Hopewell

1.

Hopewell was perfect for a prison planet. It was a water world with only two land masses being the poles. No one ever tried to escape and evade capture because there was nothing to escape to but heaving oceans under a constantly storming, raining sky. Sunlight was rare on the outside, with maybe three weeks out of the year being bright and rain free.

There was land on Hopewell, huge continents that were submerged under miles of water. The towers were anchored to the land, and dotted the entire planet. There were cities of steel gray towers stretching from the water to the sky, like the grasping hands of drowning men in search of someone to reach down and save them.

The sun was not out as the guards, dressed in sleek biothermal suits that maintained their body temperatures and kept them dry, did their outside rounds. They were checking for signs of tampering on the hull, or unauthorized vessels docked along the sides of the towers at viewports rather than authorized docking ports. They didn’t check their own towers. Instead they were responsible for walking the rails and examining towers across from them. That way they were sure not to miss someone hiding under the rails or in any convenient crevices.

Prios Kres was a trustee walking the highest rail. He was a Kriticosian, a race of people who could live and breathe both in water and on land with equal ease. The oceans wouldn’t kill him, but the creatures living in them was more than enough of a deterrent for Prios. However, escape wasn’t on his mind. He wasn’t the troublemaking type, and he was known by the other inmates as the Good Boy. Unlike the paid guards, Prios had no weapon. Well, not a gun. His weapons were in his mouth in the form of a double row of sharp, shark-like teeth.

“Prios! Lunch.”

He’d barely heard the guards call over the constant, howling wind. This was a particularly stormy day, with swells reaching up to fifty feet. The tower swayed slightly, but not enough to upset his balance. Most guards hated outside rounds, but Prios found them refreshing. He loved the smell of salt air and a clean atmosphere.

He sat down next to Andy Rubick, a guard who’d arrived and started work at Hopewell the same day Prios had arrived for incarceration. They’d taken to one another at once and become friends, though they’d never let the Tower Governor know. Each tower was ran by a Tower Governor, who answered to a Colony General, who answered to the Warden, who was responsible for the operation of the entire planet.

The Tower Governors tended to be tyrants who frowned on any kind treatment of the inmates, saying it made the cutthroats inside perceive the guards as weaklings, but Andy was both liked and respected by all, including Prios. He sat down and accepted a container from Andy. Inside were two large trout, swimming in circles in the cramped space.

“Trout!” Prios said. Andy winked at him.

“You were a lot of help in diffusing that cafeteria fight, Prios. I thought you deserved a nice treat.”

“Thank you, Andy.”

Prios reached inside, spearing one of the trout with his talon-like fingernails, and hauled it squimring and flapping out of the water. He quickly put an end to its struggle with a merciful chomp, tearing off its head in one bit. Andy didn’t flinch as he opened his self-heating tray of turkey and stuffing. He’d long since adjusted to Prios’s eating habits.

“How did you get them?” Prios asked, swallowing the first bite.

“They were cloned over in Merdoch Colony. I had one of my friends send them over.”

Andy struggled to eat his food without it getting too wet, and it took most of his attention. Prios was free to look about, and something caught his attention in the sky, flashing rapidly. He nudged Andy since he didn’t recognize the object.

“Andy, what’s that?”

Andy gave up his lunch as a bad job and threw it over the edge of the railing. As the food approached the water, an eel-like creature jumped up from the water and swallowed it whole. He stood and looked to the sky, squinting through the driving rain as the thing grew larger.

“Must be a guest for the Memorplexin conference Warden Landgraf is giving,” said Andy, but as the thing in the sky grew larger, he began to doubt it was a guest for the conference. It was a blue box, spinning wildly in the air with a pulsing lightbulb on top.

“What is that?” Andy said.

“It looks like it’s going to crash!”

The blue box spun past their tower, coming within two feet of the railing. Andy and Prios both fell back with cries of terror, thinking it was going to hit them. When it was past, they leaned onto the railing and watched as the box slammed into the water.

More to come...