Resolving the Argale Situation - Part One E-Book

Suzann Dodd

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A battalion is dispatched to encounter the freedom fighters, take them to a ship in space and do what ever quick treatments can be done before returning them to the surface to free the other slaves and destroy their enemies.

Leseprobe

Suzann Dodd

Resolving the Argale Situation - Part One

The First Excursion

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Chapter One

PAYING TWICE

SHARON FEINSTEIN

OZOHARTHERSSAVI OF IZAMEL

About five hundred and thirty something years ago, Bob Dylan sang;

'You have to pay to get out of

going through these things twice.'

I wish I knew whom I should of paid.

Since Daktoy abducted me from 1989 I've been getting doubles. Every emotional trauma repeats as if the first wasn't cataclysmic enough.

The day before yesterday or some time off there, Daktoy went down to a planet we're calling Argale and rescued one slave. Taken one so we could analyse the methods of control used by the Pig people.

The mission was necessary, for we needed to know how the slaves were controlled and how we could break that control.

One slave was freed, we learned how to remove the electronic collar and cuffs, and could manage the drug addiction, which kept the slave living to the next high, with a surrogate.

The slave was just a sample, no name or particulars, and I expected he'd be the usual two dimensional ZeSha as 99.9% of them are.

But...the slave wasn't a two dimensional ZeSha; he was a fascinating complexity named imKoldi.

Among the ZerShaz names are property and remain within the family. Only two people can be alive at the same time with the same name, and they have to be related.

Daktoy's mother had a brother named imKoldi who went out nearly sixty years ago and never came back.  His mother named her first son imKoldi, after him.

The slave taken from Argale is that brother of fiMalca. That slave is Daktoy's uncle. That slave is Daktoy's only living relative outside of our children. That slave is not expendable.

But that slave is going back down to Argale just after sunset.

It takes a lot of courage to go back to where you were enslaved nearly sixty years, kept alive by the magic water, never aging, working in the punishing sun by day, freezing in a barn by night, in a horror that won't end until the dying world gasps it's last.

It takes a lot of courage to go back and encounter the handful of ZeSha who have kept their freedom by hiding in a mountain, living near starvation, for time without end, who made one crazy try to alert the ZerShaz by sending that halfwit, aSefa.

How many years had those ZeSha in that mountain spent trying to teach her how to fly a shuttle? How many years training her to take a flyer from the humans, get it up, set a course, and find a planet how many light years away?

As impossible as it seems, they were successful. aSefa did get into the shuttle, did take it up and out, did get attention, and that's why we're here.

When night falls on that part of the planet of Argale, imKoldi is going down with others, into the caves, to encounter the ZeSha who sent aSefa for help.

The mission is not supposed to be dangerous. They've been rehearsing it for days with benefit of a VR. They'll land on the uninhabited side of a high mountain, climb, enter, go through the caves, meet the free ZeSha and take them to this erssavi.

Then they, those free ZeSha, with whatever nutritional and cosmetic help we can give, will return with a few battalions and free every slave and kill every Pig thing down there, bringing the slaves up here so Jill and her medical team can put them back together.

It takes a lot of courage for imKoldi, who's as sick and weak as a few decades bad diet and hard work can make him, as sick as anyone addicted to an opiate can be, to go back.

I know he has to go back. I know if it was me, I would have to. I know Daktoy would. That doesn't make it easy. It only gives me another episode of sit and worry until if/when I see imKoldi again.

Just as I suffered when Daktoy went down there to rescue him.

It was a heavy thing to go back, but imKoldi felt he had to;had to force his courage, because he was, despite his disavowals, a truly honourable ZeSha.

I wish I could sleep until next year. Sleep and wake up long after the event and hear about it third hand, but I couldn't. Sleep wouldn't come and even if it did I'd be awake when imKoldi left and I don't think I could play it stoic.

I came from the salpi, put on my body suit, and stepped into the front room where Daktoy sat on the sampi drinking coffee.

He sat, one foot up, resting his elbow on his knee, giving me his patented silent expression. I took a glance into the sideroom where imKoldi was asleep. I couldn't be here for any kind of goodbye. I couldn't be here, so flying across to the Odin Path, killing the day; whatever played I could be the last to know.

I muttered a prayer, and without looking at Daktoy, left. I'd been through enough episodes of the Amazing Vegetable Man to appreciate not proving I didn't exist in Daktoy's reality more conducive to our continuing relationship.

I came along corridors illuminated by diffuse orange light, the shadows cast by the exposed girders making me think I'm in a Monster flick.

The ZeSha raised their hands in homage as I passed. I went into the hangar, climbed into the veDak, pulled down, sealed the canopy, activated the engine.

As the veDak was built to fly faster than light, for a short trip I merely ejected. The flyer was attached to something like a stretched rubber band so I was shot into space, pointed the nose at the Odin, glided.

I could see iKhyarm's erssavi, looking like a pterodactyl, the wings unfurled to maintain it's stability.  The Odin resembled a thread spool, but beautifully marked for it had been a luxury liner which carried the chronically wealthy about the known Sectors in splendor.

As I neared the Odin a hanger door opened and I glided in, began braking and coasted to a stop. I had to wait until enough atmosphere was built before unbolting the canopy.

A hand of ZeSha came to greet me and I told them I wanted the use of A Deck Pool.

I don't know if they knew who I was, what I was, but written on the side of the flyer was "Property of Ki-ZerShaz", meaning I had status for three of four of them.

I went up to my Suite on A Deck, as messy as I left it. I took my time pulling on my mutton as lamb suit as I'm sure there were a pile of naked ZeSha in the pool who had to come out before I'd go in.

I left the pretty chamber, walking along pastel lit corridors and paused a moment in the hall before entering the vaulted chamber which held the swimming pool.

This pool held so many memories it could be a diary.

I looked about the echoing void, into the tourquoise water. I moved to lock off coolers, cause I wanted the room nice and hot so I could sit in the water until I pruned.

I did a pretty decent racing dive, a long lap to the low side, trying to work out my fears. I pushed images of the past to far corners, trying to make peace with myself, when I heard: "Sakari?"

I looked up; iKhyarm.  He posed, too beautiful to be real, looking at me with huge brown eyes.

I needed to talk to him, somehow find out what, if anything, happened on his ship the other day.  I came to sit on the steps at the low end, and he stooped near me; "Sakari, I have a knot in my sha."

This is how they phrase an emotional or ethical problem.

I nodded, getting ready for whatever, and he said; "The Great Lord does not--no more--treasure me."

"That is untrue." I toss, but feel offside as that doesn't match where my head is at, and he goes; "He selects the company of others."

Ahh, I know where he's at. He's jealous of imKoldi.

"iKhyarm--" Oh right, chat. Must be nine hundred of them listening right now and I don't think Daktoy is ready to make it public.

"I will review in unalloyed privacy, forthwith, but for now, let us converse of diverse items--the mission on Fuckall."

"Fuckall?" He repeats.

Can't say howdy in English, but he can use the bad words.

"I would review the contingencies." I say, which translates; 'give me the suss'.