O’Keefe looked leisurely to his left and right, scrutinizing his new companions. They were uniformly cleaner and better nourished than the men he was accustomed to toiling beside. Most of them looked almost healthy. As he turned his head back toward the front of the group, he was startled by a guard’s scaly green face hanging just above his own.
“You late,” it stated simply. The reptilian hiss that underscored the words made O’Keefe’s skin crawl. “Be here right tomorrow, or whip get work.” It showed him the scourge, it’s bony, long-taloned hand holding it up directly in front of his eyes. It then flicked its tongue within an inch of his nostrils, giving O’Keefe a nauseating snort of its foul breath, before raising its head back above the work detail.
Soon the men were emptying a large cargo container, exiting it with crates held in their arms or hoisted over a shoulder. Some of the parcels were of such size or weight that it took the strength of two men to ferry them from inside the container out to the floor, where all the cartons were stacked into a pile that grew larger by the minute. No one spoke save a single prisoner, who seemed to be some sort of a trusty or foreman. He stayed inside the freight carrier and decided which cartons were to be taken out and when. As the last of the cargo was unloaded from the carrier, an automated train, similar to the ones that hauled rubble out of the mines, approached quickly across the floor of the hangar. It rolled to a stop next to the stacks of freight and the men immediately began loading up the cars with the cartons that were piled there, the trusty now working beside the rest of the men. Behind them one of the hoists dropped a big claw-like grabber on the now empty cargo carrier, striking it with a metallic boom that echoed in the men’s ears. Its metal fingers tightened around the container and then lifted it upward and away. O’Keefe had no time to watch where it was ultimately deposited.
The men worked without pause, just as O’Keefe had done in the mines. Whenever one of the trains was completely loaded, another would roll up to take its place. Likewise, whenever the men were almost without cartons to load, one of the hoists would lower another freight carrier to the floor nearby. The system seemed designed not for maximum efficiency, but rather to keep the workers from receiving any break from their endless exertions. It was like moving piles of rock from one place to another, and then moving the same pile again. The hoists that hung from a network of railings overhead could have assisted the men greatly, but they worked almost indolently, their crane-like arms and steel lifting cables being employed only to move the carriers back and forth between the ship and the floor of the dock.
After several hours, lunch was brought out on to the hangar floor in the same way it was brought to the rock breakers—by men pushing kitchen carts. But O’Keefe nearly fainted away at the difference in the fare. Here there were large sandwiches made of real, even if stale and hard, bread. They will filled with meats and cheese, some of which appeared to actually be fresh. And there was cold, pure water to drink. Also the men seemed in no great hurry to stuff the food into their gullet, instead savoring it as if none would be taken from them if they failed to finish before the guards ordered them back to work.
It gave O’Keefe time to resume his examination of the men in his group. Stripped of their jewelry, dressed in near identical clothing, and scoured of their cosmetics, these Akadeans, like nearly all the others in the penal colony, were incredibly, boringly, similar. They were all of short to medium height. They all possessed the same brown pigmented skin. Except for those rare exceptions who had the wherewithal to have had irises of different colors genetically engineered into their replacement bodies, they all had brown eyes. And except for those who had recently been sent through the showers and been made bald by the barbers afterward, even their hair was identical—short sprigs of unruly, dark chestnut. Lindy was the only prisoner that O’Keefe had seen who differed in that respect. His hair was engineered to be blonde and straight, and it grew back that way between each shearing. O’Keefe thought that ordering different hair on a new body must have been exorbitantly expensive, if there was only one man among the thousands he had seen in Ashawzut who could afford it. Either that or the Akadeans were reluctant to pay for a hair color they would be stuck with through a long lifetime. Maybe they just preferred the ease and changeability of dyes and perms to genetic engineering. But no matter where the truth of the matter lay, it was a fact that among the vast majority of the inmates of Ashawzut only their facial features and the slight differentiations in their similar physiques distinguished any one Akadean from another.
Unable to establish eye contact with any of the downcast men in his group, O’Keefe picked one at random and took a seat cross-legged on the floor beside him. The man did not so much as glance at him, instead he remained focused on his meal, deliberately chewing each mouthful thoroughly and swallowing mechanically before taking another bite.
“Hey buddy, what’s the story here?” O’Keefe asked in a friendly whisper. “Do we get all the time we want to eat, or what?” The man looked away from his food briefly, only long enough to make a cursory inspection of O’Keefe. Then he pushed himself wordlessly to his feet and made his way to the other side of the group, where he reseated himself and again began to eat.
O’Keefe leaned toward another Akadean. “What’s with him?” he asked softly. The inmate totally ignored the remark. Suddenly, a man got up from the middle of the group and walked directly toward them, stepping over and around his seated comrades. It was the same man the others had deferred to inside the freight carriers—the trusty. He sank to his haunches directly in front of O’Keefe.
“No one speaks on the floor except me,” the man said superciliously. “I’m in charge here, and if I catch anyone else running their mouths they go back to the mines. Since this is your first day, and the guards didn’t hear you, I’ll let it pass. But don’t do it again, or you’ll be drinking slop with the shovelers before the day is done. Understand?” The man stared at O’Keefe as if demanding an answer.
As the trusty had been speaking, he unknowingly broke an invisible boundary that was scored across O’Keefe’s soul. It was as if a twig had been bent to the point where it suddenly snapped. The fracture had not been loud, in any way consequential or even noticeable to the rest of the world, but to the twig that was O’Keefe’s id it had been a near earth-shattering event. The trusty’s words and demeanor sent testosterone-fueled rage flooding into his brain. Putting up with the horrors imposed by the Vazileks and Elorak was bad enough, but this was too much. O’Keefe was simply not going to take this kind of abuse from some pint-sized, arrogant, and cowardly Akadean who for some reason thought he was in charge. He leaned forward, putting his nose less than six inches from the trusty’s.
“Haven’t you heard?” he whispered roguishly. “I’m the colony aberrant, the savage. I’m important to Elorak and her schemes. I’m a damn killer, and I do what I fucking well please. And as far as I’m concerned you’re just a pissant bootlicker with an attitude. If you ever threaten me again, I’ll rip your head off, crack your skull open, and eat your brains for breakfast. And you better make damn sure that I don’t go back to breaking rocks, because if I do I will find you, and one day soon you will wake up dead. Do you understand that?” The man gulped hard, then nodded slightly. “Good,” O’Keefe whispered sarcastically, “now get out of my face and go eat your food.” The trusty, visibly shaken, got up and left the way he had come.
The men seated within earshot of the exchange gawked at O’Keefe in astonishment, their mouths pulled fearfully agape by the utter lack of intimidation he had displayed in the face of the foreman’s threats—threats that would have crushed their own spirits like a colony cockroach caught under the thick treads of a Dominion issue boot. The man was a trusty, and in their eyes defying him meant punishment and quite possibly death. They looked at O’Keefe as if he were a male banshee sent to bring extermination to them all. As such a sharp glance from beneath an angry brow was enough to return all their gazes back to their food, and O�
�Keefe silently finished his own fare while his new workmates edged progressively farther from where he sat.
The remainder of the day passed without incident. When it was over, the men gathered round the trusty as he called their names, reading them off a personal data unit supplied by the guards. As each man’s name was called, he stepped forward to have one of his tattoos scanned by a wand attached to the PDU. When it was O’Keefe’s turn, he challenged the foreman with an angry stare, but the man never met his eyes. He only waved the wand perfunctorily at O’Keefe’s bicep and went on to the next name. When it was confirmed that all the men who were supposed to be there were accounted for; the group was escorted out of the hangar by both guards and dogs. O’Keefe had no chance at all to search the crevice for his pistol. Too many eyes were locked on his every move.
At the end of the tunnel two guards waited for him. Unable to tell one from another, O’Keefe had no idea if they were the same two that had brought him to the hangar that morning. He only knew they were for him when they jerked him out of line and ordered him atop one of their rear decks. The other men in the work detail eyed him with a mixture of envy and awe as he was carried away, not knowing what to make of his special privilege and unsure exactly what place the Earther occupied in the penal colony pecking order.
At the end of the ride, as the guards rolled to a stop outside the entry to barracks 121, he dismounted and started to go inside. “Human,” one of the guards hissed. O’Keefe stopped and turned back to face them. “Remember. You find own way tomorrow. Be not late.” O’Keefe was an instant from unleashing an insulting reply but thought better of it, remembering Elorak’s admonition that she would be watching, and already regretting his run-in with the trusty. Instead, he stood silently and meekly amidst the veil of fumes that the guards left behind as they trundled away.
When he did enter the barracks he was surprised to discover that the dockhands’ workday was not as long as the rock breakers’. He had expected to arrive after they were already back in the barracks, at near the same time as the kitchen workers and such, but upon entering he found himself nearly alone. Only a few other inmates lolled about inside, all of them seemingly asleep in their bunks. O’Keefe felt almost lonely in the large room. The solitude would not last for long. Only minutes later the dusty rock workers came staggering in. Lindy and Steenini lurched by him and collapsed onto their mattresses.
After several moments of lying on his back, Lindy rolled over onto his shoulder to look up at O’Keefe. His eyes appeared as sunken pits on either side of his dust-caked face. “So, how was it?” he asked hoarsely, his expression devoid of anything save exhaustion.
“Not too bad,” O’Keefe replied. “The work’s not a whole lot easier, but at least it’s cleaner and quieter.” He didn’t mention the quality of the food.
Lindy exhibited no response to his answer; the pilot merely stared into space with a hollow expression. O’Keefe looked at him with concern. All the Akadeans on rock detail were being systematically wasted physically, but because these two particular men were his mates and their shared hardship had cemented them close as brothers, O’Keefe was able to sense a further deterioration in their makeup. It was certainly not the first time he had seen it, but it was now infinitely clearer to him after only a day’s distance from the spiritually crushing work in the mines. The Vazilek design for Ashawzut was bearing its maleficent fruit. Lindy’s essence, his essential humanity, was discernibly leaching away, and at an alarming rate. It would not be long before he was reduced to a shell of his former self, a broken man, an automaton ready to perform any task the Vazileks assigned to him, even if that task contributed to the demise of his own civilization and his former fellow citizens.
As for Steenini, the only further task he could perform for the Vazileks would be to die, as that was evidently all they wanted or would accept from him short of a confession. And even that would not save him, as Elorak would simply kill him outright for what he had done.
O’Keefe watched as Lindy still stared vacuously into space and wanted to help the man, as he did owe him his life—but how to help he did not know. “Hang in there, Willet,” was all he could say, and the statement was only empty words, words that were pitifully inadequate. Yet those words were all the succor he could muster. He tried to add substance to them, saying, “We won’t be in here forever,” but the phrase came out weak and unconvincing, even to himself.
“I know,” Lindy answered impassively. “Before long we’ll all be dead.”
O’Keefe had no reply for that, but it dawned on him that he had underestimated his friend. Lindy had indeed accepted the Vazilek premise upon which Ashawzut was based, that the only way out was through service or death. And as he had no intention of serving his new masters and their barbarous aims, Lindy had resolved to die in the mines alongside Steenini. There would be no effort on his part to be elevated to a less strenuous position. O’Keefe needed to make good on his vow of arranging an escape, and do it quickly, or both his friends would soon be gone. He had to find a way to get to the Colt.
Dinner came, and O’Keefe for the first time received an extra portion of rations with his meal. Despite a day of more plentiful fare, hunger still gnawed at his bones, but he forced himself to split the contents of his bag of extras between his two friends, taking nothing for himself. Both weakly protested, until he described his midday meal, after which they took the food eagerly, and O’Keefe thought he saw a little animation behind Lindy’s empty stare; but there was really no telling.
The next morning O’Keefe appeared at the dock before most of his new coworkers. He had run from the barracks as quickly as he was still able, hoping to arrive at the docks before anyone else. He thought that might give him a chance to retrieve the pistol. But as he had loped gasping up to the entry tunnel, he was again disappointed as the exit half of the corridor was closed off and locked down. He sighed and walked slowly into the hangar, looking longingly through the chain link of the fence at the crevice where his gun lay just out of reach.
Those few of his contingent who were already on the floor when he approached seemed surprised to see him, and the same shock registered on each newly arriving face as they jogged toward the group only to see the rangy Earther already there and standing among their peers. Soon all were present, except for the trusty. There was no sign of the little man with the big attitude. As the hour grew later his workmates furtively leveled fearful glances at O’Keefe and a conference of reptilian whispers ensued between the two guards. Time crept by. Every other work gang in the hangar had long since begun their shift and still O’Keefe’s foreman was absent. At length one of the guards accelerated away while its counterpart and the dogs kept the men herded into a tight circle.
A short time later the guard returned. It roared up to the men and looked them over carefully before pushing into the crowd as everyone scrambled to avoid being crushed under its treads. It reached the man it sought and pulled him to the side before pressing the data unit into his hands. “You top human now,” it said. “Call roll.”
The man grasped the electronic tablet tightly in his hands, bit his lower lip, and looked apprehensively at O’Keefe, obviously thinking that the Earther had made good on his dire threats from the day before. O’Keefe merely nodded to him and smiled slightly, having no idea what had happened to yesterday’s foreman but nonetheless mightily pleased by the turn of events. The new trusty appeared pale, at least for an Akadean, and almost sick. His shoulders seemed to curl around and into his chest under O’Keefe’s gaze. He was obviously more than a little spooked about the possibility of meeting whatever fate had befallen his former boss. And when he began calling out names he did so in such a quavering, queasy little voice that O’Keefe half expected him to vomit before he made it to the end of the list.
The morning that followed was as tortuously vapid as the previous one, except his cohorts gave O’Keefe a much wider berth. When they stopped work to eat, the men left an open circle with a radius o
f at least six feet between themselves and their new, aberrant nemesis. They were clearly all deathly afraid of him now.
The afternoon passed in the same fashion. The seemingly endless supply of parcels and containers kept the men working, as always, without pause. And as they were marched out at the end of the day they were again too closely guarded for any attempt on O’Keefe’s part to make a move for his pistol. He was left on his own to find his way back to his barracks only after his work gang had been escorted out through the access tunnel to the hangar, and there were too many guards in the area to turn around later and head back toward the docks.
The days that followed were no different, the only break from the interminable routine being the occasional debarking of new arrivals from just docked freighters. On those days the workers would be hustled out of the hangar and locked in a holding pen while the guards left them to form their customary cordon, torturing the latest batch of human cargo as they were forced onward toward their initial encounter with Mada Elorak.
Each morning O’Keefe left the barracks as soon as the lights came up, and each morning the exit side of the tunnel into the hangar was gated and locked when he arrived for his work detail. Every time he walked down the entry side of the corridor he passed within ten yards of where his pistol lay waiting, but it may as well have been a hundred miles away. And when his work party was led out of the hangar he would come within arms length of the secret cache, but the roving eyes of the guards that bracketed the prisoners front and rear and the ever-vigilant canines that padded along beside the men made it quite impossible for him to get at the weapon.
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