Prison Ship

by Michael Bowers

  He likes you, too, he could almost hear Daniels say.

  With forced steps, Steiner ascended the stairway to the main deck of the command center. Tramer stood in front of the security monitors. It didn’t turn around to acknowledge his presence but continued flipping through the images on the screens.

  “Mr. Tramer,” Steiner finally managed. The cyborg turned to face him. “I am putting you in charge of training the combat teams on the planet surface.”

  “An intelligent choice,” the synthesized voice said.

  “I’m wary of sending you alone. I would like you to include Patrick Braun as your second. He used to be a U.S. Ground Forces sergeant.”

  “He is undisciplined.”

  “He is out of practice. Once you get down there, I think he may prove to be an asset to your team.”

  “I will comply and notify him of the change in his schedule. However, if you wish to oversee the training for yourself, a transmitter can be connected to my sensors. The signal can be received on the security monitors. You would then be able to modify my training procedures as you see fit.”

  The suggestion took Steiner by surprise. “Is that hard to set up?”

  “The bartender is capable of the procedure,” Tramer replied. “I can guide him through the process before I leave.”

  Steiner wondered why the cyborg was being so helpful. It didn’t have to volunteer for the transmitter. It could have kept silent. Then he realized it might be looking for an opportunity to execute Bricket.

  “If you try to harm him—”

  “I have and will continue to respect your orders. So far, his pardon has not caused the rest of the crew to lose their fear of you.”

  Steiner hesitated, wondering how to respond. “Thank you,” he finally said.

  “Is there anything else, Captain?” it asked.

  “Yes,” he forced himself to say. Every instinct in his being told him to leave, but he stood firm. It was time to test Daniels’s theory. He would apologize to Tramer for treating it like a mechanical device. If it was just an inanimate object, it wouldn’t respond. If it was Maxwell—no that wouldn’t happen.

  He looked past the glare of the blue sensor orb, into the gray, seemingly lifeless, human eye on the left side of the deformed face. He realized he had never seen it blink before. Could it? Look deeper, he told himself. The pupil shifted slightly back and forth, as did many people’s when they were looking at another person.

  Are you Maxwell Tramer?he asked silently. Are you hiding your emotions for your own protection? Steiner didn’t want to believe it. It was more comforting to accept it as a machine. The possibilities were too horrifying. But he had to know.

  “Mr. Tramer, I wanted to say …” He trailed off, not knowing if he could finish. His stomach tightened into knots. He forced himself to continue. “I want to apologize for the way I’ve behaved toward you during the past few weeks. I’ve acted as if you were only a machine. You were my friend once, and I hope you can be again.”

  The eye blinked.

  Immediately, Tramer turned away. When Steiner inched closer, he saw the cyborg’s reflection in one of the darkened monitors. A single trail of wetness ran down the ghostly countenance.

  Feeling sick, Steiner steadied himself against the wall. Daniels had been right all along. Steiner stumbled back down the stairs out of the center, his discovery too mortifying to imagine. Maxwell had survived the explosion over seven years earlier.

  When Steiner returned to his cabin, sleep didn’t come well. He lay on his cot, thinking of his first meeting with Maxwell. It was about a year before the Day of Betrayal, when there was still hope for a peaceful resolution to the unrest between United Star Systems and the newly formed New Order Empire. Steiner had joined Captain McKillip’s Cyrian Defense and gone with them on a covert mission to uncover evidence that the New Order was building new warships, called battlecruisers, which outgunned the typical U.S.S. Destroyer-class vessel. After McKillip had secretly released the evidence to the interstellar media sources, the U.S.S. Congress reluctantly approved a weapons upgrade for all their U.S.S. warships, enlisting Maxwell and Candice Tramer, a renowned team in the field of particle physics, to upgrade the particle cannons. Candice oversaw the production while Maxwell oversaw the installations, visiting the Valiantfirst because it was already in the space docks at the time. Steiner had been assigned to assist him personally, following him around the ship and making sure he got everything he needed. Maxwell had a quiet demeanor, and his voice had lacked inflection, making him sound machinelike even then. But he had possessed a sharp wit, which he interjected randomly throughout his monochromatic drone just to see the unexpected reactions from his intended audience. When he was inside the Valiant’s cafeteria, Maxwell had witnessed a fight between Mary and Steiner and quietly observed that she might be pregnant because he had gone through a similar struggle with his wife before the birth of their daughter. He had been right.

  Steiner wondered what had happened to his wife, Candice, and his daughter. She had visited the Valiant only once, to discuss a production problem with her husband, and Steiner got only a brief introduction to her. Where was she now? Steiner suspected she and her daughter were no longer a part of Maxwell’s life. He couldn’t blame them. Wiping a tear from his face, Steiner rolled over and thought about how Mary might have reacted if something like that had happened to him. He wanted to think that she would never leave him, no matter what. It wasn’t long before he fell into a deep sleep.

  Steiner and his newly pregnant wife, Mary, were walking behind Maxwell past a row of pulse cannons as he droned on about how he had enhanced their output. A pulse cannon exploded, blinding Steiner. When he looked up, there was Mary with a sad look on her face. Steiner raised his hand to her, but realized it was a metallic arm—Maxwell Tramer’s arm. He was in the cyborg’s body. Mary turned, blowing him a small regretful kiss, and ran out onto the launchpad for her shuttle. He couldn’t move his mechanical legs to stop her. The shuttle erupted into flames.

  Abruptly, the dream changed.

  Steiner, back in his normal body, stood in the command center of the Marauder, face-to-face with Maxwell Tramer, the cyborg he had been forced to work with, trying to determine what its most horrifying trait was. Its smell? Its appearance? Its lifeless stare? No. It was the possibility that this grotesque creation of human hands could be his former friend. He found himself turning in utter disgust and walking away.

  Steiner awoke at the sound of his comlink. “Steiner here.” His own voice sounded ragged to him.

  “We have achieved orbit around Baiten II.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Tramer. Have your first team assembled within two hours.”

  As Steiner washed himself and put on a fresh uniform, he thought about how he had treated Maxwell over the last few weeks. He had abandoned Maxwell in his waking life as surely as he had in the dream.

  As he made his way toward the lower levels, he passed by the bar and noticed someone had painted a letter “S” in front of the sign “HELL” and a “Y” on the end of it. Immediately, he suspected Pattie had something to do with that. Upon reaching the engine room, he evacuated the crewmen out of the area except for Daniels, J.R., and Spider and sealed the lower-level pressure door. He led the engineers into the landing bay and opened the pressure door for them to begin their preparations. All three men sang hymns as they prepped the armored transport carrier, which they had nicknamed the Stormquest. J.R., a bass, and Spider, a tenor, blended their voices together to form such majestic tapestries of music that Steiner thought they might try to start a singing career together once their sentences had expired. Steiner helped J.R. drive six of the armored TRAC vehicles into the cargo hold of the Stormquest. Then he aided them in making a trek to the armory and bringing back carts filled with assault rifles, missile launchers, grenades, suits of body armor, and six portable laser cannons.

  At just before 1200 hours, Steiner’s comlink beeped. “Steiner here.”

  �
�Captain,” Tramer’s synthesized voice answered. “The RED team has been assembled at Pressure Door C-3, awaiting your orders.”

  “We’re almost done, Mr. Tramer. I’ll open the door in five minutes,” Steiner said into his comlink.

  J.R. and Spider hugged Daniels as if saying good-bye to their own father. Daniels climbed into the control booth for the crane and waved to his assistants as Steiner escorted them out of the landing bay.

  Steiner went to Pressure Door C-3, which sealed off the lower levels from the rest of the ship, and entered the code to open it. Under the watchful eye of the weapons officer, fifteen men, including Mason, Sam, and Pattie, filed through the doorway and headed for the landing bay. Tramer acted as emotionless as ever. Steiner saluted him but got no response.

  Why is he acting so distant? he wondered as he watched his old friend march after the trainees. Anxious to view what the weapons officer’s sensors were recording, Steiner sealed the lower level, then hurried toward the command center.

  After Steiner had Julio Sanchez set the Marauder on autopilot around the planet, he dismissed everyone but Bricket from the command center. Steiner sat down next to the bartender in front of the security monitors. Instead of interior views of the ship, several of the screens depicted various images coming from Tramer’s sensor implants. One held a normal camera panorama, another, an infrared readout, and a third, a scanner that detected everything within a fifty-foot radius. The weapons officer could tell if a person was approaching even without seeing him directly. It seemed very beneficial, but at the same time, it must also be a curse, robbing Tramer of his normalcy.

  “You don’t trust Tramer going down there unsupervised, do you?” Bricket asked. “That’s the reason you had me attach the transmitter to his sensors, isn’t it?”

  “Tramer volunteered for the procedure.”

  The bartender’s brow furrowed. “He did?”

  The top left screen showed the Stormquest descending into the massive air lock in the floor of the landing bay. The center monitor displayed Tramer’s perspective of the interior of the troop compartment. He faced two rows of convicts strapped into seats along the side of the hull. Steiner could barely make out Mason and Sam through the open hatch to the cockpit on the far wall.

  “When I attached the transmitter to Tramer’s visual sensors, I took the liberty of tapping into the audio as well,” Bricket said. “Would you like to hear what everyone is saying?”

  This was more than Steiner had hoped for. “Yes,” he answered.

  When the bartender pressed a keypad, the speakers emitted distorted sounds. After several adjustments, he was able to clean it up to where individual voices could be heard. The convicts spoke softly among themselves, repeating obscene jokes and teasing each other. Steiner heard the bounty on his life mentioned twice. Both times, it had been referred to in a jesting manner, not worthy of reacting to. Tramer had been accurate when he had said that the men didn’t hide their words from him. They probably didn’t know the weapons officer’s hearing was so acute.

  “Why did you change the name of the bar to SHELLY?” one of the armored men shouted at Pattie.

  “ ’Cause I’d rather spend me free time inside a woman, wouldn’t ya all agree, lads?”

  The other convicts cheered their response.

  Bricket groaned. “My assistant says profits have increased since he did that.”

  The picture shook as the Stormquest dropped away from the bottom of the Marauder’s docking assembly. The horizon of the planet rose in the portholes along the hull. The sounds distorted briefly into a high-pitched whine, causing Steiner to wince.

  “Sorry about that. It’s amazing how powerful this audio feed is,” Bricket said, working the controls on the console. “I’ll bet I can isolate a single voice from a hundred feet away.”

  He experimented with his theory by zooming in on Mason and Sam in the cockpit. Their voices became distinct amidst all the other convicts’ chatter. Steiner listened as Mason instructed Sam how to keep the ship’s descent smooth when entering a planet’s atmosphere. Mason let the boy try it by himself, but his flying was so rocky that Mason had to take over again.

  Steiner smiled.

  A fiery glow grew in all the windows. A couple of the convicts gave exuberant cries of excitement.

  The images disappeared from the screens as the Stormquest descended into the blackout zone of the upper atmosphere.

  “Tramer wants to kill me for aiding Pearce, doesn’t he?” Bricket asked in the new silence.

  Steiner knew better than to lie. “Yes.”

  The bartender groaned. “I could sense it when I attached the visual transmitter to him.”

  “Tramer thinks that executing you will provide discipline for the rest of the crew. I don’t agree.”

  “What’s to stop him from murdering me?”

  “My order not to.”

  “Do you really believe you can control his actions with an order?”

  Steiner didn’t reply. In all honesty, he couldn’t restrain Tramer from executing anyone. He could only hope the weapons officer obeyed him.

  “That’s what I expected,” Bricket said. “I might be able to help you with that dilemma.”

  Steiner eyed the bartender curiously.

  The images sprang back to life upon the darkened screens. Cheers from the convicts in the troop compartment blared over the speakers.

  Bricket decreased the volume, then turned to Steiner. “When I attached the transmitter, I saw the CPU that interfaces with Tramer’s brain. I could’ve easily sliced through its power cord with a laser cutter. Without the CPU, his human body can’t sustain itself.”

  “You want to murder him?” Steiner asked.

  “Yes, if it’s the only way to keep him from killing anyone else.”

  “There’s no proof that he murdered anyone on this ship.”

  “He did. Everyone on board knows it—even you.”

  “We never found the weapon that killed the man in the gunnery port. As for Pearce’s death, Tramer couldn’t possibly have squeezed through a ventilation shaft to get into the life-support control room.”

  “That’s not the only way to get into life support,” Bricket replied.

  “Other than using the password for the main entry, it is.”

  “That’s exactly what he did.”

  Steiner shook his head. “Director Riggs assured me that only she and I know the ship’s passwords.”

  “I don’t doubt that at all. But consider what we are viewing on these monitors. Tramer’s capabilities are far more than either of us expected. How do we know what his limitations are?”

  A sickening sensation swept over Steiner when he remembered the times Tramer had watched him from a distance entering passwords. He found himself doubting Maxwell again, abandoning him just as in the dream.

  “He could have gotten an assault rifle right out of the armory,” Bricket said.

  Steiner rubbed his face with his hands. “If I allowed you to execute him, I’d be guilty of the exact same crime you are accusing him of.”

  “Can you risk not to? Considering his physical strength, I doubt any of the cells in the brig could hold him.”

  Steiner knew that the bartender was leading him along to the only logical conclusion, one he didn’t wish to consider.

  Bricket probably sensed his discomfort because he stopped his argument and watched the monitors for a while.

  Almost completely barren, Baiten II had been one of the first failed attempts at terraforming a world for colonization. The air was breathable, but the sandstorms made growing things there impossible, so the United Star Systems used it for troop training, instead.

  The Stormquest landed in the middle of a desert plain. Tramer immediately put on a metallic face shield, locking it into place. One of the monitors went dark from its camera being blocked by the helmet. The infrared image and the proximity sensor display remained active. When Tramer opened the hatch, a dust cloud poured through
the opening. He began instructing the convicts on how he wanted the equipment unloaded. Steiner realized Tramer’s helmet shield must be protecting the only exposed flesh on his body, his face, from the biting sand. On the screens, the convicts began to set up a large tent as a barrack.

  “When Tramer returns to exchange the RED and GREEN teams,” Bricket said, “tell him I have to adjust his transmitter for clearer reception. I’ll do the rest.”

  “I’ll consider your proposition and give you my decision at the end of the week,” Steiner said sternly.

  Bricket nodded and said nothing more about it.

  Steiner tried to imagine whether Captain McKillip would have condoned murder to protect himself and his ship. Probably not. He had never compromised his beliefs. Could Steiner afford to follow the same policy?

  As the week progressed, Steiner learned how to control the different feeds transmitted from Tramer’s sensors by himself. Between patrols of the ship, he spent hours in the command center alone, watching everything that transpired on the planet below. The serious nature of his decision demanded that he do so.

  Pattie had proven to be the valuable asset Steiner had hoped he would be. For the first day, the former sergeant teased and joked with the convicts like they were his buddies, secretly assessing their abilities. Then, on the second day, his mood toughened, and he began barking orders, pushing each and every convict to the limits of his physical endurance. At first, some complained, but Pattie explained to them all, “The Separatists are gonna want to kill you. If you survive me, then you’ll survive them; otherwise, there’s a dark cell somewhere awaitin’ any prissy boy who wants to quit.”

  Within the tent barracks, Tramer would start each training session with a lecture, walking confidently among the armor-suited convicts, instructing them how best to use the assault rifles and missile launchers in concert with each other for maximum effectiveness. He would then give the team over to Pattie, to have him run them through battle exercises outside in the harsh wind. Tramer monitored from the tent as the convicts marched through the churning sands under the twin suns. Pattie taught the men his personal battle hymn. “Oh, when the Saint, goes marchin’ in. Oh, when the Saint goes marchin’ in. He’ll stomp on his enemies’ skulls. When the Saint goes marchin’ in.”