Condemned (Death Planet Book 1)

CONDEMNED

DEATH PLANET #1

Edward M. Grant

Banchixi Media

Canada

Copyright © 2015 Edward M. Grant

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without permission in any manner whatsoever.

First Edition, 2015

Revision: #8414 - December 12, 2015

Published by Banchixi Media,
www.banchixi.com

I
t was a shitty day to die. Cold enough to freeze a capitalist's heart, wet enough to wash away their greed... and still a week to Daniel’s eighteenth birthday.

He'd always expected to get that far into his life. Graduate from the Pioneers. Hold a party at the barracks, as large as his ration allowance could cover. Be reassigned to a work barracks, to serve the World State in his true calling in life, whatever the World Economic Program decided it would be. Mate with Erica, if the World Eugenics Committee authorized the match.

His boots stomped through the murky puddles in the barren plain of brown mud as he sprinted for safety. Rain dripped from his nose. His heart pounded like a bomb aching to explode in his chest. A cord around his wrists held his arms behind him, and they banged against his back. His lungs strained against his ribs as they struggled to suck in the air to keep his legs moving. If he could reach the things that looked like black-leaved trees...

Blobs circled high above him in the overcast sky. Big ones, flapping long wings, and shrieking. But the creatures hissing and yelling behind him were more dangerous. He'd spent three weeks in the cells before his trial, just lying on the bed, with nothing better to do than worry about his future. Why hadn’t he spent it exercising, training, mentally preparing for what might happen? He wasn’t in Education Camp any more.

How was he to know they’d send him here? How could he possibly deserve this? Maybe he'd done something illegal, like they said he had, but he hadn't done anything
wrong
.

A white blob, about the size of an outstretched hand, buzzed a metre in front of his face. Its dark eyes followed his every move as he raced through the mud toward it. He turned his face away and ducked before he smacked into the hovering drone, but its fans hummed louder, and it dodged aside at the last second. Another drone took its place, and the first buzzed around behind him, then rose into the sky.

They recorded everything that happened on the planet, for the
Punishment Channel
. Not just the drones flitting around him, but even the skulltop computer built into his head would be recording all his experiences through his own senses. Then sending them home, for the commissars and their comrades to watch what was left of his life.

Which might be no more than five minutes, if he didn’t reach the trees before the hunter caught him.

F
ive minutes before, Daniel had been warm, dry and happy, in a deep, dreamless sleep. The last thing he remembered before that was standing in front of the Public Safety tribunal as they handed down their judgement. With four words, they changed his life forever.

“The sentence is death.”

The words seemed to echo back from the hard, white walls of the court. He didn’t even have time to react to them, before the militia sedated him. Or, if he had, the drugs, and months of suspension in the prison pod, had wiped his memories.

He woke strapped into his seat in the twisting, jerking pod as it fell toward the planet. A few seconds later, it smacked into the ground at the end of its long fall from the gulag ship that had carried him there, then tossed him out like garbage.

Back home, in EdCamp, a PubSafe commissar had shown them recordings of what would happen if they committed crimes against the State. A much younger Daniel had watched a recording from the skulltop of a PubSafe agent as they loaded the Condemned, already fast asleep in their helmets and orange jumpsuits, into the prison pods. Then loaded the pods onto the gulag starship like just another cargo, the sleeping passengers suspended for months with no chance of escape. At least he hadn’t been one of the 5% they said would die on the way.

But maybe that would have been a relief.

Instead, he lay in the seat after the shock of landing, trying to remember where he was, and what was happening. He winced as needles pulled out of his arms and legs, and retracted into the sides of the pod. The lid hissed, then rose and split in two. The pod's parachute still fluttered around it, revealing a dark, cloud-filled sky when the wind blew it aside. Air hissed out as he opened the faceplate of his helmet. The salty smell of the sea filled his nose. His hair blew in the wind, longer than he remembered. A short beard covered his cheeks and chin.

Red arrows on the seat straps pointed toward metal clasps. He grabbed them and pulled, until the clasps opened, and the straps fell away. Then hauled himself up from the seat, and peered out at the world around him.

So this was the legendary
Hades. The commissars didn’t call it
Death Planet
for nothing. A dumping ground for prisoners, fighting for their lives against weather, beasts, and their fellow men. More humane than execution, they said. Certainly must be more entertaining for the commissars to watch.

Other pods, bright orange where the heat of atmospheric entry hadn’t burned the surface black, were still parachuting down nearby. One fell toward the plain and bounced, tearing a long gash in the mud, then came to a halt barely ten metres away. Another flew low over his head, dragging a mass of cloth and cables behind it where the parachute had tangled after it deployed. A blast of air from the pod's glowing heatshield warmed his face for a second, before the pod smashed into the ground and broke apart. The debris tumbled across the plain in a cloud of metal, plastic, flesh and bone.

Hopefully, whoever was inside had died in their sleep, rather than waking, disoriented and confused, for a few seconds of terror before being torn apart in the crash.

The parachute separated from the pod that had landed safely nearby, then blew away across the plain in a mass of white and orange cloth, trailing long cables. The pod clunked, then the top rose, split apart and folded down the sides. Nothing else happened. Were they dead?

A helmet rose from the pod, and a hand raised the faceplate. The skin of the face beneath was soft and pale, with blue eyes surrounded by waves of red and blue hair that fluttered in the wind. For a second, Daniel's eyes met the girl’s. Her jaw was slack, and eyes wide, shocked at the sudden transition from the bright courtroom to a dark, muddy plain under a cloudy sky. A few seconds stretched out as they stared at each other.

Then men yelled, and beasts hissed, and, without even thinking, Daniel was on the ground, running for the pod. He couldn't just leave her to whatever was coming. That was the sound of rape culture... or worse.

His boots pounded across the wet ground, splattering brown streaks of mud across his orange prison jumpsuit as he splashed through deep puddles.

He reached out as he approached her pod. “Comrade.”

“Run, piggies,” a man yelled, then laughed.

The approaching mob wore leather and rags, and carried crude knives, bows, and spears. Their hair was long and matted, their beards unkempt.

At least, the ones that looked almost human.

Dark fur covered the skin of the hunter leading the nearest pack. A genetic hybrid, with hooves where his feet should be, furry hands, and a horse-like snout and ears.

Real, alien, beasts crawled in front of the hunters, with three eyes glaring on each side of their head, dagger-like claws on their feet, tall bone plates along the back of their neck, and open mouths exposing long rows of stabbing teeth. Their legs pulled hard against the leashes around their necks, and the men followed them, laughing and jeering. Drones twisted and turned in the air around them, recording it all.

The girl stared silently at Daniel as he jumped onto her pod, grabbed a railing by the lid with one hand, and grabbed her hand with the other. She twisted her arm, and tried to pull her fingers from his grip.

“Get away from me.”

Daniel squeezed her hand tighter. “I don’t want to trigger you, but do you want to be caught by that patriarchal mob?”

She glanced toward them, then at him, then jumped over the side of the pod, into the mud. He jumped down beside her. Now they were at the same level on the ground, the top of her head barely reached his shoulder. He turned and ran, pulling her behind him.

She glanced back again, then relaxed and let him lead the way. The distant woods were their best chance for a safe space, if they could get there before arrows thudded into their backs. They couldn’t escape the mob on the open plain. If the hounds didn’t smell them, the men would see the orange suits from a kilometre away. In the woods... perhaps they had a chance. The criminals behind them had been Condemned, then survived among the dregs of humanity until the next ship released its cargo. Nothing good could come from being captured.

Call home
, he thought. But nothing happened. His skulltop ignored the command. It was still projecting the date and time into his optic nerves, and the signal strength meter showed a good network connection to... somewhere. PubSafe must have reprogrammed it, and thrill-seeking commissars were probably watching through his own senses right now.

Or they would be soon, when the ship returned home with the recordings.

“Who are you?” the girl gasped.

No time to explain, or even think. Just run.

Daniel glanced back as the girl's arm pulled on his. Her face was red, and she panted as her legs slowed. A few hunters had stopped to swarm over the pods, tearing open the metal panels, and ripping out electronics, wires, and other hardware. The others were gaining, and, if she didn’t find more strength to keep moving, they’d be on her in moments.

Men with no morals, trapped on a world dozens of light years from home with no chance of punishment... would only want one thing from a girl.

Perhaps that would give him more time to get away.

No, don’t think like that. The men were murderers, rapists and worse. Nothing they might do to him would be as bad as what they would do to her.

More orange figures moved in the distance, racing away from their pursuers in whatever direction they had chosen. But half a dozen of the men and beasts were still following Daniel and the girl, hissing and yelling behind them.

And getting closer.

He pulled harder, but the girl’s boots slipped on the mud, and she stumbled as she tried not to fall. He slowed for a second to pull her up. The hunters swung their weapons, barely ten metres away, and closing fast. The hounds opened their mouths wide, baring their teeth and hissing. He turned to run on.

Then he went flying. Without the helmet, his face would have smacked down into the mud. He tried to roll over, but the helmet pushed his head down, and the girl's weight pressed down on his back as she sat astride him.

“What are you doing?” he mumbled.

She tossed her helmet aside, reached up to the neck of her jumpsuit, then rubbed a finger down the seal to her stomach, opening it enough to expose her cleavage. “Sorry, but it's either you or me. And it's not me.”

The hunters surrounded them. The hounds pulled against their leashes, jaws snapping toward Daniel and the girl. The horse-headed hybrid stepped forward, stinking of sweat, still panting from the chase, and stared down at them.

“Now, this is getting interesting.”

Daniel struggled beneath the girl, but she grabbed his wrist, and twisted it until he gasped with the pain of bone rubbing against bone. What was she doing?

“I caught this one for us,” she said.

The hunter reached down, grabbed Daniel's arm, and pulled him to his feet. The girl slid off his back, and the hunter pushed him toward another, whose beard reached half-way down his chest, below a suntanned, wrinkled face. Daniel tried to dodge aside, but the hunter grabbed him and turned him around, holding his wrists behind his back.

“Please, comrade, I’m not a criminal. I shouldn't be here.”

The hunter pulled a leather cord from his belt. “None of us should be here, kid.”

Why had he tried to help her? He should have known he couldn't escape with her in tow. He wasn't at home now. No-one would protect him. These men could do whatever they wanted. His legs shook. What would they want with him?

The hunter wrapped the cord around Daniel's wrists. Daniel twisted his arms and tried to pull himself away, but a short hunter with one arm grabbed him with the good hand, and held him while the other tied the cord tight.

“Hey, Red. What do you reckon we should do with the pretty one?”

The horse-headed hybrid glanced toward Daniel. “Whorehouse will find a use for him. Real question is what we do with his little friend?”