As dusk came, he found himself hungry and tired, walking down what seemed a familiar street. He felt sure it was not one he had passed during the day but never having been to such a city before he could have been wrong.
He passed the opening to an alleyway and stopped.
A man in a grey uniform was getting dressed near a pile of boxes. There was no focus to the face except in the eyes. Black glistening flashes, a void that clawed at reality trying to suck it in and devour it.
Nasim had seen those eyes in his visions. The figure pulled a cap on, obscuring his eyes from view. Picking up a container of some kind he turned and faded away from Nasim's daydream.
Nasim changed direction and walked off following the phantom. He wound his way through a handful of side streets and came upon a large army base. He walked towards it instinctively. Marching past a guard, who called out for him to halt, he drew closer to a military bunker.
There were two guards on the door, the man on the right-hand side started to ask for identification but never finished his sentence.
Two shots rang out and Nasim froze.
The soldier from the gate had fired his warning rounds and now aimed at Nasim's head.
Half a dozen men knotted around him screaming. As they knocked him to the ground with their rifle butts he saw the phantom leave the bunker. It's eyes glinted with a black light before he ebbed away.
Section 11
The metal handcuffs bit tight around the wrists. The cold grey steel chain kept the captive prostrate. Soft, white flesh turned pink from the bite of the restraints. Lan felt out of breath, his heart and lungs pounding inside his chest. His mind was in a state of flux. Somewhere deep inside himself was his intellect, but where he did not care. All that he was had gone; all that was left were his animal instincts. He only existed at this moment in time and the only thing in the universe was his body.
“Fuck me. Fuck me harder!” Nicola's body writhed against her constraints pulling the chains taut. She screamed at Lan for more.
Spurred on by Nicola's cries he thrust himself deeper inside. Pounding relentlessly, hard and fast, his concentration firmly focused on her warm wet grip.
“Fuck me. I can feel you so deep, yes! Fuck me harder. Yes! Harder, deeper,” Nicola panted out.
She raised her pelvis off the bed and ground her crotch into him.
Nicola began to shudder and convulse, her eyelids flickering.
The contracting pelvic muscles grasped Lan's penis as Nicola was overtaken by her rushing orgasm. Lan felt the tension snap and he too was engulfed by a wave of pleasure.
Lan opened his eyes but the dream still had a tight grip of him. He looked down at the bulge in his crotch. Lan experienced a warm tingling as the semen leaked from his abating erection. He looked up at the other three captives, all were fast asleep.
His thoughts moved away from the potential embarrassment, safe in the knowledge that no one had witnessed his accident.
“I haven't had a wet dream since I started puberty, why would I have one now?” Lan thought, “It must be this place.”
“But it wasn't a dream.”
He reminded himself, “That was a memory.”
A tear bubbled and trickled down his cheek.
“Why can't I let go of you? Why do you have to keep torturing me?”
The door slid open. The guards had arrived to relieve their boredom with brutality.
From just outside the opening a crewman covered the captives with his sidearm. A second man entered the cell to choose which poor sap to flog.
“Come here, darlin'!” the guard grabbed at Shen and started to haul her into the passageway.
What had already happened to Shen during her interrogations didn't leave much to the imagination. She had returned quiet and withdrawn with little visible signs of cruelty, the crew, as far as they could ascertain, were all male.
As Shen was dragged from the cell something snapped inside Jackson.
“Let her alone!” he yelled and lashed.
The guard took the feeble blow on his thigh.
“Shut it, scum!” he shouted as he kneed Jackson square in the face.
Jackson fell to the floor with a deafening ringing in his ears. He started to choke on a foreign body lodged in his throat. Spitting blood he coughed up the shattered teeth he had almost swallowed.
Lan watched in mute silence.
“Why did they take her away? Why won't they torture me?” he thought.
Lan had come to enjoy the pain as a respite from his remorse. The agony gave him a reprieve, albeit a temporary one from the ghost of his love. He could no longer live with the memories of Nicola eating away at his sanity. Without her there was nothing.
Lan decided that it would be best if he was nothing.
He threw himself into the departing guard's back. Despite being deprived of food and water the wild fury of his madness filled his body with strength and he knocked the guard to the ground.
Lan scrambled to his feet, uttering forth a tormented wail. Hands bound, he staggered towards the next guard in his path.
Frozen by surprise, the guard reacted too late. Lan toppled the second guard as he had the first and they fell to the ground together. As Lan tried to roll free, he found his foot was pinned under the guard.
The last of the three crewmen grabbed the hilt of his pistol. He pulled it from the holster and levelled its barrel.
Lan caught a glimpse of the muzzle flash as he tussled with the man beneath him.
Lan prepared himself for the blow but the shots seared past him and into Shen behind. Shen had used Lan's berserker rage to seize the initiative. She had straddled the first guard and prised free his gun. Now she sat astride the fallen guard blood soaking through her shirt. The gun that Shen had prised free from her captor's holster clattered to the ground as her grip waned.
The weapon bounced slightly as it landed. Her head slumped down and a light shudder swept through her body before she toppled over.
Lan looked up at the gun now firmly pointed at his head. He stopped struggling with the man beneath him and stared long and empty into the executioner's eyes.
With the ringing of a single shot the last standing guard met his demise. Jackson had retrieved the dropped gun and now swung his aim round to point it at the guard struggling under Shen's dead body. The guard lay still with his hands open acknowledging his adversary's advantage.
Lan was transfixed by the dead crewman. Wet rivers of blood surged from the ugly gouge in the mans face. The walls were strewn with gore resembling some grotesque abattoir. Sizeable lumps of flesh were sliding their way down with a grey and red slime trailing behind.
With an effort mustered by the fear of death, the young guard under Lan levered him off his chest.
Lan slid into a pool of blood from the fresh corpse.
Now freed, the young guard brought his gun to bear on Lan. With an automatic reflex, Lan kicked out, knocking the weapon from the man's grasp.
With Jackson's attention averted, the guard pinned under Shen heaved her body from him. Conjuring surprising strength he lunged forward making a grab for the weapon in Jackson's hand.
Stunned by the speed and aggression Jackson couldn't react in time and his former captive toppled him to the ground. Both men found themselves struggling for control of the gun.
The guard's strength was too much for Jackson in his weakened state. Still with his hand on the gun he was now pinned under the guard. The guard bent Jackson's hand back at him. Jackson's punished muscles could not hope to fend off the muzzle being pushed into his face.
Only a few more degrees and the gun would be pointing directly at him.
Jackson rapidly pulled the trigger sending four shots into the bulkhead, the burning ejection gasses scorching his face like a naked flame.
Another four, each of which rang out aimlessly down the corridor. The staccato noise deafening both men with an angry buzzing in their ears. Still the guard twisted Jackson's grip bringing th
e gun ever closer to his head.
The gun jolted from a ninth and an tenth discharge but still it came closer. Numbed with boiling pain Jackson could feel the muzzle thrust against his cheek. His finger was wedged against the trigger and he was powerless to stop it.
He felt the travel of the gun's trigger and imagined the hammer tilting back readying itself.
The scorching barrel of the gun pressed hard against his face; the barrel down which a bullet would at any moment, come hurtling towards him.
The hammer fell onto the round chamber.
“Click!”
The magazine was exhausted. Before Jackson could count his blessings, the guard's fist collided with his nose breaking the cartilage with a sickening crunch. Jackson fell limp as his eyes rolled back his head and his eyelids flickered shut.
Lan dislodged the young guard's weapon sending it skidding along the blood sodden floor. It came to a halt against the corridor wall. Lan stared at the gun and then back at the young guard. They both had the same thought; who would get to the firearm first? Lan, even though he was closer, had the disadvantage of lying prone with his hands bound. He struggled up and scrambled towards the gun. The guard dived forward.
Kneeling on all fours the guard's hand grasped around for the pistol grip. Lan slammed into the guard crushing him against the wall and before he had time to regain his bearings Lan slipped his shackled hands around his throat.
Lan pulled the plastic bindings deep into the guard's windpipe, leaning back and heaving as hard as he could.
Like a crushed drinks carton Lan felt the collapse of the man's trachea.
The clawing and spluttered abated and Lan felt the strength leave his victim's body with alarming speed.
In a vain attempt to free himself the guard made one last struggle against Lan's grip. He raised his free hand and tried to tug at the strangle hold but it was too tight. His joints buckled and he fell flat on his face.
Lan felt the man under him relax and hush but he maintained his strangle hold in stunned silence.
Sat atop of his victim Lan let out a gasp of air shocked by his own actions. Then from behind him the furious sound of shots rang out.
He whipped round to see Jackson under a guard both men fighting for a gun. When the weapon ran dry the guard began punching Jackson in the face.
Lan fished beneath the guard's corpse for the gun. Finding it, he aimed and fired.
The salvo of bullets ripped through the older guard's back, twisting the body with the impacts. A cloud of blood exploded from his chest as the rounds made their exit.
The guard fell to the floor, his limbs landing in an unnatural contortion.
Lan looked around him. He was alone in the corridor with the bodies of three dead guards beside him.
“Someone's bound to have heard the shooting. Time to get out of here,” he thought.
He bent down to the carcass beneath him and rifled through the guard's pockets.
No spare ammunition, but there was a knife with which he cut the plastic ties around his wrists.
Adrenaline still coursed through Lan's body. It had been a long time since he'd felt this good. Killing the guards, the life and death struggle had invigorated him. For those brief moments the pain inside had been drowned out. Was it the killing or the danger, Lan tried to work out what had made him feel so good.
Lan was about to make his way down the passage when he spotted Mornan's timid face watching him from within their cell. “No doubt he had been cowering there from the very second the door had opened. Still, safety in numbers,” Lan thought to himself.
He gestured with the gun for Mornan to drag Jackson's inert body with him.
Mornan shook his head in a slow, stiff motion. He looked so terrified and feeble, it was no wonder he refused.
Lan aimed his gun at the pitiful youth and gestured again, letting him know exactly what he would do if he didn't comply.
Lan pulled the trigger sharply.
The shot missed its target and a voice in the smoke behind him laughed.
“You're dead!”
Lan heard the buzzer ring and a soft feminine voice calmly say, “Eliminated. Retire to your base for final score.”
He turned round and exclaimed, “You bitch!”
He grabbed Nicola by the waist and lifted her playfully into the air. She giggled, pounding on his shoulders.
A hand gently wrapped around his. He felt the gun being prized free.
Through the memory of his ex-lover, Lan watched as a revived Jackson disarmed him.
He tried to shake off the sensation but it had all been so real.
“You OK kid?” Jackson asked, his words muffled by the clotted blood in his nose.
The mist over Lan's senses was clearing but the disorientation of the memory dulled his responses.
Jackson spat a wad of blood and phlegm onto the floor, “Come on, let's move. It won't be long before they realise we're missing.”
He started examining the walls along the corridor.
Jackson ripped open a light panel on the wall and exclaimed, “This way!”.
“How do you know that?” it was the first thing Mornan had said all day.
As Jackson explained, the three of them made their way along the grey corridor, “In the light panel there's the emergency light. When it comes on it displays an arrow showing the best evacuation route. There's a counter to show how far you are from the nearest escape pod. We didn't have one on our ship because it was so small but they're standard on most Alliance craft.”
“How far then?”
“Eight more light panels,”
“What good's an escape pod? They'll just come after it!” whined Mornan.
“Listen! What do you hear?”
“What do you mean?” asked Mornan.
“What sound is there?” Jackson said.
“I don't know!”
“There's engine noise. They're manoeuvring. If we're lucky we'll be on approach to Neotra and too busy to retrieve us,” Jackson wiped some of the blood from his nose with his shirtsleeve.
“Ah fuck!” Jackson cursed as he accidentally aggravated the burnt skin on his left cheek. A nauseating wave of pain flushed through him. He screwed his eyes tight and doubled over to dispel the pain. It didn't seem to help but it was the natural thing to do.
“What if we're not lucky?” Mornan asked unaware of the level of pain Jackson was enduring.
Jackson caught his breath, “They'll catch us and spank us for being naughty boys! What do you think?”
He straightened himself up, and still wincing from the injury they moved on.
A heavy hatch opened, exposing the cramped interior of an escape pod. Jackson leapt inside, disregarding the pain in his battered body.
As Mornan sealed the entrance Jackson initiated the launch sequence.
“Strap yourselves in!” Jackson shouted as he hastily unlocked the controls. Lan and Mornan barely had enough time to secure themselves before Jackson ignited the engine.
The chemical explosion catapulted the flimsy life raft into the void.
After the initial jolt, Jackson feverishly programmed the limited onboard computer.
“Yes!” Jackson exclaimed, “Would you look at that!”
He turned the ship and into view came a welcome sight.
The green and blue ball that was Neotra was tantalisingly close. Jackson disabled the emergency beacon and adjusted the approach to the planet.
“What are you doing?” Mornan whined, “The automated guidance system would have homed in on Neotra,” Jackson explained as he took control of the craft, “but the primitive systems can't compute the manoeuvres needed to evade the escort's guns.”
“They'll fire at us!” Mornan said in a startled high pitch tone.
“If they can't contain their prisoners, then their only option will be to destroy them. Especially when we might make it to Neotra.”
“We should have stayed onboard,” Mornan looked over his shoulder
as if trying to spot the Alliance escorts behind, “We could still surrender!”
Jackson examined one of the crafts many readouts, “As I thought, the ship's fuel supplies must be depleted. They're not changing heading to pursue us.”
An energy spike pinged on the life pod's computer screen.
“What was that?” Mornan asked.
Jackson read through the data on screen, “Ah shit, it's a volley of missiles.”
“What the fuck are we gonna do now?” Mornan screamed.
“Just shut up and let me think!” Jackson shot Mornan an angry look, “I honestly don't know. There are no weapons and limited fuel.”
“We can surrender!” Mornan pleaded.
“I'm not going back!” Jackson spat out at Mornan.
“We have two options. Try to evade their missiles or make a run for Neotra. If we go for Plan A, we run out of fuel and end up floating around space forever, that's if we succeed. If we take Plan B we'll probably get blown up before planet fall.”
“You're going to get us killed like you got Shen killed!” protested Mornan.
Jackson slapped the side of Mornan's face, “Shut the fuck up!”
Mornan gulped back a sob and sat silently.
Jackson spotted a blip on the sensors.
“There!” he pointed to the blip on the screen. “It's an asteroid about forty metres across,” he checked the telemetry on the incoming rockets. Without asking for a second opinion, he slowed the escape pod and set course to intercept the floating rock.
“What are you doing?” Mornan cried nervous panic in his voice.
“They'll hit us sooner. For God's sake, speed up!” he leaned over the controls and reached for the ignition switch.
Lan grabbed Mornan's hand and pushed him away.
Both the missiles and the asteroid closed with frightening speed. The two green blips, one forward and one aft, converged on the centre of the screen.
From the Torment of Dreams Page 9