sgu_challenge amnesty: #014: Hostage
Title: Mine
Author: EasyThereGenius
Rated: K+
Warnings: Contains violence towards human beings and inanimate objects.
Prompt: sgu_challenge amnesty. So I could pick any subject I wanted, which was this one - "Hostage"
The little construction flew off when they hit it in the head.
This was startling, because they had initially assumed this to be part and parcel of the creature: as much a part of it as the long strands of fibre that grew confusingly from its head.
The leader of the party picked up the construction and examined it, suddenly deaf to the sounds of combat still going on behind. Two struts of - metal? attached to more possibly-metal, bent into identical enclosing shapes, with (a blue finger extended to tap) clear surfaces enclosed within them.
The metal struts folded in, hinged, under the leader’s examination, and one abruptly snapped off to roll under the navigation station. A warm, organic scent filled the air. The creature was bleeding. Red liquid. It stood contained between two soldiers, shuddering. Blood ran slowly down the front of its face.
The leader approached, the broken construction left behind on a console, more certain now that any danger, such as it had been, was over.
The creature stared up. It was small, really, and wrapped in odd clothing (what practical purpose did this serve? Why was there so much of it?). It had a head, two arms, two legs - eyes and a mouth - but there the resemblance certainly ended. It stared into the leader’s face, obviously in distress, breathing hard. And it looked, in ways that cut across the species divide, both furious and frightened.
The leader could potentially have been convinced it was not heavily sentient, but for two things: those pale, manipulative hands and the fact that it had evidently been the one to send out the distress call that had brought them here in the first place.
So he gestured, and one of the guards brought a link to its head immediately.
The leader staggered, unprepared.
The creature howled out a word of agony.
Because it was intelligent, oh yes, its mind peeled open in the unfamiliar link, its mind running at speeds even the leader found hard to keep up with, and it was called a human, a man, a male, a him, a he, a Rush, a doctor, a Nicholas. He thought in strings of numbers, some of them recognisable, some of them alien and strange and gathered into bunches and patterns and strata and the thoughts just didn’t stop -
The leader took control of this morass of information, began to push, sift. There was the rest of the language: oddly smooth and melodic. There were the memories. There was -
- the ship, the only important thing, the desire and the pain and the striving and the ship, and it was called Destiny and it was Ancient and here were some images of the main systems and it was beautiful and it was mine -
Surprised, the leader locked gazes with the man. The man stared back, a clear liquid gathering in the bases of his eyes.
“Mine,” the leader said, first aloud so that the guards would hear, and then through the link.
The man spat out a single word in return, anger and possessiveness forging through the active link. Evidently he understood.
Another gesture from the leader, and the device was removed, the Nicholas Rush man smacked into handleable unconsciousness. They would take him. It was fortunate, the leader thought, that this opportunity had been placed in their path when that Ancient vessel had otherwise proven maddeningly elusive. Almost as if the universe wanted them to have it.
“Shall we bring this, commander? What do you think it is?”
A soldier was holding up the construction by its one remaining metal arm.
“They,” said the leader, inserting the plural from the knowledge gleaned of the man’s language, “are glasses. And they serve no useful purpose.”
Author: EasyThereGenius
Rated: K+
Warnings: Contains violence towards human beings and inanimate objects.
Prompt: sgu_challenge amnesty. So I could pick any subject I wanted, which was this one - "Hostage"
The little construction flew off when they hit it in the head.
This was startling, because they had initially assumed this to be part and parcel of the creature: as much a part of it as the long strands of fibre that grew confusingly from its head.
The leader of the party picked up the construction and examined it, suddenly deaf to the sounds of combat still going on behind. Two struts of - metal? attached to more possibly-metal, bent into identical enclosing shapes, with (a blue finger extended to tap) clear surfaces enclosed within them.
The metal struts folded in, hinged, under the leader’s examination, and one abruptly snapped off to roll under the navigation station. A warm, organic scent filled the air. The creature was bleeding. Red liquid. It stood contained between two soldiers, shuddering. Blood ran slowly down the front of its face.
The leader approached, the broken construction left behind on a console, more certain now that any danger, such as it had been, was over.
The creature stared up. It was small, really, and wrapped in odd clothing (what practical purpose did this serve? Why was there so much of it?). It had a head, two arms, two legs - eyes and a mouth - but there the resemblance certainly ended. It stared into the leader’s face, obviously in distress, breathing hard. And it looked, in ways that cut across the species divide, both furious and frightened.
The leader could potentially have been convinced it was not heavily sentient, but for two things: those pale, manipulative hands and the fact that it had evidently been the one to send out the distress call that had brought them here in the first place.
So he gestured, and one of the guards brought a link to its head immediately.
The leader staggered, unprepared.
The creature howled out a word of agony.
Because it was intelligent, oh yes, its mind peeled open in the unfamiliar link, its mind running at speeds even the leader found hard to keep up with, and it was called a human, a man, a male, a him, a he, a Rush, a doctor, a Nicholas. He thought in strings of numbers, some of them recognisable, some of them alien and strange and gathered into bunches and patterns and strata and the thoughts just didn’t stop -
The leader took control of this morass of information, began to push, sift. There was the rest of the language: oddly smooth and melodic. There were the memories. There was -
- the ship, the only important thing, the desire and the pain and the striving and the ship, and it was called Destiny and it was Ancient and here were some images of the main systems and it was beautiful and it was mine -
Surprised, the leader locked gazes with the man. The man stared back, a clear liquid gathering in the bases of his eyes.
“Mine,” the leader said, first aloud so that the guards would hear, and then through the link.
The man spat out a single word in return, anger and possessiveness forging through the active link. Evidently he understood.
Another gesture from the leader, and the device was removed, the Nicholas Rush man smacked into handleable unconsciousness. They would take him. It was fortunate, the leader thought, that this opportunity had been placed in their path when that Ancient vessel had otherwise proven maddeningly elusive. Almost as if the universe wanted them to have it.
“Shall we bring this, commander? What do you think it is?”
A soldier was holding up the construction by its one remaining metal arm.
“They,” said the leader, inserting the plural from the knowledge gleaned of the man’s language, “are glasses. And they serve no useful purpose.”