Banu Rao
The Life of a Hero (Unpublished Autobiography)
The child had never known night or day or the rituals associated with diurnal activity. She knew only the four shifts and the work required to continue living. There was a distant memory of a time before she was put to work along with others of her crèche, but that time was gone. She had been placed in barracks with the women who walked with dead eyes and spoke only what they needed and nothing else. She was a child in body only as far as the overseers were concerned. In the long hours between shifts, when the women were asleep, having taken their showers and eaten the paste that kept them alive, then she would roll towards the wall in her narrow cot and listen.
A long time ago, as far as she understood time, she had discovered a hole dug into the wall by whoever had occupied the space before her. It was hidden by the cot bolted to the wall, but she had carefully been scraping away at it until it was nearly wide enough for her to slip through. She wouldn’t have tried, of course. There was nowhere to go. She didn’t know the sky existed. Once, she had heard a story told by one of the dead women of a blue sky with white clouds that floated above their heads so high you couldn’t climb high enough to touch them. In her mind, she imagined the concrete and steel ceiling would fade away and the blue sky would appear. The hole was just a thing to pass the time. It led nowhere.
When she heard the voice, she thought the overseer had caught her and would punish her for damaging the barracks. It was a male voice and there were no males here. It was forbidden for the sexes to meet. Even when she was growing, there were strict do’s and don’ts regarding boys and girls. When she heard the voice through the wall, she was scared. It was making sounds that she knew were bad. One of the overseers had used words like that once, when a slave had missed a bolt and an assembly broke loose and hit him on the head. The voice did not sound like the overseer, though. Whoever the man was, he was not one of the thick-skinned scaled overseers, but a human.
The man called out names. At least she thought it sounded like names. Like most slaves, she had a number identifying her to the owners. One of the women had explained names to her. It was something they all had before the bug-things came and took them all away from the blue skies. When the voice cried out the names, the girl thought he sounded sad. Sad was something she understood. She listened to the man through the hole for many shifts before she finally worked up the courage to speak herself. She had told him her identifying number: six-one-eight-four-four-one. He started calling her Six. She asked his designation once, but he said he didn’t have one. She told him to look at his work suit and see what numbers were there, but he said there were no numbers.
Sometimes the man would be there and sometimes not. He said he was talking to the overseer’s overseer, but she didn’t believe him. No one ever told the overseers what to do. Most of the stories he told were of faraway places and great battles. He talked about great battles in the sky and the bugs that drove her family away from Earth. He talked about battles in swamps and people who had four arms and green skin. In the times after he came back from talking he sounded sick, but he told stories anyway. In these times, he told her of a beautiful woman with long curly black hair who had saved him time and again. The girl liked those stories. The man seemed to have been places and done things she could not even dream of. If Six had known what to call it, she would have said he was the bravest man she knew.
So when the overseer began to beat one of the other members of her crèche, a boy who had once smiled at her when they passed, Six thought immediately of the man who had stood up to the bugs and the machines that could scream and all sorts of things. She raced back to the barracks, sneaking past the guards in a way known only to the children, and ran into her bunk, and she called to him. She told him about the boy and how he had just stumbled and dropped the box. She asked if he could help.
He told her he couldn’t. He could see the guard punishing the boy from the window of the barracks, but could not go. He said he wasn’t allowed, and that the overseers would keep him from leaving the barracks if he tried to go. He said he was a prisoner on his side of the wall. She asked him what that meant, and he tried to explain, but it just sounded like life to her. Six pleaded with him to help, reminding him of how brave he had been. As he continued to say no, she began to weep. She had never cried except when being punished by one of the guards. He said he was sorry, as if that meant anything to her. In the end, she left the barracks and snuck back out into the assembly area alone.
The boy was lying on the grated floor, blood trickling from his nose after the guard had finished with him. She thought of the man’s stories of how he had helped the green people. Daring what none of the adults would, Six went to the boy. She wiped away some of the blood and told him he would be okay, but the boy just stayed curled up on the floor. The guard hissed at her and told her to go back to her work, but she would not. As the guard approached, the girl turned and stood up, looking the guard in the eye just as the man had told her he had done. The guard raised his lightning stick and fired.
Pain flared through her body. She screamed despite trying her best try not to. When the pain lessened, Six realized she was on her knees in front of the boy, having fallen in pain. New tears were falling from her eyes. She was not as brave as the man. She could not defend the boy if she fell down every time the overseers threw the lightning at her. She looked back at the overseer, pressed her hands to the ground and stood. She wiped the tears away and looked at the guard. Several of the other slaves had stopped their work to look at the girl who’d stood her ground.
The overseer was confused. Sometimes one of the men, remembering what it had been like to be outside, tried to stand up to the reptiles, with predictable results. Their bodies were carried away and new slaves were brought in to replace them. This child who stood in front of him was defiant. Six held her hands balled into fists at her sides and stared back at him. He checked the energy on his weapon, turning it up to maximum. Losing one of the children would be a small price he was willing to pay. As he raised the weapon again, something else unexpected happened.
A female slave, much older than Six, stooped over with age and wear, stepped between him and the defiant child. She looked up into the eyes of the overseer with the same expression. The overseer hissed, calling others of his kind to the area. Two more of the reptiloids stomped to their comrade and hissed their warning. Two men, one a new arrival and the other a youth who had grown to manhood in the factory, stepped to the side of the girl. They held their tools up, daring the overseers to fire the energy weapons. The three overseers looked to each other in confusion. The cost of five slaves might be too high for them to dare without approval from above. They lowered their weapons and hissed. The humans seemed to relax and that was then the overseers moved.
The flanking reptiloids charged the slaves, tossing the two men aside. One smashed over a rail and fell to the hull of the ship below. The other crashed hard to the wall. The old woman, surprised by the sudden movement, could only scream in terror as the first overseer grabbed her by her tattered clothing and pushed her back. She tripped on the prone form of the boy and fell, cracking her head hard on the metal floor. That left only the defiant little girl to stand before the overseer.
She did not shiver with fear. Six knew vaguely she was about to die. She had seen death before. The more she tried to imagine it, the more it seemed like a release from the work and the punishments. The overseer stepped close, hissing with its fetid breath in her face. She wanted to hit the overseer, but years of conditioning stayed her tiny hand. Instead, she raised her arms up, balling her hands into little fists to try to threaten the reptiloid. It hissed a long breath in her face before reaching out and grabbing the front of her tunic. As she was lifted above the head of the reptiloid, she let out an involuntary scream. The overseer held Six high, showing the slaves what happened to slaves who disobeyed their masters. He brought the girl down and placed his other hand on her head
. He was going to make an example of her. He was going to show her head to the others and make them fear him.
As the overseer began to twist Six’s head, he was struck from the side. In surprise, he let the girl go, dropping her to the metal grate as he fell. A human male he had not seen before began to pummel him with blows to the head. The girl squealed with glee as she watched the man beating the overseer. Six let out a warning as the other two turned their attention back to him. In one mighty shove, he slammed the reptiloid’s head into the grated floor, breaking the tough skin and ridges and knocking the creature unconscious. He pushed off and turned to face the other two.
The first overseer to arrive lowered its head and charged. It was met with a knee under its chin that halted its progress and knocked it backwards. The other guard paused long enough to change its tactics. The slave grabbed the shoulders of the other guard and brought its head back down into the knee. The second hit knocked loose several sharp teeth and made the creature cry out. He was thrown aside by the slave, who then squared off against the final reptiloid.
This creature was smarter than its fellows. Instead of an all-out attack, it began to circle its prey, watching as the human adjusted to the movement. The circle began to contract and the creature seemed to dance as it hopped from foot to foot in a strange display. The human did not move and kept watching as the overseer moved closer. In a final feint, the reptiloid hopped almost next to the human, and the slave ducked low, anticipating an attack that did not come. The reptiloid saw its chance and took it. As the human began to stand, he swung around quickly, slamming his thickly-muscled short tail into the human, sending him flying back. The man landed on the grate with a sharp thud, squeezing his eyes shut in pain before curling up and rolling to his feet.
The overseer chose this time to charge, seeing the human off balance and in pain. He lowered his head and hissed, accelerating to full speed in the short distance. The impact was diverted to the side as the human rolled away, and he doubled over the nearest rail, halting his progress, and roared, angry at his failed attack. The human turned his back to the rail now, in a vulnerable position. The other slaves had moved away by now, returning to their work or ignoring the fight.
The overseer moved quickly, attacking low to keep the human from ducking. Instead of clamping down on the slave’s leg, his jaws came down on empty air as the human leapt up and landed on his back. It crashed into the grate, sliding forward with the force of its own momentum and stopping with its head extending out from the bottom rail. The human almost walked across the creatures back as it slid. He jumped again, this time leaping to the railing. With a single motion, the human brought his legs down on the creature’s head, snapping the thick neck and killing it instantly. A second leap brought the man back over the rail to face the remaining guard, still on his back on the floor.
The creature hissed and only then did the human notice the small transmitter on the leather armored breast of the overseer. A crowd of overseers began to appear from every side. The human braced himself for an attack as the creatures charged.
“Halt!”
The voice came from above. It had no body, but seemed to echo from the surrounding walls. All of the slaves ducked, cowering at the authority of the voice from above. The overseers, too, halted in their headlong rush to the prisoner. The human, breathing heavy and sore from the impact of the tail, stepped from the back of the dead overseer and towards the little girl. She was still on her knees, but the tears from her eyes were no longer from fear. The man knelt down and tilted the girl’s face up to his.
“Go … hide,” he said to Six, lifting her to her feet. “That was very brave, but don’t ever do that again. I might not be around to help, Six.”
Six looked into his eyes for only a few seconds, recognizing the voice of the man from the wall, before she ran to the nearest path and out of sight.
“Bring him to me.”
The voice commanded and the overseers complied. The man stood tall as the reptiloids swarmed over him. He was thrown to the ground and kicked before his hands were tied behind his back. The reptiloids lifted the man high over their heads to show the other slaves the consequences. His clothes were torn from the human to humiliate him. The creatures took their time to parade the human from the walkway, scraping his flesh with long claws as they moved, showing the blood that resulted from disobedience.
When the creatures finally left and the slaves went back to work, Six stepped out of the secret place where she had watched the procession. She carefully stepped out to the walkway, looking for overseers who would surely punish her for the disturbance. She gathered pieces of the man’s tattered clothing, looking for the tag where his number would be printed, hoping to be able to call him by number when they next spoke. The scrap she found, though, did not have numbers. It had the letters the adults sometimes scrawled on the walls of the barracks. Six could not read the letters and it made her very sad. She resolved to keep the patch anyway and see if one of the dead-eyed women would tell her the name. She hoped it was a good name as she traced the letters with her fingers.
SANDOVAL
2
“We were lucky. I sometimes thought about my time on the ship and realized I could have been a slave on some alien hell-hole too. It kept me going and kept me looking later in the war.”
Lee Pearce
After-Incident briefing report
“You are far more trouble than you’re worth, Jon,” said the fat man. “You don’t seem to be learning the lesson I wanted to teach you.”
“Maybe if you learned my name I might pay more attention,” replied the naked man before him.
“Your name is Jon Sandoval. If you persist in this charade of being someone we both hate, I shall be forced to put you to work like the common folk below.”
“If you persist in calling me Jon Sandoval,” replied the man, still not looking up. “I shall be forced to put my foot in your ass.”
Holcombe emitted a snort of derision. He stood from his wide chair and walked closer to the kneeling man. He was dripping blood on the newly polished marble floor of Holcombe’s factory office, his hair, never the correct length and always unwashed, now caked with sweat and reptiloid blood. In all, the man presented a pitiful form to the executive. Holcombe shook his head at him and walked back to his chair.
“I have allowed you to stay in slave barracks all alone,” Holcombe explained. “Do you know I can fit at least a dozen of those creatures in one room the size you alone are occupying? I have let you eat three meals a day where the others eat their single allotment. I have even given you a window into their lives so you can see how disgusting they really are. On top of all that, my engineers still haven’t figured out what you did to the prototype isomorphs I sent you to play with. Do you have any idea how much those things cost this company? I don’t understand you, Jon.”
“My name ain’t Jon,” said the man. “My name is Connor. You’d better get used to it.”
“Connor Jakes died at your hands, Jon!” Holcombe shouted. “When are you going to give up this act? You know the man was evil. You know what he did to your family. I will not call you by that man’s name!”
“Then we’re done talkin’,” Connor said, finally raising his eyes to Holcombe. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get some clothes on, and maybe shower the gator guts outta my hair.”
“I can provide you with a suite here in the building, Jon,” Holcombe said, looking away suddenly. “I will call one of the secretaries to—”
“Maybe you can fill me in on somethin’” Jakes said. “The Ch’Tauk hate humans. How did you manage to get a deal to build ships for them?”
“The Ch’Tauk?” Holcombe said, confused by the change in topic. “Oh … well, if you must know … they do hate the human race. Something about arrogance and a desire to expand into their territory or whatever. I honestly don’t care. There was a man named Heyerdahl who contacted us about eight years ago. You know, we had to create a whole new
line of sales executives just to deal with them.”
“I’m sure it was very expensive,” Jakes replied. “You must have suffered so much.”
“Now, now, Jon,” Holcombe replied. “Sarcasm doesn’t suit our kind. The deal made provisions for expenses, in any case. The Ch’Tauk went off and destroyed the Confederation, an organization with a terrible credit rating, mind you, and we were given first crack at the allocation of resources.”
“You mean slaves,” Jakes said, horrified. “You helped kill billions of humans for what? Profit margins?”
“My dear boy, these creatures below are no more human than my sales executives. They are tools to aid in the production of ships and equipment. That is all.”
“You have been living among the rabble for too long, Jon,” Holcombe added with disdain. “I shall have to re-educate you in the ways of our world.”
“Don’t bother,” Connor said, standing up and stretching. “I’ll just go back where I was. Thanks for everything, tubby.”
“You will not call me names!”
Jakes met Holcombe’s stare. The two men could not be physically less similar. Connor was lean with muscle while Holcombe’s layers of fat rolled as he walked. Holcombe’s thinning red hair was combed over an expanding bald forehead, while Connor’s hair was long and black. Both men had an intensity to their eyes, though, that spoke volumes about the wills behind them.
“Fine then, chunky,” Connor said a smile on his face. “I’ll just be on my way.”
“I’ve released your family’s funds, Jon,” Holcombe said, stopping Jakes from turning around. “You are a billionaire, my boy. You should be up here with me, enjoying the fruits of other people’s labors. I can even offer you an office. You just have to tell me what name to put on the door.”
Connor paused for a long time before turning to face Holcombe. The larger man was sweating again as he met Connor’s gaze. Connor turned his head to look at the guards flanking him with a grin. When he finally stepped closer to Holcombe, it was with an expression of mischief on his face. The guards moved with him, but Holcombe waved them off.
The Adventures of Connor Jakes: Masks (The War for Terra Book 1) Page 18
