Vengeance and Betrayal

[Evyn]

Evyn Hunter opened her eyes, which felt akin to scraping sandpaper over them. However, that was the only painful part of her return to consciousness. The rooms dim light, soft on her eyes, showed a small room common for military or transport ships, where living space was scarce. There was a desk, wall terminal, the rooms only door, and the bed she was laying on. The only thing remarkable about it all was how utterly ordinary it was.

As she lay there, her mind began to spin, flashing through her most recent memories in a bizarre and surreal fashion. The months of work as a pilot for the Bretonian Armed Forces, gaining their trust, misleading them, betraying them.. Thats how it always was. The Betrayers and the Betrayed. As much a part of her as loyalty was of the Bretonian pilots. The feel of the knife as she pressed it to Nelles throat was burned into her memory.

Bretonia.. She had fled from it, had run as if from a nightmare. Until that Bounty Hunter had caught up with her. That damned girl, found her just as she entered the Taus. Found her and beaten her. Beaten her until the point of desperation. The scene flooding back to her, clear as day, The battle, her injured shoulder, the needle.. She paused at that. The needle, and the poison in it. The poison she was supposed to take in case of capture by enemy forces. The poison that should have killed her. And then she remembered being thrown across the cockpit, the needles glass vial shattering against the window as her out-of-control ship collided with an asteroid, sending her spinning.. Into the Harris minefield.

Beyond that she couldnt remember, and a cold lump of suspicion formed in her stomach as she scanned the room again. Nothing she saw seemed to indicate she was a prisoner, and she definitely wasnt dead. It was too dull to be heaven, and too pleasant to be hell.. Not that that was saying much. Swinging her sleep-numbed legs onto the floor she stood, the overhead light brightening as her movement tripped its sensors. The brighter light revealed nothing more than a small window lit by the white mist common among Niobium fields. Tau-37?

Walking over, she rummaged through the desk drawers; looking for anything that might indicate who the ship she was on belonged to. Nothing. All empty. She was standing still for a moment, thinking, when the light above her turned red. Outside, the white mist of the ice was replaced by the bright swirling colors of a jump hole. Several minutes passed before the ship finally began to slow, then stop.

Evyns breath caught in her throat and her eyes widened. She stared, surprised, her mind whirling in confusion. Framed in the window, almost as if from a photo, lay a green-and-orange planet orbiting a familiar green sun.. Malta.

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