The Prisoner of Khalkeus: The Phoenix Constellation Rebellion Book One: An Orphan's Vengeance by Briggs Tom

Author:Briggs, Tom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

11​ /​ PARIAH

No one spoke to Mike that afternoon. He waited a few hours before the loneliness started to get bad and approached a few of his classmates he’d worked in labs with. The moment he got close, they’d walk to the other side of the compound. He wouldn’t push it further.

He wondered why the commandant just couldn’t believe him. If Lieutenant Dellucci was one of the escapees, didn’t it make sense that he might have kept the location where they were going a secret in case someone was captured along the way? There were also squad leaders with him, and Mike was near the bottom in rank. Why was it so hard to believe that the runt of the escapees didn’t know the whole plan?

Even Vic Dunn wouldn’t talk to him. He was lucky enough that his roommate was not part of the escape team and wasn’t targeted as quickly for interrogation. Yet, they were from the same planet, and both had to deal with the trauma of Roddy’s death. When he approached him, Vic waved his hands to stay away.

Mike stood off, closer to the towers. The cadets rarely walked in the area where the towers had the best fields of fire, but today he had little reason to be concerned for his safety. If an accident occurred and a bullet ripped through his body, then the mental anguish would end. It seemed a reasonable exchange.

Although, if the anguish had one positive side effect, it stifled his hunger for most of the day. After lunch was canceled, he worried some of the larger cadets would corner and beat him to death. Fights had occurred in the last few weeks, and the guards had a variable attitude toward when they would step in and break it up. If it was two evenly matched opponents, they took their time, probably enjoying the sport while they waited to see if one would prevail or the other. They tended to be more motivated in stopping unevenly matched contests, but Mike couldn’t be sure the commandant had not given them orders to wait until he’d been damaged enough to loosen his tongue.

By the time the truck arrived with the evening meal, he felt safe enough for his hunger to remind him how long it’d been since he’d eaten. Not perfectly certain of his safety, he waited until all the cadets had lined up and had been served their meal. When the second last cadet was scanned, he got into the line and was scanned next. He retrieved the last tray with the dinner meal and stepped away.

The tray had a lid which he lifted to see a meat and rice combination. A one-liter water container was next to it and a spoon on the other side. He went for the spoon first.

“What the hell are you doing?” Enzo Santos yelled at him from less than a meter away.

Mike looked up and saw Enzo standing with the two guards who’d escorted him to the commandant’s office two days earlier.

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