Read Shadowplay: Book One of the Starcrown Chronicles Page 8

  Chapter Six

  Weeks passed into months and I lost track of the days. Life on Rabine’s plantation was tedious and depressing. Probably the most depressing thing about being on this world was the weather. It was always hot and sticky with showers every morning and afternoon that were regular enough for you to set your clock by. We just got used to being hot and wet. The work routine was the same every day as well. It started with us getting up at the crack of dawn. I would be sent to the stable to take care of the horses’ morning needs while the others headed out to the fields and Doc’s group went to the lab. Some of the others were envious that I got to spend long stretches of the day inside an air-conditioned building. But with all of the heavy work Lout had me doing I ended up drenched in sweat nonetheless.

  Whenever I wasn’t tending to horses, polishing tack or cleaning the stable I was in the training ring with Rabine. After he finished his daily lessons with his instructor, he would use me to help him practice. My knowledge of horses and riding was surprisingly thorough. I have no idea how I had found the time to learn so much about horses while running a smuggling operation but I really seemed to know what I was doing.

  The routine of our lives continued in mind numbing sameness for many months. It was in the late evening one day after we had been released from work that Momma Mary finally brought us the news we had been waiting for. Since we first arrived at this little slice of paradise, our group had been learning everything we could about the plantation so we could plan our escape. As usual we waited until everyone else had settled down to occupy themselves for the evening before we got together to discuss our plans. Alex was in a sullen mood because Rabine had sent for her at the end of the day. I had grown close to her during our time here and seeing her upset really bothered me. Unfortunately there was little I could do to help. From time to time Rabine would send word for one of the female slaves to come to him in the mansion. None of them ever talked about it afterward. There was no need to.

  Momma Mary had just finished overseeing the evening clean up—she ran a tidy kitchen. She usually looked worn out by the time she finished for the day, but tonight there was a subdued energy about her. She had been pulling double duty as a cook in Rabine’s kitchen and she often heard things before the rest of us did. Rabine had found out early on that she was a talented cook, especially with desserts, and ever since then she had been working in his kitchen several days a week on top of her duties as a field hand.

  She came over to sit with us, drying her hands on the worn towel she had tied around her middle as an apron, and told us her news. Rabine was expecting a large delivery of food the next day. A food shipment meant that he would need a group of slaves to load and unload the trucks. It was just the type of break we had been waiting for.

  It had taken us a long time to work out all of the details, but we had finally come up with an escape plan. We were going to steal Rabine’s own transport ship. Alex would pilot it. It had light speed capability and was large enough, with some squeezing, to carry all of the slaves from the compound. Although we hadn’t let the others in on our plans yet, we weren’t going to leave anyone behind. I had insisted on that right from the beginning. Taking the ship should be no problem. There was no real security at the landing field. The only time Rabine even posted a guard there was if the transport were loaded. Other than that the area was pretty much deserted. Everyone knew whose property this was. None of the locals dared to come within kilometers of any land that belonged to the Drug Lord.

  Deciding on the means of our escape had been the easy part. The hard part was figuring out a way to get out of the compound. We had spent months looking for some way around the invisible barrier that was keeping us prisoners. For a while it seemed hopeless. Then one day, Lucky stumbled onto a find. In the garage beside the slave quarters there was a workshop area. He discovered that several replacement poles for the perimeter fence were stored there. It had taken a lot of patient planning but we managed to arrange for Mark to have several minutes alone to examine them. He understood the system and was confident that he could set up a feedback loop in one section of the fence. Essentially, he could create an electronic hole that we could slip through without having our collars activated.

  But there were several problems. First, Mark would have to be on the outside of the perimeter fence to access the circuitry. Second, the system power would have to be off while he worked. Finally, he couldn’t do anything with his bare hands. He was going to need a few special tools.

  The tools turned out to be no trouble for Lucky who somehow managed to scrounge what Mark needed in only a few days. Shutting down the power to the fence however was going to take some doing. Ian was able to help with that.

  It took several more weeks of careful investigating, but we eventually learned where the compound’s generator was located. Fenced off in a clearing behind Rabine’s mansion was a small blockhouse that housed the Dyna-Flow 323 power converter that supplied electricity to Rabine’s entire property. Ian knew of a way to rig the system to build up an overload that would shut it down. If done properly it would look like one of the connections had simply come loose due to the vibration of the machine’s operation and our sabotage would not be suspected. But that would only give us a small window. The emergency generator would kick in thirty seconds later. After that, the perimeter fence CPU would reboot and bring the system back on line. Depending on where in the start-up sequence our chosen section of the fence was, it would become active again anywhere from fifteen to thirty seconds later. At best, Mark would have a minute to complete his work.

  But to get to the generator in the first place, someone would have to already be outside of the perimeter fence. That was the major stumbling block to our plan. Tomorrow’s food shipment however, solved that remaining problem.

  Rabine had told Mary to select the slaves she needed to help her move the supplies, but we had already decided weeks ago who they would be. Although Ian knew the generator system best, he was too big to slip away unnoticed. Instead, Bobby had volunteered to do the sabotage. He was fast and stood the best chance of being able to slip away quietly. He would have to sprint through the forest, locate and scale the fence around the blockhouse, sabotage the generator the way Ian had shown him, and then return before he was missed. To give him the time he needed we were going to arrange a small incident on the way back to the compound.

  It was a bold plan and there were a lot that could go wrong. But we were determined. We saw how many of the ‘old timers’, slaves who had been on Rabine’s plantation for years, had been beaten down by the drudgery. Some had given up on life, like I was close to doing when I first arrived. Their spirits had been broken over time and they moved through their days like robots. None of us wanted to end up like that.

  We finished working out the details of our plans and turned in. It took me a long time to fall asleep. So much depended on tomorrow. So much could go wrong. I lay awake going over every aspect of the plan again and again, making sure that we hadn’t overlooked anything. Surprisingly, I wasn’t nervous. We had done our homework and were as ready as we could be. Those elements that we had no control over I couldn’t worry about. Eventually, I put it out of my mind. Whatever was going to happen would happen. With that I rolled over and was able to fall asleep.