Memoirs of the Forgotten

[SevereTrinity]

Two years.

For two years I have been through hell, plunged into it's darkest depths with no end in sight. They say they are trying to break me but I was broken long ago. They have methods here that leave me longing for thumbscrews and torque wrenches.

The torture, the beatings, all the other methods they have used to try and extract information from me. These acts on their own are what took every aspect of my former person and threw them away like dust in the wind. But they pale in comparison to what they did at the start of my capture.

They ripped almost everything from me that day. The rape took care of whatever dignity remained within me. My family, my life, everything. Gone. Dust in the wind.


Who am I, you ask?
I am -in body, not sanity- Stephanie Gray. You've never heard of me because the day that name was given to me was the day I was dead to everyone who ever cared about me outside these four walls. Before that, I was Stephanie Malaign, ex-Commodore of the Liberty Navy.

Why should you care about my story?
Because in this dark world, we all need someone to speak to. I didn't quite fancy talking to a wall or to the rare scraps of food like the other prisoners who have been here longer than me. But above all, it keeps me sane in the hope that one day, rescue will come. Until then, I must endure. I've become quite good at that lately.

[SevereTrinity]

I suppose I better explain how this all happened. I can remember it all in perfect detail. I run those few dreadful hours over and over in my head as there is nothing else left for me to do in this world. Withstand the present whilst ruminating the past and hoping the future does not come.

The year was 816 A.S. and I had recently been promoted to Commodore, having just returned from commanding a squadron that defeated an enemy bomber wing targeting one of our dreadnoughts. My reward for that had been the command of a Liberty dreadnought of my own. Life was looking good for a change. To go from an orphanage to the command seat of the Arizona was incomprehensible. Yet, my life in this galaxy was not complete. I did not have someone to share it all with. I had always locked other people out of my life, so I suppose it's no one's fault but my own.

But somehow, someone chose me above everyone else. Tall, handsome, caring. He was everything I could ever dream of, and he had devoted himself to me. Three months later he proposed, and I didn't even need to think of the answer.

We were married in a chapel on Manhattan. Early in the morning. The president himself allowed us use of the Liberty One for the journey to Curacao where we were to spend our honeymoon. Every senior official was at the wedding, political differences and personal rivalries put aside for that one day to celebrate the union of two people.

The voyage to Curacao was quiet as well. This was only the second time the Liberty One has travelled to Curacao; the first time was to sign the eponymous treaty that served to strengthen the already iron bond between Liberty and Bretonia. I spent each moment of that journey dreaming of what my future was going to be like. Give me an enemy fleet composed of strikecraft, supported by missile carrying gunboats and a battleship at the head of it all and I can co-ordinate a battle strategy without breaking a sweat.

But marriage was something I was unfamiliar with and did not know how to prepare for. Oh well, I thought. I'd adapt and learn as I always did.

[SevereTrinity]

But when the moon rose like a cast colossus out of the water surrounding us, the course of my life was soon to change forever. We had just spent the day out on one of the lakes. A romantic setting, one which will never leave my mind. Returning to our quarters, right at the top of one of the towers in the complex we were staying in, we were set to carry out the traditional way of ending the first night of a honeymoon.

As we lay together underneath the sheets, linked in body and soul, we spoke of our love for each other, how we would never leave each other's sides.

The door burst open.

Smoke filled the room as we struggled out of the bedding. I could hear shouts of angry words and cruel mockery. As I coughed I frantically searched about for my sidearm. Nowhere to be found. A harsh blow to the back of my head. Another. Another.

Darkness. How could such a blissful experience have turned into the harbinger of my downfall?

[SevereTrinity]

I woke up bathed in a circle of dull white lights. Beyond that, darkness. As thoughts rushed through my head, I came to one conclusion; I had been captured. I wasn't due back for two weeks. No one would check up on me. With every new thought I was filled with more despair than the previous.

The darkness spoke to me.

"Right... Here's the deal. You're in a sealed room on a multilevel complex, with a hundred armed guards on board, hidden away in deep space. And there are no ships docked. Oh, and you're tied into your chair. And before you try and figure a way out of this, remember we have your husband." The satirical tone of the interrogatory voice bit into me, but even more so the truth behind his words.

I remained silent; the odds were against me and I had no chance of esca- my emergency implant. It was on my arm. If I could just pinch it to activate it's distress call...

"We removed that as well."

I could not remain silent anymore, "Well, what the hell do you want with me then?" I shouted, trying but failing to hide the fear from my voice.

"We want you to sit still and not cause any fuss. We're not going to ask you anything because we don't need to. You have a chip on your forehead. We can use this chip to extract everything we need straight from your brain, albeit you will suffer extreme, but we don't care about that, now do we? Oh, and every time you act up we can give you an electrical jolt that will leave you paralyzed for a day. Are we clear?"

I did not respond.

"Good."

Agony. Searing, burning agony. They took the information from my mind. Navy defense intelligence, our future battle plans, everything I had committed to memory. Memory. The pain I felt at that moment never left mine. To this day I can still remember it. To this day, I still feel the pain.

[SevereTrinity]

Time passed as the minutes melded into hours which melded into days. How long I had been imprisoned for, I knew naught. I was kept in a cell which had one dim fluorescent light that allowed me to see the rare food I was brought. Nothing but bread. When I should have been in the VIP chambers of a Curacao city-resort, I was instead a prisoner forced to defecate in the corner of my cell. As the days crawled by the stench increased; vomit soon added to the sickly aroma of the cell.

I was not spoken to, but the agony that had haunted me before came back to me many times. I suffered phantasms each night, only to awaken to a real life incarnation of the same nightmare. They took more and more information out of me, things that would have been trivial to them; my childhood, my upbringing in the orphanage. Everything was brought before me in a torrent of despondent failures and magnificent achievements. One thing that was clear to me in retrospect; I was definitely a proud if not arrogant person.

One thing I could garner from my imprisonment up until that point- whoever was in charge of the operation was ruthless and had the obedience of his men; whether by respect or by fear, I knew not, but I was more inclined towards the latter.

I seemed to be a 'special' prisoner, for lack of a better term. At night I heard screams of men in anguish and woman in pain. My only guess was that the guards were callous creatures who enjoyed the feeling of exerting their superiority over men and woman; to make them feel lowly, to turn them slowly unto but a husk of their former self.

Another thought troubled me. Tristan, my beloved, was still alive. Maybe even somewhere on this base. That thought alone was what kept me going. I knew that if I did try anything, the leader of this base would kill my husband. He did not have the sound of a man of empty threats.

I needed something. Someone. All I needed in this world, right now, was a single ounce of hope.

[SevereTrinity]

Yet more time passed by. My immunity was taken away. Beatings were no longer occasional occurrences; they became the norm. But it was not that which left me crying at night. It was the thought of spending the rest of my life living here on bread and the piss which the guards replaced my water with. I had not spoken once in the few months I guessed I had been here. I did not want to speak, but more so, I was afraid I had forgotten how.

I soon figured out why men and woman were screaming out every night. It was not beatings. It was something far worse and I was going to gain first-hand experience in it... 'Special' prisoner status revoked. No protection anymore. No-one stood in the way of them doing what they wished. No-one. Nothing.

I spent each night covered in my own feces, soaked in urine and other bodily fluids, most of which were not mine. I sat huddled in the corner of my tiny cell hoping that for once they would not come for me. They came nearly every night for me, rattling the cell door as they entered, four or five of them crowded into my eight foot by eight foot box that seemed like it would be my final resting place.

[Durandal]

I inhaled deeply as I walked down the tightly cramped and dimly lit corridor of Leniex's maximum security detainment cells, the comforting aroma of human feces and vomit mixed with piss filling my nostrils, muffled screams drowning out whatever it is that keeps a sane man sane. Anyone outside of the Legion may have thought that their prisoners would be treated with the utmost respect, that the Legion's guards might have some sense of justice. This was far from the case. In fact, the opposite was true, at least since Tadao took power.

This hell on earth had been my home for the past three months, and not out of choice. The guards here were as much prisoners to their own job as the actual prisoners were to their own fate. I had been a Westpoint dropout before joining the Legion's ranks. A faulty fuel cell having been overlooked by the technicians, causing my Guardian's engine to combust and leaving the ship to drift into the badlands. Ironic that a poorly maintained mine dropper on my sabre the second time around would have me sent to Tartarus itself after being convinced that the Legion could give me a second chance.

As I continued down the abyssal corridor one scream became more prominent than the man I had passed a few cells behind. Every few hundred feet they would rise and fall. It was nothing new to me, any shreds of sanity that the stench and sights didn't take care of were finished off by the screams. Cell #142, cell #143, 144, 145...

I don't know what compelled me to do what I did that day. Whether it was some sick perversion or sense of pity in a man who's soul should've long since been crushed. But I looked. I turned my head and I looked into that cell, my gaze and hers locked together. My "soul", or whatever may have been left of it, looking into - becoming one with - her own remnant's of a psyche.

Her lips were moving. I didn't hear the words, but her lips were moving.

"Help."

"Help me."


But my mind had since stopped functioning to the point where it could decipher even a simple sentence derived from a human being's vocal chords.

She was on her back, lying in a puddle of her own waste and vomit. They had her on the grounds as they took turns with her, each guard goading the next on.



I broke my gaze.

I looked away.

I inhaled deeply.

And I continued walking.

Cell #147, 148, 149...

It was too late to purge that image, her deep blue eyes locked into mine.

Past the point of no return.

150, 151, 152...

[Durandal]

A new day, the same old nightmare. The stench, the sounds, the sights. I could scarcely believe that people managed to down food while covered in their own waste. And for that matter I could scarcely believe "Pilot First Class" Lee Deringer was giving Leniex's high security inmates their daily bread - a half truism - as it resembled rock in more ways than anything that once came from a wheat field.

Either way, that day I set out with a strange sense of determination or duty, at least as much as can be had when walking through the valley of decay and death, the guards hovering around the inmates as a vulture would a dying animal. The difference between the two is that a vulture wouldn't keep it's next meal alive for its own sick satisfaction.

159, 158, 157.

I was getting closer.

I had always tried my best to look disinterested and broken as usual. If the guards picked up on anything, I'd rather not think about what awaited me. So far since my three month stay in hell, silence and detachment had been what kept me alive. A few of them had tried to draw me into their circle, but disinterest had kept me ignored. The only way I could deal with being in the situation that I was.

Compassion was a crime punishable in the most severe ways, mostly by one's peers. And I had to find out just who she was before that.

Cell one hundred and forty six. I looked around a bit and gulped before leaning in closer.

"Why the apprehension?" She spoke for the first time, not bothering to lift her head, voice low and monotone, yet with a faint sense of innocence.

"You can do what you want, I'm not going to put up a fight." She added, clarifying her statement, still not bothering to make eye contact. Not out of fear, I realized. Rather out of her own sense of detachment and apathy.

I stood there for what felt like an hour before just barely managing to choke out a few words. I don't know what came out of my mouth, but it must have been something moving, because what happened next remains etched into my memory 'til this day.

She crawled over to the piece of bread - that could be called bread rather than rock - I had placed in front of her, feeling it a bit, almost as though it were some foreign object of great intrigue. She lifted her head up and looked into my eyes for a bit, choosing her words, finally opting for something simple.

"Thank.. you."

I didn't say anything, but smiled at her for a few seconds before pulling myself away from her cell and continuing down the hall.

How naive I was. Back then I was too young to think that the future could change at any moment. I remember it like it was yesterday, Joyeuse's rebellion having me transferred to the 333rd, the Legion's heavy assault fighter squadron the very next day.

But I never forgot.

For whatever reason, I never forgot that woman.