by C M Weller
Then the big problem raised its ugly head.
"How are you going to fuel this thing?" said Raven.
Sahra, her growing team of rats, Smiley and Eva all put their tools down to stare at him. Then they stared at each other.
They all knew what was not being said, that the fuel for every ship known to man and Tu'atta kind, was so toxic that it was the only thing entirely processed by robotic automatons. It came in sealed containers. It went in sealed containers. Tu'atta piloted remote devices to recover it from wreckage before it could pollute local space.
It was the ultimate controlled substance.
No matter how tired, drugged, punch-drunk or - a shock to all humans concerned - horny the masters were, they were not going to let a slave anywhere near the stuff.
Smiley's face screwed up so hard that it could have imploded. He wheeled on Raven, red-faced with anger and frustration and almost a whole month of dreams going down the chute in seven words. "You! You...." he flustered. Tears gathered in his tiny, otherwise kind eyes. "You can just bloody rock me to sleep tonight!"
Which, of course, started an argument. It was one of those heated discussions in which everyone started their point with, "I'm sorry," and it got angrier and angrier from there.
It was tiny Alis, in it mostly for the strawberries, who gave Sara the idea. He had a big overbite, and loved apples despite not quite being able to take a proper bite out of them. Alis, taking a break from scrounging for the resistance, had helped himself to his favourite fruit. He managed the sinking-the-teeth-in bit, and was now quasi-noisily slurping the juice from it while he boggled at the rebels.
"Is there a way t' suck fuel outta a bigger ship?" said Sahra.
All moebius arguments about obtaining fuel stopped. The only noise was tiny Alis sucking on his apple.
"Well... yeah. But you have to have fuel enough to go an get more..."
"Whuddif it was from a ship that were docked right by the egg-sit hatch? Y'd just need canned air."
Smiley started mumbling to himself. Mostly about what bits to fit where, but Sahra could tell it was going to work.
The Mosquito-Class runner was born.
*
Sahra's new baby sister came along three nights after they started the final welds on the Mosquito. Brand new, she had a pointy head and a squinty expression but Lord, she was LOUD. Sahra knew little babies had to be loud, but this little tyke knew how to screech.
The masters assigned her the name Brae. Sahra wasn't allowed to touch her, just yet, but she would come close and sing softly whenever she could get away with it.
Brae, like David, had sort of reddish-brown hair and grey eyes. She looked at everything as if she were trying to work out how to smack it. Even Mama.
Little tiny babies were frail, Mama said. So she got time off to look after Brae and the babies until such time as Brae could go to a creche with all the other babies and get looked after by other slaves who were somehow good at lots and lots of babies all at once.
This, naturally, lead to a lot of questions from the littles. About how the masters could pick and choose, but humans could not.
Which gave Sahra another idea for sabotage.
Autumn on the master's homeworld was breeding season. She and the rebels worked this out after the rash of fights between males and public indecency charges amongst pairs of masters. Females chose the fathers for their eggs and, once they were laid, pretty much left them in incubators until they hatched. One temperature got girls. The other got boys.
Lots of incubators had been ordered, lately. They had to be shipped in from Sh'gess, a city on the master's homeworld.
Sahra had another plan for sabotage.
And Brae had three years, four tops, five if she were a totally slow learner, before she would be pressed into service as another rat. And all the risks that that held. Sahra thought of all her falls and scrapes and near-misses and even the bomb.
The thought of any of that happening to tiny, helpless, frail Brae was a waking nightmare. "You stay safe wif Mama," Sahra whispered to her new baby sister. "Get good'n'strong. Me? I'm'a do m' best t' make sure you get to want to work. 'Steada needin' to work."
Brae didn't acknowledge Sahra's promise. She just started grizzling and wriggling her arms and legs around. Setting up for a really big cry.
Sahra gave Mama a hug on her way out. She needed it.
*
The Mosquito edged out of its tiny airlock. The ship a huge shadow above. Good news, there was no slow whistle of escaping air. Better news, the HUD was working and so was the steering. Sahra touched the controls, trying not to move. If she got into the habit of moving too much in these things, then she'd trip herself up when she got bigger. Just little puffs. Taps on the controls. Just enough to move it but not enough to spend all the canned air that was the Mosquito's fuel. She had to save enough to come back.
After she drained the big ship's tanks.
Sahra had never seen her station home from the outside, and still couldn't. All the windows faced front-ways. Twisting around to even try and see could knock something loose. And the thing about space, the surprising thing for Sahra, was that there was lots of it. Just when she thought she was close enough to the master ship growing ever bigger in front of her, she'd look at the distance readout and realize there was more ship than it looked.
It was already a mountain. Blotting out the stars. A big, black shape getting bigger and bigger until it filled her whole set of windows and it was still a long way away from the fuel lines.
Right on target. All she had to do was wait until she was near enough and flip around. And let the rest of the systems do their work.
She sang a few verses of Rock My Soul on the way. Not for any real need, but to check that sound still behaved itself. Another symptom of leaking air.
She'd never sat so still so long in her life. She wriggled in place to stop the pins-and-needles from setting in. She made waiting games with the numbers as they counted down. She kept looking for detail in the dark side of the master ship.
Another thing she learned about space, light and dark were absolute. Pitch black. Blinding light. And very little in-between.
She reached the flip-point and turned her ship backwards to the master warship in one quick motion. Still on target.
The station looked like a big mess. All lumps and bumps and ugly bits and spikes where the ships docked.
And random, tiny, little square airlocks just like the one the Mosquito came from. None of them had been cleared, yet. But Sahra knew that there were at least a lot more places for a Mosquito to leave. Maybe even more baby ships to retrofit.
More Mosquitoes to drain the masters' ships. And fuel the rebels' ones instead.
One Mosquito could fuel itself and take one human on short, careful trips. One Mosquito could fuel five others, which could fuel five others, each... And keep anything spare for the colony vessels when they came.
There were tanks for the toxic fuel. And robots, too, of course. Old ones, left behind by masters long past. And anything old could be made good as new with her and her rats to see to it.
She looked over the bubbly mess of the station. "This is my station," she said. "It's a human station. And it's been taken for so long we forgot it's ever been took. But I'm doin' what I can to make sure it gets took back. 'Till we win or there ain't no more fight left in me. Amen."
Maybe God heard her. Maybe the angel still singing in her bad ear took it to God in its own way. The important part was that she heard it. Clear as crystal. This was her heart-oath. Something she had to do.
Brae was part of this station. So was Sahra. And Mama, and any number of Papas and sibs and Gempas and Gemmas... too many people to count. And the masters.
But the masters had to go.
They didn't belong here and they were taking everything the humans had come here to enjoy. Or turn into a living paradise. All the stories were the same. The humans came to an empty world and built it up. Then the m
asters came and took it away. Even the masters agreed on that.
They wouldn't give back anything they took easy. Sahra knew this. And getting them to go away without killing anyone was a problem.
One she'd have to solve.
Later. Now, her problem was finding the one little airlock that worked once her tanks were full. Without using any of the expensive-toxic fuel that now filled the Mosquito's tanks to the very top.
Sahra crossed her fingers and hit Retrace. Or the button that Smiley said she had to push to get the Mosquito to retrace its steps.
Despite Eva's best efforts, Sahra had a problem with reading words. She could see the letters, but getting them all together to make sounds was hard.
Harder than crosswiring master circuits, anyways.
Sahra thought back to Smiley showing her the button. Remembering the letters. Romeo, Echo, Tango, Romeo, Alpha, Charlie, Echo. Yes. The same letters in the same order. It was the right button.
She found the shape of a gun on the underside of the master's ship. Many times the size of the big guns the guards used to keep the Majestrix safe. One of those could wipe her out in a second. And maybe blow a hole in the side of the station. Or maybe right through it.
Those guns must never fire.
*
Security Chief Om'r Graak Jeshi'ig had been having a bad week. Mysterious forces were at play, he was certain. Things had been getting progressively worse ever since the terrorist rebels had blown up the executive lunch room. He had escaped with one bleeding tympanum and some minor scarring thanks to a paperwork emergency that had made him five minutes late.
His old boss had said, Don't waste time thanking your gods for serendipity.
He'd also said, Look for what's there.
Which was why, when other, more privileged females had been prone to blame accidents on malevolent spirits... Graak had achieved promotions by doing a brilliant job.
To think, he'd spent years cursing that shapeshifter and his exacting attention to detail. Now, it made sure he kept his rank in spite of the mishaps occurring throughout the station. Everything everyone wanted to attribute to malevolent spirits, Graak tried to examine until he found the real cause.
And, since none would volunteer, he used himself as a test case.
Tired and punch-drunk despite the early hour of the morning, he dialed up a standard stimulant in his office's food printer. It did a moderate job of imitating real food. If one wasn't fussy.
Too salty and, at the same time, somehow too sweet. But still a hot cup of stim, and that would do for now.
He'd set up a full-time monitoring of himself during his off hours. All audio and video. He got the computer to edit out the times when there was no movement or sound but that of himself breathing.
There was lots of still time on the video, all the same.
Something had made his personal alarm go off at random moments, and shut off the instant he woke up. But that wasn't the interesting bit.
The interesting bit was the hours of still time that the computer swore blind had audio.
Rather than dismissing this as a glitch or an anomaly, Graak ran the audio only through various enhancement programs.
Next, he diverted himself with the business of the day.
There was a remarkable upswing in violent outbursts between males. Disputes between females of equal rank were also on the rise. Strange things were going missing. Numerous reports of human voices in the walls after curfew. A ship at dock lost a small portion of fuel while powered down.
Enough to fill two of the smallest variety of fuel tanks. Co-incidentally, some of the items that had gone missing.
That gooey blue weirdo had told him, There's no such thing as a co-incidence.
All he had to do was stay focussed and put it all together. Difficult when the temperature controls were doing the exact opposite of his commands.
Exact... opposite.
"Computer... lower the temperature by twelve degrees." Graak said. If he was wrong, all it would do was put him into a mild torpor. If he was right... then things would improve markedly.
And he would have an edge on all others.
Graak checked the daily reports while the system adjusted itself. Thefts with no DNA trace. Mysterious illnesses sweeping through various sections of the station. Sleeping disorders were rife. Many more people were getting caught possessing Djaak. There was a ring, somewhere. He still had trouble tracking the leader down. If there was a leader. For all he knew, the Djaak was coming in by several different avenues. Or being created somewhere in the labyrinthine mess of the station.
He didn't have enough soldiers to patrol everywhere. Nor enough cameras to watch everywhere.
But somehow, someone was watching him
He knew it. He could feel it. Sneaky eyes in the sides of his vision. They watched because they knew... something. Someone had an edge on him. He needed an edge against them.
Graak would not be reporting his discovery of the environment controls glitch to anyone. He needed them - whoever they were - to be working under the same detriments as everyone else.
He couldn't trust anyone. All his officers would be effected, so he would have to pick a crime scene at random, and sweep it himself.
But first, he had to go back to his quarters and put on the thermal underwear he saved for breeding season so he could keep his mind on his job. No female ever approached him during mating season.
Nobody wanted an abandoned male. That was the kind of stigma that stayed. The kind of thing that others judged him by, first. And, naturally, the kind of thing that made him the ideal kind of suspicious bastard needed to be chief of security on a station like this. He channeled all of it into his work, did better than any female of equal or higher rank, and week by week, was just barely able to hold onto both rank and job.
And, he had to admit, the Majestrix thought it was all amusing.
And so long as he was amusing in this hive of humans, he could stay. Because heavens forfend that he was anything of the ilk, closer to home.
Changed, and looking like he hadn't bothered to stop, Graak stalked the halls. Even without the sight of humans, he could smell them. He could smell their mammalian scent through the perfumes that some poured over their human pets. He could hear the smaller ones crawling in-between the walls.
Disgusting.
But vital for the smooth running of the Tu'att Empire. Vital for the continued status of the Majestrix, long may she reign.
She could extend her fact-finding tour and debauchery as much as she liked, as long as industry still got what it wanted. And the tourists would visit the more... family friendly areas where the Majestrix went and think they gained status by osmosis.
Meanwhile he, who had rubbed more than shoulders with the Majestrix, got to fight for his post every other week. And the humans crawled everywhere around him. Stinking, sweating, puling, puking, messy beasts. Useful only for their adaptivity. Useful for doing all the odious tasks that no Tu'atta would lower themselves to do, any more.
He hated them, but if the humans suddenly and perpetually went away, then Tu'atta society would collapse.
Sometimes, he swore, he could hear the humans laughing.
Graak swallowed his distaste and entered one of yesterday's crime scenes. Nothing had come in, somehow removed three high-class miniature propulsion units, an entire box of plain white socks for humans, and a packet of self-sealing bolts... and left no evidence of its passage.
Make that, apparently no sign.
There were drag-marks on the floor. Almost imperceptible marks, indicative of some unknown someone methodically dragging out crates to look inside each and every one.
Similar to the parcel misdirection case.
He sniffed.
Humans. Young ones. The older ones smelled a lot more. There was hardly a trace of these little ones. No wonder his hormone-addled contemporaries had thought no-one had been in here.
And only humans lacked the mental capacit
y to read. And their young, the Rats, didn't even try.
Rats were small enough to fit through the air vents, which went anywhere inside the station. And yet, nobody reported any Rats turning up covered in the kind of debris that wound up in the air vents.
Everyone knew that human young were filthy creatures. If left to their own devices, they would literally perish in their own grime.
The scene was the same all over the station. Storerooms had been raided by humans who left no trace. Strange things no human would be interested in were taken.
Someone was covering their giggles in the fifth such storeroom he was examining. On all fours. Sniffing about like a canid.
He stood, brushing off his knees, and glared down the younger female at the storeroom door. "Something amusing, Kadyn?"
"Perhaps you should enlist some tracking dogs, sir."
"I have already applied and been rejected four times. The station and the Majestrix -long may she reign- have both informed me that the budget does not stretch as far as allocating canines into our system. Thus, I must rely on my own senses."
"May I ask what your senses have told you?"
"Humans are getting in. And they are not leaving trace, somehow."
"Humans? They're always trailing filth."
"Someone must be sending them in with some kind of protection. But why these odd items?"
"...sir?"
"The list, Kadyn. Surely you have enough brains to concoct a list out of those stolen objects?"
"...um..."
"Or were you too busy watching a pair of brainless males fighting?" He'd heard the scuffle, of course. He'd ignored it.
"The list, Kadyn, of the missing items... has enough parts to build a small vessel. Everything but the hull plating and the decks. Someone's building a ship and using Rats to fetch the parts."
"Um, Sir?"
"Yes, Kadyn?"
"The, um, Majestrix sent me to fetch you? She wants a report?"
He vented a low growl and marched as quickly as he could along the shortest path to the Majestrix's suite. She rarely left it, unless one of her favourite resorts was experiencing the correct seasons, on that filthy planet the humans called Hevun.
She was bathing in milk and, from the scent, eleven different herbs, spices and unguents that would not cause the milk to curdle. The Majestrix owned a bathtub the size of an exercise pool and an exercise pool that filled an entire room.