The Empty Warrior (68 page)

“Human, we wait for you,” it hissed, its forked tongue sliding in and out of its lipless mouth as it spoke, thick saliva clinging viscously to it like syrup. “You ride,” it said, gesturing to the rear deck of its hull. “Kark will follow.” It twisted its long, sinuous neck, pushing its head rearward until its jaws were farther back down the corridor than the rear of its treads, all the while lowering its head until its eyes were level with O’Keefe’s. Then it spoke again, its flicking tongue now within inches of the Earther’s face. “You stay still,” it said, reverting to the deep, grating tone of voice the guards generally used when speaking to humans, “or Kark use spear.” Beside it, the second guard brandished a harpoon in the air for emphasis.

O’Keefe nodded and climbed aboard, mildly surprised to learn that the guards were intellectually advanced enough to grasp the concept of differentiating individuals with the use of exclusive monikers. He had always assumed their recognition skills were based on scents or pheromones. Despite the unsettling reality that they were capable of speech, until now he had not believed for an instant that the guards actually
knew
each other. Not that it mattered, as it was exceedingly clear that they formed no social relationships and had no allegiance to others of their own kind. From what Steenini had told him, they did not even mate. They had been designed and then grown by the Vazileks to meet a set of desired specifications. O’Keefe was certain that they would kill each other as readily as they killed humans if Elorak were to demand it of them.

As soon as he was settled atop the hull of the one guard, Kark, still holding the spear menacingly; bent its long neck down toward him and spoke. “You watch, you learn. You find own way tomorrow.”

“And be without your company? Oh, the horror,” O’Keefe retorted mordantly. The lizard stared at him for several moments, not quite bright enough to catch the sarcasm, but still sensing something amiss. At length Kark seemed to decide that it had in fact not been insulted and looked away. It turned instead to its compatriot and said, “Go!”

Immediately both the guards’ engines came noisily to life, belched exhaust, and they were off, the metallic scraping of the tracks as they rolled around on the sprockets, the roar of the diesels, and the din of metal on stone mercifully precluding any further exchanges.

O’Keefe needn’t have been warned to pay attention. He possessed a mental map of the areas around the barracks and the mines, and he knew how to get from the mines to the arena and to two different showers, but that was all. On his first day in the colony the horrors of the passage to Ashawzut, the shock of their arrival, and the brutal initiation arranged by Elorak had rendered him too boggled to even think of trying to remember the route taken upon leaving the auditorium. Thus he had no idea where the hangar area was in relation to the barracks. This was the only time since that first day that he had traversed any of the corridors that led toward the docks.

So he meticulously counted each intersection they crossed and committed to memory every turn they made. The routine had become as normal to him as breathing; he was determined to broaden his knowledge of the colony complex at every opportunity. As they proceeded he incorporated each leg of the journey into a song, which he sang almost silently over and over again, hoping to use the melody later as a mnemonic trigger.

As he mumbled the tune to himself, he also looked over the guard on which he rode, this being the first time he had been close enough to one, without being under extraordinary duress, to make a careful inspection. He rapped his knuckles against the armor beneath him and it, despite appearing to be simple steel, seemed well thick enough to defend against anything the prisoners might muster. There was a seam which looked to outline an entry to the engine compartment, but O’Keefe could see no readily apparent way to open it. In addition the door was located beneath the weapons rack on which he sat and to which he clung with both hands. The rack itself was well stocked with six harpoon-like spears. All around the top of the hull sprouted lockers and compartments of various sizes, which O’Keefe knew to house handcuffs and whips, at the very least.

He looked to the rear at Kark, the beast following closely behind. On the sloping front armor of its hull, he could see the scabbarded dagger attached just beneath where the lizard’s neck joined the vehicle. At close range it appeared to be more like a Roman short sword than a knife, but O’Keefe knew it to be extremely sharp edged. He had seen one like it in the arena, where it had cut through thick, tough ropes as if they were mere kitchen string. Directly beneath the scabbard was a winch wound tight with cable, while thick sturdy tracks churned to either side. O’Keefe could discern no obvious weak points in the beasts’ defenses.

At length the two lizards turned into the tunnel leading to the hangar, distinctive among all the other corridors in Ashawzut for the fence that separated it down the middle. O’Keefe searched the other side of the wall as they passed, trying to see the fissure where he had hidden his pistol. He thought he glimpsed it, but their pace was so rapid and the tunnel so dim that he could not be certain.

When they rolled out into the colossal cavern that was the docking hangar, one cigar shaped, leviathan freighter lay there on its side, supported by a dozen mighty, round-footed struts that protruded from its understructure. Robotic cranes were already hoisting cargo containers out of the top of its opened hull and placing them about the wide expanse of floor that surrounded the big ship. Prisoners shuffled away from some of the containers, bent beneath heavy loads, all of them under the watchful eyes of the ever-present reptiles. Straining cables and hard pressed electric motors sent mechanical sounds echoing through the cavern, where they mingled with the occasional crack of a whip and the guttural voices of the guards. The smell of ozone and machine oil filled the air, mingling with the stifling dust and drifting plumes of diesel exhaust.

The guard upon which O’Keefe rode came to a halt. Kark rolled up behind. “Off now,” Kark said, waving its harpoon to one side. O’Keefe dismounted. “There,” it said, pointing rightward with its spear. “Your group. Go join.” With that the two guards roared away, heading off toward the exit tunnel. O’Keefe looked in the direction that Kark had pointed. He saw a large group of men making their way toward the freighter, surrounded by two guards and several dogs. He debated heading back to the tunnel immediately to look for his gun as he seemed to have been left unsupervised, but after a quick perusal of the place he noticed one of the loathsome canines loping directly toward him, apparently with the intention of making sure he went where he was supposed to go. “Damn,” he whispered, and turning away from the dog, he set off at a fast trot toward his new mates. As he joined them, he looked back to see that the dog had turned back and was trotting off in the other direction, apparently satisfied that the newcomer to the docks was under control.

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.