It might, she thought, be one of the Reman mining colonies. The lighting was dim, and a lot of her fellow prisoners were Remans. She had tried to ask, at first, but conversation was quickly and brutally discouraged by the guards. The Siohonin military guards were bad, vicious men. The robed ones, the priests of Sebreac Tharr... they were far, far worse.
It was from fragments of conversation among her captors that she gleaned the little she knew so far. The priests moved with the arrogance of new conquerors, ready at any moment to deal pain or death with their flame-tipped wands. Even the Siohonin soldiers lived in fear of them. And they spoke, sometimes, of the "great work", of the "building of the tabernacle". It seemed to be going well. Danielle hated them for that, hated herself for helping them, however unwillingly.
The work occupied eighteen hours of every day, so by the time she fell into her bunk in the common dormitory, she was too tired to ask questions, even if it had been allowed. Huge slabs of black crystal were deposited before her by a robot loader, to be shaped and polished to exacting standards with a sonic probe. If the piece, once finished, met the Siohonins' quality tests, she ate - basic ration bars, but it was food, at least. If it failed - and many did - then she began again, with a new block. Too many failures, and the errant prisoner was given to the guards for punishment. Danielle had witnessed a punishment... and she had resolved not to make too many mistakes.
So she worked, and she watched and listened when she could, because she owed it to them, to Thom and Maury and all the others. She owed it to them to survive, and somehow, to make things right.
She was a Federation citizen, the product of a utopian social order, but more and more she felt the word revenge coming to her mind.
---
One day, one of the Remans cracked. She hard turned in four blocks of crystal, and each one had been rejected; the Siohonin soldiers were standing behind her, speculating loudly about what they would do to her when she was sent for punishment. First, theirs were the only voices, and then the woman's voice made itself heard over the rumbling of the loaders and the whirring of the sonic probes: a thin wordless wail of outrage that grew to an unearthly screech. She flew at them, then, the sonic probe in her hand her only weapon - that, and sheer fury and desperation.
One soldier stepped back, astonished, when she came at him, and tripped over a loaded cargo hopper, and fell. The Reman swung her sonic probe at another, and there was a snarling buzz of weird harmonics as the tool hit his skull, and suddenly he was down too. Three more soldiers rushed her in a body, and for a few moments there was a confused jostle, and then the sound of shots.
The Reman had seized a laser pistol from one of her attackers, and was blazing away with it indiscriminately. One soldier dropped screaming, another silent; the third turned and fled. The Reman sent more shots in all directions, some perilously close to other prisoners - and then everyone was running, Daniella among them, fleeing from the woman's crazed fear and desperate anguish -
Then she gave one last shriek, and blazed with fire, and was gone. One of the priests, Daniella thought, he had seen the disturbance and taken it in hand. Those damned wands - they didn't even need to see you, to use those damned wands -
From high above, a mechanical voice boomed out. "Prisoners will cease from disturbance and return to their work. There will be no more warnings. Prisoners will return to their work."
One by one, the prisoners left their hiding places and trooped dejectedly back to their workstations. More Siohonin soldiers were arriving, picking up their dead and wounded, making threatening gestures at the prisoners... but they were concentrating on the Remans, and there was just a moment when Daniella was unobserved.
Just one moment.
She was standing by one of the cargo hoppers, and it was full of blocks that had been approved by the Siohonin, that were on their way to... whatever the Siohonin were doing with them. She still had her sonic probe in her hand; she drove the tool hard into the black-gleaming surface of one block, pressed the activating stud. The noise was drowned by all the other sounds in the cavern; there was no visible change in the block. Daniella went meekly back to her place, began her work again. She didn't know if she had made any difference. She hoped she had.
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