Through the Looking Glass, part 5
Through the Looking Glass, part 5
Here is part 5 of my recent fic.
Rated NC-17. Supergirl (CW)/Arrow (CW), Kara Danvers/Oliver Queen.
It had been three days since Sia Anders’ capture -days which had been spent alone in a cell below ground with nothing to do but to contemplate her circumstances. She had been provided with food and water and had steadfastly refused to answer any questions put to her.
While she had not been mistreated, she could admit to some resentment of her circumstances. In all fairness however, she supposed it was not unreasonable for these Earthers to object to her collaboration in the retrieval corps’ operations.
Let’s call things what they are though, she told herself, because you are complicit in the enslavement of countless numbers of their people.
She sighed. These mental wanderings did not provide an answer to the most important question for her at the moment: what to do now?
Sia raised her head as she heard footsteps approaching her cell.
“Do you need anything?” The young woman asked. Sia shook her head.
“All righty then. I guess… I’ll go back to my work then.” The woman turned and walked away.
They aren’t very good at this, Sia considered. Nowhere near ruthless enough, to be sure.
If they had been practised at this, they would have avoided using their names, at the very least. Their methods of extracting information also left much to be desired.
On the other hand, they may not be as inept as all that, she thought. For one thing, I’m so bored I have given serious consideration to clawing out my own eyeballs.
With nothing better to do, she decided to catch up on her sleep (sleep deprivation was a definite hazard in the imperial navy, so the opportunity to address this was an unexpected plus). Since all imperial personnel were required to remain in shape, she also made a point of engaging in her regular calisthenics, despite being somewhat limited by her surroundings. While completing her usual exercises she noted that the girl’s (Felicity?) eyes widened at a particularly adventurous move involving a somersault. Despite this attempt to remain active however, boredom assailed her.
Several hours later she was sitting against the wall of her cell and contemplating the strange urge she had to shove Felicity’s clicking keyboard into the nearest garbage disposal unit. At this moment, she was joined by one of the two men who had captured her, who stopped before the door to her cell.
“My name is Oliver. Oliver Queen.” He said, introducing himself.
She gazed calmly back at him. “Yes?”
“I don’t suppose you want to tell us what you were doing, or what’s going on.” He asked.
“No.” She replied. Were they ever going to get to the torture? She certainly had better things to do than remain here for the rest of her existence.
Rather than begin anything of the kind, he waited only a moment before shrugging and walking away, the muted sound of his footsteps sounding loudly in the quiet of the room.
Felicity knows that the woman listens. She listens to the echoes of their lives away from the darkness of the room she is being held in, as the others speak to Felicity about whatever they’ve been doing on the outside.
Honestly, it’s a bit creepy.
Given what the woman had said when Oliver and Diggle captured her, they had suggested that Kara try to speak with her. When Kara tried that however, she quickly backed away into the darkest corner of her cell, avoiding any further interaction. For some reason she watches whenever Kara is in the room, following her every move.
And that? Also creepy.
She eats and drinks whatever they give her, performs some weird and really scary fitness routine on a regular basis, and sleeps a lot.
And watches. And is super creepy.
Felicity really could have done without this extra ‘company’ basically breathing down her neck, and she wishes the woman would just tell them something or that they could just turn her over to the police (she still doesn’t understand why that didn’t happen, because it’s not like she’s been in any way forthcoming).
Thankfully Felicity is able to ignore her for the most part when it counts, like now, when yet another abduction is in progress in The Glades. Felicity is coordinating things on her end, keeping a watchful eye on the feeds from several local cameras along with relevant internet traffic, police radio, and various other important odds and ends (needless to say, Felicity knows she deserves a hefty pay raise for what she does). She listens as they manage to stop another abduction, then listens as one of the perpetrators dies as Oliver attempts CPR.
Once it’s over she steps away from her computer screens, needing a minute to gather herself after the ordeal of the past few minutes. The woman is still watching her, standing just inside the door to her cell, and Felicity has had it.
She steps up to the woman’s cell. “Are you happy -is this what you wanted? Are you *ever* going to try and do anything to stop this, or are people just going to keep disappearing and dying?”
The woman stares at her in silence.
“That’s what I thought.” Felicity says contemptuously, then walks away.
Sia had just completed another day of sleeping, watchful awareness, boredom, and calisthenics when she was joined by the one who called himself Oliver. He came to a halt before the bars of her cell, then sat down.
“I don’t know what’s going on here. None of us do. I also suspect we’re not going to find out unless you tell us something,” he said without preamble.
“…So how about it?” He asked her.
When she didn’t reply, he sighed. “Fine. It seems to me that you have two choices. One would be not to tell us. In that case, we’d hand you over to the police. A second choice would be to come clean and tell us what you know.”
She laughed, yet the sound was devoid of humor. “There is a third choice which you seem to be disregarding: you could force me to reveal this information to you.”
Oliver nodded. “Yes, we could. Or rather, I could.” He pointed in the direction of Felicity, Diggle, and Kara, who were at the other end of the room, apparently discussing something on one of Felicity’s computer screens. Oliver pointed towards his friends, “They would never do what you’re suggesting, simply because they’re good people and couldn’t even conceive of torturing someone.”
“But you could?” She asked pointedly.
He shrugged. “I’ve done things in the past -things that were wrong. Until recently, I could done it. I know that I could have tortured you if I felt I needed to. I know that because I’ve justified things like that to myself in the past.”
“So why don’t you do it?” She asked.
He smiled. “I won’t *because* of them. Because I was recently reminded by these people, by who and what they are, that I don’t need to be the kind of person who does things like that. I know now that I don’t *want* to be the kind of person who does things like that. I realized recently that I can *choose* to do things differently -it doesn’t erase the things I did in the past. But I can be better in the future because I choose to be. Because I desperately want to be.”
“What is your point?” She asked him, looking away.
“My point is that you can decide to do things differently, too. I can *see* that you’ve done things, things that I’m not sure your comfortable with. My point is that you don’t need to keep following that path -there’s always a choice. But it has to come from you.”
“Think about it,” he said softly as he picked himself up and walked away.
Sia thought about it that night and the following day. She thought of her childhood working in the empire’s hellish mines on the planet Tal’t, where she had witnessed the deaths first of her mother, then the grandmother who had raised her from work-related lung ailments. With no family left and no income or resources to speak of, she had escaped through the only avenue open to her: the imperial navy. Thanks to modern imperial medicine the damage done to her lungs as a result of her own work in the mines as a child was repaired -thankfully the navy was far from elitist and had been willing to recruit her despite her lack of formal education. She still remembered the day she had visited that dusty recruitment office, as well as the personnel's open skepticism when faced with the dusty and ignorant child she had been. Once given the opportunity, she had thrown herself into the work and had managed to surprise all her detractors.
She had spent her life working to escape her childhood. In order to escape that hell she had seen and done many, many things she wasn’t proud of or comfortable with. Somehow, she had managed to avoid facing that truth by burying herself in her work and by avoiding postings such as this one, where the reality of the empire was made all too clear.
She realized that somehow, he had been right about her. Somehow, she desperately wanted something *different*. She wanted to be more.
She wanted to be free.
A few more days went by, and spring began to move towards summer. Everywhere in the city trees were green and flowers were in bloom as most of the city's children looked forward to the summer, ignorant of the dangers now lurking in the streets.
Kara, Diggle, and Oliver spent their days and evenings patrolling The Glades, trying to stagger the times each of them were on the streets. Felicity had her devices recording everything she could, but there was simply no way for them to be out there all the time. Out of desperation Felicity had begun to attempt the development of a program to recognize potential abductions, although she admitted that the chances of this working anytime in the near future were slim at best.
It was late evening, the night having long since gone dark. Felicity and Diggle had left some time ago and Oliver had remained to train. Kara was using Felicity’s computers to complete some remaining work for her job at Queen Industries while taking up Felicity's usual surveillance of the city's cameras -Felicity had only half jokingly stated that Kara had better not get any viruses or malware onto her computers if she didn’t want any nasty surprises on hers.
Kara was definitely NOT looking in Oliver's direction -why did he have to train shirtless anyways? It was distracting.
It was then that the woman spoke, low enough that only Kara could hear. Kara stood and walked over to the cell, as Oliver stopped training to join her.
“My people have encountered your species before,” the woman stated. “You should know that meeting you was… unexpected.”
Then, as Kara and Oliver listened, she detailed the empire’s history and explained the nature of its operations in this sector of the galaxy.
Sia did not spare herself, laying out her own complicity in what had transpired.
She was tired of fighting the wrong war. She had intended to tell them everything but somehow, some intuition caused her to avoid detailing the covert side of her orders. She explained instead that the empire had sent her to oversee the corps’ operations. Coming to the end of her explanation, she was silent.
“Why was it unexpected to meet me?” Kara asked her once she had finished.
Sia was surprised by her response. “You… do not know?” She asked.
Kara shrugged. “Um, no. It’s complicated, but no. Whatever happened between your empire and my people is not something I’m aware of.”
Sia nodded, puzzled. How could this be? “Roughly three centuries ago -you will have to forgive my inexactitude regarding the dates, as I am no historian- the empire encountered your people. Your race was the single most technologically advanced species the empire has ever encountered -some historians suggest that Krypton’s technology may even have exceeded our own. The powers your people possessed in the proximity of a yellow sun were another concern. Your people objected rather strenuously to some of the empire’s practices, particularly when it came to the enslavement of other races. There was a war. The empire did eventually defeat Krypton's forces, yet some of our more adventurous historians have suggested that the empire came very close to defeat. In the end I believe it was the simple difference in numbers which enabled us to prevail.”
Kara was silent, watching her with wide eyes. Her expression was horrified and Oliver glanced at her in sympathy.
“What happened to my people?” She asked, finally.
Sia sighed. “They are no more. The war itself lasted approximately one hundred years. By the end of the war the empire had exhausted nearly all its resources -indeed, it was lucky to survive. Your people were not so lucky.” She said. “I am sorry.”
“Are you sure there aren’t any of us left?” Kara asked.
Sia shrugged. “As sure as it is possible to be. While there were some few survivors after the war, the privations imposed on your world were made to ensure that Krypton would never again rise against the empire. It was eventually destroyed in order to ensure this would be the case.”
“No one in the empire has seen one of your people in over a hundred years. I am sorry.” She said. Kara's face wore an expression of horror.
Sia was silent as the other two digested this new information. Finally, Kara stood. “I think I should go,” she said. Sia put out a hand to stop her.
“There is something more.” She said. Kara was obviously not in a state to hear it, but Sia continued regardless. “You need to understand that your people’s actions… In all of our recorded history, your people were the only ones who ever truly stood a chance against the empire. In the eyes of many, Krypton and its people are a legend -a symbol. Your people may be gone but what they accomplished has made them into a powerful symbol. So the fact that you are here, on this world…” Her voice trailed off.
Taking a deep breath Kara nodded and thanked her for the information she had provided, then ran outside.
Oliver followed her.
Once outside, Kara leaned her head against the side of the building, trying not to be sick. She started when she felt a hand land grip her shoulder and turned to face him. Her eyes were full of tears.
“I can’t believe this. I mean, this is apparently a whole other galaxy apart from the one I came from. But once again, my whole race gets destroyed. I mean, what are the odds?”
“Are you all right?” Oliver asked, and she burst into tears. Reaching out, he took her into his arms and held her, telling her again how sorry he was. She sobbed for a time, then realized she was getting his shirt wet and pulled back.
“Oh. Um, I’m sorry…” She said.
He waved her words away, “Don’t worry about it. How are you feeling?” He asked gently, and she sighed.
“Not too wonderful, honestly. This is just…” Her eyes filled with tears again and he took her hands.
“I can imagine it’s overwhelming. I’m sorry Kara.”
They were silent for a moment, then she sighed. “What do we do now?” She asked, still feeling lost and adrift, and he shrugged.
“I think we need to tell John and Felicity about all of this. We’ll need to question her further as well.”
Kara took a deep breath. “We need to stop them.” She said firmly.
Oliver nodded. “We will. I know we will,” he said.
They stayed where they were for a few moments, deep in thought. Kara tried to process what she had just learned. She shook her head.
“Weren’t you angry with me recently… or something?” She asked him tiredly.
He smiled. “As our good friend John pointed out to me, I was being an ass. I’m really sorry.”
Kara nodded, “Yeah, you kinda were.” She was too emotionally exhausted to give it much thought however, which Oliver seemed to realize since he quickly changed the subject.
Oliver nodded and squeezed her hand. “How about I take you home? I’ll just make sure our ‘guest’ has everything she needs for another night and take you to get some dinner.”
Kara nodded. “That would be nice.” She said, her heart feeling deeply bruised.
“I’ll be right back.” Oliver promised, as Kara leaned against Verdant’s wall and remembered her childhood.
The next morning they met with Diggle and Felicity to discuss the situation. After considerable discussion and with input from their prisoner, a decision was made to attempt to rescue some of the prisoners: the ship Anders had arrived in was still on the planet and many of the prisoners had already been moved to it. Given the risks involved, it was not a decision they were all comfortable with.
Kara, Oliver, Diggle, and Commander Anders were en route to the ship's location just outside the city. Felicity had stayed behind in order to act as their logistical support, as well as to keep an eye on events in Star City.
Commander Anders had agreed to help them carry out, as Diggle had put it, “their crazy-ass plan”. Even he had been forced to agree that it would be difficult to convince the authorities to act on this information without proof -their first step would therefore be to board the ship and free its prisoners. They would then contact the police and attempt to convince them of the truth -admittedly not an easy task, but one which might be marginally easier with witnesses and testimonials.
Anders had explained that while the ship was generally hidden from view as well as from radar and other human technology via some kind of cloak, this could be nullified by knocking out the engines, which acted as its power source. They should therefore also be able to record the ship once it became visible. Their admittedly slim hope, for the moment, was that someone would believe them and that Earth’s being aware of what the empire was doing would at least make it more difficult to carry out its operations.
They had decided that Kara would head for the engine room and disable the engines using her special abilities, while Oliver and Commander Anders liberated the prisoners.
The four of them drove out of the city to where the road reached a bend. Following the commander’s signal, Oliver parked the car off the side of the road behind a few sets of bushes. Diggle hadn't thought much of their plan, but he also hadn't liked the idea of their going into this without him. He had reluctantly agreed to stay behind, where he would act as a lookout and coordinate with Felicity.
A second, grimmer reason for his remaining behind was to be witness to what happened in the event they didn't make it back. He would record what he could from outside the ship and attempt to inform the authorities in the event things went sideways. (This was a definite possibility -particularly since Commander Anders, for all her apparent change of heart, had never provided a clear answer to what her ultimate goal was in assisting them.)
Kara also knew (because Oliver had told Diggle who hadn’t taken it that well and had told her) that Oliver had, even more grimly, updated his will and the provisions made in the event of his death. One particular provision he had made was for Diggle: Oliver had realized that, if something were to happen to him, Diggle might be blamed, since he was officially Oliver’s bodyguard. From what he had said to Diggle, these provisions included a (sealed and hidden in a safe deposit box) letter confessing just enough of his activities as the city’s vigilante to absolve his friend of any responsibility in his employer’s death.
When they arrived it was to a big field of grass, trees, and nothing significant as far as the human eye could see -Anders knew its location via her implants, however. Kara informed them, however, that she was able to see the ship quite clearly using her enhanced vision. It was, according to Anders, a pretty large ship. The retrieval corps apparently tended more towards the use of shuttles and smaller craft for their missions, keeping their larger ships in orbit. They had reportedly opted to use a larger ship for this mission because of the Commander's presence -this type of thing was reportedly a common courtesy in the upper echelons of the imperial military, and ensured that a superior officer would not have to travel in the relatively cramped confines of a shuttlecraft or smaller vessel.
The commander had explained to them that all imperial personnel were fitted with several implanted devices -one was a translation implant which enabled them to understand the empire’s many languages, which involved an incredibly complex interaction between the implant and the brain’s language centers to create a complex synergy. This was accomplished at a very young age in order to facilitate a more complete neuronal-machine interaction. Other implants also enabled interaction with various ship components -these were upgraded to more sophisticated devices in the case of imperial personnel. Without implants Kara and Oliver would be understood by other imperial personnel in this system, as they had their own translation implants, but would have difficulty interfacing with and directing most ship’s controls.
In the case of the retrieval corps, their implants also served a much more sinister purpose: they also functioned as a recording and transmission device which continually sent feedback regarding each operative’s health and current actions. It also, in a pinch and in the event poison failed, served as a backup by detonating a small charge which could eliminate a recalcitrant agent where needed. While Commander Anders had been able to ensure that she was not dosed with poison, she had been less certain of her implants, which were both a required and secret component of life as an officer of the empire. She had admitted that it was possible her implants could be used to track her and even possibly to record whatever she experienced. There had reportedly been persistent rumors of imperial implants being used for such a purpose among the rank and file of the imperial military. She had however been reasonably certain that her implants did not contain any explosive devices, and her matter of fact acceptance of this had struck Kara and the others as a frightening testimonial to life in the empire.
The commander had stated that the corps relied on their cloaking technology to hide their ships’ presence when on a planetary surface and did not bother keeping a watch for potential intruders, which had seemed odd to her, given how cautious the security conscious retrieval corps usually was regarding potential detection in space. This did however make any approach on their part considerably easier.
Kara, Oliver, and Commander Anders carefully climbed down the slight incline and walked towards the ship. As they approached the apparent location of the ship, Anders gestured to Kara and Oliver that they should wait as she carefully continued her approach. Kara watched as Anders inched towards the ship's door and closed her eyes. Eventually, it slid open to reveal a tiny compartment: they stepped inside and stood silently as the outer door slid shut. As Anders had explained would happen, the ship, in one of the vanishingly rare automatic functions permitted to imperial machinery, then carried out a scan for potential contaminants. The ship’s lighting was somewhat dim in comparison to the brightness of the morning outside and both Oliver and Commander Anders blinked several times as their eyes adjusted to the darkness. A green light flashed -Anders explained that this indicated the successful completion of the scan as well as the absence of any biological or other hazards on their persons. The inner door slid open to reveal a short corridor. Silently, all three crept forward.
After reaching and passing through a third door, they reached a junction between two corridors. Anders pointed to the right. “Down that corridor and up two levels is the ship's engine room. You will not have much time.”
Kara nodded and just as she turned to leave, Oliver caught her arm and pulled her to the side away from the other woman.
“Be careful.” He said softly, and kissed her.
The first time they had kissed, Kara had been too surprised and it had been over too quickly for her to do more than feel a certain surprise. This time, however, she felt it all.
His arms around her, the feeling of his lips on hers, the exhilaration that filled her before, all too soon, it was over. He placed a hand on her cheek.
She smiled, “You too,” she said. He nodded and then left. Anders followed, wearing a somewhat quizzical expression.
Reminding herself firmly of where they were and what they were supposed to be doing, Kara turned away. Walking down the indicated corridor she quickly located the stairs which would take her to the upper levels of the ship. According to Anders the ship had five levels altogether, the lowest of which consisted mainly of holding areas for prisoners; the ships were designed to be able to land and remain in place in a range of surface conditions while the corps carried out their principal function. She didn't come across anyone as she climbed the stairs, then looked out a door at the dim corridor beyond.
Five doors to choose from: Commander Anders hadn't specified what the engine room's door would look like. Kara found what she was looking for behind the third door and entered a large compartment with a large blocklike structure located behind a set of control panels, and which corresponded with what Commander Anders had described as being the crucial components for maintaining engine function.
As she neared the structure she was blindsided by the sudden agony which swept through her body. Collapsing to the floor, she closed her eyes as pain consumed her and a greenish glow glinted, unseen, in the engine's core.
Oliver and Commander Anders quickly reached the first of the prisoner holding areas and Oliver watched as Anders demonstrated how to work the doors' locking mechanism without an implant. (This was 'difficult but not impossible,' according to her, and would enable them to speed things up by having him free some of the prisoners while Anders freed the rest.)
He stood and waited impatiently as she worked the delicate control panel, showing him how to raise it to the machinery underneath. After considerable wrangling with the recalcitrant controls, the doors finally slid open.
As they did so, Oliver felt the deck begin to shake under his feet. Anders turned towards him, alarm on her face. “Someone has activated the engines!” She cried out, as prisoners began to stream out of their cell.
Part one is here, part two is here, part three is here, part four is here, part six is here, part seven is here.
Links:
These are things I looked up when writing this story and that I found interesting. Mostly I’m having fun looking at all this stuff because I’m a nerd. I also try to get things right when writing.
-Occupational lung disease is indeed a problem among miners: https://www.thoracic.org/patients/patient-resources/breathing-in-america/resources/chapter-13-occupational-lung-diseases.pdfe
-On yellow and red stars in the milky way galaxy:
(1) What kind of star is the sun? (Answer: a yellow dwarf star) https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/sun/in-depth/
(2) Why are stars different colors (Answer: hotter stars are bluer, cooler stars are redder. I’m guessing the yellow vs. red star dichotomy in the Superman universe is not very scientific, LOL. ;)
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-stars-different-colors
https://oneminuteastronomer.com/708/star-colors-explained/
(3) More on stars: https://www.britannica.com/science/star-astronomy
(4) The Sky May Be Filled with Earth-like Planets (among other things, this reference states that stars like our sun make up approximately 10% of all stars): http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/11/04/earth_like_exoplanets_planets_like_ours_may_be_very_common.html
-How language is processed by your brain: https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/16/health/language-in-the-human-brain/index.html
-(Basically I used this to help me with the ship jargon.) Speak the language. HERE IS A LIST OF TERMS THAT WILL HELP YOU ADJUST TO LIFE IN THE U.S. NAVAL SEA CADET CORPS. (http://www.seacadets.org/nautical-terms/)
-Disclaimer: I have NO IDEA what would be a rational design for a spaceship.
(1) What Would a Starship Actually Look Like? https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a8140/what-would-a-starship-actually-look-like-12869471/
(2) What should spaceships look like? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14291992
Here is part 5 of my recent fic.
Rated NC-17. Supergirl (CW)/Arrow (CW), Kara Danvers/Oliver Queen.
It had been three days since Sia Anders’ capture -days which had been spent alone in a cell below ground with nothing to do but to contemplate her circumstances. She had been provided with food and water and had steadfastly refused to answer any questions put to her.
While she had not been mistreated, she could admit to some resentment of her circumstances. In all fairness however, she supposed it was not unreasonable for these Earthers to object to her collaboration in the retrieval corps’ operations.
Let’s call things what they are though, she told herself, because you are complicit in the enslavement of countless numbers of their people.
She sighed. These mental wanderings did not provide an answer to the most important question for her at the moment: what to do now?
Sia raised her head as she heard footsteps approaching her cell.
“Do you need anything?” The young woman asked. Sia shook her head.
“All righty then. I guess… I’ll go back to my work then.” The woman turned and walked away.
They aren’t very good at this, Sia considered. Nowhere near ruthless enough, to be sure.
If they had been practised at this, they would have avoided using their names, at the very least. Their methods of extracting information also left much to be desired.
On the other hand, they may not be as inept as all that, she thought. For one thing, I’m so bored I have given serious consideration to clawing out my own eyeballs.
With nothing better to do, she decided to catch up on her sleep (sleep deprivation was a definite hazard in the imperial navy, so the opportunity to address this was an unexpected plus). Since all imperial personnel were required to remain in shape, she also made a point of engaging in her regular calisthenics, despite being somewhat limited by her surroundings. While completing her usual exercises she noted that the girl’s (Felicity?) eyes widened at a particularly adventurous move involving a somersault. Despite this attempt to remain active however, boredom assailed her.
Several hours later she was sitting against the wall of her cell and contemplating the strange urge she had to shove Felicity’s clicking keyboard into the nearest garbage disposal unit. At this moment, she was joined by one of the two men who had captured her, who stopped before the door to her cell.
“My name is Oliver. Oliver Queen.” He said, introducing himself.
She gazed calmly back at him. “Yes?”
“I don’t suppose you want to tell us what you were doing, or what’s going on.” He asked.
“No.” She replied. Were they ever going to get to the torture? She certainly had better things to do than remain here for the rest of her existence.
Rather than begin anything of the kind, he waited only a moment before shrugging and walking away, the muted sound of his footsteps sounding loudly in the quiet of the room.
Felicity knows that the woman listens. She listens to the echoes of their lives away from the darkness of the room she is being held in, as the others speak to Felicity about whatever they’ve been doing on the outside.
Honestly, it’s a bit creepy.
Given what the woman had said when Oliver and Diggle captured her, they had suggested that Kara try to speak with her. When Kara tried that however, she quickly backed away into the darkest corner of her cell, avoiding any further interaction. For some reason she watches whenever Kara is in the room, following her every move.
And that? Also creepy.
She eats and drinks whatever they give her, performs some weird and really scary fitness routine on a regular basis, and sleeps a lot.
And watches. And is super creepy.
Felicity really could have done without this extra ‘company’ basically breathing down her neck, and she wishes the woman would just tell them something or that they could just turn her over to the police (she still doesn’t understand why that didn’t happen, because it’s not like she’s been in any way forthcoming).
Thankfully Felicity is able to ignore her for the most part when it counts, like now, when yet another abduction is in progress in The Glades. Felicity is coordinating things on her end, keeping a watchful eye on the feeds from several local cameras along with relevant internet traffic, police radio, and various other important odds and ends (needless to say, Felicity knows she deserves a hefty pay raise for what she does). She listens as they manage to stop another abduction, then listens as one of the perpetrators dies as Oliver attempts CPR.
Once it’s over she steps away from her computer screens, needing a minute to gather herself after the ordeal of the past few minutes. The woman is still watching her, standing just inside the door to her cell, and Felicity has had it.
She steps up to the woman’s cell. “Are you happy -is this what you wanted? Are you *ever* going to try and do anything to stop this, or are people just going to keep disappearing and dying?”
The woman stares at her in silence.
“That’s what I thought.” Felicity says contemptuously, then walks away.
Sia had just completed another day of sleeping, watchful awareness, boredom, and calisthenics when she was joined by the one who called himself Oliver. He came to a halt before the bars of her cell, then sat down.
“I don’t know what’s going on here. None of us do. I also suspect we’re not going to find out unless you tell us something,” he said without preamble.
“…So how about it?” He asked her.
When she didn’t reply, he sighed. “Fine. It seems to me that you have two choices. One would be not to tell us. In that case, we’d hand you over to the police. A second choice would be to come clean and tell us what you know.”
She laughed, yet the sound was devoid of humor. “There is a third choice which you seem to be disregarding: you could force me to reveal this information to you.”
Oliver nodded. “Yes, we could. Or rather, I could.” He pointed in the direction of Felicity, Diggle, and Kara, who were at the other end of the room, apparently discussing something on one of Felicity’s computer screens. Oliver pointed towards his friends, “They would never do what you’re suggesting, simply because they’re good people and couldn’t even conceive of torturing someone.”
“But you could?” She asked pointedly.
He shrugged. “I’ve done things in the past -things that were wrong. Until recently, I could done it. I know that I could have tortured you if I felt I needed to. I know that because I’ve justified things like that to myself in the past.”
“So why don’t you do it?” She asked.
He smiled. “I won’t *because* of them. Because I was recently reminded by these people, by who and what they are, that I don’t need to be the kind of person who does things like that. I know now that I don’t *want* to be the kind of person who does things like that. I realized recently that I can *choose* to do things differently -it doesn’t erase the things I did in the past. But I can be better in the future because I choose to be. Because I desperately want to be.”
“What is your point?” She asked him, looking away.
“My point is that you can decide to do things differently, too. I can *see* that you’ve done things, things that I’m not sure your comfortable with. My point is that you don’t need to keep following that path -there’s always a choice. But it has to come from you.”
“Think about it,” he said softly as he picked himself up and walked away.
Sia thought about it that night and the following day. She thought of her childhood working in the empire’s hellish mines on the planet Tal’t, where she had witnessed the deaths first of her mother, then the grandmother who had raised her from work-related lung ailments. With no family left and no income or resources to speak of, she had escaped through the only avenue open to her: the imperial navy. Thanks to modern imperial medicine the damage done to her lungs as a result of her own work in the mines as a child was repaired -thankfully the navy was far from elitist and had been willing to recruit her despite her lack of formal education. She still remembered the day she had visited that dusty recruitment office, as well as the personnel's open skepticism when faced with the dusty and ignorant child she had been. Once given the opportunity, she had thrown herself into the work and had managed to surprise all her detractors.
She had spent her life working to escape her childhood. In order to escape that hell she had seen and done many, many things she wasn’t proud of or comfortable with. Somehow, she had managed to avoid facing that truth by burying herself in her work and by avoiding postings such as this one, where the reality of the empire was made all too clear.
She realized that somehow, he had been right about her. Somehow, she desperately wanted something *different*. She wanted to be more.
She wanted to be free.
A few more days went by, and spring began to move towards summer. Everywhere in the city trees were green and flowers were in bloom as most of the city's children looked forward to the summer, ignorant of the dangers now lurking in the streets.
Kara, Diggle, and Oliver spent their days and evenings patrolling The Glades, trying to stagger the times each of them were on the streets. Felicity had her devices recording everything she could, but there was simply no way for them to be out there all the time. Out of desperation Felicity had begun to attempt the development of a program to recognize potential abductions, although she admitted that the chances of this working anytime in the near future were slim at best.
It was late evening, the night having long since gone dark. Felicity and Diggle had left some time ago and Oliver had remained to train. Kara was using Felicity’s computers to complete some remaining work for her job at Queen Industries while taking up Felicity's usual surveillance of the city's cameras -Felicity had only half jokingly stated that Kara had better not get any viruses or malware onto her computers if she didn’t want any nasty surprises on hers.
Kara was definitely NOT looking in Oliver's direction -why did he have to train shirtless anyways? It was distracting.
It was then that the woman spoke, low enough that only Kara could hear. Kara stood and walked over to the cell, as Oliver stopped training to join her.
“My people have encountered your species before,” the woman stated. “You should know that meeting you was… unexpected.”
Then, as Kara and Oliver listened, she detailed the empire’s history and explained the nature of its operations in this sector of the galaxy.
Sia did not spare herself, laying out her own complicity in what had transpired.
She was tired of fighting the wrong war. She had intended to tell them everything but somehow, some intuition caused her to avoid detailing the covert side of her orders. She explained instead that the empire had sent her to oversee the corps’ operations. Coming to the end of her explanation, she was silent.
“Why was it unexpected to meet me?” Kara asked her once she had finished.
Sia was surprised by her response. “You… do not know?” She asked.
Kara shrugged. “Um, no. It’s complicated, but no. Whatever happened between your empire and my people is not something I’m aware of.”
Sia nodded, puzzled. How could this be? “Roughly three centuries ago -you will have to forgive my inexactitude regarding the dates, as I am no historian- the empire encountered your people. Your race was the single most technologically advanced species the empire has ever encountered -some historians suggest that Krypton’s technology may even have exceeded our own. The powers your people possessed in the proximity of a yellow sun were another concern. Your people objected rather strenuously to some of the empire’s practices, particularly when it came to the enslavement of other races. There was a war. The empire did eventually defeat Krypton's forces, yet some of our more adventurous historians have suggested that the empire came very close to defeat. In the end I believe it was the simple difference in numbers which enabled us to prevail.”
Kara was silent, watching her with wide eyes. Her expression was horrified and Oliver glanced at her in sympathy.
“What happened to my people?” She asked, finally.
Sia sighed. “They are no more. The war itself lasted approximately one hundred years. By the end of the war the empire had exhausted nearly all its resources -indeed, it was lucky to survive. Your people were not so lucky.” She said. “I am sorry.”
“Are you sure there aren’t any of us left?” Kara asked.
Sia shrugged. “As sure as it is possible to be. While there were some few survivors after the war, the privations imposed on your world were made to ensure that Krypton would never again rise against the empire. It was eventually destroyed in order to ensure this would be the case.”
“No one in the empire has seen one of your people in over a hundred years. I am sorry.” She said. Kara's face wore an expression of horror.
Sia was silent as the other two digested this new information. Finally, Kara stood. “I think I should go,” she said. Sia put out a hand to stop her.
“There is something more.” She said. Kara was obviously not in a state to hear it, but Sia continued regardless. “You need to understand that your people’s actions… In all of our recorded history, your people were the only ones who ever truly stood a chance against the empire. In the eyes of many, Krypton and its people are a legend -a symbol. Your people may be gone but what they accomplished has made them into a powerful symbol. So the fact that you are here, on this world…” Her voice trailed off.
Taking a deep breath Kara nodded and thanked her for the information she had provided, then ran outside.
Oliver followed her.
Once outside, Kara leaned her head against the side of the building, trying not to be sick. She started when she felt a hand land grip her shoulder and turned to face him. Her eyes were full of tears.
“I can’t believe this. I mean, this is apparently a whole other galaxy apart from the one I came from. But once again, my whole race gets destroyed. I mean, what are the odds?”
“Are you all right?” Oliver asked, and she burst into tears. Reaching out, he took her into his arms and held her, telling her again how sorry he was. She sobbed for a time, then realized she was getting his shirt wet and pulled back.
“Oh. Um, I’m sorry…” She said.
He waved her words away, “Don’t worry about it. How are you feeling?” He asked gently, and she sighed.
“Not too wonderful, honestly. This is just…” Her eyes filled with tears again and he took her hands.
“I can imagine it’s overwhelming. I’m sorry Kara.”
They were silent for a moment, then she sighed. “What do we do now?” She asked, still feeling lost and adrift, and he shrugged.
“I think we need to tell John and Felicity about all of this. We’ll need to question her further as well.”
Kara took a deep breath. “We need to stop them.” She said firmly.
Oliver nodded. “We will. I know we will,” he said.
They stayed where they were for a few moments, deep in thought. Kara tried to process what she had just learned. She shook her head.
“Weren’t you angry with me recently… or something?” She asked him tiredly.
He smiled. “As our good friend John pointed out to me, I was being an ass. I’m really sorry.”
Kara nodded, “Yeah, you kinda were.” She was too emotionally exhausted to give it much thought however, which Oliver seemed to realize since he quickly changed the subject.
Oliver nodded and squeezed her hand. “How about I take you home? I’ll just make sure our ‘guest’ has everything she needs for another night and take you to get some dinner.”
Kara nodded. “That would be nice.” She said, her heart feeling deeply bruised.
“I’ll be right back.” Oliver promised, as Kara leaned against Verdant’s wall and remembered her childhood.
The next morning they met with Diggle and Felicity to discuss the situation. After considerable discussion and with input from their prisoner, a decision was made to attempt to rescue some of the prisoners: the ship Anders had arrived in was still on the planet and many of the prisoners had already been moved to it. Given the risks involved, it was not a decision they were all comfortable with.
Kara, Oliver, Diggle, and Commander Anders were en route to the ship's location just outside the city. Felicity had stayed behind in order to act as their logistical support, as well as to keep an eye on events in Star City.
Commander Anders had agreed to help them carry out, as Diggle had put it, “their crazy-ass plan”. Even he had been forced to agree that it would be difficult to convince the authorities to act on this information without proof -their first step would therefore be to board the ship and free its prisoners. They would then contact the police and attempt to convince them of the truth -admittedly not an easy task, but one which might be marginally easier with witnesses and testimonials.
Anders had explained that while the ship was generally hidden from view as well as from radar and other human technology via some kind of cloak, this could be nullified by knocking out the engines, which acted as its power source. They should therefore also be able to record the ship once it became visible. Their admittedly slim hope, for the moment, was that someone would believe them and that Earth’s being aware of what the empire was doing would at least make it more difficult to carry out its operations.
They had decided that Kara would head for the engine room and disable the engines using her special abilities, while Oliver and Commander Anders liberated the prisoners.
The four of them drove out of the city to where the road reached a bend. Following the commander’s signal, Oliver parked the car off the side of the road behind a few sets of bushes. Diggle hadn't thought much of their plan, but he also hadn't liked the idea of their going into this without him. He had reluctantly agreed to stay behind, where he would act as a lookout and coordinate with Felicity.
A second, grimmer reason for his remaining behind was to be witness to what happened in the event they didn't make it back. He would record what he could from outside the ship and attempt to inform the authorities in the event things went sideways. (This was a definite possibility -particularly since Commander Anders, for all her apparent change of heart, had never provided a clear answer to what her ultimate goal was in assisting them.)
Kara also knew (because Oliver had told Diggle who hadn’t taken it that well and had told her) that Oliver had, even more grimly, updated his will and the provisions made in the event of his death. One particular provision he had made was for Diggle: Oliver had realized that, if something were to happen to him, Diggle might be blamed, since he was officially Oliver’s bodyguard. From what he had said to Diggle, these provisions included a (sealed and hidden in a safe deposit box) letter confessing just enough of his activities as the city’s vigilante to absolve his friend of any responsibility in his employer’s death.
When they arrived it was to a big field of grass, trees, and nothing significant as far as the human eye could see -Anders knew its location via her implants, however. Kara informed them, however, that she was able to see the ship quite clearly using her enhanced vision. It was, according to Anders, a pretty large ship. The retrieval corps apparently tended more towards the use of shuttles and smaller craft for their missions, keeping their larger ships in orbit. They had reportedly opted to use a larger ship for this mission because of the Commander's presence -this type of thing was reportedly a common courtesy in the upper echelons of the imperial military, and ensured that a superior officer would not have to travel in the relatively cramped confines of a shuttlecraft or smaller vessel.
The commander had explained to them that all imperial personnel were fitted with several implanted devices -one was a translation implant which enabled them to understand the empire’s many languages, which involved an incredibly complex interaction between the implant and the brain’s language centers to create a complex synergy. This was accomplished at a very young age in order to facilitate a more complete neuronal-machine interaction. Other implants also enabled interaction with various ship components -these were upgraded to more sophisticated devices in the case of imperial personnel. Without implants Kara and Oliver would be understood by other imperial personnel in this system, as they had their own translation implants, but would have difficulty interfacing with and directing most ship’s controls.
In the case of the retrieval corps, their implants also served a much more sinister purpose: they also functioned as a recording and transmission device which continually sent feedback regarding each operative’s health and current actions. It also, in a pinch and in the event poison failed, served as a backup by detonating a small charge which could eliminate a recalcitrant agent where needed. While Commander Anders had been able to ensure that she was not dosed with poison, she had been less certain of her implants, which were both a required and secret component of life as an officer of the empire. She had admitted that it was possible her implants could be used to track her and even possibly to record whatever she experienced. There had reportedly been persistent rumors of imperial implants being used for such a purpose among the rank and file of the imperial military. She had however been reasonably certain that her implants did not contain any explosive devices, and her matter of fact acceptance of this had struck Kara and the others as a frightening testimonial to life in the empire.
The commander had stated that the corps relied on their cloaking technology to hide their ships’ presence when on a planetary surface and did not bother keeping a watch for potential intruders, which had seemed odd to her, given how cautious the security conscious retrieval corps usually was regarding potential detection in space. This did however make any approach on their part considerably easier.
Kara, Oliver, and Commander Anders carefully climbed down the slight incline and walked towards the ship. As they approached the apparent location of the ship, Anders gestured to Kara and Oliver that they should wait as she carefully continued her approach. Kara watched as Anders inched towards the ship's door and closed her eyes. Eventually, it slid open to reveal a tiny compartment: they stepped inside and stood silently as the outer door slid shut. As Anders had explained would happen, the ship, in one of the vanishingly rare automatic functions permitted to imperial machinery, then carried out a scan for potential contaminants. The ship’s lighting was somewhat dim in comparison to the brightness of the morning outside and both Oliver and Commander Anders blinked several times as their eyes adjusted to the darkness. A green light flashed -Anders explained that this indicated the successful completion of the scan as well as the absence of any biological or other hazards on their persons. The inner door slid open to reveal a short corridor. Silently, all three crept forward.
After reaching and passing through a third door, they reached a junction between two corridors. Anders pointed to the right. “Down that corridor and up two levels is the ship's engine room. You will not have much time.”
Kara nodded and just as she turned to leave, Oliver caught her arm and pulled her to the side away from the other woman.
“Be careful.” He said softly, and kissed her.
The first time they had kissed, Kara had been too surprised and it had been over too quickly for her to do more than feel a certain surprise. This time, however, she felt it all.
His arms around her, the feeling of his lips on hers, the exhilaration that filled her before, all too soon, it was over. He placed a hand on her cheek.
She smiled, “You too,” she said. He nodded and then left. Anders followed, wearing a somewhat quizzical expression.
Reminding herself firmly of where they were and what they were supposed to be doing, Kara turned away. Walking down the indicated corridor she quickly located the stairs which would take her to the upper levels of the ship. According to Anders the ship had five levels altogether, the lowest of which consisted mainly of holding areas for prisoners; the ships were designed to be able to land and remain in place in a range of surface conditions while the corps carried out their principal function. She didn't come across anyone as she climbed the stairs, then looked out a door at the dim corridor beyond.
Five doors to choose from: Commander Anders hadn't specified what the engine room's door would look like. Kara found what she was looking for behind the third door and entered a large compartment with a large blocklike structure located behind a set of control panels, and which corresponded with what Commander Anders had described as being the crucial components for maintaining engine function.
As she neared the structure she was blindsided by the sudden agony which swept through her body. Collapsing to the floor, she closed her eyes as pain consumed her and a greenish glow glinted, unseen, in the engine's core.
Oliver and Commander Anders quickly reached the first of the prisoner holding areas and Oliver watched as Anders demonstrated how to work the doors' locking mechanism without an implant. (This was 'difficult but not impossible,' according to her, and would enable them to speed things up by having him free some of the prisoners while Anders freed the rest.)
He stood and waited impatiently as she worked the delicate control panel, showing him how to raise it to the machinery underneath. After considerable wrangling with the recalcitrant controls, the doors finally slid open.
As they did so, Oliver felt the deck begin to shake under his feet. Anders turned towards him, alarm on her face. “Someone has activated the engines!” She cried out, as prisoners began to stream out of their cell.
Part one is here, part two is here, part three is here, part four is here, part six is here, part seven is here.
Links:
These are things I looked up when writing this story and that I found interesting. Mostly I’m having fun looking at all this stuff because I’m a nerd. I also try to get things right when writing.
-Occupational lung disease is indeed a problem among miners: https://www.thoracic.org/patients/patient-resources/breathing-in-america/resources/chapter-13-occupational-lung-diseases.pdfe
-On yellow and red stars in the milky way galaxy:
(1) What kind of star is the sun? (Answer: a yellow dwarf star) https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/sun/in-depth/
(2) Why are stars different colors (Answer: hotter stars are bluer, cooler stars are redder. I’m guessing the yellow vs. red star dichotomy in the Superman universe is not very scientific, LOL. ;)
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-stars-different-colors
https://oneminuteastronomer.com/708/star-colors-explained/
(3) More on stars: https://www.britannica.com/science/star-astronomy
(4) The Sky May Be Filled with Earth-like Planets (among other things, this reference states that stars like our sun make up approximately 10% of all stars): http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/11/04/earth_like_exoplanets_planets_like_ours_may_be_very_common.html
-How language is processed by your brain: https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/16/health/language-in-the-human-brain/index.html
-(Basically I used this to help me with the ship jargon.) Speak the language. HERE IS A LIST OF TERMS THAT WILL HELP YOU ADJUST TO LIFE IN THE U.S. NAVAL SEA CADET CORPS. (http://www.seacadets.org/nautical-terms/)
-Disclaimer: I have NO IDEA what would be a rational design for a spaceship.
(1) What Would a Starship Actually Look Like? https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a8140/what-would-a-starship-actually-look-like-12869471/
(2) What should spaceships look like? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14291992