Runners: Escape Prison World or Die (Empire of Time Series) by John Argo

Page 21.

Vigri looked at her with pain-filled eyes. "I've made many mistakes in life. I was just a civilian traveling on business between my home world and another system when the Swarm broke through and conquered that whole region. I left a husband and two children behind. I should have risked it all, like you are doing. I should have escaped as soon as possible, to hell with the risk, to hell with the cost. My husband would be old now, if he's still alive. I'll never see him again. Nor will I ever see my son and daughter. They would be adults now, living under conquest conditions."

Vigri reached behind her neck, unfastened a clasp, and pulled a leather thong from under her shirt. At the end of the loop was an ancient, yellowed holo playlet. Never taking it off its thong, she held it with trembling fingers for Amela to see. Hidden under uncountable, lingering fingertip touches were the smiling visages of a young boy and girl. "The sound is long dead," Vigri said. "But you can still see them moving and talking." As Amela watched, the boy and girl, on obverse faces, seemed to be making a humorous speech, sending greetings on some special occasion. "This flic is from Homol's birthday. My son." She turned the little disk. "This is Vigri Mela." She smiled. "We don't use the palindrome naming like your people do. Mela means Beloved Daughter. Melu means son, which is my child Homol Melu."

"I hope they are living happy lives," Amela said.

"I hope they have children as they nice were." Vigri tucked the treasure back under her tunic, where it would contine lying against her bare skin—as long as there was warmth to keep the tiny internal battery of the playlet charged. "I keep their images warm with my heart."

A tear fell from Amela's eye as she thought of Solan and Nally. "I would glady die trying to reach them."

"Oh yes. Much better than wasting your life away, longing for them. That's how I have wasted my life. That's how I lost my good years. This terrible war, and these Swarm monsters, took my youth and my life from me. Now a traitor extends a kindness to me."

"You mean Rulla Texel?"

"Oh yes. She is one of the many traitors who sell out their own people, be they human or humanian. Her punishment in life is that she has never had a home, a husband, or children. If you ask me, for all the lives she has destroyed, she has never had a life of her own. Or if she ever had a spouse and children, and lost them—or, gods forbid, betrayed them—she has buried it so deeply that I never knew about it." Vigri's eyes got dark and hard, as if storms were lashing her soul, and lightning tortured her conscience. "I have done a lot of bad things myself over the years."

The two women exchanged deep, soulful looks. Amela did not ask. She felt as though she were staring into an abyss as she met the older woman's gaze.

Vigri continued, as if she'd read Amela's mind: "Yes, that is the other consequence of not escaping at any cost to return to your loved ones. You sink into this moral hell. I was a dirty woman who befriended a few prisoners over the years. I gained their trust and betrayed them to my old friend Major Texel. They vanished, probably to the wolvines or into those unmarked graves, or maybe penal colonies worse than Aerag-78. There are rumors. Even Texel doesn't know all that the Swarm do. I betrayed those girls because my conscience was numb from years of pain and self-loathing. In the end, I don't know what I hoped to gain. My freedom? Repatriation? How could I have lived with myself, even if I got back to my loved ones?" She shook her head. "No, it's best that it stays here, on Manaul 5, and ends this way. But you, Amela… I asked Major Texel for one personal favor, as a way of making right the many wrongs I did. You are nothing to her, and she agreed."

"Thank you." Amela's emotions roiled between loathing and pity, disgust and sympathy, for the old woman. "I'm sorry for the pain you carry inside."

Vigri closed her eyes briefly in relief. "You have already set me halfway free," Vigri said. "Now I must seek the other half of it."

"What about Whirrit?"

"She's another story. I'll tell you about that in a short while. But I have one more thing to tell you. Have you heard stories about the Pitz Boat?"

"Oh yes. I think every prisoner has."

"It's not just a legend. At least, that's what I'm told. There is a bend in the shore of the Manaul Ocean, and I have given Denla the exact coordinates. It's off the beaten track. Manaul is just an empty, half-terraformed world caught in the Treaty Marches wars, you know. The Dominion evacuated, taking their colonists offworld."

"But there are natives?"

"Oh yes. Blue-skinned folk, of distant Humansh stock. Very few of them, all in the jungles of Manaul 5J."

"Breeding standard?" Amela's question referred to the genetic standard: could they interbreed uneventfully with True Humans.

"Oh yes," Vigri breathed with certainty. "We had a few Fith prisoners many years ago. That's what the blue people call themselves. Sekurita took a hunting party prisoner on the 4J jungle continent. The Swarm did some experiments on them. I'm ashamed to say the hunters died. I'm happy I don't know exactly how. The Swarm lost interest in them, and rumor has it a few more of these primitive Fith ramble around in the jungles. They keep to themselves, and nobody bothers with them."

"Would they harbor escaped fugitives?"

Vigri looked enigmatic. "Who knows. They are said to be cannibals and head hunters. We had them here in the camp in a special enclosure. Naked blue men with frizzy black hair and dark eyes like those of wolvines. They had these looks…" Vigri held her hands up before her eyes, like claws. "…They had these blank, uncomprehending looks. They could never learn the simplest mechanical thing, like flushing a toilet or working a door knob. All tabu to them, mechanical devil work. With any luck, you won't have to see any of them. If you do, run."

In silence, the two women finished their cafirs.

"Landfall in fifteen minutes," Denla Whirrit called out from the flight deck. She was hidden among metal tubes, tanks, plates, and other shadowy machinery at the center of the ship. Amid the shadows, orange displays flickered endlessly with strings of numbers, symbols, and letters.

"We'll buckle right up," Vigri sounded back. The awl was gone from the counter top.

As Amela started to walk, Vigri barred her with one arm. "Hold on a second."

Amela waited as Vigri brought a small gadget up from a deep pocket. "See this? It's a circuit indicator. It tells you a certain bit of information." She handed it to Amela. "Hang on to this. You may find it very useful. More so than you know right now."

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