A push, a shove and the huge, lumbering figure of the armored man had already eclipsed that of a lean, athletic crewman of the Calliope. Gen had to admire the dexterity with which this beast of a man handled his limbs, something one would not expect from someone this size. Her ears weren't the best, but from what she had gathered, the man had gotten frustrated with this crewman's inability to understand his lacklustre English. That, coupled with his thirst to be released from his duties already had prompted him to indulge in more visceral methods. While the scrawny man was pinned against the wall with one arm, his feet only barely touching the ground, the man withdrew the pad and showed him the picture of Charlotte, urging him to speak out, which appeared to be difficult with the pressure he applied to the man's chest.

Gen's eyes were torn away from the back of the man when there was a tugging on her leg. Looking down, her head turned, she saw the woman, almost on all fours, one arm supporting the weight of her torso while the other was clinging to her clothes, the white of her knuckles clearly visible. Whatever dignity had still inhabited this hollow husk of a woman, it had evaporated, her face a puffy, tear-soaked mess. Those wild eyes bored down from where she huddled, as if entreating something. Gen had never been good at reading expressions, more content with simply having people talk to her if there was something they wanted. This one, however, was easy to read. I'll- I'm not Camille, the woman voice reverberated maddeningly in her skull. Not Camille. Not Camille. Not Camille.

The lights seemed brighter all of a sudden, their glaring becoming an overbearing nuiscance to the eyes, who were all too happy to relay the stinging sensation into her cortex. Slowly, she looked up from the unrelenting gaze of the doomed woman towards the brute who had tossed his helpless charge onto ground and advanced further, his patience finally exhausted now. The piercing shriek hardly registered over the sound of her heartbeat in her ears. Not Camille. She looked back to the woman who had just revealed to be the undoing of all of them, into that face that already belied the hollow void that Malta had carved into her soul without even touching her. There was no questioning that this woman was already irreversably tied to the orange planet, although she didn't know that yet.

My name is- is Charlotte.

Blinking once, she drove the haze out of her vision and realized that she had stared blankly at Charlotte's face for a moment. What was one to do in these situations? "Son altesse," Gen acknowledged what she had just heard with practiced ease, although it was only her routine bland tone keeping her voice from betraying emotion. She had to do something.

"You!" she called out for the brute before he could do further damage to the more than mortified looking crewman who had raised his arms above his head as if to deflect anticipated fists. "Sedate her!" With a twitch of her head in Charlotte's direction, she made more than clear who was meant, and as the brute stomped away from the crewman, his arms lowering to reveal a glad, almost gleeful expression that his tormentor was now headed for someone else, Gen simply stood in place, trying to wrap her head around what she had just realized. For all intents and purposes, she should be mortified at the prospect of what was to come. They would want to retrieve her. There was no doubt about it. They should have killed the survivers of the escort! But why should she care, though? Malta had given her nothing but unbearable shackles and even though she possessed a certain amount of freedom now, as her mistress allowed it, she could not bring herself to feel for Malta's impending fate. They deserved it. They all — including her — deserved it. Her heartbeat quickened in excitement, making her snort quietly before the brute withdrew a stun pistol from his belt. She would take the princess to Corsica.

Slumping over, Gen looked down upon the slightly twitching body of her princess, one hand still grasping the leg of her pants, the muscles stiff from the electric discharge. She had felt the voltage through the cloth, by sheer virtue of being close to her, heard the small uttered word of incomprehension before there nothing anymore. Taking a deep, shuddery breath, she saw that the man had walked off already. Great. Now she had to haul Charlotte herself or what? Kneeling down, she grabbed her hand, twitching back with a surprised sound as touching her bare skin shocked her slightly before shaking her hand and continuing. Gen was hardly strong enough to carry Charlotte, although she wasn't very heavy. None of the guards by the hallways seemed to notice that she was struggling with the body that she was pulling like a sack of potatoes after having rolled her over onto her back. The guards had their orders to take care of the charge of slaves here. She couldn't really blame them.

The sight of Leticia Alvaro, the girl whom she employed to fly her shuttle because it was something that was appropriate to her skillset, had never been a more grateful one after having hauled the body of an unconscious noble through the corridors. She kept telling herself that this had been simply to spare her more pain from her ribs, but in reality, she had overreacted, not able to process what she had just gotten to know. The girl went to help her as soon as she actually realized that Gen was struggling with the body, which Gen accepted gratefully. While the younger and way more physically fit woman took over, Gen looked back on the few metres she had hardly managed to haul the body. Pathetic. Shaking her head, she followed Leticia into the shuttle before the airlock slid shut and Leticia headed for the cockpit while Gen sat down by the door, unwilling to enter the little room to her right where she knew Charlotte would be lying around somewhere.

She shouldn't have overreacted like that, it resounded in her skull while she felt the slight vibration of the shuttles little ion drive coming to live to bring them out of Alpha. Gen enjoyed Corsica. It felt like her little castle that she controlled entirely. Since the the inception of the Council, it had been almost empty, only operated by a skeletal crew, making its hallways as quiet and lifeless as her own ambitions. There should be someone who could take a look at the damage on Charlotte's body, though. Yes, that would be a good way of making up for brutally electrocuting her into unconsciousness, right? Right? Leaning her head against the door, she closed her eyes, the little humming of the machines lulling her to sleep. The initial excitement about Charlotte's detection was gone, now replaced with a hollow indifference. They would want her back, but they could never get back what they had lost when the Calliope had been captured. Malta hollowed out what remained of those who came unto it, filling up the husk with poison that turned those afflicted just as twisted as itself. The Crown could try and get back Charlotte, but what they would receive would be a far cry from the princess she was. A sick joke, in bondage by the orange dream.

Her head jerked up as a tremor went through the vessel as it docked, and she noticed that she had nodded away briefly. Quickly, she rose to her feet before Leticia would leave the cockpit and found her like this. That would be way too undignified. Peeking into the room to her right, she saw Charlotte lying on the ground, unmoving, her arms at her side. If her chest hadn't been moving, one might have assumed that she was dead. The sharp whisling of the airlock's depressurizing made her flinch slightly as Leticia exited the shuttle. "Bring someone who'll take her to medical," Gen called out after her, receiving no answer but she knew that the girl had heard her. It was simply how she was and she knew her enough at this point.

With that, she looked back one more time before she left the shuttle as well. The hangar was completely empty, an oppressive feeling considering its enormous size. Corsica had been constructed to house more than ten times the amount of people who currently inhabited it, and it showed, the entire station more of a ghost town than anything else right now. Needless to say, Gen enjoyed it, as it made herself seem all the more important.