*
With some persuasion and a lot of grumbling, Az’s team stayed under rocky shelter during the day until, with no warning, around midday one day two ships arrived, quickly disgorging slaves who sprang into work. The population of the village was low. They counted eight loads of bodies going off before they saw the slaves mostly sitting down, their work finished. They now moved into their predetermined positions, planned during the long nights. They had a bit more than two hours before the planes returned, to pick up the slaves. That would make it early evening.
Tue and Az, helped by the others, had a basic plan; to move slowly and carefully, under cover, to as near to the landing area as they could. Every time, the planes had landed and taken off at the same place. But some of the slaves were wandering around a bit and some were sitting by what could be an alternative landing zone.
As planned, they split into three teams. The two teams of four went to where the planes had been landing and where they could most expect them to return to. The other two, Li and Mayling, went to the only other area flat enough to be a possible landing site given the terrain. The place some slaves were sitting at. The two moved stealthily through the undergrowth, striving to avoid being seen by the slaves. They were armed only with knives. If the planes landed at the wrong site, Li and Mayling would have to try to at least delay them. Puncturing the tyres would do it nicely. They were a plastic-like substance but Az assured them a knife would do the job. If they punctured the front tyres, it was a slow job to fix them. But the planes had double rear tyres and could take off and land with one of these removed to replace the front one. That would take a few minutes. So they could still use the planes. Not ideal, but they would be safe with the much lower weight. And time was crucial.
There were expected to be two pilots and two armed and armoured guards in each plane. The armoured guards would be the biggest problem.
Az had told them, “Their armour is not top grade. I hope. There should be weakness around the neck area. The armour is supposed to be held on by the helmet but the guards roll it down to cool down. Primary target exposed because of cost cutting. If we can get them with the blow guns, before they know what is happening, we should get them. As the guards come out, they will hopefully leave the pilot doors unlocked. It is the end of the day. The slaves will be tired and are demoralized. The guards should be overconfident and not expecting any trouble. The armour is hot and uncomfortable because it’s cheap. It sounds crazy, but even in the first few days, the guards were doing incredibly stupid things like taking their helmets off. That’s the sort of behaviour accountant type people don’t understand the significance of. Do the wrong type of people make the decisions in your world too?” The others nodded. “Good armour doesn’t get unbearably hot. So they keep it on.
The guards will not be expecting trouble. They never feed the slaves until they have returned to the slave cells. That’s for convenience and also because hungry slaves lack energy and will to fight back. If they ever had any. I didn’t notice much!
Their weapons may be on stun or kill. Assume the latter. We have no weapons that will penetrate their armour. Look for any exposed skin. When they get overheated they take their gloves off too. The pilots are unlikely to be armed but don’t assume that. We have no idea what races they are either. If we are really lucky, they may get out for a stretch.”
They sneaked into position around the landing area. There was plenty of cover. The planes circled and landed at the expected place. Seeing this, Li and Mayling were already moving fast back to the landing area. Worryingly, the pilots stayed inside as the slaves got on board directed by the guards. All eight went to work with the blow guns as the guards loaded the slaves on. There seemed to be some hits but to no effect. As the last slave got on board and the doors closed on both planes all the pilots jumped out! Immediately, they were hit by the pellets. But whatever race they were, two of them were big! Getting hit, the two smallest ones in the back plane promptly got back in and closed the doors. The two bigger ones looked as if they were puzzled.
Desperate, Karl and Dan charged towards the two closest guards who were too slow to get their weapons up. Seeing the boys charge was like a signal and everyone charged. Coming around from the other side, Mayling threw Li up to the door of the back plane.
Li hung on to the lever while she pushed, pulled and twisted it trying desperately to open the door and one method worked. It felt like the world had gone into slow motion as she got inside. The pilots were looking towards the guards and the fighting and didn’t see Li. She grabbed one pilot and tipped him out the door onto the ground. Mayling promptly pounced on him. Li squirmed further inside and before the second startled pilot could react, with time going so slowly, she had knifed him and managed to tip him out the other door. She then leapt to the ground to help Mayling who had managed to hold her pilot down by sitting on the back of his neck but she didn’t seem to know what to do next. Horrified, Mayling watched as Li promptly knifed the pilot through the neck, killing it then checked that the second one was dead. It was. They headed for the next plane, Mayling following Li.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the front plane, Karl and Helene had managed to kill one guard while the other looked as if the pellets had done their work. He had dropped his gun and was on the ground.
Az and Dan were attacking another guard while Joline and Tue took on another. Seeing this, the two larger pilots headed back into their plane. But by the time they got in, they were confronted by Li who had been boosted up again by Mayling and had then helped Mayling in. Both had got out of sight behind the seats, hearing the pilots coming. As the pilots closed and locked the doors, they probably felt safe. They were not. Li attacked again with her knife heading for the neck of the creature. Mayling didn’t know what to do with her knife but copied Li, ashamed that she was not pulling her weight. Unable to move the huge bodies out, Li and Mayling jumped to the ground to help the others but it was all over. All the guards were dead.
“The pilots!” yelled Az, running towards the nearest plane.
“All dead!” yelled Mayling after him.
Az slid to a halt and stared at her. “How?” he said.
Li started to cry and vomited on the ground. Time returned to normal as the adrenaline surge stopped leaving her shaking and uncoordinated. She sank to the ground as the secondary shock hit her hard. Az looked at her in horror. She was soaked in blood. Desperately she looked at Mayling mouthing ‘don’t tell.’
“We got them. The pellets did most of the job. Li and I knifed one of them,” Mayling said with rather economical truth, “And I got the others. There was some funny type of fabric around their necks but the knives got through it all right. The blood is theirs not hers.”
Horrified at what she had done, Li cried and cried while the others cleaned up the mess and got the bigger pilots out. It was quite a heave and took five of them to get each pilot out. The plane was a mess and it stank. There was a huge amount of blood over everything. The smell was nauseating. The other plane was not nearly so bad, both pilots dying on the ground and being considerately smaller.
Mayling went with Li to the river and Li cleaned herself up. Jolene came down concerned and wanting to check that Li wasn’t injured.
“It’s all the pilot’s blood,” said Mayling. “Li got three of them and I got one but she doesn’t want Az to know that. I think she thinks he won’t like her any more if he knew that. Right?” She said looking at Li. Li nodded. She was very pale and couldn’t stop crying.
Slowly, they walked back.
“Right,” said Karl. “I vote we let the slaves go and send them on their way one plane load at a time. Any objections?’
Every one nodded. Karl looked at Az. Az climbed up into the cleaner plane and opened the slave doors. He then got out and while Karl, Dan Helene and Tue stood guard with their newly acquired weapons. He switched his Translator to ‘All’ hoping it would include most of those Races here. He spoke to them, the Translation v
ery slow as it handled several languages.
“We are taking this plane and going to hide in a remote location. I suggest you do the same. Take any supplies you need from the village here and scatter. At the very least you will have some days of freedom. Get well clear of this village. They will blast it from space as soon as they find out what happened here. And I am sorry but they will probably blame you. Another reason you need to get away from here. Go!” As they started to move away, Az went over to several greyish blue creatures that looked like shiny large blobs with four tentacles for walking and four ‘arms’ and stopped them. He adjusted his Translator.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “But I can’t take you back with us. After the Keulfyd leave, go up into the cave up there,” he pointed, “and hide from the scanners. If I can, I will come back for you. Or I will send someone to help you. If you see some large furry purple animals that look like Kepis but don’t walk upright, they have some intelligence. They are taught to seek and find and lead out. They will come slowly up to you and sit down. Follow them.” He watched sadly and regretfully as they moved off. He felt awful. But Mathew had been adamant.
“Who are they?” Dan asked.
“Zeobani.”
Dan looked at Az in surprise. Az was crying.
Used to following orders, the slaves moved back towards the village but slowly and with many a look back. When the first lot were about a kilometre away, they repeated the process with the other plane. There were no Zeobani there. Now the real work would start. They were all strung out. Now they had started to relax, they were also all aware of injuries, bruises, sprains but it looked as if no one was seriously hurt. That was a miracle. In the end, it had been a disorganized scramble. But in each case, one had grabbed the weapon while the other had fought the guard. Luckily the guards had not been the size of the large pilots, but were some smaller race, not much bigger than the Terrans. With their weapons unusable, they had not had the brute strength to get the Terrans off them.
Dan, Karl and Az started dragging the bodies away and dumping them to the side of the runway. Az looked closely at one of the pilots, then swore. The pilot was wearing light armour! Top grade! He checked all of them. The same. He swayed and felt sick. Karl had followed and was looking at Az, puzzled and worried. Az turned a stricken face to Karl.
“They’re all armoured. Kaz. The blow guns won’t work.” he yelled, “Li! Mayling! Get here now!” He yelled as they ran over to him. “The truth,” he demanded. “Now!”
“What do you…”
“They weren’t touched by the blow guns! They’ve all been knifed Mayling. You lied. Why? What happened?”
Mayling and Li looked at each other, Li’s face distraught.
“Li killed them,” said Mayling. “Well I got one after she got three and I saw how she did it. She was so fast!”
Az looked at Li who dissolved into tears again. He put his arms around her wet body and she continued to sob. He tried to get her to talk but she couldn’t or wouldn’t. Finally, he gave up and turned to the others.
“We have to teach you girls how to fly then get out of here. We have to get a message to Kaz. Like us, they’re going to rely on the blow guns. They won’t work on the pilots, they’re armoured. Unless they take their helmets and armour off, there’s no bare skin to hit. No target. The armour goes over their heads. Not like the guards. Without Li, we would have failed. We’d probably all be dead. We’d definitely have failed the mission. And I didn’t realize the pilots would have weapons in the plane.”
The next hour or so was a blur as Az practiced take offs and landing with Mayling, Helene and Joline until he was satisfied. The planes had wheels instead of legs, Az said, so they could land on more uneven ground. They each took turns flying with the others taking notes on the procedure. Finally satisfied, Az left the plane at a run and headed for the other yelling, “everybody in,” as he did. They all leapt in to one plane or the other. Az started up and taxied, not bothering to do any checks.
“Where’s Li?” he yelled out the window to Dan.
“In the back of your plane!” Dan yelled back as he got into the other plane. Az lead the trip back, frantic at the slowness of it all and so worried for his brother and the others.
As they landed back at the city, the girls landing first as instructed, Az had no patience for the crowd trying to welcome him as he headed for Mathew, frantically pushing well wishers aside until they got the point that something was badly wrong.
He reached Mathew near his usual quarters, beside the ‘mess’ blurting out, “We have to get a message to Kaz. The pilots are armed and armoured! The blowguns won’t work on them!” Outside, there was cheering. Mathew was smiling. He pointed, “Look,” he said and Az turned to see two more planes in the distance. He sat down, his knees suddenly weak. Kaz must be alive! There was no one else to teach these idiots to fly.
Due to the variety of Races who had to fly the planes, Az and Kaz had convinced Mathew that they were very easy to fly. They declared any pilot with spatial awareness should be able to be taught in an evening and both planes come back together. If not, the second plane would be lost as a search would be mounted the next morning. There were an incredible 15 people who could fly small planes. They had been right. They had all done it. But how had Kaz’s Team done it? Who was their Li?
Az was there when Kaz landed and the two hugged in relief, both trying to talk at the same time. Az looked over his shoulder, trying to count as the planes unloaded but they were all mixed up.
“Any dead? Any injured?’ he asked.
“Just minor stuff. Kelly’s patched them up.”
“Were the pilots armoured?”
“Yes! That was a bit unexpected!”
Mathew insisted on everyone debriefing now and he led first Az and Kaz into his office.
“Right, he said. Objective achieved! Four planes! Any dead?”
“No.” said Az and Kaz together.
“Injured?”
“Minor only,” said Kaz and Az nodded.
“OK. I gather you ran into problems Az. Report.”
“The pilots were armoured and armed. We hadn’t allowed for that. The blow guns had a little effect on one guard but none on the other three and none on the four pilots.”
“So how did you solve that?”
“Do you not know?” he asked softly.
“No,” said Mathew, puzzled.
“You sent along an assassin with us. She got three of the four pilots and helped with the fourth.”
“Now who would that be?”
“Guess.”
“There was a long pause.”
“Mayling?”
“No.”
“Li?”
“Yes.”
“How did she do that?”
“She had a small, thin knife. I gave one to her and a similar one to Mayling so they could cut the front tyres of the planes if they landed at the wrong airfield. Also, so I could get her out of the fight and safe. But she and Mayling saw the planes were going to land at their normal airfield and ran there. By the time they got there, the planes had landed, the blow guns hadn’t worked, the slaves had got there and been loaded and they were within seconds of leaving when we all charged and the fight started. We were not doing well.
She immediately targeted the pilots and the planes and within a matter of minutes all four pilots were dead and the planes taken. The pilots had top quality armour which covered their heads and necks. But it is a mesh designed to absorb the impact of stunners or percussive weapons. It distributes the force. But you can pass a small knife through it. She did. She moved the knife around until she found an artery. Almost all Races I know of have a circulatory system. She found it. Very quickly. Too quickly. Too efficiently. Our little Li has had some specialist training. But my guess is she’d never used it before. Why would Li be taught to kill?”
“I don’t know. I’ll be sure to ask. And to ask her why she didn’t tell me.”
“We als
o had some assassins,” added Kaz. “Plural. We knew Ali and Akira had some military training but two others were better. Much better. And they also ignored the guards and targeted the pilots. On reflection, they were right.”
“I’d guess Miyuki but can’t think who the other would be. Unless Kelly? She was army.”
“Kelly and Stella.”
Mathew looked astonished, then thoughtful, then he started to laugh. “Oh my God. Kelly is an army doctor. I thought Stella looked Amerindian. She was brought up an army brat. An Indian in an army camp. I’ll bet she got teased or bullied. Poor kid. But she’d be just the personality to fight back. But Li is a mystery.”
“What is Stella?”
“She looks Native American to me. Her olive colouring, her dark eyes and the high cheek bones. I’ll bet her father was Indian. The Indians originally owned America. The Europeans fought them and won. So they took over the country. The Indians haven’t mixed in well. Their basic philosophy of life is different. Stella will have copped some prejudice. Especially on an army base! Huh, cowboys and Indians on an army base! Never mind,” he said, as he saw the puzzled looks on their faces.
“But enough of that. Now we have four planes and many pilots! We can hit four cities at a time!” He stopped, looking at the looks on the faces of Az and Kaz. “What’s wrong?”
“To teach a trained pilot to fly an unfamiliar plane and follow me is one thing. To teach someone to fly well, dodge, navigate, dump the load, and return is another. The complicated system is the navigation,” said Az. “We only had to retrace our route via the way we came. We could see where we were going. We didn’t have to navigate. To hit the Northern cities we must fly at night and navigate.
The really complicated skill is to fly low to avoid detection because we will be flying at night which is unauthorized. The Keulfyd will be paranoid, despite all the satellites, about someone coming and blowing their scheme. They will be monitoring but at higher altitudes looking for spaceships. We need to dodge things like mountains and hills. To teach someone to fly that well will take much more time than we have. We need to fly hundreds of miles in a night and we need to know how to get where we are going. We have to use all the features of the plane, most of which we didn’t need when taking the short daytime jaunt back here. We are trained combat pilots. Are any of your people also?”
“No,” said Mathew heavily. “I already asked that. Not one. Not even close.”
“We have another problem,” said Az. “These planes have a thing in them that the spaceships in orbit will be able to detect.”
“No they don’t,” said Mathew, who had seen the thumbs up from Ludmilla. “Not any longer. Ludmilla and Anaminka had a race as to who could find them first. Ludmilla obviously won. Once again we can thank our lucky stars that we had moved all our stuff out of the city before the gas attack. Ludmilla and Anaminka had bug detectors. Very good ones, designed to detect any emissions on every system Terra had. More parallel development. Never mind,” he said looking at the puzzlement of Kaz and Az and deciding not to translate all that. “Send the next ones in. Oh and I dread to ask another question. How much fuel have we got?”
“The fuel is at the airport,” said Kaz, puzzled.
“Kaz, we don’t know what your fuel source is.”
“What would you do without us?” laughed Kaz walking away to now teach refuelling.
“We would have found another way,” said Mathew softly.
Li
Prompted by Mathew, who wanted a word with her when she’d calmed down, Kelly and Stella found Li. Kelly hugged her. “My other little assassin,” she said.
Li looked as if she’d been punched and her eyes flooded with tears.
“Li, stop crying. You did well. Is that the first time you’ve killed?’
Li nodded.
“Well it was also the first time for Stella, but not for me. What training have you had and why?”
“My great grandmother was raped by Japanese soldiers during World War two. She was determined to see that her daughters would never have that happen to them. She found someone to teach them how to defend themselves. My grandmother married her teacher. He taught me. No one else knew. It wasn’t official. I don’t have a belt or anything. They taught me a variety so I can use lots of weapons too.
My mother didn’t learn. She refused. She was a very gentle person. But my grandparents were determined that I would learn and I got left with them for months at a time when my parents went to places that weren’t safe for me. Once I was left with them for most of three years. It seemed crazy that my mother didn’t want me to learn, especially considering some of the places I did live. Some of them were not safe.”
Kelly nodded. “Stella learnt karate officially and I taught her some of the stuff the army taught me. We aren’t supposed to teach some of it but we are allowed to teach all the defensive moves. She learnt a bit extra she wasn’t supposed to. Just as well. She used it today. Stella got two and I got two. Didn’t we all do well?”
Li looked unconvinced.
“Li, what would have happened if you weren’t there? Honestly now.”
“I don’t think they would have won. That was why I fought so hard. I never have before. Not for real. Not ever. But they were losing and they didn’t plan it well and their priorities were wrong and all the training just kicked in. I haven’t even practiced for years. My grandparents are dead and I have no one to practice with.”
“Well you do now. And forget the rules. I’ll check what you know and we’ll combine the best of what we know between us. We also need to teach others. Can you do that Li?”
“What will people think of me?”
“They’ll think you’re a remarkable person who learnt something very useful, used it only when she had to, and was very upset at what she had to do but had the courage to do it. And because of that, a lot of slaves are free who otherwise would soon have been dropped into the ocean, some very evil people are dead and some very good ones are still alive. Now how is that wrong?”
Li looked thoughtful. “I guess it doesn’t seem so bad when you put it that way.”
“Let’s go get some food. I’m starving,” said Stella and led the way, her arms linked with Li.