by Piers Platt
“The warden from the ship is coming?” Falken asked.
“No,” the bearded man replied. “Not that warden.”
“Where’s the facility?” Falken asked.
“About three miles that way,” the bearded man said, pointing. “But I wouldn’t go there, if I were you.”
A slight man was the last to emerge from the crate – short and unassuming, with a kind face and slight paunch, he looked completely out of place among the other hardened convicts, like a librarian who had gotten lost and wandered into the gym’s locker room by accident. He stood, blinking and confused, surveying the foggy alien landscape around him. The man set off after a second, wandering over toward the tree line, and then Falken saw him drop to his knees, his shoulders shaking silently.
He’s crying.
“Fucking give me your water!” Falken turned and saw that a brief shoving match had broken out among the new arrivals – one of the larger inmates was trying to steal another man’s supply kit, along with its water and energy bars.
“Get the fuck off,” the other man told him, and after a short scuffle, the aggressor backed off. Discouraged, he turned away, but caught sight of the kneeling librarian a moment later. He prised a long wooden board off the side of the crate, and then winked at Falken.
“You want in on this?” he asked Falken, nodding toward the librarian.
“In on what?” Falken asked.
“You wanna split his supplies?”
“No. Just leave him alone,” Falken said.
“You gonna try and stop me?” the inmate asked.
Falken frowned, but said nothing. The inmate snorted, and then jogged over to the kneeling man. He planted himself firmly, then swung the wooden board like a baseball bat, smashing the smaller man in the head. The librarian toppled over, unconscious.
The inmate tossed the board aside, and grabbed the smaller man’s supply kit, rifling through it and removing the water and energy bar. Then he discarded the kit. Falken walked over and knelt beside the fallen man. He was bleeding from a gash above his left ear, but Falken had seen worse cuts in the ring. A quick check of his pupils told Falken the man was concussed. Falken picked up the man’s supply kit, and saw that a small leather-bound booklet had fallen out of it. Falken lifted it from the dusty ground – it was not a wallet, as he had first believed, but rather a miniature digital photo album. The screen was cracked, but it turned on when Falken touched it, and he saw an image of the librarian, hugging a wife, with two young children in front of them.
Falken heard a loud whistle, and another inmate emerged from the tree line at a trot. “They’re coming!” he called.
Falken stood, pocketing the digital album by reflex. The older inmates stopped stripping the parachute crate of wood, and hurried over to their supply sleds, picking up handmade harnesses. “Anyone coming to the colony, we leave now,” the bearded man said.
About half of the inmates walked over to the sleds. The bearded man frowned at the unconscious form of the librarian, and then pointed at Falken. “Hey, big guy – mind grabbing him and bringing him over here?”
Falken hefted the librarian under the armpits and then dragged him over to the sleds, placing him on top of the wooden slats.
“What are you going to do with him?” Falken asked.
“Get him to the doc,” the bearded man replied, eyeing the inmate who had attacked the librarian warily. “Wouldn’t be right to just leave him here, anyway.” He peered up at Falken, who stood a solid head taller than him. “You coming with us?” he asked.
Falken wavered for a minute, then shook his head. “No.”
“Suit yourself,” the man replied, and the group set off at a jog toward the tree line, heading away from the facility. They disappeared into the fog amidst the trees a moment later.
Falken turned and started off toward the forest in the opposite direction.
“Where are you going?” one of the remaining inmates asked.
“To call my lawyer,” Falken said.
Chapter 5
Falken walked at a steady pace, heading in roughly the direction the old inmate had indicated. His stomach growled at him, so he unwrapped the energy bar from his supply kit and ate it, downing one of the bottles of water at the same time. The bar was dry and left an aftertaste of slightly rancid peanut butter in his mouth, but it took some of the edge off of his hunger.
As the sun rose higher, the fog burned off, revealing more of the landscape around him. The ground was relatively flat, the earth packed and dry, dusted with pine needles from the trees. Those oddly-shaped trees stretched away as far as he could see on either side, and though they varied in height and thickness, all of their trunks were completely bare of branches and needles from the ground up to chest height. For that first stretch of their growth, each tree’s bark was smooth and white, and when Falken rapped his knuckles experimentally on a lower tree trunk, it was hardened, like polished stone. Then, abruptly, at the same exact height on every tree, the softer greenish-brown bark started, and grew for the rest of the height of the tree.
After a few minutes of walking, Falken heard rustling noises ahead of him. He stopped, listening, but could see nothing moving amongst the white trunks. Then, when the noise persisted, he thought to look up, and spied a number of small, rounded forms in the tops of the trees ahead.
Some kind of animal?
As he watched, one of the forms moved, swinging below a branch from what looked like a feathered tail, before dropping to the row of branches below, next to one of its companions. The creatures looked to be about the size of house cats, but plumper – the way they swung among the branches reminded Falken of monkeys he had seen in a zoo as a boy. They were covered in some sort of fur, which had a bluish-gray tinge to it.
Aliens, Falken thought, with a sudden shock. Whatever those things are, you’re on another planet right now, so those are aliens.
Falken had seen videos of alien species discovered in the colonies, of course, and once, had even held a juvenile space angel at a friend’s party – one of the guests had managed to acquire an import license from Customs to keep one as a pet. The strange little creature had wrapped its lithe form around Falken’s forearm and squeezed, before flapping its wings, nearly deafening him. So he was no stranger to alien lifeforms. But somehow, sighting the new creatures in the trees above him brought the full weight of Falken’s sentence home to him.
You’re a long way from Earth. And you’re probably never going to get back there.
Falken took a deep breath, and wiped at a tear in one eye. Then he cleared his throat, and shook his head angrily.
Cut it out. Man up. Go find your lawyer.
Despite their small size, Falken decided it was best to give the creatures a wide berth – he’d seen enough horror movies to have a deep distrust of any alien life forms, no matter how harmless they appeared.
They’re probably all carnivorous little bastards with razor-sharp teeth and acid blood or something.
He detoured around the stand of trees that held the creatures, and continued toward the facility. He had been walking for several minutes when he spotted something on the ground off to his left. The forest floor was littered with pine needles, but no undergrowth or grass – apart from the trees and the occasional smooth, rounded stone, the forest was quite empty. On instinct, Falken diverted toward the object – its irregular shape gave him the impression that it was man-made.
Whatever it was, it appeared to be covered in fabric – gingerly, Falken used the toe of his boot to move the fabric aside. Underneath was a rusted metal device of some kind. When Falken tipped it over, he found broken pieces of glass, and stray wires sticking out. The fabric was faded and torn, but he could just make out the hint of stripes.
This is one of those surveillance blimps they showed us in the orientation video. The ones that are supposed to be observing and monitoring all of the inmates here.
Falken glanced up through the trees, searching the sky fo
r signs of any other blimps. He saw nothing but the occasional wisp of cloud.
Maybe they’re all at the colony.
Falken continued on. He passed two more groups of the creatures as he walked; one group was chittering loudly at each other, in a noise that reminded him of crickets back home on Earth. And he spotted another crashed surveillance drone, this one hung up in the high branches of a tree. Then, at last, the trees thinned. Falken stepped onto a narrow beach, and gazed out at the planet’s ocean.
The water was a deep blue-black, dark and opaque – even where the shallow water lapped the shore, he could barely see the sand through the water. It was also eerily still – no waves, no signs of current, just a faint ripple in places where the breeze ruffled the surface. Falken had never learned to swim as a child, so he had never been comfortable around water, and deep water in particular made him nervous.
But there’s something extra strange about this ocean. It gives me the creeps.
To his right, the beach stretched for miles, curving inland around a wide bay. Falken saw nothing but trees and sand. To his left, a thick stand of trees blocked his view.
Falken paused, uncertain, looking up into the sky.
I’ve gotta be getting close to the facility now. And it was around the base of the space elevator, which looked huge in the video. I should be able to see it from miles away. So … where the hell is it?
He turned in a circle, and then stepped on something flat and hard, under the sand. He jumped back in surprise, heart racing. An object was sticking out of the sand: thin, with a straight edge. Falken walked in a wide circle, trying to get a better angle on it, and then tapped it with a boot. More sand slid off, revealing a metal sign. He stooped and tugged it free of the sand, brushing it off with one hand. The metal was pitted and worn, rusted with age, and whatever pole it had been attached to was long since gone. The paint had worn off, but Falken could still read the raised lettering, stamped in the metal above an arrow symbol.
Corrections Facility and Space Elevator.
Falken stood, and held the sign up, frowning at the arrow.
Okay. But which way was the arrow pointing before it got knocked down?
He spun slowly, and eventually decided it would have been set up facing the trees – no inmates would have been approaching the shore from the ocean. He held it up with the ocean behind it, and the arrow pointed left.
Space elevator’s gotta be that way, then.
Falken set the sign back on the sand, and then headed toward the thick clump of trees to his left. He found himself hurrying, jogging as he climbed a small dune. Then he heard a high-pitched whine, and a blur of movement in the forest caught his eye. A wheeled vehicle burst out of the trees, slewing to a stop on the beach directly ahead of him, throwing off a spray of sand. Falken drew up short. A man in the passenger seat stood up through the open roof, leaning forward over the vehicle’s roll bar.
“Found another one!”
Chapter 6
The man in the passenger seat wore an inmate’s coveralls, though the shirt had been rolled down to his waist and tied in place, revealing a well-muscled chest covered in scar tissue. The scars were clustered in groups around his chest – each was composed of four vertical lines with a fifth horizontal bar across them.
Painful way to keep count of something, Falken thought. One for each year on the planet, maybe?
“Where are you headed, pal?” the man asked.
“The facility,” Falken answered, warily.
“You’re in luck,” the man said, grinning. He slid easily down to the ground through the vehicle’s open side – if it had had doors in the past, they were no longer attached. “That’s where we’re headed.”
“I’ll walk,” Falken told him. The man was tall, almost as tall as Falken.
“It’s no trouble,” he said. “You’re almost there, might as well hop in the back and come with us.”
Falken eyed the back of the truck – a large metal cargo container sat, box-like, on the truck’s bed.
“What if I say ‘no’? “ Falken asked.
The man’s smile widened, but no hint of it touched his eyes. “Well, that’d be rude,” he said. “The warden just wants to welcome you in person.” Falken noticed he was wearing a kind of glove, with thin metal wires running along each finger.
Where have I seen a glove like that before?
The man walked slowly toward him, and Falken saw the driver climb out of the truck, too. His coveralls had been cut off at the sleeves, and Falken noted the same counting scars along each bicep, just like the first man.
“I don’t want any trouble,” Falken said. He checked over his shoulder quickly, confirming that there was no one behind him. He glanced at the trees, and for a moment, considered running. He looked back at the two men.
“You already got trouble, fucker,” the first man told him. His smile had disappeared.
Fine, asshole. We’ll do it your way.
With a flash of anger, Falken widened his legs, squaring off against the approaching man. His fists balled up and settled into place in front of his chest, assuming the long-familiar stance almost without conscious thought.
“Oh, you want to fight?” The man smiled again. “You’re going to fit right in around here.”
He closed with Falken, and hurled a heavy right hook at Falken’s jaw. But he had telegraphed it plainly, and Falken stepped aside with ease, tagging his attacker’s chin with two sharp jabs in quick succession as he danced away.
The man rubbed at his jaw. “Motherfucker.”
The driver laughed. “Watch out, the big guy can move.”
Angered, the bare-chested man rushed at Falken, swinging another punch, but Falken turned it aside with a forearm and stepped past the man, planting a foot behind him and then neatly tripping him over it. The scarred man landed on his butt on the sand.
Falken felt a pair of arms wrap around him from behind – the driver had seized the opportunity to join the fight. Falken elbowed him hard in the gut, broke free of the man’s hold, and then gripped him by the shoulder, tossing him to the sand next to the first man. Falken stepped back and raised an eyebrow, surveying them. The driver grunted.
“Enough of this shit,” he said. He pushed himself to his feet and touched his forearm, and Falken saw that he wore the same glove-like device that his companion did. A blue-white arc of electricity crackled between the man’s fingers, and suddenly Falken remembered.
The guard on the spaceship. He used that same kind of glove to stun Orris.
Both men were on their feet now, and they bracketed Falken, standing between him and the trees. They advanced slowly, glove hands poised, forcing him back toward the water’s edge.
“Now,” the driver said, and the two men leapt forward. Falken managed to dodge the driver’s gloved hand, but the other man caught him on the arm, and a white-hot jolt of pain seared through him. Falken heard himself scream, and felt all of his muscles contract involuntarily. He toppled stiffly to the sand, twitching.
They picked him up, swearing at how heavy he was, and carried him to the back of the truck, where they dumped him unceremoniously on the sand, face-first. Falken heard a bolt being slid back, and then a metal door creaked open on rusty hinges. A second later, they lifted him again, and heaved him onto the floor of the cargo container. Falken caught a glimpse of several other prisoners in the hold with him, and then the doors slammed shut, enveloping him in darkness.
The truck started up a moment later, and Falken felt himself slide toward the back of the container. He tried to lift his arms to grab onto something or protect himself, but he still couldn’t move them at all. Limp as a rag-doll, he crashed into the back of the container, wincing at the pain.
Ouch.
The truck bounced along for several minutes, and slowly, Falken regained control of his limbs. Jerkily, after several false starts, he managed to push himself into a seated position, and then the truck slammed to a halt again, and he bumped into
another inmate toward the front of the vehicle. The doors opened again.
“Everybody out,” the driver barked.
Falken crawled to the exit and tumbled out, then pulled himself shakily to his feet. Along with five other new inmates, he was standing inside a cement-walled garage. He could see other trucks parked around the expansive vehicle bay, but most of them stood on cement chocks, their hoods open, with parts and tools strewn haphazardly around them. The room was unevenly lit by a bank of LEDs along the ceiling, but many of the bulbs were broken or dark, and Falken saw wiring hanging from several sockets. A vehicle ramp led up and out of the bay at one end; at the other end, a large metal door sat open.
“Move,” the driver ordered, indicating the metal door with his stun-gloved hand.
They complied. Falken found himself at the back of the line, shuffling hurriedly to keep up, his legs still weak from the stun device. His sense of balance seemed off – as they walked, he stumbled several times, barely catching himself. They passed along a dark corridor, down a set of metal stairs, and then through another doorway, and emerged into a massive, circular room, bright with sunlight. Falken squinted and looked up. The building’s roof appeared to have caved in – he could see blue sky above him.
He and the other inmates stood on a raised balcony that curved around the outside of the room. In the center of the room lay an immense metal disk, dozens of feet across. Its top was bare, and its smooth, polished sides rose straight up from the floor several stories below. Though the balcony encircled it, it was not centered within the space – as a result, it looked strangely out of place, as if it had been thrust up from under the ground by some tectonic force, and by chance had come to rest in the midst of this building. Where it stood closest to the balcony, a single wooden plank connected the top of the disk to a gap that had been cut out of the balcony fence. Around the base of the metal disk, Falken saw a dozen other inmates sitting or sleeping on the floor. Most looked thin, their coveralls baggy over gaunt frames, but he recognized several faces from the prison transport and the spaceship – new arrivals, just like him. The sound of heavy boots ringing on the balcony’s metal grating made him turn.
