Prison Ship (3 page)

“How did you find me?” he cut her off. “No one but my lawyer knows I’m here. Did he tell you?”

“No, I accidentally discovered you on my own. From all the reports, I knew you had been incarcerated for—” She swallowed. “Why did you attempt to murder Admiral Ralph Jamison?”

Steiner sighed. All the news services had labeled him an insane officer, driven over the edge by the destruction of his ship. If only they knew the whole truth.

“Jamison slaughtered half our shipmates,” Steiner shouted. “Close friends of both yours and mine.”

“I’ve been told Captain McKillip ignored the counterorder.”

“That’s a lie. There was no counterorder.”

“What if he made a mistake?” Suzanne asked.

“No. I spoke to him right before the mission began. He didn’t make a mistake.”

“All right,” she said. “Tell me what he told you.”

“For the past year, McKillip had been collecting evidence linking Admiral Jamison to the pirates plaguing the border systems. Before we went into Sector 489, he warned me that Jamison had signed the orders, and there was a possibility it was a trap—in fact, he died trying to remove the communication array to preserve the logs.”

“Did he save the logs?”

“No, it was too late.”

“So, you have no proof?”

Steiner’s anger grew at her skepticism. “He told his wife to take his computer records to the War Council if he was killed.”

“Did she?”

“She was murdered by a burglar on the same day. The computer files were stolen.”

“So you think her murder was orchestrated by Jamison.” She gasped. “I can’t imagine how you must be feeling right now. You and McKillip had a very special relationship. You were like the son that he and Judith never had. But why would you waste your career in order to murder Admiral Jamison?”

“I just wanted a confession, but—”

“That temper of yours got the better of you,” she interrupted. “I told you it would land you in trouble eventually.”

Steiner hated it whenever she lectured him, especially since he no longer possessed the rank to stop her. “Why are you here anyway? How did you find me? My lawyer moves me around regularly and keeps my identity a secret.”

Her mouth compacted into a fine line. “I work for Ralph Jamison now.”

Steiner came to his feet, the shackles restraining the movement. “You what?”

“He’s my boss,” Suzanne replied, standing up as well.

“I knew you were ambitious, but to sell out for a promotion …”

“Just hold on there. You have no proof of your accusations.”

Steiner slammed his fist on the laminated surface. “He’s a murderer.”

The door slid open. One of the guards peered through. Suzanne glared at Steiner for a long heartbeat as if to remind him she controlled the proceedings. After he resettled himself in his chair, she motioned to the guard to close the door again.

Blood began to leak from the reopened scab on Steiner’s knuckles. “Does your master also know I’m here?” he managed in a civil tone.

“A memo on his desk said you were located here. After a glance through the list of convicts, I found a Jake Smith. I took a chance that Jake Smith was Jake Steiner.”

Steiner’s fury dissolved into fear. If Jamison knew he was there, his life was in great danger. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Why?”

“I called for a formal tribunal into your boss’s activities,” he said. “If he gets the chance, I’m sure he’ll try to silence me, too.”

“When is the trial?”

“Six months from now, unless he twists more arms and postpones it again. Do you have something to write on?”

After Suzanne produced a pad and pen from a pocket, Steiner recited his lawyer’s name and number.

“Tell him that I require an immediate transfer,” he said.

“You really think Ralph will try to kill you?” she asked.

“Assassinations are quite easy in here, that’s why I’m hiding under an alias. I want to live to testify.”

A gleam danced in her eyes. “Transfers take time, more time than you may have. I can get you out quicker.”

She was up to something. Steiner could feel it coming. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m the director of the P.A.V. Program—Penitentiary Assault Vessel. Convicts man a spacecraft to raid enemy installations in return for points toward their freedom. The ship is still docked in orbit. I can get you on board today.”

Steiner sighed. “So that’s why you came to see me. You’re not interested in my well-being. You just want to recruit me for your personal gain.”

“That’s not true. I care about what happens to you. You’re my former commander, my shipmate, my friend.”

Steiner shook his head. “Jamison could find me there just as easy.”

“But on the P.A.V., you’d be armed,” she replied.

“What? The convicts have weapons?”

“No. Just the captain.”

Steiner chuckled at the absurdity of her proposition. “You want me to command a prison ship?”

“Penitentiary Assault Vessel,” she corrected with an edge of irritation. “Besides, I can’t think of anyone more qualified. You served as McKillip’s executive officer for seven years. You were born to be a leader.”

“Not of a prison ship,” he shot back. “What’s to keep the convicts from taking off with it?”

“Security passwords control all the major functions of the vessel. If anyone mutinies, they couldn’t go anywhere. All you have to worry about is training them to fight.”

“Impossible,” Steiner said. “A bunch of inmates could never function as an assault force.”

“I handpicked all of them. They have both the military experience and the desire to make this work. Most of them are like you. They made a mistake and want to start over.”

Steiner rubbed his chin, scraping slight stubble. “If you have already chosen a crew, then you must have had a captain already singled out. Why isn’t he doing it?”

Suzanne hesitated and lowered her gaze. “He’s dead,” she admitted. “He was found murdered before the ship launched.”

The answer didn’t surprise Steiner. “One of your handpicked men, of course?” he said sarcastically.

Her gaze narrowed. “We don’t know who did it. Ralph Jamison almost shelved the whole program. I asked him if I could take it over.”

“How do I know you’re telling me the truth? Perhaps you’re helping him to get to me that much easier?”

“How dare you suggest such a thing after all we’ve been through in the last ten years,” Suzanne said. “I’m offering you a second chance.”

“You’re not doing this for me. You’re interested in whatever can get you to the top the fastest. Go find yourself another pawn.” Steiner turned toward the door, and called out, “Guards, we’re done in here.”

When the guards stepped into the room, Suzanne signaled them to hold back for a moment. She leaned forward. “Jake, you’re only thirty-four. By the time you’re released, you’ll be in your fifties. The United Star Systems needs good captains now. At least think about my offer.” She held out the pen. “Write my number down somewhere. If you change your mind in the next two days, call me. After that, the P.A.V. program will be dead.”

To appease her, Steiner curled a corner of his shirtsleeve and let her write it on the inside fabric.

Suzanne stood up from the table. “Good luck, Jake.”

“Thanks. If Jamison knows I’m here, I’ll probably need some.”

When she turned to leave, there were tears in her eyes.

STEINER stood in a line of convicts waiting to be served meals. The digital clock on the wall read “12:36,” the time when the west-wing cellblock assembled for lunch. The cavernous dining hall resonated with the roar of conversing voices, riotous laughter, and the continuous scraping of trays. The rice dish being served possessed the same lack of smell that every other meal seemed to have.

Steiner searched through the room’s occupants for potential assassins. Thankfully, no one showed any interest in him.

Maybe he was overreacting. He might be transferred out before Jamison could try anything.

His mind replayed the encounter with Suzanne. Her offer enticed him the more he thought of it. He missed command, but when he looked at the convicts eating in the dining hall, he couldn’t imagine them manning a warship.

Steiner smiled when he saw Sam Perez threading a path toward him. When he had first learned that the “Teenage Wrath of God,” as the news links had labeled the seventeen-year-old youth, was being held at Atwood Penitentiary, he made an effort to befriend him because he sympathized with his plight. Both of them were being punished for seeking justice for crimes against people they loved.

Born the son of a famous crime lord, Sam was given up by his mother when he was five years old. She left him with Father Jose Perez at a local parish, begging him to hide the boy until she could return for him. Sam served as the grounds-keeper for the parish, waiting every day to see his mother return for him, but she never did. After the New Order was formed, its supreme leader, Christophe Staece, made the Catholic Church the official religion of his new empire, which immediately brought suspicion against the Catholic parishes throughout the United Star Systems. During the following five years of growing unrest between the two superpowers, Jose Perez spoke out for a peaceful resolution. After August 15, 2429, the Day of Betrayal, the mistrust of the Catholic Church within the U.S.S. territories ignited into rage and resentment. During a candlelight vigil for peace, a mob from the neighboring township rose up and burned Father Perez’s parish to the ground. The candle-holding parishioners scattered in fright as the priest attempted to plea for the mob to stop. They trampled him to death in front of Sam, who had watched from under his overturned wheelbarrow. Forced to live on his own, ten-year-old Sam started stealing food from the same townspeople who had mobbed his parish. Enacting what he thought to be divine justice, he set fire to the houses and businesses of those he remembered seeing during the attack. After he had terrorized the township for seven years, Planetary Police managed to catch him. At age seventeen, he was prosecuted in Pennsylvania as an adult, for postwar rioting, and received a ten-year sentence at a maximum-security prison, as an example to the populace.

“
Buenas dias
, buddy,” Steiner said, welcoming Sam into the lunch line.

The teenager twisted about suddenly, attempting to punch Steiner in the gut, but it was blocked easily.

“Not bad,” Steiner commented. “You’re getting there.”

Afraid for the boy’s safety among the hardened prisoners, he had volunteered to train him in some defensive skills. But the skills he had been able to teach him were no match against “Big Al,” the leader of the underworld within the prison itself. Steiner suspected the warden was in for a take of the money Big Al was bringing in selling contraband, like drugs, cigarettes, and sometimes alcohol, to the other prisoners. This way, the warden kept his hands clean while Big Al muscled the other convicts. When Big Al had tried to bully Sam to run drugs for him, Steiner had jumped to his defense.

Moving forward in line, Sam said in a hushed tone, “Big Al has been telling everyone that he’s going to break my legs.”

“He’s just trying to save his image after what I did to him. Just stay close to me during the recreational breaks. He won’t try anything, not after what happened last time.” Just then Steiner remembered that he wouldn’t be there much longer once his lawyer transferred him to another prison. What would happen to Sam then? The boy possessed no combat skills, except what few defensive moves Steiner had been able to teach him so far. Who would protect him once Steiner was gone?

“You call those vegetables?” a familiar voice broke through the surrounding noise. At the end of the food counter, Rick Mason stuck his tongue out at a server and gagged. Snickers spread down through the line. In retaliation, the cook heaped a mound of the greenish brown substance on Mason’s tray, then indicated the sign posted behind him. It read, ALL INMATES REQUIRED TO FINISH EVERYTHING ON THEIR TRAYS BEFORE LEAVING.

Pushing his midnight black hair out of his face, Mason sneered at the server, then walked into the dining area. A group of men followed, slapping his back and congratulating him.

Maybe Mason was the answer to Sam’s dilemma.

Even though the man was small in stature—only five feet tall—his entertaining personality attracted others to him. With so many friends, he never had to worry about protection. At twenty-seven, Mason was old enough to be Sam’s guardian yet young enough to still relate to him.

After proceeding through the gauntlet of cooks, Steiner led Sam down the center aisle, which separated two rows of ten long, rectangular tables with attached benches. As they walked through the front of the hall, Steiner saw Big Al, surrounded by muscular bodyguards and criminal cohorts. The tattooed-covered kingpin glared back at him. Steiner continued on to the rear table against the wall and set his tray down near the group huddled around Mason, listening to another one of his smuggling adventures.

“When I heard the sensor alarm blaring, I knew it was going to be a bad day,” Mason said, rolling his eyes for added drama. “I activated my rear monitor. There was the most monstrous U.S.S. destroyer I’ve ever seen.” He extended his arms, sizing up his imaginary craft. “Some weak-looking captain with a woman’s eyebrows demanded my surrender. I laughed at him.”

Chuckles rose from his audience.

Steiner smiled at the comical description of Captain David Cole, a former friend of McKillip’s.

Mason continued with his story, describing the three hours he had outmaneuvered Cole’s destroyer before being captured. When he finished the tale, a clatter of applause rewarded him.

Steiner admired the smuggler’s ability to hold his fans under his spell.

“Hey, Ironhand,” Mason shouted at Steiner, using his newly coined nickname. “You’re becoming quite famous around here. I heard you sacked ‘Two Ton’—I mean, Big Al.”

The smuggler’s friends shared quiet snickers along with cautious glances toward the front of the room.

Steiner refused to reply. He didn’t want anyone to know of his military training—especially now.