by Ste Sharp
As he climbed, switching walls every ten steps as the pit zigged and zagged, Samas felt a tingle in the back of his neck: his pin. A little welcoming present from the Ascent – every miner had an explosive device inserted in each species’ kill spot and the masters frequently blew an insubordinate miner’s head off to keep the rest in check. Samas often daydreamed about what he would do to the guards if he got free, but deep down he knew they were obeying their orders and were as much prisoners as he was. He’d seen the gleam of metal on their necks too.
Samas took a second to catch his breath before climbing the last stretch to the main corridor, from where all shafts descended. As much as he hated the labour, the terror of imminent death and the lack of sleep, it was the look in his men’s eyes which haunted him most.
He had let them down.
It had taken Samas days to come to terms with it, but at some level he’d known it all along: he shouldn’t have been in charge. He was no Mihran. He lacked foresight. He’d been unable to protect his army and had led them straight into a trap which had cost many lives and put everyone’s future at risk.
He let his face relax, trying to hide his anxiety, and climbed the last stretch to greet the host of alien miners who lay tired, broken and possibly dead along the weakly lit rock corridor. A dust-covered human nodded at Samas, and he nodded back while his mind raced to recognise the soldier. He’d lost so much weight. Egyptian. But his name? Samas walked on, grateful talking was prohibited. He strode to where a gang of miners of varying body types – insectoid, humanoid and android – scooped liquids from stone jars under the watchful eye of a tall Ladrof master who looked almost as weakened as the slaves he governed.
Samas paused as vibrations ran through his sandals, and he immediately thought of Crossley. From what he’d gleaned, the Lutamek must have studied every soldier from the moment they’d met and had given the Ascent information on each individual’s capabilities so they could be assigned to the tasks most suited to them. Not only could Crossley ‘see’ through rock, but his legendary skills with explosives, as demonstrated in the battle with the Brakari, made him ideal for mining.
Samas joined the queue. Eyes watched him and he felt the glare of the Sorean as much as the humans. The eyes reminded him he had let them down. But there was something else there too, if he looked closely.
Hope.
Samas knew he was no general but he was a leader of men. His words before battle strengthened his men’s arms and when it came to battle – in the wild moment of steel, tooth and claw – there was no one better than him at reading and reacting.
Then Samas saw her.
The shaved head, the sack clothing and skin covered in the toxic dust of the mine made her look like any other biped, but two hollow eyes fixed on Samas and he felt an energy run through him.
Yarcha.
The Lutamek had little information on her and she had no mutation from the dome, so they’d dumped her in the mine. Samas had barely talked to her, and knew little about her, but her eyes spoke to him. They didn’t blame him, or ask anything of him. One emotion shone through.
Defiance.
In that moment, Samas knew his task. He would save what was left of his army and, even if it meant dying, he would free them.
*
Delta-Six knew his diversion might not have fooled the Lutamek. If they were as clever as they seemed to be, they would pretend to accept his apparent death – blown up in the sky – and come back for him later but, if that was true, they were tracking him right now, he thought, and climbed a little closer to the energy shield which protected the entire disc, hoping it would distort any scanners.
He’d survived four hours since the fake assassination but knew he couldn’t stay in close-space for much longer before his breathable oxygen or fuel cylinders ran out. He had two choices: confront the enemy or hide from them.
He felt a desire to rescue the rest of the humans – even the Sorean – from their incarceration. During his war, with his crew, they had fought and died for one another like brothers and never deserted each other. No one got left behind. Part of that instinct stayed with Delta-Six but he had to be realistic. He was outnumbered and outgunned. In order to survive he had to hide – travel to another dome or find shelter in the desert.
He focussed his enhanced optics on the high-speed convoy of prisoners being led by the Lutamek and their new allies: a host of alien soldiers Delta-Six hadn’t seen before. From his vantage point, his guess was they were heading for the tower beyond the domes.
From this height, he could see a segmented city lying around the tower. Each wedge shape lay with the pointed end by the tower and its outskirts fanning out towards the desert and domes. His systems suggested the nearest wedge was the Ascent segment and that the city was fringed by farm complexes.
More questions came to Delta-Six about the nature of the domes, the tower and whoever had orchestrated this whole bizarre system, but he needed to survive. Maybe he could both hide and find the answers to his questions?
An orange light blinked to the right of his view.
Strange, he thought. Something was trying to communicate with him but it couldn’t be his mini-sat. He fired his jets and set them on a series of random manoeuvres while he filtered and decoded the message. It was an audio file which had been damaged en route, possibly by the disc’s shield.
‘…an. If you can hear this, we can extrapolate your position and–’
Delta-Six deleted the file as soon as he heard ‘position’ and killed his jets, sending his body into freefall. He rotated until his head pointed at the ground and descended with speed, switched his systems to maximum alert with maximum energy sent to his data walls: physical defence awareness and sensors. It was too realistic to be real, so had to be a Lutamek trap!
His head, shoulders and chest warmed as he zipped into the disc’s thicker atmosphere.
A thought came to him. It was too late now he had discarded the file, but he was unsure whether it had been translated from its original language or if it had originally been in English.
*
Samas woke as a brush of fur ran across his leg and his hand scratched the dust for his knife. He sat bolt upright. Dark shapes moved around him and it took a few seconds for his dehydrated brain to catch up. The light was poor, but he recognised the arched roof of the main chamber of the mine and his current situation came back to him like a wave of cold water.
Samas shivered and drew a sharp intake of breath.
The chamber was the only place the masters kept ventilated at night, so the miners were marched from their pits for their allotted sleeping time. Each exhausted species kept themselves to themselves, so the Sorean slept in a hairy pile, with the humans lined up nearby. New to the mines, both species had the least comfortable area, away from the heat source and closest to the open latrines.
Alien crap smelled worse than elephant dung, Samas thought, as a deep horn sounded at the other end of the chamber and the sleeping shadows around him twisted and groaned. If that was the first call, who had walked past and woken him?
‘Morning, Captain.’ Crossley spoke between yawns and stretches. ‘Another day in paradise, hey?’
Samas found himself smiling and licked his dry lips. ‘Something tells me we might be the lucky ones,’ Samas replied, not sure if Crossley would take it as a joke or not.
As commander of the troops, Samas couldn’t be seen to make light of their situation.
‘Silence!’ one of the masters bellowed as the others prowled through the chamber, kicking sleepers awake.
Crossley gave Samas a shrug.
The morning call was the only chance Samas had to check on his men – to see if they had lost anyone and, through whispers in the food queue, learn of any developments. So far there was little Samas could tell the troops, but now he was resolved to finding a way to escape he needed to build their morale. After one group hadn’t returned from their shift, Samas had started the rumour they had found a
passageway and managed to escape. The lie gave his men hope while he figured a real way out of the mines.
Morning breaths, squeaks and grunts echoed along the long hall of a cave, peppered with the hollow laughs of the guards. Every soldier here belonged to a victorious species who had made it through their dome’s silver gates, Samas thought. So who ruled the Ascent? He’d heard from other miners there were three main species. He didn’t know which species had made it to the tower first, but over time the most ruthless species had risen to the top to protect their own – he was pretty sure he wouldn’t see any of the leader species down here as a miner or a guard.
A shout from the distant entrance drew his attention and scores of heads turned in unison. Nobody was stupid enough to speak but something odd was going on. More shouting was followed by a crashing sound and a wail. Samas saw his men’s clenched fists and the Sorean group beyond, who sat with wide eyes and tall ears. Their moans were clear when a guard hobbled around the corner, dragging the limp body of Jakan-tar, the Sorean leader.
Samas recognised the guard as one of the Bensha: broad-shouldered, ape-like creatures whose heads were covered in protective plates of brilliant white bone.
‘What happened?’ the Ladrof master, Pek, asked.
Although less fearsome in appearance, this particular Ladrof had a reputation for spitefulness and, physically, reminded Samas of a badly carved sculpture: angular shapes, not finished off properly. The Ladrof had great strength too, so were rarely tested, and their army had beaten the Brakari, Samas remembered.
‘We caught it trying to escape,’ the large Bensha said with what Samas assumed was a grimace. ‘It managed to kill Fliit and Ren.’
Pek stared at the guard, then at the limp body of Jakan-tar. ‘Really?’
The Bensha moved its head in a manner Samas guessed meant ‘yes’.
‘This cannot go unpunished,’ Pek said and looked at the Sorean group. ‘We can lose one miner but two guards?’ Pek swayed from side to side.
Samas watched intently, pressing his rock-arm into the ground, ready to leap up and attack. Was this the moment? he wondered. Two guards already dead and it was probably dark outside.
‘The commanders will need to know what happened,’ Pek continued, ‘so we punish now and get back to work.’ He nodded at the Bensha. ‘Kill it.’
Quicker than anyone could react, the large Bensha pressed the controller on his belt and, with a tiny flash of light and an audible crack, Jakan-tar’s head dropped onto the floor, leaving a spout of blood in its place.
Samas knelt up, caught Crossley’s eyes and felt the other human eyes staring at him: pleading with him to make a stand – to stop this madness. They were ready, Samas thought, they would fight. Maybe they should fight before they lost more men or got weaker?
‘Silence!’ Pek bellowed and tapped his belt, quietening the low hum of whispers. The stone-like Ladrof paused to think for a while, pacing a circle, before saying, ‘One is not enough for two guards… we need two more,’ and gestured at the gang of Sorean, who scrambled behind one another to the safety of the cave wall.
Both of Samas’ fists were clenched. The other species in the cave remained silent in their respective groups and watched calmly as though they had seen it a hundred times before. Maybe they had? Samas thought. Which was why they knew not to fight back.
At a tap on his shin, Samas looked down to see that Crossley had smuggled a slip of explosive out of the mine. The American talked with his eyes and it was clear what he had planned. They hadn’t been able to fight back when they were captured, so this was their first chance. Samas shook his head. As much as he wanted to fight – as much as he knew they could take these masters – this was not the time. The explosive pins were too deadly and he’d lose too many men.
Samas looked back at the Sorean, who had stopped struggling and, through some unheard call, started to form a ring, which had confused the Bensha, who had halted its approach. The Sorean were whispering and clicking claws with one another, which reminded Samas of a war song he had heard the men of a mountain tribe sing in the Persian army. The Sorean sped up but the sound was getting quieter until, with a solemn groan, the group sat down in unison, leaving two Sorean standing. Samas gasped as he realised what was happening.
With their eyes fully open and teeth bared, the two Sorean walked over and knelt before the stunned Bensha, who looked to Pek.
‘Do it properly,’ Pek snarled and walked away.
The Bensha drew his long, curved blade, took one step back and, with a flash, the two Sorean were despatched and two thuds echoed around the chamber. Another Bensha walked forward and carried the soldiers’ bodies and heads to where the body of their leader, Jakan-tar, lay in full view of the miners.
Samas kept his eyes on the Sorean group, who had remained silent throughout. When he was sure he had enough eyes on him, Samas closed his eyes and lowered his head in respect for their loss. When he opened his eyes, what was left of the Sorean army were blinking in response.
Samas breathed in deeply. He felt the weight of their loss more than any other human in that cave.
He was responsible for both armies now.
*
Delta-Six finally had what he’d longed for – a given name.
In truth it wasn’t a given name, it was a chosen name: a name he’d chosen for himself. But for the past few days, as he had toiled in the fields, eaten with the slave-farmers and slept in the pest-infested huts, he’d become known as Lucien Thomas. The field masters called him Lucien Thomas and, when they were out of earshot of the guards, the workers who shared this agricultural prison with him also called him Lucien Thomas.
Despite the hardship they endured here, Delta-Six smiled every time he heard his name, even if it was a simple ‘Pass me the hoe, Lucien Thomas,’ or ‘Get out of my way, Lucien Thomas, you piece of Rassum turd.’
Despite this, Delta-Six didn’t allow himself to relax. He was confident his true identity hadn’t been discovered by the Ascent, but he was yet to set eyes on a single Lutamek.
After plummeting from near-space, Delta-Six had taken a haphazard route to the cultivated lands of the Ascent. Since then, combining information gleaned from the farmer’s small talk with images he’d taken from near-space, he knew the other wedges of land radiating from the tower belonged to other factions who governed their segments of land like gangsters.
Using a combination of a chamelo-cloth and clothes he had found on bodies desiccating in the desert, Delta-Six had constructed a basic but effective disguise that gave him the look of Lucien Thomas: a broad, bald-headed humanoid warrior of no specific origin. After a day of reconnaissance, he had infiltrated a line of new captives and had fashioned a fake tag in the back of his neck. He knew he had been accepted as part of the group when guards beat him. It took a great deal of self-control not to fight back, but Delta-Six’s defence systems protected him while tricking the attackers into feeling muscles being pounded and ribs cracking.
‘Lucien Thomas,’ a guard yelled, ‘there’s a blockage in the corner field’s air pipe.’
Delta-Six tapped his head, dropped the metal tub of larval seeds he’d been sowing and limped across the dusty red field. His leg was fine, but the guards had given him a good going over the day before and his systems told him the bruising from a real beating would take days to heal.
Even with his disguise on, Delta-Six could sense his surroundings as he had done before – his visuals were enhanced when needed, and he could sense movement from any direction at all times. As he crossed the field of almost-ripe Thoraxian pears, which wriggled a few centimetres beneath the desert soil with their black breathing tails pointing skyward, a red light flashed in his field of view. He slowed his pace and zoomed in on the signal – a cloud of dust on the horizon: an Ascent scouting party. He zoomed in further and recognised the shapes: Lutamek. He groaned. The last thing he needed to see. But they were heading away – probably defending the edge of the Ascent’s territory like goo
d little robots – and had disappeared from view by the time Delta-Six made it to the far corner of the field.
This was the border between apparent civilisation and probable death in the desert. This place reminded him of the pictures of regenerating Europe he’d seen during training, where the poorly performing soldiers were retired. Images from his old dream came back to him – of the Elysium plains and his promised wife and kids – then the sharp reminder kicked in. It had all been a hoax.
He looked at the wriggling tails of the field. With this crop so close to fruition, the guards would act harshly if they lost a single pear, so he set to work, crouching to check the filtration unit, a small beige box covered in flashing lights. The filters were fine. He scanned the corrugated hose which ran from the box. It had to be just a pipe blockage. He grunted, detached the tube and tapped out a pile of desert soil. Strange, with the filters working fine, there was no way that soil could have infiltrated the air system. He fixed the tube back together and made sure the air was pumping again, like the water-irrigated fields of Earth.
He stood to stretch and raised his arm to show any guards watching that the problem was fixed. He didn’t receive a response, but his systems picked up three guards’ reactions and recorded their conversation, knowing he had been marked for a beating tonight. There was little he could do to prevent it, so Delta-Six gave himself a second to think. He had so much information now – from the dome cap, from the Lutamek, if that could be trusted – and from communications he had picked up from various scouting groups in the desert. Yet every answer led to more questions.
He pretended to urinate into the desert to buy a minute more thinking time and set a portion of his systems’ capacity to building theories to answer his questions. He ran his toe through the pile of soil as he added another question: How did this disc have gravity?
He stopped. Something in the sandy soil had caught his eye. It looked like a corner of cloth. Carefully, he teased it out with his foot and flattened it out. Three shapes were printed on the cloth in red ink. Three shapes: human and Sorean handprints, beside the print of a tocka’s clawed hoof.