Ring of Hope

"Tell us another one, Rafik.  Tell us about the pit horrors."

The old slave warmed his hands over the heating ring.  Everyone else had to fight for space close to the thin orange circle of warmth, so the wrinkled and elderly man stuck out amongst a company of broad-shouldered, muscled young men.  Rafik knew stories and had been a physician once, so he always had a spot by the ring.  In the desert he would have been an Akhbar, and some traditions survived even when the names and surroundings were lost.

Rafik looked up at the gathered slaves, one eye milk-white, the other piercing blue.  He gestured as he spoke, and his hands made strange shadows in the dim light of the heating ring.  The rest of the pit was dark - lights were only turned on if somebody needed to see the slaves, and the heating rings were only left on to prevent loss of stock from cold.  In the eternal 'night' between feeding times the heating ring was the sole source of light in their world.

"They came from the desert," Rafik began.  "They were always here, long before men, even before the Old Draconian Empire, and they will survive after men are no more dust than the sands.  They are ancient.  They are terrible.  Worst of all, they are cruel."

---

Jorat let the guard's body fall to the floor.  He unwrapped the thin filament from the guard's throat while Deben unbuckled the guard's pistol and holster and wrapped it around himself.

"Don't fire that until the collars are dead," warned Jorat.  "As soon as anyone notices something off, they'll blow our throats."

"Yeah yeah," said Deben.  He gave the guard's body a kick.  "Teach that fool to spit at me.  Shame we weren't left alone with the fat man who bought us instead.  So where's Sayyid with the device anyway?  Think he's split on us?"

"Not likely," came a voice from behind them.  "I need you two to stand a chance of getting out of here alive."  The door slip open and the third slave hustled into the cargo bay, carrying a bundle of equipment in his arms.  Sayyid unwrapped the bundle on a crate and started fiddling with the pieces.

"Doesn't look like much," said Jorat.  "I thought you were after a bomb."

"What, you think I can break into the armoury single-handed?"  Sayyid laughed, a soft chuckle.  "If I could do that I'd already be on the first shuttle out of here.  No, I'm building a bomb."

"I don't fancy you solving our problem by blowing my throat out," said Deben.

"It's a little bomb.  Trust me, I know what I'm doing.  I used to work at the HohenTek plants.  Ah, there we go."  Sayyid stepped back from his construction to admire it.  It looked like a small tower of stolen, mismatched parts cobbled together in a hurry, which was exactly what it was.

"So should we take cover?" asked Jorat.

"No, stick as close to it as you can," said Sayyid.  "This shouldn't hurt"

"Wait, shouldn't?"

Sayyid pushed a button on the side of the tower.  A heating ring at the top of the tower glowed a soft orange.  The equipment hummed briefly, then made a crackling sound and a disappointing pop.  The smell of burnt toast started leaking into the cargo bay.

"Well that was disappointing," said Deben.  "Might as well give up now."

"No, it was meant to do that.  Electromagnetic pulse, you can't feel it.  Should have shorted out the electronics in your collar implant, though.  Now all we need is to escape the complex, steal a rover and drive to the nearest settlement.  We can split up from there and try to get home our separate ways."

"Yeah, about that," said Deben.  "You looked outside recently?"

"No," said Sayyid, "the complex is sealed.  What's wrong?"

Deben gestured toward a small viewport at the far end of the cargo bay.  Sayyid looked through it and felt the breath flood out of his chest.  Sualocin stretched out before him, a brilliant spherical blue-green jewel against a backdrop of stars.  Al-Sabat headquarters wasn't based on Sualocin - it was based in its orbit.

"Good thing Jorat can fly a shuttle, isn't it?"


Cast

Rafik al-Habat, 72 - An elderly slave in the Ascellan Pits.  Former akhbar to the desert clans of Ascella.
Jorat al-Mors, 37 - An escaped slave chosen for 'personal service' to the Masters of al-Sabat.  Former shuttle pilot.
Deben al-Tengri, 28 - An escaped slave chosen for 'personal service' to the Masters of al-Sabat.  Former raider and slaver.
Sayyid al-Mullah, 22 - An escaped slave chosen for 'personal service' to the Masters of al-Sabat.  Former engineer at HohenTek.
Suleiman al-Jazir, 48 - Chief Retainer of House al-Sabat.  A fat, lecherous, evil man.

Pit Inspection

Suleiman al-Jazir pressed the silk handerchief to his nose again. The perfume took the edge off the smell, but enough blood and shit cut through anything. He wondered if you got used to it if you worked the pits long enough. He'd heard rumours that some Houses had their slavedrivers genejacked to get rid of their sense of smell. Definitely worth the investment in his opinion. The slaves wore no chains or collars; the expense was deemed unnecessary and the killfields between their pits and the walkway Suleiman now stood upon were well-named. A slave could not so much as throw a rock without the automated fire systems pulverising them, not that there were rocks to be thrown. If you didn't count the layer of piss and shit on the floor the pits were empty of everything but chattel.

Suleiman motioned to the driver, then made vague gestures at the batches of slaves below.

"I'll take batches C through F for export, batch H and batch K. Pulp anyone over fifty for fertiliser and send anyone below fifteen to the Pleasure Halls. I'll take the three big ones from batch A as well for personal service, the Mistress likes a bit of meat on them. Sell the remaining batches locally, Pendragon or the Bunnies should take them."

Business concluded, Suleiman hurried along the walkway to the lift. The lift doors sealed and there was a soft hum and a gentle breeze as the air in the chamber was recycled. Suleiman breathed in deeply. Bliss. He folded away his handkerchief and waited for the lift to take him to the surface.

By the time the driver (throughly showered and wearing a valet's uniform) returned to him, Suleiman was reclining on one of the couches in the Pit's pleasure lounge, being fed grapes by young nubile slaves. The pleasure lounge was everything the holding pens were not: delicately perfumed, spacious and well-lit, with broad glasteel windows overlooking the majestic purple-brown sands of Ascella.

Suleiman vaguely appreciated the tragedy of this beautiful world. The economy had divebombed after the fall of House Ragnarok to the point where people were practically selling themselves into slavery to get by. More accurately, people were selling one another into slavery. Crime was officially low in Ascella but the thin population was spread far and wide, mostly in small nomadic groups moving between automated or slave-operated mining installations working the abundant palladium deposits in the vast deserts. It was almost local tradition that when the nomads feuded they would take slaves, and the huge Fluffy Bunny mines always needed new workers, as did the Pendragon construction crews.

It wasn't all grime and horror, of course. Ascella's one city and spaceport, Ascelon, had survived the collapse of the rest of the world's economy. The shining towers of the Pendragon Psi Institutes still towered above the sands, as did the shimmering peak of the Galactic Bank. Of course the lower city had devolved into a bunch of slums around the manufacturing core of the HohenTek plants, but what could you do? Suleiman saw urban decay as inevitable, so why not take advantage of it? It had made an excellent place to invest in the Pit.

Suleiman waved away the serving-slaves, though he did not bother to rise to greet the driver. After all, there was no need to stir oneself before another of such low rank. The driver bowed low and presented Suleiman with a small slip as receipt for the slaves purchased, along with the three slaves he had picked out below. The slaves, all young well-muscled men, wore nothing but a standard-issue loincloth and the collar implants at their throats. Suleiman, who had grown up taking slaves and putting them in ancient-fashioned iron chains, was very fond of the implants (a local product of the HohenTek plants). They neatly combined tracking device, comm-unit and kill-switch in one minute package that could only be removed by cutting the slave's throat. Expensive, but worth it for personal slaves. Suleiman made a mental note to specifically request they not be included next time; the slaves wouldn't need them for their particular service.

"Are they to your satisfaction, master al-Jazir?" asked the driver.

Suleiman licked his lips at the sight of the three young slaves, their bodies slathered with palm-oil to make their muscles look more appealing.

"Oh yes," he replied. "Yes, the Mistress will love these. In fact, I think she'll eat them right up."


Cast

Suleiman al-Jazir, 48: A Retainer in service to the House al-Sabat.  A morbidly obese, lecherous man stuffed to the skin with venial sins.  The only 'public' member of House al-Sabat.