The Empty Warrior (64 page)

“Not for us mate,” Steenini said distantly, wheezing a bit in the thick exhaust that filled the air. “But it is for some poor bastard. Maybe more than one. It’s policy that we witness it, and it takes a lot of time to get us all into the arena. Even at this pace we’ll probably have to wait in line when we get there.”

Steenini was correct, as always. It wasn’t long before they came up behind another group of men similarly guarded by lizards, and their pace slowed even further until they were shuffling ahead for a few steps, stopping for a moment, and then moving ahead a few more feet. At length they reached an intersection where both the right and left sides of the corridor that crossed their path were blocked by lizard tanks. The guard leading them turned left at the intersection and pivoted on its treads to face outward, while the guard it replaced clanked away in reverse down the passageway. When O’Keefe came abreast of the guards, he peered as best he could around them and could see that on either side the corridor curved away forward in a way that looked like it would have led the men in a great circle had they been allowed to follow it in either direction. But instead the guards, with help from several dogs, herded the men straight ahead. When the guard bringing up the rear reached the intersection, it turned into the right passage, relieving the second lizard, which roared away in the opposite direction that its comrade had gone. The men continued to move slowly and steadily forward.

O’Keefe could see a gated opening ahead and brighter light beyond. When he reached the gate he stepped forward into a gargantuan, bowl shaped, underground stadium. The cavernous arena consisted of a walled, circular floor surrounded by three tiers cut from the stone for spectators, all beneath a great domed ceiling that bristled with glaring, incandescent lights. Each of the three decks were partitioned into sections like any other stadium, but here the sections were separated by thick, chest-high walls and were completely enclosed by heavy gauge chain link fencing, and there were no seats. Steep, curving steps, that spanned the entirety of the section and gave O’Keefe an unsteady, queasy feeling as he looked down over them, were cut into the native rock that formed the stadium. The men carefully stepped down over the rows until the front ones were filled. O’Keefe, with Lindy and Steenini close behind, found a spot about half way down. The dogs continued to drive men past the gate until everyone was packed in tightly enough to be touching, shoulder to shoulder, on every step from the front row to the back. When no more bodies could be crammed inside, a heavy, iron-framed gate clanged shut behind them. Looking back over his shoulder, O’Keefe could see a dog standing guard on the other side of their only exit.

The stands were filling quickly. O’Keefe glanced about from his vantage point. He and his friends were standing in a section of the second level, and he could see men still filing into the arena from nearly a third of the entrances. There was the noise of gates banging shut and locking in place close around them as sections on their side of the bowl were filled. In a short time only the third and uppermost deck had any significant empty space left in it. A steady murmuring of the crowd filled the air.

“There must be fifty thousand of us in here,” Lindy said, obviously awed by the sight.

Steenini, standing between Lindy and O’Keefe, suddenly spoke up. “No one misses punishment,” he said dryly.

“No one at all?” asked O’Keefe, intrigued by that fact.

“No one,” repeated Steenini.

Lindy swallowed and frowned, looking a bit distraught. “Who is to be punished?” he asked.

“Who knows,” Steenini said resignedly. “It could be anyone. Your worship Mada Elorak thinks it is good for discipline for us to observe this barbaric spectacle on a regular basis. Sometimes she roams the colony merely for the purpose of finding a victim to set an example with—a replay of our first day here. It is her aim to routinely reinforce the notion that any defiance of or challenge to Vazilek superiority is useless and will not be tolerated. And apparently she is not alone in this intention. Witnessing punishment seems to be standard operating procedure for all Vazilek facilities.”

“You mean to say that it is like this even on the outside, that this shit goes on even after you’ve impressed them enough to make it out of the colony?” O’Keefe asked. “I would have thought they would lighten up once they had you cowed and brainwashed enough to serve them.”

“It is always like this with them, mate,” replied Steenini, a venomous acerbity that betrayed the antipathy he felt toward their captors creeping into his tone. “The Vazileks are few and their thralls are many. They rule only through terror and absolute subjugation. They will brook not the slightest insubordination, no matter how trifling, at any time or any place from any person. They are utterly ruthless.”

“Good!” O’Keefe said with finality.

“Good?” echoed Steenini, looking at O’Keefe with a mixture of confusion and repugnance.

“Yes. Very good. Once we get out of here we are going to need an…” Of course there was no Akadean word for army. “We’re going to need allies. The worse the people are treated the easier it will be to recruit them.”

Steenini rolled his eyes slightly, in response to what he had recently begun to call O’Keefe’s “infernal optimism,” but said nothing. A moment later he pointed down at the arena floor. “There,” he said, “it begins.”

O’Keefe looked below and could see that there was one section of the first tier that was not filled to overflowing with humanity, nor was it angled upward from the wall that surrounded the floor. It was instead a flat square cut into the side of the stadium at the height of the wall, which stretched back into the shadows beneath the second deck. A broad staircase reached from its front down to the floor. From somewhere outside, a large pack of dogs now loped out across that square, positioning themselves at regular intervals around its edges. They were followed by a group of lizard guards that formed a semi-circle across the square, facing the arena floor, which stretched from the left front corner, to the midpoint at the center, and then back to the right front corner. Then Elorak herself appeared in an enormous litter, borne by a dozen men. It slowly emerged from beneath the overhang of the second level with her assault robot, as always, following just behind it.

The litter was ornately fashioned and appeared to be completely plated with gold and encrusted with sparkling gems, though O’Keefe would have bet it was all imitation. The Vazileks appeared to lead a Spartan lifestyle to the point of being penurious. It would have been very unlike the bastards to spend any more than they deemed essential on a place like Ashawzut, and he did not think the litter was Elorak’s personal property. A jailer assigned to some backwater prison would never command the type of salary that would be necessary to afford that kind of accouterment.

Atop the litter Elorak sat reclining in a golden chaise with high sides, which looked to have been purposefully constructed in that manner to keep her shielded and therefore slippery posterior from sliding off the seat. The semi-circle of guards parted, allowing Elorak to be carried through it, and then reformed behind her. Her bearers gently laid the litter at the front of the open platform, where the goddess of Ashawzut would have the best view. They then scampered back toward the guards, each prostrating himself before one while in turn the lizards drew harpoons and held their spear points against the spines of the prisoners lying before them.

On the opposite side of the arena, a large section of the wall fronting the first tier of stands opened outward. From it issued dozens more of the lizard machines, throwing up clouds of dust from the arena floor. They continued to grind forward out of the opening and place themselves at regular intervals around the wall until the arena was completely ringed by reptile tanks facing outward toward the center. After them came the dogs, hundreds of them. They too poured forth until there were enough of them to form a second inward facing circle around the floor, just inside the ring of guards. There were so many of them that O’Keefe glanced back at the gate behind them, just to see if the dog on guard there was still present. It was.

“Good Lord,” he breathed in English, “there must be over a thousand of those monsters.” He bent closer to Steenini’s ear, and reverted to Akadean. “Are all the dogs required to be here as well, or are there even more of them running around the colony?”

Steenini shrugged. “Who can say? As no one is allowed to miss punishment, there is never anyone outside to see. It would be my guess, however, that there are many more of them prowling about the complex in our absence, if only to make certain that there are no malingering prisoners wandering about where they might create a little mischief.”

The last syllable had just rolled off his tongue when the guards’ diesels all shut down and the amplified and baleful voice of Mada Elorak reverberated throughout the arena. “For those of you who do not yet know, you have been brought here to witness punishment. The Dominion wishes those who serve us to know the price of disobedience. Observe carefully, and learn what awaits those who would betray us. Bring forth the condemned!”

With that, two lizards rolled out of the open doorway opposite Elorak. They each held one end of a rope, a rope that was wrapped around the chest of a man whom they pulled along between them. He was barefoot and stripped down to what looked like a diaper-like article of clothing fastened tightly around his waist. His ankles were shackled and his hands tied at the wrists behind his back. He stumbled along between the guards as best he could, but after moving only a short distance from the entry he tripped over his ankle chains and fell. He briefly tried to regain his feet, but the beasts that pulled him were moving much too fast, and after several futile attempts he gave up the effort and allowed himself to dragged over the floor until the guards came to a halt at the base of the staircase before Elorak.

She dismounted her litter and walked slowly down the stairs, her ever present assault bot following closely behind, until she was standing over the prisoner. “This man,” she said, kicking him, “was given the privilege of working in our kitchens, rather than in the mines like most of the rest of you. He repaid my benevolence with treachery, stealing food for himself that was meant for my faithful canines. This will not be tolerated. For this offense, he will hang.”

The man tried to gather himself, to rise to his knees. He appeared to be pleading for his life, although from O’Keefe’s vantage point his voice could not be heard. Whatever he said, it had no effect on Elorak. She simply kicked him again, this time more forcefully, and turned to walk a short distance away.

A rope knotted into a noose fell from somewhere high in the catwalks that crisscrossed the roof of the arena. O’Keefe was unable to see exactly where it had come from as the catwalks were all high above the lights, which blinded the crowd to nearly all of what went on there. But whoever had dropped the killing rope had obviously measured its length precisely as it swung slowly back and forth at about chest level, a few yards to the left of where the prisoner knelt.

The two guards fired up their engines and dragged the condemned man to the noose. There one of them pulled a long dagger from a sheath at the front of its hull and sliced through the rope that had been tied around the man’s chest. Otherwise, he remained bound. They placed the noose around his neck, tightened it, and the man was abruptly hauled roughly into the air. Blood dripped from open wounds that stretched from his knees to his toes. He writhed at the end of the rope, twisting and gasping until his face was a grotesque mask of crimson. O’Keefe could see now why the man had been dressed in a diaper; the stains appearing on it attesting to his soiling himself as he quickly neared his death.

Elorak approached the spot where the dying man hung. She pulled her knife from her boot, walked around behind the man, and severed the ropes that bound his wrists. His arms immediately began to flail about above his head, searching for the rope, desperately trying to reduce its pressure around his neck. Elorak made a cutting gesture; a slash of one of her thumbs across her throat; and immediately the rope slackened and the prisoner fell in a tortured heap at her feet.

She made another movement to her throat, and her shielding dematerialized. Standing naked over the wheezing man who was still choking for breath, she spat on him, and then reactivated her shield. “You worthless filth,” she said, her voice booming out once again through the sound system of the arena. “How dare you steal from the Dominion? I should have let you dangle from the rope until your life was leeched away. But because the Dominion is not completely without mercy, I shall give you one chance to redeem yourself.” As she spoke the shackles popped open and fell from around the prisoner’s ankles. “You will fight my guards for your life. If you fight well, I may allow you to return to your former duties breaking rocks. If you fight poorly, you will die.” She turned to one of the guards, and snatched a whip from an unlocked fender box. She tossed it at the man, its hard and heavy handle striking him in the face. “The contest begins now,” she said, and stalked away, up the stairs and back to her litter while the inmate grabbed the whip in his right hand and forced himself, unsteadily, to stand.

As soon as Elorak was seated, the two attendant lizards started their diesels once more, produced their own scourges, and moved forward toward the faltering and stumbling prisoner. One expertly wrapped its whip around the man’s arm and yanked him off his feet, dragging him to the center of the arena before releasing him. The prisoner lurched once again to his feet, clumsily wielding his lash, and made pitiful attempts to crack it in the guards’ direction. But disoriented, weak, and obviously unskilled with the weapon, he merely flailed helplessly away with no effect.