Against A Rock

by Kalin Ringkvist

  The body count rose, the numbers clearly displayed through Floreina’s mental interface. The count hit two hundred of Amarrian crew plus forty slaves after just twenty minutes of advancement. The mercenaries, on the other hand, suffered only fifteen casualties by the time they reached the access crawlway that would lead them through back-end corridors into the central pod command chambers.

  Three soldiers entered the tube, and Floreina was directed to enter and follow. They climbed hard, moving quickly, and within another twenty minutes had reached the hatch into the tiny emergency control room where Mahran stood, his brain still linked with the ship’s security networks. They passed over without opening the hatch and just a few minutes later found the next hatch leading into the main pod control chamber.

  They dropped down one at a time from the opening in the ceiling. The control room was dark, the illumination coming mostly from the readouts on the interface terminals that stood in two rows facing a command seat at the far end. The opposite side of the room contained a large armored sliding hatchway, designed to protect the adjacent capsule chamber at all costs.

  The room already contained eight Amarrian bodies; the same crew members Floreina had ordered Mahran to kill as they had attempted to blow their way into the adjacent chamber. One dead Amarrian lay next to the armored doorway, a precision torch still clutched in his hand. A panel above his head lay open, exposing the door’s circuitry, torch burns apparent around the edges of the opening.

  A technician dropped down after Floreina, dressed in the same body armor and uniforms as the soldiers. He began examining the controls as Floreina sat down in the command chair to plug the link into her mind.

  Mahran pulled away from her as she entered the system, creating a mental wall to hide from his master. She projected angrily at him and he responded by releasing only the data necessary to continue their mission. A sting hit her heart for a moment as she felt herself so close to Mahran and still unable to make a connection; to bring him back from his sudden deterioration. But she had little time to think about their relationship and moved on to decode the access systems into the pod housing.

  A moment later the large reinforced bay door rose upward to reveal the sleek grey interior of their destination, contrasting dramatically with the golden hue of the remainder of the ship. Allihence’s pod sat majestically in the center of a circular room, on a large, reinforced pedestal, surrounded by a ring of even more computer terminals equipped with mental linkages.

  Floreina removed her link and approached the room, never before having seen the emotional and intellectual center of the ship she had called home for so long. The outer walls were sleek, smooth, and precisely rounded. The reinforced vaulted ceiling hung high overhead, two massive pistons connecting a pair of giant plates to the floor, ready to fire at a moment’s notice to release the room and eject the pod.

  The capsule itself seemed to rise above everything else, dominating its surroundings. Its sleek egg shape was broken only by the seal across its midsection and the cradle within which it sat.

  High on the wall behind the capsule was a deep engraving of a lesser-known scriptures quote: Happy those who seize your children and smash them against a rock. And Floreina stared at the words for a long moment, a strange coldness passing over her despite the sense that the captain’s choice of quote seemed to justify everything Floreina had done today.

  Marteen dropped into the control room behind her, followed by Floreina’s two hired doctors, Addeilon and Pari, scowling angrily at the situation. Finally, Doctor Stephson dropped to the floor.

  “Have we drained the pod?” asked Marteen, moving past Floreina to gaze at the capsule.

  “Negative sir,” replied a technician hovered over a terminal. Floreina pulled up his name as Garmein. “The captain still has some measure of control over internal pod features. It would take us twenty minutes to hack it, and would only serve to ease Allihence’s pain when we pull her out of there. I say we pop the top and let the fluid fall on the floor.

  “Sounds good,” Marteen said. He turned to the three doctors. “Do we have everything we need in this room to get everything done?”

  They nodded, glancing at their own packs of equipment.

  “Okay, then I want this room and the rest of the ship sealed off. I want every hatchway closed and accounted for.”

  “Aye, sir,” replied a soldier. “Calling in the order now.”

  “Okay,” continued Marteen, “begin the captain’s extraction.”

  Floreina looked back at Garmein as she stood in the hatchway. He punched keys intently into the interface and within moments a hiss emanated from the pod, and tiny jets of steam shot from the ring around the center of the pod as the top slowly separated from the lower half of the giant egg, and a large grappler on a pulley descended to attach to the pod and lift the upper section and reveal the contents.

  And the room seemed to freeze as the thick embryonic fluid slowly seeped from the separation, running down the outside of the capsule in large globules and within seconds increased to a gush that splashed bright pink nutrient liquid across the floor in all directions.

  And the egg shell rose to reveal the naked form of Floreina’s captain enclosed within. Her arms hung to the sides, her body slumped, but still standing. A multitude of tubes and connections protruded from her flesh across her arms, chest, and stomach. The top raised further to reveal her face and head, covered in a tight mask with several more connections.

  Allihence began to shake.

  “Her emergency mental routines are firing up properly,” announced Garmein. “Her mind is returning to her body as planned.”

  Her head fell backward and her convulsions increased as several soldiers rushed forward to begin tearing connections from the captain, starting with her faceplate.

  She screamed; a low whining at first, rising into a tortured and piercing screech of pain and fury.

  With each connection ripped from her flesh, she shook and wailed, her arms flailing more wildly, her voice fluctuating randomly from high to low, to garbled cries to grunts, the only similarity between the sounds being their relentless fury and hatred.

  The soldiers hauled her from the capsule, grabbing her by the shoulders and dragging violently to throw her unceremoniously to the deck. Floreina felt a jolt run up her body and coalesce as Allihence slammed to the floor with a painful thud and splash.

  Her captain choked loudly, her naked body twisting and contorting in the puddle of nutrient gel as she coughed, gagged, and finally vomited. Little spots of blood emanated from locations across her body where connections had been removed without concern for her flesh. Blood mixed with the fluid around her to create subtle color variations.

  The two soldiers, named Karmine and Dithmire, stood triumphantly over Allihence for a moment, then began moving back toward Floreina and the adjacent command center.

  And another body dropped to the floor from the hatch over head. Floreina turned quickly back to see her slave squatting.

  “Mahran!” she snapped. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be connected with the network.”

  And Mahran simply turned away as he rose to his feet.

  “Mahran!” she shouted.

  He ignored her.

  “Mahran has been relieved of his control duties,” Marteen announced.

  “Excuse me?” Floreina replied. “That was not part of our plan!”

  Within moments she felt the soldier’s hands on her shoulder. Milliseconds later, a hand came around her side to grasp her rifle.

  “It was part of ours,” said Marteen.

  Everything seemed to focus for a moment as her combat implants suddenly switched into primary operation. She turned to defend herself, but found the weapon already wrenching from her hands.

  She felt the weight of a soldier as he held tight to her shoulder and drove her against the wall. Within seconds Karmine and Dithmire had clasped her wrists and bound them with thick plastic disposable cuffs behin
d her back.

  Her combat defense systems frantically calculated strategies as the soldiers threw her around like a soiled piece of clothing, dragging her to the floor, ripping off sections of armor and searching for weapons.

  Floreina cried out and struggled, throwing her legs and arms around in futile defense as she noticed from the corner of her eye, Mahran turning casually around to watch.

  One more body dropped from the ceiling, and as she watched Seleina absorb the drop with a squat, then rise confidently to her feet, Floreina came to recognize the situation. This Minmatar was not just another abolitionist soldier who happened to be female…

  “You double crossed me…” Floreina said.

  “As if I’m gonna risk my men to put someone like you into a capsule,” Marteen replied.

  Floreina’s head slumped to the floor and she closed her eyes.

  It’s just one complication and aggravation after another.

  “Mahran!” she shouted again.

  “He doesn’t answer to you any more,” Marteen replied flatly.

  “Mahran you’ve got five seconds to answer me before I detonate your heart!”

  “He’s well aware that you have no signal,” replied Marteen.

  Floreina’s face seemed to melt slowly into the floor. “Mahran, please… just answer me once… are you betraying me right now? Are you just going to turn your back on everything I’ve done for you?”

  “You betrayed me first,” he replied slowly. “You betrayed me time and time again with every lie you told.”

  Floreina stared at his back.

  “We might as well begin,” Marteen said, turning toward Seleina.

  She nodded as Doctor Addeilon unfolded and set up a stretcher for the Minmatar.

  “You betray me too?” she asked. “We had an agreement… ”

  “I’m sorry,” said Doctor Pari as he organized his own supplies on a small folding table. “We had no choice.”

  She sighed. “I suppose I’m not surprised… I shouldn’t have even made it this far…”

  Floreina watched for a moment as Seleina began removing sections of her body armor, then her uniform underneath.

  “We’re all going to die in here,” Floreina said. “You know that? We’re all dead… do you believe that the crew of this ship is going to follow this Minmatar? Being a woman is not going to fool a single person.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Marteen. “We chose her for compatibility and availability, not believability. We intend to remove the slaves, then eject your crew in cargo containers and escape pods, then re-cloak the ship.”

  “You lie,” Floreina told him.

  “Whatever—“

  “You’re going to slaughter every member of this crew and save only the Minmatar… you’re nothing more than a morally void terrorist.”

  “We believe in freedom—“

  “And you’ll slaughter anyone who stands in the way of your so-called freedom…” Floreina shouted, ignoring her tactical readouts and conversational assistants. “You’ll even slaughter the very ones you claim to rescue… you have no purpose… you have no idea what you’re doing on a moral or spiritual level… you’ve just latched onto this idea that slavery is bad and you simply don’t care what kind of destruction and suffering you cause in order to do away with it.”

  “Floreina, you don’t know what it feels like to be a slave,” Marteen replied, raising his voice only slightly. “I was born into slavery and I have seen both sides, and I must apologize, Floreina, I know you’re simply misguided, and in your own way, trying to be a good person—I do recognize that—but that doesn’t change the fact that your actions contribute to enough human suffering that it is more than worth fighting against.”

  “You have no morals, no compassion, no connection with God…” Floreina started.

  “What about your morals!” Mahran said, suddenly spinning around. “You lied to me my whole life about everything! You told me Minmatar society never accomplished anything. You told me Minmatar have deep genetic discrepancies. You told me only the fringe and insane believe in religions other than the Amarrian… You told me you only ever killed one slave! How can you talk about his morals when everything you’ve ever said to me has been designed to manipulate me?”

  “I did what I could to protect you!” Floreina cried.

  “Lies!” Mahran shouted. “I don’t mean any more to you than an animal… you’ll put me to sleep when the vet bills get too high.”

  “You know that’s not true!” Floreina shouted, then calmed herself. “You betray everything… You betray me and our Lord and everything that’s great and holy. You have moral obligations…”

  Mahran turned away from her again. He sniffed and looked at the floor. “I could have been a person… a real person… and you took that away from me…”

  Floreina’s head dropped to the floor again, wondering if any of it really mattered any more, and felt the tears rising. “I loved you… you were like a son to me…” Her eyes cocked to continue gazing at him, her vision beginning to blur.

  Mahran took a deep breath and shuddered. “I know…” he said, turning back to stare at her, the facial analyzers interpreting simple, intense passion and little more. “I know you loved me… I won’t try to take that away from you… but… Floreina… did you ever care about me? …did you ever ask if I was happy?”

  “…after all I’ve done for you and everything we’ve been through… you sacrifice the lives of everyone on this ship. …every Amarrian soul, and a large portion of the Minmatar—their blood is on your hands… ”

  “Don’t turn their deaths around on me!” Mahran shouted, moving toward her. “You started this! You forced me to be a part of this!” And he stooped before her, grabbed her uniform just below the neck and dragged her upward.

  Floreina came to her feet in sudden surprise to stare into his eyes, her analyzations searching in vain for some kind of inconsistency in his facial features. From the edges of her vision she recognized Marteen and his soldiers tensing at Mahran’s sudden outburst.

  “You ordered me to execute the crew right here in this room!” Mahran barked, his breath warming Floreina’s face. “I had to listen to their pleas while I suffocated them!”

  “Mahran, stop,” Marteen said. “Let’s not go this far… she’s just misguided…”

  But Mahran ignored him, hauling Floreina away from the wall and back toward the overhead door. He threw her under the disconnected panel and into the Amarrian corpse lying with its back to the wall. Floreina’s head hit the chest and her arms strained against the restraints behind her back. She looked up at Mahran and whined in shock.

  He dropped to the floor before her, bringing a hand suddenly outward to clutch her neck. “Take a look at the murder you ordered me to commit!” he said, drawing her head up to press her face against the corpse’s cheek. “Smell it! Smell the death you’ve caused… of your own people… you caused this death and all the death we’ve seen today, because of your choices! You were the one who wanted to do this!”

  He pressed, and she felt the cold, hardened flesh of the officer against her own and her stomach reeled back in disgust, her eyes snapping shut and her face tightening as if to pull away from the experience.

  But at the same time, her tactical systems suddenly lit up, reminding her of a simple little detail: just below the small of her back, tucked under the corpse’s locked fingers, lay the little precision cutting torch.

  She held calm as Mahran pressed her face into the body, and simply waited for the end of his tantrum.

  “Mahran!” shouted Marteen. “Okay, we need to calm down here. It’s over. She’s never going to give you another order ever again. Calm down, Man. We still need her in a reasonable condition to reference her mental systems.”

  And Mahran seemed to calm, releasing his clutch on her collar. As he pulled away, Floreina twisted, clutching the tiny torch, and guided it carefully into the back of her pants.

  Mahran took a
deep breath and turned away from her. “She’s not worth it…”

  “Okay, get her off the body,” Marteen said, motioning toward the two soldiers.

  Karmine and Dithmire stepped forward and lifted Floreina, much more gently this time, then set her down against the opposite side of the hatchway. Floreina held still for several long moments, scanning the room and allowing her tactical and combat routines to take center stage for several long moments as she examined the various characters within the room, their positions and the potential outcomes of combat.

  The hostile list included two soldiers – Karmine and Dithmire – in full body armor, each with an automatic rifle and sidearm, plus the abolitionist leader Marteen, with similar equipment. Garmein the technician had no body armor, though did carry a sidearm. Seleina, the competing aspiring capsuleer, was nearly naked and unarmed on the stretcher, though her body armor, rifle and sidearm were piled neatly within jumping distance from her location. Doctor Stephson, also considered hostile by default, was unarmed and without armor. Mahran, her tactical systems having recently reclassified as hostile, was also unarmed and without defense. And of course, the captain, Allihence, also hostile by default, unarmed, unprotected and incapacitated.

  The only non-hostiles, though hardly able to be classified as allies, also unarmed and undefended, were Floreina’s two hired doctors.

  Six Minmatar, four Amarrians, and not one ally.

  Her one advantage was the fact that their body armor was designed primarily to counter the Amarrian laser weapons, with heavy Electro-Magnetic resistance. Their weapons, however, were projectile guns of Minmatar design that had the potential to cause enough concussion damage to incapacitate a victim within a few shots, despite the armor.

  But the best option would still be the head shot.

  But these thoughts were still a long way off, only able to hope that these calculations would become relevant at some point.