Captain Stanley Nelson - Prisoner of War

[pbrione]

--Medical Ward, Fuchu Prison, Shikoku System--

Nelson opened his eyes wearily and looked around him. He appeared to be lying on a bed in the prison medical ward, with a bank of equipment to his side monitoring his heartbeat and blood pressure. Feeling down to his left arm he found a cord of wires and tubes feeding into a medi-chip inserted along one of his veins. He lay back, trying to remember what had happened to him...

Komatsu had come to see him again, that much was certain. He had been questioned, intensively, for over an hour. He couldn't clearly remember what had caused him to pass out - it must have been the pain, or had they tried to inject him with a truth syrum? He couldn't remember. He hoped desperately that he had not told them anything.

Turning his head to face the other way, he noticed for the first time a person lying on the bed next to his, the curtains pulled round not entirely hiding them from view. As the other patient moved restlessly in their bed, Nelson noticed for the first time that it was a woman, one of the first he had seen in weeks in this male-dominated Kusarian world. Her face looked beautiful, but as Nelson looked closer he could see that it was gaunt and pale, her brow lined with stress and tiredness, and dark patches under her eyes. Her expression was calm, she seemed to be sleeping, but she looked sad somehow, as though filled with a great sorrow. She looked familiar somehow...

...an image of Nelson as a young Sub-Leuitenant in the QCR sprung to his mind. He was in the officers' mess on New London, and sitting down opposite him was a pretty female Captain of the QCO. He remembered distinctly being introduced to her as the neice of Commodore Richard Windsor, the founder of the QCRF, and felt a great honor at being in her presence...

...could it be? But surely not, after al she had missing for so long - everyone thought she was dead...Nelson started hard at the face of the sleeping woman before him. It looked very different from that of the young Captain in his memory, aged and weary, badly scarred in places. Her hair was a tangled mess and she looked so thin as if she had not eaten for weeks, that her bones were clearly visible beneath her skin. Yet, unmistakably, it was the same woman. Slowly, she opened her bleary eyes and looked at Nelson.

Glancing round to make sure there was nobody watching, he leaned closer to her and whispered,

"Sam? Captain Sam Windsor...?"

Her eyes widened. Slowly, with great effort as though every movement cost her a fortune in strength, her head nodded in acknowlegement.

As he heard the door of the Medical Ward open, and 2 Kusarian male nurses walked in, he quickly lay back on his pillow and pretended to be asleep. By the time he was discharged from medical, and escorted back to cell again an hour or so later, Sam Windsor was long since asleep again.

That night, locked in his cell, after carefully checking that the knife hidden under his bunk was still there Nelson could do nothing but await the next visit of the hated Captain Komatsu. But he had suffered enough. The next time they tried to interrogate him, he would fight back. He had a plan, and he had outside help. He would escape. And now, as he lay back with a determined expression, he knew exatly who he would be taking with him...

---

Sir Stanley Nelson




<span style="color:#000066">Charles Canning </span><span style="color:#000066"> Foreign Secretary</span>