FVN Volume 6: Gamma-11, Chapter 6.3
Volume 6: Gamma-11, Chapter 6.3
I was thankful the Jessipie-90 crew tried to rally to our defense, but when the power armor soldiers aimed their guns at the surviving crew, they knew well enough to let it drop for now.
Like a good soldier, Willa followed orders and went into her cell without a fuss. Zyno ranted and raved and swore up a storm, insisting they would all hear from his union-rep. I thought briefly of fighting against them, knowing my genetic enhancements would give me the edge, but when I looked back at Eve, she still had that weird, dreamy smile with the predatory stare on her face, so I decided to get into my cell without complaint too. And as though she was being pulled in by a rope, Eve glided forward without a word and got into her cell smoothly.
All four of us caged in our containment cells, the soldiers pushed our chain-gang out of the hanger bay and into the hallways of The Judicator. Zyno’s cell was in front trailing behind the lieutenant, then I was next, Eve behind me, with Willa and the rest of the soldiers bringing up the rear of the convoy.
“This is absolute bullshit! We did everything we could to try and salvage the mission, and yet they’re going to arrest us over a fucking void singularity forming and destroying the entire system?” Zyno complained, and honestly I was surprised he was being so bold and aggressive, rather than scared over the potential consequences.
I wasn’t really amused, but I couldn’t help but chuckle at his attitude, “First time?”
Zyno turned around to glare at me from his mobile cell, “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I sighed and shook my head, “Welcome to my lot in life.” I hooked a thumb back to gesture towards Eve, “No matter what we did or how hard we tried to complete the mission, the Lord Generals would always blame any little problem on us. Guess you all just got roped up in our mess this time.”
“I’m sure they’re just following protocol after the system was destroyed. I mean really, an entire system was destroyed; you don’t think it’s important to fully investigate everything to find out what caused such a catastrophic event?” Willa reasoned.
I barked out a laugh then, “Oh yeah, totally reasonable, that’s why they’ve got us in cages now instead of just escorting us nicely to a normal debriefing.”
Zyno nodded along, “Adam’s got a point Willa; why arrest us if they just want to investigate what happened?”
I looked back to see Willa didn’t have a response to that. I didn’t exactly feel bad for her, but it was a little sad to see a normal soldier who’d risked her life for the Empire have the rug pulled out from under her so suddenly. She probably thought she was brave, maybe even heroic for everything she’d fought for so far, only to end up in a cage with the rest of us. Although I was sure Eve and I would be the ones who would face the actual wrath of the Lord Generals, blamed for absolutely everything that went wrong, I could see Willa’s faith in the system was starting to faulter.
As for Zyno, he’d been dealing with his own issues from high-command with all their restructuring of mission operations and research, and while he was only annoyed by everything so far, he was getting thrown into the deep-end along with us too—crash course in the real bullshit. And he wasn’t so naïve to think the Lord Generals had any good intentions with this nonsense.
I looked back to see Eve still had that distant look on her face, but it seemed colored with a little irritation now—a small frown on her face.
An actual reaction—was Eve finally coming back to herself?
“What are you thinking, sweet-thing?” I asked, trying to sound nice and friendly.
Regardless how weird Eve was being—and had been over the last two cycles, I still loved her beyond all reason, so I tried to power through whatever this was and made regular attempts to engage her in conversation, even though I’d been quite unsuccessful lately. And despite everything, I couldn’t help but hope her little frown might actually mean something.
Eve looked at me, and for the first time in a long time I saw her eyes focus on me once again—like she was actually there in the present and seeing me instead of just distantly watching me like some otherworldly predator.
“I don’t like they’ve put you in a cage, it’s not nice.” She said, sounding rather childish actually.
I quirked up an eyebrow, more than a little confused over her response, “Right, but it’s not like they haven’t done that before.” I said.
Eve nodded along, “I know, still, you don’t deserve to be treated this way.” She insisted, and I could see her eyes start to glaze over once again—her perception shifting to view things beyond my mortal comprehension.
“Evie? Hey, stay with me here.” I said quickly, desperate to keep her engaged with me then.
Eve’s frown melted away as her face turned to pleasantly neutral as a ghost of a smile framed her black lips once more, “It’s alright, we’ll get through this together.” She said, strangely sounding like she was drunk or drugged or something.
I had absolutely no idea what was going on with Eve at this point, couldn’t tell if she was just playing along with this timeline she perceived in the void she believed would lead to our freedom, or if her brain had been fried or scrambled due to all the void energy she absorbed when she became the conduit or whatever. It wasn’t like she explained any of it to me now, keeping me totally in the dark, and it seemed like every day she became even more distant.
~Eve, what do you want to do about this?~ I asked Eve through the humming vibrations of the inner-ear bone, something I hadn’t done since she returned from the void.
If Eve heard me she didn’t react at all—if she could. For all I knew this was a totally new Eve that didn’t have that same inner-ear thing we used for secret communication.
Of course that was just my fears thinking it wasn’t actually Eve there before me, but considering she was still contained within the same inhibitor field, I couldn’t imagine it was somebody else. And yet in a weird way, I almost wished it was someone else, rather than be my Eve who was just so strange and distant lately—like she wasn’t even a person anymore.
~Evie, please answer me~ I vibrated again, desperate to hear anything from her at this point.
Finally, Eve turned to me, and for a brief moment I saw what looked like pain flash through her eyes, and then it was gone, and that same vacant expression took over once more.
And then I knew whatever was going to happen with the Lord Generals, I would have to deal with it totally alone.
***
Unlike last time Eve and I were jailed, they put us all in separate rooms. Same as before, the room was rather spacious with a little bathroom, a small cot and even a hover-screen television monitor. The soldiers wheeled me forward, opened my mobile cell and deposited me into the prison room, then activated the repulser barriers to lock me inside.
I rushed forward and pressed myself against the barrier, but it was too late and the convoy moved the others passed me and out of sight. After all that I barely even got a handful of words from Eve, and I didn’t even know where they were taking her—or any of the others for that matter.
I turned around and went over to flop onto the cot; at least it was somewhat comfortable.
It was crazy the difference between the first time we were imprisoned on The Judicator and now. At least then Eve and I were kept together, and we spent hours talking and comforting each other, saying what we would do once we were free of the Empire and the mission—the adventures we’d go on together.
Now I was alone on the alien vessel, more alone than I’d felt in a long time—and in a jail cell no less.
It was weird I wasn’t really afraid of the consequences at this point, not like I was back during the court martial. I didn’t think it was just a matter of ‘been there done that’ either; it wasn’t like I was confident we wouldn’t be able to get out of this without serious reprimanding. Worst case scenario, the Lord Generals would wipe my mind and send me back to Earth, making me forget all about Eve and our time together, and I couldn’t even imagine a worse fate now.
And yet I couldn’t help but wonder if that would actually be a positive outcome instead. I mean really, I spent all that time on Vyrane feeling totally alone since Eve was in that hibernating state trying to hold onto her limited void energy. Then she was lost in the void for a few cycles in the Derrion System so I was actually alone. And now that she’s back she was even more distant—like I was in a relationship with a statue or something.
Then I had to wonder, were we even still in a relationship? What the hell was going on between me and Eve at this point? I couldn’t touch her since she said she was all volatile and filled with void energy, and then we barely talked because...I didn’t even know what, because she’d turned into some void conduit or something? Eve said freedom wouldn’t be that far away now, but would she stop being this weird void conduit once we were free—was she going to be like this forever after her time in the void?
I was already lying on the bed, but I wanted to melt into the floor to try and make myself and all my problems as small as possible. I felt like I was so totally stuck and helpless now.
Honestly the worst part of all this was how much I still loved Eve—how much I missed her. That’s why I was wondering if a mind wipe would be better, because there would be no way I could ever live without her now—could certainly never love anyone else like I love my Evie.
But no, I wasn’t about to give up on Eve—on our future together. We still had our forever, and it didn’t matter who got in the way of things—the Empire, the other Predazoans, or even Eve herself. I would continue to fight for us no matter what.
In all my life, she was the only thing I felt was worth really fighting for—worth dying for.
I didn’t know what the Lord Generals were going to do to us now, but even if she was acting like a damn statue, I wouldn’t let them take me away from my Evie.
It was then I started working on a plan for what to say to the Lord Generals to hopefully mitigate the damage; I thought over all the details of the last mission and everything that happened and all the decisions I’d made and tried to pick them apart from the most critical viewpoint. Getting separated from Eve certainly wasn’t my fault, so that was completely out of my hands. I then woke up in the medical bay and we found Doctor Hennor had died when we escaped void space, that certainly couldn’t be my fault. We teamed up with the Jessipie-90 crew then and started working together, looking for missing crew members until we were interrupted by the drone forms attacking Zyno. We used his device to find out someone on the crew had been assimilated and after we dispatched some more drones I revealed a half-truth about our true objective in hunting down the Predazoans.
I could see them complain about that protocol breach, but even Durgo admitted I handled it well, and I would be sure to tell them all that.
After that I couldn’t really do much to help with the efforts to get the ship back in working order, so instead I focused on trying to find Gamma-20 on the ship, using the last of the automated workforce to do it.
Well, after we had the robots search through the storage tank section of the ship, that was when Gamma-20 seemed to get a little aggressive in response to our invading her space, I guess the Lord Generals could blame me for that—even though my actions were totally justified, I was sure they would complain I could’ve handled it better. It did lead to a few more deaths after all.
Next, our infiltration team took the fight to Gamma-20, attacking her in the storage tanks. Again, I was sure they would be able to find some excuse to say I hadn’t handled the assault as well as I could’ve—especially compared to some properly trained agent. Didn’t see how that could be my fault, but I was sure the Lord Generals would be able to make that connection.
The assault really was messy of course, and we lost a few team members including Lieutenant Bryx and Agent Roote, people I’d been on previous missions with. And technically we totally failed as we played into Gamma-20’s hands as she killed and took over Durgo’s body—not that we knew until way later, obviously.
Thinking we were safe for a time afterwards, once more I was relegated to a more supportive role without much I could do to help as the crew worked on getting the warp reactor fixed—and then it blew up on us anyways, leading to the creation of the void singularity.
Seriously, from that point on it was just a catastrophic event leading to its natural conclusion; there was no way we could’ve ever prevented the destruction of the Derrion System.
But would the Lord Generals agree with that? Somehow I doubted it.
We desperately worked to get the emergency shuttle working again with proper shielding, and when we were just a few hours away from the system being totally destroyed, someone had to go back on the ship to disengage the repulser shielding to free up the shuttle so we could disembark. I was the one who took that role and went back on Jessipie-90, only to be confronted by Gamma-20 herself, revealing she’d taken over Durgo back in the storage tanks.
I almost killed her, got closer than any other mortal the Predazoan admitted, but I couldn’t finish her off, and that was when Eve made her miraculous reappearance.
She seemed so normal back then, happy to see me—even kissed me before saying we needed to keep our distance now. Then after we escaped Jessipie-90 on the shuttle and left the Derrion System, every day that passed Eve became more withdrawn until she seemed to turn into a statue that would only talk with me briefly when I engaged her.
Would the Lord Generals blame me for that too I wondered? Would they think I somehow broke their most valuable asset?
Honestly, they probably would, using me as a scapegoat for all their problems; the massive loss of profits from the Jessipie-90 khrona crystal contract, the destruction of an entire deep space system, and of course what happened with Eve now.
I went over the story again and again in my head, staring up at the ceiling of my little cell, trying to pick it all apart just to see how the Lord Generals would turn it around on me. But try as I might, I just couldn’t see how high-command could blame a simple human for all the catastrophes that took place in the Derrion System.
And yet I was sure they would try.
I spent hours working over my defense before I fell asleep. Sometime later I was awoken as guards delivered a meal to my cell, a surprisingly nice spread of some synthesized food; a large alien steak, multi-colored vegetable salad, some fluffy buttery bread, even a little piece of cake for dessert.
It’d been a while since I’d had a good meal, surviving on messed up synthesized food or limited rations on the shuttle, so I barely even noticed the normal artificial aftertaste synthesized food always had—seemed like gourmet cuisine to me.
I was surprised they fed me so well, made me wonder if things were looking good for me after all. Then again, it’s not like anyone even had to cook the meal, it was all just made through an automated food synthesizer.
Still, I was beyond hungry and eager to completely fill my stomach for the first time in quite a while, so I ate everything on the cart and left it by the doorway to my cell, then went back to sleep.
Being in a containment cell on a spaceship, it was hard to guess how much time passed; there wasn’t a clock on the wall, no sun or stars to gauge the time, and the available movies and shows that were just downloaded onto the hover television prevented me from seeing what time it was—almost like they were doing it on purpose, preventing me from seeing any live newsfeed or anything going on in the Empire.
It felt like they were purposefully trying to keep me isolated.
The guards continued to bring me food at regular intervals or when I got hungry, but not following any kind of schedule I could recognize since they worked around when I was awake or asleep, and since I didn’t have much to do in that boring cell, I ended up sleeping quite a lot.
After around a dozen meals were brought to me, I figured at least a few days must’ve passed, and I was getting beyond irritated with being stuck in the cell, alone, without any updates.
Finally, I’d had enough siting around, so the next time I was able to catch the guards, I had to ask them what was going on.
“Seriously, what’s the plan here—how long have I been locked up now?” I demanded.
Same as always, the guards opened the doorway to the repulser barrier to let my cart of food on through while taking away the old one. When the exchange was finished, the pair of alien guards paused and looked at each other, as though honestly considering just ignoring me then.
I let out a weary sigh, “Dude, come on, at least tell me how many days I’ve been in here.” I insisted.
The first guard seemed like he wanted to duck out of there quickly, but the younger of the pair stayed to answer my question.
“It’s been four days.” He confirmed.
I threw my hands up in a frustrated gesture, “Any idea when they’re going to get around to talk to me about the charges?” I asked.
The younger guard shrugged, “I don’t know, all I know is you’re last on the list of people high-command is going to interrogate.”
I quirked up an eyebrow, “Last? Why?” I pressed.
The first guard grabbed up the younger man by his bicep and pulled him away, “Mern, we’re not supposed to talk to the prisoner.” The man said as he pushed his partner forward to take the cart from him.
The younger guard didn’t seem overly concerned, “Why not? Seems like nothing much has happened with the other prisoners either, especially the Predazoan asset.
“Mern!” The first guard hissed, and then the two exited through the far door, and their argument was cut off from me then.
What the hell did that mean nothing much happened with the others? And what all had Eve done—or not done?
Well, that would probably be easy enough to answer; if she barely even engaged with me now, I would bet she was giving the Lord Generals the silent treatment too.
Question was, would that piss them off even more than they already were after Jessipie-90’s valuable cargo was lost?
I realized then all the speculation and planning in the world wouldn’t help me; the Lord Generals were going to do what they were going to do, and there was nothing I could do or say that would change their minds—make me look better in their eyes.
Trapped in that cell, isolated from my enigmatic soulmate, I decided to finally release the tension and worries that had been building up since I was reunited with Eve, and instead trust she had a plan after all.
And if she didn’t, well, I didn’t want to think about the alternative.