On the sixth day they arrived at the village. To their huge relief the bodies were still there, now so putrid that Az said he wasn’t sure what Race some of them were. There was no one alive. Keeping a good lookout, most stayed in the trees while others searched, returning with food, mostly tinned and dehydrated. They retreated well back into the woods, and made up a comfortable camp to wait. Az insisted on the camp being under a rocky overhang. The power was off. Az was not pleased; no Cleaners. The village was beside a lake where most of the fish were caught with what looked like a system of nets.
The next morning, while some kept a lookout, others bathed. When they were all finished, the girls pounced on Az, made him sit in the shallow water by the lakes edge and thoroughly washed him. The boys looked on, highly amused.
“Oh, I don’t believe he’s still struggling. What bliss! Me next?”
“Wash yourself,” from Miyuki.
“Az, do you know what we’d give to be washed by three beautiful women?”
Az was disgusted, humiliated and hating it. He knew he stank but no way would he voluntarily get near water! Again, Li stayed out of it. But when Az was finally allowed to escape, like the others, she nearly collapsed with laughter. Az resembled a very annoyed and disgusted wet tom cat. He smelt better though.
Over the day, he dried off. It had taken a huge amount of persuasion, but finally he had consented to remain just in shorts, so as to dry out. Helene whispered to Li and passed a hair brush over. Li started to brush his coat. Now this was acceptable and Az looked almost like he was purring. He refrained from telling Li that this was a courtship ritual. Normally performed before or after intimacy, by either participant. Especially he remained silent on this when Mayling and Joline decided to join in. He moved carefully to hide the bulge in his shorts.
“Oh this is so beautiful. Why do you cover it up? What I’d do for a fur coat like this!” said Joline.
“The boys strip off, why don’t you?” added Helene, “Why hide this gorgeous fur?”
“Only slaves don’t wear clothes.”
“And Priskya, and Kepis and us, sometimes.”
But Az couldn’t explain just how ingrained this was. As soon as he was dry he dressed. Then he was all business.
“Now, we have a temporary camp but we need one in a cave or under an overhang where we can excavate. Either that, or we need to be much further back than we are. They will scan the village before they land, from space. We will get no warning and they could do it at any time, but most likely in the daytime. We also need to plan how to do this,” he added mindful of Mathew’s instructions.
Plan of Attack
On the fifth day, Kaz’s Team reached the city and tied their ship up next to the others assuming one more would not be noticed. While some searched the city for any living People and for food, the others went up into the hills above the city and found some overhangs among the rocks. After two false starts, one overhang had enough soil underneath it to excavate a cave for shelter and a good vantage point, shielded from the scanners. Kaz breathed a sigh of relief when it was finished.
“When the Keulfyd are due to arrive, they will scan to check that there is no ambush waiting. I didn’t tell you about the scanners before figuring it was one more worry you didn’t need. Now we just have to wait, and stay in the cave during the day when the danger of scanners is more likely.”
“Is it certain that they will scan?” asked Kelly.
“Yes. That sloppy they are not. They will scan from space just before they arrive. We will get no warning. We will not even know when they do it. During daylight hours, we must stay under rock. So we need to build a toilet.”
“Oh yuk!”
“You mean we have to stay in here?”
“Yes. All the daylight hours! And we had better hope that not one of is outside when they do scan! One of the dangers is that if they scanand find us, they might just blast us from space rather than bother to send the slaves down. Any sign of trouble and they will do that.”
There was an uncomfortable silence as everyone absorbed that.
“So why don’t they just do that anyway? Why remove the bodies?”
“To hide the evidence of what they have done. Because the new owners want the planet as undamaged and unpolluted as possible. No one wants to take over a planet filled with dead and rotting bodies, or a planet of blasted cities. You don’t destroy something you want. There is a penalty for every city destroyed.” He sighed. “The Keulfyd are competitive and work on bonuses. The first one finished, the least real estate destroyed etc.”
“You mean they won’t help each other?”
“They will, but at a cost!”
“You know the more I listen to him, the more illogical, stupid, mind-blowingly idiotic our warfare is,” said Akira softly to Ali.
“Yeah. I think we’ve got it all wrong. I think we should be outlawing nuclear warfare and allowing biological. At least with biological, there would be some survivors and the world itself would survive. With nuclear, we are slowly destroying all species not just our own.”
“Our world would survive much better without us,” agreed Akira.
“Do I hear a hint of Greenie there?”
“I guess so,” Akira said softly, wondering what Kaz would think if he knew just how Terrans waged war. There were a large amount of cultural and conventional differences between Niseyen and Terrans despite Helkmid insisting they were the same species. Take washing. It didn’t matter what Kaz saw the other guys do nor what they hinted at or asked him to do. He adamantly refused to wash in water. It was becoming a problem. And Kaz’s reactions when he saw them washing themselves and their clothes in water were very funny. He didn’t know where to look. And he didn’t wash his clothes either. In the end, Stella just quietly took his clothes and washed them. He didn’t seem happy but he did wear them. Kaz also had trouble with underwear. It embarrassed him being washed, on the bushes drying and being worn by both sexes while they waited for their clothes to dry. It was very funny at times. He got so embarrassed.