Chapter Text
A woman stood on a hill that allowed her to observe the entire city. For a long time she looked at the stars that were sparkling above her head, visible despite the light pollution from the city, and thought of home. During the first thirty-something years of her life, she had never paid much attention to the stars; but then her daughter had vanished, and she had spent many evenings sitting on the roof, staring at the stars above, hoping her daughter would be watching the same skies.
Since then, her life had changed so many times, sometimes drastically, up to the point that she now was standing on the soil of another planet under constellations she didn’t recognise, wearing a name that was not her own - and she had changed as well. Her daughter had always told her that there were things worth fighting for, but she hadn’t understood, not really. Then the Verbellion warrior caste had taken millions of people, including her, and she had finally realised what her daughter had tried to tell her.
One moment she had been standing on a street, the next she had found herself in a cavernous room on what had to be a space ship, along with dozens of other people. They had been left alone for some time, then screens had lit up on every wall. They had displayed an alien with lots of sharp, fang-like teeth, wearing a uniform and carrying some sort of translator device. He had told them that they now were proud members of the great Verbellion Empire and that they would reach their new home in two weeks time. Then the screen had darkened again. Alien workers that looked not the slightest bit like the alien from the screen had entered the room, accompanied by guards who were clearly the same race as the alien that had spoken to them earlier and who had pointed futuristic looking weapons at both the workers and the humans. The workers had ignored the threat, just deposited large boxes with food on the wall and left the room again, but the humans had huddled together like a flock of scared sheep until the aliens had left them alone again.
The first fights had broken out less than an hour later, when a few of the stronger men tried to take more than their share. Having spent years living on a council estate, she was able to maintain a ‘leave me alone or you’ll regret it’ attitude, but a few of the others were less fortunate, and it got worse every day. She had thought things would get better once they reached the Verbellion homeworld, but she was wrong.
Their overseers put them to work, every man, woman and child above six. Those who were lucky were assigned tasks that were related to their previous work experience, but everyone else just got sent to the factories. And once again the humans turned against each other. This time it wasn’t fights about food, even though those hadn’t fully stopped either; this time it was striving for a lighter work load or less dangerous jobs, by any means necessary, be it prostitution, collaboration, or even treason.
This was wrong, even more so than the zone system at home. Nobody deserved to be treated as if he wasn’t a person, no matter if alien or human. Nobody should be reduced to being little more than an animal, their worth only determined by their strength. But what really made her furious was seeing the children being forced to work in the weapons factories. She clung to the thought that her husband would keep their children safe, back on Earth, but most of these kids had no one, and it killed her to see them lose hope, every day a little bit more.
Well, she was done just letting things happen. This needed to change, and she would do everything in her power to make sure that it did.
She had been fortunate, workwise. When asked about her job, she had told everyone who wanted to listen that she was a hairdresser, even though she hadn’t worked as one for years. By sheer luck she had been sent to work for a hair stylist, whose customers were mostly members of the upper castes. For some reason the female members of the warrior caste were extremely fond of complicated hairstyles, and word had gotten around that she was able to create something unique for every customer. Even though they weren’t really customers, because she didn’t get paid, as such; but she at least didn’t have to live in fear of being sent into the factories. Occasionally she even got a basket of fruits or something else as a thank you, mostly when she had been sent to the house of an important member of society because his wife needed something special for an upcoming party. As a result, the guards quickly got used to her wandering the streets with her basket of supplies at unusual hours, which meant she could move relatively unhindered through the city.
And she had access to information. Apparently talking to your hairdresser about anything and everything or completely forgetting the presence of said hairdresser (and the translator device) while chatting away with friends were pretty much universal constants. During the first month she gathered enough information to understand how the political system of Verbellion worked, that there were other aliens that had been abducted from their respective home planets as well, and that the upper three castes of Verbellions treated the lower castes no better than they treated their alien abductees. Then she spent another month wondering what to do with all the information she came across, and a third month looking for allies.
The first opportunity had presented itself when she met Gerard, a chemist, who had not only been able to make hair dye for her, with permission of the Verbellions of course, but had also hinted that he was able to do more than that. Somehow the entire thing had grown from there. Gerard knew two more people who didn’t want to just accept the fate their captors had destined for them, and those two had known others.
As soon as they had found the tenth member of their little revolution, an Etraxi woman named Derisa, they had decided to build resistance cells to minimise the risk of exposure for everyone if one of them were caught by the Verbellion authorities. During the last six years she had discovered that she had a talent for organising large events, and so she somehow had ended up being in charge of the entire underground operation.
Ever since their first actions – just graffiti and flyers demanding an end of the war – rumours had spread through the entire city, and they had gained more and more followers. At this point their movement had more than thousand members, humans, other abductees from various species, and Verbellions from lower castes. Some were only loosely associated, providing them with information, while others organised supplies, did reconnaissance, painted graffiti or were involved with planning their biggest project so far. They were housemaids or gardeners, or had been forced to work in the factories, but there was one thing they all had in common: they wanted peace, unlike the members of the warrior caste and all the others who profited from the ongoing war against the Verbellion people and the universe at large. She didn’t know all of them, didn’t want to, because if she did she would put them at risk if the Verbellion authorities realised who she was, but all of them had heard of the Mother Wolf.
She had no idea who had come up with her code name, but Gerard had told her she had looked like one ready to tear out one’s throat when someone had suggested to use children to carry messages between the resistance cells. She had thought of her son, and told the unsuspecting individual in no uncertain terms exactly what she was going to do to him if he ever brought up the idea again. The guy had almost fainted, and somehow the name had stuck.
With effort she returned to the present. Today they would carry out the plan they had been preparing for the last months. It had taken weeks to gather information and to, well, acquire the necessary chemicals to cook up explosives, but now they were ready. They were going to interrupt the power supply of the factories, hoping to do enough damage that the Verbellions would have to shut down the plants for a couple of days at least. And even if it wasn’t enough to bring down the government, it was a start. Maybe others would realise that they were not powerless, that they could do something to change their situation for the better; and that would set a chain reaction in motion. Maybe. Hopefully.
She sighed, knowing she needed to get back to her quarters, however much she wanted to see what was going to happen in the next hour. It wouldn’t do much good for a slave worker to be caught outside after an explosion had just crippled the main industrial complex on the entire planet. Casting a long last glance at the sky, the woman who had been registered at the work camp as Suzanne Prentice, but had become known as the Mother Wolf among the members of her small revolutionary movement, turned around and walked back to the camp.