introducing
If you enjoyed
HELL SHIP,
look out for
by Philip Palmer
Artemis McIvor is a thief, a con artist, and a stone-cold killer. And she’s been on a crime-spree for, well, for years. The galactic government has collapsed and the universe was hers for the taking.
But when the cops finally catch up with her, they give Artemis a choice: Suffer in prison for the rest of her very long life, or join a crew of criminals, murderers, and traitors on a desperate mission to save humanity against an all-consuming threat.
Now, Artemis has to figure out how to be a good guy without forgetting who she really is.
Prison Break
“Fuck you,” I said, then walked into the kitchen. And picked up the mug of scalding hot water. And threw it over my own face.
I could feel my skin melting.
I began to scream.
Let me back up a little. Who was I saying, “Fuck you,” to? Why throw boiling water over my own face? And why was I screaming like a bratty little girl? (I can, I assure you, take a lot more pain than that without whining about it.)
To know all that, you’d have to know why I was in the high-security wing of the Giger Penitentiary on the arid wilderness that is Giger’s Moon, in the midst of the greatest prison riot of all time.
It’s a long story. I’ll tell it when I’m ready. For the moment just stay with the basic facts. Boiling water, melting face, girly screaming from me. And then Teresa Shalco running after me, shouting “Bitch!” and “Whore!” and other such expletives, before punching me viciously and knocking me to the ground.
I wept and huddled, playing the helpless victim. And Shalco screamed many more vicious and mostly unfounded insults at me, whilst savagely kicking my prone body. It took three DR dubbers to pull her off.
It was all going according to plan.
Giger’s Moon—I’m digressing now, bear with me—is a boon to lovers, if you happen to live on the planet of Giger.
The Moon is a third of the size of the planet it orbits. And thus appears to Gigerians as a glorious silvery orb that fills half their night-time sky. Its surface is scarred with cliffs and craters that cast dark shadows which, to the imaginatively minded, resemble the faces of mythical beasts. There are ruined cities up there too, and eerie ziggurats made of solid metal which have no discernible function, like desk ornaments the size of skyscrapers. All products of the mysterious alien civilisation that once dwelled there.
And—I love this bit!—Giger’s Moon is believed by most Gigerians to have an aphrodisiac effect that is in inverse proportion to its size.
In other words, when there’s a full moon, the hearts of lovers will beat just a little faster. But when there’s a half moon, lust starts to really stir. And when the moon is a thin crescent—oh boy!!!—shameless and indiscriminate carnality ensues.
Which I guess is why they call it the Horny Moon.
No one knows how Giger’s Moon became a barren wilderness. Or why its original three-legged five-headed inhabitants fled. Or where those strange denizens of Giger’s Moon went to. Or indeed (okay, I admit I’m the only one who wonders this) whether they wore hats on any or all of their five heads.
Nowadays, the Brightside of Giger’s Moon is a vast Industrial Zone. And the Darkside of Giger’s Moon is where they house the Penitentiary. It is the second largest prison in the Solar Neighbourhood, after Pohl Pen. It houses recidivists and sociopaths and stone cold killers. As well as all those generals and soldiers and Corporation lawyers who were so astonishingly evil they couldn’t get pardoned in the round of judicial amnesties that followed the Last Battle.
Security here is formidably tight. No-one has ever escaped from the Giger’s Moon Penitentiary.
Until now.
“Keep your head still,” said the doppelganger robot, and I kept my head still.
The DR sprayed my scalded face with healant, and it stung like fuck. I could feel the skin becoming stiff, and I knew that in about forty-eight hours my burned flesh would start to regenerate.
“My eyes!” I whined, “I’m fucking blind!” I wasn’t, in fact, but the dubber operating the DR was too dumb to know that. His silver-skinned robot-puppet shone its torch in my eye and my pupils didn’t dilate. The idiot thought that proved something.
“Shackle her,” said the DR, and the two other DR-dubbers put magnetised shackles on my arms, pinning them behind my back. Then they did the same with a bar-shackle around my ankles. Then they fastened an explosive collar around my neck and strapped me to a trolley. They were taking no chances.
Teresa Shalco, meanwhile, had fucked off. Even though she was the aggressor and I the victim, no one attempted to arrest her. Because she was the capobastone, and hence the Boss of this entire fucking prison, and was hence pretty much untouchable.
The lead DR wheeled me on my trolley down the Spoke. Past the R & R rooms. And past the F Spoke cells and through twelve sets of force-fields, until we reached the Outer Hub where the prison hospital was located.
“What have we got here?” said Cassady briskly—that’s Cassady Penfold, hospital trusty, five-foot nine, ruby-haired and, oh, my lover—as I was wheeled into the receiving area. I groaned and raised my head and looked straight at her. Cassady, bless her, didn’t flinch at the sight of my melted face.
“Gang violence,” said the DR. “Burns on face, torso injuries, big mouth.”
“Can we use cosmetic rejuve to restore the skin texture?” said Cassady, in her usual gently half-murmuring tones.
The DR was silent a moment, as the dubber at the other end of the virtual link considered this question. Although in truth there wasn’t much to think about. Waste high-quality cosmetic rejuve on a recidivist? “No,” said the DR.
Then the DR picked my stretcher up with one hand with effortless strength and dropped me on to a bed. I groaned, trying to sound as if I was in agony and filled with abject despair at having forever lost my lovely looks.
The agony part was real enough.
“Anyone else to come?” asked Cassady.
“Nope,” said the DR, and then the light went out of its eyes and it was motionless.
Now there were only two with functioning minds in the hospital reception area. Me and Cassady.
The reception area was a large oval room with a mirrored ceiling (don’t ask me why, but it made looking upwards a dizzying experience) and a hexagonal purple and green virtual monitor hovering at its heart. It also had the standard SNG pastel—wishy-washy-coloured walls of the kind that always made me want to start shooting a projectile gun full of primary-coloured paints. There were of course, carefully embedded in the walls, micro-cameras that covered every single area in the room. But it was a fair bet no-one in the surveillance centre was looking at us. Not now. Not with all the shit that was going down.
“The riot’s started?” asked Cassady.
I consulted my retinal display. “You bet your arse,” I confirmed.