The Eighteen Revenges of Doctor Milan

By Christopher Ruz

Cezar didn't come to the prison colony known as the Pike for rehabilitation. He came for revenge.

Ten years ago, Cezar witnessed mutiny and murder aboard a colony starship. He survived, and with the aid of the enigmatic Doctor Milan he's worked his way into the Pike to kill the man who led the rebellion: the warden himself. But before he can get his hands around the warden's neck, he has to deal with the prison gang known as the Song, a Buddhist preacher with a suspicious interest in Cezar's past, and the creature lurking in the mines at the heart of the Pike... a monster that devours men whole and that may, in a way, be instrumental to Cezar's plans...

Cezar has his fists and a head filled with Milan's combat circuitry. The warden has a platoon of armed guards. The only way out of the Pike is death.

The time has come for karma and blood.

THE EIGHTEEN REVENGES OF DOCTOR MILAN is a 32,000 word psychedelic science fiction novella, in the tradition of Michael Moorcock and Alfred Bester.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Ruz
• Release date: Apr 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497797192

Book preview

The Eighteen Revenges of Doctor Milan

by Christopher Ruz

Copyright © Christopher Ruz Hayes-Kossmann 2012 All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or copied without written consent from the author.

Cover artwork © Christopher Newman

http://www.viviphyd.com/

From the Author:

Thank you once again to my many test readers, writing buddies, and family, for supporting me throught the thirteen months I spent developing and refining this story - especially Andrew Kertesz, who flew across the country to deliver his edits into my hands.

I love hearing from readers, so please contact me via Twitter or Facebook if you'd like to discuss my works, have a rant, or just say hello.

Take care out there!

Christopher Ruz - Author and Designer

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Other Titles by Christopher Ruz

Chapter 1

The prisoner transport was built for twenty men at most, but Cezar had been shackled in the back with fifty others, pressed cheek to cheek, all naked and stinking and crying as they flew across the desert plains of Arundus Seven.

His wrists were bound with a thermopolymer that tightened if he wriggled, but he risked losing circulation and shoved through the mass of prisoners to the transport's only window. Through the thin slit he could just make out the sweeps of rock, the oxidised plains, the stars shining bright through clean, manufactured atmosphere. Black pits vomiting crackling gas, and the pink tumour growths that were some strange unity of plant and silicate. Beyond them all, rising so high it became a silhouette against the stars, was their destination. The bones. The prison. The Pike.

A prisoner who couldn't have been more than twenty - more a kid than a grown man - pushed Cezar aside and pressed his face against the glass. His mouth opened and closed like a fish. What a fucking day, huh? he whispered. I heard it's just a big grave. Toss you in and lock the door.

Cezar grunted. They don't chip you if they're just gonna bury you.

You figure? Preacher came to me before they sent me off. Told me about karma and resurrection. They only send preachers to dying men, you know.

He couldn't help but laugh. We're all dying, kid. A little every day.

The kid quieted at that. The Pike grew closer by degrees, and Cezar found himself holding his breath as they approached. He'd seen the outside of the Pike only once before, when they'd landed on Arundus Seven a decade ago, descending through acid cloud cover onto an untouched plain. From kilometres above the Pike had only looked like another mountain, and it wasn't until they'd touched down that they'd seen the colossal vertebrae that made up its rocky structure, the skull near five hundred meters across with its tunnel of fossilised teeth and its cavernous empty sockets.

There were no creatures like it still living on Arundus Seven. Whether it was the remains of some beast long extinct, or a rock formation carved by alien hands, they couldn't tell. Now, he was headed inside the rotten shell.

The kid looked to Cezar with wide, desperate eyes. You wanna pray with me? They say there's something after this, you know. You start again.

Cezar didn't reply. He knew all about fresh starts. He'd taken his and drowned it in blood.

* * *

The transport slid through the gates of the Pike, shuddering and clanking as it docked. The guards forced the prisoners out, beating their bare legs with shock prods when they resisted. Few did. Two other transports had followed Cezar's, and he joined a line of more than a hundred men, shuffling with their heads down, sweat dripping from their chins.

They marched Cezar through the airlocks and into a plastic-walled decontamination chamber where he huddled with the other prisoners, naked and cold. A speaker in the ceiling spat static. Close your eyes!

A fine mist of antibacterials sprayed down, stinging across Cezar's bare skin. The thermopolymer binding his wrists hissed and fizzed as the spray ate through the material, falling apart in spiderweb strings. Then came a blast of light that left fine red motes dancing across his vision and a tingling in his fillings. Finally, valves in the walls thudded open. Cezar only had a moment to steel himself before the water jets hit, hard enough to knock him over. He shielded his face as the water pounded on his head. The prisoners howled and swore and slipped, crushing each other in their desperation to stay on their feet. Cezar scrambled on hands and knees until he reached the back corner of the chamber. He crouched there with his legs pulled up to his chest, holding his breath, waiting for the hoses to stop.

The water finally ebbed away. The speaker crackled. Go through the door.

They obeyed. There was nowhere else to go.

The corridors grew dark. The prisoners shuffled along with their heads down and said nothing. Their path was lit by tiny bulbs in the floor and in that light Cezar looked at his hands, at the deep grooves and patterns of scars left by knife-fights and broken teeth and back-alley surgeons sealing wounds with glue. He made a quick fist. There was still strength there, enough for what he had to do.

The corridor widened and opened into a long grey chamber. Guards stood behind walls of reinforced glass. They carried long microwave-rifles with dark mouths and their eyes were hidden behind black visors.

The prisoners stopped. Some hunched and covered their nakedness with their hands. Others watched the guards with teeth bared, daring them to pull the triggers. Cezar waited at the back, keeping a wall of flesh between himself and the guns.

At the far end of the chamber was a small glass booth, and in that booth was a man wearing a light blue suit and a pair of white gloves. Beneath his vest was the unmistakeable bulge of body armour. His eyes were a dark shade of blue, so dark they could've been purple, or black. He coughed, and the cough was amplified by hidden speakers, echoing off the walls.

I am the warden, the man said, and I own this prison. I own you. During your time here - however brief, long, or terminal - you will obey all directives given to you by myself or my guards. The penalty for disobeying a directive once is solitary confinement. The second time, the penalty is vivisection.

He coughed again, the noise echoing like a pistol shot. I don't care why you were sentenced, he said. I don't care whether you blackmailed the mayor or piloted a starship into an orbital orphanage. Your crimes on Arundus Seven mean nothing to me. This, here, is my world, and you're under my thumb from now until the day your implants blink off and say you're free to leave. Understand?

Cezar nodded in time with the other prisoners, but he was concentrating on other things. The floor, the walls, the gaps where the walls met the ceiling. He looked at the guards, and the straps that bound their armour to their limbs, and wondered exactly how much force it would take to wrest one of those microwave-rifles away, how many kilograms of pressure it would take to shatter their facemasks and gouge out their eyes.

The warden clapped his gloved hands, and a door slid open in the concrete wall, revealing more black corridor. Take a uniform and choose a cell, he said. If there's somebody already in your cell, that's your problem. The warden's smile was only the slightest curve of the lips. How you behave with each other is not my concern, so long as you treat my guards with respect. This is your only warning. Welcome to the Pike.

The prisoners filed past the warden's sealed-off cube one by one, squeezing through the door and into the darkness, and the warden nodded to each of them in turn as if sharing some private joke. Cezar stayed at the back, his gaze fixed on the space between his feet. It wasn't until he was right beside the warden's cube that he looked up and met the man's eyes.

The warden jumped back. One gloved hand flew up to his throat. You-

Cezar turned away and was swept along by the tide of prisoners, into the dark.

* * *

They passed through slim black tunnels where the only sound was the echoes of their footfalls. A pile of rough cloth was thrust into Cezar's hands. A uniform. He dressed as he walked, until he emerged, blinking, into the light of the Pike cellblock.

Shortly after landing on Arundus Seven, Cezar had gotten drunk in a desert bar and heard stories of the first settlers, how they tunnelled inside the corpse-mountain of the Pike, blasting through weak ivory walls in search of treasure and instead finding a great hollow too cold and dark for any sane man to endure. The stories hadn't worried him. He'd had his own problems at the time, scratching out a living on the far side of the planet, earning his bread with knives and pressure-pistols and teeth. But mistakes had been made, and he'd been hunted down and dragged to the mountain in chains. Now he was inside, and the stories were his stories.

As he stepped from the shadowed corridor into the hollow cone of the Pike he found himself mute. The walls were hard grey rock stretching up, up, up, to a central peak so