Tides of Change

[ophidian]

"You know who I am..." It wasn't a question, but she was teasing the Ensign.

"Yes, I do."

"Yes, I do Ma'am!" The guard hit her face with the back of his rifle. Blood splat across the hall. She didn't have any more strenght left to scream. Only a brief mumbling came out of her lips.

"Don't let her fade away."

Moiraine's voice was calm, emotionless. She felt no pity for Ensign Mara. Not that she felt anything for anyone in truth but after they found out who she really was, the tiny bit of Commodore Damodred's humanity was gone as well.

They were experiencing ship malfunctions both on board the smaller craft as well as the Immortal herself. At first, they looked like simple engineering mistakes caused by heavy workload. No matter what the cause was, they were human after all.

After a while though, the so called "accidents" started to increase in numbers. The final issue was about Immortal's navigation controls. Two times in their thirty hours journey, they experienced auto-navigation malfunction, losing half of the map data. Only the experience of senior bridge crew saved the computer core. Else, they would be lost in open space until they managed to get in touch with another Order craft where they can re-install the navigation matrix.

Suspiciously, Ensign Mara was on duty when routine maintainance checks were on going or registered in all repair drills going on board the Immortal whenever those problems occured. Commodore Damodred had spent all of her officer career in Order, coming back from the days of Casper Orillion. She had extensive field training and learnt almost everything the hard way.

Mara was cunning but not enough to beat the old hag. The Iron Lady realized her connection and asked the security team to follow Ensign Mara. It wasn't long after when she got caught while trying to sabotage the jump drive. It was alarming though. They had serious breaches in security before but it took lots of effort to do that and so, they were rare. Nowadays, with all those new recruits coming, they had more and more gaps opening within their security protocols. Mara was one of the newbies, started serving on Immortal only three weeks ago.

Now, her life was clinging at the end of Moiraine's feeling of mercy, which was non-existant.

"Tell me Ensign Mara, I can say that you are not an infected one... The so called Wild. So... who are you? Whom do you work for?"

Mara gave a brief smile. She was barely holding. When the security team caught her mangling with the jump drive, she tried to make her way out and a gunfight broke loose. Before they neutralized her, Mara shot one of the marines at his leg. Well, it was obvious that the security team were a bit more than upset to see their friend getting hurt. They've beaten up the woman pretty hard before they brought her to the Commodore.

"I work for them. You know it... Commodore." This time, she addressed her as an officer. Whether you work for aliens or for humans, it didn't matter. Life was precious.

"Girl. Who are your superiors? Whom you give your reports to? Give me contacts, names, locations, secrets."

"No... I can't. Kill me if you wish but I won't tell you anything."

Moiraine didn't even blink. She wasn't showing any signs of emotions. No anger, no pity. Nothing.

"Do you know why they call me the Iron Lady?"

Mara looked Moiraine in the eye... There was nothing behind those eyes. As if, her soul was taken away and it was merely a shell that endured.

"It is because you are fearless, emotionless. It is because you don't bend to life and its difficulties."

It was the standart definition any officer of Order would give. More or less.

"No. It is because I don't care." With that, Moiraine turned back and started out of the hall.

"Throw her out of the airlock." She didn't even hesitate, she didn't even turn back. Without losing pace, she walked out of the scene, not hearing Ensign Mara's begs for mercy.

For her, there was no Ensign Mara. It was already in the past.

....
....


Immortal drifted slowly towards her coordinates as a doll rag like body moved away from the ship, staring with a lifeless gaze at the eternity of space.

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