Prisoner 52 (20 page)

Day 21: Morning

“Evening.” Tezac said through the transmitter he held and Sejanus listened to the receiver in his helmet.

“What are you doing down here?”

“You got a real grateful air about you, Sejanus.” Tezac said and pressed the button beneath the transceiver console and sat down on the slab that was thus ejected
for him there. “You know that? I came to keep you company.”

“I got enough company.”

“I heard about what happened. Those goons you tussled with are in bad shape. One of them is dead.”

“They have my sympathies.”

“Why did you do it?”

“They looked at me wrong; what's it to you?”

“I'm doing what I can for you.”

“And I'm screwing things up for you. Then leave.”

              “It's not that simple.”

             
“It's as simple as I want it to be.” He said and scoffed. “I don't know what you're fixing to get out of me; tell you the truth I don't give a shit. But you've looked at my records. You know how long I'm in for.”

“26 lifetimes.”

“Regenerative lifetimes.” Sejanus said and for a moment said no more. “So why the fuck should I care what happens to me in here?”

“I care.”

“Well that's real sweet of you.”

“Can
we cut the shit a moment?”
              “I'm waiting on you.” He said and for a time the other man sat quiet.

“What do you remember,” Tezac said. “From the battles we fought?”

“This is some company you brought me. We're back to this, then. You and me are just the best of friends.”

“A man has his reasons for being a place, and I'm not here for just the one. Now I've got all night to hear about it, so you call it how you see it.”

“If that's the way we're going to play it. I guess your voice is less annoying than the computer. Alright then.” Sejanus said and cleared his throat. “I've got my bad days and my worse days.”

“Can you sort one planet from another; one battle?”

“I got a notion. But it's a kind of fear, mostly. A rage and it starts blending together. Why do you want to know this, anyhow? You're a Lord-Knight.”

“That ought to be a sign of the times, then.”

“It's hard to feel sorry this side of the glass.”

"Comes in dreams.” Tezac said. “Doesn't it?"

"I," Sejanus said and stiffened in his isolation suit and Tezac could see the helmet cock as if with a motion of his head. "Waking up, and then fighting. Waking up, fighting. The drugs when you were tired or shot; the drugs when you weren't. I can't tell you what planet we were on. Or who it was we were killing. When I tell you about it now I just see the killing, the killing and the dying."

"But you know," Tezac said. "That you should know."

"I know," He said. "That for 16 years I don't remember sleeping or eating or fucking. I remember 16 years locked inside a suit or a hibernation bed. My memories of it fade out on one battlefield and then I'm in a dropship sleep-tube headed down into another. Even though up here, in my head, I know there were other things. I know that. But if what's real is what you remember, and except for the blood I don't remember anything, then all I want to do is forget."

Day 29

“Your move.” Tezac said and leaned away from the hardlight game board before him and sank back into his chair.

“How come you moved your archers out in the open?” Leargam said as he scanned the projections of the pieces, their light glinting off the splotches of dark metal round his eyepits.

“Don’t worry about it.” He said and crossed his arms.

They listened as Leargam thought to the operatic quaver of the radio in the background, some woman in some dead Eronian dialect. The moons shined in through the windows and cast the sparse flakes that fell gently outside in each their own pale nimbus. Leargam reached up to scratch the beard that had grown in his lapse of time and the music reached its crescendo. He keyed on the console for his taurine cavalry to sweep left and meet Tezac’s spear-gunners.

“Your Emperor’s stuck in there, you know.”

“I know it.”

“I see what you’re about.” Tezac said and activated his spear-gunners to sound their retreat. “Go on.”

“I don’t want to play anymore, Tezac.”

“Come on. Those bulls’ll overrun my spearmen easy. Their backs are shown to you.”

“You’re lettin
g me win.”

“You’re lettin
g yourself lose.”

Leargam sighed and waved his hand at the ordeal and removed himself from the table. He wandered out of the low, inviting light of the holograms and into the dark of his quarters. The snow fell more softly than ever he had seen it in his 40 years on that planet and the subtle melodies of Corkhaim’s ‘Ode to Man’ added to it a majesty that for him was a sadness inexpressible now. Just as joy could no longer overwhelm him, for perfection had robbed him
of it.

"You want to tell me about it or are you just going to sulk.“
Tezac said from beyond the game board.

“It’s like I’m watching somebody else’s life. I see the place that I live in, but it ain’t my home. I see you. And I know you and I are friends. A part of me feels that, but it’s like I walked into a room that used to be crowded and all that anyone
was saying just sounds like echoes.” Leargam said to the snowflakes outside that he saw with the utmost clarity and of a sudden smacked at his eyes and sobbed dry into his hands. “A man shouldn’t want to cry, but damn it if you don’t know how bad you need to when you can’t anymore.”

“I,” Tezac said, but could say no more and instead with a frown held up his hand to him that glinted also in the frail glow behind him. “I know that place you’re going.”

“Yeah, but you had another.” He said and covered what passed for his eyes again. “Gods why couldn’t they have given me bios? Gods, why these things; why in the first place. I want an answer. Just one, that's all.”

He had fallen to his knees and held up his hands to the three moons cradled with one another in the night sky as though these beings he spoke of were yet enthroned there of all lost places. Tezac looked on as he beseeched the known dead things in the way he had seen all aggrieved and enraged men do in the hour of their discontent. What horrors despair may wrought, he thought, to make man dispute fact.

“There’s nothing out there, Leargam.” He said and went to him and put his hand on his shoulder. “We all got what we got; least you have that and at least you can see.”

“Well,” Leargam said and let fall his hands and swallowed hard. “Maybe I’d be better off.”

The music had stopped, the symphony gone silent and the contralto levity diminished. It was just the winds outside that filled the emptiness of the air then, to keep them company until the trio of notes played over the broadcast system that heralded an override.

“All personnel,” A woman said. “This is a Command Broadcast. You are advised to report any and all unusual phenomenon in your daily logs and to adhere to emergency curfew measures when travelling alone. Failure to do so will result first in a warning, second in confinement to Arbitronix grounds, and third in suspension without pay. And remember: ‘A man is only what he is in his duty’.”

“Unusual phenomenon.” Tezac said and Leargam breathed out sharply through his nose, shook his head at the floor. “Have you heard anything?”

“I’ve got an idea.”

His bracer pinged and then again a moment later. Tezac looked down at the name and then held the screen out before him, accepted the transmission and watched the viewer resolve out of the projector bulb’s light particles.

“Hotchkins here.” He said to the pale, hairless face he looked upon and traced with his eyes the scar that zagged across his lips down to his chin.

“Hotchkins, get down to maintenance.”

“It’s the middle of the night, Sir.”

“Might as well be the middle of the godsdamned day to me.”

“What’s the story?”

“Staff’s jumping at shadows. So I think. Probably smuggled a bit too much of something in from town, but the Captain wants it checked out. So: check it out. Your locator beacon reads you’re in Enforcer Leargam’s quarters?”

“Playing a tac-sim.”

“Take him with you. Needs to shake out those cob-webs from his vacation. Watch-Commander Kernes out.”

“Understood. Hotchkins out.”

The projection dissipated and he lowered the hand it had sprouted from to Leargam and helped him to his feet. He met the reconstructed orbits and peered into the crimson dark of the irising lenses their black metal ensconced. He wondered not for the first how he appeared to them and how it must feel to view the waking world as with a waking limb, forever. What it meant to observe the minutest level of existence, but gain no deeper insight into that thing. He pitied his friend for the dreams he would have.

“Are you with me?” He said to him.

“I’m here.” The old man said back.

“Then let’s suit up.”

Day 29

The doors of the lift opened onto a dark corridor and they considered their flashlights when a light flickered on in the distance, but then when out again. They gave one another a look and Tezac tried as best he could to recall what he had seen in the brief glow. He depressed the key beside his visor and his world lit up with a hazy green and within it the stubby reception area, a pair of doors to either side. The light flared to life again down the way and made of itself a sun in miniature that he saw to be dislodged and hanging from the ceiling by its wires. The others lay intact, but were as inert as the walls around them.

“Well,” He said over the internal channel and so braced his rifle against his shoulder and went out into the blackness.

Leargam followed him and together they entered the small atrium. Tezac pointed off to the left of the two pairs of doors and went to that which was closest to them and the lift. He slung his rifle and thumbed the key upon his left wrist and so opened the aperture within the armor there. From within he drew out the thin cables of his auxiliary battery supply and hooked their ends into the ports of the control panel and watched as it slowly flickered to life. He scanned his bracer across the security reader beside it there and waited. Across the way the old man did the same.

“Enforcer code accepted.” Master Control said and then again, as loud as a mob in the dead silence of the room. “Security override engaged; door opening.”

Tezac spun round from the wall and into the threshold, his rifle trained on whatever could be awaiting him beyond it. His first bullet would have obliterated the smiling faces of a family holophoto yet active on the desk before him. An empty chair sat beside it and turned slightly askance. In line with the right arm of the chair a cup sat untouched beside the projector bulb of the hardlight display. He leaned over it as if some parasite laid in wait of a fool beneath the cold, placid surface of what he found to be only coffee.

“Anything?” He said over the console.

“Machinist's jumpers. Some tools. Cold cup of coffee. Seems like he just got off. And then vanished.” Leargam said. “You?”

“I've got nothing.”

“Keep looking?”

“Check the other doors. I'm going to look around in here a bit more.”

“Kid.”

“Just go on. I'll be a minute.”

He heard him mutter something off channel out in the atrium as he went and then Master Control shouting for all the passivity of its voice. He waited for a moment and waved active the holodisplay of the console, bathing the small room in a low blue glow that shined weirdly on the storage lockers against the wall. As though in some way its touch should be brighter.

“Welcome back, Grecius Fitzsimmons.” Master Control said through the desk's speakers. “Pending action: failure to report for duty day 12 month 6 year 11635; failure to submit daily log day 12 month 6 year 11635. Report to maintenance personell commander Corsiad immediately.”

Tezac waited out the grievances and then navigated the console's interface to find Fitzsimmons's record of daily logs. He looked them over at a glance and saw the disparity he suspected between their quantity and fare before and after his own arrival. He tapped the log recorded just yesterday and the last of a plethora that had proceeded his coming to Sector 10.

“Enforcer Code accepted, Enforcer Hotchkins.” Master Control said. “Security override denied; Overseer priority.”

              Tezac slumped back into the chair as surely as if he had been struck full on his chestplate by a tank shell and saw in his visor the stars the way they had appeared from the planet surface, the only way they would appear to him again. He went forward in time, into the knowing of what could no longer be done or undone. He had come to the question of a ship and a light from behind threw his shadow across the wall before him, lit from within by the dull burn of the hardlight console.

“You taking a nap?” Leargam said.

“Just resting my eyes.” He said and straightened in the chair. “You find anything?”

“Not a damned thing. Four offices, all empty. Other than a dire need for a hygiene inspection there ain't shit all down here.”

“We need to get these lights back on.” Tezac said and glanced at the one above him upon the ceiling.

“Find the machinist and we can get
him to do it for us.” The old man said and vacated the threshold.

Tezac got to his feet and emerged from the doorway behind him. They entered the corridor that led away from the atrium and passed beneath the flickering carcass of the lamp. The glass of its smashed encasement crunched beneath the measured steps of their boots. The green of his visor's light replication module began to flicker itself, but not with the light that tossed spasmodic shadows across the hall ahead from behind. It began to dim as he went, though his visor reported no equipment malfunction, and soon his view darkened into uselessness. He deactivated it and switched to the flashlight, but
this too reached only a little out into the black and then died. He glanced at Leargam, but he seemed not to notice. The old man only took his hand steadily away from the rifle's foregrip and reached for the light discs bound by the bandolier across his chestplate.

             
“No.” Tezac said to him and Leargam gave him a look. “We don't want to let anyone know we're here.”

             
“Hell of a chance of that now.” He said, but returned his grip to his weapon.

The black of the corridor at last
gave way and their light fell out into the emptiness of another atrium. Doors lined the walls below and those above which opened out onto grated catwalks. They saw the empty brackets of holosigns above them all, those that their light could reach, and which they did not see above those of the machinists' offices behind them. They followed the glint of their light off of the stairwells to either side up onto the walkways and found them clear of anything that resembled or hinted at life.

“What do you think?” Leargam said.

“Aside from the light,” He said and deactivated the environmental seal of his helmet and removed it, held it at his waist by the chin of its respirator. “There ain't much that looks to have gone on. Everybody just up an vanished.”

“Should we try any of these doors?” He said and waved with his rifle around them.

“Well,” Tezac said and took a deep breath and then donned the helmet again. “I swore this morning to be done messing around.”

“The Hells does that mean?”

“This is Enforcer Hotchkins raising all technical personnel present on maintenance level 5. All tech personnel.” He said through the outbound vox, magnified as though to speak to a deeply packed stadium. “Enforcer Hotchkins, responding to a request for guard detail.”

His voice went through the chamber and the corridors that stemmed from it a thousandfold and was sure to reach whatever ears might lay still in that iron gloom, if ears there be. They waited in silence and the words hung in the air the way they do in quiet empty places just introduced to sound. But it was only this residuum, like an echo mutely present still around them, that spoke back.

“Nothing.” Leargam said.

“Not a godsdamn thing.”

“I'd tell you to use the transmission system but,” The old man said and shrugged at the dormant facility around them.

“Transmission,” Tezac said to the onboard computer of his helmet and turned away to face the hallway by which they had come. “Watch-Commander Kernes.”

“Hotchkins?” His voice said from the window that had opened upon his visor, darkened with the night and the man within it wiping the sleep from his eyes to squint into the meager light of the viewer. “Report.”

“This place is dead, Commander.” He said. “Did anybody report an outage down here?”

“No,” Kernes said and leaned away to manipulate something out of sight of the vidscreen a moment, then returned. “Power's still running through the conduits; must be a managerial problem. What are the details, Enforcer?”

“I just gave them. Staff is gone; no sign of a fight or foul play or native wildlife, what have you. Just cold coffee. Cold coffee is it in microcosm. When did you get that report?”

“Did you forget what I told you? Or do you just have too much shit in your mouth that I didn't quite catch you saying sir?”

“Requesting advisement, Sir.”

“Keep looking, dipshit. You think if there's not a welcoming party you just pack up and go home? You can't find them; well, it's a hell of a lot more important now. Do you even fucking think? Kernes out.”

“That punk.” Leargam said.

“Any ideas?”

“Not a one. Looks like there's another corridor ahead.”

“It leads into the access shafts for the geothermals.”

“I kindly doubt anybody is having a party down there.”

“It's a stretch.” Tezac said. “How much auxiliary you have left?”

“After the doors, about three quarters. Thereabouts.”

“I say we start popping coffins.”

“You take the upper and I'll take the lower?”

“What is your problem? A voice said to them from the darkness of the walkway above them and central to the forward heights of the chamber.

They looked up at its origin and
bathed the man in the conical glow of their flashlights and found within them a short, pudgy man cut in the padded orange of his maintenance jumpsuit. A trail of smoke filtered from the tube of a chem-stick held between thumb and forefinger. He replaced it to the bushy mustache that drooped over his lips and smoothed the thinning brown of his hair. They gave one another a look and returned to the man who stood unperturbed of their light in his welder's goggles.

“What?” Tezac said.

“I said: what is your problem?” The man said. “I've been putting in these calls for weeks. I had to cut off the geothermal to the heating in Sector 10's mess hall just to get you guys down here. And all you can say is 'what'? Some bright young graduates we've got schlepping through the ranks these days.”

“Where is everybody?”

“Where is everybody.” The man said and flicked the chem-stick away down below and it tinkled along the floor to their right. “We're holed up in the main office. I hear weird things down here, man. Strange things. So, we're holed up in the office.”

“You've been hearing things.” Leargam said.

“Don't look at me like that.” The man said and they could see his hands tighten around the railing and he leaned slightly out over it. “You're breathing the same air as me. There's nothing wrong with me.”

“Hey. Buddy.” Tezac said and waved to draw the man's attention away from Leargam. “What have you been hearing?”

“What does anybody hear, stuck down here? I hear my name; I turn around. There's no one there and then just this little – little thing. This little thing. I turn the work light on, but the light don't move the way light should. You saw it.”

“We shouldn't have.” Leargam said. “What's the deal with the power?”

“We shut it down, pal. You go turn it back on; go ahead and turn the lights back on. I won't. They're not finding me. You do it. We already sent Tilden down to do it.”

“Where's Tilden now?”

“Well he's not in the office.” The man said and catalyzed another chem-stick in his fingers, dragged deeply on it. “I don't like being out here too long. Just take a look around, check things out. You got the guns; you're the big guys. You handle it. I'm going back inside.”

“Wait a minute.” Leargam called after him. “Where's you guy?”

There was no response and they heard a pair of what sounded heavy containment doors slide into place somewhere up above, in the dark.

“Blast doors on maintenance?” Tezac said.

“In case the reactor blows out.” Leargam said, his eyes still on that place where the man had been. “Do we check the shafts?”

“There's a man missing.” He said and took his rifle into both hands and started away away toward the corridor ahead. “We have to.”

They pursued the shadows as they fled before their flashlights and came to the triad of orbicular doors that waited there. Only the outer dome of that which lay in the center was parted and open to them, hanging lazily out of its locked position without the power to hold it shut. Tezac raised his rifle at the pitch that lay beyond and stepped through and Leargam followed suit behind him.

Each kept his eye to the sensor-scope atop his weapon as their flashlights unveiled what lay of the corridor ahead. It was all cold metalwork and old grime, draping wires and conduit
stations that thrust out from the shadows to either side as so many looming ghouls of a bygone technofabric. Oblivious of their electromagnetic ghosts. Unalive with any sign of the life that had once sought to inhabit it. No heat signature, no heartbeat. Tezac could not keep his eyes from the piping that lay beneath the grating under his feet.

The corridor terminated ahead in the flat grey of a wall stenciled yellow with the words 'Access Shaft B' and the curvature of the bars of a ladder sat before them. Tezac stepped to the edge of the platform and peered down first with the sensor-scope and then with the full brightness of his helmet's flashlights. There was only an impenetrable darkness below that hummed with the great sprawl of machinery it concealed far beneath, but muted. As if in between there lay a depth needing to be sounded.