Garrett Cold and the Liberty Keepers, Chapter Six -- The Arena

In the preceding chapter, following his escape from the garrison, Garrett Cold's rescuers persuade him to pose as a militia officer. After a skirmish with a group of North Quarter convicts, one of the militia squad turns on his fellow, nearly killing Garrett in the process. After the strange power within him saves Garrett and destroys the murderous militia man, Garrett, barely conscious, cradles the wounded LT, Cassandra Caggonar, in his arms and blacks out.

 

 Garrett Cold and the Liberty Keepers

Chapter Six – The Arena

            Grampa swears the dead don’t dream. I believe he is wrong. I believe death is a place of nothing but dreams. Absent the confines of a frail and desperately needy body, the self that looks through the lens of our consciousness lifts off, soaring, to the realms beyond life. From time to time it may return to visit the living.

The events on Freelife after Grampa’s arrival opened the doors of doubt for me, allowing me to see his teachings in a new light. Not as absolute truths, but the best he could do in the moment. I still hoped that his actions of late had my welfare in mind, but I had come to see him as something less than infallible. And as far as the dream thing goes, “Come into my world, Parvenu,” that’s what Cypher said to me after I curled around Cassie and passed out.

I lay immobilized by strong cords tied to the side rails of a hard table or platform. My injured leg still throbbed but in the murky light I couldn’t see any bleeding. Cypher emerged out of a colorless, odorless mist and stood to my left so I had to turn my head to see him.

            He was dead by my hand, and he must know that, returned to haunt me before I made my final exit from this bright stage. His head lolled to the right, the knife having been removed, and after it severed all of the supporting structure on the left side of his neck. As he spoke to me in the shadows of the dream, I saw in the milk-white hue of his unblinking eyes that his sight had departed with his life. We were two, together, continuing our shared nightmare.

“You’ve made a mess of things, you know,” he chastised me, shaking a bloodstained finger. “You were supposed to die. All their plans and ambition are turned to dross. Life will never be the same. You will never be the same.” He laughed. He chewed his nails; something I’d not noticed when he was alive. The quick was exposed and covered in bloody scabs on nearly every finger.

            “What do you want with me, Cypher? Can’t it wait? I feel like I’ll be with you soon enough.”

            He opened his mouth to answer, but all that came out was a fresh surge of black blood, which he tried to catch by cupping his hands. It ran between his fingers and he fell to his knees, sucking the spill from the ground between us. In a moment he sat up and wiped his mouth. His skin was white, his lips red, as were the rims of his eyes. With his right hand he propped his head upright and cleared his throat a number of times before attempting to speak again. The voice that I heard was like water plunging over a fall, a rushing sound punctuated by the splash of small drops and muffled by mist. Each utterance cost him dearly a reflected in the crimson tears that streamed down his face. He spoke slowly, each word seeming to stick in his throat before tearing loose with a sound like sandpaper on raw wood. His chest was still. It seemed that the air came in through the gaping hole in the side of his neck, swelling his throat until it forced out the next word, like certain species of giant frogs in the swamps of Thebes. Whoever pulled the dagger out hadn’t been particularly careful and the barbed edges had torn away the flesh which hung in pink, red, white, and purple ribbons around the wound.

            “Dominicus said I should be careful with you. That you were enhanced, favored. I laughed at him. I wanted to kill you in the tunnel. You know that, right? But Cassie, that bitch, wouldn’t let me.” He made a horrible face when he said her name, his tongue, which had been cut halfway through on the underside, flopped out of his mouth and it took both hands for him to push it back in.

            “Enhanced how?”

            “Something about the thing you stole on Thebes.”

            “It wasn’t on Thebes, it was on…”

            He covered his ears with both hands and shook his head.

            “It was Thebes. I’m not talking about the compound from the lab on Cronus. That was all removed. You remember that pain, but that isn’t what I’m talking about.”

            I did remember. They’d taken out most of my bone marrow and replaced it with a cultured substitute. There was an ethical debate in the press about whether or not they should have let me die. It would have been cheaper, I think, to have done so. Let me die and then strip the stolen compound I’d been injected with from my corpse. No need for an expensive marrow replacement procedure. Ultimately, the need to prove what I’d taken and then let me stand trial with irrefutable evidence outweighed the economic considerations. The sLOD needed to set an example for other would be smugglers, saboteurs, and industrial thieves. And it was ultimately an economic decision, as are all sLOD rulings in such manners. The only way they could disband the militia, who I now, and for the first time, saw as the only check on their seizing unlimited power, was to orchestrate a society of peace and reasonable prosperity. Bread and circuses, indeed. Who was I sympathetic to in all of this?

            “I didn’t steal anything from Thebes.”

            He tried to smile but the left side of his face had sagged so that it looked as if the skin might slip all the way down his neck to his shoulder.

            “Perhaps you don’t remember it because someone drugged or hypnotized you. We all know how susceptible you are to that. You went under on the jump to Freelife, remember. They made it so you couldn’t even speak the name of your home, so you couldn’t confess your crime. They muzzled you for ten years. Cassie, that bitch, she wasn’t lying about any of that.” He caught his tongue before it slipped out again as he spat Cassie’s name.

            “Maybe so, but I’m free of that now. Thebes, Thebes, Thebes. I speak the name of my home as easily as I do yours, you murdering Judas. I named my crime. And I’ve gained a lot of perspective. I see my entire life in retrospect. My whole life on Thebes was spent working or studying. Amos saw to that. I didn’t have any opportunity to steal.”

            “Such passion becomes a martyr, not a hero, Parvenu. But who are you, really? Think again, Garrett Cold. Think back to the day you climbed the cliff above the creek. Amos wanted to divert the flow. You were sent to set charges in the rock face above. What happened there?”

            I knew the incident he referred to. I’d recalled it as I hung from the ledge during Ella Cantor’s landing and escape. There had been a cougar. Grampa might have killed me with his rock-throwing.

Cypher had moved very close, standing now beside where I lay. His bent so his face nearly touched mine. I could smell the stink of his bowels where they’d released in death. I tried to push him away but he grabbed me all the same, his head falling sideways again as his hands gripped my shoulders, lifting me as if I were a stuffed toy so that our eyes were on the same level.

            “Let me go.” I had to remind myself this was a dream. I was powerless to move and he shook me like an angry child shakes a doll or a puppy.         

            “Or what? You’ll kill me?” he laughed. “I might enjoy watching you try.”

            “What do you want?”

            “How did you escape the cougar?”

            I stopped to think about that. I’d climbed nearly to the top when the big cat appeared. Yellow eyes and a long tail with a black tip twitching in the brilliant sunlit afternoon. I could hear the squeak of a bad bearing on a windmill not far from the creek, probably the next project Grampa had in mind for me, and smell rich moss on the rocks in the stream bed below. Grampa was hollering and throwing rocks at me, or the cougar, it was hard to say for sure which. I had twelve cylinders of BLAST strapped to my back. The cougar was waiting above on the ledge. The cat was hungry, anxious, and pacing, staring hard at me so I had to avert my eyes, or else fall from the dizziness induced by the big cat’s motion.

            “I don’t remember.”

            “Don’t you?”

            I struggled to excavate the events of that day.

            “I threw a canister of BLAST at it. Grampa said it would kill me and the cat, but he was wrong.”

            “Hanging by your fingertips after free climbing a cliff, carrying volatile, homemade explosives, you had the savvy to reach over your shoulder, pull just the right cylinder from your pack and throw it. And everything turned out fine. That’s the stuff of heroes.”

            “I was lucky.”

            “Like a scythe sweeping the air is lucky when it mows a swathe. If that’s what really happened.” His words came easier now, as if he were breathing again. The dream world grew clearer the longer he talked. There were shapes in the distance, the mist fading and silhouettes of buildings replacing it, and sounds too, the screech of falcons, the drone and hum of many voices murmuring. “You picked the only cylinder with a horizontal directional charge. Only a boy and yet you had the presence of mind to do that. Threw it on the ledge in exactly the right place with one hand while hanging from an almost sheer rock face with the other, that’s what you think happened.” The air whistled out the hole in his neck as he finished the sentence. He let go of my shoulders and looked behind him, turning his body so his back was to me. “The blast didn’t kill the cougar. It just knocked it off the ledge, right on top of you.”

            “It bounced off of me and fell to the creek bed. It must have been unconscious. The fall killed it, shattered its skull.”

            “And what did you do next?”

            “Climbed to the top and set the remaining charges, then climbed down and detonated them. A third of that cliff came down. Buried the cougar and rerouted the creek perfectly despite the missing charge. It was a good morning’s work.”

            “So you say.” He turned toward me, holding his head with both hands now. His face was turning dark, or perhaps the light had shifted, casting a shadow. “Is it like Amos to send you up there with more blast than you needed?”

            “I was there. It was a very good morning’s work.” All through this encounter I struggled to free some part of my body. Prickly heat and a sense of ten thousand needles prodding me from the inside slowly replaced the numbness of my limbs.

            “At least that’s how you remember it. Still, Amos wasting blast, doesn’t make much sense to me. But, like you said, I wasn’t there.”

            I had a terrible itch on the top of my head. The numbness in my limbs was passing.         “You stole something that day. And what you stole became the power within you that has kept you safe. That’s the power that allowed you to kill me and the Sarconian.”

            “The Sarconian?” Just then I noticed the red-haired convict, the same one who’d shoved six feet of sharpened rebar through a rammed earth wall, disabling and probably killing Cassie, emerging from the shadows behind Cypher. I’d nearly torn his head off with my bare hands, but here he stood, the angry welts of his burn scars covering a whole side of his body. His head and neck seemed intact, which given Cypher’s condition I couldn’t really understand. It seemed that the wounds one received in life didn’t always follow into death. “You’re the Sarconian?”

            “He doesn’t speak. Before Rheynstadt set him on fire, his tongue was removed.”

            “And I broke his neck. But there’s no sign of that …”

            “It’s because the universe never gives us more pain than we can handle, even in our dreams, even in death.”

            “What?”

            “Just think about it.” He seemed to sense something or someone behind me as he turned abruptly, using his hand to tilt his an ear in that direction. “We’ll talk again,” he said, giving me a reassuring tap on the chest with a bloody finger. It felt like an iron rod.

            I was about to ask him for more details about the power, as he called it, when I heard a sharp crack near my head, and a scent like boiling ammonia briefly filled my nostrils. My eyes opened and I discovered that I was both alive and awake. Cypher would have to tell me the rest of his dream later.

            “Thee wake’d, Gee Cold. Thoughts had I that thee mightn’t live.”

            “Tohoana?” I saw the smashed face of Bernie’s renegade server looking down at me. I was in a low-ceilinged room, lit by candle lanterns placed on the floor near the walls. Among the flickering shadows, the smell of tallow mixed with distant shouts in air that felt like wetted felt. The convicts in the north quarter rendered the fat of their dead to make subterranean light for the many areas where power generation had ceased or never existed. Probably just as well that the candles stank so much. I was lying on a naked mattress, one that I guessed hadn’t ever been cleaned. The smell of urine and feces, always strong in the north quarter, occasionally reached my nostrils from directly beneath me in the smoky room. The injury to my leg burned as if a hot poker were being pressed against it. Through gritted teeth I asked, “Where am I?”

            “Safe, Gee Cold. Thankee no me for that. Was Dockrill Castello brought you this respite. Thou and the broken LT. Say true, Gee Cole. Hast thee gone to militia?” She had a wry smile on her face, hard for most to see in the chaos of her ruined features, but I’d known her well and for a long time. I tried to sit up and found my arms restrained, just as they were in the dream. “Stay safe, Gee Cold. Rise not yet. There be many among those left that would see thee dead and flagged as Tiny was.”

            “I didn’t kill Tiny, Tohoana. You were there, you know the truth.”

            She nodded and fingered the fabric of my uniform without looking at my face.

            “Militia mans did that foulness. Those that are dressed as such. And shaved, too, thou are like them, as if truth be not what you speak.”

            I had a moment of nausea and swallowed several times before it passed. My limbs felt like rubber, as if the skeleton beneath the flesh had dissolved and the muscles turned to jelly. I coughed and stabbing pains in my ribs reminded me of the additional damage my body had recently endured. “I’m just doing what I have to, Tohoana. Trying to stay alive.”

            She ran her hand over my scalp. Her palm was cool and I relaxed a bit, staring up at the stained ceiling. “Well that thee should live, Gee Cole. Well for all to live.”

            “Where are we?” I asked.

            “Dockrill Castello brings thee here. He comes when rest has restored thee. Here is nourishment.”

            She fed me a cup of tepid broth, spooning small mouthfuls one after the other until I choked on it. Nearly all the food on Freelife was freeze-dried or dehydrated. Mixing it with grey water and heat released weak flavors, but it was nutritious, able to keep miners alive and strong for years if they avoided accidents. Her eyes never once met mine.

Convicts like Tohoana, those with special talents, managed to form tenuous relationships with cargo ship captains who smuggled in small quantities of herbs and dried medicinal plants from the softie worlds. I could tell from the taste of the broth that it contained something other than protein and chicken flavoring. I hesitated, sniffing at the mug, but Tohoana encouraged me to drink it all.

            “Thee needs strength for the trials to come, Gee Cole.”

            “What trials?” She didn’t answer so I had a moment to think. “What about Cassie? The LT…”

            “Broken. But Dockrill Castello sees to that one also. Thou and she belong to Dockrill Castello now.”

            “Belong to Dockrill, is that what you said? Is Dockrill now a sLOD?”

            She didn’t answer.

            I choked down the last of the broth which had a strong flavor of mint beneath the food stuff. Dockrill Castello existed only as a rumor for most on Freelife. Militia and convicts used his name as an oath and a curse. Said to be the longest lived resident of the system, he was proprietor of the arena, holding it through an ever-shifting population of violent, ambitious men and women. The reputation of the North Quarter as the place where pleasure and pain both reached their peak ran parallel with Castello’s presence. Yet he was never seen, at least not by anyone outside of his inner circle. Because his presence served as the only consistent stabilizing force in the north quarter, the militia seemed to leave him alone. Or perhaps they’d tried to root him out and failed. If an ancient convict could keep the maddest of the inmates contained to one quarter of Leaveton and that quarter served to channel away much of the aggression of a million others, then allowing him to run the arena without condoning his actions seemed a reasonable compromise. And Dockrill knew the limitations. He never tried to exercise his power outside of the North Quarter.

            Tohoana stood as if to leave. I called to her, hearing the creak of the cords holding me as I strained to reach out. “What do thee want, Gee Cold?” She put a hand on my chest and looked at my face so that I saw into her eyes for the first time. What I saw there sent a chill down my back.

            “Tohoana, I wanted to ask…” My voice trailed off. What did I want to ask her?

“Go on, Gee Cole, ask all thou likes. Meets knowing comes free for Dockrill Castello’s man..”

“Dockrill, yes, Dockrill Castello. I’ve never seen him. Yet you say he brought me in. Why?”

            “Dockrill Castello do no tell the meaning of his works. Thou and I both confounded by such, though it be long confirmed in here.” She tapped her forehead and then mine. “He asks when Gee Cold be strengthened for trial. I tell him soon. Sleep now, Gee Cold.” She pressed a callused finger to my sweating upper lip before leaving, closing the door of the room behind her. I heard the dropping of a bar and the latching of a shackle lock.

            I wanted to get up and explore this new cell, but a sense of sudden heaviness filled me as the drugs in the broth took effect. I wondered if Cypher would be waiting as I passed out of consciousness. He wasn’t. Tohoana had provided me with that which I most needed, deep, dreamless sleep.

            When I next awoke, I felt ready to wrestle a cougar.

 

            Bradna Cucrow served as Dockrill Castello’s right-hand and mouthpiece to the residents and visitors of Freelife Seven. A man in his fifty’s with a typical middle-aged paunch and elaborately coiffed silver hair, he had an affinity for good music, young men dressed as women, and the logistical challenges of running the arena. Unlike his reclusive master, Bradna’s face and stentorian voice were known to nearly all of the planet’s permanent residents and many of the miners. He often rode the transport buses from the spaceport to Bernie’s or would be waiting in the circular clearing outside the tavern when the miners arrived for their holidays, generally accompanied by a half-dozen young men and women, the most attractive that the north quarter had to offer, giving his well-rehearsed and enticingly erotic pitch to visit Dockrill’s arena, “There to witness the most exquisite debaucheries, debasements, and defilements that lovely Seven has to offer. Deflowering of virgins, devouring of body wastes, and a special performance at sunset in the main ring, a piece Dockrill calls convict justice.” It was this resonant appeal that had drawn me onto the flatbed cart, drawn by a team of twenty-four naked men wearing hand-made horse head helmets and fitted with plumed anal plugs in a rainbow of colors. This was the first act in a burlesque theatrical adventure that few could resist looking in on at least once.

            When I awoke and hollered for Tohoana to cut me loose, it was Bradna Cucrow who unlocked the door to the cell where I was being held.

            “Feeling better, I see, Marshall Cold, or do we call you Private Parvenu now?” he said as he stepped into the room, stopping just over an arm’s length away from the cot to which I was bound.

            Cucrow’s presence confirmed for me where I was. The arena. I hadn’t been here in nearly five years. The fact that the number two man was personally taking an interest in me showed that the occasion was an important one.

            “Bradna, why am I tied up?” I’d been struggling with the stout braided cords ever since awaking. Whoever had tied the knots knew what they were doing and I’d made no progress in securing my release.

            “I really do apologize for that, Private Marshall,” he said with a slight titter. “Dockrill said you appeared to be having some sort of identity crisis and he thought it best we keep you restrained until that sorts itself out. It’s a shame, really, but there you are, although I must admit, you look very delicious all trussed up like that. Lean and fit as ever. I’m jealous.” He eyed me in a way that would have caused Corporal Bundy to shoot him. Not that I wanted Corporal Bundy anywhere near me.

            “Listen you old queen, I’ve done nothing but try and help all of you for as long as I’ve been on-world. The LT I was with was trying to help too. Rheynstadt has gone off the deep end and the convicts are getting even worse treatment than usual from the militia…”

            “And yet you,” Bradna said, looking me over from head to toe, “are dressed exactly like the militia.” He extended all of the consonants when he said the word militia so that I could hear how distasteful he found them. “Right down to the dogtags, or so I’m told. How do you account for that? Dockrill is most anxious to hear what you have to say on the matter.”

            “Then untie me and let’s go see him.”

            He shook his head, his mouth set in a tight-lipped smile that conveyed both sympathy and amusement at my suggestion.

            “One doesn’t just go see Dockrill, Marshall Cold. Besides, Dockrill is the one who carried you in here. It’s not his fault that you were unconscious at the time. I believe you’ll find that he saved your life.”

            “And the LT?”

            “Ah yes, the LT, Cassandra, right? I wouldn’t fret about her. You see, she’s the daughter of an old and dead friend of Dockrill’s. I suspect she’ll be given the best care we’re capable of here. Our resources, always skimpy, have become even more limited. But then again, you militia know all about that, don’t you?” All the time he spoke he circled me, looking at my legs, my arms, occasionally reaching out as if to touch me but stopping just short of actual contact.

            I had no idea what he thought I knew, but I’d never convince him or Dockrill of anything so long as I wore a uniform. Bradna wore a uniform of sorts as well. As de facto host and master of ceremonies of the arena shows, he had made significant modifications to his standard issue prison coveralls. Nearly every square centimeter of the fabric was covered with hammered metal buttons. Gleaming disks the size of a thumbnail had been meticulously crafted and sewn on individually with such painstaking exactness that instead of looking supremely tacky, the suit appeared to be a gleaming serpent, his multi-colored scales reflecting as a million drops in the candlelit room and giving off a soft chatter of solidarity whenever he moved. He also wore a large black cod-piece with a serpent’s head painted on it. I’d often wondered if Bradna had more than one such outfit. Like many north quarter inmates, Bradna rubbed aromatic spices on his body to hide the unpleasant odors that were the natural consequence of his decrepit lifestyle, making it difficult to know if either he or his clothes were clean. Still, the suit I saw a meter and a half away from me looked brand new.

            “You like this?” He touched his hair, running his hands from it down the front of the garment. “I know a tailor or two. Certainly would be happy to recommend one should you decide to shed the rather shabby attire you’ve adopted.”

            “I’m sure Tohoana told you, but in case you were too busy preening to hear her, I’m wearing this because it was a way to survive. Militia mined every avenue out of the quarter. You know we’re all trapped, right?”

            “The reports are still coming in, but yes, thus far, that appears to be the case. Dockrill…” he stopped and looked knowingly at me. It occurred to me that Dockrill may have been close by all the time that Cassie and I were discussing the logistics of getting out of the quarter.

            “What about Dockrill?”

            “Oh, nothing. He thought perhaps since you and your, what do you call the other soldiers? Your unit? Oh dear me, that’s rich.” He put a finger in his mouth to stifle the laugh, and then, catching sight of something that displeased him on one of his fingers, withdrew a small file from a pocket of his jacket and worried away at his nails for several minutes. When he’d finished he put the file away and folded his hands in front of his prominent stomach. “Now, dear boy, where were we? Have you seen your grandfather? Amos, I think that’s his name.”

            “The militia are holding him. He arranged my escape. He was wandering the quarter for some time. You must have seen him, earlier I mean.”

            “Dockrill saw him. Said that he was drawing a map. Why do you suppose he was doing that?”

            “Cucrow, we’re just dancing in the dark here, you and I. Why don’t you either get to the point or leave me in peace until Dockrill decides what he wants to do with me.”

            “Oh, but dear Garrett, Dockrill has decided already. Assuming you pass the trial he has in mind, you’ll be kept here for your safety.”

            I looked around the room. It was empty except for the cot, which I thought was bolted to the floor given that it didn’t move at all as I tried to pull free from my bindings. There was a low table against a wall to my right. The walls were stone and rammed earth. That meant this was one of the newer levels of the arena, one near the surface but far away from the sandy center ring.

            “How many are left here?”

            “In the arena, enough. We’re quite capable of sustaining our present way of life for some time. Dockrill is a prophet, you know. He saw this day coming years ago and has been laying away provisions for longer than you can possibly imagine. Protein packs and water may not be my favorite delicacies, but they’ll keep us alive until we’re ready.”

            “Ready for what?”

            He gave me a baleful stare and said nothing. I asked again, louder.

            He moved, taking a step toward me. I could smell the stink of him now through the eye-watering heat of pepper dust he’d apparently been dipped in. I wondered how he could stand it. I sneezed several times in rapid succession as he gazed down on me.

            “Ready for you to lead us, boy. To take the garrison and the town, and from there, the whole system.”

            “What?”

            “Of course, as I mentioned, there is a small test for you to pass first. Dockrill will be around presently to explain that part of your new life to you.” He leaned over me and inhaled deeply as if somehow the aroma I gave off, which was probably no better than his, contained some sort of power that could be transferred through olfactory intimacy.

            “I need to take a piss.”

            Bradna stood up and reached beneath the cot. He came up with a battered metal pan, covered in stains.

            “How am I supposed to use that?” I raised my bound hands as far as the cords allowed, a distance of about ten centimeters above the frame of the cot. He studied the situation for a moment and then moved to the foot of the cot, where my bound ankles held my legs apart.  He slid the pan along the bare mattress until it touched my inner thighs. All the while his purple lips smacked and his face contorted in a mixture of curiosity and horror.

            “I was a nurse once, you know,” he said, moving with speed I’d never have guessed he possessed to undo the front of my trousers. He hesitated, looking at the task ahead with what I took for pleasure, and I started to protest, but a sudden change in his expression led to his backing away to the door. “Oh, shit, we’ll just have to lengthen these cords. Someone will be around to take care of it presently.”

            “Bradna, you weren’t a nurse, ever. Don’t ever touch me again, even in your mind. Now, tell whoever’s coming to hurry.”

            He smiled at me before he left the room. I lay back and closed my eyes, counting slowly up from one as I waited for someone to come lengthen the ties. I wasn’t surprised to see Tohoana enter the room and close the door behind her as I reached my second hundred.

            “Gee Cole, no damned sense in this. You piss self if you like. I no like this idea. You very dangerous man. Tohoana knows this. Gee Cole knows this too. I no untie thee.”

            “A very dangerous man who has to urinate. Seriously, Tohoana, help me here.”

            “Maybe your grandfather come help? What you say to that?” She leaned over and punched me hard in the stomach. I cried out and felt as if my bladder had burst. It would have if she’d hit me six inches lower.

            “What the hell?” I said through clenched teeth.

            “You grandfather Amos Cold, the LT tell us that. You son of a killer. You a fool, Gee Cole and Dockrill probably skin you alive.”

            I was hurt, confused, and furious so that I could barely sputter a protest before she hit me again, right in the center of my chest, knocking the wind from me and leaving me gasping so that I forgot all about my bladder. The warm, wet heat spreading across my groin let me know that I no longer needed longer ties.

            “I lose many friends on SixKill Day,” she said with a snarl and launched into me with exactly the sort of ferocity I imagined her to be capable of, pummeling my chest, arms, and face until I no longer could keep track of where the pains were coming from. I thought for a moment I might die in the next few minutes, but then I realized she was actually being very careful, focusing the punches on the large muscles of my arms, legs, chest and shoulders. The blows to my diaphragm and face were lighter, making it hard to breathe and speak but not doing any serious damage. Convicts called this sort of beating a ‘tenderizer.’ It softened you up so you couldn’t move for hours, all of the major muscles being bruised beyond feeling, but didn’t do any permanent damage. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. Whoever ordered her to do this would be in to see me, and to ask the questions that they thought I’d lie about if they didn’t beat the answers from me first.

            I blacked out several times but Tohoana was prepared. She’d crack another of her ampules or throw a bucket of filthy water on me and then lay into me again. After what I guessed to be a half a standard hour my hands and fingers no longer responded to commands from my brain. My head felt like a raw sore atop a sack of blood. There was no part of me that moved according to my will. My eyelids twitched, as did the brows above them. My legs were a series of knots and whenever I moved an ankle to stretch one muscle, another seized in a charley horse. I’d never hurt so badly and I had no sense of why or who might be behind this. It wasn’t Dockrill’s style. He’d throw me in the center ring with a hundred angry cons, all carrying rebar truncheons with red bandannas on them. This was something different. I blacked out again and when I came around I tasted blood in my throat. I turned my head to the side and spat a red glob on the floor at Tohoana’s feet.

            She looked at it, shoved my head back and crossed to open the door of the room.

            Bradna Cucrow was first in to the room, followed by three of the most muscular men I’d ever seen. They were dressed in white loincloths, surprisingly clean, and had long blonde hair pulled back over their massive shoulders. Stationing themselves around the cot, one on either side and one behind, they neither looked at me nor spoke to me. Bradna examined the tableau around me, nodded to himself and left the room. He returned a moment later leading two people.

            The first was a tiny man, older even than Digit, dressed in convict standard issue coveralls that were faded nearly to white and several sizes too large for him. He had skeletal limbs and I wondered if he was perhaps even shorter than Tohoana. He didn’t look at me, but instead turned to his companion, bowing to her as she entered the room. My vision was fuzzy from the beating, but there was no question in my mind that I knew who it was that now stood at the foot of the cot looking at me as if I were a curiosity in a freak circus. She turned back to the aged convict, who had gone to his knees as she passed. Everything I saw reaffirmed my certainty as to who my captor was. Wearing a militia uniform that had been stripped of all insignia, her golden hair reaching nearly to her waist and filigreed into an elaborate braid, she gestured to the tiny old man. He rose shakily to his feet and came to stand beside her. She took his hand and they both looked at me. I had the strange sensation of being a newborn lying in a nursery bed while beaming relatives gazed at me through layers of germ resistant glass.

Bradna cleared his throat and the woman smiled.

“Garrett Cold, may I present Dockrill Castello and …”

I said the name with Bradna, my voice barely audible over the ringing in my ears.

“…Ella Cantor.”

 

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.