Red Sky: Chapter 20
I marched through the red desert with a two-guard escort. Beetleface stayed behind. Noseless and Beak were my guides. The half hour march felt different now that I was doing it without my fellow inmates. The redness was still there. The landscape was still stark with smokestacks in the distance and a large planet hanging ominously above like an overripe orange waiting to explode. But the redness didn’t bother me. It didn't make me feel hot and itchy all over. I closed my eyes and felt its warmth. I was laying on a beach on a beautiful summer day, the redness of the moon soothing my skin and healing my injuries.
One can’t help but to feel the collective unease when marching in a group of convicts. The force of the laser chain pulling on your body is a constant reminder of captivity. The sound of two hundred other shuffling feet reminds you that you’re just one of many in that captivity. But marching alone, I was an individual again. My escorts didn’t make me feel like a prisoner. They made me feel important, unique, like I was a VIP with my own special protective service.
I could see my shadow for the first time in years. However the crazy orbit of the red moon and its home planet works, between that orbit, the suffocating red clouds and the various times of day we marched to and from the mine, there weren’t ever any shadows. I always thought this strange. The red moon felt like a desert. It looked like a desert. I naturally assumed there would be long shadows casting themselves over the parched ground. This is what I always thought of when I thought of a desert with its bright sun and cloudless skies. But the red moon didn't follow these rules. Until that day, the red moon was a desert without shadows. On the long walk back to the prison, I watched the outline of my body stretched across the sand. I had my shadow to keep me company.
There was fast movement in the corner of my right eye. I looked up expecting a bird. But there were no birds on the lifeless moon. A freighter had taken off from the smokestacks. It was quickly overhead accelerating out of the atmosphere leaving a stream of exhaust behind. It was the daily load of processed ore. The higher it flew the more obscure it became, a little speck in the red sky getting smaller and smaller until finally it was gone leaving only a few lonely clouds lazily floating about.
I wondered why it never rained. Typically, the red clouds blanketed the sky and even when they were sparse, as they were on this day, they had a darker hue lying behind their transparent fronts. Was the lack of moisture part of the natural atmosphere of the red moon or was it from the terraforming? Maybe those red-orange clouds used to rain acid and were slowly changing to Earth clouds that would eventually bring water. They looked like storm clouds. If I had seen a cloud like that back on Earth I would have automatically grabbed my umbrella when I left home. They were a rolling front ready to spring a deluge at any moment. But that deluge never came, the clouds just rolled through the sky with no apparent purpose providing more redness to the red moon.
When the gray shoebox finally appeared, there was a small speck standing in the front doorway. The speck looked like an ant with a red stripe on his back. With every step the ant grew larger. Hades was standing there with his red-striped helmet on.
My escorts sped me up. Now that their boss could see them they wanted to look efficient. It didn’t help. Hades wasn’t happy. They had either taken too long or maybe he was in a bad mood because they interrupted his normal schedule.
“Get back to your posts,” he screamed at the end of his rant. “I can handle this Nic by myself.”
Hades said the last part with a particular venom. The use of the term ‘Nic’ was new to me, so much so I wasn’t sure that’s what he said. He kept his helmet on as we walked through the front processing area. Instead of taking the usual left to the cafeteria and prison block, we took a right through a doorway and walked up a stairwell to an entirely different part of the complex. We walked past a large window that overlooked a hangar bay where the supply hovers were kept and then passed a couple of rooms with various control panels.
I should have been scared since he was taking me down restricted corridors to places no inmate is supposed to see. I should have been worried he was going to kill me when we reached our destination. But I had left my fear back in the mine. I could survive anything after surviving a cave-in. I was invincible. Even Hades couldn’t kill me now.
We reached Goodwell’s office and Hades stood me up against the wall. Bug Eyes and Ginger appeared out of nowhere to watch over me while Hades went inside. I stood there and looked at my two new supervisors. They looked disheveled and disinterested. I got the distinct impression I had disturbed their afternoon nap.
Hades reemerged from Goodwell’s office with his helmet off. He escorted me to Goodwell’s desk as the other two guards waited outside. I stood at attention in front of Goodwell, Hades directly behind me. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. It was hot arid breath that made me conscious of him at all times. Goodwell stayed seated behind his desk looking down at his console. I quickly scanned the room to get a sense of him. The office was messy and cramped. His shelves were full of old-fashioned books that took up space along the walls. There was a crystal ornament on his desk with an inscription on the base. I tried to read the inscription, but it was too far away.
“Who is your partner?” Goodwell asked, still not looking at me.
“Max.”
Goodwell looked up. He had a strange look on his face like he thought I was trying to trick him. I looked back at him confused. Max was my partner. What did he want me to say?
Hades spoke in a crisp voice. “His partner is 25891.”
Goodwell nodded knowingly. This he understood.
Now that I was face to face with the old man, I was surprised by how small he was. When he strode out to the prison block on our first day and when he appeared in the holos every night, he had a certain impressive aura about him. His baggy clothes and white beard didn’t take away from this impressiveness, they only added to it by showing his lack of concern for such practical considerations as appearance. But now that he was seated before me behind a pedestrian desk like any mid-level clerk serving a giant bureaucracy, his presence was less imposing. He was a man of not even average size, much smaller than any of the inmates or guards on the red moon. He wouldn’t survive a week in the mine, I thought, as he continued to read my file from his console, his hands folded together on the table in front of him.
“An inmate is never allowed to separate from his partner.” He’d finally finished reading. “Only a guard can remove the tether. Did a guard separate you from your partner?”
“No.”
I felt a harsh blow on the back of my head. I wanted to reach up to check if I was bleeding, but my hands were still tied. It took me a brief second before I realized why I’d been hit. I spoke up again in a louder voice.
“No, sir.”
Goodwell eyed me differently than Hades. He didn’t look at me with the contempt and disdain of the man standing behind me. Goodwell’s look had a certain bemused quality, like he was trying to understand my thinking. He treated me as a child to be disciplined, like a schoolboy he was trying to teach right from wrong.
“Was your partner under a cave-in at the time you separated?”
“My partner, no, but others were.”
I received another blow to the back of my head. This time Hades spoke.
“Answer the question.”
“Was you partner under a cave-in at the time you separated?” Goodwell asked again.
“No, sir.”
“Then why did you separate from him?” Goodwell seemed genuinely confused.
“I had to save those men from suffocating, sir.”
“From suffocating?” Goodwell let out a little sigh.
“I couldn’t leave them there to die.”
Hades hit me on the back of the head again.
“Sir.”
“But that is not your decision to make, is it?”
Any answer I gave was going to condemn me.
I stayed silent.
“I have no choice, 22889, but to put both you and 25891 into solitary confinement.”
“Max? Why Max, he didn’t do anything.”
“If two partners voluntarily separate from each other then they both go into confinement. Those are the rules and I’m not changing the rules for you. We can’t have inmates breaking the rules whenever they decide to.”
“But I had to save those men,” I said, as much to myself as anyone else.
Goodwell shook his head, exasperated. He looked at his console again then back to me. “22889, you have four more years with us. I know that’s going to be four years of good behavior. Do you know how I know it's going to be four years of good behavior?”
I shook my head, ‘no.’
“Because I’m going to teach you a lesson now.”
My jaw involuntarily clenched.
“Do you understand, 22889? Are you going to learn your lesson?”
I hesitated and looked him in the eyes, his cold gray eyes, and then without even realizing what I said until the words came out of my mouth, I uttered. “No.” Holding my gaze on Goodwell.
Hades nearly beat the life out of me after I said that. I blacked out and came to when I was standing outside the box down on the prison floor. Two guards stripped my work clothes and threw me inside locking the door. This was before the other inmates returned for the night. I suppose Goodwell didn’t want to make a show of punishing someone who had saved two lives.
He made no such exceptions for Max. The metal door of the box doesn't stop all sound from coming in. I could hear Max’s muffled screams as Hades whipped him. If there was anybody on the red moon who wasn't built to withstand the whip, it was Max, his body broken down long before its time. He received the usual fifteen lashes and then I heard the closing of a door to the solitary box in front of me. We were both locked inside. We were going to find out if we could survive Goodwell’s lesson.