The Caverns of Kronos

Kronosia - Part 8

     “So,” said Matthew a little later when they’d all had time to digest the momentous decision they’d made. “How are we going to overthrow the Konnens? Lenny can’t enchant the entire Konnen army.”

     “If I enchanted Lord Basil himself...” began Lirenna.

     Thomas shook his head. “Wouldn’t work,” he said. “The entire Konnen family knows the value of the moon trogs as a slave workforce. If Lord Basil suggested leaving them alone and abandoning Kronos they’d depose him and put someone else in charge and we’d have gotten nowhere. You can’t enchant the entire Konnen family. No, I’m afraid that enchantments won’t solve this particular problem for us. We’ll have to find another way.”

     “Such as what?” asked Shaun, but the wizard could only shake his head in bafflement. Organising a rebellion was not something he had any experience with and, for once, he was completely lost for ideas.

     A baffled silence fell as they strained their brains trying to find an answer. Minutes went by without anyone offering a solution and Diana began to despair, fearing that nothing they could do would save the friendly, gentle moon trogs from an eternity of grinding slavery. Then, just as they were about to give up, though, Jerry snapped his fingers and jumped to his feet. “The Pantrys!” He exclaimed.

     “What about them?” asked Shaun.

     “The Pantrys are the secret of the Konnens’ power,” explained the tiny nome excitedly. “They control the population by giving or withholding food and water, but if the commoners had their own independent source of food...”

     “You’re suggesting that we try to capture a Pantry?” said the soldier doubtfully. “I don’t think it would work. The Konnens would search the whole city until they got it back and a Pantry's a hell of a lot bigger to hide than we are. The smallest of them are six feet high and three feet wide. You can’t just stick it down a secret tunnel. They’d find it soon enough and then ruthlessly punish everyone involved in its theft.”

     “Not if they didn’t know we had it,” replied Jerry. “The Konnens don’t control every Pantry in the city, only those in the pressurised part of the residential ring. There are at least two more Pantrys in Laxu segment, the segment of the residential ring that’s in vacuum.”

     Excitement spread among the other Tharians, growing as they realised the merit of the idea. “They might not work anymore,” pointed out Lirenna. “About half the Pantrys have failed down through the centuries.”

     “We won’t know until we look,” replied Diana. “If just one of them works we’d be in with a chance, and Laxu segment may be one of the ones with three Pantrys.”

     “We’ll ask Tomsk,” said Shaun. “He’ll know.”

     “We’ll have to take them somewhere where people can get to them without having to go through vacuum,” said Lirenna. “I don’t know what vacuum would do to food, but I don’t think I’d fancy eating it.”

     “Perhaps we can take them down into the old mines somewhere,” suggested Matthew. “Or down into one of the secret tunnels.”

     “First things first,” said Shaun. “Let’s see if they still work first.”

     The others nodded, and they began to make plans for their venture into the dead sector.

☆☆☆

     Drusus hurried down the corridor, anxious to have the Necklace back in its hiding place before his father realised it was missing. He knew he’d be punished severely if he was caught, the Necklaces being the most valuable items in all Kronos and the most carefully guarded with the outlaws still at large, but he had to have another look at Tharia. He’d been able to think of nothing else since his father had shown it to him. To a young boy who’d spent his entire life cooped up in a small city of only a few thousand inhabitants, the idea of an entire planet with millions of people, with hundreds of vast, sprawling cities, of countries, continents, islands, forests, rivers and myriads of diverse cultures and peoples… it was a lure simply too powerful to resisted.