I took the chain between my fists and began to rhythmically yank at it. With satisfaction, I felt the play in it, and the fine dust grit dropping on my naked and sweaty back. “Yes, I am.”
The dirty man’s disposition that appeared so unshakable did change as he glared over to the coward. “We really could have made it, if it wasn’t for him!”
The Kermac spoke for the first time, and his voice sounded weak. “What is a Gal Drift?”
Another slave not tied to the wall and one I didn’t recognize, said, “Galactic Drifters are a bunch of ideology whackos in need of psychosurgery. They don’t believe in Union laws and that includes schools, citizenship, and so forth. Children of the universe, they call themselves, and believe all war is wrong, weapons are for evil purposes only and think if you Kermac want to rule over us, we should accept it instead of fighting.”
The dirty man added, “He was probably a stowaway when whatever ship he was hitching a ride on was caught and raided by pirates.”
The traitor hissed, “No, that agent of your establishment, the freighter captain, sold the entire container we were hiding in to slave traders!”
I glared at him. “Lucky for you. If I had been that freighter captain, I’d spaced you!” Still, I didn’t like what I heard; it reminded me of little Exa and her story of how she ended up on Twilight.
Someone wanted to know, “What is going to happen next?”
Again, the dirty man, responded with an answer, “It’s still early in the week. So, we wait until market day in two or three days and then we are auctioned off and sold. The Union soldier here will go for much money to one of the fight arenas or, if they realize he is Union fleet, some of the Kermac agents might purchase him. Where everyone will end up is hard to say, depends on who shows up and what demand there is.”
I turned to the Kermac. “I guess that’s your ticket out of here, right? Your agents will recognize you, and you’re back home in no time.”
He shook his head. “I am a Ranig; I am not important enough to be rescued. Our agents here try to stay low profile and would not risk exposing themselves by buying me. They are only here to pick up the occasional Union Fleet member, Saresii or Union techs and scientists. Picking me would serve no purpose.”
The dirty man said to me, “The name is Tirko. You don’t have to call me dirty man anymore. Not that I mind, but we are all quite filthy again, and it might be a tad confusing who you give orders to.”
I blinked. “Sorry, I didn’t even notice I said it out loud. I am Eric, by the way.”
“You did as we raided the ship and on the bridge, you barked orders. Again, I didn’t mind; they all made sense, and I know I used to have my own ship.”
The Kermac looked at me and said, “It figures, you had to be Union Fleet. Terran even, I think.”
I didn’t want to give the enemy too much information. I didn’t like Kermac, and he was one of them. Why I suddenly remembered Egill’s words while I had to clean his tower burg, I could not tell, but I could almost hear his dry voice. Don’t be so quick with your judgments until you see the whole picture.
So, I answered, “No, I am not Terran, I am from Nilfeheim.”
Tirkov laughed and slapped his hand on his naked thighs. “A genuine Neo-Viking. Now that explains the temper.”
His response surprised me, “You know Nilfeheim?”
He glanced at the steel loop I was working on, gave me an almost unnoticeable nod, and said, “Years ago, I had two Nilfeheim Low men in my crew. Hard men they were, reliable. Didn’t mind working, could drink Botnaars under the table, and if they started singing their Valhalla Songs and praising the houses… They had braved much hardship to escape the ship. Never been to Nilfeheim, but I know a thing or two about it.”
I actually stopped yanking the chain and stared at him. “I was told I was the first one of Nilfeheim that ever joined the Fleet.”
He motioned me to continue working the chain, and I did, feeling much more play now than before. The lower bolts now showed almost an inch of shaft.
Tirko said, “Maybe you are the first to join the Fleet, and I didn’t say my ship was Union either. From those two I told you about, I heard that it was rare but not uncommon for third and fourth born sons and for Low men to book a passage on a space bus or hide on a freighter and leave that world to find their destiny elsewhere.”
He didn’t have to tell me about the fate of those not firstborn. During my last year on Nilfeheim, I had my eyes opened to the almost slave-like conditions Clans, including my own, kept their Low men.
I knew Uncle Hogun had spent some time off the planet in his younger days, not that he had ever talked about it, not even to me. Only now, being off planet myself, I could tell that Richard, the outcast who was one of my teachers training me how to fight, had also spent time away from Nilfeheim.
I asked him, “Merchant freighter, or something like that?”
He grinned. “No, not a merchant but a mercenary; I ran a mercenary outfit until recently. The problem was that our Intel for the last job wasn’t exactly accurate and instead of a small band of local cutthroats we faced two companies of Harlequin’s Jokers, complete with Zealot Battle Walkers. They had no problem to sell the surviving rest of my crew, including me, to the Mulwhur Trading Company.”
I had no real reply to what he’d just said. I knew what the definition of a mercenary was, but I never thought something like that existed in the Union.
It appeared he read my facial expression as he snorted and lost much of his toothy grin. “I know you Union Fleet types look down on us and consider us criminals, but there are many shades between the white and black.” He spat into the straw before him. “Now if I could just once borrow a real Marine Heavy Destroyer Suit and maybe a few Cerberus robots. I would love to drop in on Harlequin and make his clowns weep.”
I followed his example and spat into the straw. “I am here more or less because I used a sabotaged Cerberus.”
The Kermac tried it but didn’t really manage to spit on the ground. “You humans are disgusting!”
I grinned. “No one asked you to try that.”
He tried again with not much more success, and then said, “I think I saw a tri-visual on these Cerberus robots once. The High Wizard of Public Education, of course, prohibits such tri-visuals.”
I had to slow down my efforts; I didn’t want the traitor to see that it would take little effort now to yank the chain off the wall. “So how come a Kermac can be found here among slaves? I thought you guys love enslaving others and promote the whole business.”
He actually sighed and said, “We don’t call it enslaving but giving lesser species the opportunity to reach their potential by having the great fortune to be guided by Kermac wisdom and tutelage.” He looked straight at me. “The Grand Wizards who rule the Kermac society still believe that, and you have to be very careful with any critical ideas. The Thought Police take subversive thinking very serious. That and the fact that we Kermac love to denounce others to look good ourselves.”
He reached for the blinking device. “We are a race of telepaths and psi talents without the ingenious psi laws the Union has. That’s why we wear false beards with all kinds of anti-psi technology just to provide ourselves with a little privacy.” He then touched the scarred wound on his chin. “This is where my artificial beard was attached. It concealed a mental shield; they ripped it off before I ended up here.”
He looked straight at me and continued, “We Kermac envy your Union, for one thing, more than anything else, your psi laws. Simple laws that protect one’s thoughts and guarantee privacy; that sounds like paradise to us.”
He paused, looked at the straw, then turned to look at us. “I was not completely truthful before, because I am the Grand Wizard of Information, or to be more correct, I was. I challenged the Grand Wizard and instead of murdering me, I was abducted in my sleep. My psi shield and other implants were forcefully removed and dumped. How I exactly ended up with the slave traders
, I can’t tell, because I found myself aboard that cursed ship.”
He actually tried to move away from me. “You have places to go; somehow I know you won’t be a slave forever. I do not. If I reveal myself to the Kermac agents, they won’t go against the Grand Wizard and have to make sure I never return to Kermac Prime. To this add the general dislike common Kermac feel toward us Wizards, and I will be lucky if I end up in a mine or smelter farm and not on a Togar barbecue spit.”
I couldn’t believe my own feelings as I actually felt sorry for a Kermac, a Wizard no less, but I said, “You could try to reach Union Space, you know.”
He laughed dryly. “Getting interrogated and then dissected in a secret Union lab, what would be the difference to being eaten by a Togar family?”
Instead of simply shutting up, aiding, and abetting a declared enemy, I said, “I think you believe your own propaganda then. We do not do things like that. You ask for political asylum at any customs office, and you will get it. Once that is done, you become a citizen. Doesn’t matter in the Union if you’re one individual or a whole civilization. We even took in the Dai. I know from the news there are a few Nul living as Union Citizens and no one dissected them.”
He said, “You make it sound so easy.”
As I sat there, I realized I also believed my own propaganda. The Union did have secret lab facilities, and I had transferred two Y’All warriors to one of them.
The entire facility was nothing but a research center conducting experiments on sentient species. True, the samples I had seen were of the worst enemies but still… maybe the mercenary was right. Not everything was black or white, and I caught myself thinking still in absolutes. Of course, as a soldier, I understood that it was necessary to find out everything there was to know about an enemy and conducting research on Y’All warriors could lead to new tactics and new weapons. By the strict sense of our laws and by the application of the fundamental core values the representatives at the assembly recited loudly every year at Union week, we were as guilty as the Kermac. It did not matter if you did it only a little bit in secrecy or on a large scale and in the open.
Something happened at the steel bars, and that pulled me out of my brooding thoughts. Two Oghar, and a brown-cloaked humanoid figure had approached. Under the hood, I saw an ugly somewhat humanoid but certainly not a human face, and he said to the Oghar, “Take them out to clean the Moog’s cut, but leave the ones chained to the walls; they are too dangerous to give tools.”
The guards opened the portcullis by operating a lever and herded the other slaves outsides. The coward came too close, and I used a leg sweep to make him fall, followed up with a barefoot heel kick to his nose, then rolled to the side to evade a shocker prod.
My hand was free, so I grabbed it behind the exposed electrodes and gave it a hefty tug. The big Oghar grunted, yelled and stumbled forward, and I placed a kick against his jaw. Nothing that would seriously harm the Oghar; my seeming madness had a reason. In the tussle and due to the restricting chain, I came close to the other Oghar and he took me in a bear hug, which I did not even attempt to escape. I had accomplished what I wanted.
The guard that caught me laughed rough at his comrade, “I pay money to see this one fight in the arena.”
The other rubbed his lantern jaw with the upward-pointing brass-topped tusks and grunted, “He’s a wild one indeed.” He hit me a few times with the whip and shackled my hands as well then they left, closed the steel bars and tended to the other slaves, using their shocker prods liberally. Then they got shovels and buckets and were marched off to so some kind of labor.
As soon as they were gone, I strained my muscles, and with a grinding sound, the last bolts gave. I stumbled forward, almost colliding with the other wall, but I was free.
Tirkov shook his head. “You are crazy. They could have whipped and beaten you to death. Why risk all those bleeding whip cuts?”
I grinned and dropped the wrist cuffs to the floor, holding a metal key before his eyes. “Because I saw this on his belt.”
Silently, I thanked the Sojonites for the specialized training, I had received so recently. It had included a few lessons on how to pick pockets.
It took me no time to free the other two and even take our chaffing collars off.
The Kermac shook his head and said, “I am grateful that I did not have to meet you in battle; you are one resourceful young human.”
Tirkov said, “I think I am certain he is an officer; that’s the result of their fine academy training.”
I used the chain with the attached collar, looked through the bars as good as I could, and saw other grottos cut into the sides of sheer rock walls on the other side of this narrow canyon. As I stood there, the magnitude of this became apparent. There were these alcoves fitted with steel bars in several tiers connected with steel walkways. As far as I could see, and there was a reason to believe our side was looking the same. There had to be hundreds of these slave pens, and from the looks of it, most of them were occupied. There were dozens of guards lazily walking these catwalks swinging their prods in a bored fashion. Even though I saw guards of different species, it looked as if the Ogier had the largest numbers. The escape would not be as easy as I thought it would be. I had planned to use the collar and chain to fish for the lever and open the bars, but it was still too bright out there, and the guards on the other side would see us, raise the alarm and could shoot us.
“It’s still too bright; we better wait till it gets darker.” I turned to the two and asked, “It does get dark here, right?”
Tirkov nodded. “Yes, and very dark. There isn’t a moon around this world. I think they will have a few floodlights, but other than that, we will be able to leave.”
The Kermac also looked outside. “And then what will we do?”
The Merc said, “I am trying to scare up some clothing and a few coins. As soon as you are not recognized as a slave, we are as free as anywhere. We could try to find work, hire on as hands on a ship that goes out, but I am going to call a few friends and get me a ride off this dustball. You two are welcome to come along.”
He gave me a glance from the side. “Someone like you could run his own outfit in no time, and there is good money in it, too.” Then he turned to the Kermac. “You could learn to pilot a walker, too, you know.”
I said to him, “We need to get out of here first before we make plans for the future, but how would you make a call? I was told there isn’t anything here to make calls.”
The mercenary gave me his trademark toothy grin. “Maybe the rest of the universe doesn’t have GalNet, but that doesn’t mean there is no way to communicate.”
He made a general gesture with his hands. “I am sure there is a Myon Corresponder here. It’s not instantaneous like your fancy GalNet, and usually slower than a space ship, but it gets your message from one planet to another, and there might just be a Kermac Long Distant Telepath selling his services. And LDTs are instantaneous communication, too.”
With a side-glance at the Kermac, I said, “I know about Myon Corresponder and Tachyon Radio. That’s how we hail mother ships when I order all channels open, but I am not so sure I would entrust a telepath with my secret messages. Every other long distant telepath can listen in, right?”
The Kermac said, “Wrong! First of all, Long Range Telepaths are very rare naturally, so we enhance their ability technically. Second, they are social recluses and more tool than being and third, you can always use code.” With a miffed tone in his voice, he said, “Not everything the Saresii do is better or superior to our way of doing things, you know.”
“How can anyone take Kermac serious when all they do is be arrogant, trying to enslave others with their psionics and send spies?”
I realized I was ruder than I wanted to be, but as I spoke, I remembered the dead Garbini I saw hanging in the wreck of the Seneca. I remembered the two Kermac agents unleashing Y’All warriors at the tabernacle research facility. And, most of all, I was in this situati
on because Kermac were the driving motor behind my kidnapping just to get to a Narth.
He didn’t sound offended but tired when he said, “That is why I am here and not in the great tower. I questioned some of our politics, but you should not poke the stick into the plastic roof after it rained. I mean, ever since the Union became so big, it is often perceived as being arrogant. Go ask a Togar or a Kartanian or any number of galactic council member species what they think about the Union or the Terrans.” He raised his hands and said, “I am not defending what Kermac politics and attitude did over thousands of years, and it is hard for me to accept that. I still love Ker and my culture; I don’t want it to become Union. I want it to reform; remember that we are an old race and could be respected for achievements. I disagreed with the increasing delusion, and the blindness of the rest of the wizards to the obvious facts and one of those facts is that there won’t be a Kermac culture if we continue in the same direction. They play with forces we don’t really understand. Even among the wizards, any form of discussion is no longer acceptable. Everyone has to agree with the Grand Wizard.”
He was talking himself into a rage, and while he did so, he realized more and more, that he’d lost his home forever. Maybe it was the shock and the stress of the last days for him that kept him level, but now, he was close to a breakdown and then he started crying. I didn’t even know Kermac could cry. I still hated them, those white-skinned, meddling bastards. They had gotten me here! I had to tell myself that several times to make sure I still believed it. Maybe not all Kermac were the same and maybe shared misery like a slave prison made me realize there weren’t that many differences between him and me.
Tirkov glanced outside. “Someone is coming. Armed guard, a dealer, and the robed ugly one again!”
We went back to the wall and pretended to be tied. I hoped they didn’t notice that our chains were no longer attached to the wall.
Eric Olafson Series Boxed Set: Books 1 - 7 Page 63
