“Very sexy,” Jocasta agreed, stretching languidly as her body burned off the adrenaline from the chase. She smiled and extended a hand for Neil to shake.

“My name is Jocasta ap’Gwyn,” she said with a smile as they shook hands. Her face took on a slightly guilty look for a moment.

“Pleased to meet you Neil and you are locked and served,” she told him as her other hand came out of her jacket and thrust a stun tube into Neil’s chest, the injector cracking with a hiss of compressed air as it drove home its payload of narcotics and nerve inhibitors. The mechanic was still smiling as the sedative plunged him into blackness.


________


Neil awoke to the hum of subspace drives, the warm embrace of narcotic sleep still clinging to his extremities.  He was in a cell which had probably begun life as military brig, but had been improved by the application of a thick coat of synthetic rubber to prevent prisoners from hurting themselves. A lattice of woven crystal mono-mesh had been installed across the door to prevent egress.  A sonic shower and refresher unit were installed in one corner, though there was no provision for privacy. Outside a woman marched back and forth with precision that would have made a Galavite Drill Instructor proud. She was dressed in what appeared to be ancient Terran garments from the French Revolution, complete with a heavy musket slung over one shoulder. She was attractive, though the effect was somewhat ruined by the white powder she wore on her face and the fact that instead of hair she had a series of small snakes projecting from her skull. The snakes were tied up in a bun, and appeared to be gasping for breath which was restricted by the scrunchie the woman was wearing.


“Hey, you’re finally awake,” the woman remarked without pausing in her ceaseless and, now that Neil had time to contemplate it, silent, march. The snakes wheezed and hisses irritable as she spoke.


“You’ll have to forgive Cygi,” Jocasta said as she slid down an access ladder from an upper deck. She was dressed in a white flight suit with a green stripe down the seam. It was no affectation as one often saw in stationside bars, but a working suit, rated for vacuum with the addition of a helmet.


“She can be a bit eccentric,” Jocasta explained. All of the snakes ceased their gasping and tilted their head in exactly the same attitude as Cygi continued to march back and forth, switching her musket from one shoulder to the other with admirable precision. Several mechanical dragonflies floated down on soundless wings and the snakes began doing their best to strike at the little drones, though the hair tie prevented them from doing more than snapping a few inches short.


Jocasta took a selection of ration bars from a crate and fed them through a chute which emerged a few seconds later into the interior of the cell. She glanced up at her prisoner.


“Are you thirsty? We got some beer before we left Titan,” she explained nonchalantly.