Against A Rock Read online

  She paused, wondering if Mahran was trying to get a feel for her strategies for his own purposes, or if his soul motivation was in improving his own subjects. But consistency and communication was so important that even if he had manipulative goals, it was still better that he recognize his master’s patterns.

  So she continued, “I like simple consequences. If a slave becomes a real problem, I will have them terminated; not out of anger, nor punishment or vengeance, but out of simple practicality. In rare cases of extreme disobedience, it’s just cheaper and easier to terminate a slave and buy a new one. That’s not a punishment exactly, it’s just a practicality, and it’s not intended for the slaves to be afraid of that fate. In fact, you want to avoid the fear at all costs. You want the consequence of death to be there, but it shouldn’t be any more traumatizing than the need to put on your seatbelt.”

  She paused in front of a connecting shaft to check her drone scanner. “We’re not going to make it to the next opening before the next drone gets to us.” She sighed. “We’re going to need to stop here for about forty minutes to let the drone pass.”

  “Okay,” Mahran sighed.

  Floreina crawled forward, then backed into the connecting shaft and crawled backward for twenty meters and stopped, now clear from the drone’s passing scans. Mahran followed her into the passage, head first, and stopped just in front of her. They smiled briefly.

  “You’re sure you’ve got all the drones scanned down, so we’re not going to get jumped from behind?” he asked.

  She passed him the scanner. “You can double check for yourself.”

  He took several minutes to check over her readouts, and, finally satisfied, handed it back.

  He smiled. “So how did you come to believe all these theories? I didn’t know Master Miltein, but I assume it started with him?”

  She took a deep breath. “There was a specific point when I realized it—or he forced me to realize it…” she spoke slowly.

  Mahran cocked his head and raised his eyebrows.

  “I don’t know if I want to tell you…” Floreina said. “You might think I’m a monster…”

  “I don’t think I could ever see you as a monster… will you tell me anyway?”

  Floreina started slowly, “My dad always seemed to feel the same way as I do on these things, but never detailed them to me… I sort of figured it out just by forcing myself to take a step back and watch how Dad interacted with me and his Minmatar.”

  She paused as she lay on the cold metal surface of the air duct, her chin resting on the back of her hands, thinking of her father and the frequency crystal manufacturing firm he managed when she was a little girl.

  But she caught herself and came back to start her story. “…so I was about twelve, and still learning about the manufacturing line, and there was this slave who was teaching me to check for imperfections in the crystals as they came out of the cleanser. But the systems were screwing up and he kept having to run back to the controls to reset the cleanser tank. He was running back and forth, and so I stood by the conveyor belt and tried to help by checking for imperfections, just as he had shown me, but was getting too close to the cleanser, and was touching the crystal, which usually causes more imperfections. And the production was getting backed up, so this slave came back and yelled at me, because I wasn’t helping, and was probably in danger…”

  She paused to look at Mahran. “Anyway, he sort of shoved me out of the way… he was having a hectic time trying to keep up with the problems on the production line, then to have me in the way… looking back on it now it seems reasonable… but I didn’t see it that way at that age… I had a bruised ego, and I wanted revenge… or as I thought of it at the time, a proper punishment to make an example out of him… I wanted justice.”

  She scratched her nose, barely moving her chin.

  “So I ran back to my papa’s office and grabbed his laser pistol, ran right back and shot him in the face… And I just stood there; and everyone else just stood there.”

  She looked at Mahran and he looked back attentively, but calmly.

  “But my papa didn’t yell and scream, even though I could tell he was furious. He shut down the assembly line and let everyone take the day off, and afterward I tried to avoid the slaves, but my dad made me go down to the barracks and talk to them about it—not apologize exactly, but just talk to them so I could see how it was affecting them. And he made me go to the funeral… which was good for me; perhaps not for them.

  “It’s difficult when your kid punishes someone else… should you punish them to show that punishing people is wrong?… But I felt horrible regardless… well… I felt very intense emotions about it; lets say that. It tore me up inside and I kept coming back to that feeling for months afterwards—but I wouldn’t exactly describe it as feeling horrible… and that’s a good point, because Dad wasn’t trying to make me feel awful about it. He just wanted me to feel… to think about it…”

  Mahran rolled to his side and rested his head on his forearm, watching Floreina with a minute smile.

  “And I realized that too often, we Amarrians forget that we're supposed to be protectors; we must keep slaves, for certain races just can’t handle the responsibility of being without a caretaker. That’s how the Lord made you, and we should not punish you for that. We have different places under God, but we are part of the same team, working toward the same goals.”

  Floreina paused a moment. “So I’m not like that any more.”

  “Oh, I know,” replied Mahran.

  And she stopped, and the two looked at each other, longer than would have been appropriate with another slave owner.

  “So tell me how your new position has been going,” she asked. “Are you liking your new role as teacher?”

  “Oh, yes,” he replied. “I did not realize the perks involved… I’ve been working with the new Minmatar. I’ve been training them for maintenance and incident response…”

  And they talked, Floreina asking more about his life on the ship, and found Mahran discussing the connection between his spirituality and his work, but finally moved onto lighter topics, like how much he was going to enjoy the hit of Vitoc he would get when they got back to the hotel room.

  They had time to kill, so she let him talk on and on about simple things, and for most of the time, she simply watched, as though listening to another Amarrian. But her own senses told her, and her facial analyzers confirmed, that something was being left unsaid.

  Near the end of their wait, they took a short pause so that they could check the drone tracking systems to make sure all the maintenance bots were on schedule and not moving down the wrong pathways, happy to find everything still running smoothly.

  And she looked up to see Mahran staring at her, smiling warmly.

  After a short moment he asked, “Do you mind if I kiss you?”

  And Floreina’s consciousness seemed to stop short but simultaneously she felt her implant firing up.

  Something had told her this could happen… slaves were often known to form attractions toward their owners, but she had never thought it would be an issue…

  But now it seemed different than she would have expected, and visions began popping into her mind, seemingly from nowhere.

  There were places all over the galaxy where Amarrians, Minmatar, and people of all races lived together as though they were the same… there were places where an Amarrian and a Minmatar could be together as equals and the local society would not think anything odd about it. Mahran, of course, had no knowledge of these places.

  But suddenly Floreina envisioned herself converting… shifting her own paradigms… to learn to love someone who was once her property. They could move away from the war, to the surface of a planet and live amongst the trees and shrubs… have a house with a couple fruit trees… and never be seen as strange.

  And she envisioned their half-breed children. At first she would hide her discomfort, and within months she would find it gone, and she w
ould see them simply as her children.

  But Floreina fought back against the sudden, uninvited visions. Male Amarrians could have affairs with female slaves, but always as a subject serving their master… to allow them an opportunity to manipulate their Amarrian superiors was to invite disaster to both races.

  At the same time, however, Floreina could not help finding the idea sinfully dirty and erotic… to give herself up to something so… filthy…

  But Floreina forced it away.

  “No,” she replied flatly. “That would be entirely inappropriate.”

  And Mahran looked at the floor. “I’m sorry,” he started suddenly. “You’re right—I don’t know what I was thinking.” His face turned red, and he grew quiet.

  “I’m sorry if I gave you mixed signals…”

  “No, no, I’m sorry,” Mahran shot back quickly. “I’m just stupid…”

  And he stared at the wall.

  So Floreina let it rest for several long moments, and watched as he lay, almost motionless, his head cocked away, his eyes blinking only rarely.

  “Okay,” Floreina broke the silence. “Don’t get all weird about a simple misunderstanding…” but she didn’t know what else to say.

  “Yeah,” he shook his head suddenly, as though to clear his thoughts. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Buddy.” She patted his shoulder. “If you want to know the truth… you’re a handsome guy… you’ll make a good husband someday… ”

  And that seemed to brighten his mood.

  They didn’t talk much for the remainder of their wait and for their crawl back to the hotel. As soon as they made it back to the room, Mahran flopped onto the bed to rest. Floreina sat down in a deep chair facing him, and groaned. She checked the time; they had spent fifteen hours working in the air ducts, and they felt and looked the part.

  But things had run reasonably smoothly, with the exception of her sense that Mahran's short-lived attraction was not the only thing distracting him.

  ______ ______ ______

  “Is the deal still on?” Floreina asked, staring over the top of her soda.

  A heavy-set man in a leather cargo jacket and four days of facial hair sat before her, staring back over his empty glass. Reihmar was his name, as her helper implant subtly reminded her. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

  “Prefer to talk somewhere else?” she asked.

  “A walk in the park?”

  “How romantic…”

  He chuckled and looked around. “Yeah…”

  They headed out of the cafe, through the crowds, following side by side, but not speaking of anything other than the logistics of getting to their less crowded destination.

  Finally, when they turned into the open area in the park, Reihmar spoke, “We are concerned about the meeting place…”

  “Concerned how?” Floreina replied.

  “It’s proximity to local police offices. We’d like to make the deal in a system with lower security. We don't understand why you chose this location… it’s also too far from the docking hangars.”

  Floreina replied calmly, “Well, first of all, I need to select a spot on my captain’s normal routes.”

  “Can’t you take a vacation and meet us in a more distant system? This is a huge deal we’re talking about. With the profit you’ll make from these boosters it shouldn’t make a difference to you.”

  “No,” she shook her head. “I need to stay under the radar of everyone, including my captain and the rest of her crew. I need to do it quickly and get back to the ship. The hotel I selected will give me quick access to a secure cargo dispatch to get them back to the ship, as well as being a familiar place which will give me a little more peace of mind—“

  “We just think—“

  “No, no,” Floreina spoke quickly, knowing she must be authoritative and insistent on this point. “We agreed: I pick the location and you choose the time. They have a strict weapons ban like we agreed. What more are you looking for? Are you trying to control every aspect of this arrangement?”

  Reihmar kicked a clump of dirt and grass. “I’ve just been sent here to say that we don’t like the meeting place, and would ask that you suggest a different location.”

  “No,” Floreina replied. “I’m sorry but my partners and I are putting a lot of money on this and I’m not gonna be pushed around on this issue. I want to make the deal in a location where I feel comfortable. You can take that or leave it.”

  He groaned softly. “Okay, I’ll get the word back and see what they say.”

  ______ ______ ______

  “I need to talk to you,” Mahran said as he stepped into her quarters, the hatch sliding shut behind him.

  She looked up. “What’s going on?”

  “This plan…” he sighed, and shook slightly. “I don’t feel comfortable with this…”

  “You don’t feel comfortable with what?” Floreina turned in her chair to look straight at the Minmatar.

  “I didn’t know we would be killing people… I didn’t know it would involve hacking station life support systems…”

  “I explained that your life would be at risk,” Floreina said. “I believe I gave a reasonable assessment… What else is relevant to you?”

  “You’re also getting five million ISK worth of boosters from this deal. For that price you could buy thousands of Minmatars just like me…”

  “What are you getting at?” Floreina replied, leaning forward, her eyelids rising.

  Mahran stared at the floor. “I think it would be fair if you released me as well as my brother in trade for this.”

  “Excuse me?” She tried to remain calm. “You‘re trying to change the deal on me? The deal I offered was for the release of your brother, to which you agreed. That was the deal; you can’t come in here and just change things.”

  “I don’t think I can go through with this then… I didn’t have all the information; I didn’t know there was killing involved; I didn’t know it was such high value… it’s just too much for me… punish me if you will… I know I made a stupid mistake, but I’ve thought a lot about this, and I just can’t go through with something this major without more incentive…”

  Floreina took a deep breath and shook her head, holding her tongue. She touched the triggers in her mind to flip on her medical implants and physical enhancements, wishing to just start up her rage, jump forth and pound her slave into the floor.

  But she held back and glared at the floor for a moment before looking up. “Mahran…” she started slowly and carefully. “We had a deal. I gave you the freedom to choose your path, and you had your chance. Now you’ve made your decision.”

  “I can’t go through with it,” he said flatly.

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  “You can’t do it without me.”

  “I’ll have you terminated.”

  “I have a file stored in my personal data that describes what you’re doing. People will find it after my death.”

  “You’re blackmailing me?”

  “I will only reveal your plans if you terminate me, Master Floreina.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t believe this. What makes you think you can come in here and make these kinds of demands?”

  “You can’t do this without me,” he replied. “You need me to keep quiet. You stand to make millions from this. I think my freedom is worth far less than your profit if things are successful…”

  Floreina looked up and stared at him for a long time, and finally he looked up and gazed back into her cold glare. “You’re simply going to refuse to participate? Shirk your obligations to your master and go back on your word?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to do this.”

  “I can’t believe you…” Floreina started, then stopped herself. She didn’t have a choice in this circumstance. Mahran was playing the hand he had been dealt. “Okay,” she snapped. “Fine. You and your brother will go free if you pull through and serve your function.
Will that quell your objections?”

  He grinned, his face suddenly glowing. “Yes, Ma’am. Thank you, Ma’am.” He jumped slightly. “You know that I appreciate this immensely…”

  “Uh-huh,” she replied in monotone. “Alright, I don’t want to hear any more about this. Just go. And remember next time you try to manipulate me, I’ll put my foot down, and I’ll put it down hard.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. This is all I need. It’ll go smoothly from here; I can assure you… I’m prepared to do my duty on the station… and I’m eternally grateful.”

  “Okay.” Floreina stood and turned away. “Just get out. We’ll speak again in a couple days.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” And Mahran turned and left.

  Floreina stood, simply breathing, then screamed a deep and angry growl, wiping the hair from her face. She kicked her chair and it slid, clattering across the floor, hit the edge of her desk and toppled over.

  She shook her head and breathed heavily through her teeth, her damp hair falling into her face.

  …just another example of the self-centered nature of the Minmatar.

  ______ ______ ______

  Reihmar’s face showed up on her secure comm screen.

  “Greetings,” said Floreina. She coughed, putting a hand to her throat for effect.

  “Good evening,” he replied. “You alone?”

  “Wouldn’t have answered if I wasn’t.”

  “Okay, good. We’ve decided the meeting place is acceptable.”

  “Excellent.” Floreina nodded and smiled.

  “We still think it’s a bad choice, but we can live with it. I’ll contact you again in two weeks to confirm, but for now we have the date set at sometime over the weekend in three weeks.”

  Floreina nodded.

  “We’ll be waiting on the station and we’ll contact you either Friday, Saturday or Sunday at any time. We expect you to be at the meeting point within fifteen minutes of our call. Acceptable?”

  “Yes,” Floreina confirmed.

  “Excellent. I’ll contact you later.”

  And as quickly as he had appeared, Reihmar was gone.