was no escape. The rooms were bleak and functional, fitted only with chairs and a simple metal table bolted to a plascrete floor pierced by a small drain to make it easier for blood to be hosed away.
The process was so assured, a guilty finding so certain, that the lucky few released without charge-and they were very few-were often violently sick on the pavement outside the Gruj as they waited for someone to pick them up. DocSec troopers called them boomers, because they always came back. The troopers had never been good losers, and every boomer was a challenge to their infallibility. And DocSec’s view of things was simple in the extreme: Everyone who ended up in the Gruj was guilty of something even if DocSec hadn’t yet worked out what that thing was.
For the overwhelming majority, the next stop on their journey through the bowels of the Gruj was preordained. In the interests of efficiency, the Gruj had its own investigating tribunal tucked away in a corner of Level A, the last stop but one for most prisoners and the only area underground that was even close to being comfortably warm.
Staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the tribunal was an organization intensely proud of its ability to listen to the evidence presented by the DocSec prosecuting officer and hear the accused’s response-if the tribunal could be bothered, though it rarely was-before bringing down the required verdict of guilty and recommending the sentence. The efficiency experts had decreed that the process should take five minutes if everyone did his job properly, and to nobody’s surprise, almost every case was dealt with in less. The record, proudly held for more than ten years by Investigating Tribune Corey MacMasters, was fifty-seven seconds from the moment the state prosecutor opened the proceedings to the handing down of the sentence.
Because of DocSec’s unshakable belief in guilt by association, it was rare for a case not to involve at least two hapless Hammer citizens. The record, once again held by the energetic MacMasters, was the trial of the entire crew of the Verity-Class heavy cruiser
MacMasters had finished the entire process in less than three minutes.
The final stop for the guilty was outprocessing, and then their journey through the Gruj’s little slice of hell would end where it started, back at the loading dock. There DocSec guards would ram the guilty into the back of black trucks, some for McNair State Prison and an appointment with the DocSec firing squad, some for the living death of the Hell system’s mass driver mines, most for the hard labor camps scattered the length and breadth of the three settled planets of the Hammer Worlds.
Michael shivered again. Hartspring had told him he was to be treated like any other DocSec prisoner. It was his misfortune to know in cold, clinical detail what that meant.
The door banged open, and a marine stuck his head in. “The APC is here, corp,” he said.
“Get the escort lined up,” Haditha said. “On your feet, Helfort. Let’s go.”
Michael’s journey down into the hell they called the Gruj had started.
The cold had seeped deep into his body. He was chilled right down the bone. For hours his body had been racked by uncontrollable shivering.
Michael sat with his head back, eyes looking up at the single recessed light in the ceiling, leaning against the ceramcrete wall, at the point where he did not have the energy to care anymore. After days of relentless interrogation and physical abuse, his reserves of courage, of resilience, of self-belief, had run dry. He had nothing left to absorb the appalling shocks that life dished out. He was empty. He did not care. He had nothing left to care about. He was just a number in orange DocSec coveralls waiting to die.
He laughed softly, a laugh that mocked his obsessive determination to hunt down and kill Hartspring.
The cell door banged opened, swinging back into the wall with a crash. Michael did not even look up, unable to summon the slightest interest in the man standing in the opening.
“On your feet, 775,” the DocSec trooper said.
With an effort, Michael dragged himself upright.
“Outside!”
Michael stumbled after the man and into a bleak, harshly lit ceramcrete corridor. It reeked of chlorine. The Hammers used tons of the stuff to scour the blood and shit out of the cells. Two troopers waited for him. They took him by the upper arms and set off. Michael forced the men to take his weight. His feet dragged, one last tiny act of defiance.
If it bothered the troopers, they didn’t let it show. After a bewildering succession of turns and two elevator rides, Michael was manhandled into a small room and thrown into a chair; his arms and legs were secured to small rings. Job done, the troopers left, the door slamming behind them. Michael looked around, confused. He wondered what this place was. Unlike the interrogation rooms he’d been in over the last few days, this one was warm, softly lit, its floor not bare ceramcrete but carpeted. And the table was timber, not scuffed and scarred metal like all the rest.
He was left on his own for a long time. The minutes dragged past, but Michael was content to sit there to thaw out. The warmth soaked the chill out of his bones until his head fell back and he drifted into sleep.
A smack to the back of the head jerked him awake. “What the fuck?” Michael mumbled.
It was Hartspring. “Wake up, you sack of shit,” he said, his riding crop stabbing at Michael’s chest.
“What do you want now?” Michael muttered.
“You have a visitor, Helfort. And I’m warning you: Be polite, or by Kraa I’ll make you wish you were dead. Understood?”
Michael glared at Hartspring. His silence earned him a savage slash across the back from the man’s riding crop. “One day,” Michael hissed, “I’ll make you eat that fucking thing.”
Hartspring sniffed. “I don’t think so,” he said with a disdainful sneer.
The door opened. Michael sat up; he could not help himself. “I’ll be damned,” he whispered as he saw who it was.
“So, Colonel Hartspring,” Jeremiah Polk said as he walked in, “this is the young man who has given me so much trouble.”
“Yes, sir.”
Michael stared up into Polk’s face. It was a hard face, lined and drawn, the eyes hard too, a deep brown, almost black. They glittered in the harsh light.
Polk nodded. “Not very impressive,” he said. “He’s much smaller than I expected. So, Helfort, I hope the colonel’s treating you well.”
Anger flared. “This is the Gruj,” Michael snapped, “so that’s got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever-”
Hartspring’s hand shot out. It locked itself around Michael’s throat and choked him into silence. “I won’t tell you again, boy,” he snarled. “Mind your manners.”
“It’s all right,” Polk said with an expansive wave. “Let him babble on. It won’t change anything.”
“Yes, sir,” Hartspring said, letting go of Michael’s throat.
“I am disappointed, though,” Polk went on, talking over Michael’s choking fight to get air down his bruised windpipe.
“You are, Chief Councillor?”
“Yes. I was rather hoping you would have caught that woman of his as well. What was her name?”
“Anna Cheung Helfort, sir.”
“Yes, her. I would have enjoyed seeing the pair of them die together. So romantic-”
“You slimy son of a bitch!” Michael shouted. He hurled himself forward, arms flailing in a fruitless attempt to get free of their restraints. “I’ll fucking kill you.”
Polk laughed. “I don’t think so.” He turned to Hartspring. “Your prosecutor is taking his time,” he said.
“We need to take the time to get this right, sir. The trial is scheduled to start a week from tomorrow.”
