by Nic Plume
"No." He grabbed his pants, shoving her hands out of the way, and pulled his shirt back down.
She froze and looked at him.
"You are wet," she enunciated, "and have early signs of shock setting in. We don’t need to add hypothermia to the mix. Let’s at least get your shirt off." He saw the questions in her gaze, but she didn’t voice them. She slowly pulled his shirt up but stopped at his chest level, all the while watching his reaction.
Salayla had moved by his head and leaned into his view.
"You can have mine until yours is dry." She pulled off her shirt and dropped it beside him. "It is dry and preheated." She wasn’t wearing bioskins.
She grabbed his back and pulled him into a sitting position. Pain lanced through his abdomen. By the time he caught his breath, she’d pulled his shirt over his head and leaned into him to slide it down his arms. Heat radiated from her bare chest into his back like two directional hot pads, amplifying the low temperature of the rest of his body. His shivering worsened, shooting spasms of pain through his abdomen. He groaned and tried to curl up but couldn’t—Salayla’s tight grip kept him upright. They got the dry shirt on him.
When she released him, he curled into a ball to ease the pain, but the shivering spasms continued. Tonee grabbed him from behind, pushing an arm and a leg below his body, lifting him slightly off the ground. Kaydeen slid in from his front, using her back to wedge him onto Tonee’s chest. Then Sal’s essence enveloped him, pushing his ever-present pain into the background. She didn’t explore, only held him and filled him with warmth and peace. He wondered why he’d ever hated this feeling. He was warm, inside and out, safe, and not alone. He drifted into blissful nothingness.
9
Intel
He woke sore and aching, his arm and shoulder asleep. The door to the cellblock had opened. Tonee and Salayla got up immediately. Kaydeen stayed beside him a moment longer to indicate for him to stay down.
Tristan and Tico entered the cellblock, calling for them to get up. Tico’s hand was wrapped but he moved it with only slight hesitations. So, they had access to regen-tech for medical treatment. While Tico stayed back, Tristan approached the cell. He motioned for Kaydeen to move away from Taylor.
She hesitated.
"He’s in no shape to work," she protested in close to fluent Tinareean, but moved when Tristan pulled out a small control pad.
As soon as she did, bars rose from the floor between her and Taylor, cutting their cell into two.
So that’s what those circles and holes are for.
As soon as the new wall of bars had locked into the ceiling, a set of bars in front of Tristan lowered to give him access into Taylor’s half.
"Get up," Tristan ordered as he approached and kicked Taylor’s foot for emphasis.
The first kick didn’t hurt. The second left a bruise. Taylor didn’t want to find out what the third would leave, so he pushed himself off the floor. With one shoulder partially asleep and the other painful from the dislocation, it took him a moment to get his feet under him. He tried to straighten, but his abs refused to relax.
Kaydeen jumped on his halting movements immediately.
"He can’t even stand. There is no way he’ll be able to work. He needs to rest and heal."
Tristan stepped closer, within easy reach of a quick jab to the throat, but that would be counterproductive. Plus, Taylor wasn’t sure if his injuries would allow him the speed and power he needed to take down the guard and get out of the cell before Tico could step back to the control panel and close it. Instead, he hunched his shoulders, ready to take whatever Tristan had in store for him. It wasn’t much, at least nothing too painful. Tristan grabbed his good shoulder and shoved him. Taylor stumbled back, only half pretending, then the injuries to his core took over. He couldn’t keep his balance and fell to the floor, hard. He groaned.
Kaydeen continued to reason. It was her specialty, laying out facts to prove her point and using logic to drive the conclusion she aimed for. It didn’t always work, but where Kaydeen’s logic failed, Salayla’s flirtations or Tonee’s knowledge of rules and regulations could usually pick up. At least, that’s how it worked in Intergal territory.
It wasn’t hard to see where she was heading. A non-injured worker could provide a much better work output than an injured one. And allowing the injuries to heal first would yield a higher output faster than working him while injured. Plus, the chance to permanently disable him was lower, therefore increasing his overall production. She laid it out in nice cold facts, appealing to the greed of the mine owner and the benefit Tristan and Tico could gain from delivering the strong workforce the team could provide. Taylor wasn’t sure he liked the promises and fringe benefits she hinted at, but at the moment he merely wanted to be left alone. His tumble had hurt more than he had expected and let on. He wanted to curl back up and concentrate on ignoring the pain.
The scrape of moving bars sounded again, then the door, and then the cellblock fell silent. They’d left. He didn’t remember hearing Tristan or his teammates move away. Maybe he’d blacked out. He was thirsty. He lifted his head—the cellblock spun as if he was in a free-floating vortex shaft. He lay back down. Water could wait.
The next time he woke, Kaydeen was beside him, lifting his head and touching a soft cup to his lips. Cool water flooded his mouth. He drank greedily. Next came a metallic pouch with a gel-like substance. Salayla helped empty it into his mouth. He gagged at the overly honeyed richness of it, but Kaydeen clamped his mouth shut to prevent him from wasting the only food they’d been able to scrounge up for him. A few more cups of water, and they settled him against Tonee, whose large chest was much more efficient in transferring body heat, even clothed.
I’ll take that over Salayla’s bare breasts any day, Taylor thought as he drifted off to sleep, and vowed to never let either in on that thought.
The next morning was much like the previous one, minus Tristan forcing him to stand. Kaydeen made sure he drank a few cups of water before the guards came, then he was left alone. The pattern continued day after day, or at least what they established as day after day. Without a way to tell time, it was hard to estimate if their work and sleep shifts truly added up to a full day.
He slept for most of the first five days, waking only long enough to swallow the water and nutrient gel Kaydeen and Salayla poured into his mouth, and whenever Kaydeen poked a sore spot too hard. He usually fell back asleep soon after they left him alone. Kaydeen found the wrap around his knee on day two and used it to wrap his ribs. He had enough presence to remember and point out the med patch he’d stashed in his thigh pocket. The next day she applied it, freshly loaded, to his shoulder. He wondered where she acquired the med gel but didn’t have the energy to ask.
After day five, Taylor stayed awake longer, usually only sleeping at night and when he was alone. It took him another two days before he retained most of the information his teammates told him.
"What do you mean, it’s peculiar?" Taylor asked as he finished the latest food pouch his teammates had brought him
"Only about one-third of the workers are collared. The rest are uncollared, but we don’t think they’re fully free, and we don’t think they’re all Tinareeans," Tonee answered. He stood in his customary spot leaning against the bars, blocking the view from the door. "The collared workers aren’t locals, either. It seems they’re from all over the planet." He crossed his arms over his chest and pulled his right foot up, leaning it against a bar beside his left knee.
"Which is why you haven’t been able to pinpoint our location." Taylor finished the cup of water Kaydeen handed him and then lay back down. His ab muscles were still too sore to keep him in a seated position for any extended period of time.
Kaydeen pulled up his shirt and started her daily prodding routine. She was happy with his rate of recovery so far, though he was nowhere near able to work the mine yet.
"Correct. I’d say we aren’t far from where we crashed. Of course, our out-of-con
trol tumble probably put us way off course from our objective anyway."
“How far off?” Taylor looked at Salayla, who sat with her arms wrapped around her knees a few feet to Tonee’s left.
"Hard to say." She returned his gaze, deep in thought. "I would say we were in tumbling free fall for roughly twenty to thirty seconds. Considering a SILC’s average speed of descent and our time and altitude allowance for drop prep, that could put the crash site multiple hundred klicks from our target."
"Twenty to thirty seconds?" Tonee put in. "It felt more like a few minutes."
"The only way to explain a time lapse of multiple minutes between the attack and the crash would be that our descending flight path was not only thrown off course, but halted or even negated for some time. Any kind of non-descending lateral move could have thrown us thousands of klicks off course."
"When you put it that way," Tonee said, "I like the first option better, but it sure as hell felt a whole lot longer."
Taylor had to agree with Tonee but was acutely aware how adrenaline could affect one’s internal sense of time. He looked at Kaydeen, who had moved down his leg and was checking his injured knee’s range of motion. He wanted to hear her opinion. With her near-perfect memory, he hoped she’d be better at estimating the passage of time. She returned his gaze and then looked at Salayla and Tonee while considering her answer. She looked back at him, released his leg, and sat back on her feet with a sigh.
"We’ve discussed this already. Repeatedly." She studied him, tilting her head.
We have? He remembered intangible snippets of conversations, but had considered them dreams.
"How often?"
"Four times."
"Ah." He nodded. "Well, can we go over it one more time?"
"You going to remember it this time?"
"Yes."
"That’s what you said last time."
Ah. "Okay…then let me change that to maybe."
She smiled. "You’ll do."
"I’ll do what?"
She laughed at his question but didn’t answer it.
"Okay," she took a breath. "To answer your question, no, I do not have an internal atomic timekeeper."
My question? I guess we have had this discussion before.
"So, I cannot tell you exactly how long it took before we hit dirt-side," she continued, "and even if I could, what does it matter?" She paused to look at the others in turn. This also seemed to be a subject they had already discussed.
"Finishing our mission objective has moved down our priority list, or at least should have. We have other and more worrying concerns right now, I would say."
Taylor nodded his agreement. "It would still be nice to be able to at least approximate our location. So we know what to expect top-side."
"Agreed, but for that to be of any help we need to get free and to the surface."
"I’d say we’re at the surface right now. So, we’ve reached half of that objective." Taylor smiled.
"Yeah," Kaydeen returned, "now we need to get out of this box. And I don’t think that’s going to be all that easy."
"Whoever said any part of our job was going to be easy?"
"Nobody," the others replied in unison, grinning. "If it was easy, GFs could do it."
Taylor smiled at he familiar jab at Ground Forces troopers. It was good to see their enthusiasm was still intact. Now, they needed to keep it up. "Tell me more about the people down below. Do the collared and uncollared get along?”
“Mostly, but there’s a faction of uncollared the others seem to be wary of," Kaydeen answered.
"Guards?"
"No, there are no guards. Only workers. Most of the collared are Tinareeans, with the odd off-worlder thrown in. The uncollared have a larger portion of off-worlders."
"Traverse?"
"Possibly, but not military."
"Civilian Traverse? Tinareeans are considered civilian Traverse right now."
"Not the same. Tinaree is still under a forced occupation. They are not, or at least, have not been long enough under Traverse rule to have accepted their lot."
"Ok, so the Traverse has brought in civilians, or allowed civilians to immigrate." Taylor paused. "Why?"
"To work the mines," Kaydeen supplied.
"Mining has been part of Tinaree since it was founded," Salayla interjected. "Tinareeans have become well acquainted with the subject and have their experts. Why bring in outsiders?"
"To undercut a rebellion or the Resistance?" Taylor asked.
"That’s what the collars are for. To control the work force," Kaydeen said.
"So, what do the off-worlders bring that the Traverse can’t find here?" Taylor asked.
"Good question." She smirked.
"Let me guess. I’ve asked it before?"
"Yup."
"And I assume we haven’t come any closer to an answer."
"Nope."
"Okay." He considered what he remembered from their previous conversations. It wasn’t much.
"Why don’t you give me what we know so far?"
Kaydeen raised her eyebrows at him.
"Humor me one more time," he pleaded. "Please?"
She shook her head with a grin. "Only one?"
He shrugged.
"Ah, hell," Tonee put in. "It’s not like we have anything else to do."
So, they hunkered down and filled him in—again.
The mine was a thriving community where collared workers toiled hand-in-hand with free workers, Tinareean and Traverse. Guards weren’t present, at least not in the sense of controlling the workers and their activities. The few people who weren’t actively working the mine were more concerned with supplying food and water and moving the workers from location to location as needed. They didn’t enforce the workload or the rules, the miners did.
Foremen assigned daily duties to be completed in set amounts of time. Regular water breaks and one meal break cut the monotonous work into endurable chunks and provided time to socialize and trade.
This was the time when Salayla was in her element. Although they worked in a different area with different workers every day, she was always able to scrounge up extra food and med gel for Taylor. He didn’t ask where she acquired them or what she used as trade since he probably wouldn’t like the answer.
Ten shifts later, things changed.
10
New Normal
The guards pulled Taylor from his cell in the middle of the day and cuffed him to a set of chains hanging from the ceiling. With a push on the control pad, the chains tightened and pulled him onto the balls of his feet. Tristan pulled up Taylor’s shirt, securing it over his head, then loosened his pants. Tico, meanwhile, paced in front of him like a predator waiting to pounce on his prey. When Tristan stepped back, Tico’s leer broadened as he pulled a curl of cabling from the small of his back. He unfurled the neural whip with a grin.
Taylor recognized the device immediately. They’d studied it at the Academy. He remembered its statistics clearly—the type and levels of pain it provided, and the damage it could do to his nerve endings, especially if applied wrong or overused. The instructors had even given each trainee a taste of its bite, dialed down, of course.
What he felt then was nothing compared to what he received now. Each lashing hit his back, then curled around his side to bite into his front. Some came in at angles, at times coiling the whip’s tip over his shoulder and onto his throat or around his hips and into his groin. He tried to hold in his screams, clenching his teeth against the pain, but could do so for only a few blows. By the time Tico let off, Taylor hung in the cuffs, barely holding onto consciousness.
Tristan slapped him across the cheek to get his attention, then leaned closer. "Tell the big guy to reign in his curiosity. It’s not good for your health."
His breath, gliding over Taylor’s shoulder, felt like sandpaper scraping over an open wound.
They left.
He tried to get to his feet. He couldn’t find them. He couldn
’t feel anything below his hips but could feel everything above them. Every nerve ending was on fire—if not from a direct hit from the whip, then from its electric discharge. And it didn’t end with the whipping. His pain receptors continued to fire at the slightest stimulation.
The door opened again. His teammates entered the cellblock, and with them a cool rush of air that set his skin ablaze. A scream formed at the back of his throat, but he swallowed it. He needed his voice to keep them from touching him. They rushed to him, a jumble of movement and sound, each bringing its own gust of air lashing him anew. But they didn’t touch him. The air settled and with it the pain calmed. He opened his eyes. Tonee and Salayla stood a few steps away, ready to spring to action but waiting on Kaydeen’s instructions. Kaydeen was closer, studying his wounds as she slowly circled him. She didn’t speak, even breathed shallow and into her hand, but he felt the air movement as her fingers formed a message to the others. She had recognized the cause of his wounds and was taking care to cause him the least amount of additional pain.
She was only halfway around him when the cuffs opened. He fell. She caught him. He screamed. Salayla and Tonee were instantly by their sides, Tonee cursing loudly. Kaydeen told him to shut up, then directed their movement as they carried him to their cell and settled him to the floor. Salayla lay next to him, her hand between the floor and his throat. Pain flared up, from her touch and the floor against his stomach, hips, and shoulders, but then was drawn out into her hand. Her mind entered his, her essence pushing between his presence and the pain, forming a buffer. The pain was still there, but at a distance—he could sense it, taste it, but it was as removed as somebody grabbing his arm through a double layer of insulation foam. He was able to breathe, and think, and turn his head to look at her. She smiled at him, but her eyes stayed the dark swirling black-blue he had seen so often lately. He wondered if he would ever again see her fun-loving bright blue sparkle.
"Tonee." Taylor croaked as he looked over her head to where Tonee leaned against the bars.