Against A Rock

by Kalin Ringkvist

  He sighed a long breath, then seemed to shift his frame of mind. His face brightened and he looked up. “Yeah, sure. Let me get dressed first.”

  “I want to change my outfit before we go too,” she agreed.

  He stood, and as he walked around the coffee table, he said, “You know, we could always just get married and be wealthy real estate investors… forget all this espionage and drug dealing… maybe have a couple kids…”

  “Tempting,” she replied. “But no.”

  ______ ______ ______

  “Please, Master Floreina,” said Mahran as he cradled a copy of The Scriptures against his chest. “I really don’t want to do this.”

  “I’m sorry Little Buddy,” Floreina replied as she adjusted her hair in the hotel room’s bathroom mirror. “But your wants and desires aren’t really a factor here. Later tonight we’ll go out on the town and I’ll put your desires first and let you choose whatever you want to do, but right now you need to do this for me.”

  “Master, I need to tell you something before we go in to talk to these people.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I have a dark side… that I don’t normally show you… that makes me… question things…”

  ______ ______ ______

  Within moments of entering the tiny novelty shop, Floreina found herself staring down the barrel of a standard issue carbine projectile pistol. The red beam of the laser sight distorted in her vision as it pointed between her eyes. A Minmatar named Seilin in a suit and tie glared at her from behind the weapon.

  “Come on in, Mahran,” she said, feeling her dress being lifted and her sidearm removed from the holster on her thigh. “The locals are nice and friendly.”

  Mahran stepped into the room and groaned as he saw the man with the gun upon his master, and several other men moving toward them, weapons drawn.

  Floreina felt a hand clamp around her neck. Seilin pushed her against the wall, holding his weapon at length. “What gives you the nerve to show up here, Floreina?”

  “I’m looking for a gift for my aunt,” she joked with a smile.

  “Please don’t hurt her,” Mahran said. “She hasn’t done anything to you…”

  Immediately one of the other Minmatar, named Fielno, turned to Mahran, slamming the shop door, pushing him against it. He wore a generic janitorial utility suit and stood nearly as tall as Mahran. “She has actually hurt us very much,” he said, carefully holding his own weapon in Mahran’s face. “Who are you, sir? We don’t see any record of you in the census database…”

  “I’m her slave,” said Mahran.

  Fielno nodded, but otherwise didn’t move. “Forgive me for not immediately trusting you… the alterations make you look quite Amarrian.”

  “Thank you,” he replied.

  “That wasn’t a compliment,” he growled.

  Floreina’s nanites powered on to help reinforce the tendons in her neck and vocal chords. “I have a mutually beneficial proposition.”

  “How stupid do you have to be to come here?” asked Seilin. “And to bring your slave…”

  “It might seem stupid…” she started, muscling the words past his hands. “But think about it… there’s nothing you can do about it.” She gave a warm smile.

  “Floreina… You’ve assisted in the murder of my people.”

  “And you’ve assisted in the murder of my people,” Floreina replied. “…and the desecration of my culture… the rape of our spirituality… but that’s not my concern at this time… ”

  “You’ve shot down our comrades who merely wanted to provide liberty—”

  “I only assisted in the attack of terrorists,” Floreina shot back. “And only under orders… Everything I do is legal… unlike yourselves… but that holds no relevance to my being here…”

  Seilin pushed suddenly and twisted. She put her hands on his, to pry some breathing space, and began feeling light headed.

  Marteen, identified as the head abolitionist, stood behind them, beside a fourth Minmatar named Roben.

  “Please don’t hurt her!” Mahran repeated. “I’m innocent in all of this—we’re linked and I’ll die too if you do anything—“

  “Besides the legal penalties, and the standard vengeance from my captain,” Floreina wheezed. “You’ve got nothing; so let’s put the weapons down and act like adults. I have a reason for being here which you might find interesting, if we can just get past your blind hatred and false intimidations. We all know you won’t kill an Amarrian officer and an innocent Minmatar right here in a public shop. You’re not that stupid.”

  “We can report you to the authorities—“

  “Don’t think I don’t have my bases covered, gentlemen… I can burst his heart in a moment’s thought, and all you’ll have is the blood of my friend on your hands, so can we just calm down and talk like adults?”

  The hand loosened, but still the four men held their ground.

  “You’ve gotta learn there’s a time and place to pull guns on people,” Floreina said. “And you need to think about what you have to gain and what you have to lose when you do so… and who you’re up against. Before you can control others, gentlemen, you must learn to control yourselves.”

  “What’s your proposal?” asked Marteen.

  “I have the potential for an inside job. My captain is mistreating slaves and I want it to stop.”

  “Why should we trust you?”

  “Well,” she replied. “We’re not getting off to a good start… but if you would put the weapons down we could chat… or you could just kill us and deal with the consequences…” She shrugged questioningly at the men, and finally noticed their weapons slowly lowering.

  She waited for several long seconds as they built up the courage to let their guard down. Floreina rubbed her neck as her nanite muscular reinforcements began to relax.

  The left strap of her dress fell to dangle from her upper chest, though the rest of the outfit held tight. “You broke my dress…” She tossed the strap back over her shoulder. She looked back, the grime from the wall streaked noticeably across the white material. She felt her neck throbbing and shot a quick glare at Seilin, but stopped herself, recognizing that despite everything she still needed to be cordial.

  “I apologize,” grunted Seilin, insincerely.

  “No, no,” she replied. “It’s fine. I’m the idiot who wore a white dress, knowing what might happen.”

  “It makes you look sweet and innocent…” he told her. “in an artificial sort of way.”

  “This is your slave?” Marteen asked, motioning toward Mahran.

  “I am his guardian, yes.” She nodded. “Shall we go someplace more private and secure?”

  The four men cautiously brought them to a small office in the back of the store. Fielno and Roben stood back, near the wall, their weapons still drawn, but pointing at the floor. Marteen sat at the main seat behind the desk and Seilin sat in another smaller chair behind him.

  Floreina removed a holoreel projector from her pack and placed it on the desk. “I have something to show you.” Almost immediately she began projecting the images of the two slaves hanging in the middle of the arena, fighting for their lives, with her fellow Amarrians gathered around, laughing and cheering.

  The abolitionists watched calmly, seemingly unfazed. As her demonstration concluded, Marteen commented, “I suppose that’s a little more cruel than most of the ones we see… not too fun to watch though… I prefer the ones with the lions or where they have weapons and can run around in the cage…”

  Floreina’s eyes rose. “You don’t find this sick and horrifying?” she asked. Wouldn’t that be just like a Minmatar to not see the moral implications…

  Marteen laughed. “The horror of it is sort of a given, Floreina, but when you see this kind of thing all the time, you sort of become accustomed to it. Why exactly do you think we do what we do?”

  “Oh…” She paused, needing to stop to reevaluate. She checked her character analyzatio
ns, which estimated that the man was being open about his feelings. She had always assumed stories of slave torture were mythical creations of abolitionist propagandists. But now, somehow, it seemed realistic. “This is common, you say?” she asked.

  Marteen shrugged. “…depends on your definition of common. We think maybe one out of every ten thousand slaves is subjected to this kind of treatment. Some estimate it as being much lower, some say it’s higher, but there’s no way to tell, since we don’t know how many ships and outposts have arenas, we don’t know how often they’re used, and we don’t know how many slaves there are in New Eden, so it’s all guesswork. But one way or the other, this is all just another example of the cruelty of your people.”

  Floreina shook her head, and jabbed an angry finger at the holoreel. “This does not represent my feelings in any way. I am not a part of this.”

  Seilin nodded, pulling his chair closer to the desk to sit beside Marteen. “Yes, you are. You assist your captain. You fire weapons at abolitionists. You manage slaves on board your ship. You are contributing to a culture that allows this type of thing to occur.”

  “This isn’t my culture,” Floreina said. “If anything it’s groups like yours that force us to stay secretive, which creates the atmosphere that allows this type of thing to happen.”

  The four abolitionists stared back silently. Mahran sat next to Floreina, his hands in his lap calmly looking forward and listening.

  “You’re going to blame this on us?” Seilin asked, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair.

  “No,” she shook her head. “I’m sorry… but you can’t blame me either. I don’t support this, and I’ve never supported this.”

  Seilin and Marteen shrugged minutely. “So why are you here?” Marteen asked. “You have some kind of idea to make this stop?”

  “I have access to a modified booster,” she told them.

  Marteen shrugged in question.

  “I can implant the booster in Allihence’s capsule, but instead of injecting the proper drug, it will administer a sedative that can cut off the mental connections between Allihence and the computer system.”

  Marteen shrugged again, impatiently. “So what then? You’ve got an incapacitated ship… in theory… We’d be able to dock with an escape hatch, unload slaves, and sure we’d rescue a few thousand, but then Allihence would regain control and seek vengeance. She’s worth five billion ISK and would have no problem destroying the lives of every one of us.”

  “Not if we kill her,” Floreina pointed out.

  Marteen chuckled. “Kill a capsuleer? Ever heard of cloning technology?”

  “It can be done,” Floreina replied. “Capsules aren’t perfect, despite what Ishukone and the pod pilots want you to think. They’re not as immortal as they would have us believe.”

  Marteen cocked his head and sighed skeptically.

  “The capsule relies on a very precise computer algorithm to deliver a lethal injection at the exact moment of the brain scan to allow for a clone transplant. If we can disrupt that process in any way, and prevent the safety signals from being transmitted, we’ve got a dead capsuleer… a permanently dead capsuleer.”

  “How exactly do you propose we avoid the backlash from CONCORD and from Allihence’s allies?” Marteen asked.

  “I have my own implant with an identification and personality system designed to match the captain’s. I’ll connect into her pod as though I were Allihence herself. I then tell the crew that everything’s okay; we just had some minor connectivity malfunctions, and at that point, I become captain Allihence. Anyone suspecting anything won’t be able to do anything about it.”

  “Sounds like a fantasy,” Seilin growled, his fingers tapping impatiently on the desk.

  “And what do you need us for?” asked Marteen.

  “Well…” Floreina looked down as her dress strap fell from her shoulder. “that’s where it gets a little more complicated. An unexpected ambush by a superior gang is likely to bring every officer into mental communion. That will allow me to sabotage everyone and lock them out simultaneously.” She smiled and pulled the strap back over her shoulder.

  “You want us to attack your ship?”

  She nodded as she watched Marteen searching a drawer in his desk. “And just hold it down with lots of electronic warfare to confuse their systems and make it easier to shut down all their communications and give me time to make the switch into Allihence’s pod. You have access to EWAR drones and cruisers?”

  Marteen nodded as he handed Floreina a safety pin.

  She grinned and winked at him, then turned her back to Mahran. “Can you pin my strap?” she asked.

  Mahran carefully pinned the strap to the top of her dress. “Can I stop you for a second, Master Floreina?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she replied. “You have something to add?”

  “Do you see Seilin’s fingers tapping on the table?” he asked.

  She looked down, just in time to see the tapping cease.

  “He’s been trying to communicate with me for several minutes—“

  Seilin sighed and put his head in his hands. “Can’t you see they’re just exploiting you?”

  “I need to protect myself,” Mahran explained flatly.

  “Their society is based on hatred…”

  “No, it’s not,” Mahran said.

  “They lie to you about everything and simply take—“

  “Okay, stop,” Floreina ordered.

  “They aren’t protecting you. They have no intention of protecting you from anything. It’s a lie designed to exploit you…”

  Floreina put a hand across Mahran’s chest and opened her slave control mechanisms. She triggered the command to shut down his nervous system, and he fell forward, held up by Floreina’s arm, his eyes dropping into blankness.

  “Please,” Floreina started. “I’d like to ask you to have some respect for my property and not feed him ruthless propaganda.”

  “Respect?” Seilin replied, his voice rising. “What about the respect for him as a human being? You just turned him off like a toy—”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand… it’s like sending a child to bed…” She glanced at Roben and Fielno who stood at the edges of the room, their weapons still drawn. “If you want to discuss politics, we can lay Mahran on the floor and we can debate all night.”

  Seilin shook his head and snorted.

  “That’s okay…” Marteen patted Seilin on the shoulder. “We’ve worked inside jobs with Amarrians before… the commander here isn’t all that different. She’s just gonna take a little more time to come around…”

  ______ ______ ______

  “Allow me to pay for your dress,” Seilin offered, speaking in an empty monotone, pulling out a monetary transfer pad.

  “No, no” Floreina replied, waving him off. “I knew what I was getting into.”

  They headed out to the front shop. “Would you care for a teddy bear?” asked Marteen, motioning toward a wall of oversized plush bears.

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to impose—“

  “No, no,” he replied. “It’s better that you walk out like you purchased something.”

  “Ah.” She turned to Mahran. “Why don’t you pick something out for yourself?” she said.

  He looked at the various novelty gadgets, figurines and stuffed animals. He shrugged. “Why don’t you grab yourself a bear, Master?”

  She took a minute to pick out a silver bear with a pink bow and a tongue sticking playfully from its mouth. She stuffed it under her arm and turned back toward the abolitionists. “Well, it’s been a pleasure, gentlemen. Thank you for the hospitality and the bear…”

  Fielno handed back her sidearm, and she checked it quickly before slipping it into the holster under her dress.

  They exited the shop to walk into the street. Floreina glanced around to see the various Minmatars walking and talking and going about their business.

  “Can we get
out of this part of the station?” Mahran asked quietly, glancing around, seeming to notice the racial density.

  They moved down the street, as Floreina’s security processes kept an analyzing eye on the individuals loitering on the street corners.

  “What do you wanna do tonight?” Floreina asked. “Hit the dance clubs? I’ll need to go back to the hotel and get changed…”

  “Can we just go to the room and have something to eat and go to bed… maybe read some Scriptures or watch a holoreel?”

  “Is there something wrong?” Floreina asked. “You nervous about getting a real computer interface in your brain?”

  “I fear for my life,” he replied. “It’s too dangerous out here, and it gets worse every time… I’m scared of what we’re doing, Master.”

  “Oh, yes…” Floreina laughed. “That’s called living.” She stopped to stand in the middle of a four way pedestrian intersection. Mahran glanced in the direction of their hotel, ten or twelve blocks away, clearly wishing to continue moving out of the Minmatar ghetto. Floreina put a hand on his shoulder.

  “God doesn’t want us to just live our lives…” she told him. “To grow old and get fat watching holoreels… He wants us to live our lives to the fullest… to take life by the balls and tug with all our might… because there’s trillions of souls just like you and me wandering New Eden, and we’re all lost… we’re all just living and dying… living and dying… and whether you and I live or die is no more important than it is for anyone else… life is cheap… You can call it sad, or wrong, but it’s a fact.”

  Floreina felt her security process lighting up as a particular Minmatar caught her attention from the camera implanted in the back of her neck. A man sat behind them on the porch of a tavern, watching intently. He was a Minmatar by the name of Kielobe, with suspected ties to abolitionist groups, as reported by her facial recognition algorithm. He also had several instances of anger management problems, most dealing with Amarrians.

  She adjusted her hair to be sure her rear camera had a clear view.

  “But you can get used to the cheapness of life… and even learn to love it,” she continued. “Sometimes you need to embrace the dark side, because it holds valuable experiences… our Lord exists in the darkness as much as the light…”