So...Not The Cages For The Lions Side?

Posted on Sun May 26th, 2019 @ 9:22am by The Narrator & Staff Warrant Officer Blaise Birch

Mission: S1E3: Moments Of Consolidation
Location: Sleepers Bazaar, The Mire
Timeline: MD9 12.015AM

The Proctor lead them out of the hanger, and into what could only be described as a cattle car. Like the trams servicing Canopus Station's sprawling mass, the cars were segmented into dark metal boxes with slit-like window's along the wall. The Proctor gestured for them to get in, speaking in its lilting pipe organ like voice. And judging by the dark, almost brown stains in the dim light that hadn't been thoroughly cleaned from the platform leading to the carriage...well saying no was a very bad idea.

"Hey..." Rollin's said, fever-stricken eyes opening groggily to gaze out at the group. "What did I miss?"

Before anyone could answer the carriage's armoured doors slid shut, and with an efficient hum of electric motors, began to jostle and sway along an overhead track. After a few seconds of travel blazing light shone through the armoured glass slat of the wall. Beyond the glass was a vastness so large, it was a safe assumption to assume it was just 'space'. But not empty space. The carriage was riding along the outside of a sprawling mismatch of habitation modules and cargo racks. It was like someone had taken a space station model kit and used it to plaster over a crack.

And between the spars of metal and canisters of air, the foundation of which the Sleepers Bazaar clung to, was the bone white material that was a perfect match to the tower that had started this whole misadventure. It was orders of magnitude larger than the tower on Carpathia, stretching upwards and downwards until the all-encompassing light flooded out distance and logic. The Sleepers Bazaar was like a mould, clinging to the side of a massive white tree trunk in the middle of a blizzard.

And a more mixed metaphor you will never find.

"So...I have this gut feeling that we're not going to be having a great day here," Calhoon quipped.

"We've got to get out of here," Elias muttered, peering through the glass slat. Either that or get a signal out to friendlies. But how? At the moment he was short on ideas, and it was frustrating. He cast a concerned look at Rollins. How much longer would that pain sedative work?

"Kid, you see a way out you just let me know," Calhoon said looking around the car. "I mean I see four walls, and a ceiling and a floor, and that smell? Pretty sure that's not cinnamon. But pretty sure exits are not easily sign marked for your convenience."

He let out an explosive sign, and ran a hand through his unkempt hair.

"Look, way I see it Canopus Station took some pot shots at us on the way out system. We even got that comm signal for a bit, so they know we're alive. Plan on a rescue mission. We just survive what comes next, rest will sort itself out down the line," the pilot said. He turned to look at Blaise. "Why don't you try to talk to that Proctor thing? You know? Speak to it snarling monster of science to snarling monster of science?"

Blaise smiled beneath his dirty makeshift cowl. Even the dim light was near blinding. "It couldn't hurt," he said through stained teeth and lips. The crimson smear along his chin had turned pink as the dried blood had faded. "Some of us might not last long enough for a rescue operation."

"Yeah...and you don't look so pretty either Doc," Calhoon said under his breath.

The Proctor stood motionless in its virtual vigil of the prisoners. No, products. That's what they were now. "I beg your pardon," Blaise said to the abominable mesh of bone and metal. "I have to relieve myself. Where may I do that? I presume you wouldn't want excrement in this travel car where it may infect the others."

The Proctor remained unhelpfully silent. Something clicked inside its metal ribs, something chugged and burbled. Did the eyes seem to flicker, ever so slightly, with recognition? A twitch of the eye? A sense that, somewhere deep within that amber orb, a mind had awakened from a nightmare for just a second? Then the carriage began to slow rapidly, throwing everyone forward.

"Well," Blaise said with a shrug. "I tried."

Elias replied with only a single nod, his eyes fixed on the Proctor. He had observed Blaise's interaction with it. Information with which to begin building a mental dossier.

The armoured doors opened, and this time a wave of warm air shared through a hundred lungs rolled over them. A funk of sweat and alien biochemistry filtered in, rankling the noise and giving everyone an unpleasant awakening. Sidim made a low, moaning found of terror. They looked onto the platform, which emptied out abruptly into what a space station ghetto might look like. Multiple tiered levels of the same brown rust caked metal, with shakes of loose plates set up here and there to offer some privacy.

Almost as soon as they had arrived, a crowd of ragged dressed people was edging guardedly towards them.

"Honoured Sentient, please vacate the carriage," the Proctor said from its cubby.

Blaise stepped forward. "On me," he said. "When I give you the signal... run."

The rag-clad group bull rushed the carriage, screaming and hollering in a half dozen languages. Hands grabbed at useless combadges, pulled at clothing, the attempt at theft as clear as day as soon as one of the attackers tried to drag a bleary-eyed Rollin's away.

"HEY!" Calhoon said, driving that one to the floor as he began to wail punch after punch onto him. "Hands! Off! My! Crew! Chief!"

A pair of hands went for Elias's collar. Dirty fingernails scratched at his throat as they tried to pull off his shiny gold rank pips. Shouting in pain he threw a wild punch back at the offender. His fist landed squarely on the man's nose, which was ridged and bonier than a human's. It was like punching jagged rock. Elias, however, didn't stop, even as other hands grabbed at him. After three more punches the man let go, stumbling backwards as purple blood poured out of his nostrils. Elias continued to kick and struggle as he was knocked off his feet, but the blows were ineffectual. He disappeared under a sea of attackers.

Well, that wasn't how Blaise had foreseen the situation going. He had intended to be the one to go down swinging, but the Ops Chief had beaten him to the punch. Literally. There wasn't much more for him to do but dive in after him. One way or another, he would get his pound of flesh.

A high pitched undulating wail began to fill the air. If a sound could be said to be painful, then this sound was such. It wormed into the ear. It expanded in the mind. It rooted around in every bad memory, every sour thought, and exposed them like woodlice under a fallen tree. It was pervasive. It was intrusive. And it was horrifically off key. The raggedy clothed assailants let out a gasp of pain and clawed their way free of the Starfleeters. Those that could run did, whilst the one Elias had partway tenderised crawled as fast as he could back into the shanty town of shacks. Two of the attackers lay dead on the floor, or maybe unconscious. They might just have an overabundance of bodily fluids to leak out of.

The wailing fell away, and four new aliens stepped close. For the sake of novelty, they acted the part of a friend, the one in the lead even had his four-fingered hands up in a warding gesture of peace. He looked human at a first glance before you noticed he only had four fingers instead of five, and a pair of horns sprouted from his head and curled along the curve of his ears. Black hair turning grey at the temples, raggedly cut as though by hand, but presumably had once been cut professionally. The uniform he wore resembled something in a museum, a flight suit with pockets and patches that were presumably name and rank. Like something of a history of space travel circa WW3.

"Easy there friends..." he said, edging closer as the other three stayed back in the shadows. He placed a hand on his chest. "...if you can understand me, I'm a friend. I'm Commander Fenris of the Caledon Federation warp ship Suma. Not that that will mean much to you here. I and my friends mean you no harm."

Elias was on his back. He groaned and sat up. At the moment he couldn't care less about his first contact training. He was bruised, bloody, and had a throbbing welt on the back of his head where he had hit a metal grate. Also, the knuckles of his right hand felt like they were on fire. "If you're a friend can you get us out of here?" He asked Fenris, examining his hand and flexing his fingers to assure himself nothing was broken.

"And here I was hoping you might have an idea on that front," Fenris said with a smile, reaching out to offer Elias his hand. "I was 'gifted' to the Bazaar by a being called a Myriad. He destroyed my ship, killed some of my crew. When I arrived here a year ago, I had sixteen with me. Now its...well."

He waved back to the three other figures, who stepped closer. One was another horned humanoid figure, wearing a similar ancient spacefarers uniform as Fenris. His cheeks were a little more hollow, and one of the horn tips had been snapped off. The other two aliens who stepped forward looked nothing like Fenris and his comrade. Tall, thin, with skin patterned with blue and white zebra stripes and long drooping ears vanished down the collars of their cloaks.

"Might I introduce Jar'juum and Kal'furtin, formerly of the Royal Household Gaurd of Shishimi," Fenris explained.

"That is not the name of our station," one of them said, her voice edged with a core of steel to it.

"Yes but the other one has sixteen titles and an oath of fealty," Fenris said, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "And I don't think we have all day."

Elias nodded politely to them. "Name's Madrid," he said. Then, gesturing to the others, added, "This is Birch, Calhoon, and Rollins. We're from the United Federation of Planets. As you've probably figured out we're new here. Still getting to know the natives. Our research expedition was attacked and captured. You say you've been here a whole year? How long do they keep prisoners in this place?"

"Friend until a year ago I was sure I'd never meet an alien in my lifetime, but then again its been a year of first," Fenris said. He looked around the open air slum. "The Bazaar throws all of the slaves in here. That medical implant on your arm you got when you arrived, its a tag of some sort. Lets the Proctors know who to grab when the bidding starts. I'm in here because the Myriad I was 'loaned to' didn't like the fact I kept trying to escape. But the first rule of a prisoner of war is to escape harass the enemy, make it hard for them to operate. Don't see why that rule changes just because I'm not on Chadria anymore. If there is still a Chadria."

"We were exiles from our home when the rightful king of Shimi and all its celestial companion's was overthrown in a coup," Jar'juum said. She had been the zebra print alien to speak up, and her voice still held the same core of steel to it. "The royal guard slaughtered thousands of protesters who stormed the royal palace, but eventually we were buried under the weight of their incompetent corpses. Since then we have been here, whilst the rightful king of Shimi and all of its celestial companions is tortured by the Myriad Abborax. Meanwhile, we sit here, being fed, and fighting for the amusement of others."

"Which, to be fair was what we did before," Kal'furtin said. He had a lighter tone of voice, and stepped forward lightly on his feet, "But with less pageantry. I'm sure we won't be fighting any of you for long in the arena, you all look incredibly fragile."

"Arena?" Blaise canted his head to one side, his ears perking at the word. "Why would a slave market have a fighting arena?"

"The Lord Provider of the Concordance likes to see the slaves fights, helps inform him which of us has the right spark to make good soldiers for the crusades," Fenris said with a sigh. "These two are good fighters, but the Shishimi are immune to Concordance biohacking it appears. Something to do with their frighteningly effective regenerative abilities."

"I don't know. I think the last time they tried to infect me I lost the ability to smell salt at 30 paces. It's quite off-putting," the female Honour Gaurd said.

"And the Myriad like to watch if only to spite the Concordance during the bidding process."

"And if we refuse to fight?" Elias asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.

Fenris nodded towards the tram carriage as its armoured doors slowly closed up.

"You've met one of the Proctors right? There are two of them trotting around with horns," Fenris said, subconsciously reaching up to run a fingertip along his own. "My Biochemist and Geologists both took issue with this setup, point blank refused to fight. Their implants knocked them out, and a Proctor came along and took them. Killed another of my surviving crew when they tried to stop it. A day later, a new pair of Proctors turn up...the Harbour Master uses them up quickly, so it takes whatever the Myriad, the Concordance, and the Sleepless won't take."

"Fight, die, or become a bone puppet for a nameless horror," Kal'furtin said gleefully, clapping his hands together. "It's so nice when the rules are simple. I can't tell you how many times I wished the jousting tournaments back home were as simple as this. No banners, no special weapons, just brutal combat."

Elias traded a look with Calhoon and Birch. More than ever he wanted to leave this macabre circus. Again, how? Fenris and his people seemed capable enough. Professional and uniformed, like Starfleet, but they seemed to have resigned themselves to this place, even enjoying it in some bizarre way. Kal'furtin, in particular, was giving him all the wrong vibes.

So was the one with the broken horn. His silence was noticeable, as was the fact that Fenris hadn't introduced him. "Are you a friend, too?" Elias asked him in a neutral tone.

"Survivor," the broken horned one said, stepping a little closer. Like Fenris he was in a flight suit of antique design, like something from the chemical rocket era. "LIke the Commander said, we use to number a lot more than the handful you see here. You watch your friends get killed or dragged away only to see part's of them return connected to the Harbour Master's Proxies. See how friendly you want to be. Fenris-"

The Commander turned to look at him.

"-we don't need them. Their new, that means they'll be first up in the arena or the auction block. Being with them, providing aid, will only make us a target again. They're not our people, and thus not our concern," he tilted his head, and eyed Elias directly. "No offence. But I signed up to this mission to be the first Chadrian to break last speed barrier. And so far all I've been is an astronaut lost in some distant corner of the cosmos. Or hell? Maybe this is what the Lishti were muttering about back home during their holy wars?"

He shook his head and turned. One of the blue-skinned aliens, the female, turned and followed after the broken horned man.

"He's...had it rougher than others," Fenris said after a moment, looking back at the group of Fleeters. "Look, that gang will come back soon. My friends and I have a place, it's out of the way so it should provide you with some small sanctuary."

"You have a medic?" Calhoon asked as he propped Rollin's back onto his feet.

"No. But I took a guild certified medicant course when I joined the Caledon Defence Force," Fenris said with a weak smile. "Madrid right? That a military uniform you're wearing there?"

"Yes and no," Elias replied, the corner of his lip twisting into a wry smile. "It's a debated topic where we come from. But suffice to say we know how to fight." He rubbed the throbbing knot on the back of his head and added, "most of the time."

A guttural howl emanated from someplace unseen. Elias snapped his head this way and that. Indeed he could make out figures watching them from the shadows. Fenris was right. Best they be moving along.

"We accept your invitation," Elias said to him. "When we get there I'll tell you all about where we're from and these uniforms we're wearing."