Cellmates

Elka was an abductee from Earth, plucked from the heart of the Hydroponic Continent, which region encompassing nearly all Eastern Europe and West Asia was the only green area left on that planet. The pirates had picked her up with powerful attractors, lifting into the air not only herself but the great metal machine she'd been driving to cut down trees. It would have been her first time razing to the ground a plot of more than two hectares all in one go. And then, out of nowhere a Jovian sphere dropped out of the sky to ruin everything.

The last she checked, one week had gone by since leaving home. It felt like aeons.

Her trip aboard the relay ship had been promising. The pirates were impressed with her for resisting the standard brainwashing procedure which should have rendered her a mindless, docile hulk. They allowed her out of her cabin. She was allowed to wash in the common bathroom alone. They shared their rations with her. Most importantly, she was able to spend time ingratiating herself with her own captors. Each of them she knew by their first name at the end, even Caslor Croker himself, their leader. Each name, each sliver of an amicable relationship she meant to try and nurture, to earn favours and useful connections. No matter what bizarre customs and laws the Outworlders could possibly have, they were still human, by her reckoning. Even amongst them, there must be hope for someone who had friends. One day she might return to the Core. Elka had no license to travel to another country let alone travel anywhere offworld, so there was every chance that her **** would be recognized and compensated accordingly. Surely, to leave Terra needn't be so bad if you played the game wisely?

In fact it was all for naught. The work was futile, and now she knew why pirate raids were still happening. Upon boarding the asteroid, she saw Marshall Mainwaring of the Triplanetary War Fleet walk calmly up to Croker, and greet him as Captain. Only once he looked her way. His was the face every babe in the Core knew as the living shield. His face bore the scars and wear of decades serving solely to protect the Alliance from its many enemies. His one blue eye shining out beside its ruined neighbour was the beacon of security in the Solar System. At the sight of her, that same face twisted with disgust as though gazing at a pile of stinking cow dung.

After Croker carried her up to her new prison, time lost any meaning. It was a small dormitory, with bunks for four crewmen. With the low gravity she rested comfortably on a thin mat, her mass barely making an impression. She knew there was a window in the roof through which to see outside the ship, but it was closed. Darkness, and no sound but her own breathing provided little motivation to do anything but dwell on her sorrows, so she allowed her thoughts to spiral that way unabashedly. Hours, minutes, a whole day could pass for all she cared. It took nearly being throttled by Charlotte to wrench her back to the present.

Hands fell on her upper body and pressed down briefly as if the person were stumbling for support. They traveled upwards until feeling around Elka's neck. She stayed still, unwilling to make any sudden moves with anyone playing about her throat, but also not sure how to respond. While she hesitated, the grip jumped down and started shaking her by the shoulders like an old rag.

"Wake up!" a voice said in a hoarse whisper, "You're not cold and stiff, so snap out of it!"

Elka tried to speak, but her voice was hoarse too, and barely made a sound. Hearing no response, the stranger lifted her bodily from her bunk and to her feet, which was no difficult task in this place. Not content to simply stop and see whether she would remain standing, one of the grasping hands let go, and came back to slap her across the cheek.

The pain was trifling, but enough to break Elka from her sullen trance. Surprise and a little anger drove her arms forward, palms open for a defensive shove. A soft substance yielded in her fingers, but was gone before she could determine what it was. Her assailant yelped and relinquished their hold on her instantly. There was a loud bump from somewhere ahead, followed by soft noises of hurt.

Elka remained fixed with her arms outstretched, trying to divine what that bizarre flash of sensation might have been. So busy being confused, she jumped when the void coughed, and called out to her.

“I assume that means you are awake,” said a female voice. “Better be more gentle next time.”

“Um, y-yes, I’m awake,” Elka stammered, “Sorry if I hurt you...”

The stranger grunted in dismissal. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, “It’s my own fault. Although the past couple of days haven’t been very charitable on my temper.”

"I can imagine..." Elka thought of her company aboard the sphere, hurtling away from Earth in a seventy-foot wide ball, and sharing the living space with twenty strange men from a dozen pocket-worlds. She had been lucky to impress the pirates into treating her well. Who knew what this girl had been through in a week? "Abduction, then?" she asked, although sure of the answer.

"Yup."

The pair fell silent. It was a mighty tits-up back-flip their lives had just taken, and the utterance of a small contraction made an improbable monument to their experience. Neither could see the other, there was no clue as to what they looked like or what they might be truly thinking. But both instinctively knew each other to be sharing that surreal moment.

Suddenly **** to change the subject, Elka offered her name. With introductions out of the way she then asked "So what's all this about being cold and dead, then?

Charlotte reached out and tugged on her arm. “We have a corpse for company,” she said, leading Elka on a perilous excursion of roughly three paces into the dark. “This is the other bunk bed in here. I was up top. See for yourself...”

Elka knelt down, and reached out slowly. She found the metal frame of the bed, and from there worked her way to the mat. Indeed there was someone lying on it. Their skin was cold as ice, and they didn't move a muscle when she squeezed the nearest hand to her. Still, she lowered her head to where she thought a mouth might be. "You're sure this is dead?" she asked Charlotte.

"What else do you call it when there's neither breathing nor pulse?"

But there was a prickle of sensation on Elka's ear, and as she kept a finger on the person's neck, she could feel life-blood flowing in the flesh, sluggish and unusually viscous, but steady nonetheless. "Either sleeping," Elka told Charlotte, "Or patiently awaiting orders." She straightened up. "If there's anybody else in this room besides Elka and Charlotte, say your name."

Without pause came the reply, two words fired out of the darkness as if on a hair trigger, clear, sharp and yet utterly lifeless. “Ashara Traken.”

It was another feminine voice, but void of the innate human spark, passionless and ice cold, spoken only as the instinctive response to a direct command. The spirit it belonged to was one completely taken over and reformed into an engine of pure, faultless obedience.

Elka nodded to herself. “Thought so,” she said. “Won’t do anything but lie there until given tasks. Wouldn’t even eat unless told to. A living automaton.” An automaton, she thought to herself, who would never feel despair again. There was a funny kind of freedom in that.

“Conditioning?” Charlotte murmured. “We read about this in school ages ago... You turn into a half-alive zombie.”

“Unless you’re immune,” Elka said, “And I am. I reckon you are as well.” She reached out and took hold of Charlotte's arm. "Come on, let's leave her be. I've no idea how to undo this."

They returned to the other bunk bed, but did not linger there. When told of the possible sky-window, Charlotte insisted they get up to find it, and Elka offered no resistance. Any distraction from her funk of emotions was welcome, besides which it might elucidate what on Earth she had touched when defending herself. In searching their cell, its shape was revealed to be circular, roughly fifteen feet in diametre, with perfectly smooth walls. Every surface radiated heat uniformly, save for a patch in the middle of the floor. There were no additional bunk beds, and the remaining space was empty of any other furniture.

“Hold it, I’ve found something,” Elka called out, “On the wall between yours and my bed. I think it’s a button...” She pressed her finger on the round plastic knob.

The air throbbed with a low, rapidly oscillating hum, and above the roof began to open up. From across the room, Charlotte gasped in surprise, startling Elka, for was this not the purpose of their little quest? Up there, two semi-circles moved slowly apart revealing a large dome, tinged purple in the natural shade of the transparent metal, isonon. And beyond, almost filling the heavens appeared a huge rust-coloured disc, criss-crossed thousands of times by the pale green lines of the canals. The cabin was bathed in shades of violet light, illuminating at last its interior, and its occupants.

“Oh, Grud.”

“Hey,” Elka said, “That’s Mars. Is that where you’re from? No wonder you were asleep when Croker brought me in...” She looked over to Charlotte. “Oh.”