1
PRESENT DAY
"What's going on, buddy?"Marcin whispered to the guard.
The guard did not answer.Instead, he shoved him forward, though the destination was the same as it always was.
The table.
The prison vessel, his home for the last five years, made his nostrils burn with bitter stenches.He should have been used to it by now, but he wasn't.He hoped to never be used to the smells of sweat and other body odors.
Coolant from the ship's systems--that was how Marcin knew they were on a ship and not in a facility, the smells.
Also, the feel.
A ship moving through space felt different than being in any kind of planet-based location.
The hum was there.Always there.
Like a noise in the background that never stopped, he could hear when the engines were not acting right and feel when the momentum shifted in the ship's course.It went in a pattern, he'd figured out.One that took approximately one hundred twenty-six days.They were approximately halfway through the cycle now.Where that put him, he did not know, for he had no visual reference.
He hadn't seen a starfield in years.
Marcin glanced at the guard, who came up just past his shoulders and didn't look at him.
No guard there was his friend.No one there really was.
Correction, not any Terrans.
The guards, however, did speak to him occasionally.Some would even answer his questions.Some did it to try and get a rise out of him.To scare him.Though the Terran guards seemed to forget he was cybernetic.
Emotions were not necessary for everyday existence.Marcin had shut his down.He had no emotions.That was what he practiced.Disconnecting himself from the emotions that could overpower him if he let them take over.
Curiosity, however, was debatable.
The Terran guards sometimes responded to questions if he made his inquiring tone sound in specific ways.It was an experiment that kept his mind thinking, rather than dwelling on where they were and what was happening.
If he would ever see his people, or Sol again.
If he used the right wording and tone, it would give the guards pause and consider him a lifeform.If they believed him more than a machine to disassemble, then he had a shot at living past this place he'd wound up in.
It was a simple strategy that had worked so far, stuck in this prison camp he and fellow Rhimodians were in.Five years had passed since the battle over Tarnegs, a Terran world.It had been intense.Like the rest of his unit, he had crashed on the planet after a fight in the skies.On the world, the battle continued until, overwhelmed by Terran military forces, they were captured.
He assumed the other in his unit, Bahran, had died.
It seemed fitting.Bahran’s loose interpretations of protocols had given the Terran Empire the advantage.
The unit crashed hard on Tarnegs and lost contact with him after the crash.When the Terrans captured them, none had been able to reconnect to Master System and learn the fate of Bahran.
It mattered not.
Now, all Marcin cared about was surviving this moment.It was the best he could work toward.Until the next moment, he had to survive.
The guard pushed him onto the upright table.As soon as his arms and legs hit, the restraints grabbed him.The table shifted up and out.It locked him into place and spread his legs.Pain hit him as the restraints and the table started to puncture his skin.
Breathe,he told himself.Breathe.
He felt the neuro-calmer drug being pumped in.Enough to bring him down to a state of compliance.Everything felt like he was under water.He didn't really care what they were doing to him.
