by Jim Rudnick
At the street, they turned back to their right, and a block or so later, they turned to their left to go down the main Empire City street. Behind them, the pyramid still had stones being pulled up for construction, and even though he craned his neck to see, he couldn’t recognize any of the puller teams including his own.
He followed along, and in a few more minutes, they entered the same building that he’d been in previously, when they’d had that dinner and then been marched out as new slaves.
He felt his hair alongside the nape of his neck stand up, and he was mad, but in shackles and the target of four spears, he followed along meekly. He was ushered into a new room, however. This one had a large round table in the center and a few stewards and yes, more Shieldsmen as well. But no prime disciple.
The black-robed disciple hovered, shifted his weight from one leg to the other, and waited. He looked over at one of the Shieldsmen who was already present in the room and tilted his head.
“No idea, Disciple … the prime is expecting this prisoner but might be delayed. So we wait,” he answered.
They all remained standing and waiting.
In about ten more minutes, a side door opened up, and the prime disciple along with a few of his acolytes came into the room to take seats at the table. Not a one of them paid any attention to those already in the room, Javor noted. No eye contact. No notice at all.
Javor spoke first. “Prime Disciple—I have been unfairly treated and I wish—as an ambassador from the Regime—to register my displeasure with how I’ve been treated for the past three days,” he said, his voice calm but loaded with meaning.
The prime disciple who’d been in conversation with an acolyte started. He was surprised to hear anyone—and even more so, a prisoner—interrupt him and his acolyte.
“Pardon me, slave … you will speak to me when you are asked to speak. ‘Til then, stay quiet,” he barked out, his face flushed with anger.
“Not a chance, Prime Disciple. I am an ambassador—we need to remember that first, and that requires that my position here in Empire City be respected,” Javor spat out.
The redness on the prime disciples face darkened. “You are a slave. You are lower than any other life form on Ceti4. If I choose to have a Shieldsman spear you right now, you die. Remember that first, slave,” he said, and he gestured to have his Shieldsmen step in closer.
Javor stood still. He didn’t move and he said nothing. He waited once again.
For more than a half hour, he listened to the prime disciple and his acolytes talk. He listened to them work out a better method of shipping new gas and oil down from their refinery in the north. He listened to them discuss what kind of music to have at some kind of event next week. He listened to what the prime disciple thought of the short list of names presented to him for new Shieldsmen officers. He must have listened to almost another half hour of items that needed input from the prime disciple on various Empire City programs, events, and issues.
And he waited.
Finally, the prime disciple turned to him and leaned back in his chair. “You made a simple mistake, slave. You killed a guard who was your superior,” he began.
Now I know what happened to the guard, Javor thought.
“I did not do that directly, Prime. I simply was trying to save the water girl from falling off the ramp to the ground well below. That guard was whipping her first—then me,” he said as he pointed at the congealed blood scab that hung over his eye and more whip scars on his shoulders too.
“All I did was to stop her from dying, Prime. The guard’s death was an accident,” he said.
It did sound lame, he thought, but nevertheless, it was the truth.
“I have spoken to other guards and Shieldsmen who were there, policing your pulling team, and what you say is only half true. What you did not say was that you had no need to interfere with the guard and his punishment of that water girl. No need at all. Yet you will pay the price for that act, and Empire City will enjoy watching you in the next Games.”
So, death is the sentence, Javor thought.
He nodded. “Fine, but I ask that my team not be affected by this—they were on a break when I acted, and they had no idea as to what I was trying to do. Which was to save the water girl, Prime—is she fine?”
The prime disciple was still just looking at him. “Never mind her. You will be in the next group of slaves to be sent to the Mid-Summer Games. Run fast and true and you might escape—no one ever has, mind you, as our Shieldsmen throw their spears true. You will die, as they all do,” he said, and he turned once more to go back to his acolytes and more city issues.
He was marched out and back to his kennel. There, for a change, he was fed a bowl—a good-sized bowl. he thought, of the slave stew that was the usual slave meal. He sat once again on the dirt part of the cage floor, stretched out his legs, and warmed them on the heated concrete in front of him. He watched as close beside him, dog handlers came and took out dogs to be put through their paces. He noted and tried to remember what the commands were that they used in this new language to command the dogs. He watched, he learned, and he listened.
He went back to eating slowly, enjoying the feel of the thin gravy on his tongue and the soft mush of the many vegetables too.
Should have asked when the next Games were, he said to himself as he once again licked a finger that he’d used to swipe around the inside of the bowl…
#####
Sue finally got some information from a puller guard, but she really had no idea why he’d answered her.
She’d asked him every day about Javor.
Where was he?
What had been done to him?
Why wasn’t he here helping to pull?
Couldn’t he just let her know anything?
It had taken almost a full week, but eventually the guard she’d been picking on answered her.
“Shut up, slave. You do not need to know that he’s going to the Mid-Summer Games. Hope he can run—like it matters,” he said as he took a drink from the water girl. His hair, like most of the guards, was long and always sweaty, so he took the bag from the girl and held it up over his head, letting the water pour over. He shook his head and the water cascaded over them all. He gave back the now almost empty bag and went back to sit with the guards on the side of the mezzanine on the ground at the base of the pyramid.
Since Javor had been gone for almost a week, she’d asked those questions. And now she and the rest of her pull team knew that he was going to the Mid-Summer Games.
She looked over at Toby and said, “And these … Mid-Summer Games are …”
He looked away for a moment, shrugged, and then looked back at her. “The games are near the end of the month—the Empire runs them in mid-summer or so, and they are a religious holiday—so to speak. In fact, as we’re getting close, I’d say that they always seem to need slaves for the games. Slaves that go … never come back. It’s a death sentence we get to watch from a distance …” he said, his voice trailing off.
“Until they meet Javor,” Wayne said from one side, which didn’t get many nods.
Toby looked over to the west at one of the floaters that was going by and said, “That’s U-2, one of my favorites. She is quicker than some, not as comfy as the cabins are all inside with no windows—but she can haul big weights of oil barrels.” He sighed and squinted in the summer sunlight at the huge black floater as it went by the pyramid, quiet and serene.
“The games are in two days, and that’s when they bring all the floaters in and have them tie up right above and around the arena, showing their strength, I believe is what they think they’re doing. For me, it’s just a chance to see the five of them all together and wishing I was in one,” he said and shook his head. “Guess that’s one of the first to come in for the Games.
“Would love to get back in the pilot’s chair—I’d leave this Empire in my dust,” he said as he too drank one more slurp of water from the water girl’s bag and handed
it back to the youngster.
Sue pondered on that for a moment, while in front of the two teams of pullers, the loaders were getting the next sledge up on the first set of lead rails. Once the sledge was up on that set, a big pull was needed to get the sledge up onto the first rolling log, so there were many slaves milling around, enjoying the usual ten or fifteen minutes of waiting while the next stone was readied to go up the pyramid.
Javor was going to these games. She wondered what she—what her cadre team—could do to get that changed or maybe to even escape.
She still had her battery that held the tactical nuke she could simply set off with a time delay, but how could that help them get away and get Javor off the hook too? She shook her head.
She wondered why, as ambassadors, the prime disciple had forsaken all diplomatic rules and made them slaves.
She wondered how she could get her hands on him and make him come around.
“Ready, pullers, on the ropes,” a guard called out, and she took her spot on the left side of the team rope, behind Randy this time. Using her right arm, she grabbed the heavy rope and hoisted it up and onto her right shoulder. She took a grip, a good solid grip, with her right hand first and then in front of that with her left hand. She bent over at her waist by about a half and then waited.
“Pull!” came the order, and she and the rest of the pullers on both sides heaved against the massive interior stone that lay on the sledge. Below the very front of the sledge, the rollers were levering in the first log roller, and as they did, the mudders were over at both sides mudding up the three rails they could reach. It took all of them to get the sledge up and onto the first rolling log.
And it took almost a full minute of straining, pulling, prying, rolling, and mudding to get the sledge moving.
And it moved and the rollers tucked in another two or three logs right away to keep the momentum growing.
Sue and the rest of the pullers continued to pull, and the sledge slowly moved along the rails and up the ramp toward the top of the pyramid a long way up…
#####
“Arlington, team A-5 calling in ... Arlington ... please acknowledge?”
The assault team leader had been trying every hour to reach the Circle of the Regime, but there were problems.
One of the MIA team members had had the battery packs that ran the radio. And he was now most likely dead back in Walkerville at the army base. They had no spares, but that wasn’t going to be a problem, it appeared.
One of the team members had some skills when it came to figuring out workarounds, so every hour they stopped. He used wires stripped from under the dash of one of the trucks to connect the truck battery to the radio. Surely not fancy, and it sparked every so often too, but it got the radio up and running.
The Regime still had not answered, but now in the dawn’s early hours, someone was on the air.
“Roger, A-5—verifications, please—and page four, please,” the voice said, and the team leader opened up the book to page fourteen.
“You add ten to whatever they say,” he offered to the rest of the team curled around the open hood of his truck.
He looked down at the page, went to the bottom line of text, and read the line back to Arlington. “Empire planets while humans geared up for …” and then he said, “Sent.”
That was received, and a moment later, an answering voice came back.
“Team leader, you’re verified. What is the result of your mission?”
He reported about the assault on the army base; that they’d lost four men; that they did have six trucks; and that they were on regional roads past the turn off to Lindos. He stated they had an ETA of about three hours depending upon the roads and zombies and all the other factors that might slow them down.
“Oh, bonus, three of them were full of food items, original in their OEM packaging too. I hope,” he said with a bit of a grin that Arlington couldn’t see, “that everyone likes Twinkies.”
A snort came back from the other end.
He listened to what little intel there was on the regional road ahead and what might slow them down. He nodded and then signaled to cut the feed from the battery. They were back on the road in ten more minutes going home.
#####
The bridge on the Sophon was tense.
The ship had been on notice, via Ansible notice, that they were going to get an announcement from Boathi Supreme about their current status on their “ineffective search for the human explorer ship.”
At least that’s what had come in as a notice.
And now in less than a minute, there would be an Ansible with the supreme commander of Boathi forces.
Good or bad, they’d know in a minute, the captain said to himself, and it was out of his hands.
He scratched his ear once again, the rasp loud on the quiet bridge.
Out in front of the ship on the view-screen sat a planet, their number seven on the list of possibilities that the human explorer ship could have reached. And there were no humans here either.
Each day for over a month now, their satellites off each of those seven planets had reported no nuclear power at all. Not a single fissionable event had occurred and they had duly reported that back to the Boathi Supreme command every day as well.
No humans. So, they’d Ansibled back in this morning asking for further assignments and had been told to wait, as there was a message coming soon.
There was a chime on the Ansible console, and the planet on the view-screen changed to the face of the Boathi supreme commander.
His green scales shone. A set of crossed belts ran across his chest, and on the top of each shoulder, the crossed talons, each bright copper colored, denoting the rank of commander, lay there. His face, like all Boathi, was incapable of showing emotion, and as such, it was like it was carved out of emeralds.
He looked out at the Sophon captain and shook his head knowing that he would understand this very human indicator of disgust. The Boathi had picked up a few humanisms over the past eighty years of war with them, and this one made the leap between the species. He spoke slowly, distinctly, and yet it rained down on the bridge like a hurricane.
“Captain. Your ship, the Sophon, found this human ship—the Drake, I believe, off Arctus4. You attacked and you failed to destroy that ship. She went to light—and you lost her. You did find that she’d gone no further than twenty lights. You searched the seven systems that might be habitable and found no Drake.
“You launched satellites I understand from your reports that have so far said that there is no human ship on any of those seven systems. You have spent now more than five weeks on this, and no human ship has been found. Do I have the facts correct here, Captain?”
Swallowing was difficult, and yet, the captain nodded, swallowed once more, and then said, “Yes, that is the entirety of the facts of this search, Supreme Commander.”
He couldn’t sweat as the race didn’t sweat, but the smell of fear grew from his body, and the bridge was aware that he was scared of what might come next.
“Your idea, however, that the humans just might have turned off their reactors might have been the thing that saved your career, Captain. Because that was an idea that at least to any Boathi could never have occurred to us. I have checked with Boathi scientists, and what you have countenanced might actually work. Taking a nuclear reactor off-line then letting it sit would have made it invisible to our scans who look for nuclear fission from ships. But as you’ve indicated, there is no sign of any nuclear power on any of the seven systems.”
He looked, as always, like all Boathi , stolid.
He looked, like any superior would, waiting to hear wisdom back to them.
He looked like he believed that his side was the only side that mattered.
The captain thought at breakneck speed and made his pitch. “Supreme Commander, the idea came to me, because we could not find the human ship, this Drake. There was no other way, as the Boathi technology was superior to the humans,
that the humans could hide their ship. Damp the reactor to hide it and our scans would never show it, even if it lay right out in the open. So I took the initiative and set up the satellite network to report back to us, should there ever be a reactor that was being restarted. And that is what we have done for the past month, Supreme Commander.”
He was nervous, of course, as both his career and his ship were on the line.
The supreme commander nodded his head this time and spoke with a degree of finality. “Exactly, Captain, as you said about ‘lying right out in the open …’ You are hereby charged with the duty to go back to each of these systems. To each of the destroyed human planets in same to do a visual scan.
“We don’t care what the nuclear scans say anymore. So you go and you look at each city and scour the whole planet. I want that explorer ship found, Captain. Follow the supreme commander’s orders. Do it starting today,” he finished off.
The captain felt a wave of relief at first, and he almost raised a talon to scratch his ear again until he remembered he was not the senior person present, though the supreme commander was literally almost a thousand lights away.
He nodded. That was one human trait that he too had picked up, and he liked that the Boathi had found some easy ways to show emotion right away.
The view-screen faded out and the supreme commander’s image was replaced with the planet below that the Sophon was in low orbit around, and the bridge was quiet.
The captain thought about the new mission and then said to the helmsman, “Sub-alternate, let’s begin here. I want a low-level flight plan, say, at twenty thousand feet, and let’s use a grid pattern to search. I want the scans to indicate all power grids—what comes in and what’s going out and any bleeds off grid. I want to find that ship, and if they’ve not got nuclear power, they still have either battery power or they’ve plugged into local power. Full power search is what I want,” he said, and he tapped his chest with each word.
“Captain, that kind of a power scan of the grids will take, what, weeks perhaps per planet,” the sub-alternate said.
