Koldan, Sin and the Doomed Ship

(This is a continuation of a previous post: Embrace)

Wrath and Zhukov soon exited the medical room, the latter being dressed up back in his armor; the demoness looked pretty tired.

Krof led the demoness, at her behest, through a maze of corridors winding beneath the crew deck. The pair passed through many strongpoints that he had prepared ahead of time...defensive positions to fall back to, graced with improvised explosives. None of them were necessary to use...perhaps the ship's inhabitants sensed her presence and gave her a wide berth. Long after the demon grew impatient, he finally stopped before a reinforced hatch, marked ARM-B07, and dialed an access code, carefully with his thick clawed fingers on the pad meant for humans. It slipped open, revealing weapons racks, crates, and even a briefing table...a marshaling area for the humans' warriors, such as they were. Krof paused to take a pair of tactical cameras out of his harness and set them outside the door with their magnets, to keep watch down the corridor, as he ducked low to clear the ceiling of the small chamber.

Wrath clumsily followed the Skoll in the armory, barely noticing where she was going, her eyes closing by themselves. She ran her hand against the wall to make sure she did not tip over.

  "Zakov..." Her brain didn't seem to follow very well anymore. "I think I'm going to lie down here on the floor..." She looked miserable, as if her life force had been sucked out by something. She was dreaming of her bed, back in Anhetas... but knew it was now far away. "May I...?" She began to fall backwards, still awake but without enough force to stand. It looked like her strength had weakened even more since they left the medical section of the Persephone.

Slumber

Krof darted out one thick arm to catch her as she toppled over. He moved much more quickly than he had during their first meeting, when he was busy dying... and he seemed to have recovered remarkably quickly with just the minimal medical care he'd received one deck above. He gripped her under her arms with both paws, lowering her gently to the floor, propping her back up against a stack of crates. Taking a moment to look down quizzically as he loomed over her, he arched a thick brow and answered.

  "...Of course you may." Leaving her to rest for a bit, he hunched over as he turned, avoiding the ceiling as he digged through various crates. Thick thermal sleeping bags. Heat-reflecting microfoil blankets. He gathered them up and began unfolding them, laying them out neatly on the floor. "We brought these with us," he explained, nodding down at the sleep rolls, which were oddly lined with synthetic fur. "Last assignment was arctic...no time to trade in gear."
  Wrath smiled weakly at no one, her sight lost on whatever horizon she was imaging. She put her hand on the blanket lying on the floor next to her. "Nice......" Her words were barely correctly pronounced. Then her eyes closed without warning, her head plunged, and the Skoll immediately understood she had fallen asleep, still sitting against the crates. Her fingers were still pinching the blanket, but they released it a few seconds later as her body relaxed. Her wings were deployed in an irregular way on the metal behind her, her back resting on them.

Krof blinked at her, feeling her weariness in some way he could not explain...it's as if her exhaustion was something he could smell, driving him to do what he could to soothe it. Once he convinced himself that she had indeed fallen asleep, he walked over to her as quietly as he could while fully armored, reached down...and positioned one of the sleeping bags in front of her hoofed legs. Holding the bag open with one paw, he used the other arm to cradle her... fitting her into the crook of his elbow... and gently slipped her into its warm embrace, careful not to wake her. It was very cold on the Persephone, now that power was minimal and waste heat was no longer radiating through the ship's hull. He wasn't sure how it would affect her, laying on cold metal. Her wings presented a momentary problem, as she was halfway snug in the bag, but he leaned her forward against his chestplate... and, with probing fingers, folded her wings up safely close to her shoulder blades. With that riddle solved, she was entirely inside and warm. He zipped up the sleeping gear, leaving only her horns and a stray lock of midnight-black hair visible through the top.

More or less 7 hours and 6 minutes passed.

Nightmare

Wrath suddenly waked up, her eyes wide open, screaming. She tried to sit up straight, realized she was tied up, panicked, screamed again, ripped apart the blanket with her formidable force, finally got up blazingly fast, reached for her weapon... and stopped. She looked around her. A few seconds passed; her heavy breathing was the only thing that could be heard besides the wind-broken sound of the ventilation and a disturbing humming coming deep below them. Her arm still above her shoulder, she looked at her hooves, saw the Skoll, and finally remembered where she was. She stayed silent, not sure what to do. She slowly put her arm back to her side, useless to be up there since her weapon was gone.

Krof had been sitting directly across from her, diligently brushing his fangs with a well-worn toothbrush and spitting into the empty wrapping of a ration pack. During the night, he had not disturbed her, other than to unzip the sleeping bag by the smallest of margins and keep her face visible. He found that he did not wish to lose sight of her, for reasons unknown to him, and he found himself glancing sideways over at her throughout the night. As soon as she waked screaming he flinched, dropped the toothbrush, and rose onto the balls of his feet to scramble to her side. There was a data cable visibly plugged into the cybernetic device protruding from his spine between his shoulder blades, attached to some sort of portable computer resting on the deck. He reached out to touch her in what he thought was reassurance. Huge, strong fingers pat her shoulder, claws sheathed.

  "Is fine...you are safe."

Wrath slightly cringed when the Skoll approached his hand, still under the effect of her nightmare and destabilized by the creature's size. His paw looked enormous on her shoulder, almost making her look like a toy.

  "I... I had a nightmare. Not a pleasant one." Her eyes were dark. The Skoll could see... *feel* her mind was troubled, but not why. "Did... erm, did you sleep well?" It was weird to ask this question, as she was used to be alone during her slumber. And she didn't really care about her subordinates sleep. She pointed at the cable connecting the creature's spine to the computer. "Do you affect your dreams with this?"

Krof looked directly and unflinchingly into her eyes, saw the truth that she was physically fine, and gave her one last pat with the paw on her shoulder before withdrawing it. At the mention of the data cable, he reached back behind himself, disconnecting it, letting it reel back into the machine on the floor.

  "RIG has been having problems. Needs many diagnostics. No maintenance, here in this place." He waved a paw vaguely upward at the ceiling, indicating the ship as a whole. Then, as an afterthought, he glanced up at the ceiling as well. Almost as if he thought the ship might overhear. Turning, he hunched over another crate, rummaging. "You are hungry?" He wasn't sure if she did that. But it seemed logical, if she needed sleep as well.

Recovery

Wrath looked a little confused at first, wondering what the RIG could be. But she finally decided it was some kind of required apparel that the Skoll had to wear to survive. Might be a problem, but... She smiled as the creature searched the crates with his big paws.

  "Sure, Zhukov." Her memory seemed to be restored. "I need to get my energy back." She didn't know she could even eat anything from this ship, but she'd have to try to find out. "Where does your accent come from?"

Krof seemed to consider whatever the contents of the crate were, then produced a foil-wrapped rectangle, perhaps four inches by five, and passed it over.

  "There is not much stored here. But later, we visit hydroponics. I cannot eat food there, but maybe you can." His ear angled toward her as he considered her question. "I learned English while here. I am from NovoSoviet Collective. Ruskaya is standard there." He found another, similar rectangle, only this one had been partially eaten and re-wrapped. He sniffed at it experimentally. "Language from Old Earth."

Wrath listened attentively to the Skoll while she inspected the rectangle, amused at its shiny color. Gray. Her favorite. As Zhukov -- as she called him -- faced her again with his finding, she bit into the food, not aware that the foil was not meant to be eaten. She frowned, disliking the taste at first, but breathed a sigh of relief when she tasted the actual food.

  "Old Earth? ...NovoSoviet Collective? In what year are we?" She had an eyebrow raised, her eyes were sparkling with curiosity. She bit in the foil again.

Krof unwrapped the foil and removed the block of protein inside - it had the appearance of some sort of meat, shredded and pressed together into a congealed mass, and was identical to hers. Rather than chewing he simply swallowed it whole.

  "You, ah..." He nodded at her own food. "Metal is for storage, not eating." He shrugged mentally. Maybe her kind did eat minerals. There was no telling, despite the fact that he'd lived among demons for years. They had not exactly been on speaking terms with him. "Do not know year here...nobody can agree. Was year 2618 in my time, when we came on board." He scratched at an ear and smoothed down the mane between his ears, which was suffering from a bad case of helmet-fur. "But here is different."

Wrath swallowed the piece of food she was eating, then looked at her meat-looking meal.

  "Oh. That's why it felt a little crunchy."

She removed the remaining wrap, admiring the patience of the people wrapping that thing around the food. When it fell on the floor, it displayed two rows of pointed teeth shapes.

  "Wait?! You said year 2618?!" She was now motionless, holding her protein block in her right hand. She jumped forward, grabbing the Skoll's right wrist with her free hand.  "Did the demonic forces win over the Heavens?" She wanted to know more. "What is the current state of things on Earth?"

Krof noticed the impressions of her teeth, and spent an inordinate amount of time looking at her mouth as she grasped his arm and spoke. He had begun suppressing his defensive reactions when it came to her. Somehow, it seemed to him that he knew she was not threatening as she reached out and seized his arm. He rather enjoyed the contact, he found. He blinked exactly once as she posed her excited question, and when he was sure that she had finished, he opened his maw to answer.

  "Earth? Is in Core Worlds. Not part of SOVVOY space. I do not know." He cast his glance to the side, sorting through mental information he'd read and not learned firsthand. "Tongyi owns Earth. Am sure I would have heard of demons and angels. Nothing like that."
  Wrath looked at you with shock. "It can't be..."

Her eyes were wide opened, and you could feel her fear. Her fear that everything was lost, that she was the only demon left, that everything she knew had disappeared. Not only Moloch had banished her from her very home, but he had locked her up in a different period, literally not in the same time continuum. And she had discovered the future was the nothingness for her kind. She stepped backwards, letting her last piece of food drop on the floor, her hand on the heart.

  "It can't be!! I have to make sure! I need to see another demon!!" She lowered both arms to the ground, her palms opened, remembering what the Skoll had said when they were in the ventilation shaft: "We need to go to the ship's reactor, Zhukov!"