Rule 26 (1 of ?, j2 au)
So, yes, another J2AU wip. This is particularly shameful as I am supposed to be working on my Big Bang, which I am, I swear, but… I am doing this too. As ever with my wips, this is unbeta'd, mostly but not completely planned out, lacking in warnings aside from J2 most probably not being dead at the end, and there is no absolute guarantee that I will ever finish it. With that in mind, if you read, I do very much hope you like it.
♥ ♥ ♥ to the super-lovely atimi for not letting me forget about this.
Rule 26 (1 of ?)
A mash-up of Star Wars, Flash Gordon and a few other sci-fi stalwarts.
In which there is a galaxy-spanning evil empire, a mission to kidnap a henchman of the aforementioned evil empire, and Jared is a resistance fighter on the aforementioned kidnapping mission.
Fifty years into his reign of terror, Doctor Nekrotik firebombed Jared's home planet. Firebombed the tiny, backwater planet for seven days straight, with no provocation and no explanation. All but two thousand of the twenty-six million inhabitants died in the onslaught, and those that survived had no choice but to flee the toxic air and raging fires.
Jared had only been six years old at the time, but it was the kind of experience that easily shaped a life. He spent the next twenty years trying to be as much of an irritation one man against a galaxy-encompassing evil empire can be.
Which was why, right now, Jared was blowing up a cargo shuttle full of engineering drill pieces. His basic thinking was that if Doctor Nekrotik wanted the drill pieces someplace, Jared wanted them someplace else, and 'reduced to free-floating atoms' seemed as good a place as any.
"Would you take your fingers outta your ass and hurry up?" Chad demanded, from where he was keeping lookout at the door to the hangar bay. His grip on his blaster flexed, as he shifted fretfully from foot to foot.
Jared licked the tip of his finger and thumb, and carefully straightened out the end of the wire he was working with. "This requires a little delicacy, buddy," he said. "I am trying to ensure detonation occurs in the two minute window between us getting the hell outta here and the morning crew coming on. It ain't exactly simple"
He wound the wire around the exposed metal plug and then pressed it into the soft bar of rosy-pink plastic. "Now, if they were Nekrotik's minions, I'd let 'em go sky-high with the rest of this shuttle, 'cause they don't deserve any better. But these are innocent folks just trying to earn a wage, and I don't wanna see them dead."
"Would it go quicker if you stopped monologuing?" Chad said.
Jared ran the other end of the wire along the side of the shuttle, and taped it onto the thermal-spark. "No, but I think you shutting up might help." He fixed the timer to the thermal-spark, pressed in the detonation code, then turned and flashed Chad a grin. "All done. Let's go."
Security was minimal as they made their way back through the base, with the few guards around sticking to their normal patrol routes. Just before he and Chad reached the service-way hatch that was their exit, Jared hit one of the fire alarm pads on the wall, and a steady blaring siren rose up in the deserted corridors.
"For the guards," he said, when Chad shot him a look. "And just in case anyone's on shift early."
"They're not gonna be so early that they're gonna make it to the hangar in the next two minutes," said Chad.
They wormed their way through the tight passage, and Chad, not being half so big nor half so broad as Jared, made much quicker and easier progress. Jared grunted, tucked his shoulders in as close to his body as he could, and wriggled along behind Chad.
"You don't know that," said Jared, huffing and groaning, his skin squeaking like sticky plastic against the filthy metal walls. "And there's still the guards."
Early morning light filled up the shaft as Chad opened up the end and squirmed out onto the dusty ground. He tugged Jared out behind him, then shoved Jared's respirator at him with one hand, while he fixed his own on with the other. Even a few moments in the poisonous air was enough to make Jared's lungs burn.
The sun was a ghostly blur behind the film of pale yellow clouds, and the wasteland stretched out before them, cracked and gray. They started running towards the cover of the carved out rocks of the surrounding mountains, the fire alarm still bleating like a countdown behind them.
"None of the guards are gonna go near the hangar," said Chad. His voice was smudged by his respirator's quiet wheezing.
"Not now they're evacuating because of the fire alarm," said Jared. As he ran, he glanced over his shoulder, back at the shuttle bay, and he smirked at the handful of people already gathering outside.
"Before that," Chad insisted.
A low, sudden rumbling started, and the ground trembled beneath them. Back at the hangar bay, fire shot into the air, and one section of the building collapsed in on itself in a rush of smoke and dust. The noise was intense, deafening for a moment, and then, as it fell away, screaming and panic took its place. With a sense of professional concern which became equally professional pride, Jared stopped to watch, and noted that everyone seemed well away from the blast.
"Never hurts to be sure," he said.
:::
Home was the slums in the worst part of town, which was something notable when the town itself was kind of a slum.
Stantone was the last real outpost of civilization on the edge of a wasteland too polluted for long-term human inhabitation. The town was a walled in and covered little pit. It shouldn't have been so dark; there used to be windows to let in light but people had stopped cleaning them, because the godforsaken scenery outside was more than a little depressing and nobody liked looking at it.
The slums were situated around the massive respirators that generated clean air for the town, so the hum of machinery was constant. Jared was used to it. Growing up here since his home-planet was destroyed, Jared was used to - and was an expert on - all the most charming aspects of slum-life. Like eating whatever you could get your hands on, and as much of it as possible. The slop Jared was spooning down his throat looked bad, and tasted worse, but was not likely to kill him, and was therefore classified as edible.
"How do you eat like that and not barf?" Chad said, stirring his own slop around his bowl thoughtfully as he watched Jared eat. "I bet you're gonna barf all over Welling's shiny-shiny shoes, probably before he can even tell us what's happening."
"S'gotta be big," said Jared. Chad pulled a face, so Jared gulped down his mouthful and tried again, a little more coherently. "It's got to be big. Welling wouldn't risk coming in person if what he had for us wasn't big."
Chad pushed his bowl away and slumped forward on the tabletop, chin propped up on his crossed arms. "Like he's gonna use us for it. We're only ever gonna be grunts, dude. Not smooth enough for Welling."
"I don't care," said Jared. He emptied his bowl and dropped his spoon in it with a clatter. "Not in this for the fame and glory. Anything Welling can use me for that'll stick it to Doctor Nekrotik is fine by me." He smacked Chad lightly on his arm as he rose to his feet. "C'mon, don't wanna be late, or we'll end up with something sucky like look-out duty."
The dark streets of the town were thick with heat, full of distant, hostile noise and shambling figures you didn't look in the eye as you passed them by. Condensation dripped from the ceiling in places, pitter-pattering into puddles with the unevenness of a slow bleed-out. From under his pulled-up hood, Jared kept a watchful eye on the skittering movement at the corners of his vision. He didn't make any attempt to hide his size or ability to look after himself if necessary, but his booted feet didn't come down heavy, and the full length of his coat, flapping around his legs as he walked, hid the bulk of his contraband blaster.
Welling had picked a room above a bar out of the slums for the meet, and, ironically, it afforded a good view of the statue of Doctor Nekrotik that stood in the center of town. It had been erected about the same time as Jared's home-plant was destroyed, when Doctor Nekrotik was just beginning to get his hate on for harmless and defenseless little planets. Presumably, it was supposed to appease him enough to have the planet spared. To be fair, the planet never had been targeted, but Jared wasn't convinced that one little statue was enough to bring out Doctor Nekrotik's merciful side.
The statue was done on double scale, so the attention to detail that had been paid was obvious: the folds in fabric in the raised hood, and the smoothness of Doctor Nekrotik's customary full-face respirator, with its void-eyes and the alien muzzle at the mouth. It was an image that was instantly recognizable, and feared, across the galaxy.
Jared cheerfully stuck a finger up at the statue, and continued up the stairs to the meet.
Welling was already there, with a couple of his own people, plus a few of the local resistance folks Jared and Chad normally hung out with. While Welling was still deep in quiet discussion at the far end of the room, Jared and Chad slunk towards the sagging couch, next to Alexis and Justin.
"Anything happen yet?" said Chad.
Alexis shook her head. "Not yet. We're still waiting on a few people. Welling seems pretty psyched though."
The door opened again, and Benedict and Sterling entered, both of them instantly heading towards Jared and the others. Over by Welling, Durance scanned the room, then leaned in to whisper something in Welling's ear. He nodded, breaking away from his own group a little to address the small crowd.
"Now we're all here, we can start," he said, clapping his hands together briskly. "I'm gonna go through this quickly, I don't want interruptions, and we'll deal with questions at the end."
Beside Jared, Chad huffed quietly and rolled his eyes. If Welling noticed, he didn't comment.
"Two days ago, we intercepted a message from the S6 Deep Mining Facility to one of Doctor Nekrotik's guardian ships stationed in the atmosphere. Details are scarce, but we do know that they discovered something of importance to Nekrotik in one of the mining veins. Something important enough for him to be sending one of his top scientific experts to analyze it."
Jared straightened instantly in his seat. The atmosphere in the room was taut, poised on the edge of breaking.
"It's being kept top-secret. Senior level at the mine aren't even being told he's coming and the place is being cleared out for him. But we know when the guy's coming, and we know where he'll be going. And we know from the size of the guard Doctor Nekrotik's sending with him that he's important. This is big." Welling licked his lips, and looked out over the room. "I'm not gonna lie, this is way beyond the small-scale stuff you lot are used to pulling."
Chad huffed again, and Jared kicked him surreptitiously in the ankle.
"But we have to move fast and we have to take risks. We can't miss this. I don't think any of us in this room were even born when Nekrotik came to power. We've lived our whole lives suffering under him." Welling took a breath. "And this is our chance to finally get a step ahead of him."
He let the statement hang there, let them adjust to the weight of it in silence.
Finally, Sterling cleared his throat, and said, "You got a plan?"
:::
The S6 Deep Mining Facility was a lonely, behemoth of a building set in the middle of bone-white dust, and was in turn dwarfed under the immensity of the cold night sky. Huge metal pipes arched out of the central hub like spider's legs, and the workings of the inner drills ticked a deep, mechanical heartbeat.
The others had already dispersed into the desolate corridors on the tasks Welling had given them, but Jared was left.
"So," he said, turning to Welling. "What you got for me?"
Welling smiled, trying to pull off calm though the high color in his cheeks gave him away. "You, Jared, are helping me grab the scientist." He started heading down the corridor while Jared was still processing that, and it took Jared a moment to catch up after him.
"Wait, what? I'm not on look-out or comms? I'm actually-?"
"Actually helping me achieve our core objective," Welling agreed. "I know you can handle it. We've got you marked for big things. No time for stage fright now."
He led Jared deeper into the facility, never hesitating on direction and expertly dodging security patrols, and Jared thought again about the rumors that Welling had once worn the silver and red uniform of Doctor Nekrotik's army. The idea was unsettling, of course, but it at least put paid to the propaganda that Nekrotik's minions were faithful unto death. They were only human, after all. Nobody disputed that. It was Doctor Nekrotik that everybody had to wonder about.
The atmosphere became heavy, and Jared didn't know if he was imagining the growing weight of the ground over their heads. By the time they'd made it down into the core, Jared was warm, breath sticky in his throat, like he needed to be wearing his respirator despite the relatively clean air.
"The others are in place, and Durance confirms the scientist has arrived," said Welling. "He's gonna come down here to analyze the find, and we're gonna let him, because we need to know everything. But we take him before he can rendezvous back with his security team."
The lab that had been prepared for Doctor Nekrotik's scientist was empty, as expected. Radiation sweep, the staff had been told, imperative that they kept out of the building tonight. Jared didn't recognize half of the paperwork that had been laid out. There were stacks of printouts, full of statistics and read-outs that meant nothing to Jared. His gaze was drawn instead to an amber-yellow crystal the size of his splayed hand. He hunkered down to examine it more closely. It was beautiful, the color so rich it seemed to glow.
"Don't touch it," said Welling. "Some of it's harmless, sure, but I've seen crystals do some nasty things if you handle them wrong." The comm.-link at his wrist beeped, and Welling raised it to his ear. He cursed after a moment, and said, "I'm on my way."
Jared's attention was instantly off the crystal and back on Welling. "You're going?"
"Security's heavier than expected up-top, and the pass-codes are out of date. I might be able to hack through, but I'm the only one that can." Jared must have looked slightly freaked, because Welling clapped him on the shoulder. "You can do this, Jared. Grab the scientist, don't kill him, and meet me back up at the red junction on level two. We'll keep 'em all off you. You just have to handle the scientist."
And then he was gone.
"Just one little scientist," said Jared to himself, and took a shuddering breath. Then he squared his shoulders, firmed his jaw, and put himself out of sight at the back of the room.
He crouched there in the quiet, counting the whirring beat of the drills below, while he curled and uncurled his fingers around his blaster. Hours seemed to pass, that could only have been minutes. He thought at one point he heard the energy pulse of blaster-fire overhead, but nothing came of it.
Then there were footsteps.
The door opened and Jared ducked down, and, between the table legs, he caught sight of polished black boots and the fluttering sweep of a long dark coat. There was the click of a bag opening, a rustling of paper. Carefully, Jared began to inch his way around the edge of the room, to put himself between the scientist and the door.
His first glimpse of the guy, other than the boots and hemline of his coat, was broad shoulders, and his hood pulled down to show close-cropped light brown hair. He was younger than Jared was expecting, and, when he turned to remove a shiny silver instrument from his bag, Jared realized the guy was also unexpectedly pretty. Really pretty, in fact.
Distractedly, Jared admired the guy's black-latex gloved hands as he examined the crystal, while he wondered how long he was supposed to give the guy to get his analysis done before he should snatch him. Welling wouldn't appreciate Jared not letting the guy get all the relevant information, but the situation seemed a little more perilous now it was just Jared and this unhelpfully pretty, and even more unhelpfully evil, guy in the room.
The guy sighed and tossed the crystal back onto the tabletop. He began packing his things back into the bag, and Jared guessed the issue had been decided for him.
He managed to get right behind the guy, muzzle of his blaster pressed to the vulnerable little patch of smooth skin at the back of the guy's neck, before he was noticed. The guy went still, though his hand flexed once towards his bag.
"I'm not gonna hurt you," said Jared. "Not unless it's absolutely necessary. Don't make it necessary."
"What do you want?" the guy said. He didn't seem shaken, but Jared was close enough to feel the tightness of his body. Jared wasn't sure if it was adrenaline, or the basic physical reaction to being pressed so close to the guy, or a combination of both, that was making him flustered and excited.
"I need you to come with me. C'mon, towards the door. Nice and steady. And don't do anything silly, 'cause I'm a real good shot, and I'll burn a hole in your back before you're even a few steps away."
He could hear the quickening of the guy's breath, and that was kind of interesting too, and Jared cursed his fucked-up luck for delivering a really hot guy into his life, who just so happened to be the henchman of a sociopath tyrant.
The guy gathered his bag, and then let Jared prod him towards the door and out into the hallway.
It was more than a little unsettling to be single-handedly running a kidnapping, and Jared's bad habit of letting his mouth run off kicked in to fill the uncomfortable silence. "What's the deal with that crystal? Why'd Doctor Nekrotik send you to look at it?"
The guy flicked Jared a look with his pretty green eyes - and was there a single thing about this guy that wasn't pretty? Jared didn't think so - as if judging whether he wanted to bother answering or not.
"It's just a crystal," he said finally. "Just a pretty colored piece of rock. Not what we're looking for."
"So what are you looking for?"
The guy's lips quirked into a smile, and yes, that too was pretty, and it was strange how that smile fixed on Jared, like Jared wasn't kidnapping him at all, like they were just two guys spending a little time together, and Jared didn't know whether the whole situation was fucked, or whether he was genuinely feeling some chemistry here.
The guy might have answered the question, but Jared never found out, because just then, Welling skidded around the corner. He looked beat-up but focused, and his expression brightened when he saw Jared with the scientist. He hurried towards them, his own blaster drawn.
"Good work, Jared," he said. "We've got a clear path out. Sterling's waiting with the speeder to get us outta here."
"And go where exactly?" the scientist asked. He threw his hands up in surrender as both Welling and Jared rounded on him. "It's a simple point I'm making. Where exactly do you think you're going to go where this isn't going to follow you? Have you even started thinking about the consequences of doing something like this?"
Welling's smile was whip-thin, and the metal plating of his blaster glinted in the bleak strip light overhead as he raised it meaningfully. "Why don't you let us worry about that?"
The guy shrugged, cast Jared a look that was bizarrely just for him. "It's your funeral," he commented, and then he shut up again, and docilely allowed them to hustle him out of the mine.
When they were almost top-level, there was the thunder of booted feet, and Welling gestured both Jared and the scientist flat against the wall around the corner. A unit of Doctor Nekrotik's soldiers came along the passage, faceless beneath their respirators, living weapons in their polished red and silver uniforms. A big man in a uniform that clearly marked him as an officer came into view from the other direction, and Welling drew in a sharp breath. He shook his head when Jared glanced at him in query, but he'd gone pale, and Jared got the feeling that something had just gone irrevocably wrong.
"We need to get out of here," Welling whispered. "We need to run."
"I think it's a little late for that," said the scientist. "Don't you?"
Jared turned to tell him to please be quiet, and was bewildered to see the guy taking something out of his bag. His first thought - that it was a weapon of some kind - had to be discarded when the something was small and black, a weird combination of thin plastic and bulk.
And then, even as Jared was watching, his heartbeat pinned still under his growing horror like an etherized butterfly, the scientist fastened the gasmask over his pretty face, drew up the hood on his long coat, and was suddenly and unmistakably Doctor Nekrotik.
Not a scientist. Not some harmless, snarky little lab-rat serving the wrong side.
Doctor Nekrotik.
A sudden memory of his home-planet burning slammed into Jared. He could feel the heat, hear the screaming, like he was standing right next to that tiny, terrified kid he'd been, and his breath came too fast for him to actually catch it long enough to breathe. There was no chance of rational thought under the rush of shaking fury, and Jared launched himself at Doctor Nekrotik with the single idea of chewing his still-beating heart out of his chest.
Doctor Nekrotik flung out a hand, and both Jared and Welling were thrown, spinning weightlessly through the air like dandelion seeds on the wind. They crashed into the far wall, and something held them there. The impact made Jared's vision dance sickly, knocked the breath clean out of him. An invisible force kept Jared's back pressed to the wall, forced to watch while Doctor Nekrotik rose to his feet, and collected his bag, supremely unconcerned by Jared trying to kill him, and being recently kidnapped, and the sudden rush of soldiers coming to his aid.
The big officer got there first, and Doctor Nekrotik waved him away. "I'm fine," he said. "Did you round up the others?"
The officer nodded. "Eight of them in total, sir." He glanced at Jared and Welling. "Ten if you count those two."
Ten, thought Jared. Ten included Chad, and Alexis and Sterling, and all of them. He squirmed against the force, gritting his teeth and putting everything he had into getting free, wrenching until his muscles were straining on the edge of tearing. But he couldn't even lift his aching head away. He focused his blood-hot rage on Nekrotik, and wished that hating alone was enough to kill, because he'd have killed Nekrotik ten times over.
"Did you find what you were looking for, sir?" the big officer asked.
Doctor Nekrotik shook his head. "Crystals fit to sell to gullible tourists, that's all. We're leaving."
"And what do you want done with them?" the big officer asked, jerking his head at Jared and Welling.
Doctor Nekrotik shrugged dismissively, and started down the corridor towards the exit, his soldiers instantly snapping to attention as he passed. "Wipe them and put them to work in the mine on Zelta-4 with the others," he called back. "Kill them if they're trouble."
Even as the words left his mouth, the force that had been holding Jared released him. He dropped painfully to the floor, but was barely aware of the sharp crack of his kneecaps hitting the ground, before he was up and charging desperately after Nekrotik. The only thing he accomplished was plowing straight into a wall of soldiers, who were far from gentle in putting him down. There was blood in his mouth, and hot aches blossoming all through his chest and belly, and he could hear Welling struggling behind him, but Doctor Nekrotik was getting away, and Jared really needed to kill him. Really needed to kill him. The soldiers couldn't hold on to Jared tightly enough, not when he was so full of murderous intent.
He'd get free, and he'd take Nekrotik to tiny painful pieces.
A sudden blow cracked into the back of his head, and, dazed and abruptly weak, Jared sagged to his knees. He tried to turn his head, and caught a glimpse of the big officer's face behind his visor looking down at him, bizarrely sympathetic even as he raised the butt of his energy-rifle to hit Jared again. Jared's vision swam, and the noise around him went far, far away.
"Wait."
Jared stared stupidly at the big officer's energy-rifle, where it was raised halfway in the air, ready to come back down on his head. But the big officer wasn't moving, and Jared's gaze drifted over to Doctor Nekrotik, who was suddenly close again, suddenly in reach. The black latex of Doctor Nekrotik's gloves felt strange against Jared's skin, as Nekrotik gently took hold of his chin and tilted his face up into the light.
He stared back into the black-mirror pools of the gasmask's eyes, lost the sound of his own breathing in the whispering rush of Nekrotik's respirator.
"Patch this one up," said Doctor Nekrotik finally. "Then I want him put in my quarters."
There was a moment's pause, and Jared looked between the big officer and Doctor Nekrotik, waiting for something new to happen. Then Doctor Nekrotik cocked his head at the big officer, a small curious quirk, and the big officer nodded, and said, "Yes, sir," like he'd never hesitated.
And Jared was hauled upright by the big officer, passed off to soldiers, who dragged him down the corridor, not unkindly but not with a huge degree of support either, back towards the surface. When the cool, stingingly dry air of outside touched him, Jared tried to struggle as a respirator was fixed over his face. His head fell backwards, and he stared up at the sky, and marveled at how it was suddenly full up of the silver starlight of Doctor Nekrotik's fleet.
"Jared!" someone shouted, and it sounded like Chad, but Jared couldn't see him.
In fact, the last thing he saw before they hauled him onto the waiting shuttle to the ship in the sky, was the moonlight painting the flat plastic eyes of Doctor Nekrotik's gasmask to silver-white.
next
From 'The Evil Overlord List'
Rule 26: No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.
Flash by Queen
Though, of course, this is a bit more along the lines of 'Flash Gordon hooks up with Ming the Merciless', Queen is always appropriate.
♥ ♥ ♥ to the super-lovely atimi for not letting me forget about this.
Rule 26 (1 of ?)
A mash-up of Star Wars, Flash Gordon and a few other sci-fi stalwarts.
In which there is a galaxy-spanning evil empire, a mission to kidnap a henchman of the aforementioned evil empire, and Jared is a resistance fighter on the aforementioned kidnapping mission.
Fifty years into his reign of terror, Doctor Nekrotik firebombed Jared's home planet. Firebombed the tiny, backwater planet for seven days straight, with no provocation and no explanation. All but two thousand of the twenty-six million inhabitants died in the onslaught, and those that survived had no choice but to flee the toxic air and raging fires.
Jared had only been six years old at the time, but it was the kind of experience that easily shaped a life. He spent the next twenty years trying to be as much of an irritation one man against a galaxy-encompassing evil empire can be.
Which was why, right now, Jared was blowing up a cargo shuttle full of engineering drill pieces. His basic thinking was that if Doctor Nekrotik wanted the drill pieces someplace, Jared wanted them someplace else, and 'reduced to free-floating atoms' seemed as good a place as any.
"Would you take your fingers outta your ass and hurry up?" Chad demanded, from where he was keeping lookout at the door to the hangar bay. His grip on his blaster flexed, as he shifted fretfully from foot to foot.
Jared licked the tip of his finger and thumb, and carefully straightened out the end of the wire he was working with. "This requires a little delicacy, buddy," he said. "I am trying to ensure detonation occurs in the two minute window between us getting the hell outta here and the morning crew coming on. It ain't exactly simple"
He wound the wire around the exposed metal plug and then pressed it into the soft bar of rosy-pink plastic. "Now, if they were Nekrotik's minions, I'd let 'em go sky-high with the rest of this shuttle, 'cause they don't deserve any better. But these are innocent folks just trying to earn a wage, and I don't wanna see them dead."
"Would it go quicker if you stopped monologuing?" Chad said.
Jared ran the other end of the wire along the side of the shuttle, and taped it onto the thermal-spark. "No, but I think you shutting up might help." He fixed the timer to the thermal-spark, pressed in the detonation code, then turned and flashed Chad a grin. "All done. Let's go."
Security was minimal as they made their way back through the base, with the few guards around sticking to their normal patrol routes. Just before he and Chad reached the service-way hatch that was their exit, Jared hit one of the fire alarm pads on the wall, and a steady blaring siren rose up in the deserted corridors.
"For the guards," he said, when Chad shot him a look. "And just in case anyone's on shift early."
"They're not gonna be so early that they're gonna make it to the hangar in the next two minutes," said Chad.
They wormed their way through the tight passage, and Chad, not being half so big nor half so broad as Jared, made much quicker and easier progress. Jared grunted, tucked his shoulders in as close to his body as he could, and wriggled along behind Chad.
"You don't know that," said Jared, huffing and groaning, his skin squeaking like sticky plastic against the filthy metal walls. "And there's still the guards."
Early morning light filled up the shaft as Chad opened up the end and squirmed out onto the dusty ground. He tugged Jared out behind him, then shoved Jared's respirator at him with one hand, while he fixed his own on with the other. Even a few moments in the poisonous air was enough to make Jared's lungs burn.
The sun was a ghostly blur behind the film of pale yellow clouds, and the wasteland stretched out before them, cracked and gray. They started running towards the cover of the carved out rocks of the surrounding mountains, the fire alarm still bleating like a countdown behind them.
"None of the guards are gonna go near the hangar," said Chad. His voice was smudged by his respirator's quiet wheezing.
"Not now they're evacuating because of the fire alarm," said Jared. As he ran, he glanced over his shoulder, back at the shuttle bay, and he smirked at the handful of people already gathering outside.
"Before that," Chad insisted.
A low, sudden rumbling started, and the ground trembled beneath them. Back at the hangar bay, fire shot into the air, and one section of the building collapsed in on itself in a rush of smoke and dust. The noise was intense, deafening for a moment, and then, as it fell away, screaming and panic took its place. With a sense of professional concern which became equally professional pride, Jared stopped to watch, and noted that everyone seemed well away from the blast.
"Never hurts to be sure," he said.
:::
Home was the slums in the worst part of town, which was something notable when the town itself was kind of a slum.
Stantone was the last real outpost of civilization on the edge of a wasteland too polluted for long-term human inhabitation. The town was a walled in and covered little pit. It shouldn't have been so dark; there used to be windows to let in light but people had stopped cleaning them, because the godforsaken scenery outside was more than a little depressing and nobody liked looking at it.
The slums were situated around the massive respirators that generated clean air for the town, so the hum of machinery was constant. Jared was used to it. Growing up here since his home-planet was destroyed, Jared was used to - and was an expert on - all the most charming aspects of slum-life. Like eating whatever you could get your hands on, and as much of it as possible. The slop Jared was spooning down his throat looked bad, and tasted worse, but was not likely to kill him, and was therefore classified as edible.
"How do you eat like that and not barf?" Chad said, stirring his own slop around his bowl thoughtfully as he watched Jared eat. "I bet you're gonna barf all over Welling's shiny-shiny shoes, probably before he can even tell us what's happening."
"S'gotta be big," said Jared. Chad pulled a face, so Jared gulped down his mouthful and tried again, a little more coherently. "It's got to be big. Welling wouldn't risk coming in person if what he had for us wasn't big."
Chad pushed his bowl away and slumped forward on the tabletop, chin propped up on his crossed arms. "Like he's gonna use us for it. We're only ever gonna be grunts, dude. Not smooth enough for Welling."
"I don't care," said Jared. He emptied his bowl and dropped his spoon in it with a clatter. "Not in this for the fame and glory. Anything Welling can use me for that'll stick it to Doctor Nekrotik is fine by me." He smacked Chad lightly on his arm as he rose to his feet. "C'mon, don't wanna be late, or we'll end up with something sucky like look-out duty."
The dark streets of the town were thick with heat, full of distant, hostile noise and shambling figures you didn't look in the eye as you passed them by. Condensation dripped from the ceiling in places, pitter-pattering into puddles with the unevenness of a slow bleed-out. From under his pulled-up hood, Jared kept a watchful eye on the skittering movement at the corners of his vision. He didn't make any attempt to hide his size or ability to look after himself if necessary, but his booted feet didn't come down heavy, and the full length of his coat, flapping around his legs as he walked, hid the bulk of his contraband blaster.
Welling had picked a room above a bar out of the slums for the meet, and, ironically, it afforded a good view of the statue of Doctor Nekrotik that stood in the center of town. It had been erected about the same time as Jared's home-plant was destroyed, when Doctor Nekrotik was just beginning to get his hate on for harmless and defenseless little planets. Presumably, it was supposed to appease him enough to have the planet spared. To be fair, the planet never had been targeted, but Jared wasn't convinced that one little statue was enough to bring out Doctor Nekrotik's merciful side.
The statue was done on double scale, so the attention to detail that had been paid was obvious: the folds in fabric in the raised hood, and the smoothness of Doctor Nekrotik's customary full-face respirator, with its void-eyes and the alien muzzle at the mouth. It was an image that was instantly recognizable, and feared, across the galaxy.
Jared cheerfully stuck a finger up at the statue, and continued up the stairs to the meet.
Welling was already there, with a couple of his own people, plus a few of the local resistance folks Jared and Chad normally hung out with. While Welling was still deep in quiet discussion at the far end of the room, Jared and Chad slunk towards the sagging couch, next to Alexis and Justin.
"Anything happen yet?" said Chad.
Alexis shook her head. "Not yet. We're still waiting on a few people. Welling seems pretty psyched though."
The door opened again, and Benedict and Sterling entered, both of them instantly heading towards Jared and the others. Over by Welling, Durance scanned the room, then leaned in to whisper something in Welling's ear. He nodded, breaking away from his own group a little to address the small crowd.
"Now we're all here, we can start," he said, clapping his hands together briskly. "I'm gonna go through this quickly, I don't want interruptions, and we'll deal with questions at the end."
Beside Jared, Chad huffed quietly and rolled his eyes. If Welling noticed, he didn't comment.
"Two days ago, we intercepted a message from the S6 Deep Mining Facility to one of Doctor Nekrotik's guardian ships stationed in the atmosphere. Details are scarce, but we do know that they discovered something of importance to Nekrotik in one of the mining veins. Something important enough for him to be sending one of his top scientific experts to analyze it."
Jared straightened instantly in his seat. The atmosphere in the room was taut, poised on the edge of breaking.
"It's being kept top-secret. Senior level at the mine aren't even being told he's coming and the place is being cleared out for him. But we know when the guy's coming, and we know where he'll be going. And we know from the size of the guard Doctor Nekrotik's sending with him that he's important. This is big." Welling licked his lips, and looked out over the room. "I'm not gonna lie, this is way beyond the small-scale stuff you lot are used to pulling."
Chad huffed again, and Jared kicked him surreptitiously in the ankle.
"But we have to move fast and we have to take risks. We can't miss this. I don't think any of us in this room were even born when Nekrotik came to power. We've lived our whole lives suffering under him." Welling took a breath. "And this is our chance to finally get a step ahead of him."
He let the statement hang there, let them adjust to the weight of it in silence.
Finally, Sterling cleared his throat, and said, "You got a plan?"
:::
The S6 Deep Mining Facility was a lonely, behemoth of a building set in the middle of bone-white dust, and was in turn dwarfed under the immensity of the cold night sky. Huge metal pipes arched out of the central hub like spider's legs, and the workings of the inner drills ticked a deep, mechanical heartbeat.
The others had already dispersed into the desolate corridors on the tasks Welling had given them, but Jared was left.
"So," he said, turning to Welling. "What you got for me?"
Welling smiled, trying to pull off calm though the high color in his cheeks gave him away. "You, Jared, are helping me grab the scientist." He started heading down the corridor while Jared was still processing that, and it took Jared a moment to catch up after him.
"Wait, what? I'm not on look-out or comms? I'm actually-?"
"Actually helping me achieve our core objective," Welling agreed. "I know you can handle it. We've got you marked for big things. No time for stage fright now."
He led Jared deeper into the facility, never hesitating on direction and expertly dodging security patrols, and Jared thought again about the rumors that Welling had once worn the silver and red uniform of Doctor Nekrotik's army. The idea was unsettling, of course, but it at least put paid to the propaganda that Nekrotik's minions were faithful unto death. They were only human, after all. Nobody disputed that. It was Doctor Nekrotik that everybody had to wonder about.
The atmosphere became heavy, and Jared didn't know if he was imagining the growing weight of the ground over their heads. By the time they'd made it down into the core, Jared was warm, breath sticky in his throat, like he needed to be wearing his respirator despite the relatively clean air.
"The others are in place, and Durance confirms the scientist has arrived," said Welling. "He's gonna come down here to analyze the find, and we're gonna let him, because we need to know everything. But we take him before he can rendezvous back with his security team."
The lab that had been prepared for Doctor Nekrotik's scientist was empty, as expected. Radiation sweep, the staff had been told, imperative that they kept out of the building tonight. Jared didn't recognize half of the paperwork that had been laid out. There were stacks of printouts, full of statistics and read-outs that meant nothing to Jared. His gaze was drawn instead to an amber-yellow crystal the size of his splayed hand. He hunkered down to examine it more closely. It was beautiful, the color so rich it seemed to glow.
"Don't touch it," said Welling. "Some of it's harmless, sure, but I've seen crystals do some nasty things if you handle them wrong." The comm.-link at his wrist beeped, and Welling raised it to his ear. He cursed after a moment, and said, "I'm on my way."
Jared's attention was instantly off the crystal and back on Welling. "You're going?"
"Security's heavier than expected up-top, and the pass-codes are out of date. I might be able to hack through, but I'm the only one that can." Jared must have looked slightly freaked, because Welling clapped him on the shoulder. "You can do this, Jared. Grab the scientist, don't kill him, and meet me back up at the red junction on level two. We'll keep 'em all off you. You just have to handle the scientist."
And then he was gone.
"Just one little scientist," said Jared to himself, and took a shuddering breath. Then he squared his shoulders, firmed his jaw, and put himself out of sight at the back of the room.
He crouched there in the quiet, counting the whirring beat of the drills below, while he curled and uncurled his fingers around his blaster. Hours seemed to pass, that could only have been minutes. He thought at one point he heard the energy pulse of blaster-fire overhead, but nothing came of it.
Then there were footsteps.
The door opened and Jared ducked down, and, between the table legs, he caught sight of polished black boots and the fluttering sweep of a long dark coat. There was the click of a bag opening, a rustling of paper. Carefully, Jared began to inch his way around the edge of the room, to put himself between the scientist and the door.
His first glimpse of the guy, other than the boots and hemline of his coat, was broad shoulders, and his hood pulled down to show close-cropped light brown hair. He was younger than Jared was expecting, and, when he turned to remove a shiny silver instrument from his bag, Jared realized the guy was also unexpectedly pretty. Really pretty, in fact.
Distractedly, Jared admired the guy's black-latex gloved hands as he examined the crystal, while he wondered how long he was supposed to give the guy to get his analysis done before he should snatch him. Welling wouldn't appreciate Jared not letting the guy get all the relevant information, but the situation seemed a little more perilous now it was just Jared and this unhelpfully pretty, and even more unhelpfully evil, guy in the room.
The guy sighed and tossed the crystal back onto the tabletop. He began packing his things back into the bag, and Jared guessed the issue had been decided for him.
He managed to get right behind the guy, muzzle of his blaster pressed to the vulnerable little patch of smooth skin at the back of the guy's neck, before he was noticed. The guy went still, though his hand flexed once towards his bag.
"I'm not gonna hurt you," said Jared. "Not unless it's absolutely necessary. Don't make it necessary."
"What do you want?" the guy said. He didn't seem shaken, but Jared was close enough to feel the tightness of his body. Jared wasn't sure if it was adrenaline, or the basic physical reaction to being pressed so close to the guy, or a combination of both, that was making him flustered and excited.
"I need you to come with me. C'mon, towards the door. Nice and steady. And don't do anything silly, 'cause I'm a real good shot, and I'll burn a hole in your back before you're even a few steps away."
He could hear the quickening of the guy's breath, and that was kind of interesting too, and Jared cursed his fucked-up luck for delivering a really hot guy into his life, who just so happened to be the henchman of a sociopath tyrant.
The guy gathered his bag, and then let Jared prod him towards the door and out into the hallway.
It was more than a little unsettling to be single-handedly running a kidnapping, and Jared's bad habit of letting his mouth run off kicked in to fill the uncomfortable silence. "What's the deal with that crystal? Why'd Doctor Nekrotik send you to look at it?"
The guy flicked Jared a look with his pretty green eyes - and was there a single thing about this guy that wasn't pretty? Jared didn't think so - as if judging whether he wanted to bother answering or not.
"It's just a crystal," he said finally. "Just a pretty colored piece of rock. Not what we're looking for."
"So what are you looking for?"
The guy's lips quirked into a smile, and yes, that too was pretty, and it was strange how that smile fixed on Jared, like Jared wasn't kidnapping him at all, like they were just two guys spending a little time together, and Jared didn't know whether the whole situation was fucked, or whether he was genuinely feeling some chemistry here.
The guy might have answered the question, but Jared never found out, because just then, Welling skidded around the corner. He looked beat-up but focused, and his expression brightened when he saw Jared with the scientist. He hurried towards them, his own blaster drawn.
"Good work, Jared," he said. "We've got a clear path out. Sterling's waiting with the speeder to get us outta here."
"And go where exactly?" the scientist asked. He threw his hands up in surrender as both Welling and Jared rounded on him. "It's a simple point I'm making. Where exactly do you think you're going to go where this isn't going to follow you? Have you even started thinking about the consequences of doing something like this?"
Welling's smile was whip-thin, and the metal plating of his blaster glinted in the bleak strip light overhead as he raised it meaningfully. "Why don't you let us worry about that?"
The guy shrugged, cast Jared a look that was bizarrely just for him. "It's your funeral," he commented, and then he shut up again, and docilely allowed them to hustle him out of the mine.
When they were almost top-level, there was the thunder of booted feet, and Welling gestured both Jared and the scientist flat against the wall around the corner. A unit of Doctor Nekrotik's soldiers came along the passage, faceless beneath their respirators, living weapons in their polished red and silver uniforms. A big man in a uniform that clearly marked him as an officer came into view from the other direction, and Welling drew in a sharp breath. He shook his head when Jared glanced at him in query, but he'd gone pale, and Jared got the feeling that something had just gone irrevocably wrong.
"We need to get out of here," Welling whispered. "We need to run."
"I think it's a little late for that," said the scientist. "Don't you?"
Jared turned to tell him to please be quiet, and was bewildered to see the guy taking something out of his bag. His first thought - that it was a weapon of some kind - had to be discarded when the something was small and black, a weird combination of thin plastic and bulk.
And then, even as Jared was watching, his heartbeat pinned still under his growing horror like an etherized butterfly, the scientist fastened the gasmask over his pretty face, drew up the hood on his long coat, and was suddenly and unmistakably Doctor Nekrotik.
Not a scientist. Not some harmless, snarky little lab-rat serving the wrong side.
Doctor Nekrotik.
A sudden memory of his home-planet burning slammed into Jared. He could feel the heat, hear the screaming, like he was standing right next to that tiny, terrified kid he'd been, and his breath came too fast for him to actually catch it long enough to breathe. There was no chance of rational thought under the rush of shaking fury, and Jared launched himself at Doctor Nekrotik with the single idea of chewing his still-beating heart out of his chest.
Doctor Nekrotik flung out a hand, and both Jared and Welling were thrown, spinning weightlessly through the air like dandelion seeds on the wind. They crashed into the far wall, and something held them there. The impact made Jared's vision dance sickly, knocked the breath clean out of him. An invisible force kept Jared's back pressed to the wall, forced to watch while Doctor Nekrotik rose to his feet, and collected his bag, supremely unconcerned by Jared trying to kill him, and being recently kidnapped, and the sudden rush of soldiers coming to his aid.
The big officer got there first, and Doctor Nekrotik waved him away. "I'm fine," he said. "Did you round up the others?"
The officer nodded. "Eight of them in total, sir." He glanced at Jared and Welling. "Ten if you count those two."
Ten, thought Jared. Ten included Chad, and Alexis and Sterling, and all of them. He squirmed against the force, gritting his teeth and putting everything he had into getting free, wrenching until his muscles were straining on the edge of tearing. But he couldn't even lift his aching head away. He focused his blood-hot rage on Nekrotik, and wished that hating alone was enough to kill, because he'd have killed Nekrotik ten times over.
"Did you find what you were looking for, sir?" the big officer asked.
Doctor Nekrotik shook his head. "Crystals fit to sell to gullible tourists, that's all. We're leaving."
"And what do you want done with them?" the big officer asked, jerking his head at Jared and Welling.
Doctor Nekrotik shrugged dismissively, and started down the corridor towards the exit, his soldiers instantly snapping to attention as he passed. "Wipe them and put them to work in the mine on Zelta-4 with the others," he called back. "Kill them if they're trouble."
Even as the words left his mouth, the force that had been holding Jared released him. He dropped painfully to the floor, but was barely aware of the sharp crack of his kneecaps hitting the ground, before he was up and charging desperately after Nekrotik. The only thing he accomplished was plowing straight into a wall of soldiers, who were far from gentle in putting him down. There was blood in his mouth, and hot aches blossoming all through his chest and belly, and he could hear Welling struggling behind him, but Doctor Nekrotik was getting away, and Jared really needed to kill him. Really needed to kill him. The soldiers couldn't hold on to Jared tightly enough, not when he was so full of murderous intent.
He'd get free, and he'd take Nekrotik to tiny painful pieces.
A sudden blow cracked into the back of his head, and, dazed and abruptly weak, Jared sagged to his knees. He tried to turn his head, and caught a glimpse of the big officer's face behind his visor looking down at him, bizarrely sympathetic even as he raised the butt of his energy-rifle to hit Jared again. Jared's vision swam, and the noise around him went far, far away.
"Wait."
Jared stared stupidly at the big officer's energy-rifle, where it was raised halfway in the air, ready to come back down on his head. But the big officer wasn't moving, and Jared's gaze drifted over to Doctor Nekrotik, who was suddenly close again, suddenly in reach. The black latex of Doctor Nekrotik's gloves felt strange against Jared's skin, as Nekrotik gently took hold of his chin and tilted his face up into the light.
He stared back into the black-mirror pools of the gasmask's eyes, lost the sound of his own breathing in the whispering rush of Nekrotik's respirator.
"Patch this one up," said Doctor Nekrotik finally. "Then I want him put in my quarters."
There was a moment's pause, and Jared looked between the big officer and Doctor Nekrotik, waiting for something new to happen. Then Doctor Nekrotik cocked his head at the big officer, a small curious quirk, and the big officer nodded, and said, "Yes, sir," like he'd never hesitated.
And Jared was hauled upright by the big officer, passed off to soldiers, who dragged him down the corridor, not unkindly but not with a huge degree of support either, back towards the surface. When the cool, stingingly dry air of outside touched him, Jared tried to struggle as a respirator was fixed over his face. His head fell backwards, and he stared up at the sky, and marveled at how it was suddenly full up of the silver starlight of Doctor Nekrotik's fleet.
"Jared!" someone shouted, and it sounded like Chad, but Jared couldn't see him.
In fact, the last thing he saw before they hauled him onto the waiting shuttle to the ship in the sky, was the moonlight painting the flat plastic eyes of Doctor Nekrotik's gasmask to silver-white.
next
From 'The Evil Overlord List'
Rule 26: No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.
Flash by Queen
Though, of course, this is a bit more along the lines of 'Flash Gordon hooks up with Ming the Merciless', Queen is always appropriate.