Accident or Fate?

Min had spent many hours alone growing up. She'd learned things about the 'Mongers most of them didn't know. Some of it she had saved to hidden files, encrypted ones, and deleted the public links. Some of it she had hacked from other's encrypted files. Some of it she had intuited.

Like the Lord Marshal being a renegade Elemental. She guessed he had figured the odds of someone being able to take over the galaxy, and decided it might as well be him. Other Elementals had been on board before, but she never saw one leave. The Witch, Aereon, was the only one she'd seen twice, once as a little girl back on the breeder ship. The Witch had been interested in the Furyans there.

Which meant she knew too much about Furyans. Which meant Min needed to learn what she knew. But that would be later... right now...

Min looked up service records. She was looking for particular indications: age, rank, and specifically the time of enlistment. Not many soldiers in the lower ranks of the 'Mongers lived to be old. She didn't find many in the upper ranks either. And even less, a handful, of minor lords, captains, who fit the exact time she was looking for.

The date Fury was invaded.

She saved those files... then altered the dates.

The captains she was now looking at were solid, dependable... and invisible. Nothing in their files indicated anything unusual, nothing too outstanding, nothing extraordinary. Except they had passed on promotions... all of them. Two of them had served together, and requested transfers. They all held the same rank now, in separate companies, did their jobs well... and stayed invisible.

Min studied the pattern of promotions and transfers, then altered it slightly. Those men would find themselves transferred to the flagship over the next weeks. And while no one else would be suspect of the natural order of things, she wondered if they would notice. She hoped so.

Next she delved into the breeder ship computers. She wasn't as hopeful here. The cleansing was altered on Furyan women, and it proved to be both effective and devastating. She had seen the results with her own eyes as a child.

Furyan women were encouraged to go to the birthing rooms, which they all knew were just laboratories, and so most kept their imminent labor a secret. But Furyan women who gave birth to boys found themselves compelled to strangle them. And the next morning many went mad with grief, or threw themselves from the top levels to their death rather than face life with such a thing buried in their heads. Women who were caught before labor and escorted to the labs were relieved of their boy children without knowing their fate.

It made her wonder about Riddick's origin being Earth. Were there Furyan immigrants on earth? Or had some escaped that far? The 'Mongers hadn't yet gone to Earth, paranoid and trigger happy about their planet, the Lord Marshal had simply ignored it out of prudence. She decided to search that out later.

Meanwhile, the breeder ship files were all encrypted, each of the scientists hiding their experiments and results from each other. Much of it in such scientific jargon that it made little sense to Min when she did crack a code. But the gist was horrifying enough that she was glad not to have to visualize the details. The Lord Marshal was interested in breeding superior soldiers. Not terribly original, she thought, history was full of such failed schemes. But the results affected her personally.

Min had been born on Fury, brought to the breeder ship with her mother as an infant. She'd spent a decade living in prison like conditions in a cell with her mother and learning to avoid the guards and cameras when possible. Societal breakdown under those circumstances made the place chaotic and violent. Children weren't subject to the cleansing until puberty. Min's father had rescued her just before that time.

Just after that time, she discovered, Furyan women and girls were rounded up. Most were put into suspension, even babies.

Many became laboratory experiments in genetics, and advanced cleansing techniques. Her mother was on that list. She and the others were then sent out to the ships of the armada as servants.

And spies.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

Min copied the list of moles. Someone had been looking for other hidden Furyans all those years ago. The list of men hidden in the ranks and ferreted out by these mind wiped women... it scared her to think how close she had come to being one of those victims. How close she had come to betraying her father to her own mother. But it didn't take away the pain of having killed her. Nothing would.

Some of those women were still active on the ships. So many men had died because they had revealed themselves to someone they thought they could trust. The Five, the captains she had searched out, they hadn't fallen into the trap. Accident or fate? Or had they suspected? They couldn't have known for sure, their rank did not give them that kind of intelligence.

But her father must have known.

Did he know these men? Did they know about her?

She couldn't expunge those files, the scientists were still actively updating them. But she had the list. That would have to be enough for now.

At some point she would have to arrange for those scientists to die. The moles too.

And the Witch.

And all Elementals.