Terry Goodman slipped into the uniform as if it were borrowed skin. The jacket was stiff, the collar rubbed raw, and the badge chimed against his chest with every step. A baton, a sidearm, a key card, all in the right place. The feeling was wrong anyway. Terry took the name Cliff Bardem.
On the ship, Terry gave orders. Down here, Bardem was a fresh guard no one had asked for.
For a first assignment, the shuttle captain was handed a patrol. Lower corridors, cells, the gate to the mine lift. Keep the column moving. Make sure every name on the tablet went down to the pit and came back up. If someone was not on the list, that person did not exist. If a name vanished between morning and evening, someone caught the punishment.
Every guard carried a tablet full of quotas and check marks, but the real currency was fear. Once people feared you, the machine ran smoother.
Sándor Becker made that point the first time Bardem reported in. Tobacco under the lip, lazy eyes, a look meant to put a man in his place.
“You Cliff Bardem?” Becker asked.
Terry answered without ornament. “Yes.”
“Forget the captain act,” Becker said. “Here you are the uniform. Watch for trouble. If anything goes sideways, it lands on you.”
Hugo Ranke arrived later, and the room changed without anyone admitting it. Ranke did not raise his voice. The others still stopped breathing the moment he spoke.
“Bardem,” Ranke said. “You’re temporary, everyone knows it. Don’t expect smiles. Don’t open cells without an order. In the mine, stay away from the drill crews. Your job is the flow. They go out, they come back, and nobody thinks you’re soft.”
Terry nodded once and went where the route led.
After that, the shuttle captain walked down toward the mine lift. Chains clanked, boots slammed, metal shrieked. Prisoners moved in a column while guards lined the sides. Above, cameras blinked red, patient as insects.
Peter Voss watched from a booth like a spider in a corner. Thin, tired, hands always near the controls.
“Don’t stare at the cameras,” Voss said without looking up. “They stare at you.”
Terry muttered, “Not planning to.”
Voss gave a dry laugh. “Everyone says that.”
Felix Dorn drifted over next, tablet held like a badge of authority. His tone stayed soft, which somehow made it worse.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“You got the lists?” Dorn asked.
“I did,” Terry said.
“Then remember. If there’s an error, it’s you. Not the system. Not the table. You.”
The colony looked like a mechanism built to grind living bodies into output. Goodman watched faces in gray, heard coughing that sounded like rust, and kept his expression empty.
Bardem ended up in the med bay after escorting two beaten men from the lift. Grace Holton stood over a cot and read numbers instead of people.
“This one won’t last till morning,” Holton said.
A protest rose in Terry’s throat. “Maybe we could move him.”
“Don’t,” Holton cut in. “Your maybes don’t matter. Only quota does.”
The words followed him out like a smell that would not wash off.
Rémie Kalt was easy to spot near the ration store. Heavy build, grease and tobacco, eyes that missed nothing.
“Kalt,” Terry said when their paths crossed.
“Oh, captain,” Kalt replied with a grin. “Wearing the suit now. Careful, it bites.”
Bardem kept moving. Playing friendly was not part of the job yet.
That evening the column was driven back from the pit. Bardem held the post and looked like he was only counting heads. Tomos Goff found a moment anyway and whispered with barely moving lips.
“Your captain is up to something nasty.”
Terry blinked once, slow. “What did you see?”
“Enough guns for a whole squad,” Tomos said. “A weapons cache. Over there.”
Bardem let the hint slide past his face and gave a blank nod, then walked the rest of the route like nothing had happened.
Later, after the shift scattered, the shuttle captain went where Tomos had pointed, to an old drift that was supposed to be sealed. Plywood, stones, damp air, and the thin smell of smoke.
He lifted the edge.
Metal.
Crates stacked like a real storeroom. Rifles. Magazines. Body armor. Even a chainsaw blade welded onto a cutter frame.
A riot could start from that pile alone.
Goodman closed the plywood again and did not take the discovery to Ranke or Becker. A cache like that did not exist by accident. Someone protected it. More than one person.
Instead, the shuttle captain went looking for the man who controlled supplies.
Goodman found Rémie Kalt at the entrance to the warehouse sector, as if Kalt had been waiting, or as if waiting was simply how Kalt lived.
“Why the serious face, newcomer?” Kalt asked.
Bardem kept his voice even. “I want to check something.”
“Check away,” Kalt said. “Everything’s by quota.”
“Not by quota,” Bardem said. “By something else.”
Kalt’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“You know,” Bardem said. “Take me there.”
Kalt stared a beat too long, then put on a laugh like a mask.
“Well look at that. The captain grew teeth. Careful, someone will pull them.”
“Take me,” Bardem repeated. “No show.”
Kalt sighed and waved him along.
They walked a long time. Kalt chose turns like a man drawing a circle. All the while, the shuttle captain memorized every corner, every camera angle, every dead patch where a body could vanish.
At last they stopped at the plywood.
Kalt smirked at the crude barrier. “So? Happy?”
Terry reached for the edge and Kalt stepped closer.
“You really thought I didn’t know?” Kalt asked, quiet.
Terry went still. “So you’re in on it.”
“Everyone’s in on it,” Kalt said. “Some get richer. Some get buried.”
Kalt drew a pistol, unhurried, and pressed the muzzle to Terry’s temple.
“You’re too curious, captain,” Kalt said, almost gentle. “Curious men don’t last here.”
Terry raised his hands slowly, palms open, not reaching for anything.
“I’m not your enemy,” Terry said.
Kalt smiled. “Everyone says that.”
The muzzle pushed harder.
Then something clicked behind the plywood, a small sound, like a latch. As if something inside had been listening too.
