Prison Planet (THE RIM CONFEDERACY Book 3) (6 page)

Glaring, the admiral gestured at the monitor screen in front of them.

“What in hell has changed here, Lieutenant? Who the hell made this kind of update not update itself automatically?” he said as he shook his head.

Kelsey shrugged and held his hands wide apart as he too shook his head, and with the large pointed ears on the side of his head, it made a flopping sound that the admiral knew only too well.

“Sir, updates from the RIM systems themselves are the responsible party here. Updates to the basic OS are always automatic as they’re tested to work on any planetary system—and with the Space Elevator SaaS we use, it is done without any notice to us or by us. Remember, Sir, our only job is to notice the flashing update icon and then simply click it to update our own software. Works, Sir, it works every time,” he finished off and reached down to the screen. By clicking that flashing icon, the monitor flickered and then became rock solid once more.

The admiral looked at his screen, again did some more “boy math” on a couple of columns, and then grinned up at his aide.

“Kelsey, that did it! Muchly appreciated there, Lieutenant, and yes, if I could give you a medal for that fix, I surely would.”

“Course,” he said as he held up a finger to point at the alien, “I would also like to be able to give the idiot who decided to not automatically update my screens a month down on Max Island—and not on the Royal side billet either.”

Kelsey nodded and swung his tail back and forth for a shake or two.

“Admiral, will there be anything else?” he said.

“Um ... yes. Send me the latest reports from the Max Island community officers and also if there’s anything to know about the—what’s his name, the Caliphate Royal?”

Kelsey nodded and his tail dropped back to the floor.

“Sir, yes, it’s Nusayr al-Rashid, the cousin to the Sharia al Dotsa himself, and he’s fitting in fine. As per your notices, we delayed his entry into the Royal enclave—but it has been looking more and more like he’s going to assimilate fairly easily onto Max Island. His permanent quarters are not yet assigned, but the warden did indicate that he’d again follow your needs once more, Sir,” Kelsey said and waited.

The admiral shook his head and watched as the tail of his aide started to lift off the floor as it straightened out.

“Kelsey, not at this time. Have the warden find him quarters to match his Royal blood, and yes, keep his cronies—his minions I’d guess would be better—near him too. Let’s see if we can’t get the warden to at least localize this group in one area. That’ll be all, Lieutenant,” he said as his aide then turned and left his office.

This Royal was going to be trouble,
he thought. He didn’t know how, but judging by the huge file that had accompanied this ex-leader of Olbia and his minions, he’d best dig into the files completely rather than just reading the summary on the first page. Something had happened on Olbia and the Caliph himself had arrested, charged, and made sure his cousin was found guilty of treason.
No bigger crime to a Royal,
the admiral knew that was for sure.

He pushed a button or two, and the monitor cleared as he keyed in his credentials, and the Max Island prison camera system came online. Moving via the mapped camera icons, he quickly found the area where the Royals were quartered and noted the suite of cells for this Royal was vacant, as they were all at work now. He performed a quick scan of the living area and found little personalization items like photos, art, holos, or any kind of book, tablet, or even a pad of paper.

Barren. Plain. Empty of everything ... nothing that said anything about the occupants.

#

Hope was ... well, a planet where one could hope that things would become better, it was commonly decided. Saddled with poor landmass, it for the most part was a water world with island sub-continents that held small populations of mostly fishing economies. The usual cities and towns that existed on other planets just didn’t exist on Hope partly because the islands were so small, but mostly because they were distant from each other.

Instead, small villages, each with their harbors and moorings, held sway over their small populations; Hope was a world of small independent groups of very individualized persons each with their own way of doing things. Each village tended to see things “their way,” and for them to try to understand another viewpoint was almost impossible. When it came to planetary concerns, few Hopians cared enough to even get involved. Those that did seemed to find little feedback from the rest of the population on any kind of world issues—trade, customs, healthcare—not even one seemed to matter to the general population.

Yet a few Hopians did think, or at least try to consider, what the best course of action for the planet was. They sat in the seat of the Hopian government in Trannis, located on the largest island of all stretching for almost 300 miles in the northern temperate hemisphere. Trannis was the largest city on the planet, held the seat of government, of course, the landing port for the whole planet, and one more thing. It held the Hopian prison right beside the port, and that was where the
Marwick
was headed. And it was prisons in general were the current topic of conversation on the bridge.

“Expound, Lieutenant, after all I believe you’re from Thrones, which as far as I know looks at crime and punishment like most of the rest of the RIM does. So I’d like to hear more of that premise,” Captain Tanner Scott said as he sipped his coffee.

“Sir, it’s really pretty simple. On almost all planets as I said, the rationale behind the use of prison time is the three R’s, Sir—retribution, rehabilitation, and recidivism. If we don’t penalize lawbreakers with a penalty, we get no retribution for that crime,” Lieutenant Bates over at the Helm station said.

“And, Sir, without a penalty, what’s to prevent more and more people thinking it’s easier to rob a bank than go out and earn a living. Further,” he said as he looked around the bridge for any nodding heads, “we have the duty to provide rehabilitation—the onus is on the whole penal system at Halberd to provide the means to show convicts how to learn from their mistakes and to make better choices, Sir. And if Halberd doesn’t do that, then recidivism occurs—the relapse of convicts back into their criminal ways.”

Tanner nodded, got up to go over to the coffee station on the bridge to get a refill, and stopped at the edge of the Helm station.

“Any idea what kind of numbers Halberd has with recidivism, Lieutenant?” he said.

“As it happens, yes, Sir. Rates appear to be over sixty-eight percent of convicts of Halberd were re-arrested for new crimes within three years, which as I understand is high. Sir,” he said and nodded to his captain.

As he poured the fresh hot coffee into his thermal plas-mug, Tanner nodded back and then looked at the lieutenant directly.

“Any idea what numbers, say, convicts from Thrones have for recidivism rates, Lieutenant?” he queried.

“Sir, um, no, Sir. No idea. I only know the Halberd numbers as I did some reading on Gallipedia when we were assigned there for the annual duty tour,” he said.

His reminder that the
Marwick
would be on Halberd for a full year reflected it was still a sore point among the crew. There was a series of mutters from some of the bridge crew at that reminder. The XO smacked his desktop over on the Tactical console, and they all fell silent.

Tanner ignored that and went on, figuring that any notice of their current mission would not be a good thing.

“About the same, give or take a few percentage points, Lieutenant. In fact, as humans and aliens alike have learned, the recidivism rate is always about two-thirds of the total convict population. Except for a few cases of smarter penal systems where they learned that providing free education works as a rehabilitation factor that works way above their weight class, Lieutenant. Few systems use that, but it lowers recidivism down to almost half the normal two-thirds percentage numbers.” Tanner knew his numbers, as he also had done some research as the posting on Halberd meant that he might as well know something about where he’d be living for the next year or so.

From the science desk, Lieutenant Paterson, chief science officer, cleared his throat.

“Ahem ... Sir,” he said. “I wonder if there might be a study or some kind of report on the difference tween human and alien worlds and their respective convicts—what I mean is, is recidivism a constant no matter what the race of the convict?” he asked, his head tilting to one side.

“Not as far as Gallipedia knows—but could be the start of a great new research project, Lieutenant—one perhaps you can look into ...” Tanner said, as he sat back down into the captain’s chair.

“Helm, ETA on Hope is?” he said, thinking he might need to slide down to his quarters to “freshen” up his coffee in a minute or two.

“Dropping out of FTL in about four minutes, Sir, so then it’s less than an hour to Trannis port, Sir.”

“Right, Helm. Ansible, contact the landing port station and let them know we’ll be there in that time frame.

Over at the Ansible station, Lieutenant Greelay nodded to his captain.

“Aye, Sir, wilco,” he said, and his hand slid up to cup his throat mic as he spoke to the Trannis contact down on the planet and then simply said, “Confirmed, Sir,” as he received the verification the
Marwick
was now expected.

“Right, XO, put together the normal away team for convict pickup, and let’s meet down on the boarding ramp at say 1600 hours,” he said and rose to leave the bridge.

As he left, the XO noted the time and made the necessary notices. Thinking for a moment, he also used his PDA to message Lieutenant Sander, the
Marwick
Adept officer on the off chance that he might be useful to the away team.

On Deck Twenty-nine in the captain’s quarters, Tanner sat on his bunk and stared out the huge viewport that lay to port and watched the lights that were trails across the window. Moments later, the trails stuttered and then faded as the stars near Hope suddenly came into focus as the
Marwick
dropped out of FTL, and he could see the huge yellow star just ahead. As the
Marwick
spun under thrusters to align the ship with the planet ahead, he rose to grab the black bottle of Scotch on his dresser. Slipping the coffee cup lid to one side, he poured in a healthy shot and then took a swig from the bottle too. More than enough time to worry about shaking the booze on Halberd had been put onto his plate by the admiral just a few weeks ago. ‘Til then ... no need, he thought and swigged once more.

After handling much of the bottle, he slightly swayed as he rose from the bed once more, noted the time, and slowly made his way down to Deck One and the landing ramps. No one can tell, he thought, . He took his spot at the lead end of the away team.

Bram’s here too, he realized and thought he spent far too little time with his Adept officer and made a note of trying to rectify that over the next year. Sounds of the thrusters and landing rockets sounded loudly in their ears as the
Marwick
came down vertically on her tail, blasting all around the ship’s landing spot.

Shortly thereafter, the away team went down the ramp and off the ship to be met by the local station commander and his team.

“Captain Scott, I believe,” the station commander said and came to attention as he saluted the
Marwick
away team.

“Not necessary, Commander, but yes, that’s me,” Tanner said as he snapped the same salute back to the station chief. No need to even be saluted, Tanner knew, but a military nicety for sure.

“Convict pickups, Commander, all ready to go, are they?” Tanner said, and later he remembered it was at this point that the pickup went south.

“Ah, well, Captain, that’s the problem—one I’m sure no one envisioned,” he said, and Tanner thought there was a hint of apology in his voice. A large hint.

A slight burp suddenly escaped Tanner’s lips, and he quickly cupped his hand around his lips.

“My apologies, Commander, as you were saying?” he said and stifled another burp that smelled as “Scotch-y” as the last one.

“Captain, it appears that while we do have the eight convicts ready for transport as per the manifest, one of them is—well, not here, Captain. Storms off the island chain in the southern hemisphere about 6,700 miles from here have prevented them from delivering same. So ... we have a problem. Not you, I realize, Captain, as you can simply take the seven we have on hand and go—but I do need to ask you if you’d consider helping us out by helping us pick up that last convict. I will, of course, be ‘singing your praises’ to the admiral if you can help, Captain, but I don’t know if that matters much,” he said, and again for no reason, he saluted.

Tanner saluted back and yet stayed silent. A few days here would surely put off the time on Halberd, and by agreeing to help, he’d help Hope’s government and at the same time have that couple of days of extra time to do what he liked best. Get a glow on and captain a starship. What could be better, he thought as he half-turned to his XO beside him.

“XO, we’d be okay on our timeline, correct? The RN Gunnar isn’t due to leave on any specific date, correct?” he said quietly. If anyone knew this kind of stuff, the XO did, Tanner realized and for a moment also realized that he owed much to the man who was his second in command. He made a note to thank him on a personal note later.

Craig nodded to his captain and then held up a finger as he double-checked on his PDA, ran a screen or two, and then nodded again.

“Aye, Captain, we do have some leeway in the ETA time line for the
Marwick
on Halberd. We could help here, Sir, if you were so inclined ... else it’s pick up today and back to FTL in an hour or so, Sir,” the XO answered but had a feeling he knew which way the captain was going to go.

“Aye then, Commander. We’d be glad to go and pick up this last convict over at—what’s the name of this city?” he said and motioned for the XO to take this down.

“Ah, Captain, cities don’t exist here on Hope. All we have is Trannis, and the rest are all small towns and villages mostly. Where you’ll be going is a village called Newton, on the island of Gravity in our southern hemisphere. A shuttle should make it there in less than an hour unless you go sub-orbital and take less than ten minutes, but if you don’t, you’ll see much, much more of the beauty of Hope.”