Titus closed his eyes and sank back against the cool metal hull of the cargo bay that he was being transported in; the unforgiving and frigid metal was a stark reminder of his current predicament. He had been piloting ships all of his life, they were the only place he truly felt at home, and right now the fact that he was in a ship was pretty much the only thing keeping him from a total breakdown. True, he wasn’t currently manning the helm, but he was doing everything he could to savor what might be his last time in the air.
He idly thrummed the tips of his fingers together, the only thing he could do with his hands cuffed, and tried to steady his breathing as his heart threatened to beat out of his chest. The ship had been in the air for hours now and Titus knew it wouldn’t be much longer before it reached its destination.
“Hey baby, you landing with us right?” One of Titus’ fellow inmates jeered at the only female guard. The bastard must have had a death wish because he had been heckling the guard since the ship had picked him up from the prison on Jupiter. “If my hands were free I could show you a real good time, girl. Once I get these cuffs off, let me put them on you? What’cha say, girl?”
As was the case for the last few hours, the guard said nothing, her face completely unreadable behind her tinted visor and helmet. Titus didn’t miss her fingers flexing on the grip of her plasma rifle though and he could only offer his silent condolences to the idiot who didn’t know better than to keep his mouth shut.
Prepare for arrival, was the only warning Titus got over the loudspeaker before the transport ship began its descent to the surface of the planet below. He chuckled to himself as the ship jostled upon atmospheric entry, a telltale sign that whoever was manning the helm was almost certainly a novice pilot. Titus dearly wished that he could have shown the unfortunate kid how to properly fly.
The rattling of chains on either side of Titus snapped him from his introspection and he swore to himself at that moment that he would make it out of this alive; he would do whatever necessary to stand at the helm at least one more time. The ship continued to creep lower to the surface until it finally came to a halt, the only signal that the guards needed to begin preparing the prisoners for ‘transport’.
“Fucking finally,” the prisoner to Titus’ immediate right swore. He watched almost excitedly as the two guards walked down the line and began to heave prisoners to their feet. “Get me off this ship. I don’t care if it’s back in a cell; anywhere is better than this cargo hold.”
A small chuckle escaped Titus’ lips and the prisoner rounded on Titus threateningly.
“Something I said was funny, bitch?” He grunted stupidly.
“Everything actually,” Titus laughed again. “But you’ll see for yourself in a minute. Good luck down there.”
Titus drowned out whatever nonsensical expletives the man started to hurl in response and watched the guards nearing closer to him; he needed to have all of his wits about him to survive the upcoming ordeal. The two guards rounded up every prisoner in the cargo hold except for Titus, the prisoner that was heckling the female guard, and a third prisoner that was chained down to the floor and wearing a hood. All of the prisoners were brought to the door at the back of the cargo area and Titus braced himself against the frigid snow and howling winds that whipped into the hold as the bay doors began to slowly open.
He steeled his heart as he had each of the last few times he had been out here as one by one the guards brought the prisoners to the edge of the bay doors. They were hundreds of feet above the surface of Pluto and Titus tried his best to drown out the screams of the men as they were hurled one by one out into the air to the ground below. Only a ‘lucky’ few survived the initial plunge to the ground below and fewer still survived the never ending frozen wasteland that made up the vast majority of Pluto’s unforgiving surface.
It had been centuries since terraforming began on Pluto’s surface but despite scientists’ and researchers’ best efforts the planet still didn’t support much life. Frozen almost year-round, the planet was where the Republic dumped all of their untouchables. This was truly the end of the line and the few people that managed to survive here only did so by surrendering whatever humanity they had left. At least there was an atmosphere so Titus wouldn’t die of asphyxiation.
He looked up to see the guards kicking the last man, the one Titus had been sitting next to, out into the open air. They then began their march towards the three remaining prisoners, well soon to be two Titus supposed.
“Am I getting the special treatment after all, girl?” The still oblivious prisoner heckled; truly the man must have had only a few working brain cells.
The guard removed her helmet and Titus smiled briefly upon recognizing Lucina, one of his fellow cadets at the officer’s academy. They hadn’t been friends by any stretch of the word though and Titus knew he wouldn’t be receiving any favors from her. In fact, he wondered why he hadn’t already been booted from the cargo bay with the rest of the prisoners.
“You couldn’t handle the special treatment, prisoner 106382,” Lucina smiled wickedly as she walked over to the prisoner and began unlocking his cuffs. The man had only a moment to look at his freed hands in surprise before he was slammed in the throat by a quick chop. He stumbled backwards wheezing and clutching at his throat as Lucina followed up with a vicious kick into his midsection that dropped him to the ground. He managed to stumble to his feet at which point he tried to awkwardly throw himself at Lucina, attempting to overpower her and wrestle her to the ground. Lucina cackled mercilessly as she easily sidestepped the prisoner’s clumsy lunge and tripped him back down to the ground again. Before he could get to his feet a second time, she jumped onto his midsection and began throwing punch after punch into the man’s defenseless face. Titus forced himself to watch as blood and spittle began flying and bones cracked under Lucina’s plated gauntlets; the second guard stood motionless while Lucina bludgeoned the prisoner to death with her fists.
Looks like he did have a brain after all, Titus thought darkly, watching the barbaric display of violence and knowing that this disgusting act might be humane compared to some of the other things he would need to do to survive down on the surface.
“Stupid bitch should have kept his mouth shut,” Lucina grumbled as she casually stood up from the puddle of brain matter and bone shards that were sticking out of what was once the man’s face. “Help me chuck him out and I’ll clean up, deal?”
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The second guard said nothing but walked over to the legs and grabbed them, leaving Lucina to mutter and grumble about having to grab the dead man’s grisly torso. After heaving the body out into the cold, Lucina and the other guard walked back over to Titus, stopping in front of him.
“I was watching you the whole ride over here, Titus,” Lucina smiled. She bent down and hoisted Titus up onto his feet. “I gotta say, you looked pretty nervous.”
“Well, banishment to Pluto is a death sentence more or less,” Titus grinned back. “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous at all.”
Lucina spat in his face and then drilled her bloody fist into his stomach, knocking the wind from his lungs and sending him sprawling to the ground. He groaned and rolled onto his side clutching his stomach, and then winced as Lucina grabbed his hair and pulled his head up.
“Good,” Lucina breathed into his face. “You’re a fucking traitorous cunt and the Republic is better off without you. I consider it my finest honor that I’m the one to carry out your death sentence.”
“And what if I survive down there?” Titus managed to splutter out. “I’m not dead yet.”
Lucina sneered and slammed him back onto the floor. “You will be when you land. It doesn’t matter how augmented your body is.”
She stood and walked over to the prisoner that was chained and bound to the floor, the second guard following behind her hesitantly. Titus gasped for breath as he lay panting on the ground, not wanting to tear his eyes away from his jailors. They hesitated before the bound prisoner and the second guard used his boot to toe the unmoving body. It thrashed against it’s chains and hissed nastily and Titus felt his breath catch again as the noise was all he needed to identify the monstrosity.
A Tuatar.
The reptilian bipeds were one of the many alien species that humanity came in contact with during the Communion and the few Tuatar that Titus had met during his service in the Fleet had been extremely aggressive. Lucina carefully reached down and removed the hood, revealing a scaled purple head with rows of vicious teeth that quickly snapped up at Lucina’s hand.
“She’s quick,” Lucina grinned happily over at Titus. “We’ll drop her down first and you’ll be dead the instant you land.”
“You will all be dead the instant that I am no longer bound,” The Tuatar hissed. She blinked, closing three sets of eyelids over her slitted yellow eyes, and Titus shuddered as his chances of survival dropped from one percent to zero.
“Not likely,” Lucina laughed. Four more guards came out and held the Tuatar down as Lucina began unlocking her bindings. The Tuatar thrashed and hissed but between the six total guards she couldn’t do anything. They dragged the reptile over to the edge of the ship and unceremoniously tossed her out the same as all the rest of the prisoners.
Finally it was just Titus left and he swallowed as Lucina walked over to him for what was certainly the final time. She lifted him to his feet and clapped him on the back as hard as she could, almost knocking him down to the ground again.
“Good luck down there, ‘Lieutenant,’” Lucina laughed. He tensed angrily as Lucina walked him over to the edge. “Oops, it appears that’s still a sore subject after you were stripped of your rank.”
“At least take these damn cuffs off,” Titus tried to sound like he wasn’t begging. “Don’t leave me to face that monster without my hands.”
“Nice try, Titus,” Lucina chuckled. “Take your cuffs off so you can torch everyone on the ship? No, I don't think so. If you survive more than five seconds against that Tuatar there are some supplies down there and a key somewhere.”
The next thing Titus knew the world was spinning end over end and he was falling through the freezing night sky. He felt like screaming but he bit down on his tongue, not wanting to give Lucina the satisfaction of hearing him yell. After falling through the sky for what felt like an hour, he righted himself just in time to land in a snowbank. He grunted as the wind was knocked out of him upon his landing.
The freezing cold immediately set in and Titus wasted no time in standing up and getting his blood pumping. In addition to the threat of freezing to death, he wasn’t too keen on getting mauled by the Tuatar or getting stabbed by another prisoner that might have survived. He needed these damn cuffs off so he could use his hands to defend himself and his augments to see. He didn’t know how many more hours until the sun rose and he needed his heat vision to identify threats in the middle of the night.
He whipped his head around at a noise that he heard coming from behind him but he swore since he couldn’t see more than a few meters in front of his face. He took a deep breath and plunged forward, stumbling around while trying to find the containers of supplies that Lucina mentioned.
It hadn’t even been a minute but Titus was already losing feeling in his extremities from exposure. He shuffled along, groping at the empty air with his still bound hands desperately trying to find any sign of the supplies which could save his life. He rammed his shin into something hard and fell face first into the snow.
He quickly flipped upright and found that he had tripped on an overturned barrel in the snow. He felt for the lid and, upon finding it, grinned maniacally and set upon it, trying to pry it open with trembling fingers. Once opened, the lights on the inside revealed a coat, gloves, food, and shoes, but most importantly there was the key to his cuffs. He reached in and grabbed it, trying to remove his shackles with shaking hands and praying he didn’t drop his only salvation to the snow below. He finally got the cuffs off and immediately activated his augment.
Back when Titus’ father was still alive, the old man paid a small fortune to have his son augmented with the power of flame. Titus thanked his deceased father as his body heated up and he blinked his eyes, switching his vision so he could see heat signatures. A quick sweep of his head revealed none and he smiled to himself, thinking he was the only one to survive the fall. He returned his attention to the supplies but almost immediately, his shoulder was rent by massive clawed talons causing him to scream out in pain and collapse to the snow.
He blinked back tears as he clenched at his wound, using his augment to cauterize the bleeding and then setting his hands ablaze to fend off his attacker.
“Wait, wait!” The Tuatar hissed from just outside his vision. “You’re an Augmented?”
“Show yourself!” Titus yelled out, spinning frantically in a circle. “Why can I not see you?”
“I’m cold blooded you ignorant fool,” she snarled. “My body temperature is always the same as my surroundings. Now don’t attack me, I’m directly behind you and coming forward into the light.”
Titus cursed himself for his simple oversight, one that proved almost deadly, and began to slowly lower his hands. He knew he was being foolish, the reptile was blindingly fast and could kill him in an instant, but he supposed that she could have done so already if she really wanted to.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” Titus posed to her as she stepped into the light of his flames. “Tuatar are weapon specialists and master assassins. I know you didn’t miss.”
“I was going to kill you,” she said, cocking her head to the side and regarding him eerily with her piercing yellow eyes. “But you turned as I leapt and I saw your augmented eyes. I could not completely stay my attack but I was able to make it superficial at least.”
“It still hurts like hell,” Titus grumbled and he thought he could almost mistake the reptile’s hiss for a laugh. “What is your name?”
“Ra’Shek,” the Tuatar offered after a moment’s pause. “And your name, human?”
“Titus,” he smiled grandly. He was on his back as the words were leaving his mouth, Ra’Shek had leapt on him and held her serrated claws to his throat.
“You bare your teeth to me in challenge, puny human?” Ra’Shek hissed, baring her own wicked fangs. “Know your place.”
“No!” Titus tried to splutter out. “That was a smile! That’s how humans show they are happy!”
“What about our current situation makes you happy, whelp?” Ra’Shek snapped. She got off of Titus slowly though and stepped back, making no move to help him stand.
“Nothing,” Titus mumbled, marveling at the speed of the lizard. He made a mental note not to smile at her again. “I’ll try not to show my teeth again, sorry.”
“Mmm,” she grunted, turning to look through the upturned barrels at the supplies. “Start gathering supplies, human. We must take everything we can carry.”
“Yeah, the supply ship doesn’t come very often,” Titus agreed as he brushed the snow from his backside. “And my name is Titus.”
“I heard your name the first time, human,” Ra’Shek hissed. She had thrown on as many coats as she could wear and was now trying to put gloves on over her claws. “Now stop talking and pack the gear. We must seek shelter from this insufferable cold.”
“There is no shelter,” Titus told her. “At least not that I know of. We studied Pluto in the officer’s academy. It’s a desolate wasteland, with wolves the size of elephants and raving lunatics who feast on the flesh of their fellow humans. We have to find a way off this rock or we’ll die here.”
“Then stop talking and lead the way,” Ra’Shek said, shouldering her pack and motioning for Titus to begin their long trek.