Against A Rock

by Kalin Ringkvist

  ______ ______ ______

  Her legs floated across the floor as her applications started up, one by one in her mind, like old friends arriving at a reunion. She rested her weight on the two guards, her mind tuning once again to the depth, complexity and reliability of the digital connections that were as much a part of her person as any other part of her brain.

  She grinned as she entered the dark room of ugly and barbaric Minmatar abolitionists seated around a jet-black conference table, focused inward. “Greetings,” she said as she took hold of the back of the last remaining seat. She swung around and plopped down like a drunk.

  She saw the Minmatar, imagining a board splayed out in the middle of the conference table, dice rolling, cards drawing, and little colorful pieces hopping from place to place… pieces representing human lives…. And the players hunched over their game, discussing strategy…

  “Is my Mahran here?” she asked.

  “Hello Floreina,” came Mahran’s cold, monotone reply over the conference speaker.

  And Floreina’s euphoria diminished nearly instantaneously.

  “Mahran?” she replied questioningly. “How are you?”

  “Master—“ and he cut off.

  “You alright, Buddy?” She spoke cautiously without her conversational analysts.

  “I need to talk to you—“ Mahran seemed to be speaking carefully as well, but still the words grated sluggishly through the speakers.

  “Don’t Mahran,” Marteen put in. “Just leave it alone. We have tactics we need to attend to.”

  Mahran spat words in a sudden flurry. “Master I have gone into sections of the computer system you did not authorize.”

  “Mahran, please,” Marteen continued. “We don’t need to deal with this right now. It’s too important that we work as a team here… I’m very sorry that we helped get you started on this train of thought, but please, we need to put all that aside for right now. We’re relying on you and we need you to hold yourself together. We promise that everything will be taken care of when the day is over.”

  “No,” said Mahran more calmly now. “I must speak to my Master… it may be my last chance… because… I went deeper into the computer system… and I searched some of the databases…”

  And Floreina’s face sank into her hands as reality simultaneously formed and collapsed around her, the technological relationship constructing itself into its familiar magical precision even as her most important human relationship was suddenly on the brink of ruin.

  “And I found a database tag word… ‘not slave appropriate’, Master… and when a Minmatar sees a secret box engraved with ‘Do not open’… well, you know exactly what he’s going to do…”

  “Mahran please,” said Floreina and Marteen nearly simultaneously.

  “I don’t even understand most of it…” he continued. “But what I did understand, I found disturbing…”

  “I’m sorry, Mahran,” Floreina said. “These things are difficult to understand I know, which is why we’ve protected you—”

  “And at first I was randomly searching the database for anything with the tag of ‘not slave appropriate’ and I was able to deal with most of what I found… but then I had a curiosity…” He faltered momentarily as his voice began to crack. “So I did a search for the tag ‘not slave appropriate’ combined with my master’s name…” and his voice seemed to curl inward to a whining but powerful sob. “And I found things about my master that I didn’t want to believe…”

  “Listen to me, Mahran,” Floreina blurted. “I know these things are confusing. I don’t know what it is that you found, but I’m sure I can explain—“

  “He’s gone,” one of the abolitionists put in, his head cocked over a communications panel built into the edge of the conference table.

  “Gone?” Floreina asked.

  “His connection’s cut out.”

  “Mahran!” she said.

  “He’s gone!” the Minmatar repeated. “No signal.”

  “What’s wrong with your comm?” Floreina asked.

  “What’s wrong with your slave?” asked Marteen.

  “What kind of crap did you feed him?” Floreina said, her rear rising involuntarily from the seat, her voice fighting back against a shout. “What are you thinking trying to brainwash him right before an operation?”

  “We’ve said nothing to him,” Marteen replied. “We didn’t even start with him, Floreina, that’s a promise. The moment he contacted us he started talking about these things he found in the database—what were you thinking—“

  “Sir, he’s back online,” the other abolitionist cut him off.

  “I’m going to hit the self destruct,” said Mahran, his voice suddenly calm.

  “No!” shouted Floreina and several of the Minmatar.

  “No, listen, this isn’t necessary,” Floreina blurted. “I love you, Mahran, and I love the people aboard The Angel… and so do you. Whatever you found, Little Buddy, I can explain—“

  “Milkeinos,” he retorted. “You killed him because of a few ISK worth of artificial limb…”

  “I was under orders!” Floreina replied. “I argued for his survival. How dare you try to hold that against me!”

  “You took one point four seconds to ‘argue’ with Captain Allihence about Milkeinos’s life!”

  “Mahran please—“ Marteen attempted to cut him off.

  But Mahran began shouting, his voice echoing surprisingly clearly through the cramped conference room. “You told me that sob story in the heating ducts… ‘oh boo hoo, I killed a slave when I was twelve and I felt so horrible about it’… ‘that was the only time I ever killed a slave’… ‘the only time’… you feed me lies, Floreina. Lies! My whole life! Lies!”

  And just as Floreina’s basic environmental recognition programs began completing their boot up process and started feeding her names and facial feature analyzations, Mahran began his tirade, screaming from the depths of his throat to jolt the members of the conference back in their seats, several bringing their hands instinctively to their ears.

  “You stole my humanity! My person! You tore me apart inside! And the Minmatar people—so you could have a possession—a toy—and you showed me compassion—as much compassion as was necessary to get me to do what you wanted. And you filled my head with lies and lies and lies!” And Mahran screamed, a deep, rolling expression of anger, depression, and collapsing reality, like an over powered planetary jet engine crashing to the surface of a deserted world. A metallic pounding emanated amidst Mahran’s outburst, as though he were striking the walls of the tiny, claustrophobic control chamber with blunt objects.

  “Mahran!” Marteen shouted. “Behave like a man! Pull yourself together! We have a job to do.”

  And Mahran seemed to calm momentarily.

  “You know how much I’m opposed to what they have done to you, Mahran, so you know that I speak the truth when I say that you must respect your master and continue to obey her for just a little while longer. This is necessary for the survival of yourself and many others on both our ships. Just forget these things for the time being and we will deal with them later.”

  “Okay.” Mahran took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m sorry… I’m okay now…”

  And they paused a long moment.

  “You’re doing better, Mahran?” said Floreina. “I promise that we can get through this and in the end you will have all the rewards that I’ve promised and more.”

  “Your words are like the grunts of an animal to me now, Master… Your voice is alien… like the meaning… the spirit… has gone from your words… I don’t think I know who you are anymore…”

  And Floreina swallowed and grit her teeth to fight the sudden trembling of her jaw. “I’m sorry Buddy,” she forced.

  “I’m sorry too,” he replied flatly.

  Floreina placed her hands on the table and put her head down.

  Silence surrounded them for a long moment. Floreina sat nearly motionless; the pleasures
of her recently resurrected mental applications suddenly gone. Still, they booted up, one by one, reality becoming clearer by the minute, but in many ways, the organized details of her surroundings and her life somehow accentuated her anger and loss.

  “Okay, Mahran…” Marteen broke the silence. “Are you okay, Man? Are you gonna be able to handle yourself during our invasion?”

  “Yes,” he replied, clearing his throat.

  “We need you to keep yourself together during this.”

  “Yes, I understand,” Mahran replied. “I just needed to get that out.”

  “Okay…”

  And as the fog lifted from her perceptions, she looked upon the Minmatar at the conference table, and thought to herself about just what a dangerous game they were playing. They gave her back her computer personality without a fight, just after pulling a gun on her and threatening her with an execution. And they still wanted to play, even after declaring they stand against everything she believes…

  These boys had some balls…

  …or something they weren’t telling her…

  ______ ______ ______

  Floreina looked up at the soldiers surrounding her, approximately two hundred of them, crammed into the cargo hold of the Blackbird cruiser. Her analyzations jumped from one idea to another, acutely aware of the fact that she looked upward at all of them, being the shortest amongst the hulking Minmatar mercenaries.

  But despite the fact that any one of them could crush her skull with a well-placed blow, she somehow felt a power over them, as though her superior spirit rose high above them.

  She was the outcast; a soldier without a country; but somehow, they were the ones playing the dangerous game.

  Two hundred men stood, packed tightly together, pulling their laser-resistant vests and uniforms over their massive shoulders, even as Floreina adjusted hers.

  But there was one other woman in the crowd, her identity picked out automatically, standing, facing the opposite direction, preparing her uniform and weapon along with the others. She stood rigidly, her shoulder’s squared, as though trying to blend in with the larger men.

  “I’m concerned,” came the voice of Mahran through the earpiece provided by the abolitionists, “about what they know… they seem to be preparing themselves for an attack. They’re bypassing the network to run all sorts of routines… and I can’t tell what…”

  “Contact in four minutes,” Marteen said through their communicators, ignoring Mahran’s fears.

  “You’re going to get annihilated,” Floreina warned. Several soldiers turned to look at her comment, unaware of the private conversation between the assault leaders.

  “Then you shall be annihilated along with us,” Marteen replied.

  “We’ve got security officers lining up and preparing at each of our entry points,” Mahran warned.

  “That can’t be helped.”

  “You’re going to take casualties,” Floreina added.

  “Yes, I’m aware,” Marteen said. “We’ve been over this. Mahran, what are their positions? Can you feed us updated schematics?”

  “Working on it…” he replied.

  The time ticked down as she listened to the stream of troop locations and tactical information. Mahran seemed distant, as though he did not even acknowledge that his master was on the line.

  And the scent of communal sweat suddenly hit Floreina’s nostrils, just as she recognized the sticky dampness beneath her own, unfamiliar mercenary uniform and body armor.

  But time moved quickly and it seemed like within moments she felt the jolt of the ship finally contacting her home and forming a seal. Moments later the airlock pulled open with a loud hiss, the sound traveling across the hordes of Minmatar terrorists standing between Floreina and the scene.

  Thirty seconds later came a detonation as they blew open the airlock.

  And within seconds the sounds of automatic projectile weapons erupted, speckled with war cries and colorful flashes.

  And despite the cries of pain from many of the forward mercenaries, the crowd soon began moving forward.

  She received rapidly updated data, transmitted from The Angel’s network, the three dimensional blueprint appearing imposed over her normal vision, showing the location of shots fired and bodies piling up along the corridors. She watched her comrades falling, one by one, through this series of blips and markers.

  After several long minutes, the crowd began moving faster as many of the attackers split off to secure adjacent areas, protecting their central route to the pod control bridge.

  They began marching faster now, and Floreina quickly noticed the other woman being corralled back toward Floreina’s position, as though they felt she was not worthy of moving with the leaders, and needed to be kept back and protected, in much the same way as Floreina was hanging back. Floreina identified the woman, retrieving the name Seleina, but found little more information other than the fact that she was aligned politically with these particular terrorists, as well as slavery abolitionists in general.

  Floreina moved through the blown airlock and back into her own ship as Seleina took up a position several rows behind her.

  But her interest in Seleina suddenly dissipated as she began stepping over the bodies of her old crewmates, and the tense knot suddenly returned to her stomach.

  And they continued forward, moving steadily down corridors, hearing nearly constant and rhythmic bursts of gun fire as Floreina watched the little colorful markers indicating each loss of life.

  Up ahead, the mercenaries came to an office in which fourteen slaves had been held ever since the beginning of this ordeal.

  “Do not attack any Minmatar slave unless provoked,” Marteen reminded his crew.

  “I have not kept a close eye on these slaves,” Mahran warned. “I cannot guarantee anything about them.”

  Floreina suddenly registered what seemed like misplaced fear. The slaves, in many ways, were the most dangerous aspect of this, as there was nothing to stop them from switching their allegiances at a moment’s notice.

  Floreina watched the map as Mahran released the door and contacted the slaves inside. “The abolitionists have arrived and wish to take you peacefully to give you your freedom,” Mahran told them. “Can I trust all of you to go without a fight?”

  She heard them answer a surprisingly emphatic “yes”, and several moments later they were released from the office and directed to move backward through the advancing troops, toward Floreina, then beyond, back to the Blackbird.

  But as they approached, she scanned their faces and sudden warnings went off in her emotion analyzers as several of the slaves seemed to catch her eye and focus on her.

  Floreina moved quickly, stepping backward, snatching a nearby soldier, identified as Starneid, to pull him in front of her. But the first of the slaves made their move in the same moment. The closest two, by the names of Danayel and Heifid, darted forward, each pulling a makeshift knife made from sharpened scrap metal.

  The mercenary Starneid yelped quickly and cringed away from the slave, pressing backward against Floreina, as he raised his rifle. He fired a shot into Danayal’s jaw, disintegrating it into a splattering of blood, bone and teeth. The slave dropped to the floor. Heifid continued his frantic attack, raising his shiv in devoted hatred and drove it into Starneid’s neck.

  Floreina’s tactical systems were automatically searching for an accessable weapon. When Starneid took the hit to the neck, her systems immediately directed her to reach for his rifle with her left hand. Her right hand continued hanging onto Starneid and holding him in front of her.

  As she tried to pull the weapon from the soldier’s convulsing and clenched fingers, she registered the other slaves leaping forth in all directions. They pulled from their pockets makeshift knives, mini-torches, and even pens as weapons, boldly throwing themselves forward to attack the slits in the necks of the soldiers’ body armor.

  Even as he convulsed and choked, and Heifid wrenched the knife from his nec
k, Starneid held tight to his weapon, trying in vain to raise it again to fire another shot. Finally Floreina shoved what was left of Starneid forward as Heifid attempted to swing his knife around toward her.

  Running backward, Floreina connected with another abolitionist. His hand came around to grip her by the chest, and shoved her backward.

  She stumbled against the steel grated floor, and heard shots echoing through the tight corridor as the abolitionists fought and executed the slaves. She dropped to the floor in an attempt to avoid stray shots, turning slightly to catch herself before slamming to the floor.

  Floreina crawled below the action, between the legs of the Minmatar as they jumped and avoided her. The attack lasted less than ten seconds before the slaves were incapacitated with fatal gunshots, but several more soldiers fell to the floor at the same time.

  Turning back the other direction, Floreina crawled rapidly toward Starneid’s fallen corpse to grab his projectile rifle. She pulled it from his hands and brought her right foot forward to hop quickly to her feet.

  Almost immediately the nearest soldier placed his hand on her newly acquired weapon. “We don’t want you carrying a gun!” he reminded her loudly.

  “Come off it,” she snapped, pulling suddenly to wrench the rifle from him. “If you can’t protect me, I need to protect myself.”

  “We have orders not to allow you to arm yourself, Miss Floreina.”

  “You’ve got no choice,” she retorted, holding tight to the weapon and turning to push forward just as the rest of the soldiers began moving again.

  “Let her have it,” came Marteen’s reluctant order through the voice comms. “The slave loyalty on this ship renders things a little less predictable.”

  The soldiers continued on into The Angel, pausing at the end of each corridor to allow Mahran to disengage the lock on the next hatch. They would throw it open and fire on any Amarrian in the room. Floreina held back behind the group, watching the action mainly through her map interface… little dots and blips representing her crewmates being shot to death… and listened to the deafening sounds of the Minmatar projectile weapons.

  Slaves were treated as hostile, but still given a chance. Most gave themselves up easily, but Floreina imagined most of them would ultimately remain loyal to their ship, regardless of how tempting this easy freedom might be. They were moved and locked into adjacent rooms or restrained with plastic disposable cuffs.