by J. N. Chaney
The ground shook as the horde charged around the corner. Thousands of men and women in rags leaped over trenches, walkways, and small structures like the power conduit. It hummed with energy. Thin, poorly fitted metal covered the wiring within. Rust colored the edges.
Dreadmax had a lot of rust—not something normally seen on a space-capable vessel.
“X-37, when did I have my last tetanus shot?”
“Three standard months ago. The warden ordered it. You told him to screw off, but his medical staff gave it to you anyway.”
“Right. How could I forget?”
One of the crazies jumped onto the power box, slamming down both feet with unnecessary force.
“Run the pack. Run the pack. It’s dinner time!” The man jumped away, racing to join another group of unwashed, insane humanity.
“This too shall pass,” X-37 whispered as five more, then ten, then a hundred screaming lunatics ran over my position.
“Hilarious. You missed your calling. You’ve got jokes,” I murmured.
“Overwatch to Cain, are you still there?”
“Yep. No thanks to you.”
“We’re moving out of radio contact. Will be back around in nine minutes. The swarm is coming back the way they came…”
Static ended his broadcast.
Looking at the first of the crazies to come back this direction, I suddenly felt very exposed. My hiding place had been perfect when they were traveling in one direction, but now I was basically squatting against a wall where they would see me easily.
I scooted back, stood up, and ran for the first service trench leading away from the maintenance hangar. The people inside had fires going and surprisingly decent music. It looked cozy.
“Grady won’t like this route. It’s an even greater deviation from the original plan,” X-37 pointed out.
“The original plan was shit.”
“FOR THE RECORD, I’ve seen enough of the crazies. Let’s find the doctor and get the hell off this hunk of junk,” I muttered after two hours of escape and evasion brought me back into visual range of the maintenance hangar building.
“What about the children in the surveillance tower?” questioned X-37.
“Well, X, they haven’t exactly been helpful. But I’ll see what I can do.”
This time, I was on the correct side to begin searching for my target.
Not that it mattered.
The RSG were out in force harassing another class of inmates, those not affiliated with a gang and not yet turned into screaming cannibal freaks.
“You'll need to secure a complete evacuation of the facility to be sure there are no innocents left behind when the gravity generator fails," X-37 said.
"You think that's what’s going to crash?"
"It will go down shortly after the power fails, and before you ask, atmosphere will be lost almost instantaneously. If you're still here, I recommend being inside the superstructure. Two or three levels down to be safe. People there will be able to survive indefinitely.”
"Might be better to get shot into the void. We haven't seen any evidence of the doctor and I don't have a way to develop an informant. I have to go into the RSG building," I said as I stashed my HKD and survival gear underneath an abandoned vehicle.
My pistol and my knife stayed on my hip for now. Later, I’d have to hide them where they were easy to reach.
"Of course," said X-37.
"What would I do without you, X?" I asked, not expecting a response.
Light finally spilled onto the surface of Dreadmax, reflected from the nearby planet. It looked habitable, but I knew it wasn't. Made for a nice view to contrast with the deteriorating surface of the space station though.
"Why aren't these people living within the ring?" I wondered.
"It's full of crazies,” answered X-37. “It was overrun soon after security forces pulled out and started dropping inmates with single-use life pods."
"And you're just now telling me this? How many crazies can there be down there?"
"Level V is the hydroponics facility. Even at full population, there's more than enough food to sustain ten thousand human adults indefinitely. Unless they ruined it. In the future, I'd advise you to ask better questions."
It wasn't the first time X-37 had given me this advice.
Two-story row houses that looked like ammunition boxes lined several of the protected trenches leading toward the maintenance hangar. Metal walkways crisscrossed the space above the alley-like streets, some falling down or otherwise promising to be structurally unsound. Men and women, and more than a few children, stepped out on their ground-level porches and waited for RSG tax collectors.
Grabbing a poncho from a man who looked too scared to resist, I blended with a group of people being taken inside the RSG stronghold.
"Haven't seen you before, friend," a man said.
"Just passing through."
He laughed and looked around at the thugs who had encouraged the work party. "At least they're not sending us on a scavenging party. I hate going down to the greenhouse. My brother-in-law likes it, but he's better at pilfering shit than I am. Always comes back with some extra food. First time I tried that, I’d get my hands cut off."
I studied him without being obvious. He'd clearly been on a starvation diet for a long time and may or may not have enjoyed the benefits of running water and plumbing. "What are you in for?"
He looks at me strangely. "Beg your pardon?"
"Dreadmax is a maximum-security prison," I said, intending to elaborate but losing the words. I was wondering if he was young enough to have been born here, but I was pretty sure he was in his thirties. Hard living had made him look older than he was.
"I colonized the wrong planet. Next thing you know, I'm doing maintenance for gangsters and hiding my daughters under the cistern. What about you? Are you a hardened killer?"
I didn’t bother with an answer. As soon as I could, I moved away from these people and slipped into a series of hallways inside the main building. The rest of them were being put to work in the hangar repairing machines on some kind of assembly line. Some of the parts belonged to wheeled vehicles and others seemed to have been salvaged from the shipyard some distance around the ring.
There was a grim sort of economy with the place. Offices and smaller workshops overlooked the ground floor from the second and third levels. I spotted heavily muscled freaks with tattoos and piercings leaning over to watch their workforce. They seemed to be hungover and pissed off at life.
Every door to the place had at least two guards that appeared sober and well-armed. They had military weapons, but also some very nasty black-market variations that violated most galactic treaties.
The tortured screams from the night before made a lot more sense now.
I slipped into a hallway that ran the perimeter of the massive building, then ducked into a stairwell when I spotted two hard-asses approaching at a fast walk. They were talking to each other, swearing and laughing. They might have been convicts, but I wouldn't have doubted if they'd had some military training. Or maybe they were cops, former guards who went bad or got left here.
"Overwatch for Cain, how copy?"
"I copy fine, but now isn’t a good time. I'm looking for the doctor."
"It's about time. What can we do to help?"
"How’s that evacuation plan coming? The longer I'm down here, the more innocent civilians I'm encountering. They have a class system to get things done, like food collection and basic maintenance."
"Don't worry about the evacuation. I've sent a request up the chain and used all the hot-topic words politicians need to hear to authorize anything," Grady said. "I'd be skeptical if I hadn't seen some of these people in the daylight. No kids yet, but I'm willing to believe you."
"You're an asshole. Why don’t you come down here and see for yourself?"
"You're always talking about how this would be going if you had planned the mission. Well, my proposal had been to go in wit
h spec ops and clear this whole area until we found the principal and pulled him out. So don't lecture me."
I ducked into a supply closet as an old man carried buckets of water toward what smelled like some type of alcohol distillery at the end of this passage. He never looked up from his feet.
I opened the door a crack. "Like I said, Grady, this isn't a great place for me to talk. I'm deep in hostile territory without weapons or a quick reaction force to pull me out of the fire when it gets hot."
"What happened to your weapons?” he asked.
"Don't worry about my guns. They have better stuff to kill people with. Ever been shot with an acid thrower?"
"No, Hal. That's illegal. What's next, weapons of mass destruction? Nerve gas? Execution camps?" Grady asked.
"That's nice coming from someone who knows how many people are going to die when the power plant takes a shit."
There was a long pause before I heard Commander Briggs break in on a remote line. "That's enough of that talk, Cain. Do your job. Let me worry about collateral damage."
"I met a guy who said he colonized the wrong planet and got relocated to Dreadmax. I thought this place was for murderers and traitors, not rogue colonists.”
No one answered.
"That went well," X-37 said.
"Whatever." I picked up the pace, heading toward the sound of loud music and drunken laughter.
"What exactly are you doing?" X-37 asked.
"If the doctor is valuable to the Union, he might be valuable to whoever's running this place. Slab or whatever his name is. Remind me to tell them he's got a stupid name if we run into him."
"I can't see how taunting the man will help you complete the mission," replied X-37.
I arrived at a balcony on the third level overlooking another large hangar. There was a walkway circumventing this level with several private suites that were probably not for inmates in the beginning. It was the cleanest, most heavily guarded section of the building so far.
High above, there were dim LED lights, but many were out. The result was a harsh gloom that reminded me what type of facility this was.
Gathering up cleaning supplies, I turned myself into a janitor and pressed on. What was the worst that could happen?
A pair of guards stopped me, one with his left palm held forward and right hand holding the rifle he had on a sling. His partner didn’t say anything, only watched me.
They were solid, true professionals.
"Jonesy already cleaned this level. Who the hell are you?" asked one.
“I’m the lucky bastard that gets to clean up the doctor. Can you guys stop making him shit himself?" I replied.
“Yeah, that,” the lead guard said.
“Lucky guess,” X-37 whispered in my ear.
I’d assumed the screams were from the VIP’s torture session. I knew from experience what happened when your body couldn’t take any more abuse.
6
AFTER THE GUARDS let me in, I spotted the good doctor immediately. The sole occupant of what had been an officer’s suite was tied to a chair and only half conscious. He was balding, slightly overweight, and covered in dried blood.
I took a bucket of water, a shop towel, and cleaned him up like a bedridden invalid who’d been sitting in his own filth for too long. Nothing could take away the stink, but he slipped out of his daze and watched me with increasing interest.
"You're not one of them," he said, speech slurred like a drunk.
"It doesn't matter who I am. Are you Doctor Hastings?"
Tears leaked from his eyes as he nodded vigorously.
"I'll be right back."
The hard part of the ruse was maintaining the lazy, disinterested shuffle of a defeated man. My acting skills were a bit rusty. And I was angry.
The stoic guard ignored me, preferring to watch the hallway like he would shoot the next person he saw. The other one looked me up and down, made a disgusted face, and waved me toward the exit.
I drew my silenced pistol and shot them both dead—catching the bodies as they fell.
“I’m assuming you assholes were really bad people who deserved this.”
They were speechless of course.
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m probably not far behind you,” I said to their corpses.
I dragged them into another room and closed the door. There was blood, but luckily, I was the best janitor on Dreadmax. Got blood smears? Call Halek Cain and make the body disappear today!
Drying my hands on the stolen poncho, I returned to the interrogation room.
Doctor Hastings had moved away from his chair while I was gone. He was standing with his arms crossed, hugging himself as he looked through the window to the main hangar below. It was like a private booth at a stadium and it made me wonder what the Union officers who originally ran this place had talked about while watching their minions.
"This wasn't always a prison," he said.
"Step back from the window," I ordered.
He looked at me, then complied, moving away. "I'm not an idiot. The glass slants outward from the bottom of the windowsill, suggesting there is considerable glare when viewed from the outside. I doubt anyone down there could see us, even if they were looking," he said, unperturbed.
The party was ramping up again. Music thumped the walls. A caravan of vehicles with Red Skull Gangsters hanging off every side rail and bumper rolled into a large bay door at one end. Engines without mufflers revved. Air horns blasted a juvenile call and response that quickly got on my nerves.
Each truck had a cage in the back.
Doctor Hastings went pale. "I was hoping she got away."
Several pieces of the puzzle fell into place. “What are you doing here, Doctor?"
He faced away from me when I asked the question, wiping something from his eyes as he moved toward the door like he might run for it. I had to give him credit, he was playing it pretty cool for an amateur.
"I wouldn't do that,” I warned. “I mean, how did it work for you last time?"
"I haven't tried to escape. They have my daughter. She tried, continues to try to get away, but they always catch her and three other young women. It's part of some inscrutable gang law they have. One girl escapes, and they bring back three extras for the cages. Nothing makes Slab and his Red Skull thugs happier than a drunken killing spree.”
"You didn't answer my question."
"Research. I was here on a research project.”
I crowded into his personal space and brushed imaginary dirt from his battered jumpsuit. It was one of the original prison uniforms. Someone had scrawled his name on the tag, misspelling it: H-a-y-s-t-i-n-g-z.
"How many attempts have there been to rescue you?"
"I don't know," he sputtered. “Just you and your team, I suppose.”
"You don't know because I'm the first person to get this far. Think about that for a second. You should be realizing that I’ll be the last. If you want out of here, you're coming with me and you’re going to do everything I say."
"I can't live without my daughter. There’s no reason to rescue me if you don’t help her escape too.”
“She’s not part of my mission,” I replied.
“There must have been some kind of mistake. The Union cares more about her than me. Call someone for new orders. They won’t let us leave Dreadmax without her.”
“Why?” I asked.
“She’s my daughter. Please rescue her,” he pleaded.
“What are you doing here, Doctor Hastings?” I asked, repeating the question.
“Please, sir. Don’t make me go against the Union.”
Ignoring his oddly dispassionate plea, I spoke so softly he had to lean forward to hear me. "I need information to do my job. Answer the question."
He shook his head and backed away. “I can’t abandon my work. Just leave me here."
The RSG music continued to shake the floor. Bass thumped a driving beat that filled the entire facility.
"That
hurts my feelings, X. He's more scared of the Union than me," I said.
Doctor Hastings perked up when he realized what I’d just said and what it meant. “You are talking to a nerve-ware AI. Are you a Reaper? I thought they were all dead."
"You would think that. The fact that you even know what a Reaper is means something. What are you doing here, Doctor, and why do they have a destroyer with three companies of soldiers and multiple teams of spec ops commandos ready to storm the place?”
Looking at his feet for several seconds before he answered, he exhaled forcefully.
“About a year ago, I realized the Union had quietly taken over my daughter’s boarding school. I made inquiries to civilian and military officials I’ve worked with over the years. They had their theories and reassured me this was just something that happened in the Union. I knew, however, that they were holding my daughter hostage.”
“Sounds terrible,” I said, nonplussed.
“The situation grated on me for a few weeks before I made my first mistake. I’m not a soldier or a spy or whatever you are. My world is about research, using the scientific method to test theories—Occam’s Razor. You know it?”
“All things being equal, the simplest explanation is most likely correct,” I said.
“Exactly. One morning, I awoke with the firm conviction the Union wanted something from me that I wasn’t providing them. All that was needed was information.”
“You confronted the Union?”
“I set up an appointment and had a meeting. By the time I returned to my laboratory I’d been reassigned to… a place I can’t talk about. It wasn’t all bad. The facility and the brilliant minds I worked with were a dream come true for a scientist like me.”
“But they put your daughter on Dreadmax to keep you in line.”
“I didn’t know that until later. We talked every day by video conference,” he said, acting more like the man I assumed he was. The memory refreshed him. “Something went wrong and now the Red Skull Gangsters have her.”
“The secret laboratory must be near Dreadmax if they were able to have a video conference in real time,” X-37 commented in my head.
