And how do you know you’re still inside the city, Manda?
Manda. Dad had always called her that. And he’d taught her how to think. How to survive. And how to shoot, too. So maybe she needed a little of that good sentimental stuff she called dumb. If just to get her head together.
I hope so. I really hope so, she thought, and heard how forlorn that sounded inside her head.
Hours later the narrow door shushed open and two MAT-49s pointed down at her. The weapons’ operators were aiming ultrabeams at her eyes to blind her. She’d been asleep, or she’d been in total darkness. It was getting hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t.
They’d locked her in a dark closet and left her there. But how long had it been since the alley? Since they’d been captured? Because everything, every detail, meant something. Could be used to compute. Range and distance. Escape.
Since Reaper 66 had set her down on the rooftop in the middle of a bad situation making the jump to worse… how long had it been?
And where were the leejes?
The ones she’d tried to save. Where were they? They had been the whole point of all this.
Didn’t you go in there to try and rescue them, Manda? And instead ended up getting caught yourself.
You ain’t much of a hero, Panda.
“That’s for sure,” she agreed. Her voice sounded dry and tired.
One of the armed guards laughed. “She’s delirious.”
She’d told herself she’d be ready for this moment. She’d take advantage of any opportunity they gave her. And then she’d use it to get free. All she needed was a moment when they weren’t at their best.
That was all that mattered.
Wait for that moment, Manda.
Dad again.
Get free.
Get back to the ones who are waiting for you. Get back to the known.
You can do that, Manda.
All the names all the good people had ever called her.
Someone pushed past the pair who pointed the blasters in her face. An old man. He bent down with a hypo. He looked like… not like a doctor. More like a professor. The academic type.
She didn’t know how she knew that, only that she did.
“Hold still.” The old man had no compassion in his voice. No empathy for her current situation. Then the hypo went in, and she instantly began to fade.
They drugged me!
Her mind screamed indignantly. Her lithe, muscled body fought back and squirmed. But they just stood back and watched. The drugs would do the work now. And there was no way those narcotics were letting go.
Get back, Manda. That’s all that matters. Wait for your moment.
They drugged… me.
They probably know.
Who, Amanda? Amanda Panda. Who knows what?
They… they probably know I’ve been captured. The ones I have to get back to. The ones I’ve been away from too long. They… know.
They’ve already waited too long, she thought as the drug ravaged her mind and smashed her mental faculties into submission.
She fought to hold on. Telling herself she was tougher than the drug. She gritted her teeth and tried to tell them “Noooooooo.”
It came out sounding more like a bush deer call than any word from Standard.
Narkex is a heavyweight in the pharmaceutical world. Knockout. Every time.
* * *
She woke up again. In the back of a technical sled surrounded by more of the black-and-red rioters. Soshies. All of them on the seating benches of what was clearly some kind of military transport. All of them armed. MAT-49s. Saiger 6s. For sale in every weapons bazaar along the outer edge and often employed by the Mid-Core Rebellion.
They were laughing at some joke. But none of it made sense. Nothing did.
Probably the drugs they’ve pumped me full of, she thought.
Some kid had his mask off. He was college age. Good teeth and good looks. Kind of kid that played grav polo. He was laughing about hitting a marine with a bottle full of piss.
“You shoulda seen the guy’s face!” the kid chortled. “It was full of TG’s piss!”
And everyone above her, sitting on the benches, there to guard her, laughed harder than the kid telling the story. Like they’d just stormed the Savage phalanx at Omicron Ridge back in the worst days of the Savage Wars. Like they were real heroes.
Through half-shut eyes she tried to study their gear.
She could see some were operator types with legit gear. LCEs and grenades. Military-grade equipment. Dressed up like Soshies but kitted out like MCR. Which all but confirmed the rebels were involved in this. But only some were like that. Mixed in were a few of the homebrew, make-your-own-kit bunch. Like the grav-polo star telling his piss war story. Yet despite the amateurish nature of the newbs, they’d followed some kind of SOP.
They all had high-impact sports bottles. “Operator” blades with high-tech skins. Gas masks purchased off the elite holosites for executives who had to go out to the edge and rough it on business deals. Everything you needed to play legionnaire and marine. Everything but the hard work of actually signing up for an enlistment.
When the riot was over, they’d all go back to their classes, or to their high-paying jobs in tech and entertainment. As they took off the masks and disappeared into society once again, they’d feel a little more virtuous for having hit a marine with a bottle of piss.
Y’know… really changed the galaxy for the better.
She wanted to throw up, and she wasn’t nauseated. Not physically, anyway. It was people like this that made her sick. They had no idea how dangerous the galaxy was. No idea that the freedom they so casually tossed aside was purchased every day out there on the edge by marines and legionnaires fighting to keep a thousand would-be tyrants from getting enough mojo to enslave as
