Leanna O’Regan was roughly pushed forward through the door of her holding cell by the two guards in light-grey uniforms, their visored helmets concealing their faces. Each guard grabbed one of her arms, making the white blanket she was using as a shawl slip from her shoulders to the floor of the hallway. They started to follow Dante Valderez, his dark uniformed back obscuring the way ahead of them, but Leanna dug in her heels to stop them. The guards changed their grip on her arms to under her shoulders, and they started dragging her after Dante.

Leanna shouted at the back of Dante’s bald head, protruding above the gas tanks and tubing strapped to his back, “Let me go! You have no right to hold me like this!” Dante turned slowly to glare down at Leanna, limp in the grip of the guards. She continue shouting at him, “I’m freezing!” Leanna was still wearing the yellow hoodie, covering her white t-shirt, but her legs were bare again with her shorts. “I have to go to the bathroom, too!”

Dante breathed steadily behind his respirator, and continued to glare at her with eyes that were cold, black and heartless. “Follow me!” he commanded the two guards, and they turned down another hallway. Leanna stumbled along, trying to keep up with the guards brisk strides, looking out of the corner of her eye at the featureless steel walls and doors of the long, twisting hallways. They came upon a set of doors, one marked “STAIRS” and the other marked “WC”. “Leave the door open and don’t let her out until I come back!” he barked at the guards. He opened the door to the single washroom, letting the guards push Leanna in. Dante left down the hallway they came, and the two guards stood at the door, looking in at Leanna.

“Can I have some privacy, please?” she demanded of them, trying to see through their visors. The guards obliged and turned to face the hall. Leanna quickly used the toilet and afterwards washed her face and hands at the sink. The bathroom fixtures all were what you would expect in a sea-faring ship, and as Leanna dried her face in the rolling towel dispenser, she noted a small port hole high above the toilet. Dante had returned before she could look too closely at the porthole, and he tossed a set of light grey overalls to her. She barely had put them on over her shorts and hoodie, when the guards grabbed her again and the four of them went through the door marked “STAIRS”.

They went up a metal spiral staircase, dimly lit with yellow ship lights. Leanna peered upwards through the tall round shaft, seeing painted signs on the walls marking deck numbers and exits. Leanna slowed down, starting to breath heavily from the exertion of climbing the spiral staircase, but Dante and her guards continued in lockstep. They finally reached the top of the staircase, marked “STERN BRIDGE” and went through a door to an open room lined with banks of control panels and surrounded with sloping windows, looking out over a vast ship. The room was filled with men in the same light-grey uniforms as her guards, all of them studiously focussed on the various control panels and instruments. Leanna looked out the windows of the bridge deck, and could only see the ocean around her in the mid-day sun. She could also make out that they were aboard a huge ship of some kind, bristling with cannons and guns positioned on various decks painted in dark grey.

Dante was still leading them across the floor of the bridge, when he stepped aside to reveal a group of middle-aged men in the same black uniform as his. He took one of Leanna’s arms, releasing her from the guards, and pulled her forward to stand in front of the black-uniformed men. “This young woman claims to be Rosa Jardine, and she can tell us the CIM leaders and the location of their base of operations,” he growled.

One of the men, with grey hair crowning his balding head, looked closely at Leanna, and said to her, “Is that so? And she hasn’t told you anything yet?”

“She’s surprisingly resistant to my interrogation techniques, General Thompson,” Dante replied back, in a softened tone.

“General Thompson? You’re the bastard who authorized the use of chemical weapons and tactical nukes in the Southeast Asiatic War? I thought I recognized your stench when I got on this ship!” Leanna spat at the man Dante was addressing.

General Thompson looked non-plussed, ignoring Leanna and continued talking with Dante, “Perhaps we should demonstrate to the world the full power of this battle station, and in so doing, we can encourage Miss Jardine to reveal the CIM leaders and their base of operations?” The General turned to Leanna, and spoke to her directly with narrowed eyes and thin lips, “Perhaps we should target your hometown of Ojai for destruction?”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***