The Empty Warrior (69 page)

“Haven’t you heard?” he whispered roguishly. “I’m the colony aberrant, the savage. I’m important to Elorak and her schemes. I’m a damn killer, and I do what I fucking well please. And as far as I’m concerned you’re just a pissant bootlicker with an attitude. If you ever threaten me again, I’ll rip your head off, crack your skull open, and eat your brains for breakfast. And you better make damn sure that I don’t go back to breaking rocks, because if I do I will find you, and one day soon you will wake up dead. Do you understand
that
?” The man gulped hard, then nodded slightly. “Good,” O’Keefe whispered sarcastically, “now get out of my face and go eat your food.” The trusty, visibly shaken, got up and left the way he had come.

The men seated within earshot of the exchange gawked at O’Keefe in astonishment, their mouths pulled fearfully agape by the utter lack of intimidation he had displayed in the face of the foreman’s threats—threats that would have crushed their own spirits like a colony cockroach caught under the thick treads of a Dominion issue boot. The man was a trusty, and in their eyes defying him meant punishment and quite possibly death. They looked at O’Keefe as if he were a male banshee sent to bring extermination to them all. As such a sharp glance from beneath an angry brow was enough to return all their gazes back to their food, and O’Keefe silently finished his own fare while his new workmates edged progressively farther from where he sat.

The remainder of the day passed without incident. When it was over, the men gathered round the trusty as he called their names, reading them off a personal data unit supplied by the guards. As each man’s name was called, he stepped forward to have one of his tattoos scanned by a wand attached to the PDU. When it was O’Keefe’s turn, he challenged the foreman with an angry stare, but the man never met his eyes. He only waved the wand perfunctorily at O’Keefe’s bicep and went on to the next name. When it was confirmed that all the men who were supposed to be there were accounted for; the group was escorted out of the hangar by both guards and dogs. O’Keefe had no chance at all to search the crevice for his pistol. Too many eyes were locked on his every move.

At the end of the tunnel two guards waited for him. Unable to tell one from another, O’Keefe had no idea if they were the same two that had brought him to the hangar that morning. He only knew they were for him when they jerked him out of line and ordered him atop one of their rear decks. The other men in the work detail eyed him with a mixture of envy and awe as he was carried away, not knowing what to make of his special privilege and unsure exactly what place the Earther occupied in the penal colony pecking order.

At the end of the ride, as the guards rolled to a stop outside the entry to barracks 121, he dismounted and started to go inside. “Human,” one of the guards hissed. O’Keefe stopped and turned back to face them. “Remember. You find own way tomorrow. Be not late.” O’Keefe was an instant from unleashing an insulting reply but thought better of it, remembering Elorak’s admonition that she would be watching, and already regretting his run-in with the trusty. Instead, he stood silently and meekly amidst the veil of fumes that the guards left behind as they trundled away.

When he did enter the barracks he was surprised to discover that the dockhands’ workday was not as long as the rock breakers’. He had expected to arrive after they were already back in the barracks, at near the same time as the kitchen workers and such, but upon entering he found himself nearly alone. Only a few other inmates lolled about inside, all of them seemingly asleep in their bunks. O’Keefe felt almost lonely in the large room. The solitude would not last for long. Only minutes later the dusty rock workers came staggering in. Lindy and Steenini lurched by him and collapsed onto their mattresses.

After several moments of lying on his back, Lindy rolled over onto his shoulder to look up at O’Keefe. His eyes appeared as sunken pits on either side of his dust-caked face. “So, how was it?” he asked hoarsely, his expression devoid of anything save exhaustion.

“Not too bad,” O’Keefe replied. “The work’s not a whole lot easier, but at least it’s cleaner and quieter.” He didn’t mention the quality of the food.

Lindy exhibited no response to his answer; the pilot merely stared into space with a hollow expression. O’Keefe looked at him with concern. All the Akadeans on rock detail were being systematically wasted physically, but because these two particular men were his mates and their shared hardship had cemented them close as brothers, O’Keefe was able to sense a further deterioration in their makeup. It was certainly not the first time he had seen it, but it was now infinitely clearer to him after only a day’s distance from the spiritually crushing work in the mines. The Vazilek design for Ashawzut was bearing its maleficent fruit. Lindy’s essence, his essential humanity, was discernibly leaching away, and at an alarming rate. It would not be long before he was reduced to a shell of his former self, a broken man, an automaton ready to perform any task the Vazileks assigned to him, even if that task contributed to the demise of his own civilization and his former fellow citizens.

As for Steenini, the only further task he could perform for the Vazileks would be to die, as that was evidently all they wanted or would accept from him short of a confession. And even that would not save him, as Elorak would simply kill him outright for what he had done.

O’Keefe watched as Lindy still stared vacuously into space and wanted to help the man, as he did owe him his life—but how to help he did not know. “Hang in there, Willet,” was all he could say, and the statement was only empty words, words that were pitifully inadequate. Yet those words were all the succor he could muster. He tried to add substance to them, saying, “We won’t be in here forever,” but the phrase came out weak and unconvincing, even to himself.

“I know,” Lindy answered impassively. “Before long we’ll all be dead.”

O’Keefe had no reply for that, but it dawned on him that he had underestimated his friend. Lindy had indeed accepted the Vazilek premise upon which Ashawzut was based, that the only way out was through service or death. And as he had no intention of serving his new masters and their barbarous aims, Lindy had resolved to die in the mines alongside Steenini. There would be no effort on his part to be elevated to a less strenuous position. O’Keefe needed to make good on his vow of arranging an escape, and do it quickly, or both his friends would soon be gone. He had to find a way to get to the Colt.

Dinner came, and O’Keefe for the first time received an extra portion of rations with his meal. Despite a day of more plentiful fare, hunger still gnawed at his bones, but he forced himself to split the contents of his bag of extras between his two friends, taking nothing for himself. Both weakly protested, until he described his midday meal, after which they took the food eagerly, and O’Keefe thought he saw a little animation behind Lindy’s empty stare; but there was really no telling.

The next morning O’Keefe appeared at the dock before most of his new coworkers. He had run from the barracks as quickly as he was still able, hoping to arrive at the docks before anyone else. He thought that might give him a chance to retrieve the pistol. But as he had loped gasping up to the entry tunnel, he was again disappointed as the exit half of the corridor was closed off and locked down. He sighed and walked slowly into the hangar, looking longingly through the chain link of the fence at the crevice where his gun lay just out of reach.

Those few of his contingent who were already on the floor when he approached seemed surprised to see him, and the same shock registered on each newly arriving face as they jogged toward the group only to see the rangy Earther already there and standing among their peers. Soon all were present, except for the trusty. There was no sign of the little man with the big attitude. As the hour grew later his workmates furtively leveled fearful glances at O’Keefe and a conference of reptilian whispers ensued between the two guards. Time crept by. Every other work gang in the hangar had long since begun their shift and still O’Keefe’s foreman was absent. At length one of the guards accelerated away while its counterpart and the dogs kept the men herded into a tight circle.

A short time later the guard returned. It roared up to the men and looked them over carefully before pushing into the crowd as everyone scrambled to avoid being crushed under its treads. It reached the man it sought and pulled him to the side before pressing the data unit into his hands. “You top human now,” it said. “Call roll.”

The man grasped the electronic tablet tightly in his hands, bit his lower lip, and looked apprehensively at O’Keefe, obviously thinking that the Earther had made good on his dire threats from the day before. O’Keefe merely nodded to him and smiled slightly, having no idea what had happened to yesterday’s foreman but nonetheless mightily pleased by the turn of events. The new trusty appeared pale, at least for an Akadean, and almost sick. His shoulders seemed to curl around and into his chest under O’Keefe’s gaze. He was obviously more than a little spooked about the possibility of meeting whatever fate had befallen his former boss. And when he began calling out names he did so in such a quavering, queasy little voice that O’Keefe half expected him to vomit before he made it to the end of the list.

The morning that followed was as tortuously vapid as the previous one, except his cohorts gave O’Keefe a much wider berth. When they stopped work to eat, the men left an open circle with a radius of at least six feet between themselves and their new, aberrant nemesis. They were clearly all deathly afraid of him now.

The afternoon passed in the same fashion. The seemingly endless supply of parcels and containers kept the men working, as always, without pause. And as they were marched out at the end of the day they were again too closely guarded for any attempt on O’Keefe’s part to make a move for his pistol. He was left on his own to find his way back to his barracks only after his work gang had been escorted out through the access tunnel to the hangar, and there were too many guards in the area to turn around later and head back toward the docks.

The days that followed were no different, the only break from the interminable routine being the occasional debarking of new arrivals from just docked freighters. On those days the workers would be hustled out of the hangar and locked in a holding pen while the guards left them to form their customary cordon, torturing the latest batch of human cargo as they were forced onward toward their initial encounter with Mada Elorak.

Each morning O’Keefe left the barracks as soon as the lights came up, and each morning the exit side of the tunnel into the hangar was gated and locked when he arrived for his work detail. Every time he walked down the entry side of the corridor he passed within ten yards of where his pistol lay waiting, but it may as well have been a hundred miles away. And when his work party was led out of the hangar he would come within arms length of the secret cache, but the roving eyes of the guards that bracketed the prisoners front and rear and the ever-vigilant canines that padded along beside the men made it quite impossible for him to get at the weapon.

And every day when he returned to the barracks he would see that his friends had grown weaker and more despondent. Even the scant amount of extra food he was able to provide from his larger ration was starting to be met with apathy. After eating, both Lindy and Steenini would lie listlessly in their bunks until they fell into sleep, which now generally happened even before the lights were doused. Both were withering before his eyes, while more and more of the Akadeans that had arrived with them from Sefforia were either killed by the lizards or simply died in the night from overwork and undernourishment.

Time was becoming short. Not only were his friends failing, O’Keefe was certain Elorak had sent word of his presence on Ashawzut immediately upon ascertaining his identity. He was equally certain that before long the Vazileks would respond in some fashion. They would promote Elorak or transfer her, and where she went O’Keefe was sure to be forced to follow. If he was unable to set his plans in motion very soon, it would be too late.

At last, late one day in what passed for afternoon in Ashawzut, fortune reared its propitious head when one of the guards overseeing O’Keefe’s work gang malfunctioned on the hangar floor. Its diesel stalled and seized and the lizard sat as if riveted to the stone, spitting curses at the men and flailing away at any who strayed within range of its long lash. Less than an hour later a tracked towing vehicle arrived with a retinue of dogs and lizards. It winched the broken down guard atop the low-slung flatbed trailer that it pulled before rumbling away to the repair shop.

Apparently no replacement guards were readily available, because soon after, when O’Keefe and his workmates were taken from the floor, there was no guard there to follow behind the men. Only the dogs that normally flanked them were on their heels. The sole remaining lizard drove straight ahead, leading the way and only rarely glancing to the rear, evidently secure in the knowledge that the dogs would push along any laggards. O’Keefe was certain this would be his one best chance. It was now or never. He could search for the pistol while the guard looked forward and even if the dogs did see him, the odds were they would not understand the import of his actions and certainly they could not tell anyone about them. If none of his fellow prisoners ratted him out, which seemed doubtful as much as they feared him, the worst that could happen would be the dogs would prod him forward, perhaps with a snarl, if all the other men passed by before he could extract the gun.