on the ground, where Manis had left it. Efron was bigger – much bigger – than him. He was a good foot and a half taller, and built of solid muscle.

  He wouldn’t survive this fight, even with an axe.

  But he wasn’t going to survive this sentence, either. And he’d rather die than – well, suffer what Efron and Ket had in mind.

  He retrieved the axe a moment before Efron reached him, and swung with a savage purposefulness. The rapist dodged, and they repeated this once, twice, and again.

  Efron darted for him, and it was his turn to retreat, bringing the weapon down hard as he did so. The heavy thud of a blunt object striking flesh signaled that he’d made contact, but only with the handle. It was enough to get his attacker’s eyes flashing with anger, but not enough to stop him.

  Somewhere in the distance, an alarm sounded. It was the call back to quarters. Tal heard it, but his attention was focused on the fight, on the form in front of him. Round and round they circled, brushing the narrow walls of their confinement as they went. Now and again, Efron would drop a comment about what he meant to do to Tal, or how long he’d waited to meet him again, or how excited he was by the prospect.

  He might not have worn the badge anymore, but to his core, Tal was a protector. His job had been his life, and his training was so deeply a part of his being that they were inseparable. He understood that Efron meant to rattle him. He knew the man’s history, and that he delighted as much in the psychological torment of his victims as the physical; and Efron took immense pleasure in both.

  But he also knew, as few did, what this man was capable of. He’d argued with the prosecuting barrister for a death sentence rather than prison. He’d known what sending a man like this to the already brutal, frozen penal colonies of Zeta would mean for other prisoners.

  He’d just never imagined that he was arguing in his own defense. And yet, here they were.

  Voices sounded at the mouth of the tunnel. Tal wanted to glance back, to see what was happening, but Efron seemed to sense his distraction. He was eyeing him with an eagerness that left no doubt that turning his head would mean a fresh as
sault.

  He stayed focused, swinging the hand axe whenever the rapist got too close.

  “What’s going on there?” a voice called.

  He kept his eyes forward, trained on Efron.

  “Hands up,” the voice called again.

  Now, he hesitated. It would be one of the protectors. Disobedience would mean punishment. But he doubted it would be worse than what obedience risked.

  He held onto his axe. The footsteps and shouts got louder. It wasn’t until Efron put his own hands in the air, though, that Tal complied. And, by now, the guard was almost upon the pair of them, cursing heatedly. “I told you to put your hands up, you maggot.”

  A second later, a searing blast of electricity shot through his body. He tried to hold the scream behind his gritted teeth, and mostly succeeded; it came out as a strangle grunt. He collapsed to his knees. He’d been hit, he knew, with a submission prod.

  “Hands in the air,” the protector demanded. Mustering every ounce of strength, he complied.

  Efron watched, grinning. The guard took a moment to tell him, “You, back to your block.”

  “Yessir.” Hands still in the air, he walked past the pair of them in the direction of the cells. With a wink at Tal, he said, “Catch you later.”

  “And you, dirtbag, on your feet.”

  Tal grunted as he complied. Fire seemed to be coursing through his veins, his blood turned to liquid agony. He’d used a submission prod now and then on noncompliant criminals in his time in uniform, but he’d become well acquainted with it in his time here. A disgraced protector drew enough ire from the force, but a rat? He would have been better off if he’d actually been guilty of the crimes he’d been charged with.

  Tal had watched his CO knock a cuffed prisoner’s teeth out on a whim. He’d reported it. The CO got a written warning.

  Tal made an enemy for life. A few weeks later, a ‘routine search’ turned up narcotics in his locker. He hadn’t put them there, but that didn’t matter. It was a pretext, and everyone knew it – from the chief to the barrister. It was payback.

  And it had never stopped. Condemned to the maximum five years in the tundra of Zeta colony wasn’t enough. As a former protector, he wore a target for every criminal on the prison planet. And as a rat, he wore a target for every protector assigned here.

  So Tal Imari had become closely acquainted with the submission prod, and its crippling, merciless payload of energy. And he knew what would happen if the fog of pain, the spasming of his muscles, kept him too long off his feet. It would be excuse enough for another charge, and another when that prevented him from rising.

  Unseeing with sheer pain, he pushed through the agony, and got onto his feet.

  “Turn around.”

  His vision was clearer now. The walls of the tunnel had returned, and as he complied, he saw the face of the protector behind him. It was half hidden under a fur-lined hood. Still, he recognized the man. It was Dre Baltir, one of the junior guards.

  “I see you’re making friends with Efron,” Dre grinned. “Or has he already made you his friend?”

  Tal didn’t speak, and that seemed answer enough for the protector. His grin broadened. “Well, sorry to interrupt. But it’s back to quarters for you dirtbags.”

  They marched in silence, stopping only to pick up new stragglers. Soon, they’d reached the steps leading out of the mines, and Tal braced himself as they neared the mouth of the frozen tunnel. Even here, inside, the temperature drop was chilling. But it was the shrieking winds that really got to him.

  It was cold enough underground, away from the relentless wind, the endless ice, the driving snow. But on the surface?

  Tal was a man born and raised on Central, on the warm surfaces of Tribari’s foremost world. He’d grown up in that rosy starlight, where winter, when it came, was mild and pleasant; where snow, when it fell, was soft and beautiful; where ice, when it formed, was fleeting and admired.

  As he stepped out of the mine, a blast of wind tore into him, nearly bowling him over. It cut through the patched coat and threadbare trousers. It cut through the wrappings he’d put together, scrounged from the bodies of the dead, traded for a bit of food. It seemed to cut down to bone. There, far, far away, was a tiny star on the horizon glowing pinkish red: the star he’d grown up under.

  The memory of its warmth was impossible to recall now.

  He plodded on, Protector Baltir shouting for them to pick up the pace. The snow was high, up to his knees in patches. A path had been cut by the feet that had traveled this way before him, but the driving winds were doing their best to obliterate it.

  The barracks and prison blocks were a short stretch away, but he couldn’t make them out until they had almost reached their destination. Not through the sheets of snow dancing before him. There was a storm coming in, probably another blizzard.

  That, he supposed, was why they were being recalled. They’d lost two prisoners in the last blizzard. The protectors had waited too long to bring them back, and by time they went looking, it was impossible to find anyone. Not that they cared much, except that it meant a delay in work.

  There hadn’t been any new arrivals lately. That was unusual. There were normally new ships in every few days. The guards tended to be a little less careful when there was fresh meat. Fresh meat meant the work still got done, whatever happened. It meant they had headcount enough to sport with a few prisoners here and there.

  No new faces was good for everyone – the prisoners who would be spared this hell, and the ones already condemned to it.

  Tal drew his coat closer to his frame. He’d never been heavy, but it seemed, in his time here, he’d lost weight he didn’t even know he had. He was thinner now, the clothes he’d been outfitted with looser. And he was always cold.

  “Alright,” Baltir called, “to your blocks.”

  The protector didn’t wait to see that they complied. Instead, he marched for the barracks, for the fenced and heated retreat of his own kind. There was no surprise in that. Zeta’s penal colonies were unlike the prisons on Central and the other core planets.

  There were places to run on Central, and places to hide. There was nothing but endless tundra on Zeta – tundra, and the predators that roamed it. It was one of the least fortified prisons in the empire, simply because mother nature had done for the planet far more than any Tribari engineer could do. Here, nature was a more effective wall, guard, and executioner than the best forts or any dozen protectors.

  A few desperate souls had tried to escape in his time here, a few men and women driven to the point of breaking by the abuse the guards and other prisoners meted out. They’d faced the cold and the animals; and they’d died accordingly.

  No one survived. No one.

  He marched into his own prison, block E. It was a wooden building, barely insulated and heated only by the bodies inside. In this respect, its low ceiling and close quarters were something of a boon.

  In every other, they were, of course, appalling. It was a great stew of Tribari-kind, and all the reeks and rots of the worst accommodations in the empire. It wasn’t just the endless hum of voices, or the dank odors. He was housed with tax cheats and serial killers, political dissidents and brutal gang members. There were good men and women in here, and the worst of men and women.

  The injustice of that had been hard for him to accept when he’d first arrived. But now, he was too hungry, too cold, and – if he was honest with himself – too frightened to have mental energy to spare for considerations outside his immediate well-being.

  He settled onto his bunk and pulled a thin blanket over himself. He wondered if they’d get fed tonight. A full meal for a full day’s work. That’s what the guards said. It probably wouldn’t matter that the work had ended early on orders.

  He sighed and closed his eyes. Hunger was already gnawing at his stomach. It would be a long night if they didn’t get food.

  “Hey.” Tal opened his eyes, glancing at the bunk across from him, at the speak
er. It was Tig Orson, a prisoner hailing from Theta colony. He and Tig weren’t friends, exactly, but the other man had looked out for him once or twice. “You know what this is about?”

  Tal shook his head. “The storm, I guess. Looks like there’s a big one blowing in.”

  Tig in turn shook his own head. “I don’t think that’s it.”

  “Oh?”

  “I heard a few of the protectors talking.” He leaned over, his voice low. “They say there’s trouble on Central.”

  “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

  Tig grinned, a great, gap-toothed smile. “Some kind of uprising. Armed. What I heard is, the Office of Protection fell.”

  Tal blinked. The Office of Protection was the main police station on Central. “Impossible.”

  The other man shrugged. “Maybe. But there’s some kind of revolution brewing. Not just on Central. They were saying Trapper’s Colony is talking about independence. And there’s riots on Tau. There was some kind of violence. They killed someone, some folk hero or something from Central.” Tig leaned in even closer, until Tal could smell his breath – rank, like everyone else’s here. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “And – from what it sounded like – they’re afraid of other planets getting wind of it. They’re afraid of us getting wind of it.”

  Tal scoffed. “Who is going to get news to us, Tig? No one. And what can we do, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is what I heard. And what I heard is, they’re scared.”

  Chapter Two

  Nikia Idan wiped her brow and breathed out. Giya grinned at her. “Bet you never thought you’d do that, eh?”

  “No,” she admitted. In all the plans she’d made for her life, in all the dreams she’d had over the years, accepting a precinct commander’s surrender had never featured in them. “What about you?”

  He considered. “A few times. Although there’s been less surrender, and more death, in my mind.”

  She shook her head and laughed nervously. He was joking. At least, she was pretty sure he was joking. Giya Enden was the treasurer for the city’s branch of the Citizens for the Welfare of the Common Tribari. Since her husband’s murder, Giya had been one of her closest confidantes.