The Empty Warrior

by J. D. McCartney

  “What about maintenance?” O’Keefe persisted. “You mentioned that. Diesels have got to have down time. What if we shut down their engines, sabotage them somehow? With no hearts, their blood stops and they die.”

  “No, that won’t work either. They are equipped with batteries to keep their blood pumping if their engines die. You witnessed that today in the auditorium. It takes several hours, at least, for them to fully discharge. There are also dozens of bays in the maintenance shop where they can be placed to keep them alive while their hulls are being serviced, plus the hulls are interchangeable, and there are many spares. Furthermore, you would have to take them all down simultaneously. Each chassis is equipped with a fairly sophisticated sensor array, and all the beasts are connected to the colony network, which means not only the network but also Elorak has access to nearly anything they see or hear. An assault on one would alert the network, which would in turn alert Elorak, who would quickly alert all the other guards. And even if you somehow managed the feat of putting them all out of commission at once, it would still only kill some of them. Ashawzut is equipped with robotic towing vehicles, controlled by the network, to pull malfunctioning guards in for repair. No one knows where they are kept, and no one sees them until they are needed. This is not to mention the fact that they are armed and armored. I have personally witnessed them on the move, so you can trust me on that one. They are also always guarded by a large contingent of beasties, dogs, or both. You would at the very least have to fight your way through a pack of dogs just to get close to one of them, and then there would be very little you could do to stop it. A few of the guards might die before they could be hauled in, but the large majority would be up and running in less than a day. And believe me, they would be very angry.”

  Steenini looked up at O’Keefe and smiled the smile of a tired and beaten man. “I don’t mean to belittle your hopes, my friend, but the Vazileks have been keeping slaves for a very long time, and they are extraordinarily good at it.”

  “Okay,” O’Keefe said, far from ready to give up, “so we can’t do anything with the lizards. What about the dogs? What do you know about them?”

  “The dogs?” Steenini echoed. “I’m not sure. The dogs are enigmas. Elorak provides them with food, and they appear to owe allegiance to her, but they are not like the beasties at all. Oh, they seem fierce enough, but I can’t say that I have ever seen one of them actually kill a man. Oh, I’ve seen them draw blood to be sure, and seen it many times, but for the most part they appear to be genetically bred to be shepherds. Their main function appears to be to push us where Elorak and the guards want us to go. I still wouldn’t want to cross one, though. If they are provoked, they are big enough to kill you in an instant, barbarian though you may be.

  “But there is still something about them. The way they seem to observe everything, and the way they interact with each other. I’ve oftentimes had the impression that they are more than just well-trained canines. Sometimes I think they have an almost human intelligence. It may be just an illusion, or it may be the scantest evidence of an enormity that lies just beneath the surface. It is very difficult to say with any certainty.

  “Unlike the guards, they are social animals, as are we. It would not be far-fetched for a man, for me, to recognize basic instincts, simple lupine behavioral traits, and mistake them for intelligence. On the other hand, they could be much more than they appear to be. One can never be sure of what one sees without clinical data on which to base conclusions.

  “But I’m getting off track, aren’t I? What I mean to say is that however menacing and intelligent the dogs may appear, it is within the realm of possibility that I may yet be underestimating them. As I said before, I cannot say with certainty, but it is my belief that there is more to the dogs and their relationship with Elorak than is evident on the surface. If I were you, I would watch my tongue in front of them even more so than in front of the guards. Elorak, for all her depravity, is no fool. It is quite possible that the dogs have capabilities that are intentionally being hidden from us.”

  “Great,” said a sarcastic O’Keefe, feeling more despondent by the moment. “What else do we need to know?”

  Steenini thought for a moment. “Not much,” he finally ventured. “You’ve already seen Elorak and her assault bot. What else is there? Well, you may not know this. We are buried beneath the surface of a planet that is extremely hostile environmentally. The atmosphere, what little there is of it, is pure poison, and a cool day runs about four hundred degrees. Escape from Ashawzut is not as simple as finding a way out of the colony complex. No, the only way out of these caverns is in one of the supply ships that call here. They come in at random intervals, bringing supplies and new batches of prisoners. Sometimes there will be no arrivals for days on end; at other times there will be a half dozen ships to make port here in a week. They leave when they are filled with the ore refined from the rock we will soon be mining and take with them the prisoners deemed indoctrinated enough to serve the Vazileks unquestioningly. If you don’t mind me saying so, that might be the best bet for you two fellows; make Elorak believe you’re ready to serve the bastards. It worked for me once.”

  “And then what happens to you?” Lindy asked, suddenly speaking up.

  “Me?” Steenini shrugged, as if he were only now considering his plight. “I imagine I will have to wait until we are liberated.”

  “Shit,” O’Keefe whispered derisively while leaning back to stretch his spine. “That’s not very likely. I’d be willing to bet that your Union Police don’t even know this place exists. And even if they do they are almost certainly in no position to start liberating us. They’re probably getting their asses kicked as we speak.” O’Keefe shot another look at Lindy, but the man seemed not to have heard him, or at least was unready to dispute the insult paid to his former comrades. He merely stared mutely off into space. A moment of silence ensued between all three of them as O’Keefe pondered the situation.

  But he was the first to break the hush. “Well, I have to admit this is not the greatest tactical situation,” he said. “But it’s not hopeless. There is only one Vazilek here, and a whole bunch of us, so we have the advantage of numbers. How many guys are in this place anyway?”

  “Well I can’t give you an exact figure,” Steenini answered, “but suffice it to say that it is in the tens of thousands.”

  “Tens of thousands?” O’Keefe repeated, stunned. “And only one Vazilek? Well, damned if that isn’t the first bit of good news I’ve heard. If we can establish communications adequate to get most of us acting in concert, we can take the bitch and her minions down, no question. We’ll take casualties, probably a lot of casualties, but that’s better than letting them kill us one by one like they’ve done over the past few hours. But I suggest that first we work on devising a plan to capture Elorak and somehow neutralize her assault robot. If we could engineer that rather than a pitched battle it would save a lot of lives. Once we have her, we threaten her or torture her or do whatever we have to do to gain access to the network, and then use it to cut off the fuel to the lizards. After they are dead we use the prospect of food to win over the dogs, and then we hijack a supply ship and get our asses off this rock.”

  “And just how do you plan to accomplish all that?” asked Steenini, incredulous. “Trying to capture Elorak is tantamount to suicide. Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said?”

  Lindy’s eyes suddenly focused, and he and broke into the conversation. “I don’t care,” he said.

  “Don’t care about what?” asked Steenini.

  “I don’t care if it is suicide. I’ve been ready to die ever since those monsters killed Cyanne. It’s better to die fighting now than to eke out a few more years of life groveling before these murderers.”

  “Willet!” O’Keefe exclaimed in mock surprise. “Damn, I didn’t think you had it in you.” He reached over and slapped the man on the back then hugged him by the shoulders. “But let’s not go getting ourselves
killed prematurely. The first thing we need to do is gain any and all reliable intelligence about this place over and above what Bart already knows. Once that is done we put together a plan, and then we implement the plan. That’s when we’ll all get blown to bloody bits.”

  “Well, count me in too then,” Steenini said wearily from where he lay. “I’ll be swinging a pick here until my heart bursts. If I’m going to die I might as well make it count for something, even if it is in a near hopeless fight.” He managed a wan smile up at his new comrades before continuing.

  “But there are other dangers to consider. I advise that we keep any plans to ourselves as much as possible, at least until we can make an educated guess as to who we can trust. Let me explain how things work here. Right now, we are on the lowest rung of the ladder. I will stay on that rung no matter what; but most everyone else can work their way up if they serve with obedience and enthusiasm. Tomorrow, the guards will come for us and we will be taken to break rocks. There are machines here to tunnel and drill in the mines, but we break up the rubble and load it on mine trains to be taken to the automated refineries. If a man works hard enough and long enough without complaint, and without taunting the beasties,” he looked pointedly at O’Keefe, “that man may be able to move up a step.

  “That would put him in a more favored position, with more and better food, and with an easier job—something like emptying the barracks latrines or swabbing out cargo containers from the supply ships. From there one could work his way up to the laundry or the kitchen, then to Elorak’s lackeys or even to a position off this accursed world.

  “But there are also other, faster ways to move up. The Vazileks demand obedience, but they treasure loyalty. And you will find that there is no shortage of men among our ranks who will be happy to attempt to prove their loyalty by turning in their own comrades for even the slightest infraction. Those who do so almost always move up a step, and word gets around quickly among the new people that reporting others can not only hasten one’s climb to an easier life, it can literally be the difference between survival and death. Revealing a plot against Elorak herself could easily propel a man from rock breaking straight into the kitchens, putting him only one step away from leaving Ashawzut behind. It would be quite a temptation. The only thing that stops a lot of the men from snitching is the fact that some of the more obvious traitors die mysteriously in the night. That notwithstanding, if the wrong people were to find out what you are now proposing, the rewards of turning you in would more than outweigh the inherent risks of doing so. So be careful who you approach with this.”

  O’Keefe nodded in agreement. “That sounds like wise counsel. But as of now, no one appears to be paying any attention to us.” He glanced around the room, and the men they had arrived with were still either sitting about the floor clustered in little groups like their own or were busy picking out bunks for themselves. All were far enough away to be out of earshot. “Tell us everything you know about Elorak,” O’Keefe asked. “Where does she sleep? What kind of security arrangements does she have? Is she vulnerable at any time? Anything you can think of might be helpful.”

  Steenini scowled at the thought of the woman. “As you have seen,” he began, “she is vain and cruel. She will kill on a whim, with no provocation at all. She seems to enjoy it. Often she will descend to the arena floor just to finish some poor bastard off, after the guards have had their fun. You’ll find out about the arena soon enough. We will all be required to witness punishment. But despite her brutality she would seem to be possessed of a somewhat formidable intelligence. She speaks our language with exceptional fluency, a fluency that remains impressive despite the fact that I am quite sure she has implanted, cybernetic assistance.

  “As to her quarters, I could not tell you how to get there from here, but there is a hatch from which she emerges somewhere in the vicinity of the hangar area. I have seen it in passing on several occasions. She resides on the surface in an environmental dome, or so it is rumored. The hatch leads to the elevator that runs between our caverns and her rooms. It is heavily guarded at all times. If she is on the surface, the normal contingent of guards is joined by her assault bot, which waits for her outside the elevator door. What security measures lay beyond the guards at the hatch, no one can say. What few men have ever gone in have never come out. Whether they are killed or shipped off world is uncertain. It has been whispered that she picks a favorite from her lackeys, takes him in to satisfy her sexual appetites, and then kills the man when she grows tired of him. If the sexual part of the story is indeed true, there may be times when she is vulnerable to attack by the victim of her lust, but I tend to doubt the veracity of such tales. Elorak’s hatred for our kind is so complete and so overpowering that I find it hard to believe she could ever take any pleasure from the company of an Akadean.

  “As for the times when she is inside the colony complex, she is unassailable. Her assault bot follows closely behind her at all times, and she is always shielded. Even a blaster would be useless against her shield, as I have said. Its only effect would be to make her perspire. More primitive weapons might knock her off her feet, but they would do no real harm. Her arms and legs are not protected by the shielding and can be damaged, but only in a mechanical sense. It would not actually injure her person.

  “There is only one way, at least that I know of, to inflict any significant injury to her. The shield generator, at her throat, creates a small vortex directly in front of it, a byproduct of the shield emanation that wraps around her body. It is her only weak point. A sharpened shovel handle driven with enough force, or a pick swung with enough strength, directly into that vortex, could conceivably penetrate the shield and maybe, just maybe, pierce the generator, damaging it enough to bring down her shielding. But she would have to stand still long enough for you to do that and somehow miss shooting you with her blaster. And you would have to find a way to get close enough to her. Her robot is programmed to annihilate any threat, real or perceived, within about four or five meters, and I mean all threats. It could blast a spear out of the air or shatter the handle of a swinging pick as easily as you or I might scratch an ear. And that is not rumor. I have seen it and others like it in action on several occasions.” Steenini’s analysis brought back to O’Keefe the memory of the high commissioner and her guard, slain so easily on Sefforia. He involuntarily winced at the recollection.

  Steenini paused for a moment to raise both hands to his face and rub his closed eyelids with the tips of his fingers. When he continued his voice was slightly muffled by his palms. “Please do not misunderstand me. There is little here to keep a man alive other than dreaming of freedom and revenge. This being my second visit, I’ve had a great deal of time to ponder murder, mayhem, revolt, and escape; and I will be all in favor of any feasible plan you come up with to accomplish any of those ends. But nevertheless, I must reiterate the fact that I don’t see how it can be done, and I consider myself to be a very intelligent man, if you’ll pardon my immodesty.”

  O’Keefe sat silently, waiting for Steenini to lower his hands and open his eyes. When he did so, O’Keefe leaned forward and stared sternly down into his face. “You listen to me, and you listen to me good,” he said. “This can be done. Regardless of all the advantages she has, she is still just one woman. And no security measures, no matter how good, are foolproof. There is always a weakness somewhere, and we are going to find it. And when we do find it we are going to adapt, we are going to improvise, and we are going to overcome. You got that? We are going to get out of here. Maybe not all of us, but some of us are going to leave this place behind.”

  Suddenly, just as O’Keefe had finished speaking, the exhausted men who had been sitting or lying about near the entry to the barracks jumped up and fled back toward the bunks with newfound energy. Most climbed the ladders there to gain access to the uppermost beds as if wolves were on their trail. It was not far from the truth.

  O’Keefe turned his eyes to the doorway and saw one of the do
gs come padding softly into the barracks. It stopped and stood, panting slightly, halfway between the rows of bunks and the entrance through which it had come. The dog seemed to search the room intently until its brown eyes settled directly on O’Keefe, who shot a wondering glance at Steenini. When the Earther raised his eyes back to the dog he found it still staring at him. He pointedly stared back. There was no reaction from the beast. It stood rock still, its only movement the slight throb of its tongue and the repetitive dilation of its big nostrils. It held its tail out in a near straight line from its rump while its head was up and alert. The dog looked like an oversized, shaggy pointer detecting a quail. Hardly an attack posture, O’Keefe thought.

  He stood up, walked slowly out from between the bunks, and turned to face the beast, about twenty feet separating him from the animal’s muzzle. Even standing erect with his chest thrust out and his shoulders back, O’Keefe’s eye level was only inches higher than that of the dog’s. Man and beast stared at each other for a full half minute before the dog blinked and looked away. Nevertheless, it immediately returned its gaze to O’Keefe and bared its teeth slightly, just enough to show off a set of sharp, curving canines as large as a man’s thumb. Then it turned and inexplicably exited the room.