My Kingdom Come Book 1: The Saints We See (Complete)

Chapter 9: Assembling

661 standard years after the signing of the Alliance treaty

Hathu staggered to where the bunker was buried on the other side of the slave cages and dropped his two heavy sacks to the ground. He rubbed a hand over his ribs and let out a soft breath. This had not been a good week to take one of his father's beatings.

He crouched down and pressed his hand to the bunker scanner, hoping that his handprint was still one of the key codes. It scanned his hand and sounded the green chime. Hathu let out a breath of relief and pulled the heavy door open letting out a soft grunt of pain.

The bunker smelled musty and damp. It didn't smell like anyone had been down there in years. Hathu turned on his electric light and descended the steps into the gloom.

The bunker wasn't very big. Only a couple of grown Ir'Klahn men could have fit inside at a time. Every wall was lined with amateurly built wooden shelves from bottom to top. The shelves were lined with black cases filled with weapons. Second hand weapons Nediz bought while he was away buying second hand slaves.

When Nediz had bought the weapons they had been part of his plan to arm his new world. Now that He was head guard at the prison, he could order all the new weapons he wanted and the emperor paid the bill.

Hathu pulled cases off the shelves looked inside then replaced them again. He'd never been down there before and he didn't know what sort of weapons his father was storing. Fortunately there were a good number of plasma rifles and lots of recharge packs.

He climbed out of the bunker and lifting each of the sacks with effort, he dropped them down the stairs. He went back down the stairs and emptied the sacks on the floor. They had been full of stones. He began filling the sacks with plasma rifles and recharge packs, while filling the empty cases with rocks. Hopefully if anyone came to retrieve the cases of weapons, they wouldn't check inside till later.

He thought about the little trip to the beach he had made the previous morning, before school. He had carefully crept down the beach along the tree line, figuring that wherever the three groups his father had spoken of a few days ago were supposed to meet on the beach it probably wouldn't be too far from the main town, since they were planning on moving families. He had been right.

About half a mile from the main pathway that led from the town to the beach, he found two cargo shuttles parked on the sand. A single prison guard stood watch over them, or rather had been sitting. The man on watch had been sitting in the sand, leaning on his blaster, staring out to sea.

Hathu continued to shift weapons from cases to sacks, while he wracked his brains for everything he knew about cargo shuttles. They were generally used to transport cargo from orbit to planetside when there weren't proper landing docks, or if there were only small landing docks. Sometimes they were used to transport cargo over long distances within planet. There was no reason for a couple of cargo shuttles to be there on the beach, much less in the penal colony. They got all their goods two to four times a year from small hauling ships that landed in the prison cargo docks. The ore the prisoners mined were also carried off planet by small hauling ships. These cargo shuttles had to be what Nediz would be using to transport his group. If he was planning to be 'long gone' before the emperor found out what had happened, they had to have some sort of space worthy ship nearby that they would be flying the cargo shuttles to.

There wasn't enough room in those two cargo shuttles to move everyone in the penal colony, and Nediz had sounded like he wanted to move everyone he was moving at the same time. He was probably only going to take the families that were already devoted to his cause, whatever prisoners he could convince to go along with them and...apparently the older students from the school. Hathu swallowed and frowned.