by Phil Maxey
“Ashley—”
“If we’re being informal you can call me Ash.”
“Ash. Not including the XO there are three hundred and seventy-two women on Tantalus. And of that number three hundred and forty-one are former inmates or are in solitary. So, you’re right, there are others, thirty-one including yourself to be exact, but most are either too old, too young, or looking at their profiles I’m not sure would be fit to look after an eleven-year-old.”
She nodded, not quiet being sure how to react. “Right.”
“You have a basic cell in the female cell block? I’ll get that upgraded, we can put a door in, between that and the next cell, maybe put in some more partitions, so you got separate areas.”
“Right.”
Luke smiled. “Ash, it’s just a kid, you’ll be fine.”
“It’s just I’m really busy with my new role on the ship, and—”
She suddenly became aware of a presence behind her.
“How’s the youngest member of the crew doing?” said Luke to Dawn who had emerged from the corridor adjacent to the break room.
Dawn smiled. “I’m doing alright, thank you.”
“This lady is called Ashley Manning. She’s a lieutenant, and has an important job on the ship.”
“How important? Important as mine?”
“Just as important as the chief pet officer.” Luke briefly looked at Ash.
The mild panic behind Ash’s eyes betrayed her smile.
“You’re going to be staying with her,” said Luke.
“And Juno?”
“Yes of course.”
Ash’s head darted around the room. “Who’s Juno?” Dawn’s dog bounded in from the same corridor. “There’s a dog?”
“Yeah—”
“Right.”
Dawn and Juno sat looking at Ash.
“Okay then I guess I better umm, where can I get extra bedding?”
“Ship, direct Lieutenant Manning to our utility storage.”
“Please enter the elevator, Lieutenant,” said the ship’s female voiced AI.
Dawn and Juno, got up and ran to the elevator.
Luke smiled. “If you need anything let me know.”
“I will, do that.” Ash got up not quite knowing what she was meant to do next, but thinking perhaps she should start with showing her roommates their new home.
CHAPTER 39
Davin Murlock sat on the floor of his solitary confinement cell and looked at some mold that had grown over the scratched and scarred wall. It was his fourteenth day in the tiny space, not that he knew that. For him, time stopped the moment he felt the plasma rifle at the back of his head, and the words from the red headed girl ordering him to tell the IMs that they are to stop their actions and that he had to give command of them to her.
“I was so close, Joanna.” He spoke the words to his wife who was standing in the far corner of the room.
“You failed me. You always did—” She stepped backwards into the shadows.
Murlock reached out his hand to her. “No, please don’t leave. I’ll find another way I promise.”
“What good are you to me now? Locked in here—” She started laughing, her body now completely covered in darkness that lived in the corner of the cell.
Murlock covered his ears. “No, no, no,” he cried out, now rocking back and forwards.
On the bridge, Luke and Seth watched Murlock talking to himself and sway back and forth.
“He’s really lost it,” said Seth.
Luke sighed. “There’s a part of me that pities him.”
Seth looked surprised. “Really? He hated all of us so much, he was willing to risk the life of everyone on this ship. He’s lucky he’s still alive.”
Luke glanced at Seth then looked back at Murlock. “I know a lot of people wanted him and Babel dead.”
“Like I say, he’s lucky.”
“Ship, bring up his profile, display next to the cell’s feed,” said Luke.
Murlock’s photograph along with his service record appeared.
“How does this help us?”
“Strategy and tactics,” replied Luke.
Seth looked at him. “You sure you didn’t know Taylor? Anyway, so he was a good person before he went crazy, still not seeing the point.”
“I’m not making excuses for him Seth, but my job is to utilize all the resources we have, and we are looking at one. Along with Lieutenant Honer, he knows this ship better than anyone.”
“So, you just want to give him his old job back?”
Luke looked at Seth. “We take him out of solitary, ask him what he would want to make his incarceration easier, and in return he teaches us what he already knows about the ship and its systems.”
Seth frowned.
“This whole ship needs to transform into something it wasn’t designed to be, he can help that happen.”
Seth was silent.
* * * * *
Thiago bounced his baby boy up and down on his knee. “You going to grow up strong and clever like your Papa, aren’t you?” Ramon smiled in response.
“When you going to clear up around here?” shouted Selena.
“Hey, stop your shouting, I’ll get around to it when I get around to it, I gotta make us money so we can buy food, otherwise how we gonna eat?”
She started picking up clothes from the floor of the former cell. “What good’s money now? If you hadn’t noticed, there’s no banks, no government, nothing.”
“Selena, don’t kid yourself, there’s still the rich and the poor on this ship, and I mean to change our situation, from one to the other. You know I’m getting the stall together, it’s just going to take some time, I gotta get the stuff for it.”
She swore in Spanish. “What good is having an older man, if he ain’t feeding his family? Why don’t you take the job the Governor offered you?”
Thiago, shook his head, placing Ramon down carefully on the bed. “It’s not that simple. If I go to work for Evgeni, I’m working for the Flaming birds, no matter what important title he’s now got. And you know I don’t work for the syndicates.”
“Well, then ask the captain, you helped him! He owes you!” she said picking up Ramon.
“I’m going out, I’ll be back in some hours.”
“Bring back some food!” she shouted as he stepped outside.
“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled, closing the door behind him.
The cellblock around him was a different place than a few weeks earlier. Multicolored sheets of various shapes and materials now hung from the balconies and from cables that stretched across the gantries. What was once a sanitized environment now felt more like a small village, with the noise and smell to go along with it.
He looked down from his third-floor location, to the throbbing mass of people moving through the stalls in the main hall. Seeing this was a prison ship, even he was amazed at just how much stuff inmates were hoarding, which they then bartered for anything they could. He had been no different, in fact he was probably the worst offender of them all, but when he had returned to his cell after the battle a week earlier it was all gone. It wasn’t a surprise, but it meant he had to start from the bottom, once again. And this time coming up short meant his baby going hungry and that wasn’t an option. Evgeni had offered him a job. “Be in charge of distribution for me,” he said, but Thiago was under no illusions as to what that meant. He had always stayed outside of syndicate control and just because the leader of the Phoenix syndicate was now in charge of things, that wasn’t about to change.
The battle had given them their freedom from their convictions, but most still owed allegiance to one or another of the syndicates, doing their dirty work daily.
He already knew that at least three Grainers who survived the conflict weeks before had gone missing, and he suspected they wouldn’t be the last.
Running down the steps to the ground floor, he was in amongst it. Men and women selling services he didn’t want, or goods that h
e had no use for. Regardless of the food rations that he and his family received from the ship’s authorities, there was never enough. But as he moved through the crowd he had a plan as to how to change that.
“Ah Thiago! How’s the wife treating you? Good I hope?” An overweight woman, wearing next to nothing leaned against a particularly big stall, covered in images of glamorous women in unglamorous poses.
He smiled, walking past. “She treats me terrible! but I love her, what you gonna do?” She laughed in reply.
Soon he was on the other side of the hall, where a series of stalls were connected to the cells behind them. They were guarded by four burly looking men.
“I’m here to see Bragg,” said Thiago to the closest.
A much taller man looked down at him dismissively.
“Tell him it’s Thiago, and that I have something he will be interested in.”
The tall man frowned like he was bored. “Wait here.” He turned, pulling back a flap to a tent behind him, and talked into the room. A few seconds later he faced Thiago and patted him down, finding no weapons. “Okay, follow me.”
They walked past men playing cards, and women hanging off their shoulders, through dark corridors until they arrived at a closed door, which Thiago recognized as an entrance to a former cell. The guard knocked, something was said, and he was gestured inside.
Thiago walked into a room which was larger than a normal cell should have been. Plush looking rugs adjourned the floor, with a series of chairs on the left combined with a large ornate desk at the back of the room. Behind it sat a large overweight and unshaven man, with wild black hair. Bragg was one of the other important independents on the ship, and someone even the syndicates knew not to mess with.
“What can I do for you, Thiago, my time is short,” said Bragg nonchalantly.
“I got something you will want.”
“And what is that.”
“A plasma rifle.” The two other men in the room, sat up slightly in their seats.
“Thiago, I have already told you, my time is short. There are things to see, deals to be done, and perhaps people to be killed, and you come to me with what? A joke?” One of the men, reached into their inner pockets of their jumpsuit and left it there.
Thiago looked anxiously around. “I helped in the battle, they gave me a plasma rifle and I still got it.”
“The IMs took all the weapons from the former inmates, and if you still have this device, the ship—” he looked up, pointing both hands upwards “—would have detected it. Jared, take him out and teach him a lesson.” The man in the jumpsuit got to his feet.
“No, wait! I found a place where the ship’s sensors can’t detect it, I hid it there. Do you want it or not?”
Bragg raised his hand, and the man retook his seat.
“Hmm, and what do you want for it?”
“Food, water and I want a stall in the hall outside, near the cells on the opposite side.”
“Water is hard to come by, you know this better than anyone.”
Thiago looked resigned. “That’s what I want.”
“Okay, fine, I’m getting too old to argue about this stuff. You can have all that, but if this ‘gun’ is not what you say it is? My people will be paying you a visit.”
“It is what I say it is.”
Bragg looked at his men who both stood and escorted Thiago out into the tunnels. The older of the two stood close to Thiago. “We’ll deliver the food and water tonight, be at the bottom of stairwell five tomorrow morning and you’ll have your stall, bring the gun.”
Thiago went to reply, when there was a noise of shouting outside. He and the two men ran through the artificial rooms and out into the market. A group of tall figures all wearing robes, with their hoods up, were standing in a clearing.
“They just appeared and started busting up my stall!” shouted a disheveled looking man with graying hair.
Thiago and most of those around recognized members of the Archons straightaway, but nobody had seen them outside their area before.
The tallest of the group stepped forward and lowered his hood. The man’s long hair was tied back, and across his face and forehead were symbols that had been burned into his skin.
“My name is Tyrus Carr. I am the leader of the Archon syndicate,” he proclaimed to those standing watching.
“Yeah! So what?” shouted the gray-haired man. “I want payment for the damage—”
Carr turned and walked to the man towering over him. “You are going to give me your stall, because you believe that humankind has reached a precipice and needs to be reborn. Correct?”
The older man looked at the people around him, most of which looked anxious. “But it’s my stall, I sell my stuff here, without the money—”
“You will be well compensated.” Carr raised his hand. Other robed figures stepped forward, each carrying a small box of fresh food which they placed on top of the man’s stall. “Take two boxes and go.”
The gray-haired man scrambled to stack the boxes, picked them up and walked away quickly through the crowd. Ripples of chatter moved through the onlookers.
Thiago looked on in shock and confusion as much as everyone else, he walked up to Carr. “How you get fresh fruit and vegetables?”
The tall man picked up a small metallic container from the stall, then dropped it wiping his fingers on his sleeve. “That is not your concern, Thiago.”
Thiago looked at Carr, surprised he knew his name. “Okay, whatever.” He walked past him as the crowd started to walk excitedly closer to the stall.
CHAPTER 40
Luke slid the small opening in the door to the side. “What do you know about the Archons?”
“What? Is that you Joanna?”
“No, it’s Luke Carter, the captain.”
Murlock laughed. “Ha, yeah sure you are. There was one captain and you got her killed.”
Luke controlled her anger. “Davin, do you want to get out of this cell?”
Murlock scrambled to his feet and moved to the other side of the door. “What I want Luke, is for you and every other less than human piece of crap on this ship to be serving their time as the Earth Authority ordained it.” He backed off, lifting his arms up and down. “But we can’t all have what we want, can we?”
“The EA’s gone Davin, for all we know so has the Earth. What if we are the only humans left? You still think we should all be kept locked up in a cell?”
“Yes!”
Luke sighed. This is going to be harder than I thought. “I can make life easier for you. I can have you moved to a normal cell, out of solitary, maybe even give you access to things to watch and read. Your life doesn’t have to be just, this.”
Davin shook his head as if he was arguing with himself. “And what do I have to do for these ‘comforts’”
“You know the people on this ship and the ship itself better than I do. So that’s useful to me. I ask you questions, you give me what you know. That’s it.”
“And if we have these discussions, like you say, then I get out of this cell?” he said looking up at Luke.
“Yes.”
Davin sat on the damp floor. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about Tyrus Carr.”
Davin smiled and snorted. “Well I can tell you, his real name isn’t Tyrus Carr—”
Luke looked down at the screen on his wrist device. “His profile say’s Tyrus Carr, what’s his real name then?”
“Abram Collins is the name he was born with, until he found God or whatever it is the Archons believe.”
“How do you—”
“I took being the warden seriously and did my research, that’s how I knew. Anyway, when you join the Archons, they give you a new name, Tyrus Carr was what he got. He worked his way up, and now he leads them. That’s what I know.”
Luke felt there was more he wasn’t telling him. “Okay, that’s good enough for now, I’ll have you moved within the hour.” He closed the shutter.
“Anyone want to tell me how the Archons managed to obtain organics?”
Evgeni, along with all the top officers who were sitting around the large table, looked at each other.
“I agree, it is troubling,” said Evgeni.
Elisa looked puzzled. “I get that they have contraband food, but what’s the big deal? It’s just some fruit and vegetables, I was thinking of going down there and getting some myself.”
“Materials that go bang,” said Weber opening his hands.
Seth looked at Elisa. “The Archons are expert bomb makers, if they have got access to organics or worse still if they are growing them, they eventually might be able to make explosives. And we really don’t want the Archons doing that.”
“Oh—” said Elisa.
“The Earth purifies the Earth they used to call it, because all their explosives are manufactured from things they had grown or made in one of their crazy labs.”
“The problem is that there are now a few hundred Archons. They are the biggest syndicate. I could try to ban them, but I do not think that will help,” said Evgeni.
“There’s also the small matter that the people are loving the fresh food, I can’t predict what would happen if we try to take that away from them,” said Ash.
“How did the ship’s sensors not pick up the organic material?” said Luke.
“It should have done,” said Weber.
“Ship, at what point did you detect the presence of the organics the Archons had aboard the Tantalus? And why was I not informed of the discovery?”
“Members of the Archon syndicate do not possess organics.”
They all looked confused.
“They are definitely there, I have seen them with my own eyes!” said Evgeni.
Luke tapped on the table display, quickly selecting footage from earlier in the day, when the Archons set up their stall in the main hall, and placed all the fruit and vegetables on it. “Ship, identify the items on the stall in the footage we are viewing.”
