Page 54 of Alien Peacock
“Someone like me can’t help but read everything we come across and to remember it all,” the trash can-like robot says. “At some point in my existence, I read some reports about the Bululg. There’s no need to stare at me like that, human female.”
“Sorry.” I look back at the display. “So you have to help the slaves here, is that it?”
Arelion shrugs. “I assume so. The Archmagus said ‘those who toil there’. I can’t imagine he meant that we should help the Bululg.”
“That makes sense,” Bari agrees. “My guess is that there aren’t any Bululg here at all, just Fresks and such.” She spent most of the time in Gigori in the Bululg saucer, chatting with the computer systems and making them accept us as the new owners of the ship.
Cerak sets the saucer down among the rubble. There’s a rainstorm outside, turning the ground into small rivers and streams. “This is the only place I can spot any structures. Looks like the main entrance to the underground mines.”
I gaze at the display. It’s a big concrete cube that looks like it could house machinery and maybe a big elevator going down. “That looks nasty. What’s the plan?”
“We make our way inside,” Arelion says. “We defeat the guards and take the slaves with us in our ship. We have room for hundreds in here. We’ll take them to Gigori, I suppose.”
I pull his arm to me. “I hope there aren’t thousands. That would mean more guards than we can probably deal with. And more slaves than we can transport away.”
“Do you have your stick?” Arelion asks.
I show him. “Wouldn’t want to face hundreds of Fresk guards without my stick. And of course I have this, too.” I slap the side holster, where I carry an alien ray gun from Arelion’s army stores on Gigori. I’m wearing plates of light but strong armor over my jumpsuit, as well as a hi-tech helmet that gives me both a view of everything around me and a display that I’m sure would be helpful if I could read its alien symbols.
Virlu is wearing a full suit of armor, but no helmet would contain his head. He carries a fearsome-looking space age halberd that I think is much more deadly than that medieval weapon ever was on Earth. Sponz is his usual spectral self, holding a staff that looks a little like mine.
Arelion, wearing no armor at all, pulls me closer to him. “I still think you should stay behind here. As someone said tomerecently, this isn’t your fight.”
“Any fight against the Bululg is my fight,” I tell him firmly. “But I promise not to take unnecessary chances.”
We’ve determined that the guards will be surprised by our attack, and that they will be set up for stopping the captives from breaking out and not from well-armed enemies trying to breakin. We’ll count on the slaves turning on the guards the moment they get a chance, and we’ll give them weapons that are easy to use.
I’m painfully aware there’s only four of us. Bari obviously wouldn’t be much good in a fight, and Cerak also claims he wasnever made for what he calls ‘hopeless struggles’. Arelion seems to think that any little thing we do for the captives here in the mine should count as helping them, and so the archmagus might be satisfied.
“No reason to wait,” Arelion says. “Everyone stays behind me. Got that, Maeve? If anyone’s going to be shot here, it’s me.”
“Just don’t seek out trouble for its own sake,” I tell him. “Got that, Arelion?”
He gives me a little smirk. “Message received. Ready, Virlu?”
“Guerrilla warfare,” Virlu begins while he checks his weapon, “is a type of unconventional warfare where small groups of irregular forces take on much larger enemy forces. It often takes place inside enemy territory, and the groups often use tactics such as ambushes, sabotage, and hit-and-run attacks.”
“We will use some of those tactics,” Arelion promises. “Cerak, be ready to take off at short notice. Bari, keep sweet-talking the computer so that the ship won’t object when we bring aboard the captives.”
“It’s not like there will be anyone else to talk to here,” Bari says and looks straight at Cerak.
“Just keep your mindless chatter silent,” Cerak counters. “Or you can try to sweet-talk the ship from outside.”
Arelion checks the readout. “There should be enough oxygen, but the air is thin. Close your helmet, Maeve. It will give you the air you need until we get inside the mine.”
We’re out on the gravelly surface before I know it. The rain pummels my helmet and my armor, falling hard. The water is up to my ankles, running down a mild slope from the big cube.Arelion leads us to it, and we meet the first obstacle. There’s a big portal, but it’s closed.
He takes a black device out of his pants pocket and presses it to the door. “Cerak has prepared some door-opening tricks for us.”
“How would he know how to open a Bululg door?” I ask, having to raise my voice over the hiss from the rain falling.
Arelion shrugs. “He’s been inside a Bululg ship for a while, flying it. I suppose he knows the Bululg logic by now.”
“Uh-huh.” I have my own thoughts about that.
The portal slowly slides up on creaky iron wheels, like something out of the nineteenth century on Earth. The Resistance prepared me for alien civilizations in space to sometimes be shockingly primitive and sometimes breathtakingly advanced, and this is clearly the former. It could be a good sign — perhaps the Bululg don’t use much electronic surveillance here. At any rate, no alarm seems to have been triggered.
Inside the cube, there’s a weak light from occasional points on the walls. Apart from that, the only thing in here is a rat’s nest of pipes and old machinery and a giant lift mechanism, also looking like an eighteen-hundreds contraption. I half expect to see a steam engine to power it.