Free Prisoner 52 by S.T. Burkholder Page A

magrail port, beyond those hundreds returning and departing. The heavy snowfall nearly blurred out the '7' stencilled huge and white on the side of it.
    "Let's go then." Tezac said and shrugged off his grip.
    So they delved into the sea of metal and grime and sweat before them. Those oncoming moved from their path like wheat does the wind, swaying away from those they felt rather than saw. It was the lift that called them and they would not divert their eyes from it for fear that once out of sight it would vanish as so many things had.
    The howl of the wind and the break of ice crystals on the floor-to-ceiling glass became audible above the dull roar of the crowds, the living stamp of their boots. The threshold of the tram loomed before them and they merged into the peopled stream that issued into it. The storm outside beat against the umbilical that adhered tram to station and Tezac gazed out from its small portholes at the quagmire of steel and fumes that sat as a splotch upon the icy landscape, harried ever by the winter throes of the winter planet. Beyond the glacial hills the plains rolled to the distant and spare mountains that hosted their own metal parasites, in turn their own ecosystems of mineral extractrion. Then they were gone, behind him now as he boarded the tram with the swell of those there as well.
    He stood as Leargam sat and held fast to the support pole as the car started ahead into the snow and ice. The talk was muted. The talk that there was. He could smell the gun oil exuded by their rifles, done that morning. Some pre-dawn ritual that he himself had once known. The electrical stench of the servo-motor s of their armor, the harsh whir when a few moved such joints. The groanings of old, worn down things speaking for their owners, constant reminders of another tired day and what would be another tired day out. But the tram ran on and smoothly – without fault for anything.

Day 4
                 
    The great olive drab of the blast doors opened before them and groaned beneath the groan of the storm being unveiled. They stepped through before the gate was not yet fully int o the walls and appeared to those beyond as shadows in the swell of light that crept through the widening gulf. Modern beasts combing the ancient ruins of an antique kind. They shouldered their rifles and keyed for their visors to lower against the cold that blew into the hangar from those of its doors opened to it. Leargam swatted him on the shoulder and pointed off to that which was marked '12'. The figures there, dark against the light of the world outside, hailed and went to meet them.
    "What do we got?" Leargam said through the helmet's vocal broadcaster.
    "Standard patrol vessel," The foremost of them said and Tezac knew him for Penders, the man who had transmitted to them in the mess hall. "Outerverse border detail. 30, 50 guys."
    "Where are they?"
    "They won't leave the landing pad. Or that cargo they're carrying."
    The old man nodded and looked around their group at the indistinct shapes stood on the platform ahead and said, "What is it?"
    "Your problem." Penders said and patted Leargam on the shoulder and pushed past the two of them, his posse following close behind in chuckles.
    "Not a lot of comraderie around here." Tezac said once they had gone.
    "Penders is always a prick. Always been a prick. Probably born a prick." The old man said and started away toward the landing pad. "His father, too."
    "And his father?"
    "Godsdamned right. He thinks he ain't beholden to anybody except command; little does he know: that's why command doesn‘t fucking like him."
    "So what the hell was he doing here?"
    "Making nice with all the other assholes that aint beholden to anybody but command." He said and stopped short of the broad hangar bay marked '12' before them. "Hangar personnel."
    "You Leargam?" A squat man in thick welder's goggles asked Tezac and the old man beside him grinned his pearly grin. As though he had summoned the