The Ska Ralla sensors began to blare. Doctor Artifice looked at Kane, and smiled. "What, another of your tricks? Pah, you are a pissant at best. Juggernaut! Escort this man to the prison. The private one. And deprive him of oxygen for a while. Let him hallucinate."
Kane, his jaw clamped shut by the Juggernaut's massive hand, was led down the hallway. Doctor Artifice looked at the body of Mioki. While she was still alive, the pain she was in did not allow her to speak. "Hmm. Kane's cuts are too rough. Too...coarse. Very well! The parts are unusable. Dump her into the garbage scowl!" A set of robotic hands descended from the rafters of the medical hall, and moved Mioki to a large hermetically sealed pod filled to the brim with human remains, each grotesquely dismembered. "And throw her fianc? in there with her. She deserves that much!" And with that, he left, laughing.
Moving to a kiosk, Artifice discovered that a very large object, perhaps a system or two away, was heading towards the station. The Planet Scar was being charged, in an attempt to alter the course of the object before it would be too late. However, the cloaking device, using up over 70% of the station's energy, was beginning to fail. Typing in a few codes, Artifice ordered the ship to shut down the unimportant systems of the Ska Ralla; life support, energy barriers, communications, and lighting. Leaving the Workshoppe, he entered his private sanctum, where he was greeted by the sight of his beloved Fiona.
One fatal flaw with the Ska Ralla’s Juggernauts is that while on the Ralla they relied on constant transmissions. Transmissions sent by the communications on the Ralla, which had been recently shut down to gather energy for the Planet Scar. Thus, with the power shunted elsewhere, Dark Star suddenly found his ‘escort’ not moving after him. A few moments of experimentation revealed that the beast was not responding at all. It took a few moments for Dark Star to mull over the implications of this, and in the end he decided to wreak a bit of revenge.
By the time Dark Star moved on, the Juggernaut had been kicked into an unidentifiable lump of flesh and metal. Blood splattered over the walls, ceiling, and pooled on the floor. While it didn’t really do anything, it made Dark Star feel just a tad better. However, he didn’t spend a great deal of time gloating over his minor victory. There were things to be done.
Within the prison cells, Pops, Rick, and Jay sat. Just sat. With the doors locked and little left to them save clothing, there wasn’t much to do anymore. The communicator still trying desperately to reach something outside the Ska Ralla as the two men waited for something to happen. And sure enough, something did; the door opened. A look of surprise crossed all their faces when they noticed it was not Artifice or one of his Juggernauts at the door, but rather Dark Star.
“Knock knock. The door’s open.” Dark Star continued his smile, despite his arms still limp at his sides.
“Here, you might want these.” Dark Star shrugged off a small satchel and kicked it towards the two men. Flechete Pistols had been dropped in it, the ones the men had been relieved of at the Veranda. A quick check found all three fully loaded and still in working order. Dark Star, however, was beginning to walk away at this point.
“Julius!” Pops called after the robed, and now somewhat bloodstained man.
Dark Star turned around and looked at Pops, now loosely holding the pistol in one hand.
“Yes?”
“What was the screaming?” Dark Star considered this for a moment.
“Nothing of any consequence to us. It served my own purposes well enough.” He continued walking away, calling over his shoulder, “Head for the escape pod. I think this station is about to become a little flatter.”
Jay rang out next. “And where are you going?”
“Medical bay. I want my arms back.”
Dark strode across the hallway and out around a corner, disappearing from sight.
It took a moment for Dark Star to get the emergency kiosk working again. This particular piece of equipment still had power and was his only hope of getting his arms back to normal. Of course, to do that he had to have a surgeon. Nobody else on this station could or was qualified to, so he had to go outside.
Working very delicately and with slowed motions, he typed away at the keyboard to access the communications array on the Ska Ralla. While broken, he could still use his arms to some degree. Any normal person would have passed out from pain by now, however the Phantoms were anything but normal.
After an agonizing eternity, Dark Star could connect to the outside. He sent a simple message, broadcast on an open frequency.
“- CO, I think I need a medic.”
After that was away, Dark Star stumbled into the workshoppe and lay on one of the tables. It was only a matter of time before a quiet tinkling was heard.
“Over here, Crystal.” The tinkling moved and a quiet whisper seeped from the intercoms.
“Boss? That you? What happened?”
Dark Star sighed. “Long story short, I got kidnapped and they broke my arms. I need you to fix them.”
There was a pause before the AI spoke again. “I can try. It’s hard enough to access this system just to talk. I’m not sure I can…”
“Use your full processing power. Let the Slayers on the Oblivion deal with everything else for a while.” Dark Star closed his eyes, the smile once again removed from his face.
Oni was silent again for a moment. Then the tools began to move, cleaning, numbing, and finally beginning the long process of reconstruction. What little anesthesia there was didn’t work entirely, so Dark Star just grit his teeth and did his best not to scream as the blades cut into his flesh in order to repair the damage to his arms. He kept up a mantra in his head; “Doctor Artifice will pay. Doctor Artifice will pay. Doctor Artifice will pay. Doctor Artifice will pay…”
This is the real true story of rock and roll; it was not about anything more then, how to live your life, as a gangster, in sartorial splendor, and turning the world into a place where normality would never return again...- Malcolm McLaren
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