8. Waking Dreams
Airgoidh fitfully attempted to sleep, sometimes the lights appearing in the gel causing her to wake, other times the sound of . . . she hadn't wanted to say it, but light itself seemed to make sound here, in the Temple of Unity. The dream returned again, the whole of her world being the paddies and the house where the slaves slept and fed. She often wondered what MinMatar children did during the day, those who had never known enslavement.
She wondered how it would feel to run free on the plains of Matar, not just running, but truly free to be as she wished rather than what an Amarrian demanded.
The dream always started with the paddies. They were oblong water trough ways that fed from the river, and drained into other paddies beyond. She never worked the other paddies, just the three by the river. Rice and cranberries were grown, being swapped every spring to help keep the muck from going sterile. The paddies were in use all year, the tropical climate very conducive to keeping a slave well worked at every moment.
She had never known the name of her owner, nor of the guards who watched over them. She did have personal experience with the lance, however, and felt its vicious prodding at least once every solar week. She had come to hate and to love that lance. Every prod of the tip dropped her to her knees, and she hated it. When the slaver died by it, she loved it.
Her dream continued in a semi-awake state. As she pushed against the confining gel, she fell again completely into the reoccurring dream that she knew pre-dated even her memory, the only thing that had kept her going day after day. It was the one of the woman standing behind the slaver, his shocked face turning to death. That dream had come to her more often as she grew up, and then one day it happened in reality.
The workday started that morning just as it did every day, with the sun barely above the watery horizon. The slaver arrived by hovercar, and set about to punish a new girl, a Brutor who arrived like so many before her, beaten, exhausted and yet still defiant. Even the guards weren't around this early, sleeping or eating their fill of the slaves' hard work.
The slaver prodded the new girl several times, the Matari crying out as the lance jolted her with electricity. The other slaves did not stare, nor did they stop their morning routine of eating, but Airgoidh watched. She felt hate. The girl no longer moved, and her anger grew. With the sun behind him, the girl passed out at his feet, he continued to prod the Matari though she was now likely dead.
"Stop," Airgoidh yelled, winging a rock against his head. Both the shout and the rock struck as hard as the other, and his face was one of astonishment and fire. The sun blazed across the distance between them as it lifted above the horizon, causing her to block the light with her hand. She could see him turn to the sun, then stumble. He stepped back a little, turned and lumbered toward her careening like a man without control. His face looked like the chalky muck she had worked in all her life, and only when he fell into her lap did she see the woman standing behind him. She was tall and beautiful, with one side of hair swept forward over her face in the morning breeze. Blood flowed from a wound in her chest, and only the slaver's lance kept her from just dropping to the ground. She leaned on the weapon, breathing hard.
"Hello sister," the woman said, now about to pitch forward. "I am Gaelbhan."
**
Zayard set the plan in motion even as he stood on the crest of the dune. The fluttering shredders soothed him, and he remembered the first time he had ever seen one. His first owner had died in an attack out in Derelik, a fitting end to a cruel bastard of an Amarr, now some forty years back. The man’s slaves were being sold off to other Amarrians, and one of his brethren had set up a shredder on the hill where they had buried the bastard – to keep the spirit of the Amarr from remaining. He had seen it on that day as he was being led to the transport. He could still hear the fluttering, and remembered how proud of being Matari he was, despite the Amarr propaganda, despite that an Amarrian yelled out and the guards ran over to dismantle the heathen flag.
The plan for explaining the large number of Amarri deaths -- and the one Ammatar -- was simple. Pack up and leave. He turned back to the settlement, which already seemed empty. Only the lights of his bar continued to twinkle in the graying light. Damn the settlers were fast.
Yup, pack up and leave. After all these years of bartending on this desert of a planet, he was sorry to leave. The whole of the world was sand, and the whole of his existence had been to sweep away the sand just as his efforts in the Peoples' Front had been to sweep away the Amarr.
He only had to set fire to the settlement now, after packing the ship. He would just set up bar in Osuggur, one of a thousand there. No one would even know he existed, and certainly no stinking Amarr would ever learn that the new owner of Luci's Bar in Osoggur was the same bartender who had just slain an Amarri officer and his Ammatar lackey.
The wind had been kicking his hat around, threatening to blow it completely off his near balding head. He walked, holding it down with one hand, his other hand wringing in pain as arthritis struck. As he rubbed his fingers to deal with the pain, he noticed the sound of the wind had changed, become a mirror of the fluttering of the shredders.
He turned to the forest of Matari symbolism, and stopped dead. Shapes moved among the poles, shapes that were definitely Matari, but also shifting like the sand dunes in the wind. He blinked, rubbing his eyes. The shapes were gone, and the wind had returned to its normal howling.
"So, you are truly awake." Zayard picked up the pace back to the settlement. "Don't mind me, ronin, I am just leaving." He was now at a dead run.