In Enemy Territory - Shannon West Page 0,32
watching a sullen but semi-random parade of terrifying looking men stream past them—heavily tattooed murderers, thieves, drug dealers, slavers, and pirates—all slouching past one of five seemingly casual, but alert, Gatifreyan guards by the door.
The guards were non-binary, so it was hard to determine just what they looked like, as they were all of a similar size and wearing long, gray robes with the hoods pulled up to partially hide their faces. It didn’t take long to figure out why there were so few guards, however, or why their stance was so casual. When one of them turned slightly to speak to the other, Rasc saw the huge, deadly disruptor strapped to their back. A blast from one of those would certainly be enough to contain any fight or escape attempt that might spontaneously crop up.
Two other guards were busy overseeing a small group they’d peeled off from the crowd and randomly chosen for a strip search. As Rasc watched, the inmates dropped their prison blue uniforms into little piles and then spun around, bare-assed, to be scrutinized. Once they spread to be inspected, they dressed again and sauntered out into the yard to fill their lungs with oxygen, after what had presumably been a long night in the stagnant air of the cellblock. Gatifrey had an atmosphere that was dense like Earth’s and consisted of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide like all the humanoid inhabited planets in the galaxies. It also contained water vapor, and though the oxygen levels were a bit lower than on Earth, Rasc was having no trouble breathing. Setin was having a little more difficulty, since Laltana had an even higher mixture of oxygen in its atmosphere, but they were both getting acclimated. For the first few days, they just needed to take it slow and easy. Rasc hadn’t been on Laltana for a long time.
The first inmate to put his clothes back on after the strip search looked to Rasc like a Drex pirate. The Drex were a ragtag group of Nilaniums and pirates of mixed origin. The inmate even wore a patch over one eye. He walked about fifty yards over to a table and sat down on one of its benches. Every line of his body was a warning to come nowhere near him unless you were part of his gang. Another darker-skinned inmate, who looked to have at least a bit of Lycan blood from his large size, was already at a small workout area and staring out at the yard intently. As Rasc watched, a short, dark-haired Nilanium made his way to a third spot, near the fence. And finally, another inmate, who Setin whispered was a slaver he recognized from the old days, claimed another picnic table.
Slowly it became obvious that they had been moving tactically, and each one had staked out a rallying point for his group and its affiliates. In other words, for his gang. Members soon joined these outliers at their various vantage points.
Once each gang had achieved critical mass—which seemed to be about fifteen men—it sent off a pair of scouts. Two of the Drex at the original concrete-like picnic table began a long, winding stroll around the yard. They seemed to be walking around, stopping occasionally to get within earshot of other groups, perhaps trying to figure out what was going down in the yard that day. Flicking a glance over at Rasc and Setin as they passed, they then slowly returned to their base and seemed to be giving a report. Rasc knew it would be about what was going on, who was attacking who, and who was selling what, with no doubt a footnote sizing up the two new prisoners.
Eventually, about a hundred or more inmates came out in the yard, and the guards had stepped back and congregated at their own rallying point, their backs to the fence. One or two had taken their disruptors off their backs and were holding them casually in their hands, pointed down at the ground, but ready to be used. The men’s movements around the yard were so smooth and organized, they seemed like they were coordinated by something like the old traffic lights they had back on Earth.
Eventually, one of the guards noticed Rasc and Setin standing by the door and motioned with their disruptors for them to move away and go out into the yard to join the others. Rasc did, but quickly began sizing up the groups, trying to figure out