Forest Empire: Survival in a Dystopian World (BONES BOOK TWO 2)

by Jim Rudnick

  The captain nodded and said, “So be it. Let’s get down there and begin …”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sue nodded to Toby, and he Bruce, and one of Toby’s crew began to sing loudly. They sang a song that was an old children’s game song with many repeated phrases. The melody was simple and their voices rose to carry it along.

  While they did that, Sue and Wayne slid under the last bunk bed before the head, and with them, they took Sue’s backpack. Opening it up under the bed’s mattress gave them as much privacy as one could expect, knowing that the barracks were most likely fully bugged and recorded. With all of the others, however, sitting on that lower bunk and joining in the singing and all carrying on, they hoped that their presence might not be missed.

  Sue’s hand dove into the depths of her backpack and came out with the radio and the battery too.

  She set them down on the bare floor beside them, then hooked up the single lead from the battery to the radio, and then tried to turn it on. It did not light up, and she knew it wouldn’t either, but that was not what this action was for.

  Around the bunk, the group was singing a bit louder trying to drown out any radio noise had it turned on, but that was a lost cause, Sue knew. She angled a hand and then her thumb into the back cover of the battery where a hardly noticeable seam lay and pressed it three times.

  It popped open and beneath laid a small display screen with some buttons below same. She clicked the one on the far left, and the screen lit and said, “To arm, please choose a detonation time …” and she grinned.

  She began to sing along too. As she clicked the button once more, the screen went dark, and she re-sealed the battery. She stuffed the battery back into her backpack and then rolled to one side to come up from beneath the bunk singing and swaying with the tune.

  What the acolyte who saw this might be able to tell had just happened was beyond her.

  But she knew that she did have a tactical nuke that was ready to be armed and then detonated.

  They said the crater this would leave would be at least a half-mile wide and hundreds of feet deep—at least the ordnance guides she’d had to read years ago said that. She did hear of this kind of nuke blowing holes that had been much bigger and underwater sending up towering columns of water.

  All I need do now, she thought, is figure out how to use this for our advantage and to get both Javor and us away freely.

  How hard can that be.

  The song kept being sung, and she sang along too, but her mind was stuck on one thought—how to use the nuke to gain the whole team’s freedom …

  #####

  The line of slaves slowly moved across the arena floor, carefully raking behind them. Their job was to make the sand as smooth as could be done for the Mid-Summer Games to be held tomorrow. More than a hundred slaves had been pulled off the pyramid building construction sites to help with getting the arena ready.

  They’d already put up the flowered decorations and the bunting in sweeping drapes across the tops of the arena walls. The outside bleachers had been completely swept and cleaned and sat ready for the thousands of believers to attend the Games and watch slaves die tomorrow.

  At the one side of the arena that was closest to the city proper, huge temporary poles had been erected with large long ladders that went up to the platform about twenty feet in the air. It was here that the floaters would dock and moor and allow the whole of the Empire to see what the strength of the Empire was all about. They had the only air power on Ceti4, and that alone was enough to boast about. The prime disciple never missed a chance to brag about the Empire.

  One of the floaters would actually tie up right at the end of the arena above the doorway to freedom as it was called.

  Should a slave, it was said, reach that doorway and climb up the few stairs to that big double set of doors, they would be free and their lives would be spared. Of course, as every believer already knew, not a single slave in the past eight years had made it to the doorway. It was a given that they did try, but they all failed—speared by the best spearmen in the Shieldsmen ranks.

  The doorway had been scrubbed clean as well as all the white-washed walls in the whole interior of the arena. All was shining, bright, and ready for tomorrow. There had been an issue with part of the side walls that were taken down to allow the prime disciple and his group better viewing access. But that had been accommodated via a new set of wooden supports that linked their stage from the edge of the interior arena boards. Those boards had been angled through the stage to the mooring pole that held U-1, the biggest and fastest of the floaters to be docked right over their heads.

  Big look, big image, and big Empire, everyone would think, and that was what the prime disciple wanted.

  The Mid-Summer Games were the last ones that would be held with all of these temporary workarounds in place; in a while, the pyramid would be complete, and then permanent facilities would be designed and built to hold the leadership. That was being worked on currently.

  The slaves doing the raking were moving slower than a guard thought they should be, and his whip cracked at one of them as he barked, ”Speed up—much more to do today for tomorrow’s Games.”

  The raking did speed up a bit, but each slave was more than focused on getting the sand behind them exactly at the same level as all of the previous feet of now level sand sat at. The job required a bit of skill, and yet it was soon done, and it passed a black-robed disciple’s inspection.

  Down at the far end of the arena, on either side of the big wide steps up to the only exit, sat fine-meshed cages. Each cage was thirty feet in length on either side. The Empire dogs and their handlers would wait here for any slave that was successful enough to make the stairs, and they would attack the unlucky slave and bring him or her down. No one had ever made it that far, so this was normally just a formality, but the cages had all been cleaned and scrubbed by the slaves. Ten dogs per side were to be housed, and while the fine mesh kept them safe from an errant spear, it provided no safety to any slave unlucky enough to get this far.

  Few things did remain, but one of the most important ones was to bring in the shieldsmen and their supplies. The disciple gave that command. and in a half hour, a dozen Shieldsmen came in wheeling a large cart between them that was loaded with brand new spears. They set up the three stations first. They used dye to mark off three large circles on the sand at the starting point only about twenty feet in from the side of the arena against the pyramid mezzanine. It was from within these circles that the three shieldsmen would position themselves to throw their spears at the slaves who were all running for the far door hundreds of feet away.

  Beside each of those circles, they erected the pylons and boards that would hold the racks of the fresh new spears. More than one hundred spears fit quite nicely.

  Each of the twelve Shieldsmen took a couple of practice hurls, and each was happy with the result. Their spears shimmered in the bright sunlight as they wafted with power up and then down onto the sand. Each buried their noses more than a foot into the hard-packed freshly raked arena floor—how far they’d enter flesh itself would be looked after tomorrow.

  The disciple in charge of the event itself was happy. His report to be given in just a little while to the prime disciple would be positive. All of the odds and ends of the various details of the Mid-Summer Games had been met and successfully quelled.

  It was going to be a wonderful Mid-Summer Games.

  #####

  She sang but she skipped every other line, and Toby and Bruce did as well. Like we’re just singing along doing this new roundabout that we’d not yet tried.

  She knew this meant that the guards might look at this as slaves gone mad, but she didn’t care. They were keeping the watchers and listeners at bay.

  It had come to her in the middle of the night, and it had taken the whole day of pulling and waiting and pulling and waiting until the day was over, and tomorrow, they were off to attend the Mid-Summer Games.

&n
bsp; She grinned at that, lost her wording, and got a sharp look from Wayne who was standing only a few feet away from the table and last bunk that they usually did their singing from. She waved at him, smiled, and said to Toby at the next open line, “And you can fly one of those floaters, right?” Then she sang the next line as her previous sentence said under her breath was hidden by the loud singing around them.

  He nodded as he sang along and tapped his hands on the bunk bed frame at the same time.

  She nodded back and spat out quickly, “I have a very small nuke.” While it too was covered by the singing, Toby’s eyebrows couldn’t have raised up higher than what she could see on his face.

  He shook his head, waited for the next line, and said, “Really? Still viable?” and that got him a nod in return from Sue.

  He smiled and put some extra effort into the line that came along next, as did Bruce who sat on the floor at Sue’s feet.

  They all sang. The song ended in a few more lines, and then one of the patrollers, Kyle, started up another that they had done just a half hour ago. Why some groups would sing the same song more than once was beyond her, and she just hoped the listeners thought likewise.

  Toby filled in a question in the song with “And you think we can use the nuke to get a floater,” and he held up a bobbing hand to show he wasn’t finished. And at the next line, he said, “And get us all out of here?” and his hand danced on as he raised up his head to sing even louder.

  Singers, we are not, Sue thought, but we can plan with the best of them, and she nodded back.

  The songs lasted a full hour more until they were all tired of just singing.

  Wayne suggested that they should offer their choir to the prime disciple—maybe they could sing hymns for the Empire, and that got a laugh from them all.

  Working out the details had been tougher than she’d planned, and a couple of items had to happen just so to ensure that the plan could and would succeed.

  But Sue too was happy. Their plan had a real chance at success, and escape for them all, including Javor, was at stake.

  Life or death … but not life as a slave was how she felt, as did the rest of them.

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow at the Games would tell all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The rows of believers were long along both sides of the wide bleachers that made up the arena viewing area. It was the opening of the Mid-Summer Games, and all were eager for what was about to occur.

  Each was wearing their black robe with the heavy pendant of the copper triangle over top of the circle on their chest. Male, female, child—it made no difference—each was dressed exactly the same. Each sat quietly in their rows, and each row was chanting a variation of the hymn of the Empire as it was called. Everyone knew the chant and the music that came out of loudspeakers that were on almost every block of the ten-block street that ran from the lake at one end to the pyramid under construction at the other.

  Behind them, on the actual pyramid itself, although it was unfinished, the leaders of the Empire slowly made their way along the mezzanine area and then over the special walkway to take their place on the stage at about the midpoint of the arena on one side.

  The prime disciple, the single man who was the head of the Disciple Apostles, stood and watched carefully as the approaching parade got closer and closer. It was his job to oversee the Empire’s religious holidays, and today, these Games were an important part of their holidays. The bleachers would be full of believers, and beside them, the slaves sat in the sun, watching what happened to slaves that were found at fault.

  Above the arena were their five floaters, the Empire’s best assets, and their job today was to simply sit above the arena and adjoining pyramid and remind the believers that the Empire was the ruling power in the north. Their big black sides were a stark signal that the Empire controlled not only the land but the air as well. All were empty, of course, having been simply moored to the temporary poles that had been erected just for the Games.

  Especially today, the Mid-Summer Games holiday.

  While he knew this meant the day and night of today would be a day off for worship, most out in the general population did not know that. To them, it was just a holiday giving them time off from work, and instead they spent the day in religious observance of the equinox themselves. They put on their finest robes and then sat as they were now, singing and chanting the words of obedience and servitude to their God.

  His own outfit, a black robe and a big medallion with the pyramid as it would look when it was complete, was as it should be. On his head, he wore the feathered diadem, the bright circle over which the feathered triangle lay centered on his brow.

  Behind him but up a step—and he was glad that the step was there—was the Prime Inquisition Board leader, his counterpart in the Forest Empire society who was in charge of all things that were of heresy and religious divergence. He nodded to the man and got a simple nod back as there was no love between them. The Inquisition Board met monthly to test believers and non-believers, and their group had found these slaves wanting. The fact that the Empire needed all the slaves it could get to finish the pyramid was one thing that he was aware of as being important, but the Inquisition Board didn’t care. He often shook his head at that.

  He stifled a yawn, looked to his left to his acolytes, and noted that they too were softly singing the same hymn. The acolytes to his right were also accompanying the crowds of thousands.

  In front of him, the teams of holiday workers had built solid wooden arena walls and had used the sunken slopes there to create an enclosed and fenced large space, two hundred yards long, with bleachers to hold the thousands of believers for the Games.

  He thought it looked like an arena of the type he remembered from when he’d been a child those long years ago. Yes, the arena works for me—too bad it wouldn’t work for all of them today.

  He watched out to his right as the leaders of the parade got closer, prodding the two dozen slaves who actually led the parade as a part of their penance. The slaves who’d done the poorest of jobs, had sloughed off their tasks, or had acted up to the slave overseers were in that group. There were more women this time than last fall but still quite a few men and three children as well.

  He watched. From both of the sides of the parade, disciples moved ahead of the slaves up front to get them to funnel into that arena area, right in front of him where he stood. Behind them came a couple of rows of more disciples who pushed the slaves into the arena proper and then gathered them up into three about equal lines. The rest of the parade contingent moved slowly to take up positions around the arena.

  He nodded to an acolyte who he’d previously instructed and got the confirmation that the slave from the Regime would be one of the last three to run for his freedom. As if that were true, he thought and smirked to himself.

  The prime disciple held out his arms and slowly moved them upward toward the heavens. “We call on our God to accept the non-believers that we now will entrust to his care. And we ask that they be replaced with new non-believers who we can count on to finish our new pyramid to God for the Autumnal Equinox, the most religious day of our year. We ask all of this in the name of our God,” he finished off, and as he did so, believers, who up until now had stood at the side of the street in neat and orderly lines, now flooded the arena for the last bleacher seats.

  They all rushed to get a seat to view the arena, and most were able to find a seat in the two-hundred-yard-long bleachers. At the closer end to where he stood, there were standing rows at least four or five deep. Every fifty feet or so, a stairway went up the bleachers from bottom to top, and they were half-filled with believers who just wanted to sit and watch.

  “Everyone wants to see,” he said to himself as he moved backward and stepped up the few steps to sit on his large feathered chair on the stage about a dozen feet above the arena floor.

  He nodded to his chief acolyte, and from just below their position, the trumpeters brayed out their notes
of opening.

  While the arena area below was still a barely finished construction site, it was below grade by about five or six feet, and that gave the watchers a great view. Maybe we should add that to the drawings, the prime disciple thought as the final preparations were taking place below.

  At the far end of the enclosed arena, a line of the Empire Shieldsmen entered, and they marched in perfect unison. Each was, as usual, stripped to the waist and so well muscled that just seeing one of them identified them as a member of the arm of the Empire that enforced its rules. They did not wear the robes that the rest of the believers wore; instead, they wore a large sash around their waist on top of the short leggings and boots all in black. Some had had tattoos done on their arms and chests while others had piercings, but no one would ever think was any of these men were anything else but a Shieldsman.

  As they entered the arena area, a vast cheer went up from many around the walls of same, and some even yelled for their choice of who would be the best today. They marched and curried favor as they moved the whole length of the arena to stand behind the rows of slaves back on his right at the start of the arena course.

  The prime disciple had no favorite. It did not matter to him at all who did the best today … yet he would be one of the first to admit that the Shieldsman known as Oskar was one of the best he’d ever seen. Oskar could hurl his spear with deadly accuracy almost three-quarters of the length of the arena, and when he was one of the three Shieldsmen hurling, the slaves had no chance at all.

  As the Shieldsmen took up their positions, three of them went to stand beside the three lines of the slaves. Each of the Shieldsmen had been given a spear about three meters in length weighing about a pound and a half. There was a coiled rope to act as a handle about mid-way down the shaft, and the long point was smooth, ultra-sharp, and barbed as well.

  Each of the Shieldsmen hefted their weapon, trying to get familiar with it. At the far end of the arena was the large set of stairs leading up to the double doorway out of the enclosed arena area. Just inside stood a row of Shieldsmen, all armed with the same spears and all at ease. It was their job to mop up the non-survivors, but the real interest was back down in the arena.