Koriand'r was starving.
That was nothing new. She had been starving for 27 Tamaranian days, or 38 Outer Spiral Arm Standard Rotations. That wasn't to say her captors didn't feed her at all, but they wanted to keep her beneath her full strength. She received a handful of low-calorie archaea paste every four OSASR, mixed in with trace minerals that made it taste even worse but kept her from developing any serious diseases from malnutrition.
The official nourishment wasn't her only source of food. No spaceship of this size was a truly sterile environment, and nine-legged gnats that came to drink at her sores and lesions added a blessed bit of protein, once she'd developed the patience to lure them into a false sense of security. It was just one of the many bonuses of a prehensile tongue.
Seven of her stomachs groaned. The last two had gone numb twelve OSASR ago. Her gnorfka had told her that the prehensile tongue, like their other abilities, were a blessing from Shub-Nigguroth, that the Mother of All Things had shaped each life-form with unique capacities to thrive and adapt, as the continuous divergence of species fulfilled her grand destiny. Right now, as she felt horrible little palps scrape the still-tender scars in her armpits, Koriand'r found that destiny a bit too broad and abstract for her tastes.
"The prophet Zarquon will come, I await his coming with patience and grace. The galaxies shine in his crown. His holy words are all the food I need. His sacred vows are my water. My faith in him is more important than methane to breathe..."
Starfire rubbed the plaque from her tongue with her mandibles, careful not to disturb the parasites that nibbled at her. It was a delicate matter of risk-analysis, to give them enough time to acclimate to her without allowing them to actually reopen a wound with their feeding. Protein gained verses nutrients lost. It helped that water rations were distributed as frequently once every two OSASR.
"As he walked between the light of neutron stars and waited outside the event horizon, so shall I endure. As he..." the prisoner across from her murmured and chanted all his waking hours, even as the guards took out their frustrations on his whiskers and ovipositor with their Nth-metal nightsticks. It faded into the background, just like the muttering Daxomite in his lead chains or the parademon whispering about the anti-life equation. The only reason she actively listened to it now was to distract herself from the itching pains of those nine tiny spurred legs as the probed for the lymph nodes under her secondary carapace.
She tried to think of the virtues that defined her people, proud in their adversity: Courage, Friendship, Bisonomy, Insight, Ferocity, Endurance, and Polypsychism.
The hawkman across and three cells down from her sat, preening his nearly-featherless wings. He'd begged and prayed a lot when he first came in. Now he didn't do anything except groom and shiver.
"Nice weather we're having, right?" the white Martian said to the Zarquonian. "I'm planning to order a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster and a plate of deep-fried red bugs as soon as the waiter comes around!" She pounded her chest with amusement. "Shame the service is so late!"
The Zarquonian prayed on, heedless of his surroundings. The Martian sighed.
The lights flickered. The ship had just passed through a gamma storm.
Starfire clenched her fists, marshalled the solar energy coursing through her decentralized nervous system, and shoved it as hard as she could. The organic superconductors that made up her "fingernails" glimmered, and for a moment, she thought she'd found a weak point.
The recoil sent her to her knees. The rapid movement dislodged the gnats, which fluttered to the corners of the cell, half a body-length out of her tongue's reach.
A gargling howl from the white Martian informed Koriand'r that her neighbor had also tried to take advantage of the momentary flutter in the security grid, in this case pressing against the field stabilizer that prevented her shapeshifting.
"You know," the Martian croaked, "there are people on the outer rim who would pay a lot of money for this kind of treatment."
The parademon snickered. As a species, they were better adapted to chortles or guffaws, but this one managed it. The white Martian gave a weak smile of gratitude.
"You know what Granny Goodness would call this place?" the parademon rasped. It was one of the few prizes denied access to water, but Koriand'r still wasn't sure if they had the ability to extract water vapor from the air, or maybe just didn't need it to survive.
"What?" the white Martian asked.
"Rehab!" the parademon shouted.
Koriand'r couldn't help herself. She giggled. The Martian pounded her chest enthusiastically. Even the Daxomite quirked his lips. The mass of wings and eyeballs at the far left limit of her vision quivered its enjoyment.
"You guy's are the best," the white Martian said. "I'm really gonna miss you when these Gordanians break up the band and send us all home."
Nobody laughed this time.
Koriand'r forced herself upright. A Tamaranian princess should comport herself with dignity. She should show strength in the greatest adversity. She might be on her way to become a prize, a toy, a slave in a strange land, but she would never let them think she was a Troq. She wouldn't let her people down. That was why she had submitted to this treatment, after all.
She stretched her bound limbs overhead to better let the scent of pus waft through the air. The gnats didn't stir yet, but they would come soon. Three of her stomachs growled at the same time, while another two cramped. Koriand'r stayed upright.
"I await his coming with patience and grace. The galaxies shine in his crown. His holy words..."
Koriand'r scraped her tongue, even though the plaque was already long-gone. She probed between her mandibles, false teeth, and true teeth, foraging for some forgotten remnant of food, even a bit of her own dead skin or congealed mucus, that could give the tiniest shadow of strength to her oh-so-slowly failing body. She found none.
She had almost escaped, three meals ago. Maybe the Gordanians had altered her ration plan in response to that. If her body was draining nutrients from her endoskeleton to sustain her sub-dermal exoskeleton, she wouldn't be able to break the door open and break her jailkeeper's face with it. She grudgingly admired the calculating precision of their torment. A less insightful slaver might have kept giving her enough food to keep her strength up, or over-compensated and underfed her enough to lead to permanent disability or disfigurement.
"Silence!" the guard roared over the speaker system. None of them except the Zarquonian and the Daxomite had been speaking, and Koriand'r guessed that this was a mere petty exercise of authority over her and her fellow captives. She did not approve. The situation was clear to all of them. Trying to drive the point home with bellows and shouts only showed an inner weakness and lack of courage.
8,233 volts ripped through Koriand'r's exoskeleton. Her hair throbbed and her fingernails pulsed with agony. She also did not approve of this. Violence and pain had their uses, but this was sheer self-indulgence, or maybe an attempt by a weak mind to exert a sense of control over a hopelessly chaotic universe. For her part, she fell to her knees but didn't fall flat on the cell floor, and also managed not to piss herself.
"There's a new prisoner coming in, so by Zog, keep to the back of your cells and resign yourself to your fate. Resistance is useless!" the guard bellowed.
Koriand'r watched as they opened up the triple-locked doors. Four muscly Gordanians dragged in a transparent-aluminum cube, occupied by a pale-blue creature with white crystals sprouting at its orifices. It balanced awkwardly on three limbs, while three more limbs reached out at its equator and another three digitless, feathery ones probed the air. Saltwater sloshed in the bottom of its container.
"This is a special guest, so be sure to give zem the heartiest possible Cell Block 11 welcome." The guard on the intercom was now trying to take up a sarcastic, unctuous tone. This was just pathetic. "We have retrofitted a personalized cell suitable for amphibious life-forms. Behave well, and you may have your own containment units adjusted to better fit your personal requirements." A few methane-breathers wheezed hopefully, although the Zarquonian still steadfastly ignored it. The Daxomite rolled his eyes without breaking the whispered chant.
The blue alien did not struggle or protest as it was unceremoniously dumped into the pale green cell. There was a shallow depression full of brackish fluid that was almost, but not quite, enough for the creature to immerse itself in. The water-dispenser was bubbling, suggesting that the creature needed a lot of dissolved oxygen or methane in its liquid intake.
Once the guards had locked zem in, given the captive a few electric shocks, unlocked zem, dragged zem out, beat it up with Nth-metal rods, spat on it, cut it, deficated on the cuts, sterilized them, stiched the cuts up, then re-opened them with another beating before re-sterilizing them, and ordered the captive to shuffle back into zeir cell, it was time for a routine checkup on the other prisoners.
There was no need to open the cages for feeding or waste disposal, of course. Automated tubes delivered the former, and removed the latter when it piled up to unhygienic levels of excess. Koriand'r had been as tidy as she could manage, given the circumstances, and had not stooped to combing her waste for undigested portions of grain, like the Martian and the Zarquonian did.
"-neutron stars and waited outside the event horizon, so shall I endure. As he explored the dark spaces between solar systems and electrons, so shall I probe into the deeper meanings of his truth. As he awakened—"
Koriand'r had been raised to respect piety, to look kindly upon faith in a higher power than oneself, but what good was piety when that faith went unrewarded? Nevermind the philosopher Echiand'r's rantings against the concept of Moral Dessert, sometimes a person in extreme suffering needed to know that something, anything they did, was worth something more than a smug sense of personal worth.
Anyway, what good were messianic faiths? What was the point of waiting for a distant savior? How did that do anything to address the massive suffering in the here and now, the grumbling of her six remaining active stomachs and the hot, ugly, pain of her corrupted armpit glands?
The hideous tickle alerted Koriand'r that a gnat had alighted on her swollen gland. She relaxed a little. Patience was a virtue, even if it wasn't one of the cardinal Tamaranian virtues, or even as important as Bisonomy.
The guards dragged out the white Martian. They switched off the stabilization field just long enough for her to phase partway through the floor, then switched it back on, and cackled. Their echoing throats were well-adapted to cackling. Maybe Shub-Nigguroth had a fondness for ugly, wicked, sadistic laughter. She certainly didn't do much to arrest the atrocities that happened every moment in this big, beautiful, horrible, ugly universe of hers.
The white Martian begged the guards to free her. They pulled out polarity knives, grinned with their scaly faces, dripping down the predigestive fluid that could fray the complex compounds of a Tamaranian carapace, and cut her off at the knees. The scream was loud, but they followed up by quickly, if inelegantly, cauterizing the wounds with a proton skewer.
The Zarquonian kept praying as they dragged him out. They pulled out his ovipositor, made a lot of suggestive jokes, but thankfully didn't do anything worse than press a flame against its base. Gordanians had a code, even if it was tailored to their own convenience and broadly accommodating of a great many senseless cruelties, and they wouldn't...well, they wouldn't do anything "ungentlemanly" to their prisoners. Torture was one thing, but there are some lines that should not be crossed. For that, Koriand'r was thankful.
She considered saying a prayer of thanks to Shub-Nigguroth, but why? Wasn't the power of fornication one of the "blessings" that Shub-nigguroth had rained upon all life-forms with her unending river of love, good and bad? Wasn't the fact that she did nothing to stop this gift from being twisted and defiled proof of either divine weakness or divine apathy?
It wasn't all bad, Koriand'r reminded herself, trying to shore up her soul against gross blasphemy. Shub-Nigguroth's diversity of life had presented such things as the gnats that milked the puss from her infected glands. She lashed out her tongue, catching all but one, and savored the savory crunch as she passed them into her first stomach. That was good, wasn't it?
Her other eight stomachs roared, anticipating a meal that would not come for a long, long time.
For the first time, it all became too much. Koriand'r, princess of Tamaran, fell to her knees, and then crumpled to all fours, and then spread out on the cold floor. What was the point? Royal dignity would not stop her from suffering in abject misery. It would not fill any of her complaining stomachs. It would not elevate her above the station of a captive slave.
The Gordanians finished pounding the holy gremplork out of the pious Zarquonian, who was still praying through the bubbles of clotted green blood in his air-bladder. They choke-slammed him back into his cell, shouted "Praise Zog! Zog above all!" They slapped one another on the back, stepped out, and closed the cell door before locking it. He never even tried to escape. Evidently, faith in a higher power was all he needed.
The Daxomite continued muttering, and as they approached his cell, his words rose in volume. As they opened the door, he made a complicated sign with his left shackled hand, bit his finger, and spat out the blood on one of the guards.
At first, they took no notice. Fire gleamed in the Daxomite's eyes, but Koriand'r knew Daxomites were able to generate heat-vision. Still, the proximity of lead should have neutralized these powers, and the so-called "heat vision" was more of a directed laser.
The fire in his eyes spread to his mouth, and to the bit of blood and spittle on the guard's neck. The Gordanian slapped the spot, then slapped it again, then called out for help.
A hot-pink flame blazed out, three hand-lengths from the spot on the neck. The other guards tried to help, then quickly backed away as their efforts to extinguish the flame were in vain.
The guard coughed twice.
The guard wretched once.
Then he exploded.
Shards of bone and tangles of gut drove into the eyes and torsos of the other guards. As they bent over, doubled in pain, the Daxomite prisoner waved his right hand and spat again.
The other guards burst into flames, but the fire didn't penetrate their skin. It seared and blistered without touching the flesh underneath. They passed out, or died, from the sheer agony, gurgling and begging for mercy as their lips popped like overcooked red bugs.
"Praise Slath," the Daxomite said.
He broke off one of their hands and pressed it against the cell wall that restrained the Zarquonian. "Will you join me, brother, in prayer?"
"The prophet Zarquon will come," the alien said.
"I mean, will you join me in celebration of My God? The lord Slath, who breaketh our chains and giveth us strength."
"I await his coming with patience and grace. The galaxies shine in his crown." The Zarquonian said, with emphasis.
The Daxomite sighed. "Fine then. Be that way. I will find worthier worshippers."
The Daxomite took the severed hand to open the cage of the blue newcomer. It rubbed its feathered appendages across his feet, and he shook his head. "This is all by the will of Slath," he said, humbly, but he gave a little wink at the end.
The blue thing shambled towards the triple-locked door. The Daxomite snapped his fingers and whistled. The door opened. So did all the cell doors.
Koriand'r stumbled forward. "What...what was that? Daxomites don't have powers in the presence of strong lead."
The Daxomite smiled. "My power is not my own."
Koriand'r thought about tales of prophets and heroes. She bent her knees. "Where does it come from?"
He smiled. "Little one, I can share it with you, if you wish. It is not of Zarquon or Shub-Nigguroth or Phobos or Zog."
She lowered her head. "Teach me." She'd always wanted to believe in somebody helpful, somebody who cared, somebody who didn't plant their celestial ass in the heart of the sun, far away from the concerns of suffering mortals.
Flame danced around his face, without burning his skin or hair. "Slath welcomes you, little girl. You have much to offer Him."
"If..." she hesitated, afraid of retribution for her blasphemy.
The Daxomite beckoned with his leg, as if reading her mind.
"If you could do this all alone, why didn't you? Why did you wait?"
The Daxomite melted the chains in his hands and shaped the molten lead into a cleaver. He paired open the chest of the Gordanian and pulled out the air bladder with greasy fingers.
"Meat doesn't taste very good without salt."