Death to the Imperium (Imperium Cicernus) (3 page)

Glitz
cursed inwardly. So it seemed he wouldn’t even get a chance to talk to Tekka
and Doland again. In that case, the chance of implementing their plan
successfully seemed small. In fact, what was to stop Tekka and Doland simply
finding a new third member for their group? Tekka had said himself that he
didn’t care which two people escaped alongside him.

“Sir,”
Glitz said again.

“If
you want to speak to me, put your hand up,” Mr. Quex said.

Glitz
frowned at the man’s pettiness, and raised his hand.

“Yes,
Glitz?”

“What
sort of work is it we do here?” he asked.

Mr.
Quex turned to the largest member of the group, who had a bald head and a
tattoo of a bald eagle across his forehead. “Pieterson’s in charge here.” He
nodded to the man. “Why don’t you tell Glitz all about your work? I might be
checking up on you later.”

The
prison officer got back into the second wagon and it drove away, leaving a cloud
of dark dust. The first truck, which was carrying the prison guards, followed
it. When he had followed the other prisoners as they scrambled down into the
quarry, Glitz turned to Pieterson and saluted, half-sarcastically.

“I’m
Piet,” the man said. “And you obey me without question.”

Glitz
nodded with mock solemnity. “So what kind of work do we do, Piet?”

“We
break rocks,” Piet said simply.

To
provide a demonstration, he raised his tool and swung it from above his
shoulder, smashing it into the boulder. A tiny crack appeared in the centre of
the rock. Piet swung his pickaxe again, hitting the rock in the same place. The
crack became slightly larger. Glitz watched the mundane exercise, and then
raised an eyebrow.

“So
that’s it?”

One
of the other men laughed. “That’s it, brother.”

“But
what’s the point of it?” Glitz persisted. “We break rocks, right, but what
for
?
What does it accomplish?”

“Look,”
Piet said. “There don’t need to be a point. We break rocks.”

“Right,”
Glitz said, looking up at the blackened sky. “That sounds fair.”

The
men began to drift apart. The quarry was about the size of a gravity-ball
stadium, and they spread out across it. Glitz grabbed one of the pickaxes and
approached one of the smaller boulders. He swung his pickaxe into the rock, and
felt a vibration from the rock jolt his arm.

Annoyed,
Glitz inspected the surface of the stone. He hadn’t even made the tiniest mark
on the surface. He raised the pickaxe again and smashed it into the rock. This
time, a tiny fracture appeared. Wiping the sweat from his brow, Glitz exhaled
loudly.

“What
are these things made of?” he muttered.

“Hey,
no slacking! Get back to work!” Piet shouted.

Sighing,
Glitz swung the tool into the rock again…

The
rest of the day passed in the same way. It took him almost an hour to finally
break apart the first boulder, and he wasn’t allowed even a small break before
he moved on to the next. It was exhausting work, made even more tiring because
he was in desperate need of sleep. Also, he was convinced of the futility of
the job. Why were they breaking rocks? It didn’t make any sense. If the prison
officer was so intent on making the prisoners work, why not make them do
something useful that could actually raise revenue for the prison? Glitz was
thankful, however, that they had free access to water. There was a pump in the
quarry, which provided an unlimited supply of hydration. True, the liquid that
spouted from it tasted vaguely of metal, but it was very satisfying after a few
hours of rock smashing. The work day was ten hours long with only a couple of
water breaks, and by 17:00 Glitz felt like he was going to collapse from hunger
and overwork.

“Is
every day like this?” Glitz muttered to one of the prisoners, after they had
started putting away their pickaxes.

“We
work seven out of eight days in a week,” the man said, who had watery blue eyes
and a crooked nose. “Usual schedule is breakfast at 6:00, followed by work at
7:00. Each work day is ten hours, followed by another meal hour, and then a ten
hour rest period. Obviously, transport time eats into our leisure hours, rather
than work hours. On the ninth day every week we have a shower, followed by a
day of rest in our cells.”

Glitz
nodded. It seemed the planet Malus had a nine-day week. And each day was twenty-two
hours long. Of course, few planets colonised by the human race had the same
orbit and rotation as Homeworld. However, many planets tried to adjust their
time zones to ensure compatibility with Galactic Standard Time. It was a good
idea in theory, but it practice it caused many problems. For example, the
planet Velatia, despite making a full rotation every twelve hours, still
followed G.S.T. Thus, the planet would go dark in the middle of every day, and the
first half of every night would be bright. The humans were constantly searching
for a “perfect world”—or trying to engineer one—but all of the current colonised
worlds had some kind of fault or deficiency. Several even had different oxygen
or gravity levels, which could be very surprising for tourists. A particularly undernourished
visitor to Phoros B might find himself floating off into the air like a children’s
hydrogen pod.

When
their wagon arrived, the men stowed away their pickaxes in a small cave cut
into the side of the quarry. They were driven back to the prison compound, and
led into the refectory. Glitz noticed that there were dozens of doors leading
into the cafeteria, which seemed odd. They entered; it was a plain looking room
with no windows. Then again, any windows in Malus would only look out onto the
unpleasant volcanic landscape, so Glitz was quite glad that there weren’t any. The
tables were made of cheap plasthyne and coated with a waterproof vinyl cover.
With dismay, Glitz realised that the canteen was demarcated by translucent plasthyne
sheets. That was the idea of the separate doors, then. The section for Work
Group Eight was totally separated from the rest of the refectory.

“Can’t
we talk to the other prisoners?” Glitz said.

Piet
snorted, and replied, “Course not.”

That
explains everything, thanks
, Glitz thought.
It’s all so clear to me now.
Later, Glitz learned that their refectory was only one out of about two-dozen
across the prison site, and that each Work Group was kept in a separate
compartment in every cafeteria. The policy was intended to prevent large groups
of prisoners from planning a rebellion.

A
small hatch built into the dividing wall opened, and a large pot was pushed
through, along with thirteen tin plates and thirteen tin spoons. Piet took the
pot and carried it to the table, and one of the other men—Glitz thought his
name might be Raal—put down a plate and spoon in front of each table seat. The
men all sat down, and Glitz joined them. The pot was pushed politely from
person to person. He watched, astonished, as each man poured himself exactly
the same amount of the pale goo, said “thank you”, and pushed the pot along to
the person next to him. Piet certainly did keep a well-behaved Work Group. When
it was Glitz’s turn, he scooped out some of the mixture and dropped it into his
bowl. It didn’t have any noticeable odour, and it had the consistency of thick
porridge. None of the men started to eat; they were waiting for everyone to
take their helping.

Finally,
the pot reached Piet, and he scooped out the rest of the food into his bowl. There
were barely more than two spoonfuls left for him. Glitz couldn’t help but be
impressed by the man’s humility. As leader of the Work Group, he would surely
be entitled to a larger helping than anyone else. Who would dare to challenge
him if he did so? But Piet obviously thought so highly of his men that he was
prepared to be served last, at the risk of ending up with a smaller portion.

“Look,”
Glitz said, moving the meal around with his metal spoon. “I’m not really
hungry. Think I picked up an infection on the ship. Why don’t you eat this?”

Glitz
pushed his bowl across the table towards Piet. The table fell silent, and Glitz
wondered for a second if he had done something wrong. But Piet simply smiled,
nodded, and began to eat. It had been a lie, of course. Glitz was starving. But
he had felt sorry for Piet. Also, it couldn’t hurt to get on the good side of
their leader.

He
still hadn’t quite given up on the idea of escaping from Malus, even if it
seemed unlikely that his plan with Tekka and Doland would go ahead. But if the
worst came to the worst, and he really was stuck on Malus for five years, he
wanted to make it as easy on himself as possible.

After
everyone except Glitz had eaten, they were escorted back into their cells. He
had no way of telling the time, but he assumed that it was 18:00. That gave him
ten hours to sleep before breakfast the next morning. Glitz took off his work
clothes and changed into his normal prison clothes, before climbing into bed.
The sheets were made of polycotton, and the mattress wasn’t as uncomfortable as
he had expected. Glitz banged on the metal wall, and someone banged back. Glitz
laughed and banged again, trying to irritate whoever was in the next cell. But
the other man didn’t knock again. He felt his eyes begin to close and he laid
back. In a few seconds he was asleep.

The
next few weeks passed in much the same way, and each day the work outside seemed
a little easier. He still thought it was pointless labour, but he tried not to
complain too much. Their group leader, although not very bright, was a decent
man. As soon as he realised that Glitz was prepared to work hard without
supervision he began to treat him a little more kindly.

They
were served the same food at breakfast and dinner each day. The prisoners
called it “manna”, a sarcastic reference to the miraculous food the god of
Proteism had supposedly provided for the planet Israel during a time of famine.
It tasted a little like marchgrain porridge—that is to say, it tasted like
nothing at all. There was no flavour, no seasoning. But apparently it was
artificially constituted to contain all of the essential nutrients, and it
seemed to keep all the men in good health.

One
evening, after a particularly hard day, Glitz collapsed onto his bed while
still wearing his work clothes, not caring that he was covering his sheets in
rock dust. He was drifting off to sleep when a voice suddenly made his eyes
snap open.

“Harlan
Glitz. Harlan Glitz. Can you hear me, Harlan Glitz?”

Glitz
jumped out of bed.
I recognize that voice!
“Tekka?” he said, hardly able
to believe it. “Is that you?”

“It’s
me,” Tekka said coldly, and added, insincerely, “I hope you are well.”

“Could
be worse,” Glitz replied. “How are you speaking to me?”

“I
have hacked into the main communications server. The software allows me to
speak to the occupant of any cell. I have already spoken to Doland.”

“So
what do you want?”

Tekka
sighed. “You know perfectly well what I want. Do you not remember our escape
plan?”

Glitz
grinned. “Yeah, I remember. So it’s still on?”

“Of
course it’s still on,” came Tekka’s tinny voice. “The next prison ship will be
arriving on the planet in two days. I think it would be advantageous to go over
every point of the plan.”

“Fine,”
Glitz said.

Tekka
began to go over the plan with Glitz, reminding him of the key points. Glitz
listened carefully to the man.

“But
how are you going to get us out?” Glitz said.

The
plan seemed to depend on the three men somehow escaping from their cells. But
that didn’t seem very likely. The only way to break free from a cell was to
operate the door mechanism, which could only be operated from outside the cell.

“You
leave that to me,” Tekka said. “I will take care of everything. Just make sure
that you are ready at 6:00 sharp the day after tomorrow.”

“I
will be,” Glitz said.

Now
that he had heard Tekka’s plan again, he found his confidence in the man
renewed. Glitz still didn’t know how Tekka planned to break them out of their
cells, but somehow he believed that he would manage it.

“One
thing, before you go,” Glitz said.

“Yes?”

“Why
didn’t you just choose two different people? I mean, why stick with me and
Doland, even though we aren’t in your Work Group?”

“I
always keep my word unless I have a strong reason for doing otherwise,” Tekka
said simply. “In any case, it would have been illogical to choose anyone else.
You two already know the plan, and the comms system is the only safe way to
communicate anyway.”

“All
right,” Glitz said. “See you in two days.”

Glitz
took off his work clothes, put on his prison suit, and brushed the dust from
his bed. He began to wonder if he had simply imagined Tekka’s voice. Maybe the
hard daily labour was screwing with his brain. But the prospect of possible
escape made him feel very excited. The next morning, Glitz had an extra spring
in his step when he was taken down to the refectory for breakfast. The other
prisoners noticed that he seemed to be in a good mood.

“You’re
happy,” Tonek said, stroking his goatee.

“I
am,” Glitz said, helping himself to a portion of manna. “I’m getting the hell
out of here tomorrow.”

“No
way,” Roper said. “How do you plan to do that?”

Glitz
tapped his nose mysteriously. “Wait and see. The last time you’ll ever see me
is at dinner this evening.”

He
knew he shouldn’t be telling the rest of the Work Group about his imminent
escape attempt, but he couldn’t resist showing off a little bit. Anyway, all of
the prisoners and guards believed escape to be impossible, so they would simply
think his comments to be the idle boasts of a very bored man. Glitz glanced at
Pieterson; the man looked slightly uncomfortable. He was stirring his manna
with a strange look on his face. Glitz frowned and ate the rest of the meal.

When
the group was driven to the quarry, Glitz picked up a pickaxe enthusiastically.
The prospect of leaving Malus so soon had put the work into a whole different
perspective, and he put a great deal of energy into his morning labour. He had
developed a method that he found to be very effective for breaking the rocks.
First he would create a small crack in the stone using the pickaxe. Then he
would hit the rock with the sledgehammer, which had the effect of using the
weakness created by the crack to split open the rock. Once the rock had split
into several pieces, he would then use the sledgehammer to crush the fragments
into pebbles.

When
the men had stopped for a water break, Piet beckoned Glitz over. Glitz put down
his sledgehammer.

“What’s
up?”

Piet
spoke in a low voice. “You said you were leavin’.”

Glitz
sighed. He should have known better than to boast about his plans. “Just a
joke,” he replied.

“Then
why’re you so cheerful today?”

He
shrugged. “Just a nice day. Fresh air. The sun’s out. Well, the sun’s not out,
but…”

“You
think I’m an idiot?” Piet said. He sounded more upset than threatening.

“No,”
Glitz said, shaking his head.

“Well,”
Piet said. “If you’re gonna leave, I ain’t gonna stop you. And I won’t tell
nobody about your plan. I won’t tell Quex or the guards. But I don’t want
anythin’ to do with it. And don’t go dragging none of my men into it, neither.
Promise me.”

“I
promise,” Glitz said. That was one promise he could definitely keep. Even if he
had wanted to help anyone else escape, he doubted Tekka would want to proceed
with the plan if there were any unknown elements involved.

“Fine,”
Piet said. “Now get a drink and get back to work.”

Glitz
began to walk towards the water pump, but then he turned back. “Thanks, Piet.”

“What
for?”

“For
not informing.”