SD241712.17 - Log - Sails - "Rise of a Gardener" - part 3

Posted on Sun Dec 17th, 2017 @ 3:43pm by Sails-at-Dawn Mr

2,208 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Test Mission
Location: Trading Outpost
Timeline: Many years ago...

=^= Sails-at-Dawn, Age: 21 =^=

....Last Time....

After accepting a position aboard a cargo ship, the young Sails worked hard for a year, before his ship was attacked by pirates. In the last moments of the fight, a civilian passenger appeared and brutally cut down many of the pirates that were trying to kill Sails. That passenger was then wounded and rendered unconscious by the last pirate in the boarding party. The XO of the cargo ship used the self-destruct shortly after Sails dragged the passenger to an escape pod, taking out the pirate ship in the explosion.

The last time we saw Sails, he was tending the wounds of the unconscious passenger, as the escape pod powered towards a habitable world.

....And now....

She awoke to the sound of machinery.

With her eyelids open just a crack, her green eyes methodically scanned the room for enemies. As they did so, she did a physical inventory through extremely subtle movements. Her feet were not bound, nor were her hands. There didn't appear to be any kind of sensor attached to her head, nor did there seem to be any visible sensors for tracking her movements. This meant nothing though, as such sensors could easily be concealed in the walls.

After double-checking her conclusions, the black-haired former-passenger tried to sit up, and bit back a hiss of pain as she did so. Propping herself up against the wall, she lifted the coarse blanket that covered her body and confirmed what her midriff had just told her. Though the skin appeared to be unbroken, there was definite reddening, as well as some warning messages from the muscles in that area. Blunt impact trauma possibly, though the red skin suggested that someone had applied a dermal regenerator to an external wound. Someone with the medical expertise and intelligence of a trained ape.

Self-check completed, she turned her mind away from immediate tactical concerns and tried to absorb as much information as possible about her surroundings.

The room, she noticed, was terrible. Walls were a rough patchwork of different metals, with the door added as a sort of afterthought. The door's wall was of a fairly sturdy design, but the others seemed flimsy and hastily welded on. A large hall had been cut up into living spaces, she guessed. That meant that, if she had to make a quick escape, the walls to her left and right were probably her best bet. Still, to break though metal she needed some kind of weapon or tool. Looking around, all she could see was the cheap metal bed she was lying on, and a big blanket on the floor.

In fact, the blanket on the floor was crumpled and folded over itself. Almost as if someone had been sleeping in it. Possibly the same person that had taken her here, but that was just a guess.

Regardless, her attention was suddenly captured by the sound of footsteps approaching. Clutching her waist, as if the warmth of her hands could dull the pain, she got out of bed and staggered over to the door. She couldn't climb above it. Not in this state. But she could hide on one side and try to take the newcomer by surprise when he stepped through the door. Leaning against the wall, she closed one eye from the pain and gritted her teeth, trying to focus.

Sails opened the door to his rented room, trying to blink the tiredness away. His face and hands were filthy from the day's labours, he hadn't had a shower in days, and there were still things to do before he could allow himself a few hours sleep. No more than five hours though, as his shift on the maintenance crew started at 8am, and it was 2am already. Groaning at the thought, he staggered into the room, too tired to even make a sleeping beauty joke about the girl that was recovering in the bed. The empty bed.....

*Bam*

Sails' head hit the floor hard, and he barely heard the door hiss closed behind him as he struggled to see past the stars. As his wits came back to him, a fire erupted in his right shoulder as the arm attached to it was twisted up behind him. The girl straddled his back as he lay on the floor, a tear running down her face as her waist erupted in agony. Though despite the pain, the only sound that passed her lips was an angry "Who are you and why did you bring me here?"

"If you keep moving around," Sails replied, adrenaline shocking him awake "you'll damage yourself further, and I won't have enough Latinum to pay the medic to finish fixing you. By the way; you're welcome."

She scowled at the memory of her wounding, and also at the recognition of her debt to this streak of nothing, twisting his right arm behind his back to express her displeasure. In reply, Sails shifted beneath her and jerked his left elbow up to catch her in the head. She blocked easily, and twisted his other arm behind him. Spreading his legs wide, Sails fish-hooked against the floor and lifted the both of them up. Bending his knees under him and regaining his footing with her on his back, Sails righted himself and pushed hard against the floor as he fell backwards, slamming her against the door.

The pain proved too much for her in her weakened condition, and the world swam before her eyes, before going dark.

............................

This time, the black-haired girl awoke to find that her hands and feet definitely *were* bound. Sails had used his cleaning rags to bind her hands and feet to the four corners of his bed, and her waist was bound with his bedding, wrapped around the entire bed and tied in a big knot. As the girl groaned in pain and anger, she started yanking at her bindings, writhing under the bonds that held her. Watching from his seat on the cold floor, Sails only regretted that the first girl he'd ever tied to a bed was one that, judging from her expression, wanted to murder him with a hammer. He had considered just letting her leave, now that she was well enough to move; but her actions on the bridge of the cargo ship were not those of a chatty teenager caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. This girl had had some serious training, and she was his only source of potential answers. Still as her struggles got louder and more annoying, he began to question his decision to keep her around.

"I could have bought a ticket home with that Latinum." Sails complained under his breath, reaching for the backpack that held his make-shift maintenance kit. A few days ago, after the escape pod had limped into orbit around the nearest habitable world, Sails had taken one look out the window and spotted that it was an uninhabited dustball. Instead of landing on it and starving to death, he opted to travel an extra few hours and dock at the nearby trading station. After removing the first-aid kit and the meager supply of maintenance tools he now carried, he had sold the pod to a ship trader based on the station, using almost all of the Latinum paying a local medic to repair the girl's life-threatening wounds. The muscles were still damaged, but at least he didn't have to worry about her bleeding to death.

The rest of the Latinum had gone towards renting a room for the week in a seedy-looking motel. Though his thoughts at the time had been almost all doom-and-gloom, he realised later that it was actually a minor blessing. A reputable place would have questioned the fact that he was carrying an unconscious girl into a motel room. Instead, all they did here was grin. One person in the corridor had tried to buy an evening with the girl, and again each time he walked past. Thankfully he'd managed to avoid eye contact so far, maintaining the shaky illusion that he hadn't heard the man. Otherwise he'd be forced to turn the guy down, and Sails had no interest in tempting fate by angering a burly local.

Ignoring the girl's attempts to free herself, Sails unpacked his gear onto a clean section of flooring. This included a hardware pack, the remains of the escape pod's medkit, a small stash of latinum in a cloth pouch, a cut-price tricorder, his pocket padd, and a cleaning kit. It didn't take him long to check how much Latinum he had left, so he got on with cleaning his kit; setting the tricorder to diagnostic mode, and cracking open the cleaning kit. Scrubbing hyperspanners wasn't his idea of a fun evening, but it needed to be done. Right now his only regular source of income was a short shift each day with the maintenance crew for the station. The rest of the time was spent trying to find menial tasks to complete, which people paid a pittance for. These tasks were often dirty and degrading, but Latinum was Latinum.

Deep in thought, it took Sails a few moments to realise that the girl had stopped shouting and struggling. Setting down the hyperspanner, he looked at her face, and wondered if this meant she was ready to talk. It was then that he realised three things, all at the same time. The first was that her expression was even more thunderous than it had been a moment ago. The second was that she wasn't staring at him, but rather at something just behind him. And the third thing he noticed was the curious way his throat felt like there was a cold, metal blade being pressed against it.

"Don't worry my friend." A deep voice stated, as the owner of the voice placed a reassuring hand on Sails' shoulder. "Kitty acts that way with everyone."

The pressure on the blade increased, and Sails didn't even breathe. "Nothing personal." the deep voice said, as the hand on the handle of the knife tensed, ready to cut through his neck arteries like a spade through a garden hose, with much the same effect. People would get splashed, a mess would be caused, and someone else was going to have to clean it up.

"Wait."

The knifeman paused, surprised at Kitty's objection. From the way she'd been hollering (which had conveniently covered the sound of his entrance) he'd guessed her only regret would be not holding the knife herself. Striking Sails over the head the the hilt of the blade to keep him still, the knifeman quickly cut Kitty's bonds and offered her the knife. Instead of taking it, she scowled at Sails, and made fists of frustration. "He saved my life." she informed the knifeman, "The Order of Things....".

"The....oh kitty." The stranger said, putting away his blade with an exasperated look on his face. "What have you gone and done now? You *know* the rules. No witnesses. It was part of the plan, remember?" he stated, ticking off the stages on his fingers, "You sabotage the ship, let the pirates board, kill the Pirate Captain, eliminate all witnesses, jump in the escape pod, meet me here on the station, and we go collect the second half of the reward. Now we have this guy and...."

"He saved my life." she repeated.

"I know." the knifeman shot back, still struggling to wrap his head around this complication, shaking his head in utter disbelief. "So we can't kill him, and we can't leave him alive. Kitty, you've really messed this up. Quite badly, I think."

"If you two are going to have sex I can always leave and get stabbed later." Sails quipped, feeling too sick to run, but not too sick to make stupid jokes. 'Funny' wasn't really his thing, but the threat of imminent death, combined with the concussion, was causing strange things to happen in the privacy of his brain. One of the slightly less funny things was the realization that the wall he was leaning on was actually the floor, and his sense of equilibrium was completely nonfunctional.

Rubbing her sore wrists, Kitty ignored him. "Look," the knifeman said to her, helping her stand, "in any case, we can't leave him here. He has to disappear."

"We can't kill..."

"I *know*." the knifeman repeated, rubbing his eyebrows with both fingers to relieve the stress of the moment.

"Well, he can fight..." Kitty stated, exploring another option. "And we are low on applicants this year. Plus, with any luck he'll die in training." she added, with far more relish than Sails thought appropriate.

"Are you *kidding* me?"

"Any better ideas?" she shot back, sharply.

"Do I get a say in this?" Sails asked, trying to prop himself up on his hands.

"No" Kitty replied, crossing the room quickly and kicking him hard in the head. He rolled onto his back, and the room went dark as he passed out from the pain.

"Congratulations." the knifeman said to Sails' unconscious form, fishing three transporter beacons out of his pocket.

"Looks like you're going to be a Gardener."

=^= End of Log =^=


Sails-at-Dawn
Civilian
Versailles

 

RSS Feed