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.”
Anna reappeared. Michael’s breath caught in his throat at the sight. The image was so real, he felt as if he could reach out and touch the woman he loved. Assault rifle in one hand, she was dressed in well-worn NRA combat fatigues. Wayward wisps of fine black hair peeked out from beneath her helmet to hang down over honey- dark skin smeared with dirt. She stood in front of a group of NRA troopers-
The picture faded.
“I have to say,” Polk went on when he returned, “your Anna is a very beautiful woman. And in case you were interested, one of our agents took that picture last week at a briefing before the 120th attacked one of our planetary defense firebases. One of their more successful operations, I’m sorry to say, and before you ask, she came through without a scratch. As you’ve worked out by now, my agent in H Company keeps me very well informed. Now it’s time for you to meet an old friend. Colonel?”
Michael flinched when Erwin Hartspring appeared. The man terrified him still. The DocSec colonel had been pressed from the same mold as Polk. His face was long and gaunt, his skin wrinkle-cut, stretched tight over prominent cheekbones and windburned to a reddish brown. A long, straight nose dropped to a fine pencil mustache above thin bloodless lips. His hair was cropped to jet-black stubble.
“Hello, Michael,” Hartspring said, slapping the palm of his left hand with a riding crop. Michael had never forgotten the short length of cane covered with black leather. “I’m sure you remember me,” the man went on. “I mean …”
“… how could you forget after all we’ve been through together? Now, the chief councillor has asked me to put together a dedicated unit to hunt down and capture Anna. Team Victor, we’ve called it-v for ‘vengeance,’ in case you were wondering-and it will be under my command. Its members will be special forces marines; that gives you some idea of how seriously we are taking this. When Team Victor captures Anna, she will be handed her over to a handpicked team of DocSec …” Hartspring paused to let a smile of unalloyed evil stretch across his skull-like face. “Do I need to say any more?” he continued. “No, I don’t think I do. You can use your imagination to fill in the gaps. And don’t be in any doubt that we will capture her. Anna is here on Commitment, and you’re not, so it’s just a matter of time. We’ll do our best to get our hands on her before you are executed, but don’t worry. Even if we don’t, we will get her eventually. Well, I don’t think there’s anything more I need to say, so I will sign off now. I’m sure you won’t enjoy your last days, but Chief Councillor Polk and I will.”
Polk reappeared. “You can believe what Colonel Hartspring says,” he said, “if only because I will bring the full might and power of the Hammer Worlds to ensure that he succeeds. Goodbye, Michael.”
The holovid stopped; before Michael could do anything to prevent it, the words “File Deleted” appeared on the screen. “Goddammit,” he swore, jumping to his feet. “Now what the fuck do I do?”
That was the worst thing. There was nothing, not a damn thing, he could do, and he knew it. What Polk and Hartspring planned to do was the most exquisite torture imaginable. And the torture started now, and it would continue until the day he was taken out and killed.
There was only problem: He had absolutely no idea how to win his freedom, and until he did, that promise was as empty as the rest of his life.
Michael stared out of the plasglass window in his cell. It had been-he couldn’t be bothered to work it out exactly-months since his appeal had started its laborious journey through the courts, a process never designed to be fast and slowed further by the fact that the Federated Worlds had not executed anyone in living memory. To say those involved were being cautious was a serious understatement.
And every minute of every day, the same question ate away at his sanity: Had Polk and Hartspring succeeded? Time dragged past; not knowing the answer had stripped the life out of him. He was an empty shell, devoid of hope. All he did was exist, a man borne along by forces over which he had no control, forces utterly committed to his destruction.
He swore softly at the prospect of another day the same as the one before and the one before that, each new day dragging past with the same dreary predictability, grinding down what little of his humanity remained.
The anger that had sustained him through the early days, that had fueled his hope that there would be some way out of the trap laid for him by Admiral Jaruzelska’s betrayal, had long gone. Even the bitter mix of despair, frustration, and guilt that had followed had not lasted, leached away by the dreary monotony of living a life waiting for death.
Outside his cell, there was nothing new to look at: the same grassy exercise area secured by a double fence of razor wire 3 meters high topped with floodlights and surveillance holocams. Beyond lay more grass and yet more wire, a distant maglev line the only evidence that life went on in the real world.
At the best of times, Michael hated it. Today, it was a dismal sight after days of rain had drained from a leaden sky. It was so depressing that he wouldn’t have needed much encouragement to finish it all himself. Not that he could, of course; the never-ending surveillance made sure of that.
“You have a visitor,” the squawk box on the wall said. “Stand away from the door.”
Michael sighed and did as he’d been told. The door opened, and he was waved forward; surrounded by guards, he followed the familiar path down the corridor to the interview room, too dispirited to ask who had come to see him. “I really am a dead man walking,” he muttered under his breath. He managed a fleeting smile. Never was a cliche so true, because he might as well have been dead.
He hoped his parents hadn’t come to see him. The stress and uncertainty of the appeal process was tearing them both apart, and Michael knew that nothing he could say or do could help them. Their visits had become so difficult that he had asked them not to come anymore.
But occasionally there was one emotion that troubled him. He tried not to think about the future. Most of the time he succeeded. When he failed, the thought of waited for him was frightening, made worse because he knew what his death would do to those who loved him: his mom and dad and his sister, Sam. And more than any of those, there was Anna, still stuck on Commitment fighting the Hammers, something the people of the Federated Worlds were too gutless to do.
He could only hope that she was still alive, that she had not been taken by Hartspring.
The door to the interview room opened, and his lawyer walked in. He liked Erica Malvern, but her relentless energy was wearing, as was her unshakable confidence that Michael’s death sentence would be commuted.
“Morning, Michael,” Malvern said, a bright smile on her face as always.
“Erica. What’s happening?”
“I’ve just had word that the president has made her decision on your appeal for clemency, so we should know
