Scat (Scat's Universe, Book 1)

by Jim Graham

  ‘See you on the other side. Let’s hope they have showers.’

  Part Five

  Across the Universe

  109

  Petroff whooped with pure joy as the rebels entered the hangar along with a few broken fern fronds, some leaves and the smell of G-eo air, exactly as predicted.

  From his vantage point in the port-a-cabin built into the hangar’s wall, some 10 metres above ground, and behind PIKL and ballistic proof glass, he had given the order to throw the wormhole across the tunnel entrance, just as they had across the hotel’s vehicle park entrance some 20 minutes earlier.

  Its accuracy was uncanny, the effect was immensely satisfying. Being in control of such technology was, well, exhilarating.

  The Hunter-Killer Teams, all ex-Inner Rim Force veterans, were throwing the rebels to the ground in the space between him and the RV, rifling through their clothing, and kicking their back packs across the floor to be collected by a second wave of troopers.

  He had a grandstand view, just as he deserved.

  This had been his idea.

  He had found and retrieved the craft that offered up this technology, and now he was cutting the head off an insurgency that had cost his beloved Lynthax trillions upon trillions of dollars, almost ruined its reputation, and nearly caused it to lose its New World leases.

  But no longer.

  This technology was a game changer.

  Over the next day or so, they would throw holes over rebels wherever they could be located across the Outer-Rim. They would be brought here, to Runnymede in the Ranee system, a planet that didn’t offer much by way of high-value resources, was barren, sparsely inhabited and had been discarded as a suitable candidate for development in the first wave of ftl exploration.

  Runnymede wasn’t even on the official buoy network, so it was a perfect base for this kind of black-ops, as it was for the centre of the largest land project ever.

  Outside the windowless hangar, there now stood a small town, populated by some of Lynthax’s finest minds and most loyal employees: geo- and hydro-engineers, astrophysicists, experts in viruses, bacteria, flora, fauna, and anthropologists, archaeologists, structural, materials, electrical and production engineers and researchers – the whole caboodle. Runnymede was now the centre of development for the entire Lynthax operation, and he was the man to oversee it all.

  Deservedly so.

  The rebels were about to be fully disarmed and pacified, and it was time to let Scat know what had just happened to him.

  Oh, the joy of this job!

  He bounded down the stairs ahead of his 2-man security detail and walked quickly out onto the smooth, grey composite floor. He picked his way between the IRF vets who were loading the rebels’ packs onto a cargo cart, and stopped just behind a line of ex-Hunter-Killer troopers.

  On the other side of the line, Petroff could see two of the Hunter-Killers dragging Scat to his feet.

  He looked dazed.

  Perhaps his boys had zapped him.

  They turned Scat around, and Petroff could see that his face had met the floor, pretty hard. The nose was broken again. Blood dripped down onto his olive green coveralls. His chin was resting on his chest, eyes fixed on the floor. The two guards held him up by his arms, his feet trailing a little behind him.

  ‘Welcome to Runnymede, Scat!’ Petroff said in a surprisingly level voice, just loud enough to carry.

  Scat’s head shot up. There was instant recognition, instant loathing.

  ‘Don’t look so downtrodden, Scat. The insurgency may be over, but you’re not out of a job. We’ve decided to rehire you again—and your friends. Welcome back.’

  Scat knew he was concussed, but Petroff wasn’t making any sense. He looked at Goosen off to his left who was also looking oddly at Petroff, silently querying what he had just said.

  ‘Take them to the pens. And don’t be gentle unless they’re lambs,’ Petroff said to the Hunter-Killer’s unit commander.

  ‘Scat, we have a busy day ahead of us. Nettles is already here, and you’ll be meeting even more of your friends later tonight. Relax and enjoy your accommodation. We’ll be briefing you on what happens next.’ He looked down at his watch and then added, ‘Soon’

  He waved the guards on, and then returned to his cabin to arrange the positioning of the next hole, his face aching from all the grinning.

  It’s going to take the rest of this evening to lop the head of this insurgency, he thought to himself, but not a moment longer. After that, it was just a matter of mopping up. He would leave that to Xin.

  110

  The pens were set into the floor of a concrete and re-enforced glass building linked to the rear of the hangar by an enclosed walkway.

  The building was new and smelled of freshly applied wall coating. Desks and chairs were stacked against the back wall. Companynet cables hung from the walls, ready for connection to a bunch of widescreen monitors, still wrapped in anti-scratch protective wrapping. The grills of the pens lay on recesses that trapped a fine layer of sawdust and finely ground stone and concrete.

  A guard was waiting for them at the far pen, its grill opened up and outwards.

  The Hunter-Killer commander stepped past Scat, stopped at the open grill and inclined his head towards the opening.

  ‘In!’

  Goosen, his hands plasticuffed, took a careful step forward and descended the steep metal stairs into a square, roughly plastered and windowless room. Scat and the rest of his team followed him down.

  The guards had already stripped them of their outer clothes, leaving them in their shorts, no shoes or socks. As the rebels looked back up at the closed and locked grill, they heard the crash of doors, a cargo cart pull into the building and the thud of bags dropping onto its pannier. Someone dimmed the lights and the walls closed in.

  ‘Sheet! How did this happen?’ Goosen asked.

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ Scat replied. ‘Less than 10 minutes ago we were on G-eo and now we’re on Runnymede, wherever that is. How’s that possible?’

  Khan felt particularly vulnerable.

  ‘And all we’re left with is our underwear,’ he said, looking down at his hairy body.

  Mercador ran his cuffed hands through his straggly, matted hair.

  ‘Has anyone been to Runnymede?’ he asked ‘Are we sure we’re where that doorstop says we are?’

  Scat let out a long sigh through his nose, causing blood to bubble down onto his upper lip.

  ‘We’ll know when we break out of here, Mannie.’

  Paul jumped up, grabbed a rail in the grill and hauled himself up to see what he could of the building. But it was a deeply recessed grill so all he could catch were glimpses of walls and the top of the doors through which they had arrived. There was no guard in sight, but then he could have been sitting down. The entire Marine Corps could have been sitting down up there, and he wouldn’t have seen them.

  Upturned faces waited for him to say something.

  ‘Nothing. Can’t see a thing.’ He dropped back down to the floor flexing his wrists inside the cuffs.

  ‘Anybody up there?’ Scat shouted, looking up at the distant ceiling, turning to send his voice around the room.

  ‘Would you please keep your voice down, young man!’ was the reply.

  Scat and his team looked inward at each other. Goosen, Paul and Scat each recognised the voice.

  ‘Marvin?’ Scat asked.

  ‘Yes, Scat. It’s me—and a few more your friends. Is Paul there with you?’

  ‘They’ve got you as well?’ Scat asked, hoping Marvin was the only one Petroff had picked up from the rebel negotiation team. Then he remembered Petroff saying something about Nettles.

  ‘Yes, Scat, and the rest of us. Sorry,’ was the answer, but it wasn’t Marvin’s voice.

  ‘Reggie! You as well?’ The situation was getting worse by the minute.

  Paul sprang back up to the grill, trying to listen to where his father’s voice came from.
It had been 11 months since they had seen each other.

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Good to hear your voice again, son. Are you well?’ Reggie’s voice was a little croaky, but old age and emotions were at play. He had twice been told his son was probably dead, only to learn a month or so later that he wasn’t. It had been a trying time.

  ‘Yes, father. And you?’

  ‘OK, guys, can we deal with the family reunion at a later date?’ Scat asked, trying to get everyone back on point. ‘We’ve real issues to deal with here. If we’re going to get out of here, it’ll have to be soon, before we’re shipped off to some ISRA facility.’

  Marvin was ready with a reality check of his own.

  ‘Don’t for one minute think that they know about this, Scat,’ he said. ‘Petroff was more than explicit about that. This is private enterprise at work.’

  Scat wasn’t sure what to make of that. No one spoke as his colleagues waited for him to either ask another question or make some comment.

  ‘So, who do you have over there?’ he asked, eventually.

  ‘There’s myself, Reggie, Nettles, Thunder and Gordon. Wellington was with us, but he had a heart attack in the hangar. Petroff had him carted off. We don’t know any more than that. And you?’

  ‘Aside from Paul, there’s Goosen, Khan, Mercador, Edlin, Orwell and Innanovic. Wait! Where’s Innanovic?’

  Innanovic was missing.

  ‘Is Innanovic with you?’

  ‘No. Why? Should he be?’ Marvin asked

  Goosen and Scat looked at Paul looking for an answer. Paul knew Innanovic better than anyone else in the pen did. He had worked for his father for years. But Paul gave a shrug.

  ‘Innanovic picked us up from the spaceport, and came along with us, but he’s not here now,’ Scat explained. Then something Marvin hadn’t said jumped out at him. ‘You didn’t mention the Old Man. Didn’t he come?’

  ‘No, he didn’t, Scat. He died last month. Brain haemorrhage.’

  In the silence that followed, Scat realised there must have been an outpouring of grief in the Trevon politico circles a little while ago.

  ‘So, how did you get here?’ Reggie asked, his throat a little clearer, but sounding as if he were pressing down on a lot of emotion.

  ‘Only Jeeze’ knows,’ Scat said, summing up the confusion. ‘One minute we’re coming out of a tunnel, the next we’re in that hangar. I can only guess they fitted the RV with some kind of ftl—like those bugcams,’ he added as though it was quite a logical explanation.

  ‘I doubt it Scat. We were in a rental. We only decided on the hire company, and the model, a few minutes before we drove off in it.’

  ‘Then it was magic. Perhaps if we close our eyes, and wish hard enough, we’ll be back on G-eo,’ Goosen muttered quietly to himself, but not quietly enough: Scat heard him.

  ‘Goosen reckons it was magic,’ he said. ‘But I’m betting they’ve either upped the technology again, or they’re playing with our heads.’

  Nettles agreed with Goosen.

  ‘Petroff isn’t so stupid as to try playing with your head again, Scat. It didn’t work out too well for him the last time. My money’s on the magic. You don’t pass through a hotel’s entrance on G-eo and into a hangar on Runnymede without it.’

  ‘Well, we aren’t dead yet,’ Scat observed. ‘But from what he said earlier, Petroff’s lining us up for something.’

  ‘Most likely, Scat,’ Nettles replied, ‘but whatever it is, let’s go along with it. As I see it, we’re in no position to negotiate. Our only strength lies in sticking together. Whatever it is, Scat, let’s play along. We’ll talk again when we know more.’

  Scat didn’t reply. He had several scores to settle with Petroff, all of them involving a slow and painful death.

  Nettles pushed the point:

  ‘Scat. I need you to say something. We need for you to keep your emotions in check. Can you do that—for now at least?’

  Scat exchanged glances with Goosen but gave no answer.

  Above them, the building’s main doors slammed forcefully against their stops for a second time. More boots hit the ground. It sounded like a large group of people were walking through the room. A grill squealed opened. There was a scuffle, the sound of a stun, more scuffling, and then a loud electrical discharge, probably from a neural disrupter.

  Another gruff order.

  ‘No more farking around. Get in!’

  More foot falls, the noise of metal stairs rattling, then a thumping sound.

  ‘Hey!’ someone shouted. ‘We could have carried him down!’

  The grill crashed closed, a lock bleeped, and footsteps faded into the distance.

  It appeared the Trevon rebels weren’t the only ones being closed down.

  111

  The briefing took place in the hangar.

  Scat looked around as the guards led them inside.

  To his left, under a port-a-cabin set high up in the wall, there lay a long platform fitted with an array of microphones, and above it, there hung a giant flat screen. Facing the platform were rows of freestanding, plastic chairs. Hologram media stations stood on all four corners of the seating. Blinds covered the hangar’s high windows.

  On the far side of the seating area, there was a large open area, and, beyond that, they had pushed some equipment against the hangar sidewall. It was odd-looking. Scat had seen nothing like it before.

  To his right, a squad of doorstops were laying out a food and drinks buffet. An enormous pressure chamber ran the width of the hangar behind them. At least he thought it was a chamber. Its size made him think twice.

  It didn’t look anything like what he had expected.

  He had expected a small room, a single chair, maybe someone else’s dried blood on the floor. When Petroff told them about the briefing, he had genuinely believed it had been a euphemism for interrogation.

  But the relief was short-lived. The large number of chairs, each of them covered in briefing papers and presentation folders, gave a sickening indication of just how many rebels Petroff had rounded up. Scat counted the seats in a row and then the number of rows. The place was set up to seat 500 people. Perhaps the rebels weren’t the only ones with invitations, but if they were, it didn’t leave many of them free in the field.

  Scat pulled at the cuff of the bright orange coveralls they had been issued, trying to loosen the band around his wrist. Naturally, Petroff wasn’t taking any chances. Bringing so many rebels together against their will was a security nightmare he had solved by fitting slate-grey bands around everyone’s right wrist; all of them linked to a neural disruptor. But why they were being herded into a room together was still a mystery.

  The guards ushered them along the centre aisle to a row on the left, halfway to the stage. Guards continued to lead in small groups of rebels and show them their seats. Scat recognised many of them, but some, the older ones, may have been local political leaders, like Reggie, who he had cut out of the rebel loop in the early months of the insurgency.

  The low murmuring faded away as Petroff walked from the rear of the hall to the stage. He climbed the three steps and took his seat at the centre of the table. One by one, the other officers finished their final preparations, and then joined him.

  Finally, Petroff got up to speak.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Runnymede. As you are no doubt aware I have brought you here for a reason, and we will explain that reason over the course of the next 30 minutes or so.

  ‘For the past five years, you and I, along with Earth, have been involved in a quarrel that has cost Earth dearly. You intercepted resources and interrupted normal business. You denied Earth the medical supplements and rare minerals it needed.

  ‘Water supplies fouled. Earth’s atmosphere and climate deteriorated. Crops failed. Millions of our most vulnerable people died: all because you valued your freedom, and the concept of democracy, over the right of the Earth-born to live and breathe.

  ‘You were brand
ed economic criminals and convicted in absentia of crimes against humanity, and yet you persisted. We reintroduced capital punishment and still you persisted.

  ‘But today you stop.’

  There was a low rumbling of disapproval of the way Petroff had painted the picture. Medical supplies had been re-established very early on. It wasn’t the rebels’ fault that the resource companies had used the brokered medical flights as a cover for shifting large amounts of other, more valuable product.

  Khan stood and threw his briefing papers into the air. He had had enough.

  ‘You child-killing beast, Petroff,’ he shouted.

  He added another curse, but then slumped back into his chair and rolled to the floor. Scat dropped down to check his pulse but was edged aside when a medical team moved in. They conducted a quick scan and dragged him away.

  Scat sensed the room was about to explode. He felt a wave of frustration build up inside of himself.

  Petroff continued; sounding just a little irritated at the interruption.

  ‘As you can see, the neural disrupters work. We don’t want to use them, but we will if we must. You’re here for a reason and, as you are going nowhere for some time to come, you should listen to what that reason is.’

  He looked down at his notes again, as if to remind himself where he had left off.

  ‘As I was saying, or was about to say, 85 of you have been condemned to death. Those convictions and sentences still stand, and despite the appeals going to the ISRA Court of Appeal, the Court has yet to agree to hear them. As things currently stand, then, Lynthax has every right, every right, to carry out those executions locally. Right here, and right now.’

  He let that sink in. Not everyone on the list would know they were on it, but the list wasn’t a secret. The rebels had been very skilful at keeping out of view, but that had also worked against them. They were never fully up to date on the affairs of Earth, or the latest political thinking. Innanovic had confirmed that over the past few years.

  ‘If you look inside your presentation folders you will find the most up to date list of the death sentences passed in absentia. While you check to see if your name is on the list, I’ll continue.