The Final Battle

welcome warmth of the vehicle.

With a lurch, the mobibot set off. A few minutes later, it stopped, and Michael was fed into the Farrisport machine, the latest in a long line of prisoners that stretched back to the earliest days of the Federation.

An hour later, the machine was satisfied that Michael was who he was supposed to be. Deep scanned for contraband, checked for disease and injury, and dressed in a new jumpsuit, he was spit out by the machine into a cell no different from the one he had left behind. He dropped onto the bunk, tired beyond belief.

“You have a visitor,” the intercom announced. “Stand up and wait back from the door.”

With a huge effort, Michael got to his feet. The door opened, and a prison service colonel, iron-gray hair cut short above a comfortable round face, stepped in. Her crisp blue uniform was stark against the white sterility of the cell. “I’m Colonel Kallewi,” she said. She waved the guards out. “I’m the superintendent of Farrisport Island Prison.”

“Wish I could say it was good to meet you, sir,” Michael said with a fleeting lopsided smile. Then it hit him hard enough to make his heart pound. “Forgive me,” he went on, “but Kallewi? Are you any relation to the commander of my marine detachment in Redwood?”

“Yes, I am,” Kallewi said, her voice soft. “Janos was my son.”

Michael’s stomach turned over. This he had not expected. “You’ve heard … you know?”

“I received notification that he’d been killed in action, yes.”

“I was his captain,” Michael said. Kallewi’s dignity in her grief made his guilt all the worse. “I was responsible for his being on Commitment. It was … I’m so sorry.”

Kallewi said nothing for a moment. “Don’t be,” she said finally. “I won’t say his death has been easy to bear. It hasn’t, but Janos was his own man, and he made his own decisions. And he died doing his duty the best way he could, and I won’t stand here and tell you or anyone else that he was wrong about that. But I would like to know more of what happened. It would help me and his father.”

“Of course.”

“Tonight at 20:00 if that’s okay.”

“I don’t think I’m going anywhere,” Michael said with a crooked smile.

“Not sure about that.”

Michael stared at the woman. What on earth does she mean by that? he asked himself.

Kallewi took a deep breath before continuing. “Now, back to business,” she said. “There’ll be a full briefing for you at 09:00 tomorrow morning on the execution protocol-” Michael flinched; he couldn’t help himself. “-and your parents will be arriving at 12:00. You can see them for as long and as often as you wish, though their last visit will have to finish no later than 02:00 on the day.”

Six hours, Michael thought. I will be utterly alone for the last six hours of my life.

“That’s all for now,” Kallewi went on. “Any questions?”

“None worth asking.”

“Okay. I will see you later.”

“Sir.”

“Sit,” Kallewi said, waving Michael into a seat across a small metal table from her. “Can I call you Michael?” she went on once his escort had left.

“Of course, sir,” Michael replied. He was both embarrassed and surprised by the question. In his experience, colonels, even prison service colonels, weren’t on first-name terms with junior officers.

“Bear with me a second,” Kallewi said. She placed a small silver cube on the table.

Michael stared at the cube to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. He wasn’t. He was looking at a near-field jammer; there would be no digital record of anything said or done in this room. Michael did not know much about prison service regulations, but he would have bet what little was left of his life that the device had no business inside Farrisport. “Colonel, forgive me,” he said, “but what’s going on? I’m pretty sure this thing-” He pointed at the cube. “-is not allowed in here.”

“You’d be right.”

“So what’s happening? Please, I need to know. I can’t … I can’t …” Michael had to stop to recover his self- control. “This might surprise you,” he went on, “but I’ve had it. I just want this to be over.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what you’re going through, so let me get to the point.”

“Fire away.”

Friday, December 12, 2403, UD

Farrisport Island Prison

“It’s time.”

Michael got to his feet. “I’m ready,” he said. It was a complete and utter lie. Only the last dregs of courage and self-control allowed him to keep a body torn by fear under control.

Two guards stepped forward. Hands locked onto his arms. They escorted him down a succession of short corridors. Kallewi and a posse of observers fell in behind, his lawyer too. Erica Malvern’s eyes were brimful of tears. Michael was led into a room. Its walls were seamless sheets of blindingly white plasteel, its only furniture a single chair bolted to the floor, its back, arms, and legs fitted with broad plasfiber restraints.

Michael’s heart hammered at the walls of his chest. He was eased forward, turned, and pushed gently down into the chair. The guards worked fast to secure the restraints. The awful, unstoppable inevitability of the process threatened to break him apart. With all that remained of his self-control, he made himself stay still.

“Prisoner is secure, sir,” one of the guards said, moving back.

Colonel Kallewi stepped forward to stand right in front of Michael, a single sheet of paper in her left hand. She leaned forward. “Hang in there, spacer,” she whispered.

Michael said nothing. He was too terrified to speak, even now unable to believe what was about to happen to him.

Kallewi cleared her throat before speaking. “Michael Wallace Helfort. Your final appeal for clemency having been denied by the president of the Federated Worlds in presidential order J-557, a physical copy of which document I have witnessed in person and further confirmed by direct comm with the president herself …”

Michael turned his mind inward. His neuronics cycled through his favorite holopix of Anna, pictures of the best times in his life, pictures rich in hope and happiness. But all of a sudden, it was too much, too painful, and Michael could not take any more. He shut his neuronics down. He opened his eyes and waited for Colonel Kallewi to finish.

“… and now, by the authority vested in me as the superintendent of Farrisport Island Prison, sentence of death will be carried out.” Kallewi stepped back. “Proceed,” she said.

A guard-she looked very young and very nervous-wheeled a small trolley to where Michael sat. On it rested a plasfiber cylinder from which two corrugated hoses led to a face mask. With well-rehearsed efficiency, the guard placed the face mask over Michael’s face, tightening the straps behind his head to form an airtight seal.

“Face mask is secure, sir,” the woman said.

“Confirm system is nominal.”

The guard’s fingers flickered across a small touchpad set below a status screen. “System is nominal.”

“Close the vent. Set the system to recirculate.”

“Vent closed. System set to recirculate. Carbon dioxide scrubber is active, sir.”

“Sentence will now be carried out,” Kallewi said.

This is it, Michael thought, knowing with each inhalation that he was one step closer to death as his body burned the oxygen in the system until too little remained to sustain life. It was strange. He felt disconnected from what was going on. As if it were already over. As if he were …

Quietly and with no fuss, the end came, and Michael slipped away into unconsciousness, falling down into the darkness, down to where death awaited.

Why could he not feel anything? Why was did the darkness feel so thick? Why was the silence so absolute?