Garrett Cold and the Liberty Keepers -- Chapter Five

Aided by a militia squad called the Liberty Keepers, Garrett has a new name, Edmund Parvenu, and a greater sense of his place in the events unfolding on Freelife Seven. When we last saw him, he and his new helpers, Cassie, Chevy and Cypher, have emerged from a shelter in the north quarter, coming face to face with a band of convicts. The convicts, all suffering from injuries or disabilities, are nonetheless armed with rocks, concrete remnants, rebar, and other sharpened bits of scrap metal. Garrett's hearing has been restored, apparently through the agency of nanotech, and he now finds himself called upon to bear arms against the convict population.

 

Garrett Cold and the Liberty Keepers

Chapter Five – The Wall

 

After witnessing a decade of atrocities by the militia, being thrust into a fight on the militia side, while wearing the uniform, seemed about as improbable as my discovering a doorway back to Thebes hidden inside my shoe. Any doubts I held as to the intentions of the dozens of emaciated, crippled, and wounded convicts surging toward us shattered when they unleashed the first volley of broken concrete, rocks, and scrap metal in the green-hued, late morning light.

                Cassie, the LT in charge of our band of our not-yet-brothers, shouted orders.

                “Parvenu, follow me. Cypher, I need smoke, lots of it. Chevy, shoot a few rounds over their heads. Bastards need to know we’ve got serious firepower here.”

                I’d almost forgotten my militia alias, Edmund Parvenu, when Cassie grabbed the front of my fatigue jacket, yelled at me to keep my head down, and dragged me out of the street to the remnants of a wall separating a crumbling building from the burned out lot next to it. I could hear the pop and hiss of smoke bombs as Cypher lobbed them in front of the advancing wave of attackers.

                Cassie threw me to the ground, surprising me with her strength. When I started to peer over the top of the structure, hearing the firecracker reports of Chevy’s shots, she grabbed my collar and yanked me to the corner where the wall met the building.

                “I said keep your head down. You want to lose it? Wait here,” she said, dashing back to the others. Despite her strong injunction, I crept back toward the road and cautiously peeked through a rift in the wall. The street was shrouded in a thick, white haze fifteen meters beyond Cypher, who was now flanked by Chevy and Cassie.  A few more chunks of concrete and a couple of sharpened pieces of scrap metal flew out of the smoke cloud, which completely obstructed any view of the convicts. Chevy replied with two more bursts high in the air. A punctuated series of whistles from the center of the haze was followed by silence.

                There was no wind to speak of so the smoke from the grenades settled slowly. Cassie was in a crouch twenty meters ahead of me, her automatic pistol gripped with both hands. I held my breath as the smoke billows continued to rise.  I wondered if Cassie had ever led troops into a skirmish. The soles of her boots grating on sand and gravel as she sought surer footing caused me to grit my teeth. Deep breaths, everybody just keep on breathing. My palms were sweating and I wiped them on my pants. My legs were trembling.

Cypher stood upright in the middle of the street, his posture reckless, verbally taunting the attackers. Cassie hissed at him to knock it off. He ignored her, shouting for the convicts to keep coming. It’s the stims, I thought. He’s out of control. He’d taken off his jacket and was wearing a sleeveless white shirt. A wet ribbon of sweat ran down the center of his broad back. He held something in each closed hand, though from this distance I couldn’t tell whether they were smoke grenades or something more lethal.

Chevy had unpacked the monopod built into the stock of his high caliber automatic rifle and stood behind it, his eyes fixed on the narrow beam of the laser sight as it speared the smokescreen. Sweat dripped down his forehead and he wiped it on a sleeve that was already soaked.

                Cassie looked back over her shoulder in my direction. I gave a half-hearted wave and she frowned before turning back to study the smoke. Seeing it linger she gestured for me to come forward. I unsheathed the truncheon she’d given me and in a crouch, ran to kneel beside her.

                “What now?” I whispered.

“I told you to keep your head down.”

“Yeah, like you told Cypher to shut up.” He continued to yell curses at the cloud.

 She put a finger to her lips and pointed at the smokescreen. I squinted, trying to see what she was looking at.

                Chevy had been sweeping the cloud with the laser, the beam like a red thread of starlight disappearing into whiteness. The burnt chemical smell intermingled with the odor of rot that always filled the north quarter, a stink as pervasive as the green xenon lights perched atop tall steel poles every hundred meters or so. Even in full daylight, the quarter seemed to sit beneath a dirty green dome, the stench of decay exaggerating the affect. I watched Chevy, who swept the full width of the street, starting at his eyelevel and working down to the ground before reversing direction. Whenever the laser hit something solid, the thread of light expanded, enveloping the shape of the interfering object. Nothing seemed to be in the cloud except debris – rocks, pieces of metal, chunks of concrete and earth.

                I turned to look behind us and Cassie, who must have eyes in the sides of her head, put a hand on my shoulder.  Without moving her feet, she leaned in close so that her mouth was against my right ear. “I need the map,” she said, her voice as faint as the sound of the smoke wisps passing around us.

                “What m…” I started to say only to be interrupted by her hand covering my mouth. She was sweating.  “Don’t talk, don’t even whisper. The map in your pocket.” My ear tingled from the touch of her mouth.

                I remembered. The map from Grampa’s pack. The map of the quarter. I gave it to her and she quickly unfolded it, placing it on the street in front of her as she traced a line with one finger. I tried to see what she was looking for but the smoke had started to drift over us and she hurriedly folded the sheet and handed it back to me. Cypher, who had occasionally glanced at our position, finally stopped yelling and raised his hands. He held a pair of grenades, larger than the smoke bombs he’d thrown previously. Cassie shook her head, pointed at Cypher and Chevy and then back to the wall where she’d originally stashed me, before resuming her crouch, her pistol pointed toward the silent haze.

                Moving with such fluidity that he seemed to flow with the smoke, Cypher eased over to Chevy, returning the grenades, after some hesitation, to his pack, and pointed toward the wall. After checking our position, the two soldiers ran in a crouch without looking back. In a moment, I saw the laser  sweeping the smoke-bound street. Cassie tapped me and we both hustled back to join the others. The smoke was starting to clear, mostly settling before dispersing in tiny curlicues that disintegrated after a few seconds. Chevy continued his laser survey until we could begin to see shapes through the smoke. Dark rectangles and amorphous lumps, buildings and rubble, and a complete absence of any moving or living thing. Every convict, it seemed, had disappeared.

                “Gone to ground. Yellow dogs,” Cypher said, kicking at crumbled bits of the damaged rammed earth wall. His eyes moved constantly, from Cassie to the map in my hand to Chevy and back to me. Our eyes met once. His gaze narrowed and at the same time he opened his mouth and flashed his upper teeth in the beginning of a snarl that never came. I quickly looked away, feeling a hard spot of anxiety beneath my solar plexus.

                “Map,” Cassie ordered, speaking in a low voice. I still held it in my hand. She used her foot to clear away some broken bits of wall, creating a clear space in the dirt to spread it out. Chevy and Cypher looked over her shoulder as she put her finger onto the third ring of Lust. “Here’s the shelter,” she pointed at a dark rectangle. “There’s another here. We’re in between them.” There were only two shelters on this street. The second lay beyond where the convicts had been when we first saw them. “If the other units did their work, that one is useless too. So, where did they go? Parvenu, you think like a convict. Take a look.”

                I squatted beside Cassie to study the map, feeling Cypher move in close behind me. His knife was still in its sheath in his right boot.

“Hard to see with you hovering like that Cypher.”

“Too bad,” he started to argue.

“Back off,” Cassie commanded. He did, but only a step.  A rivulet of sweat ran down from my left temple and dripped on the paper, up near the ninth ring, smearing the ink. The printing was Grampa’s. The map, hand drawn and incomplete, nonetheless contained many details. I could see symbols for water spigots, loudspeakers, and the xenon light poles. A rough outline of every building in the first five rings with  a tiny ‘X’ marking vacant lots and burned out structures, along with trash dumps, alleyways, and even the low walls separating the shallow spaces between the building fronts and the street in each of the rings.

                “Are you saying they couldn’t have gone into the other shelter?” I asked.

                “Rheynstadt ordered every shelter in this quarter to be bombed,” Cassie said. “Ceiling charges, enough to cause a complete collapse of the structures above.”

                “But why?”

                “Anyone left in this quarter is of almost no use to him. But he won’t kill them outright, at least not yet. We weren’t told why. Just ordered to clear out the shelters and blow them up.”

                “Grampa, I mean, Amos, claimed that everyone was moved to this quarter during SixKill.”

                “That’s true. But most are in the garrison now.”

                “The garrison?” A sudden thought arrested my attention. “Does this have anything to do with Ella Cantor’s escape?”

                She looked at Cypher, expecting, it seemed to me, some reaction from him. “Ella…Cantor?”

                I looked at Cypher too. His face had colored and his jaw muscles tensed.

                “I saw her escape. No sense pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about,” I said, genuinely disgusted with being the last one to know anything.

                Now Cassie looked at me, her expression changing from one of surprise to the cold stare of command. I was still holding my truncheon.

                “Put your weapon away, Private Parvenu.” I did as she ordered. “No, this has nothing to do with Ella Cantor. And it’s best you refrain from mentioning her name around militia.”

                I felt like arguing but even Chevy nodded in agreement with Cassie so I let it drop.

                “Then what? What’s Rheynstadt up to?” And what is Ella Cantor’s role in this? The predictable routine on the planet ceased with her escape. And the sLOD boss made sure I saw her before she got cleanly away. Now, out of touch with him, I had no idea what I should be doing. In the absence of communication my life had dissolved into chaos.

                Cypher moved off a couple of paces, peering around the low end of the wall at the empty street beyond, one hand beating a fast pat-a-pat-a-pat on his hip.

                Cassie seemed impatient. “Look, I need you to figure out where a hundred crippled convicts could have gone. Our only way out of this quarter is through Violence and into Anger sector, a long haul on a good day. You’re the only one here who thinks like they do.” She glanced over her shoulder at Cypher who was looking intently down the avenue. She dropped her voice to a whisper, “Ella Cantor dropped out of sight completely, so maybe there is a connection. But neither she nor Rheynstadt are available for me to ask, and from what I know of both, they’d probably kill me if I raised the issue.  That leaves me with you. So, where do you think that mob went to?”

                “Why would they go at all? It seemed odd, them leaving just because of a little smoke and a few bullets.” I talked about the convicts but my thoughts were on Cypher and his reaction to Ella Cantor’s name when I spoke it.

                Chevy cradled his rifle and I saw the corners of his mouth turn up at my question. He was watching Cypher, but obviously had an ear to everything Cassie and I were discussing.

                She rolled her eyes before speaking, “They attacked us because Rheynstadt left them here to die. Every able-bodied convict is in the garrison by now. All running water supplies have been diverted there. All the food lockers in Leaveton are either empty or bombed out, all at Rheynstadt’s orders. That mob spent a hundred hours packed into a shelter like shells in a magazine without any sort of relief. And, as far as they can tell, there is no way out of this sector, ” Her tone grew increasingly strident with each sentence and at the last she stood up and kicked the map aside, grabbing me by my lapels and hoisting me to my feet. “I asked you a fucking question, Private Parvenu, and you answered with another. I’m not here to bandy words with a convict in a costume, do you understand?”

                I felt flecks of spittle. Her hands were shaking but her eyes didn’t waver. They were wide open, darker and with longer lashes than I’d noticed. She shook me.

                “Answer the question, Private!”

                “Aside from looking to k-kill whoever arranged things, I have no idea where they went.”

                “Then get down on your knees and look at the map. Amos made that map for a reason. Look at it!” She had me by the neck and was forcing my body down. Cypher had come back in close and Chevy had set his rifle down and was ready to jump in between us.

                I shook Cassie off and picked up the map. It had torn when she kicked it and I took my time flattening it out on the ground. My hands were shaking. I knew they could all see it and I felt as vulnerable as ever around militia. Even if these were supposed to be the good guys. It pissed me off.

                I studied the map again, tracing the alleys and avenues leading from the third ring, looking for spaces large enough to hide a hundred convicts.

                “Maybe they just ducked into the buildings ahead,” I offered. “Waiting for us to move on. You gave them plenty of cover to go anyplace they like.”

                Cassie, who was standing behind me, kicked me in the backside. I caught myself on my hands and pushed back up to a squatting position. “That smoke saved all of their asses. I gave them cover so we wouldn’t have to kill them in self-defense.”

“Pity you did that,” Cypher said.

Cassie ignored thewisecrack and grabbed my right shoulder, twisting my body to face her. “Did you hear the whistles?” she said.

Cypher gave a low whistle followed by a series of short chirps that disintegrated into clicks and clucks and finally he just opened and shut his mouth so I could hear his teeth coming together over and over. I could smell the sour stink of his sweat. He was definitely using stims, lots of them. I wondered how long he’d been at it and what it would be like when he ran out. I hoped he had enough to keep it together until we got back to the garrison. If he started to lose control as Digit had during my interrogation, it seemed like things might take a violent turn. I doubted that all three of us were strong enough to handle him without using weapons if his crash ended in psychosis.

I looked up and took a deep breath before turning my attention back to the map. Thoughts kept intruding. It was almost impossible to believe this was still the morning of the day after SixKill. Thoughts of what Bundy might do to Grampa, and of Digit, I still couldn’t lose the name I’d known him by for so long, shaking and barely able to control his movements as the stims flooding his system weakened over time. I looked at Cypher who gave another whistle and flashed his teeth at me again. Was Cypher about to kill all of us or just me?

                “Sure, I heard whistling. What was it?”

Cassie whacked me on the shoulder.

                “A special code, used by miners on Freelife Four. It carries further than a voice and with less possibility of being misunderstood.”

                “Unlike words,” Cypher said, a little too loudly.

                Cassie looked at him, a bit of her irritation with me seeming to transfer to the jittery giant. His jaw muscles worked furiously. “And I’ve had enough words from you, Cypher.” She turned back to me. “That whistle means get out of here. Probably to meet at some pre-arranged safe zone or rendezvous. They use it in the event of a cave-in in the mines on the asteroid.”

                Freelife  Four was Grampa’s base. The asteroid that tumbled erratically throughout its orbit was a warren of natural tunnels, the walls of which were lined with a dozen rare minerals and chemical compounds found no place else in the system. Mining it was the most profitable and dangerous work in all of Freelife. The profit was all for the sLOD’s, the danger exclusively granted to convicts. I knew from other convicts there were frequent cave-ins. Lots of deaths. But I’d never heard of this whistling code. Something else to ask Grampa about, if I ever saw him again.

                “But this isn’t Freelife Four, and with the shelters gone where could they go?”

                “That’s what I need you to tell me, Private. Where would you go?” She had me by the collar, lifting and swinging me so that I hit the wall hard, back first, followed by my head which set off a terrific ringing in my ears. I was confused and disoriented from both the lack of and excess of so many things: food, water, rest, fighting, being hit, always the physical abuse. I tried to push her away but she pressed against me, her forearm at my throat with Chevy and Cypher close behind. The tips of our noses touched as her eyes darted back and forth between mine.

                “Quit wasting time and show me where they went. Where you would go?” She pulled me around and threw me hard on the ground next to the map. I felt a sharp pain in my left knee and shin where I landed on a jagged bit of broken block. “Show me now!” she said through clenched teeth. Had she taken stims too?

                The answer to where they went came to me like a nova exploding inside my head.  I didn’t need the map anymore, never did really. The fourth quarter had lots of hiding spots, but only one that might work in this very special circumstance, one that despite its being here for decades, the militia didn’t frequent. With good reason, an inner voice warned.

                “The Arena.”

                “The what? Remember, I’m new here. Show me,” Cassie said, kneeling beside me. Her face was flushed and her hands clenched into fists against her thighs.  I looked at the map, trying to remember the exact location.

                Chevy gave a low whistle and shook his head. Cypher gave Chevy a look that I had trouble reading, as if he were angry about something. Then he stared at me, beads of sweat streaming down his forehead, his jaw muscles swelling with such strain that I thought he’d crack a tooth.

                I looked at Violence sector, counted out to the sixth ring, one of those where Grampa had sketched in just a few details.

“It isn’t here,” I said. I wondered if Grampa had run out of time or if he’d not thought we’d need to know everything about that space. The absence of the Arena was a significant omission in either case.  “It’s the largest bordello in the quarter, maybe on the planet and Amos left it off the map.”

“Maybe he didn’t know about it,” Chevy offered.

“Or maybe he didn’t want us to know about it,” Cypher said, whatever was irritating him causing a tightness in his voice that made him sound years younger than he looked.

                “You mean they went to a whorehouse?” Cassie asked.

                “You said the whistle meant go to a safety zone, right? Well, the safest place in the quarter, especially if you’re not from the quarter, is the Arena.”

                “What makes it so safe?” Cypher spit a little as he talked and I looked from his flushed face to that of Chevy and the LT.

                “For one thing, it’s a labyrinth. Only above ground access is on the north side. Streets in that area are mostly impassable and to get to the entrance you have to climb over a mountain of trash and rubble. If you don’t know what’s there, you’d probably pass right by.” I pointed to the spot on the map where the structure should be. “Only one floor above ground, and four below, but all built choc-a-bloc over the last century.”

                “Choc-a-bloc?” Cassie was studying the map, tracing lines out toward the sixth ring from our location. “What’s that mean?”

                “It means there was no real plan for it. It started as a dormitory for miners back in the early days of the colony. When the mines on Seven were abandoned and the quarter changed, they started adding to it. Nobody knows, or at least they don’t say, whose idea it was, but the nastiest whores, both men and women, the ones who were so crazy and submissive that literally anything goes with them, began to lodge there. As demand for their services increased, more room was needed. The miners all go at least once. Those with the stomach for it go again.”

                “Stomach for what?” Cypher asked, his tongue darting in and out of his mouth. He was losing it. I looked to Cassie but she was watching me, studying my face, probably trying to figure out if I knew this from personal experience or was just making something up to pacify her.

                “There’s a spectator level, a continuous loop that runs around the center of the labyrinth, looks down to a sandy clearing at the very bottom. They have special shows there.” I hesitated, not sure if I should say more.

                “Convict justice,” Chevy said. I looked at him, surprised that he knew. He shrugged and looked disgusted. “How come you know so much about this place, Parvenu?”

                “I went, once. You can probably find out all you want from an old convict I know. Actually, he’s not a convict at all. Senior Militia Intelligence man posing as one, that’s who told me. Name is Akyron, Dominicus Akyron. Goes by Digit among the cons. I guess he didn’t report the place to his superiors or you would have known about it.” Cassied looked as if she didn’t believe me. I wondered myself why Digit would keep something as defensible as the Arena to himself.

                They all looked at me now. Apparently Digit’s, or rather Major Akyron’s role wasn’t yet common knowledge among the militia.

                “Never heard of either one,” Cypher said, clearing his throat and spitting over the wall. I looked at him but his attention seemed to be on something in the burnt out space beyond.

                I turned back to Cassie and continued, “Anyhow, the place just kept getting more and more traffic. The sixth ring in that area is mostly deserted. Since the action, the real action, is all underground, the militia, either through ignorance or caution, have left it alone.”

                She still looked skeptical, as if the possibility of any part of what I’d said being true could not fit into her world view. Still, she looked thoughtful, studying the map before her next question.

“You said there’s only one above ground entrance. But there are other ways in, is that right?”

I nodded, “It’s really best to go in underground rather than risk getting killed climbing the rubble mountain in front of the place. There are a handful of tunnels from the fifth and seventh rings that lead inside. Whores ask for more space every year. A lot of what you see torn down around us was to salvage materials to expand the Arena.”

                “And the randy convicts who patronize it are only too willing to lend a hand? Is that it?” Chevy looked accusingly at me, as if the outrage he felt at the idea of the Arena could be blamed on one convict, specifically me. “The whole idea is sick. We ought to burn it, LT.”

                “Chevy, you’re a self-righteous prick,” Cypher said, laughing. “But, LT, if we’re going to burn it, I’d like to sample the goods first. Shake the dust off my little friend and get a hoochey massage.” He leered at me.

                “I doubt we’ll be welcome there,” I said.

                “We aren’t going,” Cassie said, looking at the map. “It’s not part of our mission.”  

                “Why Cassandra, don’t you know, I’m Cypher. The ladies always welcome me.” He leered at Cassie who held her finger steady at the egress of an alley near Lust-Violence Road at the northeast corner of the fifth ring. Cypher tried another tack, “How about just I go, you know, scout the place out for a future incursion. LT? How about it?”

                She ignored him instead turning toward me. “So, you think the convicts might have gone to the Arena, because …”

                “You asked where I’d go. That’s it. You can get lost, or lose a pursuer very easily in the labyrinth.  I’d be surprised if there weren’t quite a few others in there too. You can survive a mild solar storm in the lower to levels. And if there were any contraband food or water stores, I’d look there first for such.”

                She pursed her lips as a slow frown emerged on her face. “I was going to say that if they went there, so much the better for us. We can get out of the quarter without ever meeting up with them again, if this map is right.”

                “Why can’t we just go out the way we came in?” Cypher asked; disappointment heavy even in his stim-affected hyperactive voice.

                “Listen up, all of you. The way we come in is now closed.” She stared us down. Cypher started to say something and she turned all of her attention on him and shook her head. He shut up. “And if what our rookie says is true, then our mission isn’t finished. And we,” she inhaled and let out the breath in a sigh. “We have to go to the Arena.”

                She stood up and stretched. I watched as she closed her eyes, lacing her fingers overhead. She was stout and strong, still, her breasts showed as two soft globes beneath the heavy fabric of her uniform when she reached skyward. I became conscious of the tingle I’d felt in my ear as we crouched in the street and she whispered instructions to me. Chevy was watching me out of the corner of his eye. His look was not one of approval. I looked back down at the map when Cassie lowered her arms to massage her neck.

                Cypher was nearly dancing. “Now you’re thinking like a soldier, LT. What are your orders? Do we go straight there? Want me to take point? I’ll do recon first if you want.”

                “What do you mean by ‘closed’ LT?” Chevy asked.

                “The last squad out before ours was an ordinance detail. Every route but one leading from this sector is now fresh turned earth packed full of APM’s.”

                “What’s an APM?” I asked.

                Cypher was holding his head in his hands, shaking it as if it hurt. Saying “fuck me” over and over. Cassie went to stand beside him before answering. “Anti-personnel mine. Nice little plastic package with a couple of pounds of thermal globules in it. Touch the ground within a meter of the thing and you and everything in a ten meter radius gets incinerated by it.”

                I was stunned. “Why?”

                Cypher was really affected now, though I couldn’t tell if it was the stims or something related to this new bit of information. He was on his feet and holding his head as he walked in a slow circle.  Cassie leaned wearily, her back against the wall, arms folded.. Chevy had his eyes on me. I wasn’t moving, in fact, I was holding my breath, waiting on the LT, but it was Cypher who broke the spell.

                “Ass-fucking whore! Rheynstadt. Everything about this mission is a clusterfuck. Do you hear me, LT? When we get back I’m going to kill him with my bare hands. I don’t care what happens to me. I’m not letting him do this. Not again.” He was losing it and it could no longer be ignored.

                “Cypher,” Cassie moved suddenly to grab the big man by the shoulders. “Get it together. Whatever it takes, get it together.” She let him go and he paced away, hands on the sides of his head and making small grunting noises in the back of his throat, shaking his head from side to side as if arguing with some inner voice. After a moment he crossed to and opened his pack. Turning his back to us he took something out and put it in his mouth.

Cassie turned back to face me, a question on her face. “If you’re right, Parvenu, and there are food and water stores in the Arena, we have to go there. Any chance you’re wrong? ”

                I looked at her and shrugged.

“Always a chance of that,” Chevy said. He was repacking the brace for his rifle. Cypher had sat down on the wall and was taking deep breaths, waiting on the Stims to kick in again. I didn’t want to be anywhere near him when he ran out.

                “If there are convicts in there who haven’t been screened, and we’re the last ones home, Rheynstadt will hold us accountable,” Cassie said after a moment, nodding her head as she made her decision.

                “Screened?” I asked.

                “Orders were to take every able-bodied convict to the garrison,” she said.

                “We’re the cleanup crew, here to pick up stragglers,” Chevy said, shaking his head. “I can’t believe we volunteered for this detail.”

“Why did you?” I wondered aloud.

“According to the LT here, it was the only way to be waiting in that shelter for you and to have a chance at getting you out of the convict population.” He picked up his rifle and opened the action. Cypher seemed to be watching him closely. “Took some real fast talking on Cassandra’s part to make it happen since the word came so late. I hope to hell you’re worth it.” He closed the chamber and shouldered the rifle, deliberately flashing the laser across my face for an instant as he swung the sight across the buildings on the opposite side of the road.

                “I’ve got no idea what I’m worth to anyone, or why I’d be worth anything,” was all I could say.

                “All right, enough,” Cassie said.  She had picked up the map and was leaning against the wall holding it with both hands. Motioning us closer she began to explain her plan. “We’ll take this alley…” She was interrupted by an animal-like roar, right before she screamed.

                The wall we crouched behind was made of rammed earth. At some point in its past it had been nearly three meters high, but over the years accident and neglect had reduced it to a jagged simulacrum on a much smaller scale of the Eastern mountains above the Anglehorn. The highest remaining section, where Cassie was, stood a little less than two meters tall and dropped down to knee-height nearest the street. The thickness was uniform, about a quarter-of-a-meter.

                Cassie was in mid-sentence when that  terrible roar sounded from the other side of the wall and a piece of rebar, sharpened to a brilliant, deadly point exploded through its center, piercing high up on her leg, just below the curve of her left buttocks. The spear missed the bone, tearing all the way through her flesh as she screamed, dropping the map and grabbing at the steel.

                In the instant I heard the roar, I felt a sudden surge in my whole body, the same sensation as when I’d been kicked off the Anglehorn, only this didn’t have a point of origin, it was just an outward thrust from deep inside as if every cell had suddenly expanded to five times its size and grown a rocklike shell. I leapt over the wall, not so much thinking as reacting. On the other side, a thick-bodied, red-haired convict, whole but for an eye patch and terrible burn scars down the left side of his naked body, was bent low, withdrawing the spear through the wall. I landed on his shoulders, grabbing him under the chin and jerking backwards with more force than I’d imagined I could ever muster.

                His whole body seemed to lift in a spasm as his neck snapped and his eyes, still alive, looked right at me before I felt the last bit of resistance from his cervical column give way and he fell backwards, dumping me off and ending up lying spread eagled, on his back, his neck double the length it should be and his face at one hundred eighty degrees to his feet.

As I scrambled upright I heard sounds of a struggle and a muffled cry from the other side of the wall. Cassie screamed again as I vaulted back over in time to see Cypher, holding Chevy in a headlock, thrust his dagger up ender the rifleman’s rib cage and tear it out, taking  most of Chevy’s heart and parts of his lungs with it.

                I pulled my truncheon free of its sheath as he dropped the body and came toward me, red-faced and with a horrible grin. “Ready to dance, little playmate? Want to play with Cypher, do you, convict?”

                He didn’t even feint, just came at me almost at a run, the dagger close to his body, ready for a rising thrust as soon as he got close enough. I threw the truncheon at his ankles and he stumbled once before falling toward me. I jumped back and he fell hard on the dirt and rubble, throwing his arms out to try and catch himself.

                Cassie was bleeding heavily from her leg wound, which she held with both hands. She was screaming at Cypher, mostly unintelligibly. I stamped on the hand that held the dagger but his latest does of stims had boosted his strength so that he pulled his hand out and took a slashing cut at my leg that caught me just below the knee. I felt the knife scrape the front of the bone and tear at the long nerve running down the front of my leg. I dropped onto my backside, grabbing at the knee and biting my lip. I wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of hearing me scream, only I landed on my right hip, the useless pistol in its holster bruising the bone so that the two agonies came out in one cursing yell. If only Cassie had trusted me with a loaded pistol. Choking back a second cry I scrambled to my feet and backed away.

                Cypher  was up too, looking around and winking when he saw Cassie. “You next, LT, okay?” And then he came at me again, this time taking a wide swipe with the blade that barely missed ripping me open across my abdomen as I jumped backwards. He didn’t even pause, just kept coming, forcing me into the street. I kept retreating, but whatever unnamed force had given me the strength to kill Cassie’s assailant had left me trembling, nauseous, and weak; I knew Cypher would see that eventually. When he did, he’d stop his methodical march and charge me again. I didn’t have a truncheon to throw this time.

                He whooped like a wild man, jumping and slashing until all at once he leapt forward toward me, bringing the dagger down from overhead. To my amazement, the nausea disappeared and the same sensation of swelling and propulsion filled me. Bracing on my back leg, I stepped toward him, lifting and crossing my arms above the wrists, palms facing inward, sot that I caught the descending blow, closed my hands around Cypher’s forearm and pulled down with all my strength, twisting to the right and lifting my back knee. It caught Cypher in the rib cage, I felt and heard bones crack, and rolled my hips around to take him off of his feet. He landed hard, face forward, his arm twisted so the elbow locked vertically in front of me. I fell against the arm and felt his shoulder joint pop, saw the dagger fall, and heard the scream ripped from his throat. It was cut off by my knee hitting his broken ribs for the second time as I dropped onto him in with as much force as I could muster.

                He began to kick and buck, every movement bringing another agonized cry from him. Stims might boost strength and quickness, but they don’t do a thing to stop pain. Cypher’s body had become his worst enemy now. The stims brought on the aggression but the more he fought the more damage he did to his shoulder. I rolled away, dragging myself to my feet and staggered over to pick up the dagger, leaving a trail of blood from my wounded leg while Cypher tried to hold his useless arm and get off the ground. He made it to a crouch and I braced myself for another round.

                “Don’t do it, Cypher,” I heard Cassie’s voice, faint behind me and turned to see her lying on her side beyond the end of the wall, holding her pistol pointed directly at Cypher. “Stay down or I will shoot you. Parvenu, there are restraints in Chevy’s pack.”

                I looked down at my leg, where he’d cut me. It hurt like hell but to my surprise the bleeding was already slowing. I was sure the knife had hit bone and when I looked, tearing the leg of my fatigues open, I could see the white beyond the puckering skin. I must have had a curious look on my face because Cassie called my name again, asking if I were able to walk. As I looked, the blood stopped flowing and the cut began to close on its own. I’ve always healed quickly but this was something else, something almost supernatural in its speed and effectiveness.  I tore a strip from the torn pant leg and tied it around the wound.

                “I’m fine, you said Chevy’s bag?”

                She nodded, pale with hints of purple and gray in her face. She’d lost a lot of blood, was still bleeding heavily, but held her weapon steady. Cypher’s eyes moved from her to me. If he found the strength to come at either one of us, the delay in dealing with it might cost her life. I no sooner had that thought when I saw Cassie lapse into unconsciousness. Her tense posture sagged and the pistol barrel dipped toward the street as her head lolled to the side. Cypher made his move, leaping toward Cassie’s inert body.

                This time, when the surge came, I was more aware of it. It emanated from my spinal column, but moved rapidly to the tips of every limb. And there was a language of sorts to accompany it, at least I felt like something or someone was speaking to me, but from the lower regions of my mind. Not words, but instructions that moved me to do things I’d never consciously attempted before.

                I was holding Cypher’s dagger by the hilt, but when the surge hit I felt my grip change as my right arm drew back, extending almost straight out behind me, the dagger in my right hand reaching back too. When the arm whipped forward I saw the flight of the heavy dagger an instant before it took place, as if time had opened in my mind, to show me the reality being created by my actions.

                “Follow through,” Grampa had told me over and over when it came to striking a blow, swinging the hammer against the anvil. “Let the tool do the work.”  As I released the knife I followed through, my hand and arm free of their cargo swinging upwards while the deadly steel flew true, striking Cypher in the neck just below the left jaw hinge point as he crossed the flight path. The force of the blow knocked him off his feet and the blood filling his throat choked off his last roar of rage. He flopped like a dying fish as his face turning red, then white, then blue-gray while a dark pool of crimson flowed onto the uneven ground, seeping through cracks in the world to herald Cypher’s arrival in the house of the dead. His eyes remained open, gazing at eternity.

I knelt over Cassie, who was pale and still, and felt for a pulse on her neck. Faint and fluttering, like a tiny moth caught beneath her skin, I found the tiniest indication that she was alive. I dumped Cypher’s pack, which was against the wall – a reckless move considering the ordinance he was carrying – and found a small med-kit. Pouring clotting agent into her leg wounds and wrapping them with strips torn from my shredded pant leg was all I could do before the increasing nausea and weakness overtook me and I had to sit down. I knew Cassie was in deep shock and probably would die before help came, but I felt something special for her that I was able to articulate. She’d given me a chance, allowed me to wear a uniform and to prove that I could be useful in a fight. At least no one else would die by Cypher’s hand. Had I said something like that before? A strong wind arose from the southwest, in the direction of the garrison, and the dust that battered my exposed face and limbs also carried away the warm, coppery scent of death. Placing myself between Cypher’s corpse and Cassie’s still living body, I curled protectively around her as my vision narrowed and my consciousness once again fled.

Whether I lived or died, I’d given service to a comrade in need. That counted for something. It was bullshit, but it was comforting for that moment. Cypher, Cassie, and Chevy would all be found dead. I thought I was dying too. Tiny was dead. Grampa was probably dead. Digit and Rheynstadt and that prick Bundy would win whatever prize they sought. The image of Ella Cantor’s braid filled my mind an instant before the darkness closed around it.

 

Fifth Installment, Garrett Cold and the Liberty Keepers, a serial novel

 

Greetings once again from Freelife Seven. Quickly, if you're new to this, please go back to the first posting and read them all, in order. This is a serial novel and you'll be quite lost starting with this post. (You might be quite lost even after reading them all, but that's my problem, not yours...so long as you tell me about it). I'm sorry this posting is late. I hope the delay was worthwhile. This is a long chapter...okay, I've said enough. Enjoy! 

 

Garrett Cold and the Liberty Keepers

 Chapter Four – The Belly of the Beast

             Seeing Digit walk back from the dead and into the cell wearing a militia uniform knocked me off my feet. Sitting on the bunk, looking at the radio in the center of the table, I felt defenseless, vulnerable to every sort of assault man or nature might hurl at me. But I wasn’t the one that Digit was looking to for answers. From beneath his bandages, Digit’s one red eye focused expectantly on the figure of Amos Albert Cold.

 

          Whatever firm ground I’d felt upon seeing Grampa after the bombing, disappeared, crumbling in an earthquake of confused emotions. Love, gratitude, mistrust, and an all-encompassing sense of betrayal fought for control of my mind. In such a state, I couldn’t think clearly about anything. I was emptying out, returning to the numbness that had pervaded so much of my life following my conviction. The flimsy foundation of recent events that briefly shaped itself into hope for more of a future was shattered beneath the hammer blow of Digit’s reappearance. It was my own doing, the breaking of the walls I’d erected against thoughts of a better life. Beginning with the appearance of Ella Cantor, and in the face of Tiny’s death and all that had succeeded it, especially Grampa’s arrival, I’d regained something of my own will, a desire to strive, to seek something greater than the anonymous death every Freelife convict owed his oppressors.  Now that original dark ending seemed nearer, and even welcome, at some level. Digit’s uniformed presence above the anvil of my existence twisted hope and will into something unrecognizable and useless.

I had no idea how he could have survived the explosion. For a moment, my disoriented brain considered the possibility that I was hallucinating, or seeing an actor playing the part. But his voice, despite being reduced to an inflectionless, hoarse drone, the sharp profile of his nose, and the slight tremor in the thin fingers of his free hand, told me this was the same man I’d known. He’d survived and in so doing, revealed himself, though looking at his physical condition I could only guess how he remained on his feet. Stims, that had to be it, he was loaded up on Stims.

            All eyes fixed upon Grampa, who had moved so that his back was to the corner of the room most distant from the door. His lower lip rose ever so slightly, not pouting, just thoughtful. His eyes moved almost imperceptibly from the radio to Digit, whose cocked head and crooked sneer seemed to me to belong to some other life form than the man I’d known as the timid, stammering, insecure convict accountant.

            No one spoke for what felt like ages. The only sound to reach my good ear was the sound of Grandpa’s swallowing, an act he repeated four times. I wondered if Digit could hear anything clearly. His eyes seemed to follow the piston-like movement of Grampa’s Adam’s apple. On his face, Digit bore the smug, satisfied look of a man completely in control. Only the beads of sweat emerging on his bandaged forehead indicated to me that he most likely was feeling a considerable amount of pain.

            When Grampa finally spoke, his first words were nonsensical.

            “Thus does conscience make cowards of us all,” he said, clearing his throat and standing a bit straighter. All at once, eyes blazing with the old fury, the one I remembered from my sentencing when they dragged him from the court’s rail, he raised his handcuffed wrists high overhead, fingers spread, voice getting louder with the motion. “This is the broken belly of the beast.” He lowered his arms, pointing at Lt. Colonel Rheynstadt. “And thy bellows are his lungs.” He pointed to the radio and all eyes followed his accusing finger. “And these pipes are his throat.” Turning sharply, he directed his cold stare at the young corporal in his dress uniform. “Those feathers are his tail.” Finally, he dropped to his knees, resting his elbows on the table, his fingers clasped, looking directly at Digit. “And thy rattles, the gnashing of his teeth.”

            I couldn’t place the first phrase, but the rest came from a centuries-old poem by a man named Ben Johnson – one of the greatest, perhaps even the greatest, literary voice of ancient humanity’s home. Grampa used to recite the old bard’s poetry to me as we lay together in the grass at night, beyond the lights of the farmhouse, looking up at the starry constellations. The first time I heard these words, spoken in a tone that promised eternal torture to any who failed to apprehend their meaning, I was terrified. Later, I learned such language was Grampa’s way of confronting the unexplainable.

            Digit demanded an accounting for the radio. Grampa was telling me he didn’t have one.

            “More animal chatter,” the corporal said, a nervous lilt in his voice, eyes flicking over all of us. Grampa had unsettled his ease. The tail feathers of the beast, indeed, I thought, seeing this preening killer’s cold composure slip, however slightly.

            “Dramatic, Amos,” Digit said, bending to kneel on one knee across the table from Grampa. “I take it you remember me then. You pretended not to earlier.”

            Grampa turned to me, uncoupling his hands to point at Digit. “Garrett, this here rattling beast’s name is Akyron. Before this morning, I’d not laid eyes on him in thirty years or more. He’ll have to spin out the rest, because he’s less recognizable now than he ever was. Beware the man who advertises his loyalty, boy.”

            Digit tried to laugh but fell instead into a violent spasm of coughing, banging his head on the table’s edge, and falling backwards to the floor with a groan. The corporal and Rheynstadt came immediately to his aid, but Digit waved them off with a loud hiss. Slowly he rolled to his side. I could see his mouth moving, counting the seconds it took him to push up onto his knees, grip the table’s edge, and rise slowly to his feet. He was breathing hard, a deep rasping sound coming from his lungs, no doubt inflamed by the chemical smoke of the BLAST. He steadied himself by leaning into the table with his thighs, turning his eye on me.

            “I helped you up, GC. And gave you water.”

            “Digit, I…” I had no idea what to say, the only feeling that had breached my confusion being anger, first at Digit for his betrayal and then at Grampa for having kept me in the dark about so many things. I sat on the edge of my bunk biting my lower lip. I couldn’t look at either of them.

            “Not to worry,” he said with a half-smile. “No one is keeping score.” He coughed again, but remained on his feet. “If they were, we’d be meeting on an asteroid. Someplace near to an airlock. I have it on good authority that interrogations in such cells produce results.”

            I wondered why we weren’t doing exactly that. The longer I remained alive, the more convinced I became that for some inexplicable reason I was important to the militia and the sLOD. That belief, combined with the rage growing inside, made me either bold or reckless.

“So instead, we’re here, in this den of liars, betrayers, and murderers,” I said. Rheynstadt and the corporal both looked as if they would like nothing better than to move this discussion off planet, where the air is thinner, but Digit dismissed me with a wave, nearly falling again in the process so that he had to lean with his good hand on the table, his head lowered. Stims at high doses cause nausea, sometimes severe. And the length of their effectiveness, oddly, diminishes as the dosage rises. They were banned for starship crews for that reason.

            “Since Amos is of a literary bent, I’ll remind him and you, Garrett, that even noble Brutus betrayed Caesar when the fate of the republic was at stake.” I looked to Grampa for understanding, but his features seemed set in stone. Digit resumed, “As your grandfather said, my name is Akyron, Dominucus Akyron, not Digit. I’m not a convict, never have been one. I’d prefer Major Akyron, or just Major if you like, when you address me from now on.”

Paler and shakier than when he’d entered the cell, he was making a mighty effort to regain control of the interview. I could see it in the deep lines of his forehead and the slight movement of his lips, counting in time with the tiny movements of his finger tips on the steel table. He was performing silent calculations, his reflexive response to stress.

 “I think I prefer Digit,” I said.

            He looked at me and his face had the same look I’d seen earlier in my cell when he thought I was holding out on him as to my whereabouts after being drugged at Bernie’s. He inclined his head toward Rheynstadt and the corporal, both of whom hovered silently, their faces unreadable.

            “However you want it, GC. It does complicate things – your being so uncooperative at this delicate time.”

            “On the contrary,” it was Rheynstadt speaking, “I think it simplifies matters. Let’s get back on track. Amos Cold, I don’t have Major Akyron’s patience. I’m in the middle of a large relocation program, and the presence of this illegal radio poses a serious threat to the security of not only that operation, but the safety of every person and living thing on this planet. That includes convicts, most immediately, you.”

            Relocation program – that might explain the shuttles we’d seen coming into the base. And Grampa had mentioned everyone being moved to the North Quarter at the end of SixKill. I tried to puzzle out the meaning of those two actions, got nowhere, looked back to Grampa for help. He had a strange expression on his face, as if something horrifying had suddenly occurred to him.

            “You’re worried someone will find out what you’re up to, is that it?” Grampa said. His voice was steady, but he seemed to be struggling to keep it that way. I could see the tension in the cords of his neck and in his hands, which now splayed on the metal top of the table.

            Rheynstadt was, in my opinion, oddly placed. Tall and soft, with an effeminate voice, his balding black hair slicked back, and a tiny, neatly trimmed line of mustache, he seemed more a foppish impresario than the senior officer of a militia base. I wondered if he’d ever seen combat. Seventy-one generations of militia service, he claimed. With this puffed up mince in command it was little wonder so many of the troops were assholes.

            The commander gave a low chuckle. “Much more is at stake than you could ever guess, convict. Now, tell me why you came to SixKill for your first ever fiver.”

            Grampa spoke at once, as if he’d anticipated the question.

“For forty years I was a terraforming engineer, guv’nor. I spent ten of them with your pet mummy there. We did some great things together,” he said, indicating Digit. “I’ve been written off as dead more times than I can count. But for the past six months, I’ve been tumbling in an unstable asteroid, wasting both my mind and body on…”

            “I’m not interested in your personal history, convict. I asked why you came here during SixKill. You earned the leave weeks before, turned down opportunities to take it.” He paused, sniffed the stale air of the room, his mustache twitching like a rat’s whiskers as it approached a hunk of rotting meat. “You waited until SixKill. Tell me why.”

            Grampa shrugged. “I was bored. I heard SixKill on Freelife Seven could be exciting, if a bit dangerous. That sounded like the closest thing to what I’ve known my whole life, so, I waited, and here I am.”

            Digit was the only one who looked as if he believed Grampa. I could have told them, ‘All in or not at all,’ the Cold family motto, but I kept silent, wondering why the militia knew so much about Grampa’s movements, and why it might matter to them.

            “Excitement is what you were after, then. I see. And the radio? An attempt to create excitement?”

            Grampa looked away from the commander to face Digit. “Ask the mummy here, he knows me well, or at least he did once and I haven’t changed, not that much. How about it Dominucus? You’ve heard me lie and you’ve heard me bluff. You’ve seen me drunk and sober and most states in between. We were mates once, you and I, Dom. ‘Anky Panky’ and Amos, that’s what they called us,” he said, nodding to each of us as if to affirm the truth of his words, finishing with a slight genuflection and one-sided smile. Digit’s only response was to turn and face Rheynstadt. Grampa chuffed and fixed a cold stare on his interrogator. “You know as well as I do that I didn’t know anything about that radio until Garrett told me. That was after the bomb went off. If he’d just let it lie, we wouldn’t be here now.” He looked at me, his I told you so face flashing for just a moment.

            “How should I know that?” Rheynstadt said.

            “How could you not know it? Your apes stripped and cavity-searched me and every other convict as soon as we landed. You sent me to Bernie’s with nothing but a clean pair of coveralls and a new pair of shoes. How was I supposed to get a radio in here?”

            “You had a full miner’s pack when Corporal Bundy picked you up.”

            “I beg to differ with you, Sir. Corporal Bundy picked up a miner’s pack that he found on the ground in Heresy sector at the bombing site. Nobody identified it as belonging to anyone.”

            I bit my lip. Did Grampa know what he was saying? By calling attention to the pack he was practically inviting Rheynstadt to take it from the locker and search it. The commander gave Corporal Bundy a withering look.  

Digit was getting agitated. He shifted his weight from side to side; I half expected him to begin stammering, but decided that most of the tics I’d observed over the years were part of his undercover persona, something put on to fool me and the rest of the convict staff. It obviously worked. Thirty years he’d been on Freelife according to every convict I knew. No one would have guessed he was militia, let alone a senior intelligence officer.

“We’ll get around to the pack soon enough, Amos,” Digit said. “Tell us about the bomb.”

            “Glad to tell you what I know about that.” Gramps was smiling pleasantly now, very sure of himself. “It was BLAST. The same stuff I invented and we used to alter a dozen worlds way back when. Can’t mistake the purple flash, and the smell. Hell, Dominicus, it’s the reason you’re alive. Whoever planted that charge used a directional package, set it for a hundred eighty degree spread, both vertical and horizontal. Wherever you were in there, you weren’t incinerated because you were outside the kill zone. Couldn’t control conventional explosives like that. I’d say that makes you as much a suspect as me.”

            Digit allowed himself a small, flinching smile. “No, I’m afraid your grandson is to blame for my survival.” He rubbed his head, wincing. His hand trembled so severely I thought for a moment he was having a seizure. I guessed the Stims were wearing off.

            “Commander, I think it best we separate these two for the time being. I’ll have Sergeant Greene check out this pack that Amos hasn’t yet claimed or denied ownership of. Corporal Bundy, would you be available to oversee Amos’s interrogation?” I could hear the pain in Digit’s voice. Die, you bastard, I thought, struggling to avoid speaking the words.

Bundy looked at Rheynstadt who nodded. The corporal pulled at the waist of his starched trousers, baring his teeth. He was aroused at the thought of questioning Grampa. I looked helplessly at my handcuffs.

            “All right, the pack is mine,” Grampa said. “In fact, if we open it right now, there’s some stuff I’ve got in there can fix your ears up Dominicus. Worked on Garrett.”

            Half-worked, I couldn’t help but think.

            “Where did you get the pack, Amos?” Digit asked.

            “North Quarter, third ring I think. From a militia lieutenant. A woman. Gave me the other bag as well. She said it belonged to someone I knew. Told me I’d find him in Heresy sector.”

            “There was only climbing gear in the second pack, Sir,” Bundy offered, perhaps trying to demonstrate to Rheynstadt that he wasn’t completely incompetent. The commander sniffed at the comment. Digit radioed for Sergeant Greene to come to the cell and then continued his questioning.

            “And when was this?”

            “Shortly after that body turned up, bloated and green thing, waving a red bandanna like a flag, but out the wrong end. I opened the pack and inside it were two pair of beat up convict coveralls, a stick of yellow, and some stuff I’d made a long time ago for healing ear injuries in miners. It was my kit all right, but I didn’t bring it down with me.”

            Bundy cut in again. “Does anyone believe anything this miner is saying? He’s playing for time, that’s all. Let me get him into a separate room and I’ll have the truth out of him inside of a Standard Hour.”

            “Why would I stall for time, mate? So you won’t torture me? That’s why I’m telling you the truth. What difference does it make…”

            “This lieutenant,” Rheynstadt said, stepping smartly forward and placing a hand on the corporal’s shoulder. “You said she was a woman?”

            “Pretty little thing too, not that it matters to me, given my age and all. Yeah, she had a nice head of hair. Wore it in a gold weave or braid, maybe some combination of both, real elaborate looking. I figured it was some sort of insignia, only cleverer by half and then some compared to the lame emblems I see stuck on most of these monkey suits.”

            “Did she give her name?”

            “No, just handed me the packs and disappeared back into the crowd. It happened right near where that body got dumped, though.”

            “What happened next?” The commander was eyeing both Grampa and Digit with skeptical glances. I could see this was about a lot more than a radio. I thought back to the visit from the late trio who found the booby trap in my cell. Could this lieutenant be the same one they were looking for? Lasserhagen, her name was Lasserhagen.

            “What did you say?” Digit was looking at me. Had I spoken the name aloud?

            “The men who came to my cell, they asked about a female lieutenant. Said her name was Lasserhagen, I think.”

            “I thought that you were outside the cell when the bomb went off.” Digit might have nearly died in the blast, and he might have only partial hearing, but he was paying attention to everything.

            “I was, I mean, I ran out as soon as I saw Private Morrischenko about to open the trunk.”

            “Tell us why you did that, convict. Did you know the bomb was in there? That’s what we’d suppose from your conduct, as you describe it now.” Rheynstadt this time, his face flushed, his breathing shallow and fast. He got off on this shit too.

            “The trunk looked like it was locked. The Captain asked me to open it. I was cooperating. Like I told him, I had a pretty easy time of it. Why screw with that? When I started to unlock it, the lock fell open in my hand. That just didn’t seem right, so when Morrischenko booted me out of the way, I heeded my instincts and beat it out the door.”

            “Or did you plant the bomb, convict? Do I add murder of militia personnel, including an officer, to the other matters that appear to have greatly lessened your value, perhaps even in the eyes of the sLOD who seems so determined that we keep you safe from harm.” Rheynstadt was a tiger ready to pounce. He clearly didn’t care for me or my relationship to my sLOD boss. I wondered about his relocation project again.

            “I didn’t plant it. I was barely coherent. I don’t even know where I spent SixKill after being carried out of Bernie’s. I woke up in my rack, dying of thirst, and Digit came in while I was trying to get a drink. Like he said, he helped me up, gave me water. He was also the one who handed me the radio, which I saw sitting on a shelf in my cell. Hey, come to think of it, I only noticed it after he got there.”

            “You were nearly dead, lying on the floor with a gash on your head,” Digit said, speaking far too loud. From the look Rheynstadt gave him, I began to wonder who would get busted first, Digit or Bundy. Digit was shaking so badly now, not just his fingers, his whole body, that he couldn’t still himself even when he leaned on the table. I’d seen this before. He was in pain, to be sure, but had taken so many Stims that they were causing a collapse of his nervous system. If he didn’t get medical attention very soon, he might die, not that I’d lift a finger to save him.

            Rheynstadt finally saw Digit’s fast-failing condition. I imagined the commander was furious at the familiarity between Digit and Grampa. I wondered briefly how the corporal fit into this. He didn’t act like an intelligence officer, and I doubted Digit would have a man who enjoyed killing, no matter what the reason, in his inner circle. Digit was subtler than that. Not that he couldn’t kill, nor that he would hesitate if the situation required it, but it would be purely the logical outcome of some internal algorithm, not the calculated savagery I’d witnessed from Bundy. That meant the younger man was somehow involved on a personal level with Rheynstadt. I had no idea how that might work to my advantage, but I filed it away all the same. The way Bundy had so dispassionately killed the two boys in Heresy sector left me feeling as uneasy with him as if I were trapped in a closet with a hungry mountain lion or one of the other carnivores Grampa had introduced me to back on our home world.

            The sergeant who’d given us the food bars on the ride down from the surface entered the room. He looked at Grampa first, then me. Was that nod, barely perceptible, toward us? He whispered something to Rheynstadt who immediately terminated the interview and ordered Grampa and I to be held in separate cells, departing with a final reptilian gaze at all of us. A pair of privates entered and I rose to accompany them. Greene shook his head, pointing a finger at Grampa. Bundy asked about the pack and the sergeant told him he would bring it to him. The corporal followed the privates and Grampa out of the cell. Digit gave me another sad look, instructed the Sergeant, Sergeant Greene he called him, to be quick about getting the pack to Corporal Bundy. Greene saluted, asked Digit if he needed assistance, was waved off and then we were alone.

            Greene watched down the passage for a few moments before quietly closing the door to the cell. I was standing beside the table and he signaled me to be silent, pressing his index finger to his lips.

            He stood very near to me and spoke so softly I could just make out his words.

            “Say nothing. When I open the locker, get your pack and go, left out the door and to the end of the passage. There’s a service stairwell beyond it.” He took my hand and pressed something into it. It was the crumpled wrapper from Grampa’s food bar. “I wrote the door code there. When you get through, take the stairs to the bottom. Five clicks straight ahead, you’ll come to a power station. Someone will be waiting for you. Show them the wrapper when they ask if you’ve eaten.”

            “And if I meet someone on the way?”

“You won’t. You’ll see why when you get there.”

“Grampa, I won’t leave without him,” I spoke softly, trying to convey my determination with a look, but Greene had turned away to cut the seal from the locker doors. He took out the two packs and set them on the table. I repeated myself. He looked at me and shook his head.

            “Everything he’s done was to save you, Garrett. If you don’t go, it will all have been for nothing.”

            He had a radio on his belt. It squawked.

            “Greene, this is Bundy. Where’s that pack?”

            “On my way, sir. Major Akyron wanted a word.”

            “Is he still there?”

            “No, sir. I’m on my way now.”

            I shook my head, still whispering. “How does a corporal speak that way to a sergeant?”

            “There’s a lot you don’t understand,” He unlocked my handcuffs. “Get your gear and get out of here.”

            In that instant it occurred to me what I could do to help Grampa. Greene didn’t know which pack was Grampa’s, at least I hoped he didn’t. Of course, this could all be a trick of Digit’s to get me to do something foolish enough to justify whatever he had in mind for me. But he was militia. I was a convict. Militia didn’t need justification for their actions. Still, what Rheynstadt said about my sLOD boss was encouraging. Only one way to find out if I was right. Without saying anything more I picked up Grampa’s pack, opened the cell door, checked the passage, which was empty in both directions, and headed quickly to the left, undoing the crumpled wrapper.

            A couple of hundred meters down, the passage ended at a closed door. When I keyed the code, a red light flashed on the console and I thought for a moment that Greene had given me the wrong numbers. Then a recorded voice spoke through a speaker next to the keypad. “Warning: Reactor gas venting into service stairwell and power station access tunnel. Do not enter without proper protective equipment. Door will unlock in fifteen seconds.”

            Fifteen seconds, plenty of time for me to ponder if the message was Greene’s way of keeping the stairwell empty or a new problem for me to contend with. How do we make decisions in situations like this? Grampa’s teachings never included unnecessary risks. Knowing the score going in and being prepared as well as you could be were prerequisites for surviving in his world. Did I know the score? Greene said no one would be in the stairwell or the tunnel. He said I’d know why when I got there. Well, I was there, and there wasn’t anything but the verbal warning to make me believe I wouldn’t run across armed militia somewhere on the trip. Logically, that meant Greene was referring to the warning. Still, if this was a trap – I was out of time.

            The light on the panel turned orange. I pressed the door release and it opened out away from me with a hiss. Taking a lungful of air, I stepped through and found myself in a dimly lit space some three meters long with an identical door at the far end. Only when the first door closed and locked behind me did I realize what the space was, an airlock. Greene had sent me into an airlock without a pressure suit. He and Digit were probably having a good laugh about the appropriateness of their disposal of me, I thought, as I heard the release on the outer door and closed my eyes, listening to the hiss that would herald the arrival of the end of my sojurn on Freelife.

            An infinity of seconds passed as I waited to feel the agony of my blood gases releasing while my body briefly ballooned before collapsing into a lifeless sack of blood and ruptured tissues. Nothing happened. I opened my eyes only when I could hold my breath no longer. Exhaling and taking in another lungful of air, I saw a black metal landing with stairs leading both up and down from it. The air was stale, damp, and tainted with mildew. Just like one would find in a natural cavern. “Not my day to die, I guess,” I said aloud as I stepped onto the landing, throwing Grampa’s pack over my shoulder and heading down.

            There were dim green lights at the top of each flight, but the service shaft walls, other than the one the stairway was mounted to, were too distant to be seen. I counted flights as I descended, for a while at least. Lost count somewhere around thirty and gave up when it occurred to me that Digit would do this very thing. I wasn’t going back up, so no need to know how far I’d gone. Just get to the bottom and head straight. Five clicks. It felt like light years and I hadn’t even reached the bottom of the stairwell.

            As the flights continued, one after the other in a long procession of silence but for the sound of my footsteps on the metal steps, I had time to think about all that had happened. Greene’s remark about all Grampa had done being part of saving me took over the top tier of my reasoning. All Grampa had done implied something more than showing up at just the right moment to drag me away from an explosion. Grampa had mentioned that much had changed on the outside during the decade I’d been erased. Had he learned something of me somehow? Something that suggested I was in danger? How had he gotten to Freelife, what crime was he capable of that would lead to the ultimate sentence? There are no answers, I thought. Freelife is such a closed system that nothing was verifiable unless you experienced it firsthand.

            I reached a landing and stopped. There were no lights to indicate the top or bottom of the next flight. I felt out into the space where a step ought to be with my foot but encountered only empty air as far as I could extend my leg. Looking up, I could see the dim glow of green light from the previous flights, extending as far above me as my vision allowed. I lay flat on my stomach and reached down with one arm. There was only empty space. It suddenly occurred to me that if this escape was a plan between Grampa and Greene, although I had trouble reasoning out when they might have planned it, I had done myself a grave disservice by taking Grampa’s pack instead of my climbing kit. Not only was I now stranded somewhere between the top and bottom of hell, but once Bundy realized the kit Greene took to him was the wrong one, he’d come looking for me. I guessed it wouldn’t take him long to figure out the ruse with the warning at the entrance to the service shaft. I might as well jump. I lay back against Grampa’s pack to think.

            Far above me I heard the sound of an airlock door hissing. I looked up to see a shaft of light briefly appear and a number of shadows with it. Then the light was extinguished and the airlock closed. Pressing my cheek to the rail, I felt the vibrations of many feet moving on the stairs. Whether they were going up or down I couldn’t yet tell, but I assumed the worst and began feeling around the platform for anything that might give me a clue as to how I could hide or escape. The answer, which I finally figured out, was in Grampa’s pack.

            He’s a miner! I opened the pack and dug into it. There were several articles of clothing, including the rag mask and keffiyeh, a folded sheet of paper, and a number of closed pockets. As I searched these I found the tube of yellow, the CARCINANO, several food bars, small containers that I couldn’t identify in the darkness, and a handheld LED torch. I flicked it on, directed the beam downwards. and discovered that I was on the last landing. Two meters below me, the pebble-strewn floor of what I could now see was not a shaft, but a natural cavern of indeterminate size, reflected the white torch beam. I turned the light off and listened. I could now hear movement above me, still some distance off, but definitely heading down.

            Hurriedly repacking Grampa’s gear, except for the torch, which I carried, and sweeping the landing with my hands to be sure I’d left nothing behind, I slipped the pack over my shoulders and leapt to the ground below. Straight ahead, Greene had told me, five clicks and someone would be waiting. I still had the wrapper from the ration bar crumpled in one hand, convict coveralls having no pockets, as I set out in the direction Greene had indicated.

            I kept close to the wall as I moved off and after I’d gone several hundred steps I paused. Shielding the light again, I flicked the LED off and on for just a moment. It was enough for me to see that I’d entered a broad tunnel, the roof of which was only three meters or so over my head. I turned to face the way I’d come from and listened for any sounds of pursuit. Being deaf in one ear made it difficult to pinpoint all but the nearest noise sources, and being in a cave and tunnel network, the acoustics made my hearing anything with accuracy almost impossible. Since I couldn’t rely on my hearing, I decided my best chance lay in getting to the power station as quickly as possible. I slipped the torch back in the pack, making it easier to keep a hand on the wall, and began to run.

            I wasn’t sure I’d even recognize the power station when I got to it. All the convicts knew that there were nuclear generating plants someplace on the planet to run the spaceport and essential services provided, but these were under militia control. It made sense to bury them, to protect them not just from sabotage but from the killing effects to men and machines of the solar storms from Freelife Zero, our temperamental red star.

            It felt as if the tunnel was curving in a gentle clockwise arch. The blackness was as absolute as ever, but I began to feel a slight warming in the air as I moved on. I hoped that didn’t mean the warning about reactor gas venting was true. As I progressed further I increased my pace. I was weaker than normal due to lack of food and the beatings I’d taken during SixKill, but years of hard labor and frequent rock climbing had given me a lot of endurance. Thinking that I now owed Grampa something, shuddering at the tortures he might be enduring under Bundy’s interrogation, motivated me to push hard to get someplace where it might all begin to seem worthwhile. So I hadn’t yet given up on everything, I thought. Damn you, Digit, vile, venomous villain. Had I heard that phrase from Grampa sometime in my youth?

            Without warning, the wall beside me abruptly ended and I had to stop and make my way slowly back, discovering it hadn’t ended, but made a ninety-degree-bend to the right, and the tunnel had narrowed to less than two meters width. Ten more steps and it bent again. Ten more and I hit a rock wall as the tunnel angled off left, and I could see a blue glow ahead, along with another turn. There were at least a dozen of these, alternating randomly from left to right, the blue light increasing as I passed around each corner until I came out into what appeared to be a round chamber, lit from high overhead by blue spotlights that cast an eerie glow over the silver dome of what was undoubtedly the reactor housing. The dome was at least twenty meters high and I imagined that the whole assembly went a hundred meters or more down into the floor of the chamber. There was no visible entry point so I began to work my way around the perimeter. As far as I could tell I was alone.

            When I came back around to the tunnel entrance, which appeared to be the only access to the chamber at this level, I leaned against the reactor dome, wondering if I dared get the LED out for a better look. A sound like automatic weapons followed by a loud detonation reached me from the tunnel. With the unpredictable acoustics of the cave and my afflicted hearing it might be far off or just a few meters away. After a few seconds, I decided to move back into the tunnel and see if I could hear better what might be happening. I’d just stepped out of the chamber when a figure came around the tunnel’s last corner and crashed into me, sending both of us tumbling back against the reactor dome. A floodlight from overhead lanced through the dark, blinding me completely. In the confusion, I dropped the ration bar wrapper.

            “Are you hungry, convict?” an amplified female voice asked from somewhere overhead. Shielding my eyes with one hand, I got to my feet, trying to spot the wrapper on the chamber floor. A strong kick swept my legs from under me. My attacker landed heavily on me, knocking my wind out. I smelled the coppery stink of Stims on his breath as he leaned very near to my face.

            “The lady asked if you was hungry, mate. I suggest you answer her.” The voice was familiar, in a creepy sort of way.

            Gasping for air, I managed to choke out a few words, “Dropped it when we…at least I think I…”

            “Be quiet. You aren’t supposed to talk, didn’t they tell you that.”

            “I dropped the…”

            “Enough.”

            He rolled off me, exposing my eyes to the intense beam of the floodlight. I tried to cover up, fighting to regain my breath. Like an insect caught in a killing jar, waiting for the fatal poisons to end my suffering, I lay pinned by the beam to the floor of the chamber. Blinking through pained tears, I made out the shape of a large man kneeling just inside the tunnel.

            “Here it is,” he said, waving the wrapper overhead. The floodlight went out and I felt his hands helping me up.

            “Sorry ‘bout that, mate. I’m not usually so careless, but after delaying those fellows back in the tunnel, I was a bit spooked. Come on then, we’ve got maybe a half of an hour to get up top and somehow make you blend in. What’s this now?” He had a hand on Grampa’s pack which hung from my left shoulder by a single strap, the second having broken in the collision between us.

            “Just my gear. I’ve got it.”

            “No, this is wrong. You’re the climber right?”

            “I…”

            “But this is a miner’s pack.” He ripped it from me, nearly dislocating my shoulder in the process.

            “He’s carrying a miner’s pack,” he shouted and an instant later the floodlight hit me again.

            “Kill him,” the amplified voice said.

            “No, wait! I’m the climber. I took the wrong pack. I had to, to help Gram…Amos. To help Amos.”

            The light held me for a moment and then swung to the far wall of the cavern.

            “If that’s true, you’ll live. But you have to prove you’re the climber,” the voice said, echoing in the vast space. “Climb that. There’s a catwalk about fifty meters up.  Make it there or die trying. Or we can end it right now.” I felt a shove from the back.

            “Well, mate, what’s it gonna be?” I felt the point of something sharp press against my throat just below my bad ear. I looked at the wall. It was perpendicular to the floor. No overhangs, no significant variation to the degree of the climb. Vertical striations of differing depths, but none greater than two or three centimeters ran in parallel lines on the face of it. Cut out by a huge rock boring drill, I could tell. It was the sort of climb that didn’t need a lot of skill, just strength, enough to wedge knuckles and fists and toes into purchase points, one after the other and up, up, up you go. I’d done hundreds of more difficult climbs, but never after so much physical punishment and a five click run. I could smell the sweat of my would-be-savior cum assassin mixing with the blood-like scent of the Stims. Without a weapon, I didn’t stand a chance of beating him in a fight. “Time to decide, mate,”

            “Like the lady said, I’ll climb or die trying.” I’d never taken a Stim before, but thought it might improve my odds of success. I asked for one. The man just laughed and told me to quit stalling. I tried another tack, “You said we’ve only got a half an hour to get out of here. I can’t climb that wall in less than an hour. But I can climb it.”

            He cursed before relaying my words to the woman overhead. There was a brief pause. I wondered if it was the last silence I’d ever know.

            “Check his right ear,” the voice commanded.

            The man grabbed me and twisted my head so savagely I thought it would come off in his hands. He dug at the yellow with a finger. It sounded like a jack hammer, amplified as the sound was by the nanos beyond the plug. It wasn’t coming out. Not yet anyhow.

            “It’s stoppered tight, feels like yellow,” he called out. Another pause, longer this time.

            “Bring him, alive.”

            I knew that many of the convicts who died in Freelife simply disappeared; their bodies discarded someplace where either decay or inaccessibility claimed them. I had to wonder if something like that awaited me before too many more minutes passed.

 

            If you exit the north side of Bernie’s, there’s a scorched hollow of ground, twenty meters across and three or four deep, on the right side of Lust/Violence Road, the narrow, broken concrete path that leads into the north quarter. During SixKill, the second year I was on the planet, a rookie militia officer had gotten into an argument with one of his comrades. No one knew what it was about, only that the two of them had been drinking together one minute and the next they were outside shoving one another and adding a whole new chapter of profanities to the language. A crowd gathered, both cons and militia closing the circle around the two, expecting a bloody fight, maybe even a full on brawl as the two soldiers seemed to each have their own band of supporters.

            The surge riot troops tend to let most disagreements between the militia drunkards work out without interference, but for some reason, perhaps a relationship between the squad leader and one of the combatants, a squad of six forced their way through the crowd. One of the riot squad stepped in between the fighters and they both turned their fury on him. Without anyone ever knowing which of the three was responsible, an anti-personnel grenade exploded right in the middle of the trio, killing almost a hundred, injuring dozens more, and creating the depression.

            Corpses of convicts who die on Freelife are usually loaded on the inter-system shuttles and jettisoned in the direction of Freelife Zero. It was the same disposition that softies experienced after dying on one of the seventy worlds. Sanitary, final, and inexpensive. We’re all just so much garbage anyway. “Star-ash we are, and to star-ash we return,” was one of Grampa’s sayings for comprehending the meaning of death in our godless, deterministic universe. After Rheynstadt heard what happened, he decided to create a memory for all of us. He ordered all the dead to be piled in the depression created by the grenade blast and burned, en masse. The fire didn’t go out for over two local days, two hundred and fifty hours of greasy, smoking stink that filled most of the town for months after.

            After the fire burned itself out, Rheynstadt ordered heavy transports to roll over the scorched remains, mostly bones, permanently scarring the place. Every year, at the end of SixKill, the bodies of all the convicts who die during the holiday are burned on that spot. Beyond it is the first ring of Violence Sector. A triangle bordered by Lust/Violence Road on the west and Violence/Anger on the east, this sector, like the other seven, has nine rings, each three-quarters of a kilometer thick, dividing it. A large map of the whole layout decorates a wall at the spaceport and smaller versions of that same map can be found throughout all of the sectors, posted on concrete pylons with faded circles and X’s marking the location within each sector to help both convicts and militia navigate the maze work of alleys and narrow avenues contained in each ring. When describing Leaveton to students in the softie worlds studying the sLOD justice system, the phrase “chaos within ordered design” applies most aptly to the network of byways within the rings. If one gets lost in any sector, it can be a very long ordeal finding the main roads again. Having my former cell on the road dividing two of the rings in Heresy was a great convenience. 

            The notable exceptions to the pylon mapping system are Lust and Violence sectors. No current maps of any accuracy exist because these areas, inhabited by the most vicious, violent, and dangerous of Freelife’s resident’s, are constantly shifting. Almost anything goes within those two wedges of iniquity, and despite not having explosives or firearms, the convicts are very creative in manufacturing mayhem and destruction by other means. Militia troops watch the perimeters, looking for masses of convicts exiting, but anyone is free to enter and almost every convict, at some time, ventures at least a short distance in to see just how deviant a human mind can become in the absence of significant rules of conduct. The one constant in Lust and Violence is the locations of the underground shelters. These are noted on all maps of Leaveton, being a necessity for survival of both cons and militia should Zero act up suddenly, sending a violent solar storm our way. Due to the star’s small size and cool temperature, the planet orbits a scant three light minutes from it. Satellites inside the planetary and asteroid orbits monitor activity on the star, sending warnings to all of the inhabited bodies in the system if a severe radioactive outburst occurs. We generally only have a couple of minutes, at best, to get to shelter.

            Anyone entering a sector is taught to know the nearest shelter entrance at all times during their orientation and during every visit to Leaveton. In ten years, I’d memorized pretty much every location and as unpleasant as it could be, made an annual trip to all of them, including those in Lust and Violence. It was one of the things the sLOD boss required of me, verifying that the structures remained intact and accessible. I kept track of my visits by scratching my initials on the face of the bottommost stair of each shelter. There were eight such markings on every shelter in Leaveton, my having completed the annual survey just a few days before SixKill.

 

            After the presence of yellow in my ear bought me at least a little more time to establish my identity to the disembodied female voice in the power plant, my escort led me to a narrow slot in the wall directly below the platform holding the floodlight. I could barely squeeze through, which is why I’d missed it during my quick walk around the perimeter. I had to hold Grampa’s pack, which had been returned to me, over my head as I entered the tight orifice.

            Beyond the slot, a metal ladder was bolted to the wall of an only slightly wider space.

            “Up you go, mate,” my companion said. Hanging the pack from my left shoulder I ascended, noting that the ladder seemed to be in a bad state of decay, bits of rust flaking off in my hand as I climbed, and more importantly, the whole structure groaning and shaking as if many of the bolts had worked loose over time. I gathered that the power plant required very little hands on maintenance and so was a relatively safe place for a conspiracy such as seemed to be unfolding around me to gather.

            The ladder reached to an equally neglected catwalk that circled halfway around the chamber. It was vacant, no floodlight or speaker system, and no one but my companion, who trailed just behind, encouraging me with shoves and curses. We entered another narrow opening at the far end of the catwalk, just about at the place where the aborted climb would have brought me. Through this slot, we climbed another ladder, much taller than the first but in no better shape. Small shards of rock fell on us from high above as we climbed which told me there were others ahead of us. I wanted to ask for some assurance that the ladder was sound enough to hold all of our weight, but decided that keeping my mouth closed would be prudent until we came into a space where I could see who I was working with.

            This was far too elaborate a scheme for any convict, even Grampa, to have organized. And Digit or Rheynstadt had no need to bother with something this complicated. Whoever had organized this escape had been expecting me to be taken for some time, recruited Grampa to their cause, and would reveal what they wanted me to know out of necessity and not sooner. My dreams of a quiet passage through my remaining years appeared to have ended.

Perhaps I’d find the answers to some of the questions plaguing me at the top of the ladder.

            We emerged through a square hole into what I immediately recognized as a shelter. The entrance into the power plant lay beneath a square stone that fit onto a tight-fitting plug which would keep the stone from echoing like a drum whenever anyone walked on it. There were two other people in the room, well off in a shadowy corner so that I could only make out the barest margins of their profiles. Instinctively, I looked to the wall opposite the stairwell leading to the surface. Every shelter had a plaque mounted high in that space declaring sector, ring, and location within the ring. The nearest shelter to my cell, the one where the two boy convicts had been found, was HER2W, for Heresy Sector, Second Ring, West Shelter. The plaque here read LUS3C. The center of the third ring of Lust. I tried to visualize the location but could only imagine the utter ruin that most of the sector lay in, comingled with the groans and screams of the inhabitants. Only that was all in my mind now. From the street above, I heard no sound but the whistling of wind across the opening to the stairwell. Then I remembered what Grampa said, about everyone being herded into the north quarter shelters. The quarter couldn’t hold all of them. But this one was empty. I looked at the stairs, wondering if I could run fast enough to get out before getting shot or worse.

            “Tell me your name,” a female voice asked, no longer amplified, but recognizable as the one from the power station chamber. I heard the sound of a rifle safety clicking off and changed my mind about getting out just yet.

            “Garrett Cold.”

            “Where are you from?”

            “Heresy, Second Ring, Cell above Ri…”

            “No, not that. Where are you from? What is your home world.”

            I turned from my inspection of the stairs and wall to face the woman. She remained in the shadows and I could see that my escort had joined her. I could also see the silhouette of a rifle held by the other man, the barrel gleaming in the dim, amber glow of the shelter. The powered lighting was out and only the scant rays of sunlight filtering through some obstacle at the top of the stairwell reached into the dusty chamber.

            “You need to answer her, mate. Freelife etiquette be damned. There’s a lot at stake here, including your grampappy’s life.”

            “I grew up on Thebes. I was born on Paris.” I felt nauseous, at the confession. The rational part of my mind knew it was ridiculous, the unwritten code of Freelife Seven that prohibited speaking of one’s origins, or one’s crimes. Why shouldn’t we say it aloud? It hurt to think of home, sure. But it wouldn’t kill us. Would it? I turned and held my hand to my mouth, my stomach cramping. I felt faint and a cold sweat covered my body.

            “Just one more question.”

            I took in several deep gulps of air and managed to not vomit. Standing to face the trio I waited.

            “Ask,” I said, trying to sound stronger than I felt.

            “Why are you here?”

            I knew exactly what she meant. Nothing so recent as the sLOD boss or the evasiveness of a broad answer such as crimes against humanity would do. She wanted me to cite the specifics of my criminal background. I opened my mouth and tried to speak. My stomach heaved and although there was little to nothing in it, I fell to my knees and vomited yellow bile, and then agonized in spasms for several long minutes. I closed my eyes and wailed in agony.

            “I’m sorry, Garrett Cold, but if you don’t answer fully we will kill you. And if you are not Garrett Cold, you are already dead. Try to answer.”

            In between spasms, I thought about the nonsensical statement Grampa had made in his first response to Digit’s question about the radio. Not as it related to his situation, but to mine. It suddenly made perfect sense to me. It was like a springboard, a key that would unlock whatever in my psyche was repressing the ability to answer her question. How I knew this I would not learn for some time yet.

            “Thus does conscience make cowards of us all,” I said in a voice that began as a whisper but grew stronger with every syllable. I repeated it, louder, and again, now shouting, rising to my feet and spreading my arms to turn a long, slow circle in the half-lit shelter. I felt as if I’d just awakened from a dream, one that had lasted a decade or more. “I was twenty-three. Restless, sick of living on Grampa’s perfect world, under his upbringing, having been tested against death a thousand different ways to prove I had Cold blood. Not that I didn’t care about him and vice versa but farming, raising buffalo, tending to windmills, growing vegetables, tending orchards, and listening to the old man go on and on about old things: books,  music, art, all that had been lost when humanity abandoned their original home – EARTH, that was its name, that was my life. Seeing him surrounded by people who worshipped him, not for who he was, but for what he had done. Hanging on every word of his adventure stories, they showed me what I lacked. I wanted an adventure, a life that was more than the shallow entertainments of the seventy worlds. I asked Grampa to finance me on a tour of the system. He refused. I begged him. He said my place was with him, that it was what my father would have wanted. He never even told me who my father and mother were, only that they were gone, dead, right after I was born. ‘Leave the past lie, boy,’ he’d say, every time I brought it up. He was a hypocrite in many ways.

            “So I determined to escape on my own. I began to talk to every spacer that came to Thebes, asking how one could get off-planet with no money. Join the militia, they said. So I tried. And they turned me down. No explanation; just looked at my application and sent me back to Grampa. He’d heard about it, of course. He had friends and acquaintances and people that owed him everywhere. ‘You belong here with me,’ he said. But he didn’t forbid me from continuing to try to find a way out. ‘You’re not a prisoner, but if you want to go, it will have to be by your own means.’ And I swore to find a way.”

            I paused, amazed at how freeing this talk was. As if I’d been wrapped in a cocoon and barely able to breathe, now able to spread my wings in open air. The pains in my stomach were gone.

            “You haven’t answered the question, Garrett Cold. We’re running short of time. Why are you here?”

            “I found a freighter that was looking for crew. They turned me down at first, wanted only experienced hands. I didn’t think to ask why they needed crew members. Most ships won’t leave port without a full compliment. When they found out afterwards that I was a climber they came looking for me. I passed a test, free climbing a thirty-meter-long, glass-lined hold for liquid-cargo.”

            “How?”

            “I used yellow. Formed it into hand and toe holds and slapped it on all the way up. Not only were they impressed, but they had me teach the whole lot how to do it. Turns out they were a smuggling and burglary operation, industrial contraband. They’d break into other ships and steal what they called high-margin targets. Nanotech related mostly. Really expensive stuff.

            “Anyhow, we hit a science ship, in orbit. Belonged to one of the sLOD corporations, I don’t even know which one. This was a different sort of cargo. Some chemical. They injected it into my bones. Hurt like hell, but it was the only way to get it out for a number of reasons. Only I had an allergic reaction. Every muscle in my body tensed in a wave, like being kicked through the backbone. The spasm threw me against a bulkhead, knocked me unconscious, and the next thing I knew I was on trial for every crime the smugglers ever committed, including ones that happened before they ever came to Thebes. These were really bad actors, the kind that the sLOD categorized as extreme-reactionary-anarchistic-servants-of-evil. The press made an acronym of it: ERASE. And that’s what happened to me, erased right off humanity’s roll.”

            “You need not answer this next question. We’re quite satisfied that you are Garrett Cold. But we’re curious about the contraband. It was removed from your bones?”

            “From the marrow, by a prison doctor using only local anesthesia. Most excruciating experience of my life. They had to get it out, not to save me, but because whatever it was couldn’t be duplicated. Something real special.” I hesitated before deciding to tell the rest of the story. I didn’t need them freaking out if I had another attack. “For ten years I thought I was done with all of it. Then just a few days ago, on SixKill actually, I had another spasm, not as severe as the one that got me caught, but I’ve had another since. I don’t understand it. But it makes me nervous. There’s no warning and no external cause that I can think of. It has to be some latent side effect.”

            “We may be able to help with that.”

            The woman stepped into the light, accompanied by two men. All wore militia uniforms. The first, who from his size I knew to be my escort, sent a tremor of recognition through me. He was the three-fingered private that had been with Bundy when he picked us up.

            ‘Good to see you again, Marshall. My name’s Cypher, Cypher Hegemon” he grinned at me, waving with his damaged hand.

            “But you know me. You had to know me. Why all this…”

            “Pipe down, mate. I know you’re the one brought in with Amos. But until you told us where you came from and why you were here, you could have been anyone. Trust is hard earned on this world. Harder still when working with convicts. Bugger me later for it, if you can, but believe me, someday you’ll be glad we’re this careful.”

            “Amos told me that everyone was brought to the north quarter at the end of SixKill. Where are they? It sounds deserted up there.”

            “You saw the transports when we brought you in, right?”

I nodded.

            “You’ll see the rest soon enough,” the woman said. “Amos told you the truth; he just didn’t know the whole of it. This operation is bigger than you can imagine, Garrett. For now, let’s finish our introductions,” she said turning to the second man.

            I might have seen him before, maybe at Bernie’s at the start of SixKill. He was about my height and weight. Had brown hair just starting to grey at the temples. He wore a sergeant’s stripes and carried a nasty looking automatic rifle that he lowered as soon as my eyes rested on it.

            “Alta Chevron. Call me Chevy,” he said. His voice had a drill instructor’s resonance.”

            “And I’m Cassandra Caggonar. Cassandra, never Cassie,” the woman said. She was thick bodied, with dark hair pulled back in a short ponytail. No makeup, but she had big eyes, long lashes, a broad nose, and heavy lips that were too dark for her pale complexion. Not pretty, but striking in a powerful way. She wore the insignia of a lieutenant.

            “Caggonar,” I said, my voice betraying the question in my mind.

            She smiled without showing her teeth.

            “Rural Caggonar was my grandfather. Of course I grew up knowing none of the history. He’d been sent to Freelife was all my father ever told me. I suppose it was all he knew. Rural Caggonar, the man who caused SixKill, the original one. It happened two years before I was born. I joined the militia at eighteen and learned the whole story on my first tour. I’ve been trying to get billeted here ever since; of course they denied me every time.”

            “But you’re here now.”

            “Yeah, lots of folks are here now who never thought they would be.”

            The granddaughter of the gangster who led the takeover on Freelife Six was a militia lieutenant. And she wanted to be here. That took a minute to get past my bullshit detectors. Still, I was out of the belly of the beast and in a place that for the moment seemed a haven. I waited for her to explain further. She didn’t.

            “Why am I here?” I asked, and for the first time, I was asking it of another person, one who might be able to give me an answer.

            “Amos was supposed to tell you at the first opportunity. I guess that didn’t happen.”

            “He started to. I cut him off. You don’t talk about matters outside the system, not if you’re a con.”

            “You just did, told us more than we needed to hear actually,” Cypher said. “And a good thing, eh, mate.”

            Cassandra spoke up, “We have to move out of here real soon, Garrett. But here’s the short version.” While she talked, Cypher and Chevy brought out two equipment bags from the corner nearest them. They began to unpack a few articles as I listened to a story that I found almost impossible to believe.

            “The sLOD have been planning to disband the militia for decades now. No wars in a hundred years, at least nothing that threatened the seventy planets or the sLOD governance on a meaningful scale made it uneconomical to keep a standing army, or so they told us. Local skirmishes are generally handled by local police forces. As you might guess, this decision, dismantling the standing armies, made purely for economic reasons, riled the top brass.” She paused to take a sip from a canteen Cypher offered her before passing it to me. I sniffed it and took a long drink. Grey water. I tried to hand the canteen back. She looked at it and told me to keep it, then continued with her story.

            “About two Standard Years ago, the plan was announced and immediately after the actual work began. Those generals who most opposed the decision were given very lucrative retirements and everyone from the top down got something that made it worthwhile, at least from a materialist view, to go along with the operation. All of the assault ships and most of the defensive ones were mothballed as each unit disbanded and went home. Things happened fast once the program got underway. The sLOD, as you well know, are masters of PR, and they got the media behind them on this so that what had started as a radical idea suddenly became a mandate of the people. Can you imagine that? All seventy worlds signed a petition demanding that the sLOD get this done right now.

            “Of course, this was exactly what the sLOD were after. As the sLOD like to say, the will of the people prevailed. The only remaining active militia unit is the garrison here. This is a bit more complicated. The sLOD have something in mind for all of you but until they are ready to enact it, the militia stay. Rheynstadt is the last commanding officer. And he is not happy at what the sLOD want to do with his base.”

            I nodded my understanding, at the same time wondering what would happen to the cons, myself included, if the militia pulled out. “The seventy-one generation thing.”

            “Exactly, and he’s not taking it lying down.” She paused, as if she wanted to say something but decided against it.

            “What’s he doing?” I asked.

            “You’ll see soon enough. I will tell you this: there are some of us who don’t agree with his methods, among other things. Outright mutiny would be fatal, I promise, but there is a large, covert action underway to keep him from achieving his number one objective. You have a part to play in that, as does Amos.”

“What is his objective?”

“He wants to start a large scale war, and in so doing, force the sLOD to reinstate the militia permanently.”

“And Grampa’s and my part?”

“To stop him.”

“How?”

“I’m a small cog in this wheel Garrett, but even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. You’ll be told when the time comes. For now, I need you to trust me when I say that being with us is the only chance you’ve got of coming out alive, or of saving Amos. Come over here so Cypher can get you ready to go topside with us. You said you wanted to be in the militia but Amos stopped you, right?”

             I looked at the things that had been unpacked and my eyes must have given away my doubts. Things, information, all happening so fast. “That was a long time…”

            “Look, Garrett,” Cassandra came over and took me by the hand, leading me to where Cypher stood holding a battery powered razor. “If you go topside as a convict you won’t like what happens next. You need to look and act like a militia private. That means you take every order I give you without question. You call me Sir and you salute anyone who outranks you as soon as you make eye contact. Hopefully that won’t happen often, but if it does, you need to get it right or you won’t last an hour. Understand?”

            “No, but I’m trying to.”

            While Cypher shaved me and cut my hair, Cassandra explained the rest – my new name, a bit of fictitious personal history, where our unit was billeted in the garrison, always emphasizing that I should speak only when spoken to and avoid conversation with anyone outside of the squad as much as possible. I stood unresisting with my mouth open through most of it, shaking my head and always, always wondering how Grampa and I had gotten so far into this soup of sLOD and militia scheming. The fact that the sLOD had betrayed the group that put them in power and gotten away with it was the hardest part of believing any of what Cassandra told me.

                 Chevy had laid out a private’s uniform. It was brand new, still folded when he took it out of the pack, the colors bright as if the fabric had been fresh woven the same day. Cassandra looked at it and then at him.

            “Chevy, how exactly are we going to pass this guy off as part of our unit in that?”

            He looked at the worn and faded fatigues the three of them were wearing and shook his head. At that moment I remembered fumbling around with the contents of Grampa’s pack.

            “Was Amos supposed to get me out? Originally I mean, before we got caught?”

            “Both of you,” Cassandra said. “Why?”

            I grabbed up Grampa’s pack and dumped it on the floor of the shelter. There were two well-used sets of militia fatigues along with the folded paper and the LED torch. Everything else was sealed in pockets.

            “He put me in a convict coverall first, probably to bring me to the north quarter. There, we’d change into the fatigues, am I getting this right?”

            Cassandra nodded her agreement with my theory. Chevy held up the used uniforms and tossed me the smaller of the pair. I picked up the paper and unfolded it. It was a detailed map of the whole north quarter. I showed it to Cassandra. It was hand drawn, no doubt by Grampa. His precise lettering and even lines had always impressed me as a kid.

            “I gotta hand it to you, Garrett. You come from good stock.” Cassandra showed the map to the others who nodded in agreement. “Let’s have a look at you.”

            I was curious to see myself as well, clean shaven with a high-tight haircut, wearing a uniform. Of course, no one had a mirror. Still, from the head nods, I realized I might be able to get on a shuttle and leave the system in this. I’d need some of LT Lasserhagen’s magic with document forgery to pull it off, but it seemed a lot more possible now than at any other time of my Freelife confinement.

            “I look too old to be a private.”

            “You’d be surprised how old some of the privates are these days, Garrett. And besides, with the haircut and shave you look a lot younger than you might imagine.” This time, Cassandra showed her teeth when she smiled.

            They spent a few minutes teaching me to salute, stand at attention, and ran me through a quick check of my understanding of the insignia designating the various ranks. When I passed that test, Cassandra, who I was now instructed to refer to as LT, nothing else unless we were alone and she told me it was safe, took a sidearm and holster out of one of the packs.

            “It’s not loaded, so don’t even think of drawing it,” she said.

            “Why bother having it at all,” I asked. She didn’t answer, just drew out a truncheon and watched as I strapped it to my shin.

            “Use that if you find yourself in a combat situation. But only if I order you to, got it?”

            “Yes, sir!” I said, snapping what I thought was a smart salute.

            “Don’t get cute with me private. I can’t bust your ass any lower than the puke rank you have now, but I can sure make your life hell.”

            “Speaking of puke,” I said, “When you were, ah, verifying my identity, I felt really sick. Do you have any idea why?”

            “All convicts are given drug-enhanced hypno-therapy on the way to the system. It’s very crude, but very effective, if you survive it. Of course you don’t remember it, that’s part of the treatment. The sLOD and the militia don’t want any of them talking about who they were or what they did. If you could talk freely about it, there’s a good chance that real trust combined with a desire to return home would emerge out of it. We’d have riots all the time here. Bad for sLOD business interests.”

            “But I did talk about it.”

            “And a good thing. There are a few who can overcome the programming. I don’t understand why and I don’t have time to continue discussing it. But I’m told it feels good, really fine, to be able to break free of it. Your grandfather managed to fool them. He never succumbed to it at all.”

            I nodded, thinking of Grampa’s nonsense phrase, and how it now made more sense than ever. I thought briefly of Ella Cantor. Had she also overcome or never fell prey to the hypno-protocol?

            “Let’s move out,” Cassandra ordered. “Chevy, you’re point man. Me next, Garrett stay close on my left shoulder. Your right ear is the good one, correct?” I affirmed it. “Cypher…”

            “I know, clean this up and catch up on the double.”

            I bent to pick up Grampa’s pack.

            “Leave it lay, private,” Cassandra said. “There’s nothing left in there you need.”

            I thought about arguing that yellow and CARCINANO were both handy things to have, and the ration bars. I had no idea what was in the other jars and bottles in the pockets. But she’d given an order, and there were bullets in her sidearm, I had no doubt about that.

            Cypher had the map. The LT held out her hand. He gave it to her.

            “Put that in your inside pocket, private,” she said. I complied.

            “Sir, permission to ask a question.”

            “It better be important.”

            “How do I prove I’m who I say I am, Private…”

            Chevy pulled something from a pocket and tossed it to me. Dog tags.

            “Private Parvenu, Edmund Parvenu. From Paris, not Thebes,” he said. “Remember it.

            “We need to check in at the garrison in just over an hour. Once we get out of this quarter, we’ll go through all of the details of things you might be asked about,” Cassandra said.

            I repeated my new name name silently to myself thirty-nine times, once for each step up out of the shelter and onto the street. Paris was a world much like Thebes. Grampa had terraformed it too. I could fake being from there easy enough, unless the questioning got too personal.

            Cassandra grabbed me by the elbow just before we stepped into the windswept daylight. “Somebody might ask your squad affiliation; it’s Liberty Keepers. Got it?”

            “Liberty Keepers. Yes, sir.”

            “All right, move out.”

            We’d barely started when I heard a muffled explosion from behind. We all turned to see Cypher running toward us as a cloud of white smoke emerged from the stairwell, disappearing almost as quickly as it reached the open air.

            Magnesium bomb, I thought, mixed with some other element. The superhot flash incinerates anything within range but does very little structural damage and no fire afterwards. Not enough oxygen left after the blast. Very neat. Cypher was good, maybe good enough to have booby-trapped my cell. I’d no sooner had the thought then the plug of yellow fell out of my ear and onto the ground.

            When I turned back around, only a sharp order from Cassandra to get ready for a fight kept me from shouting. To my surprise, my hearing was perfect, in both ears. I heard her order clearly even though she’d moved to my left side, drawing her sidearm. The bigger surprise was the hundred plus convicts, carrying a variety of sharp or heavy implements, walking, shuffling, and dragging their wounded, emaciated bodies toward us.