-LOADING-
From the Memoirs of Roderick Crank
- 15/20 -
Begin recording.
The end of my incarceration would come nearly a standard year and a half later. To the day of this recording, it still astounds me I survived at all. The standard routine I've described in previous chapters could have gone on forever... or until the Space Pirates could find no more use for me on Untara II. Thankfully, they did not run out of Federation codes for me to break.
I should have gotten my masters in Classical Earth Literature.
I digress. My stay in the Pirate facility on Untara had dragged on to what seemed like forever at the time when finally the sounds of shots echoed in the shielded corridor outside my cell, and the lock opened off-schedule. I barely understood what was going on as the commotion was happening. Any deviation from the hellish routine that I had become accustomed to hardly registered in my mind. Thinking back on it, I must have looked a fright: all one-hundred and ten pounds of emaciated skin and bones, tattered clothes, matted beard.
It did not take much time for me to realize my situation and start crying to whatever happy god was watching over me, though. I'd thought the Galactic Federation had finally made a move and made a move on the Untara facility. I remember banging on the door, cursing, screaming, laughing, crying. Whatever I did, I did it all in the three seconds needed for the someone on the other side of the lock to crack the authentication.
The someone on the other side was not exactly who I had expected to see, but was clearly not Space Pirate I didn't give a damn, I just wanted out of there. I stumbled outside my cell, struck blind by the flat white lights of the corridor. A metal hand caught my shoulder impassively, straightening me when I slumped over.
Later, I would learn that this savior was a remarkable woman by the name of Samus Aran. The next few moments were dizzying- she had no time to waste, and dragged me along. Somewhere in there, she pressed a quite ordinary granola bar into my hands- I ate it immediately, but even to this moment I can't imagine where she kept it. The heavy suit looked like good protection, but I couldn't see any pockets.
It's pathetic to say it, but that cheap, box-cereal bar was the best thing I'd had in over a year.
Aside from that,s he informed me that eighty thousand credits were offered for my return, eighty-five-thousand for a safe return: a pittance on top of the two-seventy-thousand for the Untara facility's destruction. My price was offered for each additional one of my colleagues- and I was the only one of them still able to be collected.
I'd known it- that my peers were likely worse than dead- for a while, so that news was a dull non-shock. She appreciated, I think, the level-headedness in the face of dirty business. In any case, she tossed me a plasma rifle the moment she found one and that caused me worlds more duress than any tragedy she could have served to me.
I still have no idea to fire the thing...
The facility was organized through a series of locks. Ms. Aran had blasted through seven security checkpoints before happening on me, and would ransack everything within four more before she would finally leave with me. There is nothing so terrifying as a space pirate ambush. I managed to stay in her shadow most of the time, but there was one instance I clearly remember. I had been seperated by a missle blast that singed the hair off my face from across the room, and even now I can see the claws through the smoke.
I flattened against the wall, shaking. My mind had gone blank, completely blank. I could have been an infant again, for all it mattered.
Then, just as I was sure it was done gauging threat to blast my insides open, Ms. Aran fairly incinerated it. I realize now that all the time that could have passed was less than a second. To me it felt like ages, but in reality she had saved my life even before I even figured out where the gun's trigger was.
I still feel sick when I think about it.
Later, even when we finally reached outside I didn't see the sun. Untara II is a habitable planet for hominid life- even comfortable to an extent. It was chokingly warm, but I didn't need an environment suit to walk about after Ms. Aran. Or run for my life. The thick foggy cloud cover of Untara repels most of the UV rays and insulates the planet, and the orbit and rotation cools the massive greenhouse effect.
As a side effect, it is always raining on Untara II. Always. I remember slipping on my bare feet in the warm mud and puddles of hard water. I expected Ms. Aran to sink in the terrain instantly, but as she moved she kept footing on top of the mess. I wasn't so lucky- and took to stabbing the muzzle of the useless rifle into the slop like a cane.
We didn't stop running until we reached an overhang of cover- and good thing. Shots boiled the puddles at our feet and Ms. Aran nearly carried me. In retrospect, by pushing me along with her back to hat hell she surely was hit one or two times, armored as she was, I suppose it was logical to shield my vulnerable self with her own body.
She stopped once we were under cover and she deemed it safe. I wasn't so sure, and peaked out to see nothing but Hyda's thick, murky fog and more driving rain. Though, a hellish explosion ripped the air as the facility's generators exploded in a burst of stabilizing plasma, flaring an enormous electrical fire that even I could see through the haze. It steamed even thicker: a nasty smell of smoldering plastics and roasted flesh and oil. I retched- I remember that very clearly. Ms. Aran, with her line of work, was right to wear a helmet. The stench was nothing short of intolerable in Untara's sulfur-tinged atmosphere.
If not for the oxygen-rich air, I'd have been gasping for life. Ms. Aran took the moment to ask me if I required first-aid. Other than that I felt weak and sick to my stomach, and that I was decently scratched up, I could think of nothing. Being skinny and frail was not a condition she was in any position to help me with, even if I could think straight at the time. She'd done a fine job in keeping me intact, all things considered. I asked if she had another Granola bar, though. I'm not sure if she laughed- her voice through her helmet's filter didn't travel very well over the rain. She told me it would just get wet, and that my stomach couldn't handle it anyway.
Her attempt (I'm sure?) at humor was stiff and forced, but I appreciated it. I hadn't talked with anybody for over a year, and the recent events had me in sort of a horrified daze. I knew very well that every one of my colleagues had died, and that still weighs heavily on my mind. Why was I qualified to survive? Some of my colleagues had been far more intelligent than me. I was, and am, just a professor of mathematics, unremarkable thesis, at the time with two years of teaching at Terran Prime University. Some of my fellows had helped to refine space travel.
I'm aware that I'm experiencing a classic manifestation of 'survivor's guilt.' However, even as I dictate this I cannot shake the idea that my survival was random and even undeserved...
I speak on that briefly because save for a few more hellish encounters the trip to her hidden ship was uneventful, even leisurely compared to the gauntlet of the facility. There were times when she scooped me up bodily, and with incredible strength, leaped across a crack in the earth that made my skin crawl with the possibility of falling. Her ship itself was of an interesting, unknown design to me. She shoved me up the ramp and into the hatch before I even asked what model. I don't think she would have answered the question anyway.
All of it was some sort of macabre routine. Splattered in mud and guts, she threw me into a side room and locked the door. There was no second seat in her ship- the other compartment was the only safe place. I heard the engines start, the instruments go... and we were off.
As simple as that. The other compartment was dark, and I wedged myself in a small space as the ship rocked with travel. I didn't care about the cold, hard floor and the idea of sitting there the entire trip away from Untara. I'd slept, eaten, peed, cried on, and screamed at a cold hard floor for months beforehand and any hatred I had for them was exorcised with the dull practicality that comes with captivity. At least this floor happened to be friendly, and would take me home.
A bed! Food! Family. I couldn't remember what my daughter looked like.
I even tried to sleep, and I almost did- for a few minutes. The ship swerved and dove erratically, throwing me out of my nook in the dark room. Nothing fell over as I could hear- I supposed there was nothing to disturb. Ms. Aran, to me, seemed to be the neat sort. I scrambled back into the cranny, was thrown out of it again many times. I can't say how long it took to get into FTL transit- my sense of time was skewed. I'd waited in a lot of dark rooms, and for a long time.
I will say that before the ordeal was over, I'd stumbled to my feet and flattened against the wall several times. One of them saw me scramble at a switch to pull myself together, which happened to control the lights.
I have been on many space liners. I somehow doubt that the sanitary facilities on a military vessel would have trumped them, yet as I curled up I found I was in a passable excuse for a bathing area, tracking it with mud. I was bracing myself on cold metal, but when I looked up I could see several dispensers over my head. Soap? I didn't think of it immediately. I hadn't washed for a year.
Then again, after slogging through a muddy hell in heavy armor and me to protect- I'd expect she'd want a hot bath. It was strangely human to think of the intimidating Ms. Aran and realize that the ability to relax once in a while was likely one of her most valuable luxuries.
I feel it is essential to detail this about my savior. Ms. Aran, bless her soul- the first human I knew after incarceration. No matter how the Federation may approve or disapprove of her actions, she will always have at least my support- such as it is.
And thus the reason to publish this memoir posthumously. It is written in my will now- that by the time you the readers hear my words, that I'll be gone. I realize that the little information I learned, that the bounty hunter Aran devotes a sizable corner of her gunship to sanitary facilities, might endanger her or sully her reputation in some way I cannot fathom. I also realize it seems a silly thing, an obvious thing- but even so, there is no way I can know that even the smallest detail might compromise her ship's schematics or place in jeopardy some other aspect of her livelihood.
It is all I can do. An obsessive, trivial thing, but as a professor of mathematics I can't offer much more.
I hear times are changing. Or, that they've changed while I've been away. The Galactic Federation is placing more faith in contracted hunters and PMCs as their own capability to stand against threats such as the Space Pirates diminish. The speed in testing new discoveries demanded of my (new) colleagues has recently increased to a breakneck, perhaps unethical pace. And I even hear from one of my new students that he's seen a space pirate working in a federation science facility, one he spent a few standard months in internship.
I am recovered, and just now able to speak on what I've been through in the past year. The long hospital stay didn't dull the memories, and to hear about things like war in the near future... I don't know what to think.
But, as a historical record. Listeners know this: I supported Samus Aran until my eventual death. And nothing between now and then, no later entry, will change that. She saved my life, and even if I am unsure of it, and what I've come back to, I owe her that much.
Ms. Samus Aran is an extra-ordinary woman. Godspeed to her- I have a feeling that my problems will turn out to be the least of hers.
End Entry
- 15/20 -