Free Out Through the Attic by Quincy J. Allen

trying not to think what the Queen would do to them. “If they get you, my entire life will have been in vain. Getting you out of here is the only thing that can save me.” Tears slid down my cheeks and into my beard. “I’m so sorry, Wendy.”
    She grasped my hand, tenderly, forgiving. She took in a breath to speak.
    “Don’t,” I said. “You can never forgive me for this, for what I did to your life … to theirs. Ever.” I looked at our daughters, sleeping peacefully. I’d never felt so much guilt in my life. “I took what was perfect and dropped it into a meat grinder.” I gripped her hand tightly, staring fiercely into her eyes. “Promise you’ll never, ever forgive me for this.”
    “I …” she hesitated.
    “Promise!” I almost shouted, and my tears were rivers.
    “I promise, Cornelius.”
    I nodded once, and with that I walked away.
    O O O
    I take two blasts from my sniffer. It’s empty. At last. I close my eyes as the PD works its fire through my body. I smile, feeling like a god, knowing it’s for the last time.
    “That was four months ago,” I say, looking at the six faces staring down the bar at me. I trace another W in the whisky. “I’ve been on the run since then. Living in dive bars and back alleys. Every now and again I would let someone recognize me. I left a trail of sightings in my wake, figuring that if the Queen was hot on my trail, she wouldn’t be as interested in finding Wendy or the kids.”
    “So how’d they find you?” the grouchy one asks. “Seems to me you could have stayed ahead of them forever.” He looks at over his shoulder at the trolls and realizes they haven’t taken their eyes off me this entire time. His voice has softened a bit. Not out of sympathy, though. We all know I don’t deserve a shred of it. It’s more out of pity. Pity for a wreck of a dwarf who had everything and pissed it away.
    “They didn’t,” I reply with a grin.
    “Then how—” Grouchy starts.
    Through a laugh I say, “I told them where I’d be.”
    Six mouths drop open.
    “But—” the MD starts.
    “I’m tired, boys.” I let out a long sigh, and it turns into another coughing fit. “I sent one last copturier to the Queen. Yesterday. I was even rude about it. I told her she was the dirtiest whore to ever grace the surface of the earth.” Grouchy laughs at that one, and there’s a glint in his eye, like I’ve earned just the tiniest bit of respect. “I’m done running,” I add.
    “They’re going to kill you,” the MD says, he sounds confused, and he’s got genuine concern in his voice. I don’t deserve it, but I’m grateful.
    “That’s the plan,” I say quietly, more to myself than to any of them. My whisky glass has been filled again. I turn slowly, toast the two trolls and wink at them. One of them lurches up, but the other reaches out his clockwork gauntlet, holding his partner in place. I toss the whisky back and slam the glass down. It’s the sound of finality, a crack of doom long overdue.
    I stand, pull my tattered coat off the stool and shrug skinny shoulders into it.
    “What are you doing?” one of them asks.
    I reach into my jacket and pull out a pouch with my last fifty in coin. I toss it on the bar with a jingle. I toss the sniffer after it, and the thing lands on the pouch with a single clink of metal on metal. I figure it’ll make one hell of a tip. I look at myself in the mirror behind the bar and straighten my collar.
    Grouchy is right.
    I do look like shit.
    “Boys,” I say slowly, “it’s time to pay the tab.”

17
    Rudy, port shield’s gonna glitch! One more blammo and boss-man will need to dopple me!”
    17’s fingers danced over the nav-console, causing the heavily modified transport The Baboushka to heave violently to starboard. It nosed towards the Korami space station, only a glimmering speck in the ship’s main view screen. His fingers danced more, and the heavily laden cargo-carrier slid to the right, going into a tight