Chapter 6

The trip to Mesa took almost a month, since they wanted to avoid detection. They bought food for the trip before they left, and Aelinor/Armor flew much of it to caches along their route so that they would not have to carry very much food in the wagons. The trip was arduous, but not so bad that there were any dropouts along the way. They had to double-hitch the teams to the wagons to get up the mesa road without having to make multiple trips. The wagons had been so heavily loaded that it was really a wonder that they had all made it to Mesa without at least one breaking down.

They made their way up the road and parked at the site Aelinor had selected for their town. It took a whole day to get a wagon up the road to the summit of Mesa, so it took two days to get everything in place. Once they were all in place, Aelinor sabotaged the bridge so that only light foot traffic could safely make it to their sanctuary. The bridge could be repaired quickly and easily when they needed to move wagons, again.

They wanted to get started right away to building their barracks and service buildings. Joe supervised the construction, and Brad supervised the felling of the trees in a nearby forest down on the plain. Aelinor was strong enough to transport each log, one at a time, to the construction site, so there was steady progress. Construction went so fast that they lived in the tents for only 2 weeks after their arrival at Mesa. They built two gender-specific barracks, a dining hall, a shared shower, a partitioned latrine, a kitchen, and several small cabins which were to be used as a combination of office and sleeping quarters for the "officers." All of this construction took a total of about 3 months, but they were able to settle in before the cold weather arrived.

The cold weather meant that the men were staying in town more than usual, and this created a problem. The men and women had more time to socialize and pair-bonds began to form. There was nothing inherently wrong with this, in fact it was a good thing. But, the problem was that there were more men than women. Aelinor was afraid that jealousies would develop, so she began looking for ways to cut that off before it became a significant problem. The best way to do that was to recruit more women, and the best way to do that was to raid the brothel caravans.

Armor, Aelinor, and Brad decided to establish a campaign of raiding the brothel caravans, but they wanted to do it in such a way as to keep Mesa from being discovered until they had recruited more fighters. They decided that the best way to accomplish that was to hit caravans at scattered sites, and none of those sites should be close to Mesa. The first raid originating from Mesa on a brothel caravan was scheduled to leave in two weeks.

They had no trouble knowing when a caravan was due in a certain location because the schedule was posted in several places in every town. The people knew that they would be severely punished if they did not cooperate with the brothel schedule, so the Glaxoi had no qualms about posting the dates when the women should gather to be selected. All Aelinor had to do was to fly into a town after dark and read the posted schedule. That told her all she needed to know.

The brothel caravan they selected to hit first was scheduled to be at a good ambush location about 2 days' travel from Mesa. That was a little close, but the opportunity was just too good to miss. The ambush site was similar to the one they had used before, so they planned on using the same tactics. The first and last drivers in line were shot first, followed by all of the other men in the caravan, both drivers and guards. There were 23 women who had already been collected by the caravan master, and everyone was anxious to join the rebels. It seemed that the ruler of this district was especially hated by the women; he was unusually sadistic in his treatment of women, even for a Glaxan.

They suddenly had an embarrassment of riches when it came to women recruits. These were enough women to make up partners with the remaining unmatched men, so this kicked the caravan raiding to an unexpected halt while the situation worked itself out. Now, they were short of men! They returned to Mesa to work out their next step.

Everybody in leadership positions agreed that they needed more men, both to satisfy the women that they would be rescuing from the brothels and to build up their fighting force. As much as women were welcomed to the infantry, they still needed to have a majority of men just to do the jobs requiring brute physical strength. The problem was: where to find these men.

A lot of discussion finally resolved the question; they would raid the jails. Men were put in jail, women were put in brothels. The jail population consisted of very few real criminals; most of the men in jail were there simply because that's where men were put whenever an excuse could be found. The men were collected in jails until June 21^st, when they were all ceremoniously killed for the enjoyment of the Glaxoi, usually as painfully as possible. The men all knew that they were going to be burned at the stake or crucified, so they could be expected to welcome rescue from the jails. These jailbirds had nothing good to look forward to, so they should be easy to recruit, either as fighters or workers.

The town of Allish looked like a good target. That jail was located at a convenient place for attack and it was poorly constructed for defense. The building had started out in life as a warehouse, and it had never been upgraded. Conditions inside were miserable, and they only had to breach one door to gain entry. There were no individual cells, so it would be an easy "smash and grab" operation.

The plan was to infiltrate the town during the day and to attack that night after the guards had enough time to get sleepy. They were not going to be coy with their attack. Most of the attackers would form an arc around the main door and keep the guards at a safe distance by using their crossbows. A few of the men would form a guard around Aelinor while she used her fire tool to burn the lock off the door. Once the door was open, Aelinor's guard would rush into the jail and tell everybody that they were being rescued. Anybody who was too stupid to leave was not to be argued with; he would be left to the tender mercies of the Glaxoi. Any prisoner who was physically incapable of escaping, but wanted to leave would be helped out of the jail and supported on their return to Mesa.

Brad led the men forming the protective arc, and he had his men in place before the guards were even aware that they were under attack. The guards' previous experience had been that nobody was stupid enough to attack or resist a member of the police/military force. Such an action would get a man thrown into jail in anticipation of the next big "celebration." Therefore, they really didn't do any guarding of anything; they just showed up so that they could collect their pay and stay out of jail, themselves.

The rebels didn't make a big deal out of their attack; they just formed their defensive arc and waited for developments. Aelinor and her men approached the target door and Aelinor burned off the lock without wasting time on any sort of ceremony. They pushed the door open, and her men rushed in to wake up the prisoners. There was the usual confusion and incomprehension on the part of the prisoners, but they finally understood what was going on and were easily convinced that they wanted to join the rebels. One man, with a recently broken leg, was carried out, but all of the others were able to move on their own.

The guards were so shocked at the temerity of the rebels that none approached the invaders, and they ran away when the prisoners started coming out of the jail. It was possibly the easiest jail break in the history of the human race—every participant simply walked briskly away, nobody even had to run. The rebels didn't care, but the Glaxan ruler had the door repaired and refilled the jail from the luckless guards who had been on duty that night.

The former prisoners were in pretty sad shape, so it took a bit longer than expected for the raiding party to return to Mesa. There was a big celebration when they did, and everybody got to meet everybody else. Each of the new recruits was carefully interviewed, and the only man not accepted for membership in the band was a chronic rapist who deserved the death the Glaxoi had scheduled for him. He was executed and dumped off the side of the mesa; life continued at a very pleasant pace for everybody else.