The Empty Warrior (60 page)

Many, including Steenini, fell directly to the floor, gasping for breath. Lindy knelt at his side as O’Keefe approached. “Is he going to be okay?” the Earther panted, still shaken by the violent reaction of the lizard guard to his comment.

“I think so,” Lindy replied without looking away from Steenini. “At least in the short term. But he has been tortured to the point where his body can’t take much more of this. If what we have already been through is any indication of the daily fare here, this place will kill him in due time.”

“I think that is the general idea, Willet,” rasped Steenini, slowly opening his eyes. “As I have confided in Hill here, the Vazileks have a complaint with me. Their goal is to break me or kill me trying.”

“Yeah, well they’re not going to be successful,” O’Keefe said confidently as he knelt next to Lindy. He put an arm under Steenini’s shoulder blades and the other beneath the back of his knees and lifted the man into his arms, standing as he did so. The little man’s weight should have been easy for O’Keefe to bear, but under the circumstances he could barely hold him aloft. The broken Akadean wrapped his own arms around O’Keefe’s neck, trying to help out.

“Let’s find you a bunk, Bart,” O’Keefe said between ragged breaths. “And then the three of us are going to start figuring out how to get out of here.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:

Ashawzut

As O’Keefe stood, still holding Steenini in his arms, he for the first time took a good look around their new home. Like every other part of their prison, it was large, gray, and hollowed out of solid rock. The front third of the barracks was an open area with the entry in one corner. In the other corner was a large tub, a latrine of sorts, covered by a rough wooden seat; and a barrel with a crude tap at its base, sitting on a four-legged stand. A dirty cup, held by a chain, hung from the side of the barrel. It was clear that this was to be their source of drinking water. O’Keefe was afraid to guess of what quality that water would be. The rest of the excavation was covered by rows of bunks, the spaces between them only wide enough for two men to squeeze past each other shoulder to shoulder. The rows projected perpendicularly out from the rear wall, each one being eight bunks long and four bunks high, and there were about two dozen rows. The beds were fitted with thin, coarsely covered mattresses, all of which were presently unoccupied, save for some gray bundles of clothing lying atop them here and there.

Still trying to catch the breath robbed from him by the long run from the auditorium, O’Keefe carried Steenini to the row of bunks against the wall farthest from the entrance. He wanted to get as far as possible from the crowd they had arrived with, most of whom still milled about in the open area near the door. He laid the man gently on the lowest bed at the head of that row. The touch of the mattress against the back of his hands was enough to tell him that the stuffing inside was little softer than the wood beneath. As he took a seat on the bunk opposite the one where he had placed Steenini, Lindy appeared with a pair of his new gray socks, dripping with water from the barrel up front. He knelt beside Steenini, wiping his face, and then leaving the socks draped over his forehead as a cold compress. The pilot then took a seat beside O’Keefe, still breathing heavily himself but saying nothing.

Steenini groaned, and O’Keefe reached out to gently grasp his arm. “You going to be okay, buddy?” he asked.

“I’ll be right as rain in just a little while, mate. Don’t you worry,” came the pained reply.

“Can you tell us more about this place?” O’Keefe asked. “Are you up to it?”

“Oh, for the love of Stirga, I’m not dying. I’m just a little tuckered out, that’s all. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know how we can get the fuck out of here. I mean, this is getting to the point where it is a bit beyond the pale. I’ve been a prisoner ever since I woke up on one of your ships,” he paused to glare momentarily at Lindy, “and the accommodations I’ve been afforded keep taking turns for the worse. I mean, look at this place. I’m telling you, I’m ready to start killing somebody, starting with that crazy bitch Elorak. But before we get to her, tell us about those lizards. What’s the story with them? They appear to be terribly inefficient guards. They seem nearly moronic and criminally insane to boot. Why don’t the Vazileks just use robots, like on the transport?”

Steenini started a laugh that, as usual for him, turned into a coughing fit. When it at length subsided he began to speak. “We’re not important enough to merit machines,” he answered, still chuckling ironically. “The Vazileks know we are quite subdued. Putting a contingent of assault bots in here as guards, along with their maintenance facilities, would be a terrific misallocation of assets. The lizards, as you call them, don’t require any programming or upkeep. They are just smart enough to do as they are told, and the machine half of them is simple enough that they are able to maintain themselves under the tutelage of the colony network. In addition, they have a fanatic loyalty, born of desperation, to Mada Elorak. They have no hearts, literally. The diesels pump their blood. Without fuel, they die; and Elorak controls the flow of fuel, so they will fight to the death to protect her.”

O’Keefe broke in, ideas germinating in his mind like desert flowers after a long overdue rain. “Then we must gain control of the fuel. Then they will be loyal to us, and we win hands down. We’ll own this place.”

“Not so fast,” Steenini protested. “She controls the flow of fuel through the colony network, which is programmed to recognize only her. The drives that contain the core programming, if they are anything at all like every other Vazilek installation that I have knowledge of, are read and write protected. Only Elorak has the codes to override that protection. It is not like we could simply input a request to stop the flow of diesel fuel.

“And we will have no tools here save picks, hammers, and shovels, hardly the means to break into the fuel depot, even if we were able to determine its location. We also haven’t the technology to fool the network into thinking that one of us is Elorak, and even the chance to try that would necessitate somehow gaining access to an interface. In the unlikely event that we were able to overcome those two obstacles, I would assume that anything critical, like access to the fuel rationing subsystems for example, would be password protected beyond the override codes. Without processing power of our own, we could easily spend the rest of our lives trying to hack into those subsystems manually, and that’s assuming that there is no failsafe. The Vazileks are very clever. The system may be programmed to shut down or even format every drive on the planet if it in any way becomes apparent that a non-authorized entity is attempting to access the system. No, she—and only she—controls the ration of fuel for the beasties. There is nothing we can do about that. If you mean to defeat her, you must defeat her guards as well.”

“What about maintenance?” O’Keefe persisted. “You mentioned that. Diesels have got to have down time. What if we shut down their engines, sabotage them somehow? With no hearts, their blood stops and they die.”

“No, that won’t work either. They are equipped with batteries to keep their blood pumping if their engines die. You witnessed that today in the auditorium. It takes several hours, at least, for them to fully discharge. There are also dozens of bays in the maintenance shop where they can be placed to keep them alive while their hulls are being serviced, plus the hulls are interchangeable, and there are many spares. Furthermore, you would have to take them all down simultaneously. Each chassis is equipped with a fairly sophisticated sensor array, and all the beasts are connected to the colony network, which means not only the network but also Elorak has access to nearly anything they see or hear. An assault on one would alert the network, which would in turn alert Elorak, who would quickly alert all the other guards. And even if you somehow managed the feat of putting them all out of commission at once, it would still only kill some of them. Ashawzut is equipped with robotic towing vehicles, controlled by the network, to pull malfunctioning guards in for repair. No one knows where they are kept, and no one sees them until they are needed. This is not to mention the fact that they are armed and armored. I have personally witnessed them on the move, so you can trust me on that one. They are also always guarded by a large contingent of beasties, dogs, or both. You would at the very least have to fight your way through a pack of dogs just to get close to one of them, and then there would be very little you could do to stop it. A few of the guards might die before they could be hauled in, but the large majority would be up and running in less than a day. And believe me, they would be
very
angry.”

Steenini looked up at O’Keefe and smiled the smile of a tired and beaten man. “I don’t mean to belittle your hopes, my friend, but the Vazileks have been keeping slaves for a very long time, and they are extraordinarily good at it.”

“Okay,” O’Keefe said, far from ready to give up, “so we can’t do anything with the lizards. What about the dogs? What do you know about them?”

“The dogs?” Steenini echoed. “I’m not sure. The dogs are enigmas. Elorak provides them with food, and they appear to owe allegiance to her, but they are not like the beasties at all. Oh, they seem fierce enough, but I can’t say that I have ever seen one of them actually kill a man. Oh, I’ve seen them draw blood to be sure, and seen it many times, but for the most part they appear to be genetically bred to be shepherds. Their main function appears to be to push us where Elorak and the guards want us to go. I still wouldn’t want to cross one, though. If they are provoked, they are big enough to kill you in an instant, barbarian though you may be.

“But there is still something about them. The way they seem to observe everything, and the way they interact with each other. I’ve oftentimes had the impression that they are more than just well-trained canines. Sometimes I think they have an almost human intelligence. It may be just an illusion, or it may be the scantest evidence of an enormity that lies just beneath the surface. It is very difficult to say with any certainty.

“Unlike the guards, they are social animals, as are we. It would not be far-fetched for a man, for me, to recognize basic instincts, simple lupine behavioral traits, and mistake them for intelligence. On the other hand, they could be much more than they appear to be. One can never be sure of what one sees without clinical data on which to base conclusions.

“But I’m getting off track, aren’t I? What I mean to say is that however menacing and intelligent the dogs may appear, it is within the realm of possibility that I may yet be underestimating them. As I said before, I cannot say with certainty, but it is my belief that there is more to the dogs and their relationship with Elorak than is evident on the surface. If I were you, I would watch my tongue in front of them even more so than in front of the guards. Elorak, for all her depravity, is no fool. It is quite possible that the dogs have capabilities that are intentionally being hidden from us.”

“Great,” said a sarcastic O’Keefe, feeling more despondent by the moment. “What else do we need to know?”

Steenini thought for a moment. “Not much,” he finally ventured. “You’ve already seen Elorak and her assault bot. What else is there? Well, you may not know this. We are buried beneath the surface of a planet that is extremely hostile environmentally. The atmosphere, what little there is of it, is pure poison, and a cool day runs about four hundred degrees. Escape from Ashawzut is not as simple as finding a way out of the colony complex. No, the only way out of these caverns is in one of the supply ships that call here. They come in at random intervals, bringing supplies and new batches of prisoners. Sometimes there will be no arrivals for days on end; at other times there will be a half dozen ships to make port here in a week. They leave when they are filled with the ore refined from the rock we will soon be mining and take with them the prisoners deemed indoctrinated enough to serve the Vazileks unquestioningly. If you don’t mind me saying so, that might be the best bet for you two fellows; make Elorak believe you’re ready to serve the bastards. It worked for me once.”

“And then what happens to you?” Lindy asked, suddenly speaking up.

“Me?” Steenini shrugged, as if he were only now considering his plight. “I imagine I will have to wait until we are liberated.”

“Shit,” O’Keefe whispered derisively while leaning back to stretch his spine. “That’s not very likely. I’d be willing to bet that your Union Police don’t even know this place exists. And even if they do they are almost certainly in no position to start liberating us. They’re probably getting their asses kicked as we speak.” O’Keefe shot another look at Lindy, but the man seemed not to have heard him, or at least was unready to dispute the insult paid to his former comrades. He merely stared mutely off into space. A moment of silence ensued between all three of them as O’Keefe pondered the situation.

But he was the first to break the hush. “Well, I have to admit this is not the greatest tactical situation,” he said. “But it’s not hopeless. There is only one Vazilek here, and a whole bunch of us, so we have the advantage of numbers. How many guys are in this place anyway?”

“Well I can’t give you an exact figure,” Steenini answered, “but suffice it to say that it is in the tens of thousands.”

“Tens of thousands?” O’Keefe repeated, stunned. “And only one Vazilek? Well, damned if that isn’t the first bit of good news I’ve heard. If we can establish communications adequate to get most of us acting in concert, we can take the bitch and her minions down, no question. We’ll take casualties, probably a lot of casualties, but that’s better than letting them kill us one by one like they’ve done over the past few hours. But I suggest that first we work on devising a plan to capture Elorak and somehow neutralize her assault robot. If we could engineer that rather than a pitched battle it would save a lot of lives. Once we have her, we threaten her or torture her or do whatever we have to do to gain access to the network, and then use it to cut off the fuel to the lizards. After they are dead we use the prospect of food to win over the dogs, and then we hijack a supply ship and get our asses off this rock.”