"Sei! We've got to leave!"
Leave? Of course they did. This was a world people would do anything -did do anything, had already done everything- to escape. Where the rivers were made of blood, the sky was choked with ash from the burning corpses, the land itself was poisoned and the temperature would freeze or burn you in the space of minutes, as schizophrenic as the madman who had created this place. Where the only thing worse than the packs of feral prisoners were the death guards, little more than the biggest, most heavily armed lunatics in a madhouse, and the only thing worse than the death guards were the tanks and gunships they used that didn't let them stay in one place for more than an hour, and the only thing worse than the tanks and gunships was the party that had collected around her.
They were the worst.
But that was why she held back, just for a moment. The rest, Nasrys, Iron Man, Frank and Olstaneth, were already aboard, always moving forward, always advancing, never looking back. She stood on the brink, between the ramp to the ship and the accursed soil of the world, and faced the last survivor. He stared back at her, face opaque but eyes weary. She knew what he was. Did he know? There was no way to tell.
But she knew he couldn't come.
A bottle of vodka rolling gently to tap against her boot...
"You look exhausted, hell everyone does, but doesn't mean there can’t be little good will between us."
Her hand gripping his arm, pulling him, trying to force him to tell her.
"How do you know my name? Who are you?"
Him, screaming at something no one else could see.
"No, how are you here?!"
Another, dying on her blade, grinning as he bowed his head.
"You will regret this my little pet. I am your man's master and soon you too will fall...still don't you want to know how I knew...your...name...?"
Him comforting the other woman. Somewhere, he had found chocolate.
"So, do you like sweet things?"
A knife at her throat.
"Did you miss me wolfy?!"
Shots firing into the tunnel, seeking something that was no longer there. Maybe it had never been.
"You! Why won't you just die?"
He stood before her now, saying nothing. Waiting. He had to know what was coming, but he did nothing to avert it. Slowly, she raised her pistol and stepped forward.
"I'm sorry, Haydin," she whispered, and kissed him on the forehead.
Stepping back, she looked him in the eye, and shot him.
Coup de grâce.
She still didn't know how the woman had gotten here. She didn't remember much from the time she half stepped, half collapsed onto the ship. Maybe she'd been picked up later. Maybe she'd already found a way aboard before they arrived. Maybe she'd been with them all along, and Sei, in her delirium, just hadn't noticed.
Whatever it was, Joanna was back.
It didn't take long for them to all be shoved into cells. For the moment, Sei didn't care; she didn't think any of them did. The availability of food, of water, beds, even a shower was overwhelming. She consumed or fell into all with Joanna by her side, not caring that she scarfed down her food, not caring that the water drenched her muzzle in greedy gulps, not caring that she had to see her naked in the close quarters of the shower stall, not caring that they had to share a bed. She would have put up with all of that if she had to go with Nasrys, Joanna didn't even make her blush in comparison.
For a while -she was never sure how long, several days at least- she did nothing but eat, sleep and clean herself. Sei was a captive, but a happy one, after being deprived of the basic necessities vital for life and even the most rudimentary of civilized comforts she could have cared less how it was all presented to her, so long as she got to use it. They even washed her clothes and bedsheets, returned hours later. She was clean, hydrated, well-fed, comfortable.
After enduring hell, even purgatory seems like heaven.
But it wasn't all right. Her instincts, first twisted and broken by Charnel, then dulled by these luxuries, began to nudge at her again. These were stormtroopers, they'd locked her and Joanna away with the others, who she hadn't even seen since leaving. The guards refused to tell her anything about their nationality, what their destination was or what her fate might be. By the time they arrived, Sei had grown restless.
Still, she knew better to resist when they were transferred to what she overheard one of the crew call the Spinor. There wasn't even the opportunity to steal a transport, their ship just docked to another and then they were facing an entire company of stormtroopers assembled to take them in. In this transition she saw the others briefly, alive, intact and looking far better than they ever had, as well as many faces she didn't recognize -other prisoners who'd been "rescued" from Charnel, she supposed. They were herded at gunpoint down a series of turbolifts and into what Sei recognized as a cell block, though she didn't get much of a chance to look at it as they were hurried through down another elevator. Down in the bowls of this new ship, she found a line of tiny cells marked with a single word:
SOLITARY.
Pushed in by the stormtroopers, she and Joanna were the first into their new home ahead of the rest; Sei figured out later that the Spinor must be full near capacity with prisoners to put them both inside one solitary cell. It was certainly not made for two, the "bed" was little more than a hard alcove carved out from the bulkhead, the toilet was a little hole in the deck and the compartment was otherwise completely unadorned. She and Joanna settled in, curling up on the bunk as best they could, and waited. Once, they were served "food" -some kind of paste with all the palatableness of glue mixed with wood chips- that they were forced to eat with their hands on a thin plastic tray. Six hours later, the tray was removed and another took its place. Neither so much as touched it this time.
The cell was windowless, sealed, soundproof. She could not see, hear or smell anything of her captors or fellow prisoners, apart from Joanna. Any attempt at conversation died when she realized they were probably being monitored, she wanted to learn more about this woman who's name only she knew, but she wasn't willing to say anything their captors might use against them. So silence reigned, and they were reduced to contact and nonverbal communication, the only consistent sound in their world is the constant thrum of the ship's engines.
Then, after about a day, the thrum stopped and the lights went out.
Sei froze. From her position in the room she could just see a little crack of light shining in from the door. Hurrying over to it, she bent over and put her head near it, listening, smelling, putting an eye to the light. The hatch had opened just a tiny bit, enough to allow her to see...not much of anything, just a blank deck. Outside there was nothing, organic no sounds or smells, just the creaking of the ship and the light, acrid scent of what was probably some kind of cleaner. She waited for a full minute, and she still couldn't detect anything, so she wriggled her hand into the gap and went to work.
Ten long, painful minutes later, she withdrew her hand, took a moment to suck on her scraped, bruised knuckles, and stuck it flat out again. It had taken her that long to pry open the hatch just enough so she could put her hand out, but she found that it wasn't quite large enough for her to swivel her wrist, which she'd need to hit the lock on the door to get out. Sighing, she turned, faced Joanna, rolled her eyes and stuck her rear against the door. Out came her tail and it floated through the gap, tip twitching from side to side, as she got her bearings. Three misses and a curse word later, she felt her tail whap down accurately and the door swished open, letting her stumble out into the detention deck.
No one was around. The room was dim, not utterly pitch black, but dark enough so that your average human would have difficulty seeing -she herself had no problems, thanks to her nocturnal vision. Moving quickly but quietly, she crept over to the far bulkhead, liberating a "secure" rack of its last two blasters and an ammo pack, tossing one of the weapons to Joanna. Thus armed she glanced down the only tunnel leading out of the cell block. No one was at the end either, where she could see the warden's station, online but unmanned. That way meant freedom.
They were all the way down the hall, in the room about to go for the lifts, when Sei caught herself. The others, Nasrys, Iron Man, Frank and Olstaneth, were still back there. Olstaneth she could care less about, but Frank had carried her the length of a city block on Charnel and Nasrys had given her weapons (a depleted plasma sword that he himself had admitted was next to useless). Even Iron Man could be useful, she was the only one who knew anything about his beloved Setulan and she knew that he'd want to keep her alive at least until they got off the ship so he could learn more. Shouldn't she try to free them?
Turning her gaze to the warden's console, Sei's heart sank. She could manipulate the controls easily enough, but each of the other eighteen cells behind them were listed as occupied, and she had no way of knowing who or what each contained. All the prisoners within them had been given was number designations, S-1 through S-21. She supposed she could have Joanna just open each cell individually and she could stand in front of them as she opened and if she didn't see someone she recognized inside she'd blast them and move on. Yet even as she thought of it the idea seemed like an excellent way to get herself killed if she didn't move fast enough.
There was a switch that would simply open every cell, in case of mass unloading or emergency. She put a finger on it, hesitating. She had no idea what she'd unleash if she flicked it, what kind of danger she'd put herself, Joanna and the others in by freeing the rest of the prisoners. Yet, she'd have to take the chance and trust the four to handle themselves.
The switch clicked.
Down the hall she could already hear the cell doors hissing open. Wasting no time, Sei propped herself up on the warden's console and stared down the telescopic sight of her rifle, Joanna covering her back beside her. Anyone who happened to look down the hall couldn't fail to see her, and the weapon she very clearly had focused down it. If anyone tried to come up the hall that she didn't want there she'd have a perfect shot and plenty of time to gun them down, even a being who's hide was naturally resistant to blaster fire wouldn't last long trying to advance with no cover. She was more worried about what might happen to the other Charnel survivors.
Taking a breath, evening out her breathing, Sei Vydam watched and waited.
Come on, you scuts.
