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The Chronicles of Rina Balan - Part TWO |
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SP397: The Mines
Number 742536 had been working on fixing Arulia in secret for two months. She had gotten some of the main systems up and running and repaired most of the computers. Life support worked so she no longer had to spend hours in freezing temperatures in an uncomfortable surface suit. It was taking so long. The engines were giving her so much trouble, she needed more than what Arulia had crashed with. The hyperspace engine was beyond all repair, even the pathetic kind she had been using. The inertial dampeners might work sometime in the future but they were low on her list. If she was going to make anymore progress Arulia said she had to reroute a bunch of circuit relays because there wasn’t enough power getting to main control conduit. Without the power being maintained constantly things were going slower than Arulia had first expected.
Arulia didn’t like being on this planet and the more she watched the girl the more she didn’t understand why she was helping her. She didn’t understand why the girl was there either. She was sweet but she was hiding something. And what the hell was a Keeper? She’d said she was going to return in a few hours, after her work was over. Again, another mystery, she never told Arulia what it was that she did. Nor why she kept showing up seriously injured. After a while Arulia stopped asking why or how she was hurt because she never answered, she would just asked what to do next. She wanted to fix Arulia and Arulia didn’t understand why.
But at the moment she needed to get to work. She picked up her pick-axe and slammed it into the tunnel wall, trying to dislodge a piece of the element. She was sweating and if it didn’t come loose soon she wasn’t going to make her quota for the day. And she needed to make her quota or Durna would be angry. And the angrier Durna was the less time she had to fix Arulia, the farther it was till she could escape. She felt a whip hit her back as she hit the wall again.
“Work faster!” yelled Foreman as he hit her a second time. Foreman was Durna’s second in command, he followed her everywhere and didn’t get beaten and loved to hurt others. He couldn’t care less about 742536 and only hit her because Durna wanted him to. And he did whatever Durna wanted. 742536 had been skipping meals lately and Durna wanted to know why. Foreman thought that it was obvious, the old lady she was always with was dying; she had little more than a month to live. They wanted to be near each other. He might not understand why but it made some sense. That was it would make sense to him if he had a brain. Sometimes, when he tried really hard to think, it would almost seem as though he had at least a very small brain. But for the most part he was just an idiot with a whip.
She put all her weight into the pickaxe with every swing. Even she was panting now. They’d been working for hours. She was the strongest worker but this seemed impossible. The part she was trying to chip away must have gone deeper than she had first thought. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She had to focus all of her energy on her arms. It was a technique she developed and it always worked. She just had to imagine the part she wanted ripping out of the wall and hit it. She hit the mineral and it fell out.
“Got it!” yelled 742536 and Foreman come over to look at her.
“Big,” he said. It was almost a sentence.
“Can I go to lunch?”
“Lunch?”
“Food.”
“I know lunch.”
“And?”
“You go.” She nodded and left. It was then that Foreman remembered his job and followed her. Lucky for 742536 that Foreman was a big idiot and she figured out he was following her. She also figured it out why so today instead of working on Arulia she went to see Grandmother.
“How are you feeling?” asked 742536.
“I’m dying.” She took a breath.
“I swear I’m going as fast as I can.”
“You can’t save me.”
“Yes I can, I know I can.”
“Child.”
“I don’t want to hear it; I know what I can do.”
“Child, listen to me, stop worrying about me and start thinking about yourself.”
“Grandmother-.”
“No excuses, stop with this silly business before you get yourself killed.” She hung her head down and finished her meal in silence. She knew what she had to do and she knew that she could do it. She just wished Grandmother could see what she saw. If there was a chance she could save her, Grandmother would’ve been insane to think she wouldn’t try to do it.
SP397: Arulia’s Crash Site
She had had to wait to see Arulia until dinner time, when Foreman was reporting that she was sneaking off to see Grandmother instead of to go fix a crashed ship. If Durna found out she was going to be in a whole lot of trouble. When she reached out Arulia the ship was in a foul mood.
“You’re late,” said Arulia.
“Sorry, I got in trouble ‘cause I keep sneaking off here,” said 742536.
“And you’re bleeding?”
“I took too long in my work today.”
“And what is it that you do?”
“Arulia!”
“What? You never answer any of my questions.”
“I’m doing you a favor, stop annoying me.”
“Fine, I won’t tell you what to do next.”
“Arulia!”
“Tell me why you’re fixing me.”
“You were in pain; I’m doing something nice for you.”
“And why?”
“Arulia! I’m being nice, so stop being annoying.”
“Just tell me why?” At first it looked like the girl was going to explode but she took a deep breath and continued in a very serious and calm tone.
“Arulia? I’ve never been anywhere but this horrible planet and I want to. I want to go somewhere else. I want to escape.”
“And you want me to help you?”
“Yes, I need a ship; you need a pilot and a mechanic. We need each other.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you’d say no.”
“Of course I will, I’ll take you wherever you want to go.” She came so close to smiling, but her face was so hardened it looked like she had never done it before. It was as though she wasn’t quite sure how to smile and had given it a try.
“You will?”
“Yes.”
“And another.”
“Another?”
“Just one. She’s sick, she needs help.”
“Take her to a hospital; you do have one of those on this planet?”
“Seeing as how I have no idea what that is, I’m going to go with no.”
“It’s where sick people go to get treatment and get better.”
“We have nothing like that here.” Arulia wanted to ask but she didn’t, the girl had talked and told her things, sort of. It wasn’t a good idea to push it.
“Okay, now to get better power distribution you need to mess with the crystal that controls them. Take the top left one and switch it with the middle right one.” They worked for hours before 742536 had to return for bed check. They had to leave soon if they were ever going to leave at all. They had fixed the sublet engines that night. They could leave soon and make the rest of the repairs in space. Since the hyperspace engines were shot beyond anything they could do, it was going to take them a long time to get anywhere. The first thing to do was to get Grandmother off of SP397.
SP397: Grandmother’s Cave
742536 had overslept. She never did that, it wasn’t a good thing to do. But no one had noticed because there were other things going on. She noticed the center of it was at Grandmother’s Cave. She ran through the crowd and they let her through. Her strength was legendary and everyone knew how close she was to Grandmother. When she finally got there the first thing she saw was the blood. There was so much of it. Then she saw Grandmother. She was dead, someone had killed her. She’d been stabbed repeatedly, she must have suffered. She should’ve been here, she should’ve protected her. But she’d been working on Arulia. Grandmother was right she should’ve stopped with the foolishness. Now she was dead and she was all alone. She was screaming, nothing coherent, just rage.
“Who did this?” yelled 742536.
“It was Durna,” said someone eventually. They were scared. Durna had been afraid of Grandmother. In truth she had had more influence than Durna and that scared her. With her gone, Durna would have full control and 742536 was very angry. She stood up and started to run to the exit but someone grabbed her. It was 678231; he was the closest person to her age, having just barely turned twenty. And he was very pale, weak and he wasn’t going to last much longer himself before Durna found him useless and sent him to the surface to die.
“What are you doing?” asked 678231.
“Something I should’ve done a long time ago.” She broke free.
“Wait! You can’t do anything. Durna’s too strong now. Think! Think!”
“I don’t want to think.” She ran outside and up the chamber to Durna’s cave. She almost didn’t go in; she was so terrified of that room. But she was more angry than scared and she barged in before she lost her confidence.
“You!” yelled Durna as she got up from behind her desk.
“What did you do!” yelled 742536.
“What? Are you angry that I killed the old hag?”
“Why?”
“She was useless to me.”
“That’s all that’s important to you isn’t? What’s of use to you?”
“Of course!”
“I hate you! You a horrible person! A horrible, evil, disgusting thing!”
“You think you words means anything to me?” She hit her and 742536 went to the ground with the huge force. She started bleeding. She didn’t want to be Durna’s slave anymore. Her whole life she’d served this evil creature and she wouldn’t do it anymore. She closed her eyes and imagined hitting her with her axe just like in the tunnels when she dealing with a hard stone. She could just hit her and she’d go away. Just like the element would go flying out. She opened her eyes, she stared at Durna.
Then the strangest things happened. Durna gagged. 742536 was acting on pure instinct now, instincts she’d never used before. She threw her hands at Durna, never getting close enough to touch her and Durna went flying into the air. She hit her desk, hard. Her eyes blanked over and 742536 realized what she had done and raced over to Durna. She was dead and she was covered in her blood. There was a lot of blood. She wasn’t sure how but she’d killed Durna.
She ran back, away from the body. She stared at Durna’s body, she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. She couldn’t do anything but stare at her. That’s when she saw it. There was a key lying on the floor next to Durna. She knew what it was for immediately. She’d seen it used before. She reached out and grabbed it. Every slave on SP397 had an electronic collar around their necks and a locator on their ankles. On Durna’s command they would send electronic shocks through the wearer. She took the key and unlocked her collar and anklet. They fell to the ground. It was a strange sensation as the air rushed around her newly revealed flesh. It was cold.
Foreman rushed into the office and took one look at Durna and knew she was dead. He saw the blood on her and even his tiny little brain was able to put it all together.
“You killed her!” yelled Foreman and he rushed at her. She barely dogged him. He grabbed his whip and hit her and few times before she fought back. She grabbed the whip right from his hands and hit him.
“Never again!” screamed 742536, “I will never again be a slave.” She knocked him out, he was still alive. But his blood was all over her and she ran out. She had to get away. She knew what was going to happen next. Whoever it was that really ran the Slave Planets would send a replacement. And the replacement would make a point of killing her in the most brutal way to restore order. She ran out of the office and all of the other slaves saw the blood on her and knew Durna was dead. She didn’t have anywhere else to go and she somehow made it to Arulia’s crash site. She climbed in the back of the ship and closed the door behind her. Arulia’s power came on, she was confused.
“What’s going on? What happened?” asked Arulia and 742536 fell down where she kneeled on the ground.
“Arulia?”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Arulia?”
“Child? What’s with all the blood? Are you hurt?”
“Arulia we need to go now!”
“What happened? The blood?”
“It’s not mine, we have to leave.”
“What happened?”
“Durna’s dead, we need to run now.”
“What about the other?”
“Dead, leave now.”
“Kid, what’s going on?”
“We have to escape, please, you promised.”
“Fine, hold on to something.” She took off and it felt like the whole world was falling apart. She thought she was going to be sick and eventually they leveled off as they entered space. It looked like she was going to cry.
“Wow.”
“Please tell me.”
“Durna killed Grandmother. I lost my temper, I didn’t mean to, I don’t know how I did it. She just flew into the air. And now she’s dead. I killed her.”
“Okay, so kid, you never told me your name.”
“Name?”
“What do people call you?”
“I am 742536.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“It’s not a name, it’s a number.”
“What? Where were we?”
“We were on SP397, it’s a slave planet, I’m a slave. Slaves don’t have names. Only numbers.”
“742536? Well, that certainly won’t do, I shall have to give you a name.”
“I’m a slave. Slaves, do not have names.”
“Child you’re no longer a slave.” But the girl had passed out on the floor. In her mind, Arulia smiled.
 Zegwarian310 · Tue Aug 14, 2007 @ 12:07am · 0 Comments |
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