Larry Correia: Warbound

“There’s an important job that needs doing. I’m putting together a team to do it. Real talented bunch, if you get what I mean. In fact, there ain’t much we can’t do. However, this particular fella’s got some rare skills I need.”

“He’s dangerous.”

“Which means he’ll fit right in.”

“You know about…”

“Heard about him. He got here after I left.”

“Don’t think you can control him, Sullivan. He’ll get inside your head.”

“He ain’t a Reader.”

“Might as well be.” The Warden rolled his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “He’s not like you, Sullivan. Letting you out was one thing. Anybody who has studied the law could look at your case and see you were railroaded. You were a war hero who stomped a crooked sheriff in a crooked town, and because you were a scary Active, you were made into an example. I just wish I’d read your file sooner. The vast majority of the rest of my convicts, on the other hand, are in here for damn good reasons. This man Wells, for example. He’s a killer, nothing but a mad-dog killer.”

“Sorry, Warden. I’m afraid where I’m going, mad-dog killers are exactly what I’m gonna need.”

Solitary confinement was by the gravel pit. Sullivan had spent quite a bit of time in solitary. It was where you got put automatically after a fight. Didn’t matter if you started it or not. Get in a fight, go in the hole. And Sullivan, having had the reputation of being the toughest man inside Rockville, had no shortage of upstart punks who’d wanted a shot at the title, so Sullivan had spent a lot of time in the hole. Usually, he hadn’t minded. The quiet had helped him think.

The holes lived up to their name. They were just shafts that had been dug ten feet straight down into the solid rock with a four-hundred-pound iron plate stuck on top for a roof. The holes weren’t even wide enough for a tall man like Sullivan to lie all the way down. Inside was just enough room for the prisoner, a bucket to shit in, and a whole bunch of rock. Once a day they’d send down a clean bucket with food and a can of water in it, and pull up the old bucket to hose out to send back with your rations in it the next day. Once they’d decided you had enough they’d roll down the rope ladder. It hadn’t been too awful in the summer, but being in a hole during the Montana winter was miserable. There tended to be fewer fights during the winter months.

The Warden had telephoned ahead, so there were ten guards waiting around one hole in particular. Some were carrying nets, and the rest were armed with strange Bakelite batons with metal prongs sticking out the ends.

“What’re those?” Sullivan asked, gesturing at the unfamiliar weapons.

The guard patted the big square end of his baton. “Electrified cattle prod. Gotta have something. Bullets just bounce off this guy.”

“It won’t be necessary. Stand back while I talk to him.”

“Warden said you’d want it that way. Your funeral, pal.” The lead guard shrugged. “Stand away, boys.”

The guards complied, a few of them giving him dirty looks that suggested they remembered him from the old days. Even cleaned up and without the striped prisoner suit and the ball and chain clamped around his ankle, he was still an easy man to recognize. He’d never given the guards any trouble. They were just men doing a hard job, so Sullivan held no grudge, but to them, once a convict, always a convict, and only a sucker trusted a convict.

Waiting until the guards were safely away, Sullivan walked up to the hole and kicked the iron plate a couple of times to announce his presence. “Morning.”

The voice was muffled through the plate. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk, Doctor.”

There was a long pause. “So it’s doctor now, huh?”

“You got a medical degree and you’re an alienist, so that’s your title, ain’t it?”

“I suppose I’ve rather gotten used to my title being ‘Convict.’”

Sullivan remembered his own stays in the hole, how only the tiniest bit of light could creep through the air slots cut in the iron plate, and the painful blindness that came with freedom. “Cover your eyes. It’s bright today.” Then Sullivan used a tiny bit of his Power to effortlessly lift the rusting iron slab and toss it to the side.

Sunlight filled the hole. “Aw. That really stings.”

“Warned you.” Sullivan kicked the waiting rope ladder down into the pit. “Come on up.”

“Give me a minute to make myself presentable.”

“Take your time.” Sullivan waited patiently as the prisoner rubbed the feeling back into his limbs then struggled to make his way up the ladder. He didn’t offer to help pull him up, since the man was filthy after several days in the hole, and Sullivan didn’t particularly feel like getting his suit dirty, or worse, ending up in a wrestling match with a Massive who had a reputation for violence.

Like I got room to talk. Sullivan didn’t just have a reputation for violence, he’d gained national notoriety for it. Still ain’t getting my new suit dirty though. He folded his arms and waited for the prisoner to pull himself over the side. For being able to alter his density, and being so good at it that he could even make the Rockville guard contingent nervous, the prisoner didn’t look like much. He was of average height and thin build, not particularly remarkable at all. Sullivan was half a foot taller and twice as wide in the shoulders.

Wells blinked for a moment, adjusting to the sunlight, then the two men stood there, sizing each other up. It was hard to guess the age of someone that dirty, but the OCI’s file had said that Doctor Wells was thirty-five, so fairly close to the same age as Sullivan. Though right then the convict looked about ten years older. The hole had that effect on a man. The doctor had a widow’s peak, and rubbed one hand through his thinning hair, seemingly bemused when he discovered how matted with dried blood it was. “Please, excuse my appearance. The facilities leave something to be desired.”

For some reason Sullivan expected the convict to be a twitchy one, since his OCI file had repeatedly used the term erratic genius , but instead Wells seemed cool, almost too collected. Sullivan nodded politely. “Let me introduce my—”

“Wait.” Wells held up one hand, which was still scraped and raw from the altercation that had landed him in the hole in the first place. “Don’t tell me. I’ve had nothing new to keep my mind occupied for three days now. Allow me to deduce why you’re here.”

Sullivan was in no hurry. The Traveler was on its maiden voyage, and Captain Southunder was still shaking her down and checking systems. She wouldn’t be ready to leave the Billings airfield for another hour or two. “Knock yourself out.”

“I take it you don’t work here?”

“Nope.”

Wells glanced over to where the squad of guards were fidgeting. “You’re talking to me by yourself, and the Warden is far too thorough to not have informed a visitor of my capabilities, which suggests you’re not afraid of me, nor do you seem even the slightest bit nervous.”

Sullivan let him have his fun. “Should I be?”

“That depends.” Wells saw the discarded iron plate. Normally it would take three or four strong men to move it into place. “You’re obviously a Brute…”

“An interesting hypothesis.”

He went back to studying Sullivan. “No. Not a Brute… You have the morphology of a Heavy. All known Heavies are physically robust, big-framed specimens.”

Sullivan nodded. “I prefer the term Gravity Spiker. It’s more dignified.”

“And I prefer the term psychologist over the term alienist ; however, most Heavies wouldn’t care. Statistically, Heavies tend to score rather low on the Stanford-Binet intelligence scales. They’re slow. You’re an oddity. More than likely a self-taught man… Don’t look at me like that. Your pronunciation of hypothesis suggests that you’ve read the word, but not heard it spoken very often, which means you’ve not attended school. It isn’t hypo-thesis… It’s hýpothésis. ”