The Prison in Antares Read online

  ALSO BY MIKE RESNICK:

  The Fortress in Orion: Dead Enders Book One

  Starship: Mutiny

  Starship: Pirate

  Starship: Mercenary

  Starship: Rebel

  Starship: Flagship

  The Buntline Special—A Weird West Tale

  The Doctor and the Kid—A Weird West Tale

  The Doctor and the Rough Rider—A Weird West Tale

  The Doctor and the Dinosaurs—A Weird West Tale

  Ivory: A Legend of Past and Future

  New Dreams for Old

  Stalking the Unicorn

  Stalking the Vampire

  Stalking the Dragon

  Published 2015 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books

  The Prison in Antares. Copyright © 2015 by Mike Resnick. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopy­ing, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, ex­cept in the case of brief quotations em­bodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover illustration © Dave Seeley

  Cover design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht

  Inquiries should be addressed to

  Pyr

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  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Resnick, Michael D.

  The Prison in Antares / by Mike Resnick.

  pages ; cm. — ([Dead Enders ; book 2])

  ISBN 978-1-63388-102-0 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-63388-103-7 (e-book)

  I. Title.

  PS3568.E698P75 2015

  813’.54—dc23

  2015026672

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Carol, as always,

  and to Rene Sears, for skill, friendship, and patience

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  EPILOGUE

  APPENDIX 1

  APPENDIX 2

  APPENDIX 3

  About the Author

  1

  Nathan Pretorius stared at General Wilbur Cooper, who was standing in the doorway of his hospital room.

  “How’s it going?” asked Cooper.

  “How’s what going?”

  “Your recovery, my boy,” replied Cooper. “Your recovery.”

  “I’d tell you, but knowing you, you’ve probably spoken with every doctor I’ve got and know far more about it than I do.”

  “That’s my Nate!” said Cooper, forcing a chuckle. “This is your third prosthetic foot—or is it your fourth?”

  “I’ve lost count,” replied Pretorius sardonically. “You keep sending me out, and they keep blowing parts of me away.” He paused. “I’m stuck here, but you undoubtedly have a galaxy to run, so why not run it and leave me the hell alone?”

  “You do me an injustice, my boy,” said Cooper, trying very hard to look hurt. “I’m here to give you another medal.”

  “Leave it on the cabinet there,” said Pretorius, indicating the structure. “In case it’s escaped your notice, I’m not wearing my uniform.”

  “Not a problem. I’ll hang on to it for another week or so, until you’re up and around, and then we’ll have a proper ceremony.”

  “So you came all the way over here from headquarters to tell me you’re not giving me a medal today,” said Pretorius. “Why do I have some difficulty believing that?”

  “I came over to tell you that you and your Dead Enders did a first-class job in the Michkag affair.”

  “Is that what we’re calling them now?”

  “I thought it was your term.”

  “No you didn’t,” said Pretorius. “I’m due for some medication in another five minutes, so maybe you’d better cut through the crap and tell me why you’re really here.”

  Cooper nodded his head briskly. “We’ve got a hell of a situation on our hands.” He paused. “It’s tailor-made for you and your Dead Enders.”

  “They’re not mine,” replied Pretorius. “And let me remind you that they’re not yours either.”

  “Oh, they’re yours, Nate. Can’t break up a winning team.”

  Pretorius stared at the general for a long moment. “Are you ever going to get to the point?”

  Cooper made a face. “Got a real stinker for you, my boy. A real stinker!”

  Pretorius made no reply, and simply waited for the general to continue.

  “You know anything about the Q bomb?”

  “I know it’s the reason we’re losing the war against the Transkei Coalition in the Albion Cluster,” answered Pretorius. “Or are they coming closer with it?”

  “Well, yes and no,” answered Cooper.

  “Yes or no what?”

  “Yes, they’re getting closer with it, and no, we’re not losing the battle . . . exactly.”

  Cooper paused again, and Pretorius stared at him. “Someday I hope they teach you to speak in paragraphs instead of sentences. We might save enough time to develop a defense against the Q bomb.”

  “How did you know?” said Cooper, surprised.

  “How did I know what?” demanded Pretorius.

  “That we’ve developed a defense against the Q bomb?”

  “Good for us,” said Pretorius. “Now that the war is won, I’m going back to sleep.”

  “We’ve lost it,” said Cooper. “That’s where you and your Dead Enders come in.”

  “They’re not mine, and what the hell have you lost?”

  “The defense, damn it!” snapped Cooper. “After a dozen years, we finally came up with a way to neutralize the Q bomb.” He grimaced. “We used it against three attacks, and it worked. It actually worked!”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “The bastards managed to kill most of the team that created it, and they’ve kidnapped the one man who was the brains of the operation, Edgar Nmumba.”

  “But you still know how to neutralize the Q bomb?” said Pretorius.

  “For the moment—they’re pretty easy for our instruments to spot—but the real problem is that our solution is an incredibly complex and delicate mixture of hardware and timing, it doesn’t allow substitutions, and there’s every likelihood that even as we speak they’re trying to pry his formulas out of him so they can change what goes into the Q bomb just enough to overcome our defenses.”

  “Can they do it?”

  Cooper frowned. “Nobody knows. He volunteered to let our psychiatric team insert a number of incredibly strong, complex mental blocks, and theoretically they can’t be broken by any means known or even conceived by us. But if there’s a chance, and of course there is, we have to stop them before he gives them what they need.” He paused, leaning against the rail of the hospital bed. “Nate, we haven’t made the figures public, but they have delivered seventeen Q bombs, and we’ve lost an average of close to a billion people per bomb. We can’t let them go back to using it.”

  “Why do I think I know what’s coming next?”

  “We think they’re holding Nmumba in a prison buried deep beneath the ground on a planet in the Antares Sector, and we think he’s still alive. What we know is that we’ve got to get him back before they can break him. That’s where you and your team come in. I want you to rescue him and return him to us—and if you can’t do that, then he’s got to be killed before he can tell them what they need to know.”

  “I didn’t enlist to kill fellow members of the Democracy,” said Pretorius coldly.

  “You didn’t enlist at all,” said Cooper. “You were drafted.”

  “The point is—”

  “Goddammit it, Nate, the point is that if you have to kill one Man to save three or six or ten million others, let alone a billion, you’ll do it and we both know it! You won’t like it, and neither do we, but you’ll do it.”

  Pretorius glared at him silently, because he knew that the general was right.

  “The doctors tell me you’ll be able to hobble around with your new prosthetic foot in another couple of days. You can practice with it while you and your Dead Enders are on your way to the Antares Sector.”

  “You don’t want them,” said Pretorius. “They have unique talents that worked last time, on that mission in Orion, but this is clearly a different—and in ways more difficult—situation.”

  “You brought ’em all back alive a
nd intact, and we don’t know what we’re facing here, except that it’s a secure facility in an enemy stronghold, just like last time, so you’ll take the same team.”

  “They’re probably on five different worlds by now,” protested Pretorius. “They’re not military, remember.”

  “They’re military now,” said Cooper with a satisfied smile.

  “You conscripted all five?” asked Pretorius, wondering why he didn’t feel greater surprise or outrage.

  “Last week. They’re in the hotel across the street.” He frowned. “All but one, anyway.”

  “Snake?”

  “Sally Kowalski,” replied Cooper.

  “Snake,” confirmed Pretorius. A grim smile played around the edges of his mouth. “I know where she’s likely to be.”

  2

  “This way, sir,” said the robot, walking smoothly down the prison corridor. It reached the end, turned left, walked past a row of heavy doors, each with a small viewscreen at eye level, slowed its pace as Pretorius limped after it, and stopped at the last door.

  The robot looked into the room through the viewscreen, stood back as if in thought, then looked again, and finally turned to Pretorius.

  “You may enter, sir.”

  “Thanks,” said Pretorius, stepping into the cell as the robot ordered the lock to disengage.

  The small, slender, wiry occupant sat up on her cot. “Well, look who’s here,” she said.

  “Do you know how tired your government is of bailing you out of prison?”

  “Oh, come on, Nate. It’s only been four times. Well, five, counting today. And you must need me, so the bail money’s well spent.”

  “What did you do this time?” asked Pretorius.

  “Oh, hardly anything.”

  “It was that bad?”

  “Buy me lunch and I’ll tell you about it.” Suddenly she smiled. “Well, the heroic parts, anyway.”

  “Come on,” said Pretorius, walking out into the corridor. “And try not to steal any of the robots.”

  “You got a new gig, or you’d let me rot here,” she said, following him.

  “Rot here?” he repeated with a chuckle. “Have you ever seen a jail you couldn’t break out of in two days, tops?”

  “There was one on Altair III that took me a whole week,” she answered with a grimace. “Do you need just me, or are there others?”

  “The Dead Enders.”

  “Who the hell are they?” asked Snake. “They sound like a bad music group.”

  “I’ve heard some of ’em sing in the shower, and that’s exactly what they sound like.”

  “So really, who are they?”

  “You’re part of them,” said Pretorius. “They’re our crew from the last mission.”

  “Talk about a mismatched crew!” she said, snorting in derision. Then she shrugged. “What the hell. We all came through it alive. And it’ll be nice to see Pandora and Circe again.”

  “I’m glad you approve,” said Pretorius sardonically.

  “Is the critter back too?”

  He frowned. “The critter?”

  “The alien.”

  “Yeah, him, and also Felix Ortega.”

  “So we got a muscleman and a shape-changer.”

  Pretorius chuckled. “Close, but no cigar.”

  “I don’t smoke anyway.”

  “Felix is more machine than man these days. He can lift a ton and break down any door anyone can build, but he’s not doing it with muscles.”

  “Comes to the same thing,” said Snake.

  “Better,” replied Pretorius. “Muscles get tired. Felix never does.”

  They reached the main office of the prison. Pretorius had to stop to sign a pair of documents, and then they were outside, walking between rows of towering angular buildings toward the hotel where the rest of the team was waiting for them.

  “Just out of curiosity,” he asked, turning to her, “how did they catch you this time?”

  “Bad luck,” answered Snake. “I managed to wriggle all the way up to the third floor of the Worsell Planetary Bank”—she pointed to it, three blocks away—“and suddenly some asshole up on four or five got cold and turned on the heat. Fucking vent must have hit sixty degrees Celsius before I could get out of it.”

  “So you got warm,” said Pretorius. “That doesn’t explain why—”

  “I punched a hole in the ceiling and jumped down,” said Snake with a bitter smile. “How the hell was I supposed to know that Old Man Worsell would be screwing one of his assistants on the desk right below me?” She shook her head, as if to rid it of the image. “Still, I got within fifty meters of the back exit before security showed up.”

  “Just as well,” said Pretorius.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Pretorius smiled. “I don’t think even General Cooper’s clout could have got you out if you’d actually stolen whatever it was you were there to steal.”

  “Idiot!” she muttered. “If I’d stolen it, I’d be five parsecs from here, lolling on a beach.”

  “You’re not the beach type,” replied Pretorius. “You might well have been five parsecs away, but you’d just be pulling off another heist there.”

  She considered his comment, then shrugged. “Probably,” she admitted.

  “Well, you can help pull off a heist for your government and maybe even get your record expunged for it.”

  She came to an abrupt stop. “Maybe?”

  “All right,” he replied. “Definitely.”

  “Damned straight,” she said. “What are we stealing?”

  “Let’s keep walking. I don’t feel like explaining it twice.”

  She pointed to a tavern. “Want to stop for a drink first?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Pretorius, continuing to walk past the tavern.

  “Well, then?” said Snake, tugging at his arm.

  “First I’ll do what I have to do,” he answered. “Later I’ll tend to what I want.”

  “I’ll bet you were a fun guy before the military ruined you,” muttered Snake, falling into step beside him.

  3

  “Hi, Nate,” said the half-man half-machine who still answered to the name of Felix Ortega. “We were betting on whether or not the Snake would escape before you paid her bail.”

  “How are you feeling, Nate?” asked Toni Levi, who operated under the name Pandora.

  “Fine,” said Pretorius, entering the elegant suite that boasted an exquisite display of alien art.

  “No, you’re not,” said a blonde woman of such unearthly beauty that he still wasn’t sure whether she was a human, a mutant, or an alien.

  “I’m fine enough, Circe,” said Pretorius firmly. He looked around. “Where’s Proto?”

  A brown cushion suddenly seemed to morph into a nondescript middle-aged man. “Right here, Nate.”

  “Try to keep looking like this while I’m here,” said Pretorius. “It makes it easier to talk to you.”

  “Right, Nate.”

  “So what’s going on?” asked Ortega. “It’s been a month, and suddenly we’ve all been ordered to come to this suite.”

  “It seems the government was so happy with our last job that it’s come up with another one for us,” answered Pretorius. He was about to say more when there was a knock at the door. “Enter,” he said, and the door irised to allow a slender young woman with flaming red hair into the suite.

  “Hello,” she said nervously. “General Cooper told me to come over and report to a Colonel Pretorius. Would that be you?”

  Pretorius nodded. “Did he say why?” he asked.

  “No,” was the answer. “I got the distinct impression that you would be informing me of my assignment.”

  Pretorius cast a quick glance as Circe, who nodded her head almost imperceptibly.

  “Okay,” he said. “Have you got a name?”

  “Iris Fitzhugh.”

  “Rank?”

  She frowned. “I’m not in the service, sir.”

  Snake grinned. “What does he have on you?”

  “I beg your pardon?” said the young woman, turning to face Snake.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Pretorius. “We’re glad you’re here. Probably.”

  “Probably, sir?”

  “Depends on what your special talent is, Red.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Know what?” asked Pretorius.

  “Everyone calls me Red.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” said Pretorius, which precipitated a peal of laughter from the others. “Okay, Red, why are you here?”

  “I told you, sir: General Cooper ordered—”