Tantalus (The Hidden Book 1)

  TANTALUS

  THE HIDDEN BOOK 1

  by

  Phil Maxey

  This book is dedicated to my good friend Clyde.

  Copyright © 2017 by Philip Maxey

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Printing, 2017.

  http://digiterium.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  Tantalus

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  Location: Low Earth Orbit.

  Date: 26th August 2217

  Tantalus human population: 1824

  Luke Carter closed his eyes trying to push the cries of anguish and bodily fumes of desperate men from his mind. The shuttle’s engine output increased and even the ravings of the man a few rows from him became inaudible over its noise.

  “You know, it only has a human crew of four people, right?” A voice in front of him shouted.

  Luke opened his eyes. An unshaven dark haired young man, whose knee was bouncing up and down, sat opposite, looking at him.

  Luke didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to as the young man continued. “Three thousand meters long, able to sustain three thousand people. It’s also the first ship in the fleet to have an anti-matter reactor.”

  Luke didn’t care, he just wanted to get the journey over with.

  “I’m just saying, it’s a slick piece of hardware.”

  Luke had been sitting in the unforgiving seat for three hours because of a hold up back on Earth, but his fate, which had been sealed by his own mistakes, was about to come to its conclusion.

  He followed the young man’s gaze upwards through the thin clear partition between himself and the void, at the latest ship to come off the lunar assembly lines. Tantalus was a fitting name for the Earth Authority’s newest prison.

  “Docking in five minutes,” said a synthetic female voice just audible over the screams and shouts.

  As the stars above his head became progressively less visible, eclipsed by the never ending hull of his new home, he pretended to ignore those around him. Murderers, rapists, people traffickers and everything in-between. These were the kind of people that he had been capturing and handing over to the Earth Authority for nigh on ten years, and now here he was one of them.

  During the journey from earth he had seen them. Quick flashes of recognition from his fellow inmates that quickened his heart beat each time. They all wanted him dead, it was just a question of when they would make their move.

  The man to his left who even to Luke, who stood six feet tall, seemed large, sat with the silent menace of one of the large primates that used to run free, and opposite was the young man, in his early twenties, although judging anyone’s age these days was an impossible task due to re-ageing processes. In the twenty third century only the human brain was the last holdout against being age reversed, and even that single pound lump of organic matter was enhanced in some people with Nano-implants.

  Not in Luke though. During his time as a captain in the Space Force, he had always turned down the option of ‘synthetic upgrades’ and instead preferred the antiquated approach to keeping his body and mind in good shape by exercising both.

  Something he couldn’t avoid nor could any human born on earth since 2160 was an ID chip. As a child, he felt like it itched and was always touching the back of his neck where the tiny biochip was implanted. His mother told him he imagined it, like when he used to get aches in his legs and it was just ‘growing pains’.

  The young man looked at the black carbon fiber straps over his wrists, frowned then looked back at Luke. “My name’s Evan. You don’t talk much, do you?”

  Luke glanced quickly to his left at the motionless form sitting next to him. Even with the bars holding him in place, the straps on the large guy’s wrists looked insufficient.

  He wasn’t planning on making friends, but Evan reminded him of some of his young former ensigns. “First time here?” he said looking back at Evan. It was the first time he had talked since entering the shuttle, and he hadn’t realized how dry his throat was.

  “Here? Yes. In prison? Nope, but my latest hack was almost worth it to see this place.” As he finished talking, he stretched his neck around and up to try to get a better look at the ship that now filled the entirety of the shuttle’s window above their heads.

  The ravings of the man behind Evan in the third row of five, were becoming difficult to ignore even over the sound of the shuttles afterburners. “They’re going to kill every one of you! Can’t you see what’s happening? Erebus will devour us all!”

  Luke closed his eyes again trying to force the other man’s madness from his mind, but he couldn’t focus, so instead he watched as the prisoner transporter skirted along the edge of his new home. The lack of windows in the ship’s hull was noticeable. Spending time locked inside a carbonium cage was something he had gotten used to over the years, but he always enjoyed the view from his cabin of Earth or whichever of the innermost planets that he and his crew were sent to patrol.

  Soon the shuttle spun around to face a cavernous open space, only lit within by tiny points of light which blinked on and off beckoning the shuttle inwards.

  The sound around him quietened and somebody shouted, “Home, sweet home.”

  Luke smiled sarcastically. He had gone from one of the fastest ships in the fleet to soon being a passenger on one of the slowest; at least it had state of the art living facilities.

  In the twenty third century, crime was seen as an affliction of the insane, or the unlucky. This was due to advances in psychology and the fact that everyone’s biochip tracked their location. Either way, the EA deemed there were no truly ‘evil’ people anymore, just those that had gone off the tracks, usually caused by trauma in early life.

  Luke felt differently, at least for himself. The order he gave that led to the deaths of three of his crew was his responsibility. He had to own it. Twenty years in a five by five cell, wasn’t sufficient for his guilt.

  The shuttle landed softly in the zero-gravity environment, the only such place on the ship, as the rest had ‘Theodor’ gravity. This was an artificial gravity brought about by manipulation of mass at the sub-atomic level, a technology created by Theodor Clements, the earth’s leading particle physicist.

  The sound of clamps resonated through the hull, as a corridor extended out from the side of the bay, neatly fitting with the shuttles hatch.

  “Please stand, and proceed out of the shuttle once the hatch is open,” said the same synthetic voice as before.

  The bars that had been holding the prisoners in their seats all retreated.

  “I wouldn’t mind meeting her,” said Evan standing. “She sounds like a red head.”

  Luke and everyone else did the same. The big guy next to him had to duck slightly once upright, his head only just clearing the smooth curved metal beams above him.

  It was then that Luke noticed the top of a bird like tattoo at the base of the large man’s neck. This usually meant the individual was part of one of the crime syndicates, and by the look of the design probably Phoenix.

  Luke uneasily turned his back on the large man as the shuttle’s hatch slid up revealing a well-
lit corridor three-meters high and wide. A rush of cool dry air swept past them all. The panels and floor were matt white and gray, and seemed impossibly clean apart from a few spots of dark-red.

  Standing half way along the corridor stood a two-meter high hunk of humanoid shaped metal, with the brand of “U.I.M 061” on the left side of a breastplate. Luke had heard rumors that the latest Earth ships were manned by Universal Intelligent Machine’s or IMs for short, but until this moment had not seen one up close.

  Evan’s eyes widened and a grin spread across his unshaven face. “Whoa, I hoped they were already operational here, although in real life, they are kind of creepy with no eyes and all that.”

  The large man standing behind them grunted and Luke detected a slight smirk on his face when he glanced at him.

  The IM walked a few steps forward. “Prisoners will disembark and follow me to induction.”

  The men started begrudgingly walking forward into the corridor when a man in his late forties rushed towards Luke. He prepared himself to pivot if the man had managed to smuggle a weapon onboard, but the scrawny man ran past him shouting. “They’re coming! We can’t be here!”

  “Prisoner Shelton, stop!” shouted the IM as the man charged at the robot, the prisoner’s shoes clapping across the floor. Luke watched and waited for the inevitable outcome. As the man got within a few meters of the intimidating machine, its arm flicked out grabbing Shelton by the throat.

  As it lifted him off the ground, a ripple of discomfort ran through the men, apart from the large man who stood with his arms crossed.

  The IM marched back to the column of prisoners as the man struggled, his legs and arms flailing. The IM stopped with the man dangling like a rag doll at arm’s length. “Prisoner Shelton, you have one chance to calm your behavior. When I put you down, if you try to run again, I will have to punish you.” The IM lowered him to the floor.

  Shelton immediately grabbed his own throat and coughed. He looked up at the tower of artificial intelligence in front of him, and scowled, looking away.

  Luke took a quick glance around him. He had no way of knowing which of the inmates had enough of a grievance to try something. He just knew he had to be ready, if he wanted to survive the first day on this ship.

  The IM walked calmly back to the end of the corridor, where another door slid open. After walking down some stairs they all filed into a large high ceilinged room with walls of blue and white sections and a gantry six meters above. The sound of shuffling feet echoed in the cavernous space.

  On the gantry, an impressive looking IM and a man in his fifties stood waiting. His graying hair gave him an air of authority but he had the fixed, fake smile of a mannequin, and stood with his hands together in front of him. Luke, Evan, and the rest moved to stand into two rows looking upwards to their greeting party.

  “Welcome to Tantalus!” he said. “My name is Davin Murlock, and I am the warden of this facility.” He looked up at the gold and gray robot next to him, “This here is U.I.M 001, he is the head guard, and shortly will escort you onwards.” Luke noticed the IM’s head turned toward Murlock when he referred to him, a particularly human trait he thought.

  “Before he does though, I would just like to impress upon all of you, just how lucky you are to be serving your time on a ship such as Tantalus. It has state of the art facilities which will help you deal with the loss of your freedom while getting you ready to once again be a useful citizen to the Earth Authority.” His fake grin receded. “You are expected to play your part though. If you do not; trust me your time here will not be easy.”

  The warden turned, walking along the gantry and through a doorway. The IM turned to face them.

  “Inmates, undress. When you have done so, stand inside one of the circles on the ground,” said the imposing robot in a deep middle-aged voice.

  Soon twenty or so men stood naked on the cold floor. The circles they were standing on, changed color and smoke began to rise. Some of the men stepped outside of their circle.

  “Get back in the circle inmate Lowe!” said the IM with the intensity of a drill sergeant. The man duly obliged moaning under his breath.

  As white fog covered each man, lasers rained down shaving their heads, filling the room with the aroma of burnt hair.

  Within a few minutes, each man’s head had only a thin layer of stubble. Under the gantry, the wall slid away revealing a foot-deep enclosure with neatly piled gray jumpsuits.

  “Step forward and find the jumpsuit with your name on. Then clothe yourself and move into the elevator.” A double width door opened to their left.

  Each man did as told, and moved into the metal box. The space was sufficient for the men inside, but each still tried to keep as much distance between themselves as possible while the door slid silently closed.

  Once the elevator stopped, the pack shuffled impatiently for what came next. The door opened and the change in temperature, noise and smell hit them all simultaneously.

  CHAPTER 2

  A dignified looking woman in her mid-forties, with shoulder length tied back dark brown hair sipped on some steaming brown liquid, then looked slightly to her right.

  “Any more inmate shuttles on today’s schedule, Jones?”

  A middle-aged man with short curly black-gray hair was sitting looking intently at the screen in front of him.

  Jones, tapped on a few places on the screen. “No, Ma’am.”

  Captain Kim Taylor sighed and took another sip.

  Another action-packed day.

  She pushed her head back into the comfortable seat, and looked at the projected view of the earth on the large screen in front of her. The edge of the American federation was just coming into view and the light from its municipalities on the east coast merged into a continuous glow surrounded by darkness.

  Somewhere in that fusion of light was her apartment, looking out over Lake Waccamaw, in the state of North Carolina. She briefly closed her eyes and pictured the ripples on the water, while a Swallow-tailed kite swooped overhead. Her father used to take her fishing on the lake when she was a child, it was her first experience of being in control of a ‘ship’.

  “I heard Luke Carter was on the earlier shuttle,” said Jones, busily checking Tantalus’s inventory as he was tasked to do daily.

  “Hmm, what?” said Taylor returning from her daydream and not being quite sure of what was just said to her, but remembering the name Carter. “You mean the Luke Carter?”

  “Yes, he’s our newest inmate, it was a shame how it all worked out for him.”

  Taylor sat upright in her seat. “He made the wrong choice and three of his people lost their lives, now he has to pay for that.”

  Frederick Jones detected the sternness in his captain’s voice and decided not to give Carter any more sympathy. “Our inventory is at sixty-five percent, by week end we should be at full capacity.”

  “How’s the water looking?”

  “Thirty three percent, which is about … two months’ worth at our current population figures. We are waiting on the next shipment, which should arrive tomorrow.”

  “Good, is there any reason my comms officer is not sitting two meters to my left right now?” Jones hesitated to reply but Taylor continued before he could. “Doesn’t matter,” she said impatiently. She touched the back of her right wrist with her left hand, and started talking. “This is Captain Taylor, Officer Honer you are required on the bridge.”

  * * * * *

  Elisa Honer bobbed her head in unison with the thumping beat of the 80s rock song. The title of her thesis while at university ten years prior was ‘The music of the twentieth century in relation to its culture and language.’ From her few years of studying she discovered the twentieth century was a time of great human suffering, but it sure did produce great music.

  She looked around her room, while a man sang angrily about his relationship. The entire wall opposite her showed a beach scene. The waves gently crashed against a sandy beach, with the occasi
onal seagull drifting across the pale blue sky. The floor of her room was not so tranquil, with clothes, empty bottles of crater juice and plastic containers holding her belongings scattered in no particular pattern.

  I need to get my shit together.

  She swung her athletic legs off the bed, and wiped her hand through her rich red short hair. The captain’s voice interrupted the angry singing man, and requested her company.

  She sighed, and touched the back of her right wrist. “Yeah, I’ll be right up, give me a minute—Sir.”

  She didn’t particularly like Captain Taylor, although she had served under worse captains in her short career as a communications officer. Captain Taylor was too much of a ‘company’ woman for her; everything by the book. She knew she shouldn’t complain, being comms officer on the shiniest of the Earth Authority’s latest ships was an honor for a Space Force officer of only twenty-eight years of age.

  Turning the music off, she fumbled through one of her clothes canisters and pulled out her navy blue one piece uniform. Stepping inside it quickly, she left her room, and entered the perfectly temperature controlled corridor outside.

  Running over the smooth tiled floors she reached the elevator and tapped one of the triangles. The doors opened immediately. Inside was IM number 067. She stepped inside trying not to look at it then went to tap the destination, before stopping herself. “Umm was there a destination you were going to?”

  The IM’s head turned slowly towards her. “Reactor Control, Ma’am.”

  “Cool, that’s on the way to the bridge.” She tapped both locations and stood further away from the IM than she needed too.

  Soon the door opened to Reactor Control, and the machine walked away. Elisa stood and watched for a moment. If you put clothes on it, you would think it was human. She shook her head and stepped back allowing the doors to close. The IM’s human like qualities had creeped her out from the first day on the ship and months later she still hadn’t gotten used to them.