Saa'be

betray

The Double can feel his presence at her back, a chorus of dark warnings she is focused on ignoring. Personal safety is a thing she left behind a long time ago; such is the nature of dedicated, chosen servitude.

The Recruit tried to stop her, aggravating the pulsing crimson stains on his tattered militia jacket, so much so that the Gunner had to restrain him as she and the Mechanic set out in the grey-green haze that passes as dusk in the Forest. They took a datapad off one of the berserkers and cross-referenced it with the commander's information to find the Conglomerate base. Ironically, while they have been slinging aside branches and slopping through mud, the Conglomerate squad on their tail likely refueled at a base not a half click towards the suns rise. Looking through the colored holofiles, the Double easily confirmed the base did indeed have emergency medical supplies and light ground transports. She does not like the idea of this still; they risk too much by trying to make a theft of supplies. But the desperate look on the Recruit's face and haunting recollections of past slain comrades had been a glass dagger through her sternum, bright and just as deadly.

She and the Mechanic have reached the edge of the Forest and are crouched deep in the underbrush, eyes training on the spotlights glaring like white dwarves against the fallen night. The Gunner is doing the best she can to patch the Recruit in the clearing with the berserkers fetid corpses, the Forest fungi already working to reclaim flesh and bone. She'd hated leaving them, but she cannot save him with wishes and force of will, no matter how much she passionately desires a reprieve from responsibility. The base is lightly staffed, or so it seems, perhaps the slaughter she committed under the canopy its own kind of strange omen.

"How do you want to go in?" The Mechanic asks, his voice low and humid on the skin below her ear. She is surprised slightly by the question, and irked by his proximity. She'd prefer the Gunner for this sort of work but the inevitability of this interaction is something she can no longer bear. Best to seize as much control as she can of this engineer failure of a situation and try to steer its landing like she did on the Plains. She has a feeling there will be more of a price to pay than a serrated forearm and bruised ribs.

"The data files indicate a med bay in the sunward corner," she says quietly, forcing calm through her lips onto each word. "I can use my perception filter to distort my features and mimic a Comglomerate soldier and weave my way through the halls." She pulls out the small device, settling it snuggly behind her ear and her appearance shifts as she adjusts the controls so that her features are the Pilot's again and a Conglomerate uniform overlays what remains of her tattered militia jacket. "Once I get the antibiotics, I'll cause a diversion, pull their forces to me. You use that opportunity to head across the open hangar." Here she gestures to the expanse of smooth rock and metal of the base to the small aerial flotilla at the base. "You then steal one of their low atmosphere crafts. Turn its left port signals on but not on the right and open the dorsal vent flaps to signal me which craft you're in. I'll rendezvous with you as soon as I can."

The Mechanic is looking at her with grudging respect. "You should have been a thief, not a bodyguard," he tells her. "With that kind of strategist's mind, I'm amazed you didn't pull the trigger on the General yourself."

She doesn't rise to the barb as he'd hoped. Instead, she says coolly, "A Senator's Body Double is trained to take her place in all things. Now let's go before the suns rise. We have very little time to chat while a comrade is dying."

She sets off into the bushes, heading towards the base, leaving the Mechanic behind. "Your sentimentality for him will be your undoing," The Mechanic says to the tense lines of her back.

She doesn't stop, doesn't react and hears the Mechanic curse her and set off on his own mission. She pauses once she knows he's out of earshot, looking at the Forest. "And your betrayal will be yours," she whispers.