COUNTERPOINT
CHAPTER 2: THE PILOT
PART 8
By Mayavan Thevendra
Cold, dark, damp.
A chemical scent, and a low, electric hum permeated the air. From somewhere out of sight, dim voices came rolling, echoing between metal walls.
"How're we gonna do this?"
"We ain't. We wait 'til he gets back. Should'n be too long…"
"Huh. Alright. Alright, let's wait."
The voices trailed away into nothingness, their meaning lost. Either seconds or hours passed, and the frosty, stifling air pressed closer; once again, there was quiet.
Kimiko lay awake. Every thought was pain, and every movement a biting, jarring warning. Some caustic taint of the air caused every breath to sting as she drew it, and she shivered feverishly from the cold of her surroundings, although some mild comfort came from the mattress beneath her, stiff though it was. On the edge of hearing came the slow, torturous dripping of water, and steam vents hidden in the gloom broke the rhythm with the occasional sharp hiss. Trapped within this icy vault, she had neither recollection of where she was, nor of how she had arrived there. With considerable difficulty, she at last managed to cast her mind back to past events, although how far in the past they were, she had no idea. She remembered: a shuttle, and a fleet, burning in space. She remembered a dead pilot, and Valerie being an ass, and…
The fog in her head was breached as images and sounds flashed painfully into focus. The creature. The monstrous flying creature, which had set upon them like a bird of prey; it tore across them again and again, rending the hull with every pass, and at the very end, it had bolted away into the distance, and then swooped in for the kill. Slowly, through the haze the recollection came; the last thing she had seen before losing consciousness. A bright flash: not an explosion, or flames from their own battered craft, but cannon fire. Its ruby flare had struck the creature from one side as it closed, pulverising flesh and bone, and sending it tumbling, a bloody wreck. It rolled; limp and lifeless, and then blackness had fallen.
It might have been a year ago, for all Kimiko knew. Soon she was struck by a sense of urgency, and of pressing danger, but despite her efforts, she could not move. Past the pain was a numbness which sapped all strength from her limbs, and dulled her senses. Eventually, overwhelmed by pain and exhaustion, she slipped once again into unconsciousness.
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"So what the fuck is this?"
The words were spat rather than spoken, and done with volume enough to wrest Kimiko from her uneasy sleep. Fear took hold immediately, however; she kept her eyes firmly closed, and listened.
"This? This is what we found in the pilot's seat."
Another voice, perhaps one of those she had heard before.
"Mag filters on their ship were burned out, so she picked up some rads from the outside, but nothin' serious. We gave her a shot to clean her out, same as the others."
"What others?"
"The uh, nine others that we found in there with her."
Another voice. There were three of them, three men standing over her; Kimiko's chest went tight.
"There were some others, but they were already dead. Had been for a while. The live ones are over in Freight two. They were out cold when we dragged em' in, but this one, she was kicking and screaming and biting, even in her sleep, so we dumped her in here. Huh. Couldn't believe it when we found 'em all. Weirdest thing I ever saw."
"I'll bet. Who are they?"
"Confederates. Look like cadets."
"All of them?"
"Naw, there's a woman with them. She was banged up pretty bad, we gave her some medical. She'll live."
There was movement to her right, as one of them paced along the length of her bed. A sigh followed.
"Salvage, boys. You know what that means, right? Metal? Wreckage? Machinery? These things ring any bells?"
"Yeah, Grill, we towed their shuttle back too, but, well I figured we could make a little extra. I know this trash monkey, works in the Cour' Doba system, him an' his crew found one 'emselves one of those luxury stellar tugs a while back, got attacked by pirates or somethin', an' it was full of rich suckers. Sold the tug for a peach, and got twenty-five thou' from slavers and den pimps for the cargo, I ain't shittin' ya!"
"Man, but these are Confederates! We, hell, we could probably ransom these little pricks back to their school or somethin', man! Right, Grill?"
A snort of derision.
"Ransom? You're a fine junker Deke, but you're not too smart. D'you honestly think the Confederacy gives two shits about 'em? Believe me, they couldn't care less."
A pause. Kimiko's chest was beginning to flutter involuntarily, and she could feel a pressure building in her throat.
"But we can probably get a good deal for'em on Sengel. We might get ten, maybe fifteen thousand outta them. They like teenagers on Sengel. A lot."
With her eyes closed, Kimiko couldn't see "Grill's" face, but she could almost feel his crooked grin, even colder than the air around her. Fear gave way to sudden anger, and she was unable to hold her ruse; the rasping cough that had been building in her throat for the last minute exploded out. Kimiko wheezed, breathlessly, and looked up at her captors.
"Well, looky." Sneered Grill, "She's awake."
Through cracked lips, Kimiko hissed a faint reply.
"Buh-bastard."
"Heh. And alert, by the sound o' things."
A dim electric bulb on the wall behind her cast a wavering glow over the room; evidently it was a small storage cell of some sort, and was littered with pieces of junk and scrap metal. The three men were dressed in grease-stained grey overalls; the one called "Grill" was wearing a grimy red neckerchief, and grafted onto the left side of his face was a cybernetic enhancement of some kind, most likely an optical device but attached in a rather gruesome fashion. From what Kimiko had heard of their conversation, it was obvious that they were junk scavengers: generally scraped up from the dregs of Terran society, "Junkers" were nomadic traders who dealt in scrap and derelict vehicles, often resorting to theft, hijacking or even murder to acquire their goods. She had evidently been taken back to her captors' base, wherever that was.
"You got nothing better to say to me, sweetcheeks?" leered Grill.
"Fuck you." Grunted Kimiko.
Grill gave a look of mock disapproval, and then grinned.
"Well don't that beat all. My boys tell me you've been here two days. That's two days you've taken advantage of our hospitality, and that's all you can think to say. And after they went and saved your life no less."
He shook his head slowly, watched keenly by his sniggering companions.
"You know, you would have been floatin' waste if not for us." He said with a quiet, steely voice, "Tavis here was mighty swift in hauling your worthless behinds into his bird, and he even gave you medical attention. And no gratitude for it at all. I don't know, kids these days, hunh?"
He chuckled dryly, and gave a knowing wink to the other two. They had indeed saved Kimiko's life, and the lives of the others, if what they had said was true; but she knew only too well that any fair treatment from then on was to ensure a better price at whatever meat-market the junkers had in store for them. Kimiko remained silent.
"Well never mind," sneered Grill, "Doesn't take long to learn manners. I'm sure someone'll teach you."
He took a step back, and turned to leave, when Tavis stopped him.
"Do you want me to tie her?" he asked.
Grill glanced back, and looked Kimiko over.
"What did you give her for the radiation?"
"Turol, ah, Turol…"struggled Tavis.
"Terlazine?"
"Yeah, Terlazine."
"Ok," sniffed Grill, "then don't bother, she won't be moving anywhere for another day or two. 'Sides, market doesn't like it when you bring girl meat in with rope burns all over 'em. Lock the door though."
With a rusty whine, the heavy metal door swung closed, and Kimiko heard the heavy clunk of the lock turning. Footsteps sounded away, and grew dim, and then at last silence returned.
The lamp had been left turned on, but the world seemed to Kimiko to grow suddenly dark, and distant. She struggled to think back to a time before all of this, a time when her most pressing problems were poor grades and shoddy attendance. As oppressive an environment as the training fleet was, it was still her home. With no family left of her own, it was all she knew, and yet still she had seemed to suffer less than the others at its destruction. She was homeless now, perhaps as she was meant to be, she thought to herself; a wandering vagrant, no more respectable than the scavengers who had captured her. Her foolish desire had brought her here, to this. And still, it burned within her, as it had always done; lying there in her prison, she felt the steel walls melt away, and suddenly she was free, soaring, reaching higher, farther. With a click, the lamp switched off, and blackness fell again. The walls felt close and menacing, now that Kimiko knew they were there.
The darkness sunk in against her, but her mind had begun to clear. She had to escape.