Chapter 14: Judiciary concepts
Jasmine had plopped herself into the bar room’s couch and propped her feet up on the armrest, making herself comfortable while Xant, in turn, positioned a stool and glass coffee table so he might continue their work. The human had been busy pouring herself a small sample of each of the ‘drinks’ available, having fun describing the taste to Xant, who could only feign comprehension as to what ‘smoky’, ‘sweet’ or ‘fruity’ meant.
Rynard had been sent off some time ago to retrieve the dogs and what he could carry of Xant’s tablets and they were waiting for his return.
“I think this will be the last one,” she mentioned, dropping less than a mouthful of an amber liquid into the glass. “Last thing I want is a hangover with no way to cure it.”
“I can still administer the depressor as before?” Xant noted, watching as Jasmine savoured the sipping whisky. She shook her head in reply. “I recall you saying they were ‘impressively effective’.”
Jasmine chuckled, mulling over the offer in her head.
“No, it's alright. Hangovers should serve as a proper deterrent, don't want to get too attached to the unreplenishable supply,” she replied wistfully.
“Are you going to be comprehensible enough to go over some more data?” he asked, wary of the last time she was under the influence.
“Provided you're not going to ask me to write up some legislative documents, I should be alright,” she answered, before taking another sip.
Rynard returned with a shout and a chorus of barks.
“Jasi! Incoming!”
Rumbling from the lower decks, the dogs ran away from their keeper, off to explore and find the namegiver while Rynard started hoisting equipment over the deck. Xant’s ears stood on end as he saw Rynard throwing his dataslate case on the deck, and jumped up from his stool to scold the captain immediately.
“Captain! Those dataslates are irreplaceable, they’re not standard equipment to be tossed around!” Another crate double the size landed beside the dataslates, filled with the rest of their equipment. Xant gripped the railing as he glared down at the captain. “You will break the wooden deck at this rate!”
Rynard took a short run up before leaping onto the deck himself, making the entire yacht shake. Xant fell back on his tail as the old soldier looked down with a smirk.
“Break the deck?” Rynard lifted his foot to look underneath it. “Seems fine to me!” He lifted both crates in his enormous arms. “Jasi, I brought your things.”
The human appeared from the bar room, stretching her arms and legs.
“Thanks Rynard, but, could you please be careful about throwing things?” The captain had to laugh.
“The Doc’s just over-stressing, these cases are shatterproof.” He dropped the case in front of the pair. “They can be hit by artillery and be fine.”
Jasmine and Xant blinked in unison, before the human broke out laughing and the zenthi rubbed his temples.
Xant reached for his dataslate crate while Jasmine watched Rynard unload.
“You really did bring everything, huh?”
“Everything that would fit in the train. Had to leave the terminal behind though, those things don’t move from the wall. We’ll have to get one installed here on the watership.”
“Yacht,” Jasmine corrected him. “I’d thought you’d be more comfortable back in the barracks?”
“I’d be a pretty awful bodyguard if I wasn’t active while you rested Jasi,” the captain explained, pulling a capsule from the crate and fiddling with the buttons.
“But, don't you need to sleep too?” Jasmine asked, genuinely curious. Rynard tossed the capsule into the empty pool, and after a few short beeps the canister released the familiar gel mattress, filling up the entire pool.
“Sure, maybe in [a week] or so, if i don't take any stims.” He shrugged. “My model can go a [month] if we absolutely have to. Built tough, remember?” Rynard gave her a toothy grin, and Jasmine conceded.
“Alright, well, don't push yourself on my account, you enjoy the down time too, okay?”
“Yes, Namegiver,” he laughed.
Jasmine returned to her couch while Xant readied some topics for them to talk about.
“I have a few subjects for your approval.”
“Alright, list em off.”
“Judiciary concepts.”
“Ugh no, waaay too heavy!”
“Alright, how about economic systems?”
“Even worse.”
“What about interstellar communications?”
“... Xant, I don't have a lot of brain power left, so we can do a quick fire session and then get stuck into the nitty gritty of the details after I've had a night sleeping in an actual bed, deal?"
“I cannot oppose such negotiation skills.”
Xant began the recording:
Jasmine: Oh har har, right what's the subject then?
Xant: Judiciary concepts. Law and order, in user speech.
Jasmine: Heh, law and order… You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law, you have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford an attorney one will be provided for you… I don't remember if there's any more.
Xant: What was that exactly?
Jasmine: Miranda rights - you're informed of your rights as you're arrested, well, in the movies anyway, haven't had the pleasure of experiencing it first hand.
Xant: I would hope not (or else I've made a terrible mistake...)
Jasmine: What was that?
Xant: Nothing. How about we start with a list of crimes and punishments?
Jasmine: Suits me.
Xant: Theft of personal property.
Jasmine: Deffo a crime. People work hard to earn their things, thou shall not steal. That's a basic one.
Xant: Basic as it may be, it is still best to be thorough.
Jasmine: I think it's mostly a fine, depending on how much you steal, prison time as well, a couple of years. Of course, but like, if you stole something small you'd prolly get off with a warning, like a small lolly or something.
Xant: Steal food? Is sustenance not provided by your government?
Jasmine: Err, if you can't afford it, yeah, but we don't monocrop like you do, we eat more than jerky plants. 'Sustenance' is also a commodity.
Xant: Ah yes, I've seen how you presented food, it does not surprise me in the least. The council provides its citizens with all their sustenance and commercial wants within contribution credit allowance.
Jasmine: Well if the government provides everything, what's left to steal?
Xant: Sentimental items, clothing, personal data.
Jasmine: Oh, so, same stuff then. So, fine and small time in prison is the usual punishment.
Xant: Theft is also a crime in the GC. The perpetrator is removed from the population. The next topic is Fraud.
Jasmine: Removed from the population hmmm? snort That's not ominous at all...but, Fraud? Really? Wasn't expecting that so soon on the list.
Xant: Fraud is a devious and abhorrent crime, stealing the contributions of another. It's getting harder to prosecute without physical trial now.
Jasmine: Ahhh, ‘cause you guys are all clones, DNA wouldn't help you, and galactic paper trails must be a nightmare.
Xant: Indeed, many have lost their retirement rewards only to expire before correction. Terrible. The perpetrator is removed from the population.
Jasmine: I'll say, fraud isn't as severe, normally a hefty fine or, as you might understand it, limiter on your earnings.
Xant: Illegal substances.
Jasmine: Now we're getting into tricky stuff. Most human illegal substances are performance enhancers or impairers that are highly addictive and destructive, ‘cept for certain plants. It changes, mostly.
Xant: Substances that are illegal in the GC corrode the mental capacity of our citizens or outright destroy their nervous systems. Poisons would be the common term.
Jasmine: Heh, poisons are only illegal if you try to poison someone with them, then it’s murder or manslaughter, one of the two.
Xant: What? Two kinds of murder? Is it like a duel?
Jasmine: No, one's a crime of passion, justified or not, the other was premeditated.
Xant: Justified murder of another sentient being? Did they go rogue?
Jasmine: *Shrugs* I dunno, it's your hypothetical. The point is that murder and manslaughter can both be punished by life in prison, isolation if it’s particulary awful. The punishment for taking illegal substances is a bit more lenient, closer to a handful of years if the government is particularly shitty.
Xant: If a GC citizen is caught with illegal substances, the perpetrator is removed from the population. Next is Freq aggression
Jasmine: Well uhh, I'm not sure we've got an equivalent, since I've only been accused of it rather than experienced it.
Xant: It is to expose someone to debilitating pulses of freq over and over and or to coerce them into acts of violence otherwise.
Jasmine:… Huh, I guess we do have something similar, we call it abuse. Very high on the scumbag list of horrible crimes. Typically the harshest punishments…
Xant: Another we agree on. Typically the aggressors are removed from the population. If the military cannot make use of them, they're terminated. Piracy.
Jasmine: Ah yes, pirates! Ha, well, which kind of piracy?
Xant: Which kind?
Jasmine: We got two, one on the high seas and the one on the information highway.
Xant: Despite the translator’s best efforts, neither one of those translated correctly.
Jasmine: Ha ha, one is cargo on ships - earth is covered in water, so we still corridor on giant shipping containers, and we get pirates nicking commercial goods in narrow transit ways and off coasts.
Xant: And you're not concerned about this activity?
Jasmine: The companies that have the giant-ass ships have their profits in the billions, probably billions more than the GDP of the countries that the pirates come from! Those companies aren't going to miss a shipping container or two. It's often easier for them to pay off the hostage money than to prosecute the pirates.
Xant: But, those are good stolen from the needs of the people…
Jasmine: Nah, most of it would be commercial goods, frivolous stuff, like rubber ducks. Honestly, stealing info is a lot more concerning for the regular Joe. Information stolen, identity theft, you were talking about retirement funds stolen because of fraud? Same goes here, except they can also open loans with your name that you can get stuck with, destroy your reputation and just generally wreck lives. It's awful.
Xant: Are you saying that data is more important?
Jasmine: I'm saying the impact on ordinary people concerns me more than a company's bottom line.
Xant: But companies help raise new citizens and help with diversity within the GC population, they help create different cultural and biospheres organically as well as providing differing novelty products.
Jasmine: …I think we have completely differerent concepts of ‘company’.
Xant: I think you are right and we are straying from the topic at hand. Piracy is a criminal offense, and the offender is removed from the population.
Jasmine: Xant, what does ‘removed from the population’ mean?
Xant: I would have thought it was self-explanatory?
Jasmine: Yeah, but what happens after that? Are they kept in penitentiary cells? Are they rehabilitated? Are they stuck on their own planet or station?
Xant: …I’ve...never thought about it before.
Jasmine: Never?
Xant: I’ve never needed to…
Jasmine: Maybe we should stop the recording.
Link terminated
Jasmine sat up from the couch to a clearly distressed Xant, walking over to comfort him.
“Hey...are you okay?”
Xant looked down at his dataslate.
“I am a researcher, I haven’t needed to know what happens to criminals, only justiciars and enforcers need to know.” He looked up at Jasmine, genuinely confused. “Why would I ever need to know if I’ve never committed a crime? Why have I never questioned it before?”
Jasmine sat down beside Xant. “Sorry, but all of this...the Galactic Council still kind of scares me, and when you say things like ‘removed from the population’, it doesn't translate to anything other than ‘insidious’ to me. But Xant, I trust you, above all else.”
Xant’s shoulders slumped and he furrowed his brow.
“What does ‘removed from the population’ mean to you, Jasmine? How could it be insidious?”
Jasmine faltered, holding an arm defensively.
“Sometimes, people use wordplay to disguise or downplay horrible things. ‘Collateral damage’ instead of civilian deaths, ‘re-education’ for brainwashing and torture, or ‘final solution’…” The last words were so ominous it sent a chill through Xant’s cartilage bones. “Xant, not all humans are as nice as me, and I want to believe it’s just unfortunate phrasing, but I guess I can’t help thinking the worst. The unknown can be terrifying.”
“Jasmine, if the Galactic Council simply killed those who did not obey, then we would be no better than the Rajava,” Xant replied. "But on the subject of the unknown, we can agree."
“It's very messy and I'm not qualified to talk about this at all..”
“I should not have pushed you so close to your rest time.”
“It's alright, you were only trying to get me to do ‘my job’,” she joked, trying to lighten the mood. “I should get some rest, I’ve definitely drunk too much…I don't think any of my responses are valid. How about we delete that session and do a new one in the morning?” She patted Xxant’s shoulder and offered a tired, drunk smile.
Jasmine slowly made her way down into the ship's depths leaving Xant alone to contemplate the conversation.
There was so much he didn't know, that was completely outside his field of knowledge. Was there a reason that such things were kept from the citizen population? Where did those who were removed from the population go? There were answers to these questions of course, they would be available to him on the Cciv-net, perhaps even the Mil-net if he were allowed access. But, festering in the back of his mind, his secondary voice was asking other questions, ones to which answers would not come as easily.
Why would humans use such innocuous words to disguise intentions? How 'shitty' were their governments that Jasmine feared them?
Her voice echoed in his memory, and he remembered the shiver that went down his spine.
'Other humans are not as nice as me.'
Why did that sentence scare him so much?
-*-Chapter 15: Trauma
Ser Kita looked at the carnage all around him.
Scientists and cleaners were working frantically and drastically around the aging, arvas security captain. The laboratory had never suffered such a breach in the entirety of Kyu-Kage Corp’s history. They couldn't have any sniff of this leaving the facility, any incident this unprecedented couldn't even be quietly buried in the expenses section of the quarterly reports. Spy’s were always waiting for such data.
Ser Kita stood in the charred and dismembered bodies of the arvas guardsmen, nearly three dozen disposed of by the unarmed amalgamations via improvised weaponry. Ser Kita lowered himself to inspect the makeshift firebomb debris, crude but highly effective in close-quarter combat. Tables flipped for defense and the chemical generator hose still trying to produce ethanol while pointing towards the door.
Desperation Tactics and chemical warfare, not the usual Amalgamation operating system, but then these creatures didn't even give off a pulse. For them to be able to do anything of this calibre was a surprise.
“Careful with them! Don't damage any them more than need be!”
The order given by an upper management sulin, Doctor Fongren, Head of Initical Reasearch and Development Department 3.
He took a bite of a dried Waurdess ration, chewing it loudly.
“Back splat,” Fongren cursed, “We won't be able to use these labs for [days]...”
The replacement guard hauled the Amalgamation and its Vassal onto the transport beds under Kita's supervision, the larger, unconscious vassal unit was far more lucid during battle than he had expected. He swore it was the Vassal giving orders to the smaller unit.
The smaller Command amalgamation grunted as its body was thrown onto the trolly, a single pair of dark eyes staring back at the security captain. An unbroken empty stare.
Even while completely subdued by suppressor chems, the unit refused to surrender.
Difficult, worrying, but little the beast could do about it now, and it would never receive another opportunity to try.
“You’ve labled the specimens correctly, Doctor Fogren?” Kita inquired with as much subtly as he could muster.
“Yes, yes,” The doctor dismissed, standing beside the impossibly tall Arvas, “Although I’m not offended you’d ask, these amalgamations are the most complex we’ve come across!”
The Sulin doctor swallowed his bite, grinning with sharp lizard teeth, Kita looked at the doctor, bemused.
“The material has been giving you troubles before this?”
The doctor laughed in agreement.
“Well, I would prefer to use the word ‘challange’, the strains are simply constructed but riddled with trap indicators, can't scrub a gene without flipping a cancerous growth switch or blocking a valuable hormone and the universe spits at you if you even think about rearranging chromosomes… The utility’s out weigh whatever we lose in durability anyway.”
Kita nodded along, he was there to secure the work, not understanding the intricacies of Genemapping. He wiped off the red blood from his extender-blade, a fascinating colour, auspicious in most occasions.
“Better get used to how they look, we’ll have planets full of the models once we crack the code!” guffawed Fogren as he made his leave, the scientist had made his benefactor cost back four times over, he just enjoyed making himself more valuable.
Kita took in the disaster one last time. He sighed frustraited, another symptom of his advanced age. This was surely going to be taken out of his credit score.
He slid his extender sword back into its belt, and followed after Fogren, they would need his combat expertise if the amalgamations decided to show any other surprising traits but even after Forgen had readjusted the models he’d hoped the company would keep the colour, or, have it readily available on the market.
Red blood would be a best seller.
-*-
Sugawara could only watch and breathe.
He could feel the cold steel of the trolley he had been placed on through his makeshift clothes, watching as the white tile walls rolled by. He felt his own blood trickling down his shoulder and chest, but he felt no pain.
They placed him on an operating table, and a machine strapped him down. More aliens came into his peripheral view as the table lifted and rotated forward.
He saw Beau on another table. Bugmen in white coats were stabbing him with alien equipment, sealing his wounds with gel, collecting the red blood in vials.
A lizard in a coat approached him, laser glove in hand.
Sugawara’s breathing increased as the laser was lifted above his head.
He couldn't feel the heat, he didn't feel pain, but he heard the laser cutting his skin, he smelt the burning of his own flesh.
He felt the blood drip past his ear and an alien nurse wipe it away.
They were cutting into his skull while he was still conscious.
His lips couldn't move but his vocal cords still worked.
He tried to cry and scream, his eyes darting, trying to escape the madness.
But the madness found him again.
The bug nurse peered at him while he struggled. While he gasped. Six multi-coloured eyes stared and twitched as he spluttered.
The nurse wiped his mouth clean.
He watched as the black bugs came back. His mind screamed to him that they were there, crawling over his arms, his legs, his face. He needed to get them off.
The other half of his brain knew they weren't there.
Sugawara felt a tug on his skull, a wet suction noise released and his brain was exposed to the open air.
The human screamed in distress, a noise coming out of him that he didn't recognise.
Pure fear.
The nurse backed away, even the lizard surgeon faltered to the noise. The surgeon growled and snapped, the nurse scuttled away only to return with a syringe in her hand and a shadow over her shoulder.
He hadn't seen the shadow in a while, the faceless man that laughed at him with his father’s voice.
‘Look at you now,’ it laughed. ‘Don't try to get up. It's only going to get worse.’
The syringe entered his throat and Sugas voice vanished with it, his breathing slowed as the muscles relaxed.
‘No one’s coming to save you.’
‘Stop it...’
‘You’ve only got yourself to blame.’
‘Shut up!’
‘If you weren't so weak--’ The voice cut out as a slimy cold thread slipped down between his brain's hemispheres.
“There we go! That should do it. Hard to find anything in this knotted ball of nerves. Assistant Fi, is the amalgamation responding?” The surgeon’s voice, transformed from growls and snaps into comprehensible language.
The bug nurse chittered.
“It looks like it’s in distress, Doctor.”
“Nonsense! It's only in distress ‘cause it's away from its Vassal unit. Is it responding to our input?”
Nurse Fi looked into Sugawara’s eyes and saw fear turn to fury.
“...It’s responding, Doctor.”
“Fantastic. Have the techs run a jammer frequency while I find the broadcaster nerves and connect them up.”
Assistant Fi walked away but the shadow stayed behind, its blank face flickering darkness.
‘You're not even human..’ the voice mocked him, returning with a clarity that shook him to his core. ‘You're a dog. Go on and beg.’
‘N-no...’ His own quiet voice did its best to hold out against the hallucination.
‘Beg!’
‘You’re not real...’
Sugawara felt another slimy tendril slip down the back of his neck, twisting and wriggling under his skin. The shadow man stepped closer, until the darkness was all he could see.
“And that should do it--” The surgeon’s announcement died in his mouth as the entire room fell quiet.
Sugawara could feel the aliens in the room, like ripples on a pond, their life essence within his grasp. They quivered in fear, staring at him.
‘BEG!’ the voice screamed in Sugawara’s brain, and the aliens obeyed.
They fell to their ground on their stomachs, squirming and screaming for their lives.
“Don't kill us!”
“We didn't know, my lord!!”
“We’ll free you! Please, no more!”
Sugawara could feel the pain his very presence caused them, so he did the only thing he could do. Lash out.
‘SHUT UP! SHUT UP! GET ME DOWN! LET ME GO! ALL OF YOU JUST GO AWAY! GO AWAY! JUST DIE! I’LL KILL YOU! ALL OF YOU JUST DIE!’
The begging stopped.
The aliens’ presence faded away.
He couldn't hear them move at all.
He was alone.
Except for the voice.
He didn't have the meds to get rid of the voice.
-*-
Beau wasn't a fan of anesthesia, he always felt worse after going under. The hospital had forgotten to turn off the lights that were blinding him.
He reached for the hospital sheet and found only his own bare ass on a steel table.
Then the horrible reality came snapping back.
He instinctively reached for his shoulder, but there was no wound to speak of, as if he didn't get impaled on a steel spike only moments ago. He remembered the sharp lance going through his shoulder and coming out below his ribs. He remembered struggling to breathe as the blood filled up in his punctured lung, but there was not a scratch on him.
His head began to clear when he saw the bodies.
Aliens, lying on the floor, all of them with a look of agony on their faces, or at least, what he thought was agony.
Then he saw Ryo,
“Oh no…!”
The poor kid was strapped down on a table with steel cuffs, whimpering and skittish, eyes glazed over and staring off blindly into the light. Beau slowly sat up and slid off his table, grabbing his clothes and slipping on what he could.
“Hold on Ryo, I'm coming,” he called, but the poor kid didn't answer. As the soldier approached he found out why.
The kid was missing the top part of his skull.
It sat neatly alongside other alien equipment, and an empty glass tank. Beau gulped, and saw something sticking out. They had put something inside Sugawara's brain.
It pulsed and wriggled, but had ultimately been surgically melded into Ryo’s grey matter. There was no way he could remove it safely, not without killing the kid.
“Hey, Ryo?” he spoke softly, gently tapping the kid’s cheek to get his attention. Maybe he was still under the anaesthesia too?
The kid's eyes slowly came to, he looked right at Beau and cried.
That horrible, gut wrenching cry all men make when pushed past their limit. When all you wanted to do was die.
“Hold on, hold on…” Beau encouraged him, slowly putting the top of the kid’s skull back on his head and pulling at the steel cuffs to release him. They snapped open but Ryo didn't move. He couldn't, whatever nerve blocker they had used was still in his system.
“It’s alright kid, we’ll get outta here.”
Beau lifted him over his shoulder, and carried him out of the lab.
They were met with more bodies.
Everyone had seemingly dropped dead on the spot. Whatever happened while he was under had affected everyone but them. Even the guards were just slumped over against the walls.
Beau carefully reached for a guard’s weapon, and activated it.
“It will be okay,” he repeated to himself as they walked down the silent hallways. “It will be okay…”
-*-
Executive Director Mill’Sen stood from his desk as the emergency klaxons wailed through the managerial suits.
“Is it a data breach?” one of the board members asked aloud as they looked across the room. They’d had a few emergencies in the manager's hab units before, confidential files stolen and blocked cameras were always a concern.
But something about this was… wrong.
Mill’sen’s claws rattled over the holo-notification, projecting the incident for all to see.
They were horrified to see ten entire floors on lockdown.
“How is that even possible?!”
“That’s the entire Research and Development floor…”
“It's an enteral breach?!”
“Calm down!” Mill’Sen ordered his coworkers, desperately trying to reach security on their floor. Finally, a guard picked up.
Not a captain, or a knight, a guard.
“Executive Director sir!” the young arvas saluted, “You’re unharmed sir!”
“Where is your Commander-”
“All security Personnel have been ordered to contain the breach on levels 70 through to 85…” the Guard recited from rote.
“And has the breach been contained?!” Mill’sen nearly shouted.
The guard’s antennae quivered.
“We have been unable to contact any commander since the orders were given.”
Mill’Sen dived to his terminal, clawing the active vital signature data from the computer's monitoring system. 2 million workers and residential citizens resided on the Ky’ler station, that number now stood at 1.7 million.
300,000 vital signs had been snuffed out in minutes.
A dead zone, a blast radius across ten floors irradiating out from the classified R&D laboratories.
Several members of his boardroom screamed.
The Vital signature data was updating and the number of living personnel was going down.
The blast radius was moving.
“Evacuate,” Mill’Sen blurted out, his board members staring at him in shock.
“EVACUATE THE FACILITY,” he ordered them before remembering to open the station-wide channels to announce to everyone. Ky’ler station was to be evacuated, hundreds of thousands of data-years would be lost, but that was better then loosing everything.
-*-
After walking a while, Beau finally found a place secure enough for them to settle down.
He laid Ryo down on one of the tables and tried to secure the skull wedge to the poor kid’s head with some makeshift bandages. Ryo’s dark eyes had glazed over again, and he was mumbling in his native tongue, but begging sounded the same in any language.
"Hey, you stay with me, you hear? I'm gonna find us some water, I'll be right back."
As he turned to leave Ryo’s hand reached out.
"No…"
Beau sighed, and slumped down on the floor. While he was emotionally exhausted, his body was feeling strangely refreshed and raring to go.
"Alright, I'll stay. You...feeling okay?"
"No."
"Good, I'd be worried if you said anything else."
Ryo’s shaking hand skimmed the bandages.
"Hey, don't touch! It's the best I could do under the circumstances."
"Medicine."
"I'm not messing with none of that alien junk," Beau replied, wrestling with the dilemma of informing his near catatonic friend about the true state of his condition.
"They…did 'it'," came the broken English stammer, the small collection of words didn't come close to what was needed to describe the horror, but Beau understood.
"Yeah, they did," he replied, defeated. "It's bad man, real bad, they put something in you, in your brain. I...I don't think we can get it out…"
There was a pause, and Ryo’s hand lowered to his ear.
"I… I can hear them." He tapped the lobe. "I know their talk."
"Yeah well, it ain't gonna be much use, ‘cause they dead."
Room after room and all throughout his short walk through the halls, every alien he'd come across since he woke up had been dead.
Ryo nodded his head.
"I kill them," he stated.
Beau frowned.
"What?"
"I kill them." Ryo raised his arm to cover his eyes. "They talk, I yell, they beg, I yell more, they die…"
"..."
Beau had counted the bodies since their second escape. Forty three aliens he'd found collapsed like they'd all suffered sudden aneurysms. It didn't make any sense. Why would the aliens go through the trouble of capturing them, keeping them alive, probing and implanting some creepy blob into their brains only to have it backfire and kill them? From being yelled at?
What the hell was going on?
"Well, Ryo, you saved me from having my own alien probe. Thanks."
Ryo grunted a weary reply.
The doors to their room opened without prompt, and Beau stood up with his weapon ready as an alien voice clacked overhead.
"What's going on now?" he exclaimed.
"Escape," Ryo said, daring to sit up. "The aliens are escape."
"Escape? You mean they're leaving? Escaping, Evacuating?"
Ryo nodded.
"They're evacuating, because of you?"
Ryo nodded again, Beau lowered his weapon.
"Well damn." The soldier turned to his companion. "If they're evacuating, that means there's a way out of this place! You wanna find where they keep the ships?"
"Yes."
Beau supported Ryo as they made their way down the halls.
"Hey, quick question," Beau said as they rounded a corner. "Finding the ships is still a priority, but how do you feel about wrecking their shit along the way?"
"Yes."
"Good man, good man."
-*-