Page 29 of Narzek
Their original intent was to come in at night and roust their people from the slave residence, which was a high-rise apartment building that held over a thousand people. Having their shuttle shot down delayed their time table almost half a rotation.
On the other hand, it didn’t really matter because the Sargans worked them in the factories, on the farms, and in the mines around the clock. Narzek and the other team leaders conferred and decided the original plan would work as well as if they started at night. Except, they didn’t know if they had transport for the liberated slaves.
Narzek’s unit didn’t even know if they would get off the planet any time soon. Or if they did, they didn’t know who would be coming for them.
In this complex, there was a weapons factory, a clothing manufacturing plant, and a food processing plant.
Cayla lay in her bunk for over a span when her com tablet lost the feed of the space battle, and she still didn’t know whether Narzek was dead or alive. The ship had stopped shaking, but she wasn’t getting any feed at all from the system. Alone in their quarters her fears overwhelmed her, and her eyes filled with tears. As she blinked, she realized her tears had turned into little globules that floated above her face. Even though she was strapped down, she could feel the loss of gravity.
Now she had even more to worry about. She mentally shook herself and thought back to her training as to what she needed to do in this situation. If the artificial gravity failed, that likely meant the ship had lost power. It could even mean life support had shut down as well. She needed to get into a spacesuit that would keep her warm and provide a few hours of air until she could either evacuate from the ship or the power was restored.
Cayla unfastened the harness and held on to it with one hand while she reached for the closet door handle. She opened the metal door and held the handle while she reached inside for the compact suit contained inside the helmet. As she opened it up, she was relieved that the helmet was attached to the jumpsuit.
It took a few tries to get it on while wedging the toe of one boot under a foothold at the base of the closet. By the time Cayla got the suit on, her cabin door had slid open, revealing Tagnel Asedtu. He was dressed in an identical outfit.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” It was mostly true. “What happened?”
“We got them all, but our power grid took a direct hit, and we lost power to most of the ship except for level one. They sent me to get everyone out of the cabins on this level.”
“Do you know if they found Narzek and his team?”
“I don’t. Maybe some of the others will know.”
“Let’s see if I remember how to do this.” She stretched as far as she could and slid her foot from the hold and lightly pushed off and reached the handhold by the opening from the bedroom to the tiny sitting area. Then she made it to the doorway and was able to use the handholds to pull herself up to the handrail about two feet below the ceiling.
Cayla continued down the corridor pulling herself along the rail hand over hand to the ladder tube. Tagnel was waiting there with the door open, and he held it for her to go first. It was easy to climb down while she was almost weightless. The lower she went, the more she felt the artificial gravity on level one pulling on her.
Once she reached level one, she could walk to the warriors’ ready room, also known as the gym. Cayla and Hykara spotted each other at the same time and hurried over to see her.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you. Narzek’s team all survived the crash with minor injuries. Their nanites and medications infused by their armor took care of them.
“Another unit found them and took them to their target.”
“Oh, my God!” Cayla sobbed in English then reverted back to Consortium common. “Thank you, I was going out of my mind.”
“They had to fight their way in, but only the Sargans took casualties,” Hykara told her. “One of their damn fighters punched through the hull and took out the power relays for half the ship. Engineering is working to rebuild and replace the damaged parts.”
Cayla nodded. “Is there anything we can do?”
“All we can do is wait. Dread Eight sent over a couple of their engineers to help. They're estimating three to four spans before it’s repaired. Dread Seven sent engineers to the Pican slave ship to fix the air scrubbers in life support.
“The Picans had four hundred slaves still on board. Roughly half of them are from Farseek. They are helping to clean up the cells. The whole place is filthy, except for their quarters. The whole crew has been transported to Ryosa.”
“Have they started bringing people up?”
“Yes, and all our ground units are down their rounding them up. They’re telling us it will take rotations for us to collect them all, and we don’t have room for them all on the Pican ship,” said Hykara.
Hykara went on to fill her in on what she’d learned so far about the Ryosa operation. There were thousands of Farseekans and people from all over the Consortium and the Alliance sectors on Ryosa. The Pican slave ship could only take about four thousand, and the accommodations were dismal at best.
Once the Sargan battleships were neutralized, the officers from Farseek ships and the Alliance ships conferred. With almost three hundred thousand humanoids enslaved on Ryosa, the captain decided to call on the Consortium and the Alliance for more passenger transports to bring them all home. It could take half a star orbit to locate and extract all the Farseekans, let alone all the other humanoids enslaved there.
There would still be plenty of people to take back to Farseek when theKurellisreturned. Meanwhile, the Farseek Brigade needed to revise its rescue plan. Discovering so many of their abducted people on one planet was beyond their wildest dreams.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Narzek spent two more rotations down on Ryosa at the industrial complex while the ground units worked in shifts, sleeping in the shuttles. After they secured the compound in their control, they rounded up the overseers to let them know that the Sargus Empire was no more, and slavery was outlawed. The Sargus sectors would be split between the Trans-Stellar Consortium and the United Galactic Alliance of Worlds.
