When Victor woke up, he was... about as deeply frightened as he could possibly be. The last thing he remembered was the fight. The ship had taken hits, they were probably about to die.... and then darkness. His position now... was terrible. He hurt... he'd broken something in his left leg, maybe an ankle, and could feel untreated burns along his skin... and was currently strapped, naked, completely helpless, to the wall of... something. From the sound of it, a spacecraft that was currently leaving orbit.

He couldn't see much... he was immobilized. But across the container, he could see one of his companions.. the pilot, Jacob... equally helpless... but when Victor caught his eye, the man winked.

He frowned. What would he possibly... wait. The man's left eye had started to glow.

He'd never known Jacob had a fake eye; he'd never really looked that close. If he weren't gagged, he'd ask the man about it, about what it was for...but then again, if he weren't gagged, his teeth trapped apart, he could trigger the suicide charge in one of his molars, and avoid getting taken in alive. Hopefully they didn't check that before they removed the gag.

Wait. Was the eye a suicide charge of some sort? That would be an odd place for it... though very good for taking out the brain. Why did he wink?

After a few seconds, a man in an Alliance uniform stepped into the container; a faint scraping of metal could be heard as he walked, and he stopped in front of Jacob, checking the restraints, and giving a nod. "A pilot, huh? I'm sure we'll make use of you, one way or another." The figure; anonymous in his white vacuum suit and armored helmet; turned now to face Victor.

"Ahh, a local boy, huh? I wonder if they'll be able to send you back to work... or if they'll just kill you outright? Not like you know anything anyone's gonna care about." A low laugh.. and the figure kept walking.

From the sound of his comments; and the restraints being checked; Jacob and Victor weren't the only ones captured alive. When Jacob looked at Victor, he blinked three times... and then held his eyes shut.

Was that a signal of some sort? Victor felt the restraints; the man had barely checked them. Victor was born strong... everyone of his particular line were... but there were stronger people out there. Either due to high-end cybernetics, or being engineered for high-gravity worlds, he'd met people a fraction of his size who could out-lift him with ease... but when it came to fighting, mass was an enormous factor.

A United Worlds marine might be able to lift twice as much as he could, but she also weighed only a fraction of what he did... and he could hit harder. Would that matter, for breaking restraints?

He strained against them, uselessly. They were built for people of his size, his strength. Likely exactly the sort they would use if they captured a group of plantation workers on the run... which, technically speaking, he was... albeit on a very long, long, run.

Local boy... he was back home, then. There was a city not too far from his plantation.... Drasport. The place had an Alliance military facility there. He'd never been, but the Anti-Slave-Union always wanted to blow the place up. He closed his eyes.

He'd never wanted to come back to this world. To this place. He only wanted to hear about it, that the Alliance had been overthrown, the slaves liberated, thanks to the work of people like him... but, well. That work was done, for him. Now... just to...

He heard a crackle. A soft buzzing sound.

He opened his eyes. Jacob had gone limp... and that glowing eye was visibly crackling with electricity. The lights in the container had gone out, and the man who'd been checking the restraints was running closer.

The banging of armored boots on metal. The man blocked his vision of Jacob as there was a sudden, loud, pop. The world went dark.

***

This part would be dicey. She needed it to be believable, or it would all fall apart. She watched closely, and adjusted the dials; she needed the subject in just the right amount of pain, but not too much to be able to get the job done...

***

Victor's world was awash in pain as be became aware of his situation... and he felt as if he were being tumbled in a washing machine, the craft constantly shaking back and forth. He was half bent-over, his hands both still attached to their restraints... but a solid chunk of the cargo container wall had come off with them, apparently not as sturdy as the restraints themselves.

He focused. Staring at his arms, and lifted the chunk of wall up... seeing... Jacob's legs. Fragments of bone, of blood, and not much else. His eye must have been a bomb... and as soon as the Alliance soldier was between the two of them, he'd set it off... giving Victor... maybe... a slim chance.

It was an absolute pain. His arms were bound to their restraints, still, but that wall... He strained. Pulled. Put every bit of effort he could, from years of hauling buckets, years of working out, of combat training... and through sheer effort and will, snapped the chunk of wall between those restraints... and was able to start undoing them.

When he had both legs free, he assessed the room, looking around... several of his former crew were there, most injured to some extent, none of them conscious... he checked the dead Alliance soldier at his feet. No guns. A stun baton. One which had a power meter on the side currently reading dead; that bomb in Jacob's head must've had an EMP component.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He looked at the spot where the restrained legs were all that was left of his former ally. This... he'd made a sacrifice. Jacob might have been more valuable to the union than Victor was, but thanks to that freaky eye, he was the only one who could do it. Victor had to make it count for something.

He started down the line; removing restraints from everyone's arms. Slapping them lightly to see if they could be awoken...and to his sorrow, finding quite a few of them already dead.

He could hear a whistle... he didn't have much time. Hopefully one of them would revive enough to move, but if not... he took the baton, heading out of the container into the ship proper... he could hear shouting. the screech of metal... and most distressingly... the shriek of air. The ship... was falling into an atmosphere. That.... was not a sound that ever lasted long.

He glanced around...he'd been on these before. Boarded one of these transports years ago. The lifepods... He glanced back. Two people to a lifepod. With his size....

He ran back to the container, looking around. Who would... all of them were still out. But Henry was a heavy-worlder. Barely over a meter tall. He could fit in the same pod as Victor. It would be... uncomfortable.

He casually hefted the much lighter man, running back out into the hallway, then tossing him up onto the next deck... before climbing up himself. There. Eight life-pods. Six already gone.

Did he have time to go back and get more people? Maybe. Couldn't risk it. He was probably already too late. He yanked open the closest pod, dragged Henry along... stopped for a moment. Emergency transponder. Made to track it. These pods had three of the damn things. It wouldn't do any good to drop if.....

There's one. A second. Both yanked off, tossed into the bay; they were made to be user-servicable from inside the ship, thankfully. The last one... He dropped into the pod, pulling Henry along... and yanked on the lever. These things were hardened. The other transponder was inside the pod, but he needed a tool to.... Ah.

The pod dumped him out; the limited engines firing as he hurtled out towards the ground. Trying to ignore his probably imminent death, Victor broke apart the stunrod. Wires. Battery.

The transponder was... there. Would shorting it out kill the thrusters that stopped this thing from landing? Would it kill him?

Better death than capture. He pressed both wires into the right spot. The emergency lighting in the lifepod flickered for a moment. The transponder... was done.

He breathed a sigh of relief... and glanced at the display, now dead. Had he just killed himself? He'd find out soon enough. Bracing himself would do no good whatsoever, but he did it anyway, wondering just how long he had until...

***

There we go. A good solid break-point.

She left Victor's simulation paused; the poor dead man wouldn't know anything was going on; while she tapped in a message to the cafeteria, and requested a meal be delivered to her office. Nothing complex; just a sandwich and something caffeinated to drink. She relayed a message on to the Counter-Intel department about the request to accelerate her usual timeline, and have an intelligence reviewed; as well as why....

And of course, the Spooks responded immediately. Of course they were happy to come early. She'd get a complete gene-scan, her badge would be re-matched to her, and they'd thoroughly examine her apartment and... ugh.... her sims to make sure she didn't have any leaks.

She really hated when they looked over the sims. It wasn't too embarrassing, but it did make it clear she hadn't had a boyfriend since she got this job. Hopefully they didn't mention it in front of Ben. Or was it Bryce? Oh god, why did both of their names start with a B?

She double-checked the render of the plantation region prepping while she ate... it was always best for these things to be smooth so long as the subject was awake. Rendering artifacts would ruin everything, and if two rocks were identical due to a software error... It all looked good.

***

When he woke up... everything hurt. His spine, his arms... but mostly his legs. Especially his right one... when Victor glanced down at it, in the dim light of the broken lifepod, he could tell that the ankle was twisted in the wrong direction... which meant, that if the Alliance was tracking him, he was screwed. Granted, he was screwed regardless; this was an Alliance world, with its soldiers, its fleets, its lunatic slaver populace...

He'd never realized just how crazy the Alliance was until he got out in the universe, visited other nations. Saw how normal people lived. But now.... he was stuck right back in it. He might be best off killing himself, making sure to destroy the implant... but he'd give it a good try first. See if he could make Jacob's sacrifice mean something. And get one of those eyes for himself... just in case.

He reached out to the ejection handle on the lifepod; there was supposed to be a display, showing ambient temperature, oxygen content, everything else important, beside it... but he'd likely killed that alongside the transponder. He wasn't moving, so he wasn't in the water... so... He yanked the handle.

An audible hiss of escaping gas, as the compressed air fired off, launching the door away from the pod. Designed to fire with enough pressure to flip the pod over if need be, when it was in a situation like this, facing out, it ended up launching the door at least thirty meters... and with an audible clang, it slammed into a fencepost.

Victor stared out the open hatch. Those fenceposts...Seemed familiar... this... He struggled, pulling himself up to stand on his good leg and look out.

He was in a field, mostly empty at the moment; the debris of crushed plants from the last harvest scattered in every direction. This.... was the right time of year. Slaves like he used to be would be picking fruit in the orchards, and using machines to lay seeds for the crops that could be harvested by the tractors. These fields were enormous, miles across, and often not watched, while there wasn't anything growing.

When the seeds had been planted, drones would be sweeping by, checking for pests, checking water conditions, at least a couple times a day... which meant that he was lucky. He glanced down at his leg. Mostly lucky. He might have as much as a few weeks before planting, before they knew the pod had crashed here. And if he could move it...

He grunted, and pulled himself out by the doorway, looking around. The pod had made a small crater in the fertile soil, scorch-marks where the breaking thrusters had fired. There was an irrigation trench, with water flowing down it... seventy meters away. Ugh.

Well. First. Grab the emergency supplies from the pod. Second... roll it into the trench. Extremely painfully, and slowly, with only one good leg. Third... head for a nearby plantation. Definitely not his own. See if he could make contact with someone from the Union.

Granted... it not being his plantation was a problem. At his own, his whole cohort knew the timings of the drones, the positions of the cameras, the weaknesses of the fence... but they might have changed.

Unpacking the emergency kit, laying it out on the soil beside the pod, he sat down.. looking at the horrible position of his ankle... and took a deep breath. Step zero. Point his damned foot the right way. He closed his eyes, and took hold of the foot with both hands; and somehow, despite the horrific sound of his own screaming, he could still here that horrible click and crunch of the broken bones as they shifted before the darkness took him once more.