Star Kitten (10 page)

In antiquity, it took the Romans about three
months to finally take the fortress of Masada... but could the
Nausties pull of the same thing? And could they do it before the
thin air exhausted them…before their food supplies ran out… and
before help arrived to rescue the besieged Warden?

Perry looked around at the other aides in
General Hicks’ war council. Hicks was grinning and nodding; so was
The Impaler. A few others grunted and stroked or rubbed their bald
heads (The Arian Knights all shaved themselves from head to waist).
Looking up, at the task before them, it struck them with both awe
and apprehension. This was going to be an amazing feat, but they
had all the resources to do it. Historically the Romans had much
more time to pull it off, but the Nausties had mining equipment,
and thousands of experienced mine workers. It could most certainly
be done again!

The General and his men were standing right
next to the enormous landing pad and their newly captured space
craft which only a week earlier had been docked and ready for
loading when the rebels burst in. Sarcastically, Perry had renamed
it THE ANARCHY. Everyone looked up one more time at the command
bubble suspended from the ceiling of the cavern above them. It
seemed so far away and high above them.

The command bubble was a thickly glassed-in
and reinforced terminal traffic control building, suspended from
the cavern roof like a ceiling lamp in a giant ballroom. It was
enormous though and extended in an oval shape about the size of an
apartment building, with two stories and levels of offices and
traffic control desks manned by mostly Zorg and a few other beings
who observed and coordinated the loading and unloading of ships in
the cargo bay below.

From the command bubble, the Zorg Terminal
controllers could see everything going on below; and this idea of a
dirt ramp? They’d see everything the Nausties were doing from start
to finish. “No deceiving these mothers this time, ‘P’,” muttered
General Hicks to his lover Perry. But Perry was still thinking
deeply, arms crossed and one hand stroking his three day beard.
Perry looked over at his General with a mischievous grin. He was
forming yet another idea already….

Within hours, Slart planners were brought up
from the Naustie headquarters below the Service Tunnel. A new field
headquarters was established… in full view of the command bubble
above them. That was Perry’s idea, and though Hicks questioned him
on it, Perry assured his lover that it was better that the Warden
and his staff THINK they knew everything that was going on at all
times below. Perry said, “Let them see everything for a while,
General. We want them to have several weeks to plan for their
defense according to what they SEE us doing. Trust me….” The
General just raised his hands up, shook his head slightly, and
grinned. No use questioning his life partner and companion. Hicks
and Perry had been together now for ten years, and by now Hicks
knew that when Perry had a good idea, just to let him move forward
with it.

The Slarts estimated that the height
possible to reach would be 200 feet, with a feasible angle and
grade for a tractor. This would put them right up next to the wall
of the canyon and level with the Employee mess hall looking out at
the loading bay. The command bubble was about fifty feet higher in
the cavern and suspended from the ceiling about a hundred feet from
the cavern wall. From this point of view, the traffic controllers
could see pretty much everywhere in the loading bay. The plan Perry
initially hatched, was to merely drill through the thick glass
wall, create a breach, and then rush through with shock troops…
eliminating any outer defenders.

That’s the plan that Perry WANTED the Warden
to see that is. Most importantly that’s what he wanted his enemy to
prepare for.

The Slarts then estimated how long the ramp
would need to be. They determined and calculated necessary labor
and equipment needs; and assigned work teams. Thousands of Nausties
were called up from the mines below; and for three long weeks they
worked in shifts of a thousand to five thousand miners dumping and
then packing; piling and spreading thousands of tons of soil,
rocks, mineral ore, and extracted dirt. Crews followed dump trucks
with water buckets to douse the ramp and packed it firmly with
shovels so it would hold the tractor drill. Thousands of Nausties
worked loading full-size dump vehicles with ground ore extract from
the nearby crushing plant. Drills were used and in some cases
explosives were used to blow up walls and doors to warehouses
storing food supplies and tools down at the cavern floor.

Warden Ggggaaah’s aides watched with
amazement at the activity below. In only a few days of observing,
they were able to report back to the evil Warden of the Rebels’
progress. “S-sssir, the prisoners… are building a ramp!” Warden
Ggggaaah couldn’t believe his tiny reptile ears. He went down to
the command bubble to look out and see the activity himself.
THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of half-naked rebellious prisoners were
hard at work. Pumalars, Zorgolongians like himself… Earthers,
Schpleeftii, Porkonjis, and amazingly… over in one area of the
cavern past the now-captured Earth Cruiser… Slartigifijians! And
there was one very tall Slartigifijian standing in the center of
them, clearly in charge of the whole operation! “That’s-sss got to
be Architeuthis, Warden Ggggaaah. That’s-sss him I’d wager,” said
the Warden’s aide, a young Zorgolongian named Yeeeeeeek. Warden
Ggggaaah hissed angrily for a moment, then muttered cynically to
Yeeeeeeek, “Thought that S-sssquid would be dead by now.”

Sealed off rooms and chambers that the
Nausties burst through, let freshly manufactured air in from the
air processing plant on the surface above them, replenishing the
supply of manufactured air into the Service Tunnel. This was a
pleasant surprise, and one they hadn’t prepared for. The Slarts had
calculated for each being just how long they could work out in the
cavern on the ramp, before he would have to take a break and
another crewman rotated in. Crewmen taken off the hill for
mandatory breaks, were sent to recovery rooms to replenish their
oxygen levels for a while until it was time to rotate back in.
These ventilated rooms and chambers and warehouses made for great
break rooms to rest workers who’d exhausted themselves at work, so
the plundered food warehouses became a great place to set up
barracks for the ramp crews to rest between work shifts.

But it also gave General Hicks an idea: If
those rooms and warehouses were ventilated, then they had to have
air ducts. And if there were industrial size air ducts pumping
fresh air into those rooms, then perhaps smaller beings could get
through them! Schpleeftii were quite tiny enough for the job, so
Spleef raiders were sent through the air shafts with the mission to
attack and capture the crushing plant and air processing facility.
They got quite far too, but eventually their surprise attack was
blunted by far superior security forces when they tried to capture
the whole oxygen pumping plant. In this bloody attack, hundreds of
Slart engineers working for the mine as plant operators were
slaughtered; and Nausties were able to override the air system
controls to pump fresh air back into the service tunnel for several
days.

Their hold on the oxygen pumping plant was
temporary though, and after about a week, the Spleefs had to
retreat through the air ducts that only they were small enough to
fit through. Their daggers and throwing knives were no match for
Security Force Electrical Impulse Cannons. But for several days,
the air system blasted freshly oxygenated air into the cavern, and
the workers were revitalized.

It came right in time too, because by the
third week entire work crews were having to be rotated every few
hours to stave off exhaustion from the thin air. Food and drinkable
water were quite adequate now, manpower was plentiful, and so was
raw determination—but healthy air was the only thing in short
supply.

Meanwhile, below in the planet core, the
Slarts and their new Zorg assistants (former guards who’d
surrendered and joined the Nausties) had been working feverishly
for days in developing solutions for the challenges going on above.
Each Food Depot and Guard Station had its own generator which had
been set up in case of a riot, or electrical outage. Hundreds of
these generators were cannibalized and eventually welded and
combined together to form a make-shift power plant below the
Service Tunnel. This gave electrical power for running water
filtration systems and for charging electrical vehicles, both of
which were vital to the task above. Best of all, these generators
were powered by Piezoelectricity, and the planet had plenty of
crystals that could be used to power them.

Aquifers continued to supply water into
filtration systems. Crews of Nausties, commanded by their gang
leaders, enlisted their members into units assigned to transporting
water and food to the service tunnel above. Soon, over half the
planet’s former prison population were up in the Service Tunnel,
serving in any capacity they could. Meanwhile, nearly ten thousand
Nausties worked feverishly hauling up dump trucks full of soil and
mineral deposits to form the ramp. It would take several million
tons of soil to create this ramp, and as long as no relief forces
arrived in time; the Slart engineers were certain they could
complete a ramp long enough, and high enough to reach the Mess Hall
windows above.

Of course none or at least very little of
all this activity remained secret to the Warden and his forces for
very long. Perry intended for all of it to be seen, and prepared
for by his enemy. The security troops and Warden Ggggaaah could see
everything going on from above and get fully prepared for the
attack. They even calculated its exact location for an eventual
breach, based on the trajectory of the ramp. To be sure, for the
first week, they did scramble a bit and panic, realizing that the
rebels now controlled the cargo bay. Worse, the only ship on the
whole planet—the only means of escape—was now sitting right in the
middle of it below them, in rebel hands.

This giant cargo ship was an Earth Cruiser,
capable of defending itself in a fire fight, armed with
thermonuclear missiles, and able to hold a payload of many tons of
processed mineral ore. This Earth Cruiser, which was captured early
in the firefight days before, was renamed THE ANARCHY when they
captured it. And now it was going to be the central support object
of their attack ramp. The crew of the Earth Cruiser had all been
dispatched early in the rebellion… all butchered right where they
sat on the ship when the rebels burst into this rather well
equipped intergalactic ship. It was about the size of a five-story
office building laying on its side, and carried a full crew of 600.
Yet, to the amazement of the Warden and his staff, the Rebels were
soon burying it… in dirt!

As the built-up ramp reached, then cleared
the Earth Cruiser though, it would need further support. So while
the dump trucks carried soil up the ramp on one side of the cruiser
to bury it and create an incline, Porkonji welders rigged together
a scaffolding out of massive dump haulers, mine train cars, guard
post sheds, and cannibalized equipment from the rock crushing plant
to provide stability to the dirt ramp on the other side, leading up
to the cavern wall. Massive stalagmites would form most of the
support as the ramp got closer to the canyon wall and they began
filling in the crevasse and forming the ramp right up to the mess
hall window.

But this created a new problem of structural
support and measurement. The first problem was just how close
trucks could actually get to dump dirt; and how much support was
needed at the very top for the tractor drill. These objections came
up constantly from the Slarts, but Perry always told Hicks to just
brush them off. Perry just kept assuring the General that he had it
all figured out. “Not to worry, Hickey,” Perry would say.

The dirt spillage on the other side of the
Earth Cruiser was much wider, and covered the whole width of the
tunnel leading out of the canyon, but with so many bodies and so
many beings and such excellent gang organization, the massive
undertaking started coming together in only a few weeks. And by
then, Spleef raiders had explored even more of the air system duct
network and opened up air shafts with explosive charges to feed
cleaner air into the cavern where thousands of their fellow
Nausties labored feverishly around the clock.

After three weeks, the ramp had reached a
height that was unfortunately within firing range of the Security
Forces inside the command bubble. The defenders tried blowing out
the glass walls of it to fire their EIC’s at the laboring Nausties
below, and in only one bloody hour they killed off a thousand
helpless workers who had no choice but to try running down the ramp
in terror.

But Perry’s genius continued to shine, as
he’d prepared for just that very thing. His plan was dangerous, but
it worked. Zorg Slingers were sent up behind rolling shields pushed
by Pumalars. With Sulfuric Acid-filled clay pots they flung their
incendiaries to smash through the open windows and horribly burn
the flesh of the soldiers manning gun positions inside the command
bubble. Still concealed behind the metal shields, Pumalars then
hurled grappling hooks with ropes in giant salvos across the open
cavern into now-vacated open windows of the command bubble. Brave
Spleef raiders climbed up the ropes with directional explosive
charges slung over their backs. These they attached to the lower
part of the structure, while the defenders desperately tried
braving expert javelin fire—from Earthers supporting the attack—to
try and cut the ropes. Some succeeded at the cost of their own
lives, but only a few lines were cut; and only a few Spleefs fell
to their deaths or terrible injury below. It was too late anyway,
the damage was done. Many charges were set all around the base of
the now-doomed command bubble, and it finally had to be ordered
evacuated by Terminal Command.