Against A Rock

by Kalin Ringkvist

  Floreina whimpered before cutting herself short at the sound of the hatchway creaking into motion.

  Floreina screamed at the change in sensation, the tearing, as the top half of her arm separated permanently from the door. The end of her stump stuck for several long moments against the bottom of the door as it rose, then finally separated with a tearing slurp and dropped to the floor.

  She saw Allihence’s curled toes beneath the door, and a second later, watched the bulk of the captain come down to lay on the deck just on the other side of the hatch. Behind her, halfway across the room at the edge of the pool of pod fluid, mangled and bloody, lay Floreina’s right arm.

  Allihence shifted forward, shoving her head under the rising hatch to peer over Floreina’s stomach, bringing the projectile rifle up to rest on Floreina’s hip.

  They caught eyes, and Allihence smiled before opening fire on Floreina’s partners.

  Floreina continued shaking, liquid streaming from her eyes and forehead as she heard the gunshots pinging against the back wall and smashing into computer interfaces.

  Her physical shaking continued relentlessly, seemingly uncontrolled. Her eyes were blank, sweat and saliva running down the side of her cheek.

  But inside, Floreina was composing herself, and for several hundred milliseconds, looked out from within her body as though within a protective bubble, seeing the captain outside, seemingly satisfied that Floreina was incapacitated, and ducking behind her for protection.

  And at the moment her tactical systems ordered her to make her move, the shaking cleared, her muscles released from their comforting convulsions, and she felt a surge of automated adrenaline.

  Her left hand clasped the rifle draped across her midsection.

  Allihence reacted immediately, tugging backward, but Floreina forced the weapon upward in the same motion, slamming it against the underside of the ascending doorway. She pulled forward and heard Allihence call out as her fingers grated across the underside of the hatch.

  As Allihence struggled to free the weapon from her sudden grasp, Floreina twisted, pivoting easily in the film of greasy fluid, bringing her body parallel with the rifle.

  And before Allihence could react, she brought her right knee up to connect with the captain’s jaw.

  Allihence’s hold weakened and Floreina wrenched it from her hands, in the same motion, throwing it into the control room.

  Her leg came up as Floreina pushed herself under the hatch, pivoting, and wrapping her leg around Allihence’s head and pushing her backward in the same motion.

  Floreina kicked frantically, missing twice, but finally pulled herself back far enough to land a solid kick against the side of Allihence’s cranium.

  The captain rolled away, slamming against the port wall under the barrier and Floreina pushed forward with her left arm, focusing on the captain, seeing nothing beyond her target. Her right leg recoiled, then shot forward as though powered by some great tidal wave.

  The bottom of her boot connected with the face of the captain, driving her head against the wall.

  For a moment Allihence caught Floreina’s eye, and she paused only a few milliseconds before bringing her leg back to plant another solid kick into the captain’s face.

  With the captain’s head pinned between the wall and her boot, Floreina heard the subtle pop and felt the tiny jolts as Allihence’s skull cracked.

  Floreina cried out as she pushed herself under the doorway, throwing her body agonizingly across the floor. Doctor Pari came to her side, dropping his tool kit beside her.

  She felt herself collapse, the flow of adrenaline and emergency steroids suddenly shutting off. She drifted away, finding her surroundings starting to spin and tilt. Pressing her head against his thigh, she pulled herself toward the doctor as he grabbed her. She clutched his back with her left hand, as though he could protect her from falling into some great abyss.

  Awkwardly bending his arm, Doctor Pari cut away the excess clothing around her stump, carefully holding her in place. Straining her legs, she attempted to move into a better position, but only succeeded in thinking about the action. Her legs simply would not respond. Instead, she simply screamed and cried, burying her face in the doctor’s thigh.

  ______ ______ ______

  Floreina’s head drooped to the side and she looked down her right arm to see the blunt end, now wrapped tightly in surgical gauze. She stared absently at the stump through the haze of drugs, knowing she should feel some kind of emotion that she did not… wondering what that emotion might feel like when the drugs finally wore off and she still had to stare down her primary arm at an empty stump.

  …but for right now it was just a simple fact… a silly little fact… yesterday she had two arms… today, only one…

  But above that, a question hung in her heart as she waited for Mahran’s feedback on the system readiness.

  She looked out on the pod chamber from the stretcher, recognizing and appreciating the brilliance, the beauty, and the simple helpful convenience of having the lights on.

  Bodies seemed to be scattered everywhere. Her visual scans jumped absently from one dead face to the next…

  And she moved on, into the ship’s security network, jumping between cameras mounted along every room and hallway throughout the ship. The majority of The Angel’s crew still lived, trapped in various offices and quarters. The invading abolitionists, as well, had been enclosed and trapped in various chambers when she had regained control the security system.

  But hundreds of Amarrian bodies littered the corridors along the route they had taken to the pod chambers. And many more lay waiting throughout the ship, wondering if they too, would see the same fate.

  She had hurt a lot of people today, both directly and indirectly.

  She stared through the overhead cameras at her dead crewmates, scanning their faces, drawing up crew histories and lists of families, and examined them through a strangely blank and distant haze. But through the horror that she had inflicted on her own people, she felt the Lord coming through beneath everything, encompassing the events of the day and the people it touched.

  This was all a story within a game from God’s eyes… and Floreina had played hard, and she had won.

  That was the name of the game.

  And He guided her still, as He had through this journey, comforting her, strengthening her and driving her forward throughout her life to take control of the destiny that was rightfully hers…

  And all the death… all the suffering… it was all a part of God’s little story book… His little game… it was all His creation.

  So Floreina had no reason to feel guilty.

  …as long as you are guided by the Lord, you never have a reason to feel guilty.

  Her mind paused, and she smiled. Even now, after all the events, reality still held itself together.

  “Look’s like everything’s in order,” said Mahran with a grin, looking up from his spot nearby on a rolling chair, a long data link strung from the back of his head. “All damaged systems had redundancies and have been restored.”

  And the tightness seemed to edge from her stomach just a little.

  “I just confirmed Floreina’s mental state,” Pari said as he disconnected the network cable from the back of her head and let her rest back on the pillow, the visions of the ship’s internals fluttering away. “The injury caused some disruption in her brain patterns, but she seems to be compensating well enough that she should survive the transfer into the capsule.”

  “Excellent,” said Doctor Addeilon. “I don’t have the equipment to reattach the arm, Floreina, as I’m sure you’ve already gathered… nor do we have the time… but it’s not going to make a difference when you’re in the pod… ”

  And the doctors began the intricate process of connecting fluid and data lines to various parts of her body. She lay back and attempted to relax.

  Mahran came closer, carefully wheeling himself to a vantage behind the busy doctors.

 
; “Master Floreina…” he started.

  She held out her left hand and smiled. “You don’t need to ask,” she said. “I considered you free the moment I shut down my implant… you don’t need to call me ‘Master’ any more, Little Buddy.”

  His eyes gleamed as he took her hand.

  “How did you know they were going to double-cross me?” Floreina asked. “Marteen told me that you were talking trash about me the moment you made contact with him.”

  Mahran nodded. “They contacted me first, realizing you were in trouble, they offered to come and ‘help’ you, and it just didn’t make any sense why they would want to help you, so I assumed it was a double-cross, and decided to see if they’d let me in on it, so I started saying nasty things about you the moment I met them… and the things I found under the ‘not slave appropriate’ category gave me a lot of fodder…” He shook his head. “…which is something I’d like to talk to you about… some other time…” He took a deep breath and looked at the floor.

  “I just have one question.” Floreina glanced at Pari as he sliced a tiny hole in her stomach to feed yet another tube, applying more nanites to properly seal the opening.

  Mahran carefully adjusted himself and placed an elbow on the armrest to meet her eyes, clearly mindful of the wound on his stomach.

  “How did you fool everyone?” she asked. “When you were screaming and crying I didn’t see any indication of falsehood on your face or your voice or your body language… you had me fooled, Buddy… how’d you do it? I have liars assistant applications and I can’t put on a performance like that…”

  Mahran’s eyes raised and his lower lip curled suddenly. “You…” he stared. He cocked his head, his face contorting. “You didn’t realize I was faking it?”

  She shook her head slowly.

  And Mahran took a deep breath and sat back in his seat to stare at her for a long moment. “How could you…” he said.

  “I didn’t know –”

  “But it’s me… It’s Mahran… you know me… how could you think that about me…”

  She squeezed his hand and he looked away, her scans finally revealing an inconsistency in his features.

  “And now you’re lying,” she said.

  And Mahran remained silent.

  “You meant those things you said to me…”

  Mahran simply sat, holding her hand.

  “That’s how you fooled all our scans… you actually meant all those things you said …”

  “Please, Master Floreina… can we…”

  “No,” Floreina replied. “It’s okay, Mahran… I want to hear it from you… but I can see in your eyes that it’s true… everything you said was from your heart…”

  He looked back. “I have two sides to my personality,” he said. “…one that I hide very deep…”

  She nodded and gently tapped his wrist.

  “…and you told me to embrace that darker side,” he continued. “…that once after we had spoken with the abolitionists and we were standing in the street… you told me to embrace the dark side… to feel it… to enjoy it… and use it to my advantage… because the darkness is as much a part of God as the light…”

  She nodded. “I see…” She watched for a long while until he finally looked up to meet her eyes. “I’ve been thinking about something…” she paused to shoo away a nagging warning from her tactical systems. “When you were saying all of that to me… Mahran…” She took a deep breath. “It didn’t feel like you were my slave…”

  And Mahran cocked his head in question.

  “It felt like you were more than that… like an Amarrian… like you weren’t truly Minmatar… and when you said those things to me, it didn’t feel like a disobedient and ungrateful slave… it felt like another… Amarrian… simply talking about his feelings… and I felt guilty…”

  Mahran simply stared back, nearly motionless.

  “And when I look at you… I see the Mahran I remember when I would take you onto the station… with the Amarrian alterations.” She paused again to think a quick moment. “What I’m saying is that I don’t believe you are Minmatar… I believe that deep down inside, you’re as Amarrian as any of us… there’s too much depth to you, Mahran… too much intelligence… too much of a soul… you couldn’t possibly be a Minmatar deep down inside…”

  She took a deep breath as she watched the initial blood tests, her fluid running from a new connection on her arm into a small analyzer, then back through another connection on a nearby artery.

  “Mahran, I will never give you another order as a master to slave… but if you so choose… I would like to be able to continue giving you orders… as a captain to an officer.”

  Mahran smiled a twisted grin, cocking his head. “How is that possible?”

  “You can have permanent alterations to your features and you can become a true Amarrian…”

  “What about my need for Vitoc?” he asked.

  “You can say you were accidentally infected… or you can simply tell the truth. You used to be a Minmatar slave, and now you’re an Amarrian starship officer and slave overseer, with all the prestige, glory and holy grace that goes with it. In twenty minutes I’m going to be joining the ranks of capsuleers, and if I say you’re Amarrian, then you’re Amarrian.”

  Mahran’s eyes gleamed, but his lips curled downward tightly in a conflicting grimace. “I don’t know…” he started.

  “You know Amarrian starships as well as most Amarrians and know slave management as well as anyone… and have a unique perspective…”

  He shook his head questioningly. “It’s my dark side… I still have conflicting… questions…” he started, “…about the core values of Minmatar protection…”

  She smiled and gripped his hand. “Come on, Buddy. You know how much you want this…” She smiled. “I think you’ll understand the system a lot better when you see it from the other side.”

  Mahran looked back with a sudden gleam in his eye, and broke a sharp grin.

  The End

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