FSE

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I was never the person they wanted. They expected me to listen, to conform, to obey. My parents were supportive. Not of me, but of the authorities. "Stay in school" They said. "Do us proud, Auriga."

No, I don't want to stay in their rigid, agonizingly structured system. The Empire wanted little more from its citizens than to exploit them for their own means and expand their reach. And to what end?

Their education was hardly objective, with an unhealthily generous sprinkling of government propaganda on top, disinformation mixed around in the middle and boiled in the cauldron of control. I didn't want to live ignorant, to be another cog in their war machine.

I've heard stories about how it is like elsewhere on the Terran Commercial Conglomerate worlds from the merchants that came from there. Where the air is fresh and you can open a window without all your furniture turning black like the lungs of a smoker and breathe properly without a mask. Where people could go out whenever they liked and not be constrained by rubbish curfews. Of course, the government tells us that it's not real and it's propaganda. But I know sincerity when I hear it.

So I left. I left their colony on that stinky planet, the endless labyrinth of factories belching out smoke, the stench of burning steel omnipresent in the air. I left for greener worlds in secret. No one will even notice I'm gone.

An agent of the Xenos Drakos Fylates picked me up quietly along with about a dozen "troubled" youth. The definition of problem child was quite broad here. He came here to spy, I guess. And find some recruits, the lucky few who get to get off this prison planet.

I felt a loud metallic thunk and my mind jolted back to the present. We were sitting buckled in, along the wall mounted seats in a small sleek transport of the XDF and I could feel my limbs floating freely in the lack of gravity. The craft was gliding silently toward a massive spacecraft that I couldn't even see the ends of through the tiny windows. What little I could see from looking through the cockpit a few metres to the left of me showed a relatively small rectangular section but still large shimmering wall embedded in the side of the thing.

I had sometimes seen something like that coating the surface of the Empire battleships though nothing ever that huge, especially not as a hangar door. It was some sort of energy shield.

I realised that I was staring dumbly fixated at it in awe and looked back into the cabin. Everyone else had their heads turned and staring through the windshield too, except the XDF agent.

He looked really odd. His body was just like a human's but he had a head of a lizard. Was it a lizard? What kind of lizard has horns? He had a tail too, one that tapered from the base all the way to the end. He wore a thick suit with white patches and patches peppered with many small squares of varying shades of grey, and a ridiculously shaped helmet that accommodated his horns and snout. The back of the helmet was a hood like thing that reminded of a triceratops' head without the horns.

I felt my arms and legs get pulled down as we entered the artificial gravity of the interior of the vessel, white light flooding through the tiny window slits. The vehicle lurched lightly as its rear exited the thick energy shield.

He wasn't wearing a helmet now though. And I wondered silently if it was considered zoophilia if I liked the handsome features of his scaly snout. I didn't even know his name. He simply asked us to call him "Dragon". How specific.

To be honest, I was quite scared of what they were going to do to me in this place. I've heard stories of how they tortured the people they brought on board and how no one who goes in is ever seen again. Let's just say that stories about tentacles entering eye sockets don't make for nice dreams.

I shuddered.

Those stories aren't true. Anything is better than being sent to the Gulags and being worked to death. Or so I told myself.

A hiss came from outside the craft as the thrusters fired retrograde, bringing our forward velocity to a halt and the bottom of the vehicle touched down gently on the floor of the hangar. The rear ramp lowered and the grey metallic plating of the floor became visible and warm, pleasant smelling air rushed in which I swallowed eagerly. We started to unbuckle our seat belts and stand up. But Dragon raised up his hand.

"Wait, let me go out first."

My eyes followed him as he descended the ramp and spoke to a green coloured female who also wasn't wearing a helmet, exchanging polite salutes first. As they talked, I could see five other soldiers in full uniform standing at attention to the sides of the ramp and I couldn't see their faces with their helmets on.

The two down there sounded like they were just chatting casually, which was good, I suppose.

Dragon said something to the five just standing there, they moved solemnly and formed into a circle spaced just large enough to hold our group.

"Come on down. Stay in the circle." He instructed.

We obeyed, went down the ramp single file and bunched together. The green one came closer and spoke.

"Welcome to the Mothership. I am General Marianne Asteri. I'm not supposed to be here but I was in the area so I came to say hi." She giggled.

"Has Sol briefed you yet?" She asked.

So that's what his name is. She seems quite happy about something too. Everyone nodded. They all looked a bit nervous and I had butterflies in my stomach. I looked around a bit. The massive hangar was filled with rows of assorted craft, fighters and bombers and transports. But there was no one else around and the place was eerily quiet.

"Okay, let's go to Medical Centre 1."

The soldier beside me took a hand off her rifle and waved her arm, "Two lines." She commanded.

We obeyed.

Two of them flanked us on either side and one walked behind us to escort us as the two without helmets led us in front to where we had to go, my gaze following the spiny backs of their heads. It was kind of scary, like we were sheep being sent to the slaughter.

Asteri looks back and smiles. It wasn't a creepy or malicious smile and was sincere as far as I could tell. "Don't be scared. This is just standard protocol."

No one said a thing as we exited the hangar and were led into the corridor. No one knew what to feel anymore. I looked back at the people in the group. I recognised some of them as those who had been sent to the "Home" from school. Did Sol break them out? The corridor was empty too, surprising for such a large station. They must have prepared for our arrival or maybe it's just late and everyone's resting.

We were all about 18 by Earth years already. About the time that most of us would be drafted into the military or sent to work in the industry. I knew for a fact that it was common for men and women who served never to return and even more common to lose an arm, leg or eye. Those sent to the industries also suffer from poor health and don't last long. Pfft, thank goodness for cloning tech.

Losing your "humanity" to avoid such a fate didn't seem so bad to me, particularly if I get a better life. That's why I am here.

We were brought to a rather large white double door with a red cross painted on it and a sign which read "Medical Section 1". The doors slid open and three lizards went in first, one stood by a door just next to the inside of the entrance and the other two went through the door. The two last masked ones remained behind us in the corridor and the two unmasked ones stood in front so we had no where else to go but in.

"Go on down the stairs." Sol instructs, keeping a serious expression on his snout. Marianne isn't smiling either.

I let some of the others go first and then follow in the middle of the group. We walk down a brightly lit staircase to just one floor down before we are guided through a door to the side by the soldier blocking the next set of stairs down. Everything was grey and clean, unlike back on the colony where everything was black and sooty. And they had a lot of lights.

The next corridor had windows lining one side, allowing view into a large room filled with rows and rows of clear cylinders, columns stacked to the ceiling and catwalks on each level allowing access to them. Some were filled with clear fluid, some empty, some with humanoid figures inside, some just silhouettes surrounded with opaque white fluid.

We were herded into a waiting room of some sort and asked to take a seat on the three rows of chairs. I chose a seat closer to the door and looked around. The walls were blank except for a couple of posters, one of which said quite plainly, "Please do not bleed on the cushions!"

I shifted my butt and looked at the cushion I was sitting on. It appeared clean, so I suppose no one had bled on it. The cushion was bright red already anyway.

This whole situation had a surreal feel to it. Everything was so sterile. There was no trash anywhere and the only people who spoke were the ones who brought us here. I felt like at any moment I might just wake up in my bed back on the Colony.

They were calling our names one by one now. Those whose names were called went through the door. One by one, minute by minute, the room emptied. I was one of the last few.

"Auriga F. Alistre."

I stood up as I heard my name called and walked toward the soldier standing by the exit, my eyes trailing down to his rifle nervously. And remembered what I saw the others carried earlier, they seemed to all carry different guns, no standardisation?

"Go to the end of the walkway and look for the guy in the hazmat suit." He points out the door and down the catwalk.

My throat felt so dry, I gulped, my saliva felt thicker than molten lead. I stepped out onto the catwalk, each step seeming to rattle and echo through the cavernous room. The cylinders were tightly packed together with two rows back to back in each island between the catwalks, two on either side of me at any one time and countless others lining the catwalks on the levels above and below me. Pseudodragons just floated silently in some of them, naked, with serene expressions on their sleeping faces. The technician just stood at the end of the walkway with a datapad, watching me approach. It felt like I took awhile to get there, probably just my nerves. I examined him as he gave me instructions to strip and shower. He was wearing a full-body orange suit with a clear visor and black rubber boots.

I pulled off my clothes and dropped them into the plastic box he handed me and stepped into the shower. It was an open shower that sat there at a junction on the catwalk, a couple of railings for the boundaries so you can't step over nothingness to your death and a shower head attached to the corner, that was it. The water gushed down over my skin, I cringed at how cold it was, turning off the water quickly and sputtering.

The technician didn't really appear to be very interested in my naked female body as he stood by an open capsule and simply smiled at me. I assumed that he expected me to go in. I covered myself the best as I could anyway with my hands as I left the shower and stepped onto the catwalk, having to walk over it to get there and felt the cold metal mesh digging into my feet. I stepped into the small steel chamber, still dripping wet. The tank had something like a grate in the inverted funnel shaped top and draining slits at the edges of the floor. It wouldn't be very claustrophobic since half of it would be clear glass and I could see out, I thought.

I saw him go over to the panel attached to the contraption and do something to it, the curved, clear glass door sliding swiftly closed with a swish, sealing me from the outside world.

A few seconds more and warm white liquid gushed from the grate in the ceiling and down the walls, pouring all over me. It felt just like water from a warm, particularly voluminous shower. I could feel the liquid level quickly rising around my feet, not even five seconds elapsed before it reached my knees. I didn't find it hard to breathe or feel like I was drowning despite being able to feel myself inhaling it. My body felt extremely relaxed for some reason, my initial panic evaporating almost instantly. And as I fell to my knees, all I could smell in my sinuses was the sweet scent of lavender.

The final words placed in my mind as the liquid overtook my head were an androgynous muffled whisper:

"You're going to be a pretty girl."