Beyond the Rim

“I see you’ve captured some valuable prizes,” said Ranior. “What have we got here?” Seethe set Stace on the ground. Ranior cupped her chin in her hand; Stace jerked away, her eyes on fire. But Ranior just laughed. “Ah, yes, Anastasia Zodiak. It’s good to see you in person.”

“I’ll never be a slave.”

“No? Maybe we’ll threaten to sell you unless your father does what we ask.”

Stace’s gaze faltered. “I’m not sure that he will this time.”

“He will. You’re probably the only thing in all the worlds he loves.”

Ranior slid over to me. Rock tightened his grip on my arms as she reached up to touch my hair. “Devlin, it’s good to have you back. Now that Zodiak has forfeited his right to you, we’ll have to find you another home. Of course, we’ll have to reeducate you; it seems you’ve been a bit of trouble. What do you think, Kavanau? Do you think you can stand to work with him again?”

The Educator stepped forward. He looked me up and down critically, and I felt the shrinking feeling under his gaze that I’d felt in that room, strapped down for his scrutiny. I was nothing, a thing only fit to be a slave.

“I might be able to, if you will give me leeway to mold him in any way I see fit.”

“He’s all yours.” Chills ran down my spine. Was I about to become a slave again? If they left in our pod, wouldn’t Choy just blow it out of the sky? Not if he thought it was a friendly craft…

I would rather be blown up by the Corps than go back to the living death of slavery.

“Let’s head out,” said Ranior.

BOOOM! I whirled around just in time to see a blaze of fire where the compound had been. It grew and blossomed, obliterating the building and possibly the whole cliff as well.

With the shockwave, the two guards behind us stumbled to the ground. Instead of helping them, Rock unlocked my handcuffs and slipped a gun into my hand. Then he shot the two guards as they struggled to get up. They collapsed on the grass and lay still.

I signaled to the battlebot, hoping it would jump into action. As the guard next to Ranior aimed a gun at Rock, the bot shot him, burning a gaping hole into his chest.

Rock grappled with Seethe as he forced his knife toward Stace’s throat. I ran toward them, but Ed’s shot caught me in the leg. I slammed into the ground, my left leg numb. I aimed my Killsting at Ed, but the battlebot beat me to it. As Ed raised his gun toward me, the bot shot him, shattering his head apart. At the exact same instant, Ranior shot the bot. It disintegrated into a pile of molten metal.

Behind me, I heard a “thump”. Seethe toppled like a felled tree, nearly landing on me. I dragged myself away from him, and Rock and I aimed our guns at Ranior.

She stood, alone in front of the ship, her white cape whipping in the wind. For a moment, I thought she would turn and run, try to make it into the ship.

But she aimed the gun upwards, toward her chin.

It burned a path through her head, her face disappearing in fire. She fell, half of her body ripped away, the other half still smoldering, burning into the ground.

I closed my eyes. It was done.

Rock, his jaw bleeding from a knife-cut, pulled me to my feet, and Stace, a shallow slash across her throat, helped carry me to the pod.

After Rock hauled in the unconscious Seethe, we flew back to the stars, leaving the planet where we’d been enslaved.

I lay in the back of the pod while Rock guided it toward the Phoenix. Stace knelt beside me. “I guess I wasn’t as big of a help as I thought I’d be,” she said, stroking my forehead. My lip still stung where Rock had hit it, and I ached from his iron fists. My leg was numb; I dreaded when feeling would start to pour back into it.

I pushed myself up against the wall. “For a moment there,” she said, “I thought I was going to be a slave.” Her flippant tone was unable to hide the relief in her voice.

“It would’ve served you right,” I said, and kissed her forehead to show I didn’t mean it. She smiled, and leaned her head on my shoulder, and we rode like this, all the way back to the ship.

Dagan met us in the podbay, along with several crew members. “It looks like your mission was successful,” he said, as I hung between Rock and Stace. My stunned leg started to tingle.

“It was,” I said. “Except we lost the two bots.” I was especially sorry about the second bot; it had been a loyal companion, though I knew it hadn’t really felt anything, not even pain as it flashed out of existence.

“Ranior’s dead,” said Rock. “She and two of the guards. Also, the man called the Educator.” His voice faltered when he said the name. “One other guard is inside the pod, unconscious.” Two crew members headed into the pod to check it out. “The others are waiting at a rendezvous point beneath the waterfall. I don’t know how much of that is left now.”

“We’ll have to check it before we leave,” said Dagan.

Could it be possible? Could the Blue M Ring be destroyed? Without Ranior to direct it, Ed gone, maybe Kaza and Vane—the ones who had tortured and enslaved us….I didn’t quite know what to feel; I knew I should feel relieved, but all I felt was a sort of numbness.

We headed to the bridge to make a brief report. Choy was pleased. “I must say, I didn’t really expect you to get out alive. If not for Dagan, I might have destroyed the base before the time was up, but he persuaded me to wait a half hour longer.”

Dagan was standing on deck, hands behind his back, his face glazed with planetlight.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t mention it,” he replied. “All part of the job.”

I headed to my quarters to recuperate, Stace to hers. While crew members searched the planet for survivors, Choy put Rock through a lengthy debriefing.

After the stun wore off, excruciating pins and needles burned through my leg. As soon as it dissipated, I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up, Rock was sitting in the chair opposite me. I sat up and waited for him to speak.

Finally he said, “I’m sorry, Devlin. Sorry for…what I let myself become.”

I shook my head. “Rock, you don’t have anything to be sorry about. It was them. They’re gone now; you’re free.”

Rock leaned his head in his hand. “I don’t feel free. I—I tried to resist them for so long. When it got to be too much, I tried to pretend I would cooperate and work for them. It worked, for about a day.”

“You never were a very good liar.”

“When they found out, they used that drug to punish me. The one that makes your memories come back like you’re living them. To escape the memories, I started to believe I was this person, this Max.” He said the name with disgust. “Somewhere, I still believed I was myself, but whenever I started to remember, I’d bury it down deep, where it wouldn’t hurt.”

Pain shadowed his eyes. I’d felt it too. The shame of having given in. For Rock, it must be ten times worse; where he’d grown up, he’d had to learn to be strong. For that strength to be stripped away—

“Rock, there’s nothing you could do about it. No one can hold out forever, not even you.” I managed a smile. Then I said, “I gave in too. I almost gave up…But the key is, even if you let them win, it doesn’t mean they always have to win. You can be free.”

He nodded. “I’ll just have to keep telling myself that.” It was then I realized that I would have to struggle just like Rock, in a different way. It would take a long time before the events over the past two months would fade from my memory. Maybe, for as long as I lived, I’d have to fight to stay free of them, and what they had done to me, even if the battle was only in my mind.