Chapter Twenty-One
Predator, sick-bay
"You must be the new one."
The voice came to her, sounding as if being filtered through a thick layer of cotton and rousing her from a strange land between sleeping and being awake. But she kept her eyes closed on purpose, not having enough strength to even just move her lids. Then suddenly the left lid was forced open and there was white light piercing into her left eye, making her jerk her head to the side as much as her weakened state allowed.
"All right, there's a normal reaction in your left pupil, so you got no head trauma. Which is good, really. Now let's see how the other…" As the fingers which pried her left eye open tried to do the same with her right, Coreena squeezed it shut tight, no matter how much the effort needed for that made her head ache. "C'mon, I just need a short look…" The voice was light, female, soft – and still stern enough to sound commanding. And almost persuading.
"The sooner you let me open this lid, the sooner this will be over. Isn't that a nice perspective?" More scurrying around of the fingers, this time on the back of her head. "Amazing. They managed to break basically everything in your body apart from your skull. You are just one lucky bastard I got some bone-knitter-stuff and some bacta and a lot of those heavy painkillers left. Well, that and a lot of time on my hands." The talking just wouldn't cease and caused her even more headache. More and more, this felt like the all-times universe's worst hangover ever.
She groaned. "Oh, it talks.", came the sarcastic reply. Over the past minutes Coreena had become gradually aware of her surroundings. The antiseptic smell, the light penetrating the cover of her lids and the fact that she wasn't bound to the table she was lying on told her that she wasn't in the interrogation chamber anymore. But where… "Just open your eyes, and you'll know where you are. Come on, try it. I won't even try to look up that pupil you don't want me to see just now." The voice sounded a bit more distant now. After some more seconds of hesitating Coreena cracked open her eyes just so the light wouldn't hurt too much. After the first initial new wave of headache she slowly opened them fully.
The almost immaculate whiteness of the place combined with the other sensations told her she was in a kind of sick bay. Or at least something that had been made to look like a sick bay. "You're wondering where you are and if I'm the good-interrogator part of the "good-interrogator-bad-interrogator" game, aren't you?" Slowly Coreena turned her head into the direction where the voice was coming from. Beside the table she as lying on stood a woman in her early thirties with blond hair at approximately ears' length and her arms folded before her chest who was looking down on her with a mild interest. The woman sighed. "Not very talkative, are we?" Coreena just squinted and decided to stay silent. After all, this could easily be one big illusion created by some strange super-drug made to let her guard down and talk. The woman rose an eyebrow at Coreena's constant refusal to talk and chose to continue with whatever she had done before.
Unfortunately this included touching Coreena. At the sight of someone approaching her and laying a finger on her something inside her snapped and suddenly the doctor flew several meters through the room, crashing against the other side of the room. For a moment no one said anything. Instead the two women stared at each other – the doctor a kind of dumbfounded, the prisoner with a look of pure horror on her marred features. The silence was only broken when Coreena's eyes suddenly closed and she faded again.
Sick-bay, one hour later
Coreena groaned. Again. And again the same woman's voice from before answered her. "So you finally decided to come around, huh? Well, took you long enough…" Coreena cracked her eyes open. Surprisingly she wasn't hit with the same fierce headaches as from before. She tried to sit up, and noticed slightly dumbfounded that no one pushed her down again. When she had finally managed to sit in an upright position, she squinted at the woman across from her. She wanted to say something but only got a croaking sound out. "Try it with some fluids.", the blonde woman said and handed her a cup with something that appeared to be water in it. She eyes it suspiciously. "You can drink it. Chesfer'd have my head on a silver platter if I dared to break his new favorite toy." Coreena tried to withstand the temptation but the rasping feeling in her throat finally overpowered her and she gulped down the water hastily.
Then she tried to speak again, and found herself surprised at actually being able to do it. "Who are you?", she asked, sounding slightly suspicious. The woman just shrugged and said: "My name is… well, never mind my name. I'm just your friendly sew-you-together-so-they-can-torture-you-again-doctor on this lovely cruise straight into hell. Or whatever you chose to call this place where eternal torture and pain will envelope you." Coreena just knitted her brows together in a frown. "What the… where am I?" Again, the woman – the doctor, Coreena corrected herself – answered: "I'm not really allowed to tell you but you are in no shape to do something even remotely dangerous so I guess I don't have to care. You are on the Predator, Admiral Chesfer's flag ship. And before you ask more: You are not the only prisoner. There's seven more of you here. But I haven't treated them for a while now. Only one who is being shipped in here is you. Seems someone has developed quite an interest in you." The last sentence was accentuated with a scowl from the doctor, which encouraged Coreena to push her luck a little. "Is there… did you… treat a female Rodian?" The doctor quirked an eyebrow. "Yes, I did. You know her?" Instead of giving away too much information, Coreena shrugged and said "Could be."
After a kind of uncomfortable silence, the doctor finally said: "Well… as much as I'd like to continue this terribly interesting conversation, I have to carry out my obligations and call my superiors to tell them I've patched you up sufficiently." With that the woman turned to her comm, and Coreena's stomach pit was filled with immeasurable dread.
Fighter carrier Starfield, bridge
"Ma'am, incoming transmission."
Captain Nomo Morgan quirked an eyebrow. "Well, ensign, put it through.", she answered the bridge crew member who had called her. "Well, Ma'am…" She sighed. "What is it, Ganner?" The ensign cleared her throat. "It's encoded. And I really can't make out the sender's identity. Seems really strange." With a frown on her face Morgan got up from her command chair and walked over to Ensign Ganner's console to lean over the shoulder of the young woman and have a look at the transmission herself. From the corner of her eyes she could see the uncomfortable squirming of the ensign but tried to ignore it. Ganner was a competent communication officer, she just needed to get rid of this shyness of senior officers all these kids coming fresh from Imperial worlds or Imperial Academies had.
Scanning quickly through the stats of the transmission Morgan frowned slightly. This was indeed something strange. She hadn't seen this kind of data strings since… Rannan's lot had left her ship for good. Or so she had thought.
A smirk tugged at the right corner of her mouth as she straightened up again and addressed Ganner: "Transfer that message to my account, please." To the rest of the bridge crew she called out: "I'll be at my private office for the next half an hour. Only disturb me if it's really important. And with that I mean nothing smaller than at least three VSDs. D'Jan, you have the bridge." Nodding toward her 2IC, she left the bridge for her private office. This would turn out to be an interesting day, at last.
Liberty, work-out room
"So, how do you know Morgan got your message?", Marcus asked, throwing Rannan a skeptical look. "Trust me, she got it.", was the only thing Rannan answered which made Marcus frown even more. "How can you be so sure?" Rannan sighed. "Look, just trust me on this one. She got it all right. And stop making a fuss about other people's problems. You got enough on your own." Marcus huffed. How dare this smug, self-righteous bastard… "No, I don't." Rannan finally lost his patience and hit his hand against the mat he was sitting on. "Yes, you do. One of the Devaronians is grieving like mad over her fiancé, your XO and her wing-man are avoiding each other almost to death, and when they are forced to work together they appear more likely to shoot each other than the enemy, this guy who claims to be an ex-Imperial Sergeant is seen at the pilots' lounge like 24/7… Come on, Lochlin, your squadron is falling apart, and you know it. For crying out loud, pull yourself together and do something. Speak to the Devaronian, try to find out what's keeping Kenzy and her wing-man at odds. I told you before, and I'll tell you again as long as I have to: Coreena wouldn't want you to wallow in self-pity. She'd want you to bloody buck up and go back to working like a unit again. She had you all in pretty good shape, you really don't want to ruin that now, do you?"
Marcus starred angrily at the other man. He hated being talked to like that, like he was a school boy needing a thorough dressing down by one of his teachers. But that was not the only reason why he was mad at Rannan. The main reason was that the guy was dead right. Kay had been grieving for Randy ever since the battle, Kenzy and Marten had been avoiding each other for at least three days now, Flann was frequenting the pilots lounge even more than usual. And Coreena would give him a thorough spanking for letting things go down like this. Well, a verbal spanking, mind you. He stood up, walked over to the dummy and gave him a good kick against the torso. Then he said without turning around: "All right. I'll give them the lecture of their lives. Just be prepared for a lot more than just a lecture in case Morgan never got your message." With that he left the room without looking at Rannan again. Who in turn just smirked. I'll make a Diamond out of you yet.
A/N: Whoa, look at me! Another chapter like a week after the last. And a new story. I don't want to speak too soon but it looks as though I finally got my groove back. Yay me:D I also did some editing in this story and replaced some early chapters. I'm really, really sorry if I accidentally deleted some of my past A/Ns but I couldn't find the originall files anymore so I had to it this way. Anyway, hope, there are still readers out there who enjoy this storybut are just to lazy to give feedback. So c'mon, people, we writers practically live off reviews. And leaving one will you get a cookie, I promise!