by J. N. Chaney
Oops.
I knew better than to mess with anyone from spec ops. I’d been there done that before getting plucked for dark ops, where my training not only got harder but weirder. Long story.
Not many people made it through Reaper training. Fewer stayed in the field half as long as I did. There weren’t many of us left.
“Warden,” Briggs said without looking at the man whose office he had invaded.
“Yes, Commander?”
“Get out.”
James Esquire III, Warden of Bluesphere Maximum Security Prison, left without a word. The wood-paneled door clunked shut and sealed in a way that made it very clear it wasn’t made from wood.
“Kind of gloomy in here,” I said, stalling while I looked around and took stock of what was in the room. I suspected there was at least one recording device and perhaps a quick reaction force waiting behind a hidden door. “Mind if we turn on some lights?”
Briggs punched a button on the desk, illuminating the room. “You’re quick. I bet you know everything about this room from that one glance. And I’m guessing you already have at least part of an escape plan formed based on that information.”
“It’s not my escape you should be worried about, but what I’d do before I attempted it.”
“Like kill me?” he asked, nonchalantly.
Shrugging, I selected a leather couch and flopped down. Stretched out, I felt almost human—determined to forget about my tiny cell for as long as possible. “I don’t really know you, so don’t piss your pants. Besides, the warden’s as much a prisoner here as I am. No one can get out of this office without permission. There’s a door behind that stuffed gazelle. Did you replace his security team with your own quick reaction force?”
“What makes you think that’s where the door is? Just looks like some tasteless taxidermy and a wall to me.”
“The gazelle is cheap. The warden’s not gonna want his goons knocking over the tiger or the bear. And you can see where it’s been moved. Wear marks on the floor.” I waved a hand at the grooves dismissively. “Probably actually attached to the sliding door. What are we doing here, Commander?”
Briggs took a short tour of the room, popping his knuckles then rolling his neck. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was looking forward to a fight.
“You’re on death row. I never liked you when you were with spec ops and didn’t hear good things about your career after that. So let’s not pretend we’re going to be buddies. I’m here to offer you special treatment in return for certain services you might render the Union.”
“Great. I’ve always wanted to go on another suicide mission,” I replied sarcastically.
He ignored that. “I’ve read all of your mission debriefs and can tell you this will probably be a walk in the park for you.”
“You act like I’m going to do it. Don’t make assumptions. Life is easy here. Maybe someday I’ll be executed, but how is that different than dying out there with you?”
Briggs laughed. “You’re not gonna work with me. I’ll watch your every move, sure. You’ll take orders from me. But the last place you will be is with me on the battlefield. I don’t trust anybody who’s been in dark ops more than a week, and Reapers are freaks.”
“And yet here we are,” I said, spreading my hands wide.
Briggs stood near the couch at a slight angle that gave him the advantage if I abandoned my extremely comfortable slouch to attack him. He looked bigger and more pissed off than when I first saw him by the desk.
“Let me shuck it down to the cob for you. I have a mission that you’re going on—like it or not. In return, you get special treatment. All you have to do is recover one VIP from a tough spot.”
“Tell me again what you mean by special treatment.”
“I won’t have you executed tomorrow.”
“Oh! Tomorrow. You know what, that might be a relief. Let’s do it. I want to see if you have the authority to quash my appeal that’s been in limbo for two years.”
“Don’t test me,” warned the commander, lowering his voice.
“There’s a catch. Something you’re not telling me. Hostage rescue is a mission that spec ops trains for. You don’t need me.”
He shrugged. “The individual in question is a doctor lost on a humanitarian mission. He’s connected—not the type of person my bosses are going to forget about.”
“Stop bullshitting me, or we’re done,” I said.
“The humanitarian mission was on Dreadmax.”
“Dreadmax? You want me to infiltrate the place the warden threatens to send me if I misbehave? The place worse than death row at BMSP? Put me back in my cell. I have an appointment at 1755 hours.”
“Godsdammit, Cain! I’m giving you a chance for a pardon and you’re making toilet jokes. Drop the tough guy act and listen. You have the best infiltration record in the Union. Orders of magnitude more successful than anyone else in spec ops or dark ops combined. Better yet, you are, how can I say it, accustomed to incarceration,” Briggs said.
I couldn’t take this bullshit anymore, so I stood up. He stepped back, probably seeing the look on my face and wondering how many people I’d shanked since being in prison. “This place isn’t a mouse fart compared to Dreadmax. Here we have asshole guards, unreasonable curfews, and shitty food. That place is probably run by cannibals and crazies by now. Whoever your VIP is, he’s dead or worse. But most of all, you’re forgetting what kind of infiltration I did.”
“You brought people out of Glandar, Roxo III, and Kanick’s World,” he insisted.
“Those were kidnappings, except Roxo. That was an assassination and I only brought the body out as proof of death,” I corrected.
“Pretend it’s a kidnapping. Keep the principal alive, and it’s no different.”
“Dreadmax isn’t like going to a planet,” I said, thinking of the legendary environment shields covering parts of the station’s surface.
“We have full schematics and state-of-the-art surveillance you can use to plan your infiltration and exfiltration route,” he offered, as if that would sway me.
I wasn’t even thinking about taking this deal, and he probably knew it. “Schematics from when? When it was a system defense platform?”
His embarrassed expression told me I was right. Their intelligence on Dreadmax was shit. I’d be going in blind and without support. No matter what he said about this being easy compared to my prior missions, this was a one-way trip. He probably wanted me to find this lost puppy so he could send in his own teams and leave me there to die.
“We have the original architectural plans and the maintenance records up to the point it was turned into a correctional facility.”
“Dumping ground, you mean.”
“There is limited power, gravity, and life-support, so I seriously doubt the criminals we dropped in there have made a lot of changes.”
I took a few seconds. “Briggs, you’re a total son-of-a-bitch. You’ve got to know all of your troops hate your guts. Hell, it takes a certain type of officer to knowingly send men off to die, and you’re exactly the kind to do it without a second thought. Far as I know, you’re trying to march me into a suicide run.”
“Think what you want, but the whole point of a mission like this is extraction. If you die, then the mission fails,” he said, unmoved by my casual insults. “Give me an answer or I’m sending you back to your cell.”
2
The warden’s office was nice. Threats about having me executed seemed abstract and distant compared to having to leave. I walked around the room until I found the liquor cabinet and opened it. Pulling out a bottle, I looked over my shoulder at Briggs. “You mind?” I asked.
He glared at me. “Stop fucking around. You went AWOL and killed seventeen people. There’s a reason you’re on death row. Frankly, talking to you makes me want to toss my lunch.” The commander’s eyes lingered on my prosthetic—a deadly tool when the nerve-ware wasn’t being disrupted by BMSP safety protocols.
I twisted the cork out, grinding my teeth and resisting the urge to turn the bottle into a weapon. He had to realize I could beat him to death before his QRF made it through the door. “They were gangsters and they murdered my father and a bunch of other people I grew up with. Bastards, every last one of them, and they deserved what I gave them.”
“Doesn’t matter what they did. That’s why we have a justice system. You had no right to go full vigilante. You did, however, have an obligation to stay with your unit and follow orders.”
“Briggs, my unit conducted counterinsurgencies, kidnappings, and assassinations. You’re gonna honestly stand there and tell me there’s a difference?” I raised my brow as we locked eyes. “Don’t be so naive.”
“You know there is,” he answered, overlooking my use of his name instead of his title. “Screwed up as the galaxy might be, and no matter how unfair you think it is, society operates on law and order. You killed—”
“I’ve killed a lot more than seventeen people and you know it. Some of them”—I spared him a glance—“I killed for you.”
He shrugged. “During a state of war, but those were never personal. Even if you ignore the law, that’s that difference.”
I drank from the bottle. The amber liquid burned all the way down.
He continued. “I didn’t come here to ask you. You’re doing this mission, one way or another.”
I looked at the bottle of allegedly expensive whiskey. “Someone needs to tell the warden he got robbed. This is horse piss.”
Briggs didn’t take the bait. I put the bottle down and faced him. “Did you read the part of my file where I don’t respond well to authority figures?”
“That’s why I never liked you. When you were in spec ops, the officers were always complaining about your shitty attitude.”
“I’m not doing your mission. Go get your little lost sheep yourself.”
He sighed, pausing a moment before finally shaking his head. “Wrong answer, Cain.”
As beatings went, the one I received after telling Commander Briggs off was one for the record books. There was a lot of profanity and cracks about his mother and certain animals. Maybe I taunted the guards a bit more than I should have, but I didn’t think it was a stretch to assume they enjoyed the company of wild boars. I mean, it certainly would have explained a few things.
Curling into a ball in the corner of my cell where I was sometimes allowed to take a less than private shower did nothing to stop the bleeding or slow the swelling. Something heavier than mist but less dense than actual water came down from the ceiling and rinsed a layer of the blood and grime from my face and body. It was cold, so I was confident it wasn’t urine this time.
Fucking guards.
I couldn’t blame this on Briggs, no matter what kind of unfair asshole he was. Spec ops doesn’t stoop to bullying. They’d have given me a chance to fight back. Code of honor and all that.
Regardless, I was a fucking mess right now and seriously wondered if a different answer would have saved me a beating. Hadn’t had one like this in months.
Boot marks decorated my body. I held up my left arm and examined it, the worst of my pain originating there. The tread impressions were nearly perfect. I could track a man across a planet from prints like that.
Breathe, Cain. Forget about it. Figure out what you need to do.
As I lay there, my mind swam with options while I tried to work out what to do next. I was damn sure about two things: I was sick of this place, and Commander Briggs wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Clearly.
Telling him to fornicate with a razor boar hadn’t been smart. All I got was a serious ass-beating, and I would still have to do what they wanted.
Well, maybe I didn’t have to, but they’d keep this up until I either agreed to it or died. One of those two options was preferable to the other. I just had to decide which.
What exactly had they lost on Dreadmax? Based on all of this, it sure didn’t seem like some no-name doctor.
What I should’ve done was rest until they sent me one of their poorly educated, underpaid medics. I’d probably get some decent pain meds and stitches.
The problem was time. Whatever Briggs had in store for me was going to happen soon. I needed to have his secrets figured out before then.
I’d heard of humanitarian missions to prisons. Some of my best conversations since arriving here had been with do-good volunteers. I wished I’d asked what kind of doctor this mysterious good Samaritan was supposed to be. For now, I assumed he was a medical doctor and that it was possible he went to the worst penitentiary in the galaxy to do good deeds.
Laughing hurt and I spent several minutes trying to stop. Everything Briggs said was half-truth. He wanted me to find someone, and that someone was important. What I needed to know was what Briggs planned to do with me when it was over.
Fuck it. Anyplace was better than here. I’d rather go on a mission to hell than spend one more night in this cell, which made me wonder why I’d refused.
I crawled to my bed and pulled the scratchy blanket over my battered form. Several revelations occurred at the moment I was slipping into unconsciousness. The doctor was probably actually a scientist who had been doing some illegal shit where no one thought it would matter.
Which basically made it a mission for someone in dark ops. Someone expendable. It might even be a mission for a Reaper.
“Inmate Cain, you are required to wake up. You’ve slept one minute and nineteen seconds past reveille. If you do not move from your bunk in five seconds, I will be forced to initiate a stimulus,” said the voice of CIM in my ear.
By stimulus, he meant one hell of a shock delivered into my spine. Not lethal or even debilitating but very unpleasant. I’d had worse, like the time a pissed-off guard stepped on my face.
“Please acknowledge, Inmate Cain.”
“Yeah, yeah. Wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the man.”
“Correct,” replied the CIM.
“What do you think, X?”
“Please refrain from attempting contact with your X-37 Reaper AI,” the CIM said.
Neither the CIM nor X-37 were true artificial intelligences. Their specs listed them as limited AIs. Within that broad designation, there was a world of variation. A CIM was like a more sophisticated ankle bracelet. X-37 was completely different. It helped me navigate strange worlds and murder people—a standard of usefulness the CIM could only dream of.
“Do you really want to risk contact?” X-37 said, his voice sounding distant and scratchy. As part of my cybernetic upgrades, he couldn’t be removed, only quarantined. But Reaper implants like X-37 rarely came without a downside. Interaction with X brought certain consequences.
“Please check the earbud, Inmate Cain. I’m losing connectivity with BMSP servers,” the CIM ordered.
The earbud was only an antenna. The actual hardware was wired someplace I’d never found.
I massaged the earbud. “What’s on the schedule, X? I’m tired of CIM. Make him shut the fuck up.”
X-37 made a quiet beep that indicated he was about to give me information. It was a weird glitch that I attributed to damage from an earlier mission.
“You are to remain in your cell for a visitor.”
“Details?”
“None available at this time.”
Another alert warned me I didn't have much time to shit and shower. I only wished I could shave, but that was something they did for me during medical checkups.
Thankfully, the military had taught me to be quick and efficient. As a result, I had some idle time before my visitor arrived.
“Are you daydreaming, Reaper Cain?” asked X-37.
“You got a problem with that?”
“Sometimes your heart rate increases. At other times, it decreases. It makes it difficult for me to anticipate your needs.” A pause. “I don’t have the capacity for imagination.”
“Not really my problem,” I muttered. “But thanks for interru
pting.”
“Insincerity and sarcasm detected,” acknowledged the A.I.
There were things an inmate could do besides stare into space when there was nothing but time. I’d tried them all. When I was bored with dreams and old memories, I would perform physical and mental exercises or meditate. There wasn't time for the former at the moment, so I did some stretching and then sat cross-legged on my bed to calm myself.
“Your heart rate is forty-six beats per minute and your respiration steady,” noted X-37.
“I didn’t really need to know that, but thanks for the insight.”
“You’re welcome, Reaper Cain.”
The paint inside Ultramax IX was tan, I thought. Or maybe it was just dirty. Didn’t matter. I knew the look of every crack in the veneer. Underneath the paint was nothing but engineered concrete reinforced with steel—a simple design made to last.
This place was made to keep people like me locked away forever. A depressing thought, but there it was.
Good thing I was going on a field trip.
At the end of the hallway, far out of my view, one of the main doors opened. It had that sound of a heavy slab of metal slamming. Men were talking, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Footsteps.
Another door.
Warning klaxons ringing overhead.
The door to death row.
If I were paranoid, I’d have assumed my visitor was taking his or her—let's be hopeful here—sweet time to make me feel a little more uncomfortable. Add a little dramatic effect for whatever show they were about to give me.
That would make them stupid, though, because no one knew the waiting game better than an inmate on this block.
"Inmate Cain, your heart rate is accelerating. Are you anticipating a confrontation?" asked CIM.
"That's none of your business, but sure. Why not? Why would I think I might be beaten or interrogated or put in isolation? Like that’s ever happened," I mocked.
By the time I ended the conversation with my cybernetic monitor, I'd identified who was coming to see me. Made me proud, actually. It'd been a while since I'd identified a person by the sound of their footsteps.
