Page 57 of Alien Peacock
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The Fresk guards have foolishly spread themselves out through the mine, some standing alone and trying to not fall asleep, some in pairs. Guided by the four captives, we seek out each single guard, one after the other. I step out in front of the guard, wings spread, staring down at him and stealing absolutely all of his attention for a short moment. Then Sponz knocks him out from behind.
It works well for the first six. Sponz isn’t too gentle with the Fresks, and I suspect one or two of them will never quite recover. But that’s war.
It’s the seventh that goes wrong. Just as I’m about to step out in front of the guard, I notice a captive is staring at me, too. And I stare back at the captive.
As the guard checks what that captive is looking at, he spots me in the shadows. I’m frozen for one short moment, my mind in turmoil.
The Fresk yells, a high-pitched bellow that resonates through the whole mine. I briefly reflect that Fresks were made for guard duty — their voices are like big alarm horns.
Sponz knocks the guard out, but the damage has been done. The yell is being taken up by more guards all over the mine.
“Someone will be coming soon,” I tell everyone. “We don’t have time to be nice to them. Use your guns. There are still thirteen guards left.”
We run to a spot in the shadows where we can surprise any Fresk coming around the corner. We have given all the guns away to the captives we’ve rescued, and about twenty of them are now armed. We should be able to finish this.
But the guards are smarter than I thought.
“They’re not coming,” Maeve says tightly. “They may have trained for something like this.”
“All they have to do is go to the guardhouse and lock themselves in,” a captive says, his Interspeech better than my own. “We can’t get out anyway, and all the food and water is in the guardhouse. If we want to live, we have to let them out. And then we’re back where we started, except they will demand harder work and less rest as punishment.”
“But now, the elevator works even without a Bululg to unlock it,” I state. “We can just use it to ascend. The guards are working with wrong data.”
The armed captives go to get all the other ones. They gather in the elevator hall, everyone being very quiet. Maybe ten of them are Earthlings, but the majority are aliens of other species. They all appear to understand some Interspeech.
“They still don’t trust us,” Maeve says softly. “They think we’re taking them to sell them as slaves or to use them as labor somewhere else. They are also suspicious about how easy this seems to have been.”
I nod. “It’s a fair concern. Take this.” I hand her my gun and walk towards the big group of aliens, my hands clearly empty. “Friends! You are understandably not sure about what is happening. I am Arelion from the planet Eo. I was asked to help free the captives at Sprenk, and I had the resources to do so. Maeve is a freedom fighter from Earth who has dedicated her life to resist the Bululg. Virlu and Sponz have fought other oppressors, and I intend to fight the oppressor of my own planet. Up on the surface, we have a ship with room for all of you. It is a Bululg flying saucer, which we were able to take over in a recent battle. That also answers why we were able to use the elevator.”
I take a break to let them digest what I’ve said.
“Anyone,” I go on, “who wants to stay here or to be taken up to the surface and make their own way from there are of course free to do so. But we have room for you all. We want to take you to a safe asteroid that I happen to own, where you may recover and consider your options as free people in a dangerous galaxy. I know many of you have had bad experiences with the galactic civilization. This is in fact agoodexperience. We have no ulterior motives!”
I make another pause, feeling the atmosphere is changing. I see smiles and nudges among the crowd of males.
“I suppose I could point to your friends, former captives, who are right now holding weapons that we gave them. But you have already seen them, and you understand what it means: you are no longer slaves. Slaves are never armed. But you are different. You arefree. And now, you are armed anddangerous!” I speak the last word extra loudly, and finally I get a cheer from the crowd.
“If you are still not at ease, tell me what I can do to help with that,” I finish before I take Maeve’s hand and lead her onto the elevator platform. “But now, let’s leave this terrible place behind.”
I press Cerak’s door-opening device to the appropriate panel. It unlocks, and soon after we’re on the way up. As far as I can tell, every captive is with us on the platform.
Virlu comes in close. “Recruitment is the process of attracting and enlisting suitable individuals to serve in the military,” he says softly.
“I have thought about it,” I tell him. “Maeve may be able to recruit members of her Resistance from this group. I imagine most of them must come from Bululg-invaded planets, and they likely hate them just as much as she does.” I know that Virlu really meant that I should try to recruit them to my own army. But there’s absolutely no way I’ll bring aliens to fight on Eo. My war with Buroteo must be fully legitimate.
I look around and spot the captive who made me freeze up. The crowd parts respectfully as I carefully make my way over to him.
“Honored Sir,” I use the polite phrase in my native Eoan, “what has happened to you?”
The male can’t meet my gaze. “Glorious Sir,” he says with an honorific we reserve for only those we admire intensely, “I found myself at odds with Buroteo. He took exception to it. He had this done to me, and then I was sent here.”
He’s an Eoan, but his wings have had the feathers pulled off, leaving them as horrific stumps of pink, bony skin. His head comb is the same, brutally cut off at the root. I wince at the sight. He’s a deep red, and he must have looked spectacular before.
“Such dishonor,” I state, my voice trembling from the horror of it.
To pluck the feathers from a man, to render him bare and unadorned, is to shear all manliness, all beauty, and all grace from him. Even bad criminals never have that done to them, unless they have done it to someone first. Some of his feathers will grow back, but never as thickly as before. And the finest feathers, those with the beautiful patterns of color, never grow back. Nor does the head comb.