The Khitomer Blues...

Posted on Jun 05, 2014 @ 7:52am by Evangeline “Sedna” Montoya
Edited on on Jun 05, 2014 @ 8:53am

Mission: The Tangled Webs We Weave

The Khitomer Blues...

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Location: Khitomer
SD: 2.14062.0002
Scene: Work Camp


“Tell us again about this delicacy.”

The Human woman grunted as she dug away at the dirt beneath her feet. It was a rocky terrain but there was soil beneath it, and if she could get to the soil beneath it then she could find the minerals the damn Praetor wanted. If she could find the minerals, then maybe tonight wouldn't be so terrible.

She was kidding herself with that last statement. The Centurion on Khitomer did what he wanted, regardless of what she found, or didn't find. Mercurial was the way of life at the prison camp So she didn't dig to curry favors with the guards. She didn't protest the digging, there was no point in that either. On a very practical level, digging made the time go faster and kept her muscles up.

“No words today, Human?”

The dark haired woman ignored the Romulan to her right and kept digging. If she could just get up this rock...

“It probably doesn't exist. She made it up.”

She could ignore that; what did the Romulan sociopath to her right know of what was real or not?

“She has no honor.”

That was easy to ignore, coming from the Klingon criminal to her left. She wasn't exactly an authority on the subject of honor.

So the Lunan woman kept digging. Finally the rock came up and all the prisoners dove under trying to find the tritanium thought to be here. But she hadn't survived for 5 years moving around from Romulan hell-hole to hell-hole without some survival skills. And if that meant finally curbing her tongue and surviving...

“Hello my pitiful little Human.”

The woman, who had been captured by accident because the Romulan was too stupid to know that she was just the wrong woman at the wrong time at the wrong place, swung her ax around just a hair too close and gave her too wide smile to the Centurion. “Good morning, boss,” she said just to piss him off.

“Human, I told you it's Centurion,” the Romulan corrected her stepping in closer so that he stood close to her so that he was up next to her, his hot breath coming down in puffs in her face.

“And I told you about dental hygiene.” She tossed some shiny rocks his way. “Here ya go.”

The Romulan caught the rocks without looking, glaring at the woman. She stood before him – dirty, pitiful human, her dark hair matted and her tattoos of a dragon on one arm and a mermaid on the other arm, covered by layers of dirt. “I don't understand you,” the Centurion said as they stood under the sweltering sun. “You should be afraid. Why aren't you?”

“Blame it on the Bossa Nova,” she smirked.

And that earned her Round 1 of a retributions...

=/\=
Scene: Tent->Field
TI: That night

The woman looked up at the roof of her tent, briefly wondering how she could get a window. Out of all the things she missed from her old life that was what she missed the most that she hadn't let go of – seeing the stars when she wanted to. As a fighter pilot, she hadn't expected to live long (and one could argue that just by being herself that her odds weren't especially good). Not that she was a particularly warm and fuzzy person before; but being a pilot certainly that exacerbated her tendencies to not develop long-term relationships. When on your first day of SFA your pilot instructor told you, “Look to your right. Now look to your left. Remember those faces because in five years time, they won't be here at your reunion. And if they are you won't be.”

So relationships were out. But the stars remained, and long for the stars she did. And her lollipops. Those were two of her vices that she hadn't let go of.

And beer. And a good cigar or maybe a french fry. Hell a good fuck could even make the list if she really was being fanciful. Ok, she hadn't let go of a lot but she was quick at learning at the School of Hard Knocks...long for things all she could want. But she'd never get them.

Yes, she enjoyed interaction quite a bit – getting a beer, joking around; but egads, she wasn't about to get close to anyone. Getting close meant letting people in, it meant looking back and knowing that people wouldn't be there in 5 years. She was an annoying kid growing up – the little sister who tagged along to her older brothers, the “oops” kid who drained resources (according to her mother – her father was so long out of the picture he had never voiced an opinion on the matter). The pilot struggled to think of anyone who could be thought of as a friend; she had the occasional bed partner but never a boyfriend.

So that was she wasn't particularly surprised that after years in this backwater hell-hole that people simply forgot she was here. If she couldn't remember how long she was here, how could she expect people to even remember she was here in the first place?

Tucking an arm under her head, she looked up at the canvas debating how to make a window.

“Human.”

She looked over at the Klingon who entered her tent. Figures. She finally had gotten rid of her last roommate and now someone else was crowding in on her. “Go away,” the Lunan woman growled, looking for her pipe. Great, what had started out as a quiet night was going to turn into a fight.

The Klingon laughed at that. “You're not going to hurt me.”

Good she found her pipe under the scraps she had fashioned as a blanket. Swinging herself up she glared at the Klingon. “Why the fuck not?”

“Cause I'm here to get you out.”

The Human woman looked at the large Klingon man. “Yeah, sure. Cause months of you being an asswipe and suddenly you're feeling effin' generous? Towards me? I don't think so.”

“Fine stay if you enjoy digging for rocks. Matches the ones in your head. But I had orders to get you out,” the Klingon pointed out.

“Orders? Oh this should be hysterical – from who?”

The Klingon pulled the woman out. “Come.”

She knew what to do; although she thought of herself as a pilot she also knew enough Security measures. She also had a smidge of common sense; and that little bit told her that fighting now wasn't going to work when someone 1.5 times your size was dragging you.

So she went limp.

“Bitch, I'm trying to help,” the Klingon muttered as he dragged her by the collar of her tattered tunic.

She dug in her heels, and let the bastard using up his energy to pull, all the while her feet (which damn it weren't in her boots) made deep tracks in the sand. If he wanted her this badly, she was going to make him work for it.

When they came out into the moonlight night suddenly the Klingon man and the Human woman were surrounded by the dirtiest felons in the camp. “There is no help on Khitomer,” she said glaring at the Klingon.

“The puny Human is right,” the Romulan woman smiled. It was, in another lifetime, charming; here it was malevolent and pitiful at the same time – the sneer accented by the lack of teeth would do that.

“I have orders,” the Klingon repeated.

“Not from us,” the Romulan man replied. Nodding his head to the Human woman he said, “She got the most today, she gets to keep her tent.”

“La-di-fucking-dah,” the Lunan woman replied. “You want the tent, take the tent.”

She didn't mean it, she had earned that tent and damn it she wanted it. She wanted it because the last time she had to share a tent, the woman she shared it with would stand over her in the middle of the night sharpening her axe muttering things in a language the Human didn't understand. The time before that she had to share the tent with a sociopathic neurotic loan shark from DELTA V (who hadn't taken a vow of chastity as he reminded her), which was what lead to her sleeping with her pipe in the first place. Before that it had been...shit if she could remember but all she knew was she had earned that tent. She wanted that tent.

Counting the four people closing in on her and Klingon, the Human woman conceded she did want to live more than keep the tent. But damn if it wasn't close.

The fight that broke out was dirty and quick. There was no style or grace, it was a fight for survival or barring that for wounding. That suited her just fine; she wasn't a disciple of any particular style except survival.

The Klingon dropped her like it was hot, and went to work on the two women who were coming their way. Face down in the sand and dirt, all the Lunan woman could mutter as she rolled over onto her back was, “Really?!”

Faced with two large Romulan men above her, she cursed loudly. The one she identified as the leader, swept down and leaned over her. “Not so mouthy now?”

She said nothing as she pulled back as far as she could in the dirt before her right hand went flying up and her thumb dug into his left eye. As he howled and jerked back, the Human woman went quickly up, grabbed his head close to hers and headbutted him. She did that twice before adrenaline kicked in his system and he dragged her up.

Pulling her arms back and up behind her back, the Romulan pulled her back while the Lunan woman screamed at the pain. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Klingon getting his ass kicked which amused a small part of her until it kicked in to her brain that he may have actually been her only hope.

Back to her own situation she noted that while she was being pulled closer to the leader, his smaller sidekick was coming at her. Well that she could do something about. Once he got close enough, her left leg went flying and with the instep she kneed him the in the groin, thanking some wayward fluke of biology that most men's balls were in the same place.

Sadly the well timed kick didn't stop the bastard so she repeated the process three times until he sank to his knees in the dirt. While his friend tried to pull her back, she pulled forward and was able to execute a kick to the face that did send him down.

The leader flung her, but at least now she was prepared and only went stumbling instead of also going face down in the dark. He grabbed her right shoulder before she could steady herself and started landing a quick series of face and body punches with his right fist. Instinct took over and she shielded herself from some of them, but he landed enough that she was aware of the blood oozing out of her already crooked nose and her vision becoming blurry.

In what was contradiction to the instinct that was telling her to move away, the woman stepped in closer to the punches so she was in between his body and his arm. Then she snaked up her left hand to his hair and yanked on it hard so his face was lower than hers finally. At that moment she slid her hand down to pull on his big ears, using that for a grip, and pulled him back a bit so it opened up his face. Using her bony right elbow, she slammed her elbow down onto his face so he'd have a crooked nose too. As he stumbled a bit, the woman never let go of his ear, which caused him to continue howling in pain. Oblivious to the howls (he was to hers, so she had no guilt about ignoring his) she kneed his face.

As he stumbled down, the woman turned on her heel and went running for the hills. A small part of her brain whispered that she should check out how the Klingon was doing. Then again, he literally dragged her into that mess, it wasn't like he was her friend.

So she ran. Out of breath, bleeding and sore, she ran. She ran as if her life depended upon it; which it did because if the other two Romulans didn't catch up with her then surely some Centurion would.

She ran past the lights, ducking in and out of shadows, and she ran up and over sand dunes that were artificially created to block in the prisoners. She ignored the stars she had longed for so much because she wasn't in a position to enjoy them. Survival wasn't about beauty or light, it was about breathing through the night.

When the edge of the camp was in sight, she almost let out a sigh of relief. Instead she was tackled out of the darkness.

“Can't catch a fucking break,” the woman yelped as she went flying down.

“You have no idea the break you caught,” came the voice from on top of her.

The woman flipped over as soon as she felt a release in pressure. She stared up a Human man with long black hair. When he smiled at her she said, “Those teeth have got to go.”

“Careful, Sedna...I know you have claws but I bite,” he warned menacingly.

It wasn't how he said (although that did scare her a bit) but what he said. She hadn't been called that since she was on the PENDRAGON or the GATEWAY before that. It was her call sign, what she was known by when she was on a ship or station. It was a name long gone, as it spoke to a time when she attempted things like honor and civility.

Letting out a whoosh she muttered, “What did you call me?”

The man grinned again and swept himself up. Yanking her up with an ease she couldn't match with his body, he said while holding onto her wrist with a vice like grip, “Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Rawyvin Seth, and I'm your ride out of here.” Giving her a look he commanded, “And if you could please confirm your identity...”

She exhaled and took as much of a defensive pose as she could. “My name is Evangeline Montoya. And I let that Klingon bastard die. Why am I not killing you too?”

He smiled at that as if she amused him. “Good, he was a nuisance. Now, let's go home.”


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NRPG: Yes, I missed Montoya so I'm bringing her into civilization. Eventually, although she's still not a civil person ;)

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Sarah Albertini-Bond
Evangeline “Sedna” Montoya
Former Romulan prisoner