by Mack Maloney
Hunter's heart started racing now. He'd seen such a ship before. In his previous mind ring experience back on Moon 39, during which he'd witnessed a tiny portion of the deportation of the Earthlings he'd seen if not this vessel, then many more just like it. It was onto these green monsters that the people of Earth were being herded for their final flight out. A dark sensation ran through him now, suddenly things weren't as bright as just a moment before. Joke or not, Hunter knew he was about to see things he could never, ever forget.
He turned to watch the green ship pass over and got another surprise. The tiny backwater base occupied by the BMK was now a massive, sprawling military facility. Weapons bunkers, spacecraft hangars, command and control buildings, troops and vehicles on the move everywhere. The base was so big it encompassed the mesa itself; a forest of deep space antennas was now in place up here. And even beyond the mesa, the base's perimeter seemed to stretch for miles.
Even more startling, there was a huge city located right next to the base. All soaring towers and floating structures, its skyways were filled with air cars, its streets bustling with thousands of people. Who would have guessed this? An overflowing metropolis in an area that now housed nothing more than the broken-down saloon called the Last Drop. An enormous military base where now there was little more than a few aging buildings and some very old mercs. How things had changed.
Hunter scrambled to the other side of the butte to get a better look at the huge base below.
The five space gantries were still in place. Standing tall and shiny now, they towered over the tallest buildings in the city next door. Five green ships were already in the gantries. All appeared to have just recently landed. Long lines of people were being herded out of these rocket ships, down a series of descending walkways to the ground below. Hunter snapped his fingers and was immediately holding a telescopic viz lens. He could see these people were all skinny, horribly underfed, their clothes hanging off them in tatters. There were mothers and kids and old people and youths. Middle-aged men, carrying elderly parents on their backs. Grandmothers clutching infants to their chests. Many were holding tightly onto bags no doubt containing what few possessions they owned. Every last one of them looked terrified and bewildered.
Once down on the ground, the lines of people converged into one long stream that led out of the landing area and into the heart of the base itself. Thousands of individuals made up this despondent flow of humanity. They were being force-marched by heavily armed guards toward the entrance of a gigantic dead-gray building located in the center of the huge expanded base; this area was condoned off by several security perimeters, rings of electric-blue fencing strung like barbed wire around a prison. The ominous box-like structure in the middle of all this was at least a half mile long, nearly half that wide. It looked like a warehouse with large openings at either end.
Hunter turned his viz scope toward the entry point of this building and saw squads of guards pushing people through. Men, women, children — everyone got the same rough treatment. He focused the viz scope on the opposite side of the building. The people coming out this end were no longer wearing their ragged clothes. Instead, they were dressed in dreary one-piece prison suits. Their heads had been shaved and their meager possessions were nowhere to be seen. Their demeanor was even gloomier than before.
Hunter felt his throat tighten up. His heart began pounding very fast. He knew who these people were. They were the people of Earth. His people. During the mind ring trip back on Moon 39, he had witnessed the front end of this atrocity, the herding of Earth's inhabitants on to the huge green ships. Now, purely by fate or just damn good luck, he found himself looking down on the next-to-last phase of this deportation: the final processing point. And he had no doubt where these unfortunates would be going from here.
After another half-mile walk under the hot, red sun, the deportees were being prodded into an enormous corral. Ion-powered sky lifts had been put in place at several points around this holding pen. These rocket-boosted elevator platforms had been used in the distant past to bring personnel and goods up to spaceships hovering several miles above the surface, thus saving the time and expense of bringing such huge vessels down to the ground. These particular sky lifts had been adapted to squeeze in as many as a thousand people at a time. Once full, the elevator would shoot straight up to a place beyond the clouds.
Squinting through his viz scope now, Hunter followed one power lift up until he saw it stop next to a vessel that was partially hidden by the puffy, fair-weather cumulus. These clouds moved just enough for Hunter to see the vessel was actually a space barge, a massive rectangular ship more commonly used to move iron ore and slag off of mining planets. These disgusting vehicles were now being loaded with the people of Earth. As soon as one was filled, another was moved in to take its place. Soon, a string of six of the gigantic vessels began climbing up into the stratosphere, being towed by an ancient-looking ion-ballast space tug.
Hunter's fists were tight with rage by now. His jaw felt locked in the clenched position. The direction taken by the barses was unmistakable. Thev were heading toward that empty piece of space, very far away, that contained the celestial prison known as the Home Planets.
He came down off the butte via a floating walkway on the north side. Many workers dressed just like him were walking along the extended concourse just below. They all looked to be in fine health up close, even a little overfed. There was an air of smugness and wealth down here, too. No one seemed to notice his arrival on level ground though. He immediately blended in.
He began walking, testing the new environment as he moved along with the crowd. A certain feeling of uneasiness had set in once he'd reached the ground. This was not like those times in the past when he'd performed his ten-minutes-from-now recon missions, when he became, in effect, invisible. No, this all felt real, and it looked real, too. But there was static crackling around the edges of the periphery, an indication of chronic mind ring overuse. This file corruption was giving everything a strangely flat, almost two-dimensional feel. It was as if Hunter could reach up to touch the sky and actually feel something hanging there. It was almost claustrophobic in a way. Even his thoughts seemed to become weighed down, his brain function dull and ordinary.
He had to keep reminding himself that these were someone else's perceptions he was living here, recorded for whatever reason on this particular day, so long ago. And that the mind ring program, this grandiose reenactment of real life, wasn't necessarily free of the personal kinks of someone else's mind. He knew there had to be some reason Captain Kyx had guarded this particular ring. The merc officer hadn't cared to answer that question once the device had been found on him. But clearly the BMK flunky was no history scholar. Something else was loaded on here, something more than the big ships, the misery of the disenfranchised, and the massive undertaking of shooting them all out of the Galaxy. Something else had whet Kyx's appetite in this strange world.
Hunter began walking at a quicker pace. The deportation station was located within a perimeter inside the base itself. A small army of heavily armed soldiers was standing near what looked to be an auxiliary entryway to the deportation area. Most of these soldiers were on the other side of a huge electric-blue fence, which demarcated the processing site from the rest of the base, but a few were on the outside as well.
Hunter didn't want to wander too close to these soldiers; he had to remain inconspicuous. Yet when he spotted a small building just on the other side of this isolated entrance — it was a strange little place, standing alone, with a bright green door — Hunter felt his legs start moving him in that direction. He tried to steer himself back into the stream of workers, but no matter what he did, he always found himself heading the other way. The desire to do so was overwhelming.
Finally, he stopped fighting it. Why had Kyx coveted this particular mind ring? Hunter knew he was about to find out.
He wound his way through the line of workers, a shift change of sorts was in the w
orks. One small group of soldiers was standing just outside the entryway to the cordoned-off processing area. A small clutch of workers was lingering in the shadows close by.
As he drew closer, Hunter saw one worker extend his hand and give something to one of the soldiers. Whatever it was, the soldier pulled back the cordon, and the worker was allowed to pass through. He walked quickly to the small adjacent structure and disappeared behind the building's green door.
It looked very suspicious; Hunter had to see more. Another worker repeated the actions of the first. Money was being exchanged, the worker was allowed to pass between the lines. Hunter reached inside his pocket and found a handful of aluminum coins — so convenient he was sure Kyx had somehow programmed them to be there. He pushed his way through the knot of workers, walked up to the biggest soldier he could find, and gave him his pocketful of coins. The soldier looked at him just long enough for Hunter to wonder if he'd just made a huge mistake, but then he stepped aside and pushed Hunter through the invisible barrier.
Hunter stumbled along for a few feet, surprised by his sudden access. He tripped going through the green door that led into the small adjacent building. It was here he discovered why Kyx had enjoyed this mind trip so much, why he'd frayed the program by overuse, and why the BMK officer had taken great pains to hide this last ring.
The room was filled with young female deportees. Teenagers some of them, others in their twenties, but none much older than that. Beauties all, they were standing in irregular rows, held in place by some kind of localized force fields. All of them looked nervous and intense. They, too, had been relieved of their Earthly clothing, but the drab smocks issued to them were cut very high on the thigh and low on the chest. No one here had gotten her head shaved, either. There were probably a hundred girls jammed into the holding room. Two soldiers were slumped in hovering chairs at the back. Both were sound asleep.
The two workers who'd preceded Hunter into the building were looking over the females like customers might view a new shipment of spaceboots. Finally, one worker stepped forward and yanked a young girl out of the first row, causing a crackle of electricity as she was released from her force field. She went with the man, very reluctantly, toward an even smaller room nearby. When the worker opened the door to this room and pushed the girl inside, Hunter heard a chorus of squeals coming from within. None seemed to be cries of pleasure.
It didn't take an interstellar genius to figure out what was going on here. Hunter's thoughts streamed back to Kyx, sitting in the interrogation room, looking so smug — until they relieved him of his precious mind ring.
That freak…
The second worker selected his prize and literally dragged the girl to the next room. All eyes now turned to Hunter. He felt his hand reach out to grab the girl being held nearest him, but with all his strength, he managed to pull it back. He started to say something to the captives but found no words would come. What was there to say? This was real, but not real. He seemed powerless to stop it; all he could do was drink it in. He hesitated for another moment, but finally he knew he had to leave. He turned on his heel and made a quick exit from the building.
Through it all, the two soldiers sleeping at the back of the room never moved.
He hurried away from the small building, passing back through the soldiers without a word, and falling into the stream of workers once again. He tried to comprehend everything he'd seen so far: the sprawling base, the electric city, the processing station, the small room off to the side. This ring depicted some version of actual events, Hunter felt certain of that. Kyx had somehow stumbled upon it or more likely taken it off the cold body of the commanding officer he'd managed to outlive and replace. Then Kyx had used it over and over again, just to take advantage of what was happening behind the green door. The ring had survived then, not as a historical document but simply as a vehicle for lust.
But the strange trip also confirmed what Hunter and the others had speculated all along: that Xronis Trey had once been a thriving planet, vital and even booming, due solely to the fact that all of Earth's former inhabitants had passed through here on their way to jail. Yet the ring trip had not yet resolved the number-one question, the mystery above all others: Who were the people responsible for deporting the Earthlings in the first place? Hunter had seen no flags here, no signs or emblems or uniform insignias that might lend a clue as to who was committing these enormous acts of barbarism.
So, even though he was certain that Kyx had never bothered to go beyond this point in the trip before, Hunter had to press on.
He was soon walking along the eastern edge of the base; the main part of the warehouse where the deportees were being processed — and relieved of their clothes, their belongings, and their dignity — was now directly off to his left. Even though the blue-light electrical field separated the huge way station from the rest of the base, it was easy to see through the ion field and follow what was happening on the other side.
The processing station appeared capable of moving thousands of people a minute; the stream of deportees trudging in and out of the place just never stopped. There was a network of clear, superglass jet tubes running along the ground all around the structure; most were about two feet in diameter. Hunter could see all kinds of things blowing through these tubes. Clothes, baggage, hats, shoes, you name it — the lives of the hapless deportees being sucked right out of them. But where was all this stuff going? These overlords didn't seem the type to throw anything away; they seemed intent on stealing everything they could from the deportees in their desperate hour and were being very methodical about it. The network of jet tubes told that tale.
The tide of workers slowed down. Ahead there was an official checkpoint of sorts, a main ingress station through which workers could pass and get into the heart of the processing area itself. The command cluster was located here. The structure actually looked new to Hunter now. Its twelve domes were gleaming white and were not the sickly pale hue they were today. Several soaring passageways swirled around them like a jeweled crown. Rather than a poor-cousin castoff hanging on by the edge of a huge crater, the cluster was now the center of attention at the sprawling space base.
Because of the apparent shift change, two huge streams of drones, going in opposite directions, were funneling through the nearby checkpoint. Hunter simply went with the flow, squeezing in slightly as he passed through the opening in the electric-blue fence. Suddenly he was inside the last perimeter of the base; the jet tubes were flowing all around him. He veered off from the formation of workers and went to inspect the massive tangle of see-through superglass conduits.
Some ran along the edge of the cordoned-off area and out to the western edge of the base. A dumping ground of sorts was located out there. Some tubes ran through the command cluster itself, terminating at a point just below the main dome. But most continued right through the middle of the base, past the space gantries and beyond, to the eastern terminus of the facility. Back on present-day Xronis Trey, what lay east of the BMK outpost were a half-dozen small mountains. In the mind ring though, these were six domed structures that were almost as big as mountains. The jet tubes were leading directly into these buildings, each tube apparently delivering only certain types of items to what were obviously huge storage facilities.
Hunter walked up to one tube, which was slightly smaller in diameter than the rest. Like the others, it was made of clear superglass; seeing inside it was no problem. While the other tubes seemed to be moving along the generic essentials of life — clothing and so on — this narrow tube was carrying something else. Hunter could just barely make out a few of the items as they went flying by, but these things were very telling. This tube was carrying very personal items, valuable things: coins, gemstones, jewelry, and even some paper currency. And turning within this swiftly moving stream of booty, Hunter saw something else: many, many mind rings.
"Hey, mook — what the hell are you doing?"
Hunter spun around to find an enormous
individual had suddenly come up behind him. This man towered over him and was an especially rough-looking character. A heavy beard covered his chin, a slimy mustache adorned his upper lip. Contempt was etched in his face.
"Did you hear me?" he growled at Hunter again. "What the hell are you doing way out here?"
This man was obviously some kind of boss, a foreman, Hunter guessed. He was wearing a jet-black combat suit of an almost satin quality. There were lightning bolts splashed all over it, the first ornament Hunter had seen on anyone here.
"I'm on my break," Hunter finally managed to say. "I'm just stretching my legs…."
The foreman screwed up his face in an expression of pure bewilderment.
"Break?" he said, mouthing the word as if he'd never heard it used in this context before. "What the hell do you mean?"
Hunter tried to recover. "You know, a break… from my job? I'm taking a few minutes off."
"Taking a few minutes off?" the foreman roared. "You just came on duty!"
The foreman took three steps toward Hunter. He must have weighed at least three hundred pounds, probably more. Hunter wondered what would happen if he had to duke it out with this guy. Could you get hurt inside a mind ring? How about a mind ring that was suffering from chronic overuse?
"We've got a goddamn ship to land," the foreman spat at him, pointing to another huge space vessel that was passing over their heads. "And you're in an area off limits to mooks. So turn around and get back to the crew pit, or I'll break your back with one hand."
"OK, OK, I'll get right on it," Hunter said, pushing his way past the foreman. He made a quick U-turn and tried to go back through the perimeter gate. But two heavily armed guards were suddenly blocking his way. Both were about the same size as the foreman.
"ID…" one of them demanded.
"I'm the new guy," Hunter tried to lie.
"I said, let me see your ID, wiseass," the guard growled at him. "No one gets out without showing it."