Grendel Unit 3: Fight the Power Read online

  Vic and Monster looked up at the warden, neither of them moving. Vic said, "I think he's talking to you."

  "He must not be a fan of baseball," Monster said.

  Vic turned slightly and looked out at the range of mountains deep in the wasteland. The nearest one was over a hundred yards away. "Okay, new game. We'll call it human horseshoes. One point if you touch the mountain with any part of the prisoner, two points if you actually land him on the mountain."

  Monster scratched his shaggy chin and said, "Do all the parts of the prisoner have to be attached to him in order for it to count?"

  Vic thought for a moment, then said, "As long as he's in one piece when you throw him. You can't just start tearing parts off and flinging them. That's too easy."

  "Fair enough," Monster said.

  Together, they moved toward the crowd of inmates to pick out another candidate, with Vic shouting, "Tell me where Bal Ghor is!" The inmates were too busy running to answer, and Monster roared as he raced forward to grab the nearest one. The man screamed as he struggled against the Mantipor's vise-like grip, his screams lost in the sea of confusion of prisoners scrambling and yelling, when the warden fired a single shot in the air. The rifle's report made everyone stop and look up at the roof.

  "What the hell are you doing?" the warden shouted.

  Vic pointed at the nearest mountains and said, "It's okay. We're throwing them that way now."

  "No!" Drexel yelled down at them. "No more throwing prisoners. That is officially forbidden now. From now on, you will just have to make do killing each other like civilized people, or whatever the hell you are."

  The prisoners around Vic and Monster used the warden's intervention as a means to escape, scurrying around them both as they fled for the prison gate. Vic patted the Mantipor on the back and said, "Well, that was fun while it lasted. You're looking hairier already, pal."

  Monster watched the last of the prisoners vanish through the gate, disappearing down the dark corridors like roaches in a tenement building. They had feared Monster, true enough, and in the narrow corridors of the prison they could never mount a large enough physical attack to be of any danger to him, because he was not a human. But Cojo was. Monster looked down at him and said, "They will kill you. You know that. This Bal Ghor and his people will come for you, and there will be too many of them, even for you."

  Vic did not respond as they walked back into the prison together, seeing that the guards had pulled away from the roof, so that it was just the two of them beneath the bright blue sky, alone in the emptiness of the barren planet. "What if we tried to go it on our own? How bad can living in the mountains be? I'm sure together we can handle whatever we run into."

  "There is no water," Monster said.

  "Maybe there's some kind of plant. The native species have to have some kind of way−"

  "There is no water, and I am not going," Monster said. He stopped at the entrance to the prison and looked at his former captain, seeing dark circles under the man's eyes and those eyes seemed dull, as if the once-bright flame of intelligence and strength within them had softened and gone dim. The sadness in the man's face reflected Monster's own pain and humiliation, and he found his determination to stay angry at Cojo wavering. "For whatever it's worth, I have no wish to see anything bad happen to you, human. Perhaps tomorrow, we can take our meals together. I am tired of eating in my cell."

  "That sounds good," Vic said softly. "I'd like that."

  "If they let you live that long, that is," Monster said, then he turned to leave.

  4. Welcome to the Terrordome

  The group of guards and visitors followed the Warden away from the ship, onto what appeared to be a large circle built into the roof. The Warden swept aside his long coat and lowered himself to the ground, laying his hand flat against its surface. He said his name, "Warden Reginald Drexel," and the circle jolted abruptly, then began to lower.

  Frank looked up at the circle of light above them, watching the sky grow smaller and smaller, and it felt like he was seeing the last of his freedom slipping away. First he was down among the guards, and next, he'd be down among the prisoners. It would take a miracle to think that they'd ever make it to the top of that roof again. Frank felt light-headed as they lowered and he stumbled slightly, having to steady himself to maintain balance.

  Bob Buehl frowned at him and said, "You feeling all right?"

  "I'm fine," Frank said. "After flying with you all these years, I'm just not used to such a smooth and bump-free descent. It's throwing my stomach off."

  The Warden was talking to General Milner, telling him about all of the improvements they'd made and how efficiently the facility was operating. The man shifted figures and statistics around like he was playing a shell game and the General nodded and said, "very good," even as the platform landed and the elevator doors opened. The corridor they entered was well-lit and decorated like an office building, and Milner saw it was populated with nothing but women.

  One of the young ladies looked up sheepishly from a desk as they approached, careful to avert her eyes from the Warden and return to her work. She was dressed in an orange jumpsuit and her nametag said inmate. Her long red hair was tied back in an elaborate knot, and she glanced at Frank with large, doe eyes, and he smiled reflexively. He was a sucker for a pretty face.

  They passed more female inmates along the way, each of them working nervously, each of them beautiful. "This place must have a hell of a human resources department," Frank muttered to Bob Buehl.

  The Warden was like a bat, instantly whipping his head around to Frank and saying, "You noticed our little lovelies then? Yes, we are quite glad to be able to offer at least a few of these poor souls a bit of solace from the…" the Warden pointed down at the floor to indicate the cells below, "Well, I am sure you can imagine what would become of them if we allowed the inmates to have their way. It cuts down on our payroll expenses considerably, having a built-in workforce."

  "You have no female prisoners in general population?" General Milner said.

  "Of course we do," the Warden said with a laugh. "We obviously can't have everyone up here, now can we? So we have to be highly selective." He turned to watch one of the women hurry across the hall to get out of their way, his eyes lingering disturbingly long over the length of her form. "And they are highly motivated to remain up here, you know. The ones down below have a rather hard time of it."

  Warden Drexel watched the General as he spoke, searching his face for any sign of reaction. The General remained quiet and stone faced while Drexel spoke, and there was a brief moment of tense silence among the group. General Milner looked at a particularly lovely dark-skinned girl and said, "Well, sir. You almost make me wish I was staying longer."

  The Warden visibly relaxed and he continued walking, going on about expenditures and the costs of feeding such a large assortment of prisoners. Frank rolled his eyes as they followed behind the guards, but he saw that Bob's face was twisted in a scowl and that he visibly flinched every time they passed another female inmate. "Hey," Frank whispered, "Stay in role."

  "I don't stay in roles," Bob hissed. "I fly the ships. I don't do all that spook crap you and Vic do."

  They passed another girl, no older than eighteen, and she had backed away from them to press herself against the hallway wall, clutching a stack of files thicker than she was. She looked down at the floor as they passed. There was open fear in her eyes. "Sons of bitches," Bob muttered.

  "What the hell is your problem?"

  "When I was a kid, after Unification stamped out the rebellion, they took the wives of the men who'd fought. Conspirators, they called them. No trial, no fancy lawyers to defend them. Just gone. They got my aunt and two of my older cousins. Guess where they got sent?"

  Frank let out a long, slow breath, taking his time before he responded. It wasn't easy, what he was about to propose, but he said it anyway. "Let's find them," he said. "What the hell, we're already breaking out two inmates. A few more
shouldn't hurt."

  "Don't bother with it. They're dead," Bob said.

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because the prisons sent notices to our family, telling us they'd already been disposed of."

  Another young woman was waiting for them at the end of the hall, sitting at a secretary's station. She was the prettiest of them all, with bright blonde hair, and dressed in expensive civilian clothing, despite her inmate's nametag. Surely the clothes were a gift from the Warden, and surely he'd handpicked her from the others. Frank felt ill when she smiled widely at the Warden and purred, "Welcome back, Warden Drexel. Shall I get drinks for you and your guests?"

  "No thank you, dear Agnes," the Warden said as he opened the doors to his office and waved for them to follow him.

  Frank looked at Agnes, watching how her expression changed the moment the Warden was out of view. Disgust clouded her eyes like drops of oil falling into a pool of water, spreading out slowly. Frank leaned back to Bob and said, "We are the good guys, right? I mean, the more we peel back the curtain, the more I'm not so sure."

  "We're the good guys, yeah," Bob said, pointing back and forth between himself and Frank. "We just happen to work for some really slimy, scum sucking people."

  The doors opened to the Warden's office, and they filed in behind the guards, keeping toward the back of the room and staying near the doors. Warden Drexel waved for them to come in and said, "Don't be shy, gentlemen. Typical soldiers. Always wanting to stand with their backs to the walls. I assure you, there is no safer room in this entire prison. Once you are within this room, there is no way in or out without my permission." He suddenly clapped his hands together and said, "So, I hope you don't mind staying a while!"

  The Warden let off a great guffaw of laughter, and General Milner smiled casually at him and said, "Well, as pleasant as that sounds, I am afraid we have considerable work to do. My men really must begin their inspection."

  "And so they may," the Warden said. "Each of them will be accompanied by a squad of my guards, for their own protection of course, and they'll be escorted at all times."

  "I see," General Milner said. "That's most courteous of you, but my men can handle themselves. There's really no need to−"

  "Policy, sir," Warden Drexel said, and now it was his turn to smile. "I am sure you understand."

  The General looked at Bob and Frank, just two men surrounded by a half dozen heavily armed guards, and said, "I guess you boys are going to have to get used to being babysat."

  Warden Drexel moved around his desk and plopped down in the deep leather chair there. He kicked his dusty boots up onto the desktop and leaned back, getting comfortable. "While they're doing that, you and I will stay here and discuss various things going on in the government. It's not often I get to speak to someone so in the know, and I have many questions."

  "Actually, I have my own duties to attend to, Warden."

  The Warden waved his hand around the office and said, "Attend to them here. This is the central brain of the entire prison. There is absolutely nothing you could possibly need to know that you cannot find from right here. In the meantime, I will have Agnes bring us food and drink and we can amuse ourselves while your underlings are crawling around the ducts and closets, counting how many crates of toilet paper we used last year."

  Their eyes met across the desk, with neither man speaking, until the General exhaled and started to unbutton his uniform shirt's collar. "I can't see any reason not to relax and enjoy myself a bit. Especially if you insist."

  The corner of the Warden's mouth turned up slightly and he said, "Oh, I do."

  For high-alert patrols, the guards suited up. Frank and Bob waited outside of the armory, staring at the walls while they waited, glancing at the multiple cameras positioned in every corner of the ceiling. They made small conversation, careful about anything they said to avoid being recorded or overheard.

  When the door opened again, both of them fell silent.

  The guards were wearing cybernetic Sentinel Armor, massive battle suits designed to withstand direct tank fire. They weren't meant for quelling domestic situations, let alone something as simple as a prison riot. The computer circuitry and cybernetics required to even move the damn things cost as much as a small spaceship. Even if Grendel Unit had ever found a need to wear something so bulky and heavily armored, they couldn't have afforded them.

  The guards' faces were hidden behind reflective silver shields and Frank said, "I thought you guys never made direct contact with the prisoners. What do you need those things for?"

  A speaker under the front guard's helmet crackled, "If this place goes up in flames, we're the only thing standing between you and over a hundred thousand inmates, pal. Just mind your own business and go count the paperclips, you read me?"

  Frank's escort consisted of six guards. They carried no additional weapons aside from the suits. There was no need to. There were rockets built into their shoulders and chainguns mounted under panels in their gauntlets. Wearing them, the guard would be able to fearlessly enter any situation and simply begin mowing down their opposition. And if the weapons ran out, the hydraulics in their gloves and boots were heavy and powerful enough to simply begin crushing people or tearing their limbs off.

  Frank had two on either side of him, and one positioned at his front and one at his back. He was penned in like livestock as they navigated the upper floors above the prison, their boots clanging on the steel mesh floor. It was dim below, but at times he could see faces looking up at him through the grates, often human but sometimes not. Their stares were neither desperate nor angry as they watched the men above. Somehow, the life in their eyes become diminished, gone flat. There were deep grooves in the sides of their faces where there might once have been laugh-lines. Their teeth had turned gray, or had fallen out completely, and the skin sagged on their arms, loose sacks of dirty flesh.

  The guards' suits clicked and whirred with every movement, taking hundreds of pounds of torque from a thousand different micro-pistons to conduct simple movements. Frank could not fathom how they were able to work that armor into their budget after the enormous cost of what it must take to feed and house over a hundred thousand inmates.

  The answer is grimly simple, he thought. Money trickles from the top down. The people on the upper floor get everything, and the people down below get the run off. It made sense why the Warden was so damn nervous.

  Frank looked at the sparkling suits of black armor, and the shielded faces surrounding him and knew they were scanning him with their optics, pulling up all of his files.

  Have fun with that, Frank thought.

  According to Unification's main database, Lieutenant Frank Kelly was a paramedic assigned to a medical transport ship. He had never been in combat and was routinely awarded Unification pins for his study of packaging engineering, or rather, how to fit as much gear as humanly possible into smaller and smaller containers. For anyone who did not have Level Black security clearance, that was all the information available about Frank, or the rest of the Grendels.

  Bob Buehl was registered as a pilot, for obvious reasons. He flew the medical transport ship Frank worked on. A long time ago, during a boring space flight, Frank had hacked into Bob's personnel file and registered him as a Quarrin, a member of a polygamist religion based on subservient male members of a species acting as the lovers and domestic servants of a protective dominant husband.

  He'd listed Monster as that husband.

  Vic and he had laughed until they cried, and then Vic had ordered him to change it. Frank had certainly meant to, but something always seemed to come up that prevented him from getting around to it. Now, wherever Bob was, the guards scanning his profile were probably looking at his tight shirt and carefully-defined physique and thinking, "I knew it."

  As they approached two swinging doors at the end of the hall, Frank winced at a horrific odor filling the room. He felt his eyes stinging and said, "What the hell is that?"

  The gu
ards kept walking and pushed the doors open, taking him into a large room above the cafeteria kitchen. There were blue barrels lined up along the walls, with hoses coming out of the top, pumping what looked like gray sludge into large machines. The barrels were leaking, and Frank leaned forward to see what it was, then wrenched his head away in revulsion, realizing that was the source of the stench.

  The machines rumbled and beeped as they drank the gray sludge in for processing. Every five seconds, a large chunk of reconstituted blocks of meat dropped from the bottom of the machine through the floor, landing on the prisoner level below.

  Frank looked through the grates and saw prisoner cafeteria workers picking up the meat blocks and carrying them back into the kitchen. To his disgust, he watched one of them twist a handful of the dripping meat substance off with his hand and stuff it into his mouth.

  How hungry do you have to be to do that? he thought.

  The first guard whacked Frank on the arm and said, "Hey. You going to start accounting or do we have to stand here smelling this all day?"

  He'd probably only meant to tap Frank, but the armored hand had been heavy enough to knock Frank sideways. Frank collected himself and pulled out his scanner, saying, "Sorry. I'll try and be quick about it."

  He held the scanner up and activated the screen, quickly punching in a series of codes. He turned and briefly pointed it at the first barrel, then turned and swept the scanner across all the guards in their fancy suits, making several passes as he moved from barrel to barrel, careful to let the scanner collect all the information that it needed.

  "You almost done? We've got a lot more to get to and our shift if over in a few hours," the guard said.

  Frank looked at the screen on his scanner and said, "That should do it."

  He pressed a button on the device and the room fell eerily silent as every electrical device and mechanical instrument froze. The food processors stopped beeping. The barrels stopped pumping. The guards Cybernetic Sentinel Armor suits stopped moving.