Chapter 1
Mervyn felt around in the darkness. His hand connected with something gritty and jagged: another rock. He tested its weight, with his rag wrapped hands, then lifted it sideways until he bumped up against the cart. Feeling the rim of the hopper with his elbow he tipped the rock in.
He wished Loren would hurry up with the light. While he waited, he leaned against the cart and rewound the filthy rags covering his hands. Around him he could hear the other slaves digging at the piled rocks. The second cave-in today; the umpteenth this week. Somewhere under the unseen heap of rubble was their light, and the old Ethrigian who had carried it. He hoped the unfortunate slave was dead, because once the light arrived the guard would let them clear only enough space to get the cart through to the Helium3 seam. Soon Loren arrived with the glow-bag and balanced it on a ledge.
He surveyed the disaster. The pool of feeble green light showed where the roof of the narrow, roughhewn tunnel had collapsed. It would take the rest of the shift to clear a path for the cart, The Velcat growled and pointed with its blast riffle. Without a word the slaves, mostly Ethigians with a smattering of Humans and stately Zetoigs, bent to their task. They lifted each rock with their hands, shuffled to the ore cart, and dropping it into the hopper. They worked steadily and methodically not expending any more energy than absolutely necessary. Winning meant surviving in this place.
Loren pointed to a shattered log, ‘Another weak prop bearing too much load’. She was right. Mervyn had learned from an early age to prop up a tunnel safely -- just one of those skills the children of mine engineers absorb from their parents. The shoddiness of the night crews, who blasted out the Helium3 seams and propped up the new tunnels, made him nervous. Every time the work party arrived in a new area, he and Loren had taken to rearranging the props to spread the load more evenly. At first, the Velcat had objected, but quickly changed its mind when it saw a colleague buried under piles of rubble . Even so, the frequent cave-ins were a constant hazard.
He awoke from hibernation in a slave compound on the planet of Pershwin: the Naga’s base. Loren was with him, but they had not seen or heard anything about the fate of Aurora or Tarun since their capture. A full week passed without Mervyn seeing the surface in daylight: the line of slaves, that formed the work-party, started the long walk into the bowels of Pershwin before sunrise. They laboured all day at the rock-face clearing great piles of Helium3 ore blasted out by the night crews. After sunset, they trudged back to the surface for a meagre meal of soup and bread, and sleep. He had never worked so hard or slept so deeply in his life. It was as though his earlier life had never existed.
They worked steadily, clearing rocks where the Velcat instructed, until a horn echoed through the tunnel and everyone stopped. The Velcat waved a cattle prod to herd them into a line and threaded a rope through the rings on their collars. Mervyn had only needed to feel the electronic sting of the cattle prod once to know he never wanted to feel it again. The Velcat handed the glow-bag to the lead slave and they started the arduous trudge to the surface. On the way they stopped to let a similar line of slaves, heading in the opposite direction, pass by. The night shift. In front of Mervyn an elderly, and once stately, Zetoig sank to his knees.
‘Get up,’ Mervyn hissed, but the Zetoig remained on the floor. He attempted to lift the giant, ‘Stand up, please.’
‘It is no use, I am too weak,’ the Zetoig whispered. ‘It is over.’
‘It’s never over,’ Mervyn snapped as loudly as he dared. ‘Never give up hope.’
The Velcat started to walk up the line to find the cause of the commotion.
‘Leave me to die,’ the Zetoig sighed.
Mervyn’s rage boiling inside him, ‘No, I will not,’. A waste of precious energy, perhaps, but the injustice of their slavery ate at his soul. He longed to strike out against their captors, ‘I’m not leaving you, so either you stand and start walking or I’m in big trouble too. Is that what you want?’ Slowly, leaning heavily against the wall, the Zetoig rose to his feet. Mervyn smiled in triumph: a small victory maybe, but a victory non-the-less.
‘What’s going on here?’ Mervyn knew better than to reply. The Velcat glared at the stationary slaves. ‘Get moving’. The line shuffled forward towards the lift shaft.
As they squashed into the crowded lift cage, which would take them to the next level, Loren whispered in Mervyn’s ear, ‘Tarun and Aurora are held captive in a villa midway between the town and the mine complex.’ It was the first time they had spoken all day. What had she traded for this information? Within days of their arrival Loren had developed a network of informants. She traded anything she could lay her hands on for information. She had a natural talent and he marvelled at her ingenuity.
At suppertime, the exhausted slaves sat at trestle tables under the warm starry sky. Mervyn and Loren sat with the elderly Zetoig who introduced himself as Rauvic.
Mervyn pushed his bread across the table, ‘This will give you strength.’
‘No, I appreciate the gesture my friend, but you need it more than I,’ Rauvic lowered his voice still further. ‘I must escape tonight or this mine will kill me as surely as if I jumped out an airlock.’
Loren dropped her voice to match Rauvic’s, ‘How?’
‘Maybe I will just climb the wire.’ A towering double fence of barbed wire surrounded the slave compound. At each corner guards with searchlights perched in watchtowers.
‘You’ll never make it,’ Loren said. ‘At night they release the dogs to run free between the fences. If you get over the first fence the dogs will track you down before you can reach the second.’ Almost every populated planet in the galaxy possessed a dog like animal. It was called convergent evolution: similar conditions in the evolutionary food chain often produced the same type of animal, like rats and cattle. Sometimes scaled reptiles, sometimes feathered raptors, sometimes hairy mammals, but always fierce pack hunters, and often domesticated by sentient races. On Pershwin they were sabre-toothed, long-tailed, marsupials, though Mervyn doubted they were native to the planet.
Rauvic stared wistfully at the wire, ‘How then?’
‘Bide your time -- watch and wait for the right opportunity,’ Mervyn said.
‘ I do not have long, my body grows weaker every day.’
‘I’ll think of something,’ Mervyn said determined not to let down his new friend. That night he wracked his brain for a solution, but by morning inspiration still eluded him.
The night crew had cleared a path round the rock fall wide enough for the ore cart. Mervyn noticed the shattered prop had not been replaced which meant the roof could easily cave in again and kill more slaves. Throughout the mine numerous cave-ins remained in the same precarious condition. He hurried past. The tunnel continued down into the bowels of the planet until they reached an area newly blasted by the night crew.
‘Well?’ the Velcat demanded pointing its cattle prod at Mervyn and Loren. For once the new tunnel looked well constructed. Mervyn sucked air through his teeth and tut-tutted, ‘Hmm, looks dangerous to me.’
‘Could collapse any moment,’ Loren agreed playing the game, ‘Right on your head.’ The Velcat winced. Mervyn wanted to grin, but knew any sign of scheming would prove fatal.
‘Make safe,’ the Velcat growled and waved the cattle prod threateningly.
The pair worked quickly to move props and re-buttress the roof while the other slaves collected blasted rock. As Mervyn held the last prop for Loren to hammer into position with a boulder he had an idea. ‘I need someone to lean against this prop until we can find another trunk,’ he lied to the Velcat. ‘If it falls it could bring the whole tunnel. I don’t suppose you could...’
‘Pah, no,’ the Velcat spat.
‘The Zetoig could do it, he’s big enough,’ Mervyn suggested.
Without even thinking, the Velcat jabbed its blaster at Rauvic then pointed to the prop, ‘Sit. Don’t move.’ Rauvic seated himsel
f at the base of the post and leaned against it. He was still there at the end of the shift.
‘Thank you,’ Rauvic whispered at they ascended in the lift.
‘If we’re back here tomorrow you’ll have to be our support again,’ Mervyn said with a grin. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’ It felt good to get one over on the Velcat. Each little victory lifted his spirits a bit more -- he was fighting back.