Fractured perfection
15 Aug 2017Ouberos
The Diamond was bigger than his fist and in the gloaming of the utility lights it flashed with a brilliance at odds with the grime of the interrogation room. “Is this what you came for Commander? Is this what you are willing to die for?” The Federal officer asked but the hooded man, strapped to the chair in front of him gave no response. Head down, he seemed to have slipped into unconsciousness again. The Fed smiled at his prisoner and returned to contemplating the jewel.
“Isn’t it odd that we judge a diamond on its flaws? That the value of it, is in the manner in which it is broken,” he mused and twisted the gem in and out of the shiv's of dusty light.
“Perhaps Diamonds and people are not so different eh?” he asked quietly.
“Your co pilot for instance, she is quite a diamond herself is she not? Perfect at first glance but flawed on the inside, deeply flawed indeed,” he said and was not surprised when the man in the chair stirred and lifted his head. He coughed before he spoke and struggled to speak.
“What have you done with her? She does what I tell her to, nothing to do with this. Let her go,” he whispered.
“Done with her? I haven't done anything with her. Yet,” he replied and turned his back on the prisoner while he put the diamond back on the metal table. Put it next to an ugly array of instruments designed for the implementation of pain upon another human. Sharp, steely instruments. Long, thin ones with hooks and heavy things for breaking bones. A heating iron and a cattle prod.
“So far you have had all of my attention. Although that will soon change if you continue to withhold what I want to know,” as he spoke his hand drifted over the items on the table and he hovered indecisively over the cattle prod and a hooked skewer.
“Fuck you,” said the prisoner defiantly and the Fed sighed as he picked up the heavy prod.
“Very well,” he said and sparked the cattle prod into life. Then he turned, swift like a killer and rammed it into the chest of the prisoner.
The explosive bang of discharge was quickly drowned out by screaming.
The Federal officer rubbed the back of his neck with a towel while he ordered some refreshment from the instamat food dispenser. The Pirate was a stubborn one and he felt it had been time to take a break from the beating before the man died. A younger officer in an Academy crisp uniform watched him nervously.
“I don't like this Sir, we don't have orders to torture people. If the Admiral finds out we could be,” he said, voicing the panic he felt but the other cut him off.
“The Admiral won't find out though will he? Our job is to protect this facility, at all cost. This Pirate intercepted one of our shipments and was trying to sneak into the outpost, silent running engaged, drives so cold they must be secret Imperial tech. I've never seen a Python like that one. Mark my words, he isn't working alone and If you think him being here is a coincidence maybe I should start asking you some hard questions,” he snarled and the younger man backed down with a stammer and raised hands.
"What's the girl up to? I think it's about time I started on her,” he said and switched on the monitor to the other interrogation room. The contrast between the two rooms was startling.
It was a brightly lit space with furniture designed for comfort rather than pain. A screen on one wall acted as a window that showed scenery captured from the Earth like world which orbited the very distant Primary star in their binary system. The camera was positioned behind a two way mirror and the girl in the room was using the mirror to carefully apply lip stick. She was undeniably gorgeous, long red hair and pale skin. Eyes as grey as a deep ocean storm. If her captivity alarmed her she gave no sign.
“You gave her that?” He snapped, pointing at the vanity case on the table and the younger man backed up.
“She, she asked for her makeup. I checked it all through the security first. You said to keep her quiet, I figured it wouldn’t harm anything,” he replied.
“This isn’t a beauty parlour, this is” but he was interrupted by the low hum of the K-Cast as it cycled into life. They turned to look at the projector as an unusual origin sequence began. A sequence which signified the message was high priority, that it was being transmitted on an ultra high encryption. That it came from Sol and it was from the High Admiralty.
The message was taking its time to come through. The distance between their location and Sol was very great and the encryption was complex. The machine syphoned the data from the quantum tunnel as quickly as it could but there was still some uncertainty to the result for some time.
“What the frak?” swore the older officer as the projector began to paint a picture in the air. There was a worrying familiarity to the set of the phantom. The younger officer gave out a little whimper and a penny dropped for the older man.
“Have you? Have you told anyone about these two?” he asked and the younger man went pale.
“I just ran their sequences through our database to see if they had any priors, its standard operating procedure back in the Academy,” he stuttered as the rage visibly boiled up in the other.
“Academy?” roared the old officer and he pointed at the ghost that was rapidly being fleshed out in midair.
“Academy? This is a top secret facility, this is an off the grid, ultra dark operation. This is one of Hudson’s private piggy banks and you ran their sequence? Through the FEDERATION databanks?” he screamed and a little spittle shot across the room and flew through the now fully formed hologram of the stern faced President. It was fair to say, he looked less happy than usual.
“Oh shit,” said the younger man.
It was a one way conversation. Partly because President Hudson was not to be interrupted but also because the signal was very bad. Something was throwing the K-Cast off and the hologram had a habit of breaking into static and then beginning again. The ending of the message was completely lost in a flurry of interference with some random Imperial Holo-log. They got the basics down quite quickly though. First and foremost they were both about to be relieved of their duty by an incoming spec ops military convoy. The facility was going to be shut down and relocated. They were also in deep shit. The deepest shit it was possible to get in. Shit so deep there was no end in sight. A posting to New Yembo wouldn’t be far enough away to avoid the shit they were in. It was likely they were going to be thrown to the Thargoids or simply spaced at the first opportunity then used for target practice by the first Capitol ship he could summon. The President became quite graphic when he described the sort of shit they were in.
Hudson also made it clear the prisoner was not to be harmed that they were valuable to the Federation in some way. He made it clear that any shit they were in now would be nothing compared to the shit they would be in if the Prisoner escaped or died.
When the message finally broke down into holographic fractal static the older officer sat down slowly and put one hand over his heart. His Angina was kicking in bad and his mouth was dry as a long dead world.
“Fifty years, fifty years I’ve been in the service,” he said quietly and fixed the younger man with a washed out desperate eyed stare of an old man who knows the writing’s on the wall.
“Fifty years and you fuck me with Academy standard operating procedure on a black ops career posting. You greenhorn bastard,” he said quietly but the younger man didn’t care too much because the President had just called him something far worse.
The beeping of the bone mic had been insistent for some time.
“I’m not dead,” he finally responded.
“Sure? I could hear a lot of screaming back there,” said Kara.
Ouberos wasn’t firing on all four but he could have sworn there was a note of concern in her voice. Which, considering her mental state was obviously not the case.
“Yeah, what a prick. I didn’t figure on Hudson staffing this place with fucking sociopath’s. No offence,” he said but Kara simply made a noise that said she agreed with him.
“The good cop is kind of sweet though,” she replied and told him how he had brought her vanity case from the ship. The special case she saved for emergencies like this.
“Then he did something very silly. He sent a message out. Broke silence and it got bumped on the Fed Data squirt by a big fish,”
“Oh, how big?” he asked. She told him and he was quiet for a while. Ouberos was an experienced card player but his silence was as loud as any tell.
“I managed to interrupt the return stream with the buoy we dropped outside but I think they got some of the message back. It looks like our plan will need to be speeded up a little. We do still have a plan don’t we?” she asked and was relieved when Ouberos laughed a little and told her that of course they still had a plan. Nothing had changed. Which, Whether it was true or not, was exactly what she needed to hear.
Then she cut the comms and went back to her makeup. She laid out her tools carefully next to each other on the table. Scissors and emery boards, lipstick and an eye lash curler. A folding mirror and a powder brush.
Small things designed for a task more civilised than mere torture.
Then from the bottom of the vanity case she took out a circular tin and popped it open to reveal a pale powder that looked like some kind of delicately shaded blusher. Very carefully she placed it on the table besides the other things and was quite certain to not spill any.
After that she sat down and waited quietly for the door to open. Every known and then she glanced at the makeup to check it hadn’t spilled out.
The door opened and a tired looking old Federal officer came in. She sat still as a rock as he approached but felt a flutter of excitement in her stomach. He was the bad cop sociopath she thought and smiled a little on the inside because they had something in common already.
Ouberos took the offered water bottle from the younger officer and raised it to his mashed lips. He swilled his mouth first and spat the bloody water out. A broken molar tooth clattered across the dirty floor.
They both looked at it for a while and the young officer made a face.
“Sorry,” he said quietly.
“Your boss is an asshole,” said Ouberos and the younger man couldn’t disagree.
“He is what we call a time served low ranker. It means someone who has been in service for long enough to have made Admiral by now but prefers to stay in the junior ranks out of stubbornness or in his case because he likes being an asshole too much,”
“So why the change of tune? How come he isn’t in here giving me the cattle prod again?” Ouberos asked and flexed his fingers, checking they still worked.
“We, have been ordered to treat you carefully and with more respect,” the young man replied truthfully. Ouberos had already decided that the lad was far too honest to survive much longer in the Federal navy. Ruining his chances of promotion early on was likely the kindest thing he could do. Although he quickly reminded himself that it was more likely that he would have to do something less kind to the younger officer.
“President Hudson himself is err, interested in you,” he said, which gave Ouberos reason to pause.
“What did you do?” the young man asked somewhat in awe and in all honesty Ouberos was beginning to wonder himself. One thing was sure, what ever it was, he didn’t plan on finding out.
He sent a message to Kara.
We might have to improvise. Anytime now would be good.
“You look like a man on the edge,” Kara reacted to the message by taking the initiative and started the conversation. The older officer sat down on the other side of the table and did not speak. He took in the vanity case, passed over the line of tools and the tin of make up. In a daze his eyes finally settled on her. He hunched forward as if he wanted to speak but no words came out.
Kara took up a file and began to use it on her nails while she waited for him to gather his thoughts, taking care not to slice her fingers open with its razor edge.
“Why are you so calm?” He asked eventually and she stopped filling. In her case, that was a complicated question. She put the file down in exactly the same place it had come from and picked up the small folding mirror and large headed soft brush.
“In the past, I was told on a daily basis that I wasn’t well. There is an imbalance in the way my brain works. I believe the technical term for people like me is sociopath. I've had many treatments. I’ve endured, amongst other things, cognitive remapping, drug therapy, and a full brain plasticity rework, including the subsequent, permanent memory wipe, but none of the cures take. After a while my brain reverts to its previous base level,” she explained, fixing him with her thousand yard stare.
“By all accounts that is quite unusual. However, despite the novelty the Doctors gave up in the end and dropped me into the darkest hole they could find, where I remained in solitary stasis for a very long time. Personally I think my lack of emotional context gives me advantages over the normal people. As long as I keep my other problems under control I can often remain calm in situations that would terrify most people into inaction,” she replied as honestly as she could. The Fed had listened quietly and eyed her warily. Eventually he nodded as if he understood.
“I'm guessing you pair didn't know what this place was when you docked with my diamonds on board did you? Are you aware its unlikely you will leave here alive? Hudson seems keen on your partner but he never mentioned you,” he said to her but Kara just shrugged and picked up the circular tin of pale make up, looking for all the world like she was going to dip the brush into it. She paused mid action.
“I suppose you could always decide to let us go in exchange for a cut of what we get when we rob the place?” she suggested but his silence spoke volumes about his career long stubborn streak.
“I didn't think so,” she said. Then she took a deep breath and blew a great cloud of makeup into his face.
Only Kara was a cold eyed Sociopath that science couldn’t fix and the powder in the tin wasn’t make up.
The nucleus accumbens shell is a deep brain structure. It’s part of the oldest section of our cognition and links neural threads from the amygdala to the brain stem itself. On the surface of the shell are a specific set of neurons and it was those few cells which the powder was designed for.
If you were able to slice away the cortex of a man you would take away only his awareness of himself. Were you able to slice out the “little brain,” the Cerebellum at the back you would only reduce his ability to make smooth and conscious movements, perhaps silence the language which sets him above the rest of creation, but were it possible to slice out the old brain, to cut out the brain stem and the structures within it you would soon discover that 300 million years of cortical evolution isn’t worth squat without an operating system.
The powder in the make up tin had originally been Gaewen dance dust, a rare drug which came with its own dance track and hedonistic pleasures but the functional properties of the dust had been hacked by Black Omega’s Bio terrorist, Dr Glaboski. Hacked and re-engineered into something much less recreational and much, much less welcome. The dance music was the first thing he removed. Where that had been there was only complete silence. Not just the silence of an empty room but the utter, pregnant silence of deep space. A blanket of total hush. An avalanche of silence that trapped the user in their own head and left them reaching for anything to fill the void.
The Gaewen dance stimulants were thrown out next. Where they had been were now only dendritic spines which dripped with agonist like the fangs of a viper. The germ like delivery system sliced nano holes into the soft tissues of the nose, eyes and mouth so as better to deliver their weaponised neurochemicals into the thumping rapids of the blood stream. The final thing the Doctor removed was the lucid visuals Gaewen was famous for. In its original form dance dust held the hands of the user and let them play with its music driven Psychoactives. The dust Kara had blown into the face of the old fed wasn’t looking to hold hands with anyone.
On the surface of the Nucleus accumbens shell were a set of neurons which controlled our cognition of reward. It was here that the message in the dust accumulated and began to fire. From the moment the cloud of silvery particles had enveloped his face the old Fed had been plunged into his own personal cocoon of horror. He had lost all of his senses to the invasions of the dust and within a few heartbeats was transported to an alternate state of pure despair. Blinking through the cloying dust all he could see were swirling lights that accelerated and moved with sickening speed around him took away all of his ability to think beyond the need to make panic filled screams. Only he could no longer hear himself scream.
Kara watched him writhe for a while. In her time she had experienced more than one psychotic event of her own. She couldn’t empathize but her thoughts drifted back to the days before she became a pirate. Back before the darkness of the asylum. To the therapy and the experiments. To the memories she could no longer find and the feeling she was missing something important.
Her own emotions were strangers to her. At the best of times she experienced them as if through a veil, they were obscured and distant. At the worst of times it was as if she viewed them through a kaleidoscope. Watching the Fed struggle with the psychological poison brought her closer to the kaleidoscope than she had been expecting. She looked away from him, did her breathing exercise and counted out ten things around the room to ground herself. Then, when the veil was firmly back over her feelings she adjusted the small mirror until it gave out a quiet sound. She held it up to her mouth and spoke into it.
“The good news is the psychoactive components of the dust have reached their peak. Shortly they will fade away completely. Unfortunately the bad news is that you will never be the same person again,” as she spoke the Fed stopped twitching and lifted his head up, his blind eyes staring around the room. Kara struggled not to laugh at the state he was in. Snot and foam smeared his cheeks and his face looked like he had been heavily antiqued with glitter.
“I lied, the really bad news is that you are now going to do exactly what I say and there is no way you can resist. The drug I have given you is by now lodged in various hedonic centers of your neural pathways and is turning the sound of my voice into the most powerful reward stimulant the human brain can receive. All I have to do to chastise you and drop you back into that silent oubliette inside your skull is to simply, stop talking,” she said and showed him exactly what she meant by going quiet while she updated Ouberos on the internal mic.
This stuff seems to work ok. You can call in the transporters if you want. This one will be deactivating the defences very soon. What are we doing with the other one?
Ouberos nodded as he replied and flexed his fingers some more. Then he took a long look at the younger Fed.
“Have you ever realised you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time?” he asked and the naive young lad didn’t understand what he meant until it was too late.
“looks like we surprised them. They only emptied storage bins Bravo and Omega,” Captain Selzirk reported in on the secure line.
“As it happens they were the largest storage bins and there were several hundred tons of Ice in there but it could have been a lot worse. We were able to pick up the Wake of a Python that was the last to leave. Long range pursuit craft are following as we speak,”
A reply came in on the headset he wore.
“No sir, it seems the crew here were overpowered despite your warning. One of them looks to have been psych-jacked. I’ve not seen anything like it before. He will be quarantined and then no doubt hypocampal coax can get something useful out of him. The other one is missing,”
He put a finger to his ear piece as he struggled to catch the reply.
“That is correct, the primary target has escaped,” there was a long pause while he listened.
“Yes sir, I will get an answer out of the survivor immediately,” he signed off and yanked out the ear bud. Then he turned to the group of hard faced soldiers around him.
“We need to find them, or we are all in deep shit,” he said.
The special ops team were not counsellors. In all the time they worked on him, it was only at the end that they succeeded in making the old Fed lucid, and even then it was for less than ten seconds. Long enough for the old man to remember his conversation with the President. Long enough for him to look into the Captains eyes.
“He got away, the Pirate, he got away,” whispered the old Fed and the Captain looked back at him with weariness.
“How many times do we have to go through this?” he asked and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
“We don’t care about the Pirate. He is just some low life ship-jacker. We don’t care about the diamonds. We don’t even care about your missing idiot,” he shouted and the old fed winced.
“Then what?” he whined, fear and confusion mixing with the utter despair of total withdrawal.
“The girl!” shouted the Captain and grabbed him by the neck again.
“Hudson want’s the girl. I want the girl. The Federation wants the girl. She is very valuable to us. Now where did that filthy clone go?” he roared and then he shook the old man until there was nothing left to frighten.