He dreamed of death.
His body was wooden, an effigy constructed from twigs and bound by strips of plant matter. His own self, his waking body, lay beneath him drowning in blood from a torn throat filled with thorns - blood that slithered and constricted around the twig body, ensnaring it in visceral ichor even as he glared up at himself with hateful eyes. The moon, hanging in the pitch void sky of the featureless backdrop, was a pentagon aglow with dusken hues.
There was a whisper of a voice, a hissing, clattering, dry sound like bone dragged across slate. The perturbations in its intonation made comprehension impossible.
The blood slathered itself over the eyes he did not have, and he suffocated on deafening blindness. He fell, back, back, and lines of impossible color rose from the corners of his mind like bars. All he knew was the writhing form of a tangled worm, a rind of pulp wrapped around a brittle star of bones. It reaches up into his depths with a slender protrusion and Iikka Guiomar rolled straight out of his bunk, his body falling on top of his outreached arm and making him gasp with shock and pain as his head slammed against the floor and the muscles in his wrist stretch unnaturally while his bunk's alarm blared nearby.
Grinding his teeth in a mixture of pain and the existential agony of waking from a poor night's sleep, Iikka untangled himself slowly as the alarm shut off automatically and entered snooze mode, its damage already done and owner painfully awake. Finally managing to sit up, Iikka simply lay still for a few minutes to catch his bearings before finally rising and switching the alarm off before it could go off again.
The nightmares were irregular but always occurred like clockwork just before a job, probably due to incremental increases in stress from pre-job preparations and troubleshooting. Iikka gave himself an extra five minutes as he showered in his small room's all-in-one bathroom niche, taking the opportunity to blank out and think about absolutely nothing while he stared at the metallic gray wall and hot water poured down his back. His one mental break for the next several days now out of the way, Iikka took momentary stock of his appearance in the niche's mirror.
Iikka's face possessed angular edges, having been described as foxish before due in no small part to his prominent cheekbones and the pronounced ridges over his striking, orange eyes. His long, tawny hair had several knots worked into it again - and though he would never tell anybody, he lamented that there still were no hints of gray about it despite his 34th birthday on the near horizon. Due to his slight frame and the features of his face, many people mistook him for being much younger - and consequently, did not take him entirely seriously. Two past mishaps with gray hair dye had him swearing it off entirely, and Iikka felt a sullen swell of dejection as his thoughts drifted almost reflexively to Dakho. Something about the now-deceased Comms Officer's dress, demeanor, and looks had made sure that most people had taken him seriously, and he could usually be relied on to play face if Iikka himself was not fully confident about it.
Of course, he was gone now. Still plenty of work to be done though. Iikka brushed the errant cobweb of reflection out from his mind, conjuring a surge of freshly brewed irritation to replace it. He had ways of making people pay attention, both tedious and messy, and it was about time he stopped relying on somebody else to handle a key aspect of his actual job. Iikka spent the next fifteen seconds reflexively shaving stubble from his jawline before dressing - black business casual pants and a gray jacket over an orange shirt, to compliment his eyes. He then eased back into his bunk and with a flick of his wrist pulled up his holographic work interface to review the details for the job.
Iikka had spent the last two weeks working meticulously to ensure all possible avenues had been covered. There was no question as to whether something would go wrong, but merely what would go wrong. The Leaning Gale was aptly named; the wind was never blowing in quite the direction you thought it was. There was always some extra layers of conspiracy or mercenary interest that you could never anticipate for, and the key to survival was to plan for every contingency. Plan for enough potential failures, and maybe everybody might be able to get in and out without any fuss or violence and get paid. There were some iffy variables of note, two or so known unknowns, but overall Iikka was anticipating minimal operational causticity. More security and general resistance than he was generally comfortable with, but that was a given.
Elliot's voice blared through the room as the Captain summoned everyone to the mess hall. Feeling about as ready as he supposed he could be, Iikka got up, stretched one final time and worked a kink out of his left elbow, and stepped out the door to his room. The transformation that took place as he crossed through the portal was palpable. His lowered eyes, heavy with sleep, widened faintly into a more alert and ingrained leer. His mouth, already somewhat asymmetrically skewed to the left, adopted a faint and seemingly easy smirk, lips faintly parted near to the right ridge to reveal his set teeth. His hands lowered to his hips, hands held steady in a semi-clench akin to a gunslinger standing at the ready, while he drew his shoulders back faintly and craned his neck slightly ahead. The word that might have lept to mind for many who looked at him then would be tense, or perhaps predatory.
He advanced down the hall, heading for the mess hall, and keeping an eye out for the newest member of the crew - Cha’kwaina. Gauging her reaction to his stance would be the best way to determine whether he was on-form or not.
After all. Who better to assess the effectiveness of a stance he had adopted through observation of the members of a Zartarian glut, than a Quinunaki ex-slave who had probably learned to react subconsciously to the same stance through a similar kind of observation?
He did not care whether she flinched reflexively in fear or bristled in anger, so long as she reacted in any way at all that confirmed he was doing it correctly. As he walked directly into the mess hall, he made sure to faintly twitch the corners of both of his eyes. It was impossible for Human eyes to fully capture the motion of nictitating membranes, but they could evoke a flutter of sorts - particularly around the corners - that was superficially similar. Iikka knew it got a reaction out of Zartarians at the very least, if his experiences with them over the years was anything to go by. Now to see if one of their former slaves could tell him whether he was still doing it correctly, after all that time.
