Somewhere in the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy
The Indomitables' Ship - The Harbinger
06:00 SET (14:00 EDT)
August 16, 12610 (August 15, 2019)
Omeron didn't know what happened. One moment he was getting ready to thrust into his sex slave, Beria, and the next he appeared in a room he recognized as the brig on The Harbinger. The largest cell, to be precise. He looked around and saw many other people, including his XO. Unembarrassed by his state of dress, he stalked over to his XO.
"What the fuck is happening?!" he bellowed.
Ghur immediately spun and recognized the captain, saluting at once.
"Enough of that! Tell me what is going on!"
Ghur quickly put his arm down. "I don't know, captain. I was making sure everything was ready in case we needed to jump, and then suddenly I was teleported here, along most of the bridge crew."
Just then, the communications officer ran forward, "Captain! None of us can use Mindspeak or any of our abilities!"
The captain ignored the man and scanned the room, a sinking feeling quickly taking root in the pit of his stomach. As he looked around, he realized that recognized every single person in the cell, which is very difficult on a ship with over ten thousand crew. He had recruited them all on Kaldrus Dhir's orders, after all.
'Damn that man!' he thought to himself, certain that they were somehow found out.
The Indomitables' fleet was more powerful than many of the other nation's fleets that bordered Scyftan space, and Dhir wanted them for his own, or more specifically, the shroud generators onboard each and every ship. With the schematics, Scyftan engineers could quickly manufacture and outfit existing ships for use in the war with The Confederation.
Omeron's task was to get those schematics, or remove one of the many shroud generators located on the hull of the ship, but it was a task he found impossible without being found out. The schematics couldn't be found anywhere on his ship, or any of the others his allies had checked. He couldn't have one of the shroud generators on his ship removed and studied, either. Shrouds required every single generator to be working to hide the ship. If one of them was missing, the shroud wouldn't activate. If a ship happened to be crippled or destroyed in combat, Xigios was very quick to have all the shroud generators removed, or the ship outright destroyed.
He knew that the only probable location of the schematics was on non-networked computers aboard Nira's Revenge. That made it absolutely impossible to get them with Xigios' lap dog running the security aboard his ship. He had people make many attempts, but none of them ever made it through the screening process.
"Good morning everyone, this is your captor speaking!" a female voice said, quieting everyone down. Omeron recognized the voice as belonging to Esriro Dryth. "Now, as you have probably..."
"Let us out, you bitch!".
"Ah, Omeron Tol. No, I don't think I'll do that. Do you like the security measures I had put in place?" she gloated. "Even now, all your compatriots are in the process of being rounded up and teleported into the brig aboard the newer ships, or captured one by one on the older ones. We know all about your plans to assassinate Xigios and hand over the shroud schematics to Kaldrus Dhir when we finished our current contract. It wasn't very bright to keep recordings of your dealings on a networked computer."
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"No? You know, you may have succeeded with your plans if not for a new friend of mine. Her name is Abi. You might have heard about her?"
'Abi?' he thought. 'I have heard that name before...where...'
Esriro laughed when she saw his eyes pop open. "I see you do recognize the name. She spent over twelve hours trawling through the computers on every ship in the fleet. What would have taken me months to do, she did like that!" she said, with a clearly audible snap of the fingers.
"What are you going to do with us?!" a man at the other end of the room shouted out.
"Well...," Esriro started.
"None of you say a fucking thing!" Omeron demanded. "If any of you so much as says a thing, I'll make you wish you'd never been born!"
"Oh shut up!" Esriro barked. "Abi, can you take care of him please?"
"Certainly," a female voice replied.
Everyone in the room heard a pop, and then saw that Omeron had been teleported to the back of the room where some sort of metal bands appeared around his ankles and wrists. He was clearly trying to get free, but wasn't having much luck. The metal bands were securely anchored to the wall behind him, and didn't budge so much as a micrometer.
"Release me this instant!" he shouted when he realized he wouldn't be able to get free on his own.
"I don't think so, and I'm getting tired of your voice," Abi said. A second later, another band appeared, covering his mouth and securing his head against the wall as well.
"Thank you, Abi. Now, I believe I was asked a question, which I'll answer now. What we do with you will depend on what you've done. We know some of you were coerced, while others were all too happy to take Kaldrus Dhir's money and work for him, doing various jobs. We also know some of you, particularly people in positions of power, have been kidnapping young women of various races to use as sex slaves, or purchased sex slaves outright. Know now that anyone who has taken part in such acts will be executed in the coming weeks. Jonuth Kidravia will not tolerate rapists or people owning slaves, and neither will I. Murderers will also get the same treatment."
"Now, as for those of you who are guilty of lesser crimes, don't worry, you won't be executed. Instead, you'll be injected with special nanites developed by Pygmaean scientists, which have done an incredibly good job of curbing crime within the Tetrarchy..."
Everyone in the room had started talking all at once when they found out what was in store for them. Many of them had heard of the Inhibitor Nanites that were developed within the last twenty years. Once inside the body, they were self-replicating and impossible to remove without specialized equipment. If someone had them injected into them, they would quickly lose the benefits from their attributes and the use of their skills.
For Scyftans, it was much worse, however. A Scyftan injected with Inhibitor Nanites would lose both the ability to Mindspeak, and the ability to shapeshift. As such, it was considered a fate worse than death by Scyftans who had been found guilty of a crime within Pygmaean space.
"I see many of you have heard of Inhibitor Nanites," Esriro said, quieting everyone down. "Only the most grievous crimes will result in someone receiving the nanites permanently. For most of you, it might only be a few hundred years..."
The room started shouting once more, but Abi quickly put a stop to that. There were pops and then every single person in the room had the same metal band covering their mouth, as well as the bands around their wrists, which were then quickly pulled in front of them, acting like handcuffs.
"Like I said. We know some of you were coerced, and we'll do our best to get your families and loved ones released. As for the rest of you, you made your bed. Over the next two weeks, all of you will be interrogated and then handed over to Pygmaean authorities. We can't very well have you letting Kaldrus Dhir know what's happened, now can we?"
*****
