isthisart | façade

"Trouble. Ryoval's security found Murka and the troops. He spun the most beautiful web of bullshit you ever heard, and they're currently being thrown out the back door as opposed to getting an uncomfortable look at the inner workings of the biolab, but I'm squirrelled away in a ceiling panel. I'll follow them out as soon as I can, to rendezvous and regroup... but first I'm going to see if I can't locate the critter myself. Might improve our chances for the next round, God help us. If Lady Luck is with me I might even pull off getting that sample before I squirrel my way back out."

"Fuck. Be careful," advises Thorne.

"Will do. Keep an eye out for Murka and the boys. Naismith out."

And now to see if he can't at least salvage some useful intel from this screwup. He locates the appropriate cables, cajoles the door open, prays for the safety of his bones, and drops out of the ceiling to scurry through it. On the other side, he gets back into the duct system the minute he finds a reachable grille. Then he gets out his map cube and recalculates his route, now that he doesn't need to haul along his larger companions. He can just stick to the nice safe ductwork.

Three turns into this new route, he observes a junction where no junction is reported on his map. Buggery. Has the complex been altered, or was that construction company not as forthcoming as they claimed to be? Either way, he'd better keep careful track of his route. The planet continues to turn, and he still has to get out with his intel and then, ideally, turn around and lead another commando raid back in.

Time passes. Miles crawls on. He's just starting to think about turning back when he finally spots an unattended employee, sitting amid a vast array of holovid and comm equipment in a room which the dubious map labels Small Repairs. It's no repair shop, but the man at the desk is sitting with his back to Miles, engrossed in his vid displays. No better opportunity is going to present itself.

Miles checks his dart-gun, aims carefully through the ventilation grille, and fires. The man's hand jerks to the back of his neck, reflexively seeking some biting insect, before the combination of fast-penta and a paralytic kicks in and produces a nerveless slump. Miles allows himself a triumphant smile before he emerges from the grille and drops oh-so-carefully to the floor.

His victim is well-dressed according to civilian fashion - no red-and-black guard uniform here - and smiling vaguely, a common side effect of fast-penta. He's also having some trouble keeping his seat. Miles catches him in the process of falling over and rights him carefully.

"Hello there. Let's get you sat up straight, yes, here we go, can't talk with your face in the carpet... now, do you know anything about a genetic construct, some sort of eight-foot-tall fanged monstrosity, recently bought from House Bharaputra?"

"Yes," says the man, still smiling.

Ah, right, fast-penta literalism strikes again. "Where is the creature?" he asks.

"Downstairs."

"Where exactly downstairs?" inquires Miles with maximum patience. Yelling at fast-penta interrogatees is invariably counterproductive.

"In the sub-basement," the man elaborates serenely. "The crawlspace around the foundations. We were hoping it would catch some of the rats." A fast-penta giggle escapes him. "Do cats eat rats? Do rats eat cats?"

Miles ignores the babbling and consults his map-cube. The sub-basement looks like an excellent place to break out of, if one happens to have a commando team along - the prospect of finding the creature in that maze of support columns and pipe bundles is vastly less appealing, but maybe they can bait it with a rat or two. He searches his dart-gun's case for a cartridge that will render his helpful subject unconscious and thereby unable to squeal about the interrogation until morning, when Miles's team will with any luck have been and gone.

A random movement of the man's arm pulls his sleeve back far enough to reveal his wristcom, an unusually complex model very like Miles's own. Miles regards it uneasily. "Ah - who are you?" he asks.

"Moglia, Chief of Security, Ryoval Biologicals. At your service, sir," the man burbles.

Fuck.

Miles hunts faster through the dart cartridges, his mind racing. Now that the possiblity is raised, it's screamingly obvious that this room with its profusion of vid stations is a security ops center, and it's highly likely that he has managed to trip some subtle alarm by accessing it in the fashion he did, whether or not Moglia had time to hit a silent screamer on his wristcom before the fast-penta got him.

He has his fingers on the right cartridge and is just drawing it out when the door bursts open to admit a flood of guards. He throws up his hands, keying his wristcom's panic button and flinging it off in the same motion; it yelps its panic signal to the Ariel via tightbeam and then hisses and melts in midair, destroying any chance that these goons might use it to track down the rest of Miles's squad.

The security chief giggles and wobbles in his chair as the same guard sergeant who ejected Ensign Murka charges in to capture and search Miles. The search is conducted at speed and in an excessively uncomfortable fashion, and at the end of it Miles is barefoot, bruised, and equipped with no more than his shirt and trousers. At least they gave him back the twenty-four hour ration bar in his trouser pocket, probably because it doesn't look appetizing enough to steal.

It takes them a good hour or so to get the security chief revived from his drugged daze, at which point he grills the guard-sergeant about the earlier encounter with Murka and the boys, an exchange Miles would find very gratifying if he didn't hurt so much. A squad is belatedly sent out to try to track the Dendarii; Miles wishes them all confusion on their journey. Then, his face twisted by a combination of nausea and apprehension, Moglia calls his boss.

"What is it?" asks a rumpled and irritated Baron Ryoval.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I thought you'd want to know about the intruder I just caught. Odd-looking man, sort of a tall dwarf, wearing a uniform I don't recognize, carrying a bunch of high-end equipment that I don't think adds up to 'thief'." Moglia gestures for Miles and his pile of devices to be brought within range of the vid pickup. "He was asking a lot of question about Bharaputra's monster."

Baron Ryoval spends a moment looking stunned, and then laughs heartily. "Oh, I should have guessed! Stealing when you should be buying, Admiral? Ha! Very good, Moglia!"

Moglia brightens very slightly at this indication that the shit he's in may not be as deep as expected. "You know him, my lord?"

"Indeed. He calls himself Miles Naismith. A mercenary admiral, of the self-promoted variety, I don't doubt. Excellent work, Moglia. Hold him, and I'll be there in the morning to deal with him personally."

"Hold him how, sir?"

Baron Ryoval gives a little shrug. "Amuse yourselves. Freely." Then he ends the call.

Chief Moglia's first idea for how to amuse himself involves having a couple of guards hold Miles while Chief Moglia hits him. But after a single blow to Miles's stomach, he seems to reconsider; his satisfaction is obviously limited by the drug aftermaths still expressing themselves in his body. With the pleasure of direct violence denied him, a speculative gleam lights his eye.

"You crawled in here looking for Bharaputra's toy soldier..."

"I think we should let him," the guard sergeant chimes in.

"Yes," breathes Moglia, with the smile of a man contemplating some vicious heaven.

They have their guards haul Miles through a maze of corridors and lift tubes he is too beaten and dejected to memorize. The lowest exit point on the last lift tube deposits them in a dusty basement, where Miles is dragged to some kind of serviceway, a locked trapdoor in the basement floor which swings up to reveal a ladder. His captors glare. Miles contemplates his options, and starts down the ladder. The guard sergeant yells after him, "Seven! Hey, Seven! Come and get your dinner!", then shuts the hatch hastily, almost trapping Miles's fingers.

Miles hangs there in the pitch dark, his fingers chilling on the damp, cold metal rungs, and desperately reviews his memory of that vid call. Ryoval did strongly imply that he wanted Miles to be alive at the end of the night, didn't he?

Thorne, meanwhile, receives the panic button, hightails it with the non-Miles Dendarii contingent back to the Ariel, invites Nicol over for "wine, and contingencies" so that when Miles is recovered they can bolt without having to fetch her separately, and sets about making calls.

The dark proves to be not so pitch as all that; once Miles's eyes have time to adjust, they perceive a dim yellow glow radiating from parts of the ceiling. Some kind of emergency lighting, he supposes. It suffices to allow him to examine the inside of the hatch, which yields no latches or catches or handles when thoroughly probed with eyes and questing hands, nor any other detectable means by which he can coax it open and escape; a promising protrusion turns out to be the place where a previously existing handle was torn out and the hole filled with some kind of industrial sealant. Defeated, he makes the climb down the bitingly cold ladder to the merely uncomfortably chilly rock some few meters below.

Edited 2014-08-29 23:55 (UTC)

A dim shadow explodes out from behind a pillar several meters away, crosses the intervening distance in a fraction of a second, and resolves into a gaunt but still recognizably human figure. He crouches to get his face closer to Miles's level, splaying his fingers on the damp rock - his fingernails are long and strong and stained with dark smears that continue up his hands and arms, perhaps acquired from a diet of rats. He is clad in thin papery garments, a pair of loose trousers and a belted short-sleeved hospital-gownish robe. His breath smells distinctly carnivorous.

"Food," he says hoarsely.

Under that intent stare, Miles promptly produces his ration bar and holds it out in a trembling hand.

'Seven' separates bar from wrapper, wolfs down the former, and drops the latter on the floor. Then he cocks his head at Miles.

"Water," he says next. It's hard to hear a recognizable tone in that dessicated croak.

"Water, water, right..." says Miles, trying not to be too obvious about leaning away from the - creature's? person's? - starved and bloodshot gaze. "Water comes in pipes - there's pipes around here, plenty of them - let's, um, go look for one, shall we?" He edges away a few steps, reluctant to turn his back on this apparition. "Should be white plastic, with a certain kind of jointing - I'd recognize it if I saw it."

Seven looks from Miles to the ceiling, turns his eyes this way and that, and says, "Over there. Ceiling's lower. You can get close."

Then he picks Miles up one-handed by the back of his shirt, tucks him under that arm, and bounds off up the rising slope on his other three limbs.

Edited 2014-08-30 00:31 (UTC)

Miles yelps and clings tightly. He has visions of being dropped at this speed, and rolling onward, probably to break every non-plastic bone in his body...

But in fact, Seven sets him down quite gently below a cluster of pipes, and points up. "Those?"

The yellowish light makes it hard to tell colours, but Miles does recognize the jointing on two of the pipes; the bigger, darker one is probably the grey of sewage, while the smaller, paler one must by process of elimination be white for water.

"There," he says, pointing. "I could have a go at the joint, if - uh - you could give me a boost...?" The beast-man seems coherent enough to understand the concepts involved, but God only knows the state of his education. Miles adds some explanatory gestures.

Seven contemplates this notion for a moment in absolute stillness, then crouches again to admit Miles onto his shoulders and stretches up smoothly to his full height.

Miles puts a hand on the pipe to steady himself, but he needn't bother. Seven is a bony perch, but solid as the bedrock on which he stands. Now, grab here and there, and turn... blessed luck, the joint gives way before Miles's fragile fingers do anything more than ache warningly. With a squeak and a crack, the pipe disjoins, sagging a few inches at the juncture and loosing a sparkling stream of water to splash onto the rocky floor.

One powerful hand grabs Miles by the back of his shirt again and deposits him on the floor; then Seven puts his face in the stream, gulping down water as fast as semihumanly possible. He runs his fingers through his hair, rinses away the smears and encrustations of what is most probably rat blood, scrubs at his face and his hands and his arms until everything he can see is more or less clean. Then he has another long drink, splashing water everywhere.

Then he turns back to Miles.

"Can you find heat?" he rumbles. No longer quite so hoarse and dry, his voice turns out to be a deep husky near-growl, unpracticed with words but still clear enough to convey meaning.

What sort of a wizard must he seem, to this unloved creature?

"Heat," says Miles, "heat... yeah, some of these pipes are for hot air. Better get close to the ceiling first, or it'll all just go to waste. I don't see the right kind here..." He squints into the darkness. "Let's try over there - ?" Before Seven can pick him up again, Miles starts off on his own steam, dodging around the intermittent pillars in search of a heating pipe low enough to be worth breaking open.

Seven trails him silently.

At last: "There!" He points triumphantly, then deflates slightly. "I can't get the joints this time, though, they don't twist open the same way and the pipe's too big for me to turn if they did. I don't suppose you...?" He eyes the looming figure of Seven, seemingly comprised of muscle and bone and damn little else. "Maybe if you, I don't know, scored the plastic with your nails and then gave it a really good shove?" He scratches his own nails lightly around the circumference of the pipe, by way of demonstration.

Seven follows this suggestion. Scratch scratch scratch - his talonlike fingernails appear to weaken the plastic considerably, and then he climbs up between the pipe and the ceiling and braces himself there and pushes down. The hard plastic splinters apart where he scored it and gives a vast exhalation of hot air, before Seven wraps himself around the broken place and clings.

Miles contemplates this spectacle.

Miles pictures his original mission plan written on a plastic flimsy, and pictures himself taking that flimsy and crumpling it into a ball and stuffing it down a waste chute.

This creature, this Seven, is far from the doomed genetic mistake that Dr. Canaba described. He walks, he talks, he washes, he weeps; Miles can think of no viable definition of human from which this - man? boy? how old is he? - should be excluded. He is surprised by the strength of his own protective feelings.

When Seven unclasps the heat pipe and rubs at his eyes, Miles moves closer, seeking some of that warmth for himself. And answers. God, for some answers.

"They - um - call you Seven?" The old joke about who Six is afraid of flashes through his mind. He suppresses it as wildly inappropriate.

"Yeah. What do they call you?" he inquires, shifting to one side to allow Miles a spot in the cozy breeze.

"Admiral Miles Naismith."

"Hm," says Seven. "I always thought officers would be... bigger."

...Despite himself, Miles giggles.

"You're not the only one," he confides. "It's hell sometimes, trying to get people to pay attention. I have to be twice as spectacular as the next guy."

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