Rebuy: Pt.1 - Confetti
17 Feb 2020Princess Nihlus
RebuyA Princess Nihlus Story
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Part 1
-:Confetti:-
Princess Nihlus sat locked in his own cargo hold and eyed the open escape pod with utter contempt. He continued glaring at it for sometime, cursing his mistake in taking it aboard in the first place. His cigarette had become nothing but ash having been completely forgotten in place of the pod.
That fucking pod.
. . . . .
In most cases, when Nihlus salvaged the spilled remains of wrecked ship at a degraded signal source he would keep his curiosity to himself. This time however, among the debris was a single escape pod with very specific markings. The markings of the Imperial Slave trade. Taking the cargo aboard, Nihlus set a course out of the system intending to cruise in dark space a while. He needed time to think and so made his way into the hold of his Fer De Lance. Whenever he took a job there was always some backwater trash trying to pay him with shit he didn't need instead of cold hard credits, but that was the price of staying off the grid. The hold was littered with crates of modular terminals and other mechanical crap, and one imperial slave pod still in cryogenic suspension.
Nihlus lit a cigarette and peered through the frosted glass at its occupant. She was quite beautiful with olive skin and a full figure somewhere in her early forties, also well dressed which caught Nihlus' attention. She was clearly a woman of means, maybe not a noble but no dock-worker or miner either, generally it was the lower classes would sell themselves into a contract to cover insurmountable debt. Nihlus pondered how she could have ended up in the Empire's infamous Indentured Servitude scheme. His hand found its way to the control panel, subconsciously making the decision for him. His fingers stopped short of the last deactivation code on the pod's cryo unit as he took one final draw of his cigarette before extinguishing it at his feet.
A deafening hiss erupted from the pod as the seals broke but ended abruptly a few seconds later and the glass began to thaw, its frosted shell falling away like so much confetti. The woman slowly opened her eyes and she began to focus, her gaze rising up to meet Nihlus staring back with his ghostly pupil-less eyes.
She screamed.
The sound was louder than the pod, Nihlus thought to himself as he cocked an eyebrow and lit another cigarette figuring she would probably pass out any second anyway. He was right.
. . . . .
When she came to she was sitting in the co-pilot seat of Nihlus' ship 'Consent' and wearing a flight suit. Nihlus was at the helm, his flight suit cut to a very fashionable three-quarter length that really showed off his calves when he wore heels. Not the most practical outfit to wear especially if the canopy ever blew, but he'd experienced that enough to get used to it by now.
"Where am I?" said the woman with remarkable composure.
"Safe." said Nihlus. "You're aboard my ship and on our way out of Imperial space, I know some people who..." he never finished the sentence as the woman sat bolt upright with renewed strength, jerking to a halt as the flight harness did it's job of holding her firmly in place. She fumbled with the clasp frantically but Nihlus was on her in an instant, pushing her back in the chair with a firm grip on her collarbone, his wiry frame towered over her. With a single, well manicured finger pointed right in her face he said "Sit" and released the clasp. She didn't move, just looked him straight in the eye and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Satisfied, Nihlus returned to the helm and began plotting a jump route across The Bubble taking care to avoid Denton Patreus space, even if it meant a detour of a few dozen light years.
"How long was I out?" the woman asked after several minutes. "And what happened to the ship I was on?"
"Destroyed by some enterprising young edge lord no doubt," he said with a bored monotone. "I found your pod among the wreckage. That was eight hours ago." She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, only then realising that the flight-suit she was wearing was not the outfit she remembered.
"Where are my clothes?" she asked with a hint of worry "Did you undress me while I was..." she let the thought hang.
"No." Said Nihlus without looking back to her. "I had my maid do it."
"Where is your maid now?" she said and looked around.
"Flying the ship." he said matter of factly. She was about to respond but took a look at his stiletto heels and eccentric makeup and decided not to pursue the issue.
"My pod!" she exclaimed with a start "Please, I need to check my pod!" Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the arms of the chair barely restraining herself. Nihlus dimmed the lights so he could see her reflection clearly in the canopy.
"Why?" he asked emphatically. Several seconds passed and with no answer forthcoming Nihlus reached for the lights.
"Please." she said again, softer this time and with something else in her tone of voice. Defeat? Lament? Whatever it was it made Nihlus stop and look at her, really look at her. He could only imagine what she could have been through, the life of a slave is never one of certainty. For every benevolent slave master there were five more wretched and twisted whose appetites made even Nihlus baulk. He rose from his chair slowly and turned to face her.
"This way." he said and gestured toward the bulkhead door at the back of the flight deck. She gingerly climbed out of the chair and backed carefully to the door, Nihlus stood still to make some space between them before striding after her with long, slow steps. The pair made their way through the lower decks and into the cargo hold, neither of them blinked.
Finally taking her eyes off her gaunt imposing host the woman approached the pod, Nihlus hung back to give her space but also to keep a careful watch over her. It was quite damaged from whatever had happened, the locking mechanism was broken and cryo would be impossible now. She went to the external panel and began pulling the limited black box data from the pod, Nihlus watched with a small sense of curiosity as she went through records of the pods transfer papers and customs data and froze suddenly. She had clearly found what she was looking for just not what she wanted to see. Nihlus took a step towards her.
"I don't know what you've been through, but you are free now." Nihlus said as gently as his voice would allow. She turned to look at him.
"You don't have to live as a whore to some Imperial noble or tend the endless machines of the algae plants, you can just disappear." He took another step forward. "I can help you." he said and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him, trembling, and began to unzip her flight suit exposing her femininity. Nihlus stepped back and turned away from her, he was about to say something about not having to do that for him but he never got the chance as she landed a heavy blow to the back of his head with a crowbar.
Everything went black.
That fucking pod.
. . . . .
The first thing he did when he awoke was light a cigarette. He sat staring at the pod not even smoking as the ash continued to build. On the floor by the pod was the flight suit he had clad his unexpected guest with, her original clothes were gone and the door to the hold was locked. He could tell the ship was moving from the background thrum of the engines, clearly the woman knew her way around a ship well enough to plot and navigate a route, but to where? Nihlus flicked the cigarette at the pod and began pacing, his capped heels ringing out as they clanged on the hard metal sheeting. He needed to put a plan in action to get his ship back and began sizing up the ventilation system. He needn't have bothered as the comms panel in the hold lit up.
"Are you there?" came the woman's voice, her face on the view screen looked tired. Nihlus went to the comms panel and switched it on but said nothing. His expression said enough.
"I'm sorry," she said "I didn't know what else to do." Nihlus stayed silent but noticed she was in the rear airlock by the engine room. She pressed a few buttons on a panel she had clearly hotwired and the door to the cargo bay unlocked, Nihlus raised an eyebrow and then turned away from the screen. He marched through the ship, through the engine room and right up to the airlock door, the woman on the other side had a face filled with fear but as Nihlus stared her down he realised that her fear was nothing to do with the murderous glare in his eyes.
"Do you know what happens if an Indentured Servant goes missing?" she asked, her crackled voice through the door comms wavering as she tried to hold the tears back. "If no delivery is made, if no body is found, they are considered rogue." Nihlus continued to hold her stare.
"Where have you taken my ship, woman?" He punctuated each syllable sharply
"Back to where you found me." she said. Nihlus punched the glass.
"Open this door." He said
"No." He looked at her with barely contained anger, his mascara began to sweat. She turned to look at the external airlock door. "Don't you understand? If I don't turn up, the debt falls to my family, to my daughter. I did this all for her!" She was becoming hysterical "I was supposed to arrive two days ago, after two days they will try to recover my pod or my body, and if I'm not there....." she never finished the sentence and instead collapsed in a heap on the floor, sobbing heavily. Nihlus watched her for what seemed like forever and realised that she had been trying to open the external door but the safeties wouldn't allow it.
"What's your name?" He asked gently.
"Ellesandra, my name is Ellesandra Tanosis." she said and her sobbing subsided. He reached his hand across to the manual release lever and nodded to her. She simply mouthed the words "Thank you" and breathed one final sigh of relief.
Nihlus pulled the lever.
. . . . .
At a high tech medical facility somewhere in Imperial space the talented young geneticist, Dr. Lysa Tanosis put her feet up on her desk and admired her medical diploma, never knowing it's full cost.
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