The Empty Warrior (65 page)
Authors: J. D. McCartney
The lizards suffered from no such disadvantages. They wheeled about the man faster than would have seemed possible for beings mounted into large and cumbersome vehicles; moving from side to side, pivoting, roaring closer and then farther away, all the while adeptly employing their own lashes. Every few seconds a bloody new welt appeared on the doomed Akadean, each one ripping a pain infused yelp from the flagellated man’s throat.
It was over in minutes as he simply collapsed; face forward, to the ground. The lizards lowered their whips and backed away as Elorak again descended the stairs and strode out onto the floor. Approaching the fallen prisoner, she used the tip of her boot to roll him over onto his back.
She stared down at him pitilessly. “That was not a very good fight,” she said with mock sympathy. “I’m afraid it’s impossible to let you live after such a dismal showing.” Pulling her blaster from the side of her boot as she retreated a step, she casually leveled it at the prone inmate. He looked up at the Vazilek woman and mouthed something to her, but whether he found the strength to speak audibly O’Keefe again could not say. If he did, again it did not help him, for a second later Elorak blew him into pulp. She returned the gun to the side of her boot and climbed back to her seat. Her bearers scampered back out across the platform, hoisted her litter carefully up to their shoulders, and carried her back beneath the stands. Then the dogs and next the lizards began to vacate the arena. When the noise of the diesels faded away, the only sounds that remained were the echoing heaves of what must have been hundreds of Akadeans simultaneously retching from the scene they had just witnessed.
Several minutes later the dog standing guard outside O’Keefe’s section of the arena lifted a paw and pushed down the lever that unlatched the gate. It swung open and the dazed and sickened men began to slowly file out. They were met by guards in the passageway. The half mechanical beasts escorted them back to work, where they picked and chiseled through the rest of the day with horror etched upon their brains.
Later, after lights out, when he was sure everyone in the barracks was sleeping, O’Keefe hopped out of his bunk, shook Lindy and Steenini awake, and then sat crossed legged on the floor between them while they leaned their ears in closer to his lips.
“Hey,” he whispered in a voice so low that only his friends could hear over the low rumble of patrolling reptiles, the snores of the other inmates, and the rasping of tossing and turning bodies atop straw mattresses. “You guys weren’t asleep already were you?”
Steenini turned his head to O’Keefe and mumbled, “I thought I was, but I may have been mistaken.”
Lindy propped himself up on an elbow. “What is it?” he asked.
“I know how we’re going to do it,” O’Keefe said.
“Do what?” asked Lindy.
“Get our asses of here, that’s what. The arena, that’s the key. Did you watch Elorak today? She dropped her shielding for a moment in the arena, to spit on that poor sonofabitch.
That’s
when she’s vulnerable. If I can get out there in the arena with her, I’ll blow her ass away.”
“And just how would you do that?” Steenini asked skeptically.
“Remember when we first got here, when I pushed on ahead of you and said I had to stash something. It was a weapon. I put it in a crack in the wall of the entry tunnel from the dock. I know exactly where it is; I memorized the shape of the crevice. All I have to do is get back there to get it. Once I do that, it appears that one doesn’t have to try very hard to find himself in the arena. Then when she gets close to me and drops her shield—bang!—she’s dead.”
O’Keefe could sense Steenini regarding him in the darkness, looking at him as if he were a madman. “What if she doesn’t drop her shielding?” he asked. “What then? You know, it’s not like she does that at every punishment.”
“It’ll still work,” O’Keefe said excitedly. “The vortex, the vortex in front of her shield generator that you told us about. Remember? You said a man swinging a pick hard enough, directly into that vortex, could bring down the shield. Well that’s exactly what I’ll do. I’ll put a bullet,” he said, using the Akadean word for “projectile,” “right in the middle of that emblem and blow her away like lint. As close as she got to that guy today, I know I could make that shot. With my arms out, the muzzle would be damn near inside the vortex. There’s no way I could miss.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something? What about her assault robot?” It was Lindy, his dubious tone of voice indicating clearly that he shared Steenini’s opinion of O’Keefe’s intentions.
“What about it? I’ll have three shots. That’s how many projectiles I have left. I take out Elorak with the first, and then bring down the robot with the other two.”
“You plan to take out a Vazilek assault bot with two tiny projectiles?” O’Keefe could tell Lindy did not believe it possible.
“Willet, a forty-five is a big piece. It packs a wallop, especially at the ranges we’re talking about here. With two shots, I’ll take that fucker down, trust me.”
“All right, mate,” Steenini interjected. “Suppose all this works out as you say it will. When it’s over, you’ll still be alone out on the arena floor, surrounded by damn near a hundred guards and who knows how many dogs. Everyone else will be locked in the cages. What do you propose to do then?”
O’Keefe chuckled. “None of them know anything about a Colt. I might have a thousand rounds left for all they’ll know. And after they see what I’ve done to Elorak and her protector, they’ll hesitate. I seriously doubt that any of them wants to be the first to die. And when they hesitate, I’ll start negotiating. You said it yourself, Bart, they’re all dependent on Elorak for food and, in the lizards’ case, fuel. Without her they get neither. So I just convince them that if they let everyone out of the cages and play nice, we’ll arrange to get them what they need to stay alive.”
“As simple as that, huh?” Steenini deadpanned.
“Yeah, as simple as that.”
“Hill, I’m sorry, but you’re crazy. That will never work. Look, mate, I find it highly doubtful that the sequence of events will unfold as you say it will. And even if it does, this weapon of yours, how are you going to get back to the dock to retrieve it? I’m not sure any of us can even find the hangar area from here, but I am sure that it’s a long way and there will be plenty of beasties and dogs between here and there. And even if you find a way to be assigned there during the day, the guards and the dogs are going to be watching you every second. How are you going to get to this weapon without them seeing you? And if somehow you manage to do that, how are you going to get it into the arena? You saw how the man was dressed today. They put him in a breechclout. That’s not a one-time thing either; that is how they dress everyone for punishment. How do you think you are going to conceal this weapon from them while they are putting you in what amounts to little more than a diaper? You’ve seen the security measures they employed upon our arrival. They run everyone through a scanner and cavity search those they have any doubts about. I don’t know what they do to men before they go into the arena, but considering how close those men get to Elorak, you can bet they will be at least as careful with a condemned man as they are with just a simple, garden variety, neophyte internee. Have you thought about any of these things?”
“Hey,” O’Keefe said defensively, “I didn’t say I had it all worked out. That’s why I brought the whole thing up, to get input from you guys, to start working out the details. But the point is that we have a workable plan now. We know when Elorak is unprotected. All we have to do is figure out a way to get me and the weapon into the arena, and we can get out of here. I think that is at least worth considering, don’t you?”
Lindy stared at him slack jawed for a moment before finally speaking. “I was beginning to think, after getting to know you better, that what I had always been taught about aberrants was all wrong, but it’s not. You Earthers are all mentally ill, you’re simply insane. Go back to bed.” Lindy rolled over with his back to O’Keefe and said no more.
O’Keefe turned to Steenini, who shrugged and rubbed his chin between a thumb and forefinger for a few seconds before shaking his head. “Hill, I don’t mean to throw unnecessary doubt on your intentions,” he said. “But I have to agree with Willet. Your plan is just a little daft, if you don’t mind me saying so. You’ll only get yourself killed and accomplish nothing.”
O’Keefe leaned back against the side of Lindy’s bunk and sighed heavily. “Fine,” he said gruffly, so flustered that he whispered more loudly than he should have. “You guys go ahead and give up. I don’t care. But there has to be a way to get out of here and I’m going to find it. Now I need to get my gun back first of all, so let’s try and think of a way to get into that tunnel and retrieve it. I think the both of you could at least agree to help me figure out that much. Just think about it.” With that he got to his feet and climbed back into his bunk.
As he lay there on his back, with eyes still wide open, a shadow cast from the dim light in the corridor passed over the back wall of the barracks. He rolled over and craned his neck to observe the door, but there was nothing to see though it save the rugged stone of the far wall of the passageway. But still he watched. Just as he was about to give up the vigil and roll back over, the great, gray head of one of the dogs emerged from the gloom of the corridor. Its alert eyes peered around the corner of the doorway and into the room, seeming to look directly at O’Keefe. He froze, fearing even to breathe, and after an eternity of about ten seconds the big snout disappeared back behind the edge of the stone. O’Keefe caught a glimpse of the end of the dog’s tail as it turned to walk away.
Bart was right
, he thought,
there is something going on with those damn dogs. And whatever it is, I’d bet a week’s pay that it’s really bad news for us inmates.
As the days continued to crawl past in an excruciating procession of debasement, hunger, hard labor, and dread, O’Keefe tried several more times to impress upon Lindy and Steenini that some variation of his proposal to kill Elorak in the arena was the only hope of escape from the daily horrors of Ashawzut. But despite their earlier avowals of readiness to attempt anything that might lead them to freedom, he continued to be met with indifference, particularly from Lindy. The man appeared convinced beyond any hope of conversion that O’Keefe was simply unbalanced. He wanted nothing to do with any strategy concerning a confrontation in the arena, and became steadily more morose and withdrawn.
Steenini, for his part, had promised to give some thought to how they might arrange for the prisoners to escape from their cages in the stands while O’Keefe made his move against Elorak. It was a concession of sorts, one that O’Keefe had agreed to in order to avoid the eventuality of his ending up alone on the arena floor, out of ammunition, and facing the combined might of Elorak’s forces. It was also a concession that he felt would never come to fruition. He could see no possibility of the prisoners breaking out of their cages with huge guard dogs waiting behind every gate. Try as he might, he could conceive of no way to arrange a diversion enticing enough lure them all away from their posts. But he had agreed to Steenini putting his prodigious mental capacity to work on the problem in the hope that it would ignite a little fire in the man, that it might punch a few holes in his lassitude where some enthusiasm might leak through. But that did not appear to be happening, for although Steenini had begun to voice tepid support for O’Keefe’s intentions, he hardly seemed like someone who was keen to proceed.
O’Keefe got the impression that Steenini’s half-hearted acquiescence to his urgings was more an effort to avoid being badgered than any real attempt to effect an escape. Both his friends seemed to be losing the will to resist in even the most fundamental ways, and O’Keefe feared they were beginning to accept that they would spend the rest of their lives in servitude.
In his darker moments, usually when he spent too much time dwelling on the obstacles in his path, O’Keefe also abandoned his hopes for freedom, surrendering to his fears. But each time he lost heart, he flayed his weakness with mental scourges, cursing his willingness to give in until somewhere deep within he found the strength to persist. Surrender was not an option. Surrender in Ashawzut meant not only the acceptance of the enslavement of one’s person, but also the acceptance of service to the Vazilek cause. The ultimate result of that acceptance would at best be a meaningless death; at worst it would mean a traitorous one. O’Keefe, as an outsider and a pariah among the Akadeans, had by no means any great allegiance to their civilization. But the individuals of that civilization that he had come to know, despite their sometimes maddening tendency toward condescension, were for the most part normal, decent people, and he by God had no intention of spending the time that remained to him helping miscreants such as the Vazileks to destroy them. Besides, Elorak just pissed him off in general. Just the thought of the murderous bitch was enough to set his blood to boiling.