They won't live long enough to get suspicious.
Chapter 66
Instead of stopping in the packaging room, I continued down the next short hallway and into the next chamber. It was a good deal larger than the other rooms in the zulag, because it was meant to store finished food products.
I took a quick look around. Crates upon crates of slog meat, friet meat, jyggs, burrs … the room had a very good smell. The scent of well cooked meat was more alluring than the raw flit meat I had eaten all my life.
There were four mudokons simply scrubbing the floors, and one in the corner taking inventory. I had once marveled at thinking a mudokon could read well enough to take inventory, but at one point I had held the job myself. Each crate had a logo on it that corresponded to its contained product. The sheet on the clipboard had each logo drawn on it. It was the mudokons job to put a tally mark by each logo for each crate. Simple work.
And, naturally, there were sligs. Two of them. Asleep.
A fine excuse. “Kill those lazy bastards,” I hissed. My sligs take them down and look to me for the next order.
“You two stay here. I want to go investigate something.”
The sligs shake their heads. “No way, boss,” one says. “At least one of us is coming with you after that Abe guy got a hold of you.”
I thought it over, and decided I could pull it off. “Okay. You come with me.” To the other, I said: “Keep your eyes and ears open for that Abe guy.”
The sligs buzz in assent, and I move off and back into packaging, which I had passed over before.
Packaging was really a small chamber with a large machine that took up nearly the whole room. Cooked meat came in on trays at one end and came out in sealed plastic packages on the other. Two mudokons loaded the packages into crates. Two more carried the crates into a chute that unloaded them in storage. The fifth was responsible for bringing empty crates over to the machine to be filled.
So who was operating the machine?
On closer inspection, I noticed a green screen terminal with a line scrolling across it. It was labeled with a small sign reading “For Glukkon Use Only.”
I was a glukkon. I stepped on over and it spoke at me. “Hey!”
I stopped. “Hey!”
After a second, the screen barked: “What?”
I didn’t quite know what it wanted. So … “Do it!”
The mechanized glukkon voice made a
bleh! noise, and the machine ground to a halt.
The mudokons, now without anything to occupy themselves, produce rags and start scrubbing the floor.
At this point, three sligs piled into the already crowded room to see what had happened, why the machine had been turned off.
I growled. “Kill ‘em!”
The slig raised his gun and cut them down.
I turned to him. “Do you have a radio?”
The slig shook his head. “No, boss. Ruck has one, though.”
Ruck? Probably the other slig.
“You stay here and keep an eye on the mudokons. I’m going back to get Ruck.”
The slig shook his head. “Nope. I’m not leaving you alone again.”
I grunted. “It’s only down the hall. And besides, if you were to leave me alone with five mudokons and Abe shows up, what would happen?”
The slig considered … and gave in. “Okay. But I suggest you hurry up, Boss.”
Without another word I turned and ran (not really running, it was really like launching myself forward and landing on my hands again, but my gluk mind insisted on calling it running) into the hall separating these two sub zulags.
Once I was sure I was out of sight of the two doorways into either zulag, I shouted for help. Then I quickly shifted back into my mudokon form. Just as I finished peeling out of the glukkon uniform, my two faithful slig guards appeared in either doorway.
They didn’t seem to ponder where the glukkon had gone. Instead, they saw me and shouted “Freeze!” simultaneously.
As much as I regretted doing so, I released the Shrykull power I had stored inside me. But these two sligs would likely grow suspicious if I took them everywhere and had them shoot every slig we came across.
I transformed into the paramite-scrab beast and lightning erupted from me. The beams struck the sligs, who could only call for help before they were vaporized.
With the slig threats cleared, my body reverted to normal all on its own.
I ran back to storage and shouted “All o ya!” to the mudokons. At this point I cringed, expecting a Zippy to zap me for speaking. Nothing happened. I looked up and around, and finally decided that my Shrykull had obliterated the Zippy cams in the area, as well.
The other mudokons looked at me, not sure what I was saying. Right. They couldn’t speak Inglish. I had learned with the magic of my earring, but they had not.
Anyway. I whistled a greeting and they all came with me to the packaging department.
With ten mudokons in the area, I began chanting. Soon enough, a bird portal formed in the space in front of me, and the mudokons happily leapt through.
And the power of ten liberated mudokons was enough to grant yet another shrykull morph. The power surged through me, and I was reassured of my coming victory.
As I returned to the hall, I contacted Druna, mentioned that I had rescued twenty five mudokons, and requested the glukkon morph. She was clearly impressed.
In the hall, I became Avid once more, and struggled into my clothes.
With Zulag 1 cleared, I returned to the Ball Car and to the main hub of the factory.
