The Omega Cage.

by Steve Perry and Michael Reaves.

Part One

The vilest deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man that wastes and withers there; Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate and the Warder is despair.

-Oscar Wilde, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"

Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage...

-Richard Lovelace, Lucasta. To Althea: From Prison

Chapter One.

The skimmer hit a hard downdraft and fell several hundred meters almost instantly. Dain Maro felt the free-fall flutter in his belly as the little ship dropped. There was no danger; they were still far above the ground, but the suddenness of it nearly lifted him from his form-seat.

The manacles stopped him.

He was chained to the seat, wrists and ankles, and it would have taken a lot more than a little air turbulence to break him free. He looked at the gyves. They could have used ataractic drugs or pressor fields to hold him, but Omega was a frontier world, and the Confed didn't waste its technology on criminals. The manacles were molecular-stacked graphites, twice as hard as polycarb durosteel, and the process for making them was a hundred years old. Ancient, maybe, but certainly effective enough.

Maro looked up at the mirrored window next to his seat. The face that stared back at him certainly didn't look dangerous enough to be sent to Omega. The reflected image had dark hair, not quite black, and sharp features-a thin nose and lips, pale blue eyes, and a strong chin-or so he had been told, mostly by women.

"Whatcha lookin' at, pretty boy?" Pig said.

Maro didn't bother to turn; he could see the guard's image in the mirror behind him. He had mentally dubbed the two guards Snake and Pig, for their most outstanding features. Snake was a whippet-thin man of maybe forty T.S., with some kind of skin disease that made him both shiny and scaly; either that, or maybe he was from one of the worlds where the bandit bioshifters still operated. Or perhaps the condition was some kind of protective adaptation. Pig's face was dominated by his nostrils, set in a nose that looked as if it had met too many walls at too high a rate of speed.

The two grinned unpleasantly at each other. "Why don't we show him the place?" Snake said.

"Yeah. You want to see your new home, pretty boy?"

Maro continued to stare at his reflection. He said nothing. The two guards were s.a.d.i.s.ts, and he'd found the safest course was to ignore them as much as possible.

Pig touched his throat mike. "Take us down for the tour, Rouge. Pretty boy, he's curious."

The skimmer began a fairly rapid descent. Maro turned away from the window and stared straight ahead. He didn't want to play whatever game these creeps were running. He suspected, however, that he didn't have much of a choice.

To Maro's left, Snake stroked a pressure-sensitive control on the latter's chair. The window's photo optometrics kicked on and the thincris plate next to Maro washed clear. Maro didn't want to look, but he knew if he were ever going to escape from the Cage, he'd need all the information he could get. He turned toward the viewport.

They were skimming perhaps a hundred meters above a swamp. Thick-boled trees rose from dank, green water; the few patches of solid ground were covered with brush, most of it in shades of mottled green, with occasional bursts of color; flowers, birds, other animals he didn't recognize.

Some sort of animal, like an elephant with a short nose and lots of teeth, roared up soundlessly at them.

All in all, Maro thought, it was not the most hospitable place he had ever seen.

He estimated their speed at around five hundred klicks, based on his own experience flying low-level atmospheric craft. At that rate, the swamp went on for a d.a.m.ned long way before it gave way to dry land. But when the change in terrain finally occurred, Maro's jaw dropped-the land was desert, with only a few scrubby bushes dotting wind-patterned sand dunes. What kind of ecology would allow desert next to swamp that way? It didn't make any sense. It shouldn't exist.

Pig laughed, a grunting sound. "You like that? The whole f.u.c.king planet is that way, pretty boy. n.o.body has ever escaped from the Cage, but if they did, they'd be dead fast. Everything down there would just as soon kill you as look at you. You got a one-way ticket to h.e.l.l."

Maro leaned back in his seat, still not speaking. The thincris shimmered and darkened a little, filtering out the hot sunshine but staying clear enough for him to see the surface below.

Snake said, "Pretty boy like you's gonna get eaten up by the sc.u.m in the Cage, you copy? But I might put in a good word for you with some of the guards, make it easier on you-if you want to be nice to me."

The last was said in a suggestive tone. Maro turned to stare at Pig. The guard dropped one fat hand to his crotch and ma.s.saged himself through the gray thinskin uniform. He leered at Maro, and the effect was so comical that the prisoner almost laughed. He knew he should keep his mouth shut, should just let it pa.s.s like all of Pig's other crude attempts-but he couldn't resist."I'd rather sleep with a genitonecrotic dog," Maro said.The leer vanished, and Pig stood, doubling his fists.Way to go, Dain, Maro told himself wearily. Now you get your a.s.s kicked for letting your mouth fly. Just like usual...

There were six of them, Stark knew. He also knew precisely where they planned to hop the wall, and he was ready for them. It had been a while since he'd tendered an object lesson, and it never hurt to remind the sc.u.m what happened to those who got itchy feet. It wasn't any particular joy to him; he had come from the military, and slaughter wasn't his style. But the rules had to be made clear. No exceptions.

He thumbed his throat mike. "You see them, doppler?"

The simadam running the scope replied, "Copy, Warden. Six for six, approaching stanchion four, two hundred and six meters out."

Stark nodded. "Good," he said. "Heat up the lasers."

There was a brief pause, then the simadam said, "Uh, wouldn't the focused sonics work just as well? And they'd be alive-"

"The lasers, I said. Full spec, full rake, full pattern."

"Jesu Cristo." The words came in a hushed murmur.

"What was that?"

"Ah, I said, copy, Warden. Full SRP."

Stark smiled slightly. "I thought that's what you said. Discom."

The warden stood behind his desk and stretched. He could watch the show on the holoproj-they would kick in the photomutable eyes as soon as the first laser opened up-but felt he should see it directly. Never hide from the consequences of your orders. He ambled toward the office exit.

Outside, the heat hit him with its usual humid intensity. He would have to get another follow-cooler as soon as he could siphon enough stads for it. The last one had given up the fight with a bang a couple of days back; the compressor had blown out and sprayed inert gases every which way. The dead cooler lay in a pile of junk in the machine yard now, another victim of the Omegan weather. The cooler was considered a luxury according to Confed rules, but as far as he was concerned, it was a necessity here. If they wouldn't give him the money for a new one, he would get it another way.

Almost time, he thought, glancing at his chronometer.

He took the elevator up to the observatory level. It, like most of the electromechanics, had been human built and installed. The Zonn had built the wall, along with the rest of the small city around which the prison had been constructed. They had been dead or gone half a million years, so the Confed extee experts said-but sometimes it felt as if the mysterious aliens might be peering at you from behind the nearest wall. Half a million years old, and those walls and other structures showed as little signs of wear as a set of new orthoskins. Stark wished he had their engineers instead of the ones the Confed fielded.

He reached the walkway. The distraction should be starting about... now.

As if on cue, a rumble began in the yard. A fight, most likely; he couldn't see it from here, but that's what they usually did. Not very original, but effective.

Stark stroked his com. "Be sure and get good views of the distractors," he said. That was part of it too. He hadn't asked for this stinking job and he would leave in a nanosecond were it up to him, but it wasn't. And as long as he was trapped here, he would do it by the tape.

"Of course," came the reply. That would be Lepto watching the yard. Sc.u.m who had killed half a dozen men with their bare hands would cross the yard to avoid running into Lepto when his black moods were on him. In a combat unit, Stark would have had Lepto bent to a psych hospital stat. But here, the giant Tatsuan had found his niche. He was brutal and dangerous, but Stark needed that kind of man. The prisoners of the Omega Cage were the worst criminals in the galaxy.

The ear implant clicked on with incoming. "It's a go, Warden. They're making the rush."

Stark hurried to get in position. "n.o.body does anything until they clear the wall."

There was no answer to that command. Anybody who warned the escapees in any way would suffer as much as they did, and they all knew it. The rules were different here. Loyalty wasn't the key-fear was. Stark didn't much like it, but he hadn't invented the system. He just had to survive it.

The warden reached the observation tower. He keyed the holoproj on and waved it up to eight-X magnification and enhancement. The six escapees darted for what they thought was a hidden booster plate at the base of the wall, five men and one woman piling onto the makeshift lifter. Probably all praying it will work. Stark thought. They needn't have worried. Late the previous night he had inspected it personally, stuck an inducer on it and made sure the plate would do just what it was supposed to do. Somebody had done a good job; the thing operated at near capacity, the cobbled circuits controlling the repulsion nearly as well as in a commercial model. He hadn't been able to find out who from his informant, but it didn't really matter. If he was one of the escapees, he was fertilizer; if he was somebody else, Stark would get him sooner or later.

As he waited for the capacitor to build up enough charge to allow the six to hop the wall, Stark took a deep breath and felt the sweat roll down the furrow over his spine. The hot breeze wafted the stench of lube and rotting vegetation, and he was certain he would carry the memory of those smells to his cremation. They stank as bad as what he was about to order done.

He could have stopped the escape when the fight broke out; he could have disabled the plate when he had first heard about it; he could have ordered the sonics instead of the lasers. There were a lot of things he could have done, but to do so would have shown weakness, and in his position he could not allow even the faintest crack of compa.s.sion to show in his hull. If a man knew he was going to die by trying to escape, if he felt it deep in his soul, then maybe he would think twice or ten or a hundred times about trying.

Escape from the Omega Cage was not allowed.

The Confed officials told him that before, when he was ordered to climb into a Bender ship and s.p.a.ce here. n.o.body gets out, you copy, Commander? n.o.body ever has, n.o.body ever will. That is your job. We need a place to dump them, and the Cage is it. What you do to them there, we don't want to know. But they don't get out. Ever.

The dull drone of the plate interrupted his thoughts. He had the camera locked and tracking, but he could use his own vision to see the six clutching the plastic rails as the plate lifted up its cargo, sliding along within a meter of the Zonn wall. Up quickly, cresting the thirty-meter-high alien construct in less than two seconds. Then they were over, guiding the plate by leaning, free of the Cage.

"Hit the lasers," Stark said softly.

Pig was about to backhand Maro again when he stopped. "Jesus, look at that!"

Maro heard him only dimly through the ringing in his ears. He tried to focus his eyes, and saw Pig staring out of the port. He raised his head, tasting the saltiness of blood from his split lip as he did so. On the other side of him, he was vaguely aware of Snake staring through the port also.

He saw several things at once: The prison itself, constructed of some dark, almost glistening material, unlike anything he had ever before seen. It crouched upon the ground like a predatory beast squatting on its haunches. There were other buildings and additions to the main structures, obviously man-made, but it was the wall itself that caught his attention first.

Then, suddenly, the air next to the wall was filled with lances of coherent red beams. Lasers, he realized. The pattern of the lines formed a tight net that would allow nothing larger than a bird to escape their touch.

In the middle of the brilliant display, Maro saw what had saved him from further abuse at Pig's hands; a small craft loaded with people, smoking and falling. The dance of fiery light continued as the thing fell, baking those on board, stroking their blackened forms with more heat, shining through the charred flesh with a ruby glow that was interrupted by frothy bubbles of the same color.

Maro tried to turn away, but found he was unable to do so. The execution held him with awful fascination.

The ship-it was no more than a stripped hopper plate, he realized-struck the ground just beyond the wall. The bodies tumbled off, some landing as much as fifty or sixty meters away. Parts of the roasted meat fell off when they hit.

The skimmer banked, and Maro could no longer see the results of the laser barrage. He knew, however, that no one could have survived it.

Behind him, Snake quietly said, "Stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. They never had a chance."

Pig, his face alight with a sick and twisted joy, grinned at Maro. "Welcome to the Omega Cage, pretty boy."

Maro leaned back in his chair and stared at his manacles. He had been interned before, but the reality of his situation finally sank in as he replayed what he had just seen. Escape wouldn't be easy. It might take a white.

Chapter Two.

The processing seemed almost perfunctory when compared to some other cages into which Maro had been filed. He already had the haircut, so they didn't bother with that. A bored guard ran Maro's left wrist under a viral scanner and the digital ID coded into the prisoner's pisiform bone made the audio squeal. On his scanner, the guard would be seeing a quick biograph appear: retinal prints, EEG patterns, history, and so forth.

"Maro, Dain," the guard said. "MMF, and life."

MMF: murder most foul. It had a quaint sound to it, Maro thought, a pre-s.p.a.ce feeling that went along with colorful costumes and riding on beasts or under steam or fossil power. The sentence was worth a trip to the Omega Cage, though. Ordinary murder-whatever that was-wouldn't do it. Maro had killed people in his time, though never for money and not without his own life on the line. This particular crime was a set-up; of it, at least, he was as innocent as an uncoded viral computer. He had enemies, though...

The guard interrupted his thoughts. "Pa.s.s him through. Standard chem wash and irradiate."

Pig grinned. "Strip, pretty boy."

Wordlessly, Maro did as ordered. He was in pretty good shape, despite the three months of lock-time before the trial. He had had enough room to do basic flex and kata in his cell, and he'd been in good condition when they had caught him. If you'd been in top condition, he thought ironically, maybe they wouldn't have caught you...

"Inside."

The small room was windowless and dark, and the jets started spraying as soon as he was inside, even before the warped plastic door slid completely shut. Detox red first, with that alcohol-pine smell and the uncomfortable tingle on his bare skin. The crimson mist stopped, and was followed immediately by a yellow spray, probably some fungicide. He closed his eyes, but not quickly enough to keep them from stinging. The air now smelled like burning insulation.

Finally the chem wash stopped and a glare filled the room. Maro kept his eyes shut tight as the irradiant bathed him. Most of his internal flora would die from the radiation; he'd have diarrhea for a few days until he could grow more E. coli.

"Out," Pig commanded over a scratchy speaker.

The guard held a set of cheap, blue prison orthoskins and slippers crumpled in one hand. He tossed them at Maro. Pig said, "That's it, pretty boy, you're in." He turned and started to saunter away as Maro began to dress, adding casually over his shoulder, "You got G.o.ds, you'd better pray to 'em."

Warden Stark was on his feet, staring through the window behind his desk, when Maro arrived. Neither man spoke for several moments, nor did Stark turn to face the new prisoner. Either he was brave, stupid, or there was some kind of protective gear set up in the office, Maro figured.

"Zap fields," the warden said, still looking at the yard through his window, as though he had read Maro's mind. He turned to face the prisoner. "And the view is protected by five centimeter-thick densecris." He rapped the middle knuckle of his right forefinger against the clear material. It gave off a metallic tone, almost like a gong. "Somebody lined up on me with a jury-rigged rocket launcher, once. Didn't even crack the crystal."

Maro said nothing, only waited.

"The point is," Stark continued, "that I'm running things here until the Confed, in its wisdom, decides to send me elsewhere. And while I'm here, everybody answers to me. I'm a fair man. You stay out of trouble, mind your exhaust, and you stay healthy. You give me trouble, and I can turn you into puree, you copy?"

Maro nodded. "I hear you."

Stark nodded. "Good. I read your stats. You should have stayed in smuggling. We've got a city full of killers here, and some of them could swat you dead backhanded without raising a sweat. You're here forever, Maro; get used to it. I see you've escaped from a couple of the backwater lockups where you were caught. That won't happen here."

Maro said nothing. He'd heard this speech before.

"You have something the Confed wants," Stark continued. "Information on Black Sun. They are sending a man to... discuss it with you. That doesn't matter. You are mine until he gets here, and if you survive his questioning, you are mine when he leaves. Make it easy on yourself or make it hard, I don't care-it's up to you. That's all."

Stark turned back to the window, and Maro started to leave. The door slid open, and-"

The most beautiful woman he had ever seen stepped inside.

She was an albino. Her hair, worn down to the middle of her back, was as white as frozen CO2; her skin was smooth and flawless, and her eyes were an impossible blue, as icy as a glacier. She was maybe a hundred and sixty centimeters tall, and might go fifty-five kilos. She wore a prison orthoskin, as he did, but it had been tailored to her form, revealing a flare of hip and shoulder and breast that almost literally took his breath away. Of a moment, Maro found his heart pounding and his mind clutched by a surge of l.u.s.t unlike anything he had ever before felt.

He had been with dozens of women, some of whom had been professionals at every aspect of s.e.xuality to o.r.g.a.s.m and beyond, but none of them had ever had the hard visceral effect this woman had on him now. He wanted to grab her, pull her to him and take her, then and there, and to Deep with the consequences.