Everyone was getting up after their daily meal when suddenly the lights flashed. This wasn't the normal flash that they were used to, but rather the lights just turned off for about a second, then back on. Everyone froze, no one was sure what was going on, something like this had never happened before, everyone glanced at each other, wondering if this was some signal that they had never learned.
Then the lights flashed red, then white, then back to red again, then started switching between the two colors regularly. There were a few people who seemed to recognize what it was, but Jace had no idea. Several handlers rushed in and began shouting. Jace recognized Alf among them. They started shouting at everyone to get back to their rooms, but there was no order, it was complete chaos. Several slaves saw this as an opportunity and began attacking the handlers. Everyone was running around in the confusion, although it was disconcerting with the shouting only coming from the handlers' side.
Not wanting to cause trouble or draw attention to himself, but someone grabbed his hand. He turned and saw Stryker holding his wrist. He was dragging the redhead behind him, her face red with fury and embarrassment. Relief washed through Jace. Stryker would know what to do. The man jerked his head, indicating for Jace to follow him. In the confusion, they slipped past the guards and into the hall. The redhead struggling against Stryker's grip the whole way. No one tried to stop them, after all, they were just doing what they were told and heading back to their room.
Only they weren't. Jace tried to stop at his room, but Stryker just dragged him on like he was paper. Trepidation and a little fear began to fill Jace. Where are we going?!? We're gonna be in a world of pain when we're caught. He thought, and now he was struggling against the iron grip, though it seemed the woman had stopped struggling. However, nobody seemed to notice them. The halls were pretty empty, and the few people that ran past seemed to be more focused on where they were going than on anyone around them.
Stryker led them through a maze of hallways, as they progressed, the walls turned from a dull yellow and green to a blue and chrome finish, the kind of coloring you might expect in a spaceship from the stories. Also as they progressed, the halls became more populated, and the atmosphere of panic increased with the size of the crowd. The distant sound of explosions began to shake the halls as they ran through. Their progress began to slow as Stryker began to lead them to alcoves and empty closets to hide when men with laser rifles would run by. He seemed to know the layout of the ship like the back of his had, though Jace was far too overwhelmed for it to be more than a passing thought.
As they went away from the main thoroughfare, the number of people again decreased, though not quite as much as it was before. Suddenly an intercom speaker blared through the halls. "All personnel, this is an evacuation order. All personnel head for the nearest escape pod. Alert, Alert, defensive measures failed, All personal, this is an evacuation order…" It droned on, constantly repeating. Stryker seemed to take no notice as he led them to a massive room that houses several smaller ships. Jace recognized several of them as tugs for hauling goods to and from the ship, as well as several fighters that were just taking off from recruitment pictures for the Cadet Academy he'd seen back on his home planet.
Stryker led them to one of the tugs and opened up the cargo space and was about to lead them inside when they heard a voice behind them.
"Hey, slave brats. What're you doing?" Jace turned his head and saw two big men in worker uniforms, carrying a couple of heavy tools and holding them like weapons. From the desperate look in their eyes and the way they were holding themselves, Jace's street instincts immediately told him they were dangerous. He had no time to react though, as Stryker shoved him and the woman into the ship. Jace tumbled to the ground, his legs weak from fear and shock and confusion, a whole jumble of emotions. He heard flesh smacking flesh, a couple of thumps as well as a couple of moans.
He was about to get control of himself and go out to see if Stryker was ok when the man stepped into the ship and closed the door behind him. When he turned back, Jace's mouth opened in a silent cry. Strykers face was a mess. It was all bloody and bruised and he had a slight limp. He was also holding his side. The blonde man stumbled toward the cockpit, which was connected to the empty cargo hold through a small door. He collapsed into the pilot's seat and began to press buttons. The hum of the engines sprang to life and the tug lifted slightly off the ground and shot forward. Strykers unsteady steering bashed them into a ship or two, but they made it across the room. Jace was still in the back on the floor, so he couldn't tell what was going on, but he heard the sound of explosions and yelling abruptly cut off, but he was still in shock so didn't know what it meant. After a few minutes, the ship slowed, then came to a halt.
He suddenly heard scraping and shuffling across the hold. He numbly looked over and saw the red-headed woman scrambling to her feet. He distantly realized she must have hit her head and lost consciousness for a few minutes. She wasn't paying attention to him though. She scrambled over and grabbed Stryker from the pilot's chair. Jace saw he wasn't controlling the ship anymore, just sitting there. In Stryker's weakened state, he was unable to resist the younger woman's manhandling. She semi-led semi-dragged him to a bench n the back and pantomimed him staying there. Stryker nodded, and she went scrambling through the ship, searching for something. Finally, she found a box tucked behind the pilot's seat and pulled it out.
She took it to when Stryker was slumped and began puling out pastes and bandages and applying them to the wounds. She was surprisingly gentle, and Jace saw something in her eyes he'd not seen before. Was that worry? When she finished with Stryker, she turned to him. He scrambled back in fear, partially out of habit but also out of uncertainty as to what exactly she was going to do to him. She rolled her eyes and strode up to him. He didn't have much space to retreat, so she easily cornered him and looked him over. His head had long healed and the bandages removed, so she found nothing and stood back up in satisfaction.
Out of nowhere, there was a loud BOOM that resounded behind them. They were all flung forward and the ship shot forward with a burst of speed. The ship spun around before the auto stabilizers slowed it down and brought it back to a stop. Jace felt his choker begin to warm up, and he wondered fearfully if there was a distance limit on it and if it would kill him if he went too far. However, the collar cooled and nothing seemed to be happening. The woman scrambled for the front, where the windows were. He heard her take a sharp intake of breath.
Finally, curiosity broke through his stupor, and he followed her to the front. The sight that greeted him was startling. There was nothing but debris out there. The ship was gone. And the amount of debris was astounding. The ship had been much much bigger than he had imagined. There were either a much larger amount of slaves aboard than he had thought, or the ship was carrying much more cargo than just slaves. Considering he was pretty sure one could house a planet's worth of people aboard, he figured it was the latter.
"You can talk now." A man's voice, creaking from disuse, said behind him.
The voice itself was unfamiliar, but the formation of the words and the slight accent were familiar to him. He spun around to see Stryker smiling tiredly up at him.
The older man shrugged. "Something about the ownership of new slaves belonging to the ship. Now that the ship is gone, the collars are useless. Most anywhere in the galaxy says once the master dies, the slave is free. With the exception that the slaver killed the master themselves, so the collars controller is kept on the ship for just such an occasion."
The redheaded woman spoke up. Or at least tried to. "Who-" Her voice cracked. She stopped abruptly with a slightly embarrassed look on her face, then cleared her throat, coughed a couple of times, then tried again. "Who are you?" Her voice was weak, but it was better. She was looking at Stryker when she said it.
He shrugged again, then winced, "I'm Stryker. Just a slave. An escaped slave I might add." He said with a grin.
She shook her head. "You're more than that, you knew exactly where you were going aboard the ship. And how did you know the ship was going to explode? I overheard some people said pirates" - Jace had been too overwhelmed to hear anything – "And pirates don't normally explode ships."
Stryker was about to shrug again, then decided against it. Instead, he just smiled a toothy smile. "Nothing gets past you does it, young miss?" He shook his head. "In all honesty, I was just a repairman back home, they would often hire me on to help repair ships just like that one. They're not all that uncommon you know."
She pointed at her neck, where the now ineffective collar was around her neck. "How'd you know these stopped working then?"
"I worked on these two, I was all around. Pretty good at it too."
The redhead gestured toward the back of the ship. "And those thugs? You may have been pretty beat-up, but you took care of them pretty handily."
Stryker massaged his shoulder, the one not seriously injured. "Call a troubled childhood. Back in my hay day, they wouldn't have been able to touch me." He grinned at Jace. The woman turned on him. "And who are you? His son?" she said with accusatory eyes. "You don't seem terribly useful"
Jace blinked at her. Then he realized she was talking to him. He opened his mouth to speak. All that came out was coughing. When he finished, she was still looking at him expectantly. He tried to smile a placating smile, but it came out more pleading. "I'm Jace." Then fell silent. He had never had anyone to talk to before his capture, so he never knew what to say.
She looked at him incredulously, then spread her hands out. "That's it? Who are you? Where are you from? You never told me if you were or weren't his son." She stated, indicating Stryker.
Jace hesitantly opened his mouth to speak again. "I'm Jace, just Jace, I don't know where I'm from. Same place as you I assume. I'm not related to Stryker, I met him on the slavers' ship." He was out of breath by the end. Talking when he wasn't used to it was tiring.
She looked at him confused, "Jace? Just Jace? No second name? and you're from Pontilar? How do you not know what planet you're from?"
Now he looked confused. "Why would I need a second name? I only need one. And I never needed to know the name of the planet I lived on since I never left it." He filed away the name Pontilar for later.
Stryker spoke up before she could interrogate the boy further. "What about you miss? How bout you tell us who you are?"
She straightened proudly, still looking at Jace. "My name's Sarantani Mortonesse!" She declared her chin in the air, looking expectantly at Jace.
He looked at her blankly.
That seemed to startle her more than anything had yet. She immediately became timid and embarrassed. She said in a quiet voice. "You can call me Sara."
At that moment, Jace realized she wasn't the woman he had thought she was. She was probably only a year or two older than him. She just carried herself in such a way that he'd assumed she was an adult.
"How old are you?" he blurted out.
Immediately the timidity was gone from her, and she straightened back up, offended. "I'm not telling you!" she exclaimed.
Stryker burst into a loud, boisterous laugh, which immediately devolved into coughing. When he had recovered, he looked at Jace with his familiar grin. "Rule number one when talking to women kid, never ask their age."
Sara immediately blushed and refused to meet Jace's eyes. Her eyes fell on Stryker, and she immediately cried out and rushed to him. "You're coughing up blood!" She began to rummage through the box she'd pulled the poultices and bandages from. "Aaargh! Why does this first aid kit have to be so old!?"
Stryker waved her off. "sorry girl, there's not much you can do now, I know what's what in my body, and this isn't something a first aid kit can fix."
Jace processed that, then sat bolt upright. "What does that mean?!" he said, dread starting to fill him.
Stryker looked at him seriously and said, "It means I'm gonna die kid."