Farcry Chapter One: Carter Pons
Chapter One
Carter Pons
Carter Pons was annoyed.
The magnetic shackles were chafing his wrists, and he really had to pee. But try explaining that one to beings with a cloaca.
The enforcer shoved him from behind, finger talons digging into his torn, prison-issue jumpsuit. Carter picked up his pace, thankful the alien didn’t use his stun stick, as that would have made him relieve himself right then and there. The Poshk hated cleaning up after their Terran prisoners.
The doors to the adjudication room swiveled open, some unseen, silent mechanism responding to their approach and allowing them entry. The enforcer shoved him one last time for good measure and took his place along the back wall next to the doors. A gray-robed arbiter nodded to Carter as he shuffled his way to the tall, scutoid lectern situated in the center of the room. Narrow side doors opened to allow spectators to enter the viewing gallery on either side. Muted voices spoke gutteral Poshk.
A moment later the magistrate entered through a door behind the high desk at the front of the room. Stern-faced and crimson-robed, the magistrate took his seat and wrapped his scaly fingers around a battered metal ball, flat on the bottom, the beings used in place of a gavel. Carter stared at it for a long moment, imagining what it would be like to bring that ball down on the bony protrusions of the magistrate’s knuckles, or the hard, bony shell atop his stoic head.
The magistrate banged the ball on the desk and opened his beak-like mouth and something gutteral and oily spilled out. The room’s translator deciphered it a nanosecond later into Standard: “The court will now come to order. How does the prisoner plead?”
“Innocent,” said Carter’s assigned arbiter stated crisply, as soon as the translator caught up. Carter knew just enough of Terran law to know that this was an odd phrasing, but the Poshk, for all their interest in Earth-style jurisprudence, didn’t seem as interesting in following it to the letter. Even this limited attempt at justice was little more than window-dressing. For the price of a small asteroid, Carter could have paid off the magistrate and been released months ago. But since he had nothing of value to exchange for his freedom, Carter had no choice but to feel the full brunt of Poshk “justice.”
“Very well,” said the magistrate. Prisoner is hereby sentenced to ten kilocycles on the mining colony of Deltus Veta. Court dismissed.”
