Jed Calvert - "Is it a dream?" part1

Who: Captain Jed Calvert
Where: Blue Dwarf, Security holding cells
When: After Vasquez left
Jed sat with his arms locked around his knees. They hadn't even given
him a chair to sit on, all he had between his arse and the cold steel
floor was a dirty blanket. Luckily Jed didn't care about luxuries.
He felt the hull creak around him, and the slight dizzying feeling of
acceleration. This was a common feeling on the Blue Dwarf when the
Wormhole Drive was being used. It had happened a few times over the
last few hours, Jed guessed that Vasquez was making several jumps to
make sure that nobody could trace where they were going, not that
anybody could track where a Wormhole ends up anyway unless they were
the best scientist in the universe. Jed just assumed Vasquez was
being overly cautious. Or maybe his men just couldn't work the damn
thing and kept ending up at the wrong side of the galaxy.
This did however give them some time, as the Wormhole Drive needs a
certain 'cooling off' period between jumps.
But there wasn't much that Jed could do. This cell was sealed tighter
than a vegetarian's lunchbox, and Jed knew that he couldn't do much
other than just sit there. He was normally a man of action, so it
frustrated him to be kept so tightly locked up. He had tried
furiously pacing the cell and banging on the bars like a madman,
which did do a good job of making his jailer nervous, but nothing
more useful. So he had decided to save his energy and sleep.
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There was blood. Lots of it.
Bodies surrounded him. Jed didn't normally mind this, as he was quite
comfortable with death, and would gladly sit in a bar littered with
the bodies of men killed by his own hands and sip a good whiskey. But
this was different.
These bodies were mutilated. It made him sick. The blood was not only
all over them, fountaining out of them like a water display, it was
also in the air, on his hands and in his mouth. He could smell it, he
could taste it.
He spat, but the taste was still there.
He was so angry, the anger had almost turned him into a monster. He
barely felt his human at all. He just wanted to lash out at
everything.
Then there was a woman's voice. But where was it?
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In the cell, Jed woke up and felt the horrid taste in his mouth.
Normally he'd make it go away with whiskey, or some kind of illegal
moonshine. Something that would burn the insides of his mouth until
the taste went away.
He spat out of his cell and the mucus landed at the feet of the
guard. One of Vasquez's men, who didn't look too pleased. For some
reason, water passed straight through the forcefields on these cells.
Jed didn't know the science, but assumed it just wasn't solid enough
for the forcefield to keep back.
The guard looked down slowly, he saw the big greeny by his feet, and
then glared at Jed. Who looked as unapologetic as someone could be.
The man walked over to the cell with his rifle raised. Jed sprung up
like an animal, just willing him to open the door so he could pounce
and spin the guy's neck so hard it would snap. The man faced him
through the bars.
The guard turned off the forcefield, just leaving the bars between
them as protection. These were the high-security cells that had both
a forcefield and old-fashioned physical bars, which provided
protection in case the power went down.
They faced each other for a mere moment. Jed snarled like an animal.
The guard looked deep into his eyes and saw something horrible. There
was something in there, something that showed a lifetime of pain and
other general nastiness.
Jed didn't give the man long to look however, as he reached out of
the bars as far as he could and grabbed the man's arms. Bringing him
closer to the bars. He hoped to slam the man's head on the steel
rungs and knock him unconscious, but the guard was expecting it. He
raised his gun and hit Jed squarely with the barrel.
Jed might have been acting like a caged animal, but he still had
human frailties. He collapsed backwards and fell unconscious.
<To be continued>