by Graham Brown
The big Polynesian man stewed for a moment, but his face soon hardened and his jaw clenched. Finally, he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll fight.”
“You don’t sound too sure,” James prodded.
“I said, I’ll fight,” the big man replied forcefully. “You’re right. I’d rather die today than do this for the rest of my life.”
“What about the rest of you?” James asked.
A few nodded quietly.
“I’ll fight,” the father of the rescued child said, standing.
“Me too,” said another.
Soon everyone was agreeing, getting riled up.
“Strike back!”
“Kill them for what they’ve done!” someone else said.
Others began to nod and pump their fists. A chant began. “Fight, fight, fight!” And soon they were all doing it. Hundreds of voices echoing off the walls of the cave. It was loud enough to hurt their ears.
Amid the clamor, the big fellow came up to James. “So we’re going to fight,” he said. “I should probably know your name.”
“I’ve called myself Ares,” James said. “But my real name is James.”
He offered his hand and the big man shook it.
“My name is Kamahu,” the big guy said. “You are a brave man. Fighting is worthwhile, but do you really think we can win?”
“We have a chance,” James said. “First, we have to make sure our secret doesn’t get out. That means we need to… incapacitate anyone who might rat us out. If you know what I mean.”
James pointed toward Kek and his friend, who remained nearby but seemed shocked by what was going on around them. “You know they work for the guards right?”
Kamahu nodded. “None of us ever trusted them,” he said.
“I’m sure they’re not alone,” James said.
Kamahu called over a few of his friends and they had a private conversation. The group quickly dispersed. “There are a few others we must worry about,” he said. “But they will be taken care of.”
“Good,” James said, hoping that would be enough. “You’ll need a few leaders. A group that won’t hesitate. If they strike the first blows, the others will follow.”
“I can name twenty or more who will be hard to hold back once they hear what we’ve planned,” Kamahu said. “But how are you going to pull off what you’ve promised? How are you going to deal with those thumpers?”
James grinned. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I have a plan. But first, I’m going to need you to show me around.”
CHAPTER 29
Word of the plan passed quickly through the camp. Some balked at the suggestion, but most quickly came on board. To gain their allegiance and boost their confidence, James made them promises about citizenship and equality, promises he intended to keep.
He also stretched the truth about the resistance in Olympia. Making it sound as if there were thousands waiting for a revolution. He felt a little guilty for this but he had no choice. If they wavered now, all would be lost.
With the camp buzzing in anticipation, James’s biggest fear was that someone would get too eager and move too soon, or that the guards would notice the difference in the workers tonight.
“Remember, he said. “We have to take them out all at once. Go on the alarm that sounds for the mid-shift break. Do nothing before then or we’ll all be killed.”
“Why wait,” one of Kamahu’s handpicked lieutenants asked. “We’ll be tired by mid-shift.”
“So will they,” James said. “They’ll be drowsy and hungry and they won’t be expecting anything. If you watch they’re always on alert when they order us back to work. They expect resistance and arguments then, but they relax during the break and when the shift ends.”
The men nodded.
“Besides,” James added, “that alarm echoes all over the work site. It’s the only way to coordinate the attack.”
They stood and dispersed, and James turned to Kamahu. “Ready?”
Kamahu nodded.
With the plan locked in place and the suspected informants rounded up, James, Bethel, and Kamahu hustled through the tunnels that made up the subterranean part of the camp. They carried picks, shovels and a portable work light. They quickly wound their way around a dozen corners and down a long tunnel before running smack into a dead end.
“Can’t go no further out,” the big man said.
“This will have to do,” James said.
James picked up the pry bar and looked toward the ceiling. He jammed it into the soft sandstone material and wrenched it sideways. A small bucket’s worth of dirt, rock and sand tumbled down. After a few more stabs, the muffled sound of the air horn was heard. The slave-master and his friends were arriving for the start of the evening shift.
“You two better get out of here,” James said. He handed Bethel the metal strip he’d pulled from his arm. “When you go through, punch me in.”
Bethel took the identification strip, then he and the big man headed back down the tunnel. As they went James thrust the pry bar upward once again. He had twenty feet of soft sandstone to bore through and approximately four hours in which to do it.
CHAPTER 30
With the pale red sky fading to black and only the dim glow of the Solaris Array on the horizon, the mercenary crews began rolling up to the slave camp and rousting the laborers.
As usual the motivation was mostly negative—threats and curses. Bethel caught the end of it as he and Kamahu emerged from the tunnels.
“Come on you slackers,” one of the guards shouted, firing a gun into the soil behind them.
Bethel and Kamahu dutifully hustled forward and caught up with the queue of workers streaming toward the worksite and the half-finished monolith.
As they neared the fenced in perimeter, they were corralled into a narrow chute that forced them to pass through the roll call gates. Armed guards waited on both sides. A computer kept track of the workers as they poured through. As each worker passed through, a tone sounded and the workers’ names and numbers flashed up on a screen as they went past.
“Move your asses,” one of the mercenaries urged. “The faster you get to work, the quicker you’ll finish.”
Bethel lined up in the queue, shuffling forward as the men and women in front of him went through. Finally he reached the gate. He stepped up to the scanner with his heart in his throat, wondering if the scanner would realize only one body had passed through as it read two identifications.
He moved forward. The scanner flashed his name and ID number and then Ares - Gamma 4179. It happened in a blink. Two separate tones sounded, almost one on top of another.
Someone watching closely might have noticed, but there were hundreds of workers passing through the gates side by side. The tones were constantly sounding with the screens flashing and changing rapidly. More importantly, the mercenaries were watching for slackers and escape attempts. No one was worried about people sneaking into the camp unannounced.
But just as Bethel had ‘punched’ James in, others were slipping though with the ID tags of Kek and the informants who’d been trussed up and sealed in the deepest section of the tunnels. It would keep the guards from knowing they were missing and going looking for them. Bethel just hoped none of the guards sought them out, located their ID tags and went looking to talk to them. They would be chasing a ghost if they did, but it wouldn’t take them long to find out the tags were being carried by others.
Safely inside, Bethel headed to the staging area where the instructions were being given out. He found Kamahu again and managed to get assigned to the same work group. Today they would deliver power conduits that would be spliced together and buried to form a network. Based on the number of vehicles offloading the rolled up conduits, there would be miles of this stuff inside and around the Core Unit. Bethel couldn’t imagine they’d get it all in place today. But two thousand workers digging trenches and splicing cable had a way of expediting the process.
With a grunt, Bethel
lifted the heavy roll of shielded copper onto his shoulder and began to hike toward the delivery zone.
As the workers began their assigned tasks, the slave-master grinned. Flashes from the welding torches high up in the structure showed the progress. At this rate the exterior would be finished in two weeks. From that point, work in the interior could proceed twenty-four seven. And most of that would be done by the techs from Olympia.
It meant the Core Unit would be completed on schedule. He’d receive his big bonus. And Cassini and Gault would know they could trust him with any project on the planet.
Considering the future to be bright, he walked from the entry gate to a waiting APC. One of his men stood beside it with a radio. Another sat in the turret on top of the vehicle. The armored truck’s twin, rapid-fire plasma rifles were pointed toward the crowd.
“Ease up, Griggs,” he said to the gunner. “The sheep are in the pen.”
Griggs nodded, set the safety and tilted the weapons up into the forty-five degree position where they balanced and locked.
Down the hill, a squad of the slave-master’s men were closing the gates. Raising the comm link to his mouth, the slave-master hailed them. “What’s the count?”
Static came back for a second and then, “We’re nine tags short.”
That was less than usual. Under normal circumstances they lost a dozen per night. Occasionally someone was stupid enough to hide or attempt to escape, but most of the missing were found dead, or simply too weak to go on.
“Not bad,” the slave-master replied. “Especially since we’ve been cutting their rations to make up for the added numbers.”
“Did you round them up yet?”
“Yeah we found them,” the voice replied. “Two of ‘em are dead. The others are too far gone to do us any more good.”
That was the way of things. “Clear them out, and put ‘em down. Do it close. I want these slugs to hear the gunfire. It has a way of motivating them.”
“Already on it.”
With that bit of business taken care of, the slave-master climbed up on the APC and pulled out a flask of liquor. The long, boring watch was more easily stood with a little buzz going.
Deep within the tunnels of the camp, James continued to dig furiously. He was driving up through the sandstone at an angle. As he moved upward, he carved some ridges in the sides of the shaft and wedged himself into it.
Having carved his way through ten feet, he rested for a moment and looked himself over. He was filthy. Covered head to toe in red dust. His eyes were burning. His hands were wrapped in cloth, torn from his shirt, but they’d bled through that long ago. Another strip of fabric from his shirt covered his mouth and nose like a bandanna, an almost useless attempt to keep the dust out of his lungs.
He had no watch. No way to tell time. It felt like hours had passed but he had no real idea. All he knew was he’d better damn well not be late, or those he’d convinced to fight would be massacred.
“Come on James,” he said to himself. “Break’s over.”
He stretched as best he could, coughed a few times and then climbed back up into the shaft. With a deep breath, he gripped the pry bar in his ravaged hands and attacked the stone above once again.
CHAPTER 31
Up above, the worksite was shrouded in a cloud of dust kicked up by human feet, and lit by the glare of the mercury-lights. The combination gave a red glare to the world as if it were on fire or perhaps some missing section of Hades.
The slaves moved as always, slow and steady, their efforts accompanied by the clank and banging of the metal work up above. They seemed immune to it. And even as several unannounced gunshots echoed across the plain, few of them reacted with more than a flinch.
They’d grown used to it by now. There were no sick days on this job.
As Bethel lugged the latest heavy load toward the drop zone he spoke with Kamahu. He’d found it was fairly easy to talk on the trail. The guards were congregated around the unit and the staging area.
“How are you doing?” Bethel asked.
Kamahu looked back at him. “Better than you by the looks of it,” he said, then added. “Why are you following me?”
“You’re a giant,” Bethel said. “I figure you can fight.”
Kamahu gave Bethel a quizzical look. “How about you? Can you fight?”
“I’ve been in a few,” Bethel said.
“You win any of them?”
“Not really,” Bethel said.
“Great,” Kamahu said, shaking his head as if he was disgusted. “What good are you then?”
As it got closer to the zero hour the tension was growing. It was one thing to plan a rebellion, another thing altogether to carry it out.
“Well…I am a doctor,” Bethel said. “If they fill you full of holes, I might be able to patch you up.”
Kamahu stared blankly for a moment, and then he began to chuckle. The absurdity of the moment made both of them laugh. More than likely they would be dead in hours. Why the hell not laugh about it?
“Okay,” Kamahu said. “You stick with me.”
Deep within the tunnels, far from where James was digging, another man struggled against forces stronger than him.
Kek and his friends had been bound and gagged and dumped off in the most fetid, vile section of the tunnels, deep down where the waste collected.
To be honest, Kek was surprised to be alive. Had it been him, he’d have killed those who opposed him. But the man who seemed to be leading the slaves into a rebellion—the man who called himself both Ares and James—had insisted to his followers it was not necessary.
Intent on proving him wrong, Kek squirmed and twisted and strained against the knots. Finally, he’d managed to writhe his way up to the wall where he began rubbing the knot that tied his hands together against the stone behind him.
As he worked, Kek’s mind burned with hatred toward the newcomers. The anger pushed him. As did thoughts of a reward he might receive from stopping the insurrection that was about to happen.
He worked relentlessly for hours, until he felt the strands of fabric giving way. When they finally snapped, he ripped the gag from his mouth and took a breath of the stinking air.
It almost made him vomit.
He reached over and ripped the gag off the man closest to him.
Both of them breathed heavily for a moment.
“Damn this air stinks,” the other informant said.
“We won’t have to breathe it long,” Kek replied. “Those fools have done us a favor. When we turn these bastards in, our keepers will put us on the crew. We’ll be out there with guns in our hands, not down here in this filth.”
The other informant nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
“Turn around.”
The man turned and offered his wrists. Kek managed to untie them, but neither man could loosen the knots around their legs. The fabric had been wrenched too tightly.
“Grind through it like we did with our hands,” Kek ordered. “And hurry.”
In a higher section of the tunnels, James was also trying to hurry. He was slamming the pry bar upward desperately now. His mind playing tricks on him as to how many hours had passed. Several times he thought he heard the mid-shift horn only to pause and realize it was his imagination.
He jammed the bar upward and it stuck in the soft compacted mix of stone and soil. He pulled it back and almost dropped it. The space was claustrophobic.
It reminded him of the tunnel in the sublevels on Earth. He felt the same type of desperation; only this time it was for his friends not himself.
“Come on,” he shouted to himself, as he slammed the bar upward again and again.
He could hardly feel his hands. He sensed his strength going.
“Don’t give up,” he shouted. With the next thrust the pry bar broke through the surface, moving easily.
Instead of pulling back hard, and yanking the rubble downward, James steadied it and himself. He switched off the dim work light
so as not to give himself away and then cautiously wriggled the pry bar from side to side.
A trickle of rock came first and then, as he pulled the pry bar back, sand began to pour in through a roughly circular hole. It flowed like water and James hoped he hadn’t just dug his way into a sand dune or drift of some kind.
When the stream of grit finally slowed and then ceased, James wedged himself upward once again.
Cold air was pouring in through the hole above him. Fresh, in comparison to the stale air in the cavern, it swept over him and drew most of the dust from the narrow shaft into the cavern below.
“That’s more like it,” James said, feeling like he could breathe again.
He widened the hole further and stared upward. The sky was epically black, dotted here and there with pinpricks of light from a few twinkling stars.
The Solaris Array had gone down. That meant the mid-shift break was right around the corner. “At least it’s not dawn,” he muttered to himself.
He inched upward and popped his head through the hole like a gopher. In the distance he saw the construction site and the looming tower of the Core Unit lit up by the harsh work lights. But where was the MRV?
He twisted around. To his dismay, the furthest tunnel in the slave camp hadn’t brought him out quite far enough. He’d hoped to be behind the big rig, but he’d come out in front of it and off to the side. It was forty or maybe fifty yards away, sitting passively on its haunches with its angry face and lethal guns pointed towards the tower.
Crossing the ground toward the big rig would be dangerous. There was nothing to hide him. But he had a few things going for him. First, the MRV was set up to be seen. Instead of operating in a blacked out combat mode where every exterior light was extinguished, the MRV had both its position lights on and its main floodlights turned up to about fifty percent power.
There was a purpose to that. It made the big rig easily visible from the worksite and hard to forget about, but it would also ruin the night vision of the men who were manning it. As long as James avoided the lit up swaths of ground, he should be able to approach the rig unnoticed.