Jean drummed his fingers against the steel track of a drill deep in the tunnels of the Narax mines. The fingers on his right hand hadn’t fit properly for months. But now that he’d regained much of his lost weight, the mechanical digits fit well and worked properly.

  He wasn’t the only prisoner to regain a significant amount of weight in recent months. The campaign he and Monique launched after finding the abandoned tunnel filled with ore had resulted in many prisoners getting food on a regular basis. The food wasn’t free, though. Anyone that used the ore from his stash had to swear loyalty to the pair of survivors. Refusal to do so wasn’t wrong, but when the choices were loyalty or starvation, the answer quickly became clear.

  “They have a weakness,” he said, the metallic click of his fingertips echoing through the chamber. “The guards rotate off-planet every fifteen days. It’s like clockwork.”

  “How is that a weakness? We don’t have access to their dock.” Monique stood against the wall of the tunnel, tossing a fist-sized piece of ore from hand to hand. When they’d originally come to this place, the simple act of holding such a treasure out in the open was asking to be robbed. Now, lack of hunger had given the prisoners back their humanity.

  “On the night before they rotate, we kidnap a guard and strip him of his armor. One of those modules is sure to give us the proper access to get into their protected wing. When they rotate, they usually leave the prison unguarded for a few hours while they performed the changeover.” Jean leaned back and closed his eyes, mentally drawing out the plan in his mind, where it couldn’t be leaked to the guards. “Once they leave the prison, we move a group of us into their quarters and get ready to choke their bay. We will only have one chance, but if we catch them off guard, we can probably kill most of them.”

  “Weapons?”

  “If we time it right, we can get our men into the armory and still have plenty of time to lock down the bay. Even if all we can get is those shock-batons they enjoy so much, we can do some damage. I know it won’t be feasible for everyone, but I assume you will find a way to increase output on your weapons?”

  “I always do, you know that.”

  “Good. If we can kill the wave of guards before they can send a distress call, we will have two weeks to harden our defenses and ensure they cannot harm us.” He stopped clicking his fingers and locked eyes with the woman he’d worked beside for so long.

  This plan would be dangerous, there was no doubt. But now that many prisoners were back to fighting shape, they could at least try to resist. He’d done something similar back on Earth, but Earth had significantly more resources for capturing and detaining a known terrorist.

  Although, since neither the Stygiborans nor Scaladorians bothered to take the records of the humans they’d kidnapped, they had no accurate way of knowing what he’d done or why he was so feared. Companies tightened security, shipping lanes closed, and politicians refrained from showing their faces while he was in town. It wasn’t much, but his constant attempts to discredit or destroy many major corporations had forced them to take security more seriously.

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  He’d tried to bring back the splendor of Earth, but it always fell short. No matter how hard he tried to rebuild the environment, or how many companies he destroyed, new ones always rose to take their place. Taking over this prison would be different. If he and Monique could just hold the line long enough to fortify the building, they could cause some serious damage to their jailors.

  “What about the Orbital exchange?” Monique pointed out, “We have to get up there as well so we can lock down their ability to get to the ground in the first place.”

  “That’s the easy part. We’ll have a ship after the guards are dead, won’t we? I’m sure at least one of these prisoners has flight training. We can lean on them to get up there, then you can enter the exchange with a pressure suit on and vent the atmo.”

  Jean sat back, finally ceasing his endless drumming. The plan was risky, but it had merit. If they could pull this off, the prison on Narax would no longer be a place of starvation and bondage. It would become a center of freedom; a place where a person had no fear of showing the world who they were or what they cared about.

  “I think I might have someone in mind.” Monique said, motioning to Jean to follow her. The person in question was the prisoner Jean met the day he’d found the stash of ore. From the few interactions she had, the man had given Jean his full support long before anyone asked for it. “Rodney was a pilot back on Earth before the attack. He tried to negotiate a deal with the Scalador, but they threw him down here rather than utilizing his skills.”

  “And why did he try to negotiate with his kidnappers?” he asked, carefully picking his way across the broken stone of the tunnel.

  “Because life as a slave pilot and life as a slave miner are two very different things. He has the skill, and surviving in a place of respect is more enticing than living in a place like this.”

  “Bastards.” Jean spat, “At least we know he’ll have no love for them. Where is he mining?”

  “Just another mile or so.”

  The mines were cold, and the floor was rough. Despite the lights liberally spaced along the tunnel, it was incredibly treacherous. A prisoner could walk for days through this labyrinth of tunnels and only ever see stone. The Scaladorians saw this place as the worst form of torture they could envision, and for most, that was true. But the key to survival here was easy. Once a prisoner learned to navigate the tunnels, life became something worth living again.

  The pair stopped at a dark section of wall long stripped of its lights. Monique’s hands moved across the stone, searching for a small depression where wall met floor. Glancing down the hallway to ensure they were alone, she pushed and a slab of stone a meter wide swung inward silently.

  “Is he down there?” Jean whispered, following his second in command through the secret opening.

  “Yes.”

  “Are we sure he’s on our side?”

  “He has no reason to love the Stygiboran filth. I would even say he probably hates them just as much as you do.”

  Jean laughed, pushing the stone door closed behind him. “Considering what they took from us when they killed millions, I would be surprised if any human likes them.”

  His time in this prison had taught him many things. How to survive with little more than nothing. How to judge a person when they look you in the eye. But most importantly, he’d learned why these aliens bothered to take the humans in the first place.

  Deep in the hidden passages of the mines, there were secrets in the stone. The story of these creatures was carved into the stone walls, repeating itself over and over with different worlds and stars, all showing the destruction of their home. The walls depicted countless races, some of which were barely more than soft imprints on the stone.

  The Stygiborans were easy to understand. They didn’t care about humanity, or any of the races that came before them. The only reason they bothered to take humanity was because their old slaves had gone extinct and they needed new workers.

  It was time for the captors to become extinct. If Jean had any say in the matter, it would be humans that pulled the final trigger.