"Alright, here's how this is going to play out," an unfamiliar voice rasped as Nick was yanked from view -- It was gritty and heaved the words out, as if the speaker were about to vomit. "One at a time, slowly, the same way this guy did it. I see anything remotely different from that and I paint your giant -sky-… fire… ball, with the insides of his head."
Jacq stepped back from the opening as quietly as she could, then stopped -- why was her interfaced translator stuttering? Most of the stranger's words were typical comonese, and she didn't think there were any known languages absent from her interface's database anyway.
"It's alright," Nick shouted through the hole in the window. "Leru, Hep, Jarett, do as he says."
Jacq looked at Jarett, mouth agape.
Jarett quickly pressed a finger to his lips with a wide-eyed shake of his head, then followed the other crew out the window.
The unfamiliar voice growled something she couldn't hear.
"Who am I missing?" Nick asked innocently.
"Don't fuck with me -Capital-garbage-, I heard more people in there." The man spat as his voice began to gurgle, and whatever gob he'd ejected was dense enough for Jacq to hear it hit thud on the dirt. "I don't know what you were planning but you failed, and patience is a luxury I never cared to waste my time on."
"Seriously, what-"
An explosion loosened more glass pieces from the window frames and shook the metal she stood on. Stock still with all her hairs on end, Jacq listened intently to the sounds of rock chips hitting the ground in the near distance. The silence stretched on as sweat beaded on her forehead. "Nick?"
"Hold on," The stranger spoke, though it didn't seem directed at her. "Am I just getting old, or has the average age of people just gotten younger?"
"Nick?" Jacq stepped towards the exit-hole.
"I'm okay."
She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"Come on out -- Before this asshole blows out my other eardrum."
Jacq hesitantly made her way out the roof of the cockpit, Intensely aware that she was losing her final opportunity to flee as far into the wreckage as she could. Before she could reconsider, her feet were thudding on the same scuffed dirt as the crew before her -- It crumbled and shifted, evening out beneath her weight in loose lumps with a sensation like crunching cereal.
Nick's captor took a handgun with a barel as wide as her wrist off Nick's neck, but kept a firm grip on him -- the man looked like he should be unconscious in a hospital bed if not dead: His face was a mess of cuts and bruises, with a sweat-stained bandage circling above a pair of eyes so bloodshot, they had blood pooling around the irises. He stood with a slouch that occasionally switched sides, and his breathing came in short gasps that avoided moving the bandages wrapped around his chest. What she'd originally thought to be puffy gloves turned out to be blood soaked bandages wrapped around his hands as her eyes adjusted to the overbearing sun.
"Why is -Capital- throwing people at us?" A man just barely taller than Leru and built like a door frame asked, standing in a row with two others a short distance away. He was dressed in a plaid button-up shirt beneath a set of denim overalls, a comically wide-brimmed hat shading facial hair that had been coaxed into a mustache, despite clearly wanting to be a beard -- it grew thick and bushy down the sides of his face, then shot straight up around the sides of his mouth and over his lip. The resulting mustache reached straight down in one final attempt at beardhood.
"My guess is convenience." Nick offered, nearly doubled over as the wounded man twisted his arm.
"That does sound like -Capital- but what I want to know from you is who are you, and where did you come from."
"And what, what…" The mustached man scratched the side of his want-to-beard. "I mean, don't take this the wrong way but, what are you?"
Nick laughed, "in what way am I supposed to take that, exactly?"
"Oh come on, she's blue." He waved a thick arm in Leru's general direction.
"I'm brown." Nick mocked, nodding at a tall, thin woman in their lineup of captors. "She's black."
Jacq blinked in the harsh sunlight; indeed she was, a thin, angular woman in lots of form fitting black leather despite the heat, complete with wide-brimmed black hat and bandana. The parts of her that weren't hidden beneath her clothing were so dark they hid the shadows, except for her hair which was long, straight, and a red like dying coals.
"Deihelen...?" Jacq looked at the ground as she realized she'd been caught staring -- she couldn't make out the woman's eyes beneath the shadow of her hat, but she felt the embarrassment welling up inside her nonetheless.
"And I'm white." The thick man rolled up a sleeve on his thick, hairy arm. "I still won't burn half as fast as -Bluebird- over there. Is it a condition or something?" He stopped halfway through rolling his sleeve back down. "Is it contagious?"
The group looked at each other uncomfortably as he searched for support against Leru's searing leer that defied the sun. "I'm ohma."
"Yes, but why are you blue?"
"Drop it, Derbish," the bloody man started to sigh, but the exhale transitioned into a wet cough. "We have bigger crickets to cook," he choked, wincing.
Derbish raised his hands in acquiescence.
"I'm getting the impression you guys don't work for -Capital-."
Jacq delved into her interface and autocorrected whatever they kept referring to as "Capital" to "the Capital".
The bloody one had begun to slouch forward as well as to the side, and looked about to snap off at the middle.
"Don't work for anyone." Nick looked over his shoulder, squinting.
"So here's the deal," The bloody one pushed Nick away hard enough to put a couple steps between them.
"Fuck almighty," Nick swore as he got a good look at the man. "Were you underneath the ship when we landed?"
The man gave him a weak smile that didn't reach his puffy, bloodshot eyes. "You got nowhere to go. You'll die if you try to leave- that's not a threat, just… just trust me on this, ok? We've got plenty of questions to ask before you do anyway, so you're welcome to stay here in your big metal box for now." He looked to the others standing with Derbish. "Jenni, Derbish, handle the questions."
"What about the kid?" Derbish asked.
The leader winced as he tried to raise an eyebrow, and squinted instead. "Ask her too."
Out of nowhere, Jacq felt like she was falling from the atmosphere all over again as Jenni spoke. "Behr, we need to find the runaway before he gets eaten."
"What? Oh the other one. You two figure it out. Monty, you just… be intimidating. Go build a gun or something."
The final member of the group -- a shirtless, hairless man nearly two meters in height, whose bare skin didn't go more than a few centimeters without some form of scar or pock-- furrowed his brow at the Behr, then turned to leave.
"Perfect." Behr turned towards the valley wall the ship now leaned against. "I'm going to go be unconscious." He walked off with uneven, shuffling steps adding to the overtly corpse-like aura he exuded.
"Well." Derbish clapped his hands together. "I guess some introductions are in order."