Prison Planet (THE RIM CONFEDERACY Book 3) (3 page)

She pointed at him and then added, ”And this is something that the Barony will control. One might be wise to remember that ... And that, perhaps, there will be one way to meet the ends one hunts for that is hidden ‘til exposed,” she said cryptically, turned on her heel, nodded to the admiral who sat only a few feet away, and then strode off to leave the Council chamber room.

#

The barrier door for the cellblock slammed shut with its normal jarring clang, and the sound was ignored, as usual, by all within its reach except for the tall new convict in the orange jumpsuit. The Max Penitentiary guard, a corporal, pointed the much taller felon and tried to ease him along the corridor. They moved away from the central corridor coming out from the only access point to this second-floor cellblock. The taller man, the new convict in his orange temporary jumpsuit, was still dogging it, slowing down their progress between the central processing point for the prison and where he was going to be celled for now at least. He said nothing but he looked at everything, ignoring the rest of the convicts they passed who were involved in cleaning or talking among themselves. He soaked up what could be seen, could be felt as he ran his hands along the walls and doors, or could be smelled as he often inhaled a few times in quick succession as they slowly made their way outward. The guard was frustrated, but it was like a monkey trying to move a giraffe along. He just didn’t have the leverage to get the trip done quickly.

Moving finally to the end of the long cellblock corridor, leaving behind cells and their occupants, lounge rooms and their occupants, and even kitchenettes with some felons still eating their meals, the two climbed the stairs to the first tier and stopped at the first cell.

“Yours, uh, Count. ’Til Central Booking works out something else ... but for now, you live here,” the guard said. He looked up to the prisoner towering more than six and a half feet above him and smiled.

“Looks a little less than what a Royal might be used to, but it’s home, uh, Count,” he said as he tried to somewhat lessen what he was sure would be a shock to the Caliphate Royal who had been on Halberd less than a day. But it was not a shock at all.

“Looks fine, thank you, Corporal,” the Royal said with a tone of honesty in his voice. “I am in your debt for granting me such a fine cell—even on what you have indicated would be a temporary basis. I will endeavor to show my gratitude by being a perfect model prisoner,” the Count said, and he nodded down to the shorter guard and even half-bowed his head to acknowledge his thanks.The guard was surprised, but he too bowed his head then shook it and said, “No matter, Count. You’re to be here on Tier Two for a couple of days, then they’ll move you to your permanent cell ... soon. Tomorrow, you will need to report to the EL Pod Plant, ah, Gate 4U and get your assignments then. Looks like you’ll be making EL Pods for what—25 years or so, right?”

“Undoubtedly, Corporal, undoubtedly. Thank you for your help. I shall not forget it, Corporal …?” the Royal questioned.

“Stanton, uh, Count. Corporal Stanton, B-Block.”

He turned and marched away to the stairs and back to his duty shift work. For him the day went on, but for the Count, it was his first ever in his new home, where he’d spend the next few decades of his life. He slowly walked into cell 2TB-001 and grinned at the other three occupants who were in the process of standing up and coming toward him. They got within reach and then all four of them clasped each other in a group hug, and they grinned at each other.

“Count ... so nice to be able to help you to your cell,” one said.

“Yes, my name is Stanton, remember my name in case you want to hand out some money ...” another said, and the laughter rang out throughout the cell.

“Enough, fellas, enough,” the Royal said as he looked around the cell. Over in one corner was the dining table, and the places were set for lunch. Behind him against the wall was a set of bunk beds, and the other set lay well down the same wall on the way to the en suite bathroom. The steward was just plating the entrées, and his compatriot was serving the first course at the moment. The steward waved them all over to the table.

Moments later over the Veal Piccata and Caesar Salads, he dug into the meal and then took a moment to look around. Smiling, he spoke up to toast his cellmates.

“And here we are on Halberd. For what, twenty-five years or so ... but it will be a welcome time we spend here doing our penance and paying back to society our crime of treason. Won’t we, lads?” Nusayr al-Rashid said and clinked his glass against the rest. Tossing back the wonderful white Pinot Grigio, he set his glass down and watched as the steward filled it up again.

“I will apologize to you all for being held up in the prison processing center; seems that my Royal blood made them take far too long to work out the needed medical files and health factors. Don’t know why it took them an extra week to push me through when you and the others got through in what, two days, correct, Razin?” he said as he looked at his oldest friend at the table. They had grown up together, and Nusayr had always teased his friend that he was a bastard Royal and belonged in the palace with him.

Razin smiled and shook his head.

“Yes, only two days for us, but I don’t think that they took long to process you because of your blood, Nusayr ... I think it was just to inconvenience you compliments of the Caliph, of course!” He shook his head again as he said that name and looked over at his friend.

“His compliments will occur often here, Razin ... we will need to get used to that. Of course, there will be things that the Warden et al. will need to get used to as well ... agreed, lads?” he said and they all smiled at that.

Each of the others had already been assigned work details, according to their past career experience for some. Ilias, the ex-Council of Nine member who had run the power systems over the whole planet, had been given a job with the power plant maintenance crew, as if he knew how to use a wrench, which made them all laugh. Hamzah, the ex-professor of crop engineering at the Olbia University was added to the prison purchasing staff and spent much of his day buying foods for the prison kitchens, though as he said, he had no idea why he got that specific task. Even Razin, who had been his real aide in all things on Olbia, had been assigned to something similar, in that he was the one put in charge of the convict assignments, which made them all laugh even harder.

Lunch was finished up in due time, and the day stretched ahead of them. The three cellmates left the Count alone to acclimatize himself to the cell and vacated it to let that happen.

Rolling onto his new bunk, Nusayr stretched out and as usual found that his feet and part of his shins stuck out over the end of the bunk. He bunched the pillows up behind his head and scrunched up his legs to try to get comfortable and only succeeded in partly achieving this. On the wall near his head, someone—perhaps a previous cell occupant—had written a comment and Nusayr nodded to himself as he read the quote back to the wall.

“Not all psychopaths are in prison ... many are on the throne,” he read the comment, smiled, and thought suddenly of Olbia and home.

#

When first seen from orbit, Olbia made one think of a planet of green fertile land with straight blue veins running over most of it. Unsaddled with large seas or oceans, those rivers and lakes did eventually meld into low regional seas, but for the most part, they coursed through huge industrial farming communes as regular as rain. Not until you actually got down to the surface could you see those huge blue rivers miles wide were divided and then sub-divided again and again until the waters irrigated the loamy soils that comprised the farms themselves.

North and south of the tropics and temperate zones, the lands were not farmed but left as wild natural forests that were the seats of the rains and oxygen production that gave the rest of the world its best growing factors. Olbia fed the rest of the nine-world realm, and it was the one true seat of power for the Caliphate. As such, it was the one prize that needed to be run according to the wants and desires of the Caliph himself. That duty fell to the al-Rashid Royal family, cousins of the Caliph.

“At least that’s what everyone thought,” Nusayr said to himself as he walked the upper mezzanine along the south-facing wall of the palace. From up here, the flat fields that marched away into the distance meant he could see almost a hundred miles until the curve of the planet made the green land drop away. No matter what the Caliph wanted, it was his job to ignore what he wanted himself and to follow orders. No equivocations. No mistakes. No variations on a theme ... just ensure the Caliph was honored by obedience. Cousins must be obeyed, he thought as he strode along on the way to the Council meeting, but today we may need to vary that slightly. He half-smiled to himself as he opened up the double doors to the meeting room and walked around the board table to take his place at the end place setting. From here, he could also see the major feature of the city—the Square that lay to the west of the government buildings he found himself in, and it too was busy with tourists, students, citizens, and more than he could imagine.

All the Council members were present, and he nodded to them and then told the Council secretary this would be an “in camera” meeting, so she would be excused, as that meant no records needed to be kept.

Smiling at Nusayr, she quickly left but did show them that she unplugged the recorder and placed it back on the shelves to the rear of the table. Now only the nine members of the Olbia Council were present, and Nusayr, as the Council head, stayed standing while he motioned for the rest of them to be seated. He looked first to Razin, who was the head of Security for the planet, and nodded for him to proceed.

“Nusayr,” he said as he referred down to the notes in front of him, “we have so far only good news with our mission, and it’s looking even better—“

Interrupting with both a scowl and a “no way,” the planet’s chief scientist, Ilias al-Marazi stood suddenly.

“We all know what this is going to be for us—either we secede or we die. It’s that easy and for some of us here—we think the mission is not developing in a manner that we can count on for success. Nusayr, please ... you need to re-think the time line on this as well as—“

The force of Nusayr’s hand as it slammed onto the tabletop was enough to make even the full pitcher of water jump and the glasses that had surrounded it fell in disarray.

“Enough, Ilias—enough! We have been over and over this, have we not?” he said, pointing at the councilor at the end of the far side of the table.

“Did we not, Shihah our Ramat Colonel, watch you work for more than four years in our colleges, our universities, and our whole school system to show our next generation what can be hidden from all with surreptitious covert action?” he said.

Heads nodded around the table.

”Hamzah, our Crop Engineering Professor, did you not personally take the best of the best of those graduates under your wing and show them what chemistry with vision is all about? Did you not, Hamzah?” he said.

A resounding “huzzah!" echoed from around the table.

“Muhibb, our Caliphate Whip, did you not spend more than five years with bureaucrats of all types and kinds to get them to ‘buy-in’ to our vision—to get them to support either through direct action or via their supposed ignorance when it came to those shipments into Olbia?”

Again, there were nods all around the table.

“And Sadiq, Tamir, and Wajih, our Export Officers—did we not all—all of us—the Olbia Council of Nine—did we not all talk about this rebellion for years and make all our decisions by agreeing to the plan and making changes when necessary but always aiming at the date that we know this must happen on? Are we not all in agreement?” Nusayr said slowly and then turned to point out the window at the fields that marched on to the horizon.

From here, the giant irrigation sprayers moved down the fields and the spraying mists caused rainbows to appear almost in rows, field after field. The nine Council members stared out at the planet in front of them. Even here in Umarah, the capital of Olbia, the fields growing crops were harvested at least twice yearly and shipped off-world to feed the realm—something that this Council was going to change.

#

On board the black pod, the final spit-and-polish team of five low-security convicts was busy cleaning the interior of this third to last pod. Once the pods were finished being constructed over in the EL Pod Plant on Max Island, they were all linked and sent over to the mainland on the pod bridge, to this final inspection station everyone called Cleanup Hall. Once lined up, they were cleaned from stem to stern, and all of them received the same attention—a clean pod is a saleable pod, they said. And the job of cleaning them fell to the low-security convicts on Halberd, who lived in the prison farm barracks and came to the final cleaning pod arena to work every day.

“Jorgenson, did you pull the top panels yet?” one convict said.

“On which one, Jerry?”

“Y-4541, the yellow one is next,” he said and glanced sideways at the next one.

“Fine, then let’s get at her,” the team leader said and grabbed a caddy with the cleaning solutions and rags and moved on to the second to last pod for their shift. Inside, the panels that ran the length of the pod were removed from both the overhead bins and the side panels. Each was wiped, then sprayed, then wiped again, and finally polished and placed back in its place. Panel after panel was cleaned and replaced, and the whole job took a bit more than an hour for the five-man crew. Time now for the last one.

“Jorgenson, the last pod ready?” Ted the team leader asked as he looked around the large arena at the hundreds of pods that lay ready to be moved onto the EL space elevator to climb up to the top for shipping off-planet to their new buyers.

“Yeah, Ted ... we’re running slow—last group here today it appears,” he said as the other slow crew waved from the far building doors.

“Not a problem,” Ted replied as he grabbed up a handful of new rags and in doing so, hid the short pry bar as he mounted the steps into the final yellow pod. Inside, he’d removed the top and side panels, and he moved to the back row of seats. By standing on the seat, he could reach the panel that lay behind the top overhead bins. One of the team filled up the doorway with a couple of panels, and by leaning them in the opening, he hid what the crew chief was busy working on using that flat-sided tool. Prying the bar into the space at the bottom, he was able to pry up the panel. He moved the whole panel that ran the length of the overhead bin up enough to hold a crew-member. Moving quickly, as others finished off the normal panel cleaning, he finished the five overhead bins and then waited at the front one.