The Privateers

Finding her sea legs

The next moment of consciousness I had, I found myself stuck in...I guessed it was a closet. It had to be a closet, right? It was too tight to move. My wrists and ankles were shackled to something. I wanted to rub my eyes, scratch my nose, something to make sure I could still feel things. For now, I guessed I'd have to make do with the feel of the irons I'd been clapped in. They were freezing to the touch...though the sensation wasn't completely unwelcome.

As soon as I found I was able to move my head, I felt a deep shudder. Before, I felt like I was back on Earth, familiar gravity and all that. But now, I wasn't so sure I was even near a planet. I rose steadily until the shackles caught me. I was now hovering an inch or so from whatever I was strapped to; leaning my head forward at least indicated that I was enclosed in something, but I couldn't see well enough to know what. Especially not when the only light I could see, suddenly disappeared. I hadn't noticed the deep humming noise surrounding me until it, too, disappeared.

Then came the loudest hiss I've probably ever heard. Loud enough that I stopped hearing it before it was done. A flash of red light rendered me blind for some seconds. I wondered if I'd just been shot, or injected, or...something else lethal. But then, the feeling of metal, clamped down on my wrists and ankles, took its leave. With some difficulty, I started to move my limbs. It felt like I hadn't moved around in years. The sensation of touch was beginning to return to my fingers and toes - even if all they could feel was the wall in front of me. Soon, I was able to grope around the tight space until I found a handle, which I instinctively pulled until it stopped.

My vision slowly faded back in, but I assumed something was still wrong with it, because I was still only seeing red, and it wasn't very consistent, fading in and out. I wasn't confident I could hold my own weight just yet, so I spent some time looking around as my vision sharpened.

The thing I had just come out of was apparently some kind of...cryo-sleep chamber, I assumed. Must have been for crew during long voyages, I figured; it probably wasn't for imprisonment if I could open it from the inside. There were more rows of them in the room with me. Some were opened, most were not. Then I looked down, and wished that I hadn't. The ruggedized uniform that I remembered wearing, the nice utilitarian jacket that I'd picked out because it had all the pockets, the snappy steel-toed boots...all of them were gone. I flexed my arms up to my chest - still a bit difficult - and felt around, finding nothing but skin. Aw Christ, I'd thought. The hell kind of people do that to a girl, just take their clothes and put them on ice? At least I didn't feel cold at all; I'd imagine being frozen for who-knows-how-long tends to mess with how one perceives ambient temperature.

I wasn't accomplishing much by staying in the chamber, so I kicked at the floor to propel myself out...slightly too hard, as I sent myself sailing into the thin, recycled air. I wasn't stopping. Nothing stops you when you're careening out of control through what amounts to zero gravity. Nothing, that is, except the emergency power. That deep shuddering feeling hit me again, and before I realized what it meant, I found myself on the damp metal floor. I laboriously pushed myself upright, finding that I wasn't doing too bad at standing still, and scanned the room for something to wear. I saw nothing of the sort. Well, I told myself, all the more reason to not get caught.

In between the red flashes of the warning lights, I tried to identify the room I was in. There were no signs to read, but there were at least another thirty-some of the chambers. I couldn't be sure if any of them had people in them, or whether those people were alive. There were informational placards riveted to them, but the light wouldn't stay on long enough for me to read any of them.

Clang, clang, clang-- Whatever that was, was getting closer. I moved to get behind one of the pods, but my leg gave out from under me, whether from weakness or the slippery puddle of melted ice below me. A door opened somewhere nearby, and I heard somebody's voice.

"Oy! Paterson! Hurry up getting the power back, we're gonna lose the pods!" Damn. I was hoping it would be somebody friendly.

"Workin' on it!" I heard from much closer. "Maybe we wouldn't run out of power all the time if you'd quit capping so many marks for your cryo-bank scam!"

"Do I need to repeat myself again? If we lose those pods, all those neural-net accounts die wiv' 'em!" So I was supposed to be their prisoner-on-ice? "Sod it, I'll go check on Sheffield and see if he's got the backup primed yet."

The door shut, but I kept hearing muttering; somebody was still in the room with me. I had missed where the door was, so the only course of action I had was the less advisable one of crawling closer towards the muttering, as quietly as I could.

"...we're supposed to be a friggin' anarchy here, ain't nobody in charge, but everybody feels like they gotta boss around the only guy who knows how to fix crap around here...whole social dynamic's flawed from the start I tell ya." Clang. "Shit, where'd that land--URK!!"

I'd tapped into an energy that I wasn't sure I still had, and pounced on the man called Paterson, one arm wrapped around his neck and the other immobilizing the arm in which he held his spanner. I tried to come up with an appropriately menacing line to give him, but nothing was coming to me. "Where is this?" I hissed through clenched teeth.

"C-Caiaphas Station," Paterson choked. "Fringe space. Just past Pluto's orbit."

Fringe space? How long was I out to go on that long of a trip? "How do I get out?"

"You'll need a ship--urk!" I squeezed him a little tighter. "There's--probably at least a few docked here, take whatever you want, I just--I just wanna breathe again!"

I let him go and tried to bee-line away from him, while he was still coughing, before he could get a glance at me. I didn't need him to know who I was... but also, I still had my modesty to protect. I should have asked him if there were any spare clothes around - but getting away from here was the bigger problem. I was only a few steps away from him when my legs gave out again, and I fell on my face behind another pod. Alright...we'll just hug the wall, then, and hope for the best. Nobody saw that, right? And nobody else ever will. Now where's that door...