Torch of Freedom

Rada cleared his throat and hefted his flechette gun slightly. "The big one doesn't come any closer until—"

"Oh, for God's sake, relax," said the female crewman who seemed to be in charge of the contingent from the ship. She turned her head and looked at the crewman who was holding the huge slave's chains. More to the point, since he couldn't possibly have restrained the brute with his own muscles, he held a slave prod casually in his other hand. The device was a distant descendant of the cattle prods used on Earth in pre-Diaspora days. Far more sophisticated in its design and capabilities, if not in its basic purpose.

The crewman gave the monster a casual jab. The heavy jaws opened and out came his tongue.

Hutchins and Rada relaxed, and Rada's flechette gun lowered. Hutchins had never bothered to unsling his in the first place. While he did not possess unlimited faith in the goodness of his fellow men's souls (since, after all, his own contained very little of that quality), this was a routine operation. Something he and Rada had both done at least two dozen times in the four years since they'd come to the station. Besides, the tribarrel-armed weapons turret on the cargo bay bulkhead, controlled from the slavers' command center in the amusement park's turret, was a far more effective deterrent than any mere flechette gun, in his considered opinion.

"Okay, then," he said. "Let's make the transfer."

He gestured with a thumb toward the battle steel box mag locked to the bulkhead to one side of the tribarrel, and the Ouroboros' crew leader nodded. Normal electronic fund transfers were entirely out of the question for an illegal transaction like this one. Despite all the ingenuity and sophistication of the current generation's practitioners of the ancient art of "money laundering," normal fund transfers left too many electronic footprints for anyone to be comfortable about. Besides, slavers—like smugglers and pirates—were not natively trusting souls.

Fortunately, it wasn't always possible to rely on normal electronic transfers, even when both parties to the transfers in question were as pure as the new fallen snow. Which was why physical fund transfers were still possible. As the female crewmember stepped forward, Hutchins punched in the combination to unlock the battle steel box, and its lid slid smoothly upward. Inside were several dozen credit chips, issued by the Banco de Madrid of Old Earth. Each of those chips was a wafer of molecular circuitry embedded inside a matrix of virtually indestructible plastic. That wafer contained a bank validation code, a numerical value, and a security key (whose security was probably better protected than the Solarian League Navy's central computer command codes), and any attempt to change the value programmed into it when it was originally issued would trigger the security code and turn it into a useless, fused lump. Those chips were recognized as legal tender anywhere in the explored galaxy, but there was no way for anyone to track where they'd gone, or—best of all from the slavers' perspective—whose hands they'd passed through, since the day they'd been issued by the Banco de Madrid.

The crewwoman didn't actually reach for the credit chips, of course. That sort of thing simply wasn't done. Besides, she knew as well as Hutchins did that if she'd been foolish enough to insert her hand into that box, the automatically descending lid would have removed it quite messily. Instead, she produced a small hand unit, aimed it in the direction of the chips, and studied the readout. She gazed at it for a moment, making certain that the amount on the readout matched the one Hutchins' superiors had agreed to, then nodded.

"Looks good," she said, and held out her hand.

Hutchins laid the remote for the mag lock release in her palm. With that in her hand, she unlocked the box—which closed again, automatically—from the bulkhead, then spoke into her mike. Rada and Hutchins couldn't hear the words, since they were shielded, but they knew she'd be confirming with someone still on board the Ouroboros that the funds were in her possession. She listened for a moment, then looked over her shoulder at her fellow crewmen.

"Okay, we're clear. Let's get them moved."

"Begi

Rada and Hutchins both gri

The male crewmen handling the two pleasure slaves poked them forward with his own prod. "Here you go, boys. And I can tell you from personal experience that they're just as good as they look."

The very buxom one turned her head to look at him. Hutchins thought for a moment she was actually going to glare at her handler, as unlikely as that was. Pleasure slaves were trained into even greater docility than heavy labor ones.

But then he realized that her look was simply one of intent focus, and was even more surprised. Because of that same training, pleasure slaves spent most of their lives in something of a mental haze.

The crewman from the Ouroboros wasn't looking at the slave, though. He'd lifted his prod and was studying the gauge on the handle. Catching sight of it for the first time, Hutchins was surprised again. Slave prod gauges were pretty simple things, as a rule. But this gauge looked like something that belonged in a laboratory.

"Hey, what—"

"Clear," said the crewman.

Hutchins started to frown, began to wonder what the man meant, but he never finished either process. Indeed, the few remaining seconds of Alberto Hutchins' life passed in something of a blur. Somehow, the other pleasure slave had her chains around his neck, the busty one kicked his legs out from under him, and on his way down the slender one used the chains and his momentum to crush his windpipe and break his neck.

Rada lasted a little longer. Not much. As soon as she kicked out his partner's legs, the buxom slave lashed his hands with her own wrist chains and sent the flechette gun flying. That hurt, and he yelped. The yelp might have alerted the command center and roused the defensive tribarrel turret . . . if, that was, every one of the compartment's cameras and sensors—and the ones in the passage beyond, for that matter—hadn't been spoofed by the various nonstandard items built into that complicated looking slave prod. Rada wasn't really thinking about that at the moment, however, and the yelp was cut short anyway by a paralyzing jab from the male crewman's slave prod. That really hurt.

By then, moving much faster than Rada would have thought possible, the heavy labor slave was there. Somehow, his chains had come off. He seized Rada by the throat—actually, the creature's immense hand wrapped around his whole neck—and slammed his head against the nearby wall. The impact would have been enough to render a gorilla unconscious. Rada's skull was shattered.

Perched in his hiding place in the air duct, Brice was shocked into paralysis for a few seconds. The mayhem in the corridor below had erupted so suddenly, and been so violent, that his mind was still scrambling to catch up.

In his earpiece, he heard James Lewis exclaiming—just a noise, wordless; he'd probably done the same himself—and, a moment later, what sounded like retching from Hartman. Ed's position placed him closest to the scene, which was horrid enough even from Brice's viewpoint. The slaver who'd had his head slammed against the corridor wall . . .

Brice closed his eyes for a moment. Some of the man's brains weren't in his skull any longer. The strength of the slave who'd killed him was incredible.