Kinshasa, former Democratic Republic of the Congo
On the designated day, at the designated hour, four bombs exploded in rapid succession. One detonated outside an Army barracks, one in the British Airways terminal at Kinshasa International Airport, one in the motor pool of the city police, and the last near the city's capitol building. All four devices were positioned to maximize property damage while doing as little harm to bystanders as possible…a hallmark of the Resistance. As the capital and military hub of the Central African District, Kinshasa would naturally be the first target of a mass uprising…which is exactly what the district governor believed was coming. Naturally, Kinshasa went into lockdown. Directly across the Congo River, Brazzaville followed suit. With all military and police forces deployed, local Resistance cells had no hope of penetrating the cities…fortunately, however, this was never the plan. With the enemy fully occupied and certain to remain that way for some while, the wretched slave pit known as Brighton Mine had to rely on nothing but its immediate security cordon for defense. And while this might have been sufficient to repel an external attack, the area's Resistance commander was certain the mine could not withstand an assault from within.
Brighton Mine
There was an electronic beep, and Amisi reached into the breast pocket of his worker's jumpsuit. Since he had given his brief address in the cave three days before, this was the moment he had awaited. The tiny device in his hand, a miniaturized radio receiver, now displayed a red light at one end. The bombs had detonated across the river. His support and extraction teams were on their way. It was now or never.
Amisi and his two companions were only the last of the vanguard…the Resistance had roughly twenty men scattered throughout the mine, all of them preparing to enact scenes like that which the rebel officer was himself about to cause. Amisi grinned and stood up from where he was working, the two Oompa-Loompas flanking him rising as well. They fell back as he approached the mouth of this particular passage, ready to spring to his aid should he need them. A single guard was stationed here, and Amisi strode fearlessly toward the soldier, a pickaxe held loosely at the rebel's side. "Hey, jackass!" Amisi said loudly, slaves on all sides turning to stare at this newcomer who had surely lost his mind.
The guard whirled. "WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, MIDGET?!"
"I called you a jackass," Amisi replied calmly, "though I was secretly thinking that your father was the bastard son of a dog and your mother was a whore."
"WHY YOU…" the guard raised his baton, preparing to deliver a blow that would have surely crushed Amisi's skull…only the Oompa-Loompa was faster. The pickaxe whipped out in a horizontal motion, lodging in the side of the guard's knee; Amisi twisted the weapon and wrenched it free, and the guard fell with a scream of pain, fumbling for his pistol. "YOU LITTLE FU…" The bellowed curse ended sharply as Amisi swung the pickaxe down in an overhand motion, cleaving straight through the front of the guard's helmet. The man collapsed, though two more came barreling around the corner, one of them with his gun drawn.
"JENSEN?!" one of them shouted, seeing the body on the ground…Amisi rolled from behind the corpse, the fallen guard's sidearm in hand, and dropped each man with two precise shots to the chest. Amisi stood up and ripped off his jumpsuit, revealing the green uniform beneath. He pointed upward…toward the surface, toward the sun, toward hope.
"Freedom awaits, brothers," he said. It required no shout, no grand delivery. The slaves stood and stared at him for a moment, seemingly paralyzed, and then something like a shiver passed through the assembled miners. An angry murmur swelled to a buzz and then a roar; as one, suddenly every throat was filled with cheers of affirmation and cries of savage fury. Amisi turned and began to stride forward. Behind him came a living tide of Oompa-Loompas, their vengeance long overdue. When the slaves reached the next unit of guards, carnage ensued. Amisi fired his pistol as fast as possible, knocking down two of the men before they could fire…the others started shooting wildly into the oncoming crowd, every shot lethal. Twenty Oompa-Loompas fell in rapid succession, but it did not slow the miners for an instant; like men possessed, they charged over the fallen corpses of their brethren and dragged the guards off their feet. It might have been a scene from a horror film: various implements rose and fell with brutal efficiency, picks and hammers slinging blood as they came up from the bodies of the victims. The guards were beaten until they were well past dead, at which point their guns and batons were swiftly taken and the enraged slaves headed on to the next target. Amisi was hard-pressed to maintain any kind of control and quickly stopped trying…while he lamented the heinous bloodbath, there was nothing to be done for it. The slaves would do whatever it took to secure their freedom, and many of them would necessarily die in trying.
Drill Technician 54-65 heard gunshots. At first he did not react; it would not be the first time that a slave had gotten himself casually executed for some offense. Only the fire continued, and then screams echoed from a nearby passage. 54-65 stood up and fixed a wary eye on the closest junction as the sounds of violence moved closer and closer. A guard suddenly staggered out into the passage, blood pouring from a deep wound on his right leg…he aimed a pistol back down the passageway and fired as he frantically yelled something into his radio. There was another gunshot, this one from further down the corridor, and the man's head snapped back as his forehead exploded in a spray of gore. He collapsed, and a dozen Oompa-Loompas swarmed over him, grabbing his weapons and equipment. More gunfire echoed from nearby, and 54-65 suddenly found himself walking forward toward the rioters…he could not remember dropping his tools, but when he looked down they were no longer there. He snatched up a pickaxe that was leaning against the wall of the passageway, his features splitting into a snarl that he never could have imagined would appear on his face. And while his mind still wondered at what he was doing, his body was running alongside the rebelling slaves, up the passageway, up toward the surface that he had not seen in so long. One word burned in his mind: Freedom.
He did not remember much of what happened afterward. He was just one of a vast mob of bodies charging through the passages of the mine, somewhere in the middle of the group. Shouts and cries and curses came from all sides, and the mob continued to grow. Soon there were young children and old women, seemingly everyone holding a weapon of some kind…gunfire echoed deafeningly in the tunnels as both slaves and guards fired. Members of the mob would fall suddenly as they were struck by bullets; if they were wounded, someone helped them, and if they were dead, the body was left where it fell. 54-65 brandished his pickaxe with a bloodlust he could never have conceived, yet he found himself redundant…he saw nothing of the guards save for the gruesome messes which were trampled underfoot by the escaping slaves. The tunnels gave way to wider tunnels, then caverns, and then suddenly the sunlight was pouring down from above, all but blinding the fleeing slaves. They were in the central pit, the open expanse of blue sky above them. Other vast groups of slaves were pouring out from the other tunnels, a living tide coming from all sides. All of them were running for the narrow paths which zigzagged up the sides of the pit…the elevators were too slow and too dangerous, and so no one bothered with them. Now the slaves sprinted up the switchbacks in dangerous numbers, one or two careless individuals plummeting to their deaths in the mad race for the top…no one pushed or shoved, but the sheer number of bodies ensured there was no room to spare. Gun nests fired wildly into the press of bodies…dozens of slaves fell, but more kept coming. And a new sound split the air: the drone of propellers. The moment Amisi had clear sky above him, he pressed the single button on his transmitter. Tactical drones painted in dark green Resistance livery swung low overhead, the mine's guard towers erupting in fire and thunder. Several well-placed bombs flattened the gate and large sections of the perimeter fence, and the liberated slaves now poured out into the countryside, following the Resistance soldiers.