IDA - Slammer

Most Wanted Alien Brides:

Volume 1

• Slammer
• Hard Time
• Solitary

Volume 2

• Core
• Shaft 
• Claim

Volume 3

• Solitary

"Move, Rhimodian," snarled the Terran guard.

Kolvin twisted around and started to climb out of the bunk from his cell. His body ached, as it did every day. If his internal sensors were working and not being jammed, he would have detected that he was hungry as well.

Unfortunately, all he had was the rumbles of his stomach. Stuck in a Terran Empire prison, his cybernetics signals were blocked from any kind of transmissions and connection to the Rhimodian community. Left to deal with his primal side, the natural Rhimodian in him had begun becoming more dominant as well as the other cyborgs who had been taken captive. 

They had survived the last five years in this dark and dingy metal prison. The only places with light were the medical bays where the experiments were done--and not even those were very bright. Just illuminated enough to show how unkempt the ship was. 

Prisoners were not given luxury accommodations. 

Kolvin, like his fellow mates, had to draw on older, more primitive pieces of themselves to survive. 

Kolvin stood, and the Terran guard may have only come to his shoulder, but the stun stick in his hand made up for the difference in size. 

And the guards here were liberal with delivering punishment for anyone who dared to defy them. 

"What now?" Kolvin asked. 

"Are you deaf, robot? Do you need your ears reprogrammed?"

"This is not routine," Kolvin said. 

The guards would not be greeting them for another three standard hours. This should be their recuperation cycle. They didn't get a great deal of rest time, but it seemed to remain regular.

He concluded that if they woke him early, there must be something going on. 

"Well, we like to shake things up," the guard said and shoved him forward. His feet slapped on the rough and cold metal floor. 

He saw that he was not the only Rhimodian awoken and shoved out of his cell. Others who had been captured along with him were being herded out of their cells as well. 

"What do you want now?" Marcin, another Rhimodian in his unit, demanded from a few cells away. 

"Get in line," the guard said and slammed him in the shoulder.

Kolvin gritted his teeth as Marcin was hit again. 

"Move!" the guard behind Kolvin said. 

It was his turn to be struck. 

Fourteen thousand eight hundred and seven.

The number of times he'd been hit since being brought to this prison five standard years ago. 

"Get going. We haven't got all day."

Another strike.

Fourteen thousand eight hundred and eight.

He shouldn't care how many times, but he kept counting it. Kept it logged in his memories. Along with everything else that had been done. Every poke, every slice, every attack on his person. The number of times they tried to remove his lysteel gauntlets. The scars on his arms were evident of all the attempts by the Terran Empire to remove the tech to learn how it worked.

They were never able to remove them. 

But not after many hours of trying. 

It wasn't the only procedure that was performed on him and his fellow Rhimodians. Genetic code extraction and testing. Some had not survived, but the Terrans determined quickly that the Rhimodian tech died with the cyborg, so they quit killing them. Then they just performed their experiments on live cyborgs. 

He could not begin to imagine all the things that were done. More than once, he'd offer to leave them with the nanites. 

So, they would let them all go.

But it wasn't what the Terran wanted.

He wasn't sure they knew what they wanted. It seemed to change all the time. 

They blocked the connection to the Rhimodian collective consciousness, Master System, through Terran's cloaking technology. Being cut off from the ever-present voice felt like being stripped to the bone. All that they had to confirm who they were and what their protocols were, gone in an instant.

"Move it, Solkan," another guard said, and this one did make Kolvin look over. Solkan was left in solitary for a reason. A growl emerged from inside the cell. If the Terrans learned anything about Solkan, it was that the Rhimodian fought everything. 

Today was no exception.

One of the guards flew out of the cell and hit the metal ground hard. 

Marcin smirked. He was hit again for his obstinance.

Kolvin watched as they brought out Solkan, restrained on both sides by shock braces. 

Solkan shifted, a jerk of strength, and it startled the Terran guards, but it wasn't enough to break the hold. 

When they were lined up, the guards started to lead them out of the cell area and reached the door where they went for testing. Today, though, they did not go to that door. Instead, they were led the other way. 

The round exit door. The one that led to the vacuum of space. 

Kolvin's shoulders sunk.

The thing he knew would happen had finally come. The Terrans were disposing of them. 

Jettisoning them out into space.

More than once, they'd opened the air lock to suck the air out of the cell bay, just to torture them. 

Now it seemed to truly be the end. They had finally finished with them, that this was over.