Spit roasted

Earlier
Who: Cassandra, Katrina
Where: Katrina & Jay's quarters
When: Meeting after Cass briefly detoured via Hangar D

“Max!?” Katrina banged through into the darkened bedroom in her quarters "Max? Shit!"
Standing out in the main room, Cass silently shook her head at this execration, mentally bracing herself for what was about to come
Kat emerged seconds later looked utterly distraught
"He's not here!" she cried "Oh dear God Cass, he's not here!”
"Don't worry" Cass soothed "We'll find him"
She shouldered her pulse rifle and pulled a handheld terminal out from one of her jacket pockets to initiate a series security scans, leaving Kat to shake her head and turn away, her anxiety leaving her unable to just do nothing
“Max!?” she shouted as she began crashing through the apartment, desperately searching anywhere her son might be hiding “Max!? Max!?”
“Where the hell is he!?” she demanded, a note of hysteria edging into her voice as she emerged back from another fruitless search of the bedroom “Smegging help me!”
“I am!” Cass protested “There’s no sign of either Max or Jay on the security feeds, so I’m queuing a series of agent's to widen the search across the whole of the system"
“Oh shit!” Kat groaned miserably, distractedly running a hand back through her short hair as she blinked back her tears “Shit. Where is he?”
Cass paused to glance up at her
“We will find him” she said levelly
"Yeah, but what..."
Katrina tried again, her voice high and tight
“What if he's...”
She couldn’t finish the sentence and instead clapped a hand over her mouth as hot, glistening tears spilled down her cheeks
Cass pocketed her terminal and hurried across the room to catch her up in her arms
"He is alive" she insisted as Kat crumbled into misery against her "Max is alive!"
“Oh smeg” Kat managed between sobs "I'm such a terrible mother"
Frowning irritably, Cass pushed her away, holding her at arm’s length by her shoulders
"Listen to me" she demanded "No, listen! - Max is alive!"
"You don't know that" Kat wailed, feebly trying to push Cassandra’s hands away
"Yeah, okay, I don’t know it for certain" Cass relented "But back when the STCP abducted me, I did hear that grew up to be a great guy"
Katrina stared at her a moment in mute shock
"Now, I don't know what that means for him or for the rest of us in the future" Cass continued "but I do know that it means there's a very good chance he's still alive"
"Oh..." Katrina gasped, flinging herself back into Cassandra's arms “Thank God!”

In some ways Cass was glad Katrina wasn't in a particularly fit state to query what she had just said; affording her the luxury of not having to further elaborate, or to explore the possibility that the future version of herself that she had met, may well have been lying, or even worse, could even have been Brittany
"Kat, we will find him" Cass said after a moment "but we need to focus; can you do that for me?"
"Shit" Katrina took a couple of ragged breaths and sniffed loudly as she wiped away her tears "Y... yes"
"That's great" Cass nodded, pulling the terminal back out and flicking it on "Now, I'm going to ramp more of Holly's processing cycles through into searching the security archive; this'll hopefully give me a start point that I can use for a patrol and sweep pattern with the drones..."
She lapsed into silence, leaving Katrina to pace the room while Cass implemented her stratagem, the terminal pinging before she had even completed the work, alerting her to a possible match
"Gothca!"
"Where is he!?" Kat demanded
Cass turned to give her a better view of the terminal, which was displaying a grainy sequence of images from one of the security cameras, showing Max being led happily away by two GELF's who looked exactly like Katrina and her
"This is historical data as of about forty minutes ago" Cass explained "Hol's still reprocessing the search and triangulating the data; but given that the GELF’s have him and that there's still so much of the security network offline, I'd say the best place to look for him will probably be the GELF encampment - My guess would be that they'll be holding him as insurance or something"
"Oh my poor little boy" Kat whispered as she watched the footage "This is all my fault..."
"Don't you dare!" Cass scowled "The 'Dwarf is a bloody dangerous environment as it is, and the addition of telepathic shape-shifter's really hasn't improved matters! This is not your fault!"
"Yeah..." Katrina murmured sceptically "I guess..."
"Kat, don't beat yourself up about this" Cass said gently "You had left Max with Jay, the one person best equipped to look after him in this or any crisis! - Short of standing guard, ready to shoot anyone that came near him, I don't see what else you could have done!"
Katrina opened her mouth to say something, but decided against it - Cassandra didn't have kids of her own, she realised, and as such couldn't understand what she was going through
"Maybe Jay already rescued him, and they're both okay" Cass continued "but we need to make certain of that; and then once we get this mess sorted out, I think we're all going to have to play a part in assuming responsibility for Max’s safety"
She lapsed into silence for a moment as she hunched over her terminal to issue a complex chain of commands "...if, of course, Jay will tolerate me doing that" she added bitterly
Katrina grimaced but remained silent, weighing her response carefully
"Don't be too hard on Jay" she said after a moment "Your ...revelations came as something of a surprise to us all"
"Yeah, well...” Cass sighed unhappily “That's all kinds of complicated"
Pocketing the terminal, she turned to leave
"C'mon let's go; the MED should be meeting us in five"

---------

The journey to the GELF encampment took just a little over an hour, the two women hurrying along with the MED as quickly as they were able; although given that the greater part of the journey was via one of the express lifts, there was a necessarily long period of fretful inaction, where Cass passed her time working on her terminal, and Katrina distracted herself as best as she was able by stripping and cleaning their weapons
After finally stopping a couple of decks up from the cargo bay housing the GELF’s, they picked their way, as stealthily as they were able with a heavily armed three metre tall robot in tow, down through the rotting and decrepit tunnels towards the sex pig encampment

“Shush” Katrina hissed “I think I heard something”
They were in the GELF’s gloomy cargo bay, sheltering out of view of the main settlement behind a pile of unidentifiable, rotting machinery, the stench of ancient oil, smoke and food cooking on distant campfires permeated the air
“I don’t...” Cass muttered, her eye sockets behind her shades lit ghostly green with the HUD backlight as she scanned their surroundings with the MED’s adaptive optics
“Shit” she hissed “I think they’ve seen us!"
"Where!?"
"There, there and there” Cass pointed vaguely out into the darkness
Katrina grimaced as she raised her weapon
“You’re not very good at this, are you?” she observed
“What the smeg’s that meant to mean?”
“Twelve, three, six, nine” Kat snapped, pointing around her “Clock position; I need distances too!”
“Sisters!” a GELF suddenly yelled from atop a pile of nearby cargo crates “We bid you welcome!”
“Umm...” Cass pointed lamely “There’s one”
Katrina scowled in irritation as more and more of the GELF’s, each armed with an assortment of scary, rubbery looking weapons, emerged from the shadows around them, until they were eventually surrounded by a small group of the leather-clad creatures, one of whom, a fat old GELF, stepped forward to address them
“Greetings human sisters” the 'woman' smiled around her grey-bristled snout “I am Zizhan, one of the leaders of this feminist revolution, and I bid you welcome!”
"We're here for my son" Katrina said coldly, electing to dispense with the niceties
"Indeed" Zizhan nodded "All in due course"
"No" Kat snapped "Now!"
"You're in no position to make threats" Zizhan snarled, her former placid mood suddenly gone "One wrong move from either of you and the man-child will die!"
"Honestly" she went on, leaving Katrina bristling "I would have thought you would have been more appreciative; we liberate this ship for you, and all you are is ungrateful!"
"You did this for us!?" Cass frowned
"Why, you especially!" Zizhan smiled "Remember that we are, after all, gifted with a low level of telepathy..."
She turned to gesture to a GELF stood to her right
"Gertantra here and many others all sensed Chrysler’s thoughts about you during their many vigorous couplings with him - It's how we learned of your mistreatment and became convinced of the need to liberate this ship!"
Cass’s mouth fell open
"You mean he was thinking about me while he was screwing all of you!?" she snapped incredulously
"Enough of this!" Katrina shouted angrily "I want my son now!"
"I can sense there's little point in attempting to negotiate with you on this" Zizhan sighed, turning her back on the two women and walking away
"The male child is important to us" she called back to them over her shoulder, her height and features, shifting and changing behind the mass of long black hair that suddenly erupted from her head
"We have captured a wonderfully plump male who we intend to have as our guest of honour at the grand victory feast tonight!”
Zizhan turned to regard the two women, Cass realising with a start that she had transformed into an exact replica of herself
"Once we've finished spit roasting the man-thing known as Ziggy" the GELF said to Katrina "Your son will make a wonderful side dish"

Cass was more than tempted to open fire with the MED and kill all the assembled GELF's, but mindful that Max's life could well be forfeit for such a move, she looked in askance to Katrina, who wordlessly snapped her weapon up with the intention of killing Zizhan, but instead slowly keeled over sideways, her eyes rolling back in her head, having been hit with one of the weird looking GELF weapons
"Unit one: Maintenance mode; operational override, code fifteen" Zizhan snapped
Shocked, Cass gawped, open mouthed at her MED powering down before she turned to stare at the GELF version of herself
“Telepathic shape-shifter?” Zizhan smirked “Your devices accept only your orders?”
Cass shook her head in disbelief
"That's that’s just smegging embarrassing!" she breathed
“Isn’t it?” Zizhan chuckled, her skin suddenly blazing with bioluminescence as another one of the GELF’s clubbed Cass over the back of her head with one of their rubber weapons and she fell to the floor

<tbc / tag>
Who’s going to save Max?
It looks like the GELF’s have a taste for man meat – does anyone fancy being spit roasted?