The Final Battle (5 page)

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” K’zekaa said with a frown.

“What will be, will be. I can’t worry about it. Fact is I cannot go on like this much longer. I didn’t want to be here, I never planned to be here, and I wouldn’t be if Admiral Ja—if I hadn’t been kidnapped. But now that I am, it’s tearing me apart. I want closure, and sooner rather than later.” Michael paused, taking a deep breath to settle himself down. “I know it won’t make any sense to you,” he went on, “but you haven’t been through what I have.”

“No. But I do know this: I’ve read your file, and I cannot judge you.”

The silence that followed was broken when a nurse stuck his head in Michael’s room. “Hey!” he said. “What are you doing here? No visitors, so please leave—now.”

Saturday, November 9, 2402, UD
Kovak planetary defense base

The door of the holding cell banged open to reveal the substantial figure of Sergeant Habash. “It’s time, sir,” he said.

“And not soon enough,” Michael grumbled. “I’ve had enough of Jamuda, I can tell you.”

“So you keep telling me.” Habash chuckled. “We’re sorry to see you leave.”

“So tell those Fed motherfuckers I’m not coming.”

Habash looked right into Michael’s eyes. “I wish I could. None of this is right.”

“No, Sergeant Habash, it’s not. Come on; let’s go.”

Flanked by two more guards, Michael followed the man out of his cell and down a series of corridors until they reached the prisoner outprocessing center, a bleak room filled with a large contingent of grim-faced fleet police in Fed shipsuits. One of them stepped forward, a dour-looking woman sporting a warrant officer’s badges.

“I’m Warrant Officer Yamazaki, Federated Worlds Space Fleet. I have orders to return you to Terranova planet, Lieutenant.”

“Show me,” Michael demanded.

Yamazaki held out a single sheet of paper. Michael took it and read through the dense legalese. He wasn’t left much the wiser. He had no idea whether what he was looking at was valid, but he was determined not to give the Feds any more slack than he had to.

“Looks okay,” he conceded, handing the orders back to Yamazaki.

“It is. Now, your hands, sir.”

“Is that necessary? There are hundreds of you bastards, you’re all bigger than me, and we’re inside a planetary defense base. How far do you think I’d get?”

“Just do it, sir,” the woman said, her voice flat and cold.

“Why are you such an officious asshole, Warrant Officer Yamazaki?” Michael snapped.

“Now!”

With reluctance, Michael held out his hands. He was cuffed by the largest spacer in the escort. The man ran a thin plasfiber cord from the cuffs to a band on his own wrist. “Oh, come on!” Michael protested. “That’s not necessary either.”

“Not your call, sir. Let’s go.”

“No kidding,” Michael muttered as he was led out of the cell, with the rest of Yamazaki’s team of fleet police falling in around him.

Flanked by his escort, Michael stepped out into a hot Jamuda morning. The sun hammered down. It turned the ceramcrete apron into a blazing sea of heat and light that brought Michael to an abrupt halt, his eyes flooded with sudden tears. “Shit,” he hissed, wiping his eyes with the back of a plasticuffed hand.

“Come on, sir,” Yamazaki said. “Keep moving.”

The warrant officer looked anxious.
As well you should
, Michael thought. The Hammers might deny any responsibility for the abortive attempt to kidnap him, but that had not stopped them from jacking up the rhetoric, with their embassy demanding that he be extradited back to Commitment to face Hammer justice. And Yamazaki would have known every bit as well as Michael did that the Hammers would stop at nothing to get their hands on him.

“Okay, okay,” Michael said as they set off again. They had gone a few meters when Michael stopped again. His mouth dropped open. In front of him was the Federated Worlds Space Fleet assault lander waiting to take him back to Terranova.

His heart sank. He was about to come face to face with the very people whom he had betrayed, whose code of honor he had despoiled, whose reputation his actions had so traduced.

• • •

The cell door opened to admit a young spacer carrying a tray. “Lunch,” the man said.

“Thanks,” Michael said, getting to his feet.

The spacer leaned forward. With great care he spit into the food. “Enjoy,” he whispered, holding the tray out.

In an instant, rage consumed every part of Michael’s being, and he erupted into violence. He smashed the tray aside. His hands lunged for the spacer’s throat. He rammed the man back against the bulkhead with a sickening thud that drove the air from his lungs in an explosive
woof
. Michael spun the man around and pulled him back and down to the deck, one fist clubbing his tormentor’s face in a brutal, frenzied attack that gave the spacer no chance to protect himself.

Within seconds the cell filled with bodies, and Michael was dragged off. His chest heaved, and his heart pounded. He was still consumed by anger, and his arms and fists lashed out until sheer weight of numbers pinned him down. A soft
pffftt
and stinging pain from a gas gun ended his fight. “Tell that little fuck I’ll kill him next time I see him,” Michael screamed as blackness closed in. “You tell that … little …”

The marine corporal sitting on Michael’s unconscious body eased himself off. He stood up, shaking his head. “Now what the hell was that all about?” he asked.

“Who knows?” his buddy said. “But I’d bet it was something—” He reached down to pull the whimpering spacer to his feet. “—this sad sack of shit did.”

• • •

“Visitor for you,” the intercom said.

“Piss off,” Michael muttered. He refused to open his eyes even when the cell door opened, furious with himself that he had lost his temper, even more furious that his left wrist had been secured to the bulkhead by a plasfiber restraint.

“Lieutenant Helfort,” a voice said, a woman’s voice, authoritative and controlled. “I’m Commander Kadar, captain in command of the FWSS
Pilgrim
.”

Discipline, deeply ingrained, forced Michael to his feet. He snapped to attention. “Apologies, sir,” he blurted. “I didn’t know it was you.”

“Don’t apologize. Now, first things first.” Kadar turned and waved a marine into the cell. “Get that restraint off. That’s better,” she went on when the man was done. “I’m here to apologize to you. The security holovid showed us what happened. We’ll be taking disciplinary action against Spacer Gillespie.”

“I’m sorry I lost it,” Michael said.

“Pity about all this.” Kadar waved a hand at the cell’s sterile white bulkheads. “But rules are rules.”

“I understand that.”

“I know you do.” Kadar leaned forward a fraction. “You’re not on your own, Helfort—” Her voice had dropped to the faintest of whispers; Michael struggled to hear her. “—so hang in there.” Kadar stepped back. “Now,” she continued, her voice strong again, “if there is anything you need, just ask. I can’t guarantee you’ll get it, but anything we can do, we will.”

With that she was gone. Michael wondered just what the hell she’d been talking about.

Wednesday, August 20, 2403, UD
Offices of the Supreme Council for the Preservation of the Faith, McNair City

“Michael Wallace Helfort …”

If the black-gowned judge was troubled by the gravity of the occasion, her voice did not show it.

“… it is the sentence of this court that you be transferred to a duly authorized place of execution, and there, on the date specified by the minister for planetary security, you be put to death according to law. Take the prisoner down.”

“Yes!” Chief Councillor Polk hissed. “It’s about time, you piece of Fed garbage.” He scowled. “Months and months they took! Can you believe it, Lou?”

“That’s the Federated Worlds for you,” Lou Nagaro, Polk’s chief of staff, said. “Very keen on due process.”

Polk snorted derisively. “I’ll give the assholes due process,” he grunted.

“At least they got there in the end, Chief Councillor. So how about a glass of champagne to celebrate?”

“No, not yet,” Polk said with an emphatic shake of the head. “I’ll share a bottle of champagne with you, a good bottle from Old Earth, but only when that man is dead and not before. Now go and find out where Councillor Kando and Colonel Hartspring are. I want to see them.”

“Sir.”

Polk waited in silence until Nagaro returned.

“Kando and Hartspring will be back in McNair tomorrow,” Nagaro said.

“Good. I want Kando to make sure that the Feds carry through with this, and I don’t care how much we have to spend or who we have to suborn. Helfort must be executed.”

“I think Kando can make sure of it.”

“He’d better.”

“But what about Hartspring? What can a DocSec colonel do?”

“A lot, Lou, a lot. Michael Helfort might be on his way to the gallows, and none too soon, but death’s not enough for him. I want him to suffer every minute of every day he has left alive. I want him in so much pain that he’ll be begging the Feds to kill him when they strap him into the chair.”

Skepticism flitted across Nagaro’s face. “Forgive me, Chief Councillor, but how can we do that? The Feds will have Helfort locked away where nobody can reach him. No matter how much we spend, we’ll never lay a hand on him.”

Polk smiled indulgently at Nagaro. “You never were much of a creative thinker, were you?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Watch and learn, Lou; watch and learn.”

Saturday, September 16, 2403, UD
Federal Supermax Prison, Foundation City, Terranova planet

Day followed day, each one the same as the last, the routine mind-numbing in its relentless predictability.

It was almost nine in the morning: exercise time. Precisely on the hour, the door would open. He would be called out into the corridor. A pair of guards would escort him out into the yard. He would exercise for an hour and then return to his cell.

The routine never varied.

Except today it did. When the door opened, one of the guards was standing not back as usual but right by the door, a break from routine that struck Michael as odd. It was his least favorite guard, a hard-faced bitch called Loewenthal, always sullen, always as unhelpful as she could be. The woman would have made a perfect DocSec recruit, Michael had decided.

Loewenthal took a half step forward. Her hand brushed Michael’s long enough to press a tiny object into his palm.

The guard stepped back as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “Just checking,” she said. “Let’s go.”

• • •

The lights in Michael’s cell burned twenty-four hours a day, but they were dimmed at night. Taking advantage of the gloom, Michael lay on his bunk, his back to the security cameras that watched his every movement. He moistened the inside of his wrist with saliva, then pressed the object—a datastick—hard into his skin. His neuronics took only a second to establish an online connection.

“Upload file?” Michael was asked.

“Go,” he responded.

The file took a lifetime to upload. Michael prayed throughout that the prison guards would not break the door down to stop the process and then prayed even harder that somehow Anna had found a way to get a message to him.

“Upload finished,” his neuronics said. “Open file?”

“Go.”

There was a pause. Michael’s anticipation grew, and his elation built. He was convinced the holovid was from Anna. Finally, his neuronics popped a screen into his mind’s eye, and he settled down to watch.

“Hello, my love,” Michael whispered when Anna appeared.
That’s very odd
, he thought.
Why is she in Fleet coveralls? She should be in
NRA
combat fatigues, surely.

A few seconds later, the screen faded to black. Disappointment and frustration swamped Michael. “What is going—oh, no,” he hissed.

A man had appeared. He had a face no Fed would ever forget. It was more skull than face, with the skin drawn tight over sharp-edged cheekbones. They eyes were deep-set and hooded below steel-gray hair that was cropped short. “You murdering dirtbag,” Michael whispered as the image steadied.

The man’s eyes bored into him as he spoke.

“Hello, Lieutenant Helfort,” the man said, his death-skull face stretching into a ghastly smile. “I’m Jeremiah Polk, Chief Councillor of the Hammer of Kraa Worlds. I wanted to tell you how delighted I am that you are to be held to account for your crimes. I am, of course, disappointed that you’ll be executed by your Fed countrymen rather than by a DocSec firing squad, but it is a disappointment I can live with.

“And do not think for a second that you will escape. You won’t, not this time. To make sure of that, I have authorized my people to spend as much money as they need to ensure that your sentence is not reduced, and you might be surprised just how many Feds are more than happy to help us.

“Even President Diouf will not help you, and spare me all that crap about what a good woman she is. Even she has her price—which we will pay—and …”

“Bullshit,” Michael snarled. “Absolute bullshit.”

“… as you’ve noticed we’ve had no trouble persuading your trashpress to lobby hard for your death sentence to be carried out. But it does strike me that you’re getting off too lightly. Because you Feds believe all that human rights garbage, your death will be painless, and you won’t suffer as much as you deserve to. I think that is just plain wrong. You should suffer, and I intend to make sure you do.

“‘But how?’ I hear you say. I’m speaking to you from McNair, hundreds of light-years away, and you’re tucked away behind the walls of a Fed maximum-security prison. So what can I do to you? Well, the answer to that …”

Michael’s heart lurched. “Oh, no,” he whispered. All of a sudden he knew where Polk was going.

“… is to hurt the woman you love, and when I say hurt, I mean in a way no human should ever be made to suffer. And in case you’re wondering what those words mean, I am talking about weeks and weeks and weeks of drawn-out agony, torture so exquisite, so relentless that death will be a blessing.”

Polk smiled.

“Oh, yes, I’m really looking forward to it, I can tell you,” he went on. “Now, let me see.” Polk made a show of consulting a piece of paper. “Ah, yes; your Anna has done well. Very well, in fact. I’m told she’s a captain in the
NRA
’s 120th Regiment, which is not bad for a woman. We thought you might like to see a picture of her.”