THE DRIFT // UNKNOWN SYSTEM // UNKNOWN PLANET
Brego, or someone like him, sucked in air. Gasped for it. His throat constricted around the dry, sooty, scorching heat. He gagged. Coughed. His eyes strained with effort; squinting shut against roiling smoke. He felt the pulse of his veins in his ears with each ragged hawk and hem.
His nose was assaulted with the smells of burning chemicals. Harsh. Acrid. Hazardous. His chest ached as his lungs fought hard to pull whatever oxygen they could from the mess spilling into the air.
He pawed at himself. Found the release for the harness holding him hostage against the chair. Something made him hesitate, and that hesitation dared him to open his eyes.
There was an intelligent and logical reason behind why he had not pressed harness release. His mind hadn't remembered all the details, but it had known enough to stay his fingers and check his impulses.
His chest was pressed against the harness, which was fulling strained against his weight despite still managing to hold him snug against the back of the chair. His feet dangled out in front of him. He spotted the source of his difficult breathing: a churning plume of black smoke which billowed up past his position from somewhere below. As the wind shifted, it engulfed him.
Release harness. Fall. Likely to death.
Don't release harness. Don't fall. Suffocate to death.
In that moment he remembered he was, in fact, Brego. Not someone like him, and while still a poor fool, not quite the same poor fool who had awoken to a most unpleasant, dangerous, and surreal situation.
Brego gave out a cry of terror. His realization was also his body's realization of the imminent danger. At the back of his mind a small voice reminded him, pleaded with him, urged him, that panic was the enemy. His momentary ignorance had kept him alive. Now, fully aware, calm precision was his ally. Not panic. Panic was ever the enemy.
Brego didn't heed the voice. It was difficult to hear it, despite it being his own, over the screaming. Also, his own.
The chair lurched.
Or rather, the section of cabin to which the chair was still attached lurched. Steel scraped and groaned. The straining harness began to rip. He felt it give. His body jerked as it dropped less than the span of his little finger.
That little was enough. His body stilled and he ceased his screaming. Brego heard the voice in the back of his head now.
"Panic is the enemy," he muttered through cracked and swollen lips.
His eyes took in his surroundings.
The source of the plume was from a natural formation and not wreckage from the Wrath. He was suspended above it, perhaps at a distance equal to double his own height. Not too far a drop, all things considered. Were luck on his side, he'd break nothing and have only bruises. Were luck not on his side, he'd break any number of bones. Most probably his neck. Or perhaps a rib would puncture a lung. Or perhaps he'd crack a hip and break a leg and so, still, slowly suffocate beside the plume.
The ground around the plume didn't look forgiving. There were some spots which were mostly flat, but it was all rocky. Sharp and jagged formations jutted from the ground and split the terrain into tiers of narrow wedges.
The rock itself was a gradient of browns with blue-green striations. Thick, scaly patches of lichen clung to the smoother bits. Somewhere nearby and beyond the craning of his neck and twisting of his gaze, liquid was boiling and bubbling.
He snapped his eyes and mouth shut, and pinched his nose closed as the plume shifted toward him with a great puffing burst. The noxious fumes penetrated his eyelids. Tears leaked down his cheeks, rapidly drying into baked-on streaks. His split lips burned, and his raw skin itched.
For a brief instant he considered how this half of the cabin-turned-escape-pod had split apart and wedged itself onto the rocky precipice. It was only for an instant though. The how of it all would have to wait. The need to be elsewhere took precedence.
As soon as the plume shifted away, he opened his eyes and released his nostrils. He scrunched up his nose, sniffed, and exhaled sharply to clear his nasal passages of gunky buildup. Hawking out the remaining phlegm, he went to work.
He undid the safety harness but did not use the quick-release tab. Instead, he worked apart the straps at his left hip and shoulder. Gripping the right-side straps, he swung himself out of the chair and found precarious purchase on the bit of rockface extending through what remained of the cabin's crumpled deck.
It wasn't going to hold for very long, so he didn't have much time to consider his next move. He mapped out the easiest and closest point of ascension and started climbing.
The rock's outer layer was soft and brittle, but its core was as hard as any alloy. He slipped several times as his fingers scraped through the sharp shale, or his booted toes snapped off a layer of slab.
Holding himself against the warm rockface, he counted down and tried to steady his breathing. Another gust of wind pushed the plume toward him. He gagged and hacked and sputtered.
Chest heaving, his foot slipped.
The sharp rock clattered below him and shattered into fragments. His fingers slipped as his bodyweight dragged him downward.
He managed to stop himself, his chest pressed against the rock. He'd slid all the way back to the same precipice from which he had started. Perhaps up was the wrong direction.
As the plume again shifted and dissipated, the hot wind taking it another direction, he looked down over the precipice's edge.
No. Up was the safer bet. The ground was a spider's web of cracks. Layers and bits of rock slab pressed into each other with such force that they snapped upward into a blade's edge. He huffed out a sigh. The bit of rock he could make out around the plume was similar, but with the added benefit of spiky outcroppings.
Brego cursed and resumed hugging the rockface. He counted. Steadied himself. Waited for the next gust to assault him with the plume and the gust after that to take it away. Then he started climbing again.
Luck favored him, and without slipping or snagging, and a minimal amount of scraping, he pulled himself up and onto what remained of the cabin's exterior hull.
The plume buffeted the underside and puffed out from the wreck's leading edge. The air above it was clearer and cooler, even if only by the margin of a small fraction.
He was in a valley, which might have been the mouth of a volcano. Facing toward the sun. Two suns? Three suns? He couldn't quite tell, the smog in the air was thick, the atmosphere a swirl of colorful clouds. Dense enough to obscure the light source, but not to completely diminish its light. He was on the leftmost side of the valley from the light source.
Strips and streams of liquid, he didn't dare hope for clean and drinkable water, appeared to crisscross the valley. Geysers erupted with great swells of smoke, just like the one below him.
In the great distance, thunder boomed in the rolling clouds. He hoped it didn't mean precipitation. Given all he had seen, the acridness in the air, the soreness in his lungs, any rainfall was likely to be acidic and pushing toward deadly.
Turning around, he saw where the cabin had first impacted. A small crater had cracked apart the valley's lip and gouged out thick chunks of the rockface. Deep furrows ran in five separate directions, giving the appearance of a misshapen starburst and indicating, or at least giving the impression, that the impact had resulted in a small explosion.
"Well," he croaked, "it would at least account for why the back half of the cabin is here..., and the front half is... where?"
He squinted and scanned the furrows.
"There."
He sighed. There was less climbing, but plenty of hiking in his immediate future. His body ached. Inside and out. No water. Bad air. No rebreather or filter. No food, though food was the least of his worries. The air was dry, and without any way to hydrate himself, he wasn't going to sweat. He couldn't even hope for that.
He checked his blasters, both had somehow survived. Not that either looked to be of much use to him in the present moment. Apart from his signet ring, he didn't have much else.
His skull throbbed.
A reminder of Vyx's betrayal.
He was angry, but he couldn't bring himself to begrudge her overmuch. She was following orders. He was saving the full brunt of his anger for her boss. Still. He didn't think she'd needed to hit him as hard, or as much, as she had.
He started moving in the direction of the cabin's other half. The rocky ground crunched under his boots. Little puffs of gas and dust burst from small pockets, what felt like, every other step. It was much closer to every ten strides or so, but it was often enough that it slowed his pace with reactionary caution.
The light source was beginning to set, or at least drift below the lip of the toxic valley when he finally reached the cabin's other half. The unforgiving terrain, brittle under direct pressure, softened by the rampant lichen, and deadly sharp when sheared into fragments, had left him cut, bruised, and out of breath. He slid into the crater, and panting, he collapsed onto what remained of the deck plating's smooth alloy.
Whether by fortune or miracle, he didn't care, but it had mostly landed right-side-up. The deck was pitched a bit, but it wasn't anything so drastic that he couldn't keep his balance or stand up straight should the need arise. Best of all, a sizable portion of the ceiling remained intact. A modicum of shelter at the very least.
There wasn't much else.
As he settled into the sheltered corner, the cloudy sky grew darker, and the thunder grew closer. He reached into his jacket, dug his hand into an interior pocket and pulled on a release thread. A small cylinder slid into his fingers.
Removing the object, he stared down at the small transponder. He pursed his lips and wrinkled his nose. With a push of his thumb, it would emit a sourcing signal which was linked to a receiver in Hogue's possession.
Two problems presented themselves to his brain in that moment. It was possible that Hogue had died aboard the Delgrado during the skath assault, and it was equally possible that the sourcing signal would be unable to penetrate this planet's atmosphere.
He rolled the cylinder between his fingers. Tucking it away, he scraped the grime from his eyes and snorted out more gunk from his nostrils.
The sourcing signal didn't count for much in the grand splay of his predicament. It wasn't water or oxygen. He would die of exposure long before anyone arrived to rescue him.
A crackle of lightning flashed into the clouds rolling over the valley's lip. He wondered how much of the storm would make it over, and how much of it would remain on the other side, fruitlessly bashing against the rock. Thunder boomed.
He wondered if the Tempest Wrath had crashed or if Vyx had managed to coast through the descent until the engines reignited. Was she in orbit? Or facing off against the same challenge of bad weather and no supplies?
He wondered how long Fermian Hargaris would hold a grudge. How long would such a man pursue him to revenge himself for insult and injury?
He wondered at the quiet, but incessant beeping which pierced his ears. What emergency was it now? What system was failing?
He shook himself awake, uncertain if he'd actually fallen asleep. The fading, vague light persisted. The storm was spreading along the valley's distant edge, still not quite able to roll over the lip.
The beeping continued.
He pulled himself up, faster than his body could manage. He winced, grunting and cursing. Settling on the balls of his feet, he strained his ears and listened.
There was a bit of metal protruding from a pile of rocky rubble at the opposite end of the wreckage. He stumbled his way over, and after too long a moment of staring realized what the protrusion was.
The sarcophagus.
He started to the shift away the rubble, but the sharp fragments cut into his palms and fingers. Hissing, he pulled off his jacket and used the thicker material to protect his hands while he worked.
The beeping grew louder and more rapid, and as more of the sarcophagus was revealed he discovered that its exterior was cracked. Coolant was leaking out in billowing, cold drafts. If whoever was inside wasn't extracted soon, they'd die, drowning on the fluidic gel which protected them from the cryogenic process. The power systems were failing, too. Which meant the same sort of death.
Apart from rescuing whoever was inside, however, it occurred to Brego that the sarcophagus likely had a supply of water meant for the occupant.
He quickened his pace.
With most of the sides and top surface clear, he grabbed onto what he guessed was the foot of the sarcophagus and started to pull. His body ached with resistance. He'd been pushing himself hard. Harder than he had in a long time. Never mind the battering he had taken. Yet, the hope of clear, fresh water and a companion, however unsavory they might be, drove him beyond the aches and pains.
The sarcophagus lurched. Metal scraped against metal. Sooty grit crunched and scratched between the two surfaces. He stumbled as the sarcophagus simultaneously came free and caught on a wedge of rent deck plate.
Cursing, he used his shredded jacket to sweep the rest of its surface clean. The control panel was a smashed mess, and the crack was more of a deep gouging scar than he'd realized. With the proper tools he could either cut away the cover or remove the securing bolts, but he didn't have the proper tools and if a crash and tumble wasn't enough to bust it open, he wasn't going to have much luck smashing it apart with any of the rocks at hand.
He crouched in front of the damaged control panel, and huffed out a consternated sigh, his head sagging between his narrow shoulders.
A small section of the storm had finally crested the valley's lip and was rolling down the steep slope. Amid the intermittent flashes of lightning, he thought he discerned a curtain of precipitation streaming down from the dark clouds, but there was too much swirling vapor to say for sure. Either way, it didn't look the least bit friendly.
He lifted what remained of the control panel and gave it a cursory inspection. Even before turning it over in his hands, he could tell that its inner workings had fused. There was zero chance of rewiring it. There had to be an emergency release.
He yanked on the control panel and pulled out a length of humming conduit filled with semi-lucent wires. Following the bundle, he reached inside and felt around.
The interior was soggy with grease. Luckily, none of the coolant had leaked into the receptacle, otherwise, he wouldn't have had much of hand left. He wriggled his fingers about the nest of wires and twisted his hand around the interior. His fingertips brushed what felt like a release grip. He stretched for it, grasped it, and pulled.
A mechanical clunk echoed from the sarcophagus' inner workings. He pumped the grip. Mechanisms popped and released. With a woeful gasp, the sarcophagus unsealed. Cold billows of foggy air wafted out from the edges.
Brego pulled his hand out of the receptacle and shoved the lid away from the frame. It thumped against deck with a hollow thud.
The thunder was no longer quite so distant, and a subtle mugginess had begun to pervade the air. He was surprised to wipe moisture from his brow.
Waving away the fog drifting up from the pod, he took a gander at the occupant as he assessed the interior system setup. The occupant appeared to be a female idaltu. She was dressed in an insulating bodysuit which was slathered, inside and out, with layers of thermagel to protect from the adverse effects cryogenic hibernation. A mask, housing tubes for air, water, and a liquid nutrient mix, was fitted to her face.
He deactivated the mask. The internal systems of the sarcophagus wailed in alarm. Startled, but committed, he pulled the mask away, and kept pulling until the tubes slipped out of the occupant's nose and throat with a wet slurp.
Setting the mask aside, he peered over the edge.
Her eyes snapped open.
A needle thin blade pressed against the arterial vein in Brego's neck. He froze. Though, he'd have frozen even without the threat to his life. Her eyes were an absolute wonder.
A depthless layering of coral ambers and seaside violets which were divided and spun back together as each miniscule ray of light glittered and refracted.
Brego felt his knees go weak.
The large, wide eyes pierced him with vicious ferocity. The pressure behind the needle increased, and then all at once relented. It was a whisper against his skin. The ruthless gaze faltered. Confusion narrowed it, scorn furrowed it.
It wasn't just his knees that had gone weak. Brego had swooned at the sight of those eyes, that gaze. Unless the needle was poisoned. An altogether probable possibility, but if he was honest with himself, poison or no, he would always swoon beneath that gaze.
Then panic overtook the gaze, and the large eyes flitted every which way with fevered, frenetic puzzlement.
Her lips parted, but she neither inhaled nor exhaled. Her body spasmed. The needle scraped across Brego's throat. Dropped, it vanished amid the rubble. Her hands went to her own throat and pawed at the layers of thermagel, scraping off great fingerfuls of the stuff and flinging it away. The tips of her fingers squeaked against the rubber of the clinging bodysuit.
Brego reached into the pod. Her fist connected with his jaw, jerking his head to the side. He wasn't sure if the punch was intended or not. He crooked his arms beneath hers and heaved.
Her legs kicked. The heel of one foot caught him low on his left hip, a hand's width from his groin. The toes of the other cracked into his thigh above the knee. His leg buckled from the impact. Her right fist, at least he thought it was her right fist, cracked into the opposite side of his skull.
His head was jerked down and to the side. He stumbled; their bodies tangled. Thermagel splattered in every direction as he hauled her out of the sarcophagus. His face was buried against her bosom, the rubber of the bodysuit pulled at his cheek. A knee jammed into his belly.
They fell.
He shifted his weight, attempting to twist around to either catch her or at least place her on the ground rather than fling or drop. He was mostly successful.
She rolled away from him, barely able to rise to her hands and knees. Her eyes had begun to lose their focus and sharp intensity.
Hesitant, still wincing from the blows to his body, and wiping thermagel from his face and chest, he approached her. He pantomimed heaving his wrists against his stomach and vomiting.
"You've still got thermagel lodged in your lungs!" he shouted at the same time. "You need to...."
Her body heaved, her jaw dropped, and her eyes rolled backward. She vomited up two lungfuls and then some. When her body could push no more of the protective gel out of her system, she at last gasped and sucked in an equal measure of air.
"Ugh!" she choked.
"Yeah," muttered Brego as he rubbed his jaw and the side of his face. "It's not the best air quality."
She shot him a dark glance, one hand pressed against her chest which still heaved with convulsions. Tears streaked her cheeks. Snot and gel oozed from her nose and vomit trickled from the corner of her mouth. She sat back on her haunches and used her opposite hand to scrape away as much of the gunk as she could. In calm and measured breaths, she quelled her body's reaction to the poor air and violent removal from the cryo pod.
She tried to speak, but nearly succumbed to another fit of choking and heaving. Grimacing, her wide and angular lips formed a sharp frown, she pointed at him and then gestured at their surroundings. She tilted her head in a quizzical fashion, which reminded her that the bodysuit's hood was still squished to her scalp. She pulled at it. The rubbery second-skin sloughing away and expelling yet more thermagel.
He took her meaning. "I'm Brego. This is... a planet... planetoid? Could be a moon, but I haven't seen a larger celestial body since we crashed. I don't know what system."
With wet, sickening squelches she rung the thermagel from the long, thick tresses of her hair. She paused, fixing him with another dark and narrow-eyed stare.
"Crash?" she croaked. Her eyes watered with the strain of speaking.
Brego nodded. "Crash."
She cursed. Brego heard hard consonants and broad vowels. A moment later his translator caught up. His eyebrows shot up with surprise. He stifled a laugh, which was awkward and, if he was honest, perhaps a bit embarrassed and uncomfortable, behind his knuckles. He hadn't heard such harsh and foul language strung together with such eloquent fervor in some time.
She skewered him with a look which seethed with contempt.
He cleared his throat and dropped his arms to his side.
"So," she rasped, then winced. She massaged her throat and hawked out the wad of mucous, and yet more gel, dislodged by her storm of expletives. Setting the length of her dark hair on her right shoulder, she stood.
She wasn't quite a head shorter than Brego. Narrow shoulders, sharp with defined musculature, rose and gently settled as she eased her voice back into function.
"So. You don't know where we are?" She spoke with a careful and cautious cadence. There was a practiced edge to the way her broad alto formed words. She spoke with an accent which was distinct, but distant.
"No," said Brego with a shake of his head. "No idea where we are."
"None whatsoever?" she snapped with heated skepticism. She jammed her fists into the curves of her wide hips. "I find that difficult to accept. You must have some notion." Her gaze dissected him, her large eyes sweeping over him with calculated precision. A slight twitch of her upper lip indicated she was done, and she began surveying the immediate surroundings.
She was still frowning when she looked back at him and the pod. "That jacket. Those boots. Not standard issue, but typically austere." She sneered. "High ranking. Very official. Which Norr are you?"
"That's... complicated."
Her gaze narrowed, indicating that he best un-complicate it.
He cocked an eyebrow. "Look, darlin'... this?" He pointed at the ground in front of his austere boots. "This is but one problematic mess in a heap of problematic messes."
She crossed her arms. Her stance, as well as the arch of her eyebrow, demanded he submit to her authority.
He choked on his words and faltered. Like a fool, he stood there with his mouth agape. Startled by the audacity, taken aback by the incongruity of her haughtiness, and, perhaps, if he was honest, intrigued by her commanding presence.
He took a step back, set his hands on his hips just above his holstered blasters and let his gaze linger. It wasn't just her eyes that had caused him to swoon so hard.
The translucent bodysuit, even with a thin layer of thermagel between it and her, did little to disguise or obscure. She was athletic muscle and ample curve. Her complexion was a rich and tawny copper. Her features, like her figure, were sharp here and curved there. High cheekbones, wide jawline, a nose with a prominent bridge and slight bend. Her hair, as it dried, was gathering in waves, which given more time, may have tightened into ringlets.
Brego's first impulse was to crack a joke about being the last survivors of a deadly crash onto what was clearly an inhospitable planet which was likely to kill them. They might as well die in each other's arms, warm and happy.
His lingering stare only served to manifest greater heights of imperiousness. Her expression grew hard, her stance stiff and rigid.
Brego's second impulse was to hold his tongue. The joke was tasteless and inappropriate. His thorough and maintained stare wasn't welcomed. What he'd intended as neutral observation, she'd perceived as lascivious gaping.
"Very well. You wish to stare? Then stare."
"Uh...." Words failed him.
Without ceremony she peeled off the rubber bodysuit.
He pursed his lips, trying without success to get his brain to function.
Scraping her fingers across her skin, she flung a handful of thermagel at the buckled decking in front of Brego. The resounding wet smack jarred him, almost to functionality, but the subsequent splats which followed without delay made him twitch and flinch, and with each twitch and each flinch she took a step closer.
She tipped her chin up toward him, no longer able to meet his gaze directly due to their proximity. Brego judged it to be no more than the breadth of his hand, though it felt like less. He didn't know where to put his eyes, so he raised his gaze toward the overhead clouds.
The storm was gaining on their position.
She shoved him and at the same time danced backward.
The priming whine of the safety lock disengaging on his blasters took all his attention.
Both barrels were aimed at his face.
He hadn't even noticed her lifting them.
"All my life men like you have stared and wondered and wanted."
Of course, he hadn't noticed. He'd been too busy swooning. Ogling. Wondering and wanting. He bowed his head and hissed out a curse at himself. An apology rose to his lips, but she spoke with such firm authority, that he kept his mouth shut. His eyes, he kept locked to hers and nowhere else.
"All my life, men like you, have wondered how they wanted me, what they wanted me do, and what they wanted me to do it with."
Her lips curled into a venomous sneer.
"They wondered, what it was like to skrell a princess."
A princess?
"The truth about men like you, is that you always look first to those wonderings and wantings, and only when it is too late to stop my doings, have you even noticed me as I truly am."
The sneer twisted into a smirk.
"Now. Strip. Where I am going, and where you're staying, only one of us needs clothing."
Brego cocked an eyebrow, stunned. Unable to formulate a proper retort, he chewed on his tongue. She was right, but she was wrong. He wasn't like those other men. Which is what he wanted to say, but, if he was honest, he'd been like those other men, and still, at times, behaved like those men. Which is, of course, how he knew that he wasn't like those other men. Anymore. Truly.
He grunted, his mouth turning downward into a frown. He smoothed the bottom edge of mustache, then raised his hand to offer some manner of defense.
The blaster erupted.
Plasma splashed into the deck beside him.
A curl of smoke twisted toward the toe of his boot.
"Clothes, skrelzlic. Now." Her lips pressed into a thin smile. "And... if you're lucky, I'll stare at you that way you've been staring at me."
It was clear that she wouldn't ask again. Not that she was even asking at all. She was demanding. Ordering. Commanding. Just like a princess. Just like an Icosan lord.
He did as she commanded and began to strip off his clothes. What choice did he have? As he did so, his mind was working in overdrive. His translator was having difficulty with some of her words. Most notably her choice of vulgar metaphor. The context was obvious, and much to his own surprise, he did in fact recognize the words. It wasn't just the words that he recognized; it was the dialect, even her accent. He'd heard them before, but he couldn't remember where or when.
He tried to take his time, but she sent another blaster bolt through the air. It sizzled past his right ear as he fumbled with the buckle of his gun belt.
"Deha lyz! Faster! That storm is getting closer, and I want to be out of this valley by the time it arrives."
He piled his clothes onto the base of the sarcophagus. The warm air, ever thickening with torpid humidity, clung to his flesh. He brushed the side of his right arm, and his fingers came away coated in a moist, gunky residue. He stared at his fingertips. It wasn't all that dissimilar from the carbon scouring left by plasma bolts, but with the added bonus of being damp and a bit more on the side of phlegm. His skin began to itch. Whatever was in the air, his body didn't like it.
He ran his fingers back through his hair, giving the blonde mop a hearty shake and tousle. He stood with his feet about shoulder width apart, the knuckles of each hand pressed into his narrow hips. Posing had been an unconscious impulse, but he wasn't about to give into embarrassment.
Brego had always thought himself as just that side of uncommonly handsome. He was aware, even if only dimly, that this was largely due to an adolescence which was full of older, more experienced lovers who had fawned over his slim build, long limbs, pale complexion, and blonde hair. True enough, though, that his mother was, regardless of a facial scar, considered quite beautiful, his uncle, despite a similar wicked scar, was regarded as handsome, and the same was true of his grandparents. His father had been unequivocally on the side of uncommonly handsome, and the originator of Brego's green eyes and blondeness.
In short, Brego had been bred for good looks and he knew it. Or rather, his parents had been brought together to persist those features which were traditionally considered as desirable among the Icosan elite. Casting those deep green eyes at the vulgar princess it was suddenly clear that she had been as well.
That's when it hit him.
"You're the Crown-Princess of Bel Raav."
One pistol still trained on Brego, she finished fastening his trousers about her waist before affording him a look which was no less ferocious than any of the previous glares but now featured a smattering of confused curiosity. The expression faded, and her eyes narrowed. One sleeve at a time and she slipped into the shirt next.
"Fermian Hargaris is your uncle."
She jammed her right foot into the matching boot, which was just a bit too large. She hesitated in putting on the left one and let her gaze travel over Brego. From head to toe and back again. Her eyes narrowed into a near squint, her expression shifting to a sneer of disbelief.
"Are you trying to suggest you did not know who I was?"
"I don't. Or. I didn't."
She snorted. "I don't believe you."
"Be a little less hasty and listen to my story, and maybe you will."
"Be a little less hasty?" She scoffed and shoved her foot into the other boot.
"Well, at least leave me the jacket."
She straightened, the still unfastened shirt blousing open.
Brego's eyes shifted.
She snorted and gazed at him with obvious disdain as she pulled the shirt closed. "Wonderings and wantings." With only a modicum of trouble, she secured the shirt, and then retrieved the tattered remains of the jacket. She smiled, a fleeting dash of pity creasing her brow. "You'll be dead before too long. First rule of survival, don't waste resources on the dead."
Brego sucked on his teeth and scowled.
"You're adorable when you pout, did you know that?" She cast him a teasing wink as she shrugged her arms into the jacket. Then came the gun belt.
If he weren't so concerned about being left to die naked and alone, Brego would have been impressed by her ability to keep a blaster so well-aimed while dressing herself with one hand.
She holstered one of the blasters, and fastened the jacket shut. The Norr livery was ill-fitting, at once too long, too narrow, and too large. She shrugged her shoulders within the jacket in a vain attempt to settle it better.
"Die well, Icosan, and if you don't... at least die quickly. I haven't the patience for a long and painful death on my conscience at present."
Brego wasn't sure what to make of that. He offered a disdainful smirk and crossed his arms over his chest. It was all he could do to keep from itching and scraping at the residue building up on his skin. It seemed to be finding all the nooks and crevices.
Keeping the blaster trained on him, she made a quick survey of her route away from the wreckage and up the rockface, then she began to back away.
When it was time for her to put her back to him, she fired a barrage of blaster fire over his head. Forcing him to flinch and duck away. The final shots scorched the air on either side of his head, just to prove that she could have ended him then and there.
So, why didn't she?
Brego considered hollering the question at her but thought better of it. With his luck, which was clearly running low, she'd take him up on the offer and put a bolt between his eyes. Sure, it'd be better than dying of exposure, but he wasn't quite prepared for death just yet.
She was halfway up the rockface when he started rooting around the wreckage of Hargaris' cabin. He wasn't entirely certain what he was searching for, but a distant fancy of finding a hidden cache of clothing, alcohol, and perhaps some food, pestered him.
He found nothing so luxurious as food or alcohol, but he did discover some vacuum sealed clothing at the base of the sarcophagus. A long robe and a pair of slippers were within the package. Evidently, Hargaris had prepared for the eventuality of releasing his niece.
Brego pulled on the robe and tied it closed, astounded that it was of the one-size-fits-all variety. The slippers, however, were too small.
As for the sarcophagus' water supply, a peel of thunder indicating the storm's imminent arrival warned him away from any attempts at extracting the reservoir. He hoped it would survive.
He took one last glance up rockface to gauge the crown-princess' progress. He found her close to the top. He wasn't quite certain of the path she had taken, but she had found a favorable one to make such progress.
Lightning scorched away his vision.
He could hear the hiss of a sizzling rain.
His skin crawled.
He retreated beneath what remained of the cabin's ceiling.
"SKRELL!"
Her voice wafted down into the valley.
Brego twisted his head out to see her silhouette perched atop the lip. She appeared to be jumping, kicking, and flailing. Appeared to be. He wasn't sure what he was seeing, but he could make out every choice word she hurled into the air.
Then he saw something which he did not expect.
She turned around and started marching back down the rockface.
"Oh. Well, then."
He pulled the robe a bit tighter about himself and realized just how thin it was. He frowned, noting that it tended toward the sheer end of the spectrum. Neither for the first time nor for the last time, Brego questioned what sort of person Fermian Hargaris was.
Disgusted by the robe's illusory modesty, he couldn't get it off fast enough. Instead of wearing it, he used it to wipe away the grime.
He heard the squabble and clatter of rubble above him. He wouldn't be alone for the storm after all. Unless she decided to shoot him, of course.
"Ayuuup. All according to plan," he muttered as he folded the robe up into a makeshift cushion. He hunkered down within the sparse shelter of the wreckage, elbows propped upon his knees. "Yeah. Think your way out of this one, hotshot."
"Scoot over," she snapped.
He obeyed.
She dropped down beside him, shoving the jacket into his arms. Her shoulder brushed his. "No touching."
He nodded and scooched further into the corner, only too happy to take the jacket.
The acid rain fell, imprisoning them within the wreckage.
"Skrell."
"Skrell," he agreed.
THE END