Windswept - Astarte
Jul. 21st, 2011 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wiseheartby Soledad
Note: Inspired by the storm we had two days ago.
WINDSWEPT – ASTARTE
She was sitting under the protection of a crumbling stone arc, her knees pulled up, to rest her folded arms upon them, and looked out over the ruined city to the ocean. A storm was raging above the dark waves, heading towards her position, black clouds colliding and ropes of lighting – thick like the cords of the Overseer’s whip – illuminating he skies. Their violent energy discharges seemed to make the sea go up in flames, and the thunder crackled and rolled in their wake like an avalanche of heavy boulders.
The others told her that storms had been excessively violent on Windswept-the-planet, ever since the Conflict. The ancestors had fought with every weapon they could come up with, including some atmospheric ones that had knocked the weather of the planet off-balance. After several millennia, the balance still had not re-settled itself, which made it very dangerous for any spacecraft to try landing on the surface.
Still, the inhabitants of what had once been Terminus, the spaceport of the planet and the stronghold of the Technocrats of old, welcomed the storm. It was the only time in which the cyborgs of Windswept-the-ship could not use the particle transporter, due to atmospheric turbulences and the heavy ionization of the air. The only time the planet-dwellers were safe.
Oh, they had tried, of course, but to no end. Those unlucky ones had had their atoms scattered all over the planet surface ever since… and good riddance. They wouldn’t be able to cause the people any more harm.
But there was another reason why Astarte, currently leader of Terminus, liked the storm. Being born and having grown up in the artificial environment of the ship, surrounded by the never-changing wet chill, the poorly recycled air and the stench of cold metal, oil and scorched plastic, she cherished weather in all its forms.
Well, she cherished it now.
When she first set foot on the planet, it hurt badly. The brightness of the sun – of Magna, she corrected herself, trying to find some emotional distance in that neutral, scientific term – hurt her eyes, even filtered through the thick layer of millennia-old pollution. It burned her unprotected skin; for years, she only dared to come to the surface at nighttime.
The scents of the nearby ocean and of the ruined city itself, so many, so different, so intense, attacked her senses – she could barely breathe, and it took her weeks to overcome the urge of coughing or throwing up at random intervals. Wearing clothes that covered the greater part of her body was another thing she had to learn to endure; she had been a scantily-clad usewoman in her previous life, and clothes were uncomfortable. They chafed in the most inconvenient places and hindered her in moving freely. She hated them.
All that had been many years ago, though. If one saw her now, a whipcord-thin, athletic woman in skin-tight leather pants and a sleeveless leather west that displayed the wiry strength of her arms, saw her wielding weapons almost as big and heavy as herself, would never have thought that she had once been a slave girl. A plaything of the cyborgs.
The truth was, though, she had never been their toy. She’d played them, used them in exchange of being used by them, outwitted them and, at the end, escaped them. Escaped the ship. She had been the only one since the Conflict who had ever managed to do so without outside help.
She never told anyone how she’d achieved her goal. She avoided to even think about it herself. The memory of the metal applications of the dead cyborg on her skin still have her the cold shivers. In her nightmares, she still relived the fear that the mechanical parts would, in the end, overwhelm her, assimilate her and transform her.
Sure, there were no female cyborgs – not beyond The Link, that is – but that was due to the decision of the original designers, not because it would be impossible to create one. The Link was the proof of that; and no-one did really know just how much in-built independence a cyborg’s exoskeleton really had.
Yes, it had been a terrible risk; she might have been a First Class technician, but this was technology way beyond her understanding. At the end, it worked out, though. She’d managed to infiltrate a cyborg raiding party, transported down to the planet with them, to give them the slip as soon as they touched ground.
And now she was free and could enjoy the weather. And being free no longer hurt.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-21 01:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-21 03:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-21 05:11 pm (UTC)And being free no longer hurt.
A great, thought-provoking closing line.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-21 08:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-21 05:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-21 08:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-22 12:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-22 08:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-22 03:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-22 04:08 pm (UTC)