Children of Heaven: Choir of Silence

proximalflame

Nov 28

Chapter 29:

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She was naked.

That was all she knew.

No, that wasn't true. She was naked and she was somewhere dark and cold. She couldn't even see her hand in front of her face. Her heart was beating in her chest as she blindly felt around her enclosure; she'd woken up in the corner and she traced the walls, moving slowly. Her entire body hurt. She wanted to call out, but her voice was stuck in her throat. She'd always been afraid of the dark, ever since she'd been seven and a cave she'd been exploring collapsed on her. She'd been trapped in there for two days, had almost died. Even decades later, she hated the darkness.

Now, she was fighting down her own panic, her breath rasping in her throat. She would not start crying, she refused to break that easily. She focused on calming herself, taking a moment to steady herself against the wall. It was dark, that was all. There weren't any monsters lurking out there. It was just dark. She repeated that mantra to her herself over and over, calming her nerves. That was better. She could handle this. She could-

That was when she heard the first scream.

It was so faint that she thought she was only imagining it, that her mind was playing tricks on her. She pressed an ear to the metal wall, listening. She thought she heard the sound repeat itself from somewhere deeper in the… was she on a ship? A station? A planet? She wasn't certain. She'd lived in space so long that she'd almost been able to feel artificial gravity, but right now she couldn't tell.

Where was she? Where was her crew?

She remembered… she remembered failure. There'd been so many of them. For every one of them that they'd killed, there'd been another. And another. Hundreds of them. Ships dying in droves, no mercy, no respite. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide…

As the darkness closed in, her breath caught in her throat, escaping in rasping little hiccups. It was a long time before she could make herself think clearly once more, continuing her exploration of the chamber. Her ship had been destroyed; she remembered that. Half a dozen of the bastards slugging away at her, but she'd taken over half of that squadron with her, fighting to get clear of their net and attack the largest ships at the center of their formation.

Hadn't worked.

There were words, niggling little words, in the back of her brain, clamouring for her attention. She didn't want to give it to them because if she did, she'd start fixating about the darkness again and she couldn't afford that. She tried to think of anything else, but they were there and they drifted up, making her remember even more.

"Point defences are down on our port flank, starboard side's going fast – they're stripping us clean, captain!"

"Fire back with everything we have – Helm, pitch us towards the bastard on our port flank! Let's see if we can't make them blink."

Like great oceanic beasts, the two wounded behemoths jockeyed against the lone vessel pinned between them, slothful and calculating in their maneuvers, bulls courting a lone cow and unwilling to accept rejection.

As the beleaguered vessel lurched at them, one of its violent suitors retreated, but only enough to avoid a collision. Now with the measure of its prey, it sidled back towards its victim, plucking away its teeth and claws. Boxy hangars opened, a hurricane of ugly little craft pouring towards the weakening defences of its intended. The assault boats cored through the skin of their unwilling partner, spilling their lethal cargo inside it.

A perfectly vile metaphor for what was happening to her ship.

"We're being boarded – multiple encounters across all port decks! Marine units are responding. I say again, we have been boarded by hostile troops!"

Boarded. The full impact of what had happened, what was happening, finally registered, jamming itself into her brain and refusing to leave. She remembered the acid bubbling in her stomach as her troops lost control of their own ship. Remembered alien soldiers cutting through the doors of the bridge, one of them swatting the pistol out of her hand so hard that she'd felt bones shatter, the creature lifting her off the deck by the neck with one hand, her own terrified expression reflected back at her from its polished silver helmet. And then… and then she'd woken up here.

Moria MacLean whimpered, pulling her knees up to her chest. She knew she was better then this, she wanted to be better then this, but she was trapped, alone in the dark aboard an alien vessel. Her crew was dead or imprisoned. She squeezed her eyes tight, hoping, praying to whomever or whatever was listening that this was all a bad dream, that all she had to do was open her eyes and she'd wake up in a Concordat sickbay.

"Designation: Moira Maclean, Captain." The voice was flat and soulless, filling the dark room entirely.

She didn't react, still desperately trying to pretend that this wasn't real.

Her interrogator wasn't so easily put off. "Subject status: conscious. Designation: Moira Maclean, Captain, will respond." When she still refused to respond to it, the voice grew silent for a moment. "Alternative measures: necessary."

The pain came from nowhere, igniting every nerve in her body. Moira spasmed, flopping over the deck like a fish dragged from the water and thrown onto hot desert sands. The agony vanished as quickly as it had come, but her limbs ached from her seizing and her mind was numb from the ordeal. The captain rolled onto her hands and knees and vomited, emptying her stomach onto the smooth floor, her throat burning.

"Status: stimulation of pain receptors complete. Imperative: active and passive means of resistance will be punished. Designation: Moira Maclean, Captain, will respond."

"What… what do you want? Who are you?" Moria gagged out. As soon as she spoke, she felt warmer.

"Self-designation: Fallen Idol. Idolator, familiar designation. Objective: acquisition of information. Status: highthreat vessel commanded by Moira Maclean, Captain, excessively damaged in capture. Analysis: Moira Maclean, Captain, highest-caste highthreat still functional. Imperative: acquire tactical and strategic data necessary for completion of killfleet objectives."

"I… I won't tell you anything." Moira braced herself for another wave of pain, but it never came.

"Highthreat analysis: incorrect," the voice replied. Light blossomed inside the chamber as a holographic map shone down from a projector in the ceiling. Moira blinked against the sudden illumination, raising a hand to shield her eyes. The room was smaller then she'd thought, with no sign of a bed or sink. At the next corner, there was a shallow depression in the floor with a hole, which had to be a no-frills head.

The image flashed insistently, drawing her attention and Moira felt her gut fold in on inside as she recognized what this… 'Idolator' was showing her.