Chapter 58: Enclosure

Jack and Otto shared a cell. It wasn't like Etemenos lacked the space for individual prisoner berths, so Jack figured it was some bureaucrat's way of making his last days even more unpleasant.

If so, it hadn't exactly succeeded.

For Otto to piss Jack off, he'd have to do something.

Jack glanced at the oligarch. Otto didn't react. He stared at the door of their cell like his mind had stopped working.

Maybe it had.

"Otto," Jack said.

Otto's eyes closed. He didn't give any other response.

"Dammit, what's wrong with you?"

Jack had to take it back. He could get just as pissed at Otto even if the Oligarch kept his trap shut.

"Snap out of it, man!" Jack strode over and loomed above the cot where Otto sat. Jack was taller to begin with. In the close confines of the room, the Oligarch looked almost shrunken. "They're gonna shoot our asses if we don't do something."

"Fry," Otto said.

"Huh?"

"The Feds execute with electricity. Cheaper."

"I don't give a damn if they plan to tickle us to death," Jack snapped. "What are we gonna do about it?"

Otto was back to the silent treatment.

"It's because of Alarie," Jack said, "isn't it?"

Otto still didn't speak, but his hands, which had hung limp, curled up.

"You can't wrap your head around the idea that she finally got sick of your bullshit. Or maybe around the idea that hers turned out to be better."

"I told you before, Jack. Mine and Alarie's relationship is none of your business."

"That's funny. Seems to me it became my business about the time she turned a battleship's cannon on me. Or on you, at least, and us standing close enough I'd have taken the hit either way."

"It was just business," Otto said.

"She gets the company, you get electrocuted? Maybe you better get out of the business world, old buddy, 'cause that's no deal you ought to take."

"She and her dad get time in the sun. And stabbed in the back when the Feds don't need them anymore. Idiots." Otto couldn't even manage a vengeful smile.

Jack wondered if the Oligarch was injured. Maybe in the head.

Maybe he was having a bad reaction to the Limiters they'd both been injected with.

Before Jack could ask, he heard Etemenos's nanomechanical walls flow open behind him. He turned to see a quartet of men in the light green body armor of the city's police standing outside his and Otto's cell.

Jack figured the Feds had finally come to interrogate Otto. No one had bothered up to this point. Why, when there was no Oligarchical rebellion left or even enough men and material to recreate it? The only people who had that kind of resources now were the Marchesses, and they were working hand in glove with the Feds.

The Feds hadn't come for Otto, though. When the cell's bars flowed away, one of the green-armored men approached Jack. "Mr. Hughes?"

Jack glanced at Otto, but the oligarch didn't even look up. Jack said, "Like you don't know it's me?"

The Fed scowled. "You will come with us now."

"Mind if I freshen up a little, first? I'd hate to get interrogated looking like I just got out of bed, you know? Kinda bad for the image –"

"You are not being interrogated."

Jack had no idea how he kept a grin frozen on his face. He could think of only one alternative to 'interrogated,' and it was a hell of a lot more final.

"You will come with us," the Fed repeated, "now."

Jack didn't exactly have a choice. Or the energy to keep up his quips. He wasn't sure he wanted to learn what he could from these guys, considering what it was almost sure to be.

He strode from the cell and let the Feds surround him. The bars reformed at his back, locking Otto in. Not that the oligarch had even glanced at the opening.

I'm getting marched off to get shot – fried, anyway –, Jack thought, and here I'm worrying about Otto's health. Hell of a thing.

The Feds led Jack to the end of the cellblock, through an airlock-looking doorway and into an empty, boxy chamber made from the nanomechanical walls. There was enough room for the four of them to flank Jack. Barely.

Jack didn't feel the box moving, but he figured it must be. Etemenos was millions of times too big to walk around. People jogged down its hallways that flowed like rivers, but all it accomplished was to keep them from getting disoriented. Prisoners, and their guards, apparently didn't rate that courtesy.

One wall of the box eventually melted away to reveal another room. A table and benches grew out of the floor and harsh white lights blazed overhead. The room was too big for its furniture and too small for its lighting.

On a world-city where everything could be exactly the right size, this room's designer deliberately got its proportions wrong. It seemed worse than the same kind of room built from conventional materials.

It also seemed like an interrogation chamber.

"I thought you guys said I wasn't gonna be interrogated," Jack said.

The Fed who'd spoken before answered. "You're not. Sit down."

"Mind if I stretch my –"

"Yes."

Asshole, Jack thought. But he sat.

He expected the chair to grow restraints, but the Feds apparently trusted their Limiters to keep him under control. Too bad their trust was probably well-placed.

Besides, where could he run? If he alerted the guards, they could just have the room close up and squish him inside.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

He gulped at the thought.

Maybe Otto was wrong about how the Feds handled executions.

His minders didn't make him feel any more confident when all four of them marched to one of the walls and stepped through the door it turned into.

Jack sat alone in the unnerving room for about a minute before the opposite wall opened.

A Fed, maybe the same one he'd talked to earlier or maybe another who'd learned to give orders from the same voice coach, said, "Ten minutes."

Jack looked up.

His eyes widened.

He was out of his chair and across the room before the nanomachines of the wall had finished closing, but he never gave diving through them a moment's thought.

He swept Ellie into his arms and pulled her tight against him.

Her first minute was up before either of them moved.

Finally, Ellie pulled back to look up at him. She blinked tears from her eyes and whispered his name.

"Hiya, Hon," he said hoarsely.

Her second minute was their first kiss in too damn long.

Jack broke it, though Principle knew he didn't want to. He stepped back and looked her up and down, drinking in the sight of her – and looking for hurt. "Are you okay?" he asked.

She nodded. Shakily, she said, "You?"

"Locked up with Otto, but aside from that they haven't done me any harm."

He managed to startle a laugh from her, and his weak grin took strength from the sound.

Three minutes and counting. Principle! Three years wouldn't be enough, or three lifetimes. Three years, he suspected, was the longer of those two spans for him.

"They're treating you right, Ellie?"

"I'm a guest here, Jack," Ellie said, "not a..." She choked up on 'prisoner.'

"How did that happen?"

"Don't quite know myself," she said. "It's a long story."

Jack wanted to hear a long story. He could've laid down on the table and listened to Ellie tell him any damn thing and called himself content just to hear her voice.

But he couldn't.

He asked, "Do they have Chloe?"

"I probably wouldn't be a guest if they did," Ellie said. "Probably won't be for long, anyway. Even if they don't arrest me, the person who helped me won't be able to help himself soon enough."

"Admiral Avalon, right?"

"How did you know?"

"Figured he'd be the one in hot water after what Otto got him doing and saying during the battle. Besides, he claimed you asked him to try to talk me down."

"Why didn't you listen, then? Maybe you wouldn't be here like this!"

"Nope," Jack said. "I'd be dead."

Ellie started.

"Until the Marchesses showed up, Otto was winning. I couldn't take him in a fight, and I sure as hell couldn't have survived switching sides when I was in the middle of his battle line."

"Battle lines." Ellie slumped against him. "How did it come to this, Jack?"

"The Feds started it, Ellie," Jack said. "They're the bad... well, the worse guys, anyway. Least as far as Chloe's concerned."

Ellie’s ears twitched. She hesitated, but said, "I know."

"So how come Avalon's doing you favors?"

"It's another long story," she said. "He's not a bad person, though, Jack. You can believe that much."

"He sweet on you, Hon?"

Ellie smiled sadly. "Not the way you mean. He feels bad for how things turned out for us."

She started to say something more, but stopped with a slight shake of her head.

Whatever it was, it had to be important. Not important enough he would ask her if she didn't want to tell, though.

Besides, they had something else to talk about. "Can you leave?"

"What?"

"Not the room –" Jack would have preferred she never have to leave the room, unless it was with him along. "–, the city. World. Etemenos."

"They aren't holding me," Ellie said, "but of course not! Even if I had the means, I can't leave you! They're going to –"

"Use me to lure Chloe here," Jack said.

Ellie lowered her eyes. "Yeah."

"We can't let that happen."

"Don't ask this, Jack. Please. Don't ask me to leave you."

"You've got to warn her, Hon. You've got to stop her from coming to Etemenos."

"And let them execute you?"

If necessary, Jack thought. But suddenly, he grinned. "Not a chance."

Ellie eyed him suspiciously. "Don't try to bluff me on this, Jack. It's too important."

"I'm not," he said, and it was at least half true. "The Feds need me alive if they want any leverage on Chloe."

"The president won't pardon you," Ellie said.

Jack hadn't expected she would, but the way Ellie said it surprised him. "How do you know that?"

"I asked her."

Jack stared.

That was either a joke in poorer taste than he expected of his wife, or another long story.

They were gonna have a hell of a lot of catching up to do when all this was over.

For now, he said, "I don't figure on getting pardoned. If Chloe doesn't come here, I figure on getting an appeal."

"So they can keep you locked up and use you against her," Ellie said. Her ear twitched. "That's so crazy it might actually work."

He grinned. "'Course it will, Hon. When have my plans ever gone wrong?"

Ellie exaggerated a groan. At least, he hoped she was exaggerating. He hadn't screwed things up that often.

"There's only one problem with this one," she said.

"What's that?"

"I have no idea where Chloe is or how to find her, and if I guess wrong out of a thousand star systems or just miss her on the way, your trial will be over, your execution will be scheduled – and she'll come here."

"Your pal Avalon doesn't have any leads?"

"He's not exactly a 'pal,' Jack," Ellie said sternly. Jack didn't understand her reaction, but he wasn't gonna waste the few minutes they had together trying to. "And no, he doesn't. As far as I know, the Feds haven't seen Chloe since Admiral Avalon fought the Black Rook."

Jack narrowed his eyes. "That nob from Wellach? I figured he was dead."

"He may be, now, but if so his death covered Chloe's escape."

"Hell of a thing," Jack said.

Ellie nodded. "He fought the Feds at the battlecruiser where we first found her. He was trying to buy his transport time to flee with her, and I know it got away. As to the Black Rook, if they found his body afterwards, no one told me."

"So he is or was one of the good guys?"

"Where Chloe's concerned?" Ellie sighed. "I don't know. It seems like any noble should want to help Chloe rather than hurt her. But that man is the sort to help himself first and foremost. At the very least, there’s no way he’d turn her over to the Animus Hunters."

Jack got it. The Black Rook wouldn’t kill Chloe, but he’d sure as hell use her.

About like Otto, then.

As much as Jack hated the nobs in the abstract, he’d squandered any room he had to carp about them now.

Instead, he asked, "You know where he'd take her?"

Ellie shook her head. "I wasn't exactly privy to house secrets from my own lords a decade ago, Jack. Where their lords fled after the Battle of Etemenos, I couldn't begin to guess."

"Damn."

"Yeah." Ellie clasped her hands over Jack's. "My point is, I can't afford to run off and try to find Chloe. It would take a miracle for our paths to intersect before she comes here trying to save you."

"You sound like you've got a plan."

"Nothing so fancy. Just a way I'll only need a minor miracle." Ellie smiled ruefully. "We have no way of knowing where Chloe is, but we do know where she'll be."

Jack gulped. "Etemenos about the time my trial ends. If the Feds push me through as fast as I expect, Chloe'll probably come in with the crowds for the Etemenos Cup."

Ellie nodded.

"That's cutting it damned close, Ellie," he said. "If you don't find Clo before they do..."

"I'm going to try to make sure she can find me." Even the ghost of Ellie’s smile faded. "Told you it wasn't much of a plan."

It was the only one they had.

And, most likely, the only chance their daughter had.