I Need A Hero
When an Imaja is captured and tied down to a gurney, who does he turn to in his darkest hour?
The harsh lights of the lab lamps pierced him, warm and uncompromising, bathing the Imaja, casting a sheen off his leathery form, showing the multitudes of equipment stuck into him, monitoring his condition, to the scientists, watching the displays.
It was by all accounts a morbid scene, the multitudes of cuts, across his body from where surgical incisions had been made, samples had been taken. Stimuli and response had been accorded, much of it painful, and right now he was in a state of torpor.
Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the Gods?
Seito thought back, on how he had come to such an ignoble situation. He had been leading a scout ship, with two recent Inductees into The Order, but his curiosity compelled him to go off the prescribed channels and he had been gone longer and out of contact longer than he should have. His desire to watch one of those pesky Monoliths in action grabbed his attention.
They had been set upon, days into watching a species change to tool users, and they analyzed the signals bleeding off, trying to tag the data to add to their own files when a sharp piercing pain was received on the implants, all and each Imaja had, that allowed non-verbal comminque.
The signal was an overload of white noise, sharp, and before they could filter it out, they three Imaja were on the deck, in spasms of white-noise induced pain.
The screams of his inductees had long since grown silent, days ago. Even accounting for the generators keeping him from expanding his communications outwards, he got no errant signals from them. And besides, he knew in his hearts of hearts, they were dead.
A pity, they were good Initiates, too.
It as a bitter irony that 'though the resembled Gods, they could bleed and they could die.
Where's the street-wise Hercules,
To fight the rising odds?
In the darkness of space, something drifted. A person, a singular person, clad in a spacesuit, laced with ceramic tiles. They had been drifting for many days, risking O2 poisoning, and tiredness..and even the risk of getting lost or running into a starship, or any of the other myriad unpleasant ways to die in the black.
But they had passed through unnoticed, not fast enough to trigger defensive sattelites, and no errant signals to peg on anything looking for saboteurs.
The planet loomed before them, they flexed their limbs, turning over slowly, facing the planet, drifting into it's orbit, drifting to a satellite, pausing by it to carefully hack into it, a momentary track for where the signals are going, searching for somewhere with high encryption.
The scans had, hopefully gone unnoticed (the data was the best that he could get, and with a little tinkering of his own. Hopefully the bad guys didn't have any back-tracks).
He pushed off, carefully, drifting slow, spiraling around at many hundreds of miles per hour...but to his point of view it was a lazy drift.
Isn't there a white knight upon a firey steed
Late at night, I toss and I turn and I dream
Of what I need
Seito was held secure, unable to move, any toiletry business was handled with the rude hoses, he was bearing this well. Surely he'd broken some of the soldiers who had captured him initially, and had paid the obvious price, but now they had him. He dreamed of escape, of the cleansing The Order would bring on this place...unless, they wrote him off as an acceptable casualty.
******
Meanwhile above, the sheer winds were making the orbital dive more dangerous, the figure tossed and turned, the tiles were starting to sheer off, and the pain..the burning, sharp pain was becoming unbearable. Piercing through into the suit, they were rolling, steaming, threatening to burn up, the flames licking around them, but...the rush, the cool air an the burning of friction started to fade, then the whistling, screaming air around them, the world turned below them, like a marble...and as they plummeted, features started to be observed.
******
Seito cleared his mind of such macabre thoughts. He held faith, that he would be rescued. Though The Order might be pragmatic, and even though only his body might be received. He would come back to them, in some form or another. Or atleast, the perpetrators would be punished.
Although, given the options, he would prefer to make it through the Night..and the further nights to come.
I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight
He had landed in the water, not exactly the greastest landing spot. The parachute had worked at least, so he didn't make too large an impact on the world. And he had hauled himself aboard a cutter, owned by the guys in charge, the uniforms made it clear as crystal and so, each was dispatched with the cold calculus of necessity. This, was not an op requiring the taking of prisoners for him.
He had removed the threats fast, aggressively. The soldiers did not die well, but they died. The last one had the temerity to fight back, his face was bloody hamburger, shredded. The bloody muzzle on his attacker's face was testament to the brutality of close quarters combat.
No, prisoners would not be taken here.
I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light
He's gotta be sure
And it's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life
Somewhere after midnight
In my wildest fantasy
Somewhere just beyond my reach
There's someone reaching back for me
Racing on the thunder and rising with the heat
It's gonna take a superman to sweep me off my feet
Up where the mountains meet the heavens above
The base overlooked the sea, a broad, imposing cliff separated it from the ocean, sheer climb, then a long overhang the base, making it improbable but not impossible to breech.
It was a minor base to be sure, enough guards to repulse Confederation Marines.
Out where the lightning splits the sea
The boat had been sunk, the bodies tied down. This,was many of the things he would have to make his peace with the universe. But then, those like him had to stare into the abyss to that others didn't have to.
And the abyss was looking back plenty of times when he looked in a mirror.
But for now, the sins, and the demons would have to wait. He would have to be a son of a bitch still before the evening was through.
The cliff, would be a difficult climb, but he gripped it, using pitons, some chalk and sheer dogged perseverance.
It was hard, it was slippery, and his body felt it keenly, the storm and the lightening was distracting, although the rush of water from the sewerage system was making it hard to open the grill.
Still, it was the least-observed place, he eased himself into the snug tunnel, squirming through, his arms pinned, and the rush of foul-smelling detritus washing over him.
I could swear that there's someone somewhere
Watching me
There was an awareness, something tickling the back of his head, a voice. A familiar voice. Distorted for the white-noise generators, the words. "--ming to g-- -ou." Was heard in his communiqué. But he kept his body calm, a raise of his hearts, a beep on the monitors, but this did not draw the doctor's attention too much. His eyes remain closed, so they pass it off as a momentary aberration, possibly REM sleep.
Through the wind and the chill and the rain
And the storm and the flood
I can feel his approach
Like the fire in my blood
Like a coordinated action, the main lights went off, the red dim glow of the emergency lighting, that allowed the humans too see, barely. This was disturbing, but what disturbed them more, was a noise, the alarm like the keening of a Greek Chorus.
His glowing eyes opened in the darkness, a toothy smirk, a feral unpleasant smirk crossed his muzzle.
"The subject's waking up!" came one cry, but their attention was quickly diverted by the sounds of gunfire, screams of death, explosions.
Guards moved into the room, pushing down tables, providing some cover, they watched the door, tenseness rose in the room and Seito began to chuckle, it was an unpleasant noise as was the intent and he sing-songishly taunted them. "Knick-knack, paddy-wack, give the dog a bone. This old man's going rolling home."
"Shut that fucking thing up!" snarled one of the guards, his body perspiring fear like a thick cologne, and the fear in his voice raised the tension up another notch.
Then one of the walls blew in, an explosion of brick, then a clank-clank BANG-flash of a flashbang, the reporte of a firearm, a figure, all tawny and blood, moving in like the grim reaper given form.
Which, was suitably ironic given his extinct counternance.
The Doctors were dispatched with an equal degree of dispassion. Double-taps to the head, and so much pretty red matching the red lighting. The bonds were cut, the medical equipment was carefully removed, and Uilliam helped Seito lean against him.
"Let's get you home."