Alex was dazed and fading fast, half-slumped and legs entangled in the rungs of a surprisingly little-worn ladder that presumably led between decks. One of her arms jammed into a hole which presumably led toward another area of the ship and not, in fact, outerspace. Her head had knocked against metal and her ragged breathing echoed upwards and downwards in a tube a lot smaller than galactic standard decrees for the engineer's Guild. This, therefore, was either an old ship or an unsanctioned ship, belonging not to a company who employed through usual channels--guilds, training salons, station rosters--but rather one which worked sans fleet. Dangerous, because the possibility of a captain and crew working outside recognizable boundaries meant it might not be up to regs in other areas, too.
Because regulations, more than what manner of ship and crew I'm dealing with in the first place, are SO important.
Why she was suddenly worried about regs at a time like this--or ever, because Alex only knew all of the rules to the letter so that she could definitively work around them as needed--made just about as much sense as her fuss over the toxic wasteland that was her hair. It was the kind of nonsensical logic that made her roll her eyes. And then hastily close them as the tube entrance overhead haloed thickly in her vision. The stilted voice came again--the one that'd said the Diem Vuong would be ejected. Rejected.
Useless.
As useless as she'd be in a series of maintenance tunnels...without her tools of the trade.
As useless as she'd be in moments, if her adrenaline kept plummeting and she lost her grip on the ladder in a bout of unconsciousness.
Frightened, he'd said. Was she? Alex pondered that sluggishly. She had been, and had burned that fear up in her scramble to get out of the bowels of nullspace--the horrifying wreckage and memories of the prison ship. But her body was no longer screaming at her to run like she had a comet trying to ram itself up her ass. It, like the passengers on the Diem Vuong, had ceased screaming completely.
That was a problem.
Forget 'Fight or Flight'. She was about to merely Fall.
"'M not scared. Happy. 'Live, a'least." The presently reedy tone sounded nothing like her own, lacking its usual lyrical muster and slightly slurred in the way of one teetering on the edge of a tragic mix of exhaustion and delirious relief. She sounded like Standard wasn't even her native language. Frell it anyway, I sound like one of those stereotypical spacepirates they put on the really bad vids on those econ skytours. The way her tongue and teeth refused to cooperate quite right to get more Standard-forged words past her tingling lips added a frustrated edge to her words. Maybe a little hostility. "More'n I can say fer the monsters a'like 'a hit."
She was speaking about her captors. He sounded as though he knew what had happened, and disapproved. It would be a point in the scrapper's favor, except...every word he spoke kind of sounded like it'd been filtered through a disapproval machine. And how much did he know? Had he really seen? Were they just patronizing words, or did he know the ship wasn't what its designation would have portended to be? Did he watch the hours and weeks of footage that held nothing but people screaming, begging, swearing they had no idea about this political regime or that high-ranking businessman? Did he know about her?
A rock of shame lodged somewhere between her shriveled stomach and the middle of her throat. It burned, and she was too dehydrated to let the rivers of sobbing, sniveling tears run free. She'd survived torture for entertainment's sake alone in the end. The cutting, the slicing, the laughter...the screaming...Had he seen? Had he heard?
A new thought struggled to make itself known through the haze of self-directed horror. What if his ship had been responsible for her freedom? Wouldn't that mean she owed him? No, she decided as the haze made her head loll against the ladder; if he'd blown up the ship to try to save people like her, he'd mucked it up. That damage had been done by someone or something intent on utter, all-consuming destruction. Even bringing her aboard, giving her the chance to breathe air sans restraints and interrogation techniques--it had been an unintentional save.
"No' sure I b'lieve safe anywhere," she said then, her sentences fracturing inward with a noticeable increase of shadows around the edges of her vision. "Could ya pass down a spanner? I'll jus' make a li'l nest down 'ere til we land; ya won' even notice I'm a'board." She flailed toward the voice with the arm that wasn't stuck, disappointed the sarcasm and bitterness that accompanied those words in her head hadn't made it up her throat. "Don' wanna impose."
Really, she had two options: Go up, with the stranger who despite the cool tone to his voice was in fact offering assistance rather than firing down the tube. If one presumed this wasn't because he had a bad angle to do the latter. Or she could go down. Tuck herself onto a solid platform under her own power before she simply collapsed.
Food. I should ask him to send down some of that too.
If she was completely honest with herself, the motivation of which direction to take was decided not by her brain nor her usually insatiable curiosity, but by her stomach. Only one of those options might get her to food faster. The same option might get her dead faster too. Either way, the gnawing hunger would be put out of its misery. Having decided "up", however, Alex found she had deliberated too long. Now she lacked the strength to get herself untangled and out of the shaft on her own.
"Ah," she said faintly, and smacked her hand high overhead against the tube, "can't move. Sen' help."
Because regulations, more than what manner of ship and crew I'm dealing with in the first place, are SO important.
Why she was suddenly worried about regs at a time like this--or ever, because Alex only knew all of the rules to the letter so that she could definitively work around them as needed--made just about as much sense as her fuss over the toxic wasteland that was her hair. It was the kind of nonsensical logic that made her roll her eyes. And then hastily close them as the tube entrance overhead haloed thickly in her vision. The stilted voice came again--the one that'd said the Diem Vuong would be ejected. Rejected.
Useless.
As useless as she'd be in a series of maintenance tunnels...without her tools of the trade.
As useless as she'd be in moments, if her adrenaline kept plummeting and she lost her grip on the ladder in a bout of unconsciousness.
Frightened, he'd said. Was she? Alex pondered that sluggishly. She had been, and had burned that fear up in her scramble to get out of the bowels of nullspace--the horrifying wreckage and memories of the prison ship. But her body was no longer screaming at her to run like she had a comet trying to ram itself up her ass. It, like the passengers on the Diem Vuong, had ceased screaming completely.
That was a problem.
Forget 'Fight or Flight'. She was about to merely Fall.
"'M not scared. Happy. 'Live, a'least." The presently reedy tone sounded nothing like her own, lacking its usual lyrical muster and slightly slurred in the way of one teetering on the edge of a tragic mix of exhaustion and delirious relief. She sounded like Standard wasn't even her native language. Frell it anyway, I sound like one of those stereotypical spacepirates they put on the really bad vids on those econ skytours. The way her tongue and teeth refused to cooperate quite right to get more Standard-forged words past her tingling lips added a frustrated edge to her words. Maybe a little hostility. "More'n I can say fer the monsters a'like 'a hit."
She was speaking about her captors. He sounded as though he knew what had happened, and disapproved. It would be a point in the scrapper's favor, except...every word he spoke kind of sounded like it'd been filtered through a disapproval machine. And how much did he know? Had he really seen? Were they just patronizing words, or did he know the ship wasn't what its designation would have portended to be? Did he watch the hours and weeks of footage that held nothing but people screaming, begging, swearing they had no idea about this political regime or that high-ranking businessman? Did he know about her?
A rock of shame lodged somewhere between her shriveled stomach and the middle of her throat. It burned, and she was too dehydrated to let the rivers of sobbing, sniveling tears run free. She'd survived torture for entertainment's sake alone in the end. The cutting, the slicing, the laughter...the screaming...Had he seen? Had he heard?
A new thought struggled to make itself known through the haze of self-directed horror. What if his ship had been responsible for her freedom? Wouldn't that mean she owed him? No, she decided as the haze made her head loll against the ladder; if he'd blown up the ship to try to save people like her, he'd mucked it up. That damage had been done by someone or something intent on utter, all-consuming destruction. Even bringing her aboard, giving her the chance to breathe air sans restraints and interrogation techniques--it had been an unintentional save.
"No' sure I b'lieve safe anywhere," she said then, her sentences fracturing inward with a noticeable increase of shadows around the edges of her vision. "Could ya pass down a spanner? I'll jus' make a li'l nest down 'ere til we land; ya won' even notice I'm a'board." She flailed toward the voice with the arm that wasn't stuck, disappointed the sarcasm and bitterness that accompanied those words in her head hadn't made it up her throat. "Don' wanna impose."
Really, she had two options: Go up, with the stranger who despite the cool tone to his voice was in fact offering assistance rather than firing down the tube. If one presumed this wasn't because he had a bad angle to do the latter. Or she could go down. Tuck herself onto a solid platform under her own power before she simply collapsed.
Food. I should ask him to send down some of that too.
If she was completely honest with herself, the motivation of which direction to take was decided not by her brain nor her usually insatiable curiosity, but by her stomach. Only one of those options might get her to food faster. The same option might get her dead faster too. Either way, the gnawing hunger would be put out of its misery. Having decided "up", however, Alex found she had deliberated too long. Now she lacked the strength to get herself untangled and out of the shaft on her own.
"Ah," she said faintly, and smacked her hand high overhead against the tube, "can't move. Sen' help."
Dreams come in a size too big so we can grow into them.
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