Stranded by D.A. Sanford - HTML preview

Take it to them

We now have over one hundred armed kin. They are very smart, I am now seeing a number of them fitting out the pistols with a shoulder stock. They told me that it was more steady for them. What am I to try to dissuade them from a comfort. The light bullets will find the target in the sight.

From what I can ascertain, the felids have two or three cities. They should have guards by now since we have killed quite a few of their expeditions to find us. We vary our methods to make it feel like there are more groups.

We have wounded more to have them send messages. They were from the Mouser Clan, the Justice spreaders and a few more. On each, all they had was arrows spears and knives. Battles were always one sided.

Sitting with the representatives of each group of twenty five I laid my thoughts on the table.

“They have been coming at us in small groups. I wonder just how many of them really are now positive that they can beat us with their arrows and spears. We now have enough people. It may be time to take at least one of their cities. Surround and demand.

I do believe that the ones that came after us were the only brave ones. I feel that the ones that stay in the cities are the type that declare war, puff up their chests and say go out and make us proud. Then they sit and wait to take credit. They are the type that have others do the dirty work. We now need to take it to them.”

We discuss the situation and quite a few still want to chip away at them some more. I tell them that it is only working on the symptom. With a thorn in the foot, you do not wrap it up, you have the thorn removed.

“Unless we take the fight to them head on, they will keep on spreading thorns. I will go with the majority but we need to send a message to those who are sending the ones out. They need to at least feel the pain. How’s this, we attack their food. Raid their fields and rescue the field workers. Take their food and they will do something stupid. If we get some of the closer workers, we can get a better feel of what is happening in their cities.”

That plan goes well with the group so we figure that the closest fields are a day or two away. A small group will be going. Target the guards and free the slaves. Pillage the fields and destroy what is left.

As much as I don’t like it, I am being told that this is not a job for me to go on. They are now proficient on stealth. Sneak in, raise havoc and then run out. They go. I can’t stand it. I feel helpless. It was four days of hell. I have been physically restrained from going after them.

On the evening of the fourth day, the group that went out is back with ten freed slaves and bags of food. Everyone made it back. One big problem. One of the men lost his pistol. He feels it was on the way back. He insists that he had it yesterday. We need to go back. This time I’m going.

We go back over the route. Unlike our normal routine of going carefully as not to leave a trail, I notice there are a lot of broken branches and such. He starts to get worried when I mention that a blind man could follow that trail.

He looked like he wanted to run when we came around the corner and there were a group of felids. They had the weapon and it looked like they were trying to figure it out. I shot the one holding the pistol. We killed all but one. I grab the one that dropped his pistol and tossed him towards the wounded felid.

It is obvious that he was leading them to us.

“This one is one of the newer raids. We found him wandering and took him in. I now accuse him of being a plant. We need to get back. I don’t know if this one dropped a map on how to get back to our home.”

I really need to get back and I don’t care anymore. I walk over to the wounded and shot it point blank. I search them and lo and behold, in one of the dead’s pocket was a detailed map to our home. It was on the one holding the pistol.

I walk up to the group and show them the map. “Treason! You sold us out.” I take out my pistol put it to his head and shoot. He drops.

“Search him and then throw him in the pile. We need to get back, then attack the city.

This has to end. I will not lose anyone.”

Luck is on our side, on the way back, we run into a marching group of felids but they were not trained. They were very sloppy. It was not hard to take them all down. Now I am right. We need to strike.

Back home, we inform everyone that we need to prepare for an attack on our home. I explain that we have had two traitors, so far. We do not know if anyone else is a plant but I will ask, who is better off with the felids?

We decide to leave in the morning but I show my immediate family the charge on the back. Escape if necessary. “Serena I will return to you but I want you safe. Run, I will find you all.

I kiss her and we leave. The city was again a few days away. I had half of our fighters. I left the instruction that if any one showed that they were trying to give a signal to someone chain them up. My group, I will shoot them.

We got to the city, it was a mess. No one on guard. There were some of the houses that had white flags. There were slaves wandering the streets. The top elite had run to the capital. This town is toast. I yell for them to send out the slaves out. If we search and find any in your home, I will shoot you and burn your house down.

Quite a few felids opened their doors and let out our kin. The felids looked like they were not in a fed condition.

We were told that the other cities were in the same condition. The rulers had sent out everyone except themselves. Almost all families have lost their men. Most said that they were making a last push to our home.

I called everyone in and we ran all the way back. There were a few that hung back to walk with the released. We rested for a few hours then ran again. We got almost to the base and I was stunned.

There in the field was a large group of tied up felids. Behind them was a very large green ship. It had an open mouth full of teeth with angry eyes.

The description was exactly what the goblin fleet was described as. There in front of my home was a large contingent of goblins.

Their leader came to me and introduced himself to me.

“You must be Rubin King. I am Razen, commander of this ship. We picked up your distress signal. When we landed, we found these felids trying to break in. Your mate told us over the response radio that they were under attack by these felids. She described what exactly they have done. She told us that you had left to put an end to this oppression.”

I tell him that he has my eternal thanks. Then explain that my crew threw me out in a pod because I did not want to go to the goblin planet to get slaves. I heard them destroy the ship. Then I landed here and found Serena being attacked. I tell him that I was going to give him my side arm.

I slowly pulled it out and handed it to him. Razen laughed and handed it back.

“I was told that you have been rescuing slaves. We were helped by a race that we call jumpers. They rescued our forefathers from slavery. I contacted our government. There is a large unsettled section of our world that we will offer to you to settle. We have simple rules and we have found that you already follow them. How about it. Would you take us up on our offer. I can see where your people would fit in nicely.”

“I need to talk with everyone but it is just a formality. The lazy royals will not let us alone but they have been sending the lower class against us. Their system is at a collapse point. I would like my people to settle on a world in peace. Did they tell you that my people were food for the felids?”

Later I informed him that they all wanted off this world.

Razen then was able to broad cast to this world that all of the mouse folk must be released unharmed or they would suffer the consequences.”

Only the royals protested and were descended upon by the elite of his group and mine.

The royals were evicted from their castle, their wealth was distributed to the commoner felids left because my people did not want anything but to get off this hell hole.

Just as my family was amazed at my bottomless bag. The others did not have much but all they had was to come with them. Serena and I were on the last ship out. The goblins had the mouse folk DNA programmed into the fleet that circled this planet. They found the last of our kin and they were rescued.

Razen’s ship was the last and we were in the base. I showed him my equipment. Like the pistol, he just laughed. “

This stuff is old, just like your pistol. By the way, let me have your pistol.”

I gladly hand it to him.

“That was the last test. You did not even protest.”

He hands me a new one. “You don’t need to use an antique.”

“Antique? Well it was my father’s ship and he had it for a long time so I guess it could be an antique. What will this do?”

He asks me if I want my things left for the felids? I told him that I did not want them to even have the remote possibility of leaving this planet. We left my home and he told me to fire a round in to it. We were the last to come out. There is no one left in there, I made sure of that, so I humored him.

One shot and the whole hill evaporated. There was no trace of it ever being there.

Serena wiggled and told him that she wanted one also.

With that we were the last off the planet.

The stars and a new world

I would have liked to be outside the ship looking at our window. I wanted to see her lovely face plastered against the window. Serena has gone from wondering about the

stars to meeting me and finding out that there are other worlds out there and now she is in space.

She is in constant ecstasy. She is constantly in motion. She was in awe when she saw her entire world just a little ball then it vanished. We were in our room and she could not contain herself. She showed me what her mother meant when she told me size did not matter. It is a good thing that the room is sound proof. But the next morning, I had my doubts with the smiles we were getting. We did not really care because she said that now we were finally one.

“I can’t wait to see mother to see if she can tell.”

“Knowing mother, she already knows. Mothers have a cosmic connection. She probably will have a party when we land.”

Serena said that she wanted this to last a long time. Being adrift for a while, I find myself wanting dirt under my feet. I do not think that I ever want to travel in space for a living again. I will talk to Razen about having a short trip in space for a future anniversary gift.

It was a pleasant trip and finally the planet was gaining size by the minute. She was more excited.

“Look at it. It is more beautiful than the other world.”

“This one has no one exploiting others. We are free. We will need to help in every way.

They are so far advanced from what we had. We will be the ones to catch up. They told us that one of the requirements is that everyone needs to read and write. That is a good thing.”

We are informed that we will be landing in the settlement area. All our people are here and starting orientation. After we catch up. Serena and myself will come before the leaders and they will go over the rules of being leaders.

What a sight. The area is lush. It is just a little more humid but the temperature is constant year round. Serena is both happy and sad. She liked the first snows but winter dragged on but she told me that we would need to frame her fur coat and put it in our public hall as a reminder of their old life of fear.

The goblin engineers had already made the meeting house, dorm, baths and toilet house. They had started family homes based on what mother and father told them were the habits that they grew to love in the cavern. The biggest thing that we would have to get used to is above ground.

I had only been living with them for less than a year. I find myself looking for a ground entrance. There are a few of the elders that are already having their family members dig hides. The goblins do not say anything about that. They seem to know that elders sometimes cannot adapt to the fear of their oppressors feeling. I found out that the

goblins were in total horror when they were told that mouse folk would be ultimately eaten after being tormented.

Now that we were on ground, we were called before the counsel of ten. Their spokes man tells us.

“We have heard of your struggles. The horror you endured and how Rubin helped you fight for your freedom. We will be sending our historian to you. Your saga must become part of our planet’s history. You will always have a special place in our history. We were once slaves with only death ahead of us but we were not food. We are honored to say that you are now citizens of our world.”

They go over the rules. Which all boil down to respect for others and especially for yourself.

Settling in, the goblins were happy to find that we were not waiting for them to do what we can do for ourselves. Our crafts people had brought all our tools. With the wood that the goblins left, we had already constructed many homes. The goblin crew showed up and were treated to the sight of workers building.

In the nearby woods, we were harvesting the old standing dead trees. Then working them into boards. What was startling to the goblin crew was the fact that the women and children were transplanting saplings to the areas that had been harvested.

Serena told them that, since we lived in hides, the trees were considered our friends, or protectors. The hide openings blended in with the root system. When an old tree died, we replaced it with reverence. This was a practice that was adopted for the world. It’s not like the woods were being strip cut but replacing made it renewable.

It was clear to our hosts that we were an asset to this world. The biggest was when one of our people was talking with their inventors. Her name is Clara.

Clara is a tinker. She had a habit of talking to herself when she noticed something. She would think out loud. One day, they thought she lost her mind. She was looking at a stack of empty cylinders and talking up a storm. She had her notebook out and was, with the joy of inspiration, talking while drawing vigorously.

Everyone knew that it was best to leave her to her inspiration but they also knew that most times, she would turn something on it’s head. This time it was astronomical. Who would have figured that a pile of cylinders would change the face of the defense fleet.

Once Clara calmed down, she presented her inspiration.

“We mouse folk thank you for adopting us and making our life safe. We urgently need to contribute to protecting our space. Right now, we confront an intruder and give them a choice of surrendering or be destroyed. Destroying a ship is a waste. What we need is fighters that can disable a ship. We need to make a cluster ship that would be carried by the larger ship.”

She now showed her drawing. It took all by shock. It made what was needed so clear that it was a revelation. There on her paper was a cluster of small cylinder shaped ships.

“Each cluster ship is six ships interconnected. The connection to the mother ship is a single hub attached to the top of one of the old slave ships. Each small ship will be like a bee. A single bee can be a pest, but in a group, they can kill. They will be a solo ship that my people will pilot. We can target the right areas to disable a hostile ship. Equip each with a bank of light bullets and we will sting them into submission.”

After all she presented, she just sat down, folded her arms and smiled while she waited for the goblin engineers to begin to breathe again. She has just reinvented the fighter plane that they had in the books that the first jumper left for them. The fighter will support the battle ships. The mother ship would not fight. That was for fighter support. It had an arm that would capture the returning fighter and return it onto the hub.

The prototypes were made and ground tested. The fighter devastated the target but also proved that it could surgically cut areas because they added a cutting torch to a retractable arm.

When I saw my kin proudly piloting these marvels. I knew that I was never going to leave this world. Never going to leave my family.

The go ahead was given and soon we had trained pilots for these fighters. Their first trial was a large fighter that intruded into our system. It was obvious that they were another of the unbelievers.

They were given the usual warning but as usual it is ignored. While the main group fired at the ship, the fighters flew in and basically hamstringed the freighter by severing the main control lines for their weapons. They had no choice but to surrender. The crew was put in a shuttle and launched outside our system with a new warning that it was brought down and it was about entering our space without permission.

That freighter was one great prize. It seems, just like my crew, they wanted to pad their haul with goblin slaves. OOP’s. It had a cargo of military equipment that may have been intended to break our hold on this system. Greed has given us an advantage. Those weapons will be used against the ones that wanted to destroy us.

After years of fighting usurpers the legend has been cemented. Eventually, we have no invaders, just ships parked by the warning beacons. They are met each time with a ship escort regardless of how many times they come.

The fighters are now equipped with attaching clamps. Even on friendly ships, they will attach to the hull. Any sign of betrayal, the hull will be breached killing all within. Just the threat keeps all inline.

Mother is fussing, almost to the point of irritating her daughter but I learned that it was tradition. Serena is close to delivering.

She is showing what I am informed as normal size. I have been worried that the baby may be too big for her to deliver but was told that they have procedures in place that will cover any situation.

Our son was born without any problem. I had already been warned that the baby would be in, what they call, the pinky stage. Small, helpless and no hair. Since this is the first human to mouse folk baby, the goblins have greater experience with mixtures.

A baby born to a goblin who was impregnated by a human, gave birth to a normal size baby but during the first months, it will grow faster and take on the characteristics of a hobgoblin. They told us to expect the same.

Our son came into a free world, without the prospect of being game and a meal. His fur started to appear shortly after birth and really started to grow. He has feature of both of us but it is obvious that he will be taller. Around the height of the goblins. It will be interesting to see what our grandchildren will looks like.