Chapter 14

Have you ever been hit with a nerve jangler and then been woken up by being slapped in the face, hard? Not on my recommended list. I groaned and opened my eyes. I was in some nondescript room sitting in a chair with my hands secured behind my back. Fuck, it didn't look good for the home team. There were two apes in Mars Special Police uniforms standing in my line of sight and one of them was still waling away at my face.

"I think he's awake," one ape said. It didn't seem to slow his partner down much. The screen on the wall in front of me coming alive did. The face looking at me was one of the judges I had fingered as probably being dirty. Being right should have made me feel better but under the circumstances it didn't for some reason.

"Mr. Nelson," he said. His look was more than a little contemptuous.

"High Judge Mathis," I grunted. He looked a little surprised that I recognized him. "Don't look so surprised. I already had you pegged as probably dirty in this whole mess." I couldn't see any reason to be coy. It was obvious he wanted the girls at least in his control and me dead. The least I could do would be to give him only half of it.

"I don't know what you mean," he protested.

"If that were true I wouldn't be sitting here with Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton," I replied. "Planning to take a little walk, boys?" I said looking up at them. "Hope you can hold your breath." Einstein slapped me upside the head and Mathis' face danced in front of my eyes for a few seconds.

"Where are they, Nelson?" Mathis snarled. "No, never mind that. Don't bother to lie, we know where they are. What we want you to do is call and tell them to come out here so we can meet them."

"Yeah, right," I hissed. "Or you'll do what? Tie me up and knock me around? I don't think so."

"You'll do it or my associate there will cut you into small pieces, starting with your balls!" I heard the hiss of a vibro-knife being activated next to my ear. Ouch! This was going to hurt! "Do it or we'll cut you up and then dig them out anyway." Good luck on that chief! When I had that hole dug I had five centimeter plastisteel armor embedded in the walls and the door was made out of it. If they tried to dig the girls out it was going to take some time and a lot of very visible effort. I doubted they wanted to attract that much attention but I wasn't going to say anything. They might decide to just blow the place instead and that wouldn't be good.

"I don't think so," I said shaking my head. Suddenly there was a burning hot pain coming from the side of my head and my right ear fell into my lap.

"Oh, Shit! Shit!" I screamed. "All right! All right! I'll do it!"

"Wise of you," Mathis smirked. "You will be patched through, but no video!" I wasn't long before I heard Sharon answering.

"Toliver Nelson's residence, may I help you?"

"Sharon honey, this is Tol. The girls need to come outside for a breath of fresh air." There was a momentary hesitation but nobody here seemed to notice it. "Tell them they need to meet me at..." I gave her the coordinates of the meeting place I had with my snitch, (God, was I going to make him suffer if I had the chance!) and Mathis nodded.

"Yes, Mr. Nelson," Sharon answered coolly.

"Tell the girls I love them. Nelson, out"

"How sweet," Mathis grunted and looked at Einstein. "Call for the pickup. When you have them, kill all four and make sure nobody will find the bodies."

I think I did something really heroic then and passed out or something because the next thing I knew the door to the room imploded and there were armed men in the uniform of the local police swarming into the room. I was rescued, yay!

Epilogue

Most of you who read your history probably know as much of what went on as I do. I only learned about it after it all happened. I was tied up with other matters at the time.

To begin with, "breath of fresh air" was another code phrase I had set up with Sharon although I'd never really believed anyone would be stupid enough to actually let me talk to my AI. Well, stupid people do stupid things. Anyway, as soon as I said "breath of fresh air" My "ownership" of Sharon was terminated and immediately transferred to Terry and the other girls. I figured that if I was captured I might have a chance to do this and then no matter what they did to me they couldn't get me to force Sharon to do anything; she wouldn't be taking my orders anymore. Turns out it probably wasn't needed but it did work like it was supposed to.

Anyhow, a number of things started happening all at once. It turns out that Liz back on earth had been working with an unspecified branch of the Earth-gov police during the latter half of the investigation and as soon as Stackman started making his move so did they. They had a pretty good idea where the girls' parents were being held and were waiting for the final few loose ends to be spliced up before moving in. In actuality it only moved up their timetable a day or two and yes, they got them out just fine. A little worse for wear but kicking and screaming mad.

Simultaneously, there had also been action ongoing on the Mars side. Actually I was a little shocked and chagrined when I found out about this. I thought I was pretty good at ferreting out information but I hadn't heard a peep about it. I hadn't thought the Mars police had the ability to keep something like this hush-hush; it turns out I was wrong. So much for my over-inflated ego.

So everyone is rescued, all is right with the world and everyone gets to go home, right? Of course not, what do you think this is, a fairy tale? Well, that isn't exactly correct. Stackman and his cohorts ended up in Earth-side prison in Antarctica which I understand is about as pleasant as our surface-side mines, I hope they like ice. It took a day or two but Mathis, Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton and about four others (including Greaseball from the slave store!) were rounded up and after a quick trial were sent to take a walk outside.

I will admit personally I'm a bit ambivalent about capital punishment. I understand there are some people out there who are opposed to it because of the possibility of mistakes and saying you're sorry after executing an innocent just doesn't seem to cut it; I can respect that. Others are just opposed to the "state" executing anyone period; a bit more of a stretch but again I can respect their opinion. Then there are those adamantly opposed to any killing anytime, even for self-defense. Sorry, I don't buy that. There are enough examples of two-legged animals out there that just plain "need it."

Mars at that time wasn't so squeamish, so out the lock they went. Never before had I watched one of these public executions but I made an exception in this case. I've never been a big one for revenge for revenge's sake but I have to admit this time I rather enjoyed watching Greaseball gasping his last while trying to claw his way back in through four centimeters of solid chrome-steel airlock door. Terry actually cheered, Eve nodded in agreement with a slightly terrifying smile while Keelin just buried her face in my neck and refused to watch; I certainly wasn't going to force her. I was just sorry that the rest of his asshole buddies from that God-damned processing center weren't out there with him.

Sometimes government really sucks. Yes, they publicly admitted, the girls had been classified as slaves illegally but since there wasn't any procedure to change the classification they wouldn't. The next shocker I got was finding out that money can't buy you everything. Really, it's true! I don't even want to think about how many mega-unis Terry's mom and the others' dads spent applying pressure from Earth-side but it didn't budge Mars-gov one millimeter. I told you Marsmen were stubborn; it's like leading a pig. You want to get a pig to go one way then try forcing it to go the other way; works every time. The bottom line was the girls were still considered slaves; at least they were my slaves. To tell the truth not one of them seemed to have a problem with it; much less so than I did, anyway.