Prisoner 52 (11 page)

Day 7

The hailstones beat against the windows of the station in dull thumps and as insects dive at great monsters for no other purpose
than to boast and harass. He had once jumped at them, but in the days that had followed they became ordinary. As the roar of cannonfire became silence, hearing it so often. So did the projectiles of the storm not trouble him, though lethal beyond the security of the walls, as he stared out across the plains of ice and snow again. To the black mountains that leered beyond, the penal colonies that crowded around and latched onto their slopes and buried themselves within their crags. Past even these rose the dark pillar of the orbital lift, set between them and half-hidden by the blizzard. Rising to the mantle of space that he had once longed to penetrate and go out into and thus, within its stars, find his home. Cosmically adrift, the earth at his feet a sporadic happenstance that had been made foreign across the long years – and he to it.

"Early to be headin back," A voice said. "Ain't it?"

Tezac looked away from the window at the man sat in the far corner of the tram port and said, "Late to be heading in."

"Late comin off a bender, more like it. I already been chewed out for it once this morning."

"I'm not about to do it twice." He said and turned back to the window.

"Yeah, well." The man said and leaned over onto his knees and rubbed the back of his neck. "You new here?"

"First week."

"Shit. Right off the boat, too." He said. "I'm Harrington."

"Hotchkins." Tezac said to his reflection in the glass.

"So you're the one."

"So I'm told."

"You're headed for the Captain's, I expect."

"Directly."

"Well it was as nice knowing you," The man said and chuckled to himself as he shook his head and then he stood up from the bench. "As it was meeting you."

"That bad, huh?" Tezac said. "Public lashing, do you think? Or just suspension?"

"Hells, this isn't the Assault Forces." He said to his boots and slung his rifle. "Might make you wish it was, though. After your transfer."

He said nothing and listened as Harrington's footsteps trailed away behind him toward a day that he might have had himself and as the same as what came before it. Had he been as those who came before. The tram slid into view along the rail, placid and at home and a creature entirely unmindful of the beings that time to time nested within it as it made its routine stops. Its MagLev units drew soundlessly to a stop and the doors both of the station and of the car slid open and Tezac entered the umbilical that ran between the two. Departing from the window and all of that planet which unrolled to the horizon, frozen as the pale and distant star seemed that illuminated its surface.

Day 7

The doors of the lift opened and he stepped out into the concourse and confronted again the sculpture of metal that dominated it and had dominated him all his life and did so the peoples of a hundred thousand other worlds. The great enmity of those not a part of it; the great fear of those who were. He gave it a wide berth as he passed around it and looked nowhere but there until he had gone on into the centermost of all the flagged corridors that wound away from the antechamber. A
nd thus it followed him still – as it ever would.

He submitted his eyes and hand to the scanners of the doors that terminated the hall and they parted onto the maze of holodesks that lay beyond. Their occupants worked busily within the polymer rings they formed about them and with the quiet of the dead that he imagined in some deeper way he could take them for. He approached the foremost of them all and that which made in its differing shape a barrier reef about the rest. The woman sat behind it looked up from her hardlight displays and met his eyes with her own that were all but sapped of a flame long left to smolder.

"Yes?" She said. "How can I help you?"

"Captain Elias Mullins." He said. "Where's his office."

"Straight back." She said and returned to the displays. "Up the stairs and right in front. His will be the largest; you really can't miss it."

"You're the woman from reception."

"That's me." She said without looking up and inclined her head at the screens.

"My luggage still hasn't arrived. I've been wearing these uniforms for days. Even at leisure."

"Would you like to file a complaint?" She said and stilled her hands and at last looked up at him as though by doing so he could be dispersed back to whence he came.

"I'd like to not have to requisition an overland vehicle and get it myself. But maybe knocking you out of that chair and doing your job for you will do."

He left her and navigated the short lanes that ran between the terminal banks and toward the stairwell. He put the subvocal silence of the attaches behind him as he mounted to the top of the stairs and stood before the doors of the office that the receptionist had indicated, no scanner or intercom to be seen. He looked over the walls of the catwalk before him and then across to the other quarters where it wrapped round the heights of the room. The holoprojections of what lay there were jumbles of lighted characters at his distance save that which bouyed overhead and read, 'Enforcer-Captain Mullins' and beneath it 'Provectoratii, Grade Three'.

"Visitor." His room's computer said.

"Designation." He said and brought the mug in his hand to his lips and stared out the glass wall before him, watched as the landscape beyond the outer ramparts of the complex heaved violently against itself and all upon it.

"Hotchkins, Tezac."
It said. "Duty Station: Sector 1; Holding Tower 7. Enforcer Code: 51322970608."

"Admit." He said and turned about, set his coffee on the holodesk there and went round it to meet him.

The doors parted and the light outside spread across the floor with them, split by the shadow that stood in the threshold. Tezac stepped into the warm room. A new experience. He glanced round at the bare walls and at the flag that stood in the corner and then drew up to the Captain's desk and stood at attention, saluted even and outward from his breast and fist to hand as it went – in the Concilium way.

"Enforcer Hotchkins," The man said. "How good of you to come."

"As ordered, Sir." Tezac said and let fall his hand, clasped them both behind his back.

"I've recieved a report. That security cameras can verify." He said and circled round his desk again and manipulated the screen that was its top. "You disregarded primary regulation; knowingly broke the shielding along the walkway of Recreation Pod 5, Holding Tower 7; and engaged in a melee with an overwhelming number of inmates. All to save the single inmate that they were attacking. Does this line up to your own sequence of events?"

"You have the vid files from my helmet."

"Of course we do." Elias said and smiled. "It's a good
man who knows when he's caught."

"Who reported me, Sir?"

"I do not have the pleasure of disclosing that," The Captain said and looked up from his desk and smiled a wolf's smile. "As much as I'd like to. We have it in common; I hate traitors too."

"The turrets were off that day." Tezac said. "I checked the maintenence logs; no malfunctions reported, no shutdown scheduled."

"You're suggesting the man who reported you, for some reason, deactivated the turrets in Pod 5." He said as he turned back to the screen before him. "To engineer the death of this Hastur Victor Sejanus character."

"I'm not suggesting anything."

"Why would he do that?"

"Give me his name and I'll go ask him."

"You have a short memory. Don't you?"

"I'm sorry, Sir?"

"You will be." The Captain said and put his mug to his lips. "If you keep forgetting the rules. We're a unit out here, Hotchkins. There's no room for personal greivances."

"Did you fight?" Tezac asked and nodded to the flag that hung limp and tucked into the corner and contrary to all of its fantastic displays of wind and light elsewhere in the universe.

"We all did then, one way or another."

"Enlisted or conscripted?"

"Enlisted." He said and returned his coffee to the holodesk as though it had become putrid and toxic to him.

"And you already know what I'm about to say."

"When our war was up we didn't end up here." The Captain said. "Oh there's something at work in you bastards, sure. This new breed of soldier. But it doesn't have my sympathies. We had a job to do and we did it. That was all. We didn't kill the enemy to come home and live out our days weeping about it."

"Why was I ordered here, Sir." Tezac said.

"Why, you're to be reassigned." He said and turned round to the projection behind him.

"To what tower?"

"Sector," The Captain said and navigated through the holodisplay to the overland map it contained of the facility. "Might be more pertinent to your situation."

"Sector, Sir?"

"Here." He said and pointed to where the terrain viewer came to rest upon the last pair of ten sectors arrayed behind the prison walls and highlighted the farthest from them. "Sector 10."

"That's Outerverse containment."

"Of course it is." The Captain said. "You might not be so tempted over there to jump down and rescue every inmate you just might have fought with."

"I hear you," He began in the old maxim. "And I obey."

"Alright. Go on, you're dismissed." He said and waved him away and went round to stand at the window behind the holodesk agian. "And take that Leargam with you."

"Sir," Tezac started to say.

"I can order him to do so myself, if you like. He still knows how to take orders."

"He didn't have anything to do with it."

"Instructions for your transfer will be beamed at Core-standard dawn."

He saluted once more and did not wait to accept the Enforcer-Captain's in return, if he had made one at all, and made for the doors that opened at his coming. But he stopped in its ingress, the light again pooling around him and casting his shadow long and forlorn across the floor. Thus he turned so that he appeared some ancient totem in silhoutte against heathen fires. A monument to the oncoming desolation that Elias Mullins and those like him had feared to be coming since they themselves were young. The savage pygmies that inhabited its moral wasteland dancing round, chanting the way their world will end. He showed his back to it all.

"Captain." Tezac said and recalled him to the warm place upon a cold world and thus all he had ever asked for. "If I'm not going to be your problem anymore,"

"Penders," Elias said to the window and perptual tempest beyond it. "Kyle Penders."

Day 7

The doors closed behind him and traded the howl of the winds outside for the music that blared within the club. A roar indistinct and mindless as those who had come to hear it. He stepped past the bouncers that each nodded to him in turn and the strobing lights inside fell over him. The stage was fraught with the sirens of that ocean full with cold and distant stars. Dancing with an ecstasy that was spoken everywhere but in their eyes, all trapped madness. His comrades hemmed in their platforms and hovered near enough that he thought they might climb atop them at any moment. A place for him was stuck somewhere in amongst them and called to him. That he might be so near, that he might leech away the exuberance there that was without depth.

He turned aside and searched instead for the face of the man he sought. It drowned in drink and laughed through quarta tree shavings and was lost within its fellows, as they all wanted for. The reason that they were there, and not alone. He approached them and the
man who stood beside Penders where he sat swatted him on the shoulder and pointed off through the crowd at him. Tezac moved on and Penders stood from his stool beside the stage and all but those most intent on the girls were drawn to them. Soon the dancers too were captivated, and released what remained of the audience.

"Buddy whatever you're fixing to do you better rethink it real fast." Said the
man who stood outermost of the group.

Tezac threw him aside and into the tables out farther from the stage. The next punched at him. He snatched up the man's wrist and brought his arm round until it popped and then swept his feet out from under him, kicked him away as he fell. Penders was before him then and looking on dumbfounded. The music had stopped. Tezac slugged him across the cheek and it caved in and blood sprayed out in a singular lash across those nearby. Penders flew backward,
his head the truly heavy object of his body that carried the rest along with it. Tezac turned about and waded into the murmurs and stiff shoulders of the others. He made for the doors at the pace that suited him. Even as he heard the handling of a sidearm from somewhere behind him.

"You broke his face in." He heard a woman's voice call out after him. "Genefreak!"

Day 8

"This had better be an emergency." Katherine said as she sat down next to him. "Enough bodies have come into the infirmary the last hour that you could build houses. Forgive the imagery."

"Did someone trip the turrets?"

"Another dustup at work detail. Munitions and Fitting, I think. I swear. The person who thought it was a swell idea to stick the rebels in with the Blackbloods ought to be thrown in there with them." She said and keyed her drink order into the bar's touch display and fixed her eyes on him. "So, what did you ask me over here for?"

"I'm being transferred. To Sector 10"

"I'm flattered you told me. We just met."

"I need a favor."

"It's good that I ordered a drink." She said and it sprouted from the tiny hatch in the black glass countertop before them.

"The
man who I came to see the other day."

"The OBPAF trooper."

"He needs to be kept in the medical bay as long as possible."

"I'd better order two." She said and swallowed a fair portion of the first. "That's not a favor. It's a debt. And it'll take more than picking up my tab."

"I know."

"Can I ask why? In the name of all the Gods?"

"I already told you."

"You're going to have to tell me again with a lot more charm than that. You know I could lose my position here. My license maybe. You're lucky. What with the riot and all our bracers
might have picked up everything you've just said."

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't think it was important." He said and leaned closer to her. "Or know how much it would cost you. That's asking at all. You don't have to go through with it."

"I know that I don't." She said and looked away from him, took up her drink.

"But you will."

"I can't make any promises."

"I'm not asking you to."

"Then it's settled."

"It's settled." He said and stood.

"Where do you think you're going?" She called after him as he made for the door on the far side of the empty bar.

"There's someone else I have to see."

"He's still under sedation, you know. You won't get much out of him."

"We'll see." He said over his shoulder.

"You should know it's not for the pain." She said, but he went on as though she had said nothing.