epilogue
Cygnia stood in chains on one side of the hangar deck. Guards stood on either side of her. Her eye hurt, but she refused to massage it in front of the audience in the hangar.
Her surviving crews from the fleet were lined up in parade ground rows. They wore manacles hooked together with chains from one end of the line to the other. They kept their faces stoic to reflect the proceedings going on.
Cygnia tried not to think about the rest of the crews that had been killed on the outpost they had tried to set up. She had lost three-thirds of her complement to one enemy. The resulting court martial after the rescue had been short and to the point.
The admiral had kept his ruling to himself as he had ordered the survivors to the hangar for imposition of sentence. She expected they would be spaced through the launch doors.
The great man came into the room, uniform plain except for the rank tabs on his sleeve. He looked at the arrangements with a nod.
"For your failure to repel one guerilla, loss of property, failure of mission, one out of two will be decommissioned." The admiral pronounced the decision with a nod to one of the lesser officers on deck.
The officer gave the order. Security stepped up and shot every second survivor in the face with hand weapons. The men and women left struggled under the dead weight pulling on their chains after the mass execution.
Cygnia closed her eyes. She had hoped for better than that for her crew. They didn't deserve that for her failure.
"Remove the rest of the prisoners." The admiral gestured with one hand. The officer gave the order. "Don't take off their chains."
The security troopers stopped undoing the chains to release the dead bodies to the deck. They marched out the survivors. The living crew had to manhandle their former shipmates as best they could at gunpoint.
The admiral gestured for Cygnia to stand in front of the passing of sentence for her subordinates. He glared at her. She looked at the ceiling to avoid his eyes while standing at attention.
"You have shown yourself unfit to where the uniform of an officer." The admiral gestured at security. "It would be my pleasure to send you back to Headquarters as a bed girl. Instead you are to be spaced for your lack of command ability, and failure of mission."
Security grabbed Cygnia's arms. They forced her to a drone the size of a medium range missile. They sealed her in quickly. She didn't bother to beat on the cover. Her strength wasn't enough to break the metal.
The drone fired down the launch tube. The former sailor closed her eyes as the projectile's engine cut on. She knew they had fired her in a random direction. She had until the air ran out in the compartment space.
It was a slow way to die, but better than being turned into a pleasure slave to be used until she fell apart.
She wondered how long she had until the air ran out.
It would be better for her if she could get the cover off. The cold and vacuum of space was a better killer than running out of air.
The drone fired a second stage. Cygnia wondered what that was for. The second firing had pushed her into hyperspace. Her destination could be anywhere.
That was unusual. She didn't know of anyone who had been shot into hyperspace. Where had they sent her?
The missile dropped out of hyperspace. She listened. The engines cut off. She was freefalling toward anyplace with gravity. She hoped it wasn't a sun.
Maybe it would be better if it was a sun. The nuclear explosion would destroy her before she knew it.
The missile hit. There was a period of unawareness for Cygnia. She blinked her eyes in the darkness as she wondered why she couldn't see. Then she remembered what had happened to her.
Cygnia concentrated in her cell. The drone had hit a planet. The gravity was near normal. She couldn't hear, see, or taste anything. She did feel a soft breeze. Some kind of flower scent wafted to her nose.
The missile had come apart somewhere for her to smell flowers. She could live on this planet. She just had to get out of the makeshift prison.
Cygnia braced her feet against the lid and pushed. She heard creaking. The cover had broken on impact. It was still heavy. She didn't think she could push it off on her own.
She also couldn't stay in the crashed drone.
She braced and pushed with all her might. She slid the cover away to one side. Sunlight glared down. She sat up. She looked at the red trees surrounding her crater. She got to her feet.
It was better than being dead.
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Originally Posted by wick
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