Insanity Black

Chapter Twelve

Scarlet woke with her breath stuck in her throat and sweat a thin layer over her skin. Sucking in a slow breath a clock in her vision told her that she was out for over four hours. She sat up and winced as her stitched wounds stretched with her movement.

Turning her body she looked at her back only to find a plaster taking up most of her right side hiding her wounds. Feeling quite stiff from lying down on the hard tables Scarlet carefully swung herself around and off of the table. Rolling her shoulders and twisting her back carefully, she tried to relax as much as possible.

Lucille was asleep in the chair beside the tables making Scarlet sigh softly, feeling bad for what she had done to her friend.

"Should you be standing up already Captain?" Sitting at another table where Ryaki and was slouched beside pieces of machinery, passed out, Saraphena sat knitting.

"I'm feeling better." Scarlet answered easily, though there was a harsh ache in her side and back from her wounds. But nothing she couldn't easily handle.

"If you say so. Are you hungry?" She asked getting up and headed towards her kitchen behind the bar not really giving her a choice.

"Thank you." Scarlet replied not bothering to argue because she was hungry.

While Saraphena was away Scarlet placed the table she was lying on back where they came from before grabbing two blankets from the back storage to place over Lucille and Ryaki.

"Do you know where Carla is?" Scarlet asked the blind woman when they sat down at another table in the corner so not to bother her two sleeping members.

"She came around when she heard that you were hurt but quickly went back to your carriers after seeing that you were doing okay." Saraphena answered while placing plates of small quantities of food in front of them. "Sorry that there's not much. With the shortened rationing of food, we can't have much."

"This is enough." Scarlet replied and took her time with the food. "How's Ryaki doing with the weapons?"

"I'm not entirely sure but I heard her mumbling about not having a part she needed. Some type of gas held within a rock or something. I've never heard of it before." Saraphena shrugged then finished off her plate. "Cryo-something or rather."

"Cryogeode. It's a rock found only in a few meteors around the solar system. Terribly hard to get and expensive. We ran into an asteroid field while on a job where there was quite the abundant of the stuff. Ryaki went crazy over it." Scarlet replied wondering where she'd be able to get some on this planet.

The door to the pub flew open and three men in military uniform walked in and looked around, waking the other two up. Saraphena and Scarlet got up to meet them.

"Can we help you, sirs?" Saraphena asked looking blindly at the middle guard.

"Not you, we're here for captain Scarlet Blade of the Vyner Brooke." The middle man said in a condescending tone towards her.

"Why?" Scarlet asked while Ryaki and Lucille came up behind them.

"Are you her or not?" The man growled back while his eyes raked over her body in a leer.

"I am, so tell me why you're here?" Scarlet drawled back at the guy completely unresponsive to him and just looked bored.

"The Solar Alliance Representative has ordered us to take you to him." The man gruffed not impressed by the woman before him.

"Give me ten minutes to clean up." Scarlet sighed and turned her back on the three only to show them a part of the ice burn scars crawling along her back through the rip in her suit.