The Ties That Bind pt. II
11 Mar 2022User319792
When I came to, I was sprawled face-down across the laboratory in Nain Incorporated. A puddle of saliva had collected around my mouth, wrapping itself around and over my right eyebrow, and when I lifted my head to look around I could hear the sound of air whooshing through the collected liquids. I made eye-contact with one of the laboratory assistants who, glancing at me nervously and looking away immediately, exited the laboratory without saying a word. I pushed myself off the floor and decided to head to my quarters, wiping my face off with a paper towel on my way out. Coral was seated at her make-shift desk staring into her cans, which had grown from two connected by a tube into a multi-tiered network of interconnected chambers each with multiple connections. She'd affixed a pressurization unit to a base from which all the cans received a small polyurethane input that maintained a steady outflow of air from the network, maintaining a vacuum within the apparatus and producing a semblance of order within. Variously colored peas traveled from each set of cans to others, some in alignment and in sequence and others in opposing directions. Her gaze was fixed on a tube that contained two peas that looked to be moving in sync from one can to the next, never growing further nor closer to one another but always changing direction in tandem. Her eyes were glistening and she was chewing on the inside of her cheek, her focus impenetrable.
"Oh, Coral," she slowly turned her head toward the sound of my lilting, her eyes slowly coming to rest on me after lingering on the pair'o'peas a short while longer, "so a funny thing happened just now."
"Oh yeah," her voice was monotonous and her face without candor, "what was that?"
The buzzer to my quarters sounded and Captain Green's voice hawked over the the intercom,
"Permission to enter?"
I dismissed Captain Green to return a short time later without having torn my eyes away from Coral.
"I woke up on the floor of your laboratory. You wouldn't have an idea of why I would have been in there without you, do you?"
She squinted at me, her left eyebrow lowering, and I looked away, wondering if we'd dipped into some of my stash of Burnham Bile Distillate... a lot of my stash of Burnham Bile Distillate. As I continued to pry loose what could have been memories from the black, she turned away from me and returned her focus to the peas. Her voice remained calm but her tone rose significantly,
"I had to override your orders to Rosie to move my greenhouse into a new lab."
I vaguely remembered ordering Rosie to move Coral's lab and greenhouse to the lab on L-3. It was currently on L-1 and I'd figured that the move would ensure that she'd be dealing with less disturbances from anyone coming from the hangar bay.
"That doesn't explain why-"
It made sense.
"Rosie seemed a little uncomfortable with it, but she agreed that it would be in the best interest of the crew for the lab to remain in place."
I looked away from her, thinking for a few seconds, then took a seat across from her and watched as the peas moved through the tubes. Their movements were jerky and they shook back and forth as they travelled. There was no real order, in terms of direction, and in many of the tubes were bunched multiple peas looking to push their way past others. I remembered the videos of the human vascular system from training and her network of cans and tubes reminded me of what the vascular system might be if arteries and veins hadn't developed to be one-way streets. The buzzer to my quarters sounded again, and I beckoned Captain Green.
Captain Green saluted me before beginning her report. As she spoke of increasing scuttlebutt amongst the crew about my lack of ability to maintain order, she glanced over at Coral nervously. Coral, for her part, remained focused on the two peas as they moved back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, like a pendulum. I ordered Captain Green to maintain overwatch on her crew and to dismiss any members of the crew that began to show indications of intent to produce any organization outside their direct role-capacities and she saluted me, turning to Coral with an uneasy smile, saluting, and excusing herself.
"You know, Coral, in some organizations the act of physically incapacitating the chartered Commanding Officer of a vessel could be seen as mutiny, and punishable by death."
Without looking away from the peas, Coral responded that, in some organizations, it was considered legitimate to physically incapacitate children for speaking out of turn in the presence of their lady-of-the-house. I looked away and tucked my chin into my neck.
"Well its not li-," I stopped myself, realizing she was goading me into defending Imperial slavery. I glanced at her and noticed that she'd let her hair down. When not in her flight suit, she'd generally had it tied into a tight bun and it had grown out to just past her shoulders. The lights that illuminated her network crashed into the lights shining from the fixtures in my quarters creating a harsh reflection of yellows and blues that, by my recollection, should have made green but just hurt my eyes. I heard a sharp intake of breath and she asked,
"Did dad talk to you about what happened in Los?"
Her eyes slowly left the peas and came to rest on me. I tried to avoid her gaze, eventually giving in. After a few seconds I looked away, feeling exhausted.
"He mentioned something about you being 'put through re-alignment'."
She looked back to the peas,
"Yeah. It happens."
I sat in what should have been the silence of the two of us not speaking, but was the sound of myriad crew-members barking orders at one another, giving reports, and all-around human interaction not visible to the two of us in my quarters. As I continued to stare at Coral, the noise grew louder. I could hear Rosie's crew ordering a refit for an Orca that had docked and was requesting help after an attack by pilots sworn to Brian's Thugs. There was something about the way her voice cut through the noise when she spoke: it didn't overpower, drown out, nor get lost in the sound. It set my nerves on edge.
"It was the consortium's solution to recidivism within its ranks. It's basically just a remedial training protocol."
"He looked pretty serious when he mentioned it.
"It's a serious protocol. It's their version of imprisonment for the more serious violations of the consortium's doctrines. We're basically put in a room and left to unfuck ourselves."
"We have our own prisons?"
"No, not exactly. They're temporary installations that we use for serial sequestration. In the tech-manuals given us by the proctors during operational training, the instructions dictate the build-up of mounds of gravel mixed with a hardening agent and the placement of glass or clear poly-carbonate atop the mound."
"So they just put you in a room? How's that supposed to help you unfuck yourself?"
Coral squinted at me, her lip curling, before turning back to the pair'o'peas,
"When they're used for serial sequestration, the prisoner is kept in one of the facilities for 6-8 weeks just outside our target area of operation and the consortium sends in proxies to create social conditions amenable to the consortium's operational goals. Then the prisoner is set loose."
I grew increasingly uncomfortable as she continued,
"What kind of goals?"
She looked back over to me and shrugged,
"In my experience, its usually been some kind of information-sharing deal."
"And the prisoners? Where do you get them?"
She turned again to the peas,
"Here and there. Actually, its often enough just our own operatives working to secure inroads with any of the various resistance movements, just in case."
I turned away from her and shut my eyes. I lowered my chin to my neck and tried to drown out the sound around me. Secret prisons, solitary confinement, double-dealing with regional power-brokers and controlling factions... When the man in the black suit recruited me, all he said was that I'd never have to work for anyone else again. Coral's voice cut through again, perfectly blending with the rest of the sounds around me,
"I've never been to Serene Harbour," I looked at her again and she was still watching the two peas wobbling back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, "in case that's what you're wondering. I don't know anything about it, other than the information the Empire's allowed to be released over GALNET. You should know, you really did a number on us while I was in realignment."
"Do they know about realignment and sequential sequestration or whatever its called?"
"'Serial' and no. It's got nothing to do with our operations with them. Its actually pretty unuseful to the Empire, even with the whole Torquatus conspiracy crashing down on it. But, with you blabbing on, we came pretty close to being linked to those Nerva people and if the Empire found out about our tech manuals we could have found ourselves in deep."
"We are linked to the Nerva people."
She turned to me and brought her eyebrows close together. She lifted her head slightly and looked down the bridge of her nose at me, lowering her head back down and turning back to the peas.
"Oh right," she giggled and I craned my head toward her, looking to find the humor in the situation that left her giddy. As she watched the peas, the smile slowly left her face and her eyes moved to a different tube. I followed her gaze to two peas coming into contact with one another and then slowly changing direction and moving away from one another. "What do you think they're doing to that Imperial Diplomat we'd been working with?"
I looked away from her and toward the pressurization unit.
"I don't know. His career with the Empire's diplomatic corps is probably over. He's lucky his head isn't orbiting Capitol like a tourist beacon."
I looked back over to her and her eyes had stopped focusing on the network. They'd again grown moist and she stood up, walking toward her flight suit.
"I'm gonna take Keystone out. Don't go anywhere"