As I waited, I looked around the site, there had to be at least a hundred armed men in this small section alone… And I could see more groups gathering in the distance… I hope Kayin knew what he was doing…
It was hard to see how he could have convinced most of the men to fight with him without it getting back to Neros…. And after continuously hearing almost everyone I run into talk badly about the natives, I was starting to lose confidence...
After a minute or so I heard Kayin’s voice.
He walked up and said “Let’s go, everyone’s going to be busy for a while. We’ll have plenty of time to talk with 3.”
I could always get food later; this trumped everything at the moment…
Once we got away from the crowds he said “So do you know anything?”
“No, I even volunteered to do a perimeter walk but I couldn’t see him. The mine is just too big and far down… I tried.”
“It’s ok, I expected as much… We’ll probably have trouble finding him now. They do kind of all look the same, so we might have to split up.”
As night fell the winds started to pick up and it began to get cold… But it was nice to feel the air sweeping over my body after being out in the heat all day… For a few moments I felt like I was free again.
I took a deep breath…
Kayin must have heard me; he said “What’s wrong?”
“Oh nothing, just enjoying the fresh air.”
He slowed his pace and turned to me.
“Yeah that’s right… You never got to leave the ship this whole time huh? That must have been driving you crazy… It would kill me.”
I laughed “You have no idea… It gets odd at times because you feel like you’re the only one on the ship… So many people are down here… In the middle of the night I could walk for hours and not see a single person… But the strangest part has to be how time almost ceases to exist when there’s no night and day… When nothing ever changes… The only reason I knew it was “morning” is because I had a clock that told me when I needed to be at the lab.”
“Hmm, I guess that would be pretty strange.”
“…Yeah, it was really hard to sleep… I just spent most of my free time in the observation room.”
Kayin suddenly stopped and got low to the ground “Get down - You see that?”
I looked into the distance and saw the outline of someone holding what looked like a torch.
He said “Maybe it’s 3 waiting for us… I’ve never seen the natives walk around with fire like that.”
When we got a little closer whoever it was starting walking in our direction so I yelled out “3 is that you!?”
He started waving the torch so we assumed it was 3 and ran the rest of the way.
When we got to 3 he said “Check it out! I taught them how to make these… Got some rags and soaked them in oil from some of the mining equipment.”
Kayin said “So I take it things are going well?”
He laughed and proudly put his hands on his hips, sticking his chest out and smiling as he did it.
“Oh you have no idea… They love me. I’ve been talking with them and teaching them useful things like this all day.”
I said “So you learned their language already?”
3 got a smug look on his face “Atlas, it only consists of about 40 words, I had it down in a few hours.”
Kayin said “So have you told them what we plan to do? What do they think?”
3 starting laughing again “What do they think? There’s not all that much thinking going on down there…”
He turned serious. “No, I haven’t told them all the details yet. I needed to gain their trust first. Which I have successfully done… Unfortunately, there is no way for me to convince them that you aren’t their creators so I took it upon myself to come up with another idea…”
Kayin glanced over at me and said “What did you do?..”
“They’re terrified of you. They actually believe that you can kill them by waving your hands… They don’t understand guns… The things they’ve seen you do are like magic to them and I can’t explain why it isn’t. So I could only come up with one option.”
He paused and looked at me, then Kayin. “I told them you were at war with each other. That some of you, the creators, love them and want to set them free, but others don’t and want to kill them… I told them that’s why everyone is dying and they are forced to dig up the chrysos… Tomorrow I’ll tell them you want them to fight alongside you… Believe it or not it actually seems to be working.”
Kayin looked upset. “You couldn’t come up with anything better than that!? Once this is all over they’re going to worship us even more. Then it’ll really be impossible to make them stop!”
3 started shaking his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think that even if I spent the rest of my life trying to convince them it would work… Something like this is the only way; we have to use their fear and respect for you to manipulate them to act in their own interests. Once you’ve taken control of everything we can worry about making them stop.”
Kayin turned around, walked away and mumbled something to himself. Then he came back and got in 3’s face.
“Just do as little damage to them as you can… Enough has happened to them already... Don’t play games, please.”
3 stepped back and mockingly put his hands up.
“Relax, they are my people after all… They’ve already made me their leader because of everything I showed them… They were extremely enthusiastic about the torch. And I’ve been helping them add some more words to their language. I’ve got this perfectly under control… It really doesn’t take much to impress them…”
He smiled “In fact, I’m positive they’ll do anything I say. I’ll probably start tomorrow by showing them how to make better tools. Then I’ll slowly introduce the plan… It’s not as easy to talk to them as you might think. I can’t make them understand most of what I want to tell them. The words just don’t exist yet.”
Kayin seemed to have calmed down “Fine… So tomorrow you tell them that all the people involved will break away from their posts and meet with them at the mine. Then they’ll wait for the explosions to be set off and launch the attack together. I want everyone else to see us fighting side by side right away... It’ll help get the message across and convince people to surrender… Understand?”
3 replied “They’re frightened, hungry, and confused… They’re ready for leadership and unity… At first I thought we were all going to get killed trying to do this… Now I actually have a feeling it’s going to work.”
He got a mischievous look in his eyes and smiled “That is of course, if you two don’t mess everything up.”
Kayin moaned and said “Just go 3, we’ll meet in the same place tomorrow…”
Just as 3 started to walk away we heard someone yell “Nobody move!”
We all froze.
One of the soldiers ran up, gun drawn “What’s going on here!? Why is that native talking like one of us!?”
Kayin and I looked at eachother. We were all silent.
The soldier got closer and pointed the gun directly at me “Answer me now!”
Kayin wasn’t talking and I had no idea what to say.
3 started to back away so the soldier turned and pointed his gun at him “Don’t you move monkey!”
Just as the soldier turned away I heard two shots go off. When I looked over at Kayin I could see the gun in his hand.
The soldier began to fall, firing off a shot as he hit the ground. I could swear I heard the bullet fly past, inches from my head… Kayin was right on the verge of shooting him again. He struggled to get back up for a few seconds, coughed, groaned and then went completely limp…
3 ran over and kicked the gun away from him “This isn’t good… you’ve got to hide him. Quickly!”
Kayin looked at me and sighed… “I know where…”
Before he even finished I already knew what he was going to
say… the pit of dead natives.
I felt horrible about that man having to die but I could tell he was the type to side with Neros… And we couldn’t let him live after hearing 3 and possibly part of the plan as well… Kayin didn’t have a choice…
It’s just another thing I had to prepare myself for. Eventually it will get to the point where I don’t have a choice either… And if I hesitated due to guilt, it could get me killed…
If it weren’t for Kayin, I don’t know what would have happened. I don’t think I would have shot him. Or even thought about it. I was frozen… Hopefully it wouldn’t happen again…
Kayin said “Thank you for everything 3… We gotta do this and get back before anyone notices we’re missing… Don’t rush into anything, you have all day tomorrow. We can’t come get you and sneak away until it’s dark out anyway.”
Before 3 went back to the mine Kayin stopped him “Wait, I almost forgot. Just in case, I want to have a code word my people can use when the time comes. So the natives know who to trust and that it’s time to fight…. Actually, do they have a word for fight?”
“Yes, of course. It’s Cal-Mah… It means more like contest or struggle, but they use it to describe fights as well.”
Kayin said “That’s perfect. Tell them when our people come to them and say… Cal-Mah?... That it’s time…”
3 nodded and headed back towards the mine. “I’m about to eat some real food again… Those nutrition bar things you people eat are absolutely disgusting. I know you do it to extend your lives but… Not worth it… Seriously.”
Kayin and I both laughed…
Though really, I couldn’t imagine eating raw animal meat that was heated over a fire… That sounded disgusting. But it was how our ancestors started out too so I understand.
Before he got too far away I yelled “Hey! You think of a name yet!?”
I could barely hear him yell back “No!” in the distance…
Kayin and I picked up the body and headed for the pit. We had to be careful, there was a lot of moonlight and we could easily be spotted.
He said “Make sure not to get any blood on you, it could give us away. Someone’s going to realize he’s missing by tomorrow. We can be sure of that.”
When we got close to the edge of the pit the smell was overwhelming, even worse than the storage rooms… It was obvious that many of the bodies have been there for a long time, just rotting away in the sun...
I didn’t realize but I started to slow down… I guess the idea of having to look down in it again made me hesitate to make it all the way to the edge…
It made Kayin stumble and we almost droped the body, he said “What are you doing!?”
“Sorry…”
We had no choice but to throw the body in and jump down with it… We couldn’t just leave it on top.
I’d never smelled rotting human flesh before… Some of the bodies were so soft and decomposed; when I stepped on them my foot almost went clean through, opened them up and made the smell even worse…
I couldn’t help but start to gag as Kayin and I moved the bodies aside so we could bury the soldier underneath them… At that moment I actually wished I was back in the lab with Horus. Anything was better than this sea of dead eyes gazing up at me… Dead eyes that I’m partly responsible for…
The moment we were done, I frantically clawed my way out of the pit and ran for about 20 yards. I fell to my knees and continued to almost vomit… I just had to get away from it… from the smell… from their eyes…
Kayin quickly followed but he didn’t say anything… He just patted me on the back a few times and waited for me to get back up…
I brushed myself off and spit a few times “I’m fine…”
As we headed back to the main area there was nothing but silence… Hopefully what just happened would be something we never bring up. I could tell he felt the same way I did; just wanted to forget it ever happened…
After a few minutes Kayin and I started discussing the plans for taking over the Sirius. He believed we could easily gain access to the two weapons storage rooms. According to him they aren’t even guarded.
“I’ll split everyone into two teams. Once they’re secured and everyone is armed, we all head for the flight room together, seize it, and then branch out from there… Neros is mine…”
“Yeah I remember, don’t worry.”
I wasn’t going to help him torture Neros… But I certainly wasn’t going to stop him either. I wouldn’t mind knowing that Neros suffered. He’s the one ordering to have the natives work so feverishly that they’re dropping like flies…
I slowed down and said “So things are looking pretty good… We have very little time and even fewer options. I know what he has to do is only going to make certain aspects of all this worse but he’s right… Hopefully 3 will only need a day per mining site after this. Then by the time we make our move we’ll have 4 sites for sure…”
Kayin nodded “Exactly, and I’ve looked into it. The 4 largest sites have almost as many men as the remaining ten combined. So if we seize the ship too, they’ll have no choice but to surrender. If not, we’ll regroup and do whatever it takes to free the rest of the natives.”
He coughed “Just be ready… If this works we’re going to be stuck on this planet mining for at least another five or six years… The natives made it so we’ve almost hit the halfway mark but if you go by our numbers before them… It’s bad.”
“What if every available person on the ship starts helping? There have to be over a thousand people still scattered around.”
He stopped and looked at me “I already factored that in… Plus most of their jobs are far too important to be left unattended.”
I thought for a moment… “You know I just thought of something… What if we land the Sirius? That would free up hundreds of people, all we’d have to keep going is food and water production.”
Kayins face lit up “That’s perfect! And it would free up more than a few hundred: more like five or six hundred… It won’t make much a difference but it could shave off at least a year.”
“Anything helps right?..”
When we made it back, I could see that some of the soldiers had started a big fire.
One of them took a drink of what I thought was water, stood up and spit it into the fire. There was a burst of flames and the rest of them started laughing.
Kayin could tell I was surprised, he laughed and said “Apparently they were able to find everything they need to make corn liquor.”
“Isn’t that stuff outlawed on Aeris because it’s so horrible for you?”
“Yeah but people still make it anyway… It’s some strong stuff, burns like you wouldn’t believe, but as long as you don’t drink it all the time, it won’t hurt you… Wanna try some? It’s nice trust me, and It’ll help you sleep too.”
I laughed “Yeah I know, I’ve had ale before… Let’s do it, I could use a drink.”
“Oh me too… Just don’t let them give you more than one cup; it’s at least ten times stronger than ale… It’ll creep up on you and next thing you know walkin is a challenge man.”
We both laughed and then Kayin introduced me to everyone sitting around the fire.
I tried to just have fun, laugh, and enjoy the corn liquor but I all I could think about was the plan and what was happening to the natives… I kept thinking about being in that pit… I was afraid it would never leave my mind… That it would be my new recurring nightmare…
There were 13 other men around the fire and at least half of them have made negative comments about the natives in the last hour… Just as before, It made me wonder if Kayin really had as many people on his side as he believed. I could tell a few of the guys really hated them.
One even talked about how he wished he could stand at the top of the mine and do some target practice… So I guess the rumors were true… People really were doing that for fun. It made me want to kill him right then for even suggesting it…
So I decided to just leave before the corn liquor ruined my judgment and I said something…
I took one last big sip and said “Alright everyone I’m outta here… Kayin I’ll meet up with you in the morning.”
After about five steps, I realized Kayin was right… It was a lot stronger than Ale. I immediately found myself swaying from side to side and feeling a little sick… It wasn’t just walking that was a challenge, I was having trouble standing…
Luckily, there were hundreds of single man tents spread around so I found an empty one and got in… It was still kind of early, but I had a feeling I’d sleep through the night… I’d have some help… Maybe it would even keep the nightmares away...
Chapter 13
I awoke to the sounds of people yelling and running by my tent. It scared me a little at first because it sounded like we were being attacked. For a moment I thought maybe the natives had revolted again… Then I remembered what happened last night…
I poked my head out and could see that the entire site was in a state of panic. Everyone was grabbing their guns and heading towards the mine. So I got out and started looking for Kayin.
As one of the soldiers went past me I heard him say “Monkeys are gonna pay!”
After a few minutes of searching, I decided to forget about Kayin for the moment and follow everyone. Maybe he’d done the same. He had no idea where I was sleeping so he wouldn’t be able to find me if he wanted to.
I stopped the next soldier I came upon and said “What’s going on?”
“One of our guys is missing! Names Cainen, you know him?”
“No, I just got down here yesterday.”
“Well, one of the natives must have killed him! It’s the only explanation. And we’re gonna find out which one, come on!”
The Experiment Page 16
