Born from Fire: Tales from The Longview - Episode 1 Read online

  No. This criminal lies. Truth of We said this criminal would be sold to the Death Circus, which must guarantee that each criminal it purchases will have the Sentence of Death carried out. This criminal was sold. Death will come now.

  Still, the ship touches the ground, noiseless. The ship does not smell of burning flesh, which is a smell that will haunt this criminal until his last thought. This criminal tries to find comfort in the absence of a scent.

  In the darkness, in the silence, this criminal stands shivering, for no matter how the Evils do not seem cruel, the ship has arrived, and life now ends.

  This criminal thinks—which is its first crime—of what life might have been if We-42K had remained criminal. If it had not brought the Speakers and the Guards to the hiding place. This criminal imagines a life without Truth of We.

  But if such life exists, it will not exist for this Apart.

  The sky ship’s doors are open, and the line moves. The unseen hands behind push Each Apart through the tall wire corral, into the next gate.

  The first criminal steps through the gates, up into the ship. The Apart does not run.

  This criminal thinks when it steps through the gates, it will run. It is not ready for Death.

  There is no sound as the ship doors close behind the first Apart. Just a moment later, the doors re-open and the Apart is gone. It was big, tall and strong-looking, clean and fierce, and it had shouted anger at the Evils when it waited.

  The Evils have a quiet Death. It is not like the death of Return to Citizenship, which is screaming and writhing, body arcing long, then curling inward, arms and legs twisting, with skin peeling away from flesh, with flesh peeling away from bone, with bone blackening until it bursts into flame and at last is gone.

  The quiet Death may be quick.

  But this criminal wants to live.

  The line moves too quickly. Each Apart moves forward without resistance, steps up to the ship and through the doors and is gone.

  Each Apart, and then this criminal is two places away from the final corral, and it feels a sharp, quick, bright pain in its arm, and looks to see a tiny ice dart melting into its flesh.

  And all its fear goes, and its anger, and its desire to live. The face of We-42K fades, and the solemn gaze of the born disappears. This criminal is washed empty inside, and steps up into Death.

  Kagen

  KAGEN AND BURKE lifted the last body into its private suspended-animation unit and sealed the unit.

  Kagen said, “You do the paperwork this time.”

  Burke nodded, took the papers from Kagen, and started to shove them into the unit’s feeder slot.

  Kagen said, “You weren’t watching what I did. Learn to watch. If my head didn’t already hurt, I’d have let you put them in that way. And then I’d have let you deal with the alarm and trying to get the papers sorted out on your own. Because you’ve watched me do twenty of those, but you evidently didn’t see a thing.”

  Burke said, “What did I do wrong?”

  “The sheets go in numerical order, print side up, all facing the same direction. If you put them in any other way, the unit alarm goes off loud enough to wake the dead.”

  “Why? I don’t even understand why we use paper,” Burke grumbled. “This whole process could be shortened to minutes with a single data thread.”

  “Paper can’t disappear when a unit shorts,” Kagen said, “and the hermetically sealed document compartments resist tampering. You should have had that information in your Preliminary Crew Three study guide.”

  “I skimmed that,” Burke said. “I still tested high enough to be here.”

  Which marked Burke as exactly what Kagen had thought he was. Light crew. Barely above deadweight. Kagen decided he would pass on Burke’s application and see if he could find someone better from the passenger ranks.

  Annoyed, he said, “For a ship to maintain its lucrative Death Circus license in the Pact worlds, the status of every Condemned must be available to the Pact licensing body at all times. The instant the Longview passes a Spybee or comsat, the ship’s Pact module sends a burst packet that relays our Condemned update to the Pact Core, who then distributes our list of available Condemned to all subscriber worlds. If you in any way screw up the unit’s ability to identify the Condemned in the box, you screw up the system that keeps the Longview in the air.”

  Burke watched Kagen with puzzlement. “Wait. They’re not dead?”

  Kagen was pretty sure at that point Burke had done less than skim the study guide. While he sorted the paperwork correctly, making sure Burke watched him, he said, “No. Sometimes the owner decides to carry out Final Sentencing on the ship as soon as we’re beyond the Pact World borders. But there’s no real profit in that. And the Longview is the most profitable Death Circus registered.”

  “So we make a good living from killing people.” Burke frowned. “If I hadn’t managed to get passenger status on the Longview, I could have been one of the people in the boxes.”

  Kagen shrugged. “Everyone on the Longview has a story like that. We all have ugliness behind us. The trick is to not let that ugliness get back in front of us.”

  Burke raised an eyebrow.

  Kagen had decided Burke was one breath above worthless, but gave him the same spiel he gave every potential member of Crew Three. “If you don’t screw up on the Longview, you can get training all the way up to captaining your own ship. You can earn more money with us than with any other ship crew I know of. But if you want it—and I want it—you have to keep your record spotless, work hard, and study hard. And you can’t make enemies. Or mistakes. It’s a small crew, and almost everyone is trying to stay on it.”

  “Why? Because you all love the smell of burning bodies? Love taking people to their deaths?”

  “We transport people who have already been categorized Dead, Still Breathing to places that have uses for people like that. If we didn’t, someone else would, and we keep all our Condemned clean and safe and healthy until they get where they’re going—which cannot be said for any other Death Circus out there. The Longview is different.

  “When we hit some of the big buyer worlds, you start talking to crew from other Death Circuses. Most of them just shove Class B prisoners out the airlock as soon as they hit the Pact perimeter, because all Death Circuses have to buy at least 10% Class Bs, and feeding what you can’t sell costs money. Class Bs are just about impossible to sell. Every other Death Circus out there buys 90% Class A Condemned and 10% Class B Condemned.”

  Burke said, “And Class A Condemned are the rapists, pedophiles, murderers, and... one other...”

  “Thieves,” Kagen told him. So Burke had at least read something in the study guide.

  “Right.” Burke considered that for an instant. “And the Class B prisoners are basically the ones who just pissed off somebody important.”

  Kagen nodded. “You. Me. Half the damned universe, it seems.”

  “And worlds want to buy rapists, and pedophiles, and murderers, and thieves, but don’t want to buy people who didn’t actually commit real crimes...”

  Kagen said, “Have you ever heard of gladiators? The Shorgah Arena?”

  “No.”

  “It’s big on slaver worlds. Slave owners buy men other people want to see die, and they pit them against each other in a ring. They get rid of problem slaves that way, too, but there have been a couple times that policy turned around to bite them. So they like to get bad guys from much tenderer worlds. Pact worlds breed tender bad guys because they never come up against any real resistance.”

  “That’s vile.”

  “It’s a polite way for the Pact worlds to get rid of their worst citizens without ever having to get their own hands dirty. The slaver worlds buy women, too, of course. Women are easy to sell—the younger and prettier, the better, but slaver worlds usually have reju, so they can turn and old woman into a young woman, and keep her young and healthy and unmarked as long as they want.”

  “And we’re a p
art of that. I’m not sure I want to go for Crew Three. I might just get off on the next non-Pact, non-Slaver world we come to.”

  “Always an option,” Kagen said, shrugging. “There’s more to this than you’re seeing, I think—but there are also plenty of other people desperate to get the job you don’t think you want.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Kagen

  KAGEN WAS HEADING into the mess hall with the rest of Crew Three when Melie, who was Crew Two Gold, pulled him aside and waved the rest of his unit on.

  “Congratulations,” she said. “You passed Crew Two eligibility, and I’ve chosen you as Crew Two Green. You’re the first person I’ve seen in ages who passed Crew Two eligibility the first time through.”

  He had just finished decontaminating the shuttles after unloading the final twenty-one units from each of them, and had showered the stink of burning humans off of his skin. And had been trying to decide whether to give Burke another chance or to tell him he’d failed and wait for another passenger to pass the eligibility exam. It had been a brutal day.

  And suddenly it was better.

  “Someone moving up, or someone moving out?” he asked.

  “Both.” She grinned. “Willett passed his Captain’s exam and got his license while we were on Cairefon, and the last Spybee we passed had a stack of offers for him. He’s going to captain a TFN starcruiser for a salary that makes my eyeballs bleed. So everyone whose tests and promotion points are in order step promotes. You were short your time in grade for promotion, but you did well as Three Gold and the captain himself approved my request to move you to Two Green.”

  The captain himself. This was the sort of attention Kagen had been working for since the first day he worked as Three Green. If important people noticed him, and sided with him, The Dream would become real.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Are you staying on as Two Gold?”

  “Not a chance. Mash goes Gold tonight.” And then she said, “You’re the first one we’ve had in a while who got through the exam on the first try. I’ll bet you’re aiming for higher.”

  “Captain,” Kagen said. “I at least want to qualify on the captain’s exam. I want to get my own ship.”

  “Me, too.” Melie smiled. “Skip mess with Three. You’ll eat next hour with Two. Right now I have just enough time to introduce you to the Sleepers.”

  They left mess together, and for the first time Kagen found himself facing the always-locked exit to the top-level private ship gravdrop. Melie palmed them through.

  “I still find the Sleeper bays unsettling,” Melie told him. “You’ve only seen them from the shuttle bays below. Looking up, it’s all darkness and the bottoms of walkways. You won’t understand how... big... this all is until you’ve seen it from the inside.”

  He’d never been through the second doors before, so she pointed out landmarks he needed.

  “Crew One duty room,” she said, and pointed down the corridor to the left. “Don’t go in there. It’s the jump room for whichever Crew One pulls third-hand standby when we’re on alert. And on your right is the owner’s quarters,” she said and pointed to a dimly lit corridor. “If you so much as walk down that passage, you’re out on the next world we hit, no matter what sort of world it is. Don’t get curious, don’t forget.”

  They reached a crossing passage with signs saying SLEEPERS LEVEL ONE, and Melie pointed to the palm-lock that opened the Sleeper bays.

  “As soon as you accept the crew position, your palm code will be added to Level Two areas,” she said, and pressed the palm-lock, The door slid open.

  Before him lay rows of containers stacked floor to ceiling on either side of narrow corridors. They were, he realized, more complex versions of the storage units he’d been using for the last several years to bring the Condemned up from the surfaces of the worlds with which the Longview contracted.

  “What are all the extra connectors on the containers?” he asked.

  She turned and gave him a long stare and a slow head-shake. “Don’t. Ask.”

  “You know and can’t tell?”

  Her voice dropped so low he had to move his ear to just centimeters from her lips to hear what she was saying. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. Not even the captain. I think they’re something the owner invented for sorting the Condemned, figuring out which ones will be the most valuable where, and then marketing those people directly to the worlds that will pay the most for them. According to a name I can’t mention, the Longview’s owner is the richest Death Circus franchisee in existence. My source says by about twenty times. And the Longview buys the most Condemned, but percentage-wise sells the fewest. So the ones the ship sells have to be going for unbelievable prices. Have to be. Because this is also the biggest and most expensive Death Circus ship in existence. And it pays crew the best.”

  Her lips pressed against his ear. “In here, if we’re quiet, we can mention this,” she told him. “If you’re not in the Sleeper stacks, though, say nothing. Ever.”

  She pulled back. “We’re gravdropping down to Level Ten. I’m just going to show you Ten Port and Starboard today. It’s the smallest level, and you’re new. You and I will do status sweeps on Ten together twice. Then you’ll do ten on your own, and your Gold will make sure you didn’t miss anything. Then you’ll do Ten on the first day of the week and Nine on the third. You’ll have a lot of other duties, too, but this is the most important one.”

  They gravdropped slowly down through the rows and stacks, and Kagen spotted green lights on some, yellow lights on a few, and red lights on many. He pointed them out.

  Melie said, “Green means we have at least one bidder for that unit. We off-load those to the world that has bid the highest by the time we reach it. Yellow means the individual in the unit is new. Those will go red or green eventually. The study guides say going red means no one has bid or signaled interest... but sometimes they go red within a few hours of the Condemned’s arrival, and sometimes they go green, then go red. And sometimes they’re red for years.”

  “So green is usually Class A, red is usually Class B?”

  “Good. I didn’t have to tell you that. You did the extra levels of the exam study.”

  He nodded. “Figured I might not need them for Class Two, but that I’d need them for captain.”

  She grinned. “Actually, according to the captain, that part of the course you only need to qualify for owner. That and having just buckets of money. But I studied them, too.”

  “Is the owner considering selling?”

  Melie shrugged. “I don’t think so. And I don’t know anyone who’s bought a Death Circus franchise. But the captain said the owner added ownership training to each level of the testing so we’d understand what we were doing. The captain said as far as he can tell, no other Death Circus franchisee offers this.”

  Kagen filed that information away.

  They hit Level Ten and pushed out of the gravdrop to the lowest walkway. All the way down, Kagen had been watching the rows upon rows of long containers disappearing into the darkness, and he’d been trying to count. Trying to get a sense of how many Sleepers the ship carried. He couldn’t. Not even a rough guess.”

  “How many are there?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know. None of us do, and we all want to. That is another piece of information the owner keeps off the records.”

  “You could always count the units.”

  She laughed. “No. We couldn’t. And if you decide you like being here, and you want to earn a captain’s license without having to sell your soul and indenture your body, you’ll leave this alone. It’s one of the stipulations of service, which you’ll get later today. You get to see this first so you’ll understand the scope of your new duties. And then you have two options. Agree to the terms and accept Crew Two, or move to passenger status and get off the ship at the first world that fits your Acceptable Alternative stats.”

  “That seems extreme.”

  “Remember when I said the owner is doi
ng something different here?”

  “Yes.”

  “The stipulations you’ll agree to regarding sharing information about this ship and what’s on it are part of that. And realize that the owner is not playing. We veridicate after every off-ship we do, and if we don’t pass veridication, we’re not allowed back on the ship. We sleep in whatever Needle we end up in until some other ship will take us.”

  “That’s harsh.”

  “It is. Don’t count, don’t dig for information you’re not permitted to have, never get drunk or drugged and run your mouth when you’re on an away team or on leave. Crew positions on the Longview pay five times more per level than pay on any other Death Circus ship, and officer positions pay ten times more. But that’s just the start. If you do the owner’s recommended investments, you can increase your pay way over that.” She glanced sidelong at him. “And before you ask, you’ll get the information pack with the recommended investments if you accept Crew Two placement. I’ve been Crew Two for my full six years now, I’ve done the recommended investments, but went in for more than the recommended amount, and with my Crew One raise—even assuming I wash out of captain training—I’ll have enough money to buy a small in-system personal ship by the end of my Crew One minimum term. I can do better if I stay the maximum, and much, much better if I make officer.”