Rebellion at Ailon

by T J Mott

  Then he looked down at the base of the burning machine, below the base of the flames, and saw the charred, steaming corpses of five people. His eyes lingered there for a long moment. “I have eyes on the fire,” he finally said into his radio’s headset microphone. “There’s some kind of furnace which exploded. It’s fed directly from a large fuel tank back here, and I can’t get any closer to see about shutting it down. Good news is it hasn’t spread yet, if we work fast we might be able to get everyone before it gets worse. Best case, the tank runs dry and the fire burns out.” He turned around and headed back towards the safer parts of the factory. “Any luck finding anyone?”

  “Nothing yet! I wish we knew the layout!”

  He scowled, then had a thought. “Ria, are you on the radio still?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Good. Any soldiers nearby? Or anyone who might know the plant’s internal layout? I want to know where any break rooms, cafeterias, or offices are!”

  “Hang on, I’ll ask.” He cursed to himself at her response. She was far too inexperienced for this. The entire clinic crew was.

  He jogged around the aisles, past rows of abandoned machines and tanks and equipment which were still powered up and running, trying to find the main floor’s perimeter in hopes of seeing exits into office areas where the slaves could be hiding, but all he found were the unpainted corrugated metal walls that defined the building itself. Soon he ran into a few other clinic workers on the western end, and motioned for them to stick together again.

  Whump.

  Something exploded to the north, and Thaddeus turned just in time to see a fresh fireball erupt from somewhere near the burning machine. It mushroomed into the air, cooling into a dark cloud of thick, black smoke as it rose into the ceiling, and even from this distance Thad felt an intense flash of heat. He put his hands up in front of his face to protect him. “I think the fire’s starting to spread!” he declared.

  “Chad? This is Ria. We think there’s a large cafeteria in the northeast corner of the building.”

  We think? Nobody knows for sure? “Northeast?” He swore. That was near the fire. “Listen up everyone, meet me in the central aisle!” He jogged back to the east, following the yellow-taped aisles, and hoped there was still time.

  He met the other members, or most of them. He didn’t stop to take a head count and led them to the eastern wall. Turning north, they advanced, ever conscious of the fire they were obliquely approaching.

  There were clearly two separate fires now. And he saw why: there was a row of furnaces or pressure vessels or whatever that ran east-to-west, all connected together by a common fuel pipe that ran between them at about head level. There were no obvious shut-off valves. And now two such machines were spewing flames everywhere, near the middle of the row but trending to the east. The devices were close enough to each other to overheat, allowing the fire to spread to the next machine like a chain reaction.

  Dammit! Of course it’s spreading towards the corner we need to reach!

  And then he saw their destination. A large, industrial-style double-door with rubber flaps at the bottom and clear plastic windows in the upper section sat fifty meters ahead. But the fire was spreading east, towards the aisle they needed to take, and the heat was already worrisome.

  “It’s too hot!” someone said over the radio channel. “We’ll never reach the door!”

  Whump.

  A new fireball formed suddenly, bursting forth from the next machine in line. Thad knew they were starting to run out of time. If enough machines caught fire, eventually the heat might melt through the fuel tank…Anyone still in the building when that happened would surely die. That tank probably holds half a million liters. Of what? Pressurized gas? Fuel oil?

  The heat level increased again as the machine burned, acting like another burner in an oven. Thad felt like his face was starting to cook. The heat penetrated through his trousers, too, but his body…

  “Use your jackets! Hold them up on your side and cover your face and GET TO THAT DOOR!” If they could get to the cafeteria, Thaddeus still had the Army officer’s master key card. All they needed was to unlock some exits and lead the slaves out.

  “Are you crazy?” some screamed back.

  Thad frowned, looked back, and realized that he was the only one advancing. But he again forced himself to remember who he was working with. He was an experienced mercenary, used to facing death in combat situations both in space and on the ground. They were only workers for a relief force used to feeding people and giving them medicine. “Either follow me or get the hell out of the building!” he roared.

  They all turned away and moved south, towards the loading dock. Rookies, he thought. Probably better off this way. They don’t know what they’re doing.

  He slid his right arm out of his jacket and twisted the garment around to his left side, and hunched his head down behind it, trying to shield himself as best as possible. Then he broke out into a sprint, dashing towards the double doors. The insulated jacket shielded his torso and head very well, but with each step, his left leg felt like it was rubbing against hot coals where the fabric of his trousers brushed against him.

  He reached the double doors a few seconds later. They had no latches or locks and swung open violently as he smacked into the seam between them. The doors banged wide open, slamming into the walls on either side, and then he was in the southwest corner of a sparsely-furnished cafeteria. And to his relief, within were hundreds of Ailon slaves clad in cyan jumpsuits, packed tightly in the eastern end of the room, standing as far away from the fire as possible. Their eyes were opened wide in shock and fear, and Thad noted that none of them seemed to be wearing shackles. Now that he was inside, he could hear their voices, their screaming, yelling, and crying, which had been inaudible outside, completely masked by the sounds of the factory equipment. “I’m in, and I’ve found the slaves!” He started to scan the surroundings. “Going to unlock a door and lead them out!”

  The room was a large rectangle about thirty meters by fifty, surrounded by unpainted corrugated sheet metal walls. He frowned. There were only two exits. The double-door in the western end of the southern wall, where he’d entered, and a matching double-door directly opposite it in the north wall which also led to the main plant floor. Basic cooking appliances, a makeshift buffet, and some ARF-labeled crates sat along the eastern wall.

  There were no exits to the outside. The only way out of the cafeteria was to go back, past the fire.

  He heard the whoosh of another fireball out on the main floor.

  “Why would you design a building like this!” he shouted into the radio in frustration.

  “Chad, what’s going on in there?” asked Ria. Her voice had strong hints of panic.

  “There are no exits from the cafeteria!” He looked back to the double doors. Everyone would have to leave that way. But then he looked at his left jacket sleeve and saw that parts of it had burned away, exposing his mechanical forearm. The heat he’d raced through was that intense, and he hadn’t felt it because the prosthetic, while capable of providing him a basic sense of hot or cold, was designed to never send pain signals.

  He turned back to the Ailonian slaves, eyeing their cyan jumpsuits. They were made of a very thin and cheap polyester weave. There was no way they could stand the heat, and who knew how hot it was now?

  What do I do? I can’t stop the fire, I can’t keep it from spreading. He swiped at his stinging eyes, wiping away the smoke-filled tears that blurred his vision, and then sprinted up to the other double door. He grimaced, gritted his teeth, and then pushed them open. He had no choice but to go this way.

  More machines had failed during his brief moment in the cafeteria, igniting into deadly, uncontrolled open-flame burners which spewed even more heat and fire and smoke into the factory. It felt like an oven.

  He looked ahead. Ten meters in front of him, to the north, was another unpainted corrugated metal wall which seemingly flickered and sci
ntillated in the fire’s light.

  He was standing at the northeastern corner of the building, and as he scanned the nearly hundred meters of north wall all visible from here, he could not see a single exit. Not even an emergency exit. Just bare corrugated wall.

  It seemed that all of the building’s entrances and exits were to the south. The architects had never considered the need for emergency exits scattered throughout the facility. Their sole goal when laying out the building’s perimeter, Thad realized, was to make it easy to monitor and control the slaves’ movements.

  The fire was still spreading, now stretching in an east-west line nearly the width of the building itself. A variety of machines, tanks, and pipes spewed flames, all fed by the one massive fuel tank that couldn’t be shut off. Soon, the walls of that tank could begin to soften or melt…

  He scowled. The heat at this distance was intense. What was it like along the path he’d taken in? Maybe he could escape, but at what cost to himself? And if he returned the way he’d came, knowing the slaves in their thin jumpsuits couldn’t possibly follow, could he really leave them all behind to die?

  No exits on this end of the factory. But can I make my own? He looked around at the nearby machines and shelves, hoping to see something useful. Would the slaves be trusted with access to cutting torches? Were there sheet metal snips? Prybars? Maybe a few well-placed sledgehammer blows could tear through the fairly-thin sheet metal walls? But he didn’t see any such tools, at least not out in the open or nearby.

  The heat continued to rise, filling the building up with hot air far faster than the factory’s meager ventilation system could handle. It was stifling, and even through the filter mask, his lungs felt hot and dried out. The hot air was painful against the exposed skin of his face. Beads of sweat dripped down from his forehead in a constant stream, but evaporating before they could fall away.

  He was starting to become aware of just how inadequately he was equipped for this. How fitting for me to die here, after everything Ailon has suffered because of me. Poetic justice.

  Ria’s voice broke into his thoughts again. She spoke rapidly, her loud, panicked voice sounding distorted, as if she was screaming into her radio. “Chad! Chad, get out of there now! We can see the roof sagging in the heat, the building’s going to collapse!”

  “I’m trapped!” he responded sharply, still looking to and fro for something—anything—that he could use to make an exit. But there was so little around. The machine operator stations were clearly laid out to accommodate slaves, not trusted workers, and any tool which could potentially be taken away or used as a weapon was chained to its station.

  And then the radio channel erupted into a flurry of voices, all talking over each other and trying to get to Chad. The chatter was distracting and frustrating. He ripped off his headset and tossed it aside. As it hit the concrete flooring a few meters away, he saw that its plastic frame was beginning to twist and warp from the heat.

  He scanned his surroundings again. Fifteen meters away, towards the fire, was a parked fork truck. A really small and compact one which looked like it could fit through the cafeteria’s doors. The same model that he’d occasionally used in his own warehouses back at Headquarters.

  Breaking into a run, he smiled despite the situation. As he got closer and closer to the flames, the heat intensified even further, although he was so full of adrenaline now that the pain barely registered in his mind. He held up a hand, trying to shield his eyes from the heat, and then jumped aboard the forklift. But as soon as he sat down on the padded black seat, he felt an intense sear across his backside, causing him to shriek in shock and jump away out of pure reflex.

  He still had his orange ARF jacket. It was hot, even scorched through in places, but some insulation was better than nothing. Thaddeus slipped out of it, wincing as he felt sudden heat build up on his shirt, and spread it over the seat as best he could. He sat upon it. The thin workshirt he wore under his jacket felt like it was now melting in the heat.

  There was a slotted key card reader on a panel by his left knee. It looked just like the one at the loading dock gate. He fished the Avennian Army officer’s key card from his pocket, fervently hoping it worked on more than just locked doors, and awkwardly pressed it into the reader, trying not to fumble the card between his shaking fingers. The fork truck’s console came to life. He laughed and gripped the wheel with his other hand—and screamed again, pulling away in pain. This close to the fire, the black plastic of the wheel was soft and squishy and too hot to grip.

  He gripped the wheel with his other hand, his mechanical, prosthetic one. From its crude sensory perceptions he could tell the wheel was far warmer than room temperature, but there was no sensation of burning. It just wasn’t equipped to register pain, to his advantage.

  The fork controls were under the console, out of line-of-sight of the fire, and still just barely cool enough to handle with his right hand. He grabbed a lever by his right knee which raised the fork off the ground, then he backed the machine up and chuckled at the ridiculousness of its backup alarms beeping so loudly within the confines of a burning factory.

  Then he stomped on the forward pedal. The small electric motor whined and the truck soon reached top speed, that of a slow run.

  The row of fires roared behind him and to his right. He heard another explosion somewhere, but he continued on, panting heavily, feeling like he was only crawling towards the double-door. Sweat evaporated from the side of his face almost as fast as it was produced, and he was beginning to feel faint. He swung wide to his left, then yanked the wheel to the right to line up with the door—

  —And then he was inside the cafeteria again. The large door had been just tall enough to clear the vehicle’s tiny rollcage. And the corrugated metal wall to his right, the one separating the room from the main plant floor beyond, was glowing. It was a dull red color, giving off heat like a stovetop burner, radiating intensely into the cafeteria.

  He turned the vehicle left and gunned it towards the cafeteria’s eastern wall, hollering at the top of his lungs. His shouts were nearly drowned out by the sounds of the machinery and firestorm behind him. As his forklift accelerated, frightened slaves screamed and leaped to the sides to avoid getting run over. Please work please work please work please work

  The fork truck hit the wall. He slammed forward in his seat. The steering wheel bashed him below the ribs, knocking the wind out of him and leaving him fighting for breath. Tears or sweat poured from his face, but when he opened his eyes again, he saw the wall was only centimeters from his nose. The front-mounted fork itself had to have stabbed through it.

  He still couldn’t breathe, but that didn’t matter. He reached down to the fork controls and yanked them up as hard as he could. The small truck’s lift motor whined and then he heard a new sound: the terrible shrieking of sheet metal being violently ripped and torn apart. The fork prongs forced their way upward, tearing through the wall, and the vehicle dropped lower as it pushed itself down into the floor, compressing its suspension. Two ragged vertical tears formed in the wall as the fork’s prongs lifted up past his face.

  Yes! Yes! The tears were not much wider than the fork prongs. He backed up the truck about five meters, turned it slightly, and then gunned it forward again, aiming his left fork at the space between the gashes. He hit, and the steering wheel slammed into him again. Pain exploded within his guts, and this time he saw stars flicker and dance in front of his eyes, but he ignored them and worked the fork controls again, continuing to rip at the wall. His ears rang from the deafening nails-on-chalkboard shriek of sheet metal being ripped. He backed up and hit it again—and this time the fork truck crashed through the sheet metal wall, emerging into a grassy area outside, and for the first time ever Thaddeus was grateful to see the pitiful dim glow of Ailon’s weak little sun.

  A welcoming cool breeze blew across his sweat-coated face. It sent a shiver down his spine and he shuddered violently, suddenly feeling very unwell. He jumped of
f the seat, nearly collapsing as he put his full weight on his legs, but somehow he found the strength to remain upright and race back through the opening he’d just made. As he entered, he stared in horror at the western sheet-metal wall of the cafeteria which was actually melting now. Brilliant light from the fire shined in through the melting holes, like a window into hell.

  And there were all the slaves, staring at the chance to escape, yet still frozen in place. Afraid of the fire that was about to consume them, and, he realized, also afraid of what could happen if they ran outside. He’d seen far too many times already what happened to slaves who attempted to escape. He turned to face them. “Everyone…out…now…follow…me…” he said. His diaphragm was still stunned and his words barely sounded out between short, painful gasps as he struggled to breathe. Stars continued to dance in his vision, and his throat felt so dry.

  The slaves looked to the fire, then looked to him, and then back to the fire, as if trying to weigh the risks between the two options. He was here to rescue them, but would the Army company outside actually gun them down for fleeing a burning building?

  He waved them on. He didn’t know how much time was left. After a moment, they made their choice, and he barely beat the stampede through the opening. He knew he needed to be visible. If the soldiers saw his bright orange ARF jacket at the front of the pack of slaves, maybe they’d hold their fire.