EMCOTS 8

=Emergence (Concertverse) - Chapter 8=
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==Broken==
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AFS Arcadia
Orbit, Timkovichi
Coventry Province
Lyran Commonwealth
24 August, 3142
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Commander Albright stepped into the wardroom on the ship's third gravdeck with a noteputer in his hand and his freshest duty uniform.  He doubted the latter would make an impression, but his studies so far implied it might at least make an impression on his most troubling patient ever.
The girl's name, apparently, was Cynthy, although whether that was her birth name or an appellation given to her by her former master, he was uncertain of.  She was wearing a generic crewwoman's jumpsuit in place of anything else.  As always her gaze unsettled him.  Such a young face shouldn't have it, something of a cross between a predator's hunting look and someone who had already experienced too much pain.  "You.  The talker."
"Yeah."  He took the seat at the table left for them.  Unlike him, she was not free to move, handcuffs holding her to her own chair due to her frequent aggressive outbursts.  Remember, she responds well to aggressiveness.  She's not a normal patient.  But I can't let that go too far.  "At some point I figure you're going to have to talk."
"There's no point.  The Khan will kill you.  Maybe me, for surrendering."
Not for the first time Albright wondered if it was time to show her the "Great Khan" she spoke of.  Whatever Malvina Hazen was before, she was now a broken, comatose figure in the Arcadia's infirmary.  Seeing her stripped of all power might just be what broke her hold over Cynthy… or it might cause its own psychiatric damage.  He couldn't be sure.
"Well, until she does, why not humor me?"
Albright was rewarded with a moment of silent contemplation.  "There's nothing to speak about.  I am isorla.  Won by the Khan's victory, my life belongs to her."
"You're a human being, Cynthy, not a piece of property."
"I am isorla," she snarled, her arms straining against the handcuffs.  "And the Chingghis Khan will kill you for taking me!  I just hope she lets me watch before she punishes me too!"
Albright said nothing, jotting notes down and waiting to see if she'd say anything else.  When she didn't, he sighed and stood.  "I didn't want to do this," he said.  "But there's one thing I need to show you."  With no reply from her, he want to the door and the guards beyond.  "Take her with us."
The infirmary was outside the gravdeck, since that was safer for the patients and easier on the equipment than having to constantly switch between gravity by rotation and gravity by thrust.  The guards kept the girl moving with no sign of trouble.  Indeed, Cynthy made no remarks on their way, merely a distant stare and occasional twitch of her mouth into a half-crazed grin, as if she were imagining something amusing.  Given her mental state, Albright wasn't sure he'd ever want to know what was going on in her head.  Given her violent outbursts, it wouldn't be pleasant.  God above, what did these people do to that girl?
After going up one tube and down another hall with the practice born of years on ship duty, Albright arrived at the infirmary hatch.  Inside most of the patients were from the Clan DropShips that were destroyed in their original fight, plus some wounded fighter pilots from both sides.  Very few of the casualties were from the ground fighting.  Every one of them was secured to their beds by straps, with machines gently trilling as they read EKG, EEG, and other life signs.  He glanced back to see Cynthy was glowering at some of the occupants.  "Cowards.  They should have invoked bondsref."
More of these strange customs.  Is this what these 'Clans' turn people into?  Bloodthirsty murderers?  He said nothing regardless, bringing her to the critical care area, and the main occupant.
Malvina Hazen was not a pretty sight.  She'd suffered one of the more gruesome fates a MechWarrior could have while still possibly living through it, with her shattered cockpit maiming her body.  No limbs were left intact on her, and an eye seemed to be missing as well.
Albright turned to see Cynthy's reaction. Her eyes searched carefully, as if trying to find the one sign that would reveal this was all a fake.  After several seconds she shook her head.  "No.  This… no!  She is the Chingghis Khan, she can't be beaten!"
"She was."  Albright said the words gently, watching the horror on Cynthy's face and starting to feel like he'd just made a terrible mistake.  But she needed this, to shock her out of this worship.
"But she… she cannot lose.  She never loses.  She destroys the people who fight her."  The girl's voice was barely a squeak.  The look on her face made her disbelief plain.  Reality was no longer working as it should be.  Everything was going wrong, like if gravity stopped working or two plus two suddenly equaled fifty.  When she wasn't given an answer, she screamed, "The Khan cannot lose dammit!"
"She did.  You're not her… 'isorla' anymore, Cynthy, and we'll do everything we can to make sure you're cared for.  Maybe even find if we can get your parents back."
"They're dead.  Gone." For the first time Cynthy used a contraction without flinching.  The shocked look wasn't fading.  "She… she is… was… all I have."
Albright swallowed.  God, what have I done?  I just wanted to break her from dependency, but I might've just broken her completely.
Tears flowed down the girl's face.  Her eyes kept pulling over toward the broken form of Malvina Hazen, as if to remind herself it was true, that Malvina was there, and was an utter wreck of a being.  "You were supposed to conquer," she muttered at the unconscious form.  "I was going to watch you conquer and become ilKhan!  You promised!"  She turned away from Malvina, as if the sight couldn't be borne anymore.
Maybe she can still heal.  If this breaks her association with these Clans enough, she can become a normal young woman.  She…
Albright noticed the intensity in Cynthy's eyes too late.  She swung back to Malvina, moving with surprising agility through the zero-G environment, and her mouth lunged for the breathing tube (given her hands were cuffed behind her back).  Her momentum carried her though the empty air above Malvina, and with it came the tube, drawing it out in a cloud of wet droplets.
The guards, trained in zero-G themselves, pushed off after her and got her in mid-air, but it was too late. The tube was already pulled.  An electronic tone sounded as the respirator recognized it was no longer connected to its patient.  Nurses floated over, using the rails on other beds to guide themselves, but when they got their hands on the tube Cynthy wouldn't let go, keeping her jaw firmly set to hold it in place.
Albright watched in disbelief, and more than a little guilt, while Cynthy fought and writhed, resisting the guards and nurses trying to bring the respirator loose.  His eyes wandered down to the patient, to see if she was dying yet from the loss.
Her eye opened.
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The darkness ended for Malvina Hazen.
At first there was just the vague sense of existing.  Pain came next, dull pain, familiar.  But there was the unfamiliar.  The stings, all over her face and neck and arms… no, not her arms.  Her arms felt… nothing.  Her legs nothing.  No pain, no ache, no anything.  Just a nothingness.
Her chest burned.  The fire filled her lungs and for a moment she thought they would stop, but they kept working, forcing the breath in and out, in and out.
Her open eye burned too.  Burned from the light, so sudden and bright.  The other eye… nothing.  Like it wasn't there.
Her mind searched for answers.  Battle.  Yes.  She and Black Rose, triumphant over the Mad Cat with the strange orange bird on it, and more 'Mechs with that same bird, and the white bird with gold-fringed wings.  The warning sirens as fire tore her 'Mech to shreds.  But what else had happened?
The light.  And then darkness.
Yet she was alive.  As her mind processed that fact, other memories came to be, and with them, a certain realization of what this meant.
A shriek drew her attention and forced her to finally pay attention to her surroundings.  To one side was a man, wearing a red uniform that included the white hawk she'd seen on those landing ships.  Above her, hoving in zero-G, was Cynthy, a plastic tube lodged firmly in her mouth while two men and a couple figures in white with red trim wrestled to pull it out.  Their rotation brought to view Cynthy's back, where her wrists were cuffed together.
I am a prisoner.  The thought crackled like lightning through Malvina's brain.  The world cracked around it as if reality itself would fall apart.  She, the great Chinggis Khan… a prisoner.
The Lyrans would not spare me.  They would kill me.  For Apostica, for everything else.  Who are these hawk people?
She tried to raise a hand, but the nothingness sensation remained.  No muscle reported movement to her brain.  There was a void where it should be.  She willed her left hand to come up into her vision, but nothing moved that time either.  Her legs would not answer commands.
"Commander, one side!"  MedTechs — they were the ones in white — flew into view.  Hands reached for her and she heard voices making notes.  "She's stable.  Looks like the respirator's not necessary now."
"Who?"  The word came out of her mouth with little energy behind it.  Indeed, they barely seemed to hear it.  "Who are you?" she managed, forcing her throat to speak.
Above there was a shriek, with Cynthy's mouth finally emptied of the tube.  The guards had her under control.
"Who are you?"  Malvina repeated.  Not much energy in those words either, but more force behind them.  She needed to know why.  Why her victory was snatched away, why her world was disintegrating every second she remained awake.
The man in the red uniform cleared his throat.  "I'm Lieutenant Commander John Albright, Royal Navy.  Khan Malvina Hazen, you are aboard the Arcadian Federation Ship Arcadia, flagship of the 1st Battle Fleet of the Royal Federation, and are being held by request of the Lyran Commonwealth on charges of major crimes against Humanity."
"There is no… Royal Federation."
"Not in your Inner Sphere, no.  We come from another, misjumped, and arrived here."
It was such a mad thing to say.  Not her Inner Sphere?  What other Inner Sphere could there be?  But the truth was plain.  It was obvious.  Yes… they were not from her Inner Sphere.  They were from Somewhere Else, tossed across the tides of reality to herald her defeat.
For all that her voice had been a hoarse whisper before, the laugh that erupted from her throat was surprisingly loud, drawing the attention of everyone in the infirmary.  Fate exists.  It took Fate to defeat me! she thought as the realization rippled through her.  I could be stopped by nothing less!  I would have been ilKhan! The laugh was joined by another, until it all just came out, agonizing laughter that felt like it would suffocate her, but she couldn't stop, she couldn't, because reality had gone wrong simply to spite her and what else could a warrior do but laugh at such a thing?  To have been so great that nothing else could stop them?
And yet… yet she had been stopped…  "I cannot feel my limbs," she said, the laughter subsiding.
"Because they're gone.  You were maimed by a cockpit collapse.  You're a quadriplegic now."
Of course.  Because even these strangers from beyond could not defeat me otherwise. The titters came, and with it the laughter, laughter so hard she really was suffocating herself, and yet the weeping joined it, deep sobs she'd never otherwise let herself fall into, not even when Alexei died, no, only now as her world crashed around her and everything was ruined.  Her enemies in the Clan, so terrified of her they would never challenge her directly, would now make their moves, and she could not stop them.  They would keep her conquests, oh yes, but she would be Abjured, her name treated like mud, her genes tossed aside, maybe even her entire Bloodheritage Reaved, and all because reality decided to spite her!
The laughter and crying choked, and it burned, and she loved it, and she just wanted it to end.
"Kill me," she managed between the sobs and laughter.
"Pardon?"
"I invoke bondsref!  Kill me!  Kill me!"  That was all she managed before the laughter and crying took her over again.
Albright didn't move, but he did shake his head.  He would not kill her.
"Kill me, Cynthy!  My last command!  Kill me!"
But there was no sign of her bondswoman.  Just the "drip drip drip" of an IV nearby.  Through the laughter and sobbing she felt a numbness claim her.  They were sedating her.
Denied even death.  What have I left?
Slowly, quietly, she pitched back into the darkness, and welcomed it as she'd once welcomed Alexei into her arms.
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'Albright watched Khan Hazen drift off into a sedated slumber.  Beside him, one of the naval corpsmen pulled out the syringe of sedative from the IV auxiliary tube.  "Doctor's orders," he said to Albright.
"Right." Albright sighed and turned away.  He made practiced little jumps and used the handholds to leave the ward.  The two MPs held Cynthy between them.  The adolescent girl was crying as hard as Hazen had been.  "You're free of her."
Cynthy didn't respond.
Dear God I think I screwed up, he thought.  I screwed up big time.  "It's going to take time to adjust, but you can have a life," he continued.  "You can find yourself."
And yet again, there was no response, merely more weeping.
Seeing that there was no point in continuing on, Albright motioned to the door.  "Return her to the cell.  Make sure her meal's especially appetizing."
"A waste of good food, she usually just throws it all around." one of them said.
"Maybe she won't this time.  But it's important.  We've broken the hold that woman had on her.  Now we need to get her on the path to healing."
There was a skeptical glance from the guards that mirrored his own fears.  They took her away without another word.
Albright departed himself, for his nearby office, and the report he was going to be filing with Medical.  They'd probably not be any happier than he already was with himself.
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*Wiki Note: Chapter main written by Captain Orsai.
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EMCOTS 8
Category:Works by Captain Orsai