Page 55 of Redstone

“How are you holding up?” Pence asked, his expression unaccountably serious. It looked very out of place on his jolly, mustached face.

“Fine,” Kyle answered automatically, then shook his head. “No, actually, not really fine. I thought I knew what was happening, before Redstone. I thought I had a handle on what was going on and what my place in it all needed to be. Now, I don’t … I’m not sure. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t have a plan, and I’vealwayshad a plan.”

“Oh, the burden of such responsibility so young,” Pence mused. “When I was your age, I was stealing trinkets to give toother naïve young men. You realize it’s all right for you tonothave a plan for a bit, yes, pet? Our guardian dove seems to have things well in hand.”

“But it’s not fair for me to make other people take care of me when I should be taking care of myself.”

Pence smiled a little. “You’re familiar with the game chess?” Kyle nodded. “You’re clearly used to being a piece of some use. A knight or a castle. But right now, little lamb, you’re a pawn. An important pawn, the king of pawns, but a pawn, nonetheless. And that’s not a terrible thing to be. Let others move you about, let them dispense with your time and services as they see fit. The only thing you have to do right now is to continue breathing and maintaining your sanity, which I think you’ve got quite a handle on.” He nudged Kyle’s knee with his foot. “Be a little irresponsible for once in your life. It’ll do you some good.”

“Like it did for you?” Kyle asked with one eyebrow raised, and Pence chuckled ruefully.

“Oh, pet, I was hardly alittleirresponsible. I made a career out of imitating other people and borrowing from their responsible personas, so I never bothered to develop one of my own. And I probably never will.” He shrugged. “I don’t mind at this point. All I care about now is that I’m free of that hellhole, and that for the first time in a long time, I’m in the company of people that I don’t despise, and that’s saying an awful lot. It’s like winning a grand prize in life, to be able to tolerate your companions.”

“Are you actually planning on staying with us?” Kyle asked. As confused about his own feelings as he was, he still liked Pence. The man made dark places a little lighter. “You said it yourself: you’re used to being other people. We could set down on a planet somewhere, and you could disappear, take on a new persona, and make a new life for yourself. Peacock would probably even give you funds to get started.”

Pence rolled his eyes. “Your oh-so-mysterious bird people. Right, well, if this Peacock gent has the means to do all the things he says he does, then sure, I could book it and start fresh. I thought about it, in fact, but that bit I was saying about not despising you lot? I can’t guarantee that anyplace I set down I’d be so lucky again.”

He smiled, but it was a bit twisted. “I did another stint in prison before this last one, and while it was nowhere near as bad, it was still no treat. When I got out, I found myself filled with inexplicable feelings of misanthropy. Everyone around me was stupid, dull, hateful for not understanding me, for not even knowing that they should try. I was filled with contempt for the universe. It put me into a bad place, and things only got worse from there.

“But now I’m in the company of people who understand where I’m coming from, who can relate to me. Hell, you’re the most innocent of the bunch, it would seem; you or that Wyl fellow, and you’re still better than some random bloke off the streets.”

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure, pet.” Pence smirked. “The point is, I don’t think right now that I can do better than any of you. There’s no group of people in the ’verse that I’d rather be with, and you, at the very least, desperately need someone to teach you to lighten up a bit. It’s not going to be any ofthatlot.” He gestured toward the front of the ship. “Isidore wears seriousness like it’s the latest fashion, and Wyl’s going to be het up, caring for his husband until the man’s back to normal, which …” He grimaced. “Could be quite some time. That leaves me.” Pence looked pleased with himself.

It was ridiculous to even be thinking about “lightening up,” with everything that was going on, and yet somehow Kyle’s heart eased a little. Life really wasn’t his responsibility right now. He would do everything he could to help, but other than that? “What do you want to show me?”

“Oh, pet.” Pence reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “So many things. You’ll see.” He looked out the port. “You’ll see.”

Epilogue

“We’ve reached the required safe distance from the blast zone, ma’am.”

Grace Grave, Head Warden of Caravan and Acting-Warden of Redstone, calmly folded her hands in her lap. “Thank you, Lieutenant Hendricks. Put Redstone on screen, please.”

The floating penitentiary sprang into sight, a misshapen reddish ingot slowly twisting its way through space. Grace’s fingers tightened so much she felt her knuckles crack. How she had come toloathethat place during her brief tenure there.

Grace was no stranger to distasteful things. She had served with the Alliance Army Corps for almost fifty years, working her way up from private to colonel. She had participated in and fought against invasions, occupations, and guerilla warfare on nine different planets. She had seen atrocities committed on a mass scale, felt the helplessness of inaction and the futility of her own burning desire to make a difference. The army was too regimented to enact meaningful change even if shebecame a commanding general, and so Grace had taken an early retirement and moved on to a far more focused and controllable environment: prisons.

There were just as many laws on the Alliance books concerning the treatment of actual prisoners as there were for enemy combatants and prisoners of war, but while no plan survived the battlefield, in a closed system, Grace felt she could enact real change. Not that it was easy; she’d had to justify mass firings of irredeemable guards, retraining for the ones that could be taught, and new methodologies for rehabilitation and prisoner interaction. It had cost most of her political capital and a great deal of personal grief to make Caravan into a place where she could look upon her work with quiet pride. That Grace had no one left to share that satisfaction with was … disappointing, but the work was more important than her private life.

She had known Redstone was bad. The whole time she’d spent shaping up Caravan, she’d been aware of the worsening reputation of the only other maximum-security penitentiary in the Alliance. It was where the hardest cases were sent, where people went to never be seen again. She had heard, and to her shame, she had remained silent, content to better her own small, grimy corner of the universe. And her reticence to get involved had possibly cost the lives of two of the best men she’d ever known.

Don’t dwell on it.Grace had already lost too much sleep over Robbie and Wyl Sinclair. As hard as it was to put them aside, she had a whole new population to work into Caravan now: a prison population that was used to much more vicious circumstances. Over half of the inmates from Redstone had been transferred to her facility, and it would take a lot of oversight to keep them from sliding back into bad habits or encouraging those habits in the current residents. Grace would have to be vigilant, and shecouldn’t do that if she spent all her time worrying. God willing, she would meet that couple again someday. But as for today …

Today was entirely about her personal satisfaction. “Arm the mines.”

“Arming.” Hendricks nodded a moment later. “Mines are live, ma’am. Control routed to your station.” He paused, then said, “Any last words?”

Grace smiled coldly. “Good fucking riddance.” She jammed her thumb into the activation panel. A moment later, the empty carcass of one of the worst blights in the Alliances’ bloated regime exploded, disintegrating into atoms with the force of the blast. Light filled the screen, reflected in Grace’s rapt gaze. She captured the force of the explosion in her memory, the intensity of her own pleasure at seeing it destroyed, and then—the light was gone. It was over.

Redstone Penitentiary was no more.