Star Runners: Revelation Protocol

Chapter 12

12

“We have a problem.”

Cyclops strolled before the prisoners who knelt in three lines of ten. He clasped his hands tight behind his back. His muscular chest swelled as he spoke. Josh swallowed. He had heard this tone before. Back on the asteroid, Cyclops would start a speech like this and end it by forcing prisoners out of the airlock.

“Someone has opened a most important box,” Cyclops said, nodding at two of his men. “This is disturbing.”

The two guards dressed in dirty black rags moved forward in the morning light. They each held a long wooden stake about as tall as a man. Marching in front of the prisoners, they split and went to opposite sides. When they reached the edge of the group, the two men in unison slammed the stakes into the ground. They bowed and backed away.

“I am going to give the violator a chance for redemption,” Cyclops said. “Come forward now, and there will be less punishment. Reveal yourself now, and we won’t have to tell Rodon about this when he returns.”

Josh knew Waylon knelt on the opposite side of the group. He didn’t risk a glance to his comrade. Delmar remained at Josh’s side, his shoulders tense and back rigid.

“No one to volunteer their sins?” Cyclops made a clicking sound with his tongue and shook his head in melodramatic fashion. “This is not good.”

A guard forced Delmar to his feet and pulled him forward. A green, rope beam erupted from the pinnacle of both stakes. Using thick gloves like something Josh had seen in a restaurant kitchen, the guards took the pulsating lasers and wrapped them around Delmar’s wrists. The lasers burned into his flesh, filing the air with the smell of frying meat.

“This man was on duty last night,” Cyclops said. “His job was to empty the cargo ship. One of the boxes had been forced open. This man is a traitor and deserves a traitor’s punishment. Since no one has come forward to admit their guilt, this old man will die.”

Delmar’s face formed into stone. He looked at Josh, allowed a slight smile.

The lasers yanked Delmar’s arms, lifting him into the air. His feet pulled off the ground until his toes just touched the dirt. A breeze moved across the plains. Then, the air stood still.

Cyclops pulled a thick bullwhip from a satchel and rolled it in his hands. He stood behind Delmar and lifted the bullwhip high about his head.

“Stop!” Josh yelled.

He stood. The other prisoners stared at him. Some gasped, while others gazed in silence.

Cyclops grinned, revealing his battered and blackened teeth. “Good, a brave soul. I knew this man did not work alone. It is disappointing, pigs. After all we have done for you, taking you to this beautiful planet and allowing you the chance to work outside. And you repay us with this vile treachery. Cowards.”

Two pirates lunged forward and marched Josh to the front. When they forced him to the ground, Delmar shook his head.

“This man will still die,” Cyclops announced. “He is old and not valuable to our efforts.”

Josh glared at Cyclops. “You said I would share his punishment and he wouldn’t have to die.”

“I said no such thing. I said he would be punished alone. Now, you have decided to take your punishment and join him. You might wish you were dead, but I have no plans to kill you.” He gestured to the fields. “For now, you still have value.”

Josh swallowed, staring at Delmar. Then he closed his eyes.

Cyclops turned to address the other prisoners.

“Gentlemen, this is what happens when you use your brain and disobey us,” he said. He swung the whip into Delmar’s back. It cracked into the old man’s weathered skin with each sentence.

“We are your lords!”

Crack.

“You are nothing!”

Crack.

“You work for us!”

Crack.

Delmar cried out.

“This is your life!”

Crack.

Josh’s friend wailed as blood fell into the powdery ground.

“This is all you will ever know!”

Crack.

He stopped listening. He only heard the crack of the whip punctuating each sentence. Grinding his teeth, he tried to take his mind into another place.

The whip would turn on him next.

Flames ignited the flesh on his back long into the night. The guards had dumped Josh on his face into the dirt. His wounds burned as if he had never felt pain before. When he thought his skin had grown numb, a breeze would move across his back, like rubbing a cheese grater across a third degree burn. The guards must have left them for dead. During the whipping, he passed out several times only to have Cyclops rip him back to consciousness. Sweat mixed with the blood and sand coating his body.

As best as he could comprehend, the guards had forced the other prisoners into the field following what Cyclops called “the show.” The pirates left Josh where the prisoners had slept. The breeze increased in intensity, smacking into his ripped skin like a razor. He wondered if anything remained on his exposed back but tissue and bone.

He cried. He sobbed. Nothing mattered. Please, Lord, he thought, let me die.

He tried to swallow, but his throat filled with sand. He coughed, the movement hurting his back. Pain throbbed, burning through his veins.

The stench of human waste and rotting garbage drifted from the nearby trash pit and surrounded him like a fog. He usually ignored it, but thought of Delmar. Through the labor on the asteroid to this forsaken planet, his friend had always been there for him. Even though Josh had passed out during his whipping, he knew the guards would have dumped his friend in the pit.

Insects buzzed around his face, squirming and fluttering into his nose. As he struggled to focus, he knew he would die. His vision darkened. When he opened his eyes, the sun had nearly finished its trek across the sky.

He faded in and out of consciousness. He fought the weight of his head but finally surrendered, allowing his face remain in the sand.

He blinked and looked up, wondering how much time had passed. Stars covered the black sky. A fire popped somewhere, sending flickering orange embers into the blackness. He closed his eyes.

Moments or hours later, he raised his head to look around, but he had no strength left. He fell back onto the dirt again. He drifted through time and space, transitioning from Earth to Tarton’s Junction and back again. The space station wavered before him. His Trident glimmered under the station’s florescent lights. Kadyn stood before him, her eyes peering over large sunglasses.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have…I should have told you.”

She disappeared. Cyclops’s whips cracked. He jolted at the sound. Was he here? Had he come to punish him again?

Darkness.

The morning sun beat down on him, burning away sleep.

“Josh?”

He turned. Waylon knelt beside him.

“Where is Delmar?” Josh asked, although he knew the answer.

Waylon looked past his sand-caked beard to the ground. “They took him.”

He nodded, closing his eyes. He thought of the crate in the cargo container holding the curvature power relay. Delmar hadn’t wanted to go in, but he did anyway.

“I’m sorry.” Josh convulsed. “He was right. We shouldn’t have gone.”

Cool air scraped his back. He winced and clenched his teeth.

Night.

He must have passed out again. Waylon slept near him in the dirt. Prisoners snored around him.

He sat up, the skin on his back splitting. He cried out, his throat sore as if it had been scorched by a blow torch.

Burying his face in his hands, Josh sat in silence. What had happened?

He opened his eyes again and tried to swallow. A large, sandpaper-covered softball clogged his throat. The ditch was filled with new garbage and rotten food, sending the smell drifting over the lines of prisoners. Waylon, his rags ripped on his back and the bloodstains turned a blackish brown, remained next to him. Josh touched his shoulder, but his friend didn’t move.

“Waylon?”

He nudged his shoulder, but the man didn’t move. Better to let him sleep, he thought.

Thinking about Delmar and his role in the kind man’s death, Josh wept, the sobbing only intensifying his wounds.

Footsteps stumbled through the dirt a short distance from their camp. Josh fell on his side and remained still. He squinted, watching as a guard urinated at the edge of the ditch. The pirate gazed into the sky, took a long drink from a bottle and tossed it in with the rest of the garbage.

By daylight, the hunger pains faded and the dryness in his throat had subsided. He leaned back, but his stomach turned and he vomited. His throat burned. Tears, snot, and sweat covered his face. His dry lips cracked.

“So you’re not dead,” Waylon grumbled, sitting forward.

“Wish I was,” Josh said in a raspy voice.

Coping with the pain flaring on his back, he turned around to stare at the landing pad. The fighters and the tug remained near the barn. Pirate guards sat around the crates listening as Cyclops spoke. They turned and walked in their direction to begin the day.

His cracked lips parted.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said.

“What, work?” Waylon asked.

“Yes.”

He nodded. “I’ll cover for you. We’ll get through this.”

Hours blurred into days.

The guards rushed them, driving them to finish planting the field, never explaining the need for the rush. Josh struggled to keep up, but Waylon did twice the work to cover for him. Impressed, Cyclops provided Josh with medicine. At first, Josh wondered if the pills would end up being poison. But then, he figured the man would have killed him by now if he wanted him dead. Cyclops drove the workers hard, filled with a new ferocity. Something pushed him, and Josh figured it had to be Rodon. A deadline must be approaching, and the prisoners had to finish this field for some reason.

Captives received punishment for not performing up to the standards of the Tyral Pirates. Guards beat several workers each day, whipped others. They dumped three dead workers into the ditch at the beginning of the third day since Delmar’s death. Two had wounds from Cyclops’ bullwhip and the other man, one from Waylon’s group, had no visible wounds. Josh assumed he had been worked to death.

On the third night, Josh killed a desert rat with his bare hands, breaking its neck when it tried to gnaw on his toe. In his survival training, the Lobera instructors in California had gone over the details of eating a fresh animal and living off the land. Of course, he had assumed they meant deer and not this tiny rodent. Still, meat was meat.

Gathering together a shovel from the edge of the field and some grass, he built a small fire and cooked the animal for him and Waylon to share. While small, the rat provided them with the first fresh meat they’d eaten in months.

“Better than milky green snot,” Waylon said with a smile, his teeth crunching bones.

“Yes.” Josh surveyed the landing pad and the barn. “Something’s up.”

“Up?”

“At the landing pad.”

Pirates swarmed over the tug, attaching the container. Two men working on the ship’s engine closed a metal plate. The thrusters fired and the guards cheered. The container carrying the curvature power relay lifted into the air behind the tug. Three pirate fighters flanked the tug as they powered for deep atmo, the boom signifying they’d surpassed the sound barrier.

Josh sighed as he watched the vessels twinkle and disappear.

The power relay Delmar died for had escaped. Whatever planet Rodon and the Tyral Pirates planned to attack would have to defend itself.

He shook away the thought. Focus on getting yourself out of here.

By the fourth day, the searing pain from his wounds had dulled, although he knew it would never totally go away. Despite the situation, he felt stronger today. Whatever medicine Cyclops had provided must have prevented an infection.

Earlier in the day, his shovel hit something hard. When more guards worked the fields, he would have yanked out whatever caused the disruption and tossed it away. However, he was not under the same amount of surveillance.

He knelt down, finding a hardened root about two feet long and several inches thick. Breaking off a piece with his shovel, he stuffed the root into his worn clothing.

As they finished their work, he studied the field. They would soon be done plowing and planting. With no additional fields in sight, Josh wondered what the Tyral Pirates would do when they finished.

Turning back to the landing pad, he saw only three pirate fighters remained. Also, there were no cargo containers. Wherever Rodon gathered his forces, he must have all the supplies he needed.

He watched Cyclops meeting with the guards near the fighters. After several minutes of talking over the gusting wind, the pirates broke off and loaded equipment into the fighters. Dread filled Josh’s chest.

They were leaving.

No more cargo containers and no more fields to work meant the pirates would leave the prisoners on the planet. They would die in the fields. Either the pirates would fly overhead and execute them from the air, or Cyclops and his men would leave them to rot. The fields would be there when the pirates returned to find a harvest waiting for fresh prisoners to do the picking.

Josh sat in the dirt. Rodon had probably done it this way for months, maybe years.

He looked at the three fighters. One way or the other, he would die here if the pirates fled.

He had to make a move tonight.

After settling into the prisoners’ sleeping area, Josh watched the guards. Four relaxed near the fire. Their boxes had been loaded into the fighters’ cargo bays.

Most prisoners collapsed where they stopped, too exhausted to walk any further. Their resting bodies filled in the land between the field and the landing pad. The guards didn’t force all captives to their sleeping area this night.

Josh’s muscles ached, his back flaring up as the wind brushed against it like it ripped off a crusty scab. He winced.

Night fell across the plains.

One of the pirate fighters took off just after sunset, blasting the silence and disappearing into the distance. Josh glanced back to the landing pad and didn’t see Cyclops. He must have left.

Without their commander around, the guards passed around a bottle, all four keeping their guns within close reach. Josh figured they must be waiting to leave in the morning for some reason. Studying the scene and noticing the lack of transport, he realized the guards would either kill the prisoners from the air or leave them to starve. This meant Rodon planned to move, and he planned to do it soon.

Josh tied a rag around his forehead and looked out across the space between the camp’s dump and their landing pad.

Time to go.

Waylon had gone to sleep. Without disturbing him, Josh moved back to the field to find a rock. He searched in the darkness and found a small stone. Using his fingernails and the stone, he worked on sharpening the root as fast as he could manage. He pulled back strips of the root until it came to a point. Pushing it against his palm, he decided it was as sharp as he could make it. He should have paid more attention in his survival training and Boy Scouts.

He kept low to the ground, trying to avoid the flickering firelight playing across the dead grass. Two guards leaned far back in their metal chairs, their mouths hanging open. Their breath formed clouds of mist like ghostly halos in the crisp night air. The remaining guards gazed into the fire, their eyes nearly closed. One guard sat on a stump, his head leaning towards the fire, an empty bottle against his boot. The other pirate leaned on his palms and stared into the sky.

Wind brushed the taller grasses. Prisoners groaned and snored, too tired to contemplate escape, too sick to fight off weariness.

Josh moved from row to row, making his way back to Waylon. The men smelled almost as bad as the filth of the garbage pit. Flies buzzed around them, some crawling into festering wounds while others hovered over excrement from men too tired to move to the latrine.

In the darkness, he nearly gave up finding Waylon until he saw his large frame at the edge of the camp. Waylon stared into the darkness, his elbows resting on his knees as Josh slipped up behind him.

“What do you want?” Waylon asked without turning, his voice weak.

“I want to leave,” he said. “And now is the time.”

Waylon turned. “Where did you go?”

“Quiet now.”

“You were gone. I thought you were dead, friend.”

Josh studied his surroundings. “Where is the rest of your crew?”

Waylon gazed into the darkness. “Acks’ll probably not make the night.”

He made a silent count. “You’re all that’s left? How?”

“We’ve been out here too long living off too little and asked to do too much. It was only a matter of time.”

Josh remembered what he had seen earlier on the landing pad. “We don’t have time for this. The pirates are leaving. My guess is they’ll be gone by morning and either kill us, or leave us here.”

“Either way, I’d thank them. I’ve had enough of this life.”

Josh thought of the Barracudas. Delmar had acted somewhat impressed with their credentials, and he wondered if the reputation of the smuggling group had merit.

“There are others, right?” Josh asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Others in your group, you know, back from where you came from. The Barracudas?”

Waylon thought for a long moment. Perhaps he considered if he could trust Josh, or maybe he wondered if acknowledging the question would violate a sacred trust among smugglers. Whatever the reason, Waylon’s face softened.

“Yes, there are others,” he said, his tone neutral. “We have a base of operations in Quadrant Eight. They’re my family.”

Josh leaned toward him. “Then escape with me. Take me to your people and we can avenge our time here. Do it for your men. Do it for Delmar. Do it for yourself. When we first met, I told you I would be able to fly us out of here. Well, now it’s just us. Help me.”

He pointed to the landing pad. “I think Cyclops left earlier on a fighter. Those two fighters are our only route off this planet. It’s now or never.”

Waylon sighed. After a moment, he balled his fists and his mouth hardened. “What’s the worst that could happen? We’re gonna die here anyway. What’s your plan?”

Josh froze. “I’m not sure, yet. I think there are only four guards left.”

He looked at the light in the distant sky, the black night beginning to transition to dawn.

“Whatever we do,” Josh said, “we have to move fast.”