The Firelighters (A Learning Experience, #7) by Christopher G. Nuttall

The Firelighters (A Learning Experience, #7) by Christopher G. Nuttall

Author:Christopher G. Nuttall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nuttall, Space War, Interstellar War, First Contact, Alien Contact
Publisher: Christopher G. Nuttall
Published: 2023-06-15T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter Twenty-One

Elder was old.

He was in his fifties, older than most of the memory keepers, older – by far – than most of the young men and women who filled the camp. He’d been born on a plantation and had been lucky to escape when, after years of abuse, he’d killed his collaborator-supervisor and fled into the wildlands. It hadn’t been easy to find a rebel camp willing to take him in and there were times when he thought they wouldn’t have taken him at all if he hadn’t been a memory keeper. The stories he bore with him, stories he’d been told by his old tutor, were a reminder of the days before the demons. It was his role to ensure they were passed on to the young.

The Tichck were not demons, of course. Elder was no fool. He’d known they were flesh and blood, as were their monstrous servants, even before he’d fled into the wilds. He knew – now – that what he’d been told were just ... lies. The planet wasn't flat – or alone. The Tichck were alien invaders from another star, not divine beings or their demonic counterparts. There was nothing special about them, save for their overwhelming technology. Elder had seen enough rebels scythed down by lightning bolts to know, beyond all doubt, that direct opposition was futile. And yet, what else could they do? His tutor had told him to take the stories and pass them down, as if stories alone would liberate them from their oppressors.

He knew better.

They say the air is growing thicker, he thought, as he watched the gunmen at their drill. He was old enough to remember when it had been easier to breathe, when his people hadn’t had blemishes on their skin that seemed to come from nowhere. They itched constantly, mocking him. They say the world is changing around us.

It wasn’t easy – it had never been easy, even as he grew old enough to command automatic respect – to convince the young men to watch and wait, rather than throw their lives away on futile uprisings. They’d been forced to work – in the plantations, in the factories, in the homes and offices within the city – from the moment they could walk; they’d been forced to breed more children, then watch helplessly as their wives and children were sold to other plantations, never to be seen again. They’d endured mistreatment on a scale few would believe if they hadn’t gone through it themselves. And they wanted to fight back.

Elder knew better. They’d be killed if they tried. He knew how deadly the alien soldiers were, how easily they could quash an uprising ... how ruthlessly, too, they’d weed out any hostile strains from their slaves. He knew some who’d had their minds destroyed, others whose families had been completely wiped out ... he wasn’t unaware, too, of the sheer firepower arrayed against them. They could overrun a few dozen plantations, he thought, but afterwards? They’d be slaughtered.



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