Chapter Ten

Taylor's width and breadth of experience was probably--for a girl her age--pretty terrifying. She had been in bank heists, had toppled local governments, had risen as a warlord. She'd assassinated and intimidated and fought creatures that some would call walking natural disasters.

But she had never organized a revolt before. So she had to rely on the experience and know-how of HK-47, and that on its own, was proving a challenge.

The robot turned his head from left to right, scanning the first batch of slaves she had moved out of the pens and lined up. Most of them were the green-skinned lizards that looked like humans with a bit of scally body paint, but a few were tentacled aliens or normal humans. “Assessment: If we give some of them thermal detonators and let them run at our enemies, we might be able to distract them long enough to evade detection.”

“I’m assuming thermal detonators,” she said, trying on the new word for size. “Are something I would rather not have go off in my vicinity.”

“Explanation: Thermal detonators, often called ‘fusion dets,’ or by fleeing meatbags as ‘oh god, oh god, throw it back,’ are highly unstable and highly amusing thrown explosive devices. Most can be rigged with simple but efficient dead man’s switches. If you equip your slave army with a few I can guarantee a spectacular show.” He gestured at the crate that he had pulled to the centre of the armory floor with what she felt might be longing. There were at least a dozen metal spheres there.

“Let’s shelve that as plan... C,” she said. She figured that she might be able to rig something with enough insects to carry one of the grenades somewhere important, but they looked rather heavy and the few bugs that she had found were small and rather specialized in anything but carrying heavy objects around. “What about the rest of our arsenal?”

When Taylor asked HK-47 to find out where the armory was, he was only too happy to go diving into the palace’s network. His discovery that there were not one but three weapons storage rooms in the building had the robot as giddy as she had ever seen him.

So she told him to show her where the nearest one was, then left him to figure out how to break in without setting off any alarms while she got the first batch of slaves. She came back to find two dead pig men and an unlocked room.

“Comment: The weaponry is adequate.”

“Adequate, huh?” she asked.

The robot nodded. “Qualification: There are thirty seven blaster rifles, none will endure heavy use. Forty-nine blasters, three are in acceptable repair. Sixty-four shock batons of various make and model, all unsanitary. A variety of gas and stun grenades. And twelve thermal detonators.”

Taylor licked her lips and looked into the armory behind HK-47. For all his claims that the guns were in bad repair, that still sounded like a considerable amount of firepower. “Right. Okay, I need you to translate for me,” she said.

“Statement: I am always ready to relay whatever information you wish me to. My creative interpretation protocols are second to none.”

***

Xarly thought that being a slave was the most unwizard thing ever. Oh sure, he’d had a few jobs that were less than cool. Flipping rehydrated protein patties while paying for his astronavigation courses was not the highlight of his life, but he would rather be doing that kind of work instead of sitting in a cell slowly starving out. He had even lost the urge to scream at the passing pigs or to kick out and try to trip the guards.

Shock prods were a great way to tell someone to chill out and wobble on the floor for a few hours.

The least fun bit about being a slave so far was the whole manual labour thing. He was more of a computer and droid guy. Nice comfy chairs and air conditioned rooms. Oh, and the beatings, the beatings were also not fun.

In fact, the more he thought on it, the less fun the whole thing sounded.

“You’re thinking stupid thoughts again,” came a rather familiar voice from the cell across from his. A pile of blankets moved in the shadows, a slender green hand pulling them closer.

“No, I’m not,” he said. “I was thinking about how much this sucks.”

The blanket shifted back a bit and he got to look into the very flat eyes of the Qariman’s, the last ship he served on, chief navigator. That she happened to be his superior just a few days ago shouldn’t have mattered anymore, but the woman was downright terrifying and no amount of steel bars between him and her would make him feel safe. “Oh, really?” she asked.

He tried on a smile for size. “Yeah, totally.”

“We’re only stuck on a Hutt controlled desert backwater, under the wonderful care of the great fucking Nimas, the same bitch who has her pets fight to the death and then sells the videos on the holonet for some credits. The same slug that owns the biggest brothels in the sector. The same slug that sells her merchandise across the entire goddamn galaxy.”

He shrank back a little at the notes of pure rage in her tone. “Hey there, love, no need for that, yeah?”

“Love? Xarly, when I’m out of this cage I’m going to kill every last guard around here, and then I’m going to gut you,” she said.

The fact that it wasn’t the first, or even the worse, threat she had tossed his way didn’t diminish the anger behind it. “We’ll figure something out,” he said, his voice lower and hopefully placating.

Qarry might have been the toughest girl he had ever met, but even she had broken down and cried at night. They had both seen some of the others from the Qariman being shuffled about. The girls never came back intact.

He was still looking for more nice things to say, because an angry girl was an affront to everything Xarly knew, when the thump-thump of footfalls came his way.

He was ready to shrink back when suddenly he wasn’t in control of himself anymore. It was strange, almost unique. He had taken some stims that made him feel the same way some years back, though those had never made him stand up and at attention behind a door.

He saw Qarry doing the same, her blanket falling off her shoulders to reveal her dirty uniform and the collar wrapped around her neck. The complete lack of emotions on her face had him suddenly feeling somewhat nervous.

A pair of Gamorreans stopped by their doors and unlocked them from outside. He found himself stepping out in time with Qarry, then walking to the end of the corridor where he stood right next to her and behind a thin humanoid girl with long dark hair and a too big jacket on. Her eyes were masked by blue goggles, but the line of her mouth hinted at how displeased she was.

More slaves, some of them Falleen like him and Qarry, others from the passengers aboard the Qariman or from the old stock that were there before they arrived, stepped out and formed up with them.

They moved to the next row over and repeated the same action without so much as a whisper spoken between anyone. He has seen some pretty wild horror holos in his day, but this was taking the cake.

The group gathered a few move slaves, then even more. Soon they were packed in tight and Xarly found himself moving forwards to help hold up a skinny Twi'lek girl. He bent over and picked her up, one hand under her knees the other behind her back. He was made to move with surprising gentleness.

When he was back with the others they started to move with eerie synchronicity, all of them marching with light steps and breathing at the same pace. They moved through the rear exit, then through a corridor until, finally, they crossed a pair of slaves that he vaguely recognized guarding a corridor.

They were holding rifles.

The pair of them tensed as they passed, but they let them through.

Xarly found himself spreading out away from the others in a room that was, to a guy stuck in a cell for a few days, pretty damned spacious. There were a few other slaves here, or at least people in rags.

He bent at the knees and deposited the still silent Twi’lek girl on the ground next to a few more injured people.

Then, just like that, the control was gone and Xarly almost tripped over his own feet. “What the hell?” he heard Qarry whisper from behind him.

The group turned, all thirty or so of them to take in the girl with the goggles who was standing next to a rusty protocol droid. The two groups stared at each other for a long moment, neither daring to be the first to talk.

Then the girl with the blue goggles spoke in a language that was at once melodic and harsh, as if someone had tuned in on three dozen holonews channels at once and decided to imitate all the non-basic languages at once.

“Superfluous Greetings: My master, Darth Khepri, wishes to greet you sacks of rotting organic slurry and present to you an offer that, should you refuse, will no doubt end in your timely and delightfully gory ends.”

Xarly shared a look with Qarry. Already he could smell the stress pheromones in the air from the other Falleen. He, and all the others, waited, but the droid and the girl didn’t seem to be in a hurry to speak.

“So, how did you free us?” Qarry asked.

The droid repeated something back in that same strange language and Darth Khepri replied.

“Translation: My master did not intend to free you. Clarification: Through no fault of our own, my master was enslaved by the degenerate swine that serve the local Hutt. Fortunately my master is not as obviously incapable as you, and was able to murder those that captured her with inpunity. Addition: Unfortunately, she was collared. Our infiltration of this palace has lead us to discover that deactivating one collar will set off an alarm. The same alarm that would go off if all collars were deactivated.”

There was a murmur through the crowd as they took in that bit of news. Good news at that. Xarly wasn’t too fond of his own slave collar. It was chafing against his scales a whole lot.

“Then what? You’re going to turn these things off and try to run while the Hutt guns us down?” Qarry asked. “And what was that just now, with the controlling us? How did you do that?”

Xarly was real tempted to shove a hand before her mouth, but that might make the scary probably-a-jedi look his way. She looked especially miffed when the droid was done translating what Qarry had said.

So miffed that she turned on a heel and walked into the next room over.

“Statement: As amusing as it would be to watch you all be gunned down, my master has other plans.”

The girl returned, and she had blasters, at least half a dozen pressed up against her stomach so that she had one arm free. She tossed one underhand to Qarry who snatched it out of the air.

“You’re arming us?” she asked before inspecting the gun. “With blasters that don’t have any power cells?”

“Comment: You are a credit to your species’ benevolence. Conjecture: Certainly, a species that allows as member as idiotic as yourself to reach adulthood without being put down is both merciful and shortsighted. Statement: The power cells are in that bin.” The droid pointed to a bin off to one side.

In Qarry’s defence, he hadn’t noticed it either.

“Alright. We each get a blaster and a smack on the ass and are told to pray that we don’t get vaporized on the way out?”

“Compliment: What a succinct way of laying out our plan.”

“Beats being a slave,” Xarly said.

He wasn’t sure if he should have been reassured by the number of people that agreed with him.

***