guards reappeared, dragging out an orange-overalled man between them. Climbing down, they pulled him out and dropped him carelessly to the ground. Hands under his armpits, they dragged the prisoner through the icy slush until, twenty meters inside the gate, they dropped the man, turned, and left.
The first of the camp’s occupants to reach the man spun him over onto his back. His mouth dropped open. With desperate urgency, he shouted for help. “It’s one of ours. It’s Helfort! For God’s sake, give me a hand.”
In seconds, Michael had been cradled in the arms of four prisoners and was being rushed to the nearest hut. Once they were through the door, orders flew in quick succession. Michael was blue with hypothermia, and if they did not move quickly, they would lose him.
Soaked to the skin, Michael lay unresponsive as his orange DocSec overalls were stripped off. The hut filled with gasps of outrage as his battered body was revealed, its tapestry of bruises, welts, and cuts, old and new, all overlaid by crusts of dried blood, provided stark testimony to DocSec’s enduring commitment to inflicting pain.
Only vaguely aware of what was going on, Michael did not care. He was happy. Even though he was barely conscious and tired beyond belief, he knew he was safe. He was no longer alone. He was back among friends. Gratefully, he slipped into unconsciousness, the welcoming blackness pulling him down to safety.
Michael awoke with a start. Where in God’s name was he? He stared up in baffled confusion. This was not a cell. It was some sort of rough wooden hut. So where? Lifting his head off the pillow with an effort, he looked around, catching the eye of a man at the back of the hut sitting at a crude wooden desk.
“Aha!” The man smiled broadly. “You’re back. Excellent. Wait there a second.” The man went to the hut door and disappeared, the blizzard roaring outside driving a wedge of cold air and snow into the hut.
“Sorry about that,” the man said when he got back, leaning over him. Michael did not recognize him, but he had to be a Fed. Too good-looking to be a Hammer, that was for sure; the man’s classical good looks were all too obviously the product of generations of cosmetic geneering.
“Right, I’m Leading Spacer Kostas. You’re in the camp hospital. How are you?” the man asked.
Michael started to speak. His mouth opened and closed in a desperate attempt to get something intelligible out, but the words refused to come no matter how hard he tried.
Kostas frowned. “Oh, shit,” he muttered. “We’ve heard about that nasty little DocSec trick. Bunch of fuckpigs! Hang on while I connect.”
Michael felt a sudden rush of relief as Kostas connected his neuronics to Michael’s. They might not be able to speak, but at least they could communicate.
“How are you?” Kostas commed.
“Better, thanks, Leader. Where am I?”
“Camp I-2355. It’s an old Hammer prisoner of war camp. We think it’s about 8,000 kilometers south of McNair City. We’re all here.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone! Now that you’re here, that is.” Kostas’s face clouded over for a moment. “Well, not quite everyone. There are 283 of us in all. We lost a few from injuries along the way,” he said bitterly. “Anyway, Lieutenant Commander Fellsworth’s on her way over to see you, so you can. .”
He stopped. Michael was no longer listening.
Michael had passed out, a small smile on his face.
Michael was desperately frightened, afraid that it had all been a dream, that he would wake up to see the grimy, plascrete wall of a DocSec cell. He was so afraid, his eyes had been screwed shut ever since he had woken up. Trembling, he forced himself to open his eyes. If it had all been a dream, he could close them again and pretend he was back among friends.
It was not a dream. It was not a DocSec cell. It was the wooden hut. With a sudden burst of energy, Michael dragged himself upright, ignoring the protests from his battered ribs. The instant he did, he wished he had not been so eager. Head spinning and heart racing, he felt like throwing up.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered. Christ, he felt weak as piss. Closing his eyes, he lay back. After a minute or two he felt better, and he reopened his eyes to see where he had ended up. The place was spartan but immaculately clean. Eight beds in two rows, all empty apart from his. A couple of tables, two chairs, a desk. Toward the back, a screened area, cupboards, and a partitioned-off area-obviously the heads, Michael thought. The hut had small windows-no curtains-looking out onto a gloomy, snow-riven day. Day? For a moment he was confused. According to his neuronics, it was almost midnight. Then he remembered Commitment and its fortynine-hour days. Local planetary time was actually early afternoon.
The hut’s inner door opened with a bang; Michael jumped. A tall, lanky, sandy-haired man in a badly worn Fed shipsuit underneath a bulky cold-weather jacket hustled in, brushing off the fresh snow that powdered his shoulders. He smiled to see Michael sitting up.
“Oh, hello, sir! Remember me?”
Michael shook his head. “Sorry, Leader,” he croaked. “I don’t.” His throat was sore, and his voice sounded like gravel being crushed.
“That’s all right. Leading Spacer Kostas, part-time officer in charge, Camp I-2355 hospital, also known as Hut 10.”
“Nice to meet you, Leading Spacer Kostas.”
“You, too, sir. Notice anything different?”
Michael could not think of anything. His head was all mush. He shook his head.
“You’re talking! You couldn’t do that twelve hours ago.” Kostas looked pleased. “We got the camp doctor to fix you up. Not a bad bloke for a Hammer.”
“Bugger me,” Michael croaked. “You know what? I’d bloody well forgotten. Christ, it’s good to be able to talk again, I can tell you. That little stunt of theirs is scary. Like suffocating in slow motion.”
“Bastards.” Kostas spoke with quiet anger. “One day, one day. Right! Enough of that. Now, my orders are to keep you in bed until tomorrow. So do I have to chain you up, or can you do that?”
Michael laughed. He felt good, better in fact than he had for a long time. Common sense told him that any attempt to walk would have him measuring his length on the floor, so he was not going to try. “No. I’m not going anywhere,” Michael said awkwardly, “but I really do need to take a piss.”
“Uh, okay. One piss bottle coming up.”
“Make sure the bugger’s warm, Leader, and big.”
Theatrically, Kostas rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “God help me. I’ve got a delusional smart-ass for a patient. .” A long pause followed. “Sir.”
Michael laughed. His body was a battered mass of cuts, bruises, and raw pain, but he felt good. This might be a prison camp, but it was
Monday, September 27, 2399, UD
“Dropping, sir.”
With the usual stomach-turning lurch,
Commodore Monroe nodded in satisfaction as the ship’s sensor team quickly rebuilt the command and threat plots, the holovids in front of him painting the thin spread of green vectors tracking the few merships crossing the East Yuan. Two red vectors marked the positions of two FedWorld Skipjack class light cruisers, the
