Shadowplay: Book One of the Starcrown Chronicles, Page 3

  Chapter Three

  A hundred people, no shower, and one poorly installed toilet. By the time they let us out of here we were going to be ripe. These were my first thoughts as I sat looking around at our new prison. The last of us had been shoved into the hold several minutes earlier and I could feel through the deck plates that we were under way. Unlike the prison transport however, what I felt this time was the thrum of a hyperdrive. Wherever the pirates were taking us had to be well outside of Gilead space. We would probably be locked in here for several days at least. I revised my earlier opinion. This wasn’t going to be a long trip. It was going to be a miserable one.

  For a while I simply sat there feeling numb. In my mind’s eye I called up the image of a face: oval shaped, curly dark brown hair, prominent nose, heavy lipped mouth, intense eyes beneath full brows. It was the face that had looked back at me from the scratched and smudged metal rectangle that served as a mirror in the refresher alcove. A face I did not recognize. I had studied my reflection for several minutes, which eventually earned me a round of angry pounding on the compartment door. The fact that I didn’t recognize my own face didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was how young I was. The face that had stared back at me couldn’t have been older than twenty-one or so. Just barely out of my teens and my life was already over.

  Letting out a long breath I lolled my head back against the bulkhead where I was sitting and stared up at the overhead. The cargo bay was three decks high. Most of the ceiling was taken up by a pair of immense hull doors. Pipes and power conduits ran around the edges. Just forward of the doors was a small, open access panel that looked big enough for someone to squeeze through. Interesting but useless since we couldn’t reach it.

  A sudden restlessness came over me and I stood up. I swept my eyes around the compartment, searching. These pirates were sloppy. There might be something they had overlooked, some way we could fight back against them. Alex stood up next to me, as if reading my thoughts.

  “I’ll start over here and go to the left,” she said. “We’ll meet on the far side.”

  I don’t think either of us actually expected to find anything, but it was something to do. We took our time, going over every square centimeter of the bulkheads in our reach. The others moved out of our way without comment whenever either of us came near. After a few minutes I heard someone coming up behind me. When I turned around I recognized two of the men who had been part of the fight with the transport crew. My hands instinctively closed into fists.

  “Could you use a hand?” the first one asked sheepishly while his friend hung back slightly. He was about my height, well spoken, educated. His friend was taller, long limbed, and actually wearing genuine eyeglasses. I seemed to remember that it was the new style among the young crowd. In fact, the more I studied them the more they reminded me of a pair of college students. As they stood there waiting for me to answer them, they kept stealing self-conscious glances at the transport crew. I felt myself relax. They weren’t looking for trouble.

  Extra hands couldn’t hurt, so I put them to work. It turned out that my original take on them was right. They were college students, or they had been. The tall one was Mark Sooth, an electronics and computer sciences senior from Haven University. I sent him to see if he could find a way to access the door controls from our side. I had noticed an inactive keypad beside the door. He thought he might be able to do something with it. The other one was Christopher Conrad, also a senior at Haven, but a political science major working toward a law degree. He didn’t have Mark’s technical skills so I had him follow me so I could show him what to look for as we searched the bulkheads.

  As we worked, Chris kept up a steady stream of nervous conversation. He didn’t seem to mind that I didn’t have much to say and I just let him ramble on. As it was I actually learned a lot about what was going on in the world from him.

  He told me that he and his friend had been arrested for organizing a campus rally. After King Jason was assassinated one of the first things the newly crowned King Sebastian did was to order a dusk to dawn curfew across all of Haven. He claimed it was necessary to ‘contain the subversive elements in our society’. Chris snorted. After what had happened to his nephew, most people figured Sebastian was just scared. Many prominent civil rights activists had objected to such a drastic policy—at first. There were protest marches and speeches, heated debates on the news networks, but none of it made any difference.

  And then, a few days after the protests began, most of the organizers suddenly reversed their opinions. Others simply dropped from public view. Rumors spread through net that family members of several of the more vocal leaders had been picked up for questioning. Then the soldiers started appearing. In spite of the fact that the constitution expressly forbids the use of military forces against Gileadean citizens, troops were deployed in all of the major cities. Public gatherings of more than three people were forbidden. Citizens were required to carry identification with them at all times to be produced on demand. A week after the first of the protest marches, city streets across the entire planet were virtually empty as people only went out when they absolutely had to.

  While the curfew made life difficult for everyone, it was especially frustrating for the young people whose social lives were lived largely in the evening hours. After a few weeks Chris and his friends were bursting at the seams to get out and blow off some steam. Then word got around about a party that was being thrown by a group of graduate students who shared an apartment off campus. It was a way of thumbing their noses at the new curfew. Three of Chris’s friends decided to sneak out on the night of the party. They hadn’t been seen since. Chris and Mark went to the police but they were turned away at the front desk. They tried asking around campus and learned that others who had gone out after curfew that night were also missing, along with the grad students who had thrown the party.

  It was at this point that Chris and Mark had come up with the idea of a protest rally—a sit in on the main mall of the campus. In spite of everything that was happening, he and his friend actually believed that such a rally might make a difference. There had been no incidents since the King’s initial crackdown and they thought that if they could get enough students to stand together, the King would have to listen to them.

  They started reaching out to people through the net and the word spread like wild fire. Haven University is one of the largest schools in the nation and thousands of students showed up for the event. The rally had barely gotten under way when a swarm or armored hover-craft appeared overhead. Moments later a platoon of armed soldiers marched into the campus mall from all sides. Then a voice boomed from one of the circling hover-craft and ordered them to disburse. Instead of leaving, the students started booing. The soldiers formed ranks and again the students were ordered to leave. There was a tense stand-off for a while with neither side willing to back down.

  Then one of the students threw something.

  That was when the soldiers opened fire.

  Chris remembered the next several minutes as a confusion of running and pushing through panicked crowds as everyone scrambled to race back to their dorms. Within an hour word reached them that thirty nine students had been killed, while dozens of others had been taken to the hospital. He and Mark were still trying to come to grips with the reality of the news when a squad of military police officers broke down their door and arrested them for insurrection.

  They were brought before a judge the very next day where testimony was given against them and a verdict of guilty pronounced without either of them having a chance to defend themselves. Chris had tried to object but the judge wasn’t interested. A series of witnesses had identified them as the rally organizers. That was all the evidence he cared about. Chris remembered how each of these witnesses—fellow students who could not look either of them in the eye—bore bruises and other injuries that hadn’t been there the day before.


  His head was spinning. Things like this didn’t happen, not in Gilead. This was a nation of laws and democracy where people had rights.

  He demanded to be allowed to speak before they were sentenced and the judge reluctantly allowed it. While he admitted to the judge that they had organized the rally, he denied any attempt to overthrow the government. Insurrection? That was absurd. They were just trying to exercise their rights to peacefully object to the King’s new policies.

  I watched the hate fill his eyes then as Chris described what happened next. The judge smiled down at him and thanked Chris for his testimony. According to the judge, any criticism of the King was insurrection. He said that Chris had just convicted them with his own words. He announced that a new day had dawned in Gilead. King Sebastian was determined to stamp out the subversive attitudes that had infected society. People like them were to be made an example of.

  “The next thing we knew, we were on that prison transport,” Chris said, winding down. Now that he had gotten everything out I could see that his eyes were brimming with tears. Balling his hand into a fist he pounded lightly against the bulkhead.

  “I never even had the chance to call my parents. They probably think I’m dead.”

  For a while all I could do was stare mutely at him. It was more than just the horrible injustices this young man and his friend were being subjected to. What was bothering me was how the King was flagrantly abusing the system. But why did I care? A convicted smuggler, maybe even a pirate and a slaver, and I was concerned about the politics of the nation? I didn’t have the right. Yet for some reason I was deeply troubled by what Sebastian was doing. It was ... wrong!

  Of course the King could change things any way he chose to. He had absolute discretion to act outside of the law. That was the whole point of our system of government—a democratic monarchy. For the most part the people elected leaders who in turn ran the nation, but the King could step in as he saw fit and make changes. This allowed him to make corrections in the system when he found laws or policies that were ineffective. Historically, most Kings had used this authority very rarely. Unfortunately, it also meant that someone like Sebastian could subvert the system for his own purposes. Innocent people were suffering for the King’s paranoia and arrogance. For my part I probably deserved my punishment, but this young man and his friend had done nothing to justify what was happening to them.

  Then the full implications of what Chris had said finally hit me.

  I spun around and took a look at the other prisoners, my first real look at them. Before I had simply seen convicts in prison jump suits. Now I looked beyond the prison clothing and what I saw unnerved me. Facing me was a room full of frightened people. These weren’t hardened criminals. They were average men and women whose world had suddenly been turned upside down. Many were actually huddled against the bulkheads like terrified children. Alex had tried to explain what was happening to me before, but I was too confused to pay attention. Now, in the eyes of these terrified people I saw reflected the growing nightmare that was unfolding in our nation.

  I turned back to Chris. He was standing there with his head hanging as tears ran down his cheeks.

  “I’m so sorry.” It was the only thing I could think of to say. It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, but it was all I had to offer.

  Chris wiped his face and managed a faint smile. “It’s not like it’s your fault.”

  “I’m sorry too.” While we were talking one of the transport crew had come up to us. It was the officer with the swollen face. The rest of his group waited nearby, anxiously watching the exchange.

  The officer straightened up as best he could and held his hand out to Chris who hesitated briefly, then took it.

  “Ricky Molina,” he lisped through his split, swollen lips. “And I mean it. I heard what you were saying and I really am sorry about what they did to you. To everybody here,” he added in a slightly raised voice. “They used to send only the real hard core criminals out to the Tombs. But recently they’ve been having us transport more and more people like you who haven’t done anything and it’s been eating me up inside.”

  “Actually, I think I owe you an apology,” Chris said guiltily. “Me and my friend kind of picked that fight with you. Then the others joined in and—”

  Ricky waved it off. “After what you’ve been through I’d want to pound the crap out of somebody, too.”

  They both laughed. Ricky stopped after a moment and pressed a hand to his head.

  “Are you okay?” Chris asked.

  “I don’t know. All of a sudden I don’t...”

  I watched as his eyes went glassy and rolled up into his head. I was just barely able to get to him as he collapsed and I eased him to the deck. He was still conscious, but complained that the room was spinning.

  “Excuse me, I’m a doctor.”

  I looked up and saw an older man. Tall and slim with a full head of pure, white hair, I placed his age around sixty. I moved aside as he knelt down next to Ricky and watched as his knowledgeable hands began to gently examine his injuries.

  “You look familiar,” Chris said, squatting across from the doctor. The doctor gave a thin smile without looking up from his work. Within a couple of minutes he had determined that there were no broken bones but that Ricky probably had a mild concussion. There was also a slight chance that he had a detached retina in his injured eye, but to be sure he’d need instruments.

  “He should be all right if he’s left alone to rest,” the doctor said. “I just wish I had something to relieve that swelling around his eye a little.”

  “Will this help, Doc?” A small crowd had been growing around us. One of the other prisoners was holding out a small bottle of white capsules to the doctor who examined them briefly.

  “What is that, Prohibitol?”

  “Yeah. I managed to bring in a few things I thought might be useful.”

  “What is it?” Ricky croaked.

  “It’s a rather potent pain reliever,” the doctor said. “But it also acts to reduce swelling,” he added as he pushed two capsules into Ricky’s mouth. “May I keep the rest of these, Mr. ...?”

  “Dobbs, Lawrence Dobbs,” said the man who had offered the pills. “Actually, my mom’s the only one who calls me Lawrence, everybody else just calls me Lucky. And sure, keep them. You’re the Doc. You might find somebody else who could use them.”

  “Thank you, Lucky,” the doctor said. “He’s going to need doses every few hours for the next day or so. You may have just saved his vision in that eye.”

  Lucky shrugged. “Glad I could be of help.”

  “That’s a military prisoner’s uniform you’re wearing,” I observed, noting the differences between Lucky’s khaki green jump-suit and what the rest of us were wearing.

  “I was in the Fleet. Used to be a supply officer, until I got in trouble for redirecting a few things.”

  “Redirecting?”

  Lucky was a real character. He explained that as a supply officer he often had to go outside of the normal military channels to keep his unit properly supplied. It seemed that a simple requisition to the central depot, say for a gross of laser sights, could just as likely get you a case of powdered eggs as it would the sights you wanted. While this type of mistake didn’t happen all the time it did happen often enough to be an annoyance. But getting the central depot to acknowledge that there had been a mistake or to actually correct it took a small mountain of paperwork and the patience of a saint. Lucky found a better way. Being an enterprising young man, he took it on himself to build a network of contacts that he would trade with from time to time. Every unit was short on something and overstocked with something else. It was just a matter of tracking down which unit had an excess of what your unit needed and figuring out what they would trade it for.

  Over time Lucky got so good at tracking things down that supply officers from other units s
tarted calling him for help. In those cases he would also tack on a little something extra for his trouble, which the other officers were happy to provide since Lucky was usually the only one who could get whatever they needed. Exotic liquors, expensive cigars and even jewelry found their way to him as tokens of appreciation from grateful supply officers throughout the fleet. In turn he would offer such bonuses as incentives to other units when he really needed something for his men. Eventually he had the most well stocked warehouse of any unit, boasting everything from laundry soap to lingerie (a sideline he got into accidentally when a commander needed a last minute anniversary gift). But that was also what got him into trouble.

  After King Sebastian took the throne he set about making sweeping changes throughout the military. Like all of the Royals, Sebastian had served a mandatory two-year term in the fleet as a young man, but the experience had not been a positive one for him. He hated following orders and he left the service as soon as his term was over. Even though it was more than twenty years since Sebastian had served in the fleet, stories were still circulating through the ranks about how his behavior was so bad that had he been anyone other than a member of the Royal Family he would have been discharged during basic training.

  Once he became King, Sebastian announced that he was going to put an end to what he described as the ‘flagrant mismanagement of the armed forces’. One of his biggest objections to the military was that he saw no reason why the fleet should command such a large portion of the national budget. It seemed that fighting interstellar terrorism and piracy, combating illegal intrusions into Gilead space, or even the basic necessity of maintaining a military force strong enough to discourage unfriendly nations from attacking our systems were not sufficient reasons for him. What he did was hire hundreds of auditors to poke their noses into every aspect of how the military functioned. One of the first results of this was a series of surprise inspections throughout the entire fleet in which complete inventories of supply warehouses were conducted. When the auditors went into Lucky’s warehouse they acted like they had hit the mother lode. Not only did the list of supplies in central records not match what was actually in Lucky’s warehouse, but many of the items he had stockpiled were not even military issue. They thought they had come across a vast black market within the military.

  Although he was perfectly candid with them about his trading enterprises and in spite of the unwavering support of his commanding officer, Lucky found himself brought up on charges. At one point they offered him a plea bargain which would have saved him from a court-martial. But what they wanted in exchange were the names of the other supply officers who were part of his ‘ring’. They had been unable to find any records because he kept everything in his head and they needed him to make their case. Lucky knew that if he fingered any of the others they would be arrested too, so he conveniently forgot everything.

  “That was pretty noble of you,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, you can see what noble did for me—twenty years in the Ritz.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from warming to this character who had chosen to take the full weight of the consequences on himself rather than implicate others. But I could also see that he was regretting how much his principles had cost him.

  “What about your friend?” I asked, nodding toward a prisoner sitting by himself across the bay. He and Lucky were the only ones wearing military prisoner uniforms. In the other man’s case however, the jump suit barely fit his huge physique. He looked like he could pick up any one of us with one hand.

  “I don’t know. I never saw him before today. Doesn’t like to talk much.”

  “Excuse me, doctor?” a female prisoner had joined us and was anxiously pointing out a very large woman across the bay who was huddled against the base of one bulkhead crying hysterically. “Can you please help her? She keeps saying something about her babies and how there’s no one back at home to look after them.”

  “Go on, Doc,” Chris said. “I’ll keep an eye on Ricky.”

  The doctor nodded and stood. A look of frustration crossed the old man’s face as he looked over at the distraught woman. He hesitated. “I not sure what I can do for her. I don’t have anything I can give her to—”

  “Try these, Doc.” Lucky said, pressing another bottle of pills into his hand with a sigh.

  “Valium?”

  “I know it’s a little old school, but they work.”

  The doctor clapped him on the shoulder and started toward his next patient.

  “Got any other surprises up your sleeve?” I asked. “A laser torch would be real handy right about now.”

  Lucky Grinned. “Sorry, that was the last of my stash. I couldn’t bring in a whole lot.”

  “How did you manage to smuggle anything aboard with you at all?”

  He made a sour face. “You don’t want to know.”

  Alex had finished her circuit of the room by then and was walking over to us. A shake of her head told me that she hadn’t found any weaknesses we could exploit.

  “That man,” she said to the Doctor’s back. “Isn’t that Dr. Jacobs?”

  A sudden memory flashed across my mind. Dr. Joseph Jacobs, known in the news media as Dr. Death. He had been arrested for helping terminal patients commit suicide. People either praised him for having the nerve to help suffering patients end their torment or they saw him as a murderer. The courts had decided that he was guilty of contributing to the unlawful deaths of several people and had sentenced him to life in prison.

  “I knew I recognized him,” Chris said. He turned to go after the doctor. “We shouldn’t be letting him treat anyone.”

  I put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “I don’t think he’s going to go around poisoning anyone. Besides, he’s the only qualified doctor here. What we need to focus on is trying to find a way out of this cargo bay.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” said a young man with long hair and a beard as he stepped forward. He was just under average height with broad shoulders, an athletic build and a deep, coppery tan. He pointed up at the open access hatch I’d noticed earlier.

  “I saw that,” I said. “But there’s no way to reach it.”

  He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward an aft corner of the room. “Give me a boost up over there and I bet I can reach it.”

  A third of the way up the wall a sealed fiber-op trunk line entered through the bulkhead and ran up to the ceiling. Chris and Lucky gave him a boost. As soon as he got his fingers around the pipe he started climbing like a monkey. In moments he had reached the ceiling and began making his way along the girders and piping. The bay grew quiet as everyone stopped whatever they were doing to watch him. He moved like an acrobat, swinging from hand hold to hand hold and soon was in reach of the open access panel.

  “STOP!”

  It was the other prisoner in the military jump suit. I never even heard him come up beside me.

  “That’s an unshielded power conduit junction! If you touch anything in there you’ll be dead instantly!”

  Our young acrobat hung there swaying uncertainly for a moment, then turned himself around and started to make his way back down. I looked up at the hulking figure who had just saved his life.

  “I used to be the assistant engineer on a patrol cruiser,” the big man said quietly. A few moments later our young climber rejoined us.

  “Hey, thanks man,” he said, clapping the big man on the back. “You saved my ass! I really owe you one. I’m Bobby, Bobby Dare.”

  “Ian Brunner,” the quiet giant said. “I would have saved you the climb but I didn’t know what you were trying to do at first.”

  “That’s what you get for missing staff meetings,” Lucky chimed in.

  Mark returned from across the bay just then with his head hanging. The keypad box had been welded tight. There would be no quick escape like in the adventure stories where the hero pries open the control circuits with his bare hand
s and crosses a few fiber-op leads. Our prison was quite secure.

  A group of us continued to throw out ideas for a while but in the end we couldn’t come up with anything. There was little we could do with our bare hands against synthesteel bulkheads. We were just going to have to wait and see what the pirates had in store for us.