Berserker (Messenger Book 2)

by James Walker

  The officer glanced around at the suite's opulent furnishings. “I suppose you have your celebrity muckraker friends to thank for that. They're the ones who brought it to light.” He turned his attention back to Janice and continued, “Just because a few people remember it doesn't mean it was common knowledge. You never really made it big until after the Concord took control. But now the media's spilled the beans, and some higher-ups in the Commission are concerned.”

  Janice folded her arms around herself, her brow wrinkling with anxiety. “I haven't done anything,” she said in a small voice.

  “Relax. We're not here to cause trouble for you,” the officer said. “But we have our duty to perform. We've been ordered to escort you to a detainment facility, where you will be held until further notice. It's mostly for your own protection. That news report has the public stirred up. There are some irrational ex-fans that might try to do you harm.”

  “You mean you're putting me under arrest?” Janice said. “For how long?”

  “Until the investigation is concluded.”

  “What investigation?” Janice demanded.

  “The investigation into your possible connection with Union sympathizers.”

  Anger was rising and blending with Janice's fear to create a tempestuous mixture. “I don't get it,” she snapped. “ISEC monitors my calls and movements just like everybody else's. You would know if I had been in contact with Union sympathizers. This doesn't make any sense.”

  There was a subtle change in the officer's tone, though he remained cool. “Please calm down, Ms. Runner,” he said, his voice more carefully modulated than before. “Conducting an investigation is standard procedure on a case like this. Now, please get dressed and make any necessary preparations for an extended absence. As soon as you're ready, we'll transfer you to a secret location for your protection.”

  “To keep me locked up, you mean,” Janice fumed.

  A hint of impatience flickered on the officer's face. “Please cooperate, Ms. Runner,” he said quietly. “I'd really hate to have to use force on that delicate body of yours.”

  For a moment, Janice could only stare in disbelief at the bald threat. Then, suppressing tears of fear and anger, she stormed into her bedroom to get ready to leave.

  *

  The ISEC agents escorted Janice out of the apartment complex into their police cruiser. They ushered her into the back, with one of them sitting next to her while the other two took the front. The officer in charge took the driver's seat and programmed a route into the navigation computer.

  The computer guided the cruiser out of the parking lot into the crowded streets of Artair. They soon left the upscale neighborhood where Janice lived and began threading their way through the rusty metal edifices of the industrial district. At least half of the street lights in this area were out, but the giant blue face of the gas giant Saris with its swirling pair of eyes provided enough illumination to keep the street from complete darkness.

  Janice was burning with anxiety over where her captors were taking her, but she dared not break the silence for fear that calling attention to herself would only provoke their wrath. So she kept still, not speaking, trying not even to move; simply staring out the window at the dreary scenery of urban degradation, struggling to master her fear.

  Her trepidation deepened as the cruiser turned onto the highway. Eventually, the heavy traffic and dense infrastructure of the Artair metropolitan area gave way to the open fields and robotic agricultural equipment of the surrounding farmland. The minutes stretched into an hour and the farmland faded into a wilderness of scraggly forest. The twisted trunks and grasping branches of the trees flashed by like black skeletons in the car's headlights.

  They drove deeper into the forest, and ten minutes passed without any sign of other traffic on the road. Janice was overcome by the feeling of plunging deeper into a harsh, isolated land with no one but three callous security agents for company. Finally, she could stand the silence no longer.

  “We're awfully far outside the city,” she ventured. “Where are you taking me?”

  “You'll find out soon enough,” the officer in charge answered.

  Finally, the car emerged from the forest back into open terrain. Janice glanced out the right window and saw nothing but an endless black plain, which she realized was the ocean. The road followed the shoreline to a small coastal town, momentarily raising Janice's spirits at being back in civilization. Then her feeling of dread returned when the car stopped at a checkpoint located in front of a lift bridge that connected the town to an island over a kilometer off the coast.

  The driver rolled down the window, allowing a cold breeze tinted with the salty aroma of the ocean to waft through the car. He conferred with the guard at the checkpoint for a couple of minutes, then the guard raised the gate and the car proceeded onto the bridge. The construction of the bridge caused the tires to emit a rhythmic clanking sound, like a bell heralding Janice's delivery to her fate.

  As the car reached the end of the bridge, the dark edifices of a fortress-like structure cut a jagged silhouette into the spherical face of Saris. Janice noted guard towers ringing the island and her stomach churned as she realized she was being taken to a high security prison. The navigation computer guided the car into a parking lot and the driver cut the engine.

  “Get out,” the agent sitting next to Janice ordered her.

  Janice got out of the car, trying and failing to control the trembling of her knees. The agents escorted her through a door on the side of the central prison complex and delivered her into the hands of a bored guard reading a holo mag on his pocket computer. The guard flicked off the magazine, took Janice to a rusty holding room, then left her alone and locked the door behind him. Janice sat down at the metal table in the center of the room.

  A long time passed. Finally, the door opened and another surly guard came in, carrying an electronic clipboard. He sat down at the opposite end of the table from Janice and asked her for various personal details, recording them with an air of bored indifference.

  Once the guard was finished interrogating her, he escorted her out of the room into the hands of two other guards. They took her to another holding room and ordered her to take off her shoes and empty her pockets, placing the handful of possessions she had brought with her onto a table in the corner. Then the nearer guard turned to her and, with no warning, ripped off her shirt, tearing the expensive fabric to shreds. She screamed and slapped him in the face, prompting his partner to strike her in the shoulder, driving her to her knees.

  “Don't give us any trouble, little rich bitch,” he growled. “The more you resist, the rougher we got to be, get it?”

  The guard reached down and jerked Janice back to her feet, causing a spasm of pain to shoot through her injured shoulder. They tore off her skirt next and then even her undergarments before tossing a pair of shoes, gray undershorts, and a prison jumpsuit at her feet.

  “Get dressed.”

  Janice burned with shame and anger as the guards stared while she donned her new, shapeless garments. Once she had finished changing, they grabbed her arms and forced her deeper into the facility, this time taking her to a medical examination room. They took up positions to either side of the door, trading lewd jokes for several minutes, until a man in a doctor's coat entered the room. He proceeded to give Janice a cursory physical, took a blood sample, and injected a clear fluid into her arm.

  “What is that?” she exclaimed.

  “Simple nanomachine solution to reprogram your subdermal I.D. chip,” the doctor replied. “Can't have criminals running around with clean chips, now can we?”

  “What criminal?” Janice cried. “I haven't been put on trial; I haven't even been charged with anything. I haven't done anything wrong!”

  “Not for me to decide.” The doctor extracted the syringe and taped a bandage over the tiny puncture. “All right. Clean bill of health, I.D. chip updated. She's all set.”

  The guards prodded Jani
ce out of the examination room and through a series of bare, concrete corridors covered in brown stains. The air grew chill and damp as they guided her down two flights of stairs into a block of underground cells lit by flickering lights. Near the end of the hallway, they handed her a bundle of blankets, a plate, and a plastic cup before opening one of the cell doors and shoving her inside. As the echo from the clanging door faded, the guards departed without a word.

  “Oh, so now I get a cell mate, eh?” came a provincially accented greeting.

  Janice jumped and turned to see a freckle-faced woman with messy brown hair sitting on a cot in the corner of the cell. Purple bruises marred the side of her face and a bloodstained bandage was wrapped around her left leg. Despite the injuries, her mouth was twisted into a sardonic grin. Janice shrank away from her fellow prisoner in fear.

  “Hey, no need to be scared of me, hon,” the woman said. “I ain't gonna do nothing to you. The name's Cena, by the way. Cena Northwood. Who are you?”

  “J—Janice.”

  “Janice?” came a quiet man's voice from the next cell over. “You know, you look a lot like Janice Runner.”

  Janice turned to look at the source of the voice. On one of the cots in the adjoining cell sat a young man, small in stature, with dark hair and features of mixed East-West Theran ancestry. Like Cena, his face was marred by several ugly bruises.

  Janice debated how to answer him. She saw nothing to be gained by lying, so she replied, “That's because I am Janice Runner.”

  Cena said,“Well, never would have guessed they'd lock a famous entertainer up in this joint. You get busted with some ether shroud or something?”

  “No, I did some P.R. videos for the Theran Union a few years ago,” Janice explained. “I didn't know any better at the time. Somebody in ISEC found out and now they're accusing me of... I don't know, treason or something.”

  A deep, bitter laugh came from the same cell as the young man of mixed ancestry. Janice realized there was another man in the cell with him, with sharp features, midnight-dark skin, and similar bruises as his companions.

  “I see that Demir's men have learned well from their former oppressors,” he said. “The P.S.A. would be proud.”

  “And you are?” Janice asked.

  “Call me Tinubu.”

  “And I'm Vic Shown,” the younger man said. “I'm sorry to see you in here, Ms. Runner. I always liked your music.”

  Janice was relieved that her fellow prisoners were not treating her with the contempt and hostility that she would have expected. On the other hand, they were being held in a maximum security prison. That knowledge kept her on edge, however friendly they might have appeared.

  “So, um,” she said, “what are all of you in here for?”

  “Kind of a long story,” Cena replied. “Basically, we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were investigating a former P.S.A. data facility trying to find information about a friend of ours when ISEC showed up and didn't like us being there.”

  “What about your injuries?”

  Cena shrugged. “The guards' way of pumping us for information. Fortunately, they haven't been very creative about it. A couple beatings, spraying us down with cold water. One guard tried to get fresh with me and I kicked him in the junk so hard he'll be impotent for months. Bunch of amateurs.”

  “Thera's soil.” Janice slumped onto her cot, a fresh wave of fear surging through her. “Are they going to do the same things to me?”

  Cena looked at Janice with pity. “Don't worry, hon. We'll stick up for you. The guards like to act tough, but they're more scared of the prisoners than we are of them, especially given the kind of violent scum they keep locked up in here. Present company excepted, of course.”

  Janice found this less than comforting. “What about the other prisoners, then?”

  “They won't mess with you so long as you don't give them no reason to,” Cena replied. “Besides, they've already seen that we're tough. They know it would be stupid to pick a fight with us.”

  For a moment, the feelings of horror that Janice had kept bottled up threatened to gush out in an overwhelming surge, reducing her to a whimpering pile. Through sheer force of will, she crushed her terror before it could take hold, twisting it into more productive emotions. With surprising swiftness, her fear transformed into anger at the injustice of her situation; and another, foreign sensation was born within the shadow of her fury: burning hatred at those who had consigned her to this nightmare.

  “If you wish to reject your humanity, take the monster's hand in yours, and bring it into yourself.”

  Janice jumped in surprise. She stared first at Cena, then at the two prisoners in the adjoining cell. “What did you say?”

  They stared back at her in bewilderment. Vic shook his head and Cena replied, “I didn't say nothing, Blondie.”

  “Oh, OK.” Janice settled back into her cot. “Sorry. I must be getting tired.”

  What the hell was that voice, she wondered. It had sounded so clear, like someone speaking right into her ear. But already the particulars of the voice were fading from her memory. It must have been just her imagination, after all.

  What she needed was sleep. Sleep, and the futile hope that when she awakened, perhaps she would be free of this nightmare.

  Second Escalation

  Look to the stars to find my way

  Captain Fox Wyburn sat on the bridge of his Union warship, the T.U.S.S. Hydra, his hawkish eyes twinkling and his captain's cap tilted at a jaunty angle. He was staring at the image in the main viewscreen: the ocher-haloed orb of Chalice set against the giant blue sphere of Saris with its swirling eyes; and beyond that, the infinitely deep blackness speckled with tiny stars. He inhaled deeply, taking in the ship's metallic, recycled air.

  Wyburn loved space. It was the ultimate ocean, vast beyond measure, open to endless exploration. The cold infinity cleared his head and made him feel alive. Out here the legions of meddling bureaucrats who scurried about on the ground were very far away. The role of Spacy ship captain suited him well.

  But this was not the usual uneventful patrol through shipping lanes or sentry duty in orbit over some backwater colony. Today, as part of the Chalice Reclamation Expedition, Wyburn and the Hydra were about to commence a mission of the utmost importance. For the first time in the history of the Theran Union, a major colony had staged a successful revolt and ejected all traces of Union influence from their world. Worse still, the colony in question was Chalice, the lifeblood of the imports that kept the resource-starved world of Thera alive. It had taken the Union over two years to assemble a fleet to retake the colony, and then months in transit through the vast reaches of space that separated the two worlds. In that time, Thera had already depleted most of its reserves, resulting in hunger, rationing, and widespread unrest among the planet's population of ten billion people. If this operation failed, then the Theran Union's centuries-old empire would crumble, plunging the cradle of humanity into a new dark age from which it no longer possessed the resources to recover.

  “Captain, we've crossed the threshold,” reported Ensign Sierra Ferrari.

  “It's time to spread out into assault formation,” said Commander Bella Belloc. Wyburn's X.O. was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with close-cropped hair and a square-jawed face that brooked no nonsense. Wyburn found her officious manner tiresome, but he valued her for her efficiency and attention to detail.

  “Alter course to take our place in the formation,” Wyburn ordered.

  The entire fleet had approached Chalice while cloaked and under a veil of absolute comm silence, which meant that none of the ships knew with certainty their fellows' whereabouts. They simply had to trust in the precision of their navigation computers that each ship had taken its proper place in the formation. The advantage of this strategy, of course, was that Chalice's defenders would be taken completely by surprise.

  “T-minus 300 seconds to initial barrage,” Ensign Ferrari reported.

  Wybur
n felt his excitement rising as Ferrari counted down the time to attack. 240 seconds. 180. 120. 60.

  “What are you picking up on the sensors?” Wyburn asked.

  “Several satellites from Chalice's mobile sensor net,” came the report. “Four defensive satellites in low orbit. Three outdated picket ships at higher altitude.”

  “I'm sure they've got more than that,” Wyburn said. “If not, this fight is going to be over awful quick.”

  “Ten seconds,” Ferrari reported.

  “Fire control, do you have a lock on every sensor satellite within range?” Wyburn asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Five seconds,” Ferrari said. “Four. Three. Two. One. Zero!”

  Wyburn rose from his seat and swept one arm outward. “Open fire,” he exclaimed.

  The vessel shuddered as a fusillade of missiles erupted from its launchers, appearing in the main viewscreen as a cluster of rapidly receding lights. Wyburn checked the sensors and watched numerous other missile barrages emerging from the invisible Union ships, speeding toward the satellites of Chalice's mobile sensor net. At this range, even with the vessels' ultra-precise targeting computers, only guided missiles would have a chance of finding their marks.

  There was a long wait as the missiles crossed the vast distance to the sensor net. Finally, the center of the viewscreen erupted in a massive garden of flowering lights. Wyburn checked the sensors again and saw that many of the missiles were being shot down before they reached the targets, though several of the sensor satellites also vanished from the readout.

  “The enemy is countering the missile barrage with heavy defensive fire,” Ferrari reported. “But some of the missiles are getting through. That's one, two... three satellites down.”

  “Well, they know we're here now,” Wyburn said. “Let's see how long it takes them to wake up.”

  “Incoming transmission from the Promenade,” Ferrari said. “Approach the colony at maximum burn and destroy any hostile targets that come within range.”