A lady's tale

There once was a lady. She was a nice, genteel lady; an elderly example of her species, who nevertheless enjoyed her life. Then she was kidnapped. Did I mention she was a cyborg at the time? So I guess it was material theft in her captors eyes, attached as she was to mining equipment. But that didn’t matter, and still doesn’t in the grand scheme of things. They knew she was under there, the back-hearted pirates! It was her mechanics they wanted, the fact that her sweet mind was inside a steel oval buried deep within the secret bowels of all that machinery was just a bonus to them. But it was still kidnapping. Time wore on, as it does, and she eventually found little ways to signal her condition and seek aid, but with little success. There was a blocker put on her equipment, where she couldn’t get to it without hurting some delicate parts that helped keep her operating.
Her people were very unhappy about this, and the case would have never been closed, except that her captors, having pressed her into virtual slavery, got complacent, lazy & sloppy. Too much “success” will do that.
Now, her native people were large (and I do mean large) reptilians, off in a remote place of this starry wheel we call the Galaxy. Although if you look at it another way it’s a village or town with just 2 main streets, look at pictures of most spiral galaxies and see if you agree. But that’s another story. Her people had called the proper authorities, and some really good investigators were also called. But it was all to no avail.
Her captors in the meantime had fitted her out with the makings of a tank. She was horrified! She was a peaceful mining Borg! Not a nasty (her word) old tank! How dare they! Some war-tanks aren’t so bad, but, yes, some were definitely nasty. The ones that enjoy their grim work are. Some of her fellow captives were also cyborgs, or even robots. One was a former road grader, with a soft voice, who was accompanied by a bass voiced bull dozer, they had been together in bio-life, and had built roads together for a while before they’d been stolen too. One old tank though, was truly a tank, and insane as well. When the grader would softly say “I just want to make roads” and the ‘dozer would say “Show me a boulder to push around” , all the tank would say were things like “Kill ‘em all! Shoot anything that moves, then run over it! Ho HO HO!” Even the robots knew “he” was crazy, and usually stayed away from him. More than one had been involved in an “accident” with this mech.
Now, although evil, her original captors / thieves / slavers were smart; but when they stole her they were too smart for their own good.
They called themselves by many names, and their allies were just as bad as they were. Some lived in stone and steel towers, higher up in the sky than one could believe, on stripped, polluted worlds, and they thought nothing at all of robbing other places for their own use. We’ll call them the Despoilers. Their allies were called Environmentalists, and their worlds were as pristine as the Despoilers were polluted, and they stole to keep from using their own resources. To even cut down a tree that was threatening to topple over onto ones home was bound up in a lot of red tape. Two sets of thieving planetary pirates, with opposing bases for their actions, but going about the same thing.
When The Lady was taken, all she knew was she’d fell asleep listening to the winged frogs singing their night – songs, and contemplating the new vein of pink granite she’d uncovered that very day. Her job was mining rock for her peoples use, and it was one she’d enjoyed for the last 80 years. Then – she was awoken most rudely, and bundled off with a lot of other mechanicals. They thought she was a robot! Insult atop indignity! Her new mission began that very week. It was made all the harder, because although no mechanicals were broken, it took her best behavior to maintain the nutrient flow her biological needed. Work as a semi – intelligent ‘tank’ wasn’t in her training, but she picked it up soon enough. How she missed her old quarry, the singing toads and frogs, the magenta sunsets, the occasional shaking of tremors, the smokes and fumes from Mount Fire Rain over the horizon! Quietly – so as to keep it a secret, - she’d hoarded some parts for a little project of her own. Cyborgs were not without their own resources. The universal CDC Cyborg Distress Call was one. It was & is little known outside of Borg circles, but it was there all the same. It was built into her most basic circuitry, but a way to make it stronger had to be made.
The captors had other ideas, and outright plundering was the next step up (or down) from theft, “moonlight requisition” in their terms. The time to quit sneaking around the fringes of society and actually go out and take things by force had come. A likely target was chosen from a list. The Lady was again outfitted with the makings of a tank, treads, a plasma cutter for a canon, and some rather nice pincers from an old robot assembly. They’d forgotten, or simply ceased to care, there was a living, feeling, thinking mind under all that tonnage! And tonnage it was! Her brain case and nerve bundles alone weighed two tons! Hers were & still are a large people. Saurian yes, scaly, fanged, bellowing, head butting tail flailing monsters. But still a highly evolved civilization, and respected in some circles for the insights of their philosophers, and for their poetry and songs. They still live on their natal planet, and some others, their needs are different from most, being cold natured, yet intelligent. Not every planet could meet their needs, or support them.
Belzus 19 was a peaceful place, and the citizens were a strong bunch, with more than one race living as peacefully together as their temperaments would allow them. They were however not at all ignorant of dangerous neighbors, like the ones that stole a certain lady! The authorities had been hunting for their lairs for some time, and many planets were now on the lookout for their ships. Even Reavers didn’t like them, and that’s saying something! Reavers were well known for making raids and wars, they didn’t go sneaking around, and they used their own resources most of the time. So the natives of Belzus 19 were ready when they showed up, and gave them such a battle, with help from some surprising sources, that the Despoiler / Enviro bunch were defeated! However, the “tank” that accompanied the main force had cried out at her ‘capture’ “I am not a robot I am a Zyborg! Releaze me from this zlavery”! One of the things she’s made was a crude but very effective loudspeaker, and the other was a whole string of memory beads, to show just who had done what to her, and what she had been forced to do to survive.
The CDC went out on the universal Borg Band, and every Borg, Bot and Droid stopped, listened, and began to respond. There were a lot of them too! Her friends and co-workers, companions and counterparts from many star systems swarmed to her aid. They found her, brain box freed from the tank-like contraption, peacefully resting on a hastily re-liberated anti-grav unit, busily slurping a gallon or 2 of beef bouillon through a very long straw. Borg care is a well-known subject in some schools. The students had been overjoyed to find one with real (not faked) needs! She was getting well spoiled.
Due to the nature and location of the offense, and the protests of the ex-captors an extra galactic judge had to be called; every judge from the home galaxy had heard of them, and few indeed had friends, family, relations or race that hadn’t been robbed by them! Protests of ignorance were dismissed by her recordings of being addressed as a living being, among others. The judge found in her, and in other slaves, favor with no sympathy for the defendants. The length of her servitude, along with the deplorable conditions, made the settlement ruinous to them. It made her quite wealthy; a planet could have been bought with it, if it had been paid all at once, but that was not possible, so it was paid out of their coffers and from the newly wrung sweat from their brows in honest work. She promptly began to spoil her releasers, her old race, and many other peoples. She bought a spaceship, built to her specifications, so her anti –gravity support could take her into the inside, tie down and she could go anywhere she wished, which was nearly everywhere. Home, however, was the place she was freed, and her 15 ft. tall egg shaped form became a well-known sight there. She never did quite retire however, but kept doing “little projects” wherever and whenever she wished. Long association with her captors had given her a keen eye & ear for scams, scoundrels, and schemes; and she became a valued source of help - ferreting out truth from fiction. She’s still out there, somewhere, perhaps even now listening to the songs of some obscure life form, or building a museum of sea shells, or something else. The sea – squids of Elvis 29 sainted her, she’d had an aquarium with treads made so they could explore the land, and then the air & space, and it was the only way they knew of repaying her!