Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins

by Randolph Lalonde

  Chapter 5

  Captivity

  I woke up on a thin mattress with a headache worse than anything I could have imagined. It felt like my brain was too large for my head, but somehow it found enough space to throb anyway. I opened my eyes to slits and was immediately reminded of my old apartment on Freeground. The cell had the same prefabricated, plastic, white look. The mattress I was laying on was just a softer section of the pallet built into the wall. There were no seams in the small room, not even where the sink or toilet met the sides of my cell.

  The white walls gleamed under the harsh light. I had been stripped of everything and redressed in a thin plastic jumpsuit. Across from my cell was another, and Jason sat in it. There was no look of despair or panic on his face as I might have expected. He looked as though he were completely at peace with where he was and his situation. I watched him through my slitted gaze for a few more moments and noticed that his eyes were very slowly, methodically scanning everything around him one centimetre at a time.

  I could see some kind of field was blurring the air between his cell and mine and assumed it would be pointless to try and pass through it. I sat up and winced.

  “Captain?” Jason whispered. His voice was a little distorted by the fields, but I could make out what he was saying clearly. “Are you all right?”

  “I've been better. How long have I been out?”

  “About nine hours. Those electromag weapons they use are the worst. Besides the regular lethal variety, I mean.”

  “Yeah, they're pretty bad,” I agreed, gently holding my head in my hands.

  “They used one on me when they took me out of here. I woke up in an interrogation room. I guess they revived me early. I was given meds for the headache though.”

  “Tell them anything?”

  Jason hesitated.

  “Whatever it was, you can tell me about it. Don't worry.”

  “I told them about the ship, our mission, and Freeground. I'm sorry sir.”

  “That's all right. I don't think that they had this kind of situation in mind when they came up with our orders, and if they did, I can deal with the consequences as long as we come out of this in one piece. Have you seen anyone else?”

  “The only person I haven't seen is Elise. They even brought Oz by. He looked pissed off but they fixed him up.”

  “How did everyone else look?”

  “That's what I don't understand. Some of them were knocked out, others were like you. The security officers were in perfect shape. But they beat Doctor Lang.”

  “They did what?”

  “She had a split lip and the start of a black eye.” Jason replied.

  I thought about it for a moment and tried to lie down. My head only pounded more fiercely when it touched the minimal padding of the bunk, so I sat up slowly again. “They're trying to make us think some of us are providing more information than others. The only one I see holding out is Oz. I never rescinded his gag order. I'm sure everyone else is cooperating as much as they can, but that's not what they want us to think.”

  “What do you think they'll do next?”

  “Did they ask you anything about me?”

  “Only how long you've been in command and our personal opinion of you. They wanted to know a lot about your previous military record and what kind of missions you sent us on. I couldn't tell them much since I really don't know anything about your previous record, and Concordia was our first mission off ship.”

  “You never read my service record?”

  “I never had a reason to read past the vitals I guess. They weren't very happy that I didn't have much information on you, though, and they kept on asking about your involvement with the All-Con conflict. I think they already know you're a veteran.”

  “Well, then I'd say they'll be taking me next. Good thing I don't plan on keeping anything a secret. I'm already off balance with this headache.”

  “Are you sure we're doing the right thing Jonas? Telling them everything about home and our mission?”

  “I think so. They're professionals playing a pretty deep psychological game over a short time period. I'll bet that these lights never go out, and if they do, we'll be in complete darkness. We're also being recorded and our vitals are being monitored. If they knew to ask about the All-Con conflict, then they've already done some research and come up with something significant, at least where Minh and I are concerned. We're being processed, I don't know what for yet though. We'll most likely be entered into their court system soon. Besides, I get the feeling that Vindyne is pretty large, and their influence is significant in the galaxy. They already know what Freeground is, if they don't I'll be really surprised.”

  “Probably. How do you know so much about corporate prisons, by the way?”

  “Contraband movies. It's amazing what I could get my hands on in Port Operations back home.”

  “I could imagine.”

  Jason and I stood at the sound of approaching footsteps. A few moments later two guards escorted Minh-Chu past our cells. He looked like I felt, and watched me from the corner of his eye. Even during the All-Con conflict, on that desolate rock where we burned factories to the ground and made wholesale theft of stock yards possible by killing regiments of guards, there was always some kind of lightness to him. The levity that I knew in him was gone.

  The guards came back without him and stopped in front of my cell. The haze generated by the barrier disappeared and one of the guards motioned with his gun. “Come with us.”

  I stood and walked towards them. I was in complete disbelief at how close I was allowed to come. I was within inches of his helmet. I could see my reflection in his eye pieces.

  It was so tempting to take the opportunity to fight, steal one of their weapons and start blasting. I glanced up the row of cells then back down. In one direction there were sealed security doors. In the other was a hall. All along the uncountable length were hundreds of cells stacked ten high. The hallway extended from either side of the cell hall in sections and I looked a bit further to my right to see that there were cells below as well. Most of the energy fields closing off the fronts of the cells seemed distorted or opaque. It was deathly quiet for a place where tens of thousands of people were kept alone or paired in cells.

  One guard nudged me with the muzzle of his rifle and I started walking towards the nearest doorway. “Quite a place you've got here. Ever have a prison break?”

  “No.”

  “You should try it. Really spices up your day.”

  I was escorted to a massive receiving area. I looked to either side and saw that there were other doors leading to other sections of the prison. In front and to the left of me I could see through transparesteel plating into the reception area proper where thousands of captives were being processed.

  Young children were left with their mothers, but everyone else was separated into lines, a few for men sorted by fitness, and a few for women sorted by age. Guards watched from walkways above, some armed with the electromag rifles I'd already become so familiar with. Others had shorter, deadlier looking weapons with single barrels.

  One young man began to fight with a guard as he was separated from a woman holding a wailing little girl and all three of them were shot by electromag rifles. They fell to the floor twitching for several moments before they lay still. I couldn't look away until I was sure they were all still breathing.

  As I turned my head I saw them roughly lifted then dropped onto conveyor belts that lead deeper into the processing center.

  “As the wounded go by, I'll be the one standing. The stones forget our names as they erode down, featureless. As the innocent go by, I'll just close my eyes,” I recited as I was rushed down the hall. It was a poem written by one of the founders of Freeground. It was inscribed on one of the walls in the oldest section, and until then I did not completely understand it. We were always told it was about helplessness and represented a turning point in our history when apathy turned to indignation, and our foun
ders struck out to make a place for themselves. There was no apathy in me as I was guided through a door into a darkened room. One of the guards sat me down in a metal chair in the middle of the chamber. The other shot me with his electromag rifle from behind, just as I was about to recite the second half of the poem for my benefit as much as anyone else's.

  Chapter 6

  A Room, a Table and Two Chairs

  Have you ever had a really bad dream, woken up, then gone back to sleep only to find an even worse nightmare waiting? As I tried to raise my pounding head from the polished metal surface of a table and found I couldn't, that's exactly how I felt. While I mentally cursed at the guard who shot me for absolutely no reason, I took stock of my situation.

  I was in a chair. Well, not just in a chair; I was strapped to a chair with ankle and wrist restraints. My head or neck wasn't strapped to the table. I just couldn't lift it. It throbbed so badly that I wanted to both scream and scurry into a corner at the same time. Then the lights came on.

  I heard a weak, mournful cry and realized a moment later that it came from me. I could barely move my mouth. My eyes were watering and my nose was running.

  “Captain Valent.” A voice enunciated intentionally and clearly, as though caressing the words, tasting every syllable. “My dear Captain Valent,” he slowly walked around the table, tracing the space of the room. “I wonder if your name is shortened from Valentine. So many of us have names that have been butchered by the modern progression of things. It is normally a sign that we are from a lesser class, of lower breeding. You see, those teeming masses were once hard to keep track of, back when there were only a handful of colonies. So many mouths to feed in so little space. One thing us humans are good at is breeding, and it seems the lower classes were always so much more reckless about it than the more educated, intelligent few. They would have more children earlier and over time that means more generations, more poor breeders, more mouths to feed, less time for education and less spent on refinement. Thus, without the money, power or education to know enough to make an effort to maintain the integrity of one's family name, the less refined side of humanity runs around with butchered names and broken, untraceable genealogies. It makes them mutts I suppose,” he laughed at his own realization and stopped to look at me. “From your scans we can see no evidence of inbreeding, I suppose I'll have to have them scan you again.”

  Just the sound of this man's voice and its manner -- pompous and holier than thou -- made me angry. Even though all my other senses were overwhelmed by pain, I closed my teeth and started to sit up.

  “Oh, I don't think you want to do that. Your nervous system has taken a fantastic shock.”

  I clenched and ground my teeth together. Through the pain in my spine, the intense tingling in my fingers and toes, and the rhythmic explosions in my brain I pulled with my shoulders, stiffened my neck, and dragged my head off the table. Then up, up, until I finally sat properly upright. My head kept on wanting to fall to the side or forward, even backwards a few times.

  The expression on the man's face was that of amusement and surprise. It was a narrow, angular face, with a pointed chin and a long, thin nose. “I'm impressed. What will it be for your next trick? Will you loosen your restraints and disappear right before our eyes? Perhaps you'll make me disappear? That would be impressive, but considering your long lost namesake, not all together surprising. Did you know that there was once a Saint Valentine?”

  I concentrated on remaining upright and trying to calm down at the same time. Slowing my blood flow might have reduced the pain.

  “Yes, Saint Valentine,” he went on. “Thousands of years ago there was an Empire, the Romans. Not much like the Romans of today, but in some ways similar, I suppose. They did enjoy similar entertainments. They were opposed to the concept of Christianity then, a religion of forgiveness, kindness, and morality. You must have heard of it. Valentine was a priest in this order and was captured along with entire families of Christians then sent to the Roman arena. They would feed great beasts called lions with these Christians, so low they were that their enemies used them as fodder.

  “On the day Valentine was to become feed for the Roman beasts, he stood in line behind a young couple just beginning their lives together. Valentine took their place after saying something very poetic and quote-worthy, I'm sure. The Centurion didn't really care, one Christian was as good as another. Priest, child, newlywed couple-there was little difference.

  “Valentine walked to the center of the arena with thousands of Romans looking on. The mob must have been shouting and cheering, revelling in their unbridled blood-lust. This was a priest who was to be fodder for the beast, it was going to be a real show!”

  My head throbbed every time the thin man raised his voice to punctuate his story. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to shut him out for a moment, but only made it worse.

  My captor went on. “Valentine would not entertain the masses, so he knelt then began to pray quietly to his God. The lions did not care, and took their meal slowly, biting and tearing at him. He did not scream. Not so much as a whimper. Now that is strength. That is faith! Wouldn't that be impressive?”

  I was drooling. My preventative slurp pierced this silent moment.

  “There are many different versions of this tale. One ends by claiming that the crowd was in awe of the man's strength, and his piety made them look away in the final moments. That their bloodlust was slaked and they were ashamed. In that telling, they say the young couple and the other Christians lived to be fodder another day. In another telling it is recorded that the day went on, the young couple and many other Christians were killed and the audience looked on as usual as the helpless believers ran from the beasts here and there before they were torn to shreds in a feeding frenzy. Regardless, his strength, his sacrifice was meaningless in the end. The act of piety and grace bought at best a short reprieve for a people who were destined to die. That day or the next, it didn't matter.”

  I looked at the man's uniform. It was navy blue and pressed carefully, every seam was perfect. His shoes reflected the bright lights, and his knuckles were raw. The image of Doctor Lang's black eye and split lip filled my mind for a moment, and I must have glared at him. “Why write it down?” I forced myself to say. He paced around me, sizing me up.

  “What's that? Why record the story in the first place? History loves an underdog. Besides, just a few hundred years later, the Christians befriended and bred their way into the upper ranks of Rome, and were victorious. They controlled their former enemies, and therefore were able to change the recording of history. For all we know Saint Valentine was a sword bearing savage, a man of war and bloodshed who rode in a chariot drawn by four lions he would feed with the corpses of fallen Roman soldiers.” He lowered himself down to my eye level and looked at me more closely. “I have heard from every crew member that we've been keeping and they believe in you. A few of them even think that you are their key to freedom. I see strength in you, the dedication of a misguided man who still doesn't realize how helpless and outmatched he really is. If you were Valentine, I would bet on the former mythical figure. A misguided Saint who actually believes that he can make a difference,” he straightened and continued pacing around the room.

  I just stared at him as he circled the room, and glared as he came closer.

  “I wonder what your people on Freeground will think. Our efforts to contact them haven't produced results, but the Triad Corporation has already responded. They'll be more than happy to discuss you and your people.”

  I couldn't help being furious at myself and at Vindyne. I tried not to show it but could feel my face turning red.

  “Yes, Triad has a profile on you. Apparently you were a lieutenant commander in Freeground's Port Operations center, the first face many ship captains saw when they entered Freeground controlled space. I wonder what you did to earn yourself a ship and crew. How did you earn your crew's trust so well after assuming command? Are you some kind of hero? You don't hav
e the bearing or presence of a hero. No, I think you had a lucky accident and failed upwards. That makes more sense. Nevertheless, Triad wants you, and they're willing to pay much more than we are for your ship. The current offer is eight billion UCW credits. There is a bonus of five million credits for each crew member we can deliver to them alive as well. You hear that? They want you and your crew alive. Is that enough hope for you Saint Valentine?”

  I tried to ignore what he was saying, but it made me furious. I sat and tried to control my breathing.

  “The problem is, we don't have your ship yet. I'm sure that if we were to find it, they would not come easily. If you want to save your crew, you will have to deliver them to us with your ship. If they come quietly you'll simply be transported back and handed over to Triad.”

  I looked up to him and our eyes met for just a moment. I knew I was glaring. I couldn't help it.

  The bird man gave me a mock hurt expression and a gasp. “You injure me, Saint Valentine. Hate is an emotion that controls those without culture, those without a tendency towards tact and grace. I had imbued my image of you with much better qualities,” he stepped behind me and pushed hard with one hand right between my shoulder blades. My head hit the table like a gavel, and I was too enveloped in anguish to know whether or not I cried out. When the pain subsided a little, I rested. Just breathing. I just concentrated on breathing.

  “We could continue this pointless exercise or I could have them administer some medication, alleviate the pain, repair some of the nerve damage you sustained. All you have to do is answer a question or two, and that'll start setting things right. Getting us back on the right path. Perhaps we could even be friends for a short time. They say that the best kind of friendship is one that forms in passing. You only get to see the best sides of people that way.”