the sol's most notorious. (kingpins) wrote in warrantlogs, @ 2016-02-14 23:39:00 |
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Their boots thunder inside as the crew boards. The captain's already barking her orders: there's fire and iron in her angry voice and it echoes around the metal exoskeleton of the ship, one step ahead of them down the halls. This is a crew in strident formation, coming towards the bridge with purpose. They're in a hurry. They have a course to set, a job to get done, and no one's going to stand in their way. Except, in the heart of their ship grows a cancer. The door of the bridge unseals with a pneumatic hiss and slides open, the captain charges in, and — Chaos. Brief chaos, though. Hands on holsters and that's about as far as they get before the guns trained on them pop with easy denial, and the bodies hit the deck, a round of thuds, legs sprawled and torsos collapsing on top of each other and one of the attackers openly laughs at the sound of a hard skull reverberating against the metal floor. "Shit, that's gonna hurt," he snickers as they start pulling the bodies apart, laying them out one by one in front of the navigation array. The pilot watches silently. Silently, because his mouth is gagged and his hands are bound: still, every line of his body screams defiance, even despite the flat of a blade pressed to his cheek. "Good work," Beatrix tells her people as she scrapes the knife gently against the pilot's stubble, lovingly. To the twins: "check the ship for any stragglers. Wouldn't want to find an engineer holed up somewhere later on, causing trouble." The twins — young, one male, one female, utterly different in appearance in every way — nod in seamless synchronicity and move together, falling into step beside each other as they slip from the bridge. The other three remaining barely watch them go. They have their hands full. Grimes, grunting as he lays a body down on the ground like a sack of potatoes, throws Beatrix a dark look. "It's not too late to kill them all and string their guts up outside the ship." Her smile is edged. "Follow the plan, sweetheart." They start to stir at roughly the same time. First one, then a few more, and there's a low chorus of groans and labored breathing as they try to pick themselves up, only to find their hands cuffed with their own zip-ties, their movement limited by five of their own guns loaded with their own ammunition pointed at their heads, held captive by strangers on the bridge of their own ship. It's almost worth it for the look on the captain's face alone as she stares at the woman sitting comfortably in her seat, an usurper on the throne. "What the hell do you want," the captain barks. She stands up, then, and cuts a condescending salute. "Let me introduce myself: I am Captain Hera, and this is my —" "Hera?" The captain on her knees scoffs. "No kidding. Who do you think you are, some new crime boss? You know Hera was the one who kept getting —" The knife handle catches her in the mouth. It doesn't quite knock her over; she keeps her balance by a miracle and turns to look back at the woman standing in front of her, eyes black with rage as her tongue tests the blood at the corner of her lip. "Don't interrupt," Captain Hera tells her prisoner, calmly. She turns on her heel and begins to pace an easy line back and forth before the kneeling hostages. "As I was saying: this is my crew. We come from all over, but most recently, we shared a common home together on the dark side of Pluto. Having fled that cold and unwelcoming hell, we find ourselves in warmer climates, in need of certain basic human rights. Security, for one. The ability to protect ourselves. The return of our dignity, which was so heartlessly stripped from us by those who would see us naked and alone, and is a rather difficult thing to reclaim. And revenge, of course." She laughs, quietly but brittle. "Yes, I'm well aware that Hera is the goddess who keeps getting betrayed by her husband. Yet the one thing she manages, time and time again, is to find ways to hurt him and those he cares about. And despite it all, she never once loses her throne." "Well yeah, but she's also his fucking sister, though," one of the crew mutters lowly; he gets a gun butt to the back of the head which does knock him to the deck, and his teeth are bloody when Grimes hauls him back up to his knees. "So you see," Hera continues, "we're seeking a very ephemeral sort of thing, but in truth, it's really quite simple. It's a neat solution: we can blow up your headquarters —" One of the crew lunges, even on her knees. She's put down as easily as the first, but a mutter of anger ripples through the group. Teeth are bared; lips are curled. "But ultimately, hurting you doesn't get us what we need. So we come to you, open-handed — with a bit of subterfuge to get you to this point, I admit, but you can see the dilemma — to help us accomplish our goals. We need a ship, and we need to safeguard against the RAC. What better way to achieve that than to come to the best ship in the RAC and take it out from under their very noses?" There is silence for a moment before the captain speaks. "So you take the ship. You had us at gunpoint the moment we walked in," and her tone is also bitter, "you could have killed us all then. You had the element of surprise. But you kept us alive. For what? To bear witness to your success? To deliver a message to the director?" "No, no," Hera smiles benevolently at the woman on her knees. "This is the message. We kept you alive to make you an offer. After all, what good is the Cuba Libre without its crew?" "Are you out of your fucking mind?" The captain's outburst is sheer anger, explosive. "My crew will never work for you, you delusional, washed-up sewer-rat of a —" The knife flashes in the light, a streak of silver. Her insults are swallowed along with the blood. She hits the deck: this time, no one reaches to haul her back to her knees. "Well, I'm not mopping that up," Ellie murmurs to the man next to her. He rolls his eyes. Hera wipes the flat of her blade against her pants and flicks the blood delicately from her eyes. "You have no captain to tell you what to do, anymore." She looks at the faces of the crew: some pale, some flushed with anger, some impassive. "The choice is always ultimately yours. I'm sure some of you are thinking 'you're criminals!'" Her voice raises in mockery. "We'll never work for you!" She snorts, dryly, her mouth tugging up into a smirk. "But let's be honest: none of you are bastions of justice. The reason why you're the best crew in the RAC is because you only follow one rule: the warrant is all. Everything else is irrelevant. Who you capture, what they've done, how you do it — at the end of the day, you do your jobs and you get paid, and that's all that matters. Isn't that right?" She's a small woman, but when she pulls herself up in front of them, dark hair wild and eyes shining bright with anger, the scars on her face standing out red against her sun-hungry skin and pale prison tattoos winding over her neck, she has an air of command. It rings in her voice: she is strident and confident, unflinching, and — unhinged, but also — rational, it seems. "Work for me, do your job, and you will get paid like kings, each and every one of you. I only have one rule: betray me, and you die." She lets it settle around them. "Go to hell." One man lifts his chin. "Fuck it. I'd rather die than follow an unhinged bitch into battle against the RAC. We'll end up on Pluto with the rest of you in the end, or dead. At least this way, I'll die with honor." He looks at the woman next to him. "Tell my kid that I —" Grimes sets the gun to the back of his head and obliges him. The woman beside the body looks away. "I'll not die for some noble cause," she says through her thick accent. "Sign me up. You've got the measure of us: we're all a bunch of cutthroats here." She winces at her own choice of words. "Aye, too soon." One by one, the line remains kneeling or falls. And when the only ones left are the ones kneeling, Hera gives the signal to raise them to their feet. The zipties are cut, and the crew rubs their wrists and shifts, studiously ignoring the bodies of their former comrades by their feet. Five standing. Four down. "Please show your new crew members to their quarters," their new captain instructs with a genteel nod of her head. "We'll get you set up with your new tattoos, and once we're in the air, you'll get your firearms back." "New tattoos?" the accented woman echoes. "Well, you didn't think we were just going to let you offer your allegiance and then waltz off, did you?" comes Hera's laughing response. "No, sweetheart, this is still a gang. You join, you get a tattoo. Don't worry," she coos, "Miguel's a true artist. He has steady hands." She nods to her armed associates. "Let me introduce you all, before you go. I'm Captain Hera, as I said before. This is Miguel, our hacker and technical genius. Ellie is our pyrotechnic expert. Grimes is our muscle, and also an incredibly gifted pilot. And the twins —" Hera grins. "They're full of mysteries. I suggest you don't try to surprise them — they may be telepathic." One crew member snorts, and Miguel shakes his head. "Come on, guys. Lead the way. We'll keep the guns for now, if you don't mind." Grimes stays behind as the others accompany their new crew members out of the bridge. Arms crossed, he surveys the bridge, the bodies. "Lot of them said yes," his only comment. "Why are you boys always doubting me? I'm a captain," Hera shows her teeth in something that barely resembled a smile, feral. "We'll airlock the bodies when we're out of atmosphere. Chart us a course for Europa, but don't start undocking yet." She crouches next to the captain's body, twisting the blade in slow, glinting rotations between her fingers. "I have one last thing to do before we go. Did you know it's Valentine's Day, Grimes?" He grunts as he sinks down into the pilot seat. "Didn't give a shit." "No, I imagine not," Hera murmurs as she turns the dead captain over, onto her back. "But what kind of wife would I be if I didn't do something for my husband this Valentine's Day…?" "Package," the messenger tells the receptionist behind the desk, setting the taped cardboard box on the counter as he slides his clipboard for her. "For a Régulo Salazar, care of Director Phan. Sign, please?" It's Sunday, so things are slow: the receptionist signs with a sigh, setting the package down at the edge of the desk. She'll put it in his mailbox, or send it up to Jadzia's office for tomorrow, once she gets up for lunch. Sitting at the desk to answer phones is more important at the moment,. The phone rings again, she answers with a swift Reclamation Apprehension Coalition, how can I help you?, and the messenger nods a professional goodbye as he heads out of the building, slinging his bag over his shoulder again. It isn't for another thirty minutes that the receptionist notices the blood seeping out of the package, dripping off of her desk into a small, dark pool on the floor. |