Goes looked worried, but he raised his arms again. “Now we are ready to learn how to help friends who have been slaves. I fear to shock many of you, but here is a presentation Berto made to try to turn leaders in the Alliance against slavery.”

A holo came up, life sized, of a cave. “I wish you to know what slaves know. Many who own them have never set foot in a mine. This is a bluemetal mine recently liberated. Walk with me.” He walked in, and the floor had rocks of various sizes. It wasn’t easy to keep his balance. “If you had an injury to your foot or leg, walking on this might cause you to fall and get injured worse. Or, if you had a hurt head and your balance was not good. Slavers believe slaves are cheap, that they can simply trade for more. They do not even try to make work easier for an injured man. If he is injured, he can easily die from a fall that would not hurt one of us.”

Goes looked worried, but he raised his arms again. He had dark curls and brown eyes. A very muscular body, and broad shoulders. “Now we are ready to learn how to help friends who have been slaves. I fear to shock many of you, but here is a presentation Berto made to try to turn leaders in the Alliance against slavery.” Such a deep voice! A very skilled speaker.

A holo came up, life sized, of a cave. “I wish you to know what slaves know. Many who own them have never set foot in a mine. This is a bluemetal mine recently liberated. Walk with me.” I recognized Berto, who sent us on a lot of missions. Another very skilled speaker, but he’s Elshar. He walked in, and the floor had rocks of various sizes. It wasn’t easy to keep his balance. “If you had an injury to your foot or leg, walking on this might cause you to fall and get injured worse. Or, if you had a hurt head and your balance was not good. Slavers believe slaves are cheap, that they can simply trade for more. They do not even try to make work easier for an injured man. If he is injured, he can easily die from a fall that would not hurt one of us.”

He went into a room with boots. These were crude leather boots of various sizes.

“Slaves are taken to a place like this. They must remove all of their clothing and put on tunics like these.” He got one from a pile. It was stiff enough to stand on its own. “These are woven from metal fibers, and they scratch.” He held out his hand and blood dripped from cuts on it! “These are not sturdy enough or long enough to provide much protection. Slavers do not care if their workers get infections or poisonings from these cuts.” A strong man, not to flinch, getting a deep cut like that! I couldn’t imagine--

“Boots and tunics are reused, so poisons are from all parts of this mine. They also get embedded with sharps from obsidian. Bluemetal and obsidian have veins beside each other.” He cut one open. Glass shards poked up through the sole, and some were in the sides, too. He turned the boot inside out so we could see. They cut him in a dozen places while he did that! Not a flinch.

“They do not provide pocket doctors like this one.” He waved, and a golden ball listed poisons from the tunic and remedies and Berto let it seal the cuts and shoot a dot on his neck. “If I did not run my doctor just now, I would not be able to finish this holo.” And, he still made it. He’s very brave.

He went down a ramp. A room cut out of the rock had slots cut into the walls. “Sleeping arrangements are different in each mine. Some have bunks as you see here, just large enough for one slave to squeeze in. If he is too large to fit, he must sleep on the rock in the open.” He pointed in one of the slots and light shone. Rats poured out. “These are fia. Slaves can die of their bites, which are poison, especially to Zheien. My terminal protects me, here.” An unseen barrier kept them off his feet. There were dozens trying to get to them. All over the floor there were bones among rocks. Oh, I felt sick! I volunteered at a slave rescue place, but never knew they had to work in places like that! Horrible!

“Here are holos of legal mines with tech.” He ran one with slaves in metal tunics walking down to a lower level, then the scene changed. Some used pocket cutters to cut a seam of ore out of a rock face. When he finished, a crew with picks came to hit the seam and crack the ore out. As they moved down, other workers picked up large rocks in trays and carried them to an area to dump them out. Another group waited to scrape pebbles onto trays with flat scrapers, and took them to an area next to the fist-sized area. Still another group scraped dust onto trays and took that carefully to another area for sorting.

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“You will notice that these slaves wear the same clothing, but they have healers waiting when they finish a few hours’ work. They are paid well for this work. When they earn what they want, they may leave. So there is very high turnover.

“In a slaver’s mine, only slaves who can’t get up will have a healer. A very overworked healer who cannot heal much. Healing in those mines is mostly slaver herbs, that sacrifice intelligence for strength. Death rates are very high.

“There is pach protection for a man’s head, as these workers enjoy.” He held out a hand and a man handed him his helmet. “Notice, there is soft cloth padding the inside of this helmet, so the fit is good. Helmets are made for each worker, to fit him, so his helmet does not fall off or slip so he is not protected. Even with this, men can get hurt.” He gave the helmet back to the man. He was careful to put it on so it was even and cinched the straps tight.

Then he played another holo, of men in a healer’s room. Here, slabs of rock made beds. Each worker had a blanket of rough fibers.

Many of them had cuts and scrapes, and doctors worked on them. Cheap automated doctors that didn’t take many readings. We practiced on those, to try to improve them or use them to escape, if we were captured.

Healers went to men with crushing injuries, broken arms, legs, and unconscious men. They were in the background. A healer spoke. “We see many very severe injuries from falling rock. If it is too severe for a man’s doctor to treat, we tire quickly. In this mine, in Fertallas, we have many enneads of healers who heal one, then go to rest. Because there are so many healers who cannot find work, we can have fresh healers constantly. This mine is extremely productive because of this. It justifies the cost of healers because this is a Tessite mine. Workers come here to earn much trade, and we study the effects of poisons on them to learn better treatments. Unfortunately, people believe brief exposure to mepergutes is harmless. We have many with one day’s exposure who had an injury that ended their work. We send a healer home with them to observe.” They warned us about mepergutes. You can get enough exposure to end your career just inspecting a shipment of ore on a ship!

“One man thought he was well for ten years, and his personality changed. His healer noted that this man was able to work as a server instructor, and his employer praised his ability. Until the day mepergutes became active in his body. A friend went to him to ask a question and found him sitting in his chair, staring. Called his healer, who verified, it was mepergutes affecting him. He took him and trained him for menial work. He has not spoken since that day, though he responds to any kindness. His family grieves him as if he died. The loving husband and father they knew is gone, though his body is unchanged.

“This is a grave danger in any Tessite mine. Mepergutes can change a person on the first day of exposure, or it can take years. If exposure is known, a person can be given ae when he shows signs of effect. This allows him to be trained for simple work. But, he is not the same after ae, so we only give this treatment to those who show signs of forgetfulness or vague pains not caused by injury. Some are affected immediately by mepergutes, and some do not show effect for many years, and we na know why. There are too many substances that can also affect a person in a mine.” We went to Esta Faho many times, but we never saw any of the Tessite mines. Some of the other mines’ entrances, just a cave, were visible from the Spaceport there.

The holo went on to list common mine poisons, and which of those were common in which known slaver mines. The mine on Titan is a bluemetal mine, and those have not got a lot of poisons that don’t have cures. Vek ea is enough, if they only worked there. They’ll be running hygiene on all the slaves before they leave the ship they’re coming here on. So we won’t get any contamination from poisons in their tunics, or on their skin.

But, a lot of the slaves on Titan went to other mines first. Healers made notes. Now all the healers on our ship had ‘em.