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This story is the finale to this series. Please read the preceding chapters before you start this one.
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Vala looked over the three exiled prisoners that she had been tasked with guarding.
Toidi - in the body of a brown-haired college kid that looked young enough to still have acne problems - cleared his throat.
"If you speak to me," Vala growled, interrupting him. "I will gag you. If you persist in being a royal pain in my ass, I will follow Krina's advice - and remove your tongue. I am told that humans can't speak without them."
Apparently speaking to no one in particular, she raised her head (and her voice) to the sky and said, "I'm really thinking I need some sort of camera system around this cave - so that I can record the moment you fuckers push too far and I need that video-evidence that Krina talked about."
Unseen by the prisoners, Marmon headed to the base to get the fabricator started. In actuality, Siri already had the machine employed - working to build four cameras that she could use to monitor things in and around the cave - which would give them the required footage.
Vala was actually surprised that the two insipid females hadn't said anything yet. Maybe they assumed they would be more useful to Toidi if they remained alive. She had already pretty much decided that they would die as soon as she had a camera available to record the execution.
The three prisoners were shivering. Krina had given them clothing, but it was not sufficient for winter temperatures in Colorado.
"Remain here until I check something," Vala told the three of them.
She headed into the cave and began dragging out anything she thought they could use as a weapon. In the end, she only pulled the clothing replicator and resource pack out and decided she could endure the rest.
"Get inside," she told them. "It's a little cool in there so you'll have to cuddle together and conserve body-heat until I get some blankets made or something."
She followed them inside. There was a pallet bed - like a crude futon - as well as a wooden chair and small table that served as the dining room and work-area. (Or it would have, if Vala had ever actually stayed there.)
Pointing at the Asian looking female, Vala asked, "Explain to me why Nira wasted time and energy to transport your sorry ass to this planet - rather than just watching as a pavement-roller turned you into a bloody smear."
"I promised her that I would do whatever I need to, in order to keep her brother alive to serve his sentence," she replied.
Vala just stared at the girl, trying to work through the multiple logic-problems her statement raised.
"I ..." the other girl began to say.
Vala turned to her, and she stopped speaking.
"Please keep in mind that your mere existence here causes me to do work that I don't enjoy," Vala told her, venomously. "If you speak again, when I have not told you to do so, I will take no small amount of pleasure in recording your long and painful death so that I can share the recording with Krina when she returns. I will retain the audio-track to play as a lullaby to put myself to sleep at night."
The woman nodded.
"Mistress," an odd male voice called from the doorway.
Vala turned to find a hunch-backed caricature of a person standing there. She very nearly laughed out loud. It HAD to be her sister or her mate in an altered form - but they looked like Marty Feldman's character, Igor, from the movie "Young Frankenstein".
"Yes?" she asked, finally, carefully keeping her voice steady to hide how much she wanted to laugh.
"The cameras are in place out here, mistress. I have some food for your guests. Also, you dropped this," he said.
He held out the combat suit.
"Thanks, Igor," Vala told him.
She quickly undressed and changed into the suit. She threw the jacket to Toidi.
While she was changing, the deformed assistant stepped outside and retrieved some boxed meals. He handed those over to the Volkran warden. After that, he disappeared. Vala heard her sister's voice coming through the speaker in the helmet of the combat suit.
"The food is drugged with a sedative," she explained. "If they won't eat it, we'll get you a hypodermic and make an excuse that we're inoculating them against some native parasite. Once they're asleep, we'll send the construction droids into the cave and get a better space built in the back to house them. Just yell for Igor if you need anything. Hopefully, they'll be asleep in a few minutes."
Vala handed the lunches to the prisoners. She opened the last one, showed them how to unwrap the turkey roll-up - as well as how to open the bags of chips. Igor returned with three bottles of water which she passed to the three exiles as well.
She pulled the chair to the doorway and sat down. Igor came back with a boxed-lunch for her and - even though she wasn't really hungry - she opened it and began eating. Soon, the prisoners followed her example.
She collected their trash, put it in the trash-bag that Igor belatedly brought her, sat back down in her chair, and leaned back against the wall.
Soon, the three inmates began nodding off.
Vala waited a few minutes, and then walked over and pried the former prince's eyelid open to check his pupil. He was sound asleep. She opened the door and stepped outside. She left the collar controller on the table inside of the cave. She closed the door and walked towards the landing site.
Igor transformed into Marmon's human form. Silva decloaked next to him. Vala grumbled but shifted to her human form as well.
Looking at her sister's hands and confirming that they were empty, Silva said, "It looks like you came to the same conclusion that Siri did."
"That the collar controller might be a recording device?" Vala asked.
"Yeah."
"What do you think about the bimbos?" she asked her sister.
"You mean whether or not their disposable spies?"
Vala nodded.
"I would guess even odds that at least one of them is. I can't imagine that Krina was delighted, having to drag the three of them all the way here. What other purpose could they serve?"
"Kill them and record it or wait and see?"
"Let's wait," Silva advised.
Vala nodded, frowned, and said, "This is gonna suck."
Silva said, "Siri's finishing up construction on a rudimentary hover-car. Igor will bring it over. He'll help you load the prisoners aboard. Make sure to take the collar controller with you. Drive a couple miles into the mountains. We'll holler when the cave has been modified and we're ready for you to return. The plan is to build a self-contained space for them. Siri is already working to create an android clone of Igor that will be tasked with babysitting them while we're away."
Vala hugged her sister and said, "I shouldn't have doubted you."
"You can thank Google and Siri," Silva told her. "Most of this planning - and all of the preparation - is their work."
"Thanks, guys," Vala said.
In her earpiece, she heard the computers respond.
By the time Vala had stuck her head back into the cave to check on her prisoners, Igor was arriving with the hover-car. It wasn't much more than an insulated box with navigation controls - but it did the job. The two of them carried the three sleeping humans inside and laid them on the floor. Vala retrieved the collar-controller and climbed behind the steering-wheel.
As soon as Vala and her passengers were safely away, a team of construction droids arrived at the cave. Over the next three hours, they dug into the back of the cave, more than doubling its original size. All of the walls and floors of the new space, as well as the original one, were covered with wood - in various patterns and colors - to give the space a more comfortable look and feel.
The main living quarters were a combination sitting/sleep area. It had a three-person dining table sitting to one side. There was also a bathroom - with a shower, toilet, and sink.
The stone that was removed was turned into concrete. The wall between the prisoners' cell and Vala's living space hid the forms that would hold the slowly-curing mass in place until it became a solid wall. The wall was three feet thick. A heavy steel door was slotted into place at the back of the short hallway that was the only opening into the prisoner area.
A useable bathroom (with shower) was added on Vala's side of the wall as well. A small, camouflaged field of high-efficiency solar panels charged a bank of fuel cells that handled the lights and the heaters for both spaces. Vala's exterior wall was upgraded with improved insulation to help keep the heat inside of the cavern.
By the time she and her guests returned, the space had already begun to warm. Igor and Vala carried the prisoners in and dropped them on their day-beds as they began to rouse from their naps.
Vala locked the heavy steel door, checked to make sure the slot (for handing things to the inmates) was working (and latched), and verified that the LCD monitor displayed the cell interior as designed. She walked into the bathroom, placed the collar-controller in the mirrored medicine cabinet above the sink, glanced over at the fabricators and the supply crates in the corner of her office space, and exited the cave.
"That was fast," Vala told her sister.
"We 'took' the crate of ingots as payment for the construction work," she replied. "Nobody needs to know that it was all built in a few hours - rather than over a period of several days."
Vala nodded and asked, "How long before Igor gets here?"
"Siri says it'll take a couple more hours. We can monitor things from the base if you're ready for dinner. Rosie made chili cheese dogs."
"Fuck!" Vala grumbled. "Those always give me gas."
"But they're so good," Silva told her sister.
"Yeah, they are," she agreed. "Okay. Let's go."
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