Grendel Unit 3: Fight the Power (3 page)

"
Slavish?" Vic hissed, looking up at the soles of the man's boots. "Slavish!"

"You again?" the guard sighed.
Corporal Wallace Slavish was a mid-forties man with a large, round belly that obscured several of his chins from Vic's vantage point. He wore a fluffy brown beard that was streaked with white whiskers and chewed tobacco incessantly. There were gobs of it dripping down between the grates over Vic's head, stinking in the humid heat.

"What now?"

"I have new information. I need you to pass it along to Lieutenant Frank Kelly. It's important!"

"Right,"
Slavish said. "Just like the last time."

"
Do you remember how to reach him?" Vic said.

"Yeah,"
Slavish replied. "So what is it now?"

Vic raised his head as high as it would go and whispered, "Tell Frank I know how to find Yultorot. Tell him to go to the Pentak System."

"Pentak, got it," Slavish said. He worked up another mouthful of spit and hawked it down at the grate, this time aiming for Vic.

Vic stepped aside, but not quite fast enough, as he felt some of the man's black slime slide down his arm. Vic steadied himself and said, "Listen to me. I know I'm asking you a lot, but it's extremely important. The safety of Unification could depend on it."

"What makes you think I give a squirt about Unification?" Slavish said.

"If you pass it along, I'll make sure you are rewarded, or even decorated. Frank, or, Lieutenant Kelly will see to it. You could be a hero!"

Corporal Slavish just looked bored by the idea, then a smile broke across his face as if he suddenly had a funny thought. He bent low, looking down at Vic through the grates, and said, "I'll pass along your little stories when I get around to it, but just so you know, I just talked to your buddy, and he wasn't interested. We're becoming friends though. Went fishing and had a few beers together, and you know what he told me? He said you were a lunatic who'd been locked up too long and you should probably just kill yourself."

"Frank doesn't fish," Vic said.

Slavish shrugged and said, "He wanted me to teach him."

"
You didn't really see Frank. He wouldn't say that," Vic responded, but his voice was soft and lacked conviction. "I know he wouldn't."

"
You sure about that?" Slavish said. "I invited him here to come see you and he told me he'd rather die than spend time with a dishonored criminal who embarrassed everybody he knew."

Vic clenched his eyes shut.
It was getting harder and harder to tell the lies from the truths inside the walls of the prison. He worried he was becoming conditioned to being a captive. Never,
he thought intensely. I am a Unification soldier and I will continue the mission until every last threat to her existence is dead. "Where is Bal Ghor being hidden?" he growled.

Corporal
Slavish snorted slightly and shook his head. "You know what? I would probably tell you if I knew, just so I could take bets on how many days it would take you to die once they got their hands on you."

"He is a vital target!" Vic growled. He leapt upwards, grabbing for the grates above, but
they were too high. He fell swiping the air futilely, collapsing on the hard metal surface so hard it jolted throughout his body.

Slavish
looked down at him through the grating like a bored child. Like he was watching an insect struggle to get back up after having its wings ripped off. Vic got up and brushed himself off. When he looked back up, the guard had already unlocked the door he'd been guarding and gone through it, apparently bored of watching all the little insects and all their meaningless struggles.

The corridors became smaller and emptier the further away you went from the essential areas of the prison. Prisoners clustered around the food dispersing stations and libraries and recreational yards. Strangely enough, they preferred to live among the other prisoners, preferring the constant threat of victimization to the even worse horror of being alone in the darkness.

Gratersfield had been built to contain the population of entire planets if necessary,
and it labyrinth was a never ending series of intersecting corridors and dead ends. But if one was bold enough, there was plenty of room to move around quietly and unnoticed. That was a blessing and a curse. It meant you had a smaller chance of running into other inmates, but also that if you did and they were hostile, you were on your own.

The lights above the grated ceiling were
a muted blue, casting shadowy grids down on the cells below. Vic noted the faces of the prisoners he passed, mentally cataloging the ones he recognized and could identify. Some were considered acceptable targets on Unification's Level Black List before they'd been captured.

During his time in the prison, Vic had reduced their numbers by four. He had all the time in the world to add to that number.

He made a series of turns and stopped at a short dead end. He walked toward the last cell in the line and saw a hulking figure within. The beast was pressed against the back wall, slumped forward, pretending to sleep. They'd had to remove the bunks and sink from the cell just to make room for him. His enormous feet almost stuck out into the hallway, the sharp claws attached to the toes were sharper than any of the four weapons Vic was carrying at that moment.

"Hey,"
he said. "Wake up. We've got work to do."

Monster
's eyes gleamed in the darkness as he looked up at his former Captain and muttered, "Go away, human. I told you not to bother me anymore."

Vic
kicked him on the foot and said, "Come on, get up, you big ape. It's something good."

Monster flung his foot at the side of the wall closest to Cojo so hard it rattled the cell door and
the floor below, sending a loud echo of quaking steel rattling down the corridor. "I said go away!"

"I know where Yultorot is
headed. I just debriefed a guy connected to the group selling explosive to the Sapienists, and −"

Monster snarled and shot to his feet so quickly that Vic instinctively backed up. The Mantipor lowered his shaggy face to Vic's, his fangs gnashing together in a series of angry growls, saying, "We are not part of Unification anymore! Do you understand? We are nothing now. You led us into ruin. Stop deluding yourself that any of this
nonsense you're doing matters!"

"Listen to me, Monster," Vic said, "This is
all just a setback. All right, granted, it looks bad, but if we just stick together and hold our ground, I can figure out a way to get all this information to the right person. They can use it to get Yultorot. We're close on this!" He looked over his shoulder at the long corridor of cells, seeing the distant figures of prisoners that were simply waiting to be asked the right questions, in the right way. "You know, I'm starting to wonder if coming here wasn't something we should have done years ago. It's like a feeding frenzy of high-value targets for our taking."

Monster shook his head sadly and said, "You are either an idiot, or you've gone insane.
Perhaps both. Either way, leave me out of it."

"L
ook, would you stop sulking, already. Enough. What we need to do right now is talk this through. We plan it out, acquire what we need, and execute, same as any other operation."

"There is no operation, you fool!" Monster shouted, loud enough to make the hair on Vic's arms stand up. The Mantipor sulked
back to his corner and slid down the wall into a great heap. "I don't work for you anymore. Go interrogate as many of your fellow inmates as you want, or at least, as many as you can until they string you up to the ceiling and skin you alive. All I want to do is sit here and wait for death."

"What the hell happened to you?" Vic said.

"What happened to me?" Monster said, his eyes opening wide. "I lost my wives. I lost my children. I lost my job. I lost my freedom. I lost everything I had, and it's all because of one person. And now, because the gods are nothing but diseased lunatics, I get to spend the rest of my days trapped in a prison with that same person, and he is deluded enough to think I give a damn what he wants."

Vic took a deep breath, searching for the right words.
He needed something inspirational. It had always been so easy before, back when he'd spoken with the authority of rank and had the security of his team around him. When he'd been aboard the Samsara, leading his men, watching them hang on his every word for direction, he'd been firmly in command. Now, what right did he have to try and order anyone to do anything? He was disgraced in the eyes of all of Unification. Monster was probably not alone in his desire to see Vic go back to his own cell and wait patiently for it all to end. What if that bastard guard really had been telling the truth? What if Frank really said he should just kill himself?

Vic
looked at the Mantipor and said, "I'm sorry about your family. I never meant for any of this to happen."

Monster laughed bitterly, "Do you
want to know the most sickening part? I don't think you mind any of this. You have no woman or children. You have no tribe!"

Vic said nothing.

"You do not even have a life outside of your service to Unification, and you weren't even good at that."

"Hey!" Vic said. "Now you're going
too far. Grendel was the best in the galaxy when I had it. Nobody could touch us."

"
Yes, yes, it's true," Monster sneered, "You were a great operative. An inspired warrior, and under you we accomplished things no one else cold. But that was not your only job, Cojo. You were supposed to be a member of the organization. To keep us safe from our enemies both below, and above! Yet look at how many times you got demoted and cost the rest of us pay and time with our loved ones. Why? All because you couldn't follow the rules, or play their little game, and now look at where we are. General Milner wanted you to be a spoke in the wheel, but instead, you insisted on being a damned landmine! Well done,
captain.
Well done."

Vic felt like one of Monster's massive feet had slammed him in the stomach and knocked all the air out of him. "Did you always feel that way? Did…Frank and Bob feel that way?"

"Of course," Monster said.

"So why didn't you all say something then?
You could have tried. It was your job to protect me too! A lot of damn good it does us telling me now."

Monster looked up at him in the darkness, seeing
that the man he'd once considered great was becoming nothing more than a pale, shadowy version of his former self. Both of them were dressed in ugly orange prison jumpsuits. They were eating prison slop and breathing fetid prison air. Soon, they'd be as diseased and hollowed-out as the rest of them. There were already patches of fur missing from Monster's back and arms. At least there were no bugs. Every day, the sanitation jets on the ceiling sprayed them all with disinfectant and the Gods-Knew-What-Else. Hell, that was what was probably making Monster's fur fall off.

The Mantipor shook his head and said,
"We never told you because you made us believe. In you. In the mission. In doing whatever it took to win. But if there is one thing I have learned, sitting here in this cell, day after day, night after night, weeping for my little ones who I will never see again, it's that the people who believe are the ones who suffer. It is better, by far, to be a spoke in the wheel, because then you don't get run over."

Vic stood in the darkness for a while after that, not speaking. Monster closed his eyes and settled down once more, trying to go back to sleep. Vic tapped him on the foot and said, "You could look on the bright side."

Monster opened his eyes again and said, "Please, illuminate me as to what the bright side of living in this never ending nightmare could possibly be."

Vic smiled
lopsided at him and said, "You always complained about not being to go on away missions with me. Well, here we are. Ta-dah!"

Monster laughed in spite of himself and said, "Now I'm sure
of it. You're definitely insane."

Vic waved his hand for Monster to come out of the cell and said, "I know what you need. Come on.
It's been too long."

"Too long since what?"

"Since you had any exercise. I have just the thing. It will help clear your mind."

Monster squinted at him and said, "
I do not feel like going outside."

"What, you're going to sit there until the rest of your fur falls off? The sun might do you some good, and besides, I don't think I could stand the sight of you bald all over. Come on. Trust me."

"Trusting you was how I got into this mess."

"So maybe it will also help you get out. Come on. You'll like it, I promise."

Monster shook his head and lowered it into his shaggy paws, using them to block out anything else Vic said. As he did so, he looked down and saw a new patch of hairless flesh along the underside of his right arm, revealing the embarrassingly pink skin beneath his fine, chestnut brown fur. He turned his head and inspected underneath his other arm, seeing the beginning of two bald spots. Monster slumped his hands down in his lap and muttered, "Damn you, human."