RP The Cell

"Life isn't fair, Sacre. The worlds we live on are cruel, unkind places. It's our duty to make them safe and fair, for our children." She didn't move, noting that Sacre was now on top of the blades. And that the duffels were now relatively unguarded. She would have to prompt her to move further away from the bags if she wanted to have any chance at trapping and taking that blade away. So she gently started moving away from the bags, taking the longer route around the chair where she could double back and move faster if she needed to.

"You know I was denied the right to train as a Smith? As an astrocartographer? Skydasir like me are too impulsive, they said. Too driven by emotion and chaotic. Your gene mother, she wanted to be an astrologer-priestess. I'm a freighter captain, not a warrior. And if you're anything like your gene mother, you have a pure heart. Why else would you apologize to me before trying to kill me? Why do you have to do this?"

The question was accentuated by Aliset projecting images, flashes of falsehoods and planned routes of attack, the barrage of images hopefully filled in by Sacre's mind with the sickly stink of blue blood and the oily feeling of Ali's corpse for every possible attack to be met with a strike from that edge. She knew Separa were resistant to psychic attacks, but she also knew her Sacre was unusually smart, and she could feel her Lady's emotions some times. Especially when Sacre was trying to empathize. "I know it hurts. I'm not going to beg. Shurista abandoned me as a child. Nagashun abandoned your gene mother. And now... Now your makers would abandon you? To kill one unimportant Senti prisoner or die trying? Where's the sense? What does this accomplish? Why give you a spear and not a gun to kill me? Are we nothing more than a sick game? Are you the woman of honor I know is in your heart or are you just a show?"

Sacre opened her mouth wide, breathing in a deep gulp of air. Aliset thought for a moment that perhaps she had gotten through to the young Separa, that is until the nozzle unsheathed from the top of the fanged mouth.

A foul smelling corrosive sprayed out into a cone, the chair in the middle of the room began to smoke and fizzle where the substance hit it as the stream reached out for Aliset.

Aliset wasted no time diving for cover as a few drops of the venom hit her shoulder and hissed, leaving smoking wounds in her metallic skin that was quickly washed away in her oily blood as she pressed herself into the chair's annoyingly small rain shadow. "Which god did I piss off today?!"

Her Shuristan curse was accented by a sharp rise in activity from her telepathy, a beacon of fear, confusion, flashes of images and a general cry of Help!

Waiting for the cone of venom to subside, she focused on her breathing. "Okay, that's why you weren't given a gun... Could you at least tell me why one of us has to die?! I don't want to hurt you, and you didn't want to hurt me, so why?"

The scent of blood seemed to bring a malevolent sheen to Sacres eyes. She uncoiled herself and crept forward slowly. She kept her eyes on Aliset the whole time, much as a predator begins to savor it's next meal. The Naginata scythed through the air, not at Aliset, but at the restraint chair in the center of the room. One of the arms began to fall away cleanly, before Sacre struck it with the butt of her weapon, sending it careening in the air towards Alisets naked body.

"I really thought you had more fight than this in you. How very, disappointing. No wonder they all left you."

Throwing things? Really? Aliset had the barest instant to process that the arm of her chair was coming at her before her body moved, instinctively, casually reaching spinning out of the way before reaching out, grabbing hold, adding her strength and inertia to it as she dumped the force of her spin into slinging the piece of metal back at the Sacre clone's head.

In the same instant of breath, she knew that Sacre would block it with the naginata, giving her bare thousanths of a second of opportunity, and launched herself over the chair, her arm drawn back to take advantage of the classical stances and recovery from the block, to slip under and within the blade's reach and throw her nearly four hundred pounds and the strength to move as fast as she could into a single, skull shattering punch aimed to uppercut the point of Sacre's jaw.

If this worked, Sacre would be stunned long enough for Aliset to take the naginata away and make a second strike with the pommel, hopefully knocking the snake out cold, if she wasn't knocked out by the punch.

But there was a choice. Stop Aliset, or stop the piece of metal coming at her at mach fuck.

Ali really hoped there was rope in one of those duffels. If not, she might be able to use one strap as a collar, wrap the other around Sacre's lower body, and essentially fold the pissed off Separa into herself to keep her restrained. Bonus points for using the other to keep the snake's hands tied. Either way, this wasn't going to be a fun day for anyone involved.

Three things happened in quick succession.

Sacre lunged straight up, attempting to evade the punch she knew was coming.

The chair leg struck and lodged in a shallow wound on Sacres reptilian belly, and was dislodged as Aliset punch landed and flowed upwards to connect the the underside of Sacre Jaw.

The third thing, was Sacres body going limp and falling straight back down. The point of her Naginata forced itself through Alisets fist, then Sacres Jaw, then out the top of Sacres head as the all toppled into a head on the floor.

Giving a scream of pain, Aliset let the blade pin her fist to the underside of Sacre's jaw, following her down to the floor. With a whimper, she pulled the weapon free of the separa corpse filling a solid portion of the cell and held the blade in position in her hand. Certainly, it was awkward, and though a monomolecular edge invariably left an extremely clean cut with minimal surrounding trauma, that fact didn't hurt less.

And naginatas were not known for being small weapons. So she stood, keeping the blade in position, and moved to the duffels, hoping she would find the necessary medical equipment inside.

Senti blood is oil based, allowing it to quickly seep out of capillaries and deform the skin to better seal against a hull breach, slowing thermal losses, and providing a chemistry that was inhospitable to most bacteria. Viruses could be handled by the one bacteria that did routinely colonize her blood stream, a general virophage that consumed waste proteins, viral shells, and nanomachines. Kneeling down, she balanced the haft against her thigh, and used her good hand to open the duffels, seeking a blowtorch or other heat source sufficient to take advantage of the last part of senti blood chemistry.

Her body could handle unusually high temperatures, yes, but her blood was flammable. And burned hot enough to cauterize wounds. "What the fuck was that test?"

Inside the two duffle bags Aliset found the following items.

14 MREs - Daily nutritional value
3 5 Gallon Water containers, filtered and treated.
1 Nutritional supplement - vitamins and minerals
1 Waste disposal unit
1 Lorath First Aid Kit - Emergency response kit
1 Subspace Distress Beacon

"Useless, useless..." She finally found the emergency response kit and ripped it open, finding Lorath script and choosing to ignore it as her good hand ruffled through the kit until she found something she recognized. A laser scalpel, an older model by her eyes. But it would work.

With another cry of pain, her fist was removed from the naginata as the laser scalpel burned to life, engulfing Aliset's hand in a ball of fire as her blood ignited, sealing the wounds before burning out as she slipped into unconsciousness.

~~~

Blinking slowly awake, she found herself face to face with the corpse of the Sacre clone that had tried to kill her. She forced a soft, slow breath. "Sorry it ended up this way."

Rolling to her feet, she curled against one wall, considering the situation. However it ended up, neither of the two were going to be in any kinder of a situation. Separa could live a lot longer on this ammount of food. Senti could live far longer on this amount of water. Either way. She had to survive two weeks, figure out what was going on, and consider.

The presence of a subspace beacon Meant rescue. Not necessarily by the faction she wanted to be rescued by. So she pulled open the case, looking for any switch or preset channel that shouldn't be there.

The case appeared to be exactly what it looked like, with no hidden components.

"Well... That sucks." Aliset hadn't realized that she had slipped into Shuristan. Not that she needed anything but her native language right now. Gently flexing her hand, she considered the rest of the medical kit before her. Most of the healing accelerators she had found were nanite based, which would have given her blood infections, not helpful in healing herself.

But they would have been helpful if she wasn't the one meant to survive this ordeal. Which meant that any chance of getting picked up by the same people would have been left to Sacre. This version of the Separa was close. But it wasn't perfect. In order to replace her Sacre, they would have needed to not only eliminate those who knew the real one, but also the real one, herself. So any chance of figuring that out would have been on that Separa corpse... If she was, in fact, dead.

So Aliset picked up the laser scalpel, moved to her feet, and made a small incision on the brow of the clone, peeling a bit of skin back to find a shimmering weave.

"Subdermal armor. My knife wouldn't have penetrated that. Good thing they didn't think I'd punch you out. Now. Are you dead or just lobotomized?" She would check for a pulse before searching her clothes.

The smell left little to doubt as too the vitals of the Sacre clone attempt. The spreading pool of blood added to the soupy mix resulting from the muscles of the Separa relaxing after death and voiding the bowels and bladder of their contents. The clothes were unremarkable, as were the conents. I sturdy tear proof tunic, grey in color, was worn over the clones torso. Leather gloves with metal knuckle inserts and a reinforced palm were perhaps the most remarkable find.

"Well, sweetheart," Aliset took the gloves, using one to hold bandages in place on her hand as she stood. "Can't say this is how I wanted to end our meeting. Nor how I wanted to spend my time on Gashmere. But it is what it is."

She picked up the beacon and pressed the activator.

Minutes passed, then hours, as Aliset realized the very real possibility that she had been abandoned. At least, that was one way to release your prisoners.

So she did what any spacefaring nomad would, and started taking inventory. One Separa'Shan corpse, cleaned up and curled in on herself as though sleeping, wrapped in cut down padding and cloth from the walls. One art installation named "consequences, cut down and placed nearby to Sacre's body, one medical chair apparently capable of keeping her fed and removing waste, which she quickly began pulling apart to check for more food and water reserves, about three weeks worth of food, and enough water to last her about two months.

"Not the best situation," she conceded, "But I've been through worse. My Trials were rough as fuck for no reason... Okay, so a lot of things I take for obvious, these guys hadn't thought of. So let's see if this thing was built with OTS parts and see what's behind the walls. We got at least air, lighting, and power. Possibly a functional waste disposal system, but considering the chemical potty, doubtful. Maybe if I can find a screen, I can figure out what's going on, out there."

The Neshaten Litos'kan destroyer had been pursuing a group of rogue pirates in grid 2215 when they had picked up the faint distress beacon being broadcast by Aliset. They quickly diverted, assuming it was either a trap set for unwary travelers by Pirates, or an actual call for help. They came out of FTL to find a lone container floating in deep space. After scans showed no potential dangers, and a possible life sign, the captain immediately ordered the smalle cube to be brought into a cargo bay. The Retriever system fired from the ship and magnetically latched on to the cube. Dragging it into the cargo bay.....

Aliset felt herself lifted, and smashed against the wall as a massive magnetic force latched onto the cube. Apparently she was being rescued?!?

"Hu---EYAA!" Aliset let out a yelp as she found herself dragged across the floor by vicious magnetic forces, then slammed into a wall. Suddenly, she wished she had left the padding in place as she groaned.

It took a few minutes before the magnetics released, dropping her unceremoniously with a yelp, and she rolled over, putting a hand on her forehead with a breathless moan of pain. It didn't take long for the door to be cut open, and the room to be flooded with soldiers she didn't recognize. Several moved to the bodies, checking them before moving to her. She could hear their questions, recognize them as questions and implications of orders, but she didn't recognize the words.

"Šuristanas?" her voice was soft, asking for a different language, going through her known Senti languages and recieving blank stares as she identified the language in its own tongue. "Yamataigo?"

Another blank stare. No one spoke the language. "Trade?"

Finally, a spark of recognition as the medic spoke to her in Trade. "We speak Trade, yes. What happened here? Who are you?"

"Chui Aliset Koun of Yamatai, Navigator, First Fleet. I was captured by a hostile entity. I have information necessary to Fort Nozomi and Seventh Fleet operations."

"Alright, Chui. We'll get you home. Are you hurt? What's your species?" The medic's faceplate lifted, revealing a fox like face that Aliset recognized immediately. Neshaten.

"I am Tsulrati. Shuristan. I'm alright, just got my hand pretty good."

"Girl. you're naked as the day you were born, and I see chemical burns, dented bones, and one Hell of a stab wound on your hand. What happened to that Separa?"

"She tried to kill me. I need this container sent back with me. With everything that's inside for evidence."

"We'll do our best. Can you stand?"

"Yeah. I think so, Clothes. please. That's really cold."

~~~

It took a few days of negotiations, but eventually, Aliset was transferred to Star Army of Yamatai custody by a meeting on the border with a Fourth Fleet vessel from Fort Ayano. From there, she was moved back to Gashemere and to Seventh Fleet custody with her box and the two other bodies that had been in it. It wasn't until she was returned to Gashmere that she was debriefed and returned to Task Force Piglet.