Meet the Antagonists 2: Zackary Part 2
The other mercenaries bantered back and forth as the pre-flight checklist was ran through, but Zackary kept to himself. He wasn't particularly interested in making their acquaintance, but he did remember their call signs. He was Technician. The engineer was Wrench. The heavy weapons operator was Boolet, while the man with the rocket launcher was Woosh. The medic with the syringe gun was Tink, and the other medic was Mend.
The assault shuttle rose up with a gentle rumble, and propelled itself forward into space. Inside the vessel, small projector screens took the place of traditional windows, allowing the crew to see out. Not that there was anything to see. They were deep in the asteroid belt of this system, but there was still nothing within visual distance right now. The nearest asteroid to their target was seventy thousand kilometers distant.
After a few minutes of waiting, the picture on the porthole-screens shifted to show a large asteroid with a spindly, metallic structure clinging to one side like some massive spider. Armsoth shouted, "THIRTY SECONDS. BRACE FOR IMPACT." Simultaneously, a set of massive rockets fired, nearly doubling their forward velocity.
Zackary checked his kit by touch one last time, and grabbed the brace bars on either arm of his chair.
The assault shuttle split the metal hull of the space station almost delicately. It's forward prow was specifically designed for this, and the crumpling metal naturally bent outwards and away. The shuttle neatly wedged itself into the station's armored surface, and inside, the boarding ramp slid down and the doors hissed open.
Zackary was near the back of the pack, so he heard gunfire and the screech of venting atmosphere before he actually saw anything. The screech faded to a hiss, and then nothing as the remainder of the air in the room vanished into space. Zackary came out of the shuttle to see several dead miners seated at dining tables around the room, or dead where they fell running to the exits. The other operatives spread out and started sweeping the station. Zackary kept with Armsoth and followed him directly to the enemy bridge.
A pair of massive blast doors greeted them, and Armsoth gestured at Zackary to begin setting charges. He complied while Armsoth listened to the radio intently. Every so often they felt a rumble as the rocket launcher spoke up, or heard another high-pressure screech through the hull. Zackary quickly and efficiently set up two blocks of plastique on the door just so. Armsoth said, "I think the entire Security team and their lieutenant is on the bridge. We'll have trouble when we get through."
Zackary nodded silently, and slipped behind a locker to shield himself from the blast. Armsoth hide behind a vending machine on the other side of the hall, and Zackary thumbed the detonator switch.
Dual simultaneous explosions blasted the doors right off their hinges, and Zackary and Armsoth bolted in under the cover of smoke and fire.
Zackary sighted a target and opened fire indiscriminately, a burst of five shots tracking up the target and dropping it to the floor. Another shape loomed out of the smoke and he fired again, putting this one down too. The smoke started to clear and he turned, checking the room for more combatants. Armsoth stood nearby, his SMG smoking. Around them was the corpses of the security team and the lieutenant, all of whom looked rather young and fresh faced.
Zackary looked around one more time and narrowed his eyes. "Something isn't right. Someone else is here."
Armsoth looked around too and said, "How do you know that?"
Zackary smiled grimly beneath his helmet and mask, and picked up a PDA from the floor with a half-written message still on the screen. "All of the officers have their PDAs. Someone else was here." Armsoth moved to cover the door, so no one could run, and Zackary started searching the room very efficiently.
Halfway through, he unlocked a locker and it slapped open into his face, knocking him down but not injuring him through the suit. A woman in a black and white Nanotrasen Navy uniform jumped over him and sprinted for the door. Armsoth aimed his gun right at her gut as she ran at him. She twisted, trying to avoid a possible shot, but Armsoth waited a moment, the snapped out with the butt of his gun, catching her in the ribs as she dived to get past him. There was a crack, and she slumped to the ground, gasping for air.
He aimed the gun at her face and Zackary said, "No. Wait!" Armsoth nodded and replied.
"I wanted her alive too. There are no other Navy officers on the manifests. Her presence is a mystery." The prone woman coughed up pinkish foam as Armsoth called out on the comms, "We need a medic on the bridge. Take your time, we've got a good five to ten minutes before it's truly life threatening." He gestured at Zackary to grab her legs, and they picked her up and sat her on a table. Zackary filched some cuffs from one of the dead cops and cuffed her legs and hands to the table legs.
They waited in silence, watching her labored breathing from behind faceless armored masks.
Finally Mend arrived, and immediately set to work on her. He scanned her with his medical scanner, then injected her with some combat stimulants to keep her awake and alive a little longer. Then he got out a pair of sophisticated tools specifically for this purpose, and sliced a small incision open on her flank. Into this, he shoved the two tools, which started probing and mending her broken rib.
Needless to say, the woman screamed and bucked against her bonds and the careless metal yanked and twisted the broken bone out of her flesh and back into place. It sealed the wounds and then sealed the incision, leaving her on the mend, as it were. Zackary took off his helmet, then his mask. He clipped both to his belt, and looked at Armsoth, then raised an eyebrow.
Armsoth nodded. Zackary activated his comms and stepped out of the room, sealing the door as he did so. "Alright, this is Technician. I'm going to be doing some work with an unknown enemy agent on the bridge. I'm going to lay some ground rules for you all. I expect these to be followed, just as the medic would expect you to follow his medical advice. One, no one is to touch or call the subject by name but me or unless I specifically and directly order them to do so. Two, you must all remain masked at all times in her presence. Three, you must go along with whatever I say, no matter how outlandish or potentially antagonistic it might seem to you."
A chorus of beep-clicks greeted him, and he grunted, stepping back into the room. He looked at the PDA he'd found earlier, seeing the name. Sarah Helsbrecht. He prodded the officer in the side, getting her to look at him. "Your name is Sarah Helsbrecht, yes?" He half-asked, half-stated.
The woman looked at him with vitriol in her eyes and said, "Captain Helsbrecht, Sarah, NMID# 69428175, communications and operations officer."
He nodded slowly, and waved at Mend. "Can you bring me that rolling tray over there? And the chair too. I'll need both." The medic slid the two items across the floor to him, and Zackary brought the tray up to Sarah's eye level, then sat on the chair backwards facing her. He stared at her for a long time, silently.
A few minutes passed, and Sarah began to fidget a little. Zackary pulled his special kit bag off it's retaining hook and unzipped it. He drew out the first item within and gently set it on the tray in front of her, then gestured at everyone to follow him out of the room.
The item was a surgical scalpel, except not. It had a serrated blade on one end, and a three inch long needle thin spike on the other. Sarah looked at the item for a long time alone in the bridge, surrounded by corpses. She began yanking her right hand against the cuff that held it, trying to loosen the table leg or free her hand somehow.
Zackary let her sit on the thought of that terrible item for two minutes, then he came back in with the rest of the team of operatives. They circled around her, while Zackary sat at his tray and started laying items on it neatly. Barbed hooks and selective compressors and long knives and short thumb screws, a vast variety of torture implements soon covered the tray. Included was a needle and three vials of liquid. Zackary withdrew specific amounts of each liquid into the needle, then gestured at Tink, "Hold her head down. I have to inject this into her neck."
With a little effort, they got this job done, and Sarah sank back down on the table, her body wracked with variety of torturous sensations.
Zackary looked at his chronometer and waited a further two minutes for the tincture to fully envelope her system.
Then he sat down to work. "Sarah, I'm going to be blunt. If you don't tell me why you are here and what you are, then I'm going to make you suffer." He smiled softly, "I don't really care for causing pain, but it's my trade. The one thing I'm best at. Please don't make me do that to you."
"Captain Helsbrecht, Sarah, NMID# 69428175, communications and operations officer." She looked away from him, closing her eyes.
Zackary nodded at Tink again, who grabbed Sarah's head and brought it up. Over her eyes, Zackary slipped a pair of blast-goggles. She would be able to make out their shapes and outlines, but no detail. This, combined with the injection and the excess stress from her situation, typically all helped force compliance from a prisoner.
Zackary picked up the first tool he'd set down and circled Sarah at a slow pace, talking the whole time. "Sarah, we're going to get the information one way or another. You might as well saved yourself some trouble."
Sarah shook her head and said, "Captain Helsbrecht, Sarah, NMID# 69428175, communications and operations officer."
Zackary sighed and gently touched the needlepoint to the hollow at the back of her jaw, under her earlobe. She stiffened abruptly, feeling the sharp tip. He withdrew it and jabbed her in the left hand swiftly, not letting her take time to process the change. She gasped, and he stabbed her again, in the upper outside right thigh. "I'm going to ask you again, Sarah."
"Captain Helsbrecht, Sarah, NMID# 69428175, communications and operations officer." She gasped through gritted teeth at him.
Zackary sighed again and picked up a heating coil.
---
Two hours later, Sarah was at her breaking point. She kept repeating her name, rank, and serial number like a mantra. Zackary was calm. He knew he was closing in on what he wanted. She kept pausing before answering his questions. He knew she was considering the alternatives. He asked, "Sarah, we've been at this for twenty minutes now. We can keep going if you like. Or you can talk to me."
Sarah had tears on her cheeks and had bitten through her lip at least twice, but she still called up the courage to sit up as much as she was able and try to spit at Zackary. Or the shape she thought Zackary might be.
Zackary shook his head and yanked the goggles off her head. She blinked in the harsh light, and he raised the needlepoint tool to her eye.
Sarah held absolutely still, her gaze locked on that spot of silver. Zackary sat there motionless for a moment, then said, "Sarah. Ms. Helsbrecht. We are about at the end of our time together, and you need to talk to me or you won't get the chance."
She tried to shrink down into the table and get away, but there was nowhere to go. Zackary cocked his head and withdrew the needle suddenly, saying, "You know, never mind. We're done here. Boys, she is all yours. Have fun." He started walking out of the room, and Boolet roughly grabbed Sarah's leg, laughing crudely.
She shrieked, "No! PLEASE!"
Zackary smiled to himself before her turned back to her with an angry expression on his face. "Now you want to talk? No. No, it's too late. You're their toy now. After they are done, I'm taking your eyes and we'll leave you here with the corpses and wounded."
Sarah was crying hysterically, "Please, no. I'll tell you, for the love of fucking god, please."
Zackary waved Boolet away and stepped close to Sarah. "Why are you here?"
She quieted her crying down enough to speak between sobs, "I am... Seconded to... Sector Command... I was... Observing Syndicate movements... In this area..."
Zackary nodded knowingly, but in reality he had little idea of what she was talking about. He said, "And what are you? Not a communications and operations officer, surely."
She shook her head and said. "No... No. I'm Nanotrasen Secret Police."
Armsoth and a couple others gasped. Nanotrasen Secret Police were a myth, a bogeyman used to scare criminals across whole quadrants of territory. The Secret Police and their bloody warhounds the Death Commandos were legendarily bad news.
Zackary smiled at her, "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"
Sarah relaxed visibly, all the tension and stress flowing out of her. She was still sobbing slightly, and she said, "And now... Now... You're going to kill me."
Zackary looked at Armsoth. Armsoth nodded. "It appears so, Ms. Helsbrecht. We can't exactly let you tell the Secret Police all about us."
Sarah sat up again, suddenly. Her eyes were free of tears and she had a curious grin. "Oh, but I already did. I've got a camera set up in here to rival most AI uploads, plus the recorder implant I have. I've got almost three hours worth of data on you lot to collate with what we already know."
Zackary stiffened and looked at her. "Excuse me?"
Sarah laughed, "You fecking idiots. You played right into this. And now the NMV Minotaur is in-system." She smiled bloodily.
Armsoth frowned and checked a display on his armor. He stiffened also, and gestured at all of the operatives. "Let's go. Right the fuck now. Set up what charges you have left and board the shuttle. Zackary, take care of her." The operatives left the room, leaving Zackary and Sarah alone.
He put his tools back in the bag quickly as she taunted him. "You thought you had me," She crowed happily, "And where did it get you? Don't fuck with Nanotrasen."
Zackary pulled his pistol and put it to her head. "So... How did you plan on surviving this?"
"Like this." She said, as the blue glow of a teleporter enveloped her.
He fired his shot, but she was already gone.
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Topic: The Lillian Helsbrecht Story (Read 28648 times)