After being overtaken by
the Xaosian soldiers, the windows on the Evacuation craft were
blacked out entirely; Tors had no idea where they were being taken,
but the voyage seemed to take an age without any sense of time or
distance. The Xaosians had put guards outside of each cabin, and the
residents of which were violently “encouraged” to keep silent.
Cane, Pandora and Emola exchanged glances with Tors, but he couldn't
read what they were meant to convey.
When they were unloaded
onto a planet, Tors could see exactly what planet it was through the
high barbed-wire fence; Irin. The domed cities gave it away; he
wished he was in there, rather than an open-air prison camp. There
was no-where to sit or sleep but the hard ground; essentially, the
prison camp was a large square of land surrounded by a barbed-wire
electric fence. Xaosians guarded the outside, and patrolled the
inside, guns in hand; Tors couldn't identify the type, he had never
been interested in guns. Food was distributed by various cooks, who
presumably were doing this against their will, travelling from the
nearby city to deliver the small food rations.
Sat to the left of Tors
was Cane, with Pandora and Emola on his right. Cane looked troubled,
moreso than any others; he was the only Raanian here, perhaps the
only human; Tors couldn't see any others, anyway, but he hadn't
really been desperate to find one. While Cane was lonely in terms of
species, he also missed his wife and child on Raan. Hearing about the
quakes from whisperings by the guards had stunned him into silence
and anger. No tears, just rage at his home being destroyed; he had no
idea if they had survived, but his optimistic streak hoped they were.
His realist side, however, accepted them as gone, but he tried ignore
it.
A small Scaliman child
shuffled past Tors. Tors smiled at him, and the kid tried to smile
back, before one of the Xaosian guards jabbed him in the back with
their rifle. “Move it kid, get back to pen seven.” The kid fell
to his knees and, as he tried to pick himself up, he looked at Tors,
his smile sliding off his tear-streaked face. “Move!” The guard
forced him up, and pushed him, the kid nearly falling down again.
“Hey!” Cane stood
up. “Leave him alone!”
The guard pointed his
gun at Cane, who strode over to the guard. The kid ran away, scared
of both the armour-clad guard and the large, loud man. “Cane,
stop.” Tors placed his hand on Cane's shoulder, but he continued
walking.
The Xaosian shifted
stance so that it was somehow both defensive and mocking. “I'd sit
back down, if I was you. Both of you.” As Tors realised that the
voice was female, she gestured to both of them with her gun. “Now.”
Cane swung a punch. The
Xaosian blocked, returned one in the gut. “Sit down!” She yelled.
Other prisoners rose up. Shouting and roaring soon turned to
screaming as gunfire pierced the night. The Xaosian pushed Tors
aside and shot Cane in the knee. He screamed and fell to the ground.
Without hesitation, she shot at other prisoners before smashing the
butt of the gun into Emola's face, and kicking Tors down to the
ground. “Enough!” She yelled over the sounds of violence. She
then spoke into a com. “I authorise deadly force.”
Screams were silenced,
one by one. Some surrendered, some died; it was one of two choices,
there was no middle-ground. Cane clutched his knee, gingerly dabbing
at the blood with a piece of blue fabric torn off of his shirt. The
guard came over, and Cane backed away. “I only want to see.” She
moved his hand out of the way, looked at the damage, and called for a
medic from the nearby city.
“Why bother helping?”
Pandora asked.
“I don't want you to
die.” Tors noticed that a small badge on her com identified the
Xaosian as Kivina. “I just want you to do as I say. Xaos hasn't
said what to do with you, but he'll probably want you alive. For his
army.”
“We'll never join him.
Not after this.” Tors gestured around the camp.
Kivina gave a sad smile.
“I said that once. But then,” she pointed at a small silver
device in her ear, “he can be very persuasive.”
No comments:
Post a Comment