Free Warden: A Novel by Gregg Vann Page A

pressure point and underground cavity. And if you accidentally punctured one of those chambers—filled with hot gases under immense pressure—you would boil to death in your mining suit before you even realized what killed you.
    “Corporal Ennis must have been well-connected to get this done,” Tana said. “And extremely devoted to you.”
    “Not just me,” Barent replied. “We were all devoted to each other, thief.” Then he paused, looking back over his shoulder to correct himself. “Forgive me, Tana .”
    Before she had a chance to reply, Barent turned around again and continued his trek through the tunnel. “I’m afraid that old habits die hard,” he explained. “I often referred to the prisoners based on their crimes, even as I fought right alongside them during the war. But I no longer considered them criminals.”
    Barent ducked his head to avoid a low section of ceiling and then slowed his pace. “It’s odd…referring to those times as the distant past. For me it was only yesterday, and I mean that quite literally.”
    “I can’t even imagine,” Tana said.
    “No,” he replied. “You really can’t.”
    She detected a shift in Barent’s voice—his tone becoming much harsher. “But despite what I chose to call them,” he continued, “a prisoner did his or her time and that was the end of it. They paid for the crimes they committed as justice demanded, and were then allowed to rejoin society. Did that punishment make them better people, or stop them from committing more crimes in the future? Who knows? But by our own laws they’d earned a chance to prove that it did. We had no right to take that opportunity away from them, and certainly not to deny freedom to their innocent children—just because of who their parents were.”
    Barent came to an abrupt halt and spun around to face her, and even in the dim, almost nonexistent light, Tana saw the anger on his face.
    “We’d become the very thing that condemned those poor bastards to forced labor in the first place… criminals.”
    Barent took a deep breath in through his nose and Tana got the impression he was trying to calm himself. When he spoke again, some of the sharp edge was gone from Barent’s voice, but not all of it.
    “The prisoners on the Le’sant slept through the entire lifespans of everyone they knew back on Earth,” he said, “just for the chance to bust their asses building another world—one they’d never get to live on themselves. That was the shitty deal they took, and even when things went wrong—horribly wrong—the convicts fulfilled their end of the bargain. We’re the ones who broke the agreement, not them.”
    Tana’s heart was racing as Barent turned back around to continue leading them through the roughly hewn passageway.
    Well, he’s every bit as intense as the histories portrayed him to be. That’s for damn sure.
    Tana sensed the tunnel beginning to slope back up toward the surface as they moved forward, and then saw Barent hold up a closed fist before coming to an abrupt halt.
    Tana stumbled right into him.
    “Sorry,” she said.
    “It’s not your fault,” Barent replied. “I can’t expect you to know military hand signals from five centuries ago.”
    “I will know next time.”
    Barent nodded. “There’s a faint white outline up ahead. Take a look.”
    He leaned off to one side so Tana could see the tiny thread of light as well, and she noted that it was in the perfect shape of a circle. Whatever it was, Tana knew it had to be man-made.
    “It looks like a hatch,” she guessed. “Or maybe a door of some kind.”
    “A hatch, most likely,” Barent said. “The tunnel ends right at it, so we have no choice but to go through.”
    “I wish we had some idea about what was on the other side,” Tana said warily.
    “As do I,” Barent agreed. “But there’s only one way to find out. Wait here while I try to open it.”
    “I’m not some helpless waif,” Tana protested.
    “I never said you