Even with the grain confiscated there should have been plenty to eat. That governor they placed here must have been starving them! Now the extra troops around the silos made sense. He looked at the gaunt faces in the crowd and found one who looked well fed, which made him easy to pick out. He muttered a few orders into his headset, and his troops began to hand out whatever food they had on them to the people standing around.
At first some threw it away, screaming fears of poison. He finally went to a ration bar which had been thrown in the dirt, picked it up, and ate it himself. Some continued to mutter after that, but all ate.
A voice assured him over the headset that they were breaking out the emergency rations, and there would be enough to go around shortly. He wanted to wait until the food arrived, but time was of the essence. His eyes kept careful track of the one well-fed man in the crowd as he spoke, “Good people, I wish no harm to you, nor any of yours. My only quarrel is with the Legion, and the governor who has been placed over you and denied you food. You can look around you and see that your neighbors are all here, and most are unharmed. This is the case despite the fact that some of you took arms against us. I do not begrudge any of you this, you were defending your home and stood up admirably.
I can see that many of you have already realized what it is that I have come here for, and you are partially correct. I am here for this marvelous grain you have, but that is not the only reason I am here. I am also here because CentGov placed an unrighteous governor over you, and has been starving you as punishment for developing something they could not exploit. I do not like to see people going hungry, which is why I am having food brought up the hill to you, and which is why I, unlike that bastard governor and CentGov, plan to let you keep most of your grain.”
A man in the middle of the crowds raised a fist and began to shout while he moved himself to a spot between them and Lucas. Lucas felt himself smile slightly at the governor’s foolhardy boldness. The governor had changed his clothes in order to make himself look the part of one who he had ruled, but their hate-filled gazes and skin which did not sit gaunt against his bones gave him away.
Lucas decided to take a gamble and let the man speak for a little bit, betting that he would hang himself if given some rope. The man’s angry voice carried over the crowd, and Lucas could see their expressions softening toward himself. ”Oh, the Great, the beneficent, the Wonderful Lucas! He will let us keep what is ours, will only steal a little of it from us! How thankful we should be that you dropped in here like a bunch of angry bees, burned our streets, killed in front of our children, and are only going to take from us some of the fruits of our labors! How wonderful…”
Lucas let a smirk reach is face, and the governor faltered. He looked behind himself to rally support, and seemed to choke on his own words as he saw that he’d struck no cord with the civilians standing around him. When he turned his head back, Lucas allowed a full, 'feral cat' grin to spread across his features before he spoke, “Yes, governor, we are taking some of their grain, but only some of it. As opposed to you and CentGov, who would have taken it all. I have to admit that I find your audacity to be quite surprising, if foolish, 'governor'.
“To stand here before a bunch of people you have been starving for so long without the guns of the Legion to back you up takes a special kind of courage… or desperation. I mean, it is not like the Legion is the only thing that has kept these people from tearing you apart for some time. For that matter, now that they have seen your protection whipped so thoroughly, I imagine they would be perfectly willing to wade through the one or two shots you could get off with a blaster before they got to you." He put his hands on his hips, spread his feet a bit, and leaned slightly to one side as angry murmurs floated in from the crowd. All eyes had gone to the governor, with only the slightest flicks in his direction. The man tried to put bluster on his face, then turned and saw the hard faces of men pushing children into the arms of their wives.
His face fell, and panic settled into his eyes. Lucas put a hand on his pistol and steel into his voice, "So, now that you understand the position you are in, how about you load yourself onto the prisoner transports with your troops. Or, would you rather I leave you here, in this colony, unarmed, to face the parents of children you have starved half to death?”
The governor's face went deep red, then bone white. He looked around at the hard stares coming from the men who had begun a slow advance on him, and seemed to calculate how short his life expectancy would be if left alone with them. He turned and began to walk toward the prisoner transport. He tried to hold his head high, keep a defiant look on his face, and hold to a dignified pace.
The men would have none of that. They increased their pace, and began to step heavier. The governor sped up, the men sped with him and began to talk in harsh growls to each other. Soon, the governor abandoned all dignity and took off at a run toward the transports. The men stopped to stand and watch, looks of grim satisfaction on their faces, then head back to hear what Lucas had to say.
Lucas looked at the crowd again, and saw that both the aggressiveness and the furtiveness were gone from the people’s postures. There were even a few smiles as they watched their despised governor run with his tail between his legs. Much better, this might work yet.
“Yes, as I said, I will let you keep most of your grain.” A few moment’s pause, to make sure he had their full attention and to let his statement sink in. “ My men and I are going to take the same amount of grain which would have legally been taken as taxes by CentGov, the rest of it we will leave to you. The thing is, folks, this grain you have cultivated is far superior to anything else on Kethelmar. It is heartier, healthier, grows faster, and is more genetically sound than anything else available, and the Column is starting to have a bit of a food problem. We need enough of your superior grain to seed our own fields, but that is all.”
A voice raised from the crowd, sounding more resigned than angry, “You may as well take it all, you bastard, it won’t matter. Anything left in those silos they will take regardless, if they don’t kill us all out of hand. We have seen you and spoken to you, but made no attempt to kill you, we are all as good as dead. They will call in air strikes, and put the blame for our deaths at your feet! Can’t you see that?”
”See it? Well, I could, if it was going to happen, but it won’t. For your second concern, there is a news crew which has been tipped off that there is a Column raid going on here today. They should be here in a few hours, just before the Legion shows up. The crew will be broadcasting live, and so they will have no choice but to show the world that you are, indeed, all alive though we are gone. CentGov will not be able to come in and kill you then, because there would be no way they could blame it on us.
“For the first concern which you expressed, we will also destroy these silos, after loading them with enough of our own grain to make CentGov believe that all the grain is destroyed. There are a number of large, dry caves in that mountain, ones which are not too difficult to get to.” A surprised gasp came from various spots in the crowd, then a low murmuring as they began to realize the scope of his proposal.
His antagonist recognized it too, but refused to budge, “Yes, we could store all that grain in these caves, if we could get it there in time. There is a huge amount of grain in there, however, and we have only hand tools and hand baskets to carry it with, and we are all too starved to put in that kind…of…wor….”
The speaker’s mouth worked silently as his head turned to a noise coming up the hill. A line of small tractors came into view, each towed a small grain-bin full of wheel barrows and push-carts. The drivers of the tractors also held large bags of field rations. The people watched in slack-jawed surprise while the drivers hopped down and began handing out the food. They started with the men and women who looked most fit to work, then the children. Just as those rations began to run out a dozen flyers landed with more bags in their hands. As his flyers handed out the rations the drivers began unloading their
bins with an air of calm efficiency.
Within moments the colonists began to devour their rations with the gusto, and the first tractors began to race off for their initial trip to the silos. Lucas heard mothers crying as they watched their children eat, and saw the last looks of fear directed toward him slowly turn to look of gratitude and awe.
He watched the transition with awe and gladness. It made him feel alive, made him feel hope for the future, and it made him terribly uncomfortable. He saw the expectations rising in their eyes, and in the eyes of his men, and silently prayed to The Rescue that he would be able to live up to those expectations. He found it to be a very humbling experience.
Once all the food had been handed out he spoke again, “I do not propose to leave you to do this by yourselves, friends. There are not a lot of us here, but we are going to do what we can. It is my fervent hope that we can get all this grain moved in time. Now, there is a reason that the food was handed out to the strongest among you first.
Do not over-eat, just take enough to stop the hole in your belly from complaining. We will keep this food here, and you can nibble on more of it as you work. As one of you astutely pointed out, we have a great deal of grain to move and a very short time to move it in, so hop to it as soon as you are able. Where there is a Wing there is a Way, folks, and all of the wings around here are going to be doing their best to help you.”
A smile pulled at his lips due to the half-feigned groans of his men, and the amused looks on the civilian’s faces. True to his word, he grabbed a couple of grain sacks and launched himself skyward. Behind him Gencher issued orders curtly, setting a guard detail on the prisoners, organizing both troops and civilians into details for various tasks, breaking up the medics into a group to check the health of the children and a couple to make sure that none of the civilians worked themselves to the point of damage. He had to remember to compliment Gencher on that last bit with the medics, it would have been terrible to lose any of these people to over-work.
Twelve hours later he landed at the mouth of the cave, the last bags of grain in his hands. Others had tried to take the sack from him, back at the silos, but he'd had none of it. He wanted to do the honors, for his own sake, for the sake of his men, and for the locals. His feet hit the ground and he felt himself begin to waver. It took everything he had to keep from collapsing into the dirt. Calloused hands steadied him as others reached for the bags and scuttled off with them into the cave. Every muscle in his body ached. His wings shook from the strain of having to carry those sacks, his arms felt like jelly, and he had to hold back spasms in his legs the effort of taking off and landing with the added load.
Gencher had forced him to take his turns riding back to the silos in the bins like everyone else, despite his objections early on, but the strain still took its toll. He had born the strain in silence, though, and used his stoic, stubborn motion to quietly push his men.
He had watched it happen in knowing looks and whispered admonitions. They knew, all of them -flyers and ground-pounders alike- that his bat-wings had a harder time carrying a load than his feathered flyers. He had seen their eyes follow him with growing concern. Not a one had been willing to slacken his pace. They joked softly about being out-done by ‘the old man’, but he could hear the guilt their tone, the unwillingness to push themselves an inch less than he pushed himself.
He tried to turn around for a look at the island, and felt a wave of gratitude for the hands, Column and civilian alike, which reached out to steady him. He felt a water tube pressed against him mouth, and he drank deeply, if absently.
The vantage from the cave allowed him to see the cargo craft topping off the last of the silos. Those cargo craft had worked hard, topping each silo as fast as it emptied. The civilians thought they had several more craft than they did, and that they had been loaded at a nearby base to the north. In fact, though, very few of them had been in place to get the job done, and they had been loaded by cargo subs.
Several fighter craft came screaming in from the south, and everyone turned to the silos to see the bombs hit them with a spectacular chain of explosions. One of the craft banked, and came back for another pass, this time annihilating one of the buildings which had held the pair of meat-vats The Column had already loaded onto a transport.
He expected fear from the civilians, but instead a ragged cheer went up from the men and women who had gathered. They watched the fireball climb into the sky and he decided that their cheers made a certain amount of sense; this destruction ensured their safety and livelihood.
The hustle and bustle continued about him as the flash of destruction played out. The tracks and evidence of the last several hours of activity had to be thoroughly erased, lest CentGov uncover the deception. His ears caught Gencher issuing order after order, and felt a happiness rise in him. Someone half-helped half-drug him into a tractor, and he spent surveyed the scene while it carried him down the hill. As he reached the fires of the silos the last of his men and their tractors boarded the amphibious transports, and the confirmation came in that the cargo subs had submerged and gotten under way.
As people gathered a voice crackled on his private channel “Sir, we have the news plane on radar. Estimate that they are twenty minutes out, fifteen minutes from being able to obtain the first visuals.”
He signaled acknowledgement, then switched to the universal-broadcast mode. “Ok, folks, the news people are coming! We have ten minutes to get ourselves out of here or everything will be for naught. That’s ten minutes! Put your backs and wings into it!”
The last of his men loaded up, and they left the last three tractors to be driven away by the locals. It had been decided to leave them in order to give the men in the transports a little more space. His comm. crackled again, letting him know that the Legion forces were twenty-five minutes away. This brought a number of happy sounds floating across the command channel. Everything had been timed perfectly. The last of the transports lifted into the air at news crew minus three minutes, and everyone waited.
The news craft could finally be heard, and he marshaled his strength, bent his legs to launch his protesting body into the air, but a hand fall heavily on his shoulder. He turned to find one of the hard-faced, calloused-handed farm women, a look of concern on her face, “Lucas! you are not going to take to the air again. You have worked harder than anyone else here, and it is our lives you have saved. I am not about to have you falling out of our sky after you came in here and did so much for us! Now, order one of those ships to land, and let us load you onto it!” With that the woman’s eyes filled with water, she kissed him on his grimy cheek, thanked him, and turned away, her face in her hands.
His hand went in amazement to the moist spot on his cheek as his eyes searched the sky for the news crew. Several of the civilians had closed on him, guessing that he still intended to take flight.
He slowly backed away from them, and switched his comm channel from general Column feed to the audio for the live newscast. “As we are approach the nearly unknown Lancern colony billows of black smoke rise to the sky. We received an anonymous tip some hours ago that these poor people were to be the target of a Column raid, and it looks like the tip was correct. The scene is one of devastation unlike any I have seen. Ladies and Gentlemen, we must warn our more sensitive viewers...…wait…what is that on the ground near the fires? Looks like a handful of citizens are closing on one of them. We will have a close up for you in just a moment and…By The Captain’s Chair! Is That? It couldn’t be…Ladies and Gentlemen of Kethelmar, it appears that these brave, but foolhardy, civilians are closing in on none other than Lucas himself. We warn our more sensitive viewers…”
Lucas had heard enough, he'd been seen by the news, which meant the last piece of the plan had fallen into place. With an effort that felt like moving a mountain he forced his knees to bend and launch him, screaming in agony, into the air. His wings swept through the air as he struggled for altitude, but his body's sluggish response made the tran
sport suddenly seemed so far away. Muscles strained, and he managed, bit by agonizing bit, to make the ground fall away.
The roar of the oncoming news craft filled his ears and he suddenly realized he had begun to lose altitude. The pilot of his transport responded quickly, pulling an almost impossible maneuver to scoop him up as the news craft screamed by. Strong hands held him and pulled him into the craft then half-led, half-drug him to a seat.
It took him several hard breaths and let the drone of chatter from the handlers in the Command and Control transport wash over him. The tone of that buzz shifted abruptly, became far more distressed and urgent, and he forced himself to focus on the tactical holo display.
Four Legion fighter craft had broken off from the small fleet sent against him to bear down on the newscaster's plane. He heard the newscaster's voice playing over a speaker somewhere, and the lady didn't sound like she had the slightest idea how dangerous her situation had become.
He forced one more surge of adrenaline through his system, so he could muster the energy to cut through the noise, "Someone figure out what frequency that idiot Chair-Damned pilot is on, break radio silence, and warn him already!"
The cushion behind his back had almost no give as he settled, hard, against it, the last of his reserves tapped. Someone took his order, however, and he heard them shouting into a comm. Moments later the news anchor's eyes got very wide, and the cameras shifted from the ground to the Legion fighter planes. She cut the audio feed to her pilot's comms.
The news pilot spoke first, "Legion fighters bearing down on registered news plane, we have visual on you, please let us know what course you wish us to take."
Lucas held his breath when the fighter craft did not respond. He looked again at the newsfeed, and saw them setting up for an attack. The news pilot repeated his message. twice more before someone, somewhere, apparently realized that the feed had already gone out live, all over Kethelmar, and how bad it would be to have the Legion blast a news crew to Rescue and back on live vid.
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