PRISON PLANET
The Green Zone War – Book 3
By Jake Elwood

Chapter 1
The brig stank.
The ship was called CR518. She was a heavy cruiser, one of the ships that had shot the frigate Kestrel to bits, and the ship to which Tom Thrush and his crew had been taken as prisoners at the end of that disastrous battle.
Now Tom sat along one bulkhead in a cell designed for four prisoners. Twenty men filled the room to bursting, four of them stretched out on narrow bunks, the rest sitting on the floor, each man’s feet touching the feet of the man across from him. Prisoners pressed in on either side of Tom, hip to hip, elbow to elbow. The room had a single toilet and a small sink, but no shower. The air was thick, but Tom could no longer smell it. Not after all this time.
Has it only been two weeks? Fourteen days could feel like a lifetime. Already his time on the Kestrel felt like a dream, like another life.
He had no idea what the future held. Summary execution, torture, or years spent in this very cell with these men – anything was possible. At first, the fear and uncertainty had consumed him. He'd watched the others deal with it, each in his own way. Some paced, though pacing was difficult with men jammed in on every side. Some raged. Some fought back tears. One man punched the bulkheads until his knuckles were bloody. Others retreated inward, becoming grim and silent.
By the second day – hell, by the end of the first day – the worst of the stress faded. It was simply more than the mind could sustain. And it was replaced by something that was, in its own way, worse.
Boredom.
The idleness, the sense of futility, the gnawing absence of anything, anything at all to do that would have any significance, weighed on him until he half wished armed troops would burst in and slaughter the prisoners where they sat. He'd embrace the instant of variety that came right before the end.
With that dark thought filling his mind he felt a rush of genuine alarm when the door to the cell slid open. They weren't due to be fed. Something unexpected was finally happening, and he struggled to rise, hampered by the men around him who all reacted the same way. I want to die on my feet.
“Come outside. Form an orderly row.”
The Dawn Alliance officer in the doorway was unarmed, but Tom could see armed troops behind him.
Tom said, “What's this about?”
“Come outside now.”
The other prisoners looked at Tom for guidance. He was the only officer in the cell. For a moment he thought about resisting, until the absurdity of it hit him. I finally get to leave this bloody cell, and I'm thinking about fighting to stay? Even if this is the end, at least I'll get to see a different set of walls. “Go ahead,” he said, and gestured toward the doorway.
Prisoners filed out, meek as lambs, with Tom in the middle of the group. The cell opened into a central holding area in the middle of the brig, the armed troops fading back until their backs were to the bulkheads. The man who'd ordered them out of the cell – he wore the shoulder stripes of a unit leader in the Dawn Alliance military, the equivalent of a lieutenant – indicated a stretch of deck plate with one sweeping arm. “Line up here.”
The prisoners milled around with a mix of honest confusion and what looked to Tom like deliberate mischief, forming little clumps instead of one line. He saw the occasional smirk as the unit leader raised his voice, trying to get the prisoners into a row.
When the man's face had the color of a ripe tomato Tom said, “All right, do as he says. One line.”
The spacers reluctantly straightened out, and Tom found a spot for himself between a couple of technicians.
The Unit Leader, his hands balled into fists, needed a moment to compose himself before he could speak. He glared at the line of prisoners. “Disobedience will be punished, is that clear?”
No one spoke.
“Punished severely!” His hands opened and closed several times, and Tom felt a pang of something almost like sympathy. The man was bad at his job. He'd allowed the prisoners to goad him, and allowed them to see how well the goading worked.
Things will only get worse. Until this poor damned fool snaps and does something we'll all regret. It was a sobering thought. The Dawn Alliance had a history of atrocities against prisoners. I may have to rein the men in.
A uniformed man stepped forward, a coil of silver rope in his hand. The Dawn Alliance had a unified military, Tom recalled. There were no marines, no spacers. Only soldiers. The soldier looped the end of the silver rope around the wrist of the first prisoner in the line. The man made a half-hearted attempt to pull away, then shook his arm as the soldier moved down the line.
The rope remained curled around his wrist.
The soldier moved from prisoner to prisoner, making a quick loop in the rope, slipping it around each prisoner's wrist, and pulling it tight. Resistance was clearly hopeless, so the men stood docile, allowing themselves to be tethered.
When it was Tom's turn he allowed the soldier to slide the loop over his forearm. The rope, cool against his skin through the sleeve of his shirt, became rigid as soon as the soldier let go. Something touched the skin on Tom's forearm, like the tiny feet of an insect, tickling and scratching. He tried to tug the loop of rope farther down his arm.
It stuck. It clung to the fabric of his shirt, and it clung through the fabric to his arm. He felt the scratch of tiny filaments against his skin and shuddered.
“All right,” the unit leader barked. “Prisoners will come with me! Failure to cooperate will be punished severely.”
Bombastic little twit. A hatch slid open on the far side of the holding area, and the officer started forward, gesturing to the prisoners to follow. No one moved until Tom said, “Let's go.”
The corridor beyond was utterly ordinary, but Tom and the others gawked and stared as if they were in a theme park. They followed the unit leader up a flight of stairs, through a twisting maze of corridors, and into a wide compartment with bulky airlock doors on the far side.
The doors to the airlock, outer and inner, stood open.
“You're not my problem any longer,” the man said with malicious satisfaction. He gestured through the airlock to a steel-walled tunnel beyond. “Get off my ship.” Then, when no one moved, he screamed, “Go!”
After that display, no one could quite to resist the urge to dawdle. The prisoners milled around as if uncertain which way to go, while the officer's face darkened.
“I'm ready for a change of scenery,” Tom said at last. “Let's do as the man says.”
The prisoners snaked their way through the airlock and left the cruiser behind.
More troops met them at the far end of a short tunnel. Three men with shock batons and light body armor stepped forward, grabbing the first spacer by the upper arm and yanking him forward. Another soldier fell in beside Tom while the third brought up the rear. The soldier in front directed the chain of prisoners, not with words but with silent, forceful yanks on the hapless lead spacer's upper arm.
It seems like a lot of work if all they want to do is kill us. They put us out through an airlock that was attached to something, after all. There should be another lock on the other side of the cruiser, and that one will open up on hard vacuum. So I guess they want us alive.
It wasn't an entirely convincing chain of logic, but it was all he had, so he clung to it. The idea that he might be on his way to his execution gave him a perverse longing for his earlier boredom, and he shoved that thought aside and turned his attention to his surroundings instead.
The prisoners walked along a broad concourse with a railing along one side and open air beyond that. The ceiling above was quite distant, two decks high, or two stories, as he would have said in his civilian days. That was a lot of space, which told him he wasn't on a ship. It could be a planet, he supposed, but a space station was a better bet.
Two weeks' travel from Black Betty, the rogue planet where he'd been captured, meant he could be just about anywhere in the Green Zone. This might even be Dawn Alliance space – if you didn't count the whole Green Zone as Dawn Alliance space now.
The concourse was far from crowded. A pair of young women went past, giving the prisoners curious glances. They wore loose-fitting burgundy uniforms with the Dawn Alliance logo on their shoulder patches. A man dressed as a civilian overtook the prisoners from behind, hurrying past without giving them so much as a glance.
Ahead, twenty or thirty meters away, another line of prisoners plodded along with their own trio of guards. They wore United Worlds uniforms, and Tom recognized several spacers from his crew. It was strangely comforting to know that at least part of the crew was still together, even if they were utterly powerless.
The causeway had a faint curve, and Tom amused himself by trying to calculate the size of the station, assuming it was circular and the wall beside him was the outer skin of the station. He got lost in the math and had to abandon his computations. The station was bloody huge, and that was that.
The prisoners plodded down a broad staircase, then a narrow one. They moved through a guard station with force fields and steel barriers protecting a handful of armed troops, then followed another endless corridor until it opened on a broad room with data stations along one wall. An officer waited there, flanked by a pair of clerks. He looked them over, then said, “Which of you is Sublieutenant Thrush?”
“Captain Thrush didn't survive the battle,” said the man ahead of Tom on the rope. “A shell took his head right off.”
“Lies,” said the officer calmly. “Further lies will be punished.”
“I'm Thrush,” said another man.
“No, I am,” said somebody else.
“Enough,” said Tom. “Stand down, gentlemen.” To the officer he said, “I'm Thrush.”
The man looked him up and down. Tom's uniform was a darker blue than the uniforms of the enlisted men, but after two weeks in the brig everyone was so rumpled and filthy it was hard to see the difference. However, the rank bar on his chest was visible if you looked closely. “You are wise to cooperate.” He nodded to the clerk to his right, who took Tom's wrist in a hand covered by a silver glove. When the glove touched the rope the loop relaxed and the microscopic tendrils connecting it to his sleeve and wrist retracted. Tom pulled his arm free.
A few prisoners made optimistic attempts to brush the rope from their own wrists. It didn't work. They remained trapped as Tom, responding to a curt gesture from the officer, moved around the line of prisoners to stand beside the man.
“Come with me.” The man turned toward the exit.
Quick obedience looked like the sensible play in the short term, but it didn't lead anywhere good. Tom said, “No.”
The officer froze, then turned to stare at Tom, his jaw hanging open. “What?”
“I demand to know-”
The nearest guard reached Tom in one long stride, his baton slashing out. If he'd had a moment to think, Tom would have tried to dodge, but instinct brought his forearm up in a block. Pain exploded through his arm as the baton touched him. He felt as if he'd plunged his arm into a deep fryer, up to the shoulder. The agony lasted only an instant, fading to pins and needles that were merely excruciating. He cried out in spite of himself, clutched the arm that now hung useless at his side, then screamed as the end of the baton jabbed into his ribs.
“You will make no further demands.” The officer's voice was calm, unruffled. Tom couldn't have said what the man's expression was. He was doubled over, gasping, with a view of nothing but his own knees.
“Now compose yourself, and come with me. I am not a patient man.”
Tom made himself straighten up, telling himself it wasn't the implied threat that made him fight through the pain. He wanted to look strong for the crew. Taking shallow breaths and doing his best to suppress his fear, he limped after the officer as the man marched out of the room.
After a dozen steps he was able to straighten fully and to fill his lungs. He glanced over his shoulder, hoping for a last glimpse of the other prisoners, but a curve in the corridor – and the bulk of a soldier following close behind him – hid them from sight. The man, blank-faced, lifted his baton as Tom paused.
Shrugging inwardly, Tom gave the man a bland smile, turned, and hurried after the officer.
They rounded two corners and entered a room so similar to the room he'd just left that Tom found himself looking around for his erstwhile cellmates. A young woman stood at a data console, and she pecked at a screen as the officer gave her Tom's name and rank. She made one final tap and a section of wall slid aside with a hiss.
“In there,” the officer said, nodding toward the hatchway.
The dark opening looked ominous, but the guard beginning to lift his shock baton was a much more immediate threat. Tom crossed the little room and stepped through the hatchway.
The door closed behind him, leaving him in darkness. He stood frozen, peering around, and felt a sudden pressure against the back of his body. It pushed against him everywhere, from his heels to the back of his head, even thrusting at his arms until they stretched out before him like a parody of sleepwalking. He stumbled forward, fighting for balance.
He was in a narrow corridor, metal walls on either side so close he could have touched them both with his elbows. Then, after two meters or so, the corridor ended and he the pressure of the force field against his back disappeared.
For a time he stood there, blind, peering into the darkness and listening. He could hear human sounds, the rustle of clothing and the sound of people breathing, but he couldn't see a thing. Someone chuckled, close by, and Tom squinted in the direction of the sound.
“Welcome to the wardroom,” a dry voice said. “I'm afraid the standards of service might not match what you've become accustomed to on the finer vessels of the United Worlds' armed services, but what the place lacks in fine amenities, it makes up for in coziness.”
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom Tom began to see dim figures on all sides. One shape leaned forward, and someone sniffed loudly. “Actually, we have one amenity you seem to have been missing. We've got a shower. I do hope you'll take advantage of it.” Several people chuckled, and the voice added, “In fact, I insist.”
Tom said, “Where am I?”
“The wardroom, weren't you listening?”
A gruff voice said, “Oh, give it a rest. You're in the officers' cell aboard the Sky Princess. It's a Dawn Alliance space station tethered to Freecastle.”
Freecastle. That was a Dawn Alliance world on the fringe of the Green Zone. It could have been worse. He could have been in the heart of Dawn Alliance space. But still, he was a very long way from home. He said, “Officers' cell?”
“The one and possibly only.” When Tom looked in the direction of that voice he saw a slender man, his face a pale blur, sitting on some sort of bench along one wall. “We don't actually know if we're the only officers here. We're the only ones we know of.” The man rose to his feet and stepped closer, and Tom was finally able to make out his face. He was middle-aged, with a large nose and an easy smile. “Commander Dawkins.” He stuck out a hand.
“Cap – er, Lieutenant Thrush.” Tom shook the man's hand.
“Welcome to our little vacation property, Thrush. I'll show you around. It'll take at least five seconds.” Dawkins made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “This is pretty much it.”
The room – the cell, he realized – was about twice the size of the cell he'd shared on CR518, and it held only half as many people. His vision was improving every moment, and he was able to make out the essential details. There were six bunks mounted to the walls, and nine men sitting on bunks or benches. Instead of a toilet and sink along one wall there was a door leading, he assumed, to a bathroom.
Metal slid against fabric behind him and a shaft of light washed the room in a sudden harsh brightness. Men cursed and shielded their eyes. Tom turned, squinting, and saw the outlines of two men stumbling down the short corridor behind him. He stepped deeper into the cell to give them room as the door slid shut once more.
“Where are we?” said a familiar voice.
“Lieutenant Harper,” Tom said happily.
“Captain?”
“It’s back to ‘Lieutenant’ now.”
“I can’t see a thing,” said Harper.
“Give your eyes a moment to adjust.” Tom had lost most of his vision again when he’d turned to face the light. Harper was a hulking outline with a much slimmer man beside him. “Is that you, Dr. Vinduly?”
“Yes.”
“This is the surgeon and the Marine Lieutenant from the Kestrel,” Tom said to the others.
“We'll do a full round of introductions shortly,” Dawkins said. “First, if you'll forgive me for saying this, I'm afraid Noribu was right when he said you were badly overdue for a shower.” He gestured at the doorway in the back wall. “Why don't you go ahead and clean up? We'll wait.” As Tom moved past him he said, “I'm afraid we've got an awful lot of time.”
Chapter 2
Once, before the war, an armed freighter called the Free Bird had set out from Novograd with a crew of sixteen. Now, only a pitiful few remained.
They weren't all dead, Alice Rose reminded herself as she stared morosely around a holding area in the brig of the Sky Princess. Nine fellow prisoners sat with her, all of them dressed like her in civilian clothing. Some sat on the padded chairs that were scattered through the room. Others paced, or stood fidgeting. Naomi Silver leaned against a wall, drumming her fingers endlessly against the metal.
Five of her companions had been her shipmates on the Free Bird. The rest of the prisoners were from Rivendell, the hidden Free Planets base that had been captured by the Dawn Alliance, then liberated by the Kestrel.
Fagan, her one-time captain, was probably still alive, though his death would be no injustice. Three more crew had taken the Free Bird and as many refugees as it would hold and fled for the United Worlds base at Garnet weeks before. She chose to believe they were okay.
The rest of her absent crewmates were dead.
Except for Karen Chupick. Karen had been separated from the others and led through an ominous-looking red door on the far side of the room. Alice was doing her best not to worry, not to dwell on things she couldn't control, but her eyes kept straying to that door.
When the door finally slid open she came up halfway out of her seat. Karen, however, did not reappear. Instead it was the same two Dawn Alliance soldiers who had led her away. They glanced around the room, then said, “Charles Ross?”
There wasn't much point in prevaricating. They'd taken everyone's name when they'd captured the crew. Charlie stood, looking like he was frightened but trying to hide it, and walked over to the two soldiers.
They led him through the red door, and it slid shut behind them.
And Alice went back to trying not to be afraid.
The room was almost empty when her turn finally came. She stood, not knowing whether to be terrified or relieved that the waiting was finally over. “You're good at this name-reading stuff,” she said to the soldier on her left. “Did you take a lot of training for this job?”
He didn't speak, just gestured toward the door.
She started to walk, turning to the soldier on her right. “Not much of a conversationalist, is he? I bet he's real fun to work with.”
The man didn't speak, but there might have been the faintest hint of a smile on his face. It bothered Alice. She didn't want to think of her captors as people. She liked them better as anonymous monsters, people she could hate, people she could imagine being destroyed in the growing war.
The red door slid open, revealing a long and thoroughly ordinary corridor. Her silent guides led her around a corner and halted in front of a door with “Intelligence Services” stenciled on it. The door slid open, and a hand between her shoulder blades propelled her forward. She turned around, indignant, as the door slid shut, leaving the two soldiers on the far side.
“Have a seat, Ms. Rose.”
Alice turned. She was in a large office dominated by a wide steel desk. A heavyset man sat on the far side of the desk, his shoulders thick with gold braid, ranks of medals weighing down the front of his coat. She didn't know much about Dawn Alliance military ranks, but this man seemed like a pretty big wheel.
“Sit,” he said, and gestured at a point in front of his desk. “Don't make me tell you again.”
He didn't seem threatening at first glance. He had a round, plump face that made her think of Buddha, or of a well-fed baby. His arms and shoulders were thick, but it was fat, not muscle.
But something in his voice unnerved her. His voice and his cold, dead eyes. He reminded her of a kid she'd known in school, a girl who liked to step on bugs, and would giggle each time an insect died. She'd been known to step on mice the same way, when she could get at them.
Alice looked where he pointed. There was a chair in front of his desk, so small she'd overlooked it at first. It was tiny, designed for a child. She opened her mouth to protest, took another look at the man's lifeless eyes, then stepped over to the chair and sat down.
“Good. If you continue to cooperate, this will not be unpleasant for you.”
It's already unpleasant, she thought, squirming on the little chair. Her knees stuck up almost to the height of her shoulders. She had to keep her leg muscles flexed to keep from sliding off the tiny seat. If she flexed too hard, though, the chair would tip over backwards.
The man hadn't bothered to introduce himself, but his name hovered in a projection above the desk. Third Level Monkhbat. Third Level? What kind of rank is that? Who is this guy?
“I have some questions for you. Your companions have already been most forthcoming, so I will know if you lie to me.” He leaned forward. “The consequences for lies will be most unpleasant.”
It was stupid psychological bullshit. All of it, isolating her from the rest of the crew, the silent guards, the tiny chair, all of it was designed to frighten her, to make her feel helpless. It was crude and obvious – but that didn't stop it from being effective.
Her heart hammered away as if she'd just run a half marathon. She wanted to say something flippant, something rude, but she was sure her voice would come out as a frightened squeak. So she gave him an indifferent shrug and gazed into the air above his head.
“How did you come to be aboard the Kestrel?”
“I was dragged aboard.” It wasn't entirely untrue. The first time she'd boarded the frigate, she'd been a prisoner.
“Don't play games with me. It's so tiresome when I have to have an interview subject beaten. Tell me about how you came to be a prisoner aboard a United Worlds warship.”
Alice was careful to maintain a mask of indifference, but she felt a surge of triumph. He doesn't know everything. He thinks I really was a prisoner. She didn't relax, but a little bit of her tension eased as she began to talk.
She told him about living on Novograd, about the simmering resentment everyone felt at the constant meddling of the United Worlds. It all seemed trivial now, in the face of everything that had happened since, but her outrage at the time had been real.
“They claim they own the entire Green Zone,” she said. “We've been there for generations. I was born on Novograd. My parents were born there. And a bunch of people born on Earth are going to tell me they own my planet?”
Monkhbat nodded smugly, but didn't interrupt her.
“So when the Free Bird landed, and Captain Fagan spread the word that he was looking for crew, I signed up.” She told him how the Free Bird had raided United Worlds shipping, seizing goods to fund the cause and spreading chaos through the Zone. “We didn't hurt anyone,” she said. “Not when we could help it. But we let those arrogant pricks know that they couldn't just push us around.”
Those “arrogant pricks” were her allies now, and her earlier outrage felt a bit silly in retrospect, but Monkhbat didn't need to know that.
When she finished her story he asked questions. He wanted to know about the other prisoners. Who had been a crewmate on the Free Bird, and who had come from Rivendell?
She answered honestly, seeing no point in lying. When he asked about the backgrounds of her shipmates, though, her answers became vague. She didn't want to contradict any lies anyone else might have told. “We didn't really talk about the past,” she told Monkhbat. “We lived in the moment, you know? To us, it didn't really matter where someone was from or what they did before. If someone was part of the Free Bird crew, that was good enough for me.”
Monkhbat surprised her by accepting that answer. He glanced at a data screen on his desktop, then said, “Tell me about this man Ham.”
Uh-oh. Ham was from Neorome, which had refused to sign a treaty with the Dawn Alliance. He'd been tortured by Dawn Alliance troops on Rivendell. “Ham?” She said. “I barely met him.”
“He has some strange injuries,” said Monkhbat.
Alice shrugged. “I don't know anything about it.”
Monkhbat peered at her, as if sensing the lie. All he said, though, was, “Tell me about this frigate, the Kestrel.”
She told him about her last day on the Free Bird, how they'd gone after a freighter and been surprised by the frigate. She told him how marines had come aboard and captured her ship.
“Yes, yes.” Monkhbat waved an impatient hand. “Tell me about the frigate. Tell me about her officers, her crew.”
Alice lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “The brig was pretty small. At least it was clean, though. I'm pretty sure there were at least three cells, but I couldn't be certain.” She gave him her best guileless, earnest look. “Sometimes there was a marine on guard, but I never knew their names.”
He continued to question her about the Kestrel, but she kept to her story. She'd been herded into the brig. She'd stayed there until the ship was captured by the Dawn Alliance. She had no conversations with the officers or crew.
At last Monkhbat gave up in frustration. He fell silent, mashing a thumb against the screen on his desk. The door behind Alice slid open, and a hand tugged impatiently at her upper arm. The same two soldiers as before let her out of the office and back to the corridor.
The new holding area was long and narrow, with seats along one wall. Alice was deeply relieved to see Karen Chupick and all the other colonists who'd been interrogated before her. Everyone seemed unharmed.
She desperately wanted to compare notes, to ask the others what they'd been asked and what they'd said. There was no reason to think the room wasn't bugged, though, so she squeezed herself in beside Charlie, leaned back, and waited. No one else spoke.
Alice sighed, closed her eyes, and waited for something to change.
Anxiety warred with boredom, and boredom won. She dozed off, coming awake every few minutes before sinking back into slumber. She dreamed in quick, vivid bursts, each dream filled with disaster. The Free Bird took a hull breach, and she couldn't find her vac suit. Dawn Alliance soldiers with gold braid on their shoulders strapped her into a dentist's chair while a shadowy figure across the room polished an endless series of sharp steel instruments. She was back in school, walking into class, and looking down in horror to discover she was naked.
Charlie jostled her shoulder, and the dream dissolved around her. She lifted her head a few centimeters, then let it sag back against the wall behind her.
Charlie jostled her again.
Alice straightened up and opened her eyes. Monkhbat stood in front of her with a soldier at his elbow, and for an awful moment she thought it was her dream of torture made real. The man wasn't even looking at her, though. His gaze swept up and down the line of colonists, and he said, “A moment of your attention, if you please.”
Alice touched her chin surreptitiously, checking for drool, then turned her gaze to the officer.
“Thank you for your patience while we have worked through our bureaucratic processes. The Dawn Alliance appreciates your cooperation.”
Someone snorted quietly, and Monkhbat frowned. “We are, of course, pleased to have you as our guests. Just as we were glad to liberate you from your captivity aboard the warship of our mutual enemy.”
Alice sat up a bit straighter.
“It was regrettably necessary to keep you in custody until we could be sure of your identity and intentions.” He flashed his teeth in a fake plastic smile. “Be assured you are no longer prisoners. You are our valued allies. You will no longer be detained in any way.”
The colonists exchanged glances, skepticism on every face.
“We will not repatriate you directly,” the man continued. “The Dawn Alliance Navy is not a taxi service.”
Now this is more like it, Alice thought. This is the Dawn Alliance I know.
“Instead, you will be taken to a neutral port in the Green Zone. You'll have to make your own arrangements to return to your homes.”
That sounded inconvenient, but it was a big improvement over her dental chair nightmare.
“There are some conditions to your release, of course.”
Of course, Alice thought, and groaned inwardly.
“You must never speak of what you have seen while guests of the Alliance. In particular, you cannot reveal the location of our prison facility.”
Alice blinked. There's a prison facility? And I'm supposed to know the location?
“These are classified secrets,” Monkhbat said. “Sharing these secrets with anyone is treason. It will be punished by death.”
Alice stared at him, flabbergasted. The arrogant shit was telling her his people would kill her for conversations she had around the kitchen table in her own home? They'd dragged her off to God only knew what planet, and she had to keep silent about it, on pain of death?
This is how they treat their allies? And I was offended by the United Worlds?
The man droned on a bit longer, listing things they shouldn't talk about, from the appearance of troops on the station to descriptions of the ships outside. Alice listened to it all through a haze of impatient irritation.
“You will be transferred now to the Winter Morning. She will be delivering freight to several ports in the Green Zone. She will drop you off at a suitable port. You will not reveal the names of any stop on her itinerary.”
For a long moment he stared down at them with his lips pursed in a prim line. Then he turned and headed for the exit, the soldier trailing behind him.
“Wait!” Charlie stood, and the soldier turned, moving a hand to the butt of his pistol. The officer turned as well, looking astonished at the interruption.
Charlie said, “Where's Garth Ham?”
Alice quickly scanned the line of colonists. The rest of them had trickled in while she napped.
Except for Ham.
Monkhbat said, “Who?”
“Garth Ham. He's one of us.” Charlie planted his hands on his hips and stuck out his jaw. “What have you done with him?”
“I don't know where this person is.” Monkhbat turned away.
“Now, hold on!” Charlie started after him. “I want to know-”
He stopped short as the barrel of a soldier's pistol touched him just under the heart.
There was a long, tense moment of silence. Then Monkhbat said, “Come along.” He walked out, the door sliding open as he approached. The soldier spent a moment staring into Charlie's eyes, then took a step back and holstered his pistol. He spun on his heel and hurried after the officer. The door slid shut behind him.
Charlie said, “Valued allies, my ass.”
It was some time before anyone actually tested the door. It simply hadn't occurred to them that the door might be unlocked. Naomi finally walked up to the door, though, and jumped back with a squeak of surprise when it opened.
They went exploring, and didn't get far. A small labyrinth of corridors led to some doors that wouldn't open, and other doors with armed sentries. There was a staircase, though, which led down to an expansive lounge with floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall. Alice walked to the glass and looked down on the planet below.
She recognized it immediately. Gamor was unique in the Green Zone, a water world with a chain of fat islands strung along the equator. She watched as a shuttle descended toward a teardrop-shaped island directly below. Thick cloud covered much of the island, and she watched the shuttle until it vanished into a layer of gray soup.
After that she looked at ships, doing her best to memorize every detail she could. Eventually she was going to reach some representative of the United Worlds Navy, and she intended to deliver as much intelligence as she could possibly manage.
She thought about Tom Thrush, remembering how he'd come aboard the Free Bird as a junior officer, looking scared but determined to do his duty. She remembered how he'd looked after releasing her and her shipmates from the brig, his implacable determination to do what was right for his crew.
Including the former pirates among his crew. He'd surprised her with the degree of loyalty he'd shown to those reluctant additions. And he'd put everything on the line when the Dawn Alliance had threatened the rendezvous at Black Betty.
She stared down at the fog-shrouded island below her, wondering if Thrush was there. Wondering what was happening to him. Him and his crew, who had plunged into a hopeless battle to protect the same Free Planets ships that had preyed on UW shipping just a few weeks before. Apparently not one of them had given in to the temptation to tell their captors that the Free Planets personnel in the brig of the Kestrel were not in fact prisoners.
I have a chance of getting home, and it's because of you. She pressed a hand against the window, staring down at the surface of Gamor. I owe you. And I won't forget the debt. If there's a way to get you out of there, I'll find it.
A buzz of voices rose behind her, and she saw a bustle of movement reflected in the glass. She turned to see a crowd gathering at the bottom of the stairs.
Garth Ham was descending the staircase, one hand on the railing, the other hand clutching a cane. He looked tired, but not unwell. Alice moved to the fringe of the crowd as her companions ushered Ham to a chair.
“I'm fine,” he said at last in response to a flurry of oblique questions. No one was entirely convinced they weren't under surveillance. No one was going to say, “Did they find out you're from Neorome?”
“I've been in the surgery,” he said. “They did some work on my feet. Removed some scar tissue so my toes will bend better. But it's a little sore now, so they gave me this.” He hefted the cane.
Voices rose in a babble, everyone speaking at once. They wanted to tell him how relieved they were that he was okay, without giving anything away.
Alice turned away, smiling as she once again looked out the window. Things were bleak, especially for her friends on the surface below. But the news wasn't all bad.
A new ship came into view, dropping below the top edge of the window. It was a freighter, built like a baseball with engines on the back. Its best days were long behind it, judging by the fading, rust-streaked paint. The only thing that looked new was the Dawn Alliance logo painted on the front of her hull.
Footsteps clacked on the stairs behind her, and the voices of her companions went silent. She turned around.
A woman descended the staircase, a Dawn Alliance officer with a pinched, disapproving expression. She smiled with the air of someone doing a difficult and pointless trick, then let her face sink back into its distasteful grimace. “Your ship is approaching.” She pointed at the windows behind Alice. “You're going home.”
Chapter 3
Officers filled the shuttle.
The wardroom, apparently, had held only about a third of the captive officers on the giant space station. Almost forty prisoners, all of them men, sat on the hard benches that lined both sides of the winged landing craft.
No one knew for sure what world was below them, but he had a strong inkling it was Gamor. Half way from Dawn Alliance space to the United Worlds base at Garnet, Gamor was closer to home than he could have hoped for. If the Dawn Alliance was shipping prisoners so deep into the Green Zone, the war had to be going very badly for the United Worlds.
That was essentially what he'd learned from his fellow prisoners. Everyone who'd been in the wardroom when Tom arrived had been captured in the opening days of the war. Most of them were under attack before they knew war had broken out. Few of them even managed to put up a fight.
In the ten days since his arrival at the station, prisoners had trickled in with stories of other battles. None of them had much good news to share. The attack on Garnet had been an utter disaster for the United Worlds. They hadn't lost Garnet itself, and many ships has survived, but the losses in men and ships had been catastrophic. And the UW Navy, shocked and furious and badly disorganized, had reacted poorly. They'd sent small sorties out, poorly supported, in doomed missions to strike back, somehow, some way, against the enemy. The DA smashed one mission after another, destroying ships and killing crews. All over the Green Zone the Dawn Alliance was taking territories, digging in, and making alliances with the colonists. Meanwhile, the United Worlds Navy floundered, blundered, and lost ships.
It can't all be bad news. He scanned the haggard faces along the opposite bulkhead, searching for some flash of spirit, some hint that hope remained. One of those weary men must have seen some scrap of success before being captured.
He would have to wait to find out. No one was going to speak, not with Dawn Alliance guards sitting in jump seats along the middle of the shuttle. Tom was learning to hate the cold-eyed men who wore the uniform of the Dawn Alliance. Hate them and fear them. They were free with their shock batons, ready to retaliate for any hint of rebellion or even impertinence. He'd learned to toe the line, it shamed him to admit how thoroughly.
You'll get yours. He glared at the nearest guard, nursing a faded coal of anger, making a vow that felt hollow and pointless. This was a clash of nations, of cultures. Prisoners had to be controlled, and the fear that grew from a measured cruelty was the most efficient way to maintain that control. It wasn't sadism. It wasn't wanton. It was simple, calculated efficiency, stripped of any shred of compassion or remorse. It was too clinical, too impersonal to feed his rage, and the anger faded, leaving him empty and cold.
None of the officers had any contact with enlisted personnel. He could only wonder about the Kestrel's crew. He worried about them. Once he'd sworn to get them all safely back to Garnet. It was obviously a promise he had no hope of keeping, but his sense of responsibility still gnawed at him. They were his crew, and in many cases they were his friends. He was sharply, acutely worried about them.
The shuttle began to vibrate, distracting Tom from his somber thoughts. His pulse increased, and he reached down to grip the edge of the bench seat beneath him. That drew an amused glance from the man across from him, so Tom made himself let go.
For pity's sake, this isn't the first time you've been on a shuttle as it lands. He felt so completely helpless, though, that every tremor of the seat, every hum and rumble from the shuttle's wings seemed to signal his imminent death in a fiery crash.
I'm going to have to escape from this place soon, or it'll unman me completely.
He tried to remember what he knew about Gamor and couldn't come up with much. It was terraformed, so the air should be breathable. There would likely be Terran vegetation. He didn't think there was a colony on Gamor, though. He couldn't remember why, but there had to be something wrong with the planet if no one had settled here.
It looks like I get to be a pioneer. Until I get out of here.
The shuttle landed with a harder thump than Tom was used to. He grunted with the impact, then lifted a hand to shield his eyes as the back end of the shuttle swung open.
No sunshine came streaming in, though. The surface of the planet was almost as dark as the shadowed interior of the shuttle. The outside air rolled in, so hot that perspiration sprang out immediately on Tom's forehead, so humid that he gasped, struggling to breathe. He smelled dirt and distant flowers, sap and fuel and the rich tang of rotting vegetation. He welcomed each scent as a distraction from that terrible humidity.
“All prisoners will disembark!”
Tom wasn't sure which guard had given the command, but he knew better than to dally. He stood with the rest of the prisoners. Rising was more difficult than it should have been. Gamor's gravity was distinctly higher than standard, and Tom sighed, feeling a twinge in his knees. If I can feel it already, it's going to get a lot worse.
As he stepped down to the ground he got his first glimpse of the surface of Gamor. The first thing he saw was a tower, five or six meters high, built of logs. It was such a bizarre choice of building materials that Tom froze for a moment, gaping. The prisoner behind him gave him an impatient nudge and he kept walking, staring upward.
The top of the tower was about two meters square, and it housed a single soldier with a gimbal-mounted multi-barrel gun. His attention was fixed on the prisoners, and he tracked them with the gun as they walked.
As Tom looked around he saw more archaic notes. Coils of wire festooned the legs of the tower, wire with jagged metal points jutting from it. He'd heard that some of the colonies used such primitive technology, but he'd never actually seen barbed wire before. More of it glinted on tall fences that pressed in on either side. Almost twice the height of a man, the fences had wooden posts linked by close-spaced strands of wire covered in knife-like barbs as long as Tom's little finger.
Beyond the nearest fence was a hundred meters or so of open ground and then an unbroken wall of thick forest. This had to be what happened when you terraformed and then nobody moved in. Trees grew everywhere until wood became not just a cheap building material but an actual nuisance that had to be cleared away before you could build.
He looked at the ground around him and saw tree stumps every few meters, cut almost flush with the ground. Thick roots wound across the dark soil, making footing treacherous. By the look of it the ground would be a quagmire of mud when it rained. He looked up, saw a layer of gray cloud stretching from horizon to horizon, and grimaced. It probably rained a lot.
Half a dozen buildings stood near the shuttle, some wooden, some metal. The shuttle rested in the middle of a broad white circle someone had marked out by pouring a white powder directly on the ground. A second white circle marked another landing pad. It was the most primitive shuttle port Tom had ever seen.
Barbed wire completely enclosed the landing pads and the cluster of buildings. The fence had two gates, one leading to forest, the other opening onto a larger compound. As Tom watched, a soldier swung the gate open.
“This is Camp One.”
Tom looked around, finally spotting the speaker, a short man in burgundy with a sash across his chest and a pistol belted around his waist. He had a bristling mustache and an air of all-encompassing self-importance. A clerk hovered at his elbow, and a pair of soldiers with rifles stood behind him.
“My name is Amar. I am the commander of this camp. You are prisoners here, and you must understand one thing. You have no rights.”
The prisoners glanced at each other. The faces around Tom showed the same unease he felt.
“We have few rules here,” Amar went on. “But the rules we have come with harsh penalties.” He leaned forward, glaring at the prisoners. “Very harsh penalties indeed.”
“Now look here.” A prisoner took a step forward, a thick-bodied man with the three and a half stripes of an overcaptain on the rumpled shoulder of his uniform. “You can't say that we have no rights. There are international treaties that clearly state-”
Amar made a gesture and the soldiers behind him moved toward the captain. To his credit the man didn't flinch. He had to know that whatever was coming wouldn't be pleasant, but he stood with his head high and said, “There is a galactic community of nations which will look upon-”
Two rifle butts slammed into him, almost simultaneously. The man on his left was aiming for his face. The one on his right aimed for the stomach, and struck half a second sooner. The captain grunted and began to double forward, accidentally saving himself from a broken nose. The upper rifle butt hit his forehead instead. The impact echoed, a sound that would haunt Tom's nightmares for days.
The captain fell, dropping like a corpse, his limbs loose and slack. He landed in the dirt, making no attempt to protect himself, and the beating continued. One soldier drove kicks into his ribs while the other gripped the barrel of his rifle and slammed the butt repeatedly into the side of the captain's face.
The crack of a gunshot, impossibly loud, made Tom flinch. Wet dirt erupted from the ground not much more than a handspan behind one of the soldiers. Only then did Tom realize that some of the officers had started to move, surging forward in an instinctive urge to help their comrade.
Now they stood frozen, arrested in mid-lunge, staring up at the guard tower. The man in the tower stood rigid, fingers curled around the triggers of his weapon, obviously ready to open fire.
“You bloody shit rat,” said a lieutenant, but all the prisoners took a step back.
The beating lasted for most of a minute, a horribly long time considering the vigor of the attack. When Amar finally gestured his men back, the captain was a bloody mess unmoving on the ground.
“You have no rights,” Amar said, his voice terribly low and quiet. “That is your first lesson, and I think perhaps you have learned it. Hmm?”
Prisoners glowered at him, but nobody spoke.
“There is another lesson.” The man's cold gaze ran up and down the line of prisoners. “When you violate the rules, you will suffer. You have learned this. Now you must learn that you will never suffer alone.” And he nodded to his two soldiers.
They advanced on the line of prisoners, and the rifle butts lashed out. They attacked the men who'd been on either side of the fallen captain. A commander doubled over as a blow took him in the stomach. A lieutenant bobbed his head to the side, slipping the blow and making the soldier stumble against him. It brought him only a moment of respite. The rifle butt slashed sideways, taking him on the side of the face and knocking him to his knees.
Prisoners on either side clenched their fists but didn't move, all too aware of the man in the tower. It was impossible to doubt that Amar would massacre them all if they fought back.
The new victims endured half a dozen savage blows each. By the end of it both men were on their knees dripping blood into the dirt. The soldiers, unruffled, returned to their places behind Amar.
“I have been merciful with you today,” the man said. “I'm done being merciful. You have an important role to play in the transformation of this planet. It will be made useful to the Dawn Alliance. Your enlisted prisoners will do the work required. You will guide them.
“You will have the opportunity to encourage resistance among your men if you choose. Know that if you do this, every prisoner will suffer. We would prefer willing cooperation from able men, but we will break the spirit and the body of every prisoner if we must. We will kill nine men out of every ten if it buys us the cooperation of the survivors. Is that clear?”
A few prisoners glared at Amar, silent and furious. The rest, Tom among them, couldn't meet his eyes.
“Disobedience will lead to physical punishment,” Amar said. “Transgressors will be punished. Their comrades will be punished.
“Violence against the guards will be punished with death. Death to the attacker. Death to at least three additional prisoners. Perhaps more, depending on the severity of the attack.
“Attempting to escape is punishable by death.” He shook his head, looking like a stern parent unable to understand the shenanigans of his children. “There is nowhere to escape to. There are no ships, except shuttles with no ability to enter seventh-dimensional space. There is nothing in the system, nowhere to go. The planet contains work camps controlled by the Dawn Alliance. There is nothing else.
“And yet, some prisoners will try to escape. Know this. Every man who attempts escape will die. For every man who successfully eludes the guards and makes it into the jungle, three prisoners will be executed. Is that clear?”
No one spoke.
“It has happened,” Amar said, sounding almost cheerful. “We once had three men evade capture for almost forty hours. Their bodies decorated the posts just inside the prisoner compound, until the smell became unendurable.” He smoothed the front of his uniform with small, pudgy hands. “The nine prisoners who were executed as a deterrent were not put on display.” He smiled coldly. “We're not barbarians, after all.”
Chapter 4
The intake process took an hour. Very little of substance happened during that hour; mostly Tom stood in line while the men ahead of him received uniforms and gave up the clothes they'd been wearing since their capture. The process was managed by bored, indifferent clerks, with armed soldiers always in sight. It was simultaneously dull and alarming, and humiliating to boot. The only upside was that it took place indoors, in a long narrow building with polymer walls and rough plank floors and, wonder of wonders, a weak, overburdened air conditioning system. The humidity became merely bad instead of intolerable, and although sweat continued to trickle between Tom's shoulder blades, it was less than before.
The three officers who'd been beaten stood at the back of the queue. They received no medical treatment, not even the captain who'd taken the worst of it. He wobbled on his feet, and Tom watched him from the corner of his eye, waiting for the man to fall. He never quite collapsed, though he put a hand out blindly to steady himself against the wall from time to time.
It pained Tom on an abstract level to lose the uniform he'd worn with pride for the last several months. The fabric was rumpled and dirty and pungent, which made parting with it easier. He stripped and changed under the uncaring eyes of the guards and his fellow prisoners.
His new uniform was a shade of khaki so pale it was almost white. The trousers were the right length, which was a stroke of luck. By the look of it, everyone was getting trousers of the same size. They were baggy enough to accommodate even the fattest man, with a drawstring that Tom pulled tight and tied. The blouse was similarly shapeless, loose and baggy with a shoulder seam that reached halfway to his elbows and sleeves that jutted past the tips of his fingers. He rolled the sleeves up far enough to free his hands and joined the men ahead of him, who stood patiently waiting for the rest of the group to be outfitted.
The uniforms were made of a rough, coarse fabric that made Tom's skin itch. He fidgeted until he drew the attention of a guard, then made himself stand still. The only part of his old uniform that remained was his shoes, and he decided he should be grateful to retain so much.
It would have been easy enough to distribute three dozen uniforms in a couple of minutes, especially since there was no difference in sizes. The clerks, though, made the process interminable. Three of them controlled the distribution of uniforms, each man clutching a data pad and behaving as if he was handing out fully armed warships instead of third-rate pajamas. Every prisoner had to have a thumbscan. After the scan all three of them would peer into their data pads, then poke at their screens with excruciating slowness. It would have been maddening if Tom hadn't been sure that whatever came next would be worse.
When the injured men took their turns the process became even slower. One man had trouble pulling his bloodstained shirt over his head. The captain could barely lift his arms to shoulder height, and when a young commander tried to help him a guard sprang forward, rifle at his shoulder, finger tight against the trigger.
Through it all, speakers mounted high on the walls droned an endless stream of propaganda at the prisoners. Tom heard about the glorious destiny of the Dawn Alliance, the numerous and irrefutable reasons the Alliance was entitled to every terraformed planet in the Green Zone, and a shopping list of absurd atrocities they blamed on the United Worlds.
There was cautious praise for the colonies which had signed treaties with the invaders, and a laughable vilification of Neorome and Tazenda, the two colonies which had refused to sign. According to the unseen speaker, the two upstart colonies had ruled the Green Zone with an iron fist, terrorizing their neighbors until the courageous Dawn Alliance had arrived to dispense justice and liberty.
Of course, the United Worlds was also supposed to be a tyrannical force dominating the entire Green Zone. Tom supposed the two villains must have taken turns oppressing the hapless colonists, and shook his head, not knowing whether to be outraged or amused.
At last everyone was dressed in pale khaki. Amar reappeared, the same two goons flanking him, and ordered the prisoners to follow him outside.
The humidity hadn't decreased. Tom gasped and dragged the coarse sleeve of his uniform across his perspiring face. He tasted salt, and wondered if he would ever get used to this place.
The same gray cloud covered the sky from horizon to horizon. It matched his mood. Tom shuffled along with the other prisoners, following Amar to the gate that separated the smaller compound from the rest of the camp. The gate was as primitive as the rest of the fence. A perspiring soldier swung the gate open, then watched with sullen suspicion as the prisoners filed past.
“Remember,” Amar told them, “attempts to escape will lead to executions.” He strutted back into the smaller compound, and the gate swung shut.
For a moment the prisoners continued to stand in a tidy queue. Then they all moved at once, self-consciously stepping away from one another, trying to pretend they had never stood meekly in a line. Tom moved to the fringe of the group and took his first unobstructed look at the prison's main compound.
Dozens of rectangular huts stood in long, straight lines, making a grid of perfectly matched buildings. The huts were unimpressive structures, perhaps ten meters by twenty, with low, gently sloping roofs and no windows. The walls were raw wooden planks. The roofs were made of planks, with almost half a meter of green junk piled on top. Tom peered at the roof of the nearest hut. The boards were covered in layer upon layer of wide green leaves, each leaf big enough to completely cover a grown man. On top of the stacked leaves was a layer of wooden poles to hold the leaves in place.
Men moved among the huts, listless figures in baggy uniforms of a darker shade of khaki than what Tom wore.
Half a dozen men rounded the corner of the nearest hut. They wore the same pale khaki as Tom and his companions, and they smiled as they drew near. “Welcome to Paradise,” said the man in the lead. He was in his sixties, with the rigid posture of a career soldier. “I hope you'll forgive me for being glad to see you. We're a bit starved for news, and with all due respect to my companions here, we're all ready for a bit more variety in the company we keep.”
“I'm so glad we could improve things for you,” someone said drily.
The man grinned. “Quite. I'm Major Shannon. This is Major Hwang, Captain Hunter, Captain Notley, Lieutenant Creighton, and Lieutenant Diaz.”
“You're Strads,” said a man to Tom's left. The rank of Major didn't exist in the United Worlds military. The Star Republic of Stradivar had established a colony in the Green Zone fifty years earlier, then fought to keep it when the United Worlds moved in, six months before. The UW had remained neutral, watching as the Strads were driven out.
“That we are,” Shannon said. “Fifth Division Silver Guard. We held the perimeter at Lysistrata Field while the last transports lifted off.” He said it with some pride, and rightly so. The Fifth Division had given up all hope of escape to get their comrades safely off New Sheffield.
Shannon held up a hand. “Let's stop with the introductions for the moment. You have some injured men.” His finger traced a ridge of scar around his left eye. “I know what the good camp commander's disciplinary methods are like. Let's get the casualties to a bunk. We'll have plenty of time to get acquainted after that.”
He led them toward a hut. “This one will be yours. This, and the one beside it. The Strad officers are in there.” He gestured to the next hut over. “There's ten of us total. I keep hoping more will show up, because it will mean our boys are taking another crack at New Sheffield.”
As prisoners began to cluster around the hut's entrance Tom grew impatient and moved to the second hut Shannon had indicated. He stuck his head in, couldn't see much, and walked inside.
Bunks in tiers of three jutted in from the walls at ninety-degree angles. The bunks were closely spaced and filled most of the available space, fading into deep shadow away from the doorway. The bunks were wood, crudely made but solid-looking. Each bunk had a thin mattress and a folded blanket. “Home sweet home,” he murmured, and stepped outside.
He found a line of officers trickling between the huts, heading deeper into the camp. He followed, counting buildings as he went. He tried to do multiplication as he walked, then gave up. The camp wasn't all that large, but the close-spaced buildings were numerous. If they all contained as many bunks as he'd just seen, this camp could accommodate thousands of prisoners.
An open area separated the first two rows of huts from the rest of the camp. Much of the open ground was littered with scraps of lumber and chunks of rough timber, piles of leaves and branches and fat square bricks. Half a dozen trestle tables stood in a haphazard row, and a dozen long benches. Several smaller tables stood near the double row of huts, in what Tom realized was the officers' end of the compound. Four men sat around the table on rough chairs, reluctantly standing as the new prisoners and their guides approached.
Introductions were in full swing by the time Tom joined the fringe of the group. He was in time to introduce himself – name and rank, nothing more – and to hear and quickly forget the names of a handful of his companions.
“I'm Colonel Fletcher,” said the oldest prisoner at the table. “I'm ranking prisoner. Prisoner Commander, they've been calling me.” He swept a sour eye across the newcomers. “I assume one of you gentlemen will be relieving me of the title.”
“There's a three-and-a-half-striper lying down in their hut,” Shannon said.
“That'll do it,” Fletcher said. “Well, he's welcome to the job, and then some. But get this straight.” He stared around him at the gathered UW officers. “You're all big boys. You're responsible for your own decisions. But you're not the only ones who'll get hurt when you do something stupid.” He swept an arm out, indicating the far side of the open ground, and Tom was startled by the way his sleeve flapped around a twig-like arm. “All of you, and your men, who will be joining us shortly. All of us are in this together. One man's blunder is everyone's hardship.”
Fletcher lowered himself into his chair, using his arms to take his weight. Which was much less than Tom had thought at first; he was lean to the point of gauntness. “I have family back home, and I intend to see them again. Is that clear? But the biggest risk to me isn't the guards, or the slow starvation, and it isn't the Red Fever that's infected the camp.” He pointed a bony finger at the new arrivals. “It's you lot. You and your men. You're newly captured, and you think it's your duty to escape. To resist. To sabotage the construction you'll be working on.” He leaned forward, the fleshless hollows around his eyes making his gaze stark and terrible. “One of you is going to do something brave and stupid, and they'll take my head off my shoulders as a reprisal.” He sagged back. “Or they'll kill so many of my friends I won't care anymore if I survive.”
A grim silence fell. After several uncomfortable seconds Shannon said, “Anyhow, now you know what you're in for.” He gave a dry, mirthless chuckle. “There isn't a whole lot more to tell you. We've been on hut-building duty for the past few weeks. There's a bit more to do. Eating facilities will likely be here.” He gestured at the open ground. “After that, it's back into the jungle to work ourselves half to death getting the planet ready for whatever it is our gracious hosts have in mind. Let's take a tour of the fence line. There won't be much to see, but we’ll see it all. Don't step over that ankle-high wire just inside the fence. They're quite serious about shooting anyone who goes close to the barbed wire.”
He headed toward the perimeter of the compound, a handful of fellow Strad prisoners with him. Tom looked at their wrists and elbows where they jutted out from the fabric of the khaki uniforms. He looked at the flesh – or lack of flesh – on their faces and necks.
They were scrawny. Malnourished.
Starving.
“Terrific,” he muttered, and hurried to catch up.
He glanced back just once. Colonel Fletcher was staring after the departing men, his face set in bleak lines, his eyes grim and dark in his skeletal face.
Chapter 5
The freighter was called the Winter Morning, and she was a disgrace.
Alice sat in a passenger lounge deep in the bowels of the ship. There were no windows, but several screens showed the view outside the ship. If you ignored the occasional flicker, it was practically the same as having a window.
There'd been one stop, she didn't know where. The screens had gone blank while the ship was still in hyperspace, and stayed blank until the ship was in hyperspace once again.
Now they were back in normal space, and she was looking forward to finding out where she was. She could see the local star in the distance. It had a bit of a smeared look to it. She suspected it was a binary star, which would narrow the list of candidate systems. She was hoping for Novograd, her home system, but she didn't think this tub had the speed to reach Novograd this quickly. New Panama was another possibility, but the system held very little to attract a Dawn Alliance freighter. It was probably Haultain.
The stars swung as the Winter Morning turned. The ship didn't have much in the way of internal force fields, and Alice grimaced as she swayed in her seat. She'd been spoiled by her time on the Kestrel, with its top-notch internal force fields. Back on the Free Bird she'd felt every subtle maneuver.
A planet came into view, mostly dark. She leaned forward, examining the thin crescent that caught sunlight, looking for identifying details. She saw the lights of a city just below the dawn line, and three more points of light showing smaller settlements on the outskirts.
And one more point of light, this one drifting up toward the horizon.
The freighter drew closer and the point of light grew until she could identify it as a large space station. She grimaced. This was Haultain, all right.
The station had always been a point of contention for Free Planets patriots. Built by the United Worlds, it had loomed above the largest colony in the Green Zone as an ugly symbol of the might of the colony's distant imperial masters.
Still, her heart sank as she saw what had become of the station.
The once-proud station was a shambles. Chunks were missing, as if some monstrous interstellar child had taken bites out of the metal structure. As the freighter drew closer she saw subtler signs of damage, laser scorches that marred the paint and divots where missiles had struck. A gun turret was a charred mess, the barrels of the guns melted and misshapen.
The station was still painted the blue of the United Worlds Navy, but a slow transformation was in progress. New silver hull plates showed here and there as the station's new owners made repairs. Someone had put splashes of burgundy paint somewhat clumsily over the proud UW starburst on the top of the station’s hull.
Half a dozen ships were either docked to the station or hovering in space nearby. Alice was ashamed to see Free Planets ships side by side with Dawn Alliance vessels.
Still, her people were here with ships, which meant she was about to have options.
The end of her time with the Dawn Alliance came without fanfare or ceremony. A distant metallic clatter told her the freighter was docking with the station. Soon after, the electronic voice of the ship's computer announced that all passengers would be expected to disembark.
A few minutes later, Alice and her companions walked through an open airlock and onto the space station.
At first they wandered, all of them together in a big, straggling group. Alice had never been to the station before. Several of the others had, but they told her everything had changed. So they walked along the corridors and down flights of stairs, got turned back by hard-faced guards when they came to military-only areas, and found themselves at last in what amounted to a vast shopping center.
They were at the skin of the station, with windows filling one curving wall. The opposite wall was completely jammed with shops, and the space in between crowded with chairs and tables and planters. The sight of a small restaurant made Alice realize how hungry she was. However, she was broke. They all were.
“Look,” said Charlie, and pointed. “It's a Burton's.”
She followed the direction of his pointing finger and spotted the familiar logo of the largest bank in the Green Zone. They would be able to scan her thumb, ask her a few questions, and give her access to her accounts.
“There's a data café,” said Naomi. “I'm going there. I want to find out what's been going on. And if there's any kind of system in place for dealing with refugees like us, the AI's will be able to tell me.”
She set off for the café. Charlie started toward the bank at the same moment, and Alice stood frozen, filled with an unexpected alarm. To break up the group seemed like a huge step, an irrevocable choice that should be discussed, considered.
However, it was already happening.
A few people hesitated like she did, but after a moment most of them streamed away in one direction or the other. Alice stared after them, startled by how stricken she felt. Her ship was gone, and she'd lost so many of her shipmates. The unshakable certainties that had been the bedrock of her life had all turned topsy-turvy in the last month. The United Worlds, her hated enemy, had become her ally. Her homeworld had signed a treaty linking it to the Dawn Alliance. And now the last of her crewmates were dividing up. The last anchor in her life was coming apart.
“What do you think, Alice? Data café, or bank?”
She turned her head. Bridger, her shipmate and the only other survivor of the missile attack during the Kestrel's final battle, stood beside her with an eyebrow raised. Garth Ham stood next to him.
Bridger said, “Me, I vote bank. I couldn't stand to be in a café were I can't afford a cup of coffee. And, man, what I wouldn't give for a cup of coffee.” He grinned. “Of course, I don't have an account at Burton's. But I bet you do.”
He was sticking with her. That was the unmistakable subtext to his comments, and she felt a warm rush of gratitude. She looked past him at Ham. “What about you?”
He grinned. “I don't bank at Burton's either.”
It wasn't what she'd meant, but that was fine. Ham, for some reason, was sticking with her as well. “Three cups of coffee, coming up shortly,” she said, and headed toward the bank.
Half the group reconvened one last time, crowding around a couple of tables in the back of the data café. Those who had cash shared freely with those who didn't, while Naomi related what she had learned.
“Neorome and Tazenda are effectively blockaded,” she said grimly. “No ships in or out.” She looked at Ham. “They're arresting citizens of both colonies. Your presence here is illegal.”
Ham shrugged.
“The Big Sisters are trying to help displaced citizens. They're pretty overwhelmed, though.” Naomi looked around the table. “They have an office here on the station, but it's small.” She tapped the table, pointing in the direction of the planet below. “They have a big chapter house groundside. They're taking in displaced people. They'll try to get you home, if that's what you want, or they'll try to get you a job and a place to live.” She grimaced. “Getting home won't be easy. I'm going down to the surface. There's nothing for me back on New Panama. I might as well stay here. Wait for the craziness to end.”
Several of the others were doing the same thing. Mohamed had learned that his daughter's ship was due to arrive in another week. He planned to check himself into a spacers' hostel and beg a ride when she arrived. Karen Chupik was going to stay on the station. There was a lot of staff turnover in the hardware and maintenance shops, and she expected to have a job soon.
Alice spoke only vaguely about her own plans. It wasn't that she distrusted her companions, not really. A day earlier, she would have trusted them implicitly and absolutely. Now … they were no longer her shipmates. And the café was not the most discreet place for a conversation, not when one of your companions was an illegal, and your plans centered around an action the Dawn Alliance considered treasonable.
The gathering broke up, people exchanging hugs and promising to stay in touch somehow before dispersing. Alice moved to a corner table with a privacy screen, Bridger and Ham following. She turned on the screen and the background chatter in the café vanished. She looked at Ham, then at Bridger. “You two need to think about whether you want to stick with me. I'm planning to do things the Dawn Alliance won't like.”
“That's good enough for me,” Bridger said.
“They tortured me,” said Ham. “They're occupying my colony. So don't insult me.”
Bridger leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “The crew of the Kestrel,” he said. “They looked out for us.” He grinned. “Okay, they took our ship and shoved us in the brig until they needed us. But they looked out for the bigger 'us'.” He moved his hand in a circle, a gesture that encompassed the entire Green Zone. “The Free Planets. The ones who aren't dead are on Gamor, because they put their lives on the line at Black Betty.
“I know you, Alice. You're not going to rest until you've done everything you can for them. And that's why I'm sticking with you.”
She looked at Ham, who shrugged, jerked a thumb at Bridger, and said, “What he said.”
“All right then.” Alice leaned back and folded her arms. “It's a cinch we won't run into any United Worlds spacers here. How do we get somewhere where we can tell their Navy what we know?”
“We go back to the docking rings,” Bridger said, “and we keep pestering captains until we find someone who'll take us on his crew.”
It wasn't easy.
At first it looked promising. The station was crowded with ships, mostly from colony worlds. The turnover was rapid and unceasing, with some ships docked for less than an hour before hurrying away. She and Bridger were both seasoned spacers. Finding berths should have been straightforward.
But every ship was fully crewed. The station was thronged with refugees like Alice, looking to work their way to the next port. And apparently every port in the Green Zone was the same.
They spent hours pestering every spacer they could find, until they gave up in weary frustration. They returned to the same shopping area, where they found a little restaurant with outside tables. They slumped into chairs, and Alice sipped coffee and thought morosely about her bank account. She was touched by the loyalty of her companions, but if she had to pay for three sleep capsules every day, they were going to bankrupt her.
“Is it just me,” Ham said, “or is everyone looking at me?”
Alice took a look at the other patrons of the restaurant and the shoppers walking past, doing her best to be surreptitious. A few people glanced in the direction of her table, but no one seemed to pay particular attention. “I think it's just you.”
“I thought it was me, actually,” Bridger said. “I've been feeling paranoid ever since we left the freighter.” He looked around. “Anybody could be a spy for the DA.”
That's ridiculous. The thought sprang immediately into Alice's mind, but it died on her lips. Things that had seemed perfectly clear before the war were suddenly not clear at all. Things like the unity of the colonies in the Green Zone. They'd always been like a family, sometimes boisterous, sometimes bickering among themselves, but always ready to defend one of their own. Now Tazenda and Neorome had been cut out of the herd, isolated. And the other colonies, terrified of the invaders, were letting it happen.
The Dawn Alliance had done something Alice would have sworn was impossible. They'd fragmented the Free Planets.
In this new reality, what did it mean to be a loyal citizen? When your government signed a treaty with the invaders, where did your duty lie?
If your loyalty was to your own colony, you could harden your heart to what was happening on Tazenda and Neorome. It seemed unthinkable to Alice, but she'd seen exactly that attitude even among members of her own crew.
What did the war look like to the locals? Some of the people around her were spacers or travelers from all over the Green Zone. Most of them, however, were probably from Haultain. Most of them would have spent their whole lives in one colony, never going farther than this station. They might see the people of Tazenda and Neorome as foreigners, people from far away who should have signed a treaty with the Dawn Alliance if they didn't want to be invaded.
To such people, Alice and her companions might look like dangerous criminals. They were planning to provoke the Dawn Alliance, after all, and that could only make life harder for the people of Haultain.
And that was just the colonists. A third of the people in view wore Dawn Alliance uniforms, either military gear or the burgundy smocks of civilian staff. They would surely turn her in without hesitation. She could be arrested just for sitting with Garth Ham.
Someone shouted far down the concourse, the words unintelligible. Alice twisted in her seat to look. Pedestrians in the distance were turning their heads, then edging back against the windows. Alice shifted in her chair, getting her feet beneath her in case she needed to move quickly.
“What is it?” Bridger said.
“I don't know.”
There were more shouts, then a scream. She heard a metallic clatter that might have been a chair, kicked bouncing across the floor tiles. And then a woman came into view. She was dressed like a colonist, in dark trousers with a vivid blouse that flapped around her as she sprinted. She dodged around tables, vaulted a planter, and slapped the back of a chair in passing, tipping it over behind her.
A handful of soldiers pursued her, men and women in Dawn Alliance military uniforms, made bulky and androgynous by light body armor. Two of them held rifles. The rest carried drawn pistols, and Alice got ready to hit the floor if anyone started shooting.
The woman dashed past her, then turned. She fled into a narrow storefront. Her pursuers thundered in, three or four seconds behind her.
The explosion came as the last man stepped over the threshold. The blast blew him backward, and his rifle went clattering across the tiles. He landed on his back, arms splayed wide.
He didn't move.
A woman at the next table started screaming. A man swore, a hand pressed to his face. Blood trickled between his fingers. Broken glass littered the floor, the tabletop. Alice set her cup down, worried that it contained glass as well. She scanned herself quickly, found no injuries, and checked her companions. Then she looked back at the storefront.
No one emerged from the shop.
She shuddered. How many people just died? According to the tattered remains of the sign in front, it was a tailor shop. There might not have been customers inside.
In fact, she realized, the five soldiers might have been the only serious casualties. The bombing had to have been planned. Even the fleeing woman might have survived, triggering the explosion as she ducked out the back door.
A hand closed on her shoulder and shook her. She looked up, startled. Bridger was speaking. She could see his lips moving, but she couldn't make out his voice. His head jerked to the side, his meaning clear.
Let's get out of here.
She started to rise, then froze as a middle-aged woman dropped into the chair across from her. The woman spoke, her voice a murmur that seemed to come from a long way off. She made a “sit down” gesture with her hands. Alice didn't move, half out of her chair and paralyzed with indecision.
“Alice. Alice, can you hear me?” Bridger's voice seemed to get louder with every word, and Alice looked at him. She sank back into her chair.
“They'll grab people they see hurrying away.” The woman looked motherly and harmless, with graying curls framing a soft round face. Her voice was diamond-hard, though. “We're better off staying right here.”
Alice shook her head, trying to clear the shock from her mind. The woman looked vaguely familiar. “You were at the next table.”
The woman nodded.
“And I talked to you a couple hours ago,” Bridger said. “You're a spacer.”
She nodded again. “Junot Destry. I'm on the Morning Mist.”
The low warble of a siren sounded in the distance. Several tiny electric carts appeared in the distance, veering around planters and clusters of pedestrians as they raced toward the scene of the bombing. Each cart held a couple of Dawn Alliance soldiers. The smallest ambulance Janice had ever seen followed them, a bright-red cart with a single gurney on the back.
Junot leaned forward, speaking just loud enough to be heard over the sirens. “Believe it or not, this might be the safest place on the station to have a discreet conversation.” She gestured at the chaos around them. “Everyone's distracted.”
Alice nodded, conceding the point. “Fine. So what is it we need to talk about?”
“Him,” Junot said, and nodded toward Garth Ham.
There was a moment of tense silence.
“You've got a Neorome accent,” Junot said to Ham. “I grew up on the outskirts of Hampstead, and I can always spot an accent from home.”
Alice, Bridger, and Ham exchanged glances.
“You can't stay here,” Junot said. “I can get you places on the First Bee of Spring. We'll leave right away.”
“When I talked to you before,” Bridger objected, “you said you didn't need any crew.”
“We don't need any crew,” Junot said. “But you need to get off the station, and we can squeeze you in.” She looked from one face to another. “Well?”
Alice said, “What will your captain say?”
“She'll bitch about it, but then she'll say yes.”
“What if she doesn't?” said Bridger.
“She will,” Junot said, chuckling. “She knows I'll divorce her if she doesn't.”
Bridger and Ham looked at Alice. Alice shrugged. “I was getting tired of this place anyway.” She looked at the soldiers milling in front of the tailor shop. “It's too noisy.” She stood up and looked at Junot. “Let's go.”
Chapter 6
“You'll cooperate. The men under your command will cooperate. Is that clear?”
Tom and the officers around him shuffled uncomfortably and avoided each other's eyes. No one spoke.
“I'm giving you an order.” Captain Washington, ranking officer among the prisoners, enunciated each word with meticulous care. His face was a mass of bruises from his beating two days before, and his mouth was badly swollen. “Just so there's no misunderstanding.”
A muted chorus of “Aye aye's” rose from the other officers. They sounded about as happy as Tom felt.
“I know you don’t want to help the enemy,” Washington said. “We have to accept the reality of the situation, though. I expect you all to obey your orders.” He sighed, pressing a hand to his ribs as he leaned back in his chair. “That's all. Dismissed.”
The cluster of officers dispersed. A lieutenant named Hoskins fell in beside Tom. “You'll be with me on Worksite Charlie today.”
“Great,” said Tom. “Where's that?”
“No idea,” Hoskins said cheerfully. “The important thing, though, is Shannon says there's edible nuts on the jungle floor in that area.”
It was only their third day in Camp One, and already Tom and the others were obsessed with food. They were fed after a fashion, with a daily ration of meal replacement powder that might have been adequate for half as many men. Every prisoner in the camp was constantly hungry, and scrounging for food, according to the old hands, was going to become a major part of their daily routine.
Hundreds of enlisted prisoners now filled most of the huts in the compound. Tom had spoken to a handful of crew from the Kestrel. They'd been treated about the same as the officers.
The camp contained only male prisoners. No one knew where the women had been taken. Tom presumed there was a Camp Two somewhere nearby. The jungle surrounding the camp could have hidden just about anything. He fretted over the women from the Kestrel, just as he fretted over the men in Camp One. Since there was nothing he could do, he did his best to shove the worry to the back of his mind. It was actually worse than the constant hunger.
“Any idea what kind of work we'll be doing?” he asked.
Hoskins shrugged. “Not a clue. I guess we'll find out soon enough.”
As if summoned by his words, soldiers began to pour through the gate between compounds. Dawn Alliance officers bawled orders, and Tom and Hoskins began the laborious process of gathering the men under their command and lining them up near the gate to the jungle.
Most of Tom's group were strangers. There were a few former shipmates among them, including O'Reilly, who'd been his unofficial first officer. Most of the Kestrel survivors had ended up in other groups. “Platoons” was the name the officers were starting to use for the loosely organized cadres of prisoners. Tom's platoon held twenty-six men, and they were slow to gather, making the most of the early-morning chaos and the fact that Tom mostly didn't know their faces.
“All right, you've made your point,” Hoskins yelled from nearby. “You don't want to knuckle under, and you don't want to work for the enemy. I'm real impressed with your fortitude. Now quit pissing about and get into line.”
To Tom's surprise it seemed to work, sheepish men beginning to form themselves into a double line in front of Hoskins. He turned to his share of the milling crowd and hollered, “What he said! Fall in! You there, with the white hair. I recognize you! You're in my platoon. Now get in line.”
A handful of captains moved through the crowd. They had no platoons of their own, and they confronted men one at a time, brow-beating the rebellious prisoners until the last few men reluctantly lined up.
“You know the consequences if you go too far,” Hoskins said, a bit more softly. “Take a good look at the men on either side of you. Those are the men who'll bleed if you antagonize these shit rats. Those are the men who'll die if you try to escape, or fight back.” His voice softened. “I plan to see the whole lot of you off this god-forsaken rock and back in the war. And dead men are no bloody use to anybody. So don't get yourself killed, and don't get the rest of us killed either. All right?”
There was nothing Tom could say to match that. His platoon had heard every word, so he turned to face the fence.
A UW captain spoke briefly with a Dawn Alliance officer, then turned to the gathered prisoners. “Thrush! Hoskins! Palmerston! You're with me.” He turned to the Dawn Alliance officer and said, “Let's go.”
The Dawn Alliance officer led them out through the exterior gate, a captain named Goldfarb following. Hoskins led his platoon out next, and Tom followed, checking to make sure his own platoon was still with him.
Only eight or nine DA soldiers accompanied them. It seemed like an inadequate number for almost eighty men, and Tom thought about the tactical possibilities as he walked. How could he discreetly pass enough instructions to organize a simultaneous attack?
The problem, of course, wasn't how to overwhelm this handful of guards. It was what to do next. If they could take over the entire camp, kill every soldier on the planet, it would do no good. The Dawn Alliance could slaughter them all, and they could do it by doing nothing at all. There was nowhere to go, and nothing to eat. Their captors could simply leave them to starve.
There has to be a way off this planet. I'll find it. I'll bide my time for now, but somehow, some way, I'm escaping.
The ground outside the gate was a tangled jumble of weeds and low brush. Tree stumps stuck up almost knee high, some of them wide enough that he could have used them for a bed. The thought of a bed was appealing; Gamor's gravity made even a short walk an exhausting chore.
Plenty of bare earth showed between the stumps, but no dust rose around their feet. The moisture worried Tom. The sky once again was completely overcast, and it seemed clear that this place had to get a lot of rain. He wasn't looking forward to finding out just how bad it might be.
From a distance the jungle looked like a dark, unbroken wall. As he drew closer, though, Tom saw that a pathway of sorts had been crudely hacked through the trees. The stumps here were waist-high, the fallen trees shoved to either side to make a gap five or six meters wide. Fresh growth had sprung up in the opening, but Tom could see by the blackened state of the stumps that fire had been used to clear away the brush after the trees came down. The soil beneath his feet was darker now, a mix of dirt and ash.
The work site was a couple of kilometers from Camp One. It didn't look like much. A couple of dozen trees had been felled, making a clearing hundreds of meters across. A big chunk of the clearing was actually clear, the ground smooth except for stumps, no vegetation showing except grass and weeds.
The rest of the clearing was a jumbled obstacle course, a tangle of trunks and branches heaped on each other. The job of the prisoners, apparently, was to clean up the mess.
A crude lean-to against the trunk of a fallen tree contained a dozen or so plastic cases full of tools. Prisoners dragged the cases into the open, then waited as Dawn Alliance soldiers unlocked them and opened the lids. Inside were laser cutters, electric excavation machines, shovels and mattocks.
Chaos ruled for a time, the DA officers struggling to explain what they wanted, the prisoners deliberately misunderstanding. Finally one officer fired his pistol into the dirt quite close to the feet of a smirking spacer. The gun swung up, the barrel pointing directly between the man's eyes. His smirk disappeared.
“If you are truly too stupid to understand me, then you are not much use. But if I shoot you as an example to the others, then you will serve a purpose.” The muzzle of the gun didn't waver as he looked around at the other prisoners. “How many of you will I have to shoot before I persuade you to take me seriously?”
“That's not going to be necessary.” Lieutenant Hoskins, smiling as if this were a simple misunderstanding, hurried forward. A couple of soldiers lifted rifles, taking aim at the middle of his chest. He ignored them, lifting his hands in a placatory gesture. “No shooting will be necessary. Hideyo here understands the error of his ways.” Hoskins stood beside the frightened spacer. “There won't be any more delays. You'll see.”
“No there won't,” the officer said, lowering the pistol. “Or you'll see.”
Hoskins turned, bawling orders to the men around him. In very short order he had a dozen men lined up with mattocks, waiting for instructions.
Tom pushed his way closer, listened to the officer's next instructions, and got his own platoon busy. There were six laser cutters, and he assigned two men to each. The rest of the platoon would pick up the wood scraps generated by the men with the cutters, and haul it into the jungle.
The cutters were big clumsy tools with a backpack battery and a curving loop of metal. The laser was set in one end of the loop. A pull of the trigger would generate a beam of light a meter and a half long that terminated against the far end of the metal loop. If a man held each end of the loop, they could make quite precise cuts that were as long as the beam and as deep as the curve in the loop.
The men worked fairly enthusiastically for a while, with the memory of the near shooting still fresh in their minds. The men with the cutters stripped enormous branches from the fallen trees, then cut the branches into chunks. The others carried cut branches to the edge of the clearing.
The soldiers kept a fairly close eye on the men carrying scraps. Still, Tom thought a nimble man might dart into the jungle before a soldier could get a shot. With a little luck he might even make it into the trees undetected.
The problem, of course, was that there was nowhere to go.
Before long the initial enthusiasm wore off. Hideyo's brush with death faded in the men's memories and they remembered that their labor was for the benefit of their enemy. The pace of the work decreased, and Tom couldn't bring himself to tell anyone to hurry up.
The soldiers let it slide. The platoon settled into a slow, steady pace, stripping branch after branch from an enormous trunk. When it became clear the men with the laser cutters could outpace the collection crew, Tom had a couple of men put their cutter back into the case and join the others hauling branches.
Behind him, a line of men with mattocks attacked a low rise in the ground, hacking away chunks of turf. Men with spades and wheelbarrows worked behind them, hauling the chunks away, heaping them in a shallow depression on the far side of the clearing. It seemed bizarre to use human muscle for such trivial tasks, and he wondered if the point of it all was to humiliate and exhaust the prisoners.
At least we have laser cutters, he thought. How much worse would this job be if we had to use metal hand saws?
The enlisted personnel did most of the work, but Tom tried to help where he could. When he walked over to check on the heaps of wood scraps at the edge of the clearing he always carried an armful of wood with him – until he realized there would always be more work to do. He wasn't helping his platoon. He was only helping the Dawn Alliance.
After that he played a hands-off role, supervising, keeping the inefficiency of his men to a level that he hoped wouldn't inspire violence from the soldiers.
He was at the edge of the jungle, marking out a spot for the next pile of scrap, when he spotted the first nuts. Half the size of his fist, each nut had a tough-looking brown shell. They littered the ground under a tree on the edge of the jungle, a massive thing with branches that spread well into the clearing.
Tom moved along the tree line, picked an area where a heap of wood scraps wouldn't cover anything edible, and had the men start the next pile there.
And then he murmured to each spacer in turn as the man arrived to dump an armful of branches. “Edible nuts. Just there to your left.”
Actually picking up the nuts proved challenging. A couple of soldiers stood near the growing pile of branches, one on each side, watching the men as they approached. Tom was trying to think of a solution when the men in his platoon figured it out for themselves.
O'Reilly, the helmsman and unofficial First Officer of the Kestrel, heaved a chunk of wood thicker than his leg onto the stack of scrap. He turned back toward the men with the laser cutters, then winced and clutched his leg. He staggered over, dropped down on his rear end in the middle of a scattering of nuts, and kneaded his thigh. Then he tucked his trouser legs into the tops of his socks.
By the time he stood up he'd shoved a dozen nuts into the top of his trousers. Tom watched him do it, bemused. The nearest soldier was oblivious, his gaze on the next man with an armful of wood.
O'Reilly stood, his legs rattling faintly as the nuts tumbled down his trouser legs to pool just above his ankles. It made his trousers a bit baggy at the bottom, but with a little luck no one would notice.
After that, the men settled into a rhythm. Every few minutes a man would drop off a pile of wood scraps, then stagger over and sit on the ground for a short break. By the time he rose he'd be walking with a somewhat rolling gait.
The work settled into a routine. No one worked very hard, but they worked at a steady, efficient pace that quickly cleared one massive tree of all its branches. The full heat of the day hadn't yet hit, and the work was, if not pleasant, at least bearable. As time passed Tom found himself feeling unexpectedly cheerful. After weeks of sitting in one cell or another it was a relief to be outside and doing something.
The work was … satisfying. The moment he recognized the feeling he recoiled from it. I'm helping men do slave labor for the benefit of the people who attacked my country. I don't know what they want with this clearing in the jungle, but whatever they're doing, I'm helping them.
This isn't supposed to be satisfying. This is supposed to be horrible.
But there was no way not to work for their captors. It would take the death of every prisoner to bring work to a halt. In the meantime, Tom decided he was playing a central role. He was protecting the men psychologically. They weren't giving in to the Dawn Alliance. They were following the orders of their own officer. He was taking responsibility and allowing them to work – and save themselves – with clear consciences.
Tom decided to let himself feel satisfied.
When all the branches were gone from the tree the men with the laser cutters started on the trunk. The trees had adjusted to Gamor's high gravity, growing thick, squat trunks. The metal loops on the laser cutters meant they could only cut to a limited depth, far too little to cut through the trunk of the tree. So the men started carving away long strips of wood, flakes a couple of meters long by almost a meter wide and maybe a handspan deep. A motivated man in normal gravity could have carried one such flake without too much trouble. The men in Tom's platoon doubled up, one man taking each end of a flake and lumbering toward the edge of the clearing as if it was all the weight they could handle.
“Do you think we'll break for lunch, Captain?”
Tom glanced over at Carver, a technician who'd served with him on the Kestrel. “It's 'Lieutenant' now, Carver.” He'd taken the courtesy title of Captain while he'd been the ranking officer on the Kestrel, but the Kestrel was gone. “As for lunch, I have no idea. I wouldn't count on it, though.”
Carver nodded gloomily and went over to take one end of a wooden flake.
Lunch would sure be nice. Breakfast hadn't amounted to much, just a cup of gruel. He'd woken up hungry and still been hungry after his token meal. Now he looked around, hoping to spot some sign that the men would be fed.
What he saw was a whispered conversation in the line of mattock-wielding men behind him.
Two prisoners spoke briefly, then glanced around, checking for guards within earshot. Their body language was furtive enough to arrest Tom's attention, and he kept watching.
Some sort of fractured conversation was taking place among four different men. The four of them were never together, but as the line shifted and men moved back and forth, different members of the little group would cross paths. Each time, there would be a quick exchange of whispers.
Tom turned away, not wanting to draw the attention of the guards. He watched the conspirators discreetly from the corner of his eye and wondered what they were planning. That they were planning something was unmistakable. He could sense a rising tension in all four men. They were up to something, and whatever it was, it would happen soon.
They were in Hoskins's platoon. Hoskins, however, was a good thirty paces away with his back to them, standing next to Captain Thackeray and supervising the men filling a depression with chunks of turf.
When Tom looked back at the conspirators, all four men had laid down their tools and were walking toward the crew slicing up the fallen tree. Two men picked up a flake of wood while another scooped up an armful of debris. All three men started walking toward the scrap pile while the fourth man, a tall young man with a disheveled head of bright red hair, moved closer to the trunk.
Two men were carving a flake of wood from the upper part of the trunk. The man with the battery backpack stood on the ground while his partner walked along the top of the trunk, guiding the far end of the cutter.
The man with the red hair reached up to steady the flake of wood as it separated from the trunk. As the laser beam finished its cut he stumbled back, the flake of wood dropping into his arms. He cried out, falling backward to land with the chunk of wood on top of him. He let out a blood-curdling scream, and every eye in the clearing turned toward him.
Tom turned the other way, looking at the other three conspirators, who were just reaching the edge of the clearing. Only one guard stood near them, his attention fixed on the scream. The three prisoners could have easily made it into the jungle.
Instead, they headed for the guard.
One man dropped the wood scraps in his arms. The other two leaned sideways, swinging back the flake of wood they held between them. They leaned the other way, their arms swung forward, and they flung the chunk of wood at the guard.
He was bringing his rifle up when the flake hit him. It knocked him down, and all three men sprang at him. The gun went off, one prisoner fell, and the other two reached the guard. One man ripped the rifle from his hands and slammed the butt down on his skull. The other drove a boot into his ribs.
The man with the rifle took aim at the nearest guard, squeezed the trigger, and swore as nothing happened. He threw the rifle aside and both men dashed into the trees. Prisoners dove to the ground as several guards fired after the fleeing men. Tom stood frozen, not thinking to duck until the shooting was over.
The red-haired man rose quietly to his feet, looking toward the fallen men, his face pale and wide-eyed.
A Dawn Alliance officer pushed his way through a line of mattock-wielding men as they started to climb shakily to their feet. He stomped to the edge of the clearing, where he stood over the prisoner who'd been shot. The injured man was moaning, one hand clutching his shoulder. He kept bending and straightening his legs as if he were trying to stand up.
The officer spent a moment just staring down at him, face cold and angry. Then he drew his pistol, took careful aim, and shot the struggling prisoner in the head.
The crack of the gunshot seemed to echo over and over in Tom's head. He wanted to protest, to scream, to make the officer take it back. But it was much too late, and he knew with a rising dread that the killing wasn't over.
The officer turned and swept a glare across the watching prisoners. At last he holstered his pistol, then unclipped a small radio from his belt. He spoke into the radio for thirty seconds or so, his voice an indistinct mumble. At last he put the radio away.
“I need four men for a stretcher party.” He gestured at the nearest guard. “You will accompany them back to the camp.” One toe prodded the corpse. “Bury this fool. And get back to work.”
Chapter 7
Three prisoners gave up their shirts to make the stretcher. Men cut poles, ran the poles through the sleeves of the shirts, and the injured guard rolled himself onto this makeshift surface. A prisoner took one end of each pole and they set off at a brisk walk for Camp One, a soldier trailing behind them.
When the stretcher party was out of sight and the laser cutters were once again slicing flakes of wood from the trunk, Tom allowed some of the tension in his shoulders to ease. Apparently there wouldn't be a spontaneous massacre of the prisoners. Maybe Amar had been making hollow threats. Maybe the death of one man was enough.
The work went on. There was no lunch, just more labor as the platoon moved on to a second tree. Tom plodded back and forth between the tree trunk and the scrap heap, keeping the flow of work going, keeping the guards satisfied.
A squad of soldiers arrived almost an hour after the killing. There were six of them, each armed with a rifle, each man carrying some sort of hand scanner. A guard pointed them to the spot where the fleeing prisoners had entered the jungle, and the squad headed into the trees, waving their scanners around. In a minute or two they vanished into the jungle.
Soon after that, it began to rain. It began as a light shower and soon became a downpour as strong as anything Tom had ever seen. The guards gestured impatiently for the prisoners to keep working, so the men shrugged with what stoicism they could muster and carried on.
The ground, covered in shadow for years by the overhanging branches of enormous trees, had no vegetation except a few fast-growing weeds. It quickly became a morass of mud. It pulled at the men's feet. It formed a slick layer that made every step treacherous. The men with the laser cutters became slow and cautious, making sure they had both feet planted before pulling the trigger.
The men carrying scrap wood slipped and fell and cursed and got up again. Again and again they fell, until mud coated their uniforms. The unrelenting rain washed much of it away, but just as the worst of the mud dropped off a man would fall again and pick up a fresh batch.
Maybe the rain will wash away whatever traces the escapees are leaving. Maybe it means they'll give the trackers the slip.
But then what?
Do they know something? Is there a way off this planet? I mean, they can't just be running into the jungle and hoping for the best, can they?
Please, let there be something out there. Let there be a chance.
Let there be a way to escape.
The day passed in a fog of hard work. The rain eased, becoming drizzle, but it didn't stop. It reduced the heat somewhat, making it uncomfortable instead of brutal. But the humidity worsened, and the mud stank. It reeked of rot, a cloying smell that coated Tom's tongue and had him fighting the urge to gag.
The men moved slower and slower as the day progressed. While the rain was torrential the guards let it pass, but shortly after the rain began to fade, a gunshot made Tom jump. A man holding a laser cutter flinched, then swore as the beam cut into his trouser leg. A couple of nuts tumbled out, but he seemed uninjured.
Tom turned, scanning the clearing, trying to figure out where the shot had come from. Everyone seemed to be working as before, as if nothing had happened.
Except that the men with mattocks had picked up the pace. In fact, their work was almost frenzied. The same officer who had killed the injured man a few hours before circled around the line of men as they hacked away at the muddy ground. His right arm hung at his side, a pistol dangling in his grip. He walked over to the tree Tom's platoon was currently demolishing. He spoke to Tom, but pitched his voice so everyone could hear. “Your men are slacking. They can pick up the pace, or I can shoot a few of them to inspire the rest.”
Tom stared at him, speechless. Cold brown eyes stared back at him. After a frozen moment the man turned and marched away to inspire the next group of prisoners.
Eventually it ended. The rain didn't stop and the sky didn't clear, but the gloom deepened until the wall of jungle became a black, featureless expanse. Tom didn't see the officer approach, but a voice directly behind him said, “Stop now. Put the tools away.”
The hike back to Camp One seemed interminable. Tom hadn't done much physical labor, but he was exhausted nevertheless. Lack of food and increased gravity had sapped the strength from his limbs, and every step he took in the sucking mud required real effort. All around him his platoon trudged along, heads hanging, lungs heaving.
But there was no respite when they reached the camp. Amar stood just inside the gate between compounds, speaking into a handheld device, his voice booming from speakers somewhere behind him. “General assembly. Everyone line up!”
This was apparently a familiar ritual to the old hands. The Strad prisoners plodded into the open ground in front of the gate and arranged themselves in tidy rows and columns. Tom and the other officers shrugged and followed suit, lining up their weary platoons.
More prisoners streamed in from every direction. Quite a few of them wore mud-caked uniforms, showing they'd spent the day at work sites of their own. They arranged themselves in block after block until close to a thousand men stood before the gate.
Several men in Tom's platoon tilted their heads back, looking at the sky. Tom looked up and saw a small drone, the whir of its engine drowned out by the patter of raindrops, drifting through the air just above the gathered men. It's counting us, he thought. Hand tools are good enough for the likes of us, but the guards aren't going to trouble themselves taking a manual roll call.
A squad of soldiers, eight or nine men with rifles, came through the gate to stand behind Amar, and Tom felt a cold prickle run up his back. More soldiers, at least a dozen, lined up on the far side of the gate. As if they feared the prisoners would surge forward and attack the Dawn Alliance section of the compound.
As if they knew something bad was coming.
A long, tense moment of silence stretched out. Then Amar walked forward until he reached the front rank of prisoners. He was perhaps thirty men away from where Tom stood just ahead of his platoon. Amar tapped a man on the shoulder. “You. Stand there.” He pointed at a spot a dozen paces or so behind him. As the prisoner took an uncertain step forward, Amar moved down the line. “And you. And you. And you.” He selected six men, then gestured impatiently for them to advance. They walked forward, and a soldier came out to meet them. He pushed them into a ragged line.
Tom watched, a cold lump in his stomach expanding and spreading until he felt as if his whole body was made of ice. He looked at the line of soldiers in front of the gate, at the longer line of soldiers on the far side of the gate, at the alert man in the tower peering at them with his fingers on the triggers of a multi-barrel gun. And he looked back at Amar.
“Two of your fellow prisoners escaped into the jungle today.” Amar spoke into a handheld microphone, and his voice boomed out of speakers on the far side of the fence. “In addition, a soldier of the Dawn Alliance was attacked and injured.” He moved down the line, grabbing five more men and sending them, one at a time, stumbling forward. “Join your comrades.”
The five men, looking reluctant and afraid, joined the other six in the punishment line.
Amar stared into the face of the next prisoner. He took a step, stared at the next man. Another step, another silent stare. He lifted the microphone to his lips.
“A third prisoner attempted to escape.” He stared into the eyes of the third prisoner as he said, “You may be grateful that he was killed before he could reach the jungle.”
I need to do something. I need to act now, or I'll remember this moment for the rest of my life, and regret it. Tom’s gaze moved desperately from one armed soldier to another. But what can I do?
Amar turned and marched toward the eleven frightened prisoners standing in a line. He moved to the end of the line and stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the men he had selected. A pair of soldiers moved over to join him.
Tom did frantic math in his head. In addition to the two lines of soldiers there were other clusters of armed men. Could they be overwhelmed, their guns taken away from them? He remembered when the escaping prisoner had tried to shoot a guard. The guns were bio-locked. There would be no way to fire on the man in the tower, no way to shoot back when the guards, seeing open rebellion, opened fire.
Please, God, let this not happen. Let this miserable shit rat be satisfied with scaring us. Humiliating us. Reminding us how hopeless it is. Surely that's enough. He has us where he wants us. We're under control. He doesn't need to actually-
Amar drew and fired in one smooth motion, the pistol sweeping up and sending a bullet into the head of the nearest prisoner. The man dropped, the next prisoner turned to stare in horror, and Amar shot him in the face.
Some of the ranked prisoners surged forward, not all of them, but dozens of men motivated by a single impulse. The multi-barrel gun in the tower opened up, high-caliber slugs throwing up gouts of mud, and the prisoners froze.
And Amar kept shooting.
Some of the doomed men stood frozen. One man closed his eyes and bowed his head. One man lunged at Amar, and another ran for the fence.
It didn't matter. They died, one by one, a bullet catching the running man in the back and knocking him face down in the mud where he twitched and moaned while Amar finished off the others. At last he stood over the injured man and fired a bullet into the back of his head.
A terrible silence fell.
Amar lifted the microphone to his lips. “Bury your dead.” His voice was flat, devoid of emotion. “You are dismissed.”
“I won't have it!” Blood suffused Washington's face, reddening the few areas that weren't dark with bruising. “Do you hear me? I won't have it!”
Tom, Hoskins, and Palmerston stood shoulder to shoulder in front of their hut. As the only three officers at Site Charlie they were responsible for the whole fiasco in Washington's eyes. He was making sure the whole camp knew it, too.
“My first week! My first week as commander of this camp, and you dump this in my lap? Was I not clear in my orders? Did I not tell you just this morning that you were to cooperate?” He glared at the three of them. “Answer me!”
The three of them mumbled, “Yes, Sir.”
“By God, I won't have another incident like this one. The men work like bloody dogs in this heat, and all you have to do is stand back and bloody watch them. And what do you do? You apparently don't see a bloody thing while a bunch of damned idiots plot a suicidal escape right under your damn useless noses.” He went on in this vein for several minutes, flecks of spittle flying from his lips, while Tom stared into space and tried to figure out if he deserved it.
“You're all on punishment duty,” Washington said. “For seven days you can maintain the officers' latrines. Maybe that will motivate you to pay a little more attention next time you're leading a work crew.” He screwed his face up in an exaggerated grimace of disgust. “Twelve men dead, and two more skulking in the jungle with no hope of doing anything more than dying out there. God help me.” He shook his head. “Get out of my sight.”
The three of them slunk away. Latrine duty. Terrific. The compound had running water; four small pipes rose from the ground in the dining hall, the nickname for the open ground between the officers' huts and the huts of the enlisted men. There were certainly no flushing toilets.
The latrines were holes in the ground. The Strad prisoners had simply capped each hole with dirt as it filled and dug fresh holes. With the influx of new prisoners, however, there wasn't room inside the fence to keep digging. So the old latrines had to be dug out, the contents removed one wheelbarrow full at a time, and wheeled outside the compound under a guard's supervision to be dumped in a fresh hole at the edge of the jungle.
It would be hard work, and disgusting, but not nearly so unpleasant as it would become in another few weeks. Then, the contents being removed would be much fresher.
“I'm sorry,” Hoskins said. “They were in my platoon. It's my responsibility.”
“No!” Both officers turned to look at Tom, and he flushed. “It's not your fault.” He didn't say what he was thinking. It was my fault. I knew they were up to something. I saw it coming, and I looked the other way. Twelve men dead – that was more responsibility than he could own up to.
Instead he said, “You didn't know. You didn't attack a guard, or run into the jungle. It's not your fault.” He was thinking of his own guilt, of course, not Hoskins's. “You're not responsible for what someone else does. Only what you do.”
“Well, I know one thing,” Palmerston said. “It sure as hell isn't my fault. I was way over on the other side of the clearing.” He made a face. “Do you think we should start on the latrines tonight?”
“We've been through enough today,” Hoskins said. “Tomorrow is soon enough.”
Tom, his conscience pricking him badly, would have preferred to get to work immediately. He shrugged, though, and said, “All right.”
“Those idiots,” Hoskins murmured. “Why'd they have to do it?”
There was no good answer. Tom shook his head and turned toward the hut, wondering if he'd be able to sleep.
A squad of soldiers brought in the escaped prisoners just after sunset. They lashed the bullet-riddled corpses to poles set just outside the wire and left them there as a bleak reminder of the hopelessness of escape.
Chapter 8
Brobdingnag wasn't just a backwater, it was an accident.
Alice stared through a tiny window in the belly of the First Bee of Spring, watching as a dilapidated joke of a space station grew before her. The station had come into existence when a bulk freighter had broken down in deep space, half-way between Gallant and Achilleus, not terribly far from Tazenda. The original plan had been to abandon the ship after removing her cargo and stripping her of parts. But only the smallest of freighters bothered to make salvage runs, and the process of unloading the hulk took months.
And in that time a miniature economy sprang up. Someone opened a store to sell things to the endless trickle of freighter crews. The passenger accommodations on the crippled ship, while far from glamorous, were huge by the standards of small-haulers. An enterprising crew member turned the empty rooms into a hotel of sorts, renting them out to spacers craving a break from the tiny capsules they had on their own ships.
Eventually ships began to stop by even when they weren't under contract to offload cargo. The derelict ship was a convenient stop if you were flying between Gallant and Achilleus. There was less traffic from Tazenda, but sometimes a ship made a detour if they were low on something the captain considered vital.
There wouldn't be any traffic from Tazenda now, she thought sadly. Not for a long time.
The owners of the hulk had reconsidered, and left her engines intact. The ship couldn't move itself, but the engines generated enough power to keep the lights and gravity on. The company grafted on a docking facility and built a restaurant, and Brobdingnag was born.
In the years since, the place had grown and deteriorated. It looked like a junk heap in space, a mess of battered metal that would collapse under its own weight if anyone set it on a planet.
The First Bee of Spring was delivering water to the station, and looking for cargo or passengers heading to Gallant. Alice didn't expect to see much of the station, not that there was much to see. She'd spend the stopover on the hull of the Bee, refurbishing hull plates.
She watched as the ship docked, then headed up to the main deck to grab her vac suit. Captain Grayson met her at the top of the ladder, though, her face grave. “Alice. We need to have a little chat.”
The sight of Junot glaring at the back of Grayson's head from the cockpit told Alice this wouldn't be a pleasant conversation. She said, “All right,” and followed the captain aft to the ship's tiny common room.
When Bridger and Ham joined them Alice knew it was going to be even worse than she'd thought.
“I'll get to the point,” Grayson said. “I'm putting you ashore here. You'll be able to find another ship sooner or later.” She looked at each of them in turn, sorrow in her eyes. “I don't like to do it, but if I keep you aboard I won't be doing you any favors. I'm getting some disturbing chatter from the station. Captains have been telling stories. All kinds of ships are getting boarded. There's DA inspection teams in every port these days. They check IDs, they take thumb scans, they interrogate people. If you're not in one of their databases, they arrest you until you can prove you're not from Neorome or Tazenda.” She shook her head. “If I let you stay on the Bee you'll be putting your own heads in a noose, and mine along with you.”
An hour later, her stomach feeling hollow and queasy, Alice watched the Bee move away from Brobdingnag. She stared at the ship as it shrank with distance, until a brilliant rectangle of light appeared just beyond her nose. The ship slipped through into seventh dimensional space and the portal disappeared. How many times will I get a scrap of security and then have it snatched away? How many times will I find a temporary home and then lose it? Fear and a nagging uncertainty weighed on her shoulders, like a toddler who refused to be put down. How long will I have to carry it?
“Well, that's discouraging,” said Bridger. He stood beside her on her left side.
“Downright disappointing,” agreed Ham. He stood at her right side.
“On the other hand,” said Bridger, “it gives us a chance to fully explore the delights of Brobdingnag.”
Alice chuckled, shaking her head. She figured they'd seen more than half the station just walking out the airlock. They stood in a fragile cube of space, a blocky metal structure stuck on the side of the original freighter. Thin sheets of aluminum covered the floor, ceiling, and one wall. The remaining two walls were mostly glass. It wouldn't take much of a meteor strike to depressurize the whole space, and she'd be astonished if there were force fields to keep the atmosphere contained. This was interstellar space, where the odds of a meteor strike were vanishingly small, but still …
“Let's go inside,” she said, jerking a thumb at the hull of the freighter behind them. “We need to figure out what to do next.”
The others nodded and joined her as she turned and took a single step. There were no gravity generators in this add-on to the station. Instead there was bleed-over from the freighter, growing stronger as they moved closer to the hull. Alice had nearly no gravity as she pushed off from the floor. She sailed up and forward, moving in a line that was almost straight. As she moved forward her weight increased and her vector curved. By the time she touched the floor again she had more than half her normal weight.
One bouncing step and one normal step brought her to a hatch in the hull. She ducked through, feeling immediately more comfortable with solid hull plates between herself and the void. The men followed her in.
The derelict freighter had seemed tiny from the outside, surrounded as it was by the endless depths of space. From the inside it felt palatial. Designed to carry massive cargoes, the ship was built on a tremendous scale. Alice stood in a long, high-ceilinged room with scuffed metal deck plates under her boots. The drab utilitarian fixtures seemed at odds with the extravagant dimensions. She looked around, trying to figure out what this room was for, and jerked her head back in surprise when she realized it was a corridor.
Even groundside buildings weren't so generous with space, never mind ships. She shook her head in disbelief and turned in a circle, getting her bearings. “We docked over there, right?”
“We need to go to the forward hold,” Ham said. He pointed. “It's that way.”
She stared at him. “Why the forward hold?”
“It's the one with gravity.” When she gave him a blank look he said, “The forward hold is basically the local town. Out here you get a few hawkers and the dock crews. Everyone else is in the hold.”
“I thought you said you'd never been here.”
He shrugged and grinned. “I haven't. But I used to think about coming here. I had some kind of romantic idea about living without a star system. Out in the middle of the deep dark, a lonely way station between worlds, not another human settlement in a light-year.”
Bridger snorted. “Your dreams are my nightmares.”
“That's because you're a Philistine,” Ham said airily. He put a hand to his chest. “Within these humble ribs beats the heart of a poet.”
That made Bridger laugh, and Ham laughed with him. “Anyway,” he said, “I learned everything I could about this place.” He wrinkled his nose. “It wasn't that much, actually. It's kind of a nowhere spot.”
“No, really?” Bridger raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment.
“So I went to Rivendell instead.” Ham grimaced, one fingertip touching a puckered scar on his chin. “I should have stuck with Plan A.”
“Well, you finally made it,” Bridger told him, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Your dream has come true. And you get to be our guide.”
“Lucky me,” Ham muttered. “This way.”
They followed him down the impossibly wide corridor, around a corner, and up to the biggest hatch Alice had ever seen. They walked through – and everything changed.
Brobdingnag's forward hold was enormous, a good two hundred meters across and just as deep. One wall was laser-straight; the other wall curved to follow the hull. At the back the ceiling was over a hundred meters high, curving forward and down to become the front wall.
The sense of space was magnified by the tiny scale of the community in the middle of the hold. A dozen buildings stood in a meandering double row, making a street in between. There were no peaked roofs, not in this place where rain and snow never fell. In fact, she doubted every building had a roof. Each building had straight, unbroken walls. There were no windows.
The three of them walked toward the little settlement, their feet clacking on the hull plates and echoing from the ceiling high above. A row of waist-high pots lined their path from the giant hatch. The pots were filled with soil, and each pot held a sapling perhaps a meter high, dwarfed by the pot that held it. Alice tried to imagine a time, years distant, when visitors would walk between lines of stately trees.
Someone in Brobdingnag had vision. This fragile place, created by chance and mishap, was truly a home for at least some of its residents.
The buildings, when she drew close enough to see them better, were as eclectic as anything she'd seen in even the quirkiest frontier towns, a mix of cubical aluminum shipping containers and haphazard structures made from sheets of metal bolted to a steel framework. None of the buildings were large, and only a few looked as if they had as many as two rooms.
A trio of men sat in front of the nearest building on a bench made from a long plastic crate, chatting quietly. They nodded politely to the visitors and returned to their conversation. Farther down the street, a woman watered plants in crates full of soil. She set down her watering can as they approached. “Hello there!”
“Um, hi,” Alice said. The whole scene felt surreal, like a small colonial town had been transplanted to the hold of a ship without the residents noticing.
“Are you with the First Bee? I didn't think they were staying.”
“They aren't,” Alice said ruefully. “They left us behind.”
The woman's forehead wrinkled. “Oh, that's too bad.” She looked them up and down. “You don't look like troublemakers. You have a dispute with the captain?”
Alice nodded. It was as close to the truth as she cared to get.
“Well, it happens. Especially in days like these. These are trying times. Lots of people making difficult choices.” She gave them a shrewd look that said she suspected everything Alice wasn't saying. “Anyway, you've come to a good place now.”
“I can see that,” Alice said, not sure if she entirely meant it. “Thing is, we're not quite sure what comes next.”
“You should talk to George.” The woman turned her head and shouted, “George! Come on out here, you old pirate. I know you're listening anyway. You might as well be sociable.” She leaned forward to look past Alice. “You lot, too. Quit pretending you're not curious.”
The three men behind them rose from their bench and ambled over, moving like people who had not much to do and plenty of time to do it. A gray-haired man in rumpled trousers and a faded blue singlet emerged from the building behind the woman. Two more women came out of the building across the street, apparently taking the first woman's words as a general invitation.
“My name's Sarabeka,” said the woman with the watering can. “You can call me Beka. This is George. He's my husband and general pain in my neck.”
George snorted and gave her an affectionate look.
Beka introduced the others, a flood of names that vanished from Alice's mind as quickly as she heard them.
“There's half a dozen more permanent residents. You'll meet them soon enough if you stay a while. And we've got two ships still in port. One crew's sleeping in the hotel.” She gestured toward the deck plates. “That's what we call the old passenger cabins. They're nice enough, but they get expensive if you stay a long time. You'll want a place up here if you're staying more than a few days.”
A lively conversation broke out, the three travelers watching in silence as the locals interrupted and talked over one another. It reminded Alice of small town colony life, where everyone knew everyone. Or shipboard life, which was in many ways the same. She was a stranger here, but she could already see how she would fit in once they got to know her.
“The Dawn Alliance doesn't come here,” said George. “Least they haven't so far. Tazenda keeps them busy. Tazenda and the war. So you're in the right place, if that's why you left your ship.”
“They had an argument with their captain,” Beka said.
“Sure they did,” said George.
A man said, “I'm telling you, the DA will get here eventually. Probably set up a garrison.”
“Well, when they do,” said George, “we'll all swear you've been here for years, and we knew you when you were growing up on Haultain.”
“I told you, they're not hiding from the Dawn Alliance.”
“No, of course not,” said George. “I'm just saying.”
Despite the open space all around, Alice suddenly felt smothered by the press of bodies around her. “Excuse me,” she said, edging back from the crowd. “I'm going to take a walk. Is that all right?”
“Of course,” Beka said. “If you go back the way you came and turn left, you can find the hotel area. There's a card-operated bar. Even a holo-tank.” She pointed at the back wall of the hold. “Or if you go that way, you can see the farm. And there's a hatch that leads into the aft hold. I think the boys are in there boxing. That can be pretty neat to watch, until you realize what knuckleheads they are.”
The conversation sprang back up before Beka even finished speaking. No one paid much attention as Alice skirted the group and moved deeper into the hold.
The “farm” started just after the last building in the little improvised village. A knee-high barrier made of long polymer sheets attached to crates marked the boundary. The barrier made an enclosure, and the enclosure was full of dirt. Plants grew in tidy rows, little green shoots a handspan in height sticking up out of the soil.
Alice skirted the perimeter of the little plot of land. She came to a corner, turned, and found herself walking down a clear path between two dirt-filled enclosures. The next enclosure held wheat, mature plants beginning to lose their green color and turn golden.
The enclosures, essentially giant planters, were square in shape and about fifty paces on a side. Narrow gaps separated each enclosure from the next, with a wider gap making a pathway to the back wall. Each enclosure held a different crop, or at least a crop at a different level of maturity. She saw vegetables and grains and plants she couldn't recognize.
Near the back wall she found an empty enclosure, and another that contained a heap of soil waiting to be spread around. She sniffed. The other enclosures smelled of loam and lush, fertile vegetation. This pile of dirt smelled of stone and dust. It smelled sterile. It wasn't proper dirt, she realized. It was powdered rock, a byproduct of asteroid mining, shipped here to become a raw ingredient for soil.
Just beyond that enclosure she reached the back wall of the forward hold. A selection of gardening tools leaned against the wall, rakes and hoes and spades. Buckets and pots stood in wobbling stacks nearby. Brobdingnag was looking more like a planetside colony every moment.
Beyond the pots was a hatch, sized for human beings instead of the massive cargo movers the main hatch at the front must have been meant for. Alice peered through the hatchway and saw darkness.
She shrugged and walked through.
With every step her weight decreased. Enough light filtered in from the hatch behind her to illuminate a passageway about two meters long with a closed hatch at the far end. By the time she reached the hatch she was floating. She grabbed the round handle in the middle of the door, braced a foot against the side of the corridor, and gave the handle a twist.
The hatch swung inward, and she peered through. There was no floor directly in front of her. The aft hold, twice the height of the forward hold, extended from the curving top of the hull high above her to the matching curve of the bottom of the hull far below. Whatever cargo it had once held was long since removed. The vast, gloomy space was empty.
Except for one man.
He hovered near the center of the hold, floating, far from any handhold. He wore a snug yellow jumpsuit, and he had the relaxed, alert look of an athlete. His feet pointed in the direction she still thought of as “down”, and he had his head tilted back, looking at something high above. A few lights glowed along the top and bottom of the hull, but he was staring into a shadowy corner where the ceiling met the same wall that contained Alice's hatch. She squinted into the darkness and couldn't see a thing.
Rubber slid against metal with a sibilant sigh, and another man came into view. He sailed out of the darkness, arms outstretched, soaring toward the man in yellow. The new arrival wore blue, and the light made highlights and pools of shadow in the muscles of his bare arms.
The man in yellow, with no way to move aside, pointed his arms at the approaching man and waited. The two of them crashed together, an impressive bit of marksmanship on the part of the man in blue. They sailed toward the distant floor, writhing and squirming as they grappled with one another. Finally they hit, a metallic thump blending with the sound of a grunt as they struck.
The man in blue sprang away, soaring up and to one side, heading for the curved side wall of the hull. His opponent sprang after him, his trajectory just a little higher. The man in blue waited until he was about to strike the wall before tucking in his arms and legs and rotating. He hit feet-first, kicking off an instant before the other man could intercept him. The man in yellow kicked off as well, and they raced each other through the hollow center of the aft hold.
A flicker of motion caught Alice's eye. A figure was dropping toward her – if she continued to think of the bottom of the ship as “down”. It was a slim figure in green, diving head-first, soaring along less than two meters from the vertical wall that separated the forward and aft holds. Alice pulled her head back into the corridor, just in case.
The stranger jerked to a halt just in front of the hatch. It was a young woman, and she held a thin cord which she used for braking. She flailed for a moment, then pulled something out of a thigh pocket and hurled it away from her. It gave her enough momentum to drift gently through the hatch. She grabbed the edge of the opening, oriented herself so she was looking at Alice, and grinned. “Hello, stranger.”
“Um, hello. I'm Alice.”
“Kyra. Pleased to meet you.”
“What was that you threw?”
Kyra chuckled. “A chunk of ice. Ice is the perfect rescue rock. You don’t have to pick it up. It'll melt and evaporate.” She patted the bulging pocket on her left thigh.” I always carry a few chunks, just in case.” She pointed into the bay with her thumb. “The boys laugh at you if you get stuck.”
“What are they doing?”
“Boxing.” Kyra made a face. “That's the official name, anyway. Not that they will punch each other. Punching doesn't work so well in zero gee. They wrestle, and then they chase each other around the hold.”
Alice had heard of zero gee boxing, but she'd never seen it. “Interesting.”
“They made us to do it in school. Supposed to teach us about physics.” She grimaced. “Mostly taught me how easy it is to get a knee in the face from someone who doesn't even see you coming.”
“It's the one thing that unites the galaxy,” Alice said. “No matter where you go, gym class sucks.”
Kyra laughed. “You got that right.” She looked Alice over. “Are you on the Honeysuckle?”
Alice shook her head. “I was on the First Bee of Spring. It's already gone. I … had a disagreement with the captain.”
Kyra laughed again, then suppressed it, blushing. “Sorry.” After a moment of awkward silence she said, “So you're stuck here?”
“For a bit.” Alice thought about Captain Grayson and what she'd said about ships being boarded, and grimaced. “Maybe for quite a while.”
“Ah, you'll love it.” Kyra snickered. “Who am I kidding? This may be the most boring place in the entire galaxy.” She glanced over her shoulder as the two boxers went tumbling past, upside-down in relation to one another, grabbing at each other's legs. “That's the most exciting thing that happens here, and it's not that great.”
Alice laughed. Small-town life was the same everywhere.
“Seriously, though, it's an okay place to live. We've got room for a few more people. There's no jobs, but you can set up a farm if you want. There's always ships coming through, and everybody wants fresh food. We're thinking about getting chickens. Fresh eggs!” She smiled dreamily. “Can you imagine?”
“Hardly,” Alice said dryly.
“Have you seen the arboretum?” Kyra said. “No? Okay, you have to see this. You can't decide if you want to stay until you've seen the best part of the station.” Without another word she turned and pulled herself out into the gulf behind her. She grabbed the cord she'd used to arrest her earlier flight, gave it a sharp tug, and sent herself flying back up to where she'd come from.
Alice stared after her, bemused. Then she closed the hatch, kicked off ever so gently, and waved her arms, feeling for the cord. A careful tug sent her drifting upward.
Air resistance gradually slowed her, but the cord dangled in arm's reach, so she reached out and gave it another tug. She was tempted to give it a good hard yank and try to match Kyra's speed, but she wasn't sure how she'd stop when she got to the top. She had plenty of experience with zero gee, but only in confined spaces, or out in the void with compressed-air jets to help her maneuver.
So she drifted along at a brisk walking pace, tucking and turning as the ceiling neared. She bent her legs on impact, soaking up her momentum without bouncing away, and found herself looking into Kyra's upside-down face. The young woman stood in another tunnel like the one Alice had entered through.
Alice grabbed the top of the hatchway, pulled herself down, and twisted her body around so she landed on her feet beside Kyra. She could feel the faintest hint of gravity.
“Leave it open,” Kyra said as Alice started to close the hatch. “This way. Careful, the gravity picks up pretty sharply.”
Alice followed her, feeling her weight increase with every step. By the time she stepped through another hatch she was back to her normal weight.
“This hatch has to close,” Kyra said, and swung the metal door shut. Beyond lay the arboretum. The air was several degrees warmer here, and humid. Plants covered almost every surface of a long, high-ceilinged room. Vines trailed along the walls and across the ceiling. Planters filled the floor and rose along every wall. Baskets hung from the ceiling, trailing leaves and flowers. Perfume and the rich scents of fertile soil and green things filled the moist air.
“This is my favorite spot in Brobdingnag.” Kyra turned in a slow circle, her arms out to either side. “I love it in here. Can you believe this used to be a grubby old corridor?” She pointed straight up. “There's a hatch right up there. They'd load cargo through there, and big robots would take it into the hold.” She smiled. “It's much nicer now.”
Alice nodded, leaning close to a flowering vine and sniffing at a fat blossom.
“That's clematis,” Kyra said. “It grows like crazy. We've actually started digging it up and throwing it away. We have too much.” She pushed aside some trailing vines. “Look over here. This is the good stuff.”
Alice peered through the vines and saw a long row of small pots, each with a spindly sapling poking out of the dirt. None of it looked very impressive.
“Fruit trees,” Kyra said proudly. “Hardly anything the same, only what we need for cross-pollination. There's three kinds of pears and five kinds of apples, and cherries and, oh, look here! These are the berry bushes. They won't grow into trees like the others, but they'll mature a lot faster. We might have fresh berries as early as next year.” She grinned, carried away by her own enthusiasm. “Not many berries.” She cupped her hands to demonstrate. “A handful, maybe. But every year there'll be more.”
A metallic clatter from the far end of the arboretum saved Alice from an exhaustive cataloging of the berry bushes. A door swung open and a man came through. He closed the door behind him, straightened up, then swatted at something in the air beside his face.
“Hey,” Kyra said. “Don't swat the bees. We need them. Besides, they'll sting you if you annoy them.”
“Bugs on a ship,” the man grumbled. “Of all the …”
“This is a station,” Kyra said primly, walking toward him. “Captain Rodriguez, this is Alice.”
Rodriguez, a stern-looking man in his fifties with a shaved head and silver eyebrows, nodded politely to Alice – then stiffened. He peered at her more closely, then said, “Alice Rose? Is that you?”
Alice smiled. “Hello, Diego.”
Kyra said, “You two have met?”
They ignored her, hurrying toward one another. Rodriguez's strong arms enfolded her, squeezed briefly, then let her go. She stepped back, looking up at him. “Oh, it's good to see you again, Diego.”
He beamed. “Alice! I was worried about you. About your whole crew. Is the Free Bird here?”
She shook her head, feeling her smile drop away. “No. Some of the crew are dead. The rest are scattered. Bridger's here. He's the only one who's still with me.”
Rodriguez looked around, found a bench among the planters, and sat down. “Tell me everything.”
Alice sat beside him. Kyra hesitated for a moment, then gave in to curiosity and plunked herself down on another bench nearby. Alice looked at her, considering. “Kyra, where are you from?”
Kyra's eyebrows rose. “Me? Tazenda.”
“All right. You can stay.” She took a deep breath, turned to Rodriguez, and let the whole story come pouring out.
When she finished, Kyra said, “Wow.”
“So,” said Rodriguez, “what's next for you?”
Alice shrugged helplessly. “I don't know if it's safe to stay here, but it's not safe to board another ship.”
“Sure it is,” he said. “I'll take you aboard the Orange Blossom. I've got a contract to deliver machine parts to the Mercator Corporation asteroid stations. I'll drop you on Novograd.”
“The DA's intercepting ships,” Alice protested.
He dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “I've been smuggling things past the UW for ten years. Things and people.” The corners of his eyes crinkled as he grinned. “I can get you past the Dawn Alliance.”
“I'm actually legal,” she said. “So's Bridger. It's Ham who needs to be smuggled.”
“I can get him on the ground at Novograd,” Rodriguez said. “Guaranteed. If he wants to go.”
She stared at him, weighing his words. He gazed back, utterly confident. She'd known him for a long time, and she'd never heard him make an empty boast. Alice made her decision and stood. “Let's go ask him.”
When they walked into the forward hold they found Bridger pushing an enormous wheelbarrow down the middle of the street, Ham walking alongside, steadying a precarious pile of sacks. A smell of dust rose from the sacks, and powdered rock dust trickled from a ruptured seam. They were headed in the direction of the farm.
“Alice,” Bridger said, not stopping. “We've made an arrangement with George. He's fronting us enough dirt to start a little farming operation. He's giving us a couple buckets of proper soil, too. He says we'll need a month or so to spread the bacteria, and then we'll have soil that can grow something. He'll give us radish and carrot seeds. He wants half our first harvest. After that, we're on our own.”
“There's enough work for all three of us,” Ham added. “What do you think?”
“I think I'm leaving,” she answered. “This is Captain Rodriguez. He's got a ship that can get us safely to Novograd.” She lowered her voice, gave Ham a meaningful look, and said, “All three of us, if you want to come.”
Bridger put the handles of the wheelbarrow down so fast the stack of bags started to tip. Ham swore and planted a shoulder against the top bag, stopping the fall. Bridger said, “When do we leave?”
“You could stay,” she said. “Be farmers. It might be safer.”
“That's easy for you to say,” Ham retorted. “You haven't tried to lift one of these bloody bags.” He straightened up and brushed dust from his clothes. “Captain Rodriguez?” He stuck out a hand. “I'm Garth Ham. I'd be delighted to join your crew.”
Rodriguez shook his hand, then Bridger's. “We can leave pretty soon. Do you need to pack?”
“Nope,” said Bridger. “I'm carrying everything I own.”
Rodriguez glanced at the wheelbarrow. “Do you need help moving this?”
“Not my wheelbarrow,” said Bridger.
“Not my dirt,” said Ham. He turned his head. “George! Deal's off!”
“Figures!” said an irritated voice from the nearest building.
“That’s every loose end tied up,” said Bridger. “Where's the ship?”
Chapter 9
“Oh my God, Sir, that’s disgusting.”
Tom looked at the millipede squirming in his hand and nodded. “Yes, it is.” The wriggling insect was as long as a banana, and almost the same bright yellow. It was also packed full of protein. He lifted it to his mouth, crunched down on the bug’s head, and felt it give a final spasm, then go still.
The spacer in front of him, a man named Martins, grimaced and looked away. Tom ate the rest of the millipede, telling himself it was creamy rather than slimy, then said, “Wait a couple of weeks, Martins. You won’t be nearly so fastidious.”
Martins shuddered. He was a new arrival, captured in yet another battle that had gone badly for the United Worlds. He and three of his shipmates were now part of Tom’s platoon. They didn’t fit in yet. They were too plump, too soft.
They still thought of escape.
“I can hear water,” said another new prisoner, clearly trying to change the subject. “Sounds like a river.”
The platoon was supposed to be scouting a route for a road between a couple of work sites. That meant they needed to steer away from running water.
“I’d like to see a river,” Cranshaw said wistfully. He was a skinny kid always talking about home. “We had a river just up the road from my farm. We used to make rafts in the summer. Float all the way to town.”
“Give it time,” Tom assured him. “You’ll be so sick of water you’ll never want to see another river in your life.” That wasn’t quite true. Tom could hear the trickle of water in the distance, and he felt a yearning to go take a look. There was something wonderfully unconstrained about a river, all that water flowing away to places without soldiers, without fences, without guns and the constant threat of death.
The rest of the platoon was marking trees for cutting. Tom was sticking close to the new men, though. He was worried about them. When he looked in their faces he saw a desperate determination. They were thinking about escape. They were dead men walking, unless he could keep them under control.
“Why are we even doing this?” Yamato complained. “I know, I know. We’re doing it because they make us. But why are they making us dig holes with shovels, and clear brush with machetes?” He shook his head in baffled disbelief. “It must cost more to guard and feed us than our labor is worth. Why do they bother?”
“It’s for their consciences,” Cranshaw declared.
Tom stared at him. He’d heard this subject debated dozens of times, with theories ranging from a desire by the DA to humiliate the prisoners and inflate their own egos to a collapse of technical infrastructure that made human labor actually valuable. By the sound of it, though, Cranshaw had a new theory.
“They don’t want to kill us,” the young spacer said. “Not deep down inside. They want to be merciful, but their cultural philosophy doesn’t allow it.”
That drew a derisive snort from Martins. Cranshaw ignored him. “They have this concept of manifest destiny. They feel entitled to the Green Zone. To the whole galaxy, really. Because they’re superior to everyone else. We’re no more significant than that bug the lieutenant just ate.”
“We’re a lot better looking,” Yamato declared.
“But that’s the official government line,” Cranshaw went on. “It doesn’t allow for human nature. When you’re face to face with a prisoner, and he looks just like you, it’s not so easy to just kill him out of hand. So they put us to work. It lets them be merciful without violating this idea that we’re sub-human scum who don’t deserve consideration.”
Tom shrugged. Cranshaw’s idea made as much sense as any of the other theories floating around. “We’ll angle away from the river. Tag that tree.” He indicated a forest giant with a fat, conical trunk. The squad headed off to put digital markers all around the trunk at ankle height.
Felling large trees was one of the few activities the Dawn Alliance did with modern equipment. The squad stood back at a safe distance while a Dawn Alliance engineer and a couple of soldiers guided a tree-cutting robot up to the trunk. The robot, essentially a huge gleaming spider that hovered just above the ground, moved around the trunk firing a high-intensity laser into the bark between the markers.
Tom had seen large trees come down, back on Earth. On Gamor it was much different. The high gravity meant that trees were quite thick at the base, tapering quickly as they rose. The robot attacked a tree no more than thirty or forty meters high, but the trunk was as thick as a California redwood.
Even when the trunk was cut through, the tree refused to topple. The shape of it kept it upright. The robot made another cut, almost vertical, slicing a thick triangle of wood from the base of the trunk. A wedge-shaped chunk of wood, big as a ground car, toppled sideways out of the cut. And then, with ponderous majesty, the tree fell.
Wood crackled, branches snapped, and leaves and twigs rained down from above as the forest canopy shook. Tom was already out of range of the falling tree, but he edged back in spite of himself. Habit made him look around at the rest of the squad, checking that all his men were safe.
His gaze fell on Martins, who was pretending to watch the tree but was in fact looking into the jungle. The man’s lips were pressed tight as he tried to hide a triumphant grin.
Oh, hell. Tom did a quick count of noses. Three men were missing. Cranshaw, Yamato, and a prisoner named Schofield had used the distraction of the falling tree to slip away into the jungle.
“Squad. With me. Right now. Let’s go!” Tom headed back up the future road at a quick march. They skirted the remains of two more fallen trees and finally reached the rest of the platoon, who were stripping branches from another tree. Tom led the remains of his squad to where O’Reilly and half a dozen men were heaping cut branches.
“We’ve got a leak in the bucket,” Tom said, using the informal code that allowed prisoners to discuss escape attempts under the noses of the guards. “Three idiots.” He turned and jabbed a finger into Martins’s chest. “That’s nine men dead when the goons do a head count.”
Martins scowled and opened his mouth. Tom turned away before he could speak. “O’Reilly. You’re with me.” He looked over the rest of the group, choosing three more men he knew would be reliable. He wanted to take more, but this had to be handled discreetly. “The rest of you, keep an eye on this fool.” He pointed at Martins. “Don’t let him get anyone else killed.”
That was hardly fair, he reflected as he led his hunting team back to the newly-fallen tree. What had Martins done that Tom himself hadn’t done on his first work detail? Still, he had to get the message across.
Escape attempts were stupid. They achieved nothing, and they got people killed.
Tom marched up to the last fallen tree, planted his hands on his hips, and pretended to inspect the trunk. He waited, fuming with impatience, while the engineer fiddled with the robot, then moved away. One soldier went with him. Another soldier lingered, then at last wandered off.
“Finally.” Tom looked at his team. “This is the last place I saw them.”
“We’ll look for tracks,” O’Reilly said.
“I’m pretty sure they went this way.” Tom headed into the jungle, paused to listen for the distant susurration of running water, and moved deeper into the trees. “They’re heading for the river. No chatter. I don’t want them hearing us.”
They hiked for ten minutes, spotting the occasional boot print in the wet soil between the trees. The trees ended at a stony beach, where they found the missing men dragging logs of driftwood into a row beside the banks of a narrow, fast-moving river.
Three men spun to face the new arrivals as they walked out of the trees. Yamato stepped forward and planted his hands on his hips, a mix of relief and belligerence on his face. “We’re escaping, Lieutenant. We’re making a raft and floating away. You can’t stop us. But you can come along if you want.”
Tom walked toward him. Schofield and Cranshaw watched from just behind Yamato. They had the guilty look of children caught stealing cookies. Yamato was the obvious leader. Handle him, and the other two will come along meekly enough.
“We’re going back,” Tom said. “Right now.”
Yamato narrowed his eyes and stuck out his jaw, stubbornness in every line of his body.
Well, if he’s going to give me a target like that … Tom closed the remaining distance between them in one quick stride and lashed out with his fist, aiming for the man’s jaw. Yamato saw the blow coming and crouched, so that Tom’s fist caught him just under the eye. His head snapped back, and Tom stepped closer, slamming a fist into the pit of his stomach. Yamato doubled over.
Schofield took a step back and raised his fists. Cranshaw looked at him, then at Tom. Then Cranshaw edged back as well, his fists coming up.
“I can’t drag you all back,” Tom said. “I didn’t bring enough men.” He hooked a heel behind Yamato’s feet, put his hands on the man’s shoulders, and shoved. Yamato landed on his back beside the river. “There’s only one way this will work.” He stooped, grabbed a double handful of Yamato’s shirt, and dragged him closer to the water. “We’re going to bring back your bodies.”
Cranshaw said, “What?”
“There’s no reprisals if we kill you.” Tom dragged Yamato forward until the back of his head was in the water. Yamato belatedly began to struggle. “You three are dead anyway.” Tom put his left foot into the river, grunted, and heaved Yamato across the riverbank. Yamato clutched at his arms, then swung a fist, thumping ineffectively against the top of Tom’s head.
“I can’t save you.” Another heave, and Yamato’s shoulder blades were in the river. He had his head tucked forward to keep it out of the water. He stared up at Tom, wild-eyed, and tried to twist free. He could get no leverage, and Tom held him in place without much effort.
“I can save nine other people, though.” Tom shoved down on Yamato’s shoulders. Cold water hit the back of Tom’s hand and flowed across Yamato’s chest. His head was half submerged, his mouth barely above the water. The current pushed his head sideways, and he made hoarse gasping noises as he struggled. His heels drummed against the riverbank, looking for purchase.
“You can’t.” Cranshaw took a step toward Tom, then froze. Tom couldn’t see what the others were doing behind him, but he heard the scuff of footsteps as they advanced. Cranshaw looked from Tom to the rest of the team, then back again. “You can’t just kill him.”
“Watch me.” Tom planted a hand in the middle of Yamato’s face and shoved his head under water.
“No!” Cranshaw’s feet didn’t move, but he stretched his arms out toward Yamato as if he could lift the man out of the river with sheer force of will. Schofield stood behind him, body rigid, eyes wide and horrified. Yamato thrashed, his legs kicking wildly. He hammered at Tom’s arms, then clawed the riverbank, digging furrows in the wet dirt.
“You’re next,” Tom said to Cranshaw. “It’s best if you don’t struggle.”
“All right!” Tendons stood out in Cranshaw’s neck as he screamed the words. “All right! You win. We’ll cooperate. Just let him up.”
Tom glanced at Schofield, who looked ready to throw up. He wouldn’t cause any trouble. “All right.” He slid his hand down, cupped the back of Yamato’s head, and hauled him up out of the water.
When they reached the closest felled tree there was no one in sight, and no sounds of men working. Tom swore under his breath. If the guards had taken the prisoners to another work site, they might have noticed the absence of an officer and six men. He imagined almost two dozen prisoners being shot in retaliation and broke into a run. “Let’s go! Move like you mean it!”
When he heard voices ahead Tom stopped, panting for breath. He turned to the others, lifted a finger to his lips, then gestured them forward. They could still get away with this if they could slip in among the other prisoners without being noticed.
The ground rose ahead of Tom. He trudged forward, placing his feet carefully to make as little noise as possible. His head cleared the top of the ridge and he stopped, his shoulders sagging in defeat.
Two platoons stood shoulder to shoulder in a triple rank in front of a fallen tree, with a cluster of guards in front of them. All the guards were staring toward Tom.
“There you are,” said Tom. “Thank God. I got lost.” He headed toward the other prisoners, gesturing to the men behind him. “Come on, men. We found them.”
A couple of rifles swung up, centering on Tom’s chest. He ignored them and plastered a shit-eating grin on his face. “Am I glad to see you! I thought I’d never find my way back.”
There were six guards with the work party, plus an engineer and an officer. The officer was almost comically short, a wiry little man in his fifties with the face of an angry schoolteacher. He glared at Tom and said, “Halt!”
Tom stopped. The rustle of footsteps behind him faded as the others stopped as well.
“You tried to escape.”
Tom forced a laugh. “Escape? Where would we go?”
The officer’s hand went to his belt. He drew a small black pistol and lifted it until the barrel pointed at Tom’s chest. “The punishment for escape attempts is death.”
The world seemed to shrink until nothing existed except the muzzle of the gun. It loomed in front of Tom like the mouth of a tunnel. He opened his mouth, tried to speak, and found that he couldn’t make a sound.
A flicker of motion drew his attention downward. The officer’s finger was moving, tightening on the trigger. The knuckle of his index finger whitened.
“Tom, you idiot!”
Fabric rustled as someone pushed his way through the front rank of prisoners. The officer turned, and his gun hand turned with him. The rest of the world snapped back into focus and Tom took an overdue breath.
Hoskins, grinning from ear to ear, left the line of prisoners and walked toward Tom. Four rifles and a pistol swung around to cover him. Hoskins didn’t seem to notice. “This guy is a moron.” Hoskins gave a chuckle that somehow managed to sound relaxed and amused. “No sense of direction at all.” He stopped with the barrel of the pistol almost touching his chest. “We’ve been here for two weeks, and do you know what happened last night? He left the hut in the middle of the night to use the latrine, and he didn’t come back. I gave him ten minutes, and then I went looking for him.” Hoskins laughed. “I found him going from hut to hut, staring at the front doors, trying to figure out which was which. Can you believe it?”
Not a muscle moved in the officer’s face.
Hoskins leaned toward him as if he was sharing a joke with a good friend. “You know why I was still awake? Because half the time, when he goes to the latrine, he can’t even find his own bunk when he comes back. Sometimes he sits on me. So I stay awake, so I can warn him off. This guy’s hopeless.” He laughed, then reached out and put an arm around Tom’s shoulders. “Come on buddy. Get in line. You’re holding everybody up.” And, just like that, he pulled Tom away from the officer and hustled him into the line of prisoners. “The rest of you, fall in,” Hoskins called over his shoulder.
Tom, fully expecting a bullet in the back, didn’t dare turn his head as Hoskins shoved him through a gap in the front rank of prisoners. The two of them stood side by side in the second row, men shuffling over to make room.
The rest of the prisoners, frightened and uncertain, inched their way past the officer and the guards, then hustled over to join the ends of the three lines. The officer stared after them, looking like he wasn’t quite sure what had happened. There was a long frozen moment when Tom feared he would try to reassert himself. But he holstered his pistol and said, “Prisoners will follow me!”
“Thrush, you bloody idiot!”
Captain Washington, it turned out, was a screamer. Tom had heard of such creatures, but Washington was the first one he’d encountered in person. He stared at a spot just above the captain’s head and waited for the tirade to end, promising himself that whatever rank he eventually rose to, he’d never become a screamer himself.
“I don’t know where you think you are, but all of us are surviving by the skins of our teeth and the whims of our captors. We’re hanging by our fingernails, and you’re walking past and stomping your bloody feet!”
That, reflected Tom, was an impressive collection of metaphors for a single sentence. He kept the thought to himself.
Washington turned to focus his attention on Hoskins. “I just got a personal dressing-down from that son of a bitch Amar. Which means I threw away the dignity of my rank and any moral authority I might have had as the ranking prisoner, and I groveled until he agreed not to kill anyone.”
He looked from Hoskins to Tom and back again, his face so suffused with blood his skin was nearly black. “I’ve been negotiating with the man. I’ve been asking for Red Fever medication. I’ve been trying to save lives!” His hand slashed through the air in a chopping motion. “Now, any progress I might have made is gone. Gone! Thanks to you two imbeciles and your complete inability to control the men under your command.”
That, Tom knew, was a load of crap. Amar wasn’t going to waste good medicine on prisoners. If he changed his mind, it certainly wouldn’t be because of anything Washington said. However, there was no point in arguing.
The captain ranted and swore for several more minutes. Finally he told the two lieutenants they were on latrine duty until further notice. “Now get out of my sight!”
Ten minutes later, as they stood near the latrine pits with shovels in their hands, Tom said, “You saved my life today.”
Hoskins chuckled. “Yes, and I nearly had a heart attack doing it. Sweet Jesus, don’t ever make me do that again.”
“I’m sorry.”
Hoskins made a rude noise. “Those bozos were trouble. You couldn’t have stopped them. Nobody could have. But you spotted it early, and you brought them back.” He laid a forearm over the top of his shovel handle and rested his chin. “Thank God you were there, Tom. You saved a dozen men from death today.”
“Washington …”
“Is a pompous windbag,” said Hoskins, then glanced around to make sure no one was in earshot. “Seriously, Tom, you did good today.”
“So did you.”
Hoskins grinned. “And as a reward, we get to shovel out a wet latrine.”
“Well, I’m bloody glad to be alive to swing a shovel,” Tom said.
“Me too. Come on, let’s get this over with.”
Chapter 10
Unit Leader Battor Ganbold lifted his hand to knock, then hesitated. He checked his uniform, smoothed a tiny wrinkle in one sleeve, took a deep breath, and finally rapped his knuckles on the door.
The door swung open. "Come in," barked Amar. He waved Ganbold in, then shut the door. His office, small, cluttered, and windowless, smelled of tea and dust. A samovar bubbled on a low table beside the man's desk, adding to the already unpleasant humidity in the room.
That, however, was not the reason for Ganbold's discomfort.
“Are you ready for your first day of duty on Gamor?”
Ganbold, his back already laser-straight, did his best to stand even straighter. “Of course, Commander.”
"I don't expect you really want to be here," Amar said, peering at him shrewdly. The camp commander was a short man, and he tilted his head back as he stared at his subordinate.
"I go where my duty sends me," Ganbold said stiffly.
"Of course. But perhaps you wish your duty had sent you somewhere else?"
Ganbold hesitated. "The Alliance went to considerable trouble and expense to train me in the command of corvettes and cruisers," he said at last, choosing his words with care. "I don't like to see all that training go to waste."
Amar laughed, a startlingly human sound from a man who seemed constantly prickly and aloof. "A most diplomatic answer." He grinned, briefly exposing his teeth. Then all levity vanished and the usual coldness returned to his eyes. "You seem to be a skilled and dedicated soldier. But the Alliance has no shortage of soldiers. No lack of skill and dedication." He folded his arms and stared past Ganbold's shoulder. "No, it's not people we lack. It's hardware."
Suddenly those cold brown eyes focused on Ganbold, who stiffened involuntarily. "If the operation at Novograd goes as planned, we'll increase our ship-building by thirty percent. You'll have your command soon enough."
Ganbold nodded. The Dawn Alliance lacked the manufacturing infrastructure needed to keep up with the United Worlds. Factories and shipyards were expensive and time-consuming to build. They could, however, be captured and repurposed. The Dawn Alliance was in a desperate race to seize the resources of the Green Zone before the United Worlds, still reeling from the surprise invasion, could recover and retaliate. The outcome of the war hung in the balance. The future of the Alliance was at stake, and Ganbold burned to be part of that struggle.
Instead he was on Gamor, guarding prisoners of war.
"Your duties here are not trivial," Amar said, as if reading his mind. "Even if they are not what you would choose."
"Of course, Commander."
The corners of Amar's eyes crinkled ever so slightly in cold amusement. "You'll get your ship. Prove yourself here, be patient, and your time will come."
Ganbold nodded. "Yes, Commander."
"Come with me," Amar said, and led the way into the corridor. "You'll be leading a team of prisoners to Work Site Epsilon. We'll get an engineer out there once the site is cleared. In the meantime, your job is to cut down trees and clear fallen timber."
Ganbold nodded his understanding, following the camp commander out of the prefabricated building and into the compound. A light rain fell, and Ganbold shivered. By the time the sun was fully up the heat would be uncomfortable, and by mid-day it would be intolerable. At the moment, however, he was chilly.
Prisoners milled around on the far side of the barbed wire fence that separated the two compounds. They were a scruffy, unimpressive lot.
"You mustn't feel any sympathy for the prisoners," Amar said. "Don't be intimidated by them, either. They will outnumber you, but you have nothing to fear."
Ganbold bristled. "I'm not afraid."
Amar ignored his comment. "They are not entitled to our respect. They disgraced themselves when they surrendered. Now they are tools, deserving no more consideration than you would give to a shovel or a pickax."
Ganbold nodded.
"I advise you to be ruthless," Amar went on. "If you have to kill a man to bring the rest into line, don't hesitate."
Ganbold nodded again, feeling suddenly less sure of himself. He would be alone in the jungle with dozens of prisoners and only a handful of guards.
"They have no backbone," Amar said. "No courage. You might have to kill two or three of them, but the rest will be cowed. They will fall in line."
"Yes, Commander."
"You're doing important work." Amar's thick eyebrows drew together. "We need this wide sensor array." He gestured at the sky. "Our ships come and go. Most of the time there’s nothing up there but a supply ship. We can't be secure until we have our own scanning equipment in place."
A network of automated sensor stations, scattered across dozens or even hundreds of kilometers, plus similar stations on the far side of the planet, would allow the camp to spot incursions by even the smallest ships, long before they reached the planet. Until such a network was in place, the prison was vulnerable to raids or rescue missions from the United Worlds.
"But, Commander."
Amar raised an eyebrow, giving him permission to speak.
"Why are we using manual labor?" He gestured at the prisoners on the other side of the fence. "Unreliable labor, at that. Why not bring in heavy equipment and get the sensor array installed quickly?"
Amar shook his head, looking weary and cynical. "If they would send us the equipment, which they won't, we could prepare the ground for a dozen sensor installations in a couple of weeks. But the dishes and towers don't exist yet. We have to wait on the factories back home to manufacture them, and then we have to wait on the ships that will deliver them. No," he said, shaking his head again, "heavy equipment won't help us. And if we had heavy equipment, we would have no use for our prisoners. And no way for ambitious young officers like you to prove their worth."
Half a dozen more unit leaders came over to join the two of them, and Ganbold moved away from Amar, joining his fellow junior officers in a perfect line, shoulder to shoulder. Amar watched the prisoners for a moment, then turned, examining his officers. “You look nervous, Gan-Erdene.”
The man beside Ganbold swallowed. “I’m prepared to do my duty, Sir.”
“Of course.” Amar shook his head. “There is nothing to fear from these prisoners.” Gan-Erdene flinched as if he’d been accused of cowardice. Amar ignored his reaction. “They are frightened. They are broken men with no combat experience except one battle, which they lost.” His eyes swept the line of officers. “The United Worlds have been at peace for a generation. Most of these men were captured during the first and only battle they have ever been in. They have failed the only test they ever faced, and they know it.”
He paced in front of the junior officers, looking each man in the eye. “Some of you have been here since we first captured the Strads at New Sheffield. But some of you are new.” He looked at Ganbold, and at Gan-Erdene. “Some of you are fresh from military college. You haven’t seen combat. But you are far ahead of this rabble.” His arm swept out, indicating the prisoners in their compound.
“These men have no experience with truly difficult choices. They have not found their strength, and they won’t find it here. Each time they begin to lift their heads we smack them back down, and we will continue to do so. You may have to shoot one or two of them, but I promise you, they will crumple.”
The men on either side of Ganbold shifted ever so slightly, holding themselves with confidence rather than stiffness. He could feel a subtle change in his own posture, some of the nagging worry trickling away. Today he would at last face the enemy for whom he had trained for so long. And he was ready.
The gate swung open and the first group of prisoners streamed out. There was very little difference in uniforms; Ganbold identified the officer by his bearing, and his position at the head of the ragged column.
“Name!” shouted Amar.
“Dawkins.”
A unit leader stepped forward. “Come with me.” He led Dawkins and the platoon of prisoners along the fence line, a handful of guards joining the prisoners as they walked.
Another column of prisoners came out, and another unit leader stepped forward. This group headed straight for the nearest wall of jungle, and Ganbold watched the prisoners go past. They were an unimpressive sight, with ill-fitting clothes and blank, confused faces. He curled his lip as he took in their poorly hidden anger and the frightened desperation in their eyes when they looked toward the jungle.
The sheer diversity of the prisoners astonished him. The United Worlds people seemed to come from every race of humanity. The platoon held every skin tone imaginable. The shortest man in the group didn't quite reach the armpit of the tallest man. For Ganbold, who for twenty-five years had seen other races only in pictures, it was almost surreal.
A red, scabby rash furred the side of one man’s face. Another man had lines of dark red along his hairline and spreading behind one ear. It was some local parasite, and although the sight of it disgusted him, Ganbold knew it wasn’t dangerous. The guards, who had proper nutrition and access to soap, were never infected.
Still, he wished he could stay farther from the prisoners.
“Name!” said Amar, and a calm voice said, “Thrush.” Ganbold stepped forward. He was assigned to Thrush’s platoon. The men were the usual mongrel rabble, and Thrush, his officer’s uniform just a bit paler than the others, looked just as sloppy and unkempt as the rest. Ganbold looked him over, feeling a cheerful sense of contempt. We were so worried about the mighty United Worlds Navy. And look at you.
Thrush met his gaze calmly, and Ganbold felt his confidence slip, ever so slightly. This wasn’t a defeated, broken man.
Bah. It’s a veneer. He’s putting on a brave face, that’s all. “This way. Follow me!”
Thrush stared at him, not moving. His eyebrows rose quizzically.
Damn it. Not in front of Commander Amar. “Lieutenant Thrush.” His tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar words. “You will bring your men and follow me.”
“Sorry?” Thrush’s face was bland and innocent. “I can’t understand you.” Thrush, like all the prisoners, had a dialect so thick he was almost incomprehensible. Could he truly not understand Ganbold?
“You.” Ganbold pointed at him. “Follow me.” He pointed to himself. “Bring your men.” He gestured at the column behind the young officer.
“You want me to bring four men?” Thrush’s eyebrows rose further. “What about the others?”
Was that a hint of amusement in the man’s face? Ganbold, all too aware of Amar just a few paces away, put a hand on the butt of his pistol and marched up to Thrush. The young lieutenant seemed less exotic up close. He had straight dark hair, brown eyes, and high cheekbones. He would have blended into a squad of Dawn Alliance soldiers almost perfectly. It was only his eyes that didn't quite fit. They weren't quite the right shape.
But the expression in those eyes, the serene confidence, matched the guards, not the other prisoners.
Ganbold stared into those eyes at a range of less than a meter. “I don’t know if you actually don’t understand me, or if you’re winding me up,” he said. “I don’t really care. You will follow me. Your men will follow me. Right now.”
Thrush’s forehead puckered. “Sorry, can you repeat that?”
“Squad leader!” Ganbold shouted, turning away. A soldier with a squad leader’s rank circle on his shoulders hurried up. “This platoon will be coming with us. We are leaving now. In thirty seconds, I want you to shoot every man who fails to keep up.”
The squad leader turned away, calling to his men, and Ganbold wheeled. He marched toward the distant wall of jungle, and with every scrap of willpower he could muster he kept himself from turning his head to look behind him. In his imagination the prisoners stared blankly at one another before dying in a hail of gunfire, and Ganbold, with no prisoners left to lead, slunk back to the compound in disgrace.
For ten endless strides he marched, listening for footsteps, bracing himself for gunshots. Ten more strides, and finally he couldn’t stand it anymore. He looked back over his shoulder.
Thrush walked a couple of meters behind him, face expressionless. The rest of the platoon followed, a couple of guards on either side of the straggling column of men, the squad leader bringing up the rear.
Ganbold hid his relief as he returned his gaze to the jungle ahead.
An hour later all sense of relief was gone, replaced by a towering frustration. The platoon was doing a brilliant job of pretending to be buffoons and half-wits. They bumped into each other, dropped tools, tried to cut trees outside the marked area they were supposed to clear, and shaved away such fine tiny scraps of wood from the trunks of standing trees that it would take a week for a tree to actually fall. A round-cheeked, red-haired man had even managed to shove the blade of a shovel into a laser cutter. He stood with the remains of the shovel in his hands, staring at the destroyed blade as if he’d never seen something so astonishing in his life.
Ganbold stomped over to him, shoving gawking prisoners out of the way. The man stared at him, doing a poor job of hiding a smirk, and said, “Sorry, Boss. I don’t know what-”
Ganbold hit him. He nailed the man with a clean right cross that knocked him sprawling on the ground, the ruined shovel landing in the dirt beside him. A couple of guards hurried over, stopping out of arm’s reach of the knot of prisoners, rifles coming up.
The red-haired man glared up at Ganbold. His mask of bemused innocence was gone now, replaced by fury. He started to push himself up.
Then sank back, eyes wide, as Ganbold drew his pistol.
“I can see you are not much use to me as a worker.” Ganbold took careful aim at the man’s round, freckled face. “You can still be useful, though. As an example.” He raised his voice. “Watch carefully, all of you. This is what happens when you push me too far.” He took a deep breath, pushed down a despairing voice inside him, wailing that he was about to do something monstrous, and tightened his finger on the trigger.
Lieutenant Thrush stepped in front of the pistol, and Ganbold managed – barely – not to shoot him.
“Whoah. Hang on, Unit Leader. That’s not necessary.”
A wave of relief washed over Ganbold, replaced a moment later by frustration. I still have my duty. I need to regain control. I have to do this. There is no other way. “I can shoot this man,” he said. “Or I can shoot you first, and then shoot him. The choice is yours.”
Men moved in his peripheral vision, prisoners stepping closer, lifting tools. The soldiers brought rifles to their shoulders and took aim. Men froze.
“Now, you see, there’s a problem with that approach.” Thrush sounded … not relaxed exactly, but not terrified, either. Not like a man with a gun barrel a handspan from his face. “Some of these men served with me on my last command. We went through a lot together. We bonded.” His eyes didn’t leave Ganbold’s. “If you shoot me, well, they won’t stand for it.”
“I’ll kill them too!”
Thrush nodded. “I know. But that will get the rest of the platoon going. They might stand back and watch one man die, or two. But six or eight? They won’t just watch.”
Ganbold’s finger tightened, and the trigger moved ever so slightly. A flare of the lieutenant’s nostrils showed that he’d noticed, but he still looked almost relaxed. Ganbold said, “Are you threatening me?”
Thrush shrugged. “No, not really. I’m just telling you what’s going to happen.”
“You’ll all die.”
The man nodded. “I know. And then you’ll have to go back to the compound and tell that guy Amar that you didn’t get any work done, and you ran out of prisoners. You’ll have to tell him that, even with a pistol and five armed soldiers, you couldn’t keep control of a platoon with nothing but spades and laser cutters.” Thrush shook his head. “It won’t be a good day for your career.”
Ganbold stared at him, flummoxed. Amar’s words echoed in his head, mocking him. This was not a cowed man, a man who’d never faced combat, or death. Ganbold had the pistol, he had the armed soldiers, but he suddenly wondered who was really in command.
“There’s a better way,” Thrush said softly. “Macalister here has learned his lesson. They’ve all learned. They understand that they have to get some work done.” He raised his voice. “They’ll give you no more trouble. Isn’t that right, men?”
No one answered, but some of the tension went out of the closest prisoners. They no longer looked ready to fight and die. They looked abashed.
“So what will it be?” Thrush lifted an eyebrow. “Do you want a bloodbath? Or shall we get to work?”
For several endless, crawling seconds Ganbold stared at Thrush. He’d already made up his mind, but a dark instinct made him yearn to pull the trigger. Thrush, he sensed, was dangerous.
Instead, he lowered the pistol. “There will be no more dramatics,” he said, pitching his voice so every prisoner could hear. “No more delays. Get to work.”
Thrush nodded, then turned his back. “You heard the man. Let’s get a couple of trees down, shall we?” He helped Macalister to his feet. “Got it out of your system, Mac?”
“Yes, Sir.” The red-haired man’s voice was subdued.
“Good, because next time I’m letting him shoot you.”
The platoon went to work, tackling the trees and surrounding underbrush with real enthusiasm, and Ganbold got out of their way. He found a spot where no falling tree could hit him and he watched Thrush work. As he watched he thought about leadership, and strength, and the way that prisons could make prisoners out of the men who were supposed to be in charge.
Chapter 11
For once, Gamor hardly felt like a prison.
Tom stood on a high ridge, bare rock beneath his feet, the jungle falling away in an endless vista on either side. A steady wind blew, reducing the constant heat to a palatable level. He could even imagine it was less humid.
The perpetual overcast remained, but the clouds were tattered and thin, with patches of blue showing here and there. It wasn't the blue of Earth's sky. It was darker, with reddish hints, but it was pretty, and it lifted his spirits.
A hundred meters or so below, a crude road made a dark line along the slope. That road, constructed by Strad prisoners before the United Worlds entered the war, kept washing out, dirt and rocks swept away by the torrential rainfall that constantly battered the jungle. Tom and his platoon had been tasked with reducing erosion.
The ridge jutted above the jungle canopy. Most of the ridge was covered in waist-high brush, but water had dug channels in the thin layer of soil in places where the rock beneath made a natural trough. The platoon was supposed to stake down a layer of netting over the worst channels, dispersing the water and giving plants a chance to take root and stabilize the soil on their own.
First, though, stakes had to be cut. Men with machetes roamed the jungle below, cutting arm-long spikes from branches and young trees. Others unrolled bundles of netting they'd carried from Camp One. The bundles were brutally heavy, and the men were cheerful, knowing the worst part of the job was now behind them.
Sunlight glittered on the blade of a machete just inside the tree line below. It had to be a new tool. Most of the big knives were so pitted with rust you could hardly see the color of the original metal. Not only do they give us primitive hand tools, they aren't even good primitive hand tools.
One part of each machete was, however, perfectly modern. There was a radio tracking chip in the handle of every knife. A machete was an excellent potential weapon, and the guards kept them under careful control.
Of course, now that the prisoners knew there was a delicate electronic component in the hilt of each machete, the hilts were getting almost as much battering as the blades. Men used the hilts as hammers, used them to crack the shells of nuts they scrounged when the blade would have made a better tool. They used the blade of one machete to hack apart the hilt of another machete. They smashed the hilts between rocks, then feigned astonishment when annoyed guards asked them about the damage.
There was a rumor that a guard had been murdered with some of these very machetes, by prisoners working on the road below. The story said a handful of Strads had hacked a luckless guard limb from limb, then buried his remains in the mud. They'd gotten away with it, too. The soldiers had supposedly conducted an exhaustive search, then given up and written the man off as a deserter.
Tom doubted the story was true. It was the kind of fantasy men invented to keep themselves sane, to persuade themselves that someone, somehow, had managed to fight back. It was a great story. He just didn't think it had actually happened.
O'Reilly and another man unrolled a bundle of netting along the top of the ridge. The guards were all down near the tree line, so the other man flopped himself down on the netting for a rest while O'Reilly walked over to join Tom. “Morning, Lieutenant.”
“Morning, O'Reilly.”
“It's a lovely day to not get much work done.”
Tom chuckled. “That it is.”
“Some of the boys are trying to catch some of those little rodents you see in the trees. They're hoping to get a breeding pair. They think they can set up a little rat ranch and we can all start eating fresh meat every night.”
A month earlier the thought of eating something so rat-like would have repelled Tom. Now, his mouth filled with saliva at the thought of eating meat, any kind of meat. He said, “Sounds like a long shot.”
“Yeah. But can you imagine if it worked?”
They stood for a moment in a companionable silence, lost in gastronomic fantasies.
“Hey, look,” O'Reilly said after a bit. “It's the morning train.”
Far below them, a line of men plodded along the road, bent almost double under huge backpacks. When the road was in good repair, ground vehicles carried all the cargo that needed to be moved. When the road was washed out, human labor took over.
“Poor SOBs,” Tom said. “I guess we lucked out.”
O'Reilly nodded. They watched for a time in silence as the line of suffering men picked their way along the muddy road. The burdened prisoners wore the pale uniforms of Strad prisoners, and Tom winced in sympathy. Four weeks of this has been bad enough. They've been here for half a year. How do they endure?
“You know, some of them escaped,” O'Reilly said.
Tom stiffened. “When?” Would there be another mass murder when they returned to the camp?
“Three, four months ago,” O'Reilly said, and Tom relaxed. “They got away with it, too.”
“You mean, there were no reprisals?”
“Well, there were,” O'Reilly admitted. “It wasn't the official policy, not back then. Amar brought in that refinement after the escape. No, what I mean is, they made it off Gamor. They got away clean.”
Tom stared at him. “Impossible!”
O'Reilly shrugged. “I only know what I've been told.”
“How?” Tom tried to smother a rising excitement, knowing it would only lead to disappointment. “Where did they go?”
“I think they went there,” O'Reilly said, and pointed into the distance. The terrain around Camp One was a fractured mess, a jumble of low mountains and rifts, the roughness of the geology somewhat hidden by the smooth blanket of jungle that covered everything. Beyond O'Reilly's pointing finger, though, a steep-walled mesa jutted above the encroaching jungle. Light vegetation covered the flat oval top, while the sheer sides of the mesa showed a mix of stone and brush.
“The story is, they made arrangements in advance. A couple officers got released in a prisoner exchange. They knew where Camp One was being built. They knew about the mesa. They arranged for a stealth ship to sneak in and grab them off the mesa top.”
Tom stared into the distance, imagining it. It wouldn’t be too difficult to give the guards the slip. A group of men could hike to that distant mesa in a day or two. In his mind's eye he saw a ship descending, plucking a ragged group of prisoners from the mesa top and racing away before the guards could close in.
He shook his head. “I don't know. If something like that really happened, how come I've never heard of it? How come you never heard about it until, when? When did you hear this story?”
“Last night,” O'Reilly admitted. “The Strads don't like to talk about it. They're afraid it'll give us ideas. And if we get ideas, they get killed in retaliation.”
Tom stood in silence for a moment, staring at the distant mesa. “But that means they know where we are. The Navy knows where the prison is. The Strads must have told our people.” He looked at O'Reilly. “That means they know we're here. Okay, not us specifically, but people. UW personnel.” He scowled. “So why are we still here?”
O'Reilly shrugged. “They can't get to us? Or they don't know if we got sent to the same place as a bunch of Strads several months ago. Who knows?” He looked out at the mesa. “But maybe they're planning a rescue. Maybe it'll come soon. Any day now.”
The two men exchanged wistful looks, then went back to staring across the jungle.
Maybe they wouldn't even launch a rescue mission if they knew for sure we were here. It was a depressing thought, and he pushed it away. They would come if they knew. If they could be sure. They'd have to come. They'd just have to.
He tilted his head back, looking at the sky. Maybe a stealth ship was up there right now, spying on the surface of Gamor and counting the tiny dots that were prisoners plodding across the landscape. Most of the men would be hidden by jungle, but that wouldn't matter. The camp itself had no tree cover. The huts would be enough to tell the navy where the prisoners were and how numerous they were.
They'll come. He clung to the idea because he had to believe it. They'll come. They'll do it cautiously, but they'll do it. They'll get us all out of here.
Soon, before malnutrition kills us.
A dozen men came out of the trees below and trudged up the slope, bundles of long wooden stakes slung over their shoulders. O'Reilly sighed. “Looks like I have to get back to work.” He turned. “Jones! Sorry to disturb your nap, but duty calls.”
Jones, stretched out on the netting, groaned.
“Come on, look lively.” O'Reilly walked over to the other man and reached down. “Here. Give me your hand.”
Tom turned to the men on the slope below, trying to guess how many stakes were in each bundle. He was doing multiplication in his head and missing his bracer when O'Reilly said, “Captain!”
Something in his voice made Tom turn and hurry over without even correcting him on rank. Jones still lay on his back. O'Reilly knelt beside him, a hand on the man's face. “He's burning up. Even by the standards of this place.”
Tom knelt on the other side. Jones looked terrible, his eyes sunken, his skin pale despite the heat. He blinked up at Tom and said, “Sorry, Lieutenant. I'm not feeling so good.”
“How long have you been sick?”
Jones squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, grimacing. “I was a little off last night. I felt okay this morning, but by the time we got here …”
Tom leaned closer, peering into Jones's eyes. They were bloodshot, and he recoiled. “It looks like Red Fever.”
O'Reilly said, “Oh, shit,” and pulled his hands back.
“Wash your hands as best you can.” Tom stood. “Just lie still. O'Reilly here will get you some water.”
Jones nodded miserably.
“You'll be fine,” Tom said. “It's serious, but it's not all that bad. You get to lie around in the medical hut for a few days, and then we'll have you back to work.”
“Sure, Lieutenant.”
Tom turned away, his stomach roiling. Red Fever was serious. A healthy person with access to medication would recover almost overnight. Without medication, bed rest and basic care would give a recovery rate a bit above fifty percent.
For prisoners weakened by starvation? Eighteen men had fallen sick in the weeks since Tom's arrival, and twenty more among the Strads before that. Five men remained in the hospital hut, their fates still in the balance. Two men had recovered completely.
All the others were dead.
He scanned the men plodding up the hill, looking for signs of weakness, of sickness. To a man they were weary and gaunt, but they were able to climb the steep slope with a substantial burden on their backs. He decided they had to be healthy enough. Maybe Jones would be an isolated case. Maybe it wouldn't be a widespread outbreak. He shook his head, trying to ignore the lump growing in the pit of his stomach. If the disease spread, there would be nothing for him to do but watch his men die.
If he'd caught the fever from Jones he would never leave Gabor.
Chapter 12
Novograd was green and lovely, the air scented with lilacs, but Alice was beginning to hate the place.
It was twilight, normally her favorite part of the day. It had been twilight for hours. The planet rotated quite slowly. The suns were low in the sky at breakfast, and a slice of Alpha would still be peeking over the horizon when she went to bed. Night would last for three full sleep cycles. For the moment, though, the setting suns were painting the sky yellow and orange and gold and bathing the colony in beauty.
While a creeping ugliness spoiled the colony from within.
She stood on a balcony on the Administrative Building, in the heart of Smithburg, the largest town in the colony. The Admin Building, a graceful brick structure with arched colonnades and wrought iron fixtures, was easily the most beautiful building on the planet. It was a monument to everything the colonists had achieved in the face of terrible odds, and normally it filled Alice with patriotic pride.
Now, it made her sick to her stomach.
Footsteps scraped on concrete behind her and a voice spoke. “Alice. There you are.”
She didn't turn her head. Chatar Pal, vice-president of the colony, was a man she'd admired for most of her life. Wise, strong, and incorruptible, he'd been a lodestone for her. She'd thought of him when she joined the crew of the Free Bird and fought to liberate the colonies from the UW.
Now, like Novograd itself, he'd been tarnished by the arrival of the Dawn Alliance.
“It's just a statue,” he said. “It doesn't change who we are.”
“A giant statue,” she said, whirling to face him. “Standing in the lobby of the Administrative Building.” She grimaced. “Even on its worst day the United Worlds never humiliated us like that.”
Pal was backlit by the light coming through the doorway behind him. It obscured his face and made his hair into a snowy corona around his head. She couldn't see his expression, but she could hear the pain in his voice as he said, “A statue is just a lump of metal. It only has the meaning we choose to invest in it. I look at it as a temporary blight. It's there to remind us that the colonies have to stop bickering among themselves. One day we'll unite and send the Dawn Alliance packing, and we'll drag that statue outside and cut it up for scrap.”
She stared at him, frustrated. “And in the meantime, what will we do? What will the council do about my request?”
He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “You've had the official response. We're an ally of the Dawn Alliance now. We can't help you contact the United Worlds. They're the enemy.”
A thousand arguments bubbled up inside her, but none of them mattered. The decision was made. She glared at him, frustrated, then turned and stared sightlessly across the rooftops of Smithburg.
Lal appeared in her peripheral vision, standing beside her, his hands next to hers on the railing. She didn't look at him.
“You remember what I said at the end of the council meeting,” he said.
“About the tanker?” He'd encouraged her to take a berth on a massive tanker heading coreward. It would take her out of the Green Zone entirely. “I won't do it.”
“It's good advice,” he said. “You've attracted attention. People are talking about what you said today. And the Dawn Alliance is on Novograd.”
She shivered in spite of herself, remembering her interview with Monkhbat above Gamor. Sharing these secrets with anyone is treason. It will be punished by death. She'd told the entire colony council about the prison, then implored them to help her get word to the UW Navy. Am I in danger?
Well, the crew of the Kestrel was certainly in danger. She folded her arms across her chest. “I'm not running.”
A moment of silence passed. Then Pal, his voice strangely flat, said, “Come here a moment.”
He moved away, and she stared after him, wanting to refuse. She felt such a crushing sense of disappointment, disillusionment. But there was still something compelling in his personality, a strength that made it impossible for her to refuse him.
She followed.
He led her up a narrow staircase at the end of the balcony. The rooftop of the Administrative Building held a maze of planters filled with flowers, with a tiny gazebo in the center. She followed him to the gazebo. He sat down, gestured to the bench across from him, and she reluctantly sat.
“This should be private,” he said. “Someone with a snooper scope could listen in on us on the balcony.”
Alice stared at him.
“You need to spread the word that you're getting on that tanker,” he said. “I know the purser. He'll play along. Tomorrow you'll disappear, and if anyone is keeping tabs on you, they'll be quite sure you're heading coreward on the Duke of York.”
Alice opened her mouth, discovered she had no idea what to say, and closed it again.
“What you'll really do,” he said, “is meet me outside your pension at five o'clock tomorrow morning.” The colony used an Earth-standard 24-hour clock and pretty much ignored the rising and setting of the local suns. “Bring your two friends, if you can persuade them to come. You'll need them.”
She said, “Need them for what?”
He grinned, his teeth gleaming white in the shadows. “For crew, of course.” He pointed south. “My cousin has a farm about ten kilometers that way. And on his farm he's hiding a ship called the Evening Breeze. She was one of the last ships to escape Neorome before the DA blockade. She brought twenty refugees here. They're scattered throughout the colony now, keeping quiet about where they're from.
“The owners made it out on a different transport. The crew don't want anything to do with the ship. They've got quiet lives as farmers now, and they don't want to take any more chances. We didn't know what to do with the ship, so we stuck it in Sandeep's orchard and covered it in camouflage netting. He'd love to get it out of there, though.”
Alice stared at him. “You're giving me a ship?”
“No one will put it to a better use than you will,” he said. He reached out and patted her hand. “No one else has the courage to move it. So take it, and do what you need to do.”
Chapter 13
The medical hut stank of vomit and desperation.
The smell arrested Tom in the doorway. He stood there a moment, fighting the impulse to back out, looking for an excuse to leave.
The patients in the nearest beds were already looking at him, though, so he carefully hid the revulsion he felt, steeled himself, and stepped inside.
A couple of orderlies moved among the beds, prisoners with cloth masks tied over their mouths and noses. The nearest orderly caught Tom's eye, then nodded toward a box of masks. They were hand-made, squares of white cloth with a string at each corner. Tom took one, spent a minute getting the strings tied, and turned to look around.
The medical hut was laid out like the other huts, but with most of the bunks removed. All the second- and third-tier bunks were gone, and a quarter of the bottom-tier bunks, leaving an area of open floor just inside the door. He looked at the double row of bunks that remained. There were about a dozen patients, tended by Vinduly, another doctor, and two orderlies.
He found O'Reilly in the third bunk on the left-hand side. He looked terrible, his face shrunken, his eyes bright red. The pallor of his skin made the tangle of bloodshot capillaries in his eyes all the more vivid. He gave Tom a ghastly smile and whispered, “Hey, Captain.”
“Lieutenant,” said Tom, and used his foot to drag a little stool out from under the bed. He sat down.
“You'll get another ship. You'll be a captain again.”
“Maybe.” Tom started to reach out his hand, then pulled it back. “How are you feeling?” It was a patently stupid question, but he didn't know what else to say.
“Been better,” O'Reilly admitted. “I'm enjoying the bed rest, though.”
“Well, silver linings and all that.” Tom squirmed on the little stool. “Is there anything …”
O'Reilly shook his head. “There's nothing you can do, Captain. And you know it.”
They sat in silence for a while.
“I'll never forget my early days on the Kestrel,” Tom said. “I was such a screwup.” He smiled, and O'Reilly chuckled, for a moment looking almost like his old self. “Boudreau really had it in for me. You made it bearable, though. You saved me from the worst of it.”
“It wasn't easy,” O'Reilly said, and laughed. “I always figured you had potential, but Lordy, you weren't too impressive on your first few days.” He started to chuckle, coughed instead, and lapsed into a pained silence.
“You went way beyond the call of duty after the nuke.” Tom smiled, remembering. “You really stepped up to the plate.”
“Quit sounding like you're practicing my eulogy,” O'Reilly said crossly. “I'm not bloody dead yet.”
“I was just softening you up before I got to the bad part,” Tom said. “I actually have quite a list of complaints.”
“You know what you can do with your complaints,” O'Reilly groused. He lowered his voice when he said it, though. He would never undermine his officer.
“You've been indispensable to me,” Tom said. “That's why I need you to pull yourself together and get out of here. I need you up and around.”
“I'm working on it,” O'Reilly muttered. He looked pleased by the compliment, though.
They made awkward small talk for several minutes. It broke Tom's heart to see his friend, the man he'd relied on through so much misadventure, lying helpless and frail on a bunk. When O'Reilly's eyelids started to droop Tom stood with a sense of relief that shamed him. “I better let you rest.”
“Thanks for coming to see me, Captain.” O'Reilly was asleep before Tom could reply.
Tom nudged the stool back under the bed and turned. He started down the line of beds, looking at each pinched face in turn. He came back up the other side, then plodded back to the door, weary and dispirited. Jones was nowhere among the patients, and that could only mean one thing. He'd looked dreadful the last time Tom visited. He certainly hadn't recovered.
If he wasn't here, he was dead.
Tom dropped his mask in a basket and trudged outside. Even the overheated, humid air of the camp was a relief after the stench of the medical hut. He started walking, moving aimlessly among the huts, trying to convince himself that he was enjoying a nice stroll in the fresh air.
The hell of it was, there was Red Fever medication in the camp. It was no more than a couple of hundred meters away, in the Dawn Alliance compound. The DA wasn't about to let its troops suffer the ravages of a treatable illness. A guard who showed symptoms would get an immediate dose and be back to his old self in a day or two.
Tom looked at the barbed wire and the buildings on the far side. It was all so near, but it might as well have been off-world.
Half the camp was out working at one site or another, but chance had Tom's platoon taking a rest day. Normally that meant listless hours loafing in his bunk or sitting at one of the tables in the open area between the groups of huts, his strength robbed by exhaustion and poor food. Now, though, a restlessness filled him. He walked, head down and brooding, ducking occasionally under a laundry line as he wove his way between the huts.
He couldn’t have said how much time had passed when he stopped short, wondering why his subconscious was suddenly clamoring at him. He looked around, getting his bearings. His meandering had brought him back almost to the open ground between the groups of huts. Tom was in enlisted country, across the way from his own hut and the other officers.
In the open ground groups of men sat at long tables chatting or passing the time any way they could. The camp contained several sets of checkers and one of chess, all of them hand-made by prisoners. There were ongoing attempts to make playing cards from leaves, but none of the resulting decks were actually playable. Nothing in his narrow field of view seemed noteworthy, and he turned, looking around the rows of huts.
He was in the Strad area, the oldest huts, claimed by the prisoners who'd been here longest. A couple of men sat on the front step of the nearest hut, glancing up to meet his gaze, then returning to a quiet conversation. A chunky young man walked past with a leaf-wrapped bundle under his arm, and a gaunt man coming the other way gave him a nod before disappearing around a corner. Tom stared after the gaunt man, puzzled by the voice chattering away in the back of his head.
Then his head whipped around, and he looked for the chunky young man with the leaves. He was just in time to see the man turn a corner and vanish behind a hut.
Tom reached the corner in a few quick strides. He stared after the man. The fellow wasn't chunky, not exactly. He was thin, by any normal standard. But he lacked the carved gauntness of his fellow prisoners. He didn't look as if he was eating well, but he certainly wasn't starving.
There was more to it. The other prisoners moved in a sort of lethargic shuffle, conserving every calorie they could. There was an air of defeat to even the most determined prisoner. They'd seen comrades die from disease or reprisals. They'd faced the hopelessness of their situation.
The man in front of Tom didn't shuffle. He … sauntered. He walked with his head up, looking around with an air of casual curiosity.
He looked like a man without a care in the galaxy.
Tom hurried after him.
The man turned another corner, then turned away before Tom could wave him down. He stepped between two prisoners and entered a hut.
Tom hastened toward the front door – and stopped as a pair of prisoners stepped into his path.
“Begging your pardon, Sir,” said the taller of the two. “All due respect and so on and so forth, but you can't be barging into our hut.”
Tom stared at him, flabbergasted. “Step aside.”
“Very sorry, Sir.” He looked contrite, too. They both did. “You being an officer and all. However, you're not our officer.”
Tom glanced down. Both men wore the beige uniforms of Strad prisoners. So had the jaunty young man.
“It pains me to say this,” the man continued, “but we're within our rights to deny you entrance. And we do. Deny you entrance, that is. We have a certain reasonable expectation to privacy, you see. You'd be violating that, you being an officer of a foreign service and all.”
For a time they stood with gazes locked. The man showed no inclination to back down, and Tom was forced to acknowledge that he had a point. Strad and the United Worlds were allies, united by their common war with the Dawn Alliance. But Strad personnel were under no great obligation to obey UW officers, and Tom had no good reason to demand entrance.
Just a burning conviction that there was something going on, something he needed to get to the bottom of.
“You're right,” he said, and took a half-step back. Both Strad prisoners looked relieved. While they might have been technically within their rights, thwarting an officer was hardly a good idea. “I just need to talk to one of your hut-mates. The young man who just went inside.”
“Mack's pretty busy,” said the taller prisoner.
“Quite a full schedule,” said the shorter one.
“Probably best you don't interrupt him.”
“Fine,” said Tom. “I'll see you later.” He checked the number painted above the door of the hut and turned away.
“Drop by any time,” said the taller man.
“Or don't,” added the shorter one. “Not dropping by works too.”
Tom trudged out of the ranks of enlisted men's huts and into the open area. Some prisoners were assembling a new table from planks cut from a tree trunk back when he'd first arrived and left to cure. The planks still oozed sap. The table wouldn't be much to look at – the cuts were uneven, the boards almost twice as thick in some places as others – but it would be just about as good as anything the prisoners had now.
“Hey. Thrush.”
He looked around, saw Hoskins sitting with another officer at the end of a long table, and went over to join them. Both men were gnawing on long strips of dried plantain. Hoskins pushed a rather small slice over to Tom as he sat down. Food was too precious to share carelessly.
“Thanks.” Tom took the strip of fruit and started chewing on one end.
“Have you met Lieutenant Khalili? This is Tom Thrush. Also a lieutenant.”
Khalili was an intense-looking man of about thirty, with the thickest, blackest hair Tom had ever seen. He wore a Strad officer's uniform. He nodded to Tom and swallowed. “Pleased to meet you.”
Tom nodded back.
Khalili said, “It's strange how much you miss the markings of rank. At least officers get a different uniform from the men. But I can't get used to not knowing who outranks whom.”
“All this democracy is vexing,” Hoskins said with a smirk. Khalili made a rude gesture and went back to chewing his plantain.
Tom said to Khalili, “I just noticed one of your men. I wanted to talk to him, but he went into a hut, and his friends wouldn't let me follow.”
Khalili looked suddenly wary. “The men can be territorial. Perhaps it's a national trait. All of us Strads tend to be like that.”
Which was a pretty clear warning, Tom decided. Don't throw your weight around with my men. He smiled. “They were quite correct. I wouldn't dream of complaining.”
The lieutenant relaxed somewhat.
“The man I noticed. He was somewhat unusual.”
All of Khalili's attention returned. All he said, though, was, “Oh?”
“Yes. He was …” Tom hesitated, seeking the right word. “Sleek.”
Khalili's thick eyebrows rose.
“Well-fed,” Tom elaborated. “Or at any rate, better fed than any other prisoner I've seen. He looked like a new arrival.”
Khalili shrugged. “We've had no new arrivals.” By the tone of his voice he was hoping Tom would change the subject.
“He also looked, um, how shall I put it? Carefree. Like he hasn't properly noticed that he's locked up.”
Hoskins looked from one man to the other, obviously curious. Khalili stared at Tom, his face blank. Then he sighed and shook his head. He glanced around to check for eavesdroppers, then leaned forward. “That was probably Sykes.”
Tom leaned in as well. “Sykes?”
“A sergeant. Born for prison, I think. If he hadn't been captured by the DA he'd be in one of our stockades by now.” Khalili shrugged. “Some men are born soldiers. Others are born leaders. He's a natural-born wheeler-dealer and petty crook.”
“Now you've got me interested,” Hoskins said. “Is he stealing food from the rest of us?”
“Oh, no, of course not.” Khalili shook his head. “He'd have been murdered in his bed by now if that was his racket. No, he's not the best of men, but he hasn't sunk that low.”
“Then how did he keep so much of his body fat?” Tom demanded.
Khalili looked embarrassed. “Look. I'm not exactly delighted with the things he does. And I can't be certain of most of it, either. But the consensus among the officers is that he serves a valuable purpose, so we leave him alone.”
“Sure,” said Hoskins, clearly fascinated. “But what does he do?”
“He trades,” said Khalili. “Essentially, he's a one-man black market.”
When they gave him blank looks he sighed. “Some of the prisoners brought in personal possessions. Not much, but a few things. Academy rings among the officers. A lot of the enlisted personnel had jewelry or mini-processors. A lot of it got taken when we were captured, but a lot of it got ignored, or smuggled in.
“Some of the guards would jump at a chance to get a souvenir, basically free. A genuine Academy ring makes a hell of a keepsake, apparently. It's not like you can just buy one in a jewelry store. There's a guard who's putting together a collection. He's bought eight or nine of them already.
“The best part, from the guards' point of view, is they don’t have to pay. Not in money, not in anything they value. They trade instead. And not for their own stuff. They raid their own supply hut to pay us.”
Hoskins said, “What do they give you?”
“Not me personally,” Khalili said. “They usually pay in medication. Sometimes better food.” He made a face. “Real food.”
“Medication,” said Tom. “Like Red Fever medication?”
“Like that,” Khalili agreed. “One man had a puncture wound that got infected. The surgeon was talking about amputating his foot, and there wasn't much chance of him surviving that. The patient had a friend with an Academy ring. He took it to Sykes. Sykes got him a full course of broad-spectrum antibiotics. Saved his leg.”
“Why Sykes?” Hoskins said.
Khalili shrugged. “The man's a born negotiator. Someday an MJ squad is going to come to arrest him, and I'll give you even odds he'll talk them into not just letting him go, but lending him twenty bucks on their way out the door too.”
“So he's your middleman?” Tom said. “He takes a cut, I guess?”
“That he does.” Khalili scowled. “No one knows how much, either. But, as you noticed, he's not losing much weight.”
Hoskins said, “That's …” His voice trailed off.
“I don't have a word for it either,” Khalili said. “I don't know if Sykes should have a medal on his chest or a noose around his neck. He saves lives. There's no question about it. But he profits from it. He'll sit on a hoard of medication and watch men die until somebody meets his price.” Khalili shook his head. “I'd throttle the bloodthirsty little tick if I thought we could get by without him.”
Tom said, “Why don't you leave him out of it? Sell directly to the guards?”
Khalili made a rude noise. “Captain Spence tried that. Went straight to Grumpy. That's the guard with the collection. We call him 'Grumpy'. Anyway, Spence tried to sell to him directly.”
“He got ripped off?” Tom guessed.
“It was pitiful. The guards can smell desperation, and when you're trying to get life-saving medication, you're always desperate.” Hoskins leaned over and spat on the ground. “So now we go straight to Sykes, every time. We may not like him, but he's a professional. He gets results.”
When Tom returned to Sykes's hut there was only one man loitering in front. It was a different man but he moved to block Tom's path. “Can I help you, Lieutenant?”
“I need to talk to Sykes.”
The man shrugged. “Not sure I recognize that name.”
“Knock it off,” Tom said. “I need medical supplies. I can pay.”
The man examined him for a moment, then shrugged and stepped aside.
The inside of the hut was gloomy, lit by a gap between the top of the wall and the eaves. Two chairs, some of the best-made furniture in the camp from what Tom had seen, sat just inside the door. Sykes sat on one chair with his feet propped up on the other. He looked Tom up and down, then lowered his feet and gave the chair a shove. “Welcome. Have a seat.”
Most enlisted men would have stood to greet an officer, even a foreign officer. Sykes, however, was not most men. Tom took the offered chair.
Sykes was young, no older than Tom himself. His rounded cheeks, so unusual in Camp One, made him seem downright boyish. The smile he gave Tom was charming enough, but his eyes were cold, predatory. “What can I do for you, Sir?”
“I need medical supplies. Specifically, something for Red Fever.”
Sykes nodded. “A popular item, that.” He leaned forward. “What have you got to trade?”
Tom shrugged. “Food? I'll have to take up a collection. Once I know how much I need.”
Sykes shook his head. “Sorry. Food is always good, but I've got nothing in stock. I need something I can take to the guards.” He looked at Tom's hands. “I don't suppose you've got a ring from San Carlos?”
San Carlos was the Navy's elite college, the United Worlds equivalent of the Academy. Tom had never been a student there. He shook his head.
“Pity,” Sykes said. “I know a man's got a taste for rings. He's getting less keen on Academy rings, but he's dying for a San Carlos. D'you think you can get one?”
The eagerness on his face sickened Tom. “There's a man's life at stake.” He knew the words were a mistake as he spoke them, but he couldn't help himself.
Sykes spread his hands in a helpless shrug. “I don't have any medicine. If I did I'd trade it to you. Why wouldn't I, if you're willing to pay? But I'm all out.” He shook his head. “There's always demand. I can't keep it in stock.” He leaned his elbows on his knees. “I want to help. I like helping. But the Dawn Alliance, they don't run a charity. They won't give me anything just 'cause I ask nicely. There's a man who brings me things sometimes. Medicine, sometimes, and he risks his neck every time he does it. But he's a heartless piece of shit and he doesn't do it for free.” Sykes leaned back. “You give me something he wants, maybe I can help you. Otherwise, there's nothing I can do.”
Tom stared at him, fighting a rising tide of frustrated anger. A voice in the back of his head whispered urgently that he could do no more good here, that he could only make things worse. But he had no ring, nothing to trade, and O'Reilly, who'd trusted Tom to get him safely back to Garnet, was dying. How can I make it worse? If I walk out of here empty-handed things will be just about as bad as they can be.
He stood. Sykes, reading the expression in his face, shifted his weight, getting his legs under him, ready to move.
“You miserable bloody parasite.”
Sykes brought his hands up, palms out. “I'm an honest trader.”
“You're a blood-sucking hookworm, getting fat on the suffering of the rest of us.”
That brought a flash of real anger to Sykes's eyes, which surprised Tom. He didn't let it stop him. “You keep yourself well-fed and comfortable while the rest of us starve and die. Well, it stops here. You're going to give me what I need, or I'm going to beat you into a bloody pulp and tear this hut apart until I find your stash.”
Sykes, still sitting, said, “You better re-think your position, pal. Before you make a mistake.”
Tom reached behind him, lifted his chair up to shoulder height, and said, “Last chance, Sykes. Do the right thing. Or face the consequences.”
The door beside him swung open, sunlight flooded in, and Tom lifted the chair high. Someone grabbed the chair by one leg, twisting it back. Someone else reached up to grab Tom's left wrist in both hands. The chair popped free and the man did a sort of pirouette, twisting Tom's arm down and back. Tom found himself bent forward with his arm twisted high behind his back.
Sykes finally stood. “Don't come back without an invitation, Sir.” He made a gesture with one hand and the man behind Tom pivoted him until he was facing the open doorway. A shove sent him stumbling forward, and a foot planted in his rear end drove him outside. He staggered across the front step and landed in an undignified heap on the dirt outside.
By the time he got to his feet the door was closed and he was alone.
He brushed himself off, wasted a moment glaring at the closed door in mute fury, then turned and stomped away.
Chapter 14
As rings went, it was not convincing. The best that could be said was that it was round, and roughly the right size. Tom wove it from wiry grass, then wrapped it in scraps of rag until no grass showed. The end result was an ugly circle that looked like it just might contain someone's college ring. All he could do was slip it into his pocket and hope that a collector's greed would do the rest.
Spotting Grumpy was easy enough. Khalili pointed him out, a taller-than-average soldier with swarthy skin and a permanent five o'clock shadow. He had some kind of elaborate patrol route in the jungle east of the camp. It brought him close to the fence every twenty or thirty minutes.
Getting his attention was more difficult. Tom stood just inside the ankle-high wire that marked the kill zone, staring through the fence. He stood there and waited, feeling as if every eye in the camp was on him, wondering if his scheme was going to get him killed.
And maybe not just himself.
Finally a pair of guards appeared, Grumpy and a smaller man. Tom slid a hand into his pocket and curled his fingers around the fake ring, his heart beating fast as he waited. His intention was to wait for Grumpy to glance his way, then flash the ring and wait to see how the man reacted.
The guards walked past him, though, completely engrossed in conversation. Grumpy looked up once, his eyes flitting past before Tom could react. They walked on past, then turned and marched toward the dark wall of the jungle. All Tom could do was stand there, frustrated, and watch them go.
He decided to wait. Another twenty or thirty minutes would bring the two men back. He'd get another chance. He stood there, staring into the jungle, as the seconds crawled past, each slower than the one before.
Until, perhaps five minutes after he'd vanished into the jungle, Grumpy re-emerged, alone.
He jogged up to the fence directly across from Tom and stood there, a burly figure with a flat, hostile face, hands shoved in his pockets, a rifle strapped across his back. “Well?” he said at last. “What do you want?”
Tom brought out the ring, held it up briefly, then shoved it back into his pocket. “I went to San Carlos,” he said. “I need medication. For Red Fever.”
Grumpy's eyes were fixed on his pocket. His face was alight with avarice. “Let me see it.”
Tom nodded, put a hand in his pocket – then glanced over his shoulder and froze. He pretended to react to something behind the closest hut, something out of Grumpy's line of sight. “Not here. Not right now.”
“Okay, sure,” Grumpy said. “Tonight. After dark. West end of the compound, right in the corner of the fence.” He jerked his head to the side to indicate the direction. “Meet me there. Bring the ring.”
Rain drove Tom indoors soon after. It wasn't a punishing downpour like the skies of Gamor so often unleashed, just a steady, miserable drip that made the world colorless and bleak. Prisoners had built coverings for some of the tables in the open ground, simple roofs on poles to repel rain, or provide shade on the rare days when the sun broke through the clouds. Men crowded the tables, though, and Tom was in no mood for company. So he stood in the doorway of his hut and watched the rain fall and thought about his plan and wondered if he was making a terrible mistake.
Amar naturally insisted on holding the evening parade as usual. Tom stood in front of his platoon, keenly aware of O'Reilly's absence. He scanned the handful of guards behind Amar, looking for Grumpy. He peered through the wire at the men in the Dawn Alliance compound, but the rain turned them all into blurry gray silhouettes.
After parade he went back to his hut. As the evening progressed men left the tables and trickled inside. Tom waited until sunset, stretched out on his bunk listening to rain patter on the leaves that covered the roof. A handful of officers were tracking a fresh leak a few bunks over, trying to decide if it was worth it to try to patch the roof during a rainstorm. If the leak was small, only the top bunk would get wet. Tom listened to them argue until he could no longer see the bunk above him, then climbed out and stood up. No one paid any attention when he slipped outside.
A last few die-hards sat at a table, engrossed in an animated conversation, their voices muted by rain. Tom slipped past them and into the rows of enlisted men's huts. No one else was out. He stuck close to the eaves at first, trying to avoid the rain, but his clothes hadn't really dried after the parade and he decided there was no point.
A door swung open with a creak somewhere ahead, then clacked shut. If someone asked him what he was doing there, Tom had no good answer – but who was going to ask? It was all enlisted men here, and he was an officer. He would have nothing to fear … until he got to the wire.
One of the more disconcerting things he'd learned during his imprisonment was that the guards didn't really care if someone went through the fence. It could be done. A patient, determined man could wriggle between the strands of barbed wire. An athletic man could climb the fence. The patrols were infrequent, and there were no other safeguards. He was almost certain of it.
The only stretch of fence with real security was the section separating the prisoners from the guards. That was where the tower stood. That was where the guards were actually alert. For the rest of the camp, though, the wire was little more than a nuisance.
Because, of course, there was nowhere to go. All Amar had to do was count heads every night during parade. If someone failed to turn out, he could take his time sending a tracking party to retrieve the starved corpse.
As he neared the corner of the compound Tom suddenly realized there was a flaw in his plan. If Grumpy had any sense he'd stay on the outside of the wire. He'd make Tom pass the ring through.
That would never do.
He cut sideways, heading for the south wire. He had to already be outside when Grumpy found him. It was the only way.
When he came to the corner of the last hut before the fence his nerve failed him. He stood frozen, staring at the wire, at the rain dripping from the barbs, and thought about death. About his own ignominious death, bleeding into the mud. About the men who would die if he was caught outside the wire. What right did he have to gamble with their lives?
Long seconds ticked past as he stood there, paralyzed with indecision. With fear. Finally he squeezed his eyes shut and whispered, “O'Reilly.” O'Reilly, his friend, the man who'd stuck up for him when he was a junior officer on the Kestrel. Who'd supported him when fate had thrust him, unprepared, into the captain's seat. O'Reilly, who had never let him down.
O'Reilly, who lay dying at the other end of the compound.
“Shit. Oh, shit, I guess I have to do it.” He stepped out into the open, committing himself before fear could renew its grip. He wanted desperately to turn back. Instead he cursed himself for dithering in view of any passing sentry.
Six strides took him to the ankle-high wire that defined his world. A seventh step took him over the line, and then he flopped down on his stomach in the mud. He wriggled forward until his fingers touched wire, and then he slid his head underneath.
In thirty seconds he was stuck, the wire tight across his shoulders, a barb jabbing into each shoulder blade. He swore, struggled, and finally managed to back out. He lay there, panting as quietly as he could, and considered his options.
The nearest post jutted from the mud right beside him, and he grimaced at his own foolishness. The wire would be tightest at the posts. He squirmed sideways, found a spot about half-way between two posts, and rolled onto his back.
The mud was cool and soothing in the punctures on his shoulder blades, though he didn't want to think about the hygienic aspects. Rain fell softly into his face. It gathered on the wire and dripped from a barb onto his forehead as he slid his head underneath. He tilted his head to one side to keep from impaling the tip of nose, and watched as a barb came within millimeters of his cheek as he wormed his way deeper under the wire.
Only by pushing up on the wire with his hands could he get his chest underneath. Even then he had to unsnag his blouse several times. He sucked in his stomach, wriggled a bit farther, then had to use his hands again to get his hips through. I couldn’t have done this when I first got here.
When his hips were clear he twisted his body sideways, sliding one leg free, then the other. He ended up lying parallel to the fence, staring up into the rain, panting for breath and listening urgently for any sign of a sentry.
Nothing moved in the night.
He rose to his feet. Mud coated almost every square centimeter of his uniform, darkening it, making him almost invisible. It's like I planned it this way. Taking a last look into the darkness, he shrugged, decided the fates would spare him or they wouldn't, and set off along the fence at a jog.
No one waited at the southwest corner of the compound. Tom brought a hand up to protect his eyes from the rain and peered along the west fence, then along the south fence.
He was alone.
How long do I stand here waiting? How long until a sentry comes along? He looked around one more time. It's not as if there's someplace I can hide. Just as he was about to drop to his stomach and lie prone in the mud, a boot squelched in the darkness. Tom froze. Footsteps, loud and sticky, sounded in the darkness. Soon he was sure.
They were coming toward him.
It's him. It's Grumpy. It must be him. Because if it's not, I'm dead. And O'Reilly is dead. And three other people are dead because of me.
A shape loomed in the darkness, plodding toward him, a dark figure with the unmistakable outline of a rifle butt showing above one shoulder. A guard, but too small for Grumpy. He marched straight toward Tom, who stood frozen, knowing he was spotted, knowing it was much too late to run.
But if it's not Grumpy, why isn't he grabbing his rifle? I'm a prisoner outside the wire. That makes me desperate by definition.
Why hasn't he shot me yet?
The guard kept walking, and Tom realized the rain and darkness had deceived him. The man was farther away than he'd seemed. And he was larger than he'd seemed. In fact, he was huge. When Grumpy finally stopped, just out of arm's reach, Tom had to tilt his head back to see the man's face. He was broad-shouldered, solid, intimidating, and Tom gulped. What have I gotten myself into?
“What are you doing outside?”
Tom lifted his hands, palms up. “I thought that was what you wanted.” He forced a chuckle. “Hurry up and give me the medicine so I can get back inside.”
“Show me the ring.”
“Right.” Tom stuck a hand in his pocket, fished out the circle of grass and cloth, and held it up between thumb and forefinger. Then, before Grumpy could reach for it, he said, “Here you go.” And he tossed the ring to the guard.
Grumpy swore and lunged for the ring, grabbing for it with both hands. It had his complete attention. He didn't see Tom step forward, plant a foot, and twist with his whole body as he drove a fist into the big man's midsection.
All the air left Grumpy's lungs in a single explosive grunt. He folded forward, and Tom brought a knee up, aiming for his jaw. Somehow Grumpy got an arm in the way, though. Then, still doubled over, he plowed forward, driving his head into Tom's chest.
Tom fell back, his left shoulder hitting the corner post of the compound. A barb dug into his back, and he hissed in pain. Grumpy grabbed for his arms, and Tom twisted them free, then grabbed at Grumpy's shoulders as he felt himself falling to the right. For a moment they stood there, gasping and straining. Tom managed to get his right leg out, his foot planted firmly in the mud. Only the post behind him kept him from tumbling onto his back, but at least his sideways momentum was stopped.
Grumpy began to straighten, planting large, strong hands on Tom's shoulders and hauling himself upright. His mouth kept opening and closing as he fought to inhale, so Tom leaned in and started throwing hook punches into his gut.
With his legs spread wide and those meaty hands on his shoulders he couldn't put much into the punches. Grumpy dropped his hands, though, protecting his suffering stomach. Tom belted him twice on the jaw, once with each hand, and Grumpy stumbled back.
That gave Tom time to finally straighten up. Grumpy inhaled, a long, ragged sound filled with pain, and Tom knew he was about to lose his only advantage. He waded in, throwing punches at the man's jaw, desperate to bring him down before he finished recovering from that first surprise blow.
Grumpy's big arms came up and curled around his head. Tom sent one punch after another thudding into his biceps and shoulders, knowing with a sick certainty that he was too late. Grumpy was recovering, and in a moment he'd start throwing punches of his own. That would end the fight pretty quickly.
Then Grumpy's arms dropped.
Tom was so astonished his next punch missed completely. The man was gasping for air, his jaw slack, his face stricken. His arms sagged even further – and Tom nailed him on the point of the chin with a solid right cross.
Grumpy landed on his back in the mud.
In a flash Tom was on his knees beside him, pawing frantically at the man's clothes. He patted one pocket after another, fighting a rising despair, starting with the breast pockets and working his way downward.
In Grumpy's left thigh pocket he finally struck gold. His questing fingertips found a hard rectangular shape, and he tore the pocket open with frantic haste. He pulled out a flat plastic case no bigger than the palm of his hand.
This has to be it. It's this or nothing. He patted the other thigh pocket, just to be sure.
Nothing.
Grumpy pressed his hands into the mud, trying to sit up.
“Don't report this,” Tom wheezed. “Or Amar will hear about your ring collection. Understand?”
Then he lurched to his feet, turned, and ran into the darkness.
The hospital hut was one of the few prisoner buildings with artificial light, a few pale strips attached to the rafters. Only one was lit when Tom let himself inside, the strip closest to the door. Vinduly, fully dressed, lay flaked out on a cot, his feet on the floor. He lifted his head as Tom closed the door, then sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Medical emergency?”
“No.” Tom drew out the stolen plastic case. “Do you know what this is?”
“A box?” the surgeon said skeptically, and held out his hand. Tom gave him the case. He peered at it, then rose and walked to the door, standing directly under the light. When he looked up his eyes were large. “Is this Quadrazine?”
“Is that Red Fever medication?”
“Yes.”
“Then, yes, I think it is.”
“Where did you-” He stopped himself. “Never mind. I don't want to know.”
“I want you to treat O'Reilly. Is there enough?”
Vinduly slid the case open. Six glass vials lay inside, each filled with a clear liquid. “Six doses,” he said. “I can give him one dose now, and if he shows improvement, I can give him another dose tomorrow. Any more would be a waste.” His fingers curled around the case, and his face hardened. “I hope you don't want this back.”
What kind of person would take life-saving medication out of a hospital? “No,” Tom said. “Of course not.”
“Good.” He tapped at a control panel beside the door and brought up a few more lights. “Let's see what kind of shape Mr. O'Reilly is in.”
Tom followed him toward O'Reilly's bed. “What did you mean, if he shows improvement?”
Vinduly stopped and leaned his head close to Tom's. “O’Reilly is pretty far gone,” he murmured. “A hit of Quadrazine will give him a fighting chance, no more. It might not save him.”
Cold fingers squeezed Tom's guts. He ignored them. “Well, let's not waste any time, then.”
Vinduly nodded and crossed to O'Reilly's bed. He knelt on one side of the bed, and Tom squatted on the other side. O'Reilly had deteriorated noticeably in the hours since Tom had seen him. The skin under his eyes looked black in the dim light. His face looked skeletal.
He was not, however, dead. His eyelids fluttered, then opened. He looked from Tom to the surgeon, then back. “What's going on?”
Vinduly drew an injector from his blouse pocket, slid the first vial inside, and pocketed the case. “We've come into possession of some Quadrazine. Good news; you get to live.” He took O'Reilly's wrist in his left hand and brought the injector down with his right.
O'Reilly moved, surprisingly quickly for a man who looked more than half dead. He twisted his arm in a circular motion that popped his wrist out of the surgeon's grasp. A moment later he had his fingers wrapped around Vinduly's forearm. “Not so fast.”
“It's Quadrazine,” Vinduly said patiently. “It's medicine.”
“So?” said O'Reilly. “What are you giving it to me for?”
Vinduly stared at him, flabbergasted. “Because you have Red Fever.”
“And I'm going to die,” O'Reilly said evenly. “You know perfectly well I'm past the point where I can be saved. So why are you wasting that on me?”
“You're not doomed, O'Reilly. If I give you this, there's an excellent chance you'll pull through.”
O'Reilly sneered. “An excellent chance? Like what? Twenty percent? Thirty?”
“Maybe fifty,” the surgeon said.
O'Reilly's hand slipped from the man's arm, his strength apparently exhausted. The iron was still in his voice, though. “Well, that's not good enough.” He nodded at the beds around him. “I want you to give that dose to one of the new cases. One of the kids. Someone in the early stages. Someone who's almost certain to survive if you treat him now.” He squinted at the injector. “That juice is too precious to waste.”
“It won't be a waste,” Tom protested.
“There's a fifty-percent chance it will be,” O'Reilly said. He stared into Vinduly's eyes. “That's my request. I don't consent to being dosed with that.” His eyes flicked to the injector. “Understand?”
Vinduly held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. He glanced at Tom, who gave him a helpless shrug.
For the next few minutes Tom stood, mute and frustrated beside O'Reilly's bed, watching as Vinduly moved from one bed to another, injecting patients in the arm. Tom watched him work, telling himself it was right, telling himself it was worth the price.
When he looked down at his friend, O'Reilly's eyes were closed.
Vinduly, his face bleak and tired, came back to stand beside Tom. He looked down at O'Reilly and said, “That's a brave man.”
Tom nodded.
“Here.” The orderly held out the plastic case. “There's one dose left. Keep it. Sooner or later you'll get sick. When it happens, you can catch it in the early stages. Before it's too late.” His eyes flicked to O'Reilly's pallid face, then back up.
“You've got more patients.”
Vinduly shook his head. “None who aren't at least as far gone as O'Reilly.” He pushed the case toward Tom. “Go on. You saved five lives. You can take an insurance policy. You deserve it.”
Tom stared at the man's hand, at the innocuous plastic case that could mean so much. He shook his head. “Give it to him.”
“I can't. He declined treatment.”
“Strictly speaking, he told you not to inject him with the first vial.”
Vinduly scowled. “He made his wishes pretty clear. As a matter of principle-”
“Principle?” Tom interrupted. “What do your principles tell you is the right thing to do right now?”
For a long moment the two of them stared into one another's eyes. Finally the surgeon shook his head. “What the hell.” A wry grin took some of the tiredness out of his eyes. “He's going to be some pissed if he recovers.” He loaded the injector.
He knelt and put a hand on O'Reilly's arm, leaning on it a bit this time. O'Reilly didn't stir, though, not even when the injector pressed against his skin. The little device clicked, and Vinduly stood. A red circle showed on the inside of O'Reilly's elbow. There was no other change.
Vinduly opened the injector, removed the empty vial, and tossed it in the trash. “Well, that was nice while it lasted.”
“You did the right thing.”
The surgeon scowled. “Did I? You know he's just as likely to die anyway, don't you?”
“Well, now he's got his fighting chance.”
“Sure.” The man plodded over to his bunk. “I sure hope that was Quadrazine in those vials.” He flopped back and draped an arm across his eyes. “Do you mind getting the lights on your way out?”
No one dragged Tom from his bed during the night.
He woke feeling lethargic and heavy, Gamor's gravity pulling at him even more strongly than usual. He spent a long time staring up at the underside of the bunk above him, wondering if he might be sick. A case of Red Fever right now would be an ironic twist.
Hunger finally drove him from his bunk, hunger and the knowledge that he wouldn't get his morning cup of gruel if he waited much longer. That thought was intolerable, and he rose and stumbled outside.
He saw no tension in the few visible guards, heard no shouts, no signs of unusual activity from the Dawn Alliance side of the fence. He joined a crowd of fellow officers in front of the gate, waiting for the day's instructions with only a moderate lump of fear in his belly.
The gate swung open at last and a Dawn Alliance officer came through, a pudgy man with a data pad under one arm. He recited a list of duty assignments from the pad, grimaced at the gathered officers, and returned to his own side of the fence. The gate swung shut.
No pronouncements from Amar. No accusations.
No executions.
Tom led his platoon into the jungle, his anxiety easing somewhat. Much of it stayed with him, though. Even if Grumpy stayed silent, someone might notice a bruise, or the mud on his uniform, and demand an explanation. Grumpy might have already made a report. Amar could be waiting for the evening parade.
All day Tom directed his men as they excavated a vast pit in the middle of the clearing where they'd carved up so many fallen trees. If the tree cutting had been primitive and frustrating, the digging was much worse. There wasn't a single concession to modern technology. The men scraped dirt away with shovels and hauled it out of the hole in wheelbarrows. The ground, still wet from the rains the night before, was soft enough to bury the wheelbarrows up to their axles.
Only the fact that the men didn't care about their progress made it bearable.
“There's no need for sabotage,” Hoskins said sourly as they watched sweating, cursing men drag a wheelbarrow up a disintegrating mud ramp leading up from the bottom of the pit. “Four platoons together aren't a match for one modern excavator.”
Tom nodded sourly, wondering for the thousandth time if the UW even had a goal on Gamor beyond working a thousand prisoners to death. “Maybe it means they're losing. Their infrastructure has collapsed so completely, they can't even get modern tools to a work site. They've sunk so low that this actually makes sense.” He gestured at the pit.
“Sure,” Hoskins said, clearly unconvinced. “Why not?”
“Why not,” Tom agreed, and headed down the slope to help with the wheelbarrow. He was rested, at least in comparison with the struggling men, and he was filled with restlessness. Hard labor took his mind off the sense of guilt he felt, knowing he'd risked the lives of his fellow prisoners. Hauling at the wheelbarrow, dragging the wheel out of the sucking mud, felt like penance. It wasn't enough, but it was all he could do.
No one died at the evening parade. Amar did a quick inspection, announced that the war was going entirely in the Dawn Alliance's favor and that Garnet was soon to fall, and dismissed them all.
Finally Tom, his stomach in cold knots, headed for the medical hut to see if it had all been for nothing.
O'Reilly looked terrible. He was sitting up, though. He stared at Tom, silent and grim, as Tom found a stool and took a seat beside his bed.
“Well, hell,” Tom said at last. “That’s the last time I waste perfectly good Quadrazine on you.”
O'Reilly laughed. It looked like it was the last thing he wanted to do. For a moment he looked outraged with himself. Then the tension, the angry stiffness, seemed to drain out of him. His shoulders slumped and he said, “Well, you damn well better not do it again.”
“I won't.” Tom tried a small grin. “I promise.”
O'Reilly, to his relief, grinned back. “Good. That's settled, then.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Bloody awful, Lieutenant, thanks for asking.” He coughed. “I just might pull through, though.”
“Good,” said Tom. “I'm hatching a brilliant escape plan, and I'm going to need your help. It involves a ladder tall enough to reach a ship in orbit. I'll need you to hold the bottom.”
O'Reilly laughed. “Well, if anyone can get us off this rock, it's you, Sir.” He slid down until he was flat on his back. “No offense, Sir, but I'm about played out.”
“Sure.” Tom stood. “I'll leave you alone.” He nudged the stool under the bed and turned away.
“Captain?”
Tom turned back.
“Thanks.”
“You're welcome.” He walked out, feeling just a little bit lighter.
Chapter 15
Captain Harn Johnstone was a prick.
Alice sat in one of his visitor chairs, her hands shoved in her pockets to hide the fact that she was making fists. Bridger and Ham sat on either side, Ham's face carefully blank, Bridger's sour expression showing that he shared her low opinion.
“Let me just recap,” Johnstone said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his desk. “You two were captured by a United Worlds warship while committing acts of piracy.” He looked at Alice and Bridger, his expression full of amused contempt, then swung his gaze to Ham. “While you were part of the crew of a Dawn Alliance base.” He smirked. “And you expect me to believe you've brought me a priceless nugget of military intelligence about a Dawn Alliance prison deep in the Green Zone.”
Alice glared at him, wanting desperately to hop up and knock that smirk off his face. “It's all true.”
“Really,” he said.
“You have spy ships,” she said. “Surely you could verify this. You don't have to take our word for it.”
“Oh, don't worry,” he said. “I won't be taking your word for anything.” He leaned back, clearly amused. “Tell me. Do you have any proof at all of your … colorful claims?”
Alice jerked her shoulders up in a frustrated shrug. “Of course not. What do you think they were going to do, hand us a bunch of maps as they turned us loose?”
“As they turned you loose,” Johnstone said. “Fascinating, isn't it, how they turned you loose? How they saw you as trusted allies of the Dawn Alliance. But you somehow hope I won't see you the same way.”
“The crew of the Kestrel is on Gamor,” Alice said. “They'll still be on Gamor when you're done twisting our tails.”
“Really,” said Johnstone.
“Yes, really,” she snapped. “Every moment you spend being a prick is an extra moment they spend suffering God knows what at the hands of the Dawn Alliance.”
That, finally, was enough to take the smirk from his face. He touched a button on his desk and the door behind Alice slid open. Johnstone spoke to someone behind her shoulder. “Have these three been photographed and thumbprinted?”
A man's voice said, “Yes, Sir.”
“Good. They are to be considered suspected enemy agents. I want them escorted from the base. You'll keep them under constant supervision until they're outside. Understand?”
“Yes, Sir.” A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. “Let's go.”
Alice took her hands out of her pockets, wrapped her fist around the man's smallest finger, and twisted. A yelp sounded in her ear and the hand vanished. “Don't touch me again,” she said, and stood. A pair of burly young men stood just inside the office door, the nearest man with his left hand curled protectively around his right. He looked angry and indecisive, as if he was deciding whether to go for the pistol on his belt.
“I'm done with this idiot,” she told him. “Let's go.”
The Rusty Rocket was a dockside bar that would have fit in well on almost any planet in the Green Zone. Well, except for all the UW spacers cluttering up the place. Alice glared around at them, thought about trying to start something, and ordered another drink instead.
The evening was fading into an alcoholic blur, details vanishing in the haze. She couldn't remember when Ham and Bridger had left, but she had a vague memory of shouting at them, venting her frustration on the only people who were on hand.
She wondered blearily if she'd ever see them again. They'd gone with her because she had a mission. That mission had foundered completely. She'd told the UW Navy everything she knew. It was the one and only thing she could do for Tom and his crew.
Now she was useless. Homeless and disconnected from her old life. Never to be trusted again by the Free Planets because she'd allied herself with the UW. Except the UW didn't trust her either. Tom had trusted her, but he was on Gamor, and on Gamor he would stay, because no one knew he was there except Alice. And who was going to believe Alice, she of the ever-shifting loyalties?
“Bloody hell,” she muttered, and took another drink. Except the glass for some reason was still empty. She spent a moment staring at it, befuddled and perplexed. Then she pushed the glass back into the dispenser in the middle of the table and tapped a finger imperiously on the tabletop. A drink menu appeared, and she pressed her thumb with exaggerated care on the image of a frothy beer mug.
Nothing happened.
She leaned forward, peering closer at the tabletop. Something had happened, just not the cascade of delicious libation she'd expected. A red rectangle was superimposed over the menu. She blinked, marshalled her concentration, and did her best to read the fat white letters in the rectangle. The text jumped and shifted, but she managed to get the gist of it.
The table thought she was drunk, and it was cutting her off.
“Stupid table,” she said, pulled her glass out of the dispenser, and banged it on the tabletop. “Gimme my drink or I'll thump you again.”
The table ignored her.
Fury rose within her, mingled with déjà vu. There'd been another bar before this one. A colony bar. Not a Navy spacer in the entire place. Proper acoustic music playing, not this synth crap mewling from the speakers here. A live server, who'd cut her off when she'd gotten belligerent.
Then tossed her out, when she decided to show him what belligerence really was.
“Stupid server,” she muttered, then banged her glass down one more time.
“Easy there.” A hand closed around the top of the glass and lifted it from her hand. “You'll break it. Cut yourself.”
She looked up, saw a blurry human outline, and stared until it resolved itself into a familiar face. “Bridger!” She smiled from ear to ear. “Am I glad to see you.”
“Um, good,” he said. “I need to-”
“You can get me a drink!” She gestured at the dispenser. “Stupid table thinks I'm drunk.”
“Imagine that.” He dropped into a seat across from her. “I want you to meet some people.”
“I want to meet my next beer,” she said impatiently. “Come on. Let's make with the pouring and the bubbling.”
“Fine.” He put the glass into the dispenser and tapped the tabletop.
Meanwhile, other people kept walking up and sitting all around the table. She recognized Ham and gave him a wink. The others were strangers. She tried to count them, figured there were either two or three, and decided she was in no shape to do advanced math.
“Here.” Bridger shoved her glass toward her. “Drink up.”
“I'm way ahead of you,” she said happily, and grabbed the glass. It felt much too light, and when she tilted it up, only an ounce or two flowed into her mouth. It wasn't beer, either. She tasted mint and vinegar, the unmistakable flavor of an alcohol scrubber.
For a moment she sat there, her cheeks puffed out, the unpleasant mixture sharp on her tongue. She thought about spitting it back into the glass. After all, she'd put some real effort into getting this drunk.
But Bridger and Ham had sought her out, despite her condition, despite the way she'd been acting. And they'd brought people to meet her. Something was going on. A corner of her mind that wasn't yet blinded by alcohol told her the time for self-pity and indulgence was over.
She swallowed.
Conversation flowed around her, idle chatter about the weather, the war, the latest zeroball game. They were passing time, she realized, while they waited for her to sober up a bit. That embarrassed her, which she took as a sign the scrubber was beginning to work.
Her stomach, a beacon of warmth radiating well-being through her body only moments before, contracted into a hard knot. Sweat sprang out on her forehead, and she belched, then gave Bridger a resentful look across the table.
She was sober enough to read the look he gave her in return. Don't blame me. You did this to yourself.
Alice pushed the dirty glass through the disposal ring in the tabletop, drew out a new glass, and filled it with water. She took a deep drink and sighed.
“You want another scrubber?” Bridger said.
She shook her head. “Not unless you want to see me puke.” She pushed the water glass away and looked around the table. The new arrivals – there were three of them – were colonists. Spacers, by their clothes. She said, “What's this all about?”
“My name is Ernst.” The man in the chair beside Alice was burly, the forearms he rested on the tabletop roped with thick muscle. “This is Liesl and Kara.” He frowned. “You have to understand that this is all second-hand. The man I spoke to said he was there, and I believe him. But I can't say for sure that he spoke the truth.”
“All right,” Alice said.
“Leisl was with me when I heard the story. She'll speak up if I get any details wrong.”
A blonde woman across the table nodded solemnly.
“We heard this two, three months ago,” Ernst said.
“Almost three,” Liesl interjected.
“We were in the guild hall in New Panama, looking for a ship. These two came in, a man and a woman. They told us a story. They were on a ship called the Vanessa Cardui. A little armed freighter. They did legit cargo runs, and they did some unofficial things, too.”
Meaning it was a Free Planets ship, harassing and stealing from UW cargo haulers. Alice nodded.
“They had this contract,” Ernst went on. “When New Sheffield fell, most of the Strads pulled out. A few of them stayed in the Zone, though. Spies and the like. The captain of the Vanessa got contacted on the sly.” He smiled, remembering. “This Strad spy wanted him to take some prisoners off Gamor.”
Alice sat up straighter in her chair.
“It seems an officer in the Silver Guard made it off Gamor. Some kind of prisoner exchange. So some of his men tell him they'll wait two weeks from the day he's released, and then they'll break out of the prison camp and head for Bull's Head Mesa. It's this big flat-topped hill sticking up out of the jungle. Easy to see from the ground. Easy to spot from orbit.
“So the Vanessa waits until the designated date, and she slips into the system all quiet-like. And they scans the top of the mesa, and there's a campfire burning up there. So they wait for nightfall and they take the ship down, and there's a whole crowd of raggedy-ass prisoners, all of them starving and dirty, and they pile aboard. And the Vanessa runs like hell.” Ernst leaned back and folded his arms across his thick chest.
“And?” Alice demanded. “What happened?”
Ernst shrugged. “The DA wasn't in the rest of the Green Zone back then. They dropped the prisoners off on Novograd and collected their pay. They said no one ever came after them.”
“But … that means they know where the prison is!” She made a frustrated gesture with her arms. “The United Worlds hasn't always gotten along with the Strads, but they're allies now, right? I mean, they're both at war with the Dawn Alliance. They must be sharing information.” She scowled. “That prick Johnstone must have already known I was telling the truth.” Her scowl deepened as she realized she'd come all this way for nothing. “But why aren't they doing anything?”
The three of them batted it around for a while after Ernst and his companions left. For Alice it was a welcome distraction from the churning of her stomach. She sagged in her chair, feeling wretched, as Bridger ticked off possibilities on his fingers.
“There might have already been a rescue. It could have happened weeks ago. It might not have made the media. People keep things secret during war, right? Or there might be a rescue plan in the works.” He folded his index finger and touched the tip of his middle finger. “They might think a rescue is impossible. After all, Gamor is deep behind enemy lines now.” Another finger bent. “They might think it's a trap, an attempt to lure a bunch of ships into their end of the Zone. The prison is just bait.” He touched his pinky. “Or they might decide all the intel they have was out of date by the time they received it. Anything could have happened since we left Gamor. The prisoners could all have been moved. A fleet might have moved in. Anything.”
A gloomy silence descended. Alice doubted a rescue had already taken place. It would be too much of a morale booster if captured troops were brought back from the heart of enemy territory. “How feasible do you think it would be for the UW to do a rescue?” she said.
“I bet they could do it,” said Ham. “The Sarens did something like that a year ago. They were taking prisoners, not freeing them, but it was the same basic idea. They sent one troop carrier almost all the way to Kristal. Marines dropped into a big Coalition fortress. They captured a general and half his staff and grabbed a bunch of data cores and bugged out before the Coalition could react.”
Alice shrugged. The war in the coreward systems didn't interest her. She'd always considered it an irrelevant distraction from the cause of freeing the Green Zone from United Worlds oppression. In fact, she would have guessed the Sarens were part of the Coalition. “It can be done, then.”
Ham nodded. “Absolutely.”
“It takes good intel, though,” Bridger said. “You can only send in a small force, or you'll be spotted. So you have to know what you're up against. Otherwise it's suicide.”
Alice nodded, swirling the water that remained in the bottom of her glass. Her earlier sense of frustrated helplessness was gone. She almost missed it, because if she couldn't do anything, she couldn't get herself killed.
“I know that look,” Bridger said mournfully. “You're going to get us into trouble again, aren't you?”
She looked up. “You don't have to-” The indignant look on his face stopped her, and she smiled. “Yes,” she said instead.
“Great.” Ham rubbed his palms together. “I was getting bored.” It was false bravado. She could see a shadow behind his eyes. He'd been tortured by the Dawn Alliance, and however brave he acted, he couldn't quite hide his fear.
However, he'd be coming with her. That went without saying.
“We'll take the Evening Breeze. It's small and quick. We'll pop into the Gamor system and take a little look around.” She looked from Ham to Bridger and back again. “We'll get some scanner footage. If we don't see too many warships we'll sneak in close to the planet. Get a scan of the prison camp. Maybe even get a rough count of the prisoners. Then we'll hightail it back here and deliver everything to the Navy while it's still fresh.” She grimaced. “With any luck we'll get here when Johnstone's got a day off. Maybe we'll get to talk to someone who'll actually listen.”
Ham made a face. “They should be doing this themselves. We shouldn't even have to do anything.”
Alice thought of Johnstone, the skeptical, amused look on his face. “They think we're lying,” she said. “So we'll give them something they can't just dismiss.”
Of course, scanner records could be faked. The Navy might still ignore them. But maybe, just maybe, it would be enough.
At any rate, she was going to find out.
Ham said, “So when do we leave?”
Alice rubbed her eyes. It felt like someone had packed the lids full of sand. She desperately needed a shower and a good night's sleep.
Well, the ship had bunks and a tiny shower. She stood. “Right now,” she said. “Let's go.”
Chapter 16
For once the prisoners got the VIP treatment.
Tom sat on one of the bench seats that lined both sides of a cargo flitter, the wind whipping at his hair. The flitter, essentially a rectangular steel box with a repulsor at each end, had open sides. It wasn't moving all that fast, but wind blew freely through the interior, exhilarating him.
Twelve prisoners rode with him, along with a Dawn Alliance engineer and four guards. He couldn't see the men on the far side; the middle of the box was filled from floor to ceiling with machinery. Tom had no idea what any of it was for. He was apparently going to help install it at a remote location, though.
The sky was clear for a change. When Tom turned his head he couldn't see the ground at all, just a distant blue ocean and the blue-black sky above. He was hungry, of course, but aside from that he thoroughly enjoyed the flight.
As the flitter descended he peered around, trying to get a sense of how far they had come. The jungle-covered hills all looked pretty much the same, though. He saw a mesa jutting up above the trees. It looked different from the mesa near Camp One, but it could be the same mesa from another angle.
Ultimately, he knew, it didn't matter. He would do whatever work they made him do, and at the end, if he was still alive, they would fly him back to the camp.
That discouraging thought dampened his mood, and he was feeling sour and petulant by the time the flitter touched down in a broad clearing. A loud metallic clank rang out, and the two end sections of the flitter rose into the air. They hovered briefly, twin pods linked by a fragile steel framework, then raced off to the north, leaving behind a steel box full of machinery and men.
To Tom's disgust, the first task the prisoners faced was construction of a compound to contain them. The thought of working hard to build his own prison irritated him, the more so when he recognized the stack of fence posts among the equipment. He'd supervised the cutting of those poles from a stand of young trees the week before, not knowing what they'd be used for.
They dug the post holes by hand, naturally. The stockade wouldn't amount to much by the time they were finished, just a rectangle maybe thirty paces on a side. Tom watched the men dig, wondering sourly how long this pen would be their home.
Half the holes were dug and teams of grunting men were lugging the posts into place when Tom became aware he had a slacker. He had two of them, actually, but one he already knew about. O'Reilly was back on duty, but he didn't have much in the way of stamina yet. He sat on a plastic crate, sorting the metal staples they'd use to tack the wire to the posts.
Another man, Jamie Barnard, sat with O'Reilly. Sorting staples was make-work, a way to make O'Reilly look busy to the guards. It was barely a one-person job. It certainly wasn't a two-person job.
Tom walked over, and Barnard looked up, then shifted furtively, setting something on the ground beside his foot. Tom sighed, glanced around to check there were no guards in earshot, and said, “Just tell me what you're up to, Barnard.”
The man stared up at him for a moment, then sighed and lifted a small box of staples. He murmured, “I'm cutting the staples short, Sir. See?” He held up a staple. Instead of its usual three-centimeter length, the staple was barely a centimeter long. The tines were crudely cut off. Tom leaned over and saw a heavy-duty pair of pliers on the ground by Barnard's foot.
A kick, even a good hard tug, might be enough to pop a short staple loose.
It was pointless mischief. Even if they could get through the fence, what would be the point? It was boosting Barnard's morale, though, and Tom was in favor of any kind of sabotage that didn't get them caught.
“Make damn sure you get rid of the staple ends,” he said. “Try to get them into the bottom of a post hole.”
Barnard nodded.
“And when you use them, try to put them close together.” Tom thought of the night he'd wriggled under the fence. “Adjacent posts, so the wire has some play. Close to the bottom is probably best.”
“Right, Sir,” Barnard said, and smiled.
“Oh, and Barnard?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“For the love of God don't get caught.”
Once the fence was done the prisoners assembled a couple of prefabricated buildings, one inside the fence and one just outside. They approached the construction of the inside building with more enthusiasm than they usually showed. It was going to be their shelter for the rest of their time here. They built a single hut, less than half the size of the huts back at Camp One, with thirteen bunks inside. There would be no more separate accommodations for officers. Tom would sleep with the men.
The new building was better than the huts at Camp One. The roof was a sheet of flexible polymer that they unrolled, glued down along the edges of the walls, and sprayed to make it harden. It didn't look as if it would last very long, but in the meantime it was perfectly waterproof, which was a vast improvement. It even let in a bit of light.
The second building, intended for four guards and an engineer, was every bit as large as the prisoners' hut. It included internal dividers, too. The guards didn't just get space, they’d have some privacy.
The men put real effort and ingenuity into making this building as uncomfortable as possible. The Dawn Alliance engineer supervised them closely while they dug trenches, put in forms, and poured a couple of long strips of concrete that would serve as a foundation. The foundation was perfectly level. The engineer checked it a half dozen times.
When the time came to lay down the three long polymer sheets that would form the floor, though, the men got creative. They slipped rocks and narrow scraps of wood under the sheets as they laid them across the foundation. Then, showing an unprecedented level of initiative, they grabbed fusing tools and stuck the floor down before the engineer could check their work.
One man even managed to fit a pebble between the edges of two sheets, leaving a thin but unmistakable gap in the floor. The engineer was beet-faced with rage when he found out.
The outside walls went up crooked, the engineer running from one corner to another as the prisoners, expressions of earnest goodwill pasted on their faces, did their best to fuse the ends of the walls together before he could spot their mistakes. When the time came to hang the door, the men looked so cheerful the engineer chased them away and did it himself, an annoyed guard helping him.
“I'm afraid the roof is going to leak,” O'Reilly confided to Tom as the polymer sheet was hardening. “You wouldn't believe how many pinholes are in it.” O'Reilly grinned, his expression filled with something Tom hadn't seen in a long time.
The satisfaction of a job well done.
Their first night in the new camp was downright cheerful. It was impossible not to feel good about sleeping inside a building you’d helped build with your own two hands, even if you'd done it under duress. Whatever labor the coming days held, at least they were away from the dreary tedium of Camp One. Tom went to bed that night with a light heart, certain he'd be able to handle whatever tomorrow held in store.
In the morning they dug a hole.
It was a massive hole, and they dug it by hand. One crew softened the dirt with pickaxes. The next crew followed with spades, shoveling dirt into wheelbarrows. The third crew wheeled the dirt away, making a massive heap that was only going to get bigger.
By the look of the equipment still in the box, the end result would be a tower with a parabolic dish at the top. Perhaps it would allow for better scanning of the system, making rescue more difficult. That was an ugly thought, more pressing than the usual abstract knowledge that they were aiding the enemy's war efforts. Tom kept the men working, allowed as much slacking as he thought they could get away with, and dreamed of sabotage.
Even if they couldn't achieve anything meaningful – and he was pretty sure they couldn't – he yearned to do something to undermine the project. Prisoner morale demanded it. His own morale demanded it. The idea that they were helping their captors to keep them contained ate away at him. He became grouchy and irritable, because it was the only way to keep from sinking into despair.
With straightforward labor to do, the guards weren't going to tolerate any more staple sorting. Tom gave O'Reilly the one machete among their tools and put him to work clearing brush. The excavation was close to the compound, part of the same wide meadow with the edge of the jungle half a kilometer or so in every direction. Tom didn't know why no trees grew in the meadow. As he watched the men set to work with picks and shovels he could only hope it wasn't because the ground was too stony.
Lush grass filled much of the meadow. It wasn't a hindrance to the work; the men simply trampled it flat in passing. The shrubs were another matter. Thin, twisted, and covered in wicked thorns, the shrubs varied in size from waist-high nuisances to monstrosities taller than a man. Tom had O'Reilly tackle the job of clearing it all away.
O'Reilly set to work and Tom turned back, watching as the pit took shape. The men, frustrated by the thick grass, abandoned the picks. Instead, a line of men with spades cut out chunks of turf. They'd cut all around with the blades of the spades, then squat, pulling up on a fistful of grass with one hand and prying with the spade with the other hand until a chunk of turf came free, trailing a tangle of dirty roots.
It was brutally hard work, the tall grass dragging at the wheelbarrows, the roots impeding the spades. It looked as if the job might get easier, though. The grass would soon be trampled flat, and once the top level of turf was gone, there would be nothing to remove but soil.
Wood crackled behind Tom, and a voice cried out in pain. He whirled, and saw a man drop the handles of a wheelbarrow and run toward a towering shrub. Tom hurried over, his stomach twisting.
O'Reilly lay on his back beside the shrub, the machete on the ground beside him. His right forearm was covered in blood. At first Tom thought he'd cut himself with the machete. It crossed his mind that it might even be a suicide attempt. O'Reilly was right-handed, though, and the damage was to the back of his right arm.
A chunk of branch lay beside him, blood glistening on some of the thorns, and Tom realized what had happened. O'Reilly had slashed at a branch above his head, and the branch had come loose, hitting his forearm on the way down. It was a solid branch, propelled by Gamor's high gravity, and several thorns had torn into O'Reilly's flesh.
It would have been a trivial injury under most circumstances. Gamor's lush jungle seemed to marinate in bacteria, though, and O'Reilly wasn't going to get much in the way of medical treatment.
Tom tugged at the jagged edges of the torn sleeve, ripping the fabric until he could peel the sleeve back above O'Reilly's elbow. Then he said, “Move your hand.”
O'Reilly reluctantly complied.
He had three long gashes between his wrist and elbow. One was quite deep, with something sticking out that Tom for a horrified moment thought was bone or ligament. He finally realized it was a thorn and plucked it out.
“Damn it!” O'Reilly hissed. “I mean, thank you, Sir.”
“Get some water,” Tom said to Cooper, the man who'd dropped the wheelbarrow. He looked around, thinking he'd better tell the rest of the men to get back to work, but the guards beat him to it, shouting at the prisoners who reluctantly resumed their labor.
Tom bathed the arm as best he could, relieved to see the bleeding was already mostly stopped. Cooper stayed beside him for a minute, until a guard chivvied him away. Tom looked up at the young soldier. “I need a first-aid kit.”
“Back to work,” said the guard.
“This man has an open wound in his arm.”
“Back to work. Now.”
For a moment an old familiar rage rose within Tom, putting a red haze on his vision. He pushed it down. Losing his temper could only make things worse. “Look. I just need a minute. And some sealant.” The guard scowled, and Tom said, “A healthy man will do more work.”
The guard slid his rifle from his back and pointed it at Tom.
“You're an idiot,” Tom said, and stood. That was enough to make the rifle twitch in the guard's hands. Tom ignored him, extending a hand and helping O'Reilly to his feet. Tom picked up the machete and put the handle in O'Reilly's left hand. “Take it as easy as you can,” he said. “Don’t let your heart rate get too high until that scabs over.”
O'Reilly nodded and Tom turned away, heading back to the pit.
In the morning, O'Reilly's arm was badly swollen. He ate his breakfast awkwardly, holding a spoon in his left hand, and grimaced every time his moved his right arm. He picked up the machete cheerfully enough, though, and headed out to resume his war with the shrubbery.
Rain began to fall in late morning. At first it was a blessing, cooling the air and softening the ground. The pit quickly turned to mud, though. Every spadeful of dirt weighed twice what it should. The wheelbarrow got stuck each time it left the grass, so the men plodded over to dump a scoop of mud at a time into the wheelbarrow where it waited at the edge of the hole.
Progress was slow. By midday the hole was barely knee-deep, and it was half-full of water. When the spades hit rocks the men plunged their arms into the black water and fumbled blindly, gasping and cursing as they pried stones free and lifted them out.
When Santiago collapsed, Tom blamed exhaustion. He hopped down into the pit, sloshed his way over to where the man sat submerged to the waist, and helped him to stand. They slogged their way over to the edge and Santiago sat, his head slumped forward. When he started to sag sideways, Tom put a hand on his shoulder to hold him upright.
The man's shoulder felt strangely warm. Tom put a hand on his bare forearm, then swore.
Santiago was hot to the touch.
“That's enough rest. Back to work.”
Tom looked past Santiago at the guard on the grass behind him. “He's sick.”
“He's lazy. Tell him to-”
Santiago flopped backward and stared up into the rain, then closed his eyes. The guard prodded him with a toe, then knelt and slapped his face. Santiago opened his eyes, and the guard flinched, then scrambled back.
Santiago's eyes were vividly bloodshot.
Chapter 17
By the end of the day three men were in their cots and the floor plan in the prisoners' hut was changed, the sick men against the back wall, the rest of the cots crowded together near the door. It was far less isolation than Tom would have liked, but with the rain pouring down outside it was the best he could do.
O'Reilly's cot was with the healthy men, but he was far from well. The swelling in his arm had increased all day, until the forearm was twice its normal size. He lay on his bunk, his elbow propped up on a rolled-up blanket, his forearm pointing straight up, leaning against the wall to keep it elevated. His face wore a permanent grimace of pain, but he didn't complain.
“The guards are scared,” Cooper said. “I saw them dosing each other.” He scowled. “They've got fever medication, and what are they doing with it? Giving it to healthy people!” His lip curled. “Sons of bitches.” He leaned toward Kuzyk, who sat on the next cot wringing water from his socks. “How do my eyes look?”
“Like limpid pools,” Kuzyk assured him. “The whites are still white.”
“Good.” Cooper squinted. “You too.”
Tom stretched himself out on his cot, then immediately rose. Inactivity was intolerable. He tried to pace, couldn’t find room, and went outside instead. He stomped over to the gate and rattled it.
A guard in a slicker approached. “What do you want?”
“Medication. We've got men with Red Fever. And a man with an infected cut in his arm.” Tom pointed an accusing finger toward the guards' hut. “And you've got medical supplies!”
“Get away from the fence.”
“Damn it, I know you're worried about the fever. And you want us to get this stupid hole dug. Well, the best way to take care of both things is to give us access to your precious medical supplies. It's not like you can't spare it.”
The guard brought his rifle up from under his coat. “I said back away.”
Rage washed over Tom. He grabbed the wire of the gate, shook it. “God damn it, what's the matter with you? We're human beings over here, you know! These men are dying ten whole meters away from your stupid unused medicine stash that you won't-”
The rifle fired, the report like a blow to his eardrums, shocking Tom out of his anger. He stared at the guard, his brain re-running the last few seconds. He'd felt a tremor in his right foot. By the angle of the gun barrel, the man had put a warning shot in the ground no more than a finger’s breadth from his foot.
“Back away,” the guard said, and the barrel of his rifle tilted up until it pointed directly at Tom's chest. “Last warning.”
Tom twisted the wire in his fists until hot lines of pain burned across his palms. Then, one finger at a time, he made himself let go. He stepped back.
The guard didn't move. The barrel of the rifle didn't waver as Tom took another step back, then another. Finally he turned his back on the guard and trudged back to the hut. He felt powerless, useless, humiliated.
When he reached the door he glanced over his shoulder. The guard still held the rifle ready, the barrel pointing at Tom's guts.
He spat in the guard's direction and went inside.
In the morning Cooper was ill. He dragged his cot over to the sick side of the room and flopped back down.
O'Reilly claimed to feel a bit better, but he looked terrible. “Stay here,” Tom told him. “It's not like they're going to come in here and check on you.”
“I'll come outside,” O'Reilly murmured. “I don't want to stay in here.”
Tom nodded his understanding. He had no idea if O'Reilly might be immune to the disease. Men recovered so rarely, they had no data to draw on. What he knew for sure was that no one wanted to stay in the hut a moment longer than they had to.
The rain had stopped. The pit was a quagmire, with ankle-deep water over a layer of butter-soft mud that pulled off men's boots when they tried to take a step. It was miserable work, and the men with wheelbarrows traded off with the others, taking their turn wielding spades in the muck.
There wasn't much supervising to do, and Tom found himself watching, feeling guilty that he wasn't working harder, feeling guilty that he couldn't do something to spare the men.
He caught himself peering at his own reflection in puddles, trying to spot redness in his eyes. There was none so far, and he wondered how long his luck would hold.
A voice whispered away at him in the back of his mind, and at last he ran out of other distractions and began to listen. You better not get sick, it said. If you get sick, you won't be able to do anything. It will be selfish if you act to save yourself. You'll stand idle and let your men die around you rather than take an action that would save your own life.
But if you're not infected, it's easy. You can do something. You can turn on the guards and murder them in their beds and unleash a nightmare of reprisals back in Camp One. You can do it all, because it's not for you. It's for your men, and it's your duty to keep them safe.
“I can't do anything.” He murmured the words aloud, then looked around furtively. A man with a wheelbarrow was almost in earshot, but he was lost in a private world of misery. “I can't do anything,” Tom repeated in a whisper. “I really can't. The price is too high. And what will I achieve? If I give medication to my team, what good will it do?
“They're dead men. They just haven't stopped breathing yet.”
At midday two more men limped away, skin hot and eyes bloodshot. The guards told Tom to join the workers, and he spent the rest of the day with a shovel in his hands. He didn't mind. It gave him an outlet for his rising frustration. It felt like penance.
He was walking beside O'Reilly on the way back to the compound when he noticed a smell like rotting meat. Once they were inside the wire he sat O'Reilly down and inspected his forearm.
It was bad. The worst spot, just below the elbow, was swollen to the size of a football. The skin over the swelling was a bright angry red shot through with streaks of black, and by the smell of it, O'Reilly's flesh was putrefying.
The machete was the only knife they had. Tom washed it as best he could, then, as delicately as he could with such a clumsy tool, he sliced open the tight-stretched skin above the swelling.
Hot bloody pus gushed from the cut. The smell twisted Tom's stomach, and he turned his head away, fighting to keep his gorge down. He waited a moment for his nose to deaden a bit, then started kneading O'Reilly's forearm, working as much pus as he could out of the wound.
O'Reilly endured it all in silence, his face white, his eyes squeezed shut. He breathed in short agonized gasps, and when it was over his whole body trembled in relief.
Tom bathed the wound, then bandaged it with strips cut from a blanket. It was a pitifully inadequate treatment. He was no doctor, but he could see that the infection ran deep. If they were back at Camp One, he figured the surgeon would probably amputate the arm in an attempt to save O'Reilly's life.
Out here, without even that level of care, Tom could only make token attempts to help.
O'Reilly was going to die.
The last of the cloud cleared as the sun set. The healthy men sat around on the grass outside, talking quietly, killing time. Tom went into the hut.
Cooper and Reese sat on one cot playing chess with a board made from woven leaves. They had chess men improvised from pebbles, flowers, bits of wood, and bundles of grass. They were arguing over whether one chunk of wood was a bishop or a knight. The fading light didn't help.
The other men lay on cots. Some of them sat up as Tom approached, and he waved them down. Some of them barely looked sick, if you ignored their bloodshot eyes. The more advanced cases looked worse, listless men with sunken eyes who didn't do more than glance at him before retreating into their personal world of suffering.
Santiago was the worst. He didn't stir even when Tom put a hand on his shoulder and spoke his name. Tom sat on his bunk for a time, looking down at the stricken man, his thoughts churning in frustrated, useless circles.
He felt stuck, tangled in indecision. All the medication his men needed was right there on the other side of the wire. He figured he could get it, too. But the cost …
Santiago moaned, turned his head, and lapsed into stillness. Tom stared down at him. If you die …
What? If he dies, what? He scowled, imagining himself using Santiago's inevitable death as a goad that would finally jar him from his indecision and make him act.
But if you're going to do something, why don't you do it now, before he dies? Why don't you save Santiago?
Because it won't save him. We'll still be on this God-forsaken rock with no way off, and nothing will stop Amar from hunting us down and hanging our bodies outside the fence at Camp One as a warning to hotheaded lieutenants like me. We won't even get the chance to die of starvation in the jungle. They'll track us, and they'll shoot us, and they'll carry our corpses back as trophies. And there's nothing I can do to prevent it.
“You need to get out of here, Lieutenant.” He couldn’t tell who had spoken in the deepening gloom. “You need to quit breathing our air. Believe me, you don't want what we've got.”
Tom stared in the direction of the voice, his mouth open, searching for something to say. He wanted to promise he'd do something, but it would be a lie.
He was going to do nothing.
Finally he stood, angry with himself, and walked out of the hut.
He lay on the grass, wrapped in a blanket, staring up at the stars. A single light burned on the wall of the guards' hut, bathing much of the compound in cold white light, but the men had put their blankets in the shadow of their own hut. There wasn't enough light to spoil his night vision. The stars pressed in, uncountable, so close he almost thought he could reach out and touch them. Will I ever travel among the stars again? Will any of us?
Do it, whispered a voice in the back of his mind. Don't just lie here watching your men die around you. Act.
But the consequences, he said to the voice. The reprisals. If I act, a bunch of innocent prisoners are going to die.
If you don't act, O'Reilly and Santiago and Cooper and a bunch of other innocent prisoners will die.
I can't save them, he insisted. They'll die anyway.
You can give them a ghost of a chance. You can let them die like men. You can fight back, strike a blow against the Dawn Alliance. You can turn a bunch of pathetic trapped slaves back into soldiers.
But the reprisals!
How many of the prisoners back at Camp One are going to survive the war? Tom squirmed in his blanket, not liking the thought. If you allow the Dawn Alliance to control you with hostages, the war might as well already be over. The only way to victory is to refuse to give in.
And those hostages are going to die anyway.
Around and around his thoughts went, until at last he ran up against one inescapable truth. O'Reilly and the men with Red Fever were going to die in a matter of days unless he acted.
Tom sat up.
Immediately the men all around him sat up as well. Kuzyk said, “What's the plan, Lieutenant?”
“I don't know,” Tom said, violating a cardinal rule of command. “I don't know if it's the right thing to do.”
“What are they going to do?” said Barnard. “Kill us faster?”
“He's right,” said Kuzyk. “We can't just keep working for them while they murder us by degrees. Someday there'll only be two prisoners left alive, and neither one of them will fight back because it'll get the other guy killed. No one's going to act like a man until there's only one man left.”
Murmurs of assent came from the darkness. Champlain said, “We're not doing the men in Camp One any favors by keeping them alive in this shit-hole.”
“All right,” said Tom, and let his doubts fall away. “This won't be easy. But here's what we're going to do …”
“What do you think you're doing?” The voice belonged to the only guard on duty. He was speaking to O'Reilly, who had the job of keeping him distracted for the next several minutes. “Get back from the wire!”
I hope he doesn't get himself shot. Tom pushed the worry to the back of his mind as he led the rest of the healthy prisoners to the fence. O'Reilly and the guard were on the far side of the hut, O'Reilly's position carefully chosen to lure the man to the one spot where he wouldn't be able to see the escape.
“Here,” said Barnard, indicating the two posts where he had put in shortened staples. He and Kuzyk started kicking the wire close to the posts, and staples made a faint clatter as they popped loose and flew into the darkness.
Tom had expected to crawl out at ground level like he'd done in Camp One, but Kuzyk and Barnard loosened four wires at just below waist height. Then the two of them spread the wires, leaning a knee on one wire to pull down, lifting on the wire above it with their hands. “Go, quick!”
The guard hut was a dozen meters away, and this stretch of fence was well out of the shadow of the prisoners' hut. They'd be in plain sight if another guard came out. Tom shrugged inwardly. They would be lucky, or they wouldn't. He helped Kabir get unsnagged from a barb, then took his own turn climbing through the gap. Barbs caught him in several places, and he waited patiently, balanced on one leg, as the others got him free.
He and Champlain took over for Kuzyk and Barnard, holding the wires apart as Kuzyk came through. Barnard was last, muttering angrily as a barb dug into his leg.
Somewhere on the far side of the hut O'Reilly was complaining in a low, bitter voice, claiming he had a right to lean on the wire if he chose. The guard seemed to have given up on arguing back.
Barnard took the machete. Tom had wanted it for himself, but Barnard had more training in hand-to-hand combat. He also had a ruthless look in his eyes when he talked about killing, so Tom relented.
They walked away from the fence, careful to keep the hut between themselves and O'Reilly. A dozen paces was plenty. They dropped to their stomachs in the tall grass and started to crawl, moving parallel to the fence. They crawled until the light that touched the tops of the stalks around them disappeared. That meant they were past the front of the guard hut.
Still they crawled, on and on, and finally Tom pushed with his hands and lifted his head slowly above the grass. He was past the back of the guard hut. He couldn't see the guard, but if the man was moving, he might come into view at any moment.
Tom changed direction, the others following like the body of some great segmented serpent with Tom as the head. He curved toward the guard hut, lifting his head from time to time to get his bearings.
Finally the back wall of the guard hut was directly ahead, no more than a dozen meters away. He stood and hurried to the hut, the others clustering around him.
O'Reilly had long since gone silent. That meant the guard could be anywhere. Tom crept to the corner of the hut and peeked around.
Nothing moved. The guard was nowhere in sight.
“I see him.” The low whisper came from Champlain, who was peering around the other side of the hut. “He's going around the – okay, he's on the far side of our hut.”
Tom reacted without thought, stepping around the corner and moving to the light mounted high on the wall of the hut. He'd helped install the thing, so he knew exactly how to disable it. He grabbed the circular base of the light with both hands, pulling and twisting, and heard the glue give with a low tearing sound. The light was self-contained, and continued to glow in his hands. He slammed it against the ground, and the world went dark.
He had to find his way back around the corner by touch. He stared into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust, listening to the quiet breathing of the men around him and the buzz of insects in the grass.
Footsteps rustled in the distance, growing louder with decreasing distance. The guard, coming to check on the light. Would he be suspicious? If he advanced slowly, rifle in hand, this would not go well.
By the sound of his feet, though, he was walking like a man unconcerned. And why shouldn't he? As far as he knew the prisoners were trapped behind barbed wire, and why would they do something as crazy as attempting escape?
Tom peered up at the sky, saw only a handful of stars, and shook his head. He'd have to trust the men to deal with the guard. They'd all been behind the hut. They still had their night vision.
“Now!” The cry was a sharp whisper, and it triggered a rush of feet running through the grass. Tom followed, heart in his throat, and saw a confused blur of dark shapes as five men converged on the luckless guard. Someone grunted, and the machete made a sickly crunching sound as it struck. And then there was silence, except for the sound of men panting for breath.
“Don't touch the rifle,” Tom said, pushing his way through the cluster of prisoners. He'd learned a few things since his first day in the jungle when he'd seen a prisoner take a rifle from a guard. “There's a filament running to his belt. If it pops loose the gun won't fire.”
“Son of a bitch,” said Kuzyk. “He's right. I can feel it. Damn thing's invisible.”
“There's not much holding it in place,” Tom said, “so don't fiddle with it. It might even set off an alarm in there if it loses contact.” He pointed at the guard hut.
“So what do we do?” Kuzyk said. “Leave it here?”
“Someone stays with the guard and holds the rifle,” Tom said. “Don't stand up. Just kneel beside the body. If you're careful you should still be able to shoot.”
“Got it,” Kuzyk said, planting one knee in the dead man's stomach. He took aim at the door to the hut, then touched the stock of the rifle. “Filament's still in place.”
“You're the reserve force,” Tom told him. “Stay here and cover the door. The rest of you, come with me. We're heading inside.” He looked at Barnard, who held the bloody machete. “Are you good to lead the way?”
“You bet, Lieutenant.”
“All right. Let's go.”
They poured into the hut in a rush. By the time Tom made it through the doorway the room was a chaotic jumble of struggling bodies. A shape lunged out of the darkness, a man's bare shoulder slammed into Tom's chest, and he staggered back, tumbling through the door to land on his back on the ground outside. A foot landed in his stomach, driving out what little breath remained in his lungs, as someone fled. A gunshot rang out, deafeningly loud, and Tom struggled to sit up.
A light came on inside the hut. Petersen and Champlain had a guard pinned face-down on the floor, his arms pulled tight behind his back. A second guard was a bloody mess in a doorway, hacked down by the machete.
Kabir appeared in the doorway, grimacing as he stepped over the corpse. “I got one,” he said, and held up a blast pistol. “He was going for this.”
“One got past me,” Tom wheezed. He clambered to his feet and looked outside.
Kuzyk still knelt on the corpse of the first guard they'd killed. He lowered the rifle, unclipped a small object from the dead man's belt, and pointed into the darkness. A beam of light appeared. Tom looked in that direction and saw the engineer, wearing only underpants, flopping in the grass a dozen meters away.
Tom took another look inside the hut. The men clearly had things under control. He plodded wearily toward the engineer, weighing options, weighing consequences.
The bullet had taken the man in the right hip. He couldn't stand, but he kept trying. He glanced once at Tom with wide, terrified eyes, then turned away and dragged himself along the ground, using both hands and one leg.
Tom stood over him, watching the man struggle. Then he straddled him from behind and slipped his left arm around the man's neck. He grabbed his right bicep and planted his right hand against the back of the man's head.
“I'm sorry,” he told the engineer. “We can't take a prisoner. We just can't. And we need as much of a head start as we can get.” Then he pulled back and squeezed with his eft arm, pushing forward on the man's head with his right hand.
The engineer's frantic struggles didn't last long. He went limp, and Tom continued to squeeze. At last he let go, breathing heavily, and fumbled at the man's throat, checking for a pulse.
There was nothing.
By the time he got back to the hut the guard who'd been pinned to the floor was dead and Barnard was cleaning the machete. Petersen emerged from a back room, his cheeks bulging as he chewed, half a dozen plastic packets cradled in his arm. He passed the packets around, tossing one to Tom. The package was labelled “Pineapple Rice”, and Tom tore it open, wincing as his saliva glands went into overdrive. He didn't think about much of anything else until the packet was empty. His stomach churned, unused to so much food.
They did a quick search of the hut, finding a couple of crates of medical supplies in the front room. Tom pocketed a couple of cases of Quadrazine, a case of broad-spectrum antibiotics, and an injector. Petersen grabbed another half-dozen food packets and they headed back to the compound. No one had found a key to the gate, so Barnard pried the hinges off with the machete and they trouped inside.
In the prisoners' hut Tom went from bed to bed, injecting each man with a vial of Quadrazine. Then Petersen distributed the food. Even Santiago managed to sit up when he smelled cold roast chicken and corn. Tom left them eating and went outside in search of O'Reilly.
He found O'Reilly sitting on the ground, his back against the wall of the hut, his legs stretched out in front of him. He gave Tom a weak grin. “How's the escape going?”
“So far, so good. Stick out your arm.” Tom injected him with antibiotics. “Can you stand?”
“I guess. If I really have to.”
“Stay there. I'll bring you a snack.” Tom stood, saw O'Reilly trying to rise, and hauled him to his feet. They went inside, where O'Reilly joined the feast in progress.
“What now, Sir?” Barnard said quietly.
“Now we do our best to get a good night's sleep,” Tom said. “As soon as the sun is up, we run.”
No one slept much. Tom and a couple of others performed a thorough search of the guards' hut, finding among other things a proper first-aid kit. Kabir revealed he'd had some training as a medical corpsman, though he'd never fully qualified. That made him much more qualified than Tom, who assisted him as he reopened the cut in O'Reilly's arm, squeezed out more pus, cut away a bit of necrotic tissue, and sprayed everything with a foam that he said would disinfect things and promote healing.
They spent the night eating and napping. When the sun rose they unscrewed the access panels on every piece of electronic equipment in the cargo box, smashed everything that would break, and scooped mud into the places they couldn't reach. Barnard found the pliers he'd used to shorten the staples, hidden away by the guards once the fence was complete. He cut the fence into scraps and destroyed a couple spools of wire they hadn't used. Petersen took the fuser and turned the sections of the tower into a solid lump of steel. Then he tossed the fuser into the muddy water in the bottom of the pit.
When the destruction was complete the men lined up outside the remains of the stockade. The sickest men were pale and trembling, but all of them were on their feet. Several men wore packs improvised from supply cases with polymer shoulder straps added. These were full of food and water and medical supplies.
None of the guns could be fired. The group's only weapon was Barnard's machete. It was not the most promising beginning to an escape, but Tom shrugged to himself, setting his worry aside. Today, they were free. Today they had a chance, no matter how slim.
“All present and accounted for,” O'Reilly said. He was pale and drawn, but food and hope had given him back much of his strength. “Which way?”
Tom turned and pointed to the distant shape of a mesa jutting above the jungle. “There. We need to reach that chunk of rock, and we need to climb to the top of it.”
It didn't sound like much of a plan. In fact, it sounded hopeless. O'Reilly just nodded, though, turned toward the mesa, and started to walk. The rest of the prisoners – former prisoners – fell in behind him, single file. Tom brought up the rear, and they walked together into the unknown, toward a distant and fragile scrap of hope.
Chapter 18
The Evening Breeze slid through hyperspace, skirting the front of a bulbous red-orange energy storm. This was Alice's favorite way to fly. The storm was magnificent, and so close that any shift in the storm front would engulf them. It required constant attention, endless tiny course adjustments. You felt like you were really flying when you hugged the face of a good big storm. There was nothing like knowing that a mistake could kill you to make you feel really alive.
It wasn't adrenaline addiction that kept her so close to the storm. The Dawn Alliance ruled the Green Zone now, and they wouldn't react well to an armed freighter sneaking around near their prison planet. If a warship appeared, she intended to pop inside the storm. Not so deep the ship would be destroyed, just deep enough to hide.
For a moment she remembered the exhilaration and terror of standing at the mess hall windows while the Kestrel flew into battle. There was something glorious about standing and fighting when your instincts screamed at you to run away. It hadn't ended well for the Kestrel, but whatever else happened, at least there had been a time when she helped take the fight to the enemy.
She had the bridge of the Evening Breeze to herself, for the moment at least. She and Bridger had been trading helm duties, with Ham often sitting in to learn the controls. He was already a competent pilot, able to take over in an emergency if she and Bridger were disabled. Ham had never done a landing, though, so he'd better hope any emergencies were short-lived.
A cup of coffee rested in a holder on the console in front of her, the surface curved as if an invisible thumb pressed down on it. The sight of it made her smile. The Evening Breeze wasn't the Free Bird, but it was the same kind of ship, an ancient small freighter with cobbled-together repairs and upgrades that gave it a unique character. The nose of the ship was constantly too cold, while the aft section was uncomfortably warm. And the gravity field was ragged and variable, leading to things like the dimple in her coffee. She felt noticeably heavier on her left side than on her right, a sensation she found strangely comforting. It meant she was back in the absurd, kludgy, irrepressible Free Planets fleet, a place that for Alice had always meant home.
A chime sounded, the ship's computer telling her she was quite close to her destination. She thumbed an intercom button. “We're almost ready to come out of hyperspace.”
The position she'd plotted in advance was inside the storm that billowed beside the ship. That was fine. Her goal was not to reach a specific location, but to pop out of hyperspace on the fringe of the Gamor system, far enough out to avoid detection. One spot would do as well as another. She turned the Evening Breeze away from the storm front, giving herself enough space to avoid interference from the storm.
The bridge hatch slid open behind her, and she saw Bridger reflected in the window as he ducked through. Ham was on his heels. The two men took seats on either side of her.
“We're ready to open a portal,” she told Ham. “Think you can handle it?”
“I'll give it a shot,” he said cheerfully. “I can't do any worse than destroying the ship in a ball of fire, right?”
“That's the can-do attitude that made the Free Planets the pan-galactic superpower they are today,” Bridger said approvingly. “Go for it, and let's see if we survive.”
Alice rolled her eyes, then sat back and watched as Ham verified their position. He brought up a chart of the system, double-checking there was no planet or other known hazard in the area, then ran a quick diagnostic check of the portal generator. He glanced at Alice, then took a deep breath, reached out a finger, hesitated a moment, and tapped an icon on his console.
“You've killed us all,” Bridger said, then guffawed as Ham shot him a worried glance.
“You did fine,” Alice said. “See?” She pointed, and a brilliant white rectangle appeared in front of the ship. “Now take us through.”
He moved the ship at about half the speed she would have used. Normally she approved of caution when a newbie was at the controls of a ship, but portals didn't stay open indefinitely. She had to grab the arms of her chair to keep herself from reaching for the controls, but at last the ship moved through. The mundane glitter of normal-space stars surrounded them. The portal icon on Alice's console went dark as the portal closed behind them.
“We made it through, and with an almost two-percent safety margin, too,” Bridger said.
Ham stared at him, unsure if he was being teased. “Two percent?”
“It was a little more than that,” Alice said. “Still, you'll want to pick up the pace when you go through a portal. The portal's always dead ahead with zero relative velocity. That's how the generator works. So you can goose the engines as soon as it opens. You can't mess up unless you actively steer.”
Ham nodded. “All right. I'll remember.”
“We'll make a proper spacer out of you yet,” Bridger said. “The next step is to forget all that engineering stuff you learned in your old life. Good spacers don’t have marketable skills. You'll have to lose yours if you want to fit in.”
“Enough chatter,” Alice said. “I want to know if we're alone out here.”
Both men turned their attention to their consoles, checking scanner data. The computer would have warned them of a ship or any potential threat at close range. The AI was no substitute for human judgment, though.
Close-range threats weren't the issue. It would take astonishingly bad luck for the ship to pop out of hyperspace within a million kilometers of a source of danger. No, the real risk was ships at a greater distance that might detect the portal and come to investigate. Portals were much easier to spot than ships. The moment of arrival in normal space was always the time of highest risk.
“I think I see Gamor,” Bridger said. “We'll never see anything from this range.”
“We'll watch for a bit,” Alice said. “Then we can-”
“Portal!” Ham shouted. He wasn't looking at his console, either. He was staring straight ahead, pointing through the bridge windows. Alice looked up, saw nothing but stars for a moment, then spotted a little glowing rectangle in the distance. A buzzer sounded as the Evening Breeze's AI finally noticed.
A single ship showed on Alice's console, a light cruiser by the look of it, at a range of five or six thousand kilometers. It must have been close, relatively speaking, when the Evening Breeze emerged. It had spotted their portal, slipped into hyperspace before they detected it, and emerged from this second portal quite possibly before the light from the first portal reached the Evening Breeze.
“What do we do?”
Ham's voice was shrill, and Alice couldn't quite hide an amused smile. “We get back into hyperspace, first. Open the portal, would you?”
He'd opened a portal not quite five minutes earlier, but now he spent a moment staring helplessly at his console. Then he shook his head, took a breath, and tapped at a screen. The stars ahead vanished as a white rectangle of pure energy appeared dead ahead.
“I'm taking helm controls,” Alice said, and took the ship through. The seventh-dimensional void looked quiet, some yellow-gold storms bulging like cauliflower in the distance. That was because she'd been heading directly away from the closest storm when they'd left hyperspace. Now she swung the nose of the ship around.
The storm she'd been skirting for the last several hours loomed dead ahead. For a moment she stared at it, her heart in her throat. Am I really going to fly us into that?
Not necessarily, she reminded herself. The cruiser might not follow. But if they do …
She fed power to the engines, taking the Evening Breeze toward the storm. The front hadn't seemed too bad while she'd been skirting it. Then, the idea of running into the storm had been an abstract one. Something she might do in a desperate emergency, not something to seriously contemplate.
Now …
When a white rectangle appeared between the Evening Breeze and the storm front she looked at Ham, wondering if he'd generated a portal. His fingers were laced across his stomach, though. When a dark shape appeared in the rectangle she realized the truth.
The cruiser was entering hyperspace directly ahead of them.
“Shit!” She gave the engines full power, and jerked the nose of the ship to the left. The portal was at a bit of an angle. If she could get behind the portal itself, she'd be hidden from the cruiser, at least until the portal closed.
“They're firing,” Bridger barked, his voice almost drowned out by an alarm as a laser beam touched the hull. Alice worked the helm controls, putting the ship into a corkscrew, and winced as a metallic bang echoed through the bridge. A shell had struck them a glancing blow and bounced away.
The Evening Breeze raced behind the portal, giving them a moment of cover. Alice changed course by several degrees.
Then they were past the portal and racing for the storm. The distance was mercifully short, made longer by the frantic zigzags she put the ship through.
The windows turned red as the ship plunged into the storm. Alarms sounded and lights flashed across every console on the bridge as the ship tore through energy fields she was never designed to withstand.
A bang sounded from aft, as loud as a hammer striking an anvil. The entire ship jerked, and a new alarm sounded, this one high and shrill. Loss of atmosphere.
“We've got a hull breach port side aft,” Ham said, peering at his console. “Good news. The tool room's still airtight.” The tool room was directly aft of the bridge. If it lost air, the hatch to the bridge wouldn't open. They would be trapped.
“They're still after us,” Bridger announced, peering into a screen on his console. “I can't tell the range.”
Alice changed course, veering thirty degrees to port and several degrees up. “How about now?”
“They're still going straight,” Bridger said, relief in his voice. “Hold it. Damn.” He looked up, his face bleak. “They're following.” He looked down as another buzzer sounded. “Laser strike. No damage, though.”
Hyperspace storms were hard on laser beams, and they made missiles almost useless, at least against a small, quick target. Projectile weapons still worked fine, though, and Alice continued to jink and dodge as she fled deeper into the storm.
“Uh-oh,” said Ham, staring forward through the bridge windows. Alice glanced up, just in time to see the red haze of energy outside deepen almost to black.
There was no sense of impact as the ship struck a layer of pure energy. The Evening Breeze trembled instead, vibrating like she was inside the rattle of an infant god. Every alarm on the ship screamed, and her console flared and then went black.
Beyond the barrier was a pocket of empty space, a gap in the storm a couple of kilometers across. The ship was racing forward, heading for the writhing bands of cloud that waited on the far side. Alice bellowed, “Brakes!”
Bridger's console was still alive. He brought his hands down and the braking thrusters in the nose of the ship fired. A great hand seemed to shove Alice forward, so that she sprawled across her dead console.
The ship slowed and stopped, the edge of the pocket perhaps a hundred meters ahead.
“Portal,” Alice said, regaining her seat. “Can we generate-”
“I'm on it,” Ham said. A moment later: “There it is.”
The storm disappeared, hidden by a wall of white, and Alice said, “Take us through.”
The storm vanished as they dropped back into normal space.
“What now?” said Ham, his voice hushed.
Alice's instincts told her to whisper, but she made herself use her normal voice. They were being stalked, but it wasn't as if the hunters could hear them. “Now we get out of the neighborhood.” She thought for a moment. “Point us at the planet. Hit the engines hard. Maximum burn for thirty seconds, and then cut power.”
A hum filled the cockpit, the seat pressed against Alice from behind as the ship accelerated, and the tiniest hint of a vibration came to her through the soles of her feet. A tremendous knot of tension between her shoulder blades let go all at once, and she gasped out loud. She realized she hadn't really expected the engines to work.
Ham said, “Will the cruiser stay in hyperspace?”
“For a bit, if we're lucky,” Alice said. “We’d be hard to see in that mess. With any luck they'll blunder around for a while in hyperspace looking for us, before they come out and look for us here.” She fumbled with the underside of her console, found the power switch, and did a hard restart. “That's why we're cutting the engines.”
As if on cue, the hum of the engines disappeared.
“So when they come back into normal space, they won't see us.”
A couple of minutes later a diamond-shaped white light appeared ahead of them and far off to starboard. “Don't touch anything,” said Alice, and they spent the next few minutes waiting in a tense silence. The portal was quite a ways off, but it was close enough to see. That meant there was at least a chance the Evening Breeze would be spotted.
“Look! I see another white light.” Ham pointed, and Alice turned to see a tiny line of white against the blackness of the sky. After thirty seconds or so, the line disappeared.
“Are they gone?” said Ham.
“Probably,” Alice told him. “We'll leave the engines off for a while, just in case.”
Ham said, “Won't they keep hunting us?”
Alice shrugged. “They would expect us to bug out. Ships the size of ours don't usually hang around when they run into a cruiser. And they'll be wondering what we're up to. Early scouts for an incoming attack? Or are we a decoy intended to lure them away while another ship raids the planet?” She shook her head. “No, I don't think they'll keep looking for us. Not unless the Dawn Alliance has got a lot of ships in the system.”
Ham nodded, the furrows on his forehead easing. He frightened easily, but he had a way of setting his fear aside that Alice respected. In fact, she envied him the ability.
Bridger tapped at his console, then twisted in his chair to look at the others. “Well, we're moving toward the planet at a pretty good clip. By my calculations, we should get there in slightly under three standard years.”
Alice smiled. “I think we can shave a little time off your estimate. We'll do a prolonged scan, and if we don't see too much ship activity, we'll do another short leg in hyperspace. We've drawn their attention to this side of the system. We'll pop out on the other side of the planet and see what we can see.”
Chapter 19
Santiago died just before noon.
There was no way to bury him. They had no tools, and not much strength. Santiago had walked at first, moving slower and slower. Finally they took turns carrying him piggyback. It made for slow progress, and when he slid into unconsciousness they had to put him down.
Bernard and Kuzyk were trying to make a stretcher when Kabir announced that Santiago was no longer breathing. The rest of the men gathered around, and Tom gave a short, awkward speech praising the man for his courage and sacrifice.
He didn't say what most of them had to be thinking. That it was good luck for the rest of them that Santiago had died quickly. That they would make better time without his weight dragging them down. But if he had died sooner, fewer of his comrades might be murdered back at Camp One.
That it didn't matter anyway, because all of them were doomed.
They left Santiago stretched out on his back, hands clasped over his stomach, a leaf covering his face. It was all they could do. Tom turned away from the body, his thoughts churning in dark circles. I crossed a line I never should have crossed. I did it for these men. And they're dying anyway. I've done something awful, and it's for nothing.
A hand touched his shoulder, and he looked around, startled. It was a degree of familiarity that enlisted men just didn't show to officers.
Cooper said, “He died a free man, Lieutenant. If it was me … Well, I would want to die out here on the run.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Not back there, working for them.”
Tom nodded, and they started to walk.
They took turns leading the way, using the distant mesa as their landmark. Whoever went first got the machete. At times it was essential, as vines and brush blocked their path. At other times they were able to walk for long stretches without using the machete at all. The jungle canopy formed a green roof overhead, plunging the ground into gloom. Nothing grew in that shadowy space between tree trunks, and they walked unimpeded.
Tom kept waiting for another man to collapse. He made sure there was always a healthy man bringing up the rear, and he kept glancing back, expecting the worst.
They stopped frequently for rest breaks, and every time they stopped, they ate. Their hunger was insatiable. They would eat until their stomachs were full, and an hour later they'd be hungry again.
Tom thought about rationing their food. After so many endless weeks of near starvation, though, he couldn't bear to deny himself or the men a meal. The food was heavy, too. So they ate, and made their burden lighter with every meal.
And as they walked, their pace increased. The food helped. The fever medication helped. Hope helped. They were free men, for the moment at least, and it filled them with exhilaration. No matter how weary they were, no matter how depleted their strength, they all had a restless energy.
The jungle was riddled with streams and pools, and they started carrying less water. The risk of a stomach bug from untreated jungle water was pretty high, but they would be off the planet or dead before they had time to get very sick. So they drink their fill, and ate their fill, and smiled at one another as they walked.
When night fell they talked briefly of trying to walk in the dark. Exhaustion stopped them, and they stretched out under the trees. Tom considered posting a guard, but if soldiers came, what could they do?
He let the men sleep.
In the morning Kabir made his rounds with the injector. He said, “We'll keep the rest, in case someone else gets sick, but these guys won't need another shot. They're all getting better.”
“That's good news.” Tom looked over at O'Reilly and lowered his voice. “How is his arm?”
Kabir shrugged. “He really needs a hospital. He needs surgery. His infection's under control, but he's still got dead tissue in there.” Kabir lifted his hands helplessly. “This is way beyond anything they trained me for. I'll keep giving him antibiotics. That's all I know how to do.”
“Good enough,” Tom said, and they resumed their walk.
It rained during the morning, quite a deluge by the sound of it, but the jungle canopy made a surprisingly good rain cover. There were places where the rain came through in a cataract, but for the most part it was like walking through a gentle shower. The ground grew damp, but not really muddy. Someone said, “I forgot to smash that damn wheelbarrow before we left. I hate that bloody thing.” The others laughed, and the trek continued.
In the early afternoon Cooper said, “Maybe they're not after us yet.”
“I bet our guards were calling in every morning,” said Kuzyk. “They've been hunting us since yesterday.”
“What if they didn't check in every day?” said Cooper. “Maybe they don't know. Maybe it's too late now. Whatever they detect with those hand trackers, maybe it's all gone by now.” He gestured upward at the canopy of trees. “They sure can't spot us from orbit. Maybe we're free and clear.”
“They're after us all right,” Kuzyk said darkly. “They'll catch up with us any time now, too.”
Cooper said, “If they're hunting us, where are they? It's not like we're moving fast.”
“They're on foot too,” Kuzyk said. “And using those scanners. It slows them down.” He hefted the machete. “They'll reach us today. The key is to put up enough of a fight that they kill us clean.”
But the day wore on and no one appeared in the trees behind them. They hiked, keeping a wary eye behind them, and at last the ground began to rise. As night fell they reached the edge of the trees and stared up at the sheer side of the mesa.
Reese shook his head. “How the hell are we going to get up that?”
“It will be easy,” Tom told him. “Wait until the sun rises. You'll see.”
The men seemed to accept this completely baseless reassurance. They retreated to the trunk of a forest giant and stretched out on the ground.
“I'm keeping watch,” Kuzyk announced.
Tom, his initial optimism tempered by weariness and a rising fear, nodded his agreement. “We'll take turns. Wake me up in a couple of hours.”
He surprised himself by falling asleep immediately. It seemed to him that the situation should be stressful, but he felt almost carefree. After endless weeks of doing nothing while men around him died by degrees, he had finally made a choice and taken action. He felt strangely at peace as he stretched out and closed his eyes, only to open them what seemed like a moment later as Kuzyk touched his shoulder.
“It's all quiet so far, Sir,” Kuzyk murmured, handing Tom the machete. “If you listen to the bugs it’ll tell you if anyone is approaching.”
The jungle hummed as Tom sat with his back against the trunk of a tree. The men breathed. Some of them snored. Leaves rustled above them as a gentle breeze blew. And insects, just as Kuzyk had said, raised their voices in a constant background susurration.
The bugs must have been there all along, Tom supposed. They simply went unnoticed when the world was awake and full of distractions. Now, with no company but his own thoughts, Tom was alive to every buzz and flutter of wings.
When he caught himself almost dozing he rose and walked around the tree. The sound of the insects changed as he moved, the bugs falling silent as he approached and gradually starting up again behind him. No one would sneak up on the escapees. Not while someone was awake and paying attention.
He couldn't see the leaves above him. The sky was simply black. He found himself eager to climb the mesa. If we're still free tomorrow night, we'll see the stars.
That was as far ahead as he cared to look. For the moment all of them were well fed, reasonably healthy, and above all, free.
For the moment, that was good enough.
In the morning they climbed.
At first it was easy – for about ten minutes. The slope grew steep, and soon it was almost vertical. However, the side of the mesa was far from smooth. The rock had broken and crumbled until it almost resembled a staircase. Clambering up was laborious but not complicated.
Tom's instinct was to go last, so he could keep an eye on everyone. It was clear, however, that the men were looking out for each other. Tom decided not to insult them by double-checking, and led the way instead.
The men who were recovering from fever had a tough time, stopping frequently to rest and catch their breath. O'Reilly was the worst off. His right arm wasn't good for much. He hauled himself up with his left as best he could, but he quickly became the pacesetter for the group.
Each time they stopped, Tom scanned the jungle behind and below. He could see nothing through the canopy, so he switched to checking the base of the mesa directly below them and searching the skies. He saw no flitters racing in to deliver troops, no trackers taking aim at them from below.
Still, the guards would be coming. He could feel it in his bones.
When the sun was directly overhead they stopped for lunch, sitting on half a dozen crumbled steps and ridges. Not much food remained. Tom set aside enough for a celebratory snack when they reached the top, and distributed the rest.
They were well past halfway, but moving slower with every passing hour. O'Reilly was almost done in, his face a mask of grim concentration. Cooper and Reese didn't look much better. Tom wished he could give them all a good rest.
Instead, he stood up and resumed climbing.
In the afternoon the sun moved past the mesa top and put them in shadow. It was a nice break from the heat, aided by a freshening breeze. The breeze grew stronger as they climbed, though, until Tom's baggy uniform flapped around his emaciated body. The wind felt like urgent fingers tugging at him, threatening to pluck him from the side of the mesa and hurl him down to the unyielding ground far below.
A cry caught his attention, and he looked down in time to see Champlain pushing O'Reilly more firmly against the rock. O'Reilly clung for a moment, then resumed climbing.
Tom climbed and cursed the treacherous, dangerous wind – until the rain began. Then he realized the wind hadn't been much of a hardship at all. Water blinded him when he looked up. It made the rock slick under his hands and feet. It chilled him, making his fingers numb and clumsy. And when he kicked a rock loose, the patter of raindrops obscured the sound so the men below him had no warning. They spread out, shifting left and right so that no one climbed directly below anyone else.
Tom's arms and legs were trembling by the time he reached a wide fissure in the rock with nothing visible above him but fat clouds. He told himself he wasn't at the top. This was an aberration, an irregularity in the structure of the mesa. He mustn't get his hopes up. The top had to be at least an hour away.
Still, his hopes rose in spite of himself as he flopped down on a natural stone bench. One by one the others reached him and took seats on either side, or clambered onto flat-topped chunks of rock around him.
Finally O'Reilly reached the fissure, Kuzyk at his elbow. O'Reilly didn't speak, just sagged against a boulder and gasped for breath. Kuzyk looked around, grinned, and said, “Are we at the top?”
“I don't know,” Tom said, and stood. “I'll go take a look.”
He clambered upward, hope and dread battling within him, and at last pulled himself up to the top of the cleft. A rock the size of his head came loose and bounced away behind him, and he heard men curse as they scrambled out of the way.
He didn't care.
A flat plain stretched before him. There was nothing left to climb. He was at the top of the mesa.
The plateau was a couple of hundred meters across, roughly oval with jagged gaps like the cleft he had just climbed. There was soil up there, a thin layer that supported scruffy weeds and waist-high shrubs. Water stood in stagnant puddles, or cut rivulets through the dirt as it flowed toward the edge. No trees grew. They would be exposed to rain and wind, but at least they would not have to climb.
“Well,” said Kabir behind him, “there's no ship waiting for us.”
Tom turned and gave him a rueful grin. “It was a long shot.” He looked back at the cleft, where the men who had reached the top were helping the rest over the last step. He wasn't needed.
“What now?” Kabir said.
“First we explore our new domain. Then we get ready to defend it.”
The top of the mesa held an abundant supply of crumbling stone. They used it to make a rampart, a wall in a curving half-circle in front of the cleft where they had climbed up. It was the most likely place for trackers to appear. They worked until nightfall, and by the time they were done the wall stood waist-high. It was enough to block the wind, and when they laid down shoulder to shoulder there was just enough space for everyone to share this meager shelter. There was no protection at all from the rain, but shared body warmth helped, and eventually Tom managed to sleep.
By morning the rain had stopped, but the cloud cover persisted. Tom walked to the edge of the mesa, urinated into the void, then stood there, staring out across the jungle.
A boot scuffed against stone behind him and O'Reilly said, “Lousy weather we’re having.”
“Well, we won't get sunburned.”
O'Reilly said, “If there's a ship up there hoping to rescue us, they won't be able to see us.”
“Maybe.” There were scanners that could see through cloud, and the sky would clear eventually. “I have a job for you.”
“Sure, Lieutenant.”
“I want you to gather small rocks or whatever else you can find.” Tom looked at his own shoulder where he used to wear the proud sunburst of the United Worlds Navy. He was surprised by how much he missed it. “I need you to write me a note.”
The others moved rocks as well. Gravity was almost their only weapon, so they put stockpiles of stones along the lip of the cleft. Men circled the plateau, found other likely routes, and put stockpiles of rocks there as well, everything from fist-sized stones to massive chunks of rock that a man would barely be able to lift.
They built up the rampart until it was chest-high, and put stockpiles of rock inside the half-circle. Then they continued the wall until they had a circular fort with a narrow doorway.
By early afternoon the men were exhausted and the defenses were as ready as they were ever going to be. O'Reilly starburst was a dozen paces across. Lookouts stood at half a dozen points around the perimeter of the mesa. The rest of the men stayed close to the fort.
After that, there was nothing to do but wait.
Chapter 20
“I see two major installations and maybe nine smaller ones. But only two spots that look like they're populated.” Ham had the entire galley tabletop activated, showing images taken from long-range scans of Gamor. He had a surprising affinity for interpreting visual data. Alice could have stared at the scans for hours without spotting even the biggest active site on the planet.
“Both big installations are on the large island,” he went on. “About a hundred kilometers apart. Everything else is natural.”
That rankled her. She'd been quite proud of herself when she spotted a square shape in the dunes of a smaller island. Ham was certain it was a naturally-occurring rock formation. “You're sure?” she said. “Never mind. Of course you're sure. You don't fire your rockets without fuel.”
He nodded, pleased at the compliment. “Both sites have the same layout, just on a different scale. A lot of identical rectangular buildings surrounded by a fence, and another fenced-off area with a few more buildings. It's almost certainly where prisoners are being held.
“The smaller sites are some kind of construction project. Probably a large-scale scanning system. If it was up and running, we'd have already been spotted.”
“That's not good,” Alice muttered. She wanted to call Bridger and ask him if the two ships they'd spotted so far were doing anything. She knew him, though. He'd let her know if anything changed.
The light cruiser that had chased them when they first arrived was on a continuous patrol of the system. It was working a spiraling search pattern that would bring it dangerously close to the Evening Breeze in about eighteen hours. By the time the cruiser spotted them, they'd be much too close to make a clean escape. She had to move soon. If she used the engines to change her course and buy more time she might catch the attention of the cruiser even sooner. But that was a problem for later.
At least the other ship was no threat, not unless she flew right up to it. A support ship tumbled around Gamor in a distant orbit. It was impressive-looking, a huge thing almost the size of a battleship, but it would have minimal armaments, and scanners no better than what the Evening Breeze had. Support ships carried vast reserves of fuel, medical and dental bays, and holds full of food and ammunition. She guessed it was here to support the forces on the ground, and to act as a moveable supply base for any Dawn Alliance ship in the area. If she stayed long enough she'd probably see ships drop in through portals, dock for a time with the supply ship, and move on.
She didn't intend to wait around that long. In fact, she was thinking about bugging out immediately. The cruiser was far enough away that she could use the Evening Breeze's engines with only a moderate risk of detection. She could slip behind the planet to open a portal, and be gone without the cruiser knowing she'd been there. And if they spotted her, well, they were far enough away that she could probably give them the slip.
Every hour that she waited increased the risk. In fact, it was almost at the level of foolhardiness already. She had a certain amount of intel for the UW Navy. She tried to tell herself that it would be enough.
But she'd come so far, been through so much, and her memories of Captain Johnstone and his cold skepticism were so vivid! If she gave him the images currently displayed on the tabletop, she sensed he would dismiss them. Blurry rectangles, faint lines that might or might not be fences. It wasn't enough.
Can you get more? If you can't, then you need to leave now. While you still can. She frowned, rose from her chair, and walked from the coldbox to the window and back again. She loved small ships, but they were lousy for pacing in. She dropped back into her seat. “What if we hit the engines right now? Blast past the planet at close range. Fly right over this island, take some decent pictures, and jump through a portal before that cruiser can get to us.”
“It's the wrong time of day,” he said. “The island's on the night side. We wouldn't see a thing.”
“Damn it.” She drummed her fingers on the table, accidentally zoomed in on a patch of featureless jungle, and zoomed back out. “How long until dawn?”
Ham opened a small window in a corner of the table. “Five hours, nine minutes.” He expanded the window, swiped in a menu, and tapped away for a time. “If we don't change course or velocity, we'll pass over the island in just under seven hours.” He gestured at the long-range photo displayed on the table. “That should increase our resolution by a factor of about ten.”
Alice leaned over the table, staring at the blurry pattern of rectangles that Ham assured her was a prison camp. If it was blown up ten times larger she'd be able to see individual guards and prisoners. They'd be no more than dots, but still …
“Seven hours,” she said, picturing the trajectory of the cruiser. “That's cutting it pretty close.”
Ham shrugged. “We'll certainly see a lot.”
Go, Alice. Bug out now. Call Bridger and tell him to take us behind the planet. Open a portal and get out of here. She rubbed her temples, wishing she didn't have to weigh the safety of her ship and crew – and herself – against the vague benefits of gathering military intelligence.
Intelligence that a certain arrogant captain was likely to ignore.
She thought of Tom Thrush and the drawn, haunted look on his face before the battle at Black Betty. Was this what it was like for him?
I should learn from his example. He pushed things. He ignored caution and good sense and pushed his luck, and look where he ended up. And he took his crew down with him.
Part of her, the frightened part, wanted to swallow that analysis whole without examining it too closely. It gave her a reason to flee. But there was another way to look at things. Thrush did his duty. So did his crew. They did the right thing, no matter the risk, and they accepted the price. That's the reason they're down there on Gamor.
That's the reason I have to do all I can to get them out.
All I can.
“We'll stay,” she said. “Seven more hours. We'll take one good close-range scan, and then we'll run for the hills.”
Ham nodded with every appearance of calm. She knew him well enough to see the fear he tried to hide. And she knew that, if it was up to him, he would make the same choice she just made. “I'll go tell Bridger,” she said. “Try to take a nap. I want you fresh when we make our pass.”
“Somehow I think I'll be staying awake,” he said with a wry grin. “I'll go lie down, though.” He blanked the table and left the room, and she headed to the bridge to tell Bridger she was gambling with his life.
Bridger stood the ship on its nose so that Gamor hung dead ahead as they watched the dawn line crawl across the face of the planet. Sunlight glinted on water near the south pole, but around the equator where the large island lay she saw only cloud. She stared, frustrated, knowing that she'd risked all their lives for nothing.
Until a sliver of blue appeared right where night gave way to dawn. The blue sliver grew, became a triangle, then flashed white as it caught more light. And a bar of green expanded out of the shadows as Gamor continued to turn.
She looked at Ham. “Are we recording?”
“Of course.”
Alice leaned over, looking at Ham's console as he fine-tuned the scanner display. Cloud filled his screen, glowing white and gray as sunlight played across it. Then the cloud ended and she saw jungle, an endless canopy of green.
“It won't be long now,” he said. “Ah. Here's one of the remote sites.” A rectangular hole appeared in the jungle, cluttered with the unmistakable shapes of human technology. She saw long white stripes, rectangles, and a white triangle that glowed in the early-morning sunlight.
“I was right,” Ham said. “Parabolic dishes. It's going to be a scanner array.”
Alice shook her head. “Dishes are round.”
“They ship them in sections,” he said, and pointed at the white triangle. “That's a circle right there. It's just in pieces, all stacked up.”
She opened her mouth to ask if he was sure, then closed it again without speaking.
“The first camp should be lit.” He worked the controls on his display and the gap in the jungle vanished in a blur of green. When the display stopped moving the unmistakable shapes of simple buildings filled the screen.
“There's a person,” Ham said triumphantly. “A whole bunch of them. They're coming out of the buildings. Wow, they're early risers.”
Alice watched tiny specks pour from the little buildings and wondered if she knew any of the people she was seeing. Was Tom in that multitude?
“Let's check the big camp.” Ham fiddled with the controls, and Alice had to look away as the display blurred again with motion. She looked out the windows instead. Gamor was so distant she could have hidden it with the palm of her hand at arm's length. The entire island wasn't much more than a speck. She squinted at it, wondering where on that distant blob of green the camp was.
“Found it,” Ham said. She watched as he made the view trace back and forth across a fenced compound. She couldn’t recognize individual people, but she could see color variations in the uniforms on either side of the fence that divided the enclosed space. Prisoners on one side, guards on the other.
“This must be enough,” she said. “We need to get this back to the UW Navy.”
Bridger said, “You want us to duck behind the planet?”
“No.” The cruiser was likely to see their engines, and if they didn't, the supply ship certainly would. She didn't want to waste a precious minute or two that she could spend fleeing through hyperspace. “We'll open a portal right here.”
Bridger nodded and tapped a couple of icons. “Ready.”
“Wait.” She stared through the bridge windows, thinking. Remembering her conversation with Ernst back at Garnet. “Is there a mesa near the camps?”
“One sec.” Ham zoomed out the view. “Oh, yeah.”
The dawning sun made five mesas instantly obvious by casting long tapering rectangles of shadow across the jungle.
“I need to see the tops of those mesas,” Alice said. “One at a time.”
Ham touched the mesa top closest to the smaller camp. The screen flickered and became a close-up of a shadow-dappled circle of stone. “If we wait half an hour the shadows will be gone.”
Alice nodded absently, knowing they couldn't delay their escape that long. “Do you see anything?”
“Just rocks,” he said, then zoomed out and touched another mesa top.
She had a moment of excitement when she saw a dozen little black streaks, lines of shadow from something about the size of a human being. But there were other lines of shadow just a bit longer, and others that were too short. And none of them moved. She pointed. “What's that?”
“Trees,” Ham said. “They don't seem to grow very tall on the mesa tops.”
Damn. She waited as he zoomed out and picked another mesa. You're wasting your time. There's no escaped prisoners sitting on a mesa top hoping a friendly ship will go by. It's ridiculous. Still, she couldn't help leaning in as the new mesa top appeared.
The first thing she noticed was a circular shape that cast a long rectangle of shadow. It had to be a natural formation, a finger of rock jutting up near a fissure at the edge of the mesa. She scanned the rest of the mesa top, seeing no movement, nothing that looked like a human being. Two more mesas remained, but her heart was already sinking. She wasn't going to find anyone.
She glanced at Ham, waiting for him to zoom out. He met her gaze, smiling like he'd just found a bacon cheeseburger under his console. He said, “This is it.”
“What?” Alice shook her head, baffled. “This is what?”
“Look!” He pointed, his fingertip almost touching the screen. She looked where he pointed, and saw nothing but a jumble of rocks. There were no black dots, no stretching shadows that might indicate people. There was nothing. She opened her mouth to tell him he was an idiot - then blinked, stared, and left her mouth hanging open.
There, in the middle of the mesa, was a shape drawn in rocks. A familiar shape, one she'd seen a thousand times.
The starburst of the United Worlds Navy.
Chapter 21
Prisoners have been there. But they might be long gone. In fact it could be the original prisoners that Ernst told me about, the ones who escaped months ago.
No, it's not them. Those were Strads. They wouldn't draw a UW starburst.
Ham zoomed in until the starburst filled the screen. Then he started a slow pan to the left, searching.
“Go to that round feature,” Alice said.
He nodded, flicked his finger across the screen, and the top of the mesa rushed past. When he came to the edge he changed direction and followed the edge of the mesa until the fissure filled the screen.
Black dots moved in that cleft of rock.
“I don't believe it,” said Ham.
“What?” said Bridger.
“There's someone there.”
Bridger made one brief attempt to look past Alice at Ham's display before giving up and returning his attention to the helm controls.
Ham adjusted the zoom until he was at maximum resolution. The area around the cleft and the stone circle bustled with activity. Men moved around the perimeter of the fissure. Others bustled around inside the fissure itself.
“Ship!”
Alice whipped her head around, looking at her own console. There were no proximity alarms. She could see the cruiser, still on its distant patrol, and the supply ship, orbiting with cold engines. She looked at Bridger. “What ship?”
“There's a flitter heading toward the mesa.”
For an endless moment she stared at him without seeing him, her mind racing. A flitter meant Dawn Alliance troops. Was it Dawn Alliance personnel she'd seen on the mesa top, and not escaped prisoners at all?
No. That starburst was the work of United Worlds prisoners. They were on the mesa top, and they were in trouble.
“Get us down there. Right now!”
The engine roared and the planet seemed to leap toward her. Ham sucked in a quick, frightened breath. Bridger cackled as the ship plunged toward the surface of Gamor.
“Open the gun locker,” she said to Ham. “This might get messy.” She switched her console to a tactical display and tapped the icon that brought the ship's twin laser cannons sliding out of their protective casing. “Land us on the mesa top. As close as you can get to that circle of rock.”
Ham hurried out of the bridge, and Bridger leaned over the helm controls. Alice adjusted her tac display, zooming in, ignoring the cruiser and the support ship and concentrating on the planet below. The flitter appeared as a yellow blip racing toward the mesa from the direction of the larger camp. Then the yellow blip slowed, turned in a curving arc, and headed back the way it had come.
“The flitter's turning tail,” she said. “That's one less thing to worry about.”
Bridger nodded without looking up. He had more than enough on his plate. The Evening Breeze began to vibrate as her nose touched atmosphere. The island ahead disappeared in a haze of red as friction heated the nose of the ship. Alice watched the altitude drop on her tactical display, wondered if she should tell Bridger to slow down, and decided to keep her mouth shut.
“Braking,” he said, and she braced her feet against the console. The ship decelerated hard, pushing her half out of her seat, and a thud came from aft, followed by a loud curse from Ham.
“Sorry,” Bridger shouted, then laughed. He was as gleeful as a small child with a new toy. “Hang on, in case that wasn't enough of a hint!”
The nose of the ship swung up, and Alice's seat pushed hard against her. The ship was still dropping, but slower now, her limited wings increasing her drag. They were belly-down now instead of nose-down, and the sunlight abruptly disappeared as the ship dropped into cloud. A soft fog surrounded them, hiding their velocity, making it easy to imagine they weren't still hurtling toward the planet at a terrifying rate, and racing forward just as quickly.
They plunged through the bottom of the cloud bank, and Alice looked up, using the clouds to gauge speed. It wasn't as bad as she'd feared. The cloud seemed to shoot up as the ship dropped, but not too quickly. She caught her first glimpse of jungle below, still reassuringly distant.
“I know what I'm doing,” Bridger said testily.
“I know you do,” she said.
“Then why do your knuckles look like icecaps?”
She looked at her hands, tightly clenched in her lap, and made herself relax them. “I don't know what you mean.”
He chuckled, then focused on flying. She saw the mesa ahead, like a stone tooth erupting from the jungle floor. The ship was well below the mesa top, and she gasped, realizing just how low they were. The mesa loomed larger and larger, and the nose of the ship rose. Bridger decelerated, more gently this time, and Alice unfolded the joystick that would give her manual control over the guns.
The side of the mesa rushed toward her, she fought the urge to brace herself for an impact, and then the last of their forward momentum bled away. The ship hovered, stationary, and she saw men climbing and dodging and firing rifles no more than a dozen meters away.
For a moment she stared, not sure what she was seeing. Men in pale uniforms lined the top of a triangular fissure in the rock. Men in darker uniforms scrambled around on the rocks below them. Not much sound made it through the hull of the ship, but she heard faint gunfire, like pebbles dropping on a tile floor. She stared helplessly, her overwhelmed brain unable to tell who was who.
Then a man on a high ledge turned, leveled a rifle at her, and fired. A divot marred the window in front of her face, and abruptly everything made sense. The ragged-looking men in baggy ill-fitting uniforms were prisoners. They were flinging rocks down on Dawn Alliance soldiers. It was the only thing that made sense. There was no way the prisoners had all the guns and assaulted a plateau while the guards defended themselves with rocks.
More rifle fire clanged and pinged against the ship, a fresh divot appeared in the window, and her hand squeezed on the joystick. Laser fire erupted from the underside of the ship, and she pulled back on the stick, tilting the guns up. The man who'd first shot at her disintegrated, consumed by a column of fire that blackened the rock behind him. His rifle – or most of it – went bouncing down the rocky cleft, and the men around him fled. They went the only way they could go, straight down, leaping from rock to rock, some of them tossing their rifles away, others slinging the guns across their backs so they could catch at the rocks with both hands.
Bridger moved the ship back, and Alice saw a terrified soldier leap onto a ledge that crumbled beneath his boots. The man fell, arms waving, into the void, tumbling as he hit the side of the mesa.
She pushed forward on the joystick, tilting the guns down. She didn't fire, though. Not at fleeing men. A cold voice in her head told her to destroy them while she had the chance. They would certainly kill good people later if they were able. She couldn't do it, though.
“Get us up there. We need to land and load up fast. We're not out of this yet.”
Bridger's only answer was a grunt. The ship surged up and forward, clearing the top of the mesa by such a small distance she was sure the prisoners must have thrown themselves flat. The ship thumped down on the mesa top and the main hatch hissed open.
“Come on!” It was Ham's voice, at a volume that would have impressed a drill sergeant. “We're not waiting around all day. Get on board or get left behind!”
Boots thumped on the boarding ramp, and she wondered just how many men they were picking up. How many people could cram themselves into one small freighter?
One crisis at a time. She glanced at Bridger, who leaned over his console, hands poised. He knew as well as she did the cruiser was coming this way. They would need every second they could get.
Feet thudded in the tool room. The hatch to the bridge hissed open and a man ducked through. It was a stranger, a dark-haired young man with gaunt cheeks and haunted eyes. He said, “We've got men around the perimeter of the mesa. Three of them.” He peered at her, and his head jerked back in surprise. “Alice?”
Alice said, “Captain Thrush?”
“Half right,” he said.
The ramp hissed and Ham bawled, “That's everyone!” Bridger kicked the ship into the air and they surged forward, no more than a couple meters above the mesa top. He pointed the ship straight at a distant figure, a man in a pale prisoner's uniform coming toward them at a shambling run.
Alice touched the intercom switch. “Get that hatch open. We've got three more passengers.”
Grabbing the last three prisoners took two interminable minutes. Alice cursed each passing second, but she couldn't very well leave someone behind. So she watched the tactical display and fought to hide her impatience as the last few men clambered aboard.
“That's it!” Ham's shout echoed through the closed bridge hatch, almost drowned out by the roar of the ship's engines. The mesa and the distant jungle disappeared as the nose of the ship tilted up. Alice watched the sky darken as they climbed, until stars appeared and the vibration of atmosphere against the hull faded away.
The cruiser seemed to pop out of nowhere, a red icon appearing on her screen a scant thousand kilometers dead aft. “They just came out of a portal,” she said. “They're close.”
Bridger responded by adding some wobble to their flight path, making the Evening Breeze harder to hit. Tom stumbled, caught himself against a bulkhead, then dropped into the empty seat that had been Ham's.
There was no point in giving Bridger orders. He knew as well as she did that they needed a portal as soon as they were clear of the worst of the planet's gravity well. She rotated the gun turrets until they pointed aft and tried a few shots, entirely hopeless at that range. She let go of the gun controls and stared through the windows, searching for peace among the stars. She started counting stars, a completely pointless task that shifted her focus and gave her subconscious a chance to work on the thorny problem of how to stay alive.
The stars vanished as a portal opened dead ahead. The ship plunged through, and an energy storm buffeted them from every side, a maelstrom of red and black.
“Fishhook,” she said.
Bridger nodded and brought the ship around in a tight turn. The storm was so thick that for a moment she couldn’t see the portal. It brightened as they drew closer, then flashed as they darted through an instant before the portal closed.
She checked her tac display. The cruiser had made a tactical error, rushing into hyperspace the moment the Evening Breeze disappeared. It would have given them precious seconds to close with the freighter before they could vanish into the storm – if the Breeze had stayed in seventh-dimensional space.
“Get us back to Gamor,” she said, and the stars tilted until the glittering ball of the planet was dead ahead. The support ship would see them and inform the cruisier – but not until the cruiser came back into normal space. “Get the planet between us and that tub.”
“Right,” said Bridger. He sent the Evening Breeze blazing toward a spot near the horizon line, a few degrees up from the south pole.
She ran through scenarios in her mind as the planet grew and grew. The obvious thing to do was to return to hyperspace. It was the simplest way to gain distance. Could she hoodwink the cruiser by doing something less obvious?
Her console chimed and she swore. The cruiser was back. It was quite a ways aft, but it would spot them immediately, and it was the faster ship.
The stars jumped and the ship thumped against something below, the impact making Alice grunt. They'd bounced from the upper atmosphere, she realized, and watched as Bridger increased their altitude. They didn't need air slowing them down. He followed the curve of the planet, staying barely above the atmosphere, and she watched the support ship vanish from her display.
Thirty seconds later, the cruiser vanished as well.
Alice switched to the ventral camera. The ocean below was speckled with black, hundreds of tiny islands like dark holes in the blue of the ocean. “Take us down,” she barked. “Land us on one of those islands.”
Bridger gave her a single dubious glance, then put the ship into a steep dive. He chose a tiny island hardly bigger than the ship, a shallow hump of rock sticking up above the waves. The ship came in fast, but touched down with surprising delicacy. Alice didn't actually feel the landing. She only knew they were down when the hum of the engine disappeared.
“I want a complete shutdown,” she told Bridger. To Tom she said, “Rally your men. We've got camo netting, and I want us covered before that supply ship comes over the horizon.”
When the cruiser went into hyperspace she saw the white rectangle of the portal in the sky directly overhead in the last moment before camo netting slid down to cover the bridge windows. She sighed, relieved that at least one part of her plan was working.
“How long do we stay here?”
She looked at Bridger. “I don't know.” She was tempted to stay for a long time. Days. A week. Long enough for the cruiser to give up completely. But a close scan of the surface would reveal them, camouflage netting or no. Plus, there were hundreds more prisoners on Gamor. Possibly thousands. The Dawn Alliance would know their prison was no secret, was not secure. They might beef up their defenses, or move the prisoners. Even if they did nothing, the United Worlds Navy would worry about what they might do. The fresher the intel, the more likely they were to act.
“Maybe an hour,” she said. “Long enough for that cruiser to move away. Not long enough for it to give up and come back and look for us here.”
He nodded. “I've got the bridge if you want to take a break.”
“Thanks.” She opened the hatch and stepped through into the tool room.
A corpse lay along the bulkhead, a man wrapped in a bedsheet. Blood stained the cloth around his head. She spent a moment staring down at him, wondering if he was someone she'd known, and apologizing silently for arriving too late.
Three men sat in the galley looking weary and drained. She didn't recognize the man with the bandaged arm until he said, “Hello, Alice. Thanks for picking us up.”
“O'Reilly!” She looked at his bandage and decided not to ask. “Is there anyone else here from the Kestrel?”
“Just me and Lieutenant Thrush.” He looked around the galley. “Do you mind if we cook?”
“Help yourself.” She moved past him as he rose.
The island was covered in a mix of sand and rock. She descended the landing ramp and found half a dozen men sitting in the shadow of the netting. They looked terrible, dirty and thin, but every last one of them smiled as they looked at her. She smiled back. “Welcome aboard the Evening Breeze.” She jerked a thumb behind her. “I'm sorry about your friend who didn't make it.”
The smiles vanished. “Thanks for picking us up,” said one man.
“Do you have anything to eat?” said another.
“O'Reilly's cooking right now.”
“Uh-oh.” The man heaved himself to his feet. “He's the worst cook in the platoon. If he couldn't cook with two hands, what's he going to do with one?” He gave Alice a shy smile, stepped around her, and climbed the ramp.
“It's so … heavy here,” she said. “How did you stand it?”
The eyes that stared up at her were bleak and cold. “The gravity was the least of it,” a man said.
The little pocket under the netting felt suddenly claustrophobic. She had a mad urge to duck outside, run across the sand, and swim in the ocean. With the supply ship quite possibly scanning from above, that would be foolhardy. She turned instead and went back into the ship.
The Evening Breeze, designed for a crew of five or six, had seemed almost spookily empty with just the three of them on board. Now it felt positively cramped. Gaunt prisoners crowded every open space. Alice stood for a moment in the galley, watching O'Reilly and another man argue over the best way to prepare powdered eggs. Then she fled to the bridge.
They did passive scans, watching as the supply ship ran its engines to stay in position on their side of the planet. They suspected the truth, then. They might even have spotted the Evening Breeze already. Either way, waiting for the cruiser to return would be foolhardy.
“Pack up the net,” she told Bridger. “We're leaving.”
The storm was rough, but it hid them well. The ship shook and trembled, the bridge lights flickered, and Alice's console once again flared and died. In fifteen minutes or so, though, Bridger found a pocket of quiet space with bands of furious energy on all sides. He followed a twisting path through the heart of the storm, never quite touching the worst of it, and eventually the Evening Breeze popped out into a gulf of clear space. There was no sign of the cruiser.
Alice tried to reset her console, watched a coil of pale smoke rise from a vent between the screens, and sighed. “Head for Garnet,” she told Bridger. “Quick as you can. I'll go get my tools.”
Chapter 22
Battor Ganbold was asleep, dreaming pleasantly of a girl he’d known at Military College, when the blare of a siren blasted him into consciousness. He was on his feet and buckling his trousers by the time his sleep-fuddled brain caught up. There was no sound of gunfire, so the prisoners were not in revolt. That just left one possibility, the event they’d been dreading and half-expecting ever since the escape.
The Dawn Alliance was in the system. Gamor was under attack.
The compound outside was a scene of controlled chaos. Amar stood in the middle of it all, giving calm instructions as officers approached him, listened for a moment, and hurried away. “Unit Leader,” he said as Ganbold reached his side. “There are enemy ships inbound. I believe it is a rescue mission. Take some men in there.” He waved toward the prisoners’ compound. “Kill the prisoners.”
Ganbold flinched in spite of himself. “Sir?”
“Kill them,” Amar said, a trace of impatience in his voice. “Kill them all. Then take your men to the landing field and wait for a shuttle. We will try to evacuate you.”
Ganbold looked past him at the two squat shuttles just outside the compound. How many trips would it take to ferry all the soldiers up to the orbiting supply ship? Would there by time for everyone to leave?
“Duty first,” Amar snapped. “Escape later.”
“Yes, Sir!” Ganbold spun and plunged into the surrounding chaos. Half the men he encountered hadn’t even grabbed their weapons. Some were barefoot, or shirtless. Well, clothing hardly mattered under the circumstances. He sent the unarmed men running for their rifles. Those with guns he gathered around him in a squad that grew as he trotted toward the gate.
A soldier got the gate unlocked and Ganbold shoved it open, leading his men into the prisoners’ compound. He was horrified at what he was about to do, yet strangely excited. He was about to strike a real blow for his country. The rescuers would arrive to find a wasteland of corpses, with no one left to liberate.
“Kill them!” he bawled. “Kill them all!”
A few soldiers gaped at him. Others headed for the prisoner huts, spreading out as they advanced. The door of a hut swung open and a prisoner peered out, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the lights that lined the fence. The nearest soldier stopped and lifted his rifle to his shoulder.
Light flashed in the darkness outside the wire, and the soldier pitched sideways, his rifle tumbling in the dirt. One arm landed beside the body, detached at the shoulder. The soldier’s chest was a gory mess.
Ganbold stood frozen, a corner of his mind screaming at him to move, to give orders, to do something as light flashed three more times and three more soldiers fell. Shock held him frozen, and God only knew how long he might have stood there, rigid and unmoving, if the tower behind him hadn’t exploded.
The blast snapped him out of his paralysis, and he dove onto his chest, feeling warm air wash across his back. The ground was cool against his stomach, and he realized for the first time that he’d run outside without his shirt on. I’m going to die half-dressed. I always thought I’d die in my uniform.
The light around him dimmed, then dimmed more. They’re shooting the lights, he realized. Will that make it easier to escape?
Probably not. Lying on the ground wouldn’t help either. He sprang to his feet, running forward, changing speed and direction to make himself a harder target to hit. His men were dark outlines around him, milling around like alarmed sheep. A soldier not three steps away gave a grunt and fell, and Ganbold smelled blood and offal.
“Back to the compound,” he shouted. “Take cover, and prepare to defend yourselves.” There was nothing they could do out here, not against an enemy sniping from the dark.
Sniping from outside the fence, he realized. He changed direction, running between huts. They’ll hold their fire. They won’t want to hit the prisoners.
For a long moment he stood with his back pressed against the wall of a hut, panting and staring into the darkness. The last electric light was gone, shot out or extinguished. The only source of illumination was starlight and the burning remnants of the tower. No one came out of the huts, but men murmured to one another on the other side of the wall.
Why am I still alive? Why aren’t they storming the camp and finishing us all off? They must have come in overwhelming force. He looked up. Ships should be dropping from the sky. They should be touching down inside the compound itself. It’s the quickest way to keep us from killing the prisoners.
A flash of light in the corner of his eye made him turn his head, just in time to see a soldier die, his demolished body briefly outlined by the energy pulse that killed him. The same flash showed Ganbold another knot of soldiers huddling just beyond the unlucky soldier. They had no cover, and yet, so far, they were unharmed.
This isn’t the attack. Those ships are still up there. He squinted up at the stars, looking for the flare of braking thrusters. These are commandoes. They came in first, in a stealth ship. To keep us from massacring the prisoners when we spotted the main attack force.
Brief visions flitted through his head, of leading a counter-attack and wiping out the commando team before the rest of the enemy could land. He dismissed the idea. The entire camp held only two or three helmets with night-vision lenses. The soldiers had light weapons and no armor, and all they knew about the enemy was a vague direction. Trying to hit back would be suicidal.
Then I must escape.
He moved deeper into the prisoner compound, then hesitated when he came to the open space separating the officers’ huts from the enlisted men. I’m just a warm outline to the commandoes out there. They don’t know I’m a soldier. I might be a prisoner.
Before he could lose his nerve he flung himself forward, sprinted across the open ground, and flattened himself against the wall of a hut. A door creaked somewhere nearby, and he heard voices that rose in volume as prisoners came outside. His hand went to his hip, searching for the reassuring bulk of his pistol.
It wasn’t there.
Ganbold cursed himself silently, then turned and jogged for the end of the hut. He circled around a knot of prisoners, suddenly glad for the concealing darkness. He was just another anonymous prisoner.
A voice behind him said, “I think that was a guard.”
“What, him? That’s nuts.”
“I’m serious! He ditched half his uniform so we wouldn’t spot him. You should have seen how fat he was.”
Ganbold, jogging briskly away, ran a hand over his flat stomach. Fat?
A quick glance over his shoulder revealed nothing but darkness. The suspicious prisoner, if he tried to follow, would never find him. Ganbold pushed it from his mind as he passed the last line of huts and jogged across a stretch of open ground before the fence. He slowed his pace, a hand stretched out, feeling for the barbed wire.
He found the ankle-high wire that marked the kill zone instead. He found it by tripping over it and landing on his chest on the damp ground. He took a moment to recover and orient himself, and then he wriggled forward on his stomach, imagining a sentry firing into his body. That was absurd. The soldiers, the ones who hadn’t been killed yet, had bigger fish to fry.
The top of his head bumped a wire, invisible in the darkness. Ganbold examined it by touch, wincing when a barb pricked his finger. The strands were too close together, the barbs too big and too tightly spaced. There was no way he would make it through. He cursed under his breath, wondering if he could climb the fence, or find a tool to cut the wire.
Light, white and searing, filled the compound, and Ganbold squeezed his eyes shut. The ground trembled against his breastbone, and a terrible roar made his skull vibrate. He forced his eyes open, gave them a moment to adjust, then rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky.
Assault ships dropped from the heavens, lights blazing from their undersides, braking thrusters searing the night air. The attack force was here.
A barb tore a bloody furrow down his back, from his shoulder to his hip, but the blood made his skin slick and sped him up. The barb sank into his trousers and gouged his left buttock. He flailed and squirmed until the fabric finally ripped. A moment later he was through the wire. He ran, squinting into the darkness, his night vision completely ruined by the lights behind him, and cried out when his foot struck something. He fell full-length on the ground, grass cool against his skin, and scrambled into the rectangular shadow of a stump. Common sense told him to get up and run for the jungle, but a deeper instinct demanded that he hug this scrap of cover and cower.
Lifting his head above the stump took all of Ganbold’s courage. Assault ships squatted like fat insects in the open ground between the two groups of prisoner huts. The long tables and rain shelters were gone, crushed to kindling by the ships. Troops in bulky armor milled around, while prisoners stood in nervous clumps against the walls of the huts and watched.
A mech, twice the height of a man, strode regally through the chaos, heading for the guards’ compound. Ganbold’s head turned. More UW troops surrounded a ragged line of Dawn Alliance soldiers, defeated men with hanging heads, hands clasped behind their necks.
Beyond them the shuttles burned. No one had managed to evacuate.
I should surrender. Give myself up before somebody shoots me. Get this cut treated. He knew he wouldn’t do it, though. The invaders wouldn’t stay. They would take their liberated prisoners and flee. The Dawn Alliance would be back. And Ganbold couldn’t bear the thought of joining that line of humiliated, beaten men.
Bodies littered the compound, all of them either half-dressed or wearing the uniform of the Dawn Alliance. By the look of it the rescuers hadn’t taken a single casualty. Amar had to be among the dead. Ganbold couldn’t imagine the fierce commander surrendering.
Even as the thought crossed his mind, one prisoner lifted his head. It brought his face out of shadow, and Ganbold’s eyes widened as he recognized his commanding officer. For a moment he thought Amar was displaying his courage, refusing to bow his head. But the man stared past the UW troops, and the expression on his face was anything but fierce.
Ganbold didn’t count the prisoners who burst through the gate in a rush of dark bodies. There might have been twenty or thirty of them. The nearest armored man lifted a hand in a command to stop, but the liberated prisoners ignored him, pouring past him on both sides in a frenzied rush.
They launched themselves at the ragged line of guards. They attacked everyone who wore a Dawn Alliance uniform, but Amar was their main target. He threw his hands up in a hopeless attempt to protect himself, and he shrieked in the last instant before he went down under a wave of gaunt, furious bodies. His shriek seemed to echo endlessly in Ganbold’s ears, long after the man himself went silent.
Ganbold heaved himself to his feet and ran for the jungle.
Chapter 23
“So let me get this straight. You disobeyed direct orders from your commanding officer. You murdered four guards and an engineer. Then you conspired with known pirates to leave Gamor. Does that about summarize it?”
Tom stared at the Intelligence officer, flabbergasted. “My commanding officer wasn't there. It was war, and those men died during combat. And I didn't consort with a pirate, I boarded the ship when it landed.” Quite a few more words came to mind, all of them angry, none of them likely to be helpful. Tom closed his mouth and concentrated on taking long, slow, deep breaths.
“You've been a very busy man since your capture. And then there are the choices you made after taking command of a frigate under questionable circumstances.”
“Questionable-” Tom started to rise from his chair, then made himself settle back down. He's trying to push your buttons. Don't let him know how thoroughly he's succeeding.
A projected nameplate hovered above the man's desk. Captain Johnstone. Military Intelligence, which meant he never had to put himself at risk, or make any tough choices. He's not qualified to judge me. He's a fool. His opinion of me doesn't matter. I can let him squawk all he likes. It's just noise.
The interrogation went on for another quarter of an hour. Tom gave monosyllabic answers, shrugged a lot, and ignored Johnstone's endless sneering insinuations. The man became visibly annoyed when his barbs failed to hit, his frustration mounting until finally he ordered Tom out of his office.
A marine led Tom back to an area known euphemistically as the debriefing wing. It was a completely secure suite of rooms, effectively a prison. It was comfortable enough, but there was no outside communication, no communication with the other residents, and above all, no way to leave.
It was his fifth day in the facility. His fifth day back at Garnet. His fifth day as a prisoner of the Navy for which he had sacrificed so much. He stepped into his room, heard the door click shut behind him, and swore, giving in to the tide of bitterness that grew and darkened within him day by day.
He sometimes caught glimpses of the others in the corridors. His fellow escapees were locked up in the debriefing wing. Worse, Alice, Bridger, and Ham were incarcerated as well. They'd risked their lives getting him off that mesa. They deserved better.
“We all deserve better,” he muttered. “I deserve better.”
An hour later the door slid open. As usual, a marine waited outside. “Come with me, please, Sir.”
Once again he considered refusing, just to be perverse, just to see what happened. As usual he thought better of it. “Lead the way.”
To his relief they didn't go to Johnstone's office. The marine led him into a different office, this one with “Major Chisholm” stenciled on the door.
Chisholm was a middle-aged black woman who looked him up and down with two of the coldest eyes he'd ever seen. Then she surprised him by smiling. “Lieutenant Thrush. Please, have a seat.”
He sat warily in her guest chair.
“I'm sorry for the way you've been treated.” She sounded like she meant it, too. “You were in enemy hands for weeks, and your escape was … remarkable. We thought it prudent to take certain precautions.”
“Like testing my anger management skills by cooping me up with that prick Johnstone?” He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth, but Chisholm, to his relief, smiled.
“Captain Johnstone can be a little difficult.” The skin around her eyes crinkled. “I appreciate your forbearance. I believe there was a trainer named Reynolds who wasn't quite so lucky.”
Tom flushed. “Reynolds wasn't injured.”
“He survived,” she said, “and you became a Battleship School legend.”
Tom, with no idea how to reply, remained silent.
“It's rude of me to dredge up the past like that,” she said. “I wanted to tell you in person that you're being released. Also, the Navy and Marine Corps have just run a joint operation that will be of interest to you. I thought you deserved to know about it right away.”
Tom leaned forward, his embarrassment forgotten.
“We sent a rescue mission to Gamor,” she said. “The ships involved have just come out of hyperspace. I'm told the raid was a complete success. Every prisoner has been rescued.”
For a time Tom just stared at her, willing his brain to process her words. He whispered, “Thank God.”
“Quite.”
Every prisoner has been rescued. It sounded good, but it wasn't quite true. There would have been reprisals for five men killed and thirteen escapes.
Not every prisoner was rescued. Not even close.
“I have a bracer for you,” she said. “You'll have to consult Mycroft about a billet, and your next assignment.” Mycroft was the base AI. She opened a drawer, took out a standard military bracer, and set it on the desk in front of him.
He picked up the bracer, struck by how much emotion it stirred. It was just an electronic gadget, a combination communicator and personal computer, but it symbolized so much. They'd given him a uniform when he first came off the Evening Breeze, but only now did he feel like he was fully reinstated as a naval officer.
“It's because the rescue mission came back, isn't it?”
Chisholm blinked at him, surprised. “Pardon?”
“You're letting me go because the rescue mission came back. And it was a success. So you know I told the truth, and I wasn't trying to lure more ships into a trap.”
“It's a dirty war,” she said. “We're not in the business of taking chances. It's not personal.”
He nodded. “I understand.” He slipped the bracer onto his forearm, squeezed gently, and felt it click into place.
“If you want to see your former fellow prisoners, they should be docking with the station in a few minutes.” She glanced at a screen set into her desktop. “Bravo Dock.”
“Thank you.” Tom stood. “I'm free to go?”
Chisholm nodded, and he hurried out.
He found a spot one deck up from the concourse at Bravo Dock where he could lean on the railing and looked down at the passengers they disembarked. A handful of crew came first, bright-eyed men and women with the eager look that spacers get after several days cooped up on a ship. Several cargo movers rolled out behind them and rumbled off down a corridor.
And the prisoners came trickling out.
After several weeks away from Gamor Tom had forgotten just how bad the prisoners looked. He heard gasps from people around him, and a shocked murmur as the first half-dozen prisoners came into the station. They were gaunt and stoop-shouldered and wide-eyed, staring around like rabbits emerging from a den, looking as if they were ready to whirl and bolt back into the ship.
A couple of spacers approached, spoke to them, and pointed down a corridor. The former prisoners continued on as more came through the concourse behind them.
Some had been issued uniforms aboard ship. Others still wore their baggy prison uniforms. They were finally free, finally in a secure United Worlds Navy facility, but every one of them looked terrified.
O'Reilly appeared in Tom's peripheral vision, leaning against the railing beside him. For a time they stood there in silence, watching the endless stream of prisoners.
“How's the arm?”
O'Reilly wiggled the fingers of his right hand. “It's still with me. I'm pretty happy about that.” He scratched absently at his forearm. “A lot of the muscle is gone. They're regenerating what they can, but …” He shrugged.
“What does Personnel say?”
O’Reilly grimaced. “They’re invaliding me out.”
Tom stared at him, dismayed. The navy without O’Reilly at his side was more than he could imagine. “Are they sending you back to New Haven?”
“Well.” O’Reilly smiled. “They’ve offered me a flight home. I don’t know if I’ll take it, though.”
Tom raised an eyebrow.
“I received an interesting job offer,” O’Reilly said. “I might …” His voice trailed off as he looked over the railing. “Look. It's women.”
A handful of female prisoners shuffled through the concourse, just as wide-eyed and lost-looking as the men. A knot in Tom's stomach loosened as he watched them. “Thank God.”
“I guess they had them in a separate camp,” O'Reilly said.
They watched in silence as prisoners trickled past, a mix of familiar faces and strangers. At this rate it would take hours for the ship to empty.
“I can't tell the Strads from our people anymore,” O'Reilly said.
Tom nodded. The United Worlds prisoners were now just as emaciated as the Strads. He watched them shuffle past, angry and sad and above all relieved that it was finally over.
“We did this.” O'Reilly glanced at Tom. “We made this happen. By escaping. We brought hard evidence of the prison camp and the defenses. If we hadn't done it, we'd all still be there on Gamor.” He grimaced. “Well, you would. I'd be dead.”
Tom gave him a brief smile, knowing O'Reilly was trying to cheer him up. Trying to absolve him, because that endless stream of prisoners was shorter than it might have been. He didn't know yet who had died in retribution for their rebellion and escape. Someone had paid the price, though.
After a time O'Reilly drifted away. Tom remained, watching freed prisoners flow past, telling himself he'd done the right thing.
Until a familiar figure caught his eye.
Hoskins walked out alone, moving like an old man. He gazed around the concourse once, then stumbled over to the nearest bulkhead and leaned against it as if walking out of the ship had drained the last of his strength.
Tom spun, jogging to the closest staircase, and took the steps two at a time, hurrying down to the concourse level. He circled around a cluster of Strads, men he didn't know, and reached the wall where Hoskins leaned, staring at his own feet.
Slowly Hoskins's eyes rose until he was looking into Tom's face. Tom said, “Hi,” and smiled.
Hoskins shifted his gaze to one side, doing a convincing impression of a man who was still alone. His face went cold and hard, and he straightened up, then brushed past Tom with his head high and his back straight. Tom stood in the concourse, staring after the man who had once been his friend until Hoskins was no longer in sight. Then he left the concourse and went in search of the nearest bar.
The Flameout was a cubical space utterly devoid of character. The management had made a token effort, covering one wall in a mural of an old Achilles drop ship with one engine engulfed in flames, and installing a bar with a veneer that looked like real wood. There was soft music and subdued lighting, but it remained a soulless metal box.
Tom sat alone at the bar, brooding. He was nursing his third drink and wondering if he should get drunk when a young woman took the seat beside him. There was plenty of room along the bar, and he gave her a sour look, hoping she'd take the hint and leave him alone.
She responded with a smile that pierced the fog of alcohol around his brain and warmed him in a way his drinks never could. She was startlingly tall, almost a handspan taller than he was, with an oval face and dusky skin and vast brown eyes that looked as mysterious and limitless as hyperspace. She showed no sign of leaving, and Tom suddenly didn't mind.
“Is this seat taken?” She had the kind of voice that makes jazz singers famous, a throaty purr that would have made a recitation of the alphabet sound seductive.
“It's free.” A lingering sourness made Tom gesture around the bar and add, “So are all those other seats.”
“Well, there's no one to talk to if I sit way over there.” Her smile became coy, intimate. “You don't mind, do you?”
“You can stay,” he said grudgingly. “If you don't chatter too much.”
She laughed as if he'd said something clever. She did it so convincingly, he half believed he was as charming as she pretended he was. She's good, he thought, and tried to convince himself she really was attracted to short, surly junior navy officers.
“I'll be quiet as a mouse,” she promised. “I was hoping you'd do most of the talking, anyway.” She shifted on her stool, leaning an elbow on the bar. It didn't seem as if she did much, but her pose was suddenly devastatingly sexy. She wore a rather small dress, and he couldn't help noticing just how long those legs of hers were.
He said, “What would you like to talk about? I know a lot about fuel consumption on United Worlds frigates.” He paused, wondering how much of it was classified.
“You're funny,” she said. “Actually, I was more curious about the prison on Gamor.”
It was as if the temperature in the Flameout dropped ten degrees in the blink of an eye. The warm glow from the alcohol and her eyes vanished instantly, leaving him sober and chilly. Her eyes hadn't changed, but now he saw calculation in them. He said, “Who are you?”
The smile dropped away, and she moved her legs ever so slightly, becoming somehow businesslike instead of seductive. “Celeste Bennett. I'm a reporter with Interstellar.”
Tom stood.
“Wait.” She caught his hand. “Take my contact info. In case you change your mind.”
He didn't expect to change his mind, but he couldn't bring himself to jerk his hand away. She touched a narrow gold bracelet on her wrist, then let go of his hand long enough to touch the bracelet to his bracer. A faint chime told him her business card had been transferred.
“I'm sorry to bother you,” she said. She flashed him one last smile, then turned and walked out of the Flameout. He couldn't help watching her leave. He even caught himself trying to think of a reason to call her back. He scowled, disgusted with himself, and sat back down. He looked at his drink, decided he was tired of feeling sorry for himself, left it where it was, and walked out.
“Lieutenant Thrush. Have a seat, please. The commodore will see you shortly.”
Tom nodded to the young lieutenant behind the reception desk and took a seat in the waiting room. He was deep in the administrative heart of Garnet Base, answering a curt summons from a commodore named Bentley. He had no idea what it was about, but he assumed he was in trouble.
That impression was strengthened when movement caught his eye and he turned to see Captain Washington stalking down the corridor to his left. By the look of it, Washington wore a uniform that had been tailored for him before his imprisonment. The fabric hung slack on his stomach. Washington glanced over, spotted Tom, and fired a murderous glare in his direction before vanishing around a corner.
“Terrific,” Tom muttered, and settled himself in for a long wait.
He sat for most of half an hour. He didn't mind. He'd been given no new duties, no assignments since his release from the debriefing wing. Time weighed heavily on him, and this plush waiting room was as good a place as any to loaf.
“Lieutenant? The commodore will see you now. You can follow your bracer.”
Tom nodded and stood. His bracer showed a map, an extreme close-up of the corridors around him with a green arrow showing the path he was meant to take. He dutifully followed the arrow until he reached a door with “Commodore Phillip Bentley” marked on the screen beside it.
“Come in, Thrush.” Bentley was a solid, fleshy man with heavy jowls and a fringe of silver hair above his ears. He didn't suggest that Tom take one of the many chairs in the cluttered office, so Tom stood before his desk.
Bentley spent the next two minutes ignoring him, fussing with papers and data pads and the screen set into his desk. It reinforced what Tom had begun to suspect as he waited outside – that the commodore was deliberately making him wait as a way to underscore his subservient position.
He would hope that Tom would be annoyed. So Tom stood there, stared at a picture of a battleship on the commodore's back wall, focused on his breathing, and kept calm.
“You're a troublemaker, Thrush.”
Tom shifted his gaze to the commodore, who glared up at him with small, dark eyes set deep in the fleshy folds of his face. There seemed to be nothing to say, so he kept silent.
“You made some highly irregular choices when you took command of the Kestrel. You should have brought her straight back here.” When Tom didn't respond he said, “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”
You weren't there. That was hardly a prudent thing to say to a commodore, so instead he said, “Sir, someone had to warn Sunshine Base that war had broken out.”
Bentley sneered. “And it had to be you?”
“There was no one else, Sir.”
The commodore harrumphed. “That was a lapse in judgment, and it wasn't your last error. But let us move on to the matter at hand.” He pecked at his desktop, then glowered at Tom. “You disobeyed a direct order from Captain Washington. You led a pointless rebellion against the guards at your remote work site. You killed five people. And, as a direct result of your actions, thirty prisoners were executed in retaliation back at Base One.”
Tom winced. It was his first confirmation that reprisals had happened. Well, his first confirmation aside from Hoskins's reaction in the concourse. Thirty was actually something of a relief. According to Amar's grisly formula it should have been worse. But still – thirty men!
By the look on his face Bentley wanted some sort of reply, so Tom said, “Sir, there were no options where nobody would die. I did what I had to do to save the men under my command. I couldn't just do nothing and watch them fade away.”
“Yes, you bloody well could!” Bentley's hand slapped the desktop, making papers and data pads jump. “You had clear, direct orders, and you disobeyed them!”
Tom shifted his gaze to the picture of the battleship, a toxic mix of emotions churning in his guts. Bentley was right. But he was also wrong.
When Bentley spoke again his voice was cold, controlled. “You are confined to Garnet Base until such a time as a court martial can be convened. A panel of officers will consider your case and decide your fate. Is that clear?”
Tom made himself meet the commodore's gaze. “Yes, Sir.”
“You are dismissed, Thrush.”
He wandered the base in a daze. Standing still was unthinkable. He walked, pouring the simmering energy of his emotions into exercise, his thoughts chasing themselves around and around with every step.
Every accusation that could be leveled against him presented itself to him, and every counter-argument he could offer in his own defense. An insistent voice from deep inside declared that he deserved a trial. He deserved to be convicted, and locked up.
But again and again he saw O'Reilly's face, drawn with pain, dying for lack of the antibiotics that lay just on the other side of the fence. Cooper, so young and full of life. Cooper a few days later, bedridden, waiting to die. Santiago, who he might have saved if he hadn't hesitated, shackled by Washington's impossible orders.
Thirty men, his conscience insisted. Thirty men shot down because of your rebellion.
Thirty men trapped in Camp One, he replied. Thirty men whose lives were forfeit. Dying slowly of starvation in a camp full of Red Fever, and working to strengthen Garnet's defenses until rescue would have become impossible.
And finally he set his guilt aside.
A fresh wave of emotion swept in. Indignation. A sense of betrayal. I'm finally out of prison and they're going to lock me up again. I'm just as helpless as I was on Gamor.
Gradually he became aware that he was no longer walking. He was standing in front of a café, watching through the front window as a news feed played on a giant screen inside. The feed showed emaciated prisoners shuffling through the concourse into Garnet.
Tom went inside, chose a booth, and waved his hand over the tabletop. He ordered a cup of coffee and found a list of newsfeeds. And listened to what the media had to say about the rescue.
His own role, he learned, was absent from the official storyline. Navy officials said only that they had “received intelligence” about a prison camp on Gamor. A Navy spokeswoman talked in glowing terms about the rescue operation, describing how a small fleet had reached the system undetected, how marines had swept in, destroyed the limited defenses in place, and hustled thirty-two hundred and seventeen prisoners onto shuttles.
The Navy was clearly milking the whole thing for propaganda value. It was a glorious success, brave men and women were rescued from a terrible imprisonment, they'd endured starvation and disease and random murder but now they were safe, and so on.
Tom watched it all, and a sense of outrage began to grow inside him. His career was about to be destroyed, he might even go to prison, just to appease the bombastic Captain Washington. Where Tom was concerned, the rescue of three thousand prisoners didn't matter. Only the thirty dead men counted.
But the story given to the media was the exact opposite. There was no mention of thirty men killed in retribution for an escape. That didn't mesh with the official story of triumph in the face of oppression. As far as the Bureau of Media Affairs was concerned, only the rescue mattered.
He watched and brooded and considered his options. He told himself he might be exonerated, cleared by the court martial and allowed to return to his duties. Deep inside, though, he knew it wouldn't happen. The absolute necessity of his decisions wouldn't save him. The Navy would convict him and bury him. It was over for Tom.
Unless he employed one more unconventional tactic.
He killed the feed, leaned back in his chair, and stared up at the ceiling of the café, thinking about what he was about to do. He was going to cross a pretty serious line in a moment. There would be consequences.
He thought about the trial looming in his future and sighed. He really was fresh out of things to lose. He tapped his bracer, scrolled through his contacts, and tapped an icon. Celeste Bennett's face appeared. He pecked in a quick message.
You're going to buy me a cup of coffee. In return, I'm going to tell you an interesting story about how all those captured spacers came to be rescued from Gamor.
Chapter 24
It didn't take long for the shit to hit the fan.
Tom was in a data café, looking at his own picture in a newsfeed, when his bracer chimed. He was summoned to the same waiting room as before, but the commodore didn't condescend to speak to him in person. Instead an overlieutenant called him into a meeting room and told him brusquely to sit down.
“Well. You're quite the media darling, Thrush.”
Tom shrugged.
The other man grimaced. “They need their heroes, and they've picked you. Congratulations. You won't be court-martialed.”
Tom couldn't help smiling.
“Your little media stunt might keep you out of Halston, but it's the last stunt you're going to pull with us. You're done.”
“Pardon?”
“You're cashiered,” the man said. “Discharged from the Navy. Your services are no longer required. Congratulations, you're a civilian.” He made a beckoning gesture. “Give me your bracer.”
Tom had known there would be consequences, but still, this was a shock. He clicked open his bracer, drew it off his wrist, and handed it over.
“We'll send you all the paperwork.” The man glanced down at the bracer. “You'll have to find a way to access it.” He smirked. “You have twelve hours to find yourself civilian clothing and return your uniforms. In the meantime, you will be escorted from the secure parts of the station. You are from this moment no longer a member of the United Worlds Armed Services. Do you understand this declaration?”
Tom thought it over. “Fuck off,” he said at last, and stood.
A marine joined him as he left the waiting room. The man reached for his upper arm; Tom twisted away. “Keep your hands off. I'm leaving.”
The marine shrugged and the two of them walked together through a maze of corridors to a lift. They descended, Tom's stomach sinking even faster than the lift. They walked to a secure entrance with turnstiles. “Thanks so much for the escort,” Tom said, and pushed his way through a turnstile and into the public part of the station.
And then he stood there, with no idea where to go and what to do next.
A data café gave him access to his personal bank account. He hadn't done much with his Navy salary. He hadn't had the opportunity. It was a tidy sum of money, though it wouldn't last long if he had to pay for his own food and accommodations. He would have to head back to Earth, he supposed. And how am I supposed to do that? Are there even ships that take passengers? Do I have enough to get there?
If I don't, what am I going to do?
He ordered a data device, a palm-sized gadget that would do pretty much everything his bracer had done. Then he leaned back and idly browsed the feeds while he waited for the device to be delivered. I never finished my architecture degree. Do I still want to be an architect?
What the hell am I going to do?
“Can I join you?”
Tom looked up to find Celeste Bennett standing at his table. He fought down a moment of fury. She'd made this happen – but he had sought her out. It was his choice, not hers. “Sure. Knock yourself out.”
She sat, smiling as if his invitation had been gracious. “The grapevine says you won't be court-martialed.”
He nodded, then grudgingly said, “Thanks to you.”
“I'm glad. You don't deserve to be locked up.”
“I'm happy somebody thinks so.”
“I take it the Navy's not too pleased with you?”
“The Navy is done with me,” he said sourly.
“Oh, I'm sorry.” She looked like she meant it, too.
He shrugged.
“They're done with me, too.” He raised a puzzled eyebrow, and she explained. “I'm officially frozen out of all official announcements and press conferences. I'm no longer allowed in the military-controlled parts of the station, and all senior officers have been instructed not to speak to me.” She gave him a wintry smile. “My interview with you was a pretty good scoop, but this is not a good day for my career.”
He stared at her, surprised to find himself feeling real sympathy. “I'm sorry to hear that.”
She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “I wouldn't change a thing.” She grinned, a glint of mischief in her eyes. “In my line of work, if you're not pissing people off, you're not doing your job. You're not a real journalist until you've been slapped down.”
He grinned back, liking her in spite of a cynical suspicion. “So what are you going to do next?”
“Oh, I'll keep reporting on the war.” She smiled, all confidence and bravado. “I've got other sources besides the UW Navy.” Her voice changed subtly as she added, “For instance, I've met the President in exile of Neorome.”
“Really? I didn't know there was one.”
“There is now,” she said. “Her name is Brenda Schreiber, and she's been duly elected by as many exiles and refugees as she's been able to gather together. They accept her, too. She's got real legitimacy as the voice of Free Neorome.”
That was interesting, but Tom knew by now that Celeste Bennett never made idle small talk. She had an agenda. Instead of asking he looked at her, waiting for her to get to the point.
“I think Ms. Schreiber might like to meet you.”
“Me? Why?”
Bennett said, “Free Neorome has a navy.”
He didn't answer, just raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, it's not much. Not compared to the United Worlds Navy, anyway. But they have a bunch of armed freighters, the same ships that had you guys running yourselves ragged for the last several years. And they have a cruiser and three corvettes.”
Tom said, “Where did they get those?”
“One ship's a donation from the UW. It's an obsolete model. It took some minor damage in a skirmish last month, and your navy decided they'd rather replace than repair. I don't know about the other two corvettes. The cruiser's a captured Dawn Alliance ship.”
“No kidding.”
“No kidding,” Bennett said. “They've got ships. They've got willing recruits, some with experience on armed freighters, some with nothing more than patriotic zeal. What they don't have is experienced officers.”
Tom stared at her, his thoughts whirling.
“You don't belong in the UW Navy,” Bennett said. “You never did. Face it, you have the wrong mindset.” She grinned, and the piratical glint was back in her eyes. “But you have exactly the mindset the Neorome Navy needs.”
She stared at him expectantly, and he stared back with no idea how to respond. Finally she said, “Will you meet with President Schreiber?”
“Let me weigh that against all the other opportunities I have available to me,” Tom said. “Yes.”
Bennett smiled. “Excellent.”
“Is she here? The president?”
“No. But there's a ship's captain who has recently enlisted in the Neorome Navy. She'll take you to a rendezvous with the president.”
Tom said, “She?”
Bennett's smile deepened. “You've sailed with her before, of course. It's Alice Rose.”
“Ah.” Tom rubbed his jaw, thinking. He was making a life-altering decision. He was making it based on very little data, too. He should have been filled with misgivings, but when he examined his feelings, he found he was strangely at peace. “Where will I find her?”
“The Evening Breeze is docked at Gamma Nine.” Bennett stood. “I'll be seeing you, Mr. Thrush. I expect it'll be Captain Thrush when next we meet. I hope you'll have plenty of stories to share with me.”
“I might at that. Thank you, Celeste.”
She winked and walked out. Tom watched her go, and then he stood. Garnet Station held nothing more for him. It was time to find dock Gamma Nine. It was time to get back to the war.
Author Notes
The adventures of Tom Thrush continue in Rogue Navy, available now.
Jake Elwood is a Canadian writer of science fiction, especially adventurous space opera with a dash of humor. When he's not at a keyboard he likes hiking and biking and sometimes kayaking on the Bow River. He is also the author of the Hive Invasion trilogy, beginning with Starship Alexander.
For more titles and releases by Jake Elwood check out his website. Sign up for his mailing list and get a free book: http://jakeelwoodwriter.com/