The Freedom of a Galley Slave
Steven Mathes
Steven Mathes lives miles from the nearest pavement with a spouse and a dog. When he isn't writing, he tends a garden. He gardens because he likes to cook. He cooks because he is passionate about eating. He is a full member of SFWA, and links to some of his work can be found at stevenmathes.com.
They called me Ishmael. I am not into stories. I did not get the joke.
Soon after I was kidnapped we were all forced onboard a raider boat, and wired in. They shoved me into a seat next to my new friend Patti. After hours of rough handling and training, including the implanting of a brain interface, and then after hours surrounded by yelps of horror from my fellow slaves, we cast off. We rowed, and it hurt.
I could tell that our boat Stinger was cut loose from space-time because of the screeching from the implanted web of wires. That felt a little sickening. Not everyone onboard accepted it. There were groans, and one screamer. The screamer tore the skull connector away and stood. Boss and Freja gave the screamer a quick exit out the reality-lock, straight into abstract void. That made us very quiet.
"The computer taught you how to row," said Freja. "Now row!"
Boss said nothing, needed to say nothing. He was a berserker.
They needed speed, and made us row harder. Galley slaves all had mathematical backgrounds. Stinger's drive did the computations using our not-so-spare neurons, but the calculations were hard work. Thinking against our will made us breathless, sweaty, miserable. Some of us could produce more results for the drive than others, but all of us were whipped with special prods.
Fear is nothing more than hope with trembles. I trembled. I limited my effort whatever would make me survive.
Boss and Freja patrolled the aisle. To me, their prods felt icy. They prodded my nipple it froze solid. Patti felt heat, and got a blister on her shoulder. The difference in the way we felt could have been a gender thing, since the probe worked on the mind. Granted, we were all sexually de-juiced after they spared our lives. Anyway, no matter what you felt, it jolted to the soul. We both agreed on that.
They let us whisper to each other. There were twenty of us. Patti and I pushed hard, and eventually they stopped whipping us two to concentrate on the weaker ones. Someone started singing in a language I did not know, and they were not prodded. The few lyrics were repeated and simple, though, so Patti and I soon joined in. All of us did. The harmony and rhythm helped us forget the pain, made us more productive. Music felt like one good thing. Its goodness lived on a different plane from the evil of being a galley slave.
"If we come in too slow, we die!" Freja said. "So we strike hard! And fast!"
We popped back into space-time after a couple of hours. Our wires stopped screeching, and the connectors popped free. The top half of the boat was transparent, so we saw the skilled way Freja floated Stinger toward the flank of an enormous ship called The Leviathan. The panicked figures scrambling over our target were human, so The Leviathan had to be a colony ship. I knew it would seem to them like we popped out of nowhere, which technically we did. Here back in space-time we had momentum again. I felt my body pressing as Stinger used all its life-liquor, its life-force fuel, to slow.
Our bowsprit was the needle of a giant syringe. It plunged into The Leviathan, which like our little boat Stinger was a living thing made of cultured, engineered flesh, like everything technological. The hard crash slammed us into our restraints. The impact stunned me for just a moment, but I snapped out of it. My restraints freed me. I grabbed my harpoon, and jumped up second only to Patti. Fear in me gave the illusion of trembling eagerness. Patti pulled me to the opening reality-lock. Freja led us. Boss would cover the rear.
"Pick a clear spot and launch your harpoon!" said Freja. "Spread your targets."
Patti launched a clean hit dead ahead, so I jetted my harpoon wide. I hoped to hit nothing, not even The Leviathan, but one of the running colonists deflected it. My harpoon went clear through the colonist, suit and all, and lodged deep into The Leviathan's hide. The colonist died while another one tried and failed to free my harpoon.
"Great shot!" Freja said.
Before my village was raided, I had never seen a dead person before. People no longer even died where I came from, at least before the raids started. Looking at that skewered colonist, my stomach turned, and I swallowed back my vomitus desperately, fearfully.
Boss the berserker slaughtered and roared.
More harpoons flew. Freja focused on prodding any slave still hesitating, and soon The Leviathan began its death rattle, poisoned by our harpoons. Any surviving colonists ran for their escape pods. Boss had already kidnapped a prisoner to replace the one they shoved out of the airlock. The remaining colonists meant nothing to the raiders. The life-liquor of The Leviathan throbbed through Stinger's bowsprit-syringe. That mattered.
"To the galley! Get your asses back to your places!" said Freja.
The prods stung even harder through our suits. They shocked all over, not just at the point of contact. Patti and I tried to be quick, but being in front before the assault put us in the rear afterwards, while scrambling, jostling to get back to the benches. After two or maybe three shocks I collapsed. Boss growled at me, still berserk. Patti saved my life. She pulled me to my feet, and got me through the reality-lock.
The new prisoner, not knowing better, sat in Patti's spot. I panicked. I could not survive without Patti. I grabbed the prisoner by a strap, and pulled as hard as I could. The poor prisoner flew, slammed against a bulkhead, fell, and had to be picked up. I knew what that felt like, and I knew I was turning evil in my cowardly way.
Again Freja laughed hard, and clapped: "That's the spirit!"
I looked at Patti in apology. I could not look at the prisoner, shamed as I was. I certainly dared not say anything out loud, which would broadcast cowardly thoughts through my suit radio. That would not be "the spirit."
The reality-lock clapped closed. Pressure came back and our suits unfolded. But the prisoner had the wrong kind of suit, one that would not connect to our benches. They strapped the captive with duct tape, pulled off the helmet to reveal a thin, tall male, or at least someone groomed to look male. They gave him a good couple of snaps with the prod.
They de-juiced his sexuals with an injection. They dropped a devil onto his head. The devil chewed through his skull, and spread its wires into the jelly of his brain. The top part of the devil hardened into a connector. Freja plugged him in.
"The computer will teach you to row, educate you on raids, make you feared, and make you truly fear failure. Quick learners survive."
The prisoner shuddered and twitched during his education. He must have had some mathematics in him because he survived. He went limp-exhausted after. Then he yelped at the screech in his head as Stinger popped out of space-time. He blubbered, but nobody was thrown out through the reality-lock. The rest of us got a little vacation from the prods while Freja concentrated on the new slave, but we rowed hard anyway. Anyone could become an example.
"You have a name?" said Freja.
The exhausted recruit squinted in defiance, saying nothing. Freja whipped him. Still he said nothing. Freja double-whipped and made sparks. The recruit twitched in silence.
"We like tough guys," Freja said. "From now on your slave name is Binkie, bitch."
So much for freedom.
The exhausted Binkie rowed with us. It was to be expected that he did a weak job of it, but he was not the weakest. He understood that we helped each other calculate to help each other survive. With Stinger's tanks filled with life-liquor Freja and Boss let us be. Perhaps they were a little too relaxed with their success. Perhaps we were no longer just galley slaves but now useful raiders. We pulled toward home, and then we popped into space-time in a low orbit around the icy planet of Ismantorp.
"After a good raid, you each get a pint of life-liquor," Freja said. "Not you, Binkie."
Life-liquor conferred health and youth in the long term, but made the drinker punchy and slow in the short term. We ate and drank through tubes, not out of cups. However, I saw that Boss had an enormous stein, two-handled, and that he drank deep. Freja turned away from us and took up her own stein. I glanced at Patti. We would not drink the life-liquor, out of respect for Binkie, who glowered at our two oppressors.
The other slaves began chattering in mild tipsy bliss. Freja and Boss filled their steins a second time, confident that their full hold of life-liquor would bring them riches, confident that no threat could come from us. Our suits could envelop us and be free-moving for battle but otherwise they were part of the bench, and always held us as shackles. We were stuck in place during the revelry. Only silent Boss had the power to free our suits for battle.
But an alarm went off.
"Oh shit!" said Freja.
A constable ship popped into space-time dead ahead of us, and another aft of us. These were frigates, from living flesh like all modern vessels. But these were of snake form, living space vipers, the fangs in their snapping jaws squirting venom into the vacuum, their long scaly hulls wriggling. They broadcast orders for us to surrender or prepare for boarding. Addled by life-liquor, Boss and Freja bumped into each other as they rushed to prepare for battle. No escape out of space-time was possible while sandwiched between law enforcement frigates. We galley slaves would fight and die.
Poor Binkie was now nothing more than fresh slave-meat. He would be condemned with the rest of us.
Drunken Freja snapped Binkie's helmet over his head and sliced away his tape. As my suit closed around me, I learned regret, regret for not sipping a little life-liquor, for not enjoying few minutes of pleasure before going to my doom. I felt Patti's glove grip my sleeve as we popped free of the bench. She took her harpoon and rushed to the hatch of the reality-lock. She pressed herself against the bulkhead, half-hidden, ready to strike while drunken Freja and Boss still fumbled.
Constables broadcast their last warning, obviously never expecting a surrender.
By now Freja wore a suit and weapons, although she still staggered from life-liquor. Instead of rushing to the hatch, she went along the benches, slaughtering two slaves who had not already taken up their harpoons. I hefted my harpoon, looking toward the hatch, and she passed me by. Boss staggered after her, too slow and sloppy to be berserk.
The fangs of the constable ships clamped onto our little boat. It shuddered from the poison. The hatch on the airlock blasted open, the thick, bony door flapping over Patti, splattering her, sending sloppy pieces of her flying. I cried in rage. I let fly with my harpoon, but it went through Freja and one of the bolder slaves. I ducked between the benches, afraid of Boss's wrath, but saw his figure turn straight to me.
Turning his back to the hatch was his mistake.
Constables poured through the blasted hatch, their tiny sidearms shooting shiny needles of death everywhere. Boss was distracted, drunk, and greatest of stature, the easy target. He was first to fall, the back of his suit bristling with those glistening barbs.
I cowered in my trembles, protected by the benches.
The clumsy harpoons in the closed space of our boat were worse than nothing, as my ill-aimed shot had already proved. Whenever one flew, its razor tip bounced and spun, its tail spraying stinky propellant. More of our own died than did constables. Stinger filled with globs of blood that boiled away in the vacuum, while our radios filled with screams that soon faded.
The constables would have spared Binkie in his odd colonist space suit. I glimpsed more than one constable aim away from him, but a last wayward harpoon grazed his shoulder. Blood boiled out of him as he turned. Even as the tear in his suit sucked away his life, he raised his own harpoon, and skewered the last standing slave by throwing it like a spear. Then he used the last of his strength to push himself out the ruined airlock.
I cowered while pretending death.
Many constables had fallen, and the angry survivors tossed slave bodies looking for their own, which they carried reverently away. Wedged alone as I was between benches, I was ignored.
"Their boat's dead. It's small. They're in a decaying orbit. Leave it for the scavengers, then let it burn in the atmosphere," said their commander.
"Should we check for survivors?"
"Right? If there's a coward still alive, where will they go?" the commander said. "Ha! Down they go, with the ship!"
As they disappeared back into the reality-locks of their vipers, I felt a different, worse fear. I missed Patti. I had no battle to fight. I had no enemy to hide from. Our small boat, Stinger, dead and filled with the dead, had nothing to offer except the hole that had been the reality-lock.
I waited for the vipers to slither away. I looked for sources of life-liquor, not for drinking, but to fuel my suit. I took my unused pint, then Patti's unused pint, and emptied both into my tank. I had no way to access the poisoned life-liquor stored in the hold of our dead boat, not that I wanted any of that!
Then I launched myself toward the hole that was once the reality-lock. I sailed through. Beautiful icy Ismantorp's gravity would pull, but now I had a little life-liquor for the thrusters on my suit. I could choose to die in a tiny fireball, or I could thrust to a stable orbit, and die of thirst and starvation. So much for freedom.
As the constable said, I was a trembling coward. I chose the feeble hope of stable orbit.
The tossed bodies of my fellow slaves, or parts of their bodies, or other debris, drifted away from our destroyed Stinger. My suit activated its thrusters, calculating to push me into my eternity. Futility did battle with hope, and at least that emotional struggle helped pass the time. I could not look away from the horror, the horror that I had helped cause.
Then came the hopeful surprise.
"Here's what they were talking about," said my radio.
A tattered boat floated into sight. I watched its needle bowsprit jab into the corpse of our old Stinger. Not a raider but a salvage scow, it pumped away Stinger's full hold of poisoned life-liquor, and while it worked, two of its crew came out of their airlock. Salvage boats had anti-toxins, of course. I stopped my thrusters. They floated up to me.
"We'll call you Ishmael," they said. "Because you alone escaped."
"Ishmael?"
"You never read Moby Dick?"
The scow Rachel had found a coward. It had found me. I would work off the price of my rescue because thankfully I already knew how to row. I already had a wired brain with a connector. As salvaged goods go, I amounted to a bonus for them. And from my vantage, indenture was a step up from slavery. The job of simple rowing was a step up from murder. So much for freedom.