‘You’re just a clone. My ancestors walked on Earth.’
Keldra thumped the door again, making the cell rattle. ‘You know nothing about Earth! I’m closer to Earth than any true-born. I’m a genetic duplicate of someone who lived on Earth.’
‘You’re a clone. What’s your name, clone? Your full name?’
‘To hell with you.’
‘You don’t have a name. You have a serial number. You were made.’
Keldra was leaning close to the bars, as if she were the one locked up. She seemed like a caged animal that might tear the door open at any moment. Making her angry was almost too easy. Had she come down here looking for a shouting match?
‘I’ll tell you my name,’ she said. ‘Keldra 2482-Pandora-33842, Engineer.’
Assuming it was true, that made Keldra 28-years-old. He hadn’t heard of Pandora, but there were a lot of minor Belt Three cities he didn’t know.
‘I am Gabriel Dominic Ellis Reinhardt,’ he said, slowly emphasizing each name. ‘I can trace my family tree back to people named Reinhardt and Ellis who lived on Earth. You have no such continuity. You have a serial number, clone.’
‘You’ve got a past but no future. You’re letting the human race die.’
‘True-borns are the only ones that matter.’
‘You’re letting them win!’ Keldra shouted. ‘In a few hundred years the Worldbreakers will have destroyed everything. There’ll be nowhere for us to live.’
‘There’s nothing we can do. You can’t beat the Worldbreakers. We’re living at the end of the human race.’
Keldra banged on the cell door again. ‘You should have fought!’ She disappeared from the bars and her footsteps echoed away along the corridor.
‘Don’t hurt Ayla!’ Jonas shouted after her. ‘I want her back!’
A few hours later the lights abruptly went off. Jonas lay on the bed and tried to sleep. The cell was cold but stuffy, the air not circulating properly. The faint sound he could hear resolved itself into a dozen different ship systems: rattles, hums, rhythmic thuds, and a trickle of water that sounded as though it came from just beyond the wall. There was a gentle, regular swaying sensation, as if the grav-rings were not quite properly aligned.
He still didn’t know if he had judged Keldra’s personality correctly. She seemed so volatile that he couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t forget about the ransom and slave-spike him in a fit of anger.
Six years ago he’d promised to do something worthwhile with Gabriel Reinhardt’s name. He had set out to prove that he could run a successful business while treating his tank-born employees decently, or at least better than the exploitation that was the norm. Not exactly a grand dream, now he thought about it, but even there he had failed. Gabriel Reinhardt’s uranium-mining business had survived but had not prospered. Jonas had found himself living day-to-day, plans to do more pushed to the back of his mind. Now the double blow of Worldbreaker and pirate had ended even that, his employees were dead, and there was no goal left for him but to escape and survive.
At least he had a chance of doing that. Keldra was volatile, but if he trod carefully his plan should still work. Soon he would be free, and then he could think about what to do next.
Jonas had guessed right. When another tray rattled through the slot the next morning, the face at the bars was the expressionless servitor that had been Ayla. Jonas ran up to the door. Keldra stood behind the servitor, smirking, a nerve gun in her hand.
Servitor-Ayla remained at the door after delivering the tray, giving Jonas a chance to look at her. Her face was bruised, one eye half-closed from the swelling, and he could smell blood from where Keldra had beaten her. He reminded himself that Ayla’s personality had died the moment Keldra had slave-spiked her, so she was no longer suffering, but that didn’t make the bruises any easier to look at. She had been a brilliant young woman with so much potential, but the only place his society had found for her was as a living control system for a mining hauler. Worse, she had accepted that place, humbly buying into the belief that true-borns were her natural superiors and her role was to serve them. Jonas had tried to tell her that he wasn’t better than her, but she hadn’t listened. Now his decisions had led to her personality death and the mutilation of her still-living body. At least it would soon be over and, if his plan worked, she would be avenged.
He leaned close to the bars, and let the emotion he was feeling show on his face. He had to give Keldra this triumph to make her feel secure. He glanced left and right. Keldra and Servitor-Ayla were alone in the corridor.
Keldra let out a little laugh. ‘You know, there are some theories that consciousness survives a mind-wipe. It has no control, but it can perceive what’s happening. Your Ayla could know exactly what I’ve been doing to her.’
Jonas pressed his face against the bars, and whispered.
‘Oberon.’
Servitor-Ayla blinked twice. Her original pilot implant, now running his combat programme, had a deep connection to her brain, and quickly wrested control of her body from the more recent slave implant. He stepped back from the door, and Servitor-Ayla’s eyes followed him. He nodded in Keldra’s direction.
‘Neutralize her.’
Keldra started to react, but not quickly enough. Servitor-Ayla spun around fluidly and landed a kick squarely in her stomach. As Keldra reeled, Servitor-Ayla neatly struck her hand, sending the nerve gun clattering across the corridor. Keldra swung at the servitor, but clumsily. Servitor-Ayla placed one more sharp blow to Keldra’s neck and the pirate collapsed against the wall.
Jonas grinned, triumphant.
‘Get this door open.’
He saw how the door locked when Keldra had put him in: there was nothing electronic, just a big manual lever that released the bolts. The unarmed combat programme should be able to follow his instruction.
Servitor-Ayla ducked out of sight. A second later the door swung open.
Keldra was moving sluggishly, winded but not unconscious. Jonas grabbed the nerve gun from where it had fallen, clicked the slider up to ‘kill’, and levelled it at the pirate. There was no fear in her eyes, only anger, as if she were daring him to kill her.
He closed the trigger and held it closed as Keldra convulsed, muscle spasms making her limbs flail in unnatural directions. He kept the trigger closed until she lay still. She wasn’t breathing. The nerve gun should have stopped her heart.
Jonas felt sick. The hand that held the nerve gun shook uncontrollably, and the corridor seemed to spin around him. He closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing, but when he opened them the body was still there. He should have felt pleasure at having avenged Ayla and the others, and won his chance at freedom, but all he felt were nausea and guilt. He had never killed anyone before, and now he knew he was capable of it.
He looked away from the body and managed to stop shaking and think clearly. He could reassess his moral compass later, once he knew he was safe. He looked up and down the corridor, trying to orient himself with what little he knew of a Salamander’s layout. If he reached the bridge he should be able to take control of the ship and put it on course for a friendly city. The bridge would be in the first grav-ring, and he was fairly sure he was in the second. If he headed around the ring he should come to a transport hub, eventually. He gestured Servitor-Ayla to follow him.
The bulkhead door at the end of the corridor was open. Beyond was a dim storage area, large enough that the far end was hidden behind the grav-ring’s ceiling horizon. The corridor ran between transparent partitions, on the other side of which deactivated servitors knelt in neat rows like Scriber cultists at prayer. Jonas recognized some of them as his mining servitors and the former crew of the Dancer; a few of them