Spartacus

[Ramius85]

You know that helpless feeling where you have done everything possible and you're still in the shit. I had never experienced it, even while fighting the Khaak, after being shot up by those damned scouts, but I always had some trick, some technique, something else I could try, but not now. Now I was floating along in a spacesuit at 12 kps and that harrier hauler was getting pretty damn big.

Jinking and juking hadn't worked, just waisted propellant. There was now way in hell I could outrun him, just maybe I could overpower him before we could get docked. I still had my service pistol, I could do some damage once on board, maybe even use his ship to exact some revenge. I slowed up and pulled my pistol and waited. I could see his cargo bay doors open as he slid over me. I scanned the bay as the door closed and I thought I was alone.

When the seal was reestablished, I moved to the hatch and began working on getting the door opened. I didn't see the Paranid bastard sneak up on me before he pulled my life support hose. I spun to fight him off but my suit was quickly ran out of air and my world faded to gray then black.

I had engaged the harrier and his buddies around the north gate of CBSW and if I had to guess, I would say I was taken to the Pirate base in the Ore Belt. But determining ones location can be imensley difficult from the inside of a slave pen. Although anyone has the right to complain in this sort of situation, I decided it could have been worse. I had an entire cell to myself, yeah, doesn't make up for the fact that I was going to be sold like an Argnu at auction. And as I lay trying to get some sleep, my morbid sense of self-importance figured I would bring in a nice price.

I was wrong. I was on display for only a few seconds when I was sold for a measly 1200 cr., that hurt my pride just a smidge. My new 'Master' was the station manager of a mine somewhere in paranid space. He had it figured that slave labour would save a ton of credits that could line his pockets while his parent company was none the wiser. Before I could say, "but it's a bug", I was thrown into a cage with four other new aquisitions in the hold of an ore hauler.

My new buddies were all humans and none too happy about our situation. One, his name was Binks or Brink, something like that, decided we should have a good ol' fashioned slave revolt. "You wanna get us all spaced, Spartacus?" I asked him, nobody else thought the joke was funny. Later that night a behemath of a man with a stern and grim look came over to me.

"Why did you call him Spartacus? That is not his name." This fellow seemed genuinely confussed so I explained the tail of Spartacus and how he lead a slave revolt that nearly brought the Roman empire to it's knees. I told him of how Spartacus faught and eventually died in the defense of freedom. While I explained it to him, my heart sored with hope of a Spartacus to save the day, my new friend just looked more confussed when he walked back to his bed.

Come the morning our friend, the loud mouth revolutionary, got the revolt beat out of him and that put and end to his big talk, and then we were introduced to the mine. We helped Binks to the infirmery before being shown how to use the equipment. It was a dirty and dangereous job and we had casualties. We lost one guy to a back fire on his mining lazer, killing him and injuring about four others. Binks died after a ceiling collapsed on him, he never fully recovered from his first beating and was too slow to clear the tunnel. I nearly bought the farm myself Grimm pulled my out from under a shaky overhang.

After three months of this brutal work in worse conditions only myself, Grimm, and a fella named Huri were left of the five that were bought together. In that three months time 46 men lost their lives down in those tunnels and nobody cared but us. Even the Paranid inspectors who knew we were slaves acted as if he didn't even see us. It was as if it was good for Paranid business, the ends justified the means.

Grimm, the nickname had stuck to my large friend, it turned out wasn't very literate and very ignorant of a lot. I did my best to teach him to read and write. Between me and Huri, he got an education in history, math, and science. One day I caught Grimm adding and subtracting using the unrefined ore nuggets. He looked at me and proudly declared "If I have thirty nuggets, and only seventeen have ore, then I have thirteen are just stone." I shot him a smile and a thumbs up and he wore a smile from ear to ear for the rest of the day.

After six months on the rock, Grimm was working on long division and the guards got bored. It started with them comming down too hard for minor infractions, like stopping to wipe sweat from his forhead, had got a man beaten pretty bad. This escilated to the random beatings, of which I recieved one or two. For no other reason than being around when a guard felt like hitting something, a man could be beat.

Grimm, Huri, and I were eating supper while we discussed history, Huri got thirsty and went for some water. I didn't see what set them off but the guards started in on Huri something fierce. I didn't see most of what happened, as I was trying to keep Grimm from getting his skull knocked as well, then I would have two to carry to see the doctor. I did however turn in time to see Huri on all fours and a guards boot connect with the back of Huri's head, with a sickining crunch.

I felt Grimm freeze behind me. The guards retreated half a step, enough for me to dart in to Huri's side. As I rolled my friend over, it was very clear that he had passed on the the next world. I felt a wave of rage wash over me. I remembered Binks' beating that lead to his death, I saw so many die in this damned mine, but those had all been accidents, this was just murder, plain and simple.

I laid my friend on the floor and said goodbye. I figured I would be joining him soon, so I thought I should get that out of the way. Before he relized that he was unarmed, I had grabbed a guards side arm, leveled, and removed a good chunk of his head from his shoulders. As the guard's body fell towards the floor, Grimm and the others joined into the fray. In a matter of seconds three guards were dead and a group of thirty slaves were on the warpath. We stormed out of our habitat, over taking four more guards. The more guards they threw against us the more furiosity and firepower grew.

Of all the nightmarish things I have seen and done in my life, the image that stands out as I think of these events is one of Grimm. He is crushing the skull of a guard with his mine strengthed hands. We rampaged until we came to the blast doors that sealed off the command deck of the station. I called for a mining lazer to be brought up to cut our way in and get the people that had made life a living hell since we got to this place.
The lazers were unwieldy in zero-g let alone in gravity. It took three men to mucsle it into place. We were chomping at the bit to get at our slave handlers and the minutes it took to burn our way onto the command deck felt like an eternity. The next few minutes were as close to hell as man can get without satan getting jealous. When the smoke cleared all the guards were dead, the station manager was wounded but still breathing, and we had lost eleven of our thirty, with another ten wounded. Now I had a very serious decision to make and it didn't take me long.

The station manager what hauled down to the docking bay, where he was uncerimoniously into an airlock. We watched him beg for mercy for a second or two before opening it up to vaccume. He dissappeard into the blackness of space and that was that. Grimm found me in the middle of all the mess, "I guess you are Spartacus now." A couple of fellas near by just laughed, but Grimm looked serious, it would be something we talked about later. We saw that our dead were placed in an old tunnel of the mine and sealed it.

In the chaos of the fighting the stations demeter was ignored, so after re-chrissining it the 'Amastad', we boarded and looked to put our days as slaves behind us and get back to Argon space. If only it were that simple.

[Cantankerous]

Damned good start Ramius. I look forward to the next installment.

---As an aside, not a criticism, the Paranid are even more massively strong than the Split than the Split are when compared to human beings. Even a truly huge human being would have a hard time over powering the equivalent of a little Paranid girl, much less crushing her head.


Isshia