Barthelme
Aboard the ice harvester Titan IV in Sotec
26 days left
Jolo jogged down the hall, slipped out the door into the cold and headed back down the stairs. The slaves would be on the lower levels collecting ice. The brain trust had guessed there would be a dozen or so slaves on the big harvester. On the way down, Jolo paused at level seven, a large room filled with Jaylens, all manning control screens. A towering BG lord stood in the middle staring into a large vid screen just like most space ships. There was a data feed on the left side and the right side was a split screen with a forward view of the ice and a rear view of brown rubble left behind.
At the fourth level down Jolo noticed the windows were dirty and he could make out humans moving around below. The machines were loud and he could hear other voices, not the high-pitched Jaylens, but the tired groans of men. He slipped inside and found himself on a high walkway staring right down into the heart of the operation. Levels 1-4 were actually one big room, the only thing marking the different floors were the narrow walkways next to the walls. Jolo scanned the room and spotted two Jaylens and a hover bot 50 meters or so off to the rearward side, staring down into the mess of men and machines in motion on the rocky, wet earth below.
The men were dressed in rags, and even the ones actually on the ground under the harvester, the ones Hurley told him were called rock humpers, had little protection against the cold. Their job was to make sure no big chunks of rock or earth got mixed in with the ice that was constantly being fed into the processors via large conveyors. He watched the tired men stumble along, with brown cloth wrapped around their feet, heaving rocks into a big container. Jolo saw a large man and thought for a moment it was his old engineer, Barthelme, but the man had two arms.
Hurley said the worst job fell to the trackheads minding the wheels. The harvester used a continuous track propulsion system, which was a series of alacyte track bands, each driven by three giant wheels. There were eighteen total track wheels so even if a few broke down, the Titan would keep on rolling along. The trackheads had to be small and fast and were usually children, and they didn’t last very long.
Jolo spotted one small trackhead with a large crow bar darting back and forth between the giant wheels. Suddenly a rock got caught between the belt and a wheel and the whole thing jammed and the Jaylens instantly started yelling. So the little person jumped on top of the track band, jammed the bar in next to the rock, then leaped out to the end of the long rod, clinging on with hands and legs, using all of his weight to pry the rock loose.
When the rock broke free, the child slammed into the ground dangerously close to the wheels and the track band. One tiny hand in the dirt just under the wheel, but somehow he got it out in time. And that was when Jolo realized it was a girl. Her hair was tied in a pony tail in back.
The whole time ice was being lifted into the upper processing levels and the rocks were crushed and spit out the back. Just as Jolo was about to search level 5 a large rock broke one of the forward wheel tracks and again the Jaylen’s started yelling. Two men tried to heave it up and into the big container. One of the men climbed up onto the edge of the container and pulled as the other man pushed. The rock finally gave way and fell into the big rock crusher, but the man went with it. The other man cried out and reached into the big container trying to pull him out.
Jolo thought to take out the two Jaylens and rescue the men but thankfully, finally, one of the Jaylens looked at the hover bot and pointed down at the men. The bot darted straight for the men and Jolo sank back against the wall and breathed a sigh of relief. By then the second man was perched on the edge of the big rock container, one hand holding onto the first man, who was about to be swallowed up and crushed, the other reaching up for the bot to lift them both out. The bot hovered over both men for a second, its forward ocular sensors blinking, but instead of giving the man a handhold, Jolo saw a thin red flash as it cut the man’s arm off and he, too, fell into the rock hopper. Both men screamed and cried out. Jolo could see blood spurting out of the man’s arm as the rock crusher sucked him under. Both the Jaylens were laughing.
Jolo couldn’t stand it anymore. He ran down the length of the platform, took out the two Jaylens, then leaped over the rail and dropped four stories down into the pit, firing three shots at the bot before landing in the rocky, wet mess. On the third shot the bot lost power and fell straight into the crusher. Sparks and metal pieces flew into the air when the teeth of the crusher shredded it. Jolo scrambled up to the top of the hopper, stared down into the mess of rock and blood, angry at himself for hiding when he should have been doing something. Both
