My Kingdom Come book 1: The Saints We See

661 standard years after the signing of the Alliance treaty

Hathu staggered to where the bunker was buried on the other side of the slave cages and dropped his two heavy sacks to the ground. He rubbed a hand over his ribs and let out a soft breath. This had not been a good week to take one of his father’s beatings.

He crouched down and pressed his hand to the bunker scanner, hoping that his handprint was still one of the key codes. It scanned his hand and sounded the green chime. Hathu let out a breath of relief and pulled the heavy door open letting out a soft grunt of pain.

The bunker smelled musty and damp. It didn’t smell like anyone had been down there in years. Hathu turned on his electric light and descended the steps into the gloom.

The bunker wasn’t very big. Only a couple of grown Ir’Klahn men could have fit inside at a time. Every wall was lined with amateurly built wooden shelves from bottom to top. The shelves were lined with black cases filled with weapons. Second hand weapons Nediz bought while he was away buying second hand slaves.

When Nediz had bought the weapons they had been part of his plan to arm his new world. Now that He was head guard at the prison, he could order all the new weapons he wanted and the emperor paid the bill.

Hathu pulled cases off the shelves looked inside then replaced them again. He’d never been down there before and he didn’t know what sort of weapons his father was storing. Fortunately there were a good number of plasma rifles and lots of recharge packs.

He climbed out of the bunker and lifting each of the sacks with effort, he dropped them down the stairs. He went back down the stairs and emptied the sacks on the floor. They had been full of stones. He began filling the sacks with plasma rifles and recharge packs, while filling the empty cases with rocks. Hopefully if anyone came to retrieve the cases of weapons, they wouldn’t check inside till later.

He thought about the little trip to the beach he had made the previous morning before school. He had carefully crept down the beach along the tree line, figuring that wherever the three groups his father had spoken of a few days ago were supposed to meet on the beach it probably wouldn’t be too far from the main town, since they were planning on moving families. He had been right.

About half a mile from the main pathway that led from the town to the beach, he found two cargo shuttles parked on the sand. A single prison guard stood watch over them, or rather had been sitting. The man on watch had been sitting in the sand, leaning on his blaster, staring out to sea.

Hathu continued to shift weapons from cases to sacks, while he wracked his brains for everything he knew about cargo shuttles. They were generally used to transport cargo from orbit to planetside when there weren’t proper landing docks, or if there were only small landing docks. Sometimes they were used to transport cargo over long distances on planet. There was no reason for a couple of cargo shuttles to be there on the beach, much less in the penal colony. They got all their goods two to four times a year from small hauling ships that landed in the prison cargo docks. The ore the prisoners mined were also carried off planet by small hauling ships. These cargo shuttles had to be what Nediz would be using to transport his group. If he was planning to be ‘long gone’ before the emperor found out what had happened, they had to have some sort of space worthy ship nearby that they would be flying the cargo shuttles to.

There wasn’t enough room in the cargo shuttles to move everyone on the penal colony, and Nediz had sounded like he wanted to move everyone he was moving at the same time. He was probably only going to take the families that were already devoted to his cause, whatever prisoners he could convince to go along with them and…apparently the older students from the school. Hathu swallowed and frowned.

He knew that there were plenty of prisoners who were working out the remainder of their days in the penal colony mines. Many of them were very receptive to Nediz’s particular brand of utopia. Hathu wondered what would happen to the rest of the prisoners who simply wanted to work their sentence out and go home.

Hathu had filled the sacks with as much weight as he could carry right now. He looked around to make sure he hadn’t left anything out of place and lugged the heavy sacks back up out of the bunker. He set the sacks down and shut the heavy door, making sure it locked. He lifted the sacks again and began the long trek to where he would stash the weapons until they were needed. His eye caught on the empty slave cages as he walked.

His father had said there would be a hunt in two weeks, but there were no slaves to hunt.

Hathu walked the thirty minutes or so to the little cave on the cliffs above the beach that he’d found while exploring as a child. He was a lot bigger now than he had been back then, so it was a bit of a squeeze for him to get through the entrance. Once he was inside, the cave opened up a bit more. He went to the back of the small space and did his best to hide the sacks of weapons behind the small pile of boulders there.

Hathu squeezed back out of the cave and started making his way towards school. He had to circle back around the town and enter it where he usually did on his way to school. He walked a little bit out of his way to pass by Narish’s home. He saw Narish walking a bit ahead of him and hurried to catch up.

“Narish!”

Narish turned to see who was calling him, then frowned and paused.

“Good morning.” Hathu said as he came along side of Narish.

“What do you want Hathu?”

“How is training coming along with red team?”

Narish gave him a disgruntled look. “Fuck off, Hathu.” He turned to walk away.

“Narish, wait. I want to ask you something.”

Narish stopped walking and turned to looked at Hathu skeptically.

“Have you ever thought of joining up with another team in the game to take out the other two teams?”

Narish blinked.

“Blue and red teams are at a slight field disadvantage compared to orange and purple teams. We could give ourselves an advantage by teaming up to take them out. This hasn’t ever been done before. If we teamed up in the first engagement we could probably take out the other two teams in a matter of minutes. They’ll never see it coming. Then I only have one enemy to focus on instead of three.”

Narish’s jaw tensed. “You think red team will be easy to defeat?”

Hathu laughed and roughly clapped his hand on Narish’s shoulder. “No, Narish. I’ve played with you. I would have picked you for my team if you weren’t voted to be a team leader. I just have better odds if I can focus all my resources on beating one team, instead of three. So do you. It helps us both out.”

Narish chewed on his top lip thoughtfully for a moment. “How do I know this isn’t a trick? That you’re not just trying to get my guard down so that you can take my pennant without a fight?”

“We’ll split our defenders between your team and mine. If I try to steal your flag, you’ll already have someone inside my home base to steal mine. Let me send you my plan.” Hathu pulled his datapad out of his pocket, brought up the document and sent it to Narish’s datapad. “Look it over. Let me know what you think.”

* * *

“Go!” Hathu yelled to the blue team members who were next in line. He had his team lined up in five rows in a field, running up a hill and walking back down to line up to run again. He waited till the runners were half way up the hill and had the next Ir’klahn that were in line start running.

Korish was sitting on the log of a fallen tree at the edge of the field grading papers.

After blue team got the rhythm of the drill, Hathu joined joined one of the lines and took his turns running up the hill along with them. He did his best to hide how much his body was hurting. Before they were done with the drill he could taste blood at the back of his throat.

After that Hathu split blue team up into three groups and had Tanahsa and another of the older students on the team, Ishmakah, help him run a few more drills before dismissing the team, but he told Tanahsa and Ishmakah to stay.

Tanahsa, Ishmakah and Hathu stood in an awkward circle near where Korish was still grading papers. Hathu pulled his datapad out. “Okay Tanahsa, how did your group do? Did the drills seem easy for them?”

Tanahsa shrugged. “It wasn’t easy for them, but they gave it their best.”

Hathu nodded and scribbled on his datapad. “Did anyone struggle more than the rest, or do better than the others?”

Tanahsa thought for a moment. “Bava struggled more than the rest, but he was the smallest in the group.”

“Okay. How did everyone interact? Did they get along?”

Tanahsa nodded. “Yeah, they did. Everyone was supportive of Bava and it seemed to help. He improved before we were done.”

“Good.” Hathu turned to Ishmakah. “How did things go in your group? Did the drills seem too easy or too difficult for them?”

Ishmakah frowned. “I don’t understand why any of this matters. If they can’t perform, we leave them behind. If they do, they share in the victory.”

“Because we win or lose as a team. We can only be as strong as our weakest members. The stronger we make the smaller and slowest members of blue team, the faster we move as a team. The better the team works together, the more difficult we are to defeat.”

“Okay.” She shrugged. “The drills were hard for everybody except Novina, but everyone worked really hard. Tillen struggled the most, obviously. Novina was faster than anyone, by a lot.”

“How did everyone get along?”

“Eh, a couple of them made fun of Tillen at first, but Novina told them to knock it off, because he was part of the team. After that things went pretty well. Novina actually helped a lot of the others improve by giving them tips and encouragement.”

Hathu nodded and noted down what she had said. Then he tucked his datapad back in his pocket. “In my group, the drills seemed equally difficult for everyone, no one really stood out. Everyone seemed to get along well except Arvah. He likes to let others know when they aren’t doing well. I’ll have a talk with him tomorrow.”

Tanahsa and Ishmakah both gave him puzzled looks. “Why are you telling us how your group did? You’re the team leader.” Ishmakah said.

“You two have the potential to become really good leaders. This is part of your training for the game. I’m going to need to lean on you during team training and in the game. The more brains we have working together to guide us to victory, the better. I can’t come up with every good idea, and I can’t be everywhere on the field at once. It sounds like Novina would be a good addition to the leadership on the team. What do you think?”

Tanahsa and Ishmakah glanced at each other and nodded.

“Good. Now, I have one more thing that you need to know.” He glanced at Korish wishing he had a different teacher observer. He couldn’t afford to get beaten by his father again but it looked like it was going to be unavoidable. “We are going to play the first engagement of the game a bit differently. We are teaming up with red team against orange and purple team.”

“What?!” Ishamakah’s eyes were round with surprise. Tanahsa frowned and cocked his head slightly.

“As far as I know, this hasn’t ever been done before. It’s going to give us the advantage of getting rid of two teams probably within the first ten minutes of the engagement. We’re going to run a few practices with red team later in the week. I’m going to need you to keep your eyes open during those practices. Figure out who is their fastest runner, who works well together on their team. Just watch for threats so we can prepare for them. Can you do that?”

Ishamakah grinned. She and Tanahsa both nodded.

“I’ll send you the plans I have for the first engagement, look them over and let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions. Oh, and one more very important thing. No one can know about this. No one. As soon as it gets out, the advantage of surprise is lost. This is between us three only, okay?”

They nodded again.