“By Lao’s beard! What on earth is that reeking smell,” Ming said gagging. The grimace Farr wore was every bit as pained as Ming’s but he wasn’t about to open his mouth in the presence of that overpowering stench.
“That’s the first part of our daily offering. We always start with the offal just in case the Suits try to take it. It’s the least valuable of the offerings.”
Farr held his hand over his mouth and said, “Let me check on my people and secure the area and then we’ll release you.” He then went over to Tegev who was finishing with securing the prisoners. She saw him and reported.
“The prisoners are as secure as I can make them under the circumstances. We weren’t exactly expecting this,” she said, needlessly, in Farr’s opinion. “Dr. Takashi’s okay and I’ve rounded up the graphene rounds we expended. What’s with the face sir?”
“It stinks to high heaven out here. Something one of them called their first daily offering.” Tegev, still wearing her helmet peered down the tunnel. “It must be coming from those wagons,” she said pointing down the corridor.
Farr readjusted his opticals which had automatically switched to normal lighting upon the helmet being disconnected. The lowlight vision returned and he could see them clearly now, three wheeled containers sitting approximately thirty meters away. To call them wagons was generous. They were about a meter wide and deep and about two long. “Yes, I see them now. Since you’re still wearing your helmet go see what’s in them.”
Tegev returned a minute later slightly green in the face.
“Waste and dead bodies and rotting… things,” she reported shaking her head. At least she can’t smell it Farr thought. Then he motioned his people to him and they gathered round.
“We’ve got to assume that these are the humans we’re looking for, or at least their descendants.”
“Why do they look so odd?” Tegev asked. It was the botanist who replied.
“Genetic altering and adaption I should think,” Skorsson said. “The workers that were on these colonies, whether here or the asteroid belt, were never meant to be here permanently. They were just trapped by circumstances. The corporations had geneticists at every outpost studying the effects of low gravity and how to deal with it. Some people think they were actually trying to alter humans to fit their environment. I’d have to side with those people right now.” He looked at Ming. “If you were stranded in a one sixth g environment what would you do, that was within your control, to adapt?”
“Yes, I see what you’re saying.” Ming studied the men in chains again and the prisoners. “They all have the same adaptations; it’s just that our winsome party boys over there are a little better fed. Also, something we haven’t even thought about yet is, when the other dome was compromised it took out the atmosphere plant for Six.” He stopped for a second, thinking.
“So, now you’ve got two colonies trying to survive on one atmosphere plant. That explains the thinness of the air. By thinning the air you can now cover the entire complex with one plant. It also explains the barrel chests on these people. From a genetic standpoint there are two things you can do. One, you can genetically engineer larger lungs or you can engineer them for high altitudes, like the Sherpa guides of old Earth who have a gene that actually makes less hemoglobin which allows them to stay at high altitudes without risking blood clots and other nasty things.”
“I would do both, I think,” Skorsson said picking up the ball and running with it. “Better odds of survival. The Sherpa people were one of the very few humans to have that trait. They interbreed with a subspecies of humans called Denisovans, who eventually became extinct. The Denisovans were, in turn, closely related to Neanderthals, who also became extinct. But the air doesn’t explain the eyes. You could do that genetically, but what would be the need? I mean the dome lets sunlight in, unless… ”
“Unless, of course, you’re not allowed into the dome,” Ming finished for him.
“Exactly,” Skorsson agreed.
“I’m going to ask those gentlemen a few more questions and then I think I’ll release them, but I want that other group guarded closely. Have you policed their weapons Tegev?”
“Yes sir, compressed air gun, pretty powerful but limited effective range, maybe twenty to thirty meters maximum.”
“What ammunition?”
“Rocks, but well-made rocks, shaped into a bullet form but very sharp on the end. I think the rock is obsidian, but I don’t know for sure.” Ming held out his hand and she gave one to him.
“Yep, that’s obsidian and really nasty, very sharp and as thin as these guys are, probably fatal.” Ming said looking at the projectile and then walking over to the corpse. “Yeah, this one took two rounds, one in the abdomen, nothing to stop it, probably hit the abdominal aorta and he bled out. He took one in the chest too but that one’s lodged against his breastbone. Would’ve hurt like hell, but it’s not a mortal wound.”
“Okay, that’s one murder depending on the situation,” Farr said grimly walking over to the two men in chains.
“My name is Commander Callum Farr. My team and I are from Earth. We’re going to let you go, but please don’t do anything rash because we’re a little jumpy right now, okay?”
“You’re aren’t going to kill us?”
“No,” Farr sighed heavily. “We’re human just like you and we’re from Earth. We came here to help you.” Farr leaned down and undid the old style cotter pin that held the chains tightly in place releasing the two men. The men eyed him distrustfully but stood up slowly and regarded him, each face a mask of suspicion.
“Do you have weapons on you? If you do, please show them to me now.”
“No, those with the first offering don’t wear weapons. That way if the Suits attack us and take the wagons they don’t get our weapons.”
“Are these men Suits then? We don’t know anything about you or your culture. As I told you we’re from Earth and we’re humans just like you.”
“Yes they’re Suits, but you don’t look like a Worker or a Suit,” the youngest replied. The other just stood sullenly, a pathetic and accepting look on his face, ready for whatever abuse came his way.
“So you’re Workers and they’re Suits. How many Workers are there?”
“Don’t tell him anything,” the other said listlessly. “This is just another Suit trick to find out where we are and how many of us there are.”
Farr observed them, not unkindly, because he believed theirs was a hard life and his experience said people like that didn’t easily trust others, especially strangers. There was no spark in their eyes and, therefore, no hope.
“Never mind the numbers then. What were they going to do with you?”
“Make us slaves, of course, what else?” He then looked at the other man. “They can’t be Suits. Suits wouldn’t go to this much trouble and they’re not this creative. They’d just beat us until we told them what they wanted to know or we died. If you aren’t going to kill us then let us take our daily offering to the appointed place while there is time.”
“We can do that. We’ll also guard you as well in case you have any further trouble and we can talk as we walk. Is it safe to leave these men here unguarded?”
“No, if you leave them some of the others who are coming behind us might kill them.”
“I would rather they didn’t,” Farr explained. The youth just stared at him and shrugged.
“Then you will have to take them with us, because some of the others will surely try to kill them.”
Farr ordered Tegev to get them on their feet and to bind their hands, leaving their feet free so they could walk. Eric and his companion retrieved two of the three wagons and started down the adjacent tunnel that led to the greenhouse area. The men looked forlornly at the remaining wagon and Farr noticed.
“Would you like us to bring that one?” he asked the older man and his voice was level but compassionate.
“Yes, please. If we don’t deliver it our rations will be cut a
nd we barely have enough to eat as it is.” There was gratitude mixed in with distrust in the man’s eyes.
Tegev was guarding the prisoners so Ming went without a word and brought the wagon along. To him it was ridiculously light for its size and he barely broke a sweat while the other two men strained mightily with theirs as they made their way toward the dome of Lunar Base Five.
CHAPTER 9
As they traversed the murky passageways Farr continued to question the young man and slowly a picture began to form of this world. His name was Eric. The Suits lived in another area and from what Farr remembered of the diagrams it was probably the original living area of Lunar Base Five. The young man carefully avoided saying anything about the numbers of the Workers or where they lived and Farr did not press him on the matter.
Apparently they had a daily quota of several items ranging from minerals to waste to ice and each day they delivered their quota, or as much as they could, to the appointed place. It was not unusual for the Suits to attack them along their route, taking both their offerings and their people. That’s why they always sent one group early to act as bait and why the first group carried only offal and waste.
Eric said his people spent their days mining the items required of them but some of the deposits of ice and minerals were becoming harder and harder to come by. The young man told Farr of the legends of his people and how the old ones spoke of a time in the past when the Suits were not able to enslave them or kill them. He told Farr that the machines had kept the peace, but he didn’t expand on exactly what that meant. “It’s just a legend though,” he finished.
“What happens to your people that the Suits take?”
“They’re enslaved and they’re worked until they can no longer function. Then they’re killed,” Eric said flatly. “The Suits increase the amount of food they receive because they can deliver more minerals, ice and waste but they only give the slaves enough food to keep them working. Sooner or later it’s not enough and they die or sit down and sing themselves away. All the while the Suits are well fed.”
“What did you say?” Farr said suddenly looking at the young man with wide eyes.
“They die or sit down and sing themselves away. When a worker cannot go on he or she will sit down and sing the old songs of comfort and allow their body to stop,” the young man said eyeing Farr curiously. “Is it the same with your people?”
“It was the same with my mother’s people,” Farr said banishing the thoughts the boy’s words evoked and focusing on the situation at hand. “How do you know the conditions of the ones enslaved?”
“My brother was taken two periods ago. I went to find him and I was able to creep within a stone’s throw of the place of the Suits. I watched them for a day. They beat the Workers continually, calling them lazy and unionists. If a Worker fights back they are killed instantly. They call it ‘downsizing’. That is what happened to my brother. I saw it happen. Defiance was in his nature.” As Eric finished Farr thought he saw a brief look of pain cross the young man’s face and then disappear almost immediately.
“I would think the Suits guard their tunnels pretty closely so how did you manage to get so close to them?” Farr asked.
“There are ways if one is smart enough and brave enough. I go often to spy on them,” Eric said cryptically and Farr didn’t press the issue.
“Why did they kill the other man with you,” Farr asked. Eric and his companion had loaded the body into one of the wagons after stripping the clothing and other articles from it. Neither had said or done anything even remotely respectful or religious over the body and Farr suspected that life for their society was so harsh that such things were not done at all.
“Because he’s seen over forty periods and would’ve been unsuitable for the hard labor their slaves perform. They prefer the young.”
“What is a period Eric?”
“It is three hundred and sixty five light cycles. I’ve been alive for fifteen periods.”
Farr gleaned from his remarks that the colonists still kept the Earth day as their unit to measure time, although they didn’t even know that’s what it was. He looked at Eric, who towered thirty centimeters above him. Fifteen years old! Life was indeed harsh here to leave such pain on the face of a fifteen year old. The dead man was just over forty years old and considered used up. Harsh indeed. He stopped his questioning because they were slowing, obviously coming to the appointed place.
Finally they turned left and stopped. They were still in a low, lighted portion of the tunnels and Farr’s sense of direction told him they were about three quarters of a kilometer from the biodome. Farr didn’t know what he was expecting next but it wasn’t what actually appeared. A hundred meters directly in front of him two huge shapes moved in the shadowy recesses and in the thin air he could hear the dull thump of their metallic feet.
“Do not make any sudden moves, man from Earth,” Eric whispered to him. Farr slowly reached up and initiated his suit comms.
“Everyone be very still,” he whispered. “Are you seeing this Ming?”
“Seeing, still working on believing,” was Ming’s shaky reply.
The two machines stopped thirty meters in front of them and Farr could see every detail. They were bipedal with four arms, but no one had taken the time to give them human features. Their purpose was a sinister one and human features would’ve been out of place.
Farr recognized the monstrosities confronting him as warbots from the late twenty-first century, Kashi 1123 models, if memory served right. They were two and a half meters tall and carried a variety of sensors, including infrared, which they were probably using now. Never effective on the battlefield because of EMP devices, they were nonetheless used to guard installations that weren’t likely to see sophisticated attacks and they were devastating against humans under the right circumstances. The two lower appendages were rapid firing guns while the upper appendages could use any weapon known to man in conjunction with the lower guns. It could engage four different targets simultaneously. They’d also been outlawed in 2104 after the Brazilian massacre, where two warbots had slaughtered over a thousand people during a protest. They were primitive and crude by Farr’s standards, but if you didn’t have EMP weapons, and he didn’t, they were deadly effective. Questions flooded his mind concerning what he was facing but his biggest question was, what the hell were they doing here?
The frames of the metallic apparitions in front of him were not in the best shape he observed. These had apparently been repaired with whatever was available because mismatched areas appeared all over their torsos.
“Only the three of us with the wagons may go forward,” Eric whispered. Farr nodded and passed the word to Ming.
“I’ll try to observe them when I’m closer,” Ming’s whispered voice came to him.
“Ming, don’t raise your eyes to the warbots. Depending on how they’re programmed that could be considered a hostile act.”
“Oka-a-ay, this just gets better and better doesn’t it?” Farr ignored that as the three men approached the warbots and Eric led the way past them where other simple robotic machines attached themselves to the wagons and carted them off. Soon other machines rolled out three identical wagons and these had been filled with hundreds of dark rectangles about the size of a person’s palm and thinner than their little finger. Eric led the way back to the group and signaled with his head that Farr and company should start back along the corridor.
As they started to leave, one of the prisoners, the leader, whispered something to Farr.
“Listen stranger,” he hissed, “I will not let you turn me over as a prisoner to these Workers.” As he said the word his face was screwed up in a manner of utter contempt. “So, if you don’t release us I’ll cause a disturbance and the machines will…” He never finished the sentence. Before either Tegev or the prisoner could register the motion Farr’s left hand had whipped up in a flat slicing motion and caught the man across the larynx, choking his words off and incapacitat
ing him, while Farr’s right arm had gone across the man’s back in an almost friendly motion. His hand gripped the back of the man’s neck like a vice grip and he propelled him along in a somewhat normal motion. The warbots had briefly keyed on the action but the targets were retreating and since there was no further movement they went back to their standby mode.
“Gentlemen, I want you to listen to me very carefully,” Farr whispered to the other three prisoners while the leader continued to gag as he was propelled along the corridor in Farr’s relentless grip. “Those are Kashi 1123 warbots. If any of you are so inclined to act as your commander threatened, let me tell you what will happen. The warbots carry one hundred and fifty rounds of high density graphene bullets and they can discharge them all within one minute. If you should happen to shout or draw their attention in any way, I’ll use you as human shields to get my people behind the wagons. We may not make it, but you’ll be shredded into pulp within the first few seconds. It won’t be a pretty sight. Do you understand me?” The prisoners nodded their heads in the affirmative, their already wide eyes now slightly hysterical.
“That was pretty brutal,” Ming whispered with a chuckle over the comms.
“I just wanted to keep their attention on me until we were out of range, which we are now. They wouldn’t have made very good shields. It would be like trying to hide behind a sapling.”
“That’s a good assessment, and speaking of assessments I think we need to powwow.”
“Agreed.” Just then another train of wagons came into view. The caretakers panicked at the sight of the Earth people and the prisoners but Eric managed to allay their fears, although they watched them closely as they went by.
“Eric we’d like to meet your people, if you believe we can do so without unduly frightening them.”
Eric thought for a moment before he replied. “I can arrange for you to meet our elder. He will decide what you see after that.”
Children of the Dark World Page 11