Verdant Ink 🏳️‍🌈 (wlw)

7: Compassion

A khaki sea of Agents flowed along the corridors that criss-crossed the vastness of the Miranda, some filtering off on their way to the armoury, some to the hangars to man the fleet of warships.

Pelin marched along with them at first before peeling off the main ribbon of khaki towards the edge of the corridor, wondering how long it would take for the warship Sergeants to notice that she hadn't arrived at the hangars. In the chaos, perhaps they'd assume that she was already caught up in Karinja combat in some distant corner of the Miranda.

Only a small, dedicated Karinja team could have orchestrated such a reckless attack on a carrier. The Miranda had ample defences: forcefield, variable-range missiles, superluminal escape courses. The Karinja must have had a precise target.

The surge of Agents collected at the bottleneck between the workshops and hangars, letting Pelin swerve to the left along a service corridor in the confusion. Unseen, she sped towards the General's complex.

The corridor lights leading to the General's sanctum flashed on and off erratically, a bad sign. The Karinja would have arrived silently, appearing at the edge of maps as if from nowhere, their craft shielded from the Miranda's detectors by high-k polymer coatings. A primitive but deadly method of ambush.

All that was left of the clean, white office space was a shattered pile of lightscreens and furniture. Karinja must have pounded through the General's private hangar before the Miranda's forcefield could be raised, sweeping through the General's offices, searching. It seemed that they had a singular goal: they may have already taken 301.

The central atrium of the General's complex was a graveyard of toppled palms and smashed pots, leaves and flowers trampled and crushed under bony Karinja feet.

Pelin could understand why they'd carried out such senseless destruction. Earth-plants, creators of the hated oxygen that suffocated the Karinja, were easy targets to those who preferred to inhabit NOX- and SO2-ridden wastelands.

A lone white orchid flower lay broken in a mess of spilled soil. Pelin gathered it in two hands and tucked it into her shirt pocket.

The doors to the General's maze of rooms all sat hidden in the wall-niches, their lights flickering, as if the electronics were making a final push before death. The General's private room door was trapped bent in its niche, the iris detector wrenched off its mounting and hanging lifeless from a twisted cable.

Pelin stepped over debris and marched in, her knife in front of her. She almost laughted at how pitiful the flick-knife looked in comparison to the gaping axe-wounds in the wrecked furniture of the room. How could a knife possibly fare against a Karinja club, mace or axe? Designed to slice through Karinja exoskeletons, their weapons slid through thin human flesh like butter. The flick-knife would have drawn endless laughter from the Karinja, if those high-pitched clicks were what they called laughter.

The General's hangar was the final place to search; she may have evacuated with 301 in her personal freighter. The winding corridors to the hangar were unknown to Pelin, no markings or signs on the walls as she raced towards the unknown.

A sentry lay at the hangar entrance, clawing at the metal sheeting of the corridor in a pool of his own blood. A Karinja throwing-axe was embedded deep into his shin.

"Help me."

There was no chance of removing the axe without medical aid. "Medical will come soon. What happened here?"

"Karinja fighter craft...flew into the General's hangar. They broke through an airlock..."

"What were they looking for?"