Seth sucked his breath in at what he saw next.
The young woman in the dark dress was struggling to escape the man who had blasted his way through the door. She was pressed up against the doorway, pinned by the weight of his large body. One of his hands was twisted into her hair, and he crushed her mouth against his in a brutal kiss. The woman was fighting him with all her might but he was too strong. With a sickening feel in the pit of his stomach, Seth wondered if they were about to witness a rape. It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing had happened in the heat of battle.
The woman flailed against her captor desperately, one hand catching against something tied around his neck. She pulled at it, trying to choke him. Seth held his breath, wondering what she could hope to accomplish; even if she subdued the man, there were fifty more just like him. He already knew how the story ended–the slaves had won. The poor girl didn’t have a chance.
The man lifted his head from hers to wrench whatever she had grasped out of her hand. They fought for possession of it, then it broke and something small and bright came off of it and flew out of the camera’s range. The man looked around for it, but apparently he couldn’t tell where it had gone. The woman, sensing his distraction, chose that moment to try and break free. She kicked him savagely in the groin, and he doubled over in agony. She jerked away from him but was pulled up short by her long hair. A chunk of it was tangled in what was left of the shattered door lock. She pulled at it frantically, but before she freed herself the man had recovered enough to realize his prey was escaping.
He grabbed her arms, savagely twisting them so she couldn’t move. Then he pulled out a homemade knife from his belt, a sharpened piece of metal with fabric wound tightly around one end. He brought it toward the woman’s head, and Seth caught his breath. The man raised the knife and slashed through the chunk of hair holding the woman to the door. She fell forward against him. Dropping the knife, he grasped the back of her head and crushed her mouth to his again.
Once again, the camera moved back to view the corridor. This time it was empty. Then the man came into view, dragging the woman with him. He searched several minutes for whatever it was that had flown out of his grasp, but the woman struggled against him fiercely. He finally swung her up over his shoulder, her upper body flopping down against his back. She kicked out helplessly and he swatted her butt hard in response. The camera swung away from them as he strode around the corner, his cargo having given up her fight.
As the camera focused once again on the apartment door, a large hand came around in front of it. It grasped the camera, darkening the picture, then the recording ended. Someone had ripped it away from its power source.
“It makes me sick to think of honest Pilgrim women being touched by scum like that,” Calvin growled into the silence that followed. “Even if we could get them back, they’re no good now. Once a woman’s tainted, she’s ruined for life. It’s a damn shame.”
Seth grunted in response. There was nothing to be said to Calvin’s statement, and the woman’s plight–frozen in time–haunted him. He turned around, surveying the corridor. Something had flown off the man’s necklace, and he wondered what it was. Probably just some little keepsake, but it would be interesting to know. He appeared to be one of the leaders; any clues Seth could find to his identity would be helpful when he returned to Discovery station.
Simply looking around, Seth found nothing, so he keyed the suit’s scanner to help him. Moving slowly and deliberately, he covered every inch of the corridor, pausing to investigate every anomaly.
Unfortunately there were quite a few, as each blaster burn and piece of debris registered separately on the scanner.
“What the hell are you doing that for?” Calvin asked, clearly disgusted. “We should get back to the ship and kill that bastard. Then we need to hunt the rest of ‘em down. They’re killers, and there’s only one way to deal with killers.”
“Shut up, Calvin,” Seth muttered. The sensor chirped in his headset as it picked up something. It was crystalline in structure. Following the readings, Seth made his way across the corridor. The remains of the small barricade were still there, although they had been torn apart–perhaps the man had come back to find his pendant? Using the sensor as his guide, Seth narrowed in on a broken bench made of hollow plast-crete. Cheap and easy to form, plast-crete was used in construction throughout the empire. In most cases it was brightly colored or shaped to resemble some other material. This was simply plain without ornamentation.
Using the sensor as his guide, Seth turned the plast-crete bench over. There was a rattle inside. After several tries, he realized he wasn’t going to be able to get it out by simply maneuvering the bench. Calvin, who had come up behind him to watch, spoke.
“Why don’t you just cut the damn thing open?” he asked. “That’s the best bet for getting’ it out.”
For once, Calvin was right. Removing a small laser-cutter from his tool belt, Seth carefully lined the tool up on the bench leg. Making his cut well above the place indicated by the sensor, Seth slowly made the cut. The leg came off easily.
He grasped the newly-freed leg and tilted it. A small, shiny object fell out into the open palm of his glove.
“What is it?” Calvin demanded.
“It’s a holographic pendant,” Seth said, turning the bauble over in his hands. “You know, the kind you can get taken in booths for a half a credit.”
“I ain’t never seen one of them booths,” Calvin admitted slowly. “We don’t hold with that kind of thing.”
“Have you ever been out of the asteroid belt?” Seth asked curiously.
“Nope, and I don’t wanna ever leave, either,” Calvin said harshly. “There ain’t nuthin’ for an honest Pilgrim out there. Me and my family plan to stay put on our rock.”
Seth sighed, wondering briefly what kind of man Calvin might have been if he’d grown up somewhere else, or had access to education. How did a person become so filled with hate?
“How does that thing work, anyway?” Calvin asked, trying not to look too curious.
“Watch,” Seth replied. Gripping the little disk between his thumb and forefinger, he held it up in the air.
Then he took a small light from his pouch and aimed it at the disk. “You shine the light through it, and the hologram will appear right in front of us.”
With a flick of his finger, he turned on the light. The beam hit the disk, and an image of two people took shape in front of them. One was the man who had lost the pendant, although he looked different in the hologram–younger, not as hard. Seth turned his attention to the woman with him, and his heart stopped.