Expendable Heroes, page 1
EXPENDABLE HEROES
THE PLANET TRAP
PATTY JANSEN
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
About the Author
More By This Author
CHAPTER 1
The fluorescent light in the ceiling was one of the ViviGrow-B series. They were made by a company on the Moon specifically for use in hydroponics and simulated daylight facilities in long-range space exploration vehicles. They were pricey, and onboard equipment officers tended to skimp on them by putting in cheap replacements.
At which time the habitat’s farm would slowly start to produce less and less food, and concerns about poor production would travel up the command chain until someone figured out that the issue was “Ship Operations trying to save costs again.”
Steven lay on his back, staring at this light, wondering why he was seeing it, and wondering what had happened to the familiar naked lightbulb that hung from the ceiling of his prison cell, that he’d been staring at for the past four months, two weeks and three days.
And in his state of slumber—because apparently he’d just woken up—he wondered where he was, and how he had finished up here, and why, judging by the mild vibration in the floor and the hiss of air out the ceiling vents, he appeared to be on a ship.
Travelling on a long-distance space vehicle was a privilege for the rich, and he was meant to be on trial for supposedly revealing state secrets.
He searched his scattered and broken memories for information about whether the trial had already come and passed, and had he forgotten about it, but he didn’t think so. And then he wondered how long he had been out, because obviously he was not just waking up after sleep, but he was waking up from stasis. Because that was why there were heart monitor sensors and other things with leads stuck to his chest, and why there were machines with blinking lights on the bench next to his bed.
That meant, obviously, at some point, somebody had taken him out of his cell and put him here. It would be awesome if he could remember how and why.
With all the wires attached to him, he could only lift his head ever so slightly, which limited his view of the room.
It looked like a typical on-board hospital. He knew the type because he had seen many of those before. Working as on-board farm biologist, he was essentially a ship interior technician—never mind the biology degree—and he had repaired many of the pieces of equipment in rooms just like this. One needed to be versatile to justify one’s position on board.
There was movement on the other side of the room, where a nurse was unpacking medical equipment out of crinkling foil while standing at a bench with his back to Steven. The pale green colour of his uniform was one of the standard colours that this type of clothing came in and gave nothing away about where the hell he was.
Steven tried to speak, but his voice was so dry, and his lips and tongue felt like rubber and wouldn’t work.
He’d definitely been under for more than two months.
So what was going on? Why was he here? What was the outcome of the trial?
Where was Lette, and when could he see her? And then Sophia. He’d promised her that Daddy would be at her fourth birthday party. They’d said the trial was a formality. The lawyers had even assured him that if he admitted having passed classified information to a journalist—even if the information wasn’t classified and it wasn’t a journalist and he’d done so in the public interest—he would be free.
And now this?
Unless somebody was very soon going to come up with a very good reason for why he was here, and what was going on, and that reason was going to be acceptable, he was going to be very angry.
In the bed next to him, another person was about to come to life.
An older man, in his late 40s or early 50s, with dark salt and pepper hair on the sides of his head. The top was mostly bald.
He had a scruffy white beard to match. His face was rough and his cheeks red, his nose kind of bulbous in the way that alcoholics’ noses grew big and red.
His startlingly blue eyes met Steven’s and Steven was taken aback with the level of anger he saw in there.
He was going to say, Look mate, I don’t know what we’re doing here, but then remembered that his mouth didn’t work, although the feeling in his tongue was starting to return, and he felt the ability to speak again was not far away.
The man pushed himself up. He was still attached to a number of leads and tubes.
They tangled with some of the equipment next to his bed, and an alarm started going off.
At this, the nurse at the bench turned around.
His eyes widened.
“Please stay down, sir,” he said.
Not that the character in the bed next to Steven took any notice of that. He ripped the tubes and the attached plaster off his arm, and sat up properly.
The nurse sped to the communication unit next to the door and called into it, “Can I have some assistance please?”
Meanwhile, the older man was pushing himself off the bed. He was wearing a very skimpy hospital gown, cut down the sides to make access to various parts of his body easy.
It showed liberal amounts of pale white skin with lots of body hair. Like a gorilla.
Two more nurses came into the room.
They both wore the same light green uniforms, but if there was any logo or insignia on them, Steven couldn’t see it.
The three nurses went to the bed next to him and forced the guy to sit down.
But he was strong. He swung his arm and with his elbow, pushed two of the men inside. The place where he had ripped the tubes out of his arm was leaking blood all over his bare leg and onto the floor.
“Sit down, please,” the nurse kept shouting. “Calm down.”
The three nurses struggled to get him down.
Steven raised himself on one elbow.
If he was correct, in his stasis-addled state, he remembered this fellow. He had been in the cell opposite him. His name was Rollo—his last name escaped Steven for the moment. A beefy guy with a booming voice who would get angry about the smallest thing and go off on his cell mates or the prison wardens.
The rumour went that he’d gotten so angry once he’d beaten someone to death. That was how he’d landed in the prison in the first place.
Those nurses were brave.
Movement in the corner of his eye made Steven turn to his other side.
In the bed to the other side of him was someone else, a man who lay quietly staring at the ceiling, ignoring all the commotion.
Steven had definitely seen him before. He’d been in an out of the same cell block during the months Steven had been there. His name was Jack, and he had never answered questions about why he was in the prison.
In the limited community of misfits, protesters committed of violent acts or leaking of confidential information and other political shit-stirrers inside the prison, that did not make you any friends.
The nurses were still fighting with the beefy guy. One of them was trying to restrain him by wrapping him with the sleeves of his own gown, while another yelled into the unit for extra support.
And then a clear, female voice said, “Stop it, you idiot.”
A woman in a grey jumpsuit pushed aside a curtain around a bed in the corner. She strode across the room. Her hair danced like a glossy black curtain over her back. She had Asian eyes and a pale skin. Her feet were bare.
She pushed herself in between the nurses and, before any of them could do anything, grabbed Rollo around the head, while sticking her fingers into his nose. She pulled him up by the nostrils. He gave a yell.
She snapped, “Be quiet, dumbass.”
He was going to say something, but she pulled up sharply. His words turned into a yowl.
One nurse saw her chance and jabbed a needle into his backside. She was still panting from trying to restrain him.
“Ouch!” He tried to hit out with his elbows.
The Asian woman pulled up. “Shut up, Rollo. Everyone knows what sort of piece of shit you are. You want to get out of here alive? Then shut the fuck up.”
Some of the madness went out of his eyes. He let out a deep breath.
“Now, calm down and sit here and let the nurses do whatever they need to get your ass out of recovery.”
Rollo sat down.
Recovery. That hit a spot. Recovery from stasis.
“Can someone tell us where we are, and what are we doing here?” Steven asked into the silence, meeting the Asian woman’s eyes. “I think we have a right to know that.”
The Asian woman scoffed. “Don’t ask me. I’m one of you. From the women’s prison. They woke me earlier than you. We got taken here because some gov wants us to do a stupid shit job before they release us. I want to do the fucking job and get out, and I don’t want any dumbasses to fuck it up.”
“Is that right?” Steven asked, turnin g to the nurses.
“I wouldn’t put it in language like that, but it’s pretty close from what I understand,” a nurse said. “Mind you, I’m just a medical officer. My task was to wake you up and the next task is to get you dressed.”
“Where are we?”
“I’m not authorised to say. You will be briefed.” He took a flat parcel off a pile on a trolley and handed it to Steven. The contents felt soft. The man nodded at it.
“That’s your uniform. Put it on in the partition behind the curtain and make your way nextdoor. There will be a meal and someone will give you instructions.”
CHAPTER 2
Steven was the first to get changed. He went to the corner where a curtain formed a privacy screen around a bed. He plonked the parcel on the bed and ripped open the cover.
Inside was a grey jumpsuit similar to the one the Asian woman had been wearing. The parcel also contained a set of underwear and a pair of socks. Next to the bed stood a rack with the type of white sneaker shoes that crew on long distance ships wore. They were all different sizes, and he presumed he was meant to pick one.
The woman had come out barefoot and her sneakers still stood on the ground.
Stephen wormed himself out of the hospital gown, and put on the underwear and the jumpsuit, while listening to what was going on in the room.
Rollo asked, “Who are you?”
“I am Luciane Chen.”
“My name is Rollo Watt.”
“Believe me, I know that. We all know that.”
“I’m that notorious, eh?” Rollo laughed.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“What about you?” Rollo then asked.
“I’m Jack.”
“Do you have a last name, Jack?”
“Ramirez.”
A lot of memories came back to Stephen, because locked up in his sterile white prison cell and going to mandatory work sessions where prisoners sat at benches doing stupid jobs like packing items in boxes—three red balls, three green balls, three blue balls, put on the lid, seal it shut, put on a cheerful sticker with the image of a dancing bear, why, why, why did he think of that mind-numbing job now?—he had heard rumours about a notorious double-dealing spy called Jack Ramirez in the high-security unit. He was said to have been busted using his position as government-sponsored spy to sell government information to some crime lord, or something like that.
He couldn’t remember the precise details. It had been at the time when Steven had arrived in the prison, and his mind had been preoccupied with many other things.
Such as fighting the injustice of it all. That whistleblowers go to jail while the companies went on to perpetuate their crimes in their poisoned culture.
He pulled up the zipper to his jumpsuit, picked up the bag, and the extra pair of shoes on the floor, and pushed aside the curtain. “Next. You forgot your shoes.” He held out the shoes to Luciane. She took them from him. Her long fingers had symbols tattooed on them.
“Thanks. I was going to get them later, when you finished.” She dropped the shoes to the floor and stuffed her feet into them.
“Not keen on seeing my hairy butt?” Rollo said.
“Not your hairy butt, or anyone’s hairy butt.”
“I bet his butt is not hairy,” Rollo said, nodding at Jack.
“What sort of fucking garbage are you talking?” Jack said.
“I just wanted to know if your—”
“Rollo!” Luciane called.
She glared at Rollo and he glared back, and Jack glared at both of them, muttering, “Imbeciles.” Jack grabbed his parcel and went behind the curtain.
The three of them waited in a silence thick as molasses. Boy, this was going to be fun.
“What’s your name anyway, Mr Boss-man?” Luciane said.
“I’m Steven Jameson.”
Her eyes widened. “You mean the Steven Jameson from the Jackson files?”
Steven shrugged. “That report got a lot more notoriety than I intended. All I did was give someone the data that they’d asked for. That was their legal right to obtain.”
“Yet, you did it, at great risk to yourself.”
“We’ll see how that ended up for me once I know where we are and what we’re supposed to do here.”
Rollo snorted. “See? He isn’t all that special. None of us get special treatment.”
Luciane snorted at him. “We know that, fuckwit. You’re just jealous that someone’s got guts.”
“Shut the fuck up, you two,” Jack called from behind the curtain.
Silence.
“Does anyone know where we are?” Steven asked.
Luciane snorted. “They haven’t told me anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Whoa. Not defensive at all…
“It was a genuine question. I don’t know. I think we are on a ship. Where are we going, why are we here, what happened to my trial? That’s all I want to know.”
“Good luck with that.”
“I was in prison, I was waiting for my trial, and I was hoping to get that whole thing over and done with quickly. I’ve already served a few months, and my lawyer said the charges were mild and if I confessed we could make a bargain so I could be released.”
She laughed. “Believe me, when you’re in that particular prison unit, they don’t let you out that easily. All those inmates are in for some matter of insubordination or demonstrating against the interests of some government or a major company. Like you released those files. Jackson Prospecting didn’t like that, so they busted out the heavyweight lawyers.”
“But they were trying to put me away for something that’s not illegal.”
“Trying? There is no trying with any of this. They will always win. Legal or no. There is no way they would have let you off lightly, no matter what they told you. They will remove you from public life until they are convinced you can’t harm them anymore. We’re lucky. We’re on a ship and we get to do something in a place where they don’t want to send their own people. That fact will probably give us a lot more freedom than we would have had otherwise. It’s going to be dangerous, I can tell you that.”
“It sounds like you’re excited.”
“When you’re in prison, there is no means of escape.”
She gave him an intense look that said she intended to do anything in order to escape. Steven glanced at the ceiling and mouthed, Aren’t they listening to us?
“Everybody is always listening,” she said. “See if I give a fuck.”
Jack came out of the cubicle in the corner, and Rollo picked up his parcel and went in.
Jack joined Steven and Luciane, leaning against the side of the bed.
“Do you know anything more about where we are and what we going to do?” Steven asked him.
“Why should I? I woke up about the same time you did. Did you hear them telling me anything?”
Sorry I asked, mate.
What a friendly character.
So they waited in silence until Rollo came out.
He looked, in one word, ridiculous. The suit sat tight around his belly, and because the material was stretchy, this made the legs too short, showing a good deal of pale and very hairy skin. Steven didn’t even want to think about his butt. Urgh. How again did they end up on this subject?
Rollo stopped in front of a door with a smooth metallic surface that functioned as a fuzzy mirror. He pulled down the cuffs of his legs.
“Man, we’re not here to win a fashion contest,” Jack said.
“You’re a real cheerful chap, aren’t you?” Rollo said.
“You’re the class clown?”
“Watch your mouth, mate.”
Steven stepped in between them. “Come on, stop the stupid bickering. Let’s go.”
He led the group out of the room, into a long corridor.
Yes, they were definitely on board a long-distance ship. He wondered how long they had been away. A dreadful sensation crept up in him that maybe that he had missed far more of Sophia’s life than just a few months.
