[ january i log: cetaganda ]

[barrayarmods]

Who: Everyone
What: Arrival on Barrayar and what follows
When: January 2nd - January 17th
Where: Cetagandan base
Warnings: None (at the moment)


welcome to barrayar.
It's the dark of night when you come to beyond the foothills. Snow on the ground, chill winter wind whistling. A steep mountain range towers overhead, its peaks illuminated by the light of two moons, and the foothills behind you ascend quickly into rocky mountain faces. Whatever you last remember, it isn't how you got here, and you feel oddly jetlagged, slightly queasy.

And you're not alone. There are nine other people close by, all looking equally lost and confused. But before any of you have a chance to figure out what's going on, the soldiers arrive.

They're fitted with what look like futuristic tactical vests and armed with some kind of energy weapons that look deadlier than not. They surround you at gunpoint, dealing orders in intelligible English, but with some obscure, unplaceable accent, and their faces are colored with vivid paint. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that you are not the people they at first assumed -- something about Barrayarans, the barbarians in the mountains. The one who seems to be in charge steps away to murmur into what looks like a wristwatch-like communicator. After a minute or two of inaudible conversation, the officer steps back in. He orders his men to escort you all back to their base. As long as you cooperate, that's all that will happen.


the base
You are taken back to a military base of considerable scale and some serious fortification. There are two rounds of guard checks to go through, both taking what must be a lot longer than usual, and it's cold out. You are ushered past the guard checks into what looks like a barracks building, but relegated to a bunk on one end. They seem to have cleared the immediate area, with guards posted at the door, but there's audible activity beyond the short hallway in front of the door. They make it clear you are not under arrest, that you are merely being detained until they have ascertained the situation -- the word quarantine is used, but it doesn't seem to be of a medical sort. Either way, the only people who come to the bunk are those cleared by the guards, and they all seem much more interested than hostile.

They answer your questions with the very basic facts: the people who hold custody of you are the military service of the Cetagandan Empire, and the planet you are on is their Ninth Satrapy, and they're currently at odds with some of the native population. They won't say it outright, but it's clear they have no clue how you came to be here or why, but it's clearly of great interest to them. For the most part, the Cetagandan soldiers are civil, if at times distant and aloof, but if you look a little less -- or more -- than human, they'll eye you with visible curiosity, perhaps even some kind of appreciation.

At daylight, a few women in lab coats and the same face-paint as the soldiers come to the room to escort you across the base to the nearby medbay, two or three at a time. The medbay is an intimidatingly sterile and state-of-the-art facility, all gleaming chrome and polished glass and crisp holo displays. You are taken in one at a time for a physical examination -- they have to make sure you haven't brought any foreign contagions into their base, after all -- but the military physician isn't the only base personnel in the exam room. You hear the word exotic tossed around a few times until they realized they're talking about you. They call you the exotics.


the exotics room
For a military bunk, it's in surprisingly tasteful design. The room sleeps a dozen soldiers, so you even have a little bit of room to yourself, and while the furnishings are relatively spartan, they're hardly uncomfortable. If you're in need of clothing, the soldiers will bring you base fatigues – no rank insignia, of course, but the make of the textile is surprisingly fine.

You're served food at mealtimes, a combination of shelf-stable meal rations and what seems to be fresh food, all prepared with unusual artistry for a military base. There's a sophistication to the preparation that seems more like it belongs in a four-star restaurant than a military base. If you have any special medical needs, they'll do their best to attend to them -- and their medicine seems impressively advanced.

Soldiers and scientists alike come to the room every so often to ask you questions, more like interviews than interrogations, but behind the civility there's a burning intellectual curiosity. They seem intent on knowing as much as you'll tell them, and then some.

The nearest bathroom is at the end of the hall, and while they seem to have cleared the area of all other personnel, showers and baths are scheduled, and any trips to the restroom are chaperoned. The guards, while not hostile, are certainly not interested in letting you escape. You could try sneaking past them, but you probably won't get far.

Well, at least you've got each other for company: the exotics on the Ninth Satrapy.

Comments

[infailtration]

"They've clothed and fed us, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. And--" and he actually wants this exam. Maybe they'd be able to tell him what's wrong with his implant. But he doesn't say that, just lets it hang in the air between them as they shuffle up closer to the med bay. He fusses with the cuffs of his base fatigues and takes in Daryl's appearance.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

[pigsfeet]

You shouldn't. You shouldn't give these people the benefit of the doubt. You shouldn't trust them worth anything. But then, there's no reason for Daryl to trust his fellow 'exotics' either. They have his sympathy-- a fact he's far from willing to admit-- but they don't have his back. They're not safe either.

So he doesn't give any more warnings. They'll only fall on deaf ears, anyway. This guy wants to skip right up to the slaughter, so let him.

"Atlanta," he says. "You?"

[infailtration]

"Atlanta... you were on Earth?" He blinks, surprised. He was born on Earth himself, but hasn't been back since he started service. "I was getting into a teleporter on Heian. Makes a little more sense it might have fucked up, but I lost all my gear getting here. And the guy in my head."

It feels strange to be talking to someone else, if he's honest. He's used to Delta's constant observations, so the conversation with Daryl only serves to make him feel more alone.

[pigsfeet]

"Uh, yeah." Yeah, he was on Earth. It occurs to Daryl for the first time that there were probably astronauts in space before the turn. Well, they're all dead, and Daryl sure as shit doesn't look like one. Heian may be in space, it may be in goddamn Japan for all Daryl knows or cares. Something else catches his interest.

"You wanna explain the 'guy in your head'?"

[infailtration]

"Don't worry, I'm not crazy." Yet. He's not sure what else'll happen in his head without Delta. He already doesn't feel himself.

York turns his head and taps at the base of his implant, which looks like a small metal plate embedded in the base of his skull. In actuality the interface goes all the way into his brain, completely interwoven. "I was implanted with an artificial intelligence years ago. He's always with me... until now. Here."

[pigsfeet]

Daryl isn't sure how they got here, or what happened to cause it. One minute, they were in Atlanta, he had a gun in his hand, two women were bleeding out on the floor, screaming and crying and guns being fired-- and then everyone was gone, and he was in the middle of a frozen warzone.

The only thing Daryl can think is that they were abducted by aliens. It's stupid and strange, just like the dead rising up to eat the living.

"You're an alien," he says, more of a statement than a question. A judgmental statement at that.

[infailtration]

"No, I'm human." Daryl gets the first almost-smile out of York, though, as the concept of being an alien amuses him. "I've seen aliens, though, they are not humanoid. They kinda look like big bugs. You don't know about the war?"

[pigsfeet]

"Ain't no war in Atlanta."

Of course, if you're the poetic type, you could say it's a war of the dead against the living. You could say it's a war of desperation, humanity against the inhuman. Survival versus living. Right versus might.

Daryl isn't the poetic type. All the poetic types are dead. Beauty didn't survive the end of the world. It died screaming.

Bitterly, he mutters, "ain't nothing in Atlanta."

[infailtration]

"...the war with the Covenant." How could he not know about the war? York's brow furrows as he tries to come up with options but the only thing he can think of is that Daryl's from some backwoods family that doesn't acknowledge the rest of the world, and that doesn't fit with his being in Atlanta. And then his blood runs cold, like when you know you're about to hear bad news.

"What do you mean there's nothing in Atlanta?"

[pigsfeet]

Daryl stares blankly at the other man, and it's with a practiced quiet and calm that comes from being beaten down and knowing that moving won't get you what you want. There's no judgement in his eyes. There's no anything.

"There ain't nothing worth seeing," he says. "Just dead."

But this prick is from space or some shit. Who the hell knows what he's seen?

[infailtration]

"What happened?" He didn't hear about anything going down on Earth, though his sources were limited these days. It was entirely possible something happened back home that he didn't know about. "Was it bombed..?"

[pigsfeet]

Maybe he really is from space, judging from the entirely genuine look of surprise he's wearing. Daryl continues his full body pokerface routine, and speaks slowly, for once without judgement. "Yeah," he says. "Napalm. Didn't fix nothing."

[infailtration]

Napalm? York shakes his head in wonder that anyone even still makes napalm. "That's old school. What was it supposed to fix?"

[pigsfeet]

This guy really is far the hell out. "You ain't heard," he says, "then it don't matter."

It's not this guy's problem, obviously. Wherever they are, wherever they're going, it's with a free and clear outside world. He saw the defenses this place has, and they're not right for fighting off the swarms of the dead that could be lurking in the woods. No, they don't have that problem, here.

Their problem is, as always, the people.

[infailtration]

"It does matter," York insists. This will drive him crazy if he doesn't find out what's happening back home. "Is it the whole country?"

[pigsfeet]

"Probably," Daryl says with a shrug. "Ain't like I can call up and ask."

That, he realizes, probably tells this kid more than he needs to know. And he is a kid, even if he's clearly a child. He's got that wide-eyed worry, that obvious concern, that Daryl can't help but associate with youth, however grim his profession, however painfully he lost that eye.

[infailtration]

It's probably the whole country but the guy doesn't know, but it's not a war? What the hell could it be? A plague? He's getting a bit frustrated with this guy's manner.

"Why won't you just tell me what happened?"

[pigsfeet]

Daryl folds his arms over his chest, leans back against the pristine wall. He knows it doesn't feel like a kindness, but it's the best he can do for this kid.

"Ain't gonna have you worrying over something you can't fix," he says. "Won't believe me anyhow."

[infailtration]

York stares at Daryl, sizing him up, his good eye dead serious. "We're randomly on a planet in what's gotta be a different galaxy. I bet I'd believe you."

[pigsfeet]

Well, that's a cogent point. Still, Daryl doesn't want the kid to wet himself over a mess nobody can clean up. Then again, if he stays quiet, he'll just worry over whatever his fevered mind can cook up at midnight thirty.

"Sickness," he says, and that's a kind word for it. "Like rabies, I guess." It's a kind word for it. Something just seems wrong about scaring the kid.

[infailtration]

That was along the lines of one of York's ideas, a plague. He tries to imagine a whole city full of people with something like rabies, and it's terrifying. They'd be violent, not just sick. He takes in Daryl's toughened demeanor again and thinks he might understand where it comes from now. The poor guy probably had friends, loved ones, lost to it. If it spread far enough, it'd be chaos.

"That sounds horrible. Were you immune, or do you have to catch it through fluids too?"

[pigsfeet]

Explaining the full extent of it will just, again, make the kid scared. Given a kernel of the truth, Daryl thinks he'll take whatever Daryl offers and be happy with it.

"Ain't been bit," he says.

[infailtration]

"Bit?" He raises an eyebrow, having never heard of a rabies bite from a human. "What, they're like zombies?"

[pigsfeet]

Daryl shrugs. Your guess is as good as his, kid. "The hell's a zombie?"

[infailtration]

"You know, the dead rise and attack people for food. Romero movies. Resident Evil, Left for Dead, World War Z." He lists off a few pop culture references that the other man must have heard of before.