“For four and a half centuries the Khun mined the metal for the Xanti, living and working as slaves with no hope of change. Then one day, without warning or obvious cause, the Nomen ceased to function. They just fell over dead, every single one of them, all at the same time.
“We were afraid at first. We’d long prayed for freedom, but this was so unexpected that we didn’t know what to do. Not only had the Nomen died, but none of the machinery worked, either.
“For two weeks we waited, terrified of what would happen when the Xanti came to collect the metal as they did every month. But when that day came and went, and the next, and the next, we began to understand that something had happened somewhere in the universe, and whatever that something was, it had freed us.
“We abandoned the mines completely. For the first time in centuries men, women, and children lived and worked together. The women taught the men how to farm, and we all tried to get used to living as free people. Then, a few months after the Nomen had dropped dead, a ship landed on Garza, near our new village. I was nine years old at the time, and I remember watching my father and his three most trusted men go out to meet it while the rest of us got ready to run and hide.
“It turned out that the new ship wasn’t filled with Xanti or Nomen. It was a Welfare ship, and inside of it were the first kind people we’d ever seen. With their help, the Khun began to prosper. There weren’t very many of us by then, fewer than five hundred, and the Welfare captain confirmed that we were the only people on the entire planet. But they didn’t care how many of us there were. To them, the Khun were in need, and it was their creed to help, so they did.
“They built a school and provided a teacher who taught anyone who wanted to learn, child or adult. They brought new, up to date farming equipment, seeds and fertilizer, and machines that would dry and preserve our harvests much more quickly and easily than the methods we’d been using. They told us which crops were in demand and helped us learn to grow and sell them so that, for the first time, we had money. Not a lot, but enough to buy things we needed, like this old ship. They even made it possible for those of us that were interested to leave Garza and go to college. For sixteen years we learned what it was to live as free people, and true citizens of the Thousand Worlds.
“Then, about a year ago, the Nomen returned. They looked completely different, so we didn’t know who they were at first. My father and his men went out to meet their ship, as they’d done with the Welfare ship years before. They entered the ship which took off, heading in the direction of the old mine. They did not return.
“The next morning, before dawn, I led a group of twenty males to the old mining compound in search of my father and his men. When we got there we found their bodies hanging from posts in the middle of the compound, on display. There was no one else there so we took them away and gave them a proper burial deep in the mountains where they could never be found.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Tani said, while placing her fist over her heart and bowing solemnly in the Jasani way.
“Thank you,” Steel said, his voice rough with unshed tears. He cleared his throat and continued. “By the time we got back to the village, the Nomen had come and gone, taking not just the men, but the women and children as well. Only the oldest, the infirm, and the very youngest children were exempt. Babies were handed off to the care of men and women too old and weak to mine. The new Nomen had dehydrated food for the prisoners to eat so there was no need to leave people on the farms to raise food when they could be mining instead.”
“This is why you didn’t come to school this past year,” Tani said to Astra.
“Yes,” Astra said. “Steel and Khurda offered to take me, but I refused. I could not attend classes knowing what was happening back at home.”
“No, I wouldn’t have been able to do that, either,” Tani said. “Although, I have to ask how it is that you’re still free.”
“Paranoia,” Astra said.
“Pardon me?”
Steel arched a brow at his cousin, but Tani caught that little twitch at the corner of his mouth and knew he wasn’t really annoyed with her. “After living for centuries as slaves, we Khun had a difficult time accepting that our freedom would last. We’d learned by then that the Xanti were no more, but that didn’t take away our fear of what the future might hold. After a while, the village elders decided to do something about it.
“It took about a year of exploring but eventually a cliff was discovered deep in the mountains that was riddled with caves. Dozens of caves of all sizes, some with one chamber, some with as many as five chambers. We chose the largest and deepest of the caves, sealed it off, and began storing food and supplies there. We planted more than we needed just so we could stockpile more and more food against the day we all feared. It was a ten day walk from the village to the caves and back, but it was worth the effort for us to know we had a safe store of food, and a place to hide if we needed it. It helped.”
“I imagine so,” Tani said, shivering as she tried to picture herself in such a hopeless situation.
“Two days before the Nomen returned to Garza, fifteen young women and fifteen young men had gone to the caves with a large load of freshly preserved food to store. Astra was one of those, a happenstance I am forever grateful for as she is the only member of my family still living.
“When my companions and I returned to the village after burying my father and his men, we gathered up the older people and the littlest children that had been left behind and took them to the caves. Then we returned for the farm animals and anything else we could carry away. Sometime between our fourth trip and the fifth, the Nomen destroyed the village and every crop, house, and building they could find.
“During the first few weeks there were a few escapes from the mine, but there’ve been none since. Right now there are a little over a hundred of us, about sixty males, and forty females, including the little ones. The remaining four hundred Khun are once again enslaved. We don’t know how they’re being treated, if they all still live, or if some have died. All we know is that if we don’t free our people soon, the Khun will cease to exist altogether.”
“I’d say that this is definitely a legitimate ICARUS matter,” Tani said. “The fact that the Khun were taken from their home world by the Xanti to begin with would be enough, I think.”
Steel and Astra both smiled with relief. “Thank you, Tani,” Astra said.
“Well, don’t thank me yet,” Tani said. “I haven’t done anything. I will though, that much I promise. Do you have any idea who’s making these Nomen? Or who’s giving them orders? Because I guarantee you it isn’t the Xanti.”
“Unfortunately, our efforts to learn more about where the Nomen come from have failed,” Steel replied. “We’ve tried several times to follow their ships after they come to pick up the metal, but we simply can’t keep up with them. But, even though we haven’t been able to learn anything about our people, we’ve collected a great deal of information on the compound itself. We’ve got maps, a couple of surveillance images, and we know which buildings hold what, where everyone sleeps, when they begin work and when they’re allowed to quit for the day. We know what type of security they have on the fence, what kind of ground transports they have and their capacity. We have stacks of lists and images and maps, and it’s all useless information because it doesn’t tell us how to free our people without getting everyone captured or killed in the process.”
“What’s in the mountains where the caves are that prevents the Nomen from coming in to get you? Or just dropping bombs on you, for that matter?”
Steel looked at Astra, who nodded at him. He looked back at Tani. “Blind Sight.”
“Did you say Blind Sight?” Tani asked, shocked. Steel nodded. “How did you manage to get your hands on a Blind Sight?”
“Khurda was very quick to catch on to anything having to do with technology. Like my father before me, I had three best friends when I was a child, and we all did everything
together, including going away to school. The first thing we did when we got home from college was go to the old mine compound. There was so much that we’d never understood before, but we knew enough by then to identify almost everything we found. It was Khurda who figured out that the reason everything stopped all at once was because the Xanti had planted a transponder that received a signal at regular intervals. If that signal wasn’t received, the transponder sent out a different signal that caused everything to stop working.”
“Wow,” Tani said, impressed. “That means that the Nomen are, or at least were, either androids, or they had controllers. What else did he find?”
“He found a Blind Sight device that was so big it hid the entire planet,” Steel said. “That explained why the Welfare ships hadn’t found us sooner than they did, something we’d always wondered about. It didn’t work because of the Xanti’s kill signal, but that didn’t stop Khurda. He took it apart, put it back together, figured out how it worked and what had been destroyed when the failsafe fried it. Then he built a new one on a smaller scale using parts from the original. It took him over a year to do all this in his spare time, but when he was done, we had a Blind Sight that no one else had. We set it up to hide the area around the caves where we’d stored all of our supplies because, even then, we were still concerned about what the future might hold.
“After that, Khurda went to work making another one for the village. Before he finished it, the Nomen returned.”
“What if one of your people tells the Nomen where the caves are?”
“It’s been over a year, and no one has yet,” Steel said. “It’s always a possibility, of course, but even if they do talk, most can’t give more than general directions such as walk for a week that way. We keep guards posted all the time, and so far we’ve seen no sign of the Nomen.”
“I think it’s deliberate,” Astra said.
“What’s deliberate?” Tani asked.
“They have enough people to work the mine right now and make their quotas,” she said. “They don’t need more of us because the new equipment requires fewer people to run it. I think they’re content to let us be for now. We aren’t causing them any trouble, and if something happens and they need more workers, they know where to find us. In fact, I believe they allowed those men and women to escape at the beginning because they didn’t need them. The more people they have, the more they have to feed, so letting some of us stay free is to their benefit.”
“What do you think, Steel?”
“I agree with Astra,” Steel said. “I just haven’t shared the theory with anyone else. I’m worried it will take away too much of their fight if they realize we’re being allowed to be free until they need us.”
“I agree,” Tani said, relieved that both of them understood the truth of their situation. “What is this metal that they want so much?”
“We know it only by our own name for it, rhagyrum, or liquid metal. We know now that it’s a key element in the construction of the Xanti’s bio-suits, but what its other uses are I can’t say. We do know that it’s not found on the periodic table, and not even the most advanced scientists in the Thousand Worlds know what it’s called, or where it comes from. They think it’s an alloy of metals mined in the Xanti’s galaxy. But it’s not.”
“You never told anyone about it, either, did you?” Tani asked shrewdly. “Not the Welfare people, or your professors at school.”
“No, we didn’t,” Steel replied. “We agreed, all of us, to never talk about it in case someone else decided they wanted it, and put us back to work in the mine for their benefit.”
“That was the smartest thing you could have done under the circumstances,” Tani said. “Unfortunately it now looks like someone has decided to follow the Xanti’s lead, and since no one else knows about this metal, they don’t have any competition. All they had to do was move in and pick up where the Xanti left off.”
“How is that possible?” Astra asked. “I thought the Xanti and their entire world were destroyed.”
“They were, but the Xanti never created anything, Astra,” Tani said. “All of their technology, everything they had, was stolen from worlds that they subjugated and enslaved. It’s not unthinkable that one of those races would decide to use technology they created to take the Xanti’s place.”
“I don’t understand how anyone who was once enslaved could ever enslave others,” Astra said.
Tani shrugged. “People do things I don’t understand all the time. My Mom says that one of the biggest mistakes people make is to judge others by their own principles.”
“Meaning?” Steel asked, frowning.
“It means that if you believe enslaving people is the worst thing anyone else could ever do, you might assume that others who’ve been enslaved feel the same way, so you don’t expect them to do it.
“But not everyone will believe as you do. Others who’ve been enslaved may believe that in order to prevent themselves from being enslaved again, they must enslave others to make themselves stronger. They must climb to the top of the heap themselves in order to keep anyone else from getting there first.”
“You have to think the worst of other people then, is that what you mean?” Astra asked.
“Not at all,” Tani said. “It just means that you can’t rule out the possibility that others are capable of far worse than you could imagine of yourself. You don’t have to understand why they do something. You just can’t close your eyes to the possibility.”
“We do not want to be at the top of the heap,” Steel said. “We just want to be left alone to live as we choose.”
“And you should have that,” Tani said. “When will it be safe for us to send a transmission?”
“I don’t know,” Steel said. “We’ll reach Garza tomorrow, but if we do anything to give away our position before then, they’ll be able to track us. We suspect that they know where the caves are, but until we know that for fact, we act like they don’t know.”
“Once we set down?”
“We’ll take a transmitter to an area far from the caves, then you can send your message,” he said.
“All right,” Tani said, then took a deep breath. “Now I’m going to tell you what I think.” Astra and Steel exchanged another look, then nodded. “First of all, and correct me if I’m wrong, Steel, but you had no indication that you were being followed by the Nomen when you left your world to find me, did you?”
“No, we didn’t,” Steel said. “But how did you know that?”
“You transported Astra down to the planet, alone. You wouldn’t have done that if you’d known they were there no matter how many micro cams she wore.”
Steel nodded. “True.”
“I also couldn’t help but notice that all four of the Nomen who attacked us looked exactly alike. I’m used to seeing people who look alike since Jasani are always born in threes. My sisters and I are identical except for the color of our eyes. But these guys weren’t Jasani. Am I wrong or do all Nomen look alike?”
“You’re not wrong, Tani, they all look alike,” Steel confirmed, then held up one finger. “There’s one who looks different. He has yellow hair and is not as big as the others. He goes by the name Brutus.”
“You said that the current Nomen look different from the ones before, right?”
“Yes, that’s right. They were smaller, and had black hair.”
“It seems pretty obvious to me that the Nomen begin as clones, and always have been. Whoever’s making them have just upgraded to a bigger, stronger template.”
“Yes, that is our belief as well,” Steel said.
“What else, Tani?” Astra asked.
“When we were attacked, the first two Nomen approached from behind you, Astra,” she said. “But the second set entered the alley from the opposite direction. From the direction of my dorm.” Astra nodded, remembering that now that Tani mentioned it.
“It makes no sense for them to come at you from opposite directions unless they had
some prior knowledge of your destination. Is there any chance of that, however small?”
“No, that’s not possible,” Steel said. “Astra never mentioned a specific destination other than the New Oxford campus.”
Tani nodded, unsurprised. “I’m fairly certain that the second pair of Nomen were after me, not Astra. Well, not me specifically. I’m sure either of my sisters would have done as well.”
“Why do you believe that?”
“Lots of reasons,” Tani said. “But the most important reason is that the Nomen who threw the tranquilizer dart was directly in front of me when Astra knocked me out of the way, and he made eye contact with me. The only way he could have hit me accidentally was if he’d known ahead of time that Astra was going to push me out of the way. As it was, he aimed for my right arm and got my left, instead.
“Furthermore, the one with the knife was directly in front of Astra, and considering the wound she received, I think the knife would have killed her if she hadn’t tried to push me out of danger.” Tani shook her head. “They knew I was a Jasani Princess, I’m certain of it. They’d probably been waiting for one of us to separate from our sisters for some time.”
Steel hadn’t paid much attention to the second set of Nomen, so he’d have to review the vid to be sure, but his gut was telling him that Tani was correct. “We’d narrowed the overhead image to display the first two Nomen, never suspecting that there’d be more of them. That was careless of us.” He looked at Tani. “Do you think they wanted to ransom you?”
“Oh no, not at all,” Tani said. “They wanted to inject a controller into my brain, then let me go on my merry way.”
“What makes you think that?” Astra asked curiously.
“I think that, in addition to their other alterations, your Nomen have controllers,” she said. “It’s a guess, but your description of them being cold and emotionless fits. If I’m right, whoever makes them could have an army of beings who can easily pass as human, and who will follow any order given to them without hesitation.”
Tani's Destiny (Hearts of ICARUS Book 2) Page 5