Chapter Text
“Contact in five…four…three…two… one. ”
The Gamara shuttle docks against the Altean transport ship smoothly. The nearest Gun agent immediately activates the jamming protocol, and the ship’s defenses are overridden instantly, enough for them to lever the airlock open without detection. The agent looks relieved. “Intercepted codes accurate. Security lockdown sequence successful.”
Slav snorts at that. Of course it was successful. He’d written it. There was a three percent chance it would fail in only the most unfortunate of realities.
“Good.” Byroc, the current head of their attack team, unholsters his weapon and brings it to bear. “Remember, this is a supplies mission, so there’s no way to be subtle. They’ll know we’re here the moment they realize their transmissions aren’t getting in or out, and they will have two goals: call reinforcements, and kill us here and now. That means we’ve got half a varga to get in, grab the supplies, and get out. Team one is on defense, teams two and three are on supplies detail. Clear?”
As one, the team of twenty-five Gun agents acknowledge with a sharp, “Sir!”
“Good. You two, hold our escape. Slav, lead the way. Death before oblivion. Go! ”
They go.
Slav bolts to the front of the team, gun in his topmost set of arms, already calculating the best approach to the cargo hold. It’s an Alpha-Galax transport shuttle, second class. There are four possible routes to the destination. Two lead through highly trafficked areas and will increase their chances of being seen and getting into a firefight before they even reach the payload by seventy-five point six two percent. A third has only a twenty percent chance of getting them seen but will take too long. The fourth is most optimal, reducing travel time by thirty percent and decreasing possible combat encounters to smaller patrol groups for maximum efficiency.
He chooses route four. The others follow without further instruction, and well they should. Slav is still relatively new to the organization compared to some, having been a member for only a few decafeebs compared to the dozens of others. But they’d brought him in as the resident Altean expert for a reason. His genius and ability to adapt and decode the enemy technology and strategy within doboshes has made him unquestionably vital to the Guns of Gamara.
Since actively going on missions he’s increased their success ratio by twenty-three point four five percent. They’re aware of it. They know better than to doubt him in this, no matter how much he hears them grumbling when they think he’s not listening.
The Guns move fast, despite their numbers. They typically operate in smaller cells of two to four members per mission, and tend to prefer stealth and secrecy to outright combat. But this mission simply hadn’t allowed for their standard tactics. Stealing all the supplies in the cargo hold of an Alpha-Galax transport ship was hardly subtle work. Every member capable of combat and not already on a mission was needed for the endeavor.
They didn’t have a choice, after all. They needed the supplies, and badly. By Slav’s calculations, if he’s right—and he is almost always right by a ninety-five percent ratio—they won’t have enough food or medical supplies to last more than a few feebs.
The Alteans are ruthless, wiping out Gun after Gun and free race after free race, enslaving innocents and calling it peace. The Guns are running out of allies. They need to turn the tide, somehow.
Depriving the enemy of valuable supplies and using it to bolster their own seems like a fitting start.
The mission’s initial phase goes well, matching Slav’s estimates. They encounter three skirmishes with gladiator patrols, but the Guns are able to take them down quickly before the enemy can be alerted to their presence.
But they’re only doboshes away from the hold itself when they encounter their first Altean soldier. It’s a low-ranking female accompanied by two gladiator bots. The Guns bring down her and her escorts fast, but not fast enough to stop her from signaling the alarm.
“Keep going!” Byroc orders. “We’re close enough to the hold to lock it down and prevent entry while we gather the supplies. Move!”
They keep going. Slav calculates their chances of escaping alive and simultaneously completing the mission have been cut in half, but perhaps they can make adjustments. Some supplies are still better than none, and will increase their estimated survival by an appropriate percentage.
But when they break into the hold and immediately fan out to lock down the doors for preparations, Slav discovers a highly distinct difference in its contents that adjusts his calculations considerably. Because the cargo hold isn’t full of foodstuffs, raw materials and medical supplies as intelligence had originally suggested.
It’s full of slaves. Specifically, mostly dead slaves.
The cargo hold looks like it’s been turned into a makeshift barracks, with neatly stacked bedrolls and the basic necessities for perhaps four hundred adult aliens in a cramped but survivable environment. All of those aliens are still there, but sprawled in ungainly heaps on the floor, unmoving and staring blankly. The way they’ve fallen, Slav can easily spot the grey spines of the hoktril embedded in many of their skulls. He scowls in disgust at the sight of the filthy technology.
Despite his vast knowledge of the universe, it still takes Slav a moment to recognize the species, but when he does everything makes significantly more sense. Earthlings. Their planet had been conquered in the name of so-called ‘peace’ six hundred years ago, and the Alteans had ‘rehabilitated’ them of their war-like ways. A species that fought so violently amongst themselves would be a danger to both themselves and the rest of the universe, the Alteans claimed, and they had been ‘saved’ from the futility of combat.
It was extremely convenient that they also made exceptional slave labor. Earthlings lacked the brute strength, skill or intelligence of many other races. But they were enduring, capable of survive in a wide variety of temperatures and environments, could subsist on a variety of diets, and bred and matured with absurd speed. Alteans used them for all manner of labor and menial tasks, with the justification that it gave the pacified race something productive and purposeful to work towards in the name of their supposed peace. These ones were probably being delivered to the latest planet in line for terraforming and colonization, where they would live or die by the grace of their so-called ‘caring’ masters.
Not caring enough to let them live now, though.
Byroc swears as the Guns manage to shut down the last of the doors, locking them from the inside with the override scripts Slav had prepared for them ahead of time. “What the hell’s going on? I thought this was a supply ship?”
“The transmission details we intercepted state they were transporting ‘valuable cargo,’” another Gun, Michela, reports. She brings up the transmission report on her uniform’s gauntlet computer, frowning.
Slav leans over her arm, ignoring the way she shifts back and glares at him, and frowns at the translation. “Whoever ran this interception did so extremely poorly,” he comments. It certainly was ‘valuable’ cargo, to the Alteans—just not the cargo the officer gathering the intelligence had interpreted. “The translation is not accurate. Perhaps if they had taken into account the—“
“I don’t care what went wrong right now,” Byroc snaps. “We weren’t expecting to find slaves on this ship or I’d have strategized differently to rescue them. Damn it! They activated the hoktril ‘peace protection,’ didn’t they?”
“Yes,” Slav says, scowling around the cargo hold. “They did.”
The ‘peace protection’ was a disgusting advancement in the hoktril technology in recent decafeebs. While the hoktril sapped the free will from a slave—or ‘non-cog’ as the Alteans preferred to call them—they could, with careful practice and just the right counter-tech, be disabled again. Slav had discovered the secret himself, after countless feebs of study. The slave would be freed and able to live a life of their own choices.
But the Alteans hadn’t liked their so-called peace being so easily countered. They’d taken steps to prevent the hoktril being removed and their wearers rescued, by effectively euthanizing the wearer with a sharp jolt to the brain. It was relatively quick and painless—the Alteans, with their twisted sense of mercy, would accept no less. They claimed it ‘saved’ non-cogs from returning to ‘a life of violence and evil,’ and was necessary to prevent innocents from being abused by wicked choices. A regrettable necessity, they insisted, activated only when their hands were forced by malicious beings like the Guns of Gamara. A mercy for the poor individual doomed to return to a life of horror, chaos and destruction.
Mercy, they call it, but any way Slav calculates it, it’s still murder.
It could be prevented, after a fashion. If they’d known they were attacking a slave transport, they could have used special jamming signals tuned to the hoktril frequencies, to interrupt the Altean ‘peace protection’ signal. It would protect most of the helpless slaves from being murdered by their masters until the Guns could escort them to safety and begin the arduous process of permanently removing the device.
But they would have needed to know beforehand, and planned accordingly. Their intelligence had been wrong, and it had just cost them about four hundred innocent, helpless lives.
Slav clenches all of his hands in frustration. All his preparations and he had never accounted for this possibility. The percentage had seemed too low.
Byroc curses again. “Nothing we can do for them now. Guns, retreat—“
“Sir,” Michela interrupts. “There’s still some living, it looks like…”
Slav activates one if his gauntlets for a quick bio-rhythm scan. Sure enough, there are approximately forty additional life-signs, not accounting for the Gun agents still in the room. Surprised, he glances over the collection of dead slaves again.
Ah. Yes. Difficult to spot at first, but there is movement among the bodies. Smaller individuals, huddled near the fallen slaves bearing hoktril, ones that don’t stand out terribly unless they move.
“Quiznak,” Michela hisses under her breath. “They’re younglings. ”
Of course. That makes perfect sense. “The hoktril cannot be applied to an immature brain,” Slav points out. “It has a less than one percent success rate.”
Children simply hadn’t developed enough yet for the hoktril to have any real success. It was more likely to destroy the mental and physical development of the host in the process—which for the Alteans, meant ruined slaves. Children were generally kept with their parents until they were of age to begin indoctrination and eventually the implant of the hoktril when they were old enough. When they were young they generally didn’t understand enough to run, and were unlikely to survive on their own even if they did. Their parents had no willpower to save them and would never encourage resistance.
These children were clearly being transported to a new colony with their parents to provide a long-term, generations-spanning source of so-called peaceful labor. Slav is no expert in Earthling maturation, so it’s difficult to say how old they are, but he doesn’t think the largest of them could be more than perhaps thirteen decafeebs. They’d mercifully been spared the ‘peace protection’ triggered by the Guns’ assault, but on their own, even the eldest of them was still helpless.
“We can’t leave them,” Byroc says. “The Alteans will just redistribute them to other slave colonies and implant them later.”
He isn’t wrong. Slav estimates a ninety-six point two five percent accuracy to the statement. Even with a net loss of almost ninety percent of their supply, forty Earthling children will eventually make valuable slaves in just a few decafeebs.
Still, the Guns of Gamara are hardly equipped to handle children. Slav acknowledges that they need rescuing, but children are simply unpredictable. They don’t follow basic procedure or pattern and have an annoying tendency to be outliers in all of his calculations. He has no idea how well the mission’s success chances are with the addition of forty Earthling young, but has a strong feeling it is rapidly swinging from ‘highly unlikely’ to ‘totally doomed.’
The Guns don’t hesitate, though. Even though the mission parameters have changed, they’re well trained, enough to adjust on the fly. The ones that aren’t guarding and sealing the doors start to move forward towards the children, to try and herd them into some semblance of order.
But the moment the first agent starts to get closer, several of the children begin to whimper and cry. Some of them cling to each other, and others cling to the fallen bodies of what Slav can only assume are their progenitors. Still others huddle farther into the center of the room, fearfully watching the Guns and their weaponry.
“It’s alright, little hatchlings,” Michela says, as soothingly as she can. She raises the tinted protection of her visor to make her face more visible, and deliberately holsters her gun on one hip. “We are here to help you.”
But the children only back away more fearfully, crying harder.
It is apparent to Slav within ticks that none of the children speak any form of intergalactic common, and they aren’t equipped with universal translators. Hardly surprising, of course—slaves that can’t communicate with outsiders can’t ask for help or barter to escape. He supposes Michela is trying to appear friendly, but he also supposes her large clawed hands, black eyes and sharp teeth aren’t helping matters any. Most of the children regard her like she might eat them.
Except one, anyway.
Slav watches curiously as one of the Earthling young stirs. It—no, he, Slav is fairly certain this one is male—had been crouched near a fallen Earthling male and female with the same dark eyes, dark hair, and pale skin as his. But as Michela takes another cautious step forward, hands raised, the child staggers to his feet suddenly.
He isn’t very large—Slav estimates the child’s head barely comes up to his second pair of arms—and his body is scrawny from exactly enough nutrition necessary for survival without any accompanying training or exercise. It’s hard for Slav to estimate an age when he knows so little of Earthling maturation, but this one looks younger than the eldest of the children—somewhere between seven to nine decafeebs, perhaps. Despite the fact that Michela is more than twice his size and fully capable of shredding him apart, though, the child plants himself firmly between her and the rest of the children huddled in the cargo hold.
Michela blinks in surprise. So does Slav. The child looks frightened still—Slav can clearly observe him shaking—but he also bares his teeth in a warning little snarl. His little hands are balled into fists in lieu of a weapon, and he snaps something at Michela in whatever Earthling tongue the slaves are permitted to speak.
Slav doesn’t know the language, but the ‘stop’ is one-hundred percent clear in any tongue.
Michela freezes immediately.
“We don’t have time for this,” Byroc hisses.
The child glares in a curious mix of fear and anger over Michela’s shoulder at the Gun commander, and rattles something off in his own language. His voice shakes, but he doesn’t move.
“Slav, you speak a billion languages—know that one?” another Gun, Serrata, asks in exasperation.
“I speak one hundred and five distinct languages and all related derivatives,” Slav says with a disdainful sniff, “but Earthling is not one of them.” It’s practically a dead language, after all. Earthling colonies are extremely well protected by the Alteans due to their usefulness, and he’s never met a free member of the species.
The child seems to realize they don’t understand him either—or perhaps he realizes he can’t understand them. He eyes Michela warily, and then says in a shaking but determined voice, “ Go…away. You…hurt. Stop.”
Slav’s ears prick up at that. Altean! Rudimentary and broken at best, but at least something familiar. Not many of the Guns speak Altean fluently without the use of a universal translator, but a few do. The chances of a productive conversation increase by at least thirty percent now.
“ We are here to rescue you, ” Slav answers in precise, exact Altean.
The child frowns at that, clearly confused. Slav is not exactly clear if it’s the language syntax or the content that throws him, unfortunately.
He isn’t alone in his confusion—several of the older Earthling young frown at that as well, and seem more frightened by the words than less. They seem to understand Altean, but appear less interested in communicating with the Gun agents. That’s not surprising. Some of them look old enough that the Alteans will have begun indoctrinating them for hoktril preparations—drugged food and medications to keep them passive, and constant reinforcement to obey and behave as peacefully as possible without argument or rebellion. They’d have to understand their masters for that.
It also means they have at least a forty seven point seven two six percent chance of causing trouble in the escape. Slav determines to keep an eye on them.
The little translator doesn’t appear to be trouble, fortunately. At least not in that regard. He has the rebelliousness of a child and the determination to match, but is still young enough the Alteans haven’t been able to start working it out of him yet. He remains firmly planted between the other children and the Gun agents, but glances back and forth carefully between Michela and Slav now.
“ Rescue? ” he repeats after a moment. Cautiously testing the word.
“ It means we’ll take you away from here, ” Michela says. Her Altean isn’t as fluid, and warped somewhat by her Schilean accent, but it’s passable enough for the child to understand.
He frowns at that again. “ Away?” He repeats.
“ Away from the Alteans, ” Slav clarifies. “ No more slavery. No more hoktril. ”
The child’s eyes widen at that, and flick down to the nearest fallen adult Earthling, and the gray spines sticking out the back of her skull. The fear in his expression is real. When he looks up again, he swallows, and his voice still shakes, but he seems marginally less afraid of them. “ How this? ”
“ You must come with us, ” Michela says. “ Tell all of the other Earthling hatchlings to follow us. We will take you to our ship. We will take you to a safe place where you won’t be slaves. But you must be good and follow so that we can protect you.”
The child bites his lip, clearly unsure.
“Incoming Altean troops,” Serrata warns, near one door. “Ten doboshes until they break through.”
Which means they’ll lose their escape completely soon after. “ Hurry, ” Slav says. “ They are coming. If you convince them all to follow there is a fifty-three point six two seven percent chance the majority will escape alive— “
“Slav!” Michela snaps.
The child only stares in confusion.
One of the older children, huddled far back from the Guns, rattles something off in the Earthling tongue. Their translator cocks his head while listening, and then regards Slav and Michela. “ He say…run, hurt. Alteans mad…we run. Angry. Punish. Stay is safer.”
Yes. That other one had definitely begun the indoctrination. There is a ninety-seven percent certainty.
Michela opens her mouth to argue, but Slav cuts her off. “ Running will be dangerous. There is a seventy-five percent certainty that someone will be injured. A twenty-two percent chance of at least one fatality. A thirteen percent chance the mission fails completely. But to stay means a one hundred percent certainty of the hoktril. ”
The child stares at him again, eyes wide.
“Damn it, Slav!” Michela snaps. “Commander, please tell him to shut up!”
“You know that’s an order he won’t take,” Byroc says.
Michela mutters under her breath. “ Yes, little hatchling, it will be dangerous,” she says, “ but I promise we are very good at what we do. Our job is to protect you. We’ll get you out of here, and then you can be free. That’s worth it, right? Freedom? To make your own choices?”
The child frowns at her for a moment. Glances back at Slav. Glances down at the adult Earthlings surrounding him and the other children, and swallows again. “ They…up…when?” he asks, pointing at the nearest fallen Earthling, a female that shares many of his own characteristics. “ They…rescue…too?”
“ No, ” Slav answers flatly. “They are dead. There is no reality in which we can rescue them.”
“For Quiznak’s sake, Slav, they’re hatchlings! ” Michela snarls, causing many the children to flinch. She takes a deep breath to compose herself. “ Sorry, little ones. Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. We will take care of you, I promise. We’ll find a way. We can’t take them with us, but we will protect you. ”
Several of the older children, the ones that understand Altean, are frightened and tearful. The little translator looks stricken for a moment. He stares at Slav again, silent and wide-eyed.
Slav stares back, unrepentant. It doesn’t matter what Michela says—he refuses to offer an impossible probability, no matter how much it might hurt. Those slaves were murdered. They aren’t getting up again. But if these children are to survive, they don’t have time to dwell on false hopes and maybes.
Slav isn’t sure what goes on in the little translator’s mind. He watches as the child finally breaks eye contact and squeezes his eyes shut, grimacing. There’s a little glimmer of wetness around his eyes as he breathes in and out, once, twice.
But when he opens them again, his expression, while still full of fear, confusion and sorrow, also contains determination. He finally relaxes enough to turn his back on them, and rattles on in his own language to the others.
Whatever he says, it seems to galvanize the other children into action. Many of them sniffle and cry still, clinging to each other or their progenitors, but they wearily begin to climb to their feet. Their translator helps a few up, and gestures for others to move. Some are unwilling to leave the fallen adults, whimpering and sobbing as they cling to them, but the translator is patient as he coaxes them away to stand with the others still living.
Now that they’re more active, Slav realizes that their ages range from nearly ready for the hoktril to one tiny Earthling that can’t be more than a few spicolian movements old. Several members of Gun teams two and three carefully gather the smaller Earthling children when the translator beckons them forward. The children, although clearly uncomfortable bordering on terrified of the Guns, permit it when their translator convinces them to accept the help.
It takes a frustrating five doboshes to have most of the Earthling young gathered near the door, but despite that Slav is actually surprised at the speed at which they act. Then again, even the most rebellious of the children must have learned to act immediately under their Altean masters, and to do so as quickly as possible. Even the oldest obey wordlessly, frightened but too instilled with the need to follow orders to rebel now.
But in the end, all of them are ready. The children are in a ring with the Guns carrying the smallest ones, and the defensive team of Guns surround them, weapons in hand. All told, there’s forty-one children of varying ages.
Slav wonders if this will be the reality in which they all make it to the Gamara shuttle.
“ What is your name, little one? ” Michela—now holding the tiniest Earthling of only a few spicolian movements in her claws very carefully—asks their translator.
The little translator stares at her for a moment, and glances over at Slav. Slav merely shrugs his second set of arms. He has no idea why that one is looking to him for the answer. Slav has answers for many things, but he certainly can’t be expected to know this one’s name for him.
“Sven,” the child says finally, pointing at himself.
Michela nods. “ Alright, Sven, ” she says in slow, careful Altean, “ We need you to stay in the middle of the group with us and the other children. We might have to give directions. It’s your job to tell the others, so we can help rescue everyone. Okay? ”
“ Yes, ” Sven answers. “ I help. ”
“ Good, ” Michela praises. For some reason, this makes Sven frown, and he glances over at Slav again before looking back. Really, Slav can’t figure this one out. Another one of those obnoxious unpredictable outliers. “We’re ready, Commander,” Michela says out loud in common.
“Alright,” Byroc acknowledges. “Protect these kids at all costs. Slav, get us out of here fast. Go!”
They burst through a different set of doors at Slav’s advice. There is a seventy-four point five three two percent certainty that the Alteans are lying in wait along the route the Guns were first reported on, hoping to thwart them from getting back to the ship with the children. But the other three routes are still viable, and at this point, probably safer.
His estimation is correct. There are some gladiator bots and two Altean soldiers waiting outside the doors Slav chooses, but the Guns overwhelm them hard and fast before they can sound any warning. Team one scouts ahead and takes down attackers from the front and rear, while team two focuses on guiding the children, and team three provides support to both other sets of duties.
Slav counts the children’s heads rapidly as they move on from the first skirmish. Forty-one. Good.
They encounter several more small packs of gladiators and Altean soldiers along the way. Each time the Guns manage to bring down the attackers with minimal difficulties. Each time, Slav does a head count after. All Guns are accounted for. Children count is still forty-one. Things are progressing smoothly so far. At this rate there is a very high likelihood that they will succeed with no further issues.
But then they hit their first difficult encounter. At an intersection of several hallways along a more heavily trafficked point in the ship’s design, they encounter several groups of gladiator sentries. The fighting becomes dangerous, with rifle blasts flying in all directions from both Gun weaponry and gladiator firearms.
The children are pushed back again as much out of the way as possible while the Guns take down their opponents. But the bright flashes and loud noises cause several of them to start crying in fear, and a few panic. The Guns have difficulty managing them and fighting at the same time; there aren’t enough agents to reassure all the children and engage in combat.
The fighting turns brutal. Slav manages to dive through the hail of laser blasts to reach a better vantage point, and lays down fire until he eventually takes out two gladiators keeping some of the Guns’ better fighters pinned down. Once freed, they manage to burst out and wipe out the remaining gladiators attacking from a different hallway, finally clearing the way.
They’ve won the firefight, but their losses are higher than they’d like. Two Gun agents are dead in the skirmish. Three others are injured, one badly enough that she needs assistance moving. The children aren’t hurt, but they are terrified, and the chokepoint is a mass of chaos and movement.
“Leave our dead, we can’t spare the manpower to move them,” Byroc orders. There’s nothing the Alteans could pull from their uniforms that would assist them; Slav’s coded all of their computers to forward new data to another agent and then wipe themselves in the event of life signs flatlining. “Get the kids. Team three, focus on child duty but be prepare to assist in fights. Move—hurry!”
The Guns move fast. Several members of team one move ahead to scout and clear out minor obstacles, while teams two and three gather the children. Slav remains close to Byroc, running and re-running their odds in his head while counting and re-counting heads in all the chaos.
“—way? Slav! ”
Slav blinks at Byroc, who scowls. “Quit counting everyone again, Slav, and tell me which way we’re—“
“We are missing two,” Slav interrupts.
“I know we lost two,” Byroc says, gritting his teeth. “There’s nothing we can do for them. I—“
“We are missing two children, ” Slav clarifies. “There are only thirty-nine.”
“What?” Byroc glances at the chaotic mess of terrified kids the Guns are trying to herd together again. “How can you even tell? ”
“I counted them.” Slav searches the faces, hunting for the six older Earthlings in particular that he had earmarked as having a high probability of returning to the Alteans. Sure enough, the child that had protested earlier is missing.
Byroc swears. “They must have run off in the firefight. Maybe they were scared—“
“Or returning to the Alteans. One of the missing children is older and may have been indoctrinated.”
Byroc swears again. “And the other?”
“The other is…” Slav’s eyes widen. “The translator. Sven. He is missing too.” A much more serious issue—they need that one to communicate with the others. The Guns are doing their best to organize the children again, but they are frightened of their rescuers almost as much as the Alteans. Sven had possessed some ability to calm them and convince them to follow—without him, the success chance of completing the mission with all children alive and safe drops an unacceptable fifty-three percent.
Odd that he’d leave, though. Certainly Slav had seen no signs of indoctrination in him, and he clearly had no love or loyalty to the Alteans. His chances of returning to them willingly seem less than one percent, and no Gladiators or Altean soldiers had gotten close enough to attempt a capture.
Unimportant. If he wastes time calculating probabilities based on unpredictable outliers he wastes chances to recover the missing children. “Here,” he says, bringing up one of his gauntlet screens. He taps out a fast calculated route and transmits it to Byroc. “Use this route, it has a seventy-five percent chance of safely returning the most combatants and children to our shuttle.”
Then he turns and darts away from Byroc, back down the way they’d come.
“Slav!” Byroc yells. “Wait! Where the hell are you—“
“I have the greatest understanding of Alpha-Galax ship structure and Altean combat distribution,” Slav shouts over his shoulder. “I estimate a thirty-seven percent increase in success if I find the missing Earthlings, which in turn increases our chances of saving the other children. Go! I will find alternate routes and meet again.”
“Quiznak, Slav—“ Byroc curses, but then switches back to command. “Everyone, move. Serrata, use Slav’s map to guide…”
Their voices fade as Slav bolts back the way they came, gun at the ready in his uppermost arms. He’s already calculating the best route to take. There’s only so many halls the Earthling young could have reached, and their only chance to break away would have been during the chaos of the firefight. The eldest has an eighty-seven percent chance of trying to return to Alteans, meaning a direct route to a highly trafficked area that non-cogs would still be permitted to see.
Slav takes the left handed path based on these deductions. It’s an assumption, of course, but it’s an assumption with a high probability of being right.
His choice pays off. He follows down two more short hallways before discovering the first of the missing children: Sven.
The child is almost at the end of the hallway. His luck is exceptional in that he’s somehow managed to avoid any patrols, a shockingly low eighteen percent chance of occurring. The chance of meeting resistance increases the longer he is away. But they’re not too far from Byroc, still—Slav can grab Sven, return him to the team leader, and then perhaps spare time to search for the final missing child while Sven’s rapport with the other children increases their chances of survival.
It’s not the best plan, but it is the one with the highest chance of success. Slav darts down the hallway, and snags the back of Sven’s slave uniform with his third right hand, pulling him back before he turns the corner. Sven starts to yelp, but Slav hastily slaps his third left hand over the child’s mouth to keep them from being caught.
“Quiet!” Slav hisses low under his breath in Altean, raising his second left hand to his beak in a universal gesture of silence. “ No screaming. We will be caught.”
Sven stares at him wide-eyed, but stops fighting once he recognizes Slav. He tugs at the hand over his mouth, and Slav takes it back.
“ We must go back, ” Slav says. “ The others need you. ” He wraps his second right hand around the child’s own little one even as he releases the uniform, and tugs him back the way they’d both come.
But to his surprise, the child digs in his heels and tugs back, resisting. “No!”
Slav whips his head around and scowls at the child. “ I am trying to rescue you. Your chances reduce significantly if you resist—at least forty-seven percent! Now come on, we have to go!”
He tugs at the child’s hand again, insistent. Sven tugs back, scowling. Slav doesn’t think the child understood even half of what he said—his understanding of Altean is clearly too rudimentary. So he tries to simplify, as frustrating as it is. “ We have to go! You will be caught again!”
“ No! ” Sven repeats, tugging again to free his hand, struggling for the end of the hallway. “ Einar away! Need…me…help! Einar away! ”
Slav’s ears prick up at that. Einar? “ Is that the other Earthling?” he asks, gesturing with his second left hand at the estimated height level of the other missing child, the one that had objected earlier.
Sven’s eyes widen, but he nods enthusiastically, and gestures more frantically at the end of the hallway. “ Away…there. Hurt, maybe. Need…me…help.”
Slav sighs in exasperation. At least one question is answered. This one hadn’t run off due to any indoctrination. This one thinks he’s a damn hero. He’d probably seen the first run off and was following to bring him back, especially after Michela made such a big deal of him assisting his fellow Earthlings. “ You want to help him, ” Slav clarifies.
Sven nods. Slav can feel that he’s shaking slightly—he’s obviously scared, as a child of his age probably should be in this situation. But his expression is full of determination.
“ You know you have no chance of retrieving him by yourself. ”
“ Try, ” Sven answers stubbornly. Then he considers, and adds hopefully, “ You help? ”
Slav scowls at him, but the child doesn’t seem deterred at all. “ I’ll help, ” he finally agrees, “ But only because it was already my mission to retrieve him too. And for the record, there’s a thirty percent chance we’re going to die attempting this.”
Sven either doesn’t understand the last part, or he’s ignoring it. He tugs at Slav’s arm again. “ Go! Fast! ”
“ Not like that! ” Slav snaps. He can’t hunt down this other child and protect this one when he’s out in the open. “ Get on. I am not going to risk the high probability of you dying in a firefight after going through all the trouble to recover you. ” His skills as a translator and motivator for the other children are simply too valuable for that.
Sven doesn’t understand at first, but Slav gestures insistently at his back with is second and third sets of arms, and the child’s eyes light up in understanding. He clambers into an awkward piggy-back, hooking his arms around Slav’s torso just over his second set of arms. Slav supports him with his bottom set of arms, hooking them under Sven’s legs to hold him steady.
The little Earthling’s head presses awkwardly against Slav’s back—Bytor as a general rule aren’t really made for carting around bipedal four-limbed creatures—but the child is still small enough for him to pull it off. More importantly, it lets him keep track of exactly where this little wandering Earthling is. He will be able to shield or control Sven’s involvement in any firefights that may come up.
“ Stay put, ” Slav warns. “ Don’t run off or there is a high probability you will die. I will help your friend if I can, and can do so in many realities, but only if you are not distracting. Understand?”
Sven makes a frustrated noise, although Slav isn’t clear if it’s because he doesn’t understand everything that was said, or if he just doesn’t like the rules. After a moment he feels the child nodding into his back, though. “ Yes.”
“ Good.” And without wasting further precious time, Slav heads down the hall Sven had gestured to earlier.
He’s a little slower than before—with his unexpected passenger, Slav isn’t as agile as he is generally capable of. Even so, they reach the end of the next hallway quickly. He barely has time to begin calculating the probabilities of which way to turn before Sven reaches over his second right shoulder and gestures frantically to the right. “ He there. ”
Slav is about to argue the likelihood of it—there’s no way the child could know if he was there, and the statistics —but he pauses. Sven had gotten this far on his own. His luck was absurd, or perhaps this was the exact right reality where things work out just fine, but either way, he was clearly doing something right. Slav is pressed for time. Just this once, he’ll give it a chance. He takes the right path.
He’s genuinely impressed when, one hallway later, they find the missing Earthling. He’s held firmly between two gladiator bots, each one with a hand wrapped relentlessly around the Earthling’s arms, with a third leading the way farther into the ship. None have noticed him yet.
Slav feels the child on his back squirm as he too spots his fellow slave. “ Quiet, ” he warns under his breath. Sven’s arms tighten around his torso, but he feels the child nod into his back again, acknowledging.
Good. He’ll need concentration for this. He raises the gun that gives him his name, and sights the first of the gladiators carefully. Marksmanship isn’t his strongest skill in the Guns of Gamara, compared to other skills he brings to the organization, but all Guns need to be good shots to pass. With his surprise attack and skill level, he estimates a ninety-five percent accuracy rating, and only a point five six percent chance the child would be injured.
He fires. The first gladiator holding the child drops, head shattered. The Earthling backs away in fright, crying out in fear. The remaining gladiators turn to find the source of the attack, and Slav fires a second time, dropping the second bot holding the child prisoner.
The third takes a shot at him before he can aim again. Slav yelps and dodges aside, but it’s more difficult to do with a passenger, and the blast cuts a gouge in his topmost left shoulder. He scowls at that, but manages to raise his own weapon and fire a third time. The shot misses, but the fourth hits, bursting the bot’s head before it can get another attack off.
Slav winces as he lowers his gun and it jars his bad arm. No time to worry about that, though. The wound is only superficial. There is only a two percent chance it might lead to death, and only if left untreated. There is a thirty percent chance it will affect his aim in future attacks, however, meaning he and his charges need to leave immediately.
Slav darts down the passageway to the remaining Earthling as Sven cheers excitedly in his ear. “ Quiet! ” he reminds sharply.
Sven grows quieter, but does say, “ Thank you. ”
Slav just shrugs his second set of shoulders, indifferent.
The second Earthling child, Einar, whimpers as Slav approaches and curls up in a tight ball, shaking. “ We must go, ” Slav says, but although he certainly understands at least rudimentary Altean, the child makes no move to leave with him. He’s frightened, and badly, but Slav suspects he’s more terrified of disobeying the Alteans and leaving than he is of Slav himself. He has almost certainly been severely manipulated by his Altean masters; Slav estimates he’s only perhaps a decafeeb away from the hoktril at best.
Not for the first time, he’s disgusted by the twisted way the Alteans abuse their science and technology.
Sven gestures frantically at his fellow Earthling, and Slav reluctantly lets him down. Sven immediately begins to rattle off something to Einar in their shared tongue, and Slav wishes he understood it. Perhaps when this is over he can study the language, and make some sense of it.
He’s never sure what Sven says, exactly, but the child does gesture insistently and grip the older Earthling’s hand. Slav doesn’t know the context of the words, but the tones alternate between soothing and excited. And to Slav’s great surprise, Einar does eventually uncurl from his terrified huddle, gripping Sven’s hand hard, and slowly clambers to his feet. He still looks very frightened, and keeps glancing over his shoulder as though he expects the Alteans to melt out of the walls to drag them back. He huddles as close to Sven as he can. But he moves—which is more than Slav could have made happen in almost any reality.
“ Run, fast, ” Sven says, as he pulls his fellow Earthling closer to Slav, and slips Einar’s hand into one of Slav’s free ones. Then he clambers back up on Slav’s back and holds on tight.
Slav has no objection to that. They’ve already wasted valuable time as it is. He turns and runs back down the hall, tugging the Earthling child after him. Whenever Einar stumbles, Sven turns around on Slav’s back to encourage him, and they make a decent pace.
In the end, they make it back. Slav is frankly stunned that they do. They encounter two more wandering patrols, but Slav is able to take them both down with no injuries to the children, and only minimal superficial graze shots to himself. He takes an alternate route and manages to meet up with the rest of the Guns of Gamara and their young charges halfway there. Sven is able to help calm the rest of the children and encourage them further, and no more go wandering. Only one other Gun is lost in the ensuing fights, and the two Guns left behind have managed to hold their escape.
They manage to herd all of the children into their shuttle and tear away from the Altean transport at breakneck pace. The Alteans follow with pod fighters, of course. But the Guns are able to escape with a mix of jamming technology to interfere with Altean sensors, and clever pilot work to obscure visuals. The children are frightened, but Sven does his best to work with the Guns to calm his fellow Earthlings. He seems to have become the ringleader by virtue of being the only one willing to engage with the Guns at all.
Taking into account all factors, the success chance of the encounter had been less than five percent. The odds are astronomically against them, and yet somehow, in this reality, everything had worked out fine. Slav is…impressed…and he does not impress easily.
Of course, this is only the first hurdle. If Slav’s study of realities have taught him anything, it’s that a change as enormous as this will have drastic consequences, for good or for ill. And no matter how he calculates the odds, he only predicts difficulties ahead.