The Street Survivors (The Guild Wars Book 12)

by Ian J. Malone

  “Get that hydro processor online now!” Torrio barked to a Cochkala nearby.

  The alien froze.

  “Move your ass, Badger Boy, or we’re all gonna be barbecue in the next 30 seconds!” Torrio shouted.

  The Cochkala sprinted to a nearby machine and threw a series of switches on the dashboard, eliciting a series of groans from the equipment. A moment later, the crate-sized device sputtered to life, while Torrio unhooked the valve hose from its side, then raced back toward the shaft. He aimed the hose straight into the inferno’s teeth and let fly.

  A pillar of steam billowed from below as, little by little, the flame began to subside.

  “Nice save,” Taylor said once the hydro processor had quieted. “Where’d you learn to handle yourself like that?”

  “The New York City Fire Department.” Torrio returned the hose to its cradle and walked over. “I was a volunteer firefighter for almost eight years before I moved to North Florida.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Taylor said.

  “There’s a lot about me you don’t know,” Torrio said. “You would, though, if you and your cronies had treated me with a modicum of respect when you executed your takeover of Steeldriver.”

  Ordinarily, Taylor wouldn’t have felt compelled to justify his command decisions to an outsider. In this instance, however, and given the colonel’s actions with the fire, he decided to make an exception. “I’m sorry, Paulie. I’m sorry for the way things went down between you and the Eagles. For what it’s worth, we strongly considered you to lead San Marco Company when we organized the new command chain.”

  “And?” Paulie asked.

  “And Commander Blaylock had just as much experience as you, but without the baggage.”

  “And what baggage might that be exactly?”

  Now Taylor was starting to get annoyed. “If you know anything about me, you know I ain’t one to blow smoke up somebody’s ass to spare their feelings. I shoot people straight. Always have, always will.” He shifted his stance. “In case you haven’t noticed, Colonel, there’s a whole bunch of folks who don’t like you. Whether that’s because of your attitude, your way with command, or the way you look down your nose at people, I don’t know. I also don’t give a damn. What I do know is, I didn’t need that kind of poison on my command staff, period. You wanna know why you got busted back to sergeant? Well, there’s your answer.”

  Torrio turned aside and snorted. “Typical Duval redneck crap. You people always stick by your own, no matter what.”

  “Listen, Paulie.”

  “No, you listen.” Torrio stabbed out a finger. “Two weeks prior to your meeting with Carnegie when he handed you the keys to the Ryley Osyrys, he and I had a talk of our own. His current XO had accepted a job with the Danville Express, and Ron wanted me to fill the two slot, with a new, unofficial title — colonel-in-waiting.”

  Taylor’s eyes widened.

  “That’s right, you North Floridian prick.” Torrio patted his own chest. “I was next in line to command the Steeldriver Defense Group when Carnegie retired. Not you. Me. Then you went off to Rukoria and got tangled up in whatever the hell happened out there, and all that went by the wayside.” He stared at the ground and huffed. “From executive officer to staff sergeant, and this fargin guy thinks I oughta be grateful. What an asshole.”

  Neither man spoke for a long moment, especially Taylor, who hadn’t known any of this.

  “Everyone! Get back to work!” Several KzSha began ordering the shift laborers back to their posts.

  “Welp. Looks like break time’s over.” Torrio sighed and headed for the bathroom huts. “Come on, newbie. These turd tubs ain’t gonna clean themselves.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 18: Stung

  The next three days underground played out in much the same fashion as the first. Taylor would wake from what little sleep he could manage in the cage, then be shuffled out at stinger-point with the other workers to be herded onto a train bound for yet another shift in the mine. Sometimes Taylor lucked out and nabbed an assignment to one of the cleaner duties, like supply running or loader operations. Mostly, though, he drew the crap duties—literally, in the case of sanitation work. Clearly someone had seen to that.

  By the time the fourth morning arrived, Taylor hardly knew what day it was, much less the time. He only knew that he was tired as all get out, and nasty as sin, not to mention physically and emotionally exhausted.

  The call came early on day five, when two KzSha guards arrived at Taylor’s cage before sunup. At least, he thought it was sunup.

  “Out,” the lead guards ordered.

  Right. Out. Gotcha. Taylor took a second to shake the cobwebs out of his mind, then pulled himself upright to go. From there, he was marched from the confinement area and out to the terminus platform where, just like always, a Croon chauffeur waited to take him into the tunnel.

  Wait, where is everybody else? Taylor glanced around. Only eight other slaves were being rousted from their cages for work. That ain’t nearly enough to flesh out a shift crew, not by a long shot.

  One of the guards shoved a large Besquith into the open. “Move!”

  The wolf alien snarled in protest, prompting the guard to raise its stinger. The Besquith bowed his head immediately.

  Whoa. In all his years in the merc business, Taylor had never once seen that sort of behavior from a Besquith.

  “Out, now,” another guard said to a pair of Lumar workers.

  Beginning to feel like the runt of the litter, Taylor filed onto the passenger car and waited while the bigger aliens joined him onboard. After that, the Caroon fired up the transport’s engine and headed for the tunnel to the mine pit cavern.

  “All of you, please exit the passenger transport and prepare to move out,” a green and yellow GenSha said once the car had eased to a halt.

  Taylor pegged the alien at once as a mine manager. That was the technical term for the pure souls the KzSha had selected to be the wasps’ eyes and ears among the former’s own peers.

  “Why are we here?” one of the Lumar asked, climbing out.

  “All will be answered shortly,” the GenSha said. “For now, you need only obey instructions and follow me.”

  The Besquith snorted through its nostrils. Still, it didn’t speak up.

  Taylor filed off the passenger car with the other aliens, then fell in line behind the GenSha, who led them across the terminus platform and down into the courtyard. From there, the crew marched past the director’s shack and back into the main thoroughfare, seemingly headed toward the actual pit itself.

  Ah, dammit. Taylor cringed upon rounding a corner and spotting the bathroom huts ahead. He really wanted no part of that today.

  Thankfully, the group was escorted right past the foul little structures toward the far-side loading docks, where they were eventually brought to a halt by the KzSha guards.

  “Several of our automated cargo loaders are presently undergoing maintenance and repairs in the topside motor pool,” the GenSha said. “Coincidentally, this morning’s haul has yielded more product than anticipated. Many of these bins, therefore, will need to be loaded onto our trucks manually for transport to the refinery, which is why you’ve all been summoned.”

  Taylor studied one of the empty metal bins, resting open on the motionless conveyor. He’d been down in the hole five days, yet even after all that time, he still hadn’t one iota of a clue what this mysterious product was, or why Akoya’s benefactors would’ve seen fit to commit such a hefty sum of resources to mine the stuff.

  “Each of you will be divided into pairs for the purposes of fulfilling today’s task,” the GenSha continued. “To that end, you may select your own partner or have one assigned to you. The choice is yours, but decide now.”

  The larger aliens shuffled quickly away from the smaller ones, as if the latter were inflicted with some sort of plague. By the time this game of musical slave chairs finally ended, Taylor was left standing alone like t
he fat kid in dodgeball class.

  “Very well,” the mine manager said. “The human shall be assigned to—”

  “I will work with him.”

  All eyes turned as Haju stepped through the crowd to the forefront.

  “You wish to work with the human?” the GenSha asked.

  “I do,” Haju said. “I know him to be a strong back and an able worker. He will do fine.”

  The mine manger nodded. “As you wish.” He waved to the others. “Everyone take your stations. Our next shipment of product will arrive momentarily.”

  Taylor dispersed with the others and started for the far end of the conveyer with Haju. “I appreciate you catchin’ my back like that. I owe you one.”

  “Indeed, you do,” the gate master said. “Rest assured I shall hold you to that debt, too.”

  Taylor wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that.

  “I presume you came here by way of the Osyrys,” Haju said, hushing his voice. “Is she still in orbit?”

  Taylor chewed his lip and looked around. No one else was in earshot. “So far as I know, yeah. This whole region was devoid of activity when we arrived, and it needs to stay that way. We’re shorthanded as hell and in no position for a ship-to-ship firefight.”

  “On that point, you are in luck,” Haju said. “The KzSha possess but one ship—an outdated frigate. It remains in orbit only long enough to deposit slaves and collect a new shipment of product, then it redeploys to the next culling.”

  “When was the ship’s last deployment?” Taylor asked.

  “The day before you arrived on Droxis,” Haju said.

  Taylor felt a rare bit of relief wash over him. If the KzSha frigate had departed the system the day before the Eagles arrived, it would be another week at least before the vessel returned, per the laws of hyperspace physics.

  An alert light flashed as the conveyor started moving. Meanwhile, the first convoy of trucks pulled alongside the loading area.

  “Incoming shipment,” the GenSha announced. “Get ready!”

  * * *

  It took Taylor hauling a single bin to the trucks to understand why the mine manager had divided their crew into teams. The industrial containers—or more aptly, their contents—felt like they weighed a ton. Even the bigger species like the Lumar had problems carrying the crates on their own.

  For the better part of the next two hours, Taylor and Haju took turns sidestepping each other’s feet while shifting bins from the conveyer into the truck beds for transport to the refinery. Once one truck was filled, another would shift up in line to take its place, until eventually the final bin had been loaded. After that, the conveyor alert would ring again as another convoy entered the loading bay, and the entire dancing process would begin anew.

  Son of a bitch. Taylor hadn’t worked like this since he was eight years old, toting watermelons out of a field by hand, and placing them on a tractor for his uncle. His shoulders and arms were killing him. Still, he soldiered on, wanting no part of the repercussions for doing otherwise.

  About halfway through hour four, the crew finally got a reprieve.

  “Have you seen any of the others?” Haju asked, collapsing onto a work bench to rest his back and take a few swigs of recovery drink.

  “Just Torrio,” Taylor said, doing likewise on a crate. “I saw him on day one down here when the powers that be had me cleaning bathroom huts. You?”

  “I see the Eagles every day, actually,” Haju said. “My cage resides in the same confinement zone as theirs.”

  “And?” Taylor asked.

  “And they are alive,” Haju said. “Some of your comrades are faring worse than others, specifically the one called Newhouse. However, they are all breathing, nonetheless.”

  Taylor furrowed his eyebrows. “What happened to House?”

  Haju took a pull of his drink, then explained that the corporal had apparently gotten into an altercation with another worker. The result had been a forced separation by the KzSha via a near-lethal dose of stinger venom.

  “Your man spent most of last evening immobilized on the floor of his cell before regaining the use of his extremities shortly before midnight,” Haju said. “Again, though, he is alive, as are the others.”

  Taylor nodded, grateful for the update. “You mentioned earlier that the KzSha frigate delivers this product of theirs offworld to Akoya’s benefactors. Do you know who that is, or what the product is?”

  “I know nothing of the buyers,” Haju said. “Master Vello has gone to great lengths to keep their identity a secret. As for the product, I’ve heard rumors that it’s referred to among the KzSha as kambersite.”

  “Kambersite, huh.” Taylor swigged at his drink. “Never heard of it.”

  “Nor have I,” Haju said. “Allegedly it’s an ore of some kind that resides deep within the Droxis crust. As for its use or why Vello’s superiors covet it so, I could only speculate.”

  “So you’ve never actually seen it, then,” Taylor surmised.

  Haju shook his head. “To my knowledge, the only ones who have are the Caroon. Their species alone comprises the ripper teams tasked with excavating the kambersite from below ground. From there, the ore is lowered into a passage tunnel at the base of the fissure, where it is packaged into these bins and hauled topside for us to shift onto trucks bound for the refinery.”

  “And who runs the refinery?” Taylor asked.

  “Also the Caroon.”

  Taylor wrinkled his nose.

  “You!” A visibly agitated KzSha stormed over and stabbed a finger at Haju. “You come! You come now!”

  Before the Sumatozou could even speak, much less move, the wasp laid into him using the backside of its tail like a scourge weapon.

  Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

  Haju tried to rise, but collapsed to one knee, his broad expression fraught with pure agony.

  “You come now!” the guard screamed. “Now!”

  Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

  Taylor started to intervene, but by the time he’d left his seat, the beating had ended.

  Gingerly and with immense effort, Haju stumbled upright and staggered out of sight with the guard.

  Taylor was still sitting on his crate, horrified and stunned, when Haju returned a few minutes later, having completed whatever task he’d been summoned to accomplish.

  “What the actual hell was that about?” Taylor asked.

  “The guard needed a belt changed on one of the other conveyors,” Haju said. “It was nearing failure, which would’ve interrupted its service.”

  Taylor blinked then blinked again. “That’s it? One KzSha guard saw fit to beat you within an inch of your life over a conveyor belt? He could’ve just ordered you to fix it, ya know.”

  Haju frowned and dabbed at the fresh gashes on his face, wincing. “It has been my experience that Master Vello takes special pride in seeing others of his species suffer, especially those of us who serve the Cartography Guild as gate masters.”

  A flurry of dots connected in Taylor’s mind, from the atrocity he’d just witnessed, to the litany of injuries he’d seen on the other Sumatozou. “Akoya thinks his own species betrayed him after Sakall, so he’s taking it out on you guys.”

  Haju gave a slow, heavy nod and swallowed. “We need to get free of this place, Van Zant…I need to be free.”

  “Look out!” someone shouted.

  An audible metal kapow sent Taylor and Haju spinning on their seats.

  “I’m sorry!” a mortified Sumatozou rushed out, the overturned bin laying sideways at his feet, its rocky contents strewn out like jigsaw pieces in the dirt. “Please, I’m so sorry!”

  The frightened alien dropped to his knees and frantically began shoving the ore pieces back into the bin, but it wasn’t enough. Four KzSha guards converged on the elephant in a blur, lashing and whipping him with their tails.

  Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

  The elephant toppled over under the beating and rolled hims
elf into a ball for protection. Still, the guards kept at it.

  Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

  “Enough!” Haju lunged to his feet and charged toward the melee.

  Ah, hell. Seeing no other option, Taylor charged in with his partner and plowed a shoulder into one KzSha. After that, he threw a punch at the jaw of another alien, landing most of it.

  Both KzSha reeled to regroup, but that still left the others, plus the three extras who surged onto the scene in defense of their comrades.

  A deluge of pain ripped through Taylor’s system as the first dose of KzSha venom poured into his veins. Another strike followed, then another and another, and another after that. Soon Taylor’s whole body felt like it was on fire. Everything in him wanted to fight back—to make the wasp bastards pay for what they’d done to Stan. Part of Taylor wondered if maybe now it was his turn to be torn to shreds. Instead, the KzSha stung him and stung him and stung him again until Taylor’s consciousness gave up the ghost, and the world around him faded to black.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 19: The Forgotten Digger

  Taylor awoke to the sounds of clamoring voices and dripping water as the icy sensation of cold rock registered against his skin. He jolted upright, suddenly alert. Where am I? He was lying on the floor of a cave, ostensibly somewhere else in the mining complex. It wasn’t a big cave, either. The entire chamber measured all of five feet from dirt floor to rocky ceiling, with a smattering of artificial lights scattered about the space and intersecting corridors for illumination. The whole place reeked of dank air and moisture.

  Ugh. Gross.

  “Van Zant!” a voice whispered from Taylor’s right. “Van Zant, over here!”

  Taylor shifted on his butt to see a pair of coal-black elephant eyes peering back at him through a hole in the cell wall. “Yeah.” He coughed. “Yeah, Haju. I’m here.”

  Haju heaved a sigh of relief. “Welcome back. I must confess, for a few hours there, I feared I’d lost you. In all my time in this place, I’ve never once seen another slave, human or otherwise, take a lethal dose of KzSha stinger venom. I was starting to wonder if that’d changed.”