Chapter 4

She was finally ready to take that first step. She had the weapon, a plan, an escape route and a target. It starts tonight.

The intervening years had not been kind to little Kathleen Andrea Mackey. The Peace Keepers had placed her in a group crèche with a hundred or so other orphans and unwanted children. Run by the state, the children continued to receive a basic education, enough to make them useful members of the prole class, but not enough to inspire them to excel. They were to be taught to read and write, along with basic math skills and a trade that would place them firmly in the underclass. Each pod was trained in a different skill set, one that would slot them cleanly into the labor force when they reached the age of sixteen. Katy's pod were to be sanitation workers.

She only saw her father one more time, and only on the vidscreen. The day of her father's public execution was burned into her mind and still invaded her dreams at night. The matron in charge of her crèche pod had pulled her out of class and marched her to the Dean's office. There, in a chair before the desk, was the mousy little man who had questioned her months before. Still looking as rumpled as ever, his face expressionless, he watched as she was marched in and placed squarely before the vidscreen.

Katy remembered being terrified. Life was not kind in the crèche and the staff, while not wantonly violent, were indifferently cruel to all of the children. They were as apt to correct an error with a slap or a kick as they were to lecture. The "Dean", or headman of the crèche, was an almost mystical boogieman. He was a tall, spare man who took meticulous care with his appearance. He wore a severely tailored suit, always black, and his hair was firmly plastered to his head. He never spoke directly to the children, instead choosing to address issues he discovered by speaking quietly to the staff. These discussions almost always ended in some form of punishment for the child in question. Children and staff alike cleared a wide path when he walked the halls, fearful of coming to his notice.

Katy stood were she had been placed and carefully looked around, making sure not to meet the eyes of any adult in the room. It was considered disrespectful and would earn her a swift and painful reprisal. Children were never allowed in this room and that, as much as the presence of that hateful Sub-Prelate, frightened her. Had she committed some infraction? Was the Dean going to hand her back to the Peace Keepers? The three days she spent locked in the interrogation room still loomed large in her nightmares.

"Watch." That single word, the first and last the Dean had ever spoken directly to her, was the beginning of a new nightmare.

The vidscreen lit with a picture of the public square in front of the Governor's office building. The square was large enough to handle eight or nine thousand people and still have room for the central dais that was used for ceremonies. The Governor would make speeches, deliver proclamations and, more frequently of late, hold public executions.

The square was packed today, as it usually was for an execution. There being little in the way of escape or even entertainment for the prole masses, an execution was an excuse to gather and visit with friends and neighbors without the Peace Keepers snooping around looking for conspiracy or sedition. There was a double line of armed and armored Peace Keepers in a circle around the platform, keeping the masses from getting too close to the condemned.

There, in the center of the platform, on public display and chained to a tall metal pole, was the battered and bruised figure of a man who looked strangely familiar. As the camera zoomed in, Katy was horrified to see that it was her father. He had been beaten severely and, it appeared, repeatedly over time. His eyes were swollen shut and one of his cheeks was misshapen as if the bones had been crushed. His lips were cracked and bleeding and it was clear he was missing several teeth. He was listing to one side, favoring his ribs and one knee was swollen to nearly twice its normal size. His entire body was encrusted with filth and dried blood.

If the months in the crèche had taught Katy one thing, it was to suffer in silence. Tears streamed down her face as she strained to see every detail. Knowing he could not see her, she still reached out with her thoughts, hoping he could somehow know that she was there, that she loved and missed him.

The camera pulled back from the condemned man and panned right, settling on the well-known, and almost universally hated, face of the sector Governor. A handsome man with the face and figure of a holo-story hero, he cut an imposing figure on the temporary dais that had been constructed behind the execution pole. His smile was wide and bright, his manner was open and welcoming as he turned in a full circle with his arms spread wide to draw the attention of the waiting crowd.

"Citizens! We are gathered here today to witness justice. This man is a criminal, a seditious and vile little worm who thought to commit murder and sow discord in our fair city. A man so disturbed that he was willing to sacrifice himself, his family and even you in his quest for evil. A man who deserves no pity from us. Witness the fate of such a man. Witness the justice we mete out this day."

Katy watched, frozen and helpless, as the camera panned back to the pain-wracked figure of her father. Standing next to her father was a mountain of a man, his oiled and muscular torso gleaming in the morning light. He wore a small domino mask, not as a disguise but more as a symbol of office. His head was shaved bald and a wide, pale and puckered scar ran from over his right ear, across one milky eye, disfiguring his wide nose and terminating at his mouth. The scar pulled his upper lip into a permanent scowl showing his incongruously white teeth to the world. The man's right hand gleamed and, when the camera zoomed in, she could see that it was a prosthetic of some kind. It had no fingers, just a single socket meant for removable attachments.

The executioner held a long, black leather case in his left hand and he laid it on the platform to the side of the prisoner. Opening it, he took from the case a long, metallic rope with a plug on one end, and then fitted that plug to the prosthesis on his right arm.

The rope immediately started to crackle with energy, sparks shivering down the length as it began to writhe as if alive. The man raised it up and let it whip through the air a few times before turning towards the prisoner and raising his face to the Governor's platform.

"The law," the Governor began, "says that this man should be executed, but it is up to me how that execution is carried out. I have decided that this heinous attempt on me deserves no less than a Neuro-lash."

A hush fell over the crowd. The Neuro-lash was outlawed on almost every world in the union. It stimulated the pain receptors with electricity and was a spin-off of more beneficent technology designed to repair damaged nerves in trauma patients. The Neuro-lash sent electric shocks directly from the nerve endings to the neurons in the brain that registered pain. The electric current was calibrated to agitate those neurons and magnify the effect of the pain signal 100 fold. It was said that a simple touch of the whip would cause a strong man to fold and soil himself. Being whipped to death by a Neuro-lash was an almost unimaginable torture and the crowd, long inured to the pain and suffering evident in a public execution, was stunned.

Several seconds passed in an unnatural silence as the Governor turned and smiled out over the crowd. Somewhere, in the rear of the crowd, a growl started. A low rumble, felt more than heard, it spread as quickly as a brushfire. The crowd began to edge closer and the Governor, feeling the change, motioned to his guard commander. The commander spoke into his hush mike and the circle of guards below the platform drew stun batons and set themselves.

The crowd, sensing the change, held themselves rigidly in place. Most were fully aware of how painful the stun batons were and none of them wanted to be the next on the platform.

The Governor's smile grew smug and he nodded to the executioner. The masked man stepped forward, drew back his muscled arm and crack of the lash was almost drowned out by the electric sizzle as it struck the prisoner across the chest. The prisoner's body arched and shook in agony, a high pitched, thready scream was torn from his lips. Only the chains kept him upright.

Katy forced herself to watch. Forced herself to see and remember every second. It took her father a long, long time to die.

Seven long years she had waited. She had planned and schemed. She had studied hard, often spending long hours of her allotted sleep time with borrowed or stolen books she got from other pods. She learned about mining, mechanical repair, food service and sanitation. She studied electronics, healthcare and crèche theory. She absorbed the knowledge and turned it to suit her plans. During her exercise periods, she had concentrated on those games designed to build strength and endurance, speed and agility. Her entire existence, from that fateful day forward, had been aimed at a single goal.