CHAPTER 17
GRAY EYES AMONG THE WOLVES
A prison guard faced the barred wall of my cage, then shouted: "Move your ass new guy!". I stared into his eyes, hoping to appear threatening. "Think you look cool, brat? I won't tell again, half a wank, move your ass!".
I obeyed. I had not been called for an interrogation, a beating or a rugby match against a New Zealand team. Nothing so terrible and violent. It was just lunchtime.
Every opportunity was an excuse to verbally attack each other. I realized that after all it was just role-play. His harsh actions and mine served to mask our mutual fear. Fear that was instead genuine, of that place and those who were locked up there, guard or inmate.
If after only two minutes in prison already a maniac had tried to rape me, I dared not imagine what awaited me on my first day. I did not want to leave my caged safe space but it really seemed that skipping meals was not allowed.
The cells were almost all empty; I was perhaps the last in the procession of diners. Wrong assumption, because as soon as I stepped out into the hallway, I saw another one of those damned cops kick a prisoner out. He threatened him again and the boy obeyed walking not far from me until he joined.
He was young and short in stature, medium-length, wavy black hair, with a bizarre look perhaps from the drugs. After a few steps escorted by the two guards he addressed me in a viscous tone. "You're the new guy aren't you? You ripped that bastard Soapy's dick off! You're already famous".
"Soapy?".
"The guy you undicked earlier man. Yo! You made me win fifty credits".
"Really", I said, cutting it short. Betting on something like that. I was in the middle of as much rot as there was in the world.
"Where are you from? You're not a sailor, are you? Your hair is too long no... are you a pilot maybe? Not even... assault infantry? Of course! A killer!".
"You're a pain in the ass, shut up and leave me alone", I shushed him. Seriously, what about me attracted people like that?
"Man, look it's important to get along with the right people here! It’s difficult if not impossible to fend for yourself in this corner of hell".
"And you would be the right people?", I asked skeptically. He looked like a pathetic pedantic brat isolated for too long alone on a desert island.
"Sure! Do you want cigarettes? Smoke? Porn? A blade maybe? All you have to do is ask!"
"I don't get high, I have someone special in my heart and... I also quit smoking", I replied incredulously. "If I castrated that balky maybe I'm already armed enough, don't you think?".
"You’re cool man, really cool! But you lack someone to watch your back".
"I’d like to have no one behind me in here after last night".
He laughed in a silly way, embarrassing me. The guards were far enough away that they did not hear our conversation and as soon as we entered the cafeteria they disappeared, leaving us in the care of their colleagues by closing the doors behind us.
"There must be something you want! Everybody wants something!", he said. ù
"I'll think about it", I replied vaguely.
There was a great commotion. The room was full of men in orange outfits shouting, talking, insulting each other in front of tin trays covered with something that must have been food. It was a rectangular and bright room, with a high and very large ceiling.
On my right there were windows covered with a net while on the left there was the food distribution. A walkway filled with armed guards about five meters high embraced the room.
"Is the cook touchy-feely?", I joked as I observed the weapons of war in the hands of the guards.
"I see you lost, man. Follow me and I'll show you how it works", he said as he rocketed off toward the cafeteria. I followed him reluctantly but my nose told me it was the wise thing to do. I was amazed that he did not take the shortest route by going through the tables. He followed the wall bypassing the entire cafeteria.
"One should not pass between tables, it’s dangerous", he explained. He had perhaps just saved my life. We arrived at the silent line, always guarded from above by the attendants. One step at a time came the time to first take the tray, then the strictly plastic cutlery (no knives) and then to have some sort of yellowish mash that vaguely resembled rice thrown over it.
"Follow me friend I'll take you among the people who matter", he proposed, heading toward the north side of the room.
"No thanks", I declined. "I'll eat alone. Thank you and goodbye", I took the opposite direction to his by pointing to an empty corner of a table. I heard no reply from him and felt relieved. I walked quietly toward my future seat, dodging the various inmates who passed me by, some waiting in line and others already with trays in their hands.
No one was paying attention to me. I was nervous, scared, and walking, hoping at least to hide it well. The air smelled of smoke and dirt. Maybe they didn't wash often in there. Suddenly the tray departed from the hands poured the high, as if a thruster had ignited at the bottom. It took off, performed an elegant spin in the air and obviously fell on the side with the food on the ground.
"Oops", chuckled a huge bald ape who had just passed by me going the other way. He did not deign to give me the slightest attention and continued on his way.
"Hey, you little shit!", I called him aggressively. As usual I was getting into trouble.
He stopped suddenly, and as if by magic a religious silence descended in the hall.
Everyone stopped as if petrified and took to staring at that clumsy imitation of a human being. He was really ugly even from the back; he had ripped off the sleeves of his overalls and left fat and hairy arms on display. His face was a show on its own.
"Are you talking to me pretty boy?", he said, smiling goofily.
"By the Gods how an ape like you was enlisted for Humanity?", I asked, observing him scornfully. "I suppose they sent you to the frontline to scare the enemy!".
"It must be your first day... I'm hungry so I won't kill you now", he replied quietly and resumed walking with his back to me. "See you later pretty boy".
I should have let it go and thanked my lucky stars. I was not so smart. "Stop while I'm talking to you, you bag of shit!", I challenged him. The idea was to steal his tray after beating the shit out of him. A simple plan in its stupidity.
Around us a total vacuum was created. The silence was broken for a few moments by soft whispering. The guards on the walkways looked on curiously and amused. Perhaps there was some other lurid bet going on.
"A little training before eating is always good", he said as he slowly placed the tray on a table.
"Even after, in your case, would be healthy," I resumed, reiterating. Many people's eyes widened, but the guy kept his composure.
"Oh kid, I've been wanting to get a new boyfriend for a long time", he said menacingly, licking his fingers. "Come on let's play together", he continued and took a heavy but swift move toward me.
I reached him in three strides, took a leap and with a kick loaded with all the energy accumulated in the run-up I hit him precisely at the mouth of the stomach with my heel. A man may weigh 150 kilograms and be ugly and hairy, but a kick to that spot is almost as equal as the law. I landed softly as he cowered like a crab entering its shell, throwing his arms around his neck and grunting in pain. I reached to his left side, grabbed him by the lardy neck with one hand, and with all the strength I had I moved him until he was biting the shredded wood of the counter where the line was being made. He literally bit into it and I heard the man's teeth break. He lost consciousness after the impact and I let him crumple to the floor. Silence remained a constant in the room, however, sharing exclusivity with a myriad of shocked stares. Some were serious, others smug. Then something unexpected happened.
One after another, the inmates sitting at the tables began to clap their hands and feet in rhythm. Those standing also began to tap their feet with a precise cadence. A slow, eerie tapping as regular as the ticking of a clock, though absolutely louder. The guards were now more agitated and some ran away from the walkway.
The space around me widened but the people around took to gathering as if to witness something. This did not bode well. I took to looking around and spinning around myself in search of some clue. I had ended up in a strange and primitive world that now even seemed to have complex rules. Instinct made me turn on my heels.
A dirty guy had come out of the crowd and was about to attack me from behind with a knife or something similar. It was useless, I only had to lift and stiffen my leg without moving from where I was. He went on it with his face, fell to the ground on his back and remained there writhing.
Another one emerged from the same direction however unarmed. Again using my right leg I kicked him in the face. He did not fall, so with the same limb with which I had hit him I wrapped him up, wedging his head under my knee. Thus trapped I dragged him close to the wooden counter and slammed him violently into it. He also fell down stunned. I walked back to the center hoping that the strange ritual would end, spreading my arms wide as if to say: "Anyone else?".
People kept beating and having fun. It was the turn of two guys who caught me one from the front and one from behind. The one in front took a kick in the chest and fell violently from his back, ending up being a threat. The one behind cashed in a similar blow perpetrated by the same leg on rebound after the impact with the first opponent. It wasn't even enough to make him fall, so he came charging back and managed to catch me. He did not last long: with a couple of punches, he went to the ground rather quickly.
Three more opponents arrived, two of them armed with something undefined. I was getting tired of that story. They walked around me waiting to attack, and I never lost sight of the one who occasionally stood behind me.
Suddenly a whistle was heard blowing and the rhythmic thumping gradually ceased as the three guys after consulting each other with their eyes disappeared one by one into the heap. The crowd, however, did not dissolve. I had a feeling I’d just been set up.
The guards arrived in single file, creating a small gap around them. Once they got to the circle, instead of dissolving it, they were all around it. Then, I noticed something really weird: they pulled out of their dark sheath an iron stick with the rubber handle and laid the handle on the side, stretched it parallel to the ground in the direction of the nearby colleague, forming a kind of human wall all around the circumference. But even more bizarrely, the inmates behind them seemed to be morbidly afraid of the sticks by avoiding even touching them, as if the iron part was coated with lethal microbes.
It was silent again and I began to feel really in trouble. Maybe I should have gone to meet the people who matter but as always, I had chosen to do the wrong thing. In front of me one of the guards suddenly lifted the bar and let a colleague pass who took to the circle area not far from me.
He looked at me menacingly as he unsheathed his stick, smiled wickedly, and then contracted his face as he charged and raised his hand to deliver the first thrashing. It was embarrassing how easy it was.
As soon as he lowered his arm, I nipped the stick blow in the bud with my forearm by slamming it into his wrist, then grabbed by turning my hand around his arm and disarmed him with a swift gesture, seizing the bar. Finally, I gave him some of his own medicine on his teeth and he fell to the ground. All was still for a moment: I had just knocked out a guard.
I was in trouble up to the tip of my hair. Now I had become a full-fledged thug. As soon as I realized the misdeed, it was already too late. Everyone, including me, was waiting for something undefined. The same guard from before raised the bar in the same manner and let another colleague, dressed the same way, pass. Round two was coming.
"Good, good", he said, looking at his friend crawling on the ground. "Not bad kid. You survived the circle until we arrived. Now get ready".
"For what?", I asked. It was a silly question.
He drew his stick from its sheath, then exerting a strange motion on the handle, similar to wringing out a damp cloth, he rotated one part of it, the lower part. Then a strange buzzing sound was heard coming from the metal part, and I instinctively moved half a step away.
"I don't look for trouble. Let's end this, okay?".
He seemed not to listen to me at all. He landed a blow and I parried him without any trouble with my stolen rod. We then began to fight, and he proved to be an excellent swordsman, even though we did not use swords. As luck would have it, I never dared to parry a blow except with the bar. Otherwise, I would certainly have died that day.
After a few slashes, finally one of my blows reached him in the neck. However, I did not dare to rage and again proposed to stop there. He stopped and chuckled.
"Not bad. Really not bad", he congratulated himself. He repeated the gesture from before and his bar for a moment made the same humming sound. Then he re-sheathed it. I held out mine to the man as a sign of peace, but he did not take it. "Do you know what you're holding?" he asked.
"Some kind of truncheon?".
"Roughly. It's a peacekeeper. Do you know what it is?".
"No".
"It is an electrified baton. If activated you subject the special steel bar to tension. It is also a lethal weapon", he said. "Do you know who is the guy you kicked first? The leader of one of the many ragtag gangs that stink up this place. Keep it. You'll need it when they come looking for you".
It smelled like a trap. I smiled and handed the peacekeeper back to the cop.
"Thanks", I replied, "but if they come looking for me, there will be the authorities to protect me".
"You honor us. You are not a recruit. You are a kid but well trained. You are a cadet, aren't you?", he praised, grabbing his weapon. He tapped his colleague on the ground with it and he stood up, repossessing his work tool. The man re-crossed the human barrier of guards and lost himself in the crowd as the other turned his back on me.
"I am", I confirmed guardedly.
"Yeah. It was you who castrated that inmate last night, right?".
"An accident, he did it all by himself", I lied. Of course he knew, it was all a farce.
Those present whispered something I could not understand, and the guard laughed, thinking something he kept to himself. "You have the makings of a leader if you start off with a bang like this. Or are you just a flash in the pan?".
"Punishment is a waste of time for me", I cut it short. "I have things to do out of here. I don't want any more troubles, I just want to get out and do my job. I'm a loyal officer of Humanity and that will never change".
"Loyal", he repeated sarcastically. "Loyalty in here doesn't matter. Remember that".
It was a flash. He turned and dealt a blow near my ear. I fell shocked in pain and stunned. I did not see the next scene but I knew that the guards withdrew without rage and dragged some of the fallen I don't know where, perhaps to the infirmary. The buzz resumed and the usual pedantic homunculus approached me.
"I told you man, you're cool! You are so cool!". He grabbed me by the arm and helped me up. "Take it," he said, handing me the fat man's tray I had laid out. "You won, it's yours! C’mon. Now follow me".
He led me to a table and I sat down there without even looking at who was with me. I put down my tray and shaken my head to wake up from the state of total drunkenness into which the bolt had thrown me. I finally looked up from the greasy table and took to observing the diners.
Just in front of me stood a human mountain, a white man with short brown hair and piercing eyes. To dress him they may have had to sew two uniforms together. To his right was another pale guy with dyed purple hair and a bag of earrings in his left ear. Next to me, on the other hand, was a skinny old man with a big scar on his cheek, a long gray goatee, and a bald head. After him always on my side of the table was the clingy, pedantic fellow and opposite him a half-breed with dark skin and African features. He had one hand twice as big as the other and the rest of his arm seemed disproportionate as well. He was athletic and dry and had cuts under his cheekbones. A little further on were a couple of guys quite on the ordinary, one with curly light brown hair with a pair of round glasses and another guy in front of him clean-shaven with two earrings, one in each ear and a large tattoo on his neck.
"So, you are the new guy", the old man said to me. I hesitated for a moment before responding.
"Yeah", I replied. "I am Lieu… cadet Lester".
"Recently demoted I guess," replied the mountain.
"Fresh from degradation, yeah", I confirmed.
"Let me guess, you got in trouble because you beat up an instructor", said round glasses.
"I would have liked to", I smiled. "But no".
"Nah, he stretched out his hands on the general's daughter!", attempted purple hair. "You are out of the way", I said timidly and tried to eat the thing we had been fed. I ate without hardly even tasting it.
"Usually new people are pickier", the old man noted. I smiled.
"I've been lost on a desert island for months, and believe me, I've eaten worse things", I explained. "Or maybe not?" I recanted a second later.
"Make the introductions come on", said the annoying guy.
"I was Major Brommel, life sentence for murder", the old man introduced himself.
"Private O'Brien, five years for sexual harassment", said the human mountain. "Never happened, by the way" he pointed out.
"Cadet Lieutenant Minneapolis Wiseman, three months for cowardice", purple hair broke in.
Now it was the one with the glasses who spoke, "Lieutenant Jay Douglas, ten years for concussion".
Then the one with the big hand showed up. "My name is Armando Big Hand Morales, sailor, one year for doping".
"Call me Mouse, jailed until I tell where I hid the two hundred million credits I emptied from the army coffers", said the pedant. He must have been a hacker and a tough one at that.
"Sergeant Major Frounhofer, 20 years for murder", said the last man in my row sadly. My turn had come.
"Seattle cadet Lester, six months for doing the right thing the wrong way".
"Here we are all honest about what we are in for. Those who don't do it risk a lot, and I'll tell you why. You risk being taken for a rapist or a pedophile. And if that happens, you end up like you did to Soapy", Jay explained.
"Okay. Let's say instead of following orders I protected two civilians who were being persecuted by some guys. I went over and during some confrontations I... caused some... collateral damage... anyway other than that I didn't follow protocol, so six months", I explained.
"Were there no extenuating circumstances? Your dean went hard on it. Don't you have Burris in Seattle?", asked Wiseman.
"Yes, but the Board of Deans sent me here", I explained.
"What the fuck?", the old man marveled. "The full board!? You got into something big kid".
"Maybe”, I nodded. “Please: don’t ask”.
Suddenly everyone's attention was caught by a man behind me. He carelessly took the chair from a fellow by slipping it off him while he was sitting causing him to fall to the floor, dragged it noisily to the head of the table, and then sat down next to me. He was a man with Afro-American features, well-built in both face and build. He had two dark eyes and very short bleached-blond hair. He stared at me curiously as he placed the tray on the table.
"Who are you?", he asked in an authoritative voice.
"This is the new one. His name is Lester", the pedant announced.
"So, you're Balls Shredder Lester, the one who veined poor Soapbox".
That nickname didn't sound very catchy to me. "Just call me Lester".
"Why?", he asked sarcastically. "It sounds so good Ball Shredder. So, Ball Shredder, how did you end up here?".
"More or less for insubordination", I replied succinctly. He was provoking me, aware that I could not afford to argue again. "Who the hell are you?".
"I am Lieutenant Briac Lemaire kid, five years for falsifying a report after a not quite regular mission".
"Seems like you also knew too much", I said.
"Not really. The mission was unofficial. Someone found out that the report was false, and to cover up the operation I was blamed for perjury. I am here of my own free will. Once I'm out, everything will be as before. At least, I hope. And what about you? You’re a cadet like old Arthur here. Did you shit yourself too and not follow an order?", he asked presumptuously. The purple-haired boy dared not reply even though he could tell he was irritated by what the man said. Evidently everyone feared him. I had to be careful.
"It's not my habit to back out. If I am here, it is for the opposite reason. Besides, many cadets become cadets when they are not able to make decisions. Not everyone is cut out to be a soldier", I defended him.
"This is true", agreed Briac pleased with the answer.
"What exactly are you in for, Wiseman?", I asked at that point in curiosity.
"I...", he tried to answer. He took courage by breathing deeply. "A month ago, you know, that the Flying Fortress appeared. We were among the first to be mobilized and headed for the likely destination of the Fortress. We had to defend a nuclear power plant outside Aleppo. At that point it came as planned". He was talking about Charon and his base. He lowered his gaze; evidently something terrible had happened. "We were perched not far from the plant and entrenched. Then from the hill in front of us they began to come. First there was a flash and it was as if something had bitten off a piece of Earth. Our artillery, our tanks, all vanished with a bang. Not destroyed, vanished! Poof! Just a few pieces here and there! And then those strange dwarves-they were terrible. They were running at us firing wildly without caring about the death of their comrades. Then about thirty meters from the trench, even though they kept dying by the hundreds, they threw their rifles to the ground and unsheathed knives. There seemed to be no end to them. They were throwing themselves into the trenches and killing. We were ordered to resist but...".
"I heard that the terrorists using that Fortress are not at all subsidized by the Domains in revolt", said round glasses.
"Bullshit, it's always those fucking settlers who are looking for trouble. I've been killing settlers for all my career!", exclaimed Frounhofer. "They're worse than rats, you kill one insurgent and two pop up behind".
"They are not the settlers", I said. Everyone looked at me intrigued by my so confident statement. "They are other terrorists, with other purposes".
"What do you know about them?", the old man asked. "Did you met them?".
"Probably before all of you", I replied.
"For me, they’re settlers," Frounhofer insisted.
"Do you know who it was that knocked you out kid?", asked Jay referring to the guard. I answered no. "That's Diaz and he's a no-brainer. He's the leader of the guards and he's a no-brainer. He let you go but don't ever step on his toes again. Rather let a guard hit you, I don't think you will be so lucky yet".
"He is a cunning one," the old man continued, "and always looking for excuses. You have to be careful".
"He's just doing his job, I understand he wants to be feared by the inmates", I naively justified him. The others looked at me puzzled.
A siren began to emit a long, pained sound. I looked around and noticed that the guards seemed suddenly taken to observing us inmates below them. Briac noticed my surprised expression.
"End of recess", he wryly explained. "Everyone back to class children".
"What do you do around here for fun?", I asked worried about the idea of spending long days within four tiny walls doing nothing.
"Behave yourself and maybe someone will offer you as an assistant in the kitchens or the library. Time goes by and you earn some credit", Big Hand explained. "Keep your head down and avoid the gray areas and you'll be fine".
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