The Empty Warrior (75 page)

For the following seven days, O’Keefe worked the storerooms and the dock, waiting for enough ships to berth in Ashawzut for his plan to commence. During that time a big freighter arrived, was unloaded, filled with ore, and then departed. For days after it had risen on its antigravs and carefully found its way out through the hangar door, there had been nothing. But on the eighth day O’Keefe arrived for his work detail to find two of the largest freighters in the Vazilek inventory—or at least the largest that he had seen—and one smaller transport lying across the wide expanse of the cavernous hangar. There was so much metal spread over the dock that from the bow of the first one, the hull of the last could not clearly be discerned for all the dust stirred up by the work parties and the guards. He whispered to the dog nearest him to get Regulus and within ten minutes he felt the pack leader arrive. A few moments later the massive canine was trotting off to reclaim the Colt and hide it beneath the mattress of O’Keefe’s bunk. The time had come to put their plans in motion.

That evening O’Keefe was, as always, one of the first back to the barracks. A dog was lolling about, seemingly unconcerned, just outside the entrance, but the nonchalance was a façade. The alert eyes that met O’Keefe’s gaze as he jogged up made it clear that the animal was there to provide security, both for him and the pistol. Less than a minute after he had entered, the dog followed him in and lay down next to the doorway.

O’Keefe strode quickly to his bunk and found the holstered gun, dropped his pants, and struggled for several minutes trying to find a way to adequately secure it to his upper leg. At last he succeeded, using strips torn from the rags that had covered the gun to tie the straps of the holster tightly around his thigh. Two other inmates, who apparently worked in the laundry, where already back in the barracks to witness what he did, but they lay on their bunks catatonic, if not asleep, and paid no heed to what went on in the far corner where O’Keefe made his preparations. Not that it mattered. Even if they had noticed what he was up to and wanted to do something about it, the dog would have easily thwarted them. He had just pulled up his trousers and was retying the drawstring when he heard the sounds of a lizard guard approaching, heralding the arrival of the first of the men from the mines.

When they had tottered past him and collapsed into their bunks, O’Keefe quickly and quietly informed Lindy and Steenini of the news. Although both had been heartened by his unexpected breakthrough of befriending Regulus and the pack, O’Keefe did not think that they really had an understanding of just how capable the canines were. They were also utterly spent by the rigors of the day and neither could do much more than nod or shake their heads to denote an affirmative or a negative response. O’Keefe was unsure if they were too tired to be excited, if they were too apathetic to care, or if they still believed him to be merely a deranged and violent outworlder with a crazy scheme in his head.

The answer came once his friends were restored enough to speak. Both badly wanted to escape, but they were cognizant that success still hinged on the Earther’s ability to kill Elorak in the arena while somehow surviving her assault robot’s wardship. Neither thought it possible, and both still believed O’Keefe to be mad for attempting it. The two of them explicitly expressed that sentiment, but they had also come to know O’Keefe well enough to understand that any effort to dissuade him from the path he had chosen would be futile. His course was set, and nothing would alter it now. Halfheartedly they pledged to assist in whatever way they could, but the look in their eyes said they believed O’Keefe to be a dead man. It seemed clear that they expected nothing more than to witness him blown into pulp or to see his mangled body adorning the business end of one of the guards’ harpoons.

O’Keefe, for his part, scowled and heaped scorn on his friend’s presumptions. It irked him to no end that they initially had been all for any kind of action against the Vazileks in general and Elorak in particular, even if it meant certain death; but now that the actuality had arrived they sat listless and acted as if the whole enterprise was maniacal, even though neither of them had any real part to play and no hazards to risk.
Perhaps that was part of the problem,
O’Keefe thought, sighing inwardly. Maybe if they were more involved they wouldn’t be so defeatist about what was to come.

O’Keefe’s funk was broken by the arrival of the evening meal, when as usual, he and the few others with choice jobs in the colony were served first. The vacant and hungry eyes of the rock breakers stared greedily, following the extra portions the others received with their eyes, oblivious to the men that carried them. Most of the chosen few took their larger rations and huddled together in one corner of the barracks, by the entry, where the security of numbers allowed them to eat without fear and in relative peace. O’Keefe noticed while watching them that the dog that had been lying there had, at some point during his discussions with Lindy and Steenini, evacuated the spot where the inmates now sat for their repast. The absence made him a little nervous, but he felt sure the guardian still loitered out in the corridor, just in case one of the two inmates that might have witnessed him hiding the gun beneath his pants got talky about the whole thing. Only O’Keefe and one other man brought their more generous rations back to their bunks, where O’Keefe, as always, gave his meager extras to his two comrades.

Around them, others looked on in envy, but by now they were all well aware that O’Keefe was able to walk the complex at night in the company of the dogs while suffering no maltreatment in the process. Additionally, the story of the missing trusty had worked its way back to the barracks. The many retellings of the tale as it had circulated through the colony had transformed the Earther’s role from suspect to undoubted perpetrator, and magnified many times over the supposed violence spent on the Akadean in the name of O’Keefe’s aberrant thirst for revenge against the little man who had dared to confront him. By now the Akadeans in barracks 121 feared O’Keefe nearly as much as they feared Elorak. He took comfort in that knowledge, relatively certain that none of them would dare to cross him.

His extras for the evening consisted of some hard bread and a small handful of moldy cheese which was cut into bite size squares. Lindy and Steenini wolfed down the scant morsels ravenously. Complementing the expanded rations O’Keefe now received as a result of his favored status was the use of a utensil, a spoon, which he now used to break apart the familiar block of indeterminate sustenance that lay in his soup. The hard and desiccated composition of the brick soaked up the gruel, while the gruel in turn softened the hard fragments of nourishment into something that was, if not at all appetizing, at least more edible. O’Keefe dipped his spoon into the bowl and began to rapaciously devour the stewy mixture. It was only moments before he was scraping the last bits out of the metalware and into his mouth. Then he licked the bowl, knowing that even that tiny bit of nutriment might mean the difference between life and death, especially with the arena looming in his near future. He rose to take the bowl back to the two servers, but instead of placing the spoon inside it, he lifted a corner of his mattress and placed the utensil beneath it before making his way to the front of the barracks.

Once there he handed the bowl to the cart pusher. The underling took it, crouched, and stowed it inside the cart. He was then very careful to make a notation on his pad that the dinnerware had been returned. He stood, and waited for a moment for O’Keefe to hand over the final item that had been issued him. Finally the Akadean spoke. “I need the spoon,” he said expressionlessly.

O’Keefe leaned in toward the cart pusher, and spoke slowly, in a tone laced with belligerence. “I didn’t get a spoon,” he said.

The man breathed deeply and looked away, but in a moment returned terrified eyes to O’Keefe. “They count them. You know that. This will mean trouble for us both.” He extended a now unsteady hand, palm upward, toward O’Keefe. “I need the spoon,” he said again, this time pleading.

O’Keefe stared at the man, who again dropped his eyes. “You don’t listen very well, do you, my little friend?” he said. “I told you I didn’t get a spoon.” He turned and walked back to sit next to Lindy on the pilot’s bunk. The cart pusher said nothing more and remained at the front of the barracks, looking lost and forlorn.

When everything else had been collected, the two kitchen helpers started to approach the bunks, no doubt with the idea of somehow retrieving their missing utensil. O’Keefe rose from his seat and turned to face them, sneering at them like an angel of death as he did so. They promptly faltered, retreated a step, and then turned to make their way back to the food cart. There was a short, muffled discussion between them before they chanced a last look at O’Keefe, and then left, pushing the cart from the barracks and proceeding to the next stop on their rounds.

O’Keefe hopped up on his bunk and lay back with his hands behind his head. “Well,” he said, “that ought to do it.”

He had never been so right. Less than an hour later Elorak herself stormed into the barracks while the noise of multiple diesels echoed in the corridor. She was backed by her assault bot, several dogs, and a dozen or so lackeys, all armed with wooden clubs that appeared to be pick handles. The smaller of the two food servers stood meekly among them. Every man in the room immediately rolled from his bunk and fell to his knees, crowding the walkways between the rows, everyone pushing frantically against one another for a spot of rock floor on which to touch their foreheads.

“Everyone up,” Elorak commanded. “I want everyone lined up against the wall. Quickly!” She gestured furiously toward the forward wall of the barracks as she spoke. The men rose and started a shuffling jog toward the front of the room. One of them was stepped on by another and murmured a complaint. In response, Elorak drew her weapon as if by reflex and loosed an unaimed bolt in the general direction of the comment. It caught a man—not the one who had spoken—in the left bicep and exploded his arm, covering that side of his chest with thick, crimson gore. The man stood dumbstruck for a moment, staring at his severed lower limb that now lay on the floor beneath him, before grabbing the bleeding shreds that hung from his shoulder in his remaining hand and dropping to his knees. The pain finally registered in his brain and wrenched a diaphragm-deep scream from between his lips.

The others, sensing what would follow; rolled, jumped, or dove away from where the man knelt, leaving him alone in an ever-widening circle of his own blood. Another blast sizzled across the room and the man’s chest exploded. His head and remaining arm separated from the rest of his body and landed with dull thumps behind his now twitching pelvis and legs. His shrieking ended abruptly, the mouth on his now disembodied face frozen in mid-scream. Blood gushed across the floor and under other men’s boots as they moved quickly toward the front wall, while moments later vomit mixed with the spreading cruor as two nearby men threw up the paltry contents of their stomachs at the sight.

Elorak marched to the nearest one and pushed the blaster into his face. “You weakling,” she hissed derisively. “You defile this floor again, and your blood will be joining that of your mouthy friend. Now get in line.”

The man clasped a hand over his mouth, swallowed the bile in his throat, and obeyed.

“I trust,” Elorak continued, “that there will be no more disruptive comments from you loathsome worms.” She pointed at the cart pusher who was being held by the upper arms between two of her toadies. “Bring him forward!” she commanded shrilly.

The lackeys unkindly hustled the cart pusher up to the front, turning him roughly to face the line of men. “Now tell me,” Elorak said softly, yet with malignant scorn, “which one of these insects purloined one of colony’s valuable spoons?”

The man looked up and down the line, his visage that of a trapped animal, his gaze immediately settling on O’Keefe. He raised a trembling finger to point at the Earther. As he did so, amusement seemed to play about Elorak’s lips. “Where do you sleep, Earthman,” she snapped.

O’Keefe was suddenly afraid and unsure how to respond. If he gave up the information too willingly, the woman might know something was up. But if lied he would almost certainly die on the spot. He stalled for what he hoped was an appropriate amount of time, then shrugged and said, “Last row, first tier, second bunk, your worship.”

“Check it,” Elorak snarled.

Several of her toadies immediately jogged to the indicated bed. They tossed the mattress aside and readily found the spoon. One of them grabbed it and trotted back to where Elorak stood, being careful to drop his slender club to the floor before he entered the assault robot’s killing radius. He fell to his knees before her, raising the spoon up to her in his palms like a religious offering. “I have it, your worship,” he intoned obsequiously.

“Good. Now you and you,” she said, pointing toward the kneeling man and another nearby lackey, “take it and this incompetent simpleton,” she gestured toward the cart pusher, “back to the kitchen.” The kneeling toady did not move quickly enough to satisfy her, so she planted the sharp toe of her boot in the middle of his chest, the impact causing him to careen over to one side. The spoon clattered to the floor beside him. “Go!” Elorak screamed at him impatiently.

The toady scrambled to gather up the spoon and regain his feet, then nearly sprinted to where the cart pusher stood. Then he, along with his comrade, hustled the man from the barracks.

“Down! All of you!” Elorak commanded, and the men dove to the stone as one, all of them trying to separate themselves from O’Keefe as much as they were able. O’Keefe, keeping his forehead to the floor, turned his head slightly, and could see the Vazilek woman amble casually over to where her lackey had discarded his pick handle. She bent down to retrieve it, then walked slowly toward O’Keefe, gently slapping the wooden shaft against a gloved, steel palm as she approached. O’Keefe turned his eyes back to the floor, hearing the click of Elorak’s stiletto heeled boots come closer until they stopped directly in front of him. There was silence in the barracks, the only sound being the slow thwack, thwack, thwack of the club against Elorak’s leather covered prosthesis.