Kraken Mare Read Online Free PDF Page B

cell block, though it was unlike any I had ever seen before. The honeycomb and white design reminded me of a wasp nest a little bit. I mentally shuddered at the thought. I hated wasps with a passion.
    “Military prisoners?” I tore my thoughts away from traumatic childhood memories involving flying murderous rage insects as we neared the first prisoner's cell. “What sort of military prisoner gets transferred to a top secret research station? That doesn't make any sense at all.”
    “It's actually easy to explain. You see, we only get certain types of prisoners. Volunteers, actually. For instance…” Gerry stopped and pressed a small silver button next to the cell. “They accept a plea deal, they don't get executed. It's a solution to advance science while ensuring that the most dangerous convicts are removed from both a general prison population and still legally remain in military custody. Win-win.”
    The protective barrier changed from cloudy white to perfectly clear, revealing the sparse interior of the cell. On one side, a cot, a table, and a chair. On the other side, a low wall afforded some privacy to the privy.
    A man sat reading, his dark skin contrasting sharply with the cell’s sterile white interior. His bearing was that of a lifelong military man, as though he wore Dress Blues, not just dark blue scrubs and slippers. I turned away, taking a step before recognition set in.
    I stopped, eyes narrowing as the man's familiarity slowly dawned on me. I glanced over at Gerry.  He read my expression, nodding before I could ask the question.
    “Yeah, that's him,” Gerry acknowledged. “Captain Emery Holomisa, United States Army.”
    “I thought he was still locked up at Leavenworth,” I muttered as I inspected the prisoner from outside the protective barrier. The man inside the cell was a legend, one that gave me a smidgen of respect for the Army. It was also one of the few times when I wasn't entirely sure that I was the best in the room; a strange sensation for any Marine. It was especially unsettling for my ego, since it knew I was the best and yet it was also convinced I was looking at the best. It was all very confusing.
    “He escaped from there twice,” Gerry explained. “So they stuck him in the Maelstrom on Mars. He somehow rigged a breathing apparatus out of an apple juice box and a lump of charcoal and escaped from there as well. Survived for three weeks in the Martian wilderness before they found him. He'd almost completed building a transport shuttle out of spare parts in a waste disposal pit outside Antiquity. He was shipped back to Earth and put in prison of all his own. He escaped, despite having two guards watching him at all times. He was sentenced to death for that one, since a guard died during the escape. They say he murdered the guard, but…well, they offered him a deal instead of shooting him right then and there, so something smelled a little fishy to me. But the deal? Come here and help with some science experiments, or death by lethal injection. Unsurprisingly, he chose this.”
    “I heard what he did at the Battle of the Pyre,” I breathed as I locked eyes with the only man to win both the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Hero of the Russian Federation Medal, the two highest awards of separate rival nations. The Pyre Front had been nasty, a dirtier fight than Soma could ever have been, and the casualty ratio had cracked ninety percent at one point. The Battle of the Pyre was the culminating effort at bringing the rebellious colony world of Delphin back under UN jurisprudence. I was glad that I had managed to avoid that hellish pit of despair, though a tiny part of me was embarrassed at my relative good fortune. “He's a hero. A bonafide hero.”
    “CENTCOM thinks otherwise, and he was convicted of war crimes at The Hague when the EU demanded his head after embarrassing them at Delphin.” Gerry shrugged, disgust evident in his tone. “Not that I believe the original