Prisoner 52 (7 page)

"How long will that last.
" Tezac said and looked at his gloved hands, the skeletal brackets of the enhancement overlay.

"Ain't that the question.
" Leargam said and started away toward the door. "Come on, let's not keep our guests waiting. Tram's on the floor below us."

T
hey waded from out of desolation and into abundance. The ghosts of the pre-dawn shifts streamed out of the return magrail lines and into the port by the hundreds and so swamped the massive second level of headquarters. He and the old man had found brief isolation, Tezac knew, and solitude and inside so short an interim. The human element of what had before seemed a wasteland of automation and its captive audience to the whole cruel play had then become apparent. And it unfolded across a dozen different sectors and in a dozen different quarters. Each dwarfed by the movements of those anthills which toiled beneath their hives. Of it all, he was only a small part and across time smaller still. Leargam took him by the arm.

"What's the matter," He said. "This can't be
any big deal after the war."

"It wasn't like this. Not like now." He said and wanted to return to his room, where his luggage in his mind had been transmitted to his bed.

"Well come on. Tram's over there, you see it? The one we came in on." Leargam said and pointed out the hulk of steel that idled behind the polymer windows on the far side of the magrail port, beyond those hundreds returning and departing. The heavy snowfall nearly blurred out the '7' stencilled huge and white on the side of it.

"Let's go then." Tezac said and shrugged off his grip.

So they delved into the sea of metal and grime and sweat before them. Those oncoming moved from their path like wheat does the wind, swaying away from those they felt rather than saw. It was the lift that called them and they would not divert their eyes from it for fear that once out of sight it would vanish as so many things had.

The howl of the wind and the break of ice crystals on the floor-to-ceiling glass became audible above the dull roar of
the crowds, the living stamp of their boots. The threshold of the tram loomed before them and they merged into the peopled stream that issued into it. The storm outside beat against the umbilical that adhered tram to station and Tezac gazed out from its small portholes at the quagmire of steel and fumes that sat as a splotch upon the icy landscape, harried ever by the winter throes of the winter planet. Beyond the glacial hills the plains rolled to the distant and spare mountains that hosted their own metal parasites, in turn their own ecosystems of mineral extractrion. Then they were gone, behind him now as he boarded the tram with the swell of those there as well.

He stood as Leargam sat and held fast to the support pole as the car started ahead into the snow and ice. The talk was muted. The talk that there was. He could smell the gun oil exuded by their rifles, done that morning. Some pre-dawn ritual that he himself had once known. The electrical stench of the servo-motor
s of their armor, the harsh whir when a few moved such joints. The groanings of old, worn down things speaking for their owners, constant reminders of another tired day and what would be another tired day out. But the tram ran on and smoothly – without fault for anything.

Day 4

The great olive drab of the blast doors opened before them and groaned beneath the groan of the storm being unveiled. They stepped through before the gate was not yet fully int
o the walls and appeared to those beyond as shadows in the swell of light that crept through the widening gulf. Modern beasts combing the ancient ruins of an antique kind. They shouldered their rifles and keyed for their visors to lower against the cold that blew into the hangar from those of its doors opened to it. Leargam swatted him on the shoulder and pointed off to that which was marked '12'. The figures there, dark against the light of the world outside, hailed and went to meet them.

"What do we got?" Leargam said through the helmet's vocal broadcaster.

"Standard patrol vessel," The foremost of them said and Tezac knew him for Penders, the man who had transmitted to them in the mess hall. "Outerverse border detail. 30, 50 guys."

"Where are they?"

"They won't leave the landing pad. Or that cargo they're carrying."

The old man nodded and looked around their group at the indistinct shapes stood on the platform ahead and said, "What is it?"

"Your problem." Penders said and patted Leargam on the shoulder and pushed past the two of them, his posse following close behind in chuckles.

"Not a lot of comraderie around here." Tezac said once they had gone.

"Penders is always a prick. Always been a prick. Probably born a prick." The old man said and started away toward the landing pad. "His father, too."

"And his father?"

"Godsdamned right. He thinks he ain't beholden to anybody except command; little does he know: that's why command doesn‘t fucking like him."

"So what the hell was he doing here?"

"Making nice with all the other assholes that aint beholden to anybody but command." He said and stopped short of the broad hangar bay marked '12' before them. "Hangar personnel."

"You Leargam?" A squat man in thick welder's goggles asked Tezac and the old man beside him grinned his pearly grin. As though he had summoned the man by mention of him.

"Hotchkins," He said and pointed with his rifle. "He's Leargam."

"You took damn long enough. Any more and the instruments would have started freezing over. Conduits bursting, flaps icing up." He said and took a dirty shammy cloth from his belt and wiped with it his dirty face. "Ah, to hell with it. There's your man anyway."

Leargam looked past him at the platform for a second time and still the storm occluded the outside world with white. But through the ice and wind and snow he could make out the tall, broad shape that was grey-black in the colourless nothing which swirled around it.

"Don't see anybody apart from the soliders, guy." Leargam said. "And that thing they're all standing around."

"He's there alright." The man said and brushed past him. "I got work to do. Just make it quick, alright? Or the-"

"The instruments will freeze over." Leargam said. "Yeah I got you."

"You'd think they didn't want anybody to take him." He went on in the absence of the machinist. "I'll be fucked if we ever get this guy out of here if all those soliders want to give the long and short of it too."

"Something isn't right." Tezac said and did not go ahead with him toward the wall of the blizzard.

"You mean my suit'll freeze up before we get back to our post?" Leargam said and his words began to be smothered by the howl of the wind the further he went before he saw that the rookie had not followed him. "Well what the hell do you mean?"

"That guy," He said. "You don't
talk like that if you got some place to be. I saw it dozens of times in the wars."

"We aren't in
the SepSecs here." The old man said and studied Tezac's face as he said nothing of it. "What're you thinking, then?"

"I think that thing out there on the pad with them is an obelisk." He said. "And you'd better be careful about what's inside."

Leargam eyed him and then turned away and brought his wristband round. Tezac watched him manipulate its hardlight screen impassively and then stared out into the flurries at the hardly there figure of the black containment tower therein. Indeed, he peered at it and peered beyond it and so searched the most darksome of what his mind had chosen to remember.

"Yeah," He heard the old man say into his bracer. "This is Leargam. Down in the hangar bays. Enforcer Code: 23900541212. Connect me with Captain Mullins. No I won't wait. It's important. Tell him a military vessel has docked with his containment sector and he'd probably like to know why."

Leargam fell to muttering to himself and keyed off the transmission and joined Tezac again far back from the open bay doors, the soldiers yet waiting beyond.

"Captain Mullins is already aware." Leargam said. "Cleared the transfer himself this morning. Shit. They have their own facilities for this."

"I can tell you that your captain didn't have much choice."

"Well," Leargam said and keyed his visor to lower again.

They went away at last to the threshold of the landing pad and beyond it the soliders stood yet as stoic as statues left in some bygone palace to weather what they will. They stirred at their approach as waking temple guardians and one stepped apart to hail them. Bulky as they in his exo-suit, but self-contained and immune to the harrying elements. Tezac and Leargam drew to a stop before him, ramshackle in ramshackle suits and so much the primitive visited by a long absent progenitor.

"Morning," He said, distorted through the sealed helmet, and he then looked about himself as the ice crystals broke across his visor. "Least I think it's morning."

"Close enough." Leargam said to the giant. "What you got for us?"

"Maerazian." The man said and took his trigger hand away from it and held the palm out to them, prompting the holoprojector bulb therein to broadcast.

Tezac looked at Leargam out from the corner of his eye and the old man did the same, the one knowing and the other knowing that he did.

"Zhouferon Zhoudai," The
soldier said to him. "Height: 3.2 meters; weight: 138 kilos. Age: unknown."

"Your gene scanners didn't pick that up?" Leargam shouted over the storm.

"Returned as unquantifiable."

"So he's an old one."

"Captain thinks Exodux Age, but he hasn't been thinking too straight since we picked him up." He shouted back. "Listen, I hate to drop him off on you. But you guys are the only slam in a few dozen AU and we just don't have the containment facilities on board. About wasted all our sedatives just getting him here. And we had a lot of sedatives."

"When can we expect a pick-up?"

"Two, three weeks tops. Core-standard. Captain said there's a Magi vessel nearby that can take him. But we'll see how that pans out."

"Alright," Leargam said and nodded and looked off at the monstrous Obelisk. "I sure hope it does; we only got the one cell that'll hold the son of a bitch."

"Don't worry. Somone'll be along." He said. "We got to lift off before this storm gets any worse like the sensors are reporting. Good luck!"

"Yeah," Leargam said, but did not watch the squad file back into their dropship; his eyes remained fast to the monolith before them, one of a different sort
hidden inside, until he turned back to Tezac. "Alright. Let's get this beast hooked up and hauled out of here."

Day 4

"These are the levels they don't tell you about in the briefing." Leargam said.

Tezac nodded as the lift plunged and whined into the engulfing dark of the shaft hidden beyond the walls. They flanked the Obelisk like excavators having hauled out some alien relic from the bowels of a dead world, for indeed that is what the machine appeared to those unaccustomed to it. And what resided within, beyond their ken. A retinue of men stood behind them and wrapped round the rear of it and one of these leaned forward to touch him on the shoulder.

"First drop?" He said and Tezac nodded.

"Here." He said. "Plenty of atmospherics."

The man smiled and said, "You're in for a real treat when we get to
the bottom," and then withdrew back into formation.

The subsurface kilometers ticked fast and upwards of 30 on the readout of the hardlight console until at last the lift hummed to a halt at 52. The doors remained shut against them and so Leargam thumbed the hardlight button that would open them, again when they did not.

"Please state designation." The console said at last and turrets lowered of a sudden from hatches in the elevator's ceiling, training themselves methodically and in turn upon all those before them.

Leargam submitted his code as he had done not so long ago to the Enforcer-Captain's assistant and its blue light thrummed orange, brightening slow and dimming fast as with
everything in the world that lay far above.

"Designation accepted." It said. "Alpha wave brain pattern correlated. No preservative bodies found. Welcome to Cocytus Penal World Subterrenean Specialized Containment and Isolation, Enforcer Leargam. Enjoy your stay."

The console chimed and the turrets recoiled and the doors opened to admit a gust of air a degree warmer than those that whirled above. They filed out and the Obelisk with them, its self-guided treads processing the data of the NervLink cables that ran between they and it. It was a heavy silence that greeted them on the walkway beyond. Only the buzz of the containment tower disrupted it, and their booted feet. Tezac looked up at the ceiling that was strewn with interminable doors, to each only a thin strip of glass to see within or without, and then at the distant walls which held the same.

"Gods it's hot down here.
" He said.

"Outside those walls it's a
thousand degrees." Leargam said and pointed off into the shadows that surrounded them. "Give or take. Not that it matters at those temperatures. Geothermal core oughta be around here some place. Powers the whole sector, pays for itself. Go figure, all the noise that it's making."

A bright light fell on them of a sudden and blinded them in dispelling the darkness of that deep tomb. Their reactive visors dimmed the incoming rays and all could see plain the barreled arms of a turret flanking the spotlight. It beeped sequentially and then droned at them and those behind flinched at the noise.

"Hey, boys. You caught me in my midafternoon nap." A voice called from somewhere in the darkness and cleared its throat. "What brings you to the land of death and stagnation?"

"Zirdat." Leargam said and nodded at the turret, squinting
still into the light of its flaring eye. "How's business?"

"Teddy Leargam. I haven't seen your mug down here in a while. Who's that
big guy you got with you?"

"Rookie, just shipped in. Is there even a midafternoon to have naps in down here?"

"I manage; it's all in the mind, my friend." He said and yawned. "So what do you got for me?"             

"New inmate." He said, staring up into the light and the dark that hovered close around it. "Just in, straight to sub-level iso. No downtime."

"Null-grav?" He said and the light swivelled up to rest on the tanks inset throughout the vast chamber and then down to illimunate rows of metal cylinders below the walkway that had before only been hinted at by the dim light of the overhead lamps. "Or the nightmare tubes?"

"The shaft." Leargam said.

"The shaft." He said and there was a pause in which the light of the turret maneuvered to fall on the containment obelisk behind them. "Well shit. What the hell did you bring me that needs to be put in there?"

"Full sense-dep." He said. "Mag-con. Maerazian, maybe a warlord. Who knows."

"That's some cargo you brung me." Zirdat said and sucked his teeth. "Well fuck. Alright, keep him coming."

             
"You'll take him off our hands, then?" Leargam asked.

             
"Got to." He said and they heard the shrug in his voice and then the turret swivelled out from their way and shined upon them from the emptiness beside the walkway. "As much as it'd be interesting to see you put him in with the rest of those animals up there, I'm sure there's a regulation or two that would nail my ass to the wall."

So they moved forward into the gloom and escorted by the rail-turrets, servants of a god of a redundant underworld. Tezac saw as he looked about himself the guardsmen behind him doing the same. But in the way that he had seen men do in unfamiliar jungles or canyons or ruined metropolises. Hoping that, in searching, something would not appear.

Their way soon revealed the platformed heart of the processing center that sprawled beneath Cocytus, a contiguous fungus that housed the means of its own construction. There the light was best and shone down on them from above through white discs, so much the eyes of their builders. At its center was only a life, amidst all the machines and facilities which operated and maintained the thousands of isolated prisoners. Simple, not small nor large, and of no great magnificence tandem to that of the prisoners it had been built to send below. And in its simplicity was the thing that kept all wary men at bay.

They peered up at the groups of
loading scaffolds that were the arms of the installation. Standing silent and ready to withdraw any number of the cells above and all around to deposit them again, loaned out. He wondered how many of them were occupied and what insanity could come that should fill all of them. He wondered more at the silos below, cast into the pit of wiring and conduits that too fell away into an unknown blackness.

"Bring it over to the lift." Zirdat said. "Watch your heads."

A hatch squealed open in the dark high above them and out of it issued the low hum of carbon-fiber wings and afterward a squadron of drones lowered down into view, their manipulator arms grasping at nothing as they formed up around the monolith. In their wake Leargam and Tezac started forward and the obelisk trailed after them, pulling along those who accompanied them from behind. No one wanted part in the plunge ahead and in such a mode of descent that vaunted hidden meaning. But onward they went and their shoulders squared, their rifles high.

The treads of their cargo whirred to a halt at the epicenter of the
open-air elevator at the center of the platform and its ferryman were quick to disengage the nervelink cables from their suits and step away. A tetrad of turrets rose from hatches in the floor and trained themsevles on the machine that towered amidst them. A crisp, sweet smell came into their nostrils but only the soldier and the miner among them knew its source. It was clear to them who understood that there was little in all the theorized Mulitverse that could withstand Teredium rounds fired at such capacities. That the radiant crystal's explosions would detonate the finances of him who purchased it no less than its target.

"You're set to take him down yourself, then?" Leargam said to the man behind the drones
that had lowered down into view. "He's still sedated in that thing, but I'd go quick taking him out."

"He won't be any trouble." Zirdat said. "Nothing my goons can't handle. Go on, I'll see you all at Suzie's later."