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To the Victor… The night air was cool and
brisk, even for September. He had begun to wish he’d had on more
than a t-shirt and jeans. When he reached the end of the alley he
heard a voice tell him to stop. It was far too dark there to see who had spoken,
and that actually made him feel a bit better about things. This
voice scared him. “Glad to see you made it,”
the voice said. “I been in before.
This wasn’t no diffrn’t. I do gotta say that I didn’t
expect there to be that many of ‘em though.” “Still, the compensation was
enough for you?” It sounded a little
menacing. “Y—Yes. Oh,
yeah. Hey, it was fine. We knew the risks going
in. It was just a job like any other. It’s just that
some of the guys thought that maybe next time, if there is a next time, we might
get more information so we can be ready. Ya
know?” “Understandable, and
reasonable. There may well be a next time. We’ll be
in touch soon. Until then I was told to offer you a safe place to
relax for a bit. You can get into Eastgate I
assume?” “Heh, ya mean the
Hollows? Yeah, I can get in there. No
Prob.” “Good. Here is
the address. It’s a little run down, but it’s safe.
We’ll contact you there when we have a new task for
you.” With that, the voice pulled
back further into shadows and seemed to disappear. The man in the
t-shirt looked around nervously then inched his way back to the
street. * *
* Lista entered the room where
the others sat and plopped down in a beat up old chair. “Waiting
sucks. I’m not good at it. I hate stuff I’m not good
at.” Jyn looked over at her and
said, “It’s only 15 minutes. It’s not like you have anything better to do now
anyway.” “Not the point.
The point is we need a microwave.” “Hey, considering the
condition of the rest of this zone, this school is in great
shape.” “But it’s just a
school. It’s not a real base. We’re
squatters. And what’s worse, we’re squatters that have to wait 15
minutes for a dinner that would take 3 minutes to nuke.” Epim burst into the room,
her excitement was barely contained. “Everyone! Gather!
I’ve got something.” “Well a bit of penicillin
should clear it up. I’m sure Lis’ has truckloads of
it.” Epim gave Jyn a side look
while the others came in. Once all were present she
explained: “I’ve got a lead on the guys
that jumped Lis at that office a few weeks back. One of them just
got out of jail and Ent and I followed him tonight. We heard him
meet with the person that hired him and found out where they were gathering
while they wait for the next job.” “Great!” said Tog.
I don’t suppose you were able to follow the guy that hired them back to
wherever he was from?” “We couldn’t.
He was ‘ported away.” “Damn. Still,
this is good. Where is Ent?” “She’s in the Hollows,
watching the building from a safe spot. Her last report said that
a few more Outcast had gone in. I’m thinking we wait until about
“Sounds good to me.
Okay everyone meet out here at * *
* On the roof across the
street form the Outcast safe house, Entimangler watched. There had
been no activity or a few hours, but the steady thumping of the radios from
within said a few were still in there. As far as anyone knew, she
was unique on this world. She was nearly 8 feet tall, definitely
insectoid with an iridescent exoskeleton that shifted between green and purple
as she moved. Her arms had a row of long sharp spines on the
forearms and ended in a three prong claw which could emit a black vapor.
This vapor dissipated quickly but served many purposes in her former life
as a guard on a prison ship. First, it was a gaseous version of a
non-Newtonian fluid. It was a vapor unless it was quickly
compressed. Under rapid compression, it would turn almost
solid. This gave the effect of being hit with a rock rather than a
large claw. A second effect was that on contact, some of the vapor
would adhere to the target. As it dissipated, it would cloud the
vision and make it hard to return an attack. Before the crash,
when she still had all four arms, she could project this vapor in the form of
tendrils that could be used to anchor a target to the ground for a short
time. It was an ability she missed. In addition to her outward
physical abilities, she had a wider range of vision than most humans.
It wasn’t as good for fine detail. Compound eyes weren’t
made for that. They were made for seeing the slightest movement,
and they registered in the ultra-violet range as well as a short way into
infra-red. She had been taught to use that ability to see IR to
serve as a form of early warning. She wasn’t able to see through
walls, but she could see an increase in body temperature in warm blooded
creatures; an increase that usually indicated an adrenalin surge and was nearly
always followed by a “fight or flight” reaction. It was hard to
catch the Guards unaware. The thicker atmosphere of
Earth also gave her superior hearing, as well as far better endurance and
regeneration than she had known before. Epim thought this might be
due to a higher volume of oxygen in the air, but admitted that it was just a
guess. Of course, these benefits
did little offset the loss of her second pair of arms. Still, she
was adapting to the change. Slowly, but it was
happening. A sudden change in the noise
from across the street caught her attention. The music had stopped
and had been replaced with angry shouts, followed shortly by the sound of combat
and then silence. Back on the ship, she would
sit alone and guard one set of prison cells. That was her
role. If there was an escape, her role was to incapacitate the
prisoner and return them to the cell. A strange noise on the ship
was handled by ship security. A Guard never left her post.
Ship Security were a smaller, faster version of her, with more
articulated claws for use with weapons. They were also bred to be
more self reliant. She contacted Epim at once.
It was so ingrained in her
to wait for the rest of the colony that she didn’t even consider going in
alone. When Epim had suggested she do just that, a feeling washed
over her. She felt she was being shunned.
Abandoned. Members of the Guard never go and investigate,
and certainly never alone. They sit and watch. They
chase and capture. They team with other members of the hive if
they are needed for a large riot or other major disturbance. The
never investigate. It wasn’t a rule, or even a law.
It was something much bigger. Deeper. It was
part of the genetic code that made up her race. The Colony is
one. Members have specific jobs. None are told to go
alone unless they are bred for autonomy. None can disobey an order
from a commander either. Epim was a commander, second only to Doug
in her view, even if neither were members of the Colony. This was
how she had to see things to make sense of this world. With the
closest thing to fear that she could possibly have, she dropped 4 stories to the
ground and crossed the street to the building she had been watching for the last
three hours. At the door she paused and
checked the street. There was no one about, and no unusual sounds
she could make out. The door opened under minimal effort and she
slipped inside. The entryway was poorly lit
but her eyes were quick to adjust. The carpet was torn up in
places and covered with filth and stains. The walls were coated
with dirt and spray paint. Her antennae twitched as she scanned
the air for smells. There was a foul, musky taint to the
air. Not rotten, but the smell of an unwashed animal or person;
possibly a mix of the two. It definitely looked the part of a gang
hideout. It also looked no different from any other building in
the area. She crept along the wall, as
much from instinct as training. As she approached the first
hallway, she heard a faint scuffling sound and a mucousy sort of
breathing. There were two of them, and one was big.
Their skin was green and they had the look of something not quite
human. She thought again how being there alone went against
everything she had ever known. An inky mist surrounded her hands
and she plunged ahead. The first Troll to see her
probably didn’t think she was real. An iridescent purple and green
bug looking thing standing nearly 8 feet tall was out of place, even in
She continued through the
halls toward the sound of jeering. Again, the hall split, but this
time there were five of them. She inhaled deeply and rushed the
biggest one. She was hit hard by multiple gunshots and a massive
left hand. She refused to let it phase her, and continued to
pummel the Troll until he fell. The others had moved in close, so
rather than fight them one at a time, she angled around to line them up a
bit. He arms became a blur as she batted each one multiple
times. None of the blows were all that hard, but there were a lot
of them. In addition to the fists and forearms, there were heads
banging into each other, and counterstrikes intended to pass over the shoulder
of an ally striking the back of the head instead. When it was
over, two more fell. The remaining two were taken down with a
quick jab and hook. She was winded, and more
than a little hurt, but that could be fixed by waiting just a minute.
Another benefit of the higher oxygen content here. At the top of the elevators
she found the first Outcast. He was in bad shape.
She placed a transponder on him and he was teleported away.
In the corner of the room was the Outcast she had followed to the
building. He was cowering under the threat of two more
Trolls. Between him and the current position of Entimangler was a
wide open room with a dozen Trolls in it. Jyn had worked with Ent
a bit on focus over the past month and Ent thought back on this.
She thought about the crash. Her lost Colony.
Her arms. Her future, stuck on this planet.
The orders from Epim that put in this position. She got
angry. Then she got focused. Running across the room
to the two guards, she took a few hits; in taking them out, she took a few
more. The second guard fell, and another product of her genetic
code engaged. Humans might call it an adrenaline surge, but to her
it was just another tool used to guard prisoners. The damage she
had sustained was forgotten for the moment and she turned her attention on the
rest of the room. Weaving between the columns allowed her to cut
some of the damage for a moment, as well as forcing some of those with guns to
step in range of the vapor clad pincers. One Troll landed a hard shot
to her body, but paid for it as the spikes on the backs of her forearms were
raked across his chest. That was another one down.
For a moment, she thought she might have a chance. That one
thought was enough for her to lose focus. For every blow she
landed, they landed three. She was
fading. Her escape route was cut
off. She was outnumbered. It looked hopeless.
Still, her genetic code was in control. If she was going to
go down, she’d make sure to have one Troll in each hand. She
backed around the last pillar to make them come to her. At this
point every second not getting hit was critical. The first Troll around the
corner met with a hard right punch to the body. The shroud of
vapor prevented her from feeling just how many of his ribs cracked, but she was
pretty sure she heard three. She followed that up with a right
elbow to his face, and she saw his eyes roll back in his
head. No sooner had he started to
fall, when she felt a sharp pain on her upper shoulder. She
slipped her left hand down and struck the Troll in the groin. She
hoped they were still human enough for that to be effective. As he
doubled forward, she hooked the back of his neck with her right forearm spines
and pivoted back to the right to drive his head into the pillar; one of them
cracked, which one was of little concern to her. She continued
that arm motion to strike another that was coming up on her right side.
He fell away to reveal a stack of She looked at her
options. She could throw maybe three more strikes, but they’d
probably get her before then. She could focus on her fast
regeneration again, but would take all of what little she had left.
There wasn’t a choice. Go down fighting. She
heard them closing on her position, took what she felt may well have been her
last breath, and charged around the corner to see what looked to be a large
block of floor coming right at her. Just beyond that she saw Tog
and Lista. * *
* The next day, Epim came to
her room and knocked lightly on the door frame. “Ent. I owe
you an apology. A big one.” Entimangler tilted her head
slightly to one side, paused, and tiled it a little more.
“Why?” “Because I treated you
unfairly last night. You are so different from humans.
It never occurred to me that you would try to take on that whole building
alone. I only intended for you to go in and look around.
We left here as soon as you contacted us, intending to join you at the
door. “I was trained to be a
doctor of the mind, as you were trained, and bred, to be a Guard.
My training was for human minds. I’m at a bit of a loss to
understand you, and how you think. I want to understand
you. I want to help you to understand us. I’m sure
we can do it, in time. From what I’ve seen, you do have feelings
as we know them. Emotions. I’d like you to find
someone to talk to about them. If you feel afraid, or happy, or
angry, I’d like you to share it. It doesn’t have to be with
me. It should be the person you feel most comfortable
around. You see, insects on earth communicate with their hives by
releasing smells so the others will know what happening. If you do
that as well, we have no way to detect it. That’s why humans talk
to each other. It’s the main way we share
things. “After a while, I’d like us
to talk as well, but first I’d like you try to get a feel for how we are as a
people. I also want to say we’re not a Colony, and never will
be. We’re a family, and you’re a part of it. An
important part of it. In a family, everyone is equal, more or
less. Doug is sort of the “dad”, and I guess I’m the “mom”, but
that doesn’t mean we have the same power over you that a leader in your colony
did. If any one of us tells you do something that you’re not
comfortable doing, tell us. That includes that sharing thing I
just mentioned. I’d really like for you to do it.
But it’s not an order. You don’t have to if you don’t want
to. Do you understand? Ent sat for a moment,
unmoving on the large, white cocoon she had spun for a bed so long ago.
Finally, she nodded and Epim left the room, head
low. Back in the break room, the
other six sat in around a small table with a stack of books in place of the
fourth leg. “Well?” asked
Tog. “No idea. She
didn’t really seem interested in anything I had to say.” “Does she remember calling
out to us when we got there?” “God,” said Lista.
“That was the freakiest thing I think I’ve ever heard. The
way she practically screamed ‘Not abandoned! Not alone!’
Like we’d have really ditched her.” Epim took a sip of her tea
and stared into the cup for a moment. “I can sure see why she felt
that way. Everything she is tells her that she is a small part of
a large colony. Now she’s basically an equal partner in a seven
way split. If we treat her like that, she sees it as if we’re
cutting her off, but if we treat her like she expects, she falls to the very
bottom of the pecking order and I just don’t know if I can get around
that. I hope we can find some way to get her to meet us half
way.” An electronic voice layered over the clicks of her natural voice came from the hallway. “Lista? You have talking time?” |