Authors: S.T. Burkholder
Day 9: Early Morning
He opened his eyes and blinked in vain at the blurriness of the world. The bright overhead lights stabbed at him and he turned away from them toward the wall, where it swam in a dark haze. A shiver passed through him and he curled deeper into the MedSlab's invisible and heated embrace, feeling the sweat that soaked through his clothes. Warmth upon warmth swelled to his eyes and filled his head with such a weight that he could not pick it up from the steel he lay upon. His joints ached, his thoughts reeled and were bent nowhere but to all of what he had seen in the light of the moon and beyond. A spectre of the will that was housed there, deep in orbit, and seemed to him then to know that he had awoken.
"Hey," A voice said and thundered in his ears, for all its quiet comfort, and a hand sopped the sweat from his brow with a damp cloth. "How are you feeling?"
"Katherine," He said and looked to her, where she leaned over him, and his world sobered. "Where am I?"
"Medical," She said and relaxed to where she sat beside him. "At Headquarters."
"Gods," He said and sat up onto the edge of the MedSlab. "What time is it?"
"It's the middle of the night." She said and put her hand on his shoulder as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
"How did I get here?"
"Your friend brought you. Said his name was Leargam. It was only an hour or two ago; you really don't remember?"
"Remember what?"
"You couldn't walk on your own but you were conscious." She said and stood from the MedSlab, went to lean in the doorway of the chamber and crossed her arms. "He said he found you out in town. Buried in the snow, unresponsive. It must have been hours, the way things
line up. You should be dead."
"I feel it."
"Tezac," She said and clasped her hands before her and stood free from the threshold.
"What?" He said and looked at her over his shoulder.
"The MedSlab's readings." She said and fidgeted where she stood. "There was enough synthetic adrenal enchancers in your blood to make a Khagani's heart burst. And the nervous tranquilizers beyond that."
"So I have a problem; who doesn't in this place." He said and stood to his feet. "That's why we're all out here, isnt it?"
"That's not so much what I'm concerned about." She said and stepped nearer to him. "You metabolized all of this, with the first stages of hypothermia, in the time it took to have a nap."
"What's your point."
"Is it true what they do to you at the Citadel?" She asked. "What they've done to you. To your – 'kind'."
"All we ever know," He said. "Is what we're told. And that's nothing."
"Wait," She said as he brushed past her toward the corridor and bit the inside of her lip. "What about the Mute?"
"
You’re a doctor. You've heard of cyber-psychosis." He said and turned back round to face her.
"Your hand." She said and took up the metal fingers glinting dull in the evening lamplight, huge in hers.
"I've got nothing from the wrist that's mine."
"I thought most cases of neural rejection were more extensive." She said. "Full cybernetics, total limb replacement."
"They are. I don't have it. But I can feel it just enough, below the bone. The gnawing that something is still there when I know it isn't. And it's constant. Like something that'd reconnect if only I'd just let it." He said and looked into her eyes, she back at his, and then down at his feet. "You should know I'm not a strong man."
And
then he went. Out into the darkened lane that ran long between the banks of MedSlabs along either side. His shoulders stooped to the level of men who have been beaten to how they stand, over the length of the years and little by little. Fearful of bringing them back up again for what notice it might bring to those forces that had put them there to begin with. Little did he know, and for which Katherine shook her head, that such things had passed and would not revisit him save in new forms that he brought on by choice alone and once he knew how to face them. When they would find themselves as waves that in crashes and tides brought away none of the rock that held them at bay. As useless and ineffectual as assaulting the heavens with mortal instruments.
Day 9
"First week planetside," Leargam said from across the tram and shook his head, watched what he spoke of from the window. "And you get transferred. Me with you."
"I don't stay where I'm put." Tezac said and went away from his own window beside Leargam to sit down farthest from him.
"Ain't that admirable." The old man said. "You know where we're headed, don't you?"
"You had the same instructions I did."
"Hells," He said. "Maybe if Idve left you out in that storm they would have looked more kindly on me."
Tezac looked away out the tram car and watched Cocytus roll past beyond and wondered in some small way what life could live out there.
"Come on," Leargam said and stood from the bench on the far side and went over to him, sat down beside him. "I didn't mean it."
"I know what you meant." He said and waited for the old man to go on, but he didn't. "I need help, Leargam. I've got too much in common with that sound out there."
Day 16
Hastur Victor Sejanus woke to find himself free of the medical pod's magnetic containment. The occasional mote of white drifted by outside, calm and unhurried. There was a cry here and there, of pain or for medication withheld, and then the soothing voices that answered them. But apart from these, Arbitronix United Installation #
2397B might have been long abandoned en masse.
He pulled on the edges of the tube with the toes of his boots and slipped out into the null-grav field beyond, hovering hundreds of meters from the floor. He looked about himself, at the shadowed forms that bouyed still in stasis and technicians that floated to and fro attending them. His eyes fell on the woman who mock-leaned against the wall beside him and then kicked off from it to float foetal before him, he before her.
"Quiet today." He said.
"It's bound to get much louder." Katherine said. "Our time together is at an end."
"The jig is up then." He said and glanced at his bracer. "You're early."
"Are you ready for this?"
"It ain't like I've got much choice." He said and looked about the vast chamber a moment then settled on her again. "Have you heard from him?"
"I thought you said you didn't need taking care of."
"Have you heard from him."
"Not since the last time."
"Last time was a week ago."
"Listen," She said and took something from her vest pocket. "Open your mouth."
"Open my mouth?"
She gave him a look and then repulsed nearer to him and he did as she bade.
"This is a self-adhereing pocket." Katherine said as she placed the sac of synthetic tissue along the inside of his cheek, where it melded with the flesh there. "Inside is a batch of stimulants and selective tranquilizers; I believe you and the other inmates call it RAGE."
"What do you want me to do with it?"
"Prisoner
71," One of a pair of figures called from the opened blast doors far below them, floating upward to where they hovered. "Assume stance and await restraint."
"I want you to use it." She whispered in his ear and he smelled her hair. "Whenever you're in trouble. Just bite down on it. I can't give you another, so don't give in to your emotions. And make sure it's you or them, life or death. But
whatever you do: watch where you get hit."
"What do you care if I live or die?" Sejanus said, but looked to the guards
men who neared.
He placed his wrists together behind his right leg and saw one of them interact with his bracer and the maglocks sealed his hands together in that way. They glided to a stop before Katherine and he saw the glint of light that played off the implants that marred the face of the one. He caught Sejanus's stare and lashed out with the butt of his rifle and it was all he could do in the moment to offer his skull in place of his jaw.
"Penders!" Katherine hissed.
"Oh what do you care." The guard said, his speech slurred by the half of his face that was no longer of himself. "There's a thousand of him to peck on the cheek, if blunt objects is your thing. He can take it. Can't you, inmate?"
"Yes, sir." Sejanus said.
"So," Penders went on and turned away from him. "Give any more thought to it, Kate?"
"No, Penders." She said. "And it'll be no the next time."
"Well," He said and grabbed Sejanus by the back of the collar of his jumpsuit. "You'll come around. Won't you?"
She revolved away from them then and drifted away and through the heights of the infirmary. Penders watched her go until she became as distant as she had been and at last went away himself, down to the doors below and with Sejanus in tow. He saw out of the corner of his eye the man he was with studying him and he looked away as Penders looked back at him.
"Something on your mind?"
"What if she files a complaint?" The man said.
"What if she does?"
The man shook his head and they passed through the opened gateway of Holding Tower 7's medical quarters, into the decontamination stent between the inner and outer seals. They unfitted the repulsor modules from their boots and sat Sejanus down in their place upon the bench to do the same for him. The sanitizing agent flooded out from the vents once the equipment was locked into place and they had keyed for its release upon the hardlight projections of their bracers.
"Master Control," Penders said. "Hold decon."
"Holding decontamination, Enforcer Penders." The computer intelligence said.
"What are you doing?" The other guard said.
"Just having a little fun.." He said and traced the slope of Sejanus's jaw with the muzzle of his rifle.
He raised his rifle as if to strike him with it and Sejanus blurted, "Not in the face."
"Not in the face?" Penders said with a smile and slowly dropped the rifle back to his side, looked back at his partner. "I hate to be the one that says it, but I don't think you're cut out for life in the Politik."
"You wouldn't want to return a prisoner from medical with new wounds." He said to the floor. "Would you?"
"Well look at the brain on dickless here." Penders said and glanced over his shoulder to the other man again before returning to the inmate. "You just saved me a mess of reports to file. It won't help you, though. But that's typical of the vets of this war. No spine."
"I'll have to report this." The guard said from behind him.
"You're not going to do shit," Penders said and drew his sidearm on the man. "Except stand there and watch."
"I can't be a part of this." He said as he put his hands up.
"You don't have to be."
"Penders."
"Mitchum."
The man shook his head and so he turned back to Sejanus and smiled, grisly with the flesh of his lips that was not there to contort and showed only as metal, toothed scaffolding.
"Don't worry," Sejanus said to Mitchum, but held Penders’s eyes. "I'll be alright."
"We'll see about that." The Enforcer before him said and he bowed his head.
He raised the butt of his rifle again and Sejanus tensed at the coming blow, but it never did. Penders's bracer had chimed and now did so again as it blinked into the soft gloom of the decontamination chamber. He let fall his weapon and keyed his acceptance of the transmission on the prompt.
"Penders," A voice shouted from a sidewise projection that Sejanus could thus not make out. "Have you retrieved Prisoner
71?"
"Yes," He said. "Yes, Sir. We have."
"Good." The voice said and paused. "Good. Bring him to me."
"Of course, Sir." Penders said and the hologram dispersed in a drone that sighed throughout the short corridor.
"The Sisters must like you." He said to him and hauled Sejanus to his feet, hunched over still. "But fate or no: it's a small world."
They made for the doors of the outer gateway and Penders called for the sterilization process to continue. Beneath the billowing of the vents Sejanus could hear the ot
her man who was with them sigh with relief. He nodded to himself as the door opened.
Day 16
He was thrust through the doorway before it had hardly cleared and stumbled into the room beyond, looking back over his shoulder at the man he had made promises against in his mind. Penders only grinned at him and so he stood to attention for the man who stood at the wall of glass beyond the holodesk before him, shadowed by the light outside.
"Leave us." The man said.
He heard the door hiss closed behind him and saw the light that had m
ade a pillar about him collapse into nothingness.
"Do you know who I am, Prisoner
71?" The man said to the all-encompassing window, hands clasped at the small of his back.
"Enforcer-Captain Elias Mullins." Sejanus said. "Commanded
the Ersatz Legion 2nd Batallation in the Second Reclamation, two Chains of Unity for it. You're in command here."
"I'm a god then; wouldn't you say?" Elias said and turned aout, leaned on the holodesk between them. "I'm your god."
"That's one way to look at it."
"Yes," He said and squinted at him, nodded to himself and circled round to face him. "I understand you've had some issues with the other inmates here."
"You could say that."
"I could say that. I could look at it that way too."
He said and went back behind the holodesk, activated it. "I believe we have a mutual acquaintence."
"You mean Tezac."
"He's very fond of you."
"He doesn't even know me."
"Well," Elias said and smiled as he looked up from the display at him for only a moment, his face something hollow and spectral in the dim blue glow. "Holding Tower 8: acknolwedge."
"Holding Tower 8." A man said. "Ready and waiting."
"This is your Enforcer-Captain. Are there any vacancies at your post?"
"Uh," The man said and they could hear the movement of his fingers across the hardlight console of his station. "How many? Sir."
"Just one, initiate."
"Well. We've got," He said and Sejanus could hear the man' shrug in his voice. "Cell
758; Partition 4. Previous occupant met his end in that skirmish they had over at Munitions."
"Prepare to fill it, Tower 8. Ready a detachment for prisoner transport. Core-standard dawn, in the magrail port."
"Understood, Captain. Tower 8 out."
"What's my end of this?" Sejanus said once t
he transmission was ended.
"I am not entirely without mercy, Prisoner
71." Elias said and circled round again and gestured to one of the chairs there, but Sejanus made no move toward it. "We have a moment, you realize."
He sat imself and went on, pulling a chem-stick from the dispensary on his desk.
"Where are you from?"
"Kurwieler." He said at last and sat down across from him, hands linked magnetically still but now on his lap before him. "Aubraxis system."
"That's a Slave Sector, isn't it?"
"It was." He said and nodded slow, looked out the window then back again. "Gone now. Went separatist during the war, got blasted out of space by mass drivers."
"You didn't have any qualms," Elias said and offered him a chem-stick that he refused, so the Captain activated his own. "About killing your own people?"
"I was on Reydghulk when it happened." He said. "Command said Aubraxis was too
costly for orbital invasions."
"Did you spend much time there? As a boy."
"I don't remember it, or my parents. I was young when they took us; we all were. The Citadel is all I've known."
"You know I wonder sometimes," Elias said and replaced his chem-stick to the dispensary. "At night mostly. That if the uniform I'm wearing is a product of the age I was born to. Things were different then; they didn't take you at birth."
"I don't know if it would have changed anything. I don't know much of anything about that anymore." Sejanus said and shook his head at the wall and said no more.
The Captain jerked his chin at the banner that stood draped to the floor in the corner and said, "What does that flag mean to you?"
"I couldn't tell you. If you asked before the fighting started, maybe I could. I was bred for it; same as everyone in my gen-class, by that point." He said and looked to his boots, back up at Elias. "But it didn't help. Ask anyone, and they'll tell you."
Elias shook his head and said, "Why?"
"You want my opinion?"
"You're free to give it."
"It's a lot easier chem-deathing planets that aren't human."
His eyes settled on those of the inmate across from him and he leaned forward onto his knees and said, "We ought to pity you, is that it?"
Sejanus pursed his lips and made a short snap of his head.
"You people are a joke." He said. "You figure it all out for us the day we're born. You enlist me for assault training. You toy with my gene matrix and pump me full of drugs I can't remember half the names of. I'm shipped out to systems I didn't know existed until I got out there to kill
men who look no different from me. Might have been me, circumstances allowed. Then I show up here when you've run out of uses for us and I'm the one who earned it. You ask me: we should just let the Maerazians roll across the Gulf and watch everything burn."
Elias Mullins smiled once more and nodded to himself. He stood from the chair and went round to the holodesk, navigated its hardlight display.
"Penders, Mitchum." He said. "Escort Prisoner 71 to the magrail port; ensure he arrives at Tower 8 by Core-standard dawn."
The door to the Enforcer-Captain's office opened and the shadows of the guardsmen filled it, filled the light that ran a tract across the floor.
"Goodbye, 71." He said. "I hope you enjoyed your time here as much as I did."