by Jean Kilczer
Bat sat chained to a post. His left cheek was swollen. His eyes were blackened and shut as he leaned against the post.
“Oh, God, no,” I whispered.
“My gut tells me,” Big Sarge said, "that they'll hold the execution in the morning.
Chancey slammed his fist on the table. “Then we free him tonight!”
I nodded numbly.
“Let's go,” Big Sarge said. “I'll handpick the tags I want on this one. Not you, pretty boy.”
“Oh, yeah, me,” I said. “My tel powers might come in handy.”
“Jules,” Sophia said.
I turned. She was dressed, with a hairbrush in her lowered hand.
“Jules, I…” She drew in a breath. “Be careful.”
I took down my stingler from the wall hook and strapped on the holster. “I will.”
* * *
It was night as I lay on a rocky promontory beside Chancey, and watched the mine below, lit by sweeping searchlights, through graphoculars. Joe and Huff were back at the cabin, waiting. I convinced Huff to stay, by telling him Sophia needed protection. He never asked me protection from what.
Guards called out orders from speakers in the mine below. Whips snapped. The crack of salt crust splitting as slaves worked into the night reverberated across the craggy hills and mingled with the clomp of ponies' hoofs as they strained to pull carts of salt slabs across the hard ground. It seemed the land itself cried out as it echoed the suffering of the innocent.
Chancey and I waited, while Big Sarge, Apache Joe, Attila, and Priest checked the pattern of security patrols to choose the best way in.
I lowered the graphoculars and rolled to my back to stare at the sky, where two moons winked between clouds. Alien plants pressed against my shoulders. Their smell was bitter in my throat, but not as bitter as the scene below.
“You think the bastards are expecting us?” I asked Chancey. “Just keeping Bat alive to lure us in?”
Chancey took the graphoculars from my hands and trained them on the compound. “I wouldn't bet my creds against that. Why the fuck don't they just use androids to work the mine?”
“There are laws against treating androids badly,” I told him. “The factories won't sell to known abusers. Anyway, androids wouldn't last under these conditions.” I rolled back to my stomach and stared down. “Flesh is cheap.”
“Always was, man. My people could tell you that.”
Big Sarge ran over, low, and slid down onto one knee. “The mothers are waiting for us! They knew we were coming.”
“Then it's a trap?” I asked.
Sarge nodded. “The installation's fortified like Fort Knox. Apache John just located the execution wall and your friend.” He pointed to the western perimeter of the compound. Three to one they've got ground sensors, and mines surrounding the area."
“So what's your plan?” I asked him.
“You want a plan?” he said. “I'm calling off the mission. That's the plan.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
“I signed my people on for a surprise attack and a takeover of the mine. I didn't sign my core tags for a death trap.” He sat down and ran a hand across his sweaty brow. “When our strategies can be implemented, we'll attack as a full unit. This is not the time.”
“What about Bat?” I asked. “He hasn't got time. Are you just going to abandon him?”
Sarge squinted down at the compound. “Your friend is dead meat.”
“Like hell he is!” I stood up. “Chancey?”
“Stay low, Jules.” Chancey shook his head. “Unless we can spread wings and fly over the electrified fence, I think we're at a dead end.”
“The hell I am!” I started down the clay hill toward the compound.
“Jules!” Chancey called. “Where the fuck are you going, man?”
“I don't know,” I called back. “I'll tell you when I get there.”
I stayed low and trotted along the outside of the fence to the western sector. There, in the shadows within, was the back of the stone execution wall, pockmarked with burn holes from beam weapons.
“Bat,” I said quietly when I saw him. He sat chained to a post, leaning hard against it, his head low.
“Jesus,” I whispered. “Bat.”
Perhaps there was a breach in the fence. I moved silently along it, searching by moonlight for some tear in the wire. The clay ground was as hard as rock.
Voices!
I ran, low, and rolled behind a boulder as a foot patrol of three guards approached. I unholstered my stingler.
“Ye ask this Altairian,” a guard said as they strolled by, “the Boss has us trekking a wasted march around the mine. We be going around in circles.”
“That be an 'aye',” another said. “Chasing nothing but our own tails.”
“They be a pack of pritcull bog blinkers, I'm thinking,” the third one said, “to show up with all these lights brightening the place.”
“Don't ye tell that to the Boss, Eflo,” the first one said, “unless ye want ye tail loped off.”
The three chortled as they went by and disappeared into shadows.
I holstered my weapon and moved back to the fence. Was I on a futile quest to find a way in? I passed the warehouses and the place where I'd downed a tree to escape the compound. The tree was gone and the fence was repaired. But wait. Where the tree had been uprooted and taken away, the bottom tube of metal that held the fence down, and couldn't be electrified, sat on soft, sandy ground. I dug my fingers deep into it and scraped out a handful of sand.
I began to breathe hard with excitement as I found a solid branch left over from the tree and dug beneath the bottom tube.
I don't know how long it took me to make a hollow deep and wide enough for me and Bat to wiggle through, but sweat plastered my shirt to my sides and dripped down my temples.
Finally, I flattened myself on the ground and inched my way through, careful not to touch the electrified fence above me.
I got up and ran between the warehouses and high stacks of supplies until I reached the back of the execution wall. Big Sarge had said this area was probably rimmed with sensors, and mined. There was enough light from the overhead spotlights to see where boots had dented the clay ground. I stayed to the bootprints and came around the wall.
“Bat!” I knelt beside him.
He stirred as I checked the chain that kept his hands behind his back and looped over the post. “It's me, Jules!” I whispered.
His face was swollen and discolored. His eyes were narrow slits. He stirred, and moaned.
“Come on, Bat. Stand up!” I had to get him on his feet to loop the chain over the post and free him. I dragged him up and leaned him against the post. “Just hang on for a minute.” I grabbed the chain, but his knees sagged and he slid back down.
“Bat! You've got to do this.” I dragged him back up. He stiffened his knees and I held him with one hand as I threw the chain over the top of the post.
“Jules?” he said as I lifted the loop of chain over his head so his hands were in front of him.
“Yeah, Bat. I've come to rescue you.”
He slumped against me. “No, I'm dreaming this. I'm dead and I'm dreaming.”
“No way, Bubba. Would I rescue a dead man?” I lifted him over my shoulder. Good thing Bat was short and light. I still staggered toward the hole in the fence.
A light pinned me in its glare!
“Stay right there where ye be, Terran!” a guard ordered from his mount and aimed a rifle at me.
“OK. Don't shoot.” I lowered Bat to the ground and lifted my hands. “Just…don't shoot.”
Bat tried to get up.
“Stay there, Bat,” I said. “We've got trouble.”
The guard nudged his horse forward and drew rein beside me. “I be a motherless pritcull if ye are not the tel.”
Ye be a motherless pritcull anyway, I thought but didn't say. Strange, that I was so angry at my failure, I felt no fear. “I'm
sorry, Bat. I tried.”
“I wish you had stayed away,” Bat gasped in a slurred voice. “I didn't want them to get you too.”
I peered up as the window in the high tower was suddenly lit from behind, and there, silhouetted in its glare, was the bulky figure of Boss Slade. My breath came fast as a slow rage began in my chest and seemed to spread until it devoured my thoughts with its insistent demand to kill the creature in his tower. This incarnation of Satan! Until all I wanted was his blood, for all the people he'd tortured. For all the lives he'd swept away like dead leaves. I wanted his cold blood on the stones below his castle, more than I wanted life.
“Slade!” I screamed. “Come down here, you piece of slime. I'm waiting for you. Come down here and face me like a man if you've got the balls for it, you motherless bag of shit.” And then I remembered the curse the guard had just uttered. “Ye be an Altairian pritcull!” I screamed at him.
The window flew open and he leaned out with both hands gripping the sill.
“I'm here, Slade.” I spread my arms. “You'll never have a better chance. Show your men what you're made of, you bloated bag of garbage.”
The slaves murmured. Some shouted and cheered.
“Come on, Slade,” I said. “Mano-a-mano. Just you and me.”
He slammed a fist on the windowsill. “I could have ye killed where ye stand!” he shouted.
“You're a coward, Slade. A pritcull coward. Here, I'll make it easy for you.” I unstrapped my holster and flung it aside. “Let's finish it here and now. Your men are watching. Come down, or show them the prit that you are.”
The slaves cheered. I heard the crack of whips and anguished cries. But an ominous murmur rose among them and they surged forward. One of the guard's mounts screamed as he was knocked over by charging slaves.
“No, don't!” I shouted as guards drew rifles from sheaths. “Go back!” I called to them. “They'll slaughter you. Go back. The time's not right.”
The slaves retreated before the rifles, and the horses that shouldered them.
Slade slammed the windowsill with a fist, but he stayed where he was. I should have known he wouldn't meet me face to face. If I won the fight, he'd be disgraced in front of his people and the slaves. Or better yet, he'd be dead. If he won, I'd be a martyr, dead or alive. This time, it might be the final incentive for a slave rebellion. Either way, he'd lose.
The guards milled through the crowd, watching the window, waiting for their boss' orders.
“When a predator gets his claws into his prey,” Slade shouted and spread the talons of his hand, “the prey ceases to be a free entity and becomes food!” He snapped his hand into a fist. “Mark me, ye bottom prit of the swampmoors, ye will be food for the worms when the time is right.” He pointed as the main gate slowly swung open. “Take that Terran garbage at your feet, and get out, before I change my mind and turn this night into the worm feast.”
“Jules!” Chancey called from the gate. “For Christ's sake, come on. He wants you out of here, man. Don't push it.”
“If you haven't got the guts to come down,” I called to Slade, “I'll make it easy for you. I'll come up!”
Slade leaned out the window and pointed at the gate. “Get out!”
The slaves cheered. The guards trotted their mounts among them and I shuddered as the lash of whips struck flesh.
“Ye motherless pritcull,” I threw at Slade and strode toward the portal of the high tower. “You're only good to torture and kill the helpless. I'm coming for you.”
A hand gripped my arm and swung me around. “Jules!” It was Chancey. “Come on, man. You made your point. We got Bat. Let's go!”
I pulled away. “I want him dead. If it's the last thing I do, I want him dead.” I shoved Chancey aside.
“It will be the last thing you do.” Chancey threw a fearful look at the tense guards. “Come on. Before he changes his mind.”
Sarge jogged up to us. “We're leaving now, tag,” he told me.
“Take Bat and go. I want that bastard's blood.”
Chancey helped Bat to stand and dragged him through the gate.
Sarge gripped my vest and yanked me close. “You can walk out of here,” he said between teeth, “or I can drag you out.” He lifted his fist. “Your choice.”
“All right! Let go.”
He did.
I stared up at Slade. “It's not over,” I called. I picked up a chunk of salt crust and flung it at the window. “You bastard!” It bounced off the stone wall.
“It will be over when ye are dead.” He shook his fist. “Look over ye shoulder, Terran prit. Soon there will be a death squad behind ye.” He slammed the window shut and I heard glass crack. The light went out.
The guards moved their horses toward us.
“C'mon!” Sarge pulled me toward the gate and I almost fell.
“Let go of me.” I swung at his jaw.
He stepped aside and I hit his shoulder.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“I'll feel better when he's dead.”
He let go. “It ain't gonna happen tonight.”
I strode toward the gate. Behind me the slaves shouted and moved forward. Guards held them back with horses and whips.
I stopped and turned. “Your day is coming!” I shouted to the slaves.
I left the compound with the cheers of the people, and the crack of whips, echoing in my ears.
I climbed into the back seat of the cubair where Bat sat, leaning against the side door.
Chancey took the controls and Big Sarge got in next to him.
“How you feeling?” I asked Bat as Chancey lifted the cub into the sky.
“Pretty good for a dead man.” He smiled and reached out a hand to me. I took it. “Thanks, Jules.”
“Aw, shucks. Just returning the favor, Bubba.”
Chapter Thirteen
We were a scruffy looking bunch when we returned to the cabin and the campsite. Big Sarge's men, sitting around campfires, stood up to watch as we went by with Chancey and Sarge helping Bat into the cabin.
“Hey, Superstar,” one man called and made a thumbs-up.
I nodded and returned the gesture.
My leather pants and vest were streaked with clay and Bat's blood from when I'd carried him. I had clay and sand in my hair and down my shirt from crawling under the fence. I was hungry and tired, and the energy drain was beginning to tell. I shivered in the cold night air.
Apache John, Priest, and Attila had come back before us in the first cubair and related the details of Bat's rescue. Turned out, one of Sarge's men, Ty, was a former military medic. He went into the cabin to see to Bat.
I stared at the campfire where Apache John, Priest, and Attila sat, and felt myself sway with weariness. “Mind if I join you tags?”
“Sit down.” Apache John said. His tanned skin caught fire reflections and shadows in the night. “Mi casa es tu casa. Got some hot brew in the thermos.”
“Yeah? Thanks.” I sat cross-legged and sighed with weariness as fire warmth on my face and hands made me drowsy. Wood burst and snapped and flung cinders. I breathed in the smoky aroma. There is that in a wood fire which harkens back to times so lost in antiquity, nothing remains but a buried memory stirred by the flames of a campfire. I began to doze off.
“Hey!” John extended a cup. “The boys want to hear all about your daring rescue.”
“Maybe tomorrow.” I took the cup and let the pungent taste of Earthbrew roll around in my mouth before swallowing.
Attila grinned. “Chancey tells us they call you Superstar.”
“They call me a lot of things,” I mumbled and rubbed my eyes.
“Jules!” It was Sophia. She ran out of the cabin and sat down beside me. “Jules. Baby, are you all right?” She ran her hand through my hair and clutched my face. “I was so worried about you.”
I saw Apache John slide Priest a look and cover a chuckle with his coffee cup.
Priest's dour expression never faltered, as
though all of life were a solemn mass and not to be taken lightly.
I had to smile. “I'm OK, Soph. Just a little tired.”
She brushed the sand and clay from my hair, my shirt. “They say you rescued Bat singlehandedly, and then you were about to go after Boss Slade.” She brushed dirt off my cheek and kissed me there. “You promised me you would be careful!” Her dark eyes glistened with tears in firelight.
I opened my mouth to say something. God, I was tired.
“You call that careful?” she said. “I'd hate to see what you call reckless.” She sat back. “You didn't have supper, did you?”
“I, uh…” I shook my head.
“Jules!” she said, “When are you going to start taking care of yourself?”
“Well, I –”
She brushed off my vest. “Bat said you were ready to fight it out with Boss Slade right in his own tower. What were you thinking?”
“I thought –”
“You'll turn my hair gray, worrying about you.”
Joe strode out of the cabin and came over. “He already turned mine gray,” he told Sophia.
“Thanks for the support, Joe,” I said. “Where's Huff.”
“He's off somewhere in the woods.” He waved toward trees. “Said he wanted to worry about you alone, or something like that. Only you and God know what the hell he's talking about.”
“I'll get you something to eat.” Sophia got up and brushed her grimy hands. “You need a shower.”
“I figured I'd take one after –”
She turned and strode back to the cabin.
Apache John chuckled. “Looks like you can take on anybody,” he told me, “except your lady.”
Attila took a karate stance with stiff hands where he sat, and did a chop in the air with one hand. “Those were your balls I just loped off, Superstar.”
Priest's lips spread into a smile. The deep furrows around his mouth seemed to crack like cement.
I looked around. “Very funny!”
* * *
It must have been mid-afternoon when I awoke, stretched, and yawned. And got a mouthful of fur. Huff had found me during the night and was curled against my side with a foreleg thrown over my chest. His musky smell was pleasant, but I gently lifted his foreleg and slid it off me.
