Garrett
Cold and the Liberty Keepers
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.
