The Rhino Score (3)

[hwrnmnbsol]

I have an idea for where this will go now.

It was about ten days later when Swami buzzed us back. It was my turn to hide the comm bud, so I was thrilled in more than one way to receive his call.

"Hello?" I said, as soon as was sanitarily convenient.

"How are you, Jackpot?" asked Swami in his birdlike voice. He was always friendly, but there wasn't a lot of warmth behind anything he said. I used to think he was some of machine intelligence, but I've seen enough of his blood to know Swami's as biological as they come.

"Well, I'll tell you, Swami," I replied. "I've gotten to know my fellow Chulko inmates, and I think they're all fine fellows. They're all dumb as rocks, they live simple lives fueled by alcohol and a burning hatred of the Mastazi who have conquered their world, and they would have skinned and eaten Lopez several times over by now if I hadn't strongly disincentivized this activity. If the plan to spring us requires them all to die messily, I think I'll be able to live with that."

"Hm," said Swami. "Did you say they don't like the Mastazi? That's very interesting."

"Why is that interesting?" I said. Sometimes I don't get Swami and his strange non sequiturs.

"I think we'll want to be saving them," Swami said. "They may come in useful when we go after the horn of Khmamgdan."

My jaw dropped. "How did you know what we were after?" I asked.

"Oh, please," said Swami. "I knew as soon as I saw the museum's contents that the horn was Javanite. I don't think any of the Mastazi know it, though. All right, that's a pretty good score you guys are after. I'm happy to be part of the gang. You don't mind if I devise a few refinements to your plan, do you?"

That was just false humility on his part. "Swami," I said, "as long as you're on board, I'll stick to the smashing and killing."

"Superb," said Swami. "All right, I think I have the details of your jailbreak hammered out. Could you be a helpful fellow and send me a few images of the maximum security capsule's interiors? And also a count of the number of your fellow inmates?"

"The last part is easy," I said. "There's twelve Chulkos and a Carnegiean."

"Oh dear, that's a complication," said Swami sadly. "You'll have to convince the cactus to break off one of his arms."

"Oh, is that all?" I said sarcastically.

"Yes, I believe so," said Swami. "You have nine hours." He broke the link.

During exercise in the central core (they spun the capsule to allow us to jog across the bars of the cells), I took a few pictures of the capsule and piped them to Swami. I approached Grabsy, who was refusing to take exercise and was spinning slowly on the far end of the capsule. He bared his teeth as I approached.

"Hey, pal," I said brightly. "Ready to blow this joint?"

Grabsy peered at me suspiciously. "If you're shitting me, I'm going to cut you into three even pieces."

"Which would be a tricky thing, given bilateral symmetry and everything," I replied smoothly. "But not to worry, as you are not being shat. You're getting out of here. We're all getting out of here."

Grabsy looked over my shoulder. The Chulkos were playing a game of Chase the Weasard. I wasn't worried; Lopez is as quick as they come, and native to zero gravity. Grabsy smacked his inflexible lips.

"Whee," he said.

"Now, what needs to happen is this," I said. "We need to stage a fight, and a piece of you needs to be chopped off."

"Let me get this straight," said Grabsy. "We fight."

"Yes."

"And I get hurt."

"Yes."

"But you don't?"

I cleared my throat. "That's not a requirement of the plan," I said.

Grabsy smiled. "That strains the bounds of credibility," he said.

"Look," I sighed. "You can grow back an arm. I don't know why this is such a big deal to you."

"Because it still hurts, you stupid meat puppet," snarled Grabsy. "All right, let's get this over with."

We staged a nice little brawl. Grabsy, to his credit, pulled his punches. Not to his credit, I got spines stuck all through my skin anyway. I did manage to get on his back and grapple one of his lesser arms, and prise it away until it broke off at the base. The wound began to seep a thin green liquid that bounced around the capsule in tiny spherical droplets. Then the guards broke things up. Grabsy's arm was stuck back on with plaswrap; the Mastazi docs figured his regeneration would reattach it in a few days. Both of us got kicked around some and put back in our cages. It was quite the good time. I slept.

It was Swami's return call that woke me up. "Almost time, Jackpot," he said. "Are you ready to be a free man again?"

"I dunno, I was starting to enjoy prison food," I said. "I mean, have you eaten Lopez's grub?"

"Just a moment," said Swami. His voice lost about half its volume; he was clearly speaking into another mouthpiece. "Mayday Mayday, Tierra Salvador Prison Control, repeat warning, barge _Capstan_ complete navigational failure, cannot divert. One hundred twenty seconds to impact." He came back on the comm.

"I'm sorry, what were you saying?" he said.

"Uh…no, I'm done," I said. "What happens now?"

"Well, here's the deal," Swami said. "The end of the capsule that connects to the rest of the prison? You want to stay at least five meters away from that."

"Got it," I said. "Okay, what's next?"

"You're going to want to have the cell doors unlocked if you can," Swami said. "What happens next may become a bit… chaotic."

"Lopez!" I shouted. "We need the doors open! You only have a minute!"

"What, these doors?" asked Lopez, sliding his bars to the side.
Swami was talking again. "Say again, Tierra Salvador Prison Control, cannot self-destruct. Mayday Mayday, collision imminent, may God have mercy on those poor souls. Sixty seconds." He toggled back to me. "Jackpot, now listen carefully. What you want to do right now is use the bathroom."

"No, I'm good," I said.

"You don't understand," said Swami. "All of you want to activate your siphonic toilets, and then you want to stick your heads inside them and hold your breath."

"This is a very strange plan," I commented.

"It's all about saving your eardrums from explosive decompression," said Swami. "Hurry please."

"Hey everybody!" I said. "Stick your heads in the toilets! Uh, put your CABEZAS in el BANOS!"

"No thanks, I'll just watch you guys," grinned Grabsy.

Lopez had his head in the toilet in two seconds. Hell, he had been drinking out of that thing ever since we arrived. The Chulkos were slow to respond, but once they saw I was serious, they got into the spirit of the thing.

"Five seconds, Jackpot," said Swami. "Earbud out."

I popped the bud out of my ear before submerging my head in the chemical-scented toilet water. I hung onto the commode for dear life. The capsule jolted and my stomach lurched. Suddenly it was very cold in my cell. Still holding my breath, I gingerly removed my head from the toilet and looked around.

The capsule was dark, but there was a ragged glow of light from the end where the connector had been. It took me a moment to realize that the entire end of the capsule had been sheared away. Some kind of enormous boom was sticking through the hole. An air hose, I said to myself, noting that my eyeballs weren't boiling away into vacuum.

I climbed out of my cell, going hand-over-hand across the bars. The boom was indeed a hose big enough around to let Lopez crawl down it. It was blowing oxygen into the capsule, and even though it was then spilling out into space through the open end, it was providing enough pressure to keep us from dying. Holding on for dear life in the draft that was venting out into space, I crawled to the jagged edge and looked outside.

The capsule was stuck to the underside of a large starship – one of those big unmanned freighters that transports bulk junk across the galaxy. I craned my neck up and saw what looked like a large magnet holding us on.

Further along the underside of the ship, another magnet held another capsule, a twin of ours. It had the same ragged edge and open end as the one we were in. As I watched, that magnet let go and the capsule tumbled lazily out into space. Things fell out of that capsule as it spun – things that looked like bodies.

Grabsy joined me at the edge and watched the other capsule fall away. There was too much air noise for intelligible speech, but Grabsy pointed at his injured limb on his back, and I understood him. I crawled on his back, ripped the broken limb loose, and threw it out the open end. It flashed greenly in the reflected light of Tierra Salvador and then fell away towards the other capsule.

The planet fell behind us and out of our view; _Capstan_ was on an outbound course. At some point, I hoped, Swami would have a plan to get us *inside* the ship and not *outside* it.

Grabsy soundlessly laughed and pointed at my head. The toilet water in my hair had frozen, and in zero gravity my hair was sticking out in all directions, so my head must have looked distinctly spiky.

I grinned. Yeah, go fuck yourself, cactus, I thought to myself.