As the night went on, all of the Burmin became less rowdy, subdued by food and alcohol. Silhouette was planning on tracking the most drunk Burmin in the room, but a horn blared from the street and the bartender ran over to open the front doors as every Burmin patron got up from their seats and left all at once. From her position Silhouette could see that they all were loading into one large vehicle together. It must have been their ride back to the compound, but it was too risky for her to run out and hitch a ride, so she decided to be patient and wait until another opportunity arose.
The human workers stayed late to clean and reset the tavern for the next day. Silhouette hid in the darkness until everyone had left for the night. She noticed that each of the workers had taken a bag of leftover food on their way out. Must be the perk of the position, she thought. Silhouette never saw what had become of the injured waitress.
Once alone she raided the kitchen. Many of the ingredients were familiar to her, but the meat most certainly was not. Hunks of it filled the fridges and were mixed into soups and sauces, all of it purple and with a somewhat viscous quality to it. There was a cooked steak of it on a shelf in the walk-in fridge, still a little warm from the grill, and she decided that she was going to try a bite. She unwrapped the plastic around it and sunk her teeth right in.“Not bad,” she mumbled through the meat. A little… I don’t know, fishy? Feels kind of like chunky peanut butter that’s been fried in lard.
She filled herself and stayed the night in a storage closet. Nothing in the Verse felt more magical than a full belly.
* * *
Silhouette left the tavern in the early morning and stayed out of sight for all of the next day. She returned to the Rathskeller’s cluttered alley in the evening, watching as Burmin walked into the tavern from all directions after sunset. They packed in to the public room even tighter than they had the previous night. Other than the occasional cook on a smoke break, the alley remained lifeless late into dark hours.
Until it was not.
Two Burmin turned off the sidewalk and into the alley, unaware of the phantom hidden in the shadows. They wore identical beige and green bodysuits, a uniform of some sort, and looked quite similar to one another. Silhouette enjoyed finding the unique features of a goon and giving them a nickname for it. She examined them from her hidden place behind a garbage dumpster and noticed that one had dyed its low-hanging ears with blue stripes, and the other had its ears tied back and also suffered from a severe underbite. Stripes and Chinderella walked up to the kitchen’s backdoor. A panicked cook grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door shut, locking it with a loud click.
Stripes leaned up against the door and reached into its pocket, pulling out a small knife and a baggie filled with turquoise goo. The Burmin rolled up its sleeve and sliced its upper arm, quickly covering the wound with the goo and rubbing it in. The bleeding stopped and Stripes shivered in pleasure. The Burmin took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and then passed the equipment over to its friend.
With the two Burmin caught up in their choice of recreation, Silhouette moved in closer, staying out of sight and moving behind a stack of pallets. If she wanted to sneak onto the Burmin bus she needed to create a distraction.
Stripes closed its eyes and raised its face to the sky in ecstasy. Chinderella sliced itself, then lowered the knife and held on to it loosely while it shoved its fingers into the baggie of goo. Silhouette slinked around the pallets and slid her hand close enough to reach out and grab the hilt of the knife, and, before Chinderella could react, Silhouette twisted the blade with a quick, powerful motion and pulled the weapon away, slicing Chinderella’s wrist. Blood dripped from the Burmin’s hand as it stood there, the beast becoming confused then enraged as it turned toward its attacker. It reached out to grab her. Silhouette stayed low and swiftly ran behind Chinderella, then she rammed her knee up into its groin. The Burmin bent over in agony, then Silhouette slid back around to its front and flung an elbow into its throat. Chinderella choked and grabbed at its throat, taking a few steps back and then falling to the ground. The burly creature struggled for breath while its bleeding wrist dripped on its neck and soaked into its uniform.
Stripes was slow to react. Through the euphoric haze given by the turquoise goo, its friend seemed to be dancing, but the red blood around Chinderella’s throat brought some clarity to Stripes’ vision. Only then did it see the shadow holding a bloodied blade, standing over its companion. Stripes was momentarily stricken with paralyzing horror, but willfully transmuted the fear into a burning rage. The blue-eared Burmin reached out with both hands as it ran for the shadow.
Silhouette ducked under Stripes’ grasp and rolled toward its flank. She stabbed twice into its side, one between its lower ribs and one deep into its armpit. Not deep enough, she thought.
Stripes let out a squeal of pain and turned to grab at her again, but Silhouette seized its reaching arm and countered the momentum, swinging back in front of its body and jamming the blade into its gut. She stepped in rhythm with Stripes as the Burmin turned back once again, stabbing at it several more times. Stripes reached down to cover its bloodied stomach. Silhouette hopped to the creature’s side and slammed her elbow into its left arm between its tricep and bicep, striking a nerve, causing Stripes to holler in agony. Too much noise, thought Silhouette, too messy. Down the alley she saw that the same compound bound bus from the previous night had pulled up to the front of the tavern. She knew she had to finish this now.
Seeing Stripes bent over in pain, Silhouette leapt up on its back and stabbed viciously at its exposed neck. One…two…three hard strikes before the Burmin whipped its head back in response and Silhouette had to jump off its shoulders, but she rebounded quickly and with a powerful leaping strike she rammed the blade up high into the side of Stripes’ neck. Silhouette angled the blade so that as gravity pulled her back down the knife tore through its neck and blood gushed from the wound. Silhouette went to duck under his swinging arms once more, but Stripes managed to grab her with one arm and then wrapped the other around her waist. The Burmin pulled her close and lifted her off the ground.
Silhouette wriggled her arm free and thrust the blade into its larynx. She pulled her hand away, leaving the blade lodged in its throat, and then struck the base of the hilt with the ball of her palm, driving the blade further into its gullet. Stripes dropped her and scrambled to pull the blade free, but it had been lodged in too far.
Stripes fell to the ground, weakly scratching at the knife. Chinderella began to rise, still trying to cope with the bruised esophagus and lack of oxygen. Silhouette hopped over Stripes’s blood soaked corpse-to-be and kicked Chinderella in the mouth, knocking the Burmin back to the ground. She stomped with all of her strength onto its throat and felt something crush under her foot. Chinderella’s eyes went wide and the Burmin’s body trembled in pain and fear.
Silhouette fled down into the depths of the alley. She climbed over a fence and turned to see that Chinderella had crawled partway over to the lifeless body of Stripes before becoming still. Some of the Burmin who had gathered to load into the shuttle bus now stared down the alley, bewildered. Silhouette ran off as drunken Burmin waddled down the passageway and approached the bloody corpses of their friends.
Silhouette found a hose to wash away the blood. Her suit had to be clean to be effective, so she washed off and then ran back toward the tavern, taking a path around the corner of the Rathskeller opposite of the excitement in the alley. Several Burmin stood at the entrance to the bloodied alley, and a couple looked on from inside of the shuttle bus. Silhouette moved from the cover of the buildings and crept along to the street-facing side of the bus, keeping low below the view of the passenger windows. The shuttle had many exterior cargo compartments which would not likely be used by a bunch of drunken, bed-bound Burmin. She pulled gently on the latch of one of the compartments and it opened with ease. She crawled in and pulled the door shut. Time to ride.
* * *
The bus started its engine a
nd Silhouette opened the compartment door enough to see through to the outside. The shuttle slowed as it approached the compound, but it was waved right on through the gates and continued to drive toward a well lit tunnel which appeared to travel under the compound. Silhouette rolled out of the compartment before the bus had reached the tunnel and she ran for cover.
She found a dark place and used her Ocu to scan the grounds, seeing that there was not much movement. Two guards stood at the gate where the bus had entered the Burmin stronghold, and a couple more patrolled the perimeter. The only other bodies outside of the walls were clustered together inside some kind of barn. Must be livestock.
Silhouette popped the compound layout into her vision, and now that she could see the place in person she better understood how large it was. She pinpointed her location on the map near the freight loading zone, which X described as one of the highest Burmin activity areas of the compound, but it was quiet and apparently shut down for the night. Silhouette looked with her thermal vision toward the building itself and saw that most of the Burmin bodies were sleeping with little movement otherwise, and she could see that X’s estimation of nearly 300 resident Burmin living inside of the place was accurate.
X marked several locations as hiding spots, but they were used by the human slaves in the compound, those trying to find momentary escape from their duties. Those places would not do. She could not risk being seen by anyone, not even the other humans. From what she could surmise from X’s data, Burmin at the compound tended to stay where they were assigned all day and every day, spending most of their free time at night in the nearby towns. The command center, mineral processing areas, airfield, barracks, and other offices would be too dangerous to reside in, as would be gathering places like the cafeteria or gymnasium. The prison would always have eyes guarding it, of course.
She hustled over to a doorway near the freight garage and found that it was unlocked. Light security and unlocked doors, the Burmin did not seem to be too worried about anyone planet-side waltzing onto their property. Silhouette surveyed the complex through the night. Most places were dark, empty, and the doors were always unlocked. There was little activity during the night with few bodies moving around to cause her any concern, but every location she visited appeared to see heavy foot traffic during the day, and as the daytime hours approached she still found herself without a good place to hide.
Silhouette had to resort to one of the locations provided by X, a storage room off to one side of the compound’s heat exchanger which was rarely visited. At least if she was discovered it might be a good location for hiding a body. Making her way to the room was simple enough. Inside she found wire shelving on wheels holding large boxes and heavy machinery pieces, providing her with plenty of coverage to hide behind. She glanced up at the ceiling and noticed that it was made of white tiles, and they looked like they could be moved. Almost everywhere else in the compound was covered in sheet metal. She climbed one of the wire shelves and pushed up on a ceiling tile, lifting it with ease. She pulled herself up and into the ceiling, sticking to the cross beams which were strong enough to support her weight.
Looking around, she realized that she had found a vast crawl space, and there was nothing about it listed in X’s detailed information, not in this section anyway. Perfect.
* * *
Silhouette spent weeks exploring the compound and monitoring movements with the help of her Ocu. While inspecting the crawl space she discovered several maintenance hatches and more removable tiles above some offices and in the kitchens. She followed the patterns of Burmin and human alike, monitoring popular passageways and noting the quieter halls. She was able to sync up many Burmin to the labels and information provided in X’s notes, identifying the leaders and memorizing their daily routines. It would be all too easy to pick them off, one by one, but that was not her mission. She needed to find a way onto the command ship— so she waited, and she listened. Patience was her strongest ally. Information was her deadliest weapon.
In her exploration Silhouette ventured into the containment area, as X had labeled it, otherwise known as the prison, and it was a dark, damp place. How could it be damp? The complex was surround by an arid landscape, yet the prison was cold and miserable. It was different than the one she had been in as a child. She had been locked in a room with others, but here the cells were separate from one another, each one a solitary confinement.
Test-tube-like chambers were stacked in rows across the large room with blue lights illuminating the insides of the occupied cells. They were tight, confining, and there were many dozens of chambers to be filled, but only a handful were occupied by prisoners. The Burmin must have made a recent slave run to their homeworld and emptied the compound prisons.
The air smelled like wet concrete. Silhouette crept along the chambers, easily avoiding the lone Burmin who sat at a desk in a corner of the room, its face buried into the screen of some small device.
The prisoners were fatigued and listless except for one man who felt about his chamber, searching for something to grab on to, something to twist or pull, something to help him escape. He must have been a recent addition. The others rested, silent and still.
Another man with dark brown hair and a thick, umber beard caught Silhouette’s attention. He was a handsome young man and slept like most of the others, but he was too thin, too weary. Silhouette stood in front of the chamber, a clear wall separating her from the sleeping man. She studied his features and found them— comforting.
His eyes opened.
The man looked directly at Silhouette and for a moment their eyes locked onto one another, or so it had seemed. The moment passed. Silhouette noticed that his focus was not on her as the man’s eyes rolled away and he turned his body, adjusting his position. He closed his eyes again and returned to sleep. She stood there in the blue light for a long time, longer than was safe, and she watched her brother sleep.
Her brother Davi was imprisoned like she once had been, waiting to be sent away and sold as a slave. He could wind up on the other end of the galaxy where she would never be able to find him again. He was beautiful, familiar, family, and he was despairingly malnourished and frail.
Love, fear, anger— it all boiled to the surface. Silhouette’s skin burned and her muscles tensed, her rage urging her to break open his cell and run away with him to freedom.
The blue lights of the chambers blinked and were replaced with a lime green; then the white ceiling lights brightened. Silhouette’s rage dropped away in an instant, replaced by adrenaline. The Burmin in the corner of the room grunted and stood from its seat.
Silhouette crawled to the furthest corner of the room and squeezed behind a dusty holding tank. She watched the Burmin as it approached the occupied chambers with a box held between its left arm and torso. It walked up to one of the occupied cells and pressed a series of buttons which opened a small slot next to the chamber’s glass wall. The imprisoned man’s anger and frustration bellowed into the room as he stuck his fingers out through the slot, reaching for anything he could. The Burmin smacked the man’s hand hard with a metal rod and he cried out in pain. The Burmin then slid a gelatinous brick through the slot and pressed another button to close it again. Is that supposed to be their food? Silhouette wondered.
Next the Burmin gave a brick to a woman who eyed the flat, beige rectangle with repulsion. The block of food rested neat and untouched on a small shelf inside of the cell beside her.
The other three prisoners accepted their food and ate it, none looking pleased about it. Silhouette’s Ocu recorded the button combination pressed on her brother’s cell and she watched as he bit into his bar and chewed methodically, without pain or pleasure. The lights of those who ate faded back to their blue status. The man who at first resisted soon gave in and ate his brick, his light then fading to blue as well. The woman stood by her refusal of the meal, and after some time another Burmin walked into the room to join the first, both of them standing at the woman’s cell
like they were waiting for something.
The woman’s defiant demeanor withered as discomfort and pain set in. She cringed and grabbed her gut, and soon she crumpled over in agony, tears streaming down her face and mucus dripping from her nose. The woman looked to be wailing in pain, but no sound escaped her cell. She reached up for her food brick and took a large bite, chewing through her sobs. After a couple more bites, her weeping lightened and the pain on her face morphed into a sorrowful look of defeat and regret, but she continued to eat until the bar was gone. The recently arrived Burmin left the room and the other returned to its seat in the corner as the woman’s cell faded back to blue and the room lights dimmed.
Silhouette remained in her position for the rest of the day, examining the room and her brother. The lone guard fed the prisoners once more late into the night, then it left its post and did not return until morning. Davi woke only for food, and otherwise slept. He was broken. There was not any fight left in him.
* * *
Silhouette returned to her dwelling and rested until the next evening. During the quiet night hours, she made her way to the commissary and pocketed an assortment of queer snacks. She tried each of them and put a few of the tastiest ones aside, eating her fill and then putting together a small package for her brother, along with a note. The food had to be simple: no wrapping, no mess, no leftovers. She encased it all in a spongy, flat bread-like food.
Silhouette Page 4
