Free Star Kitten by Purple Hazel

didn’t surrender, they’d
starve to death eventually anyway. Just like any pirate captain,
Ggggaaah merely planned on bringing in thousands more prisoners
once the mutiny fizzled out, and he’d be right back in
business.
    Yet this did not concern Architeuthis,
because General Hicks’ plan already took that into consideration in
the first place. Hicks had assumed that Ggggaaah would shut off
power to the elevators as a security measure. In desperation, any
trapped commander would encircle himself with his best troops and
just let the enemy come to him. But Ggggaaah didn’t yet consider
himself to be trapped; that was the difference. He had actually
underestimated his opponent, and presumed he could defeat them by
starving them into submission, like he’d always done.
    Ggggaaah, however…
was dead wrong !
    True, General Hicks didn’t know which of the
three food depots would fall the easiest so he had a thousand
Pumalar shock troops in reserve, at the ready, at each location, to
try and board freight elevators before power was cut off. It would
be a twenty earth minute ride to the surface in those gigantic
lifts. If all three captured elevators worked, that would make
things easier of course. But if none of the elevators worked or
didn’t carry the warriors all the way to the surface, then the next
four Earth days would be very rough-going for the Rebels.
    Luckily however, one elevator was captured
quickly and still serviceable all the way to the surface before
Ggggaaah shut off power to them. While the other two food depots
were under attack, and being secured by allied rebels, a thousand
brave Pumalars scrambled into the one captured freight elevator,
along with a platoon of Earther EIC fire teams riding all the way
up accompanying them. Each Earther fire team used captured weapons
from the dead prison guards; and set up barricades to protect
themselves for when the elevator door opened at the service tunnel
above.
    Not sure what they’d find when it opened, an
ambush or a surprised sentry, the Earthers at the front prepared
for a deadly firefight. The elevator grinded, hummed, whined, and
groaned, then lifted the comparatively light load of sweaty (and
furry), grime- and dust-covered beings for twenty terribly long and
terrifying minutes as it ascended from the bloody battle scene
below. Packed in shoulder to shoulder, with many still fresh from
combat, it was going to be an agonizingly long journey. Would the
elevator even complete its ascent? Or would the elevator stop
somewhere along the way and leave them with another mile (or more)
to have to climb using the service ladders?
    Thankfully, to the heavily armed Pumalars
and Earthers holding carbide lamps in case of a power shutdown, the
elevator completed the long climb, and to their relief, the doors
opened finally—only to find an entire platoon of about 30
Zorgolongian security troops awaiting its arrival, apparently still
expecting an empty elevator to open up for them to ride down and
easily suppress the rebellion. Remarkably, the Lieutenant in charge
of the unit, had “called” the elevator up to the surface right
about the time the Pumalars and their Earther allies had boarded
it; so the entire unit of Zorgs was expecting an empty elevator
lift when it opened.
    As the lift crept over the edge of the
service tunnel floor, Earthers holding EIC’s and manning larger EIC
machine guns on tripods opened fire, decimating the surprised
security force, and scattering those not killed immediately. That’s
when the massacre began….
    As the elevator came to a clunking stop,
Pumalar warriors inside the elevator went wild and rushed forward
to slaughter the more than five hundred mining engineers, truck
haulers, and support personnel working in the service tunnel. These
terrified civilians employed by the mine; had been working in
relative safety for years never expecting anything quite like this
to ever happen; and their screams and cries for help filled