“I got it,” said Henry in a whisper.
With the blood raging in his ears, Alistair perhaps did not show the proper appreciation but he did manage a nod. “Send it through.”
Sitting down on the floor and trying to effect a nonchalant air, Henry slipped a finger into his left shoe, dug around a bit, and finally dragged the stasis capsule out.
“You put it in your shoe?”
“Why not?” asked Henry in an irritated tone as he passed the capsule through.
Grimacing, Alistair looked for a clean spot on his body to wipe the capsule, but found nothing. Instead, with a wary eye on the distracted Guard, he popped the capsule in his mouth, worked it around to build up saliva, and swallowed it.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“You did fine,” Alistair managed, accidentally meeting the gaze of a curious prisoner and quickly looking away. “Thank you.”
“I hope it helps.”
“It will.”
The two sat for a moment, but with so many eyes on them there was little either was willing to say. Henry finally collected himself and stood up.
“Goodbye, Alistair.”
“Goodbye, my friend.”
Henry nodded. As he walked down the aisle of cages, Gregory called out to him, “Henry!”
Henry paused, a look of surprise and then relief on his face. He lifted a hand to wave goodbye and Gregory did likewise, and then Henry was out the door.
It was only a few minutes later when the low muffled rumbling of an explosion reached their ears. The hushed conversations that had resumed were cut off. Prisoners shifted uneasily and the Guardsman grabbed the audiphone. Seconds after he ended the call, the door opened and four Civil Guard marched in, armed and armored.
“What the hell’s going on out there?” demanded one prisoner.
One of the Guardsmen, a beefy man with forearms as thick as a normal man’s thighs, pointed a short, thick finger in his direction and barked, “Keep your damn mouths shut or you’re gettin’ a muzzle!” No one said another word.
Another explosion rumbled its way to them, this one close enough that the tremor could be felt. Alistair’s keen ears detected what he thought might be gunfire. The prisoners, cowed into silence, had little to do but restlessly stir in their cells, shifting from one apprehensive pose to another. Just outside the door, the sound of dozens of boots stomping the floor in unison was heard, passing from left to right and fading back into silence. Then another explosion hit, this one making the floor rattle.
A moment later the door opened and an officer rushed through. He exchanged words with the others who nodded and turned to the prisoners. “We’re gonna transfer you to the ship, now,” said one while the officer rushed back outside.
The Guardsmen proceeded to the back corner of the detention block and the original Guard typed again on his sleeve. A section of the floor lowered, forming a ramp leading into a dark lower level.
“Let’s make this quick,” suggested one of the Guards and they surrounded a prisoner’s cell. A few strokes on the keypad and the light bars disappeared. The Civil Guard moved in, handcuffed the man and took him down the ramp and into the darkness, reemerging to repeat the process.
Figuring the process would reveal nothing interesting, Alistair lay down and closed his eyes. He was far too alert to fall asleep, so he listened to the excited stirrings of the prisoners and the occasional sound of troop movements and battle. They would come for him when they came for him, to take him to the last journey through space he would ever take. Until then, there was nothing to do but wait.
***
The gathered crowd of Arcarians at the harbor provided the perfect opportunity for a diversion. With a few men, a large tumult was achieved with a couple shots and a few well timed screams. The Civil Guard did not hesitate to put down the riot and protect the ships in the harbor, and with so many of the forces thus distracted, Oliver struck at the spaceport.
His men were few but well equipped. Having infiltrated the spaceport over the course of an hour or so, in groups small enough to draw little notice, Oliver and half a dozen others arrived in a transport auto filled with the weapons they could not sneak inside. The other three dozen men appeared at the front gates just in time to get their weapons and the well timed though hastily planned assault was on.
It was a move that might not have worked a few days hence, but the State was still grappling to regain control of the city. There were five Civil Guard stationed at the spaceport for every rebel, but they did not come upon them all at once. Instead, they encountered surprised and disorganized resistance in small pockets, and these they swept away with comparative ease.
Now Oliver Keegan 3nn stood in the large, empty hall he knew to be the detention center. Just outside the door lay the two Guardsmen he had shot, but he and his men were alone inside.
“The computers have been locked down, sir,” said a man seated at the computer station. “I can’t get information.”
Oliver gritted his teeth in anger and fired off a few rounds into the far wall. His men hung their heads, hoping his angry gaze would not fall on them.
“We did what we could,” he finally mumbled. “Let’s commandeer a vessel and get out.”
He strode quickly for the exit and the half dozen men with him fell into step behind. Upon returning to the terminal hall, he was met by another of his men.
“The prisoners are being loaded onto a transport,” he excitedly said.
“Where?” demanded Oliver, enveloping the man’s comparatively frail shoulders in his massive hands and squeezing more than he realized.
“You can see it from the window.”
Oliver was only a half step behind him, and when he arrived, anxious hands gripping the rail, he peered out over the landing pads at a trail of prisoners being led up a ramp and into the round, pyramidal form of a transport vessel. They were at least three hundred yards away and guarded by a score of Civil Guard who formed a tunnel on either side of the entrance ramp. Gusts of wind swirled around, carrying snow and lashing at the men.
“We’ll never reach them in time,” he breathed softly, trying to make out Alistair’s larger form but failing to spot him. “Are you sure those are the prisoners?”
“They are.” The man waited a moment while Oliver watched the ramp being raised. “Sir?” he prompted.
Shaking his head, Oliver said, “It’s time to retreat.”
He lingered a moment longer as the ship started to float, no longer secured to the ground by gravity. Then, as if a cord was cut, it soundlessly fell into the sky. Before ten seconds passed it was a small dot, and then it was obscured by clouds.
“Goodbye, Alistair,” he said. A moment later he turned from the window and left.
End of Part I
PART II
Chapter 43
The ride was designed for speed, not comfort. The acceleration of the ship pushed Alistair and the other passengers into the floor. He stood erect at the small circular window, his mighty legs bracing him while the others sank into the floor or the metal benches lining the walls of the twenty-by-twenty holding cell. The benches had straps to hold passengers in place, but with cuffed hands and overfull capacity, and lacking guards who cared enough to strap them in, the two score men and handful of women were left to the mercy of inertia. A couple prisoners groaned against the forces assaulting their bodies but Alistair maintained his silence, watching as the city of Arcarius sank beneath him. Avon would be farther west, probably visible on the other side of the transport vessel. Before long they were above the clouds. The curve of the planet next became discernible and the entirety of the main continent could be seen.
The vast, sprawling city of Rendral and its twenty five million inhabitants came into view, filling Aldra’s Birth Crater. Centuries ago, when the emigrant ship reached the system, conditions were unfit for human colonization, and the lengthy process of terraforming was begun. After Aldra was surveyed and its life forms – almost exclusively bacter
ia – collected and preserved, the first step in the process of terraforming was to wipe the slate clean. Suitable asteroids were found, chosen for size and composition, and impact routes and speed determined after much calculation. Most were directed towards the oceans, creating great clouds of scalding steam to sterilize the planet. One, however, was sent towards land, and it created the Birth Crater, a sort of signature after the lengthy and arduous process of composing their opus. In the Birth Crater the first and capital city of Aldra was founded. Alistair thought of his sister as he stared at its lights, wondering which of them illuminated her.
The blue of the sky faded, replaced by the speckled blackness of space. The circular window darkened against the sun, and thus protected, he stared into Aldra, the G-class star, slightly smaller and much younger than the sun of the human homeworld, with defunct solar power stations in close orbit around it. Craning his neck, Alistair could just make out The Incarcerator as their small vessel approached it. Like most modern interstellar cruisers, it had the shape of a disk and was riddled with miniature lights, some of them constant, others blinking, a few pulsing and whirling.
The pseudo-gravity of their vessel diminished as the ship slowed its acceleration. The low hum of the HD engine ceased when it was switched off. After a few seconds there was no gravity at all and inertia alone carried them forward. With his hands cuffed behind his back, Alistair could do little to keep his position near the window, and when a fellow prisoner, in panic over his first trip into space and squirming wildly, bumped into him he was knocked from the window and lost his view of the great interstellar cruiser.
The looks of panic and awe had only just begun to fade from the faces of the novice travelers when, suddenly, one wall of the cubicle seemed to come at them. Alistair knew it was just the transport vessel turning itself around for deceleration, but his companions did not and a cry of alarm went up from the men as the wall knocked into them just hard enough to stun. Fully aware of what was to come, Alistair kicked his legs like a swimmer to realign his body, but failed to do so before the hum of the engine sounded once again and the ship decelerated. He fell head first to the floor, a short fall and a soft one given that the deceleration was weak at first. This proved quite fortunate as two prisoners fell into him from the ceiling where they had been desperately trying to get some control over their bodies.
Moments later, the deceleration was quite strong and most of the prisoners lay on the floor, subject to a force stronger than the gravity of their homeworld. It was a few minutes later when their deceleration slowed once again and they passed into a large docking bay of The Incarcerator. The ship was immense, half as long and wide as the city of Arcarius itself with a depth about one sixth the length and width. Inside the docking bay, Alistair stepped onto a platform in a field of gravity matching Earth’s at sea level, a gravitational field slightly weaker than Aldra’s but the difference was almost unnoticeable.
As the noise and the bustle inside the drab, gray docking bay hit him, he looked up to the ceiling many scores of meters above. Dozens of stations and control rooms dotted it, like boxes stuck there, with pedestrian tubes connecting them, leaving the docking bay floor open for ships to land. The strident orders of the armed guards who surrounded them kept the prisoners moving in a single file line towards a cordoned area where a greater crowd of captives gathered. The guards carried no weapons in their hands, but small cannons were mounted on each shoulder. Sensors in their faceplates read the eyes of each guard and the cannons fired at what the soldier was looking at.
Alistair could not find Wellesley or Greg, but received a kick to his shin from one of the guards as he, in Mandarin, yelled for Alistair to face forward and keep walking. When he made it, limping and wincing, to the larger group of prisoners, men and women coming in from all over the planet and in various states of health and abuse, Gregory and Wellesley found him. Their haggard faces showed their fear, but they both took comfort from reuniting with their physically intimidating friend and stopped just short of clinging to him. Alistair said little, obliging questions with begrudging answers of a single word, or possibly just a grunt or nod. Any question whose answer would have necessitated a more intricate response was greeted with a dismissive shrug of the shoulders.
The general mood was hardly conducive to chatter, but the varied accents came to their ears through hushed conversations, brief arguments and complaints that flared up and died out. These conversations rumbled low under the yells and whistles of the guards and under the horns and engines of their vehicles traversing the docking bay. Ringed by armed guards of a decidedly inhospitable demeanor, there were no displays of bravado. No prisoner dared more than glance at his masked captors, and the glances were furtive and fearful.
At the far end was a series of tunnels, and every few seconds a hovering train of carriages emerged whereupon people were herded on. The train then disappeared into one of the tunnels. With the exitus and entrance of prisoners, the crowd was gradually recycled and Alistair and his friends found themselves steadily moving closer to where the prisoners boarded. When they were finally ushered on with a few shoves that did more to display dominance than facilitate the proceedings, they took their seats with about forty others and were soon in total blackness, whooshing through a tunnel and making their way to the cell that would hold them for the trip. Occasionally, a lit station would flash by their eyes for an instant, but most of the trip was in complete darkness with a wind from the tunnel blowing at them.
The jaunt on the transport lasted perhaps two minutes before coming to a stop in another station. They were escorted off and hastily divided into smaller groups sent jogging down one of a series of hallways, always under the watchful eye of armed men. The three companions, managing to stay together, arrived at the same cell and were ushered inside.
The room was almost featureless, consisting of white walls, floor and low ceiling. Its only distinctive features were the small windows lining the walls, windows at approximately face level and ringed by glowing buttons. One of the guards went to one of these windows and pressed some buttons. There was a hiss as a door revealed itself around the window and opened up, unveiling a padded interior almost like a coffin and tilted a few degrees backwards.
A prisoner was grabbed at random and brought to the open door of the hibernation pod. The man, grimy from his imprisonment on Aldra, was shaking as two guards tore his clothes from his body. One guard tossed the clothes into the middle of the room while the other shoved him into the pod and, pressing a couple more buttons, closed it. The lights ringing the window grew active, blinking on and off in a pattern that made it look as if a light were rapidly encircling the window. The man’s look of terror abruptly faded and his head settled back.
Hardly bothering to acknowledge it, the guards grabbed another prisoner and she too was stripped naked. When placed in the pod she struggled more than the first, as if overcome by claustrophobia. The door closed on her writhing left arm and the woman screamed as she retracted it. Then the door sealed shut and her scream became almost inaudible, but it made the prisoners restless. A gruff order from one of the guards in heavily accented English was enough to settle them, and a moment later, as the buttons blinked in the same pattern around the window, the woman’s head slumped back.
Gregory faced his hibernation with quiet dignity, going so far as to begin to undress as he was pushed in front of his chosen pod. His hands were slapped out of the way in favor of ripping his clothes from his body. When he was placed inside, he closed his eyes, drew a deep breath and swallowed, only his clenched jaw giving away his nervousness. It relaxed when his head settled back.
Alistair betrayed no fear when his turn came. Knowing there was no accountability for the guards during the long voyage in space, he was careful to stare ahead at the wall and give no challenging looks, but he refused to show meekness. His head he held high even as they stripped him naked. A woman was brought next to him as his pod door opened and he noticed she was attractive. As
he stepped into his pod – only just able to squeeze inside – he thought grimly of what could befall her during the trip. But the thought was cut short as the door closed. The last thing he saw through the small window, as all sounds from the room were muffled to the brink of vanishing, was Wellesley staring at him with barely restrained fear. Alone with the sound of his own breath, which he could now hear, he prayed Ryan’s fear was not a reflection from his own face. Then he lost consciousness.
Chapter 44
For a moment, Alistair had the delightful sensation of waking up on Foundation Day, wedged in between his brother and sister. They always slept together on Foundation Eve, after the festival and the story telling, and his heart leapt as he thought of the new baseball mitt he would get. Before he had a chance to consider it was odd he already knew his gift beforehand, he lurched forward as two hands yanked on his arms and reality slammed into him. He fell to his knees, naked, remembering the cramped quarters were the walls of the pod, not his siblings, and then pitched forward, falling face first into the floor despite his attempts to stabilize himself. He was vaguely aware of other bodies being dragged out of their hibernation pods and, like him, falling untended to the floor.
Having come out of hibernation before, he knew to lie still until the wooziness and lightheadedness passed. He heard the sound of vomiting and knew someone had tried to rise too soon. He dared not open his eyes. They were sealed shut with sleep anyway, but the light making his eyelids glow was uncomfortably bright and reddish orange, a warning not to expose the sensitive organs. As he lay on the floor he wet himself, helpless to control it. Though he had been in hibernation, he had still aged the equivalent of a day or two, and his weakened body could not hold the urine.
Withûr We Page 42