"Sir, the Militia girl is boarding a Guardian's ship, headed to Mercury. What do you propose?" "Send a Leech. Let's test their mettle," It spoke, thick, purple lips heavy, clapping with every syllable. -- She had been aboard the Deonida Verdant for days now. She was posted up in the small closet in the vessel's control hall, where water seeped from the ceiling, creating a few inches of sewage sloshing across the strangely textured ground, and where it was always freezing so as to prevent the engine from running warm. She had been able to forage some old quilts from the storage area, old and musty, which were always damp from the thin sheen of the piss water; when she stepped into the craft, she was given her space and nothing else. It was similar to a warzone, really. She had been up to the cockpit a few times, and from what she'd seen, the ship was once a squatter vessel. Drug addled vagrants holed up here, constantly sticking tetanus needles in their arms or conducting bashful orgies, and when her surrogate captor had taken her into space, she realized he wasn't much different. The man was slovenly, his quarters covered in grease, shells and porno magazines, and the cockpit was a pigsty of used ramen containers, ranging from spicy to garlic. So when he had heard his marching footsteps thunder across the floors, reverb traveling across the river he walked through, and opened the door to find her in there. He left it open, a cue for her to stay with him, something no sane human would understand. He wasn't much for talking, especially to her. So she got up from her moldy mattress ridden with bedbugs and laid with springs that jutted into her shoulder blades when she tried to sleep and walked behind him. The ship's walls were patched with posters, mostly all indie rock bands from Old Earth, and old Vargas pinups that showed scantily clad women, most bearing all. There was also ornate furniture, much of it with studded and polished features, rips in the leather with cloth hanging out, entrails from a decomposing carcass. He stopped in the bridge overlooking the cockpit, and rested one hand on his waist. "So," he said with a drawl, "the fuel you gave me wasn't enough. Only gonna last us two more days here, maybe one, and navigation tells me Mercury is three days away." His eyes were cold, callused and uncaring. The hand snaked to his belt, littered with tools, and into his knife holster. "Now, here's the rub." He spoke slowly, wanting her to understand, voice low and sinister. "I can squeeze in an extra few more hours if I get this here girl running a little lighter." She knew what he meant, and her voice wavered. "Don't you have some dead weight on the ship you can sacrifice?" He shook his head, a smile creasing to the corner of the lip, twisting his face in an ugly way. He ran a hand through his auburn beard, combing out fecal matter and lice. "Don't be coy, sweetheart. Afraid my cargo is important. Got a lot of money in my storage. You're eating my rations, using my utilities. Burning fuel." A numbness reached over her chest. She tried to speak, but her tongue would not move, her jaw was putty, adhesive stuck between her lips. Moths clawed the inside of her stomach and fluttered within. Before she could muster enough strength to plead for her livelihood, he began talking. "Now, you've got options. First off, I can blast your head off. Painless, quick, not too messy. I might need the bullet, but if it's between that and being stranded in space, I'll sacrifice. But that's a privilege only silence can afford. If I hear a squeal out of you-" he reached fully into the sleeve where his knife was situated, slid it out with a sharp hiss, sharp and polished- "Either I will jettison you out of the airlock and watch you suffocate, or I will cut you into little pieces and drink your blood after I skin you." He stared at her wavering eyes with dead precision, keeping locked onto her, brown eyes eating away at her and leaving her shaking in fear. She was not sure whether or not he was serious, if he was truly demented enough, before she realized it probably wasn't the greatest idea to question his sanity. A smile reached over his face, and he kept the knife in his left hand, going into his holster and getting his Barett .45 with one fell swipe of his hand. "I'm glad we could come to an agreement," he said as the gun's muzzle pressed to her forehead. She crumpled to the ground as it stayed there without hesitation, tears beginning to slip from the corner of her eyes, his finger wrapping around the trigger and slowly pressing down when their world was throttled. They recoiled to the huge crash seeming to com from the ship's hull, him firing the gun in instinct, the bullet colliding with the ceiling and making an indenture in its wake. She looked up and saw the cockpit's glass shattered, a huge structure now attached to its perimeter. Air rushed from the seams in its doors, adjusting to the air pressure and oxygen of the ship, and soon its doors opened. The lights above them flickered off after a few tense seconds, emergency lights coming on. They were red and dim, casting a filter over the two, the image of him about to blow her head off now vacant from both minds as they watched the contents of the pod spill out as its doors open. He took his gun and gave it to her, the .45, slinging the heavy machine gun off his back. His armor wrapped around him from thin air, visor sliding over his face. becoming the drake impersonated. With a steely look as it obscured his eyes, he stared at her. "Lock and load, sweetheart. Time to kill some Smokers."