Grendel Unit
Page 22
"Go to hell," Milner hissed. "We never targeted civilians. We never specifically set out to hurt anyone not involved in combat."
"You have served me well and recently suffered a somewhat significant loss. I realize your mind must be sick with grief, so I will be merciful. I pardon your behavior and send you back to your new duties." He looked at his guards and said, "Now get him out of my sight."
They wrenched Milner up from the floor, using the hook of the pike to keep his head raised and mouth shut as they dragged him out. The President's face glowed with red fire behind a curtain of smoke, and then backed away, leaving nothing but the sound of his low, rumbling laughter.
The guards carried him back down the hall and dragged him toward the building's entrance. He had no idea how many of them had a grip of a piece of him, only that every inch of his body seemed bound and his every attempt to thrash and kick them away was met with excruciating pain. The front doors slid apart and they tossed him down the stairs like a bag of trash, sending him rolling down the edges of sharp stone until he landed on the dusty terrain with a cry.
He lay there on his back on the concrete, squinting up at the sun's harsh glare. He raised his hand to shield his face and glimpsed two men running toward him, their boots kicking up a cloud of dust that billowed over his face. They scooped him up in their hands as he gagged and choked and the one said, "Are you hurt?"
"What the hell was that?" the other whispered. "There was nothing on the ship's monitors except you. I was watching the entire time. It was like you floated out of the palace and threw yourself down the stairs."
"The Presidential Guard," Milner winced, clutching his side. "They have invisibility tech. We have to go before they decide not to let us leave."
They put Milner's arms over their shoulders, helping him hurry back to the ship. Hot spears of pain stabbed him in the sides every time he turned to look at the front entrance, trying to see if anyone came through it.
The muscular man helping to carry him looked back at the entrance and said, "Invisibility tech? That might come in handy, you know."
"Forget it, Bob," Frank Kelly said. "I'm not fighting the entire Presidential Guard just because you want to get your hands on new gear."
"I'm just saying. Where we're going, it wouldn't hurt."
20. Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos
Gratersfield.
A deserted wasteland of nothing but gray rock and damp clay. Nothing green lived on the planet. There were no streams or lakes to be found. Nothing but an endless expanse of barren mesa and rock canyons. Whatever lived in the caves of those canyons had grown accustomed to eating things much more rugged than human beings, as anyone who wandered away from the confines of Gratersfield Penitentiary was soon to find out.
The prison had no gate, no walls, and no towers. Prisoners were free to leave the grounds if they chose, and some did, unable to resist the urge to attempt escape. It normally happened in the first few days, when they'd be in the yard and realize no one was stopping them from running off. They'd slip away into the canyons, or hide in the cliffs, telling themselves that it was only a matter of time before they found food or water or a way off of the planet. There was nothing to find, except the rotting corpses of other prisoners, and most of them were just skeletons that had been picked clean of meat and were now nesting insects.
The prisoners who made it back were dehydrated and babbling. Some of them had seen visions out in the waste, fever-dreams of oases filled with fresh water and colorful fruits, but after a few weeks recovering, they would tell all the other prisoners that they'd found nothing but emptiness, and for as awful as the prison was, it was better than what waited for all of them beyond its walls.
The guards patrolling Gratersfield walked thirty feet above the prison floors on catwalks, carrying heavy assault weapons. What made Gratersfield unique is that the guards were not there to enforce any rules on the prisoner population. The prisoners were allowed to riot, murder, and do any manner of unspeakable things to one another, and they did, all in clear view of the guards. The only things they were not allowed to do was attempt to climb up.
Food and other necessary items were all delivered by chutes down to the various corridors that stationed the prisoners' cells. When an inmate died, it was left to the prisoners to carry the body out into the waste and leave it for the creatures to feed on.
Attempts to climb the delivery chutes, or the walls themselves, were met with sudden, final punishment. The guards would spray the prisoners below with their automatic weapons, mowing down however many it took for the others to scatter. At times, the prisoners would look up and see a different kind of man walking along the catwalks, his drawn-forth nose and upper jaw, with the absence of any sort of chin, gave him the distinct appearance of a long-necked swamp rat. Warden Drexel dressed in a long, somber gray coat with black buttons that he wore fastened all the way up his neck. As he walked, his heavy boots landed heavily on the catwalk's metal grated floors, while he peered down at the prisoners with scalding contempt.
Titus Fyrell looked up at the catwalk and saw the Warden, but the man was too busy, or too self-possessed to notice, and he continued on his inspection, the clunk of his boots soon growing dim. Fyrell grunted as he returned his gaze to the fearful-looking man in front of him and said, "See what I mean? They don't care what we do down here." Fyrell extended his blistered palm, scarred from years of working with unstable explosive gels and said, "Give it."
They were in one of the darkest corners of the prison, far away from the constant fighting and commotion of the lunch room and yard, but the bald-headed man still looked quickly over both shoulders, and then up at the catwalks, making sure they weren't being watched. Fyrell snatched him by the throat and pressed close to him, snarling into the man's ear with breath so rancid it could wither an herb garden, "They ain't the ones you gotta worry about in here, love. I could pluck out your eyes and leave you writhing in permanent darkness and they wouldn't give two squirts. Now. Give it."
Fyrell's mouth became an extended row of blackened, chipped teeth as he watched the man back up and jam a finger down his own throat. He bent forward and started to dry-heave, coughing and gagging until he vomited up a wet plastic bag of pills. Fyrell bent down as soon as the bag hit the floor and grabbed it, saying, "That's good. Well done. Well done indeed."
The man wiped his mouth and said, "You'll tell your people I did it, right? They'll cancel my debt and leave my family alone now?"
Fyrell was too interested in the bag, then, holding it up and staring in wonder at the dozens of pills inside. "Excuse me," the man said again. "You'll tell them, right? That was the deal."
Fyrell glanced back at him and said, "Sure. Next time I see them. Of course, being stuck in here, that might take a while."
"But…but…we had a deal," the man whispered. "I risked my life carrying those things around inside of me. This isn't fair!"
Fyrell's hand disappeared behind his back and came flying back around wielding a length of steel that had been ground to a sharp edge along one side, forming a makeshift machete. He lunged at the man just enough to send him scurrying down a long corridor of cells. Fyrell chuckled to himself as he lifted the bag and inspected the pills, mentally calculating how much he'd be able to charge for each one. It was a shame the food was such terrible slop in there. People would give that away willingly. In a prison such as Gratersfield, it was what people did not want to part with that held value. Having something the others didn't gave you a certain form of power, and right now, Titus Fyrell was holding a bag full of it.
On the street, they might just be worth a handful of credits each, but in prison they were as valuable as diamonds. Fyrell had been to several prisons from the time he was twelve years old, and he'd always come out of them richer and better connected than he'd been before he went in. Some people thrived under pressure, he told himself. Some only existed to serve as feed fish to the other, more dangerous predators, much like the sad sack who j
ust ran off, he thought to himself.
Tiny pinpricks of light shone up through the grated floor beneath him, showing the distant gleam of the hundreds of generators and processors that it took to keep Gratersfield running. The metal flooring was a low-tech, efficient way to keep from having to clean up the multitude of things that spilled on a prison floor. Buckets of blood had spilled through those grates over the years and been instantly vaporized by sanitation jets.
Plus, the metal grates left a nice pattern on a man's face if you stomped it against the floor hard enough, he thought. It marked them like a tattoo, permanently identifying them as someone who'd been to Gratersfield, and not been particularly good at doing it.
Fyrell was walking, lost in his thoughts, when he felt a slight tug on the bag of pills at his side and heard dozens of things spill out onto the grates, ringing like coins pouring out of a slot machine when it came up triple bananas. The sanitation jets hissed instantly and Fyrell watched in horror as the last of the pills he'd been holding fell through the grates and were disintegrated. He saw the severed bag in his hand and spun around with his machete raised, ready to chop the meat of whatever idiot had tried to interfere with him, only to see the bright point of sharpened steel glinting an inch from his eye. He looked past the shank and saw a pair of hard, pitiless eyes, and said nothing.
Victor Cojo held the shank steady and said, "That wasn't good business, Titus. If you treat your workers like that, they won't be very productive. You could have had a good thing going with that. I'm sure he had a few more people in his family willing to come to this cesspool just so you could sell Phendicyn in here?"
Fyrell laughed and said, "Come on man. You don't care if people in here wanna do a little fennies, do you? So what if they want to escape this place for a little while? Can you blame them?"
Vic grasped Fyrell by the back of the head and held him tight, glancing at the machete the man still held high in the air, making sure it hadn't moved. He closed the distance between the tip of the shank and Fyrell's left eye and said, "You have contacts on the outside connected to Yultorot. Where is he?"
"I have no idea," Fyrell spat out.
Vic pressed the metal point ever so gently against the thin lens of Fyrell's eye and said, "I'm about to give you a permanent black line to look at for the rest of your life. Then I'm going to carve my name in the other one."
"I don't know where he is!"
"You lie! Your people sold him the explosives he needed to blow up Andoho-Sky. You helped him kill all those women and children, you son of a bitch."
Fyrell watched a single, thick bead of sweat drip down the side of the man's face and realized there was not going to be any negotiation. No deals were going to be made. There would be no talking his way out of it. So be it, Fyrell thought. I'll probably lose the eye, but I will chop this bastard's arms off in the process. It will be worth it. "Why should I tell you anything?" he said, stalling for time as he planned his attack. "You're just going to kill me anyway."
Vic readjusted his grip and said, "I'm not going to kill you. But you probably will."
"Whatever you say man," Fyrell said. His arm was starting to tremble from holding the machete up for so long. Whatever was going to happen, it had to be fast. "Fine, you want to know about Yultorot? Last I heard, he was planning something big. He knows Unification is going to get him, and he wants to go out big."
"Where?" Vic snarled, sticking the tip of the shank in ever so slightly.
Fyrell cried out, "I don't know! The Pentak System is all I heard. I swear it by the Human God."
Vic's eyes hardened as he stared deep into Fyrell's, and then, just as suddenly as he'd snatched the man, he let him go. "I believe you. Thank you for being cooperative."
Fyrell looked at him in confusion, making sure his hands were empty and it was really over. His arms were trembling as he tried to catch his breath, a cold, quaking rage coming over him that this man had grabbed him and stolen from him and humiliated him. "You son of a bitch!" Fyrell hissed.
Vic cleaned off his shank on his pants leg and said, "One last question before I go. Where is Bal Ghor?"
Fyrell's twisted snarl became a surprised look of amusement. "W-what?"
"I want to know where Bal Ghor is. I know the Sapienists are hiding him in the prison. I want to know where."
Fyrell barked with laughter, "I would sooner chew off my own tongue than even say his name, you Unification scum. I'd pluck out my own eyes, so I couldn't even glance in his direction rather than tell you where he is. At first I thought you were an idiot, but now I realize you are a suicidal idiot. They won't just kill you, you bastard. They'll kill you real, real slow."
"Everybody dies," Vic said. He turned to leave, and felt the soft whisper of wind across his back as the man behind him whipped his machete into the air and charged forward. He could hear steel whistling as it cut the dense, humid air of the corridor, coming down at him in a powerful arc that would have slashed Vic's neck wide, except that Vic turned sideways at the last moment and whipped his arms around, hurling Fyrell forward across his hip.
They were spinning then, both men whirling around in one, continuous motion that ended with Fyrell careening toward the metal grated floor face first, flying and unable to stop. Just as he was about to land, he realized the sharp end of the machete was aimed at the center of his stomach, and he heard the butt-end of the weapon clank against the floor. In the briefest expanse of time his entire body was suspended in the air by the blade, like it might fold in half and snap under his weight, but the steel was resilient, and held firm. It was strong and sharp and that's why he'd chosen it, but now the point was puncturing his stomach and the weight of him was doing the rest. His last thoughts as he slid down the length of the weapon, aside from the scalding intrusion of it running him through, was that he could hear his own blood pouring through the grates on the floor and the sudden hiss of the sanitation jets.
Vic Cojo stood over Fyrell's body as it bled out, waiting for him to stop twitching and kicking involuntarily and said, "I told you, but you didn't believe me."
He saw the machete sticking up through the center of Fyrell's back and moved aside to roll the man over. He worked the metal back and forth, through a series of grinding and sucking noises from the wound, until he was able to draw it free. He cleaned the blade off and admired it in the dim light. There was no need to waste a perfectly useful weapon. He slid it down his pants leg and ducked into the shadows to make sure no one else was coming. When he was sure it was clear, he headed down a long, winding series of corridors, sometimes doubling-back to make sure he wasn't being followed. When he came to a group of people, he slowed down and blended in, giving them no reason to pay attention to him, nothing to report later. He kept to his old ways. He kept his tradecraft sharp.
He could tell he was nearing the far end of the prison, toward the administrative unit, because the lights above were more intense and the din and heat from the computer processing centers became near unbearable. There was a guard standing in front of the doors to the center holding a large rifle. Vic had tried a thousand different ways to get inside that center, but it was completely sealed off from the prison below. Eventually, he'd had to take a chance and make contact with the guard.
"Slavish?" Vic hissed, looking up at the soles of the man's boots. "Slavish!"
"You again?" the guard sighed. Corporal Wallace Slavish was a mid-forties man with a large, round belly that obscured several of his chins from Vic's vantage point. He wore a fluffy brown beard that was streaked with white whiskers and chewed tobacco incessantly. There were gobs of it dripping down between the grates over Vic's head, stinking in the humid heat.
"What now?"
"I have new information. I need you to pass it along to Lieutenant Frank Kelly. It's important!"
"Right," Slavish said. "Just like the last time."
"Do you remember how to reach him?" Vic said.
"Yeah," Slavish replied. "So what is it now?"
"Pentak, got it," Slavish said. He worked up another mouthful of spit and hawked it down at the grate, this time aiming for Vic.
Vic stepped aside, but not quite fast enough, as he felt some of the man's black slime slide down his arm. Vic steadied himself and said, "Listen to me. I know I'm asking you a lot, but it's extremely important. The safety of Unification could depend on it."
"What makes you think I give a squirt about Unification?" Slavish said.
"If you pass it along, I'll make sure you are rewarded, or even decorated. Frank, or, Lieutenant Kelly will see to it. You could be a hero!"
Corporal Slavish just looked bored by the idea, then a smile broke across his face as if he suddenly had a funny thought. He bent low, looking down at Vic through the grates, and said, "I'll pass along your little stories when I get around to it, but just so you know, I just talked to your buddy, and he wasn't interested. We're becoming friends though. Went fishing and had a few beers together, and you know what he told me? He said you were a lunatic who'd been locked up too long and you should probably just kill yourself."
"Frank doesn't fish," Vic said.
Slavish shrugged and said, "He wanted me to teach him."
"You didn't really see Frank. He wouldn't say that," Vic responded, but his voice was soft and lacked conviction. "I know he wouldn't."
"You sure about that?" Slavish said. "I invited him here to come see you and he told me he'd rather die than spend time with a dishonored criminal who embarrassed everybody he knew."
Vic clenched his eyes shut. It was getting harder and harder to tell the lies from the truths inside the walls of the prison. He worried he was becoming conditioned to being a captive. Never, he thought intensely. I am a Unification soldier and I will continue the mission until every last threat to her existence is dead. "Where is Bal Ghor being hidden?" he growled.