by J D Huffman
William couldn’t argue down her logic. She’s right. I probably wouldn’t trust me, either. “I’ll make you a deal, Sasha. Maybe I haven’t done enough to prove myself to you yet. I’ve heard you next plan to hit a Totality weapons depot. Do you have anyone among your close advisors who knows about tactical planning?”
“Fred has some expertise in that area.”
“Fred seems to have expertise in everything,“ William noted wryly.
Sasha couldn’t help forming the ghost of a smile at that remark. “It’s true. I’m always amazed by what that man knows, when he feels like sharing it.”
“What I’m getting at is that I would be happy to help you with the tactical planning for your strike on the Totality weapons depot. I don’t know anything about the facility itself, but I’m going to assume the plan is to breach a building and clear it of it hostiles?”
“That’s correct. You have experience in these matters?”
If you only knew. “Yes. On my homeworld, I’m what they call a Militiaman. Requires a lot of tactical training, and I’ve gone up against some rather nasty people who didn’t want to come out of wherever they were holed up. With just a handful of people I can take almost any structure, given some time to work out how it’s laid out and defended.”
Sasha’s eyes widened somewhat. William hoped this was a good sign. “Your help would be greatly appreciated. It’s unlikely you will be in any physical condition to participate in the assault directly, though.”
She’s got me, there. “True. I don’t know what kind of setup you’re working with, but I could do command and control from almost anywhere as long as I have eyes on the situation. Figure out what technology and tools we have to work with and I’ll do my best to come up with a plan. I’ll even work with Fred in case you don’t want everything to be in my hands.”
William sensed Sasha’s apprehension at the idea, but he wasn’t sure which part put her off. Does she want Fred to do something else? Does she think I’ll deceive him somehow? She responded a moment later. “I’ll tentatively accept your offer and make my final decision after speaking with Fred and the rest of my trusted officers. You should also know that we’ll be departing Actis before the end of the day. I believe Angel plans to move your bed onto our ship and secure you appropriate medical facilities. They are more limited on the ship than they are here, but we’ll have all the medical supplies and equipment we can take from this outpost.”
She dismissed herself and William was left to think about how he’d actually concoct a plan to take a Totality weapons depot. Really, William? You think you could pull this off? It’s been years since you’ve had to do something like this. But it doesn’t matter. I have to prove myself valuable to her. Demeter was right about that. If I don’t give myself a real purpose in allying myself with Sasha, she might as well leave me behind, and then I’ll be alone again. I stand no chance against the Totality by myself. Even a fool could see that.
Chapter 18
Points of Departure
Though she knew it wouldn’t have been possible, Sasha wished she’d slept longer. She had a hard time sleeping ever since the revolt, the weight of so much newfound responsibility keeping her up when she most needed her rest. It was what led to Demeter crossing her path on his way back from visiting William—something she wondered about after seeing the latter, in fact. From Fred, she was aware of William and Demeter’s past association on Trepsis, that William was Demeter’s superior officer and the latter was abducted by the Totality when they came to Trepsis. She had no real reason to believe that wasn’t true, since both Fred and William had corroborated it, and while she didn’t know William well enough to trust everything he said, she couldn’t imagine why Fred would aid William—or Demeter—in deceiving her. But this left the question of Demeter’s message to the Order. If only I knew what he said. What if it was completely innocuous? What if he’d heard of them from Fred, decided they’re enemies of the Totality, and tried to call for help? Could it be that simple? But then, how would he know the right frequency and encoding for a message? It’s possible he found that information in the Totality computer, but it’s also possible he knew it already. I wish I could ask him without it seeming like an accusation. He seems intelligent and resourceful—I can’t risk alienating him. But since he and William are relatively close, maybe I can use that to my advantage when we plan the depot raid. William will probably want someone he trusts in a lead role in the ground assault, and I can push back and say I want someone I trust in a similar role, and make it look as if I’m grudgingly allowing Demeter to assume a risky position, when I am really trying to put him to the test, to see where his true loyalties lie. If there’s any possibility of him defecting to the Totality, I need to make sure his access to information is limited. There is, after all, the chance that his message to the Order was a ruse, that he left it there specifically so I could find it, to let me think he’s trying to secure allies for us when his real goal is to give us over to the Totality. I can’t let him have access to anything sensitive, in that case. But then, I thought Fred might be working for the Totality, too. I should throw them all aside and just rely on Serim. He does what he’s told. He has no initiative. I don’t have to worry about him turning on me or having loyalties to other forces.
A scream interrupted her thoughts as she patrolled one of the mining complex’s many corridors, and it set her into a run. She wasn’t far from the docking bay, where she was already headed. She came through the doorway and into a scene of pure carnage. Bodies littered the floor, joined by pools of blood, and screams and moans filled the air, punctuated by the little pop sounds of the Totality rifles. It took her a moment to process what was happening. Some of the bodies wore Totality uniforms. Others were the bare slave tunics and shorts. She saw several armed individuals in slave garb loading barrels of fuel and crates of food onto the docked ship—the first one set to leave. She recognized a few of the men as those she’d previously encountered in the Totality living quarters, the ones who’d taken to killing the Totality prisoners for sport. Many thoughts raced through her mind in that moment, but the foremost was simple: I have to stop them!
She moved instantly to the communication panel on the wall, depressing the button that called up to the general operations center. “This is Sasha. Is anyone up there?”
“Demeter here. I’ve got Serim and Fred around, too.”
“I need as many of you down here as can be spared. Bring weapons. We’ve got a… disturbance.”
She moved off to the side, outside the doorway and out of sight, hoping they hadn’t seen her. Given the way they continued to wheel pallets of supplies onto the ship, she assumed they hadn’t noticed. Some of the wounded clearly had, however, and they called out her name as if invoking it would ease their pain and save them from imminent death. Shut up, damn you. You’ll get me killed!
Peeking her head around the corner from outside the bay, she saw the group of killers scanning the expansive room. She had the advantage by being so far away, such a small target from across the bay. She did her best to put together what they must have done. They probably brought the Totality prisoners here and executed them. Which means either they killed the guards I had posted, the guards were sleeping, or they turned on me, too. I can’t tell if they killed all the prisoners. Based on the number I can see, looks like it was most of them, at a minimum. But what about the free humans they’ve killed and injured? Are they people who didn’t want to follow me, and were killed for trying to board? I’m probably not going to get an explanation. Why am I going to have to kill my own kind? She felt her eyes moistening as tears welled up, which only veered her into anger. This isn’t fair! I just freed these people, and now I have to fight them. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
She took a quick, deep breath and straightened her posture as Demeter and Fred arrived with a couple extra rifles on their backs. Fred handed one to Sasha. “What
is happening down here?”
“Fucking banditry,” she cursed. “Those men I talked to in the Totality quarters. Looks like they executed the prisoners along with a bunch of innocent people. Now they’re stealing whatever they can. They’re not getting away with this, Fred.”
He nodded. “I agree. It cannot be permitted.”
Demeter didn’t need any prompting. He went ahead of Sasha and Fred both, stepping down the ramp into the open area of the bay and started shooting. Three men immediately went down, bringing the pallet they were moving to a standstill. Two more emerged from the ship’s docking area and returned fire. Demeter didn’t miss a step, though he missed his next few shots. Sasha and Fred rushed to his side, laying down more weapons fire on Demeter’s behalf. The men grunted and hit the ground. No one else came out right away, but Sasha wasn’t content that she only had five rebels to worry about. “We need to clear that ship. Fred, I want you to go to the comm panel and get Angel down here to check on the wounded. Tell her to bring anyone she can get her hands on to help with triage. If we can save any of these people, we have to try. But the ship comes first. We have to secure it before anyone else is killed.”
“What about the Totality?” Demeter asked, keeping his eyes fixed on the still-distant target of the ship’s docking port.
“She can treat them after she’s treated everyone else. Go to it, Fred.”
The troll nodded and jogged away, leaving Sasha and Demeter to move toward the ship and seize control of it. As she moved up the loading ramp and inside, she was brought back to her childhood, to that slave transport that first brought her to Actis. The huge, almost-empty reaches of the cargo ship reminded her of the slave barge’s interior, where people struggled to stave off both starvation and boredom. She moved side-by-side with Demeter past the barrels of fuel and crates of supplies. She saw packages of fresh food—vegetables clearly stolen from the kitchen—left out in the open instead of a properly-refrigerated area. She knew these ships had adequate refrigeration facilities specifically for such cargo, but evidently the murderous thieves didn’t bother to investigate before commandeering the ship. They could have simply gone aboard and let the ship take them anywhere. They could have left as a group, settled on the first planet they found, gotten some food and other provisions, never having to deal with the Totality again. They could have escaped to some remote place. They didn’t have to do any of this. Instead, they defied me. They marched the Totality down here and fucking murdered them. They killed dozens of innocent people who either came down here expecting to leave, or tried to stop them from executing the Totality. All they got was shot to death, too. And then they had the nerve—the fucking nerve—to steal from the kitchen and leave perfectly good produce out to rot. She knew it was absurd to be so upset about such a relatively minor detail, but the principle of it drove her mad. They were so careless, so callous, so vengeful. But that’s exactly what the Totality turned them into, isn’t it? She frowned as she felt a pang of sympathy for the five men they’d already killed. It was possible that she could have saved them, but there wasn’t time. There’s never time, is there? I didn’t have time to bring everyone together and force people to make peace, to act like reasonable human beings, to understand that the only way we’ll survive—the only way—is by working together. And now, it’s like the universe has come back to teach me a lesson, that I can’t just win and call it a day. Every victory has a price, and I’m going to keep paying and paying for this one, aren’t I?
After using the ship’s communication system to call for reinforcements to gather the produce to preserve it, she and Demeter resumed their search and found more people within the ship. Each one popped out from behind a cargo container, hands in the air, pleading not to be shot. One of them didn’t say anything Sasha understood, but she immediately lowered her weapon so as to make clear he wouldn’t be harmed. She sensed the gratitude in his voice as he fled in the direction she’d entered. The other three had similar stories to tell. One was a woman a little older than Sasha, trembling from fear. The story went more or less as she’d expected. “We were waiting in the docking area to board the ship. We thought you would come to send us off, but then these men with rifles came, and they had Totality with them, all tied up and beaten. They made the Totality get in a line, and then they stood in front and asked if any of us had the guts to kill the creatures that enslaved us. Everyone was scared and no one wanted to say or do anything. We just wanted to leave. They wouldn’t let us. The men just started shooting the Totality, one by one, in their heads. After the first few…” She stopped, falling to her knees and crying. Sasha knelt down next to her and rubbed her back, trying to console her.
“You don’t have to tell me the rest right now,” she said soothingly. “But how many of them were there? How many men did this?”
“Six,” the woman sobbed. “I know it was six.”
So, there’s one to go, Sasha scowled.
At the far end of the ship’s lengthy cargo bay was a door that opened onto a ladder, which Sasha assumed led up to the ship’s control center. Cautiously, she and Demeter moved up the ladder, taking care not to make any noise. They proceeded shoulder-to-shoulder, weapons aimed directly ahead, eyes scanning for any possible threat. A wall at the upper landing offered them a smidgen of cover. They didn’t hesitate to take advantage of it. The control center was as wide as the ship itself, with a large forward-facing window that offered a view of the seemingly endless snowy wastes outside. The room was much larger than the living area Sasha had grown accustomed to as a slave, and even felt more spacious than the general operations center in the mining complex. The consoles were spread out and relatively isolated, clearly designed to be operated by separate people and likely not reliant on a tremendous amount of cooperation. It occurred to Sasha that she knew virtually nothing about how these ships were controlled. She had a very rough sense of their flight characteristics from the quick remote rigging Fred had established during their earlier crisis, but she didn’t know if that was representative of how these vessels normally flew. With her head peeking ever so slightly around the edge of the little strip of wall that protected them, she looked for signs of life. Abruptly, a body thrust up from behind one of the consoles. She recognized him immediately—it was the one she’d spoken with before, in the Totality quarters. She couldn’t forget that face: the thin lips, sharp cheekbones, jagged jawline, the improbably wide eyes that nevertheless looked so vacant, and a hateful visage framed by dark, thinning hair. His attention was not on her, however. She saw that he was agitated, and it was confirmed when he pounded his fist against the console and shouted wordlessly.
When she saw he wasn’t armed, she knew it was time to strike. She rushed out from behind the wall and toward him, closing the distance quickly, stopping only a couple meters away. He noticed her before she stopped, and lunged for something she couldn’t see. “Ah, ah!” she called out. He stopped in mid-dive, looking up at her.
“If you’re going to kill me, do it!” he barked.
She moved a little closer, keeping her rifle trained squarely on his chest. “Whether you die right now is up to you. I want to know why you defied me again. I thought we had an understanding.” She motioned the tip of rifle upward. “Stand up. I don’t like you looking like you’re about to snatch up that weapon.”
“Fine,” he hissed, moving into an upright position, stepping toward her as if to dare her to shoot. “We never had an ‘understanding.’ You thought you could tell us what to do. No one appointed you our leader. You took that role upon yourself. But I do not bow to you. You’re nothing to me. The Totality brutalized me—brutalized my people—and they deserve every shred of revenge I’ve visited upon them. They deserve more, the way I see it.”
“It wasn’t your decision,” she said flatly. “It wasn’t even my decision. I intended to leave them alive, to show that we’re better. They treat us like garbage, work us to death, throw our bod
ies into the fire, and replace us with kids straight off a slave barge. But we take them prisoner, and we take pity on them. We show mercy. We house them, we feed them, we make sure they’re taken care of until we leave, and then their own kind can have them back. Don’t misunderstand me. They don’t deserve to be treated well. They’ve earned a great deal of misery for their crimes against us. But I want our actions to confuse them. Do you think mercy is something Totality understand? Do you think they grasp forgiveness? Do you think the concept of treating their enemies with dignity has ever occurred to them? It was part of my strategy. I wanted to make them question what they’re doing. I wanted them to struggle to understand. And you—you fucked it up.”
He kept his eyes on her the whole time, his face sporting the same unmoved expression. She saw nothing in his eyes, as if he wasn’t really there. She wondered what kind of person he must have been before, if he was always this seemingly vacant monster capable only of death and hatred, or if it’s just what the Totality made him into. With some time, I could probably figure it out. We could talk. Maybe he’ll open up to me and tell me about his past, about his childhood, about what the Totality did to him and his friends. He doesn’t even know they’re dead, does he? He doesn’t know they died following him. Would that reach him? She thought it was worth a try.
“I’m also sorry to tell you that your companions are dead. They tried to stop us from entering the ship. We had no choice but to kill them. Do you see what your decisions have brought upon you? We saw what you did in the docking bay. We saw the bodies. The Totality. The humans—your own kind. What kind of person are you?”
He opened his mouth to say something, then a quick pop reached Sasha’s ears. She turned to see the source, but then her attention went right back to the man, whose body was in the midst of falling backward. She saw a hole in his chest, still flickering as the bolt’s discharge briefly ignited his clothes, and watched him land on a console behind him, then slump forward, his face smashing lifelessly into the floor in front of her.