“There’s no need to keep your hands up, doctor; with your reaction times, you could keep them on a pistol, and I would have little to worry about,” stated Yulik as he walked Diduk into the survivors' camp.
The response was surprisingly muted as the pirates entered the area. Yulik chalked this up to the shock, and their current predicament led them to develop more robust constitutions.
“How do you know who I am?” asked Diduk, taking the pirate up on his offer and lowering his arms.
“As I told my crew, I do my research,” explained Yulik.
“Now, where is the human?” asked Yulik, pointing his pistol had Diduk’s head.
“How…?” Diduk attempted to ask, but Yulik interrupted, “How do I know what the only human on board is amongst you? Simple, you are all still alive; now, where is she?”
With few options, well, no options really, Diduk led Yulik to the stretcher where Madeline was still sleeping.
Diduk had hoped, prayed even, that Madeline’s super senses would have alerted her to the pirates’ presence and that she would have melted away into the jungle to hunt the pirates.
No such luck; however, Madeline was still sleeping, utterly oblivious to what was happening.
“Why is she asleep? Why is she tied down?” asked Yulik; of all the meetings he had imagined in his mind, this was not one of them.
Diduk did not want to tell the pirate; he did not even want to look at him. Still, he had the gun, and Diduk told Yulik everything.
Yulik snickered, “Oh, I don’t think she envisioned this when she told you all you would not last five minutes.”
As he gazed at the sleeping female, Yulik was struck with the realisation that he had never seen a human in person before. He was hit with the dissonance that most people experienced, the universe’s great deception indeed.
This Madeline looked so small, so helpless as if a stiff breeze would break her. Beneath that smooth, fragile-looking skin and delicate hair were muscles of whipcord steel and bones like granite.
Yulik needed to consider his next step carefully.
He knew, almost instinctually, that killing her would be the safest move. While this woman was not some hardened warrior or masterful survivalist, death worlds instilled a tenacity and cunning in all their lifeforms. However, it did not always reach the surface or emerge at an opportune moment.
Earth would have only created a more extreme version of this, and Yulik would need to be careful when she woke up.
Killing her, however, would create problems. Yulik’s plan hinged on ambushing the soldiers and using the passengers as sapient shields. If Yulik could not prove she was alive, they would treat all pirates as hostile and most likely shift to extermination orders. The soldiers’ primary goal was to rescue her after all.
Angry, bloodthirsty soldiers were more dangerous than an irritated tourist.
Yulik could not help but feel he was making a mistake, but rather than execute her right there and then, he ordered that the human female be restrained, even more so than she already was.
***
Madeline felt weird, she was confident she had a headache, but Madeline could not feel any pain; she knew it hurt, but it did not hurt. Madeline sighed; she was too groggy for philosophical ramblings.
She attempted to rub her forehead, but her arms would not move. They were also numb; she must have slept on them; how had that happened?
As Madeline rolled onto her side, she realised that her arms and legs resisted, “the hell is going on?” she thought.
As Madeline’s brain tried to process what little information she had, it dawned on her that maybe looking at her limbs might help.
The light was bright, and it aggravated her painlessly painful headache.
Even with her brain still stuck in first gear, Madeline could tell that she was surrounded by the other survivors, and she recalled that she had had a conversation with Diduk before passing out.
“Diduk,” Madeline hissed; that sod had drugged her; she attempted to stand and give the overgrown lizard an earful.
Yet Madeline couldn’t. It took her some time to realise that her legs had been bound.
“Diduk! What the hell have you done” Madeline yelled.
Everyone was startled by the noise, and everyone turned to look. Their looks of surprise quickly moved to relief.
Everyone began to speak at once, and Madeline found she could follow none of it, something about an attack, but this was getting them nowhere.
“What the hell are your people talking about?” shouted Madeline, her voice rising above the others.
“I believe they are referring to us,” an unfamiliar voice said.
Everyone else fell silent, and Madeline righted herself until she was sat down, her knees pressed against her chest. She had no idea who this person was, but it did not take long for her to put the pieces together.
“Am I correct in assuming that you are the captain of the pirates that attacked us,” asked Madeline. She found herself strangely calm; Madeline did not know why; it could be the drugs still coursing through her system, but it was almost as if she was not there, like watching a movie.
“I am; though I am not the captain who ordered the attack; he died in the conflict, going down with their ship”, explained Yulik.
“Honourable”, stated Madeline.
“I thought so”, Yulik replied.
Everyone looked on, somewhat surprised at this civil conversation, yet no one else spoke for fear of shattering this delicate balance. The passengers hoped that Madeline might be able to reason with them. The pirates, however, hoped that wherever this talk led, it would mean fewer of their deaths.
"I must say you have risen far; the Ponut’kild only reached the stars fifty years ago”, stated Madeline.
Yulik was momentarily thrown off by the knowledge that Madeline had heard of his people; Madeline noticed this and added, “you seem surprised that I know what you are.”
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This knocked Yulik from his stupor, and he replied, “Forgive me, I did not expect you to know of my people; to most, we are just another face in the crowd.”
“It’s part of standard education; humans learn about every Habitableworlder”, explained Madeline.
Yulik found himself taking slight insult at this, but that feeling was overwhelmed by the idea that humans were taught about seventy-seven different sapient species.
“You may be famous for your prodigious minds as well as you’re incredible bodies, but I do not believe for a moment that you memorise seventy-seven races”, stated Yulik.
Madeline seemed confused for a moment before realising where the wires had crossed.
“I'm afraid you misunderstand; humans don’t consider themselves to be Deathworlders; to us, a Deathworld is Venus, a 96% carbon dioxide, 450 degrees, sulfuric acid-drenched hell,” she explained.
“You and me, we’re habitableworlders”, she added. “That lot,” she gestured with her eyes to everyone else, “they’re paradiseworlders.”
This was technically correct; she had learnt it this way back in school. When she decided to take her holiday out of human territory, however, the course she had been legally required to attend had explained that it was best to use the galactic standard with other races to avoid confusion.
The past week had shown that Madeline was extraordinarily adaptable, and she found herself even referring to herself as a Deathworlder in her own head.
Madeline's explanation seemed to throw Yulik off for a moment. She did not know it, but the knowledge that the same race that had skewed public perception was not affected by it made some of his bias melt.
Not that it mattered in the long run, Yulik wanted to escape, plunder for a few years and retire as rich a Tuvilu. The woman was still an impediment, and he needed to ensure she caused no problems.
Yulik could not deny the allure of talking with her, however, and had to force himself away.
“Make sure she does nothing; I mean it, if she so much a sneezes, you tell me!” he ordered Surt; she gestured that she understood.
As Madeline watched the alien walk away, she began to check her pockets, looking for anything that might be useful and found to her astonishment, that her knife was still there.
Whoever tied her up must not have been happy about it and just done the deed and left.
“This is going to be even easier than I thought”, she mused as she began to cut at her bindings.
It did not take Madeline long to cut through her bindings; it felt like an hour; however, her wrists were in agony, and she had sliced her hands more than once. Despite her reclaimed mobility, she still felt it was in her best interest to make everyone think she was still restrained.
No matter Madeline's strength or toughness, a laser weapon would still boil her from the inside out.
So, Madeline sat there, assessing the situation. Her guard was nervous. Being left alone with Madeline was not something the Surt had relished.
Despite the circumstances, Madeline could not help but feel that the slug woman was rather pretty in a way, covered in beautiful frills of deep blues and blacks, like a tropical nudibranch.
Eerily beautiful or not, Madeline did not let herself become distracted.
It was time, time to put a life dedicated to spy thrillers, action movies, first-person shooters, third-person stealth and real-time strategy games to good use. Her first response in these situations would be to doom stack a load of dragons, but that option was not available.
As far as she could tell, the pirate captain was the main obstacle; without him, the rest would be relatively easy to deal with. Fighting him was not an option. Madeline had taken karate lessons for about three months when she was ten, and she could remember only four things from them.
First was how to make a fist that could not break your thumb. Second, the best solution to any threat was just to run away. Third, a punch was more effective the closer you got, and finally, she learned how a skilled fighter moved.
The pirate did not fall into the typical archetype. He was not simply a drunken sailor with a gun. This guy practised, and despite her physical abilities, he would slowly take her apart in a one-on-one confrontation; her only hope would be if she got lucky with a punch. Madeline knew better than to rely on luck, however.
After what Madeline assumed was about half an hour, though she could not be sure, someone had taken her P.D.A., so they had not been quite as lazy as she thought; she had a plan, and Madeline thought it was a pretty good one. It all hinged on her getting deep enough into the woods, where the pirates’ firearms would be mostly useless.
She sighed; she would have to wait for nightfall, which was over seven hours away, judging by the sun. Seven hours, pretending to be restrained, this was going to be uncomfortable.
“Oh my god, you unbelievable bitch,” thought Madeline; it had not even occurred to her to check on everyone else.
Her eyes darted from prisoner to prisoner; from what she could see, none of them were injured or, rather, had no new injuries. Madeline sighed; they had not put up any fight, which was good.
She saw Diduk, the Nimuteru, the millipede horse, Jodhr and Brox were well, if somewhat shaken up. Madeline felt a little spite for Diduk even now; how dare he drug her without consent.
Even so, she considered being held at gunpoint to be an over-proportional punishment.
Diduk noticed her looking at him and stared back. Madeline wanted to tell him that she had a plan and would do everything she could to help them, but she took Yulik's warning to the Surt very literally.
It was best to be productive with her time and polish her idea to a mirror sheen.
Part of this refinement meant gauging her guard, who still appeared uneasy despite having time to settle into her role.
They were not heavily armoured, so a quick konk on the head would render her unconscious, and if she remembered correctly, Surt were not very quick, still processing a pseudo foot, much like an Earth snail.
The Surt noticed Madeline’s staring, but she did not avert her gaze. Madeline thought that if she quickly looked away, the Surt might realise she was planning something.
So Madeline kept staring, and the Surt just stared right back. It was difficult to tell, but Madeline was sure she was shaking. “If I keep this up, maybe they will faint out of shock,” thought Madeline.
Somewhat unexpectedly, the Surt stood up and cautiously made their way to Madeline. Her first thought was that they would threaten Madeline and tell her to stop staring, but they seemed too timid for that; if this were going to be a dressing down, it would be the meekest one in history.
The Surt got to eye level with Madeline, their stalks aimed directly at her and asked, “If I help you get off this rock, will you put in a good word for me?”
Madeline gave them a look and scanned the immediate area; she could not see anyone. If this was some kind of set-up, Madeline had no idea what the payoff could be.
“You’re going to betray your fellows?” asked Madeline, sceptical of their intent, also astounded that she had used the word fellows.
“Not necessarily; if you live and convince the other humans not to massacre us, I might save their lives,” replied the Surt.
“You disagree with your captain?” asked Madeline.
The Surt looked away, but with their eyes on stalks, that meant they did not need to move their head.
“He has his pride tangled up in this; he wants to prove something, and I’m not sure even he knows who to,” the Surt explained.
“You don’t believe you can take on a group of human marines,” stated Madeline.
“I don’t believe we could take on a bunch of Surt marines; you may have noticed that my people are not exactly the most agile”, replied the Surt.
“How many of you feel this way?” Madeline asked.
“As far as I know, just me,” they replied.
“There goes the idea for a mutiny, back to the original one,” thought Madeline.
“Where is my P.D.A.?” inquired Madeline.
“I think the Captain has it,” replied Surt.
“Get me my P.D.A., and then I’ll believe you,” stated Madeline.
“I’d never be able to do it,” The Surt explained.
“Then you die with your captain or trust him to pull it off,” replied Madeline.
The Surt was not taken aback by Madeline’s words, though Madeline certainly was. Instead, she viewed her surroundings and then walked towards a nearby tree.
They called out something, most likely a name, and another pirate approached.
“Cover me for a bit; I need to use the little girl's room,” the Surt stated; the other pirate did not seem to argue and took up Surt’s previous position.
All the while, Madeline sat there confused; unless she was mistaken, Surt were hermaphrodites; they should not even have a concept of womanhood, let alone identify as one. Hell, they did not even use individual names; they were all called Surt. Madeline supposed they must have some way of telling one another apart, but it was not through language.
This little puzzle kept Madeline so distracted that before she knew it, the Surt had returned.
In her hands was Madeline’s P.D.A., Surt tried to untie her, but Madeline reached for her digital assistant.
Surt was surprised at this, as the realisation that Madeline could have attacked her at any time, but was also reassured when she recalled that Madeline had not.
“What’s your plan?” asked Surt.
“You’ll get the gist of it soon; the finer points I will explain later, if you are true to your word, however”, replied Madeline.
“How did you steal it anyway?” asked Madeline.
“I’m the tech; when I told the Captain that I wanted to examine the human’s P.D.A., he just handed it to me; I guess it did not occur to him that I would attempt anything like this”, she replied.