by Dennis Yates
Infected Planet
By
Dennis E. Yates
Copyright © 2017 by Dennis E. Yates
[email protected]
These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Dennis E. Yates.
Chapter 1
I've heard some people come out of deep freeze with a new outlook on life, like they've been reborn or some such thing. I also once heard there were crazies who liked doing it just for kicks. Talk about sick.
Deep freeze was supposed to be the end of me. I never planned to come back at all after I was executed and packed in the Federation’s spare parts bank. Imagine how surprised I was when they popped the lid and I saw my old warden glaring down at me.
"Howdy shit kicker," he said by way of greeting me back to the world of the living. You had to love him for it.
As usual, the warden tried to act like he'd grown up some place other than this giant crib the Pilgrims have floating in space. I doubt if the man had ever breathed real air or spat dust through his teeth.
"What's the deal, warden? Don't tell me you beat me to hell."
The warden didn't laugh. No surprise there, he was known for being a hard ass. It went with the job as they say. If the hospital staff had been given the night off, I'm sure I'd be tasting blood right about now. He hated back talk of any kind, and I'd made giving it to him my obsession while a guest of his prison.
And then it hit me. He was much older than the last time I'd seen him. Standing in a starched red uniform with other members of the Federation's finest. Smiling as my friends and I were neatly killed with the least amount of organ damage but with the highest degree of pain.
Son of a bitch. The puffy bags under the warden’s eyes had turned into deep trenches. His hands were wrinkled and covered with brown spots shaped like spiders. Had I been frozen for that long?
We got the ultimate punishment. But we hadn't killed anyone innocent that I know of. In fact, I thought we'd run a respectable operation before getting caught. And besides, most of our victims were crooks that no one else wanted to mess with. The way I saw it, we were bringing justice to a world that desperately needed it.
In the end, we were shown what people can do with money if they're really pissed off. In less than a week a small army was dispatched to hunt us. The day we were captured, we knew it wasn't a good sign they hadn’t shot us on sight. Turned out their flavor of revenge demanded we must be made examples of.
The warden kept quietly watching me. As usual, he liked to marinate prisoners in his special brand of intimidation. During such times, you didn't want him to talk. Just seeing his icy glare was enough. Made me think of shallow graves and scavengers and that dreadful day everyone's got coming...
"I'm here to make you an offer."
"Yes," I said without hesitating.
The warden's forehead bunched up into a washboard of wrinkles. "Excuse me?" he asked, incredulous.
"I'd be honored to marry your daughter,” I said.
The man bristled. "You don't know my family. And if I ever caught you near them, I'd kill you myself."
"Sorry. I don't know what just came over me. Must be some side effect of the freeze."
"Side effect, my ass," the warden grunted. "I regret the day we received orders to thaw you out. I was planning to shove your storage pod out of the airlock for some shooting practice."
"Well at least I'd be asleep while it happened."
The warden leaned in close enough that I choked from the fumes of his last vodka. Old habits die hard.
"I wouldn't let you sleep through something like that," the warden grinned thinly. "Oh yeah... I'd make sure you were very much awake. And when you were in so much pain that you begged me to finish the job, I’d turn you over to the lab boys to patch up.”
“Why?” I asked.
“So that we could start all over again, of course.”
The warden seemed amused with me now. Although his dark eyes hid deep within his skull, I knew he was intently studying me. Enjoying every minute.
"Can we get past the threats for now?" I asked. "What's this deal I'm supposed to reject?"
"You're not going to say no."
"What makes you think I'm not?"
"Because the rest of your pathetic band of criminals have already signed on."
My heart knocked in my throat as if it’d been kicked. "They're alive?"
"Unfortunately, yes. They were brought out of freeze before you."
"But we were executed..."
The warden smiled broadly for the first time since his visit. It's not the kind of smile you'd want to remember on the day you got your ticket punched -- or any time for that matter.
I pulled up my gown to look for any healed scars. Other than a bit of frost rash, I saw no evidence of where the lasers had opened me up so I could glimpse my shiny intestines. Reliving the memory of my execution suddenly made me look around for a place to puke.
"You going to be okay?" the warden asked in a mocking tone.
I leaned back against the thawing pad and gulped air until my heart settled. This man wasn't here to offer me anything. He was here to torture me.
"Just tell me about the deal."
The warden looked almost concerned. "I'm not convinced, shit kicker. You're looking kind of green around the gills. I don't know how much you can take anymore."
I tried to ignore my roiling stomach. An image of a snake sinking its teeth into itself looped over and over in my head. I pushed it aside and stared back at the warden.
"Tell me, you son of a bitch."
"It's a job."
"Legal or illegal?"
"Government."
"Go on."
The warden walked over and checked outside the doorway. Satisfied no one was there, he grabbed a chair and slid up next to me. I hated the feeling of being on display. I was trapped and vulnerable inside the thaw pod, and he was enjoying the hell out of it. If I didn't free myself soon, I'd go mad.
"Can you help me out of this thing?"
The warden shook his head. "You've got to stay put a couple more days."
"This is ridiculous," I said. "There's no way to speed things up?"
"Sorry, but we don't have any of those fancy new thawing centrifuges around here. We’d rarely have a need for one and they cost an arm and a leg. Look at it this way, Brand, you'll have plenty of time now to think things over."
"If I only knew what about maybe I could."
The warden leaned closer. His flesh was pasty. For the first time, I detected fear in his eyes. Of what? There were legends about the man, of how he once singlehandedly took down five prisoners who'd tried to jump him.
I watched the warden glance at the door again and turn back. Something in his face told me he wasn't going to speak the whole truth.
"You're right. I should get to the point," the warden said. I've grown tired of looking at your stupid face, and I keep hoping for a reason to put you back on ice. But I know that’s not going to happen soon enough. The fact still remains. We need you and your fellow reprobates to help us."
"Who's we?" I smiled. Surprised.
"The Federation."
"You've got to be lying to me."
"I'm not... But to be honest, I wish I was."
"Let me get this straight. First the Federation kills us, and now they need us alive so we can do them a favor? Why should I give a damn about
the Federation?”
It was my turn to smile. I had the feeling lady luck wasn't through having her way with me just yet. The warden, however, was now deeply unhappy. You’d think he’d lost his dolly. At least some color had returned to his cheeks, I thought. He no longer looked half dead.
"Don't start patting yourself on the back," he replied. "I take no pleasure in having to give you a second chance. But your gang knows their way around planet Lazarus better than anyone else we can find at the moment."
"What's going on warden? You know damn well I have kin on that hot ball of grit."
The warden wiped his face. "Let me back up. I'll try to be brief. You've been on ice for a total of thirteen years and two months. During that time life on Lazarus kind of spiraled out of control. Solar storms kept playing havoc on our infrastructures and people got tired of having to rebuild. They started leaving in droves. Lawlessness quickly refilled the void. What couldn't be salvaged was left behind to crumble into sand."
I smiled proudly. "Lazarus has never been a place for the soft, warden. Only the old ways can ever work there. You Pilgrims are a greedy bunch and you always want things easy."
The warden pretended to ignore my comment. "Last year the Federation sent down a team to investigate rumors of a global insurrection. There'd been hope of restarting some resource extraction industries that had developed better tech protections against solar storms. Massive casualties were discovered when the crew arrived. By all appearances, the planet had been gripped by a bloody civil war."
I swallowed hard. "What are we talking about warden, in terms of deaths?"
"Estimates are around 80 percent lost, but probably much more than that."
"Are you counting only Pilgrims?" I asked.
"No. Dusters included."
I couldn't believe it. The gang and I always stuck to old colony rules. We only robbed, and if necessary, killed Pilgrims. To think things got so bad that Dusters started killing each other seemed remote. I only knew of one Duster who didn’t hesitate killing his own kind. But I’d heard he’d been driven into the badlands and never returned.
"Where's the crew now?" I asked.
"They've gone missing. No one has seen or heard from them since their initial report."
"Then what does the Federation want now? To send down some Dusters they can afford to lose? No thanks. I'm better off waiting out this one in deep freeze."
The warden grinned. "There's no going back. If you choose not to take the deal, you’ll be put on the fast track for harvesting. And unless they decide to wake your head up some day, you'll never get a shot at being conscious again. I still don’t understand why you weren’t harvested long ago. You must have friends in the right places.”
I swallowed hard and studied his face for signs he was lying to me. "Tell me how this is going to work."
"The President has authorized us to equip you with everything you need while you're on Lazarus. He wants you to find the missing crew."
"Why does the President care so much?"
"His son is among the lost. His father sent him along so he could learn to grow a pair."
"I see... And may I ask what we get for our trouble?"
"You'll be pardoned. I've got the letter from the President if you want to see it."
“Tell him I appreciate it, but doing this thing to get out of your jail won’t fly with us. You’re going to have to tell your boss it’s going to cost a lot of money.”
“How much are you talking about?” the warden asked. The man’s eyes had a glint of mischief about them I didn’t like.
“Six million for the job. Expenses not included.”
“Anything else you want to clear up while you’re at it?”
"One more thing. If we decide to make a run for it while we're there, will you send down bounty hunters to find us?"
The warden shook his head. "You can run all you like, but I'd advise sticking to the rescue plan if you have any desire to stay alive. There are plans to have the entire planet torched in the very near future, and I’d hate to see you miss your ship out of there."
"What about survivors?" You won’t try to evacuate them first?"
"The President understands it's not worth the risk of getting in the middle of a war and trying to sort out the good from the bad. Our resources are so depleted they’re being rationed now. The Federation needs to be able to harvest quickly and without interference."
I shook my head. "So now the Federation wants to take back what it abandoned? What happens if the President's son is dead?"
"He and his crew will be honored as heroes, naturally, and life in the Federation will go on. As for the other inhabitants still alive on that crap hole you call home, I guess they just got dealt another bad hand. Besides, I think we'd be doing the galaxy a favor by taking out all those vermin you call kin."
I shot my hand up and clamped it around his throat. It wasn’t one of those cases where I’d acted without thinking. I knew exactly what I was doing.
The warden's eyes had bulged in surprise. When he tried prying away my fingers I squeezed harder, felt my arm surging with adrenaline as his face blued. Thirteen years ago, he would have had the strength to land a nose-crushing punch and break my grip. But those days were behind him now.
"What's going on here?" I heard a voice ask. It was the blonde nurse -- the first woman I’d seen after over a decade in a dark chamber. She’d ignored me when I’d asked her name, and now my chance of ever knowing probably just went up in smoke.
I let go of the warden's throat and he stumbled backwards into the nurse before turning around and weaving out of the room. I shook my head and grinned. I could still hear the bastard choking in the hall.
Maybe I'd just re-stamped my own death certificate, but I didn't care. It felt damn good to be alive now. The nurse glared at me while readying a needle full of tranquilizer. Perfect, I thought. My time spent thawing will go by faster.
“He and I go way back,” I said before she took hold of my arm.
Chapter 2
We were dumped on Lazarus during a massive sandstorm, not far from a Duster town called Cranston where the President's son had last been heard from. I wasn't surprised when no apology arrived from the Federation for the timing screw up. The insertion team that put us down on our ancestral home had treated us rudely. It didn't help matters much when one of their sneering grunts and I got into a scuffle and I'd broken his nose before others could jump in and stop us.
The only time a sandstorm is any good is if it's putting a barrier between you and someone who wants to kill you. For the time being, I was glad we were concealed from whatever could be out there. We needed a chance to acclimate to our harsh surroundings. Although I was supposed to be completely thawed, I still felt the painful sensation of ice traveling through my body. My blood ran sluggish and caused my head to throb.
After gathering up our gear we went to look for a place where we could wait out the storm. There was no sense in losing more skin than necessary right off the bat. Besides, Ramos had a bottle of tequila we had to drink.
We'd seen some tire tracks but no sign of their owners. The storm had done its best to confuse things. Some tracks were going toward Cranston and others were exiting. Most of the tracks were so blurred by wind that you couldn't determine their age. We had no clue as to how many people we could end up confronting, or even when they’d last been around.
Fortunately, we were in a canyon and it didn't take long to locate shelter not occupied by an unhappy somebody. It'd been years since we'd all spent a night together inside a cave. The red sandstone smelled like home and was still warm to the touch from the day's scorching rays. Good thing too, the temperature outside had dropped to freezing when night took hold.
I kept thinking I had to be experiencing some kind of hallucination inside my deep freeze chamber, or wondering if my brain was floating inside a tank being fed stimuli by one of the warden's mad scientist buddies. However, something inside me insisted it was
real, that the people around the campfire weren't demons masquerading as my old friends.
Being inside the cave reminded us of the early days in our life of crime. Yet I think in the backs of our minds we were all wondering how long it would take before the devil realized he'd been cheated. We were supposed to be dead after all. Until someone in the Federation was in need of a liver, a lung or a pair of second-hand eyes.
Before Ramos downed the first drink, we were all feeling emotional and teary eyed. It had been thirteen years since we'd nodded our goodbyes in the execution yard. As tradition dictated, the bottle was next passed to Jade and then to me. Neither one of them had felt the need to make a toast. It had been a long day and our throats were raw with dust.
"To new beginnings," I announced hoarsely. I raised the tequila to my crew and threw back a triple shot's worth. The stuff went down like August sunlight –- a phrase I remember my father saying to me once.
"How'd you score this?" I asked Ramos.
"I know someone who works in the supply area."
"Who?"
The big man grinned. "A nephew. He was a kid when I was put away. It blew his mind when I paid him a visit yesterday. Said he thought I was just a myth."
"Let him know I owe him one," I said. I handed the bottle back. "In my opinion, this is a better way to come out of a thirteen-year freeze."
I glanced over at Jade who seemed to be quieter than normal. Something was definitely gnawing at her. I knew that look well.
"What's on your mind?"
"Those weapons they gave us are crap."
"This is the Federation we're dealing with, remember?"
"Listen to me, Brand. We're not going to last a week if that's what they expect us to use. I've gone over everything a couple times. It's pathetic. I doubt if we could stand a prolonged firefight against even a pimply gang of rogue space scouts."
I nodded. Felt the tequila slosh inside my head. I had no doubt Jade was right. She knew weaponry better than anyone. She'd saved our lives countless times by making sure we were well prepared.
"And that's why we need to get to the closest weapons cache we've got," I said.