Chapter 30: Aiding Friends

Island Day 22-23

Gromorik Headquarters 350 Kilometers ESE of Port Loma:

Supreme Commander Rufchaad’s office.

Communications Specialist, Comstuk, receives a message from the lead guard, Numbals.

“Comstuk, we have rounded up over 100 new slaves for the mines. We have just met up with the group that started in the red-skinned native’s area to the far west and transported their slaves to join up with us. But now, with only 10 of us, we request permission to begin taking them to the mines.”

Security Specialist, Striktuk huffed, “How did you get so many this quickly?”

“Just following our Supreme Commanders orders, sir. After losing so many prime slaves a couple cycles ago, we decided to send his message that now we were going to take anyone strong enough to pick up and move rocks! I fear we have many old men and females in this group. The females do not move very rapidly, so we have to issue corporal punishment to keep them moving. Many of the men have become hostile because of it. That is why we must get them to the mines by Port Loma as quickly as possible. I am aware that they are needed at the larger Midlander mine, but this group will not make that distance. With only ten of us we fear a possible uprising if we try to make them walk that far.”

Striktuk grumbled into the communicator, “Ughh ... alright, but stay alert. You are going near the place you got taken advantage of, so, do not screw up again, because we don’t have the resources to help you if you run into trouble! I know how you operate, Numbals. You might want to ease up on your treatment of the prisoners. That could be why they are becoming hostile.”

Numbals laughed, “Maybe instead of the shock probe I’ll use my own ‘probe’ to give the females motivation?”

Striktuk huffed, “Numbals, your ‘probe’ is so small even the natives would scoff at you! That would only serve to slow them down further, you idiot!”

“We shall see. We should arrive at the mine in about three ronas (hours). Have the mine Supervisor be ready to put them to work! Numbals out!” He said sneering as he closed his communicator.

He knew they were much closer than that, but, after the taunting by Striktuk, he wanted to prove he was an asshole. He ordered the other guards to stop and called upon any guard who wanted, to pick a female and have his way with her!

Five guards eagerly joined Numbals, quickly picking out six of the youngest women who’d been slowing them down the most.

It took a few moments before the prisoners figured out what was happening, but then the screaming started. As the women were pulled out of line and stripped of their meager clothing, the men soon began shouting in their outrage over what was going on.

What they didn’t see was what was happening toward the back of the column...

Chen POV:

I was still thinking about what we needed to do when Annie and Maggie each grabbed one of my hands, we went invisible and took off. We were searching for the new prisoners that young Peter had told us about.

We’d only gone about half a mile when we saw the huge group of natives. They were all just standing around and there was a ton of screaming going on.

Maggie saw what was happening first and flashed in outrage, “Those bastards are raping those young native girls! We’ve gotta do something!”

Well, I wasn’t the only one who heard her! We no more than landed behind the rear guards when Max, Monte, Tiny and Jasmine all teleported in right behind us.

Before we could even think, Monte made the left rear guard’s head spin nearly 270⁰ and we heard a loud snap like a big tree limb being broken. The right guard spun to look and HIS head promptly kept spinning!

Just like that, the two rear guards were ‘neutralized’! And we now had almost 75 yards between us and the group of about 6 guards who were hastily getting undressed.

The horny bastards were so preoccupied, they had no idea what kind of hell was about to reign down upon them.

Now that Monte had used his PK to damn near decapitate the first two guards, we decided to all appear so the natives would know what was going down.

Thank God we kind of looked like them.

Our size definitely frightened them, but, at least they knew we weren’t with the bastards who had captured them.

Those closest to us were indeed from the Indian Tribe we’d first visited.

Mookie recognized me and Annie, and immediately came running over, “They’re raping my daughter, Morning Dove! They’ve been beating us and hitting us with some kind of stick that feels like being struck by lightning!”

I hugged her briefly, “Well, we’re about to put a stop to that! Please tell your people that we are all your friends, even the very big guys! Okay?”

With a tear, she nodded, “You are my hero, Wizard Chen!”

Suddenly, one of the guards looked back and saw us.

He let go of his partially lowered pants and reached for his stunner.

The next thing I knew two arrows went deep into his chest!

Tiny and Monte had already ‘reloaded’ when a second guard, now pants-less, started shouting and trying to get his ‘real’ weapon out of its holster.

I was astounded that those first two arrows had only stunned the first guard. He was gasping for air when two more arrows went into his head, finally putting him down.

Then, all hell broke loose...

Arrows began flying in from everywhere! Our native friends had come running onto the scene and, seeing Monte and Tiny shooting the one guard, decided to help.

Unfortunately, that sent all the captives scattering when wayward shots started landing all around near them.

I was going to have to instruct them about recognizing when NOT to shoot. Like when ‘friendlies’ were in the line of fire or behind their targets!

I looked further up the column and noticed one of the lead guards was already trying to use his communicator.

That could be very bad.

Thankfully Monte also saw it and let fly another of his arrows. This one was razor tipped and went right into the guard’s throat, hopefully shutting him up!

The six ‘rapist’ guards were all down now, some with as many as 10 arrows or spears protruding from their bodies.

I was shocked at the carnage.

I did a quick headcount to see if there were any more guards and found I only counted nine. I told Monte we were missing at least one and, if he were to summon help, things could get very ugly.

He nodded, went invisible and flew toward the front of the column to check it out. He flashed to us there was one guard running like his ass was on fire and yelling into his communicator. Unfortunately, Monte didn’t understand Gromorik and had no idea what was being said.

Luckily, I had an idea.

By using his ‘joining’ with Maggie, I not only ‘heard’ everything like I was actually there with him, but saw it through his eyes!

The dog-faced fucker was scared shitless and on the horn, desperately trying to reach his Commander. Fortunately, he didn’t get to say much because Monte snatched the communicator out of his hands before he could get a response. It went flying and now the fucker was up 20 feet in the air and screaming, begging for whatever was doing this to put him down.

I mentally asked Monte to bring his ass to me (and Maggie).

I wanted him to see what his fellow assholes had been doing to the young girls.

And I also planned on messing with his head!

As the guard came ‘flying’ in with the still invisible Monte, I had to yell at the natives not to shoot at him! I didn’t want them to accidentally hit my big friend. I told Monte to drop his invisibility so our ‘troops’ would understand why I stopped them.

They gasped seeing Monte suddenly appear overhead with the guard and I heard murmurings, wondering if Monte was also a wizard? I wanted to say ‘you ain’t seen nothin’ yet’, but, decided now wasn’t the time.

What it was time for was to get the hell out of the way, because, when the ‘air-borne’ guard saw his buddies looking like archery targets he puked everywhere!

Ewww, was that nasty ... what do these suckers eat?

When Monte finally set him down, the guard started yelling (in Gromorik), “You savages killed my friends! How dare you!?”

I looked into his eyes, “Uh, NO HABLA, MUTTFACE.”

After getting a confused look from everyone, except my ‘mates’, (who all started laughing or choking back a laugh), I said in Gromorik, “Say what!? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!? Just how many of this planet’s natives have YOU and your fellow aliens killed, HUH?”

He looked at me, stunned that a ‘native’ understood his language, “What do you mean? ‘Bowl calling cooking vessel black?’ I have never killed any natives ... at least, not like this!”

I’d had a feeling my metaphor wasn’t going to translate right, so I said, “Oh no? These people have told me that you’ve taken hundreds of their people to work in your mines and MOST of them have never come home! And you’ve abducted anyone with psychic abilities and they ALSO have never returned! If they’re not dead, then, where are they?!”

The guard was dazed and looking at me with either fear or respect. (They are first cousins; you know?)

He stammered, “How do you know our language? We have never taught anyone. Where did you and these, these ... GIANT BEINGS come from?”

There was some giggling and chuckling, as Sheila had been ‘with’ Maggie and Monte, translating everything to them on ‘broadcast mode’.

I grinned, “That is for me to know and you to find out. I will tell you this, we would never have killed anyone if your friends here hadn’t been raping these innocent young girls! You have a lot of nerve calling us savages. What does that make you!?”

He finally dropped his head, “I told Numbals that trying to pleasure themselves with those girls was a bad idea.”

He pointed at one of the guards with about 6 arrows in him. “You must understand ... what’s your name? In the 5 Sun cycles (years) that I have been here, not one guard has ever been attacked, or hurt, let alone killed! We had the natives convinced we were ‘Gods’ and to just obey our orders. Now, this changes everything and we will have to retaliate most harshly to re-establish our authority. High Command will be horrified that this has happened. This assignment was considered ‘low risk’ and now many of my people will be fearing for their lives, that this could happen to them, too.”

This was exactly what I was afraid of.

I decided to tell this fool my ‘stage name’, “My name is Robin Hood, what is yours? Do you speak the native language?”

He nodded his head, “My name is Molokai,” he said in English, then continued, “I’m afraid my ‘Plebeian’ is not as good as my native tongue.”

I chuckled, “Plebeian? Where did that name come from?”

He gave me a look that resembled a smirk, “We call this planet, Plebe. The natives here are so technologically backwards, they’re like a bunch of plebes. It just seemed like it fit. Our astrological designation for this planet is PB-8762, so that also prompted the name.”

I shook my head, “So you Gromoriks do actually have a sense of humor? Who would’ve thunk it? Most of the Gromoriks I knew were very stoic, and rarely if ever even smiled at anything.”

His eyes opened wide, “So, you know more of my people?”

I nodded, “Yes, the planet that I came from had both Gromoriks and Greyzarisans living and working there. Both had been there many tens of Sun cycles. What I don’t understand is, neither of them ever tried to enslave my people to do their work for them. They had these huge machines that bored into the ground, creating huge tunnels and separating out the minerals they needed. That’s why I don’t understand why you’re making these people do all the work, manually, when you can do 100 times as much with just one of those machines?”

He grunted, incredulously, “How did you know about those machines? I want to call you a liar, except that everything you just said is true. The part I still don’t understand is how could there be both my people and Greyzarisans on the same planet? The Greyzarisans are our sworn enemies, so it seems unlikely we could both occupy one planet and not be at each other’s throats.”

That confirmed what Tumrik had told Sheila.

“Earth is over twice the size of ‘Plebe’ with over 20 times the population. The gravity is more than twice what it is here, so, that may have something to do with it, also, the Earth’s sun emits much more UV light than Plebe’s sun. Neither the Grey’s nor your people hardly ever go outside, preferring to stay underground.”

Molokai nodded, “High UV light would make it highly intolerable for us. One of the things we like about this planet is their sun allows us to be outside most of the time. Our eyes and skin cannot tolerate high UV exposure. This is the first assignment where I’ve been able to be outside. It’s good that the gravity here is nearly identical to our home planet, Gromerly”

His admissions also revealed that physically, we were naturally much stronger than they were, here on this planet.

He had no idea this was the kind of information I was fishing for.

He kept looking at his dead buddies so I asked, again, “So, just where are all of the missing people, like those with psychic abilities that you’ve taken?”

He twitched, nervously, “They were sent to our home planet ... to be studied, I think.”

“And, just when will they be returned to their homes?”

“I, I ... I do not think they will ever be returned. It takes one and a half sun cycles just to make the journey to Gromerly from here. It is my understanding most do not survive our testing.”

“So, if you don’t feel that’s barbaric, perhaps we should take you somewhere and cut you open so we can study YOU.”

His eyes popped wide open, “NO, PLEASE, I am not the one who decides what is done with them! I just told you what I know. As for the slaves, many die in the mines when they cave in or are killed trying to escape. We only stun them the first time they try, but they are warned that a second attempt will result in their deaths. The ones who obey and work hard ARE released after two Sun cycles. It is not our fault that most do not survive that long.”

Monte was getting pissed, “These people are not experienced miners! You know that! I also know you have the technology to make the job safer, so, why don’t you use it? On Earth, your people’s tunnels and mines NEVER cave in!”

“That’s because of the machines we use! We are forbidden to use any technology beyond the native’s natural stage of technological development. I do not agree with that policy, but, it is what it is because of the agreement we have with the Triloks. Do you know of the Triloks?”

Monte huffed, “Yes! They’re a bunch of arrogant, scientific eggheads who’ve supposedly been seeding different planets with human beings so they can study their natural development. Are you saying you’ve got some kind of treaty with them?”

“Yes. They promised not to go to war with us and let us mine this planet as long as we don’t expose the natives to any advanced technology. Our weapons were allowed, as long as we had them believing we were ‘gods’.”

Maggie sneered at that, “And they didn’t have any objections to YOU people using the natives as slaves!?”

“No, they are only concerned about not advancing their technology. They haven’t given us any trouble about so many being killed, either. We even tried helping to reinforce the mines to minimize cave-ins, but, THAT they had a problem with! They took exception since we were using steel that was several hundreds of sun cycles beyond the native’s current technology. We had to make the steel disappear and promise not to do it again. We had to use wooden reinforcement, but, it is not as good as steel and that’s why there have been so many cave-ins.”

My friends were all shocked at these admissions. I was thinking at some point these Triloks were going to discover OUR ‘intentional interference’ and we’d be dealing with them much more indignantly than these Gromoriks have.

I didn’t know much about Triloks, but, Monte and his friends seemed to. Maggie, thru our connection, told me Charlie’s brother, Bob, had a very interesting confrontation with one, named ‘Sintar’ and had the sucker thinking he was ‘Captain Kirk’ from “Star Trek”! She said she’d tell me the whole story later, but, it was quite funny. She also said the Triloks were like the Gromoriks, as far as not having any psychic abilities.

THAT was also good to know if we ever have to face them.

I’d been thinking about the Gromoriks we just killed and what to do with them.

Having a witness was leading me to revert to my old ways of doing things, i.e., just killing the witness and burying ALL the bodies. I had a feeling that wasn’t going to fly with Monte and company.

Until ... Maggie came into my head, “Why don’t we just push the living guard into saying what we want? Then we can bury the rest! What we don’t want is to start a war right now.”

“That’s a great idea. I think we need to find out all we can from this guy, Molokai, first. Like, just where these mines are that all these prisoners were being taken to?”

We’d been on ‘broadcast’ mode, so everyone from the island could also hear and add their input.

Tiny chimed in, “Chen, are you thinking we should go to the mines and liberate all of the prisoners there?”

“I don’t know, let’s interrogate Molokai and see how far away it is and what kind of garrison they have there.”

Max said, “We should round up all of these dead guys’ weapons and tech, don’t you think? I don’t believe we should let our little friends have any of those weapons yet, right?”

“You got that right! Why don’t you and Tiny do that while Monte, Maggie and I interrogate Molokai. Jasmine and Annie, would you two start getting all of these former prisoners out of here? Make sure they hide out for a few days, just in case there are reprisals. Also, get with our new ‘troops’ and see if they’ll help find a secluded spot nearby so we can bury these dead guards. We don’t want these guys found if we can help it.”

Annie nodded and she and Jasmine started dispersing the crowd, while Max and Tiny started rounding up all the Gromorik tech.