by T J Mott
And most of the rest had similar stories, joining the Foundation after the war, where they now occupied a complicated role in the Ailon ecosystem that was part voluntary slave and part enabler. He wasn’t sure how many members the ARF had, or even where they got their funding, and in the back of his mind he wondered what would have happened had all these workers fought on the rebel side during the war.
He was clenching and unclenching his left fist and idly picking at his food with a fork, in too much pain to have an appetite, when the door to the mess opened and Chet entered. He stood in the doorway for a long moment, frowning at Thaddeus, and then sat down across the table from him. “You doing alright, Chad? You’ve really kept to yourself these past few days.”
Thad remained silent, realizing he wasn’t really sure how to answer. He was far out of his element, used to leading a company of mercenaries and pirates, not living incognito and doing low-level gruntwork for a mobile clinic and watching helplessly as others get gunned down.
“I know all of this can be overwhelming to an outsider,” Chet added.
“I guess I’m tired, and overwhelmed,” Thad admitted. “There’s a lot to take in here. It’s worse than I expected.”
Chet nodded in understanding. “You’re still having nightmares.” A statement, not a question. The clinic’s men all shared a single barracks.
Thad clenched his jaw. He didn’t have them every night, but they were frequent. The dreams were always variations of the events at the Cadrian Casino, with a few stray memories from some of his pirate missions—expressions of repressed guilt, he suspected—woven in. And he always woke up in agony. He wasn’t sure if the nightmares triggered the pain in his artificial hand, or if the pain triggered the nightmares.
“How’s the hand?”
Thad sighed. “It hurts. Not all the time, but it gets much worse when I’m this tired.”
“I can imagine. We’ve been very busy lately, and nobody is getting much rest.” Chet paused. “I don’t want to see anyone get burned out. If you need a day to rest and get yourself back in order, we’ll allow it.” He paused again, and after Thad didn’t reply, he pointed at his artificial hand. “How did it happen?”
Because of his mental fatigue, it took him a few seconds to remember all the details Commodore Cooper had prepared for his cover story. “I was working on a shuttle and propped open an access panel to reach the thruster coils. I only needed access for a few seconds, so I didn’t lock it open like I should have. It slipped and slammed shut on me. Stupid mistake.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Chad, you look totally beat. Hey, wait here for a second, I’ll be right back.” Chet stood and quickly left the mess, leaving Thad to wonder. He took a few more bites of the mystery meat slab on his plate and considered leaving the mess before Chet returned. Avoiding people only worked when others left you alone. But he missed his chance and Chet returned a few minutes later, dropping a couple blister-packaged pills on the table in front of him. “Take these. It’ll help you actually rest tonight, before everything starts back up tomorrow.”
“What are they?”
“Painkillers,” Chet answered. “Opioids. It’ll keep your arm from hurting and put you to sleep all at the same time.”
He glanced at the pills, feeling uncertain. He’d had to take painkillers after losing his hand, but he’d actually tried to avoid them as much as possible. Deep down inside, he’d known he’d been changing into someone he didn’t like, and up until the Waverly mission he’d been drinking more and more to shut down those thoughts. But it had taken a toll on him. He was finally becoming afraid of his own chemical dependencies, and so he’d been clean ever since leaving Headquarters.
Thad’s uncertainty must have showed in his expression. “Chad, I’m a surgeon. I’ve had to install prosthetics just like that one, and I’m well aware of the difficulties patients have during recovery. You’re in pain and you need the rest. You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
He’s right about that last part. Been much longer than a week, too. Maybe a year.
“Look, I’m going to level with you here. I’m second-in-charge of this clinic, and it’s up to me to make sure everyone is doing okay. Those I can’t help, I have to send them back to HQ for reassignment to a lower-stress role.”
Thad nodded uncertainly.
Chet suddenly stood and exited the mess, leaving Thaddeus to the last few bites of whatever it was that sat on his plate. Afterwards, he took the painkillers and retired to the barracks.
***
Thad woke up the next morning actually feeling quite refreshed. He’d had no nightmares and no pain, and his attitude was almost cheerful for once. “You look better already!” Chet had told him at breakfast that morning. “I knew all you needed was some real sleep.”
Right then, there was a sudden cacophony of voices outside the mess. The building’s door was propped open, and those inside gave into their curiosity one at a time and stepped outside. Thad quickly finished his bowl of the pasty goop that the clinic called “breakfast” and joined the others outside.
Like before, the camp was set up somewhat away from everything. The slaves liked to see the countryside, he’d been told, so the clinic tried to set up there because it helped with their morale. But Zhale was visible not far to the south, and a number of refinery complexes surrounded the camp.
And one of the refineries about two kilometers away was on fire. Thick black smoke billowed away from the complex, rising into the air in a massive column that blotted out a huge portion of the sky.
Ria came out of her small prefabricated quarters. The breeze blew her red hair around her face, which was set in an expression of fierce determination. “Headquarters wants medics on the scene and we’re the closest. Hitch up the supply trailers. Move!”
Not long after, the clinic was on-site and quickly assembling a miniature version of their camp in the refinery’s parking lot. The main refinery building was burning, with thick plumes of smoke roiling out from one end. Ria spoke to the Army officers while her crew worked and was able to give them a quick briefing shortly after. “This is a bauxite refinery,” she explained. “Something inside caught fire at around 0730 this morning. The staff was not able to put it out. All Avennian personnel have evacuated. No other details at this time.”
Thad looked around at the parking lot. There were plenty of Army buses and transports, and a full company of soldiers standing around and watching. But none of them were doing anything except standing around. “Only the Avennians evacuated?” he asked, already feeling angry at the answer he suspected he’d get. “What about the Ailonians?”
“Still inside,” she said. “We need to go in and get them. There are at least four hundred slaves in there.”
He looked again to the brown-and-tan uniformed Avennian Army soldiers who stood in clusters at a safe distance from the building, wondering why they’d called in the ARF to evacuate their slaves. “Why are they just standing there?”
“They aren’t going to help,” she answered lowly after stepping closer to him.
“What?” he asked. “They have plenty of men, far more than us! They could be searching for survivors, or trying to put out the fire, or something! But they’re just standing around watching and doing nothing!”
She grimaced, and stepped even closer to him. She stood less than a meter away and dropped her voice lower, as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear her words. “Chad, Avennia doesn’t do that kind of work.” She looked down at her feet as she spoke, as if embarrassed. “The Foundation does. We’re on our own here.”
His jaw dropped open in disbelief. “They’re going to lose workers, and facilities, and not do anything about it?”
She sighed and looked up at him. “You don’t understand the politics here. If we don’t get to work, those guys will let the building burn down and kill everyone inside. They already got their own guys out. The rest…the rest are just slaves.” She turned away without making eye co
ntact again and set back to organizing the crew. “Chet, Giles, Jason, keep working on getting everything deployed. The rest of you, grab a radio and mask and get in there! Be careful!”
It took Thaddeus a long moment to get himself into motion. Those inside the refinery were only slaves, officially having no rights at all, but did the Avennians not value them even somewhat? The Ailon enslavement was the entire basis for the planet’s economy. Could they really stand around and let hundreds of slaves die? And feel nothing about it?
It’s the ARF. I bet they’d care if the ARF wasn’t here to take care of everything for them. He grimaced. If the ARF wasn’t here to enable them.
He took a radio and filter mask from Jason and equipped them after a quick check. Then he and ten other clinic workers jogged towards the refinery’s southern end as black smoke continued to steadily roll out of every opening in the building. This is insane. We don’t even know what’s burning. A few squads of soldiers stood by the open doors of the loading docks, standing guard and watching with morbid interest as the clinic team climbed the concrete steps and entered the refinery.
Even through the filter mask that covered his mouth and nose, Thad could still smell the terrible smoke from whatever was burning. It made his eyes sting, but he gritted his teeth and continued. They were in a loading/unloading area. Long rows of tall metal shelving stretched up towards the ceiling around them, holding a disorganized collection of crates, barrels, boxes, and pieces of machinery. The tops of the shelves were invisible, buried in the cloud of sooty smoke that hugged the ceiling. Breaks in the rows marked off aisles that led further into the refinery. And the refinery’s interior was terribly loud, filled by the mechanical sounds of pumps, fans, and other machines. Beneath it all, he could barely hear the sounds of a raging fire.
Not a single soul was in sight.
“What do we do?” someone asked over the radio.
“I’m not sure,” someone else replied nervously. “I guess we start looking around for slaves and escort them out.”
“But what about the fire? Can we do anything about that?”
“With what? We don’t have any firefighting equipment!”
“Guys, I really don’t know about this. We’re medics, not firefighters. This isn’t safe. Ria, isn’t there another unit better suited for this?”
Ria’s voice cut into the radio conversation. “Not near Zhale,” she replied. “Two other Zhale clinics are on their way but they’re an hour out. We’re the only ones here. It has to be us, and we have to act now.”
Thaddeus shook his head. The team had no idea what they were doing. They weren’t trained for this kind of situation.
This isn’t that far off from a battle. Gather intelligence first. He keyed his radio and used his best command voice, just like the old days when he’d been a mere captain commanding small task forces or personally leading boarding parties. “Listen up! We need to scope things out! I’ll take point, everyone follow me, and pay close attention to everything you see! Don’t stop for anything yet, we will be moving very quickly!”
The others walked up behind him and several shrugged at each other. Thad waited for a moment, took a deep breath, and then broke out into a jog towards the gaps in the warehouse shelves.
They didn’t get far. They passed through several aisles, weaving between some parked fork trucks, and then encountered a chain link fence which ran from the concrete flooring up into the cloud of smoke. A large chain link gate sat in the path, but it was shut and locked up. Thad yanked at it in vain. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” He keyed his radio again. “We can’t even get in, someone go talk to the soldiers outside and get this worked out!”
The other men hesitated, looking around at each other uncertainly, and Thad cursed. “Fine, wait here!” He sprinted back through the aisles, jumped off the loading dock, and half-expected the soldiers twenty meters away to think he was an escapee and start shooting at him. But they respected his orange ARF jacket and watched him approach with nothing more than mild curiosity in their expressions. He tugged off his mask. “There’s a locked gate beyond the loading docks, I need you to open up access!”
One of the soldiers, wearing a different uniform than the others—maybe he was an officer? Thad didn’t understand the force’s structure or markings yet—actually laughed. “No, we’re not going anywhere near that!”
Thad grunted angrily. “How many people are going to die in there?”
The officer shot him a disbelieving look. “It’s not my problem. They’re only slaves, not citizens.”
“Not your problem? Then why the hell are you guys even here?”
“You’re either stupid, or new to Ailon,” the officer scoffed. “My regular orders stand. Keep watch over the loading docks and make sure no slaves escape from custody.”
Thad hurled his filter mask over his shoulder in rage. “They’re going to die!” And yet the officer’s expression remained unconcerned. “How do the locks work? Is there a master key, or some kind of emergency circuit to release everything?”
“We use key cards.”
He really doesn’t care! This is unbelievable! Thad glared at the man, incredulous at his nonchalant attitude and wanting desperately to grab him by the neck. “Do you have a key card?”
“Of course I do.”
Thad continued to glare, hoping to see some shred of humanity in the officer, but he still seemed entirely unconcerned about the situation. “Can I have it?”
The officer frowned, and then pulled a red plastic card from his pocket. Clicking a button on it, he held it out towards Thad. “Timer’s set. It will deactivate in an hour.” Thad snatched it and started running back towards the refinery, stopping to scoop up his filter mask on the way. As he left, he heard the officer say to his men, “Stupid Ailonian. He’s going to die in there.”
“Better him than us,” one of the other soldiers remarked.
He shook his head in aggravation as he raced back to the gate inside, where the rest of the clinic crew still waited nervously. The electronic locking mechanism was on the right side of the gate. As he drew a deep breath through his filter mask, he hoped whatever authentication systems it relied on were still active, and inserted the officer’s key card into the slot.
The mechanism blinked green. He released his breath, removed the card, and yanked the gate open. It moved easily, and he slid it in its tracks to the left as far as it would go.
“Okay guys! Stay close and keep your eyes open!”
First step: Risk assessment. Find out what’s on fire and evaluate how much time we have.
Thad broke out into a jog, rapidly scanning his surroundings as they followed the path. Semi-permanent yellow tape outlined the aisles and lanes and walkways. The crew seemed to be following a major pathway that split the refinery lengthwise into two halves. All around them were machines, tanks, pipes, shelves, and arrays of industrial equipment whose purpose Thad could not even begin to guess at. His experience was with starships, not factories.
But as he looked around, scanning the environment and making note of the operator positions for many of the machines, he saw that something else was wrong. There were no slaves. Anywhere. He frowned, wondering if they’d taken cover somewhere. Maybe in a break room or lunch room? Or the restrooms?
Did the Avennians even provide break rooms to the slaves?
He continued onward, and as he followed a bend in the aisle around a giant piece of machinery, he could see a tower of flames at the end of the aisle, in the far end of the building, twisting like a tornado and spewing massive amounts of black smoke up into the ceiling. It seemed to be coming from a single point. It hasn’t spread yet…I need a closer look.
He began running straight towards the fire and someone yelled at him through the radio. “Are you crazy? You can’t go near that!”
“I need to know what’s happening!” he answered. “See how dangerous it is and guess how much time we have to work!” Or put it out, if possible. He f
elt his anger return at the soldiers’ lack of action. As little as they were willing to contribute, maybe I’ll just have to close a shutoff valve and then everything will be okay.
He looked back and saw that he was on his own. The rest of the crew had stopped following, standing nervously at the bend in the aisle and watching him incredulously. The radio came to life again. “Hey guys? This is Harve. Ria? Chet? Chad is running towards the fire. We’re not sure what to do…”
He cursed. Crisis management is not one of their strengths. He keyed his radio again. “Dammit guys, just wait there for me!” He moved another few meters and stopped. No, he couldn’t let them stand around and wait while he moved on. That turned his force of eleven men into a force of one man. They needed something to do. “Belay that! Start looking for restrooms, break rooms, offices, and such. There’s nobody on the plant floor so they’re taking shelter somewhere! Find them and start escorting them out!”
A woman’s voice responded. It was Ria. “Guys, just do whatever Chad tells you to do!” The group dispersed, splitting up and running in ten different directions. Thad shook his head, but continued on. A few seconds later, he was less than twenty meters away from the fire and unable to continue. Strong gusts of wind whipped around him as the flames drew in currents of air, and the heat was intense. His face began to sweat profusely and he was thankful that the insulation in his ARF-issued jacket worked both ways. It could protect him from the heat for a little while.
Squinting, he tried to peer past the flames and smoke. And then he saw it. Beyond, there was a large cylindrical tank, easily ten meters in diameter and of uncertain height, its top masked by the clouds of smoke. A pipe fifty centimeters wide ran along the ground from its base, splitting into other pipes which distributed the tank’s contents to the rest of the factory. One such pipe led to some kind of furnace or pressure vessel which had obviously caught fire and ruptured, the remains of which now acted like a flamethrower. The fire boiled up out of it, spraying upwards into the ceiling like a rocket nozzle, and Thad immediately knew there was nothing he could do about it. In a sane plant, there would be cutoff valves which could stop the flow of fuel. But with the intense heat limiting his approach, there was no way he could get close enough to the fuel tank to use them—if they even existed. After his few interactions with the Avennians so far, Thad doubted that the plant was built with safety in mind.