The cell door clanged shut with shocking force. After a pause of less than a heartbeat the heavy electromagnetic locks fired, sealing the cell. Kyra Ren took a step back from the doorway cursing with enough originality that even the guard seemed. That was fair, In fifteen years of wandering the spinward colonies she had enjoyed plenty of opportunities to learn. Not for the first time she cursed the day she had ever heard of Benson. It had seemed like a simple job, in and out and score a few thousand credits without anyone the wiser, instead it looked like she might be here quite a bit longer than she had planned. That wasn't such a bad outcome in the grand scheme of things, plenty of places they would have just shot her.

“Your mother should have spat you out you ditch dropped son of a Keefian whore!” she screamed at the back of the departing guard. The other prisoners hooted and jeered and the guard paused for a moment and then walked from the cells without a further word. Kyra was a trim woman in her late twenties, lean and pale skinned with slightly upturned eyes which bespoke ancestry in one of the long burn colonies in East March of the Taurian J. She had short blonde hair which hung in an untidy series of tresses and braids that were badly in need of washing. She wasn’t stunning, certainly not in her current disheveled state, but she had a vivacity and intensity that turned heads or least she normally did. Currently, dressed in a shapeless spacers jumpsuit and covered in yellow gray uranium dust she didn’t cut much of a figure.

The jail, like most structures on Benson, was a prefab unit, the kind of low cost, low density, high endurance structure that could be customized in anyone of a dozen configurations. The individual cells were ribbed metal containers with woven wire paneling that had probably began life as transport for cattle or other livestock before being downgraded for human beings.  There was an open air toilet and a sink at the far end but no other furniture. Either the locals didn’t expect people to remain here long, or, more likely, they didn’t care much about their prisoners comfort. Unfortunately, the plural of prisoners was true in this case.

A man, bearded and disheveled grinned at her without warmth while a fat woman with lank hair sat in the far corner by the toilet, her arms drawn up around her knees with an expression of misery on her face. The man took a step towards her, his eyes gleaming with an unwholesome hunger.

“Why don’t you just go along with it girl, old Jeb will show you how things are…”

Kyra kicked him hard  in the knee, waiting till his weight was on it and angling the blow to drive the joint outward away from its natural alignment. The big man screamed and twisted downwards, only to meet her knee as she drove it upwards into his chin, cutting off his scream with a clack of teeth that was painful even to hear. It was probably unnecessary for her to drive her elbow into his kidney as he fell, but Kyra had been taught that you didn’t stop putting the boot in just because the other fellow was down. The man, Jeb she presumed, fell in a writhing heap. She grabbed his shoulder with her wiry fingers and pulled him over onto his back, expending far more effort than it had taken to put him down. Blood leaked from his lips from where he had bitten his own tongue. Without wasting time or motion she knelt down on his chest pressing her forehead to his. The mans breath was foul with old booze and some sort of herbal tobacco but she paid it no mind. Instead she pressed a finger to his temple and focused her mind.

“You will never touch me again,” she commanded pouring her will into the words. Jeb whimpered and his eyes rolled back into his head. As far as projection went, it was about as simple and brutal a technique as you could use. There was the sharp smell of urine on the air, Jeb had wet himself when she had assaulted his mind. Unsteadily she pushed herself to her feet and glanced at the woman cowering in the corner. SHe looked away instantly unwilling to meet Kyra’s eyes.

“Fuck this fucking planet,” she cursed a moment before one of the guards hit her from behind with a shock batton and she was hurled into unconsciousness.  


[@Flagg]