RPlog:Guest of the Empire, part 4

Security Deck - ISC Broadsword The detention block is the Imperial standard of a well-built facility. Capable of handling the most aberrant criminals in the galaxy, the detention block is designed to intimidate and invoke fear and hopelessness in the prisoners held within its cells. A large ring of computer terminals on a raised circular dais in the center of the room hinders any attempt to move directly toward the raised detention block from the direction of the Turbolift. Numerous types of surveillance equipment descend from the ceiling and extend from the walls to alert the bridge in the event that trouble arises. In addition to the two stormtroopers and the detention officer manning the security stations, several more armed stormtroopers line the walls at regular intervals. The block of cells itself extend down a pentagonal corridor. Steel grate floors with red lights underneath them traverse the black walled block. The doors to the cells are magna-locked to prevent blasters from opening them, and are recessed into the walls. Small view-ports allow observers to peek into the cells and an oblong tray door allows meals to be served, without opening the doors. => Kyrin

Left to her own devices, occasionally fed... never enough and never regularly, left without means to end her torment forever, as much as she knows it would hurt the ones she cared about most... anything other than being an instrument of death to her people... Kyrin's lapsed into a catatonia punctuated by weeping and song. But the songs are of sorrow. Her people will die, and there's nothing she can do to save them... except betray the Republic she loves. How fair is it that a society that more or less ignores both Republic and Empire will suffer for the choices of an Exile, one of their outcasts, someone they didn't even want.

Behind those cold walls of Kyrin's cell, a whole different story has been playing out. Korynn has been quite the busy ISB agent, observing Kyrin via the cell's security cameras, and coordinating with Task Force Hammer's ISB command center on board the flagship, HIMS Malevolence. Fleming now has with him a series of computer programs designed to simulate holographic displays of both Chylene, a pair of Imperial Stardestroyers, and a series of planetary bombardment graphics generated from recordings of the Cochran incident. Along with that, an ISB computer specialist has been brought on board, with orders to operate the computer simulation per Fleming's orders. "Your responsibilities again, Mister Roth." The computer specialist answers Fleming dutifully. "I will simulate the bombing of Chylene in accordance with simulated orders you send over the scrambled comm frequency." Fleming locks eyes with the specialist for a few seconds. They were simple orders, requiring only a specialist's skill. Roth's life would depend on it, and he knew this. Korynn had made that clear a few minutes ago. "Very good." He turns toward one of the security personnel. "Open her cell."

Kyrin looks up when the cell opens again, and it's an almost listless expression on her face. Leaning against the wall in a corner, she looks little more than some kind of zoo specimen, a caged animal. What dignity she's had is completely gone. If anything, she might even welcome death at this point. Anything to end it once and for all.

The two CompForce troopers who enter behind Korynn carry nothing but stun batons. They don't want to bring anything into the cell (yet) that can provide lethal damage. This is standard ISB procedure when a prisoner is deemed "broken" by the ISB ranking Interrogator. The door seals itself shut, and Korynn makes a slow, patient approach on the unbound and broken Chyleni pilot. "I trust you have given your situation some due thought, Kyrin?" His query is quiet, and it even lacks the rage and malice that was frequently accessible. His voice sounds human... sane... even polite.

Kyrin hasn't heard her first name spoken, much less politely, by any Imperial... ever. She doesn't nod. There isn't any need to do so. He can see it with one eye closed and one stun baton tied behind his back. The answer is yes, she has thought about it. Shamefully, she looks away from her interrogator, her eyes on the floor. "What..." she says, her voice hoarse from all the singing and the weeping. Clearing her throat, she tries again. "What do you want to know?"

Folding his hands behind his back, Korynn takes a step away, lifting his chin. There are a few moments of silence, as he chooses his first question. "I want strategic information on the New Republic's blockade run operation. Navigation routes, task force sizes and deployment, comm frequencies you've been using, code words for operations. Anything and everything."

The realization sinks in. He wants everything. And anything. Weakly, she shakes her head. Kyrin Sh'vani's so close to the edge, but still. No, she can't. "Go fly off a short platform, sir," she replies with the uttermost weary courtesy she can muster. "A very short platform." And then she looks up. Defiance is still there. Not yet. Not yet.

Fleming doesn't turn to face Kyrin, but his eyes narrow and he ceases his movements. For a moment, he questions how it is possible that this alien, a woman, is able to withstand such torment. For a moment, he allows himself to feel regret for what is about to happen. He is not a monster... he's indoctrinated. His love for the Emperor is all that matters. Wiping the regret away with an overwhelming sense of duty, he lifts a comlink to his hand. "Bridge, this is Fleming. Route the vid-feed from Task Force Zero to Prisoner AA-47-Ketra's cell." The voice of the computer specialist, Roth, comes over Korynn's comlink. "Aye." Holo-projectors built into the corners of the ceilings come to live, broadcasting a holographic representation of a flat-video feed, showing Chylene from what would seem to be the bridge of a Stardestroyer. The second destroyer is visible from its vantage point, sitting off to starboard. "Your sense of humor amazes me, Sh'vani, but I'm sure the people of your home planet wouldn't find it amusing," he states, eyes locked on the holographic display.

Kyrin frowns as she recognizes the tall trees and pylons of her homeworld. There's nowhere else in the galaxy quite like it. Her nostrils twitch as if she can even smell the unique scent of the leaves amongst the boughs. There are even Chyleni in the images, their skin tones ranging the visible spectrum, proof that the Imperials didn't assume that blue is the only skin shade her people came in. Strands of lights hover between the gallant trees, silver in tone, chased with gold filigree. Platforms are strung between quartets of trees, and many of them have the sacred sand paintings inscribed on them, forever preserved with a stasis field. On one, a dancer is in the process of creating such a piece of art, colored sands being flung about as part of an intricate dance, wings and tail whirling about as the dancer spins and glides his way across the platform, galleries packed by an audience seemingly gasping with the beauty of the creative process. Still, Kyrin shakes her head, denying it as a trick. It has to be... right?

"It will be a slow and meticulous process," explains Fleming. "You will have plenty of opportunities to stop this pointless rebellion and begin your service to the Empire. First, they will knock out communications. Then, they will begin bombarding centers of civilian activity. Finally, ground troops and starfighter patrols will hunt and destroy the rest of your species, leaving Chylene to be a planet meant for resource mining, which will be used to bolster the Imperial Fleet's war resources." He turns to face Kyrin, with no lack of honesty showing in his eyes. "You, Kyrin, will be the last of your species to be eradicated, and it will begin with those ghastly wings of yours." He tips his head toward the wing spars just visible from his vantage point across the room. "If you begin answering my questions... you can not only save your people and your way of life, but you will prevent us from bolstering our war machine with resources from Chylene. It's..." Here he pauses, making a conceding hand-gesture. "...a loss we're willing to accept, in exchange for the information you can provide. Either way, Coruscant is going to fall. You can either preserve your culture... or you can be responsible for its destruction. There are no other options."

Kyrin simply shakes her head. "Enough," she whispers softly. "Do whatever you want with me, but leave my people in peace. I cannot condemn them. I am Exiled from them. They should not pay for my crimes. All I ask is that you leave me my... ghastly... wings. They are all I have now." Instinctively, she pulls them in tighter as if that could prevent their amputation, her eyes fearfully going to the door.

With his lips pressed together, Korynn continues in that same fashion of giving ample time to consider his prisoner's responses, and calculating her requests. When he speaks, it is with that same slow, honest sounding tone he's been using all along. "I am a reasonably forgiving man when it is appropriate, Kyrin." He turns again, lifting the hand that holds his comlink once more. "Bridge. Inform Captain Prota to stand down." "Aye sir," comes Roth's voice. "I copy. Transmitting orders to stand down from operation Base Delta Seven now." Lowering the comlink, Korynn turns away from the holoprojection, which has now switched to a tactical holograph. The two Stardestroyers are shown as red wedges above the blue and green graphical display of Chylene, and they slowly begin moving into a higher orbit, facing the horizon rather than down at the planet itself. He takes a few steps back toward Kyrin, narrowing his eyes slightly. "Kyrin." He shakes his head from side to side, then closes his eyes and lowers his head as if in mourning. "Ahh, Kyrin. You are so like the rest of your rebel friends. You always ask for too much."

Chylene as the new Cochran. And the New Republic probably wouldn't care much because they didn't have much or any investment in the place. Sure, Chylene has a Senator, but there aren't any trade agreements, really. Nothing really worth trading with her people, and not many of the Chyleni actually like leaving home, so they're pretty self-sufficient. Like Ewoks. A shudder wracks the pilot's form as a sigh of relief is exhaled. Base Delta Seven averted. "We... do have that habit, yes," she agrees with her captor. "Anyone who wishes true freedom asks much of others." Somewhere in her is that old defiance, but it's so far down there. So dampened.

"Detain her," orders Korynn, and the two CompForce troopers move in as they are trained to do, going first for the Chyleni's arms.

There is a token struggle, but by this time, Kyrin's too weary to do much. But she has to try anyway.

Changing frequencies on his comlink, Korynn now addresses the open frequency to the security control center. "Extend four binding ropes. Two from the ceiling, two from the floor." He waits patiently as two small hatches open in the floor and the ceiling each. Steel ropes, similar to the ones that had held her up before, are spilt out, and the CompForce troopers go to work first at attaching one rope each to binders on the prisoner's wrists. "Bring in a surgical kit," he adds in finality to the comlink, then snaps it shut, his eyes icing over.

Fear. It's there, in her eyes. The fear that he will make good on the threat. Again, she struggles, but it's too little, too late. A 'kit'. For something like that. Kyrin screams.

As soon as the CompForce troopers finish binding the screaming alien's wrists, the ropes above her are drawn taut, lifting her up. Systematically, the loyal troopers begin binding the second pair around her ankles, attaching tightly bound binders to each ankle and strapping the ropes into them, locking them down. The door to the cell opens, letting the screams spill out into the hallway beyond. The orderly who brings in the surgical kit winces at the sight, and quickly passes the kit off to Korynn before turning and scampering out of the cell. "String her up," orders Korynn, his words as silken as the ice in his eyes. The ropes in the ceiling draw her yet higher, as the ropes in the floor simultaneously tighten, 'stringing her up' in mid-air. "A bit lower," he instructs, and those outside who are operating the devices let her be lowered a bit more, so that her wing joints are in Korynn's arm span. "Very good."

Kyrin doesn't have much range of motion, but the trembling of her entire frame, the sheer terror... if anyone in the room gets off on that sort of thing, they're probably getting a near-overload of pleasure from the Chyleni's predicament. The screaming doesn't get louder, it gets hoarser, weaker, tears running down her face. Even so, she tries to flap her wings. It's an involuntary reaction. When in danger, fly. Fly away. But even this trails off, the screams fading into soft moans, almost pitiful creeling.

Korynn moves so that he's standing behind Kyrin, and with a cold detachment observes as her wings flap in an involuntary way. He observes them carefully, critically, searching for the place where they join the rest of her body; looking, he is, for the right place to begin the procedure. Perhaps he is a monster. Turning aside, he sets the surgical kit on the floor, and replaces the gloves on his hands with a pair of rubber surgeon's gloves, letting them snap down against his wrists. The sound should aid in the breaking. Removing a laser scalpel and a pair of surgical tongs, he strides toward Kyrin's left. "Secure it," he instructs, nodding his head toward her leftmost wing. As the troopers move to get their hands on the Chyleni's angelic appendage, Korynn addresses her one more time. "Kyrin... I beg you. Tell me what I want to know."

Kyrin trembles throughout her entire frame. She can't help it. When her wing is secured, the other one continues flapping almost frantically, requiring it to also be secured. And thus, she's almost quiescent when Korynn approaches again.

With his two underlings holding the alien's wings, Korynn sees no choice but to continue. He tears open the fabric of her prisoner's jumpsuit, prods the surgical tongs into the flesh between her shoulders and the wing joints, and points the laser scalpel at her skin. Setting it to the first setting, the scalpel comes to life, sending a microscopic laser a centimeter out in front of it. With a meticulous gesture, the ISB interrogator begins carving open the skin of his prisoner.

No anesthetic. Kyrin screams again, but it's the weak mewling cry of a creature knowing it's doomed. And given how she's being held down, she can't move enough, although her body twitches against her bonds, muscles clenching and unclenching automatically. But the part Korynn's carving up... perfectly still. A whimper escapes the prisoner's throat, her face wet with a mixture of sweat and tears.

Once he's carved a half-circle in the skin around the alien's joint, Fleming inserts the surgical tongs and spreads them open, tearing some of the minor flesh beneath the creature's shoulders. His precision prevents any tendons or ligaments from being affected. Wasting no time, he reaches into the wound and finds a spare artery. With a quick flick of his fingers, the artery is crushed, and blood begins spurting with each pump of the prisoner's heart. It spills over his gloves, onto his shirtsleeve, across Kyrin's back, and splatters finally down onto the floor. "And now, for the tendons," he says, raising his voice just enough that it could be heard clearly above Kyrin's whimpers.

Another scream, this of sheer fright and terror and not a little pain. "STOP!" Kyrin shouts, then her voice breaks into sobbing. "Stop... stop... stop... I will tell you..." And then she hangs limply in her bonds, her head lowered. And then she begins to speak. Her words are condemning. Everything Fleming seems to want to know. More and more, nearly babbling in her haste to get it out, draining intel out of her lips like the lifeblood draining from her veins. Information gushes, spurting into the room, sopped up by the waiting ears both flesh and mechanical. And when she's done ages later, she whispers two words. "Kill me."

Korynn pinches the artery shut every time Kyrin speaks, opening it again when she falters, until those last two words are uttered. He smirks wryly at that, leaves the surgical tongs pinched down on the artery as he turns about to face her forward. He looks into her broken eyes, his smirk the sight of an enemy who has succeeded in his terrible plans. "No." Instead, he raises his arm and strikes her firmly across the forehead, throwing her weakened form into unconsciousness. It would be an easy task, what with the torment he has put her through already. Then... he begins putting her back together.