Secure Interrogation Facility Bravo-6, Commitment
Michael started as the door banged open. It was Colonel Hartspring, on time to the second, followed by the everwatchful Sergeant Jacobsen. Michael searched Hartspring’s face for clues, but the man was impassive as he waved Michael into a chair and sat down himself.
“So, Michael. What’s the answer? Do we have a deal?”
Michael shook his head. “No, we do not. I cannot do what you want me to do. I’m sorry.”
Hartspring put his head back and sighed. It was the sigh of a patient man coming to the end of his tether. Nice acting, you Hammer pig, Michael thought as his heart sank. Hartspring leaned forward and looked straight at him.
“I know you think we’re fools, Michael.” His hand went up as Michael started to protest. “No, let me finish.” He paused to regather his thoughts. “We’re not, you know. Well,” he said, tapping the table with his riding crop-Michael had never seen him without it-for emphasis, “I’m not. Now, personally, I happen to think you’re a damn liar. All that crap about comas and so on.”
Michael’s heart headed for his boots. Oh, shit. Here we go, he thought, instinctively bracing himself for the inevitable onslaught from Jacobsen.
“Now, those set above me by the power of Kraa, while they agree with me that you are a damn liar, aren’t willing to take the chance that you might be telling the truth. They think a dead Helfort might be more of a problem than a live Helfort even if the little fucker won’t do what we want him to. But let me tell you something else, Helfort.” Hartspring spit contemptuously. “I always thought you weren’t worth the trouble, Helfort, and I was right. You’re just another piece of useless Fed crap. So, the bad news is this. I’m going to ignore my bosses and take the chance that you might just be telling the truth.”
Michael’s spirits crashed. Hartspring got to his feet and looked down at him for a moment, his face a mix of scorn and anger.
“Filth.” He nodded, the riding crop pointed right into Michael’s face. “Lying Fed filth, that’s what you are. Well, you had your chance. No more Class A privileges for you,” he said, waving his arm around at the luxurious suite. “Effective immediately, you’re a Class D prisoner. Sergeant Jacobsen!”
“Sir?” Jacobsen stepped forward.
“You know what to do,” Hartspring said, turning to leave. “And for Kraa’s sake, Sergeant! Try not to kill him.”
“Sir!”
Jacobsen stared at Michael. A small smile ghosting across Jacobsen’s face crashed Michael’s spirit even further. This did not look good, and he was pretty damn sure Class D prisoners did not count for much in DocSec’s perverted, psychopathic scheme of things.
Michael stood up. “Sir?”
Hartspring turned back, looking irritated. Obviously, Class D prisoners weren’t worthy of a DocSec Colonel’s attention.
“What?” he barked sharply.
“What happens now? Where do-”
That was as far as he got. Jacobsen, taking a half step back, whipped out a small stun pistol. Casually, he stun-shot Michael in both legs, dropping him to the floor screaming, his back arching up off the floor, his mouth a rictus of agony.
Jacobsen stood over him, waiting patiently until Michael recovered. “New rules, Helfort. One, you’re not Helfort anymore. You’re 419963-Q now. Second, you talk only when I tell you to. Understood?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“That’s sir, you Fed maggot!” Jacobsen shouted, stamping his boot hard into Michael’s stomach. Michael rolled away in agony, his mouth open wide as tortured lungs fought for air.
“Understood, sir,” Michael whispered when he finally regained his voice. God’s blood! When would it end?
With great care, Jacobsen leant forward and spit into Michael’s face. “Good. I hope you do understand, 419963-Q. I really do, but to make sure. .”
The door to Michael’s cell smashed open, dragging Michael out of nightmare-racked sleep.
Two DocSec troopers burst in. Wordlessly, one grabbed him, pinning him hard against the wall. The second put what looked like a gas-powered inoculation gun against his neck. That was what it was. There was a brief pffftt and a short, sharp, stinging pain, and then Michael was dragged out of the cell along an endless series of corridors to a loading dock, thrown into a van, plasticuffed, and left alone.
He sat slumped, too stunned even to think. It all had happened so quickly. Since Sergeant Jacobsen had dumped him, battered to the edge of unconsciousness and bleeding all over the floor of his new cell, he had not seen or spoken to anyone. If not for his neuronics, he would not even know what day it was. The light had never gone off, and meals had come seemingly only when some damn DocSec guard could be bothered to sling the filthy slop that passed for food in through the tiny slot at the bottom of the cell door.
With a start, Michael realized with mounting horror that whatever he had been injected with was attacking his vocal cords. An icy-cold paralysis starting at the base of his neck was creeping up his throat until, no matter how hard he tried, he could not make a sound. There was nothing. Not a croak, not a gasp, not a wheeze, nothing. All he could do was breathe, and even that was hard work, his lungs on the very edge of suffocation.
It absolutely terrified him, the cold sweat beading on his forehead running down into his eyes, the salt stinging viciously. He started to panic, losing his tenuous grip on reality until with a desperate effort he took control, beating the panic back where it had come from. Slowly, he recovered, resigned to whatever fate the Hammer had in store for him.
After a long wait, the van set off. The ride was short. Only a few minutes later, the van slammed roughly to a halt, and the two troopers reappeared. After they cut the plasticuffs, he was dragged bodily out of the van and into the evening sun. They stood alongside the huge bulk of a lander carrying DocSec markings. His escorts were muttering something about a problem with the access door. Michael did not care; the pain of old injuries, reactivated by the short trip, almost overwhelmed him.
Finally, the door problem was fixed, and the troopers hustled him up the short ramp and into the lander. He waited again, plasticuffed to a metal bench in the shuttle’s single large passenger compartment. Passengers! You idiot, Michael thought despairingly. DocSec prisoners, the lowest of the low in the brutal, vicious system that administered the Hammer Worlds, were a million kilometers from being passengers. Feeling worse than he had for a long, long time, Michael sat there as the lander slowly filled up. Prisoners in crude plasfiber boots, dressed in the standard DocSec prison uniform of orange overalls crudely marked with their new identities, arrived in a steady procession, maybe two hundred of them in the end. They were all men, their pain and fear filling the shuttle with an acrid, sour smell. Without exception, they were a sorry-looking bunch, their faces liberally marked with bruises and cuts. Harried by DocSec troopers wielding short clubs with cruel efficiency, they were beaten, pushed, and shoved onto the racks. Michael winced as a particularly vicious blow caught one of the new arrivals across the side of the head, dropping him to the deck like a sack of potatoes. Ignored, the man lay still, blood from the gash in his scalp pooling slowly around him.
The racks got fuller, but that did not bother the troopers. They simply jammed more prisoners in, indiscriminately laying about with their clubs to make space.
Eventually, one of the troopers deigned to notice the man lying unconscious on the deck. Waving a second trooper across, the two men picked the unconscious prisoner up and smashed him onto a rack. The terrible wound to his head was ignored. After securing the unfortunate man, the troopers made a final cursory check that all the prisoners were secured. Then the troopers left, slamming the compartment door shut behind them.
The compartment was quiet, but only for a moment. A gentle buzz started, a mixture of cursing, moaning, and sobbing, the noise rising and falling like crickets on a hot summer day. Michael could do nothing except lie there-he could not do any cursing, moaning, or sobbing of his own because his vocal cords were completely dead-and hope that all this soon would be over. The waking nightmare he was trapped in had already lasted a lifetime; he was beginning to wonder if it would ever end. If death was the only way to end it, why wait? This was a life not worth living.
When the shuttle’s engines started, Michael gave himself a mental shake. It was not over until it was over, and while he still lived there was always a chance.
After a short taxi, the shuttle ran its engines up to full power before accelerating up and away. Michael could only hope that things would get better. It better be soon, he thought as he slipped into an uneasy, pain-filled sleep.
Curious, happy to have something-anything-break the monotony of another empty day, the occupants of Camp I-2355 stopped what they were doing to look at the truck.
It had appeared out of the blizzard raging across the sorry-looking collection of huts set around a muddy, ice-puddled parade ground before pulling up in a screech of brakes. With a crash of gears, it reversed to put its tailgate right up against the outer of the two gates leading into the prison compound and stopped. Camp guards in bulky cold-weather gear formed up around it, stun guns at the ready.
Two guards dropped the tailgate and climbed inside as others opened the inner gate. Moments later, the guards reappeared, dragging out an orange-overalled man between them. Climbing down, they pulled him out and dropped him carelessly to the ground. Hands under his armpits, they dragged the prisoner through the icy slush until, twenty meters inside the gate, they dropped the man, turned, and left.
The first of the camp’s occupants to reach the man spun him over onto his back. His mouth dropped open. With desperate urgency, he shouted for help. “It’s one of ours. It’s Helfort! For God’s sake, give me a hand.”
In seconds, Michael had been cradled in the arms of four prisoners and was being rushed to the nearest hut. Once they were through the door, orders flew in quick succession. Michael was blue with hypothermia, and if they did not move quickly, they would lose him.
Soaked to the skin, Michael lay unresponsive as his orange DocSec overalls were stripped off. The hut filled with gasps of outrage as his battered body was revealed, its tapestry of bruises, welts, and cuts, old and new, all overlaid by crusts of dried blood, provided stark testimony to DocSec’s enduring commitment to inflicting pain.
Only vaguely aware of what was going on, Michael did not care. He was happy. Even though he was barely conscious and tired beyond belief, he knew he was safe. He was no longer alone. He was back among friends. Gratefully, he slipped into unconsciousness, the welcoming blackness pulling him down to safety.
Michael awoke with a start. Where in God’s name was he? He stared up in baffled confusion. This was not a cell. It was some sort of rough wooden hut. So where? Lifting his head off the pillow with an effort, he looked around, catching the eye of a man at the back of the hut sitting at a crude wooden desk.
“Aha!” The man smiled broadly. “You’re back. Excellent. Wait there a second.” The man went to the hut door and disappeared, the blizzard roaring outside driving a wedge of cold air and snow into the hut.
“Sorry about that,” the man said when he got back, leaning over him. Michael did not recognize him, but he had to be a Fed. Too good-looking to be a Hammer, that was for sure; the man’s classical good looks were all too obviously the product of generations of cosmetic geneering.
“Right, I’m Leading Spacer Kostas. You’re in the camp hospital. How are you?” the man asked.
Michael started to speak. His mouth opened and closed in a desperate attempt to get something intelligible out, but the words refused to come no matter how hard he tried.
Kostas frowned. “Oh, shit,” he muttered. “We’ve heard about that nasty little DocSec trick. Bunch of fuckpigs! Hang on while I connect.”
Michael felt a sudden rush of relief as Kostas connected his neuronics to Michael’s. They might not be able to speak, but at least they could communicate.
“How are you?” Kostas commed.
“Better, thanks, Leader. Where am I?”
“Camp I-2355. It’s an old Hammer prisoner of war camp. We think it’s about 8,000 kilometers south of McNair City. We’re all here.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone! Now that you’re here, that is.” Kostas’s face clouded over for a moment. “Well, not quite everyone. There are 283 of us in all. We lost a few from injuries along the way,” he said bitterly. “Anyway, Lieutenant Commander Fellsworth’s on her way over to see you, so you can. .”
He stopped. Michael was no longer listening.
Michael had passed out, a small smile on his face.
Michael was desperately frightened, afraid that it had all been a dream, that he would wake up to see the grimy, plascrete wall of a DocSec cell. He was so afraid, his eyes had been screwed shut ever since he had woken up. Trembling, he forced himself to open his eyes. If it had all been a dream, he could close them again and pretend he was back among friends.
It was not a dream. It was not a DocSec cell. It was the wooden hut. With a sudden burst of energy, Michael dragged himself upright, ignoring the protests from his battered ribs. The instant he did, he wished he had not been so eager. Head spinning and heart racing, he felt like throwing up.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered. Christ, he felt weak as piss. Closing his eyes, he lay back. After a minute or two he felt better, and he reopened his eyes to see where he had ended up. The place was spartan but immaculately clean. Eight beds in two rows, all empty apart from his. A couple of tables, two chairs, a desk. Toward the back, a screened area, cupboards, and a partitioned-off area-obviously the heads, Michael thought. The hut had small windows-no curtains-looking out onto a gloomy, snow-riven day. Day? For a moment he was confused. According to his neuronics, it was almost midnight. Then he remembered Commitment and its fortynine-hour days. Local planetary time was actually early afternoon.
The hut’s inner door opened with a bang; Michael jumped. A tall, lanky, sandy-haired man in a badly worn Fed shipsuit underneath a bulky cold-weather jacket hustled in, brushing off the fresh snow that powdered his shoulders. He smiled to see Michael sitting up.
“Oh, hello, sir! Remember me?”
Michael shook his head. “Sorry, Leader,” he croaked. “I don’t.” His throat was sore, and his voice sounded like gravel being crushed.
“That’s all right. Leading Spacer Kostas, part-time officer in charge, Camp I-2355 hospital, also known as Hut 10.”
“Nice to meet you, Leading Spacer Kostas.”
“You, too, sir. Notice anything different?”
Michael could not think of anything. His head was all mush. He shook his head.
“You’re talking! You couldn’t do that twelve hours ago.” Kostas looked pleased. “We got the camp doctor to fix you up. Not a bad bloke for a Hammer.”
“Bugger me,” Michael croaked. “You know what? I’d bloody well forgotten. Christ, it’s good to be able to talk again, I can tell you. That little stunt of theirs is scary. Like suffocating in slow motion.”
“Bastards.” Kostas spoke with quiet anger. “One day, one day. Right! Enough of that. Now, my orders are to keep you in bed until tomorrow. So do I have to chain you up, or can you do that?”
Michael laughed. He felt good, better in fact than he had for a long time. Common sense told him that any attempt to walk would have him measuring his length on the floor, so he was not going to try. “No. I’m not going anywhere,” Michael said awkwardly, “but I really do need to take a piss.”
“Uh, okay. One piss bottle coming up.”
“Make sure the bugger’s warm, Leader, and big.”
Theatrically, Kostas rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “God help me. I’ve got a delusional smart-ass for a patient. .” A long pause followed. “Sir.”
Michael laughed. His body was a battered mass of cuts, bruises, and raw pain, but he felt good. This might be a prison camp, but it was Ishaq’s prison camp and he was with Ishaq’s people. Compared with where he had come from, it was more than good enough.