(Speech change)
The sun was starting to go down and as I sat down to eat the food that was finally cooked I couldn't help but look at the three in front of me.
A weak pathetic man and two women that in any other place would have had cozy lives, perhaps nobility...no he was certain of it, the two women were of noble origin, they moved with a grace that commanded the people around them. It was like looking at someone that knew what they were doing and were only amongst the lower classes because they had to.
The man, however, he was unkempt, perhaps self-trained, someone that learned by doing and never perfected anything, all of this made the three of them targets, but that was the thing, they had lived...they had lived.
The dark-haired woman gave off a feeling of familiarity and warmth, like if she had been some sort of healer once, while the blond was cold and distant, like if she was separated from the people around her since a young age.
The man was weak, no need to look at him for any signs of a truly significant threat, he would soon be dead, the other prisoners would make sure of that and yet for some reason he doubted his own instincts, almost as if the man dying would be unlikely.
He bit into raptor meat and to his surprise, he found that it was perfectly seasoned and cooked just right, he allowed himself a brief moment to glance at the dark haired woman and found that the blond woman's cold blue eyes were now firmly locked on him.
A guard, an extremely skilled one at that. He would soon have to put her in her place or deal with her permanently if that meant claiming her sexually then so be it, however, if she proved herself to dangerous to handle, then he just might miss his target and she would find herself with a gunshot thru her head.
They ate in silence, no one really had any reason to talk, so as they ate the sounds of the night began to be heard all over.
Women screamed as men and woman alike laid claim to their new toys, sex slaves sold and traded for the relief of other inmates. Some screams were the pain-filled deaths of fools that challenged those above them and died because of it, others were old leaders of their teams that fell to the younger blood that had come in.
The sounds of the trees and bushes told him everything he needed to know, the penal born had come. Children born into this place, they were divided into two things feral and savage, the feral ones were nothing more than animals, while the savage ones, those were the ones you watched out for.
They hunted, laid traps and tortured people simply for the hell of it, to them if a prisoner wasn't one of them then he was either food or entertainment. The women they captured would always be found later, they would be found only after they had committed suicide for one reason another.
As he ate he slowly shifted his weight on his mechanical arm and began to draw a small knife that had been implanted in it, he could see past the fire in front of him that the blond woman was slowly reaching for her recently acquired chains sword, the fair-haired woman was crushing plants together in her hands ad the man was simply eating.
They wouldn't sleep tonight, the penal born had marked them as the weakest group and they were now being hunted because of it.
All of a sudden the only thing he could hear was the embers of the fire breaking and mixing in with the screams of the night, then as something was flung into the fire putting it out plunging them into complete darkness, he swung his arm into the face of his attacker killing him instantly.
The sounds of the chain sword coming to life and the creamed of the dying soon followed as they mixed in with the sound of lassgun fire.
No one slept that night and when morning finally came he noticed the number of bodies around them, he had only killed a few and they were near him, the dark-haired woman had several men and woman that looked as if their veins had strangled them to death.
This had clearly been the work of some sort of poison, but for it to have been so potent and for it not to have affected her... He needed to have someone check his food for now on, she would kill him if she ever had a reason to and nothing assured him she wouldn't do so, simply because she wanted to.
The man had a few deaths here and there but nearly every other corps was torn apart by chains sword.
He looked into the blond woman's cold blue eyes and the way she looked at the weak man, was it pity, concern or perhaps love?
Either way, they needed to move the bodies soon animals would gather for the feast and none of the new blood in front of him looked like the kind that ate human meat.
So he began to drag the first body and the blond woman followed him dragging to of them behind her, the other two followed.
He didn't bother looking at what they were, dead was dead and to give someone a glance after they tried to kill you and you killing them, in turn, was pointless.
When they were done he guided them all to a river took his cloth off and washed off the blood that had spattered on him, both the man and his two women did the same. He noticed that both women had a significant amount of muscle on them, while the weak one, had none.
Yet both woman's eyes whenever they looked at the weak one, had something he couldn't quite understand, was it disgust, hate, bloodlust.
No, it was something far more dangerous, something that would get the three of them killed, loyalty, the kind of loyalty one had to a master they had been raised to protect.
A red light shone in front of him and he felt his head begin to burn as orders were implanted into it when he looked up, he noticed that the other three were graving their heads in pain, the first time was always the worst.
Looks like they weren't going to get any rest, they were to be shipped out in an hour.
"Good," he thought to himself, soon he would be the only one left alive again, it was better to be alone anyways.
(Character change, Location Change)
She sat there quietly, there was no point in screaming or arguing, they already made up their minds, she was guilty and deserved to get punished. It didn't matter that she never did anything out of line or the fact that she did her work well, perhaps not perfect, but it was well done.
She had learned to put the holy places of the machines together and offer the correct prayers, burned the correct oils and marked down who and were to be marked for skull extraction. Yet despite all of this, she had been found guilty.
Her superiors didn't care that she didn't handle the coding process, or that she herself didn't produce the complete list of people that were meant to be servitors, no she was found guilty because they wanted someone to blame.
Still, she had found that someone had an eye on her and intervened, so instead of being taken to be processed and recycled as was the custom, she was being sent away to be a savage world with little to know knowledge of technology.
"Turn this way." A guard told her, before he placed a collar on her neck.
"There's an explosive in that thing. So if you want to die try something stupid." The guard added, before walking up to the only other person in the room and pausing for a moment.
"We have a code right" he said, before a man with a heavy chain like machine walked in and placed the chain on the man's neck. The machine began to glow and weld itself on to the man's artificial neck.
A pull on the ship alerted her that they were entering the planet's gravity, soon she would be forced to teach the more masses how to build and maintain simple black powder weapons and other primitive devices.
The ship shook and a door on its side opened, she didn't say anything, it didn't matter she just began to walk out and her eyes widened realizing the danger. Roles upon roles of hive gang members, small children and crying woman all stood right next to one another.
Transport ships came and went, delivering more until the area was so packed that they could not even move.
For the first time in years she felt fear, recycling killed you and left no ability to feel or think, being sent to a primitive world left no room for regrets as she would have to learn to live in a way she never knew of before.
Yet this was truly horrifying, this was a penal colony only the strong survived here and the weak wished for death.
Soon a man began to walk, she briefly looked back, something that proved almost possible now and noticed her ship had long since left, the area where it was located was now filled by several dozen more people.
"All of you are here because you failed in the Emperor's eyes, in one way or another. If you are to have some form of salvation, it begins now." He said before he pressed a button and caused the collar she was wearing to let out an electric shock
"Take off your clothes, they don't belong to you. They belong to a loyal citizen of the Imperium and none of you are it." The man said to them in a cruel voice, but he held a savage glee as he looked at the inmates doing what he wanted.
"I see that all of you are the evident kind, so I'll be kind to all of you." The man said with a hint of softness in his voice, before pausing and allowing a cruel smile to cross his face.
"Today we have been given a mission to clean out an infestation, but you see we don't have the numbers to deal with the problem, luckily for us a whole of fresh meat has just arrived. So all of you will join with the teams you're sighed too." The man said before an inmate spoke.
"So are we ever going to get any clothes?"
The Warden aimed a small device towards the man's direction and the man began to scream, he screamed as his flesh began to burn, he screamed as he fell and was completely unable to stand ever again and finally he screamed until he could no longer scream.
"Clothes are for loyal citizens or people that live longer than a day. You keep what you kill. BAre there any other questions?" The Warden asked, but this time no one spoke.