Chapter Thirteen
SitRep
Crystal wakes slowly with more pain than she can remember having ever suffered at any one time. Last time she'd awoken she'd only had to adjust to a strange bedroom, and once she'd remembered how she'd gotten there she could go into her morning Prayers, Contemplation and other usual details and ablutions.
Now she forces her eyes open to discover she has far more reasons for prayer, and meditation on the last day's events (how long ago?) is not going to help her.
The room is dimmer than she remembers the ship to be, and from her view of the ceiling it must be nearly cavernous. She can't distinguish much lying upon the floor but with the pain of her arms tied behind her and her ankles even more tightly bound she can see nothing but a ten foot wide, twenty foot long space, the rest (how much?) stacked high with large and quite probably heavy plastic boxes and the floor is freaping hard.
In the pain which is so bad she's forced the rest of the way to wakefulness, she looks left and sees, while somewhat more urgent prayers fill her mind, that she's not alone.
Captain Ed Mercer lies two meters away, seated against the pseudo-wall of crates, trussed with feet together and arms behind him on the cold (she assumes his section is because hers is freezing) deck.
Kelly Grayson lies on her side a meter above her head so she must look up to see that the First Officer is also bound, ankles together and her arms probably crossed as high behind her back as hers are, but unlike the Captain she's naked.
'She must really be cold,' Crystal thinks, and is sure she can wait for answers for this one.
x
She looks down past her feet and there's Alara, but she's chained while they three are roped and the metal links that bind her ankles are thick enough to tow a ship on the ground. Crystal has never imagined anything so formidable used to hold a woman.
Now she has greatly more reason to pray, and does so with great fervency if brevity before she can speak.
"What happened?" rasps in her throat and she tries to swallow what moisture she has and believes she's not going to get more. 'All right, it's trite, clichéd and hackneyed but I really wanna know.'
"What do you remember?" Mercer, on her left, counters.
"A lot of pain." 'Okay, honest, concise but not the most helpful report I can give my Captain.' "I was talking to Alara … I'm guessing she was not Alara."
"Good guess," the chained Xelayan says with little bon homie.
"Okay, well I was talking to not-Alara in her quarters. She grabbed me, literally spun me about in mid-air, threw me across the room. I hit, I suppose, the bulkhead."
"Must have felt like getting hit by a truck," Mercer summarizes with a measure of sympathy.
"I've been hit by a truck. This is worse."
"Some of that's probably from the fake Alara dropping you on the deck when they brought you in."
"Oh –" The word she bites off wouldn't do credit to her image or reputation any more than it would change a blessed thing.
x
"Specifics, Reverend. We've been here since I called 'Secure from General Quarters'."
"Well, that was last night, 'Gamma' shift?" He nods. "'Not-Alara' decked me, literally, in her quarters toward the end of Beta. I think it must have been after 2320, probably a lot after. I don't know anything after that."
'Aw, heck, it's Christmas Eve.'
x
"A day or better. Why did she attack you?"
"Well, she was…." She strains, from lying on her side, to sit up to face him and the hugely chained Xelayan, and she's relieved that the move puts Kelly behind her. It's not that she has anything against nudity per se, but with the bruises and dried blood on the First Officer's face this is going to be a really unpleasant tale. "I was going around the ship, getting acquainted and lost all track of time. I noticed her at dinner in the mess hall, the lounge rather, she was eating with Lieutenant Malloy and was quite comfortable wearing that Talmed."
"Huh!" This from Alara and carries several different flavors of offense.
"We met quite a while later, I commented that she seemed to like it, the talmed, and she gave me a 'why shouldn't I?' I was stupid enough to mention the reason." The expression on Alara's face is a reminder, or a warning, not to mention that reason here.
x
"She invited me to her quarters for a 'night cap', wanted to talk. Looking back, I see she probably wanted to pump me but she started out by offering me a drink, which I suspect was probably drugged."
"That's how the other Kelly took me out," Ed interjects.
Crystal continues her narrative with the chained Officer. "You know how I am with alcohol. I reminded you and in the next instant I'm sailing through the air and denting the bulkhead."
x
"Do you know anything about what's happening out there?" Mercer asks, not having much hope.
"Only that we're headed to a planet to deliver grain."
"Are you sure? Are you positive we're still on course?" He's not surprised by her expression and suspects that a significant number of the crew are unaware of the change in course. They would believe that they are still on course for Catonis II (those who may know even that much) when he knows they're heading back to Earth.
The next 'General Briefing', a practice started less than three months ago, is scheduled for four days hence, after the Christmas holiday and so he's not distressed by her quiet admission.
"Um… no."
x
They're quiet for a long moment. Crystal thinks they're integrating her measly information into their body of knowledge. She's sure that they know far more than she does and in the quiet she pivots around and whispers as softly as she can away from the others: "Commander? If it's none of my business…."
She's run out of words, tries… prays… to keep the blush from her face. Kelly, however, has never been a Shrinking Violet.
"The fake Ed raped me."
"Oh my God," is quiet yet louder than she'd wanted it to be. "I…. Can…? Do…?"
She glances back to discover with greater shame still that the real Ed Mercer is looking at her.
"Yes," Kelly declares, pulling her forward again. "I want to talk with you - a lot - later."
"Of course." 'Talk of timing - and my frigging big mouth.'
Right now, none of them can be sure there will be a later.
x
"But we've been out of commission for a full day," the Captain concludes, "and yet these fake Mercer, Grayson and Kitan haven't taken anyone else." Crystal can't keep a flash of her thought from her expression and darn it but he saw it. "You and the others probably don't appear in their plans, and that gives us an advantage."
"More than that," Kelly counters. "No matter how well briefed those people are, they can't fool those who know us for very long. Kitan messed up twice," her look takes in the real one in her chains, "because they didn't know about Gordon's gift to you," she looks to Crystal, "or about your conversations."
"My bet is with Gordon," Mercer declares. "No matter how well they researched us, they'd fall down first on the personal stuff."
"And meantime," Crystal says, "I could get you two loose."