Jodiah Ayreg was known for his cold, calculating approach to many issues. Sometimes, though, even he released the inner-Corlagon and bucked for some random acts of senseless violence. Today's venture took him out of the city, and into the surrounding countryside.

He had a mind to hunt.

Usually when a denizen of Rhy'Din went to hunt, though, they were either bounty hunters or vampires. Ayreg considered himself no sell-sword, and he damn sure wasn't a leech. No, the death knight was off into the wilds to hunt game. After all, he had grown quite weary of salted pork and roasted chicken, and Spring wasn't quite old enough yet to have a better selection beyond the early fruits -- like strawberries. With any luck, maybe he could find a deer. Or a bear. He'd even settle for wild dog.

Dog made a fine meal.

Alright, so maybe it wasn't a random act of senseless violence, but it was a bloody affair, and Ayreg felt like he had some rust to shake off in that particular regard.

The bow he wielded was borrowed, of course, and a quiver of arrows was inexpensive -- and quite worth it, if he could bring down something worthy of a feast. He stalked through the brush, arrow nocked and readied on the bow as his eyes raked left and right. He'd already found a few rabbit trails, and even sent an arrow off after one, missed, and it sailed into the unreachable void of a thicket.

Swordsplay, yes. Axe mastery, sure. He could even dance with a spear, or a warhammer. Archery was not his strongest suit in the least.

Frustration setting in after almost two hours in the wilds, Jodiah sat to rest beside a tree. He was wearing his boots, of course, and his breeches tied up the side of his legs, with his drawstringed shirt tucked into them at the waist. High-collared coat was left behind, as was all of his armor and his sword. A cloak would not have gone over well hunting, either.

Hearing a soft grinding noise to his flank, he turned his head. Something was moving beyond the brushline, and he simply had to inspect it.

A clank.

A whirr.

A click.

Another grind.

Ayreg peered through the brush at this iron beast, very nearly the size of a horse, as it dug around in the face of a rock. Spinning drills were cutting into the stone, and a boulder some distance away also looked so gored. He blinked, very nearly stunned.

"Hey, it's a local!"

Jodiah spun around and saw a strangely-dressed man. A blue, one-piece outfit was worn over his lithe body, and a bizaare patch was stitched to his right shoulder. Ayreg squinted, making out "GALCOM" on the patch and sneered.

A spacer.

"Easy there, fella, just get back on your horse and ride on back to your village, or... whatever. We. Come. In. Peace."

The man was speaking to him as if he were a child. Or, worse, some kind of uncivilized brute. It was outright infuriating.

The man went down with a loud scream, and an arrow through his upper chest. The death knight nocked another, and saw two more similarly-dressed men rushing at him. The second stumbled and fell when another arrow let fly and pierced him through the hip.

Without time to nock another, Ayreg used the bow itself as a weapon. He spun, building momentum, and brought the shaft of the bow down like an axe on the man's shoulder. The man grounded to one knee, looking boggled.

And the bow broke.

...Bloody, flaming, shoddy workmanship!

"Hold it, we're coming!"

Ayreg grabbed the stunned man by the cuff of blue suit, pounding his fist repeatedly into the spacer's face, and a kind of sadistic grin pulled at the death knight's lips. More men were coming at him, now, and he wondered idly just where all of these spacers had come from. The new arrivals wore helmets, and some kind of body armor over their torso that Jodiah didn't recognize. And they carried some kind of club. Or.. baton. It was hard to be sure, while he proceeded with the beating of the man's face into hash.

"Let's go, Marine!" one of the onrushers said to the other, and their club-like weapons were raised toward the death knight.

Releasing the man to fall in a slump to the ground, he swung around and just barely dodged to the side as one of those men thrusted the baton-like weapon at him. The tip seemed to be crackling with electricity, but Jodiah couldn't feel the hackle-raising touch of elemental magic in work. It had to be a device built of artifice.

With an upraised elbow striking the man's cheek, he turned around just in time for the second one to push the tip of the electrical prod into his stomach.

Convulsing, Jodiah lost control of his body and fell to his knees. When the blinding pain was finally lifted he fell limply to the ground.

There was a soft crackle, and some words that Ayreg couldn't make out. They sounded tinny, and faint. Then the man with the electrical club spoke, as if answering.

"Uh, roger that, Basilisk, we're going to be bringing up a couple of wounded techs. And a prisoner."

Jodiah Ayreg coughed, curled up on a steel -- well, he didn't think it was steel, but it had the look of it... only not as lustrous -- bed extended out from the wall. Bed was loosely termed, of course, since it reminded him more of a table with a tiny pillow only marginally softer than the bed itself was. He groaned, in pain, and opened his eyes.

Everything was... fuzzy.

Like in a dream.

Was he dreaming, again? It wouldn't be impossible. His dreams had been very... active, lately.

He leaned up, and the pain that shot through his body most certainly assured him that this was no dream. One did not simply ache in a dream.

He stood on shaky legs to his feet, and blinked. Three of the four walls was quite solid. The fourth wall had a few men dressed in that strange body armor, and holding some kind of weapon or tool crafted from a type of black metal. They looked like `blasters` that spacers were known for but it was hard to be sure. The wall itself was barred, but the death knight couldn't tell what type of metal at a glance. He reached out to touch one.

Inches before his hand came into contact with the first bar, though, there was a sharp, surging hiss of energy, and some kind of shield very similiar to that the skeleton warriors of Asmodean used came into focus. The energy rushed into his body, and threw him backward onto the floor.

He groaned again, and didn't move for several minutes.

When he did get up, a man in a blue coat with yellow trim looked at him. It had a high collar, and some kind of military-style dressings that Jodiah didn't know. He pointed upward to a door on the far wall from the barred entrance.

"If you get too rowdy, sir, we will space you. Now calm down until you are called for interrogation."

Not that Jodiah Ayreg knew what "spacing" meant. He examined his surroundings again, but saw no other way out save only the door that seemed almost like a piece of the wall itself, and the bars with the hidden shield over it. He sat on the metal bed again, and sighed.

Then it struck him. He couldn't feel the Nihil. Normally a consistant presence in the back of his mind, like an itch that one cannot scratch, he couldn't even tell they existed at all. It was a very similar feeling to being around Obsidian. Only now, of course, she was nowhere to be seen. Experimentally, he tried to open himself to the power of the Nihil, channeling to force the Saa over his eyes.

Nothing.

Ayreg felt... alone. Abandoned. Helpless.

Lowering his head to the hard pillow, the death knight wept silently.

Sarah Kleepak had an unassuming name. One wouldn't be able to tell from merely hearing it that it was her duty to pry information out of people. It was a skill that served GALCOM Intelligence well, since there were very few regulations involving the use of The Question on non-Terrans.

Vaugely asiatic features darkened as she entered the interrogation room. Commander Labron Terrel had charged her with extracting information from this... primative's mind. She checked the regulations involved, of course, as she understood this man at least appeared to be Terran. Slender arms were folded behind her, and she approached the table he was secured to.

The man's clothes had already been removed, and were laying folded in a cabinet off to the side. Stripping one of their dignity was always a very effective method when enacting The Question, though the man's features were like a stone.

"Good," she mused silently, eyes raking across the man's scarred and rugged body, "..I do so enjoy a challenge."

Straps were secured around the man's ankles, wrists, thighs, and throat. The heavy-duty straps were constructed of ferro-fiber, cross-stitched for flexibility and strength. The more the man might attempt to struggle, though, the tighter the straps would become.

It was a useful and creative invention. She had written many colorful letters of praise to GALCOM R&D.

"You are here to answer my questions, Jodiah Ayreg." she started, attaching electronic probes to his temples. Her eyes grazed over the scars on his torso, found a suitable position, and attached the heart monitor.

If the man had heard her, he didn't make any kind of appearance. Neither nod, nor even a flick of his eyes. Just the ever-present and constant frown, and the soft whistle of air in and out of his nose.

"Oh, yes.." she mused again, wordlessly, "This will be very fun, indeed."

Switching the heart monitoring station on, she checked his pulse rate, blood pressure, and the computer-generated image of his heart beating in the projection screen.

He seemed healthy.

That was good.

Healthy subjects could survive The Question longer without passing out.

Or dying.

"Let us begin.." Sarah Kleepak said, darkly.

"Stupid, foolish, pride-minded..." Sara Kleepak was livid, shouting every bit as much at Jodiah Ayreg as to herself. "... MAN! Ugh!"

She turned, flinging her free hand in the air with an angry, dismissive gesture. Her head turned sharply, scowling at the medic who had been standing there since their last session. "Revive him, fool! I can't very well do my duty when he's passed out like a drunkard, now can I?

Striding over to her desk, Sarah Kleepak sits down with the scowl still marring her features. Fingers turned the cap on the small glass bottle in her hand, tightening it. When she was convinced it was quite secure, she set the bottle onto the desk in front of her. A towel was lifted from its place hanging half-off the side of the desk, and she cleaned her hands of the unslightly red splotches.

Pulling open the cover on the console, and began a series of flurried button-pushes as she typed..



WELCOME TO GALCOM SYSTEM CONSOLE
PLEASE SELECT CATEGORY

CATEGORY SELECTED: PERSONAL LOG

YOU HAVE SELECTED A NON-RESTRICTED-ACCESS CATEGORY
PLEASE LOG IN

LOGON: KleepakST

IDENTIFIED

LOADING...
...
...
...

LOAD COMPLETE
SELECT OPTION

OPTION SELECTED: NEW ENTRY

This primative from that ridiculous little backwater planet is troubling me.

Commander Terrel said that something at least marginally useful in a report is all I needed. If I wasn't already told his name was Jodiah Ayreg from the initial interrogation, I still wouldn't be that far. The man might as well not even be able to speak!

Neuro-transmitted pain was a joke, and most of the time he even seemed to smile. My request for stepping up the program was approved, but still not even a single word, even after I juiced him up so full of TX-D22 that he very nearly went mad. Even though the drug is supposed to make someone start talking like a seive, I got nothing from the man.

I have to break him.

But after nearly an hour of every single measure and tactic I knew, all I got was a handful of pained expressions and hateful scowls. Not a single damn word!

And to make it worse, now, my bottle of cholorectic acid is almost empty. It's far too rare to have used that much on a single man. I truly hope he's happy for his insolence. I'm going to be cleaning blood stains from my uniform for weeks now because he forced me to bring out the blades and the hot-irons.

Infuriating man.

End log.

The shuffle of movement told Sara Kleepak that the medic had finished, and that the prisoner was lucid again. She left the bottle on the desk, and walked to the table that he was still strapped down to. She would be satisfied now with a scream -- a groan, even, or a gnashing of teeth in agony. The man simply stared upward to the cieling with a stony resolve to ruin her fun. `Stoic` doesn't begin to describe it.

She wanted to strangle him.

"Let us begin again, Mr. Ayreg. Please do try and stay awake this time." she taunted him, but she felt like screaming. Reaching to the side, she drew the rolling table-counter toward her. Gleaming in the light, the metal tools with the wicked shapes of her trade glinted.

A monotone, droning voice started to echo throughout the hallways of the Basilisk, accompanied by a loud klaxon that announced the alert in series of long beeps.

"General quarters. General quarters. All hands, man your battle stations."

The voice repeated, and to the ringing ears of Jodiah Ayreg it could very well be the opportunity he had been waiting for. Since being brought on board, he hadn't yet resigned himself to captivity, and the people that crewed this vessel -- this construct of metal -- suddenly rushing about ignited a spark in the death knight.

His head was hanging limply, his arms lifted up and held on either side by these strangely armored men the others called marines. The Questioner had ordered them to return him to the detention block when the alarm was raised, and to secure him there until it was over.

"Pity. I will have my fun with you yet, Mr. Ayreg" she told him.

He almost spit in her face.

The marines were dragging him through the hallways, his clothes only marginally put back on. His boots had long been taken from him, and his shirt hung loosely open in the front. With great praise for his dignity, however, the guards did go to the trouble of lacing his breeches at least part-way down his leg. If he had been dressed this shoddily in public of his own accord, he would have considered himself a fool.

In this particular case, though, he was willing to give his self-image the benefit of the doubt.

"What's going on?" one of the marines asked.

"Don't know. Maybe Credians?"

"This close to the galactic core?"

"Raiders then? Insurgents?"

"Maybe. What say we get the primative back to his cell, eh? We might be needed elsewhere for someone that isn't as meek as buttermilk."

There was an explosion somewhere that could be felt more than heard, and the wide corridor rocked sharply to the side. The marine on his right arm lost his grip, and fell forward against the wall with a grunt.

He half-slumped to the ground before he realized the opportunity he had been waiting for had finally arrived. His dropped hand clinching into a fist, Ayreg's head popped up suddenly, and his eyes snapped open.

Meek.

As.

Buttermilk.

A twisted grin pulled his lips apart.

In the security office, Major Matthew Harper sat in the rotating chair and kept a close watch over the myriad of monitors displaying security cameras across the ship. With the exception of the exterior cameras to watch the battle, his duty at the moment was watching over the transportation of the prisoner being taken back to his detention cell.

The ship lurched, suddenly, forcing Harper to grab the arms of his chair to keep from falling out to the floor. Watching the monitor, he could see the prisoner half-falling to the ground, and one of the marines disengaged from him. A single eyebrow was lifted as the man's head lifted, and he sprang into action with strength that no man should have after being put to The Question for that long.

The marine still holding onto him was struck across the face, and then thrown in the way of the other marine who had drew out his shock-stick. Harper watched in stunned silence as one marine shocked another, followed by a brutal and quick snapping of the marine's neck. He turned his head, picking up his headseat and moving the microphone toward his mouth.

"Prisoner has escaped. Security team to Deck Two, Section Eight. Repeat, Prisoner has escaped."

__________
__________


Commander Labron Terrel's head turned at the announcement made over the ship's intercom. "Prisoner has escaped. Security team to Deck Two, Section Eight. Repeat, Prisoner has escaped." He frowned, annoyed, but unable to do much of anything at the moment. He turned to his TACOPS officer.

"Bring us to bearing 4-6-1. How much longer on that hyperdrive engine?"

"One minute, fifty seconds, Commander."

__________
__________


Major Matthew Harper watched the monitors, switching between cameras to watch the prisoner's movements. He's already killed two marines with his bare hands, and injured another two as they rounded the corner in each other's face. He was so fast... he almost didn't even seem human. Hands and feet flew in almost a blur, and Dylan could tell, even on the mute witness of the security cameras, that the man was as brutal as any, and knew how and where to hurt people where they went down, and didn't come back up.

Tapping the microphone to activate it, he speaks again over the intercom. "Prisoner heading in direction of interrogation room four. Repeat, interrogation room four."

__________
__________


Sarah Kleepak was wiping the table clean. The intercom speakers were always disabled in the interrogation rooms, for security purposes, and psychological -- so long as those being put to The Question had no grounds with which to cling to, in terms of reality, they were far more easily broken. Except that Jodiah Ayreg... man. So stubborn. So unwilling to even give her a simple scream. That's all she wanted! Was it so wrong?

The soft woooosh of the door opening turned her attention upward. "Is he back in his cell, yet? I told you there was no need to report back to me, private."

She blinked. The man standing in the doorway -- and, indeed, striding the length of the room toward her -- was not one of the marines she had charged with taking that stubborn man back to his cell. It was the stubborn man himself. Lips worked wordlessly as she backed away, raising her hands in front of herself like some kind of shield. Jodiah Ayreg lifted one of the implements of her Questioning skills from the tray, examined it for a second or two, nodded absently, then continued his walk toward her.

A malicious grin pulled at his lips.

__________
__________


Major Matthew Harper stared in disbelief. The Questioner was dead, as well as a handfull of the marines assigned to the Basilisk. He activated the intercom again, watching the man running barefoot through the corridors.

"Prisoner moving to the aft launch control bay. Security teams intercept! Repeat, aft launch control"

__________
__________


"Time until hyperdrive engine is online?"

"Fifty-seven seconds, commander."

Labron Terrel shook his head. "Shields?"

The tactical officer looked up from her console, fingers pausing for a moment from the frantic button-pushing. She had her hands full, at the moment, directing not only the defense of the ship from the attackers, but also coordinating the hunt for the escaped prisoner. "Shield integrity down to 12%, commander."

The operations officer looked up from his own console, "Commander, we've got a reading on the hostile vessels. They're S.E.C.T.O.R., sir."

"S.E.C.T.O.R.? But why would they attack a GALCOM military vessel?" Labron Terrel asked, looking up.

"Reasons unknown, sir. All attempts to hail them have failed."

He turned back to the tactical officer. "GALCOMHQ is going to love hearing about this. We'll finally have something to nail those bastards down with."

"Yes, sir. Assuming we make it out."

The logistical officer shot up from his chair, then, raising his voice across the chatter and noise of the bridge. "Unauthorized launch detected from the aft bays, commander!"

__________
__________


Major Matthew Harper sat back in his chair with a thump. He had watched the man move across the length of the deck of the ship. Fourteen marines were injured, six killed, and two more that would not survive their injuries. Eight technicians in the launch control bay were dead, as well.

And The Questioner. That poor, poor woman..

He shook his head, again, wiping the sweat from his brow and tugging at the high-collared blue military jacket. Death had walked the corridors of the Basilisk, this night.

And he didn't even have a pair of boots on.

__________
__________


The shuttle screamed out of the launch bay. Jodiah Ayreg sat, staring blankly at the colored lights blinking in front of him. What little he knew of vessels was reserved for water craft. He knew his port from his starboard, and his bow from his stern, but this was a bit beyond his meager knowledge. He knew what navigation was, though, so it was a simple gesture to press the buton marked "NAV."

A display appeared on the monitor in the center of the console. A single sphere, with two much smaller ones circled around it. Outlying the edges of the screen were a series of numbers and letters, indicating something called "NavBouy." There were several of them. He pressed his finger down onto the planet itself, recognizing the shapes of continents from his mapreading skills.

The tiny craft he sat in came to a stop. A faint whirr could be heard behind him, and the ship accelerated suddenly. Stars whizzed by, and Jodiah Ayreg screamed in abject horror as he and the vessel in which he rode passed into the realm of the speed of light.

__________
__________

"Hyperspace?"

"Ten seconds, sir. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six."

"Shields collapsing!"

"Five. Four. Three."

"We've got hull breaches across all decks. Barracks destroyed. Launch control destroyed. Flight deck damaged. Main life support destroyed, switching to secondary. Engineering damaged. Medibay destroyed."

"Two. One. Hyperdrive initiated."

The ship came to a stop, and shuddered. A quick jolt sent most of the crewmembers to the ground, and the logistical officer looked up at his console. Blood drained from his face, and he looked to Commander Labron Terrel.

"Hyperdrive cooling systems damaged, and inoperable. Hyperdrive is not functional, sir."

The aged man sat down into his chair, limply. He buried his face in his hand as the ship rocked again.

"Orders, sir?"

"Make your peace with God, ladies and gentlemen. It was an honor to serve with you."

__________
__________

Behind the fleeing shuttle, a brilliant flash of light was seen. A magnificent fireball erupted in the dark of the cold, empty void of space, showering debris across an enormous field.

The Basilisk had been destroyed.