View source for Comm-Link:Orbital Supermax - Episode 6

As ex-quartermaster aboard OSP-4, I have seen my share of dead bodies. Contrary to popular belief, we do not space the bodies of men who die in prison. Instead, each death begins a rigorous investigation, and I was required to provide for all of the medical supplies and any other exotic components the examiners need for their tests. I have seen the bodies of men shanked by other prisoners, beaten to death with lead pipes, and I even saw one man who’d gotten stuck in one of the heating ducts and slowly cooked.

The sight that confronted me and the small group of escaped prisoners in the Forensic Psychiatry Ward was unlike any other I’d seen. Dead bodies. Men and women, some wearing guard uniforms, others the flimsy dressing gowns of the patients. Some of their faces were beaten into a mass of purplish flesh, but others were recognizable. Some lay slumped peacefully against a wall while others wore looks of horror. Someone had broken the overhead lights and shattered glass littered the floor.

I heard a sob from Cayla Wyrick. She knelt next to a young man with angry red welts on his cheek and a frightened stare captured in his cold, dead eyes. She said something to him I couldn’t quite hear. Figuring she needed some privacy I left her and joined Wes Morgan, the mercenary we’d rescued from the Maximum Security wing, who stood further down the corridor.

“Do you feel that?” he asked me.

“Existential terror? Yeah, I’m there.”

“No,” he took a deep breath. “The atmosphere mixture is wrong in this wing. Captain Kilkenny’s attack must have damaged the recyclers. There’s too much nitrogen and too little oxygen.”

“You can smell that?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I feel a little drunk. Don’t you? That’s one of the signs of nitrogen narcosis. We need to find Herby and get the hell out of here as soon as possible.”

I turned and looked at the half-dozen or so men in orange-jumpsuits. They were all armed, many with prison tattoos on their face and hands. One of them, whom I learned was simply called “Shank,” had dyed the white of his eyes so that he stared at us with blacked-out orbs. Not the type of men who needed any more “-osis” anythings.

They were the enemy of our enemy, so to speak, and we’d somehow come to the conclusion that it was best to travel together as long as we were all trying to avoid becoming the Nova Dogs’ next meal. Literally. They were cannibals. Now that decision was starting to look a little dicier. “What do we do about them?”

“Nothing.” Morgan raised an eyebrow and looked over his shoulder. “Look at them. At the armory they were taking turns trying to out alpha-male each other. Now? They’re more afraid of Kilkenny than they are of us. If they weren’t they would have already shot us both in the back …” His eyes roamed over to Wyrick, who knelt next to another of the bodies. “… and done much worse to her.”

He was right, of course. The worst of the bunch had stayed behind with Fat Max. I had no doubt they’d already been captured by Martin Kilkenny. The rest of them … they were like a headless snake. Not as exciting as a live one, but also not as deadly.

Our little group made our way further into Forensic Psychiatry. It was a small ward, but the hallways were all maddeningly similar to each other and there were quite a few double-locked doors that had been smashed open, often at a physical cost to the assailant if the bloody marks on them gave any indication. Always we heard laughter — the disturbed, joyless laughter that was as involuntary as a sneeze.

Eventually, we found one of its sources. A slim man with jaundiced skin, he was covered in medical bandages he’d stolen from an overturned medical cart. He was desperately trying to bind wounds on his hands and wrists.

Wyrick knelt quickly to offer aid, but recoiled when the crazed man offered his wrist and she saw the metal band that dangled on one of them. She stumbled back into my arms and for a moment I smelled sandalwood and roses. I was reminded that she had put on perfume earlier in the day, never suspecting that an attack by pirates would turn everything upside down.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“His watch belonged to a friend of mine,” she said quietly. Her hand closed on my arm, painfully, but her eyes were locked on those of her patient.