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zzambrosius_02This popped out today. I had no idea it was imminent. I was taking my break.
(Yes I had to SIT STILL for an hour before continuing to the next job.)
I had the travel computer with me, so I opened Google docs and considered my options...SALTARAE II is the priority right now...
Then I had a vision: a prisoner, bound hand and foot, hooded to blind her. Yes, I know. FTWD probably had something to do with that image.
Still, this story went a different way: How would the Commonwealth military deal with high value (and hence very dangerous) POWs? I've written stuff that hinted at the answer. Here's one possible answer. Exile, in Lines where the tech is too far behind for anyone to find a Gate or build a Shifter...enjoy!
AFTER DEEP FLANKING
Consciousness returned to her in bits and moments. She sought to return to sleep, to avoid wakefulness. She failed.
She was lost.
‘More than lost,’ she thought: ‘Doomed is more like it.’
The black bag over her head did not help at all. She twisted her arms, seeking some weakness in the bonds that held her wrists behind her back. ‘Futile,’ she realized. Though the rope felt soft, it reacted to every twist and turn of her arms, almost like a live thing.
“I cannot escape,” she muttered.
Her captors went silent, no longer speaking to one another in their babbling tongue. One voice came to her, speaking French: “You cannot.”
Her spirit sank. If they spoke her language then they very likely knew her place in the Imperial Household. “My family will not ransom me…” she began: “Jean the Fourth will not yield anything to get me back.”
“We are not holding you for ransom.” The voice sounded amused.
“Oh.”
“We also have no need to question you. You have no information that we need.”
She sighed: “My beauty betrays me once again. Rape me, then, and get done with it. I suppose you’ll kill me once I no longer amuse you.”
She heard their amusement. One of them said: “___________”, then the first voice translated: “Projection.”
That second voice had been distinctly feminine. She didn’t let her hopes rise. Women could be worse than men, when it came time to torment an enemy...did she not recall deeds of her own to prove that?
Silence ensued, and stretched, and grew. She would give them no satisfaction, she’d not beg, or plead...she would not even speak.
She heard movement. Someone took her arm, no more roughly than seemed necessary, and raised her to her feet. The bonds on her ankles fell away, and the pressure on her arm increased, till she walked in the direction her captor desired.
They moved her along some hallway or tunnel; they paused while a door opened or they opened it.
She passed then into some much larger space, a cavernous warehouse or great hall by the echoes. A chill wind fingered her nightgown, and she cringed as her bare feet touched a cold smooth floor. She could hear the murmur of many voices, and the sound of machinery. Hisses and occasional clanks and bangs, from nearby and far away.
A louder bang from very close by startled her, and she dove for cover...or would have, had her captor not held her still.
“Please,” she said, regretting it immediately.
“Calm yourself. You are in no danger.” The woman’s voice beside her ear gave her no comfort, none at all.
She shuddered, fearful, then braced herself.
She spoke through gritted teeth: “Whatever you are going to do, do it now.”
The woman holding her laughed merrily, an expression of utter unconcern: “You are in no position to give orders. I realize that has been your whole life, telling others what to do, when you were not submitting to your...betters. Those things are no longer your...role? Task? Ah, there’s the word I wanted: ordering folks about is no longer your job.”
She turned hard to the left, butting with her head and striking with her feet. She hit nothing, as though her captor were immaterial, a ghost of a jailer, a hand on her arm and nothing more.
“Stop it,” said her foe: “You could not hit me if you were unbound, you surely will damage only yourself if you struggle.”
She heard the tone of voice and recognized it: the speaker had complete confidence in her skills; she embodied calm. Her captor felt centered and whole.
She knew herself defeated. 'Perhaps,' she thought: 'It's likely that my whole people are defeated. If they have me...' She tried to imagine Jean, bound as she was, helpless. Or...dead: 'There were a lot of slugs flying around our bedchamber...'
“This way.”
She followed perforce. Voices called out and machines whispered. Her captor spoke in the language of the foe, Rational Hellenic they called it. A voice replied, new to her.
A bell rang six times, and then she cried out as vertigo spun her head around and she fell to her knees.
“Stay right there. You will be in great danger if you move before you have looked around.”
The bonds on her wrists fell away. She sat back, cautiously. She crossed her feet and sat upon her heels. She laid her hands on her thighs, terrified: obviously, they had just Jumped, Saltated as the enemy said. She might be anywhere, even in another century.
“You may remove the hood. Be calm. Do nothing precipitous.”
She took the hood off. Light dazzled her, even through closed eyes. She waited, schooling herself to remain calm. She reached casually for her left breast. It fooled her captor not at all, for that one chuckled.
‘They’ve removed my locator,’ she thought, feeling the place where they'd cut it out, and glued the wound together. Despair washed over her.
When it seemed possible to do so without pain, she opened her eyes. Then she closed them again, moaning in terror, struggling to control herself and give her enemy no pleasure.
Finally she opened her eyes again. The foe stood before her, a slight smile upon her face. Her hand held a plasma sword, extended to nearly two meters, and by its sound set to very low power. She wore a jumpsuit in brick red, with two heavy leather belts around the waist, one white, one black. She’d dressed her hair in extremely fine dreadlocks, which fell about her shoulders like little snakes. Several of the ones in front had small snakehead beads attached to the ends. After a moment she spoke: “I am Magistri Arrenji.”
She drew in a breath and sighed it out. "I've heard of you." She thought: 'I am in the hands of the most unpredictable of the foe.'
With the sword at that length, and at that power, Arrenji had all of the potential fight in her hands. ‘Not that she needs such advantages. I am no warrior, and she most assuredly is one.’
“Yes,” Arrenji said: “I can stun you, or cut you. If you rise or roll forward, you are already defeated. Therefore there is no need for any violence.”
“That is correct, unless you decide to kill me.”
“We are here to avoid that necessity,” said Arrenji.
“Here? Where are we?”
“This is a semi-Quiet Timeline. The Commonwealth designates it Dam People Thirteen.”
“Dam People?”
“Descended from beavers. Sentient, about as smart as chimps, but technologically a little advanced: they have opposable thumbs, they talk and use fire. They smelt and forge iron. They still live pretty much like beavers do, though.”
“Oh. Why here?”
Arrenji shrugged: “Here you will be harmless. There are no people on this continent, no humans I mean.”
She lowered her head and let her tears flow: “You’ll leave me here alone, then?”
“Stop it. I know who you are, what your life has been. You cannot make me pity you.”
“I suppose not.”
Arrenji sneered a little: “As for ‘alone’...there are the Dam People. I will tell you now, for they will tell if you ask, that there is an island where a small colony of humans live, some distance from here. They are refugees from several Lines conquered by your...paramour, I guess the word is. They will not be well-disposed to you, if they discover who you are.”
She disregarded the last statement. The opinions of peasants mattered not at all to her. She asked: “How far?”
“Doesn’t matter,” her enemy shrugged: “It will take you years to reach it, if you decide to try to go there. You will have to learn to speak the Dam People’s language, and how to hold your temper, and some empathy.”
“Empathy is for the weak, for the slaves, for…”
Her captor interrupted: “Empathy is central to the Dam People’s philosophy. Carry your current attitude into one of their settlements and you’ll be lucky if they run you out. If you are not lucky, they’ll nail you to a tree with one of their three-pointed spears.”
“How empathic.”
“They’ve learned to deal with humans. If you want to live out your life in any comfort, you will have to learn to deal with them.” Arrenji smiled: “For your information, they are a bit of a pain in the ass, by human standards.”
“What does that mean?”
“They don’t think like us. They are a different species. It takes some getting used to.” Arrenji turned as though to leave her.
“Wait!”
Arrenji brandished the sword, now set at about a meter: “What?”
“Food? Water?”
“Oh, right. Here’s a copy in French of “Edible PLants of North America”. From my student Ambros’ Line. Mostly applicable.” Arrenji tossed a ratty paperback to the ground at her feet. “Be sure to read the introduction.”
Arrenji turned and left her there. She stared as her enemy passed around a bend in the path, then Saltated. The ‘pop’ of air rushing in to fill the space echoed across the glade.
She rose and looked around. She stepped carefully over to the precipice behind her and gazed across the landscape. Smoke rose from a hundred small settlements, each built around a dam and pond, each with a stone and wooden lodge in the center of the pond, each surrounded by fields and copses of trees. Furry people in cloaks of straw moved about in the nearest village, sometimes upright, sometimes on all fours. They dragged branches, pulled weeds, tended animals: a very odd grunting and cooing song rose from there, as the Dam People worked.
She saw Arrenji appear in the village below. A female of the Dam folk approached and they conversed; Arrenji waved in the direction of the cliff, and the several of the creatures looked up and spotted her, standing there bemused. 'So much for sneaking, or theft. Well, such things are beneath me, I suppose...' Her shoulders sagged. “A new language, at my age, and a long trip to find people…” She looked over the edge of the cliff, considering: “It was kind of Magistri Arrenji to give me an easy way out. That's a long enough fall to ensure a quick death.” She pondered that.
After a while, she turned from the drop, and began to scout out the best way down to the flatlands, where a new life awaited her.
(Yes I had to SIT STILL for an hour before continuing to the next job.)
I had the travel computer with me, so I opened Google docs and considered my options...SALTARAE II is the priority right now...
Then I had a vision: a prisoner, bound hand and foot, hooded to blind her. Yes, I know. FTWD probably had something to do with that image.
Still, this story went a different way: How would the Commonwealth military deal with high value (and hence very dangerous) POWs? I've written stuff that hinted at the answer. Here's one possible answer. Exile, in Lines where the tech is too far behind for anyone to find a Gate or build a Shifter...enjoy!
AFTER DEEP FLANKING
Consciousness returned to her in bits and moments. She sought to return to sleep, to avoid wakefulness. She failed.
She was lost.
‘More than lost,’ she thought: ‘Doomed is more like it.’
The black bag over her head did not help at all. She twisted her arms, seeking some weakness in the bonds that held her wrists behind her back. ‘Futile,’ she realized. Though the rope felt soft, it reacted to every twist and turn of her arms, almost like a live thing.
“I cannot escape,” she muttered.
Her captors went silent, no longer speaking to one another in their babbling tongue. One voice came to her, speaking French: “You cannot.”
Her spirit sank. If they spoke her language then they very likely knew her place in the Imperial Household. “My family will not ransom me…” she began: “Jean the Fourth will not yield anything to get me back.”
“We are not holding you for ransom.” The voice sounded amused.
“Oh.”
“We also have no need to question you. You have no information that we need.”
She sighed: “My beauty betrays me once again. Rape me, then, and get done with it. I suppose you’ll kill me once I no longer amuse you.”
She heard their amusement. One of them said: “___________”, then the first voice translated: “Projection.”
That second voice had been distinctly feminine. She didn’t let her hopes rise. Women could be worse than men, when it came time to torment an enemy...did she not recall deeds of her own to prove that?
Silence ensued, and stretched, and grew. She would give them no satisfaction, she’d not beg, or plead...she would not even speak.
She heard movement. Someone took her arm, no more roughly than seemed necessary, and raised her to her feet. The bonds on her ankles fell away, and the pressure on her arm increased, till she walked in the direction her captor desired.
They moved her along some hallway or tunnel; they paused while a door opened or they opened it.
She passed then into some much larger space, a cavernous warehouse or great hall by the echoes. A chill wind fingered her nightgown, and she cringed as her bare feet touched a cold smooth floor. She could hear the murmur of many voices, and the sound of machinery. Hisses and occasional clanks and bangs, from nearby and far away.
A louder bang from very close by startled her, and she dove for cover...or would have, had her captor not held her still.
“Please,” she said, regretting it immediately.
“Calm yourself. You are in no danger.” The woman’s voice beside her ear gave her no comfort, none at all.
She shuddered, fearful, then braced herself.
She spoke through gritted teeth: “Whatever you are going to do, do it now.”
The woman holding her laughed merrily, an expression of utter unconcern: “You are in no position to give orders. I realize that has been your whole life, telling others what to do, when you were not submitting to your...betters. Those things are no longer your...role? Task? Ah, there’s the word I wanted: ordering folks about is no longer your job.”
She turned hard to the left, butting with her head and striking with her feet. She hit nothing, as though her captor were immaterial, a ghost of a jailer, a hand on her arm and nothing more.
“Stop it,” said her foe: “You could not hit me if you were unbound, you surely will damage only yourself if you struggle.”
She heard the tone of voice and recognized it: the speaker had complete confidence in her skills; she embodied calm. Her captor felt centered and whole.
She knew herself defeated. 'Perhaps,' she thought: 'It's likely that my whole people are defeated. If they have me...' She tried to imagine Jean, bound as she was, helpless. Or...dead: 'There were a lot of slugs flying around our bedchamber...'
“This way.”
She followed perforce. Voices called out and machines whispered. Her captor spoke in the language of the foe, Rational Hellenic they called it. A voice replied, new to her.
A bell rang six times, and then she cried out as vertigo spun her head around and she fell to her knees.
“Stay right there. You will be in great danger if you move before you have looked around.”
The bonds on her wrists fell away. She sat back, cautiously. She crossed her feet and sat upon her heels. She laid her hands on her thighs, terrified: obviously, they had just Jumped, Saltated as the enemy said. She might be anywhere, even in another century.
“You may remove the hood. Be calm. Do nothing precipitous.”
She took the hood off. Light dazzled her, even through closed eyes. She waited, schooling herself to remain calm. She reached casually for her left breast. It fooled her captor not at all, for that one chuckled.
‘They’ve removed my locator,’ she thought, feeling the place where they'd cut it out, and glued the wound together. Despair washed over her.
When it seemed possible to do so without pain, she opened her eyes. Then she closed them again, moaning in terror, struggling to control herself and give her enemy no pleasure.
Finally she opened her eyes again. The foe stood before her, a slight smile upon her face. Her hand held a plasma sword, extended to nearly two meters, and by its sound set to very low power. She wore a jumpsuit in brick red, with two heavy leather belts around the waist, one white, one black. She’d dressed her hair in extremely fine dreadlocks, which fell about her shoulders like little snakes. Several of the ones in front had small snakehead beads attached to the ends. After a moment she spoke: “I am Magistri Arrenji.”
She drew in a breath and sighed it out. "I've heard of you." She thought: 'I am in the hands of the most unpredictable of the foe.'
With the sword at that length, and at that power, Arrenji had all of the potential fight in her hands. ‘Not that she needs such advantages. I am no warrior, and she most assuredly is one.’
“Yes,” Arrenji said: “I can stun you, or cut you. If you rise or roll forward, you are already defeated. Therefore there is no need for any violence.”
“That is correct, unless you decide to kill me.”
“We are here to avoid that necessity,” said Arrenji.
“Here? Where are we?”
“This is a semi-Quiet Timeline. The Commonwealth designates it Dam People Thirteen.”
“Dam People?”
“Descended from beavers. Sentient, about as smart as chimps, but technologically a little advanced: they have opposable thumbs, they talk and use fire. They smelt and forge iron. They still live pretty much like beavers do, though.”
“Oh. Why here?”
Arrenji shrugged: “Here you will be harmless. There are no people on this continent, no humans I mean.”
She lowered her head and let her tears flow: “You’ll leave me here alone, then?”
“Stop it. I know who you are, what your life has been. You cannot make me pity you.”
“I suppose not.”
Arrenji sneered a little: “As for ‘alone’...there are the Dam People. I will tell you now, for they will tell if you ask, that there is an island where a small colony of humans live, some distance from here. They are refugees from several Lines conquered by your...paramour, I guess the word is. They will not be well-disposed to you, if they discover who you are.”
She disregarded the last statement. The opinions of peasants mattered not at all to her. She asked: “How far?”
“Doesn’t matter,” her enemy shrugged: “It will take you years to reach it, if you decide to try to go there. You will have to learn to speak the Dam People’s language, and how to hold your temper, and some empathy.”
“Empathy is for the weak, for the slaves, for…”
Her captor interrupted: “Empathy is central to the Dam People’s philosophy. Carry your current attitude into one of their settlements and you’ll be lucky if they run you out. If you are not lucky, they’ll nail you to a tree with one of their three-pointed spears.”
“How empathic.”
“They’ve learned to deal with humans. If you want to live out your life in any comfort, you will have to learn to deal with them.” Arrenji smiled: “For your information, they are a bit of a pain in the ass, by human standards.”
“What does that mean?”
“They don’t think like us. They are a different species. It takes some getting used to.” Arrenji turned as though to leave her.
“Wait!”
Arrenji brandished the sword, now set at about a meter: “What?”
“Food? Water?”
“Oh, right. Here’s a copy in French of “Edible PLants of North America”. From my student Ambros’ Line. Mostly applicable.” Arrenji tossed a ratty paperback to the ground at her feet. “Be sure to read the introduction.”
Arrenji turned and left her there. She stared as her enemy passed around a bend in the path, then Saltated. The ‘pop’ of air rushing in to fill the space echoed across the glade.
She rose and looked around. She stepped carefully over to the precipice behind her and gazed across the landscape. Smoke rose from a hundred small settlements, each built around a dam and pond, each with a stone and wooden lodge in the center of the pond, each surrounded by fields and copses of trees. Furry people in cloaks of straw moved about in the nearest village, sometimes upright, sometimes on all fours. They dragged branches, pulled weeds, tended animals: a very odd grunting and cooing song rose from there, as the Dam People worked.
She saw Arrenji appear in the village below. A female of the Dam folk approached and they conversed; Arrenji waved in the direction of the cliff, and the several of the creatures looked up and spotted her, standing there bemused. 'So much for sneaking, or theft. Well, such things are beneath me, I suppose...' Her shoulders sagged. “A new language, at my age, and a long trip to find people…” She looked over the edge of the cliff, considering: “It was kind of Magistri Arrenji to give me an easy way out. That's a long enough fall to ensure a quick death.” She pondered that.
After a while, she turned from the drop, and began to scout out the best way down to the flatlands, where a new life awaited her.
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no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 04:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 05:22 am (UTC)Beaver people.
Date: 2016-05-13 02:12 pm (UTC)