Are You Aware Of the Fire Beneath Your Feet?
Governor's Mansion
155 West Paces Ferry Road, New Whitehorse, Terranova
9/11/2101, 1815.27 American Time
Sitting down at his desk, Guy Thomas Zellner, Governor of the Union, calls up his copy of the LeHaye Bible, bookmarked to the Book of Tribulation, stroking a button on the workstation holodisplay to begin.
”The Antichrist,“ Saint Timothy LeHaye, the last of the true Christian prophets, speaks in the background, as fireballs boil up from the Twin Towers, from the Pentagon, from the Capitol, from all the ancient and long-vanished monuments of his race’s superiority over them,”in retribution for God-fearing men rallying together to stand against him, destroyed all the places holy to the race of Man, all the monuments of Their supremacy, bringing woe, devastation and death upon the believers and those still unbelieving alike, and,“ the scene dissolves to leather-clad, jackbooted zeds running through the streets on antique Ford-Davidson gasburner motorcycles, whipping and otherwise preying upon innocent men, women and children,” the armies of the Harlot of the Antichrist rode through the streets of the fallen cities, subjecting men , women and those children who still obeyed the will of their fathers and their Lord, Jesus Christ, to unspeakable and multiple depravities, turning them away from their Christ, away from their fathers, turning them towards the path to bestiality, darkness, Hell itself.“
A larger holovid projector plays on the wall in front of his bed, showing him real-time Webcam footage of the scene outside his Capitol, all those ungrateful, goddamn Fall Line and South Coast zeds on the front steps, screaming “GIVE US A VOICE! GIVE US A VOICE!” over and over.
Highly unauthorized Webcam footage...YouTube knows better than that, the National Police as well, letting a freelancer get a cam within a mile of the Capitol at a time like this.
”So it was in all the cities of the earth(’Chaos, rampant in the age of distrust’),“ LeHaye's voice drones,“ the armies of the Harlot—”
A child window briefly pops up, showing the murderous zed Hillary Clinton, butcher of Waco, chief architect of the Conspiracy against her kind and his.
”—and the Antichrist who was but her black-hearted harlot—”
Another child window shows Hillary's lover, the infamous Condelezza Rice, the zed directly responsible for the September 11th Massacres a hundred years ago.
”—riding through the streets(’confrontations, impulsive habitat’)leaving misery and death in their wake(’on and on south of Heaven’)for three days and three nights. On the morning of the fourth day, the armies of Man banded together as one, under the banner of RJ Williams and all his mighty men, driving the forces of the Harlot before them, subjugating them in the bondage the race of Eve deserved(’on and on south of Heaven’), the bondage the Lord had commanded Adam to inflict upon Eve at the beginning—“
Knocking back half a glass of Kentucky and kike with his free hand, the inheritor of the New America watches and smiles, as soldiers beat down on all those filthy, stinking zeds.
His smile disappears when he looks back at all those zeds on the steps of his Capitol continuing to chant and stomp their feet, National Policemen arrayed all around them, not doing a damn thing to stop them.
”—and, when they were done(’on and on south of Heaven’),“ LeHaye continues, ignorant of the shrilling zeds on the other HV,“ the Lord called together all the mighty men who had done this thing, saying unto them[in a voice that sounds a lot like the first Chairman of the YouTube Media Committee, Bruce Boxleitner] ‘too much folly and wickedness has been loosed upon My Earth, too many false covenants, enforcing all manner of folly and wickedness and depravity in the name of freedom, have profaned and corrupted My Chosen People, have allowed the harlots free rein over you, and you have suffered much because of it, your people stripped bare and their shame and their whoredoms laid open and exposed, just as I warned them would happen should they ever turn away from Me.
Your sufferings are now at an end, and will remain so forever, if you follow My commandments to the letter. First, you, My mighty men, shall now take and keep your rightful places as My anointed kings over Men. In this duty you must not fail Me, or, again, you shall suffer My Perfect Wrath.’
‘This we shall do, Lord,’ said the mighty men all as one.
‘Second,’ Christ said unto them,’ you must place the harlots in the same bondage I commanded Adam to lay upon Eve at the beginning. They are beasts, lowest of My Creation, and, this is how you must treat them. Pen them up in cages, keep them apart from one another and from yourselves, put upon their backs all the low and hard labors of the world and constantly lay bare their shame, expose their many whoredoms and chastize them for it. In this duty you must not fail me, or again, you shall suffer My Perfect Wrath.’
‘This we shall do, Lord,’ said the mighty men all as one.
‘Third,’ the God of Abraham commanded them,‘ you must, at once, rule your nations with force and with fire, and forbid the making of false covenants, the adherance to false covenants; I say unto you now, true freedom lies in utter bondage to Me, the Lord, your God, and to you, My chosen Kings over all the earth.’
‘We know that now, Lord,’ said the mighty men all as one. ‘Forgive us the folly of adherence to false covenants, for believing their promises of freedom and equality, for we know those promises are promises of depravity, perversity, sinfulness and to bondage far worse than Yours, Lord.’
‘You are forgiven,’ the Lord, their God, told them,’ as only I can, as only the race of Man is capable of, but, be warned, you must do as I say, in all things, or, again, you shall suffer My Perfect Wrath.’ ”
‘We shall do as You command, O’ Lord,’ said the mighty men all as—“
Goddamnit, his Gilda would have to have the bad fucking manners to whimper for more of what he'd just gotten through giving her.
Angrily, he knocks back the rest of the Kentucky and kike, her Governor getting up out of the chair, grabbing the kinky black hair of that worthless piece of Fall Line ghetto trash, jerking her head up just so He can slap her across the face one, two, three, four, five, six frickin' times, just like she wanted him to, like she’d do to some other zed whennever he turned his back on her for even a second.
Her subhuman kind continues screeching in the background for rights they don't deserve, as “South of Heaven“ plays in the background, both serving to make him that much angrier, as he just keeps hitting her, just like she wants him to.
Like all those other zeds want him to as well.
“GIVE US A VOICE! GIVE US A VOICE!” they all continue chanting , their stomping pounding in his head, as he hauls his Gilda out of bed, throwing her into the desk, the holo of the Book of Tribulation wavering a bit from the resulting impact, the Governor of the Union grabbing hold of her hair again, driving her ugly, black face hard into the polished cherry wood of the desktop.
His every breath comes in ragged heaves cooling the white foam running down the corners of his mouth, the Governor of the Union—their Governor, whether they frickin' liked it or not—stabbing a button on the holodisplay.
If they wanted a voice, then he would give them a voice.
By God, would he ever give them a voice.
“Guy?“ Micheal John Bauer, his Prime Minister, asks.
“It's gone on just a little bit further than it should've, don't you think, Micheal?“ his Governor tells him, Micheal replying instantly:
“All units, you are authorized to use Delta Level protocols to disperse the crowd, repeat, Delta Level protocols.“
On the larger HV, National ACV-137 Spectre gunships swoop down on the zeds, five-terajoule laser cannon, five-hundred gigajoule autolasers and hell missiles tearing into them, other National Policemen converging on the Capitol's front entry, their .502 Magnum massdriver riflesblazing, the zeds getting what they wanted at long last, the speakers in his office deafening him with the cheering and exultation of those watching this on the InterWeb.
Echoing with the only voice the Governor of the Union would ever permit any of them to have.
“...Mama?!” the thirteen-year old girl screams, kneeling over her mama, holding her hand...she's bleeding from the ears and the mouth, her chest is all crushed, and her legs are bent out of shape.
She's not moving.
“Mama,” Jami pleads, hearing the engine roaring, tires squealing as he turned around again, “ you gotta get up, now, please, he’s comin’ back, Mama, please, please, you gotta get up.”
The roar of the gasburner’s engine grows louder, he had gotten up speed, Jami feels the headlights burning into her as he charges back down Long Street, horn blasting the first few notes of “Glory to the Union,” into the night, he’s gonna be on top of them any second now, out to finish what he’d started doing.
“Mama, please,” Jami sobs,“please, get up, please get up, please—”
Hot, burning white lights....
...rip through the bridge, more alarms screaming in her ears, goddamn Yanker warships everywhere she looked in the flickering piloting holodisplay...they didn’t have one freakin' chance in Hell of making it out of this alive....
“Grav shielding reduced by 95%!” Chief Warrant Officer Micki Phillips reports from the engineering station at the rear of the bridge. “Primary and secondary electrical systems are trashed out, teritary electrical system 78% disrupted, warp engine severely damaged, venting antimatter and warp engine coolant, auto-repair system off line, main lasers two, three, five, seven, eight and eleven knocked out, grav beam forward and starboard emitters destroyed, electronic warfare subsystems destroyed, crew and middecks both open to space, hangar bay destroyed...med section reporting heavy casaulties, 13 dead, 19 wounded.”
“Number One,” she adds,“ I know you want to save as many of them as you can, we all do...but—”
“All available warp engine power to the grav shielding and main lasers!” screams the frightened senseless 21-year old girl now commanding the Unbroken.“ Return! Fiii-re!”
“—you’re in command now,” that bitch of a flight engineer just has to remind her,“you have to think of your ship and crew as well...you’ve done all you can, you have to....”
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Zellnersboro Aerospace Corridor, 0.05 AU from Twice-Born
9/11/2101, 2320.68 Zulu
“...all hands, man your battle stations, captain to the bridge, on the double, captain to the bridge, on the double!”
Commander Jamilinne Sipe, captain of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken, is already out of bed—she's learned a long time ago to sleep in her greys—out of her quarters, and halfway down the red-lit corridor to the ladder leading down to the middeck by the time her first lieutenant had started shouting over the 1-MC for everyone to come running.
Jami's also learned to sleep light....
She barely acknowledges the cry of “Captain on the bridge!” made by one of the Legionnaires standing guard at the hatchway, barely even hears Lieutenant Commander Stephanie Rhoads announcing “captain has the bridge,” as she sits down at the command station, belts herself in, feels her ship emerge from warpdrive into normal space, hurtling headlong at 611 klicks per second towards—
“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the Red Cross medical relief ship Bernadette Healey, transporting refugees from Twice-Born; am under attack by hostile machines, have taken heavy casualties, warp engine, hangar bay, and med decks all holed, grav shield generator destroyed...we are defenseless, we have women and children on board, someone please—“
someone screams amidst the snow on her right-hand command holodisplay, the captain of the Unbroken seeing the Red Cross medship for herself in the left-hand display, along with four Freeman Lang-class heavy cruisers, two with the coiled snake insignia of the Alliance For Ethical Government, the other two sporting the flaming phoenix and star of the Twice-Born Republican Interstellar Navy, all four closing on the medship together behind a cloud of T-novan-built F18B Predator warpfighters displaying both supposedly-warring factions' colors, lasers from all the hostiles tearing into the unarmed and defenseless ship.
“Gunnery deck, bridge, fire main lasers, “ Jami snaps, no hesitation in her voice,“ launch Gobstoppers and Smashmouths, defensive, launch decoys and anti-beam ordinance; Number One, release the hounds!“
“Warpfighters away,“ Stevie replies from the piloting station at the forward end of the bridge, the holo of the 1,262-ton Dauntless-class cruiser's gunnery officer, Lieutenant Prudence Davidson, reporting,“Missiles and torps away, firing main las—
Crap!
The bridge shakes, sparking briefly in places, alarms howling inside the headphones of her CyberLink, her flight engineer, Chief Warrant Officer Ariel Dixon, shouting from her station behind the comm and lidar operators,“Grav shielding reduced by 83%, primary electrical system 64% disrupted, secondary el system 41% disrupted, direct hit to warp engine, warp engine containment destabilizing, venting—”
“Return fire!” Jami snaps. “All nonessential systems to secondary power, all available warp engine power to grav shielding and main lasers!”
“Hit 'em again!” she adds unnecessarily.
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/11/2101, 1830.00 AMT
“Maan,” Marc Bevill asks his fellow wits seated with him at the stretch end’s middle booth,“just what is their problem? It's our tax money what supports ‘em lazy zeds here and on the South Coast, and this is how they repay us...so what if they don’t have no real represenatives in the Common Legislature, and Horse's Ass gave the corps the right to do whatever they had to to make some money off 'em...man, it wasn’t like it was Pharaoh coming in and killing off all their first-born sons or anything like that.”
“Hell,” he adds, after a sip of his large to-go cup of Moot House coffee,“as far as I’m concerned, Guy Zellner can kill all of ‘em off, nothin’ but a goddamn bunch of troublemakers and crybabies anyway.”
“Damn straight,” Joe Keane chirps right up,“ you damn straight they are, nothin’ but a buncha crybabies, every damn one of ‘em, bitchin’ ‘cause we have to come in there and make 'em do a little bit of work and try to educate ‘em...shoulda shot all of ‘em dead back durin' World War I, 'steada lettin' em all live like we did.”
“Y’damn skippy,” Jim Hunter remarks. “Need to send the goddamn Third Shock Army down here and knock all their heads around, that’s what they oughta do.”
“How ‘bout some more coffee there, darlin’!” Joe hollers out to Candace Hill, the salesperson working the stretch end today, the dirty, goddamn leprechaun SOB banging his cup on the table, knowing damn good and well Candace is busy taking the orders of a family of four in the booth behind them.
“Maan,” Marc observes,“can’t get no good service round here.”
“Hey!” he shouts at Candace.“ The man said he wanted some more goddamn coffee! How ‘bout you shake that fat ass of yours over here with the coffeepot?!”
“You need to do somethin’ ‘bout them girls, Sunni,” Carl Eustis, Joe’s running buddy from way back in the Pleiocine Era, says to Sunni Pate, as she brings the pot around, refilling all four men’s cups. “Gettin’ to where you can’t get a cup of damn coffee without having to wait an hour and a half.”
“She was waiting on other customers,” Sunni replies, feeling Joe’s eyes zeroing in on her ass as she turned round to go back behind the line.
“Always got a damn excuse,” Jim comments, Joe telling him,“it’s the fuckin’ Cooter House, Jim, whaddya expect?”
“More than what I get, for the money I have to pay to eat here,” Jim whines in reply. “I mean, look at this, a goddamn dollar seventy-five for a lil’ bitty ol’ sliver of softshell pie, goddamn ninety cents for a cup of coffee that don’t fill y’hollow tooth and almost five damn dollars for two bacon cheeseburgers and hashbrowns.”
“I know, brother,” Marc replies,“ it’s just ridiculous how much you have to pay...ninety cents for a damn cup of coffee.”
The Moot House district manager chokes on what she wants to say to them, listening to Candace call in her order to Jody Harbuck, the second-shift cook, as she sits back down at the low counter and gets back to work on next week’s schedules for all three of her stores...Ibrahim’s sorry ass was supposed to be have been here ten minutes ago, but it would probably be more like two hours later, before he even bothered to come in the door, and he sure as hell wouldn’t be sober in any case.
Sighing, Sunni turns her attention to the tickets Ibrahim had stuck Amy Smith—no relation, thank you, Jesus—with auditing, the responsibilty, of course, having gone straight to the point on her head, no surprise there....
At least, she tries to turn her attention back to the tickets, hard to do with Toby X booming through the store, Canadace’s idiot co-worker, Scott Ogles, having uploaded ten dollars to number 127 on the jukebox in the far corner of the store...ten years ago, Toby used to be one of her cooks, making $6.75 an hour...now, he makes millions per second, three houses, the one he had in Vargas big enough for the whole town of Owensboro to fit in its horse barn...how the hell was that for irony?!
“....evil gonna fly, there gonna be some hail, when ol’ Guy Z. start rangin’ yo’ bell Terranova gonna give it to ya Terranova gonna give it to ya, say T-Nova gonna give it give it to ya.,” the “artist” once known as Toby James Bohannon raps, his holo gyrating in front of the Union Colors,“Brought to ya courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue, numba one in da hood, gee!”
“O’,” Scott, looking oh so pretty(useless)leaning on the condiment stand on the office end, shouts,“hail yeah!” as the song restarts.
Another sigh...Toby had been just as good—or as bad—a grill operator as he was a rapper, at least on the nights when he hadn’t been too geeked out on rapture to put in a performance at the grill...and, clean or stoned, you could forget about putting him on weekends—which reminded her, she still needed a cook for third shift, Ibrahim doubtlessly having not troubled himself to call someone in for little Johnny’s worthless ass....
Okay, back to the tickets...the system automatically priced and totalled the damn things, yet, whennever food costs got a teeny weeny bit too high, the Moot House Method specifically called for her to access the tickets written in the last 21 shifts and go over them for any sign of error, when the only possible error the girls(and two guys)could make was to call it in wrong....
“...I didn’t—” Sunni starts to say, even knowing it wouldn’t be any use.
“Bitch,” Jimmy spits back at her, jerking a hand at the holoprojection floating over the office workstation,“ don’t you even think of effin’ tellin’ me these ain’t your errors—if they are, in fact, errors...can’t be nothin’ else, but yours, sweetpea, system only charges the prices based on what you say into your Link, so it can’t be its fault.”
“Chargin’,” he added, tapping the holo,“ for a grilled cheese plate on four on ticket 223, when I know damn good and well you called in a T-bone dinner on two, a pork chop dinner and a Porterhouse dinner for that same ticket...do you realize just how much money you just balled up and threw away on that order?”
“Goddamn,” he added, looking right between Sunni’s legs,“if you didn’t have other redeeming qualties to ya, I’d have fired and sent ya back to PTP long time ago....”
“...the rule of law,” Micheal Bauer's holoimage says from just over the high counter, a pair of TSID ops flanking him, as he stands on the Capitol’s still charred and bloody steps,“simply does not apply to enemy combatants, and that was what those people were, plain and simple, foreign troublemakers, instigated by Gilda Schrenko,” the Union Education Minister,“ and the Conspiracy she willingly serves, to create problems where none existed. Yes?”
“Jamie Murdoch,” a balding man, medium height, wearing a brown suit, speaks from the middle of the mob of YouTube News reporters at the foot of the steps,“ Sir, what do you have to say to the claims that people in the Fall Line and South Coast simply wanted sovreignty or representation in the Common Legislature?”
“You right-wing liberal media talking heads are something else indeed,” Bauer, chuckling and shaking his head, replies,“ willing to parrot every word put in your damn mouths by the zeds controlling the Media Committee.”
“Damn,” he adds, shaking his head, pausing for a few moments before finally answering Murdoch’s question:
“It just so happens, Mister Murdoch, that the majority of the people in both the Fall Line and the South Coast—as opposed to all the instigating rabble rousers, most of whom are not even Terranovan citizens, let alone from anywhere on the continent of Basseterre—are perfectlly fine with the way things are now; if you don’t believe me, then check the Ministry of State IW site for the results of the election held last November, you’ll find that 73% of the people in both regions voted no on Amendment 46, which would’ve given them the independence they supposedly wanted, and 77% percent voted no on Amendment 49, which would’ve granted each of the Fall Line and South Coast the full voting representation in the Common Legislature you liberal Republican media elites keep telling folks they all want.”
He pauses again, and the reporters to laugh, Bauer concluding:
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/11/2101, 1831.40 AMT
“And, for those of you still believing the zeds' ridiculous assertions that we somehow made all that up, let me clue you in on a dirty little secret...the Secretary of State just happens to be one of them.”
“Damn sure is,“ National Policeman First Class Geoff Halfacre says, through a mouthful of hashbrowns, onions and ketchup, the voices of those watching this all over the IW agreeing with him, Bauer adding:
“And, even she doesn't think highly of her own kind,“ Bauer adds,“ as she proved when she voted for Guy Zellner two years ago, instead of Cynthia McKinley.“
National Policeman 1st Class Garrison Lee Sipe picks at his double quarter cheese plate, only part of him really tuned in to either his elder half-brother or his partner, most of the rest of him still thinking about the zed they'd rousted earlier in that traffic stop on 75, just a mile from the Centerville exit.
What they'd done to her kid, while they made her watch...what they'd done to her afterwards, while waiting on the unit they'd called in to transport her to the LEC in Ford's Valley.
What was going to happen to her, that part unpleasantly reminding the thirty-six year old Sipe of twenty-seven years ago, when Mama had been run down with Daddy's antique gasburner, and Jami had been blamed for it.
Sipe sighs, Halfacre looking at him funny but saying nothing...they even sold copies of those three seasons on the IW, $59.99 TSC per download, and still, they said she'd only ended up in YDC, getting slapped on the wrist while being turned out by the other zeds.
He'd even told that lie to himself and the three nephews Jami had never even seen, even after Jacob had found the footage in his comp's plasma matrices, Sipe catching him staying up 'till well past second sunrise watching his Aunt Jami being—
“Hey?!“ Halfacre snaps Sipe out of his reverie. “You there, Garry?“
“Yeah,“ Sipe replies, repeating himself, taking a bite from the double cheeseburger on his plate, in spite of being sick to his stomach.
“You been doing that a lot lately,“ Halfacre, his mouth stuffed with even more food, observes. “Anything you wanna talk about?“
“Naw, man,“ Sipe lies,“I'm good.“
“You sure, buddy?“ Halfacre asks. “You not having problems with your old lady, or nothing like that, are you?“
“Naw,“ Sipe assures him. “Michelle ain't givin' me no trouble, least no more than what she usually does.“
“Zeds is nothin' but trouble,“ Halfacre remarks, shovelling a forkful of scrambled cheese eggs into his mouth at the same time.
“Not,“ he adds, food dropping from his mouth back onto his plate with every word,“a goddamn thing but.“
“Yeah,“ Sipe remarks, taking another bite of double cheeseburger, chasing it down with a forkful of hashbrowns covered in cheese.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Zellnersboro Aerospace Corridor, 0.05 AU from Twice-Born
9/11/2101, 2333.91 Zulu
“Got him,“ Prue remarks over her Link, the captain of the Unbroken watching one of the Loyalist heavies go up in a bright ball of fire, as twelve 160-terajoule lasers punch through clouds of anti-beam ordinance and grav shielding at point-blank range, Stevie jerking the stick in her left hand in all directions at once, twisting the cruiser out of the path of thirty-six 160 TJ lasers burning their way through the blue-gold fog of ice and strips of gold foil Unbroken leaves behind in the course of her evasive maneuvers.
Stevie brings the main lasers to bear on an AFEG heavy's underbelly, Prue and the other main laser gunner slashing it open, even as the ship's fifteen robotically-controlled five-hundred gigajoule autolaser quad turrets scour the surrounding sky clean of warpfighters, forty-seven megaton Smashmouth antimatter torps detonating in the midsts of more cruisers, heavy cruisers, warpfighters, even a few battlecruisers the Loyalists and the AFEGs had managed to hold on to in the five years since TB's disputed Presidential elections had torn the world apart.
“Aren't,“ Unbroken's navigator, Sub-Lieutenant Genera Muncie, asks out loud,“the Loyalists and the AFEGs supposed to be deadly enemies?“
“They're at least supposed to hate each other's guts, even before the civil war,“ Ariel is quick to speak up, something the captain of the Unbroken finds more unusual than two supposed enemies working together to achieve somebody's greater good.
As the Commonwealth's own history bears out, the latter is not all that unusual.
“Supposed to be,“ Jami remarks, Chief Lidarman Meliza, tenth so named of Clan Potonakro, reporting,“that medship's made it to warpdrive, but we've got three others lifting from the surface, along with additional warpfighters and cruiser-class machines.“
“Where the hell are their escorts?“ Radioman First Class Alannah Munro asks, Stevie quick to reply,“they have big red crosses painted on their sides; New Geneva apparently thought that was all the protection they needed.“
“Some fools,“ Jami remarks, Unbroken turning to bring her main lasers to bear on a Loyalist Benjamin Zellner-class cruiser,“never freakin' learn, do they?“
“No,“ Stevie answers, Unbroken executing a micro, emerging from warpdrive close enough to one of the battle cruisers to scrape its paint job, the main laser gunners goring it in passing, as the three other Red Cross medships clear Twice-Born's upper atmosphere, hotly pursued by nearly a full fleet's worth of cruisers, heavy cruisers, battlecruisers and warpfighters.
All of whom are painted in the dull olive green of the Terranovan Republican Spacefleet.
“Radioman,“ Jami says, playing a hunch,“monitor the comm and data traffic from those Yanker—“
“Skipper,“ Alannah cuts her commander off,“they're in communication with the Loyalist and AFEG machines we're currently engaging; it's encrypted, so I can't tell you exactly what's being said, but—“
“You've told me enough, hon,“ Jami replies, as Smashmouths and one-kiloton Gobstopper antimatter missiles disrupt the approaching Yankers' formation.
“More than enough,“ she adds, Unbroken entering warpdrive again.
War Room, Commonwealth Forces Headquarters
20 kilometers underneath Cydonia, Cydonian Desert, Mars
9/11/2101, 2335.06 Zulu
She watches Unbroken emerge from warpdrive in the midst of the Yanker formation, main lasers blazing away, autolasers stopping inbound missiles, the Dauntless-class cruiser's squadron of Raptors blasting their way through the Loyalist and AFEG machines to come to the aid of their parent craft.
Her worst suspicions have been confirmed, but Angelique Gault finds she isn't terribly surprised by that...the President of the Commonwealth has learned the hard way nothing was ever beneath a Yanker, except possibly decency, fair play and the democratic principles they insisted only they were capable of, even as they slaughtered three thousand of their own people on the steps of their bloody Capitol.
Oh yes, I forgot, she remarks bitterly to herself, those weren't really Terranovans, but foreigners, aliens, offworlders, zeds whose WARCOM almost destroyed the human race, had it not been for the Lord RJ Williams leading the righteous on a holy crusade against the unbelievers....
“Coffee, Madam President?“ the Anazazi chief petty officer asks, a large plastic beaker of strong, black coffee in her right hand.
“Thank you, Chief,“ Angelique replies, nodding her head, as she takes the beaker and sips from it, before looking back at the fighting raging over TB.
She's just in time to see Unbroken torpedo a squadron of sixteen Arleigh Burke-class cruisers in full Yanker warpaint, just as another full squadron of Loyalist battle cruisers lift from their side of the planet, their Predator warpfighters already pursuing yet another pair of Red Cross medships transporting more refugees of the civil war out of the effing kill zone.
Should never have listened to the goddamn Red Cross, she recriminates herself for only the millionth time since the head of the Red Cross had gone on the IW a week ago and announced her harebrained scheme to send unarmed medships into a system the Yanker “peacekeepers“ had closed off, when they'd returned to Twice-Born five years ago(all in the name of preventing the Loyalists and AFEGs from spreading their civil war throughout space, oh, so effing noble of the backstabbing yobs)before asking the Commonwealth Forces to, pretty please, not provide escorts, because that would only start another interstellar war.
So, instead, she observes, taking another sip of coffee, Unbroken's all by herself, in the middle of a whole whacking lot of hostile machines, a recurring motif in the almost twenty years Jami's held command of that ship, starting with the bloodbath on Clavileno....
The President of the Commonwealth closes her eyes, sighing, opening them back up to watch Unbroken fighting for her life and the lives aboard those medships...another effing mistake she's made, believing Busbee's good intentions and letting Petro take on the ecorepair of Big Sky, knowing damn good and well that King Solomon had been spot on, one miserable sinner of an epileptic Yanker pederast did indeed destroy a lot of good.
She's been through so much already, she muses, her whole life, she's had to fight so bloody hard for what we take for granted, even for the love of a good woman...especially for that one, simple thing, and it took her hitting bottom to finally let Stephanie in....
She shouldn't, Angelique adds, taking another sip of coffee, watching her old ship shoot down even more Yanker trogs, have to keep paying for my mistakes.
Governor's Mansion
155 West Paces Ferry Road, New Whitehorse, Terranova
9/11/2101, 1838.11 AMT
“How in the hell,“ the Governor of the Union demands of his Chief of Military Operations,“did your little b—“
“We think Unbroken was forced out of warpdrive by the recent additions we made to Achird B's System-Wide Minefield,“ Fleet Admiral Kennisaw Mountain Sipe is quick to reply.“According to our latest intel reports, she was supposed to have been en route to Big Sk—“
“I can read, Admiral,“ Zellner replies coldly, glancing away from Sipe's holo to the larger HV, now showing the newly-implemented Amendment 1804 of the Articles of Union in action.
He fights the urge to smile, as he turns back to his CMO.
“So,“ he says,“I already emeffing know where your little bitch was supposed to have been. Since, however, no warpdrive course to Big Sky that I'm aware of cuts through the Zellnersboro corridor, what I'd like to know, Ken, is how—“
Sipe has the temerity to interrupt his Governor a second time:
“Once in normal space, she was able to intercept the Mayday sent via warpdrive transceiver by one of the surviving Red Cross medships, as it left Twice-Born's atmosphere, something she couldn't have done if she was still in warpdrive, as even another drivefield intersecting with hers—“
“I am also familiar with basic warpdrive physics, Admiral,“ the Governor of the Union, adding a guttural growl to his voice, snaps.
“Of course, sir,“ Sipe replies.
“And,“ Zellner adds,“I now also know how she ended up in the Zellnersboro corridor, in spite of a system which was supposed to prevent such a thing from taking place.“
“It's not one hundred percent effective,“ Sipe tells him.
“Apparentally,“ his Governor replies,“it isn't even one percent effective, seeing how those effing medships also got through the mines.“
“No, sir,“ Sipe agrees, “it's no longer effective...doubtlessly, the navicomps on Unbroken and those medships now have a complete map of the SWMF in their plasma matrices—“
“Which the Commies can now use to get past the damn things,“ Zellner finishes for him.
“Just effing great,“ he remarks, just as his little Gilda, lying on the floor where he left her, starts up her damn whimpering again.
“Just“ her Governor repeats, stomping his bad little zed into the deep shag carpeting,“effing great.“
Aboard the Republican Union Ship Atlanta Three
Zellnersboro Aerospace Corridor, 0.03 AU from Twice-Born
9/11/2101, 1840.06 AMT
“Understood,“ Captain DeForrest Tucker Sipe replies to Daddy's holo, just as Unbroken follows the last of the Red Cross medships into warpdrive.
“Nav,“ he says to Lieutenant j.g. Jeff Ledford,“plot a course for Big Sky.“
“Sir?“ the preppie little North Coast brat has the nerve to turn and face his commanding officer and ask.
“Something wrong with your hearing, boy?!“ Sipe asks. “I need you to plot a warpdrive course which will have us come out on top of Unbroken and those medships before they can tell everyone how to get through the SWMF.“
“I think that's a pretty simple concept,“ he adds, his exec, Commander Phillip J. Snead, asking him,“do you want to recall the fighters, Skip?“
“Leave 'em in the air, XO,“ Sipe decides,“but have Ledford interlink our navicomp with theirs.“
“If,“ he adds,“that's not too much for your tiny brain to handle, Mister Ledford.“
“Intercept course plotted, interlink established,“ Ledford replies. “Drivefield generators one, two and three coming on line and answering navicomp commands, warpdrive entry in five, four, three, two, one—“
Space and time turn Sipe's stomach as Atlanta Three's drivefield twists them up, the stars themselves stretching like salt-water taffy, as the 42,053-ton Freeman Lang-class heavy cruiser enters warpdrive, her air group of 120 warpfighters forming a distorted V shape in front of it, the formation intersecting normal space, moving through it at roughly three thousand times the speed of light.
“ETA to New Seattle corridor,“ Ledford announces,“0306.00 AMT, 13 September.“
Twenty seconds subjective, give or take, Sipe observes, doing the math without even thinking about it.
Not even enough time to watch Dick Grissom, he muses, space and time returning to normal, the painfully blue disk of Tau Ceti's second planet resolving itself on his left-hand command holodisplay, his right-hand display showing him tactical view, warpdrive lidar instantly showing him the positions of the Red Cross medships.
And the ship commanded by his murdering, spoiled-ass brat of a sister.
“Gunnery deck, bridge,“ he snaps into his Link's headset.“ launch Mark 125s, stand by Harpoons and main lasers. Nav, as soon as—“
The lidar alarm howls in his ears, his lidarman shouting out:
“Unbroken's acquired us, entering warpdrive on an intercept vector!“
...spanking her as hard as he could, spanking her even harder, when she can’t hold in the sobs, the screams or the pleas, DeForrest Tucker sticking his fingers in there from time to time for variety, as Avery sat in Daddy’s chair, playing with himself while watching Girls Next Door on YouTube.
“She’s so nasty, ain’t she, DT?” Avery asks his older brother, watching Harlee Madison, wearing a leather thong, stockings and high heels, burn lit cigarets on Katee DD's breasts, slapping her face when Katee, handcuffed to a rafter in the Mansion's play room, yelps in pain.
Avery tells DT ,“ this is my favorite scene in the whole movie, bubba,” the nine-year old boy then saying,“That's what Jamilinne likes.“
“Damn sure is,“ his eleven-year old brother replies, spanking his six-year old sister even harder.
Even knowing it wouldn't do any good, Jamilinne tells 'em,“no, it ain't! I wasn't even—“
“And, now she’s lying too,” DT snaps back, balling up his fist, drinking another bottle of Daddy's and Mickey's beer, as he grabs hold of her long, brown hair and forces her to.....
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
New Seattle Aerospace Corridor, 0.05 AU from Big Sky
9/13/2101, 0806.00 Zulu
...watch.
Jami focusses on the here and now, as Unbroken emerges from warpdrive between DT's ship and his warpfighters, the main laser gunners burning holes through the Yanker heavy's rectangular spaceframe, the enemy ship's thrust vectrals lighting up with plasma vectored from its maneuver jet, Unbroken entering warpdrive before Atlanta Three has a chance to bring its main lasers to bear.
“Lieutenant Pollard,“ Alannah informs her, as they emerge from warpdrive directly behind Atlanta Three,“reports Fighter Squadron 214's dealt with the last of the torps, and they're now escorting the medships the rest of the way to New Seattle Spacedock.“
Gobstoppers set for radiation seeking home in on the enemy heavy's three warp engines, Unbroken executing another micro to dance out of the way of Predators about to swoop down on her.
“Signal from Commander, Eighth Fleet,“ her radioman reports upon returning to normal space.“Vice-Admiral Naoska Clan Kerokha is launching cruisers and warpfighters to assist.“
“Good,“ the captain of the Unbroken replies, a view of the Atlanta Three's port side filling the entire right-hand command holodisplay.
“Main lasers,“ she orders,“fire !“
Even as autolaser quad turrets on that side of the Yanker heavy open up, Unbroken's 160-terajoule lasers tear into its titanium skin, gouging out a wound which gushes atmosphere and vaporized metal out the other side, the Dauntless-class cruiser skimming across the top of the other ship, as it begins heeling sharply to starboard from the vented gas.
“Gandymede and Muskogee emerging from warpdrive,“ Meliza soon reports,“ten thousand klicks from us and closing rapidly.“
“Both ships,“ she adds,“punching their air groups.“
Aboard the Republican Union Ship Atlanta Three
New Seattle Aerospace Corridor, 0.05 AU from Big Sky
9/13/2101, 0307.52 AMT
“Goddamnit,“ Sipe curses, watching as a Commie Albion-class battle cruiser and a Commie Cosmograd-class heavy cruiser emerge from warpdrive on either side of the Atlanta Three, both enemy ships launching Raptors towards it.
“Numbers one and three warp engines destroyed,“ Atlanta Three's chief engineer, Ensign Alan Miller reports.“Number two warp engine severely damaged, venting antimatter and warp engine coolant, no better than two lights per day possible; med section reports heavy casaulties, 167 dead, 394 wounded.“
“Weapons status?“ Sipe asks, the stench of his burning bridge assaulting his nostrils.
“Main lasers off line, no repair possible,“ Miller tells him,“ Autolaser turrets one through eighteen and twenty-three through thirty-eight destroyed, defensive computer destroyed, grav shield generator destroyed, grav beam generator destroyed.“
“So much for that,“ Snead comments, sweat glistening on his perfectly smooth, perfectly black head.
“Indeed, XO,“ Sipe says, disgusted.
“Nav,“ he orders,“get us the hell out of here.“
“Drivefield generator two coming on line and answering navicomp commands,“ Ledford replies, his hands furiously working both navigation holodisplays. “Warpdrive entry in five, four, three, two, one—“
Atlanta Three enters warpdrive, an instant before the main lasers from all three Commie cruiser-class starships converge upon its former position in space, the Freeman Lang-class heavy limping through the void at just a little over seven hundred times lightspeed.
He doesn't need Ledford to tell him just how long it will take to get back to Twice-Born.
He's already done the math...five days, a minute fifteen subjective.
Plus time to decelerate in normal space.
At least enough time to watch Dick Grissom, he thinks to himself, before I get my ass handed to me.
“You have the bridge, XO,“ he says, undoing the straps restraining him to his chair, before getting up and walking off the shambles of a bridge.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
New Seattle Aerospace Corridor, 0.05 AU from Big Sky
9/13/2101, 0808.01 Zulu
“Recall the Raptors,” Jami says, her whole body starting to shake in spite of her,“ stand down from general quarters.”
She can just barely control her trembling hands, her fingers fumbling with the buckles of the her chair's restraints, managing to undo them, her knees almost going out from under her as she stands up, eyes on the wreckage of a bridge, as Stevie turns the ship over for deceleration.
“Effect repairs,” she adds, voice almost gone, the grav field generators holding her fast to the deck, as she turns and rapidly walks towards the hatch leading to the wardroom. “Bridge is....”
“...yours, Number One,” Unbroken tells her , as a burning....
...white light blinds her, his voice, stinking of alcohol, screaming at her, calling her a bitch, grabbing her, turning her around just so he can knock hell out of her, Jami making the mistake of trying to get back up, Daddy stomping her into the pavement, kicking her, hauling her back up onto her feet, slamming her up against the hood of the car, ripping her jeans open, pulling them and her panties down, laying into her ass with his belt and his boots, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he called her a murdering, goddamn bitch, telling her she did it, she did it, she was the one who’d run over her own mama, because she was a chickenheaded goddamn effing zed who hated even the one what gave birth to her, and how dare she effing try and put this all off on him.
Blue lights strobe in the darkness, another man telling Daddy,” we’ll take care of it from here, Captain Sipe, go on back home and sleep it off,“ someone grabbing hold of her hair, shoving something hard, metallic into her, Jami screaming her head off, pissing herself, every last nerve in her body on fire, a gauntleted hand slapping her ass, wrenching her arms behind her back and snapping on a pair of neural-paralysis handcuffs, pushing on whatever had been shoved up in her, before pulling it out and throwing her down into the street, the same man who told her Daddy to go home screaming for her to get up, you sick piece of crap, get the eff up, as he stomps on her, kicking her ass as hard as he could with his boots....
...Jami falling down onto her hands and knees on the deck of the wardroom, gakking up all over the floor and herself, her body heaving and trembling, her stomach tearing itself apart, her breath coming in ragged sobs, Unbroken’s skipper unable to do anything else except puke, shake.
And cry.
—endit—
Marks Of Weakness, Marks Of Woe
“...Mama?!” the thirteen-year old girl screams, kneeling over her mama, holding her hand...she's bleeding from the ears and the mouth, her chest was all crushed, legs bent out of shape...she wasn’t moving.
“Mama,” Jami pleads, hearing the engine roaring, tires squealing as he turns around again, “ you gotta get up, now, please, he’s comin’ back, Mama, please, please, you gotta get up.”
The roar of the gasburner’s engine grow louder, he 's gotten up speed, and Jami feels the headlights burning into her as he charges back down Long Street, horn blasting the first few notes of “Glory to the Union,” into the night, he’s gonna be on top of them any second now, out to finish what he’d started doing.
“Mama, please,” Jami sobs,“please, get up, please get up, please—”
Hot, burning white lights....
...rip through the bridge, more alarms screaming in her ears, goddamn Yanker warships everywhere she looked in the flickering piloting holodisplay...they didn’t have one freakin' chance in Hell of making it out of this alive....
“Grav shielding reduced by 95%!” Chief Warrant Officer Micki Phillips reports from the engineering station at the rear of the bridge. “Primary and secondary electrical systems are trashed out, teritary electrical system 78% disrupted, warp engine severely damaged, venting antimatter and warp engine coolant, auto-repair system off line, main lasers two, three, five, seven, eight and eleven knocked out, grav beam forward and starboard emitters destroyed, electronic warfare subsystems destroyed, crew and middecks both open to space, hangar bay destroyed...med section reporting heavy casaulties, 13 dead, 19 wounded.”
“Number One,” she adds,“ I know you want to save as many of them as you can, we all do...but—”
“All available warp engine power to the grav shielding and main lasers!” screams the frightened senseless 21-year old girl now commanding the Unbroken.“ Return! Fiii-re!”
“—you’re in command now,” that bitch of a flight engineer just has to remind her,“you have to think of your ship and crew as well...you’ve done all you can, you have to....”
“…Unbroken from New Orelans,” Vice-Admiral Kaplan’s voice echoes in her Link, Unbroken’s captain on her knees amidst the wreckage of her own bridge, eyes fixed blurrily on the command holodisplays. “Unbroken, do you copy?”
“Commander, Unbroken,” the Eighth Fleet commander's voice repeats,”please respond.”
Commander…that was a fucking laugh…Sarah had been a commander, right down to the bitter end, when Jami’s stupidity had forced her to….
“…Invincible, no, goddamn you, don’t—“ screams the Unbroken's skipper, watching helplessly as a ball of fire lights up the night 1,500 klicks off her starboard bow, Sarah Grey’s Vinnie, what remains of her, ramming Chickamauga at warp speed, Jami’s shouted order coming too goddamn late….
Happy Valley
1,600 kilometers from New Seattle, Big Sky
9/13/2101, 1827.04 Zulu
…always too goddamn late, or out and out just not good enough.
Commander Jamilinne Sipe stands in the shade of an evergreen marking another of the graves in the grassy meadow of the hellhole the Yanker sons of bitches had called Happy Valley, the crisp, clear, cold sky turning purple as Tau Ceti begins setting, the wind rustling through the green needles of the tree under which she stood…terraformers giving life even in death, returning life to the earth which had given them life, each grave marked by a headstone and a different plant, evergreens, apple trees, bogbushes, a few with violets, sacre coeurs, other flowers…they’d grown so much in the last ten years, all this beauty born of the ugliness that had happened to them only because Jami Sipe isn't, and has never been the legend everyone said she is.
She sighs, sniffling away tears, as she inhales the scent of evergreen.
Someone's standing behind her.
She’d been there for some time, Jami turning to walk away, looking into the moist brown eyes of a commander in the Commonwealth Forces' Legionnaire Corps, in her charcoal grey and red dress uniform, long brown hair tucked into her bright red uniform beret.
The other woman’s eyes stare past the captain of the Unbroken, at the evergreen behind her, Jami nodding her head, turning from her, walking towards the next tree, the woman stopping her in mid-stride with a soft, tear-choked,”you did everything you could’ve done that day, Commander, I know that.”
It wasn’t enough, Jami thinks, but doesn’t speak aloud, it's never effing enough.
I’m so sorry I wasn’t as advertised, I should’ve been able to….
Sighing a wet, trembling sigh, clenching her shaking fists, all the supposed Avenging Angel of Avalon can do now is just walk away.
She should’ve been able to do better than just effing run, same as she'd done nineteen years ago.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 150, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/13/2101, 1833.11 Zulu
“We were up against a fiercely determined enemy,” says the holo of Jami's useless bastard of a father, as he sits on the bridge of his flagship, talking with one of YouTube's interchanganly-nameless and faceless interviewers,”ready to do just about anything to make sure the rule of law and of the people did not prevail on Big Sky, that their Conspiracy had no opportunity whatsoever to spread their political correctness and its attendent moral depravities to yet another innocent, unsuspecting people.”
“They,” Vice-Admiral Clarence D. Braxton, the man who'd led the assault on Clavileno almost twenty years ago, then prates, the camera dissolving to him now,”were cowards, pure and simple. Sure, they were able enough to terrorize and intimidate the weak and defenseless with their Death Star of a so-called terraforming station, the stockpile of biological and chemical weapons it manufactured and the nearly fifty thousand cruisers, heavy cruisers and battlecruisers it housed and was building on almost an hourly basis.
But, against the spirit, tenancity and superiority—in technology, intellect, creativity, science, evolution and morals—of the Terranovan fighting man, they simply could not prevail; when they realized they were fighting an enemy they could not bully into submission, they fled.”
“But,” YouTube's Roger Mudd says to Fleet Admiral Kennisaw Mountain Sipe, as the view dissolves back to the bridge of the Sumterfield,” the Big Sky government claims, to this day, that the Commonwealth liberated their people.”
“And,” that rotten rat bastard, snorting contempt, replies,”you right-wing liberal media elites believe and spread that load, furthering their attempt to poison our worlds with their politically-correct, morally-incorrect way of thinking.”
The HV dissolves to...oh, dear God, they're all hanging upside down by meathooks shoved into them, the poor things swaying in the wind, dangling from every lamppost, flagpole, stoplight, bridge and mag-rail in bloody New Whitehorse like bunches of atomic fireballs weighing down the bushes on which they depended.
“Those,” Sipe’s voice says,” who refused their would-be liberators’ call to give up civilized behaviors and return to the jungle paid the ultimate price...they did not die quietly or with dignity,” the camera pans even closer on all those brutalized corpses, making damn sure everyone of the wankers watching this online see all their burns, all their bruises, all their welts, each and every last gash ripped into their bodies, “ but suffered for a long time, degraded in the most unspeakable ways, before being slowly murdered for the amusement of—”
“Turn it off,“ whispers Lieutenant Commander Stephanie Rhoads,“turn the bloody thing off.“
The HV in the upper right hand corner of the wardroom switches itself off, Unbroken's first lieutenant shaking, fumbling for the tumbler of ice water on the end table next to the sofa, the glass continuing to shake in her hand, as she curses the goddamn Yanker knobguzzling bastards who could do this to their own people.
To someone as special as Jami.
Stevie sighs, finally calmed down enough to take a sip from the tumbler...yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the Tau Ceti Accords which had ended the bloodiest war in human history, begun with that terrible day nineteen years ago, when her first cousin Elli had been killed in the opening seconds of the fighting over Clavileno, and Jami—then the ship's first lieutenant—had been forced to take command.
Another sigh...even now, Jami doesn't think she did enough that day, even though she'd done everything humanly possibly and beyond, almost literally bleeding herself dry in the process of helping to save 6,500 ECP Petro terraformers, to say nothing of the state the ship had been in, when she had finally been forced to enter warpdrive.
Thirty-five hundred of the station's ten thousand personnel had been left behind to be captured and subjected to the unspeakable degradations that worthless pedo had had the balls to accuse her Commonwealth of perpetrating, before dying miserable deaths and buried in effing latrines in that miserable bloody hellhole Stevie's wife insisted on visiting every bloody time they were on Big Sky.
They're all in proper graves now, at the cost of eighteen of her crew and another piece of her soul, but she only sees that as more proof of her failures, more proof of all the evil men did being her own bloody fault, and Stevie....
She's shaking again, her left hand balled tightly in a fist, her right gripping the tumbler so tightly, her fingers are white down to the bottom knuckles...all that frustration's brought up memories of more frustration, Unbroken’s first lieutenant relaxing...she knows Jami can’t help being Jami, but, it still hurts, all the things that she’d said and done to try and make Stevie resent her, and, there had been times where she’d almost succeeded in making her say to hell with her and moving on....
Six months after Clavileno, it had all come to a head...Jami had started drinking, heavily, after the station had fallen...Jami had fallen, lashing out at everyone around her, at Stevie most of all, till, finally, one day, when she just couldn’t see the way out, she’d found herself at Stevie’s doorstep...and, it had all come tumbling out of her, everything, she’d finally put words to all that pain, all that terrible pain that should’ve brought her down for good.
But it hasn’t.
Stevie smiles, in spite of her tears.
She knows it won't, no matter how bad it gets.
Her Jami is a hero, after all....
In front of Taft Hall, Terranova Wesleyan College
Vineville Avenue, Flyntsboro, Terranova
9/13/2101, 1336.58 American Time
“All right, ladies,“ Captain Emory Snell barks out over the Link,“lock and load!“
The rear door of the LAV-125 slams down onto the ferrocrete, the National Police tac unit pouring out of the back, HOUNDS bolting out ahead of them, National Policemen First Class Geoff Halfacre and Garrison Lee Sipe bolting out of the '02 Ford-Davidson Group Magnum police cruiser parked just behind the wheeled APC, M16A4 massdriver rifles at the ready, as they move into line with the tac unit, two of whom have already splintered the massive wooden doors of the dorm with a gravity ram.
Zeds in the lobby scatter like scared jocritters at their entry, but they aren't fast enough.
They never are.
Electricity arcs into them from activated electrowhips in the hands of the tac unit and Sipe's partner, setting their clothes on fire, as the zeds convulsively tear at them.
The zeds continue to twitch, scream, burn, crap and piss themselves as they fall to the floor, Halfacre and the others on top of them in a flash, none of them noticing the activated electrowhip hanging limply in Sipe's hand, as all he can do is just stand there, watching his fellow National Policemen howling as they make the zeds howl, the voices of everyone watching this via the InterWeb a defeaning, exultant roar over the speakers built into the walls of the dorm, other National Policemen running past Sipe, intent on catching the other zeds, none of them giving the veteran National Policeman a second look.
Or even a first one, Sipe himself feeling like he's outside his body, watching all this from above, a feeling he's had a lot lately, but, until now, never to the point where it's interfering with what he knows is his sworn duty.
Or is it?
That's the problem.
He's been doing this for twenty years, and, he's honestly never stopped to wonder why, the fact that it was expected of him all the reason he'd ever needed.
And, he's come to the conclusion that it just isn't enough to keep doing what he's doing.
“Yo, Sipe!“ Snell barks out, as a zed, about nineteen, twenty, maybe, tries to make a run for it out the rear doors. “Don't just stand there, effing get after her, now!“
“Move it!“ he screams, Sipe running after the zed, catching her with one shot of the electrowhip, knocking her to the floor twitching and screaming.
“Forgot how to do this, Garry?“ Halfacre, now standing next to him, asks.
“Naw,“ Sipe replies, he and his partner jumping on top of the still convulsing zed, pinning her to the floor.
“I ain't forgot nothin',“ he adds.
“...ssshhh,” Jami whispers, finally managing to get that damn thing off her neck, picking the little one up, cradling her in her arms and getting her the eff out of this kennel.
“It’s gonna be okay now, sweetpea,” whispers the captain of the Unbroken, stroking her head again, as she takes her to where Ryla and her people have set up shop....
Happy Valley
1,600 kilometers from New Seattle, Big Sky
9/13/2101, 1836.11 Zulu
...right here, at the camp hospital, still standing, just as it was eleven years ago...everything has been left as Jami and her crew had found it, no museum, no gift shop, no town across the way selling bits and pieces of crap as antiques, no snack bars selling overpriced hot dogs, hamburgers, fries and pop, no 256-bit true color holos describing the official version of events, no pretty landscapes or commemorative courtyards with streams, plaques and bas-relief murals depicting suffering Yanker POWs...not even a MiniNatRes park ranger in sight to give a guided tour, or so much as single war veteran/former prisoner of war, talking about the good old days over beer and Q.
It has all been left as it was, Unbroken’s captain standing precisely between the hospital, one of the four deadline forts, its turreted five-terajoule laser cannon and 500-gigajoule autolaser quad turrets pointed back towards the countless half-metre high monocarbon boxes sunk into the muddy ground, the residential facilities for the camp’s originial garrison and “scientific” personnel, and, on a slight rise to her right, the administration building and the house of the camp’s commander, the animal now calling himself Prime Minister of the Union.
Her bastard pedophile half-brother.
Beyond the kennels are the various buildings where “expiriments” had been performed on the inmates of this hellhole...and the recreation facilities where they’d been forced to “entertain“ their captors and privileged others who’d known about this godforsaken place...to the left of those buildings lies the camp latrine, a mass frickin' grave for those her people could not save, bones upon bones upon desecrated corpses, over six and a half decades’ worth...Commonwealth Forces combat engineers are working at this moment to exhume those bodies and bones, carefully, reverently, laying them down into stasis tubes, loading them onto the backs of WIG lorries<!-- AG vehicles are considered too expensive for anything save military and commercial apps. Civilians use wheeled ground vehicles; commercial drivers drive AG lorries, measuring a hundred meters from front to back(counting a ninety-meter long trailer)to haul goods over highways and over water as well… --> for transport to the morgue, 250 meters to the east of the camp, as far away from here as the Commonwealth Forces can build the damn frickin' thing.
There, the work of over a decade continues nonstop...the cemetery, also in the Commonwealth part of Happy Valley, held 34,186,700 bodies of those the Commonwealth Forces' MedCorps forensic identification teams had succeeded in giving names and faces to in spite of their murderers’ efforts...she could just see the flagstaff—the Star and Cross of the Commonwealth Of Free States flying at half-staff—and the tops of the barracks housing the personnel assigned here.
Thirty-four million people...not even one percent of those who’d been condemned to suffer and die in this miserable hole, and it didn’t count the ones brought here from Clavileno....
...all those empty chairs, men, women, children, goddamn little babies, frickin' screaming at her, as they spin crazily in the fire, flung violently from it to set more of the field ablaze, as he just effing stands there, looming larger and larger by the second, laughing at her....
...she is on her knees, the roaring, blinding white of pain gradually ebbing to a throbbing, constant stab through her skull, someone’s hand on her left shoulder, a woman’s voice asking,”Commander?! Commander, are you all right?!”
“Commander?!” the voice asks again, Jami finally opening her eyes, everything still a little bit blurry, as she turns in the direction of the voice.
Staring into the face of the Legionnaire she'd met earlier.
“I’m fine, Commander, thank you,” she says, struggling to her feet.
“Just a migraine,” she adds, the other woman nodding her head, looking her in the eye.
“I wanted to tell you—” she starts to say, before her voice cracks.
“I mean....” she tries to explain, sighing, looking away from Jami.
It's Jami's turn to gently put her hand on the other woman's arm.
“I'm sorry,“ is all she can think of saying to her.
“I didn't do enough, and....“ she adds, her own voice choking, as she looks into the twilight and closes her eyes.
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/13/2101, 1340.26 AMT
“The Red Book of the Conspiracy,“ the TSID's Director of Union Security, Admiral Omar Baraka, says to YouTube's Ashleigh O'Connell,“explicitly states that the zeds plan to corrupt our young through prostitution, drugs, the casual acceptance of alien and perverse lifestyles, and the dissemination of perversion and depravity via the InterWeb by the liberal Republican media elites controlling the Media Committee.“
The female YouTube reporter—as overly made-up and virally blonded as when she'd worked here—and the Haziri male—in a coal-black thirty-thousand dollar Brooks Brothers suit tailored especially for his race, his hair in a virally-blonded buzz cut—stand in front of Terranova Wesleyan's administration building, Baraka leering alternately at Ashleigh's grey pinstriped miniskirt(and what it doesn't hide)and the line of beaten-down people, shackled together in a line, being electrowhipped by the Gnats in time to the cheering of those watching this online.
And that of Sunni Pate's regulars, watching this in their usual booths along the store's stretch end.
“Always said,“ Marc Bevill remarks from the rear booth, as he sips another large to-go cup of coffee,“'em zeds were some sick puppies. “
“Nothing but,“ David Bell, sixteen year old waitresses seated in the middle booth along with him, adds.
“—result is played out live on the InterWeb,“ Baraka tells Ashleigh,“as the zeds force us to take actions against them that we are loath to take, simply because they do not think like us.“
“Damn sure don't,“ Joe Keane, seated with his son Brian at the stretch end booth towards the door, remarks.
“Damn sure don't,“ he repeats over his cup of coffee.
“Goddamn,” Brian then speaks up, as he stares up at the HV, everyone else on the stretch end turning to face the same direction. “Y’all believe that crap?!”
“Read ‘bout it,” David says,”in the afternoon update when I was here eariler.”
“And, y’all,“ Marc says to Candace Hill, busy pouring Joe another cup of coffee, “think you’re like us...maaaann....”
The HV now shows Terranova Wesleyan soccer players on their knees to other Terranova Wesleyan soccer players—most of them, of course, virally blonded as well—the ones on their knees taking off their t-shirts and bras, as they lower their heads.
The ones standing over them pee, crap and dump garbage on them, after which they grab hold of virally-blonded hair.
It's at that point the cam cuts back to YouTube's studios in Vargas, on Marley.
Suzann Lawler tells them:
“This footage of the hazing ritual—inflicted annually by the upperclassmen on the Pioneers’ soccer team upon the newest members of the squad—was provided to YouTube by the TSID's Special Victims Unit.
Terranova Wesleyan officials continue, in the face of overwhelming evidence, to deny such a degrading, humiliating rite of passage takes place on their campus, while, at the same time, initiating proceedings to expel the victims of the hazing, Terranova Wesleyan President Norah Kizer defending this action in an interview with TMS News’ Carolyn Minh earlier today:”
A middle aged blonde woman in a pinstriped skirt and white blouse appeared on HV just long enough to say:
“They broke the code of sisterhood, and such acts of outright betrayal will not be tolerated at Terranova Wesleyan College.“
“I’ll be goddamned,” David comments, Suzann Lawler continuing:
“The father of nineteen-year old Shannen Melendi, National Policeman First Class John Melendi, who has pressed charges against the zeds involved in the hazing, has told YouTube News that he intends to go to the Board of Regents in New Whitehorse to demand Kizer’s immediate removal from the presidency of Terranova Wesleyan College.”
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 150, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/13/2101, 1845.26 Zulu
“Admiral Baraka,“ the virally blonded YouTube anchor then says to the mostly-deserted bridge,“would you care to comment?“
“We,“ the Director of Union Security then speaks,“ have done everything humanly possible to give them the same opportunities we have...and, this is what the zeds have chosen to do with those opportunities, what happens every time we leave them to their own devices...as RJ Williams himself once said almost seventy years ago,’ give a zed an education, and it will teach you the magnitude of the error of your ways.’
This incident, occurring as it did in one of our institutions of higher learning turned over to them, on the heels of their terrorist assault upon the Capitol two days ago, has most assuredly taught us the magnitude of the error of —”
“Off,“ Chief Warrant Officer Ariel Dixon whispers, the HV fading to back, as she returns her full attention to the repairs to the 1,262-ton Dauntless-class cruiser, stroking keys on the engineering station's holodisplay, directing scores of damage control bots of varying sizes in their work at the same time she concentrates on the long-overdue calibrations to the Rolls-Royce/Arianespace Toronado warp engine.
She curses herself, as an angry buzzing alerts her to the latest screwup she's made, this one to the spatial frequency parameters for the drivefield generator, Ariel sighing, as she inputs the corrections, making the bobblebug buzzing go away, hands flying in a blur across the engineering holodisplay, making adjustments and feeding in corrections, tightening the gravitic containment in the annhilation chamber, increasing the particle density in the acceleration chamber, sending in nanobots to clean and repair the thermopiles and gravitic-induction filaments in the annhilation chamber's gamma-particle collectors.
A million and one other little things that are supposed to be done every six months, but never get done, especially, when it's all up to some lazy zed who doesn't even know....
“...what the eff you doin’,” Ken Armistead shouts at her, as her machine screws up again....
”...I don’t care,“ Mister Garry snaps, getting in her face, “what a bunch of loony liberal Republican know-nothings up in New Whitehorse say...everybody knows that the Governor’s Honors program is just another one of 'em feel-good programmes the Conspiracy rammed down our throats, that 'em zeds what get Governor’s Honors don’t really do all that well in school, they’re just given the award, just like the zeds controlling the TAE make us give their subhuman kind As and Bs when all y'all deserve Ds and Fs...when you’re only here to make a real Terranovan get you pregnant, so you’ll have a free ride for the rest of your life...don’t you dare contradict me, Miss Dixon, unless you want to spend the next ten days at Brown University...that’s the only college any of you can get into without anyone giving you a leg up, Brown frickin' Univeristy....”
“...nothin’,” Mistress Kym tells her, her boot pressing Ariel’s face into the floor of the cage,“but just another filthy, stinkin' zed, no better n’ all the rest!”
She bites down on her lip as the electrowhip tears through her in one white-hot slash, Mistress ordering Her slave to tell Her what she was, now!
And, Ariel, trying not to cry, did as she was told....
...sighing, sniffling down the tears as they come, dryswallowing as she finally gets everything right, containment, acceleration field coil, hydrogen flow rate, anti-hydrogen creation ratio, critical line reaction rate, every—
Jesus!
Her LP077 250-gigajoule laser pistol is already out of its holster and aimed at the spot just behind her, before she even thinks of going for it, screaming at whoever had put her goddamn hands on her that she’d just effed up, big time—
There isn't anyone there for her to shoot at, however.
It takes a few moments for Unbroken's flight engineer to catch her breath, the hatch she's facing buzzing as it opens, the First Lieutenant stepping through the hatchway, asking,“Chief?“
“I'm all right,“ Ariel replies, mind racing as she figures out a way to explain what just happened.
“Just,“ she tells the ship's executive officer,“jumpy, I g-guess, Number One.“
“Sorry,“ she adds, quickly turning away from Lieutenant Commander Rhoads, forcing herself to concentrate on her work.
Big Sky Highway 316
1,526 kilometers from New Seattle, Big Sky
9/13/2101, 1850.06 AMT
She kicks it up to 1,500, the whine of the Sable's plasma jet deafening her even though the hush bubble built into her helmet, the captain of the Unbroken whipping the horse in and out of traffic, the grav field splattering countless millions of flying insects, as she twists the steering controls in the handlebars, rising into even faster-moving aerodyne traffic, and, then, just above them, the planetary traffic-control net issuing an automated warning over her Link, an female AI voice letting her know she's exceeded the authorized ceiling for aerodyne traffic.
Jami drops down another couple hundred meters, just above a convoy of thundering wing-in-ground effect rigs, each trailing thirty-meter long trailers behind them, these massive vehicles being the sole occupants of the highway's ground lanes.
Jami rises up again, moving into a less well-travelled lane between two other lanes, her left thumb pressing the accelerator control, the horse rocketing to 2,100, continuing to accelerate, the wind buffeting her and the horse, threatening to send in every direction at once, a second automated warning coming in over her Link, informing her she's exceeded safe speed, and the resulting fine would be auto-debited from her pay.
Fine.
She accelerates to 2,500, then, soon enough, 3,000, so she can concentrate on controlling this beast and not have to think.
Her turn comes up, Jami taking it more tightly than she would've like, more warnings coming from the traffic-control net, but she doesn't care, she just twists the steering controls, dropping down until she's sluicing through the dark indigo waters of the Land-Locked Sea separating the continents of Tacoma and New Montana, kicking up froth as she runs it wide-open, 4,000 kilometers per hour and still accelerating, the traffic-control system giving up issuing warnings to her, the wall of water she's smashing through directed by the bumper field to either side of and directly behind her.
She calls up the map of the planet on her Link, consulting the orbiting satellite navigation system, nodding her head, as she checks the holodisplay indicating the amount of hydrogen she has left...she can make it to the coastline on what's in the tank, but, after that....
“...goddamn fat effin’ cooter!” Daddy shouts at her, after knocking her to the floor, standing over her, stomping on her when she tried to get up, Mama telling him,“baby, please, don’t, not in fr—”
“Bitch, shut up!” he screams at her, Jami cringing as her mama starts squalling, telling over and over him she's sorry, Daddy beating the crap out of her anyway, until he's red-faced and heaving, and she's sobbing.
“Mickey,“ he tells her older half-brother,“pick up your sister's plate.“
Mickey picks Jami’s plate of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy and broccoli casserole up off the table , spitting on her as he leers down at her.
Daddy tells the the rest of the boys to get up and stand over her.
“Avery, DeForrest,” Daddy says, everyone else in the restaurant looking at them,“ hold her down.”
Her older brothers pin her down on the floor, DT stomping on her when she tries to struggle.
“We're gonna show all y'all,“ Daddy then shouts at the top of his lungs,“what a fat, effing, goddamn pig looks like!“
The sixteen year old boy mashes the plate into Jami's face, rubbing it all over her with his shoe, Avery then picking up the saucer with the piece of shoofly pie with his free hand, mashing that in her face, as DT grabs Mama’s plate off the table, dumping meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy and string beans on her, using his hands to smear it all over his six year old sister's dress.
On and in her tights.
“Now, sit down, you pig!” Daddy snaps at her, grabbing her hair and getting her good across her face when she started....
...crying, Jami cursing herself for getting distracted, as she nearly loses control of the horse, damn near drowning it and herself, regaining control just barely in time.
Even as the low fuel warning shrills in her ears, the captain of the Unbroken punches it up to 5,500 kilometers per hour, bulleting through the Land-Locked Sea towards Tacoma's east coast.
In front of Taft Hall, Terranova Wesleyan College
Vineville Avenue, Flyntsboro, Terranova
9/13/2101, 1355.91 AMT
“Move, pigs!“ Halfacre screams at the frightened zeds, chained up in a line, laying into the nearest one with his electrowhip, whipping the zed again for screaming.
A tall, blonde one at the front of the line furitively looks back at the other one, Halfacre catching that just a fraction of a second before Sipe does, catching the tall blonde—looking a lot like Jami when she'd been nineteen—across her face with the electrowhip, knocking her to the ground twitching, Halfacre screaming and cursing her, as he just keeps on whipping the crap out of her, stomping her down into the grass and mud of the courtyard with his boot....
“...why do you always make me do this to you?!” Daddy screams , Sissy not even able to do that, as he just keeps tearing her apart. “Why does it always have to be this way?! Why can’t you just be a good girl and do what you’re told , instead of tryin’ to be something you’re not?!“
“Why, goddamn you?!” he demands, as Garry, the five-year old boy held tight by DT and Avery, watches. “Answer me!”
“They’re all like that, Ken,” Mickey says, as he sits on the edge of the bed, beer in one hairy hand, his thingie in the other, as he watches Daddy hurt Sissy,“ you know that...don’t even know why we bother with 'em in the first place, men are—”
“Because, she just effin’ will not mind me!” Daddy half-growls,as he finally gets up off her, grabs her by her hair, shoves her face down into the pillows.
“By God, I will not have that!” he screams, mashing Sissy's face even further into the pillows as he....
...gets up off of her, the blonde one almost dead, as a pair of monkeyboys from the TSID's Special Victims Unit picks her limp body off the ground, cuts her loose from the other zeds and drags her to an unmarked baby-blue Magnum.
“ By God, buddy boy, she'll learn now,“ Halfacre remarks in between ragged breaths, as he looks back at his partner.
“She damn sure will learn now,“ he repeats, as the voices of those watching this online....
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/13/2101, 1400.11 AMT
...scream “hell, yeah, turn it up!“ in a deafening chorus, Joe grabbing at Candace, screaming for her to get him some more coffee, darling, before half swinging her into the two-seater next to his booth.
“You show 'em, brother,“ Marc hollers at the Gnat with Jami's little brother, after he gets up off the blonde, “you show 'em!“
“Glad to see,“ old Calvin Hobbes, sitting at the low counter, remarks,“that some of us ain't afraid to do what needs doin'.“
“Need more men like him around,“ Jim Hunter says through mouthfuls of bacon cheeseburger.
“Damn skippy,“ David comments, Sunni puffing on a Doobie Brothers Premium Blonde, explosively blowing the smoke out towards the stretch end, as Kimmie Faircloth finally gets her fat ass out of the backroom, adjusting her tight black miniskirt, pinstriped blouse, tie and headscarf, after Todd Tanner had been helpful enough to disarrange them for her a few moments before....
...she keeps telling them she's sorry, begging them please, please, don't hurt Jami, please, she’d do anything she wants them to, but please, please, don’t—
She's screaming no over and over, struggling to break free, her apron, neck tie and head scarf keeping her bound and foot to the chair, keeping her from doing anything other than watching Phillip grab a good handful of Jami’s hair, shoving her facedown into an insert of grits at the same time he spanks her hard, before he balls up his fist and....
...she almost chokes on the smoke she inhales, Sunni taking a longer drag this time, as Candace half runs up the backline, heading for the clock by the office in back, Sunni's Link going off just as she moves past her, Randy's holo floating in front of Sunni's right eye.
“When the hell you getting home?!“ he snaps at her.
“Just a few more minutes, please, Sir,“ Sunni pleads with her husband. “I—“
“You got twenty minutes,“ Randy tells her. “Twenty minutes and one second, and I'm coming up there, get me?!“
“Yes,“ Sunni whispers.
“Yes, what, wife-girlie?!“ Randy asks.
“Yes, Master,“ she says, forcing herself to say the words in a normal voice.
“Good,“ Randy tells her, before his holo disappears.
Henry's Hideaway
New Seattle Highway, East Bay, Big Sky
9/13/2101, 2204.09 Zulu
She sighs, staring at the tumbler of José, shaking her head, thinking about just how frickin' easy it is for her to feel so sorry for herself that she would actually go back there, throw away nearly twenty years’ sobriety…worse than that, put Stevie through all that hell again, just because Jami isn’t the hero everyone, including Stevie, thought she was….
“Ma’am,” the waitress says, as she comes up to her, Jami still staring at her first and only drink,”I don’t mean to be nosy, but, you’ve been staring at that drink an awful long time…ever since you got here, as a matter of fact.”
“What time is it, anyway?” Jami asks her.
“Four and a dime after twenty-two Zulu, ma’am,” the waitress—she’d heard some of the others in the bar call her Penny—tells her.
“Jesus Christ,” Jami interjects…almost three hours since she’d set foot in this little hole-in-the-wall biker dive off the main highway between New Seattle and New Helena….Stevie's worried sick about her—she always is—and all Jami can think of frickin' doing is to try and shut her out again.
That's all that tumbler of tequila on the table is.
“You know,” she says to Penny,”I started drinking, as just another pathetic attempt to push her away from me…by turning myself into the damn thing I hated most, I was hoping to make her hate me as well.”
“That’s pretty stupid, huh?” she asks, Penny nodding her head in reply, tells her “not one of the more intelligent reasons to start drinking, no.”
“Damn thing of it is,” Jami says, motioning the other woman to one of the chairs,” it got to be about more than just running away from her…I found this,” she gestures towards the glass,” could help me run away from everything, when it got to be too much for poor little Jami to deal with.”
“So,” she adds,” I thought at the time…either way, it didn’t work, no matter how hard I tried, she wouldn’t leave my side, wouldn’t take the frickin' hint….all I succeeded in doing was killing her bit by bit by trying to do the same exact goddamn thing to myself, and still, she….”
Jami trails off, sighing heavily, wiping away the tears with the sleeve of her black sweatshirt, Penny remarking,”sounds like she’s a good woman.”
“Too good, sometimes,” Jami whispers, another heavy sigh passing through her, as she repeated herself, fondling the wedding ring depending from the chain round her neck, feeling the blue sapphire which was her wife’s birthstone set into the stainless steel which was supposed to last forever, pulling the ring and chain out of her shirt.
“Sometimes,“ she repeats,“too good, for me, but still....“
She finds herself smiling, in spite of her tears, nodding her head, as she gets up from the table.
“How much—“ she starts to ask, Penny holding her hand up.
“You already paid for it,“ she remarks.
“Huh?“ Jami asks, noticing the tears running down Penny's face.
“You already paid for it,“ Penny repeats, adding,“long time ago.“
Smiling, she tells her:
“Go home to her, Commander.“
—endit—
Blood And Fire
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 150, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/14/2101, 0006.16 Zulu
"Ssssh," Lieutenant Commander Stephanie Rhoads whispers, putting her finger to her lips and pointing at the sleeping form of Unbroken's chief flight engineer laid out on the wardroom sofa.
Commander Jamilinne Sipe nods her head, as she climbs up the ladder on to the cruiser's middeck, taking off the long black armorjack duster, draping it over a chair , Stevie getting up, walking over to the coffeepot, taking Jami's Winnie the Pooh mug down from the cupboard just above it, filling it three-quarters of the way full of coffee, the rest of the way with hot chocolate mix and pop.
"Sweetie," Jami objects, as she sits down in the chair she's hung her jacket over,"I could've-"
Stevie replies simply by handing Jami the cup of coffee, kissing the top of her head, whispering,"your hair's a mess," Jami hearing the low whirr of a sonic probe at work, Stevie gently taking some of her wife's shoulder-length,virally-blonded hair in her hands, using the probe to comb it, shushing her when she starts to object again.
"Let me take care of you for a change, ‘kay, luv?" she whispers, continuing to comb Jami's hair as Unbroken's skipper sips her coffee, regarding Ariel Dixon's fitfully-sleeping form, smiling in spite of the day she'd had, about to ask Stevie how she's managed that, when Stevie told her:
"I almost had to carry her off that bloody bridge," she cocks her head towards the hatch at the bow end of the wardroom, adding,"poor girl was afraid I'd-"
"You blame her?" Jami asks.
"After what she's been through," Stevie replies," no, I can't...."
She sighs, repeating," I can't," half to herself.
"She had her laser pistol out,"her wife and second in command adds, a silence later,"pointed at nothing; my God, the look in her eyes, she was...lost."
"Like I was, baby," Jami whispers, smiling, reaching out to touch her wife's right arm.
"Like I was," she repeats, starting to cry," before you...."
She trails off, biting her lower lip, crying, Stevie whispering,"ssssshhhh," as she combs her hair.
Fort Gibson National Veteran's Cemetery
Commonwealth Highway 62, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, Earth
9/14/2101, 0009.48 Zulu
"Hullo, luv," Angelique Gault says, as she stands in front of the grave marked ZZ 2947, a stone wall separating it from the rush of traffic hurtling along the ten lanes of the old Shawnee Bypass.
Elli's grave.
The President of the Commonwealth sighs, knowing the woman she adopted as her daughter, her niece's wife, is or was doing much the same thing eleven-odd light years away, blaming herself for the death of Angelique and Rebekah's oldest daughter and the 3,500 Petro terraformers she couldn't save that day nineteen years ago.
Of course, she remarks bitterly to herself, they weren't really terraformers, but jackbooted stormtroopers stockpiling weapons of terror and mass destruction, as they attempted to skew the elections on planet in their favor, and the Commonwealth Forces happened to have twenty fleets in the bloody system to help that process along...YouTube said so, and YouTube's by the people for the people, so it can't possibly lie, now can it?
Another sigh, this one more forceful, Angelique staring up at the painfully blue Oklahoma sky...two days ago was the tenth anniversary of the Tau Ceti Accords and of the bloodbath immediately proceeding that, fifty-seven billion dead on both effing sides....
Which reminds her...Angelique moves down row Double Zed, towards 4049, stopping to face another marker.
Her niece, Stephanie's twin sister, commander of the old Arky, before she'd been shot down over Clavileno in the closing hours of Bloody Tau Ceti, taking the Yanker battlecruiser Iwo Jima and most of the enemy's 101st Fleet with her in the process, but still....
Micki had been by the house earlier, Angelique and she chatting 'til an hour ago, when she left to drive to Muskogee Starport.
Petro has Wanderer heading for Tallgeese, and, from there, to the Angel Halo, the accumulated nova shells at Cor Caroli's heliosphere, a container ship passing through there yesterday having picked up readings unusual even for the Halo, and home office, on Titan, thinks it's worth Micki's scout taking a looksee.
Ten years, and losing Cat still hurts like hell for her.
Angelique understands that only too well.
She looks up into the sky again, at the fires sprialling their way towards Muskogee Starport...Rebekah's due home any time, she's been at Mars Command since early this morning, meeting with the rest of the Military Operations Staff, and the only time Angelique's seen her all day has been when the MOS were online with Parliament earlier today, discussing their options in regards Twice-Born and the intelligence Unbroken and the Red Cross medships had brought back from there.
She's arriving by warpfighter, the Commonwealth flaghsip, the battle cruiser Astrolabe, remaining at Muskogee Spacedock, fully manned and alerted, while she travels between here and Mars.
A squadron of Raptors scream by overhead, maintaining a ladder formation as they rocket past at 200 meters per second per second...whatever her people's final decision concerning Twice-Born, Earth is preparing for the war the mad dog Guy Zellner will bring to her doorstep...no one here questions that, the murdering pederast has made his intentions entirely too clear in the past almost two decades he's ruled his fellow troglodytes, clearer than all the trogs what had come before him.
Than even RJ Williams and the bloody WARCOM what had come before them, and they'd damn near wiped out the human race in their fevered dreams of manifest destiny...they would've succeeded, if the Confederation of Two Races and the First Colonies hadn't spilled so much of their own blood driving them from Earth, if the Russians and the Chinese hadn't sacrificed themselves to buy Titan, New Europos and the other First Colonies the time they'd so desperately needed to fight WARCOM and win.
All so a man more than capable, more than willing, to murder the innocent and the lovely, could hang the threat of slow death over the heads of all her people sixty-five years after the end of the Eleven-Day War.
The sky wavers and swims in the Commonwealth President's field of vision, Angelique sighing one final time, dryswallowing, before looking back at Cat's grave, absently nodding her head, before she turns and walks back towards her aerodyne.
In the cockpit of Commonwealth Forces Ship Sky Dancer
Lunar L5 point, 500,000 kilometers from Earth
9/14/2101, 0012.06 Zulu
The same names echo in her ears for the umpteenth time, as Admiral Rebekah Lee Tilghmann, Chief of Military Operations of the Commonwealth Forces, drifts through the Kordylewski Cloud less than a hundred meters from a simple warp transceiver coupled to a maneuver jet and a guidance computer which keep it stationed at the precise point between Earth and Luna once occupied by the long-extinct Russo-Chinese Alliance's sole orbital colony.
The housing is a dodecahedron of gold foil, each of its twelve sides bearing a star-shaped plaque of anodized steel, the simple inscription:
JOHN 15:13
in all eight of the Commonwealth's official languages, as well as in Japanese, Russian, Mandarin, and Cantonese, a cross with a rose engraved in the metal below the star plaque which faces Earth, Rebekah having learned in school that this had been a symbol of the old Marist Order, the rose and cross together symbolizing pain, sacrifice and, either triumph or resurrection, depending on what one chose to believe.
Rebekah finds the idea of resurrection especially ironic, with the descendants of WARCOM howling at the gates of her Commonwealth, ten years after the last time they'd tried destroying her people, sixty-five years almost to the day since RJ Williams and his thugs had damn near killed all of them during the Eleven-Day War.
Memorial Week's not even half way over with, she thinks to herself, listening as the recent additions to the War Memorial's list of names drone over her Link's headset, the nearly half trillion people who died during 9YW, including the 3,500 Petro terraformers buried in Happy Valley.
And, her oldest daughter, killed before she'd even had the chance to fight back, her number one blaming herself even now for that, same as she'd blamed herself for all the others whose blood those miserable Yanker trogs and the pederast who they kept in their Governor's Mansion had spilled for no other reason than they could....
She hears her niece's name as well...the last ten years without Cat have been especially hard on Micki, time stopping for her the day the Ark Royal had been shot out of the sky over Clavileno.
She doesn't muse on that bitter irony...no time, not with war in the immediate future, and God above only knew what lay beyond that.
Naiad's waiting for her.
For now, that's the most important thing Rebekah can think of.
Nodding her head, sniffling away tears, the Commonwealth's Chief of Military Operations brings Sky Dancer's warp engine back online, turning the Mark IIB Raptor warpfighter's nose towards home.
"...so, you like girls, huh?!" she says, as she leers at Jami-stripped down to nothing but a pair of panties-as she huddles up in the furthest corner of the quiet room, knees to her chin, watching as Heather takes off her housecoat, straps on her dildo, and grabs the stoned-up out of her head twelve-year old girl by her hair, shoving the frickin' thing down her throat, chuckling as she told what a stupid effing b-
Stevie busts Heather right in its gob, tearing her away from Jami, before she takes the frightened, trembling girl in her arms, rocking her gently, the whole time....
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 150, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/14/2101, 0424.21 Zulu
...whispering it was okay, she was here, now, Stevie's got her.
She always would.
Jami's sobbing against her breasts, and Stevie whispers that she's nothing to be sorry about, not one bloody thing, as she strokes her shoulder-length, straight virally-blonded hair...human telepaths are a rare enough mutation, starting from the darkest days of WARCOM and gradually growing in numbers over the past six and a half decades, the gene for it cropping up exclusively in female DNA, no one knows why.
The how's simple enough...even in the twentieth, scientists had known certain strong emotions released certain phermones-how animals and some humans could "smell" fear, for example...in telepaths, thoughts and emotions were released as phermones, though it seemed only other women were receptive to them...even the Commonwealth's scientists still don't know enough about telepathic abilities to make anything more than educated guesses concerning them.
Stevie, on the other hand, doesn't need to question...she's been this way all her life, just as she'd breathed all her life, and when Jami and she had made love for the first time, they'd come together, body and soul.
That's all she's ever needed to know, cos it's the only thing which matters a damn.
Her only true love trembles against her, whispering in a shaking voice," Baby, it ain't right, just ain't right, m-me always keep dragging you into m-my-"
"Bosh," Stevie whispers, kissing the top of her head, the two of them snuggling even closer against one another, as they lay side by side, intertwined on Jami's bed, Winnie the Pooh glowing softly on the night table, smiling as he reached into his honey pot...Jami has a million of them, from the shabby creature sitting on the workstation chair with its right eye missing and its left ear hanging on literally by a thread to the gargantuan Pooh sitting between the night table and the bed, cradling a smaller Pooh in its stuffed arms...
There's even one, in fourteen-karat gold, hanging from the stainless steel chain holding her gravemarkers and wedding ring-a simple band of stainless steel, a single blue sapphire gem set into it-as they depend from her neck, cool against her wife's skin...a birthday present, Stevie had found it in a shop on Valdezport, when Unbroken had been on patrol in the Kaus Australis system about eight years ago.
Stevie knows what all those Poohs(especially the shabby one)mean to her wife....
"...' get in there!" Daddy screams, hurling Jami-not wearing a damn thing but bleeding welts all over her body-into the cold tomb which is now her bedroom, the thirteen year old girl hitting the bare ferrocrete floor-he's had the carpeting taken out-hard, the door slamming shut and locking behind her as all she can do was sob like a goddamn little baby.
That wasn't-
Through the tears in her eyes, she swore she'd seen...wedged between the headboard and the wall, where Daddy would never have thought to look, Jami tearing Pooh Bear free and clutching him tightly against her....
...it's only the madness of the north wind what drives her to collect all those bears.
Stevie shivers, the toes of Jami's left foot raising goosepimples as it brushes ever so slightly against the skin of Stevie's right leg, itself moving slowly, gently, over the inner skin of her wife's right leg, round to the back of her knee and calf and sole of her foot.
She's gone back to sleep now, her snoring echoing off the bulkheads of her quarters.
"Good," Stevie whispers, kissing the top of her head again, as she cradles it against her breasts.
"Good," she repeats.
Tilghmann-Gault House
31048 E. 687 Road, Wagoner , Oklahoma, Earth
9/14/2101, 0432.16 Zulu
"...information which clearly shows the Yankers, far from keeping the peace between the A Fags and the Loyal Twits," Irma DeLong's holo says, as it lights up the otherwise dark living room,"are in league with them and against the people of Twice-Born."
"Which," the Commonwealth's most well-known blogger comments,"should really come as no surprise to anyone with half a friggin' brain."
"Which," she adds, after a drink from her ever-present glass of ice water,"apparentally leaves out those on YouTube's Media Committee, who have this to say about the civil war on TB:"
The cam dissolves to a view of Elizabeth Haas, uncomfortably crossing and uncrossing legs virtually left uncovered by her short skirt.
The dissolve catches her in mid-sentence:
"...began when actor David James Knight, the star of the popular military reality series JAG and mayor of Telfair, was illegally installed as President of Twice-Born by the Conspiracy during the recall elections five years ago, the zeds aiding Knight in spite of allegations that he sexually abused at least thirty women, including Catherine Bennett, his JAG co-star."
"Your pop, my dear," Rebekah says to Angelique, handing her her glass of cold Diet Doctor Pepper, before sitting back down next to her on the overplush couch.
"Thanks, luv," Angelique whispers, kissing Rebekah's cheek, before turning her attention back to the HV:
"The controversy, as our viewers may recall, stemmed from contested electoral votes from Knight's own constituency, which forced election officials within the city to manually recount those votes immediately after the incumbent President, Arnold Black, was declared the winner by the Twice-Born Ministry of State; however, Telfair's own superintendent of elections and Knight's campaign manager, Kate Harris, stopped the recount barely three days into the process, claiming that preponderance of electoral votes was in Knight's favor, a decision which was immediately appealed by President Black to the Twice-Born Supreme Court in Zellnersboro, where the decision was made to uphold Harris' ruling, by a vote of 12-11, the deciding vote being cast by then-Justice Ruthann Ginsberg, a zed activist with ties to such iconic Conspiracy organizations as M-POWER, the Lambda Group and even to the Commonwealth's State Security Buerau; she also wrote the majority opinion on that decision."
"Did you know we had a State Security Buerau, Naiad?" Rebekah remarks, a well-worn joke reassuring Angelique with its familiarity.
"News to me," Angelique replies, giving Rebekah's hand a gentle squeeze, both of them watching Haas continuing to shift her miniskirt with the constant crossing and uncrossing of her legs, the YouTube anchor continuing:
"Of the eleven other justices ruling in the majority, at least eight of them also have ties to various offworld organizations linked by the TSID to the Conspiracy, with one of the other three justices, Marianne O'Dell, seen by several eyewitnesses days before the ruling which plunged an entire world into five bloody years of civil war, quote,' walking arm in arm,' unquote, through the halls of the Supreme Court Building with the former Commonwealth ambassador to Twice-Born, Cynthea Pollock-"
"-who's been missing," Irma says, breaking off every word,"since the shooting started on that miserable slushball five years ago."
"Off," Rebekah whispers, the living room now dark except for the stars in the sky outside the bay window, Angelique leaning against her wife, snuggling up against her, Rebekah giving her a gentle squeeze, as she holds her, kissing her gently at the base of her neck, mumurring,"your hair smells nice, Naiad."
Angelique chuckles...Rebekah's always called her Naiad, cos she's Cor Leonis, born and raised...all her people are naturally adapted to life on the surface and under water, a condition arising from her homeworld's pelagic nature.
She shivers slightly, Rebekah kissing the base of her neck again, blowing on it, Angelique chuckling a second time.
"Whaaatttt?" Rebekah whispers playfully, tickling her ear with each soft word.
"Y'like?" she asks, tracing the outline of her wife's right ear.
"Yeah," Angelique whispers breathily, before turning to take Rebekah in her arms, the two of them lying in a tangle on the sofa.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 150, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/14/2101, 0424.21 Zulu
She gently brushes strands of curly auburn hair from Stevie's face, kissing her softly on her forehead.
Stevie murmurrs in her sleep, smiling, Jami smoothing the covers over her sleeping form, as she thinks to herself, good.
Glad I can make her smile sometimes, she adds, sighing, as she sits down in the workstation chair, taking the thick book of poetry Stevie had bought her ages ago, leafing through it.
She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the corner between the foot of the bed and the door of her quarters, and, she surprises herself by not looking away.
Was it that long ago, she wonders, looking back at Stevie, snoring loud enough to wake the dead, when I couldn't even stand to look at myself naked in the bathroom mirror?
She smiles, as she watches her sleeping wife.
Is that what you've done to me, baby, she asks, sniffling, a line from an old song coming to mind:
"Can't you see, can't you see? What that woman, Lord, she been doin' to me...."
Jami finds herself singing that, softly enough so as not wake Stevie up, realizing she doesn't know any of the song except that line, the captain of the Unbroken chuckling to herself, shaking her head, as she turns her attention back to her book of poetry.
-endit-
In the Hours Before Sunrise
Processing Wing, Bibb County Law Enforcement Center
Intersection of Telfair Street and Hardeman Avenue, Flyntsboro, Terranova
09/13/2101, 2336.65 American Time
It's time.
The clone is fully-grown and ready for him to use.
Nodding, Master Chief Hugh Hatcher of the TSID's Special Victims Unit, lies down in the bottom of the coldwire unit, medbots taping electrodes and inserting IVs in his arms, an instant before they close the top half of the clamshell unit down on him.
A few moments pass, moments which Hatcher must not show fear of either the enclosed space or the darkness, before a voice announces,“all systems optimal, initiating coldwire.“
He barely notices the multiple pricking sensations of needles pumping digatalis into his system, or the numbing cold creeping up his body to stop his heart and brain, Hatcher taking a final breath, before closing his eyes....
...opening them, examining the small hand before her eyes, flexing each and every one of the long, slender fingers attached to it, as she climbs out of the coldwire chamber opposite the one holding her original body, feeling the coolness of tiles against her bare feet, as she pads over to the full-length mirror by the dressing-room door.
Nice, she thinks to herself, feeling her big black boobies, fingering their perfectlly-chocolatey nips, examining each and every inch of her well-toned, athletic body—and she means every inch—before she pats her firm booty and begins the process of getting dressed.
First, the toy...all zeds like toys, the bigger, the better, Hatcher settling on a twelve-incher as darkly chocolate as the rest of her body, strapping the puppy on, cinching the straps tight around each muscular, black thigh.
She shivers slightly at how good those straps look round her thighs, how right that tool looks on her...God knows, her little white girlie-girl sure thought it looked right on her....
“Can't help what we are, sweetie,“ Hatcher says to her reflection in the mirror with only a little bit of a growl, as she pulls the creamy white crotchless thong on over her tool, following that with the tight, white tank top—slit up at the sides, held together with snaps—which bunches up her boobies and allows her nips to poke through, Hatcher completing the ensemble with the orange prison jumpsuit—which zips up along the sides—left just open enough at the front to show cleavage.
One final look in the mirror.
She's ready to go.
The door hums and clicks, as it opens for her, Hatcher stepping out into the hall, walking past holding cells on either side, until she reaches the next to the last one on her right.
“Open 23,“ she says, the cell door humming and clicking, before sliding into the wall, Hatcher stepping in, almost feeling sorry for the worthless piece of zed huddled in the corner with its knees tucked under its chin.
It looks up at her.
Clearly, it wants what Hatcher's about to give it.
“P-precious?“ the zed stammers.“B-baby, t-they—“
Hatcher just walks up to it, reaching under the armpits to unzip the jumpsuit all the way down, letting it fall to the floor, letting it get a damn good look at the toy it wants her to use on it, the eight-year veteran of the Special Victims Unit smiling, as she sees the zed's wide, terrified, uncomprehending stare.
This is the part Hatcher likes.
She grabs its long, blonde hair, hauling it up off the floor, slapping it across its face one, two, three times, chuckling, as she whispers:
“You actually think I can love something like you?“
Hatcher chuckles again, before calling it a stupid bitch and pulling on its hair to force its mouth open.
...the dyke crew drags her, kicking and screaming from her cell, throwing her up against the railing, Suzanne bitchslapping her , screaming “who said you can stand up, you worthless goddamn, stinking piece of poot?!” before she wrenches one of Ariel's arms behind her back, bending her over the railing, another of her girls pulling her panties down, Suzanne smacking her fist in her hand, before she shoves it up in her, shouting for her to shut the eff up, bitch, shut your effin’ cooter head, shut it, using her free hand to pull her arm even further out of her socket, as Suzanne humps her, telling her,”maybe this’ll show ya....”
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 150, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/14/2101, 0442.20 Zulu
...what we’re all about, lil’ girlie, her mind says, laughing at her, what you’re all about....
Chief Warrant Officer Ariel Dixon wakes up in a cold sweat, her ragged breathing echoing off the bulkheads of the cruiser's deserted wardroom, as she tries to remember the sequence of events leading up to her waking up here.
She remembers now...the First Lieutenant had come onto the bridge, after Ariel had gotten spooked over nothing...she'd threatened to carry the twenty-four year old flight engineer over her shoulder if she didn't get to the wardroom and take a break.
She must've fallen asleep.
Reflexively, she looks down...she's still dressed, her greys rumpled from her having slept in them, her equipment belt, holding her laser pistol, laser lance, grav shield generator and toolkit, sitting on the coffee table in front of her.
You'd have liked that, a voice in her head titters, wouldn't ya, pootie-poot?
No, Ariel replies, the voice laughing at her, yes, you would've, don't lie, little poot, you know you do, all us zeds is—
“No,“ Ariel says over and over, grabbing hold of her head, trying to shake the voice loose, but it only gets that much louder, Unbroken's flight engineer getting up off the sofa, pacing till she passes by the icebox, rummaging through it for a can of pop—she doesn't care what it is, as long as it's cold and it's got caffiene—realizing she needs something loud to drown out the voice still....
....reeking of stale cigarets and cheap liquor, Khryste reaches inside her brown chinos, hitting Ariel’s exposed breasts with her belt, screaming for her to smile and shake that ass for me, bitch, shake that goddamn stinking....
...her breathing is more ragged, as she holds onto the edge of the sink at the far corner of the wardroom.
“YouTube,“ she says, desperate for any sort of noise, the workstation on the coffee table switching on, YouTube News' Glenn Beckett floating in the air, telling the worlds:
”As you all know, solid information on the true state of affairs inside the Communist State of Satellite Nations is nearly impossible to come by. The right-wing liberal media elites who control YouTube's Media Committee would naturally have you believe that the Commies live in a paradise, wanting for nothing, free to do and live as they please; however, our sources from deep inside the high command of the Commonwealth Forces tell us a far different story, as this holofootage smuggled off the Commonwealth homeworld of Earth by decent, God-fearing men fighting against incredible odds, clearly shows:“
The holofootage dissolved to scenes of ragged, dirty men huddling together against bitter cold over guttering fires, digging up food from dispose-all units, coughing their lungs up, as what were supposed to be Commonwealth Constabulary, all blonde women wearing knee-high boots and black leather catsuits, stomped and beat the crap out of them for their troubles.
”As you can plainly see for yourselves,“ Beckett’s voice said in the background,” despite the lies of the Vargas media elites and the Conspiracy who controls them, life in Commonwealth soil is a harsh struggle for existence against terrific odds. Many brave men have taken to the hills and the hinterlands of this former American penal colony staging daring attacks against their zed oppressors...many other men have taken to the skies, in whatever starships they can steal, taking on overwhelming numbers of the most efficent killing machines ever seen in the human worlds, in underarmed, ill-maintained, obsolete machines made more for the commerce of peace than for the far grimmer commerce of war in which the zeds have proven themselves entirely too expirienced.“
”Brave men,“ he added, after a pause,” you who risk everything to fight your enemies, do not think we have forgotten you or the sacrifices you make in the defense of your homes and families. Our own Bob Simon has been secretly moving about inside the Commie capital, and he has a live report on the current situation.“
The holo dissolved to a picture of the reporter in question, a still of Earth and a caption saying ”BOB SIMON, FORT GIBSON.“
”Brian,“ a tinny Oxford-accented voice was saying in the background, ”the Commies are becoming more desperate by the day. A recent raid by the Resistance in Fort Gibson against the largest of the zeds' concentration camp facilities has prompted Angelique Gault to cut off all food supplies to her captive poulation...already three food riots in Fort Gibson and another six or seven in the Tulsa Metropolitan Prison Zone have been bloodily suppressed by the Commie Forces’ dreaded Black Titan shock troops with the use of plutonium-oxide gas and various nerve agents....“
Greyhound Bus Terminal
600 Spring Street, Flyntsboro, Terranova
09/13/2101, 2345.78 AMT
“....along,“ the YouTube reporter drones on,“the use of snarling Rottweilers, held on breakaway leashes, the Titans then moving amongst the survivors like black-clad vultures, picking out the more attractive of the victims for immediate transport to the recreation centers and auction houses throughout Fort Gibson.“
“Sounds like,“ Beckett says,“you've had some harrowing expiriences, Bob.“
“Not as harrowing as it is for those who are forced to live here, with neither the means of escaping,“ Simon remarks,“nor the necessary political and social connections to secure even the most meager of—“
Damn it.
Precious Syms continues running, the pair of Gnats just entering the bus terminal ruling out any other option, the clerk at the ticket counter stroking a key on his terminal's holodisplay, the star frosh of the Pioneers' soccer team ducking through the pair of double doors connecting the terminal with the bus gates, just as a slab of monomolecular carbon snaps down into place behind them.
“There she is, frickin' nail that halfie skank!“ screams one of the veritable freakin' army of Gnats, Marines and Special Forces Command gathered round the arriving and departing buses, a HOUND closing the distance between her and it in a single leap of its four robotic legs, Precious showing off some of the skill which made her the team's star striker and the Terranova Collegiate Association student-athlete of the year by running like hell, the nineteen-year old halfie girl barely winded, her Neveleim musculature and her Haziri wing flaps allowing her to take to the air almost immediately, the thermals letting her glide thirty feet above her pursuers.
A storm of laser pulses and massdriven slugs rip past her, Precious barely succeeding in evading all of them, an ACV-137 gunship charging towards her on its vectored-plasma jets, a five-terajoule laser pulse crackling the air above her, singing some of her long, straight, black hair, burning a furrow through her uniform and her back, the resulting white wash of pain almost causing her to fall.
She has to find another place to hide, and fast, the thermals pushing her towards Second Street, Marine hoppers now joining in the pursuit, lighting the sky around her with five-hundred gigajoule laser pulses.
For the nth time since the Gnats smashed the door of her dorm room into a million pieces, Precious worries about Shannen, wonders if they got her, and if they do, what the hell's being done to her...things weren't great between them, they'd fought terribly after practice last night, and....
That had been the last time she'd seen her, God knows what they'll do to her, she's told Precious some of the crap she's been through, and Precious is reasonably sure she hadn't told—
She lands on the steps of Saint Paul's, on Cherry Street, pounding on the locked doors leading into the cathedral, her ears picking up the whine of plasma jets close to the ground, turning to see an AV-51, a trail of UV-116s following close like baby duckies behind their mama, coming up the Third Street end of Cherry.
Precious throws herself on the locked cathedral doors, beating on them even harder, screaming for someone to let her in.
Rectory, Saint Paul's Cathedral
121 Cherry Street, Flyntsboro, Terranova
09/13/2101, 2353.06 AMT
“Reverend Cheney,“ Deacon Keith Ishmael tells him,“you are aware of the Church's policy concerning asylum for zeds. The Council for—“
“Screw you,“ Reverend Robert Cheney replies, his voice a liquidy, rattling, rasp, the sixty year old American Orthodox minister walking out of the rectory, a million and one sins against his God on his mind and conscience, the old black man waiting until he is in the crisp air of a September night in the Fall Line to start coughing and wheezing, a hard glob of bloody, blue-green phelgm depositing itself on the ferrocrete for all that exertion.
The halfie girl nearly runs him down, before he even has a chance to stand back up, Cheney telling her, “come with me, child, now, before they—“
He hears bootsteps clomping up the steps leading to the cathedral proper, the sharp crack as a gravity ram breaks the sound barrier and sixty-five year old doors at the same time, part of the aging and dying preacher's mind musing on the irony of men who feel God is so much in favor of them and their government that they can defile His places with impunity.
He leads her into the rectory, Deacon Ishmael joined by Deacons Buckner Melton, Charles Dickey, and Jimmy Stumbo, the latter of the four growling,“not to put too fine a point on it, Reverend, but we hired you, and we forbid you giving shelter to any of,“ Stumbo leers at the halfie,“these.“
“Accept my resignation,“ Cheney replies,“and get out of my damn way.“
The well-dressed Haziri male growls again, before drawing a massdriver pistol from his thirty-thousand dollar tailored suit.
“You are a traitor to your Union and your God, Cheney,“ he snaps, aiming the pistol dead at Cheney. “I always knew you were.“
Cheney can't help but laugh out loud at that...it's a tossup between what's more ridiculous, being called a traitor or being threatened with death.
Bootsteps echo directly behind the deacons, Ishmael turning to face the pair of National Policemen, saying,“we have a zed in our custody, and this man is guilty of violating the Union Security A—“
His voice drains away from him, the deacon not expecting the Gnats to shove their M16s in his face, or for the blonde one of the two—a major according to his rank insignae—to bark out,“all four of you, on the effing ground, now!“
Cheney is even more surprised when the blonde one adds:
“Smitty sent us, Rev. Come with us.“
...they laugh as she lies on the dressing room floor, sobbing like a little baby, sick to her stomach, one of the other dancers kicking her ass, stomping her face down, ass up into her own vomit, then pulling her up to her knees by her hair, puke all over her face, another dancer, a black stallion, all over tats and brands, the word “Gurly Gurl” burned into the lips of her hairless poot, commenting,”nasty-ass bitch.”
“They all are,” Cathi commented, spitting on the eleven-year old girl’s breasts.
“They all are,” Cathi repeated, taking a strap-on from the table next to her, putting it on and ramming it down Khryste’s throat at the same time the black stallion gave a rebel yell, jumping on her from the rear, slapping her ass hard, screaming ,”let’s ride, pony gurl!” as she rubs up against....
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 150, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/14/2101, 0501.15 Zulu
...she flinches from the memory, Lieutenant Khryste Pollard dryswallowing, as she continues pacing Fighter Squadron 214's wardroom, stopping at the pic of the originial Black Dogs, posed in front of their Corsair Mark VB warpfighters on the hangar bay of the first Nawlins.
These are the legends who made the VF 214 the most famous warpfighter squadron in human space...Will Marley, Ben Griego, Micheal Delvecchio, Daniel Rice, Julie Tallgeese, the Commonwealth's ace of aces herself, bumping some sausage smoker from the top of the all-time kill board with nearly seven hundred fifty kills to her credit before she'd become Unbroken's first skipper sixty years ago, and, from there, Commonwealth Chief of Military Operations and President almost immediately after that....
Even in dying, she was a hero, and everything a President of the Commonwealth should be, Khryste observes grimly, giving up her life without a second thought, so the people of Winterhaven could be free of Yanker bonesmokers.
The gaze of 214's current commander drifts to the holo coded Nova Regina, 2/14/2080, sitting on a sideboard just below the flatpics of the other Black Dogs which had come before Khryste.
She strokes the Play icon on the holo, the still coming to life, a woman's voice saying:
“Today, Valentine's Day, 2080, is especially important for Leftenant Jamilinne Sipe, commanding officer of the storied Warp Fighter Squadron 214, based aboard Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken.“
The young woman in the holo, virally-blonded hair, piercing blue eyes—glasses, believe it or not—tries hiding her stocky, five-foot, ten-inch frame behind the nose of her warpfighter, garishly embellished with an effed-up looking baby duck grasping Guy Zellner's bloodily-severed head in one hand, and an Anazazi nofohaz in the other, the woman in the background—whose voice she recognizes instantly as a(relatively) much-younger Irma DeLong—cajoling a younger Jami Sipe to “come out from behind there, Leftenant, I don't bite,“ at the same time she continues her narrative:
“While engaged against Yanker forces in the Hampton aerospace corridor just this morning, Leftenant Sipe singlehandedly dispatched a dozen cruisers, heavy cruisers, and battle cruisers, along with a substanial number of warpfighters, to surpass Julie Tallgeese's long-standing tally of enemy craft shot down. Jami has, in just three years of service to her Commonwealth, amassed a kill tally of 757 enemy machines destroyed, including a record 121 cruiser-class starships of all three types....“
Khryste pauses the playback...Ugly Duckling's still in the hangar bay—immediately below the squadron wardroom, ready room, and quarters—on the cruiser's forward middeck, her pilot now even more of a living legend in the almost two decades she's been Unbroken's skipper...it's hard for the twenty-one year old squadron commander to imagine the Old Lady wearing glasses, let alone as scared of her own shadow as Khryste herself is.
Especially where Ariel's concerned...she's been on the bridge all frickin' day, working on repairs and tweaks to the ship, while Khryste's been here, finding other reasons to stay too busy to talk to her.
She sighs, moving down the line of squadron history, past the saber which had hung in the first 214's wardroom, supposedly the one Andrew Jackson had used to lead the charge at the First Battle of Nawlins nearly three hundred years ago, the one Will Marley had used to defend himself from two of his pilots who'd chosen to switch teams, along with the sgian dubh in the glass case just below it.
The two of them had fought at this spot just before Unbroken had left Excelsior Spacedock for Big Sky a few days ago, Ariel screaming that Khryste never listened to her, Khryste screaming that Ariel never wanted to talk, both of them calling each other names Khryste, at least, wished to God she could take back.
All 'cause Khryste was feeling herself getting too close to Ariel again, prolly vice-versa, no real way of knowing for sure, since the only damn time Ariel even frickin' thinks to talk is when she's so goddamn angry and jumpy she wants to shoot someone in the face....
...Cathi grabs her hair, hauling Khryste up onto her knees, the fifty-seven year old woman the other dancers call “Mama” forcing the bottom girlie’s face into her crotch, screaming for her to “eat it, bitch, eat it frickin' raw!” as she jerks even harder on her hair, smothering her with her poot, ordering her to “stick that tongue up in there, now, lil’ girlie girl, now!” as she keeps pulling on her hair, forcing her mouth open....
...and, Khryste's so scared to even touch her, she's worse than frickin' useless to Ariel.
That, in itself, being nothing new.
Processing Wing, Bibb County Law Enforcement Center
Intersection of Telfair Street and Hardeman Avenue, Flyntsboro, Terranova
09/14/2101, 0004.18 AMT
It's whimpering in a bruised heap of naked flesh at her feet, Hatcher stomping on the back of its head, whispering in a husky, half-growling voice:
“Bitch, you bore me, all y'all bore me...what you got to offer , it ain't a damn thing but poot, just somethin' to get me off, nothin' like screwin' a— “
The cell door buzzes and clicks open, Hatcher turning to face a couple bull dykes wearing MiniPriz khakis and identical blond buzzcuts.
“What the—“ Hatcher starts to ask, the right-hand blonde buzzcut barking out,“this one's going for a little ride; her girlie's still running rou—“
“Will you shut the eff up 'bout that?!“ Hatcher snaps, adding,“I need to see your orders, before I—“
“I assure you, Master Chief,“ a squat, stocky man with a well-manicured beard says, as he appears behind the butches,“these orders come from Admiral Baraka himself. As he hasn't the time to communicate his wishes with the likes of you in person, he sent me instead.“
Micheal Smith, Adjutant-General of the Terranova National Police, then steps out in front of the butches, adding,“I trust you won't see the need to question me, concerning those orders, Master Chief.“
“No, sir,“ Hatcher reluctantly replies, letting the butches scoop the little blonde bitch up off the floor, Smith telling him to carry on, as he leaves.
Processing Wing, Bibb County Law Enforcement Center
Intersection of Telfair Street and Hardeman Avenue, Flyntsboro, Terranova
09/14/2101, 0005.46 AMT
“Move!“ Micheal Smith snaps to Lori Pollard, as the “butch“ slips behind the steering yoke of the MiniPriz HV-128 Choctaw aerodyne, the wing-in-ground effect transport lifting itself up off the ferrocrete on its thrust vectrals, bulleting into traffic at well over 1,200 miles per hour, the gee force nearly slamming Smitty into the terrified heap of a nineteen year old soccer player, as they scream down InterCounty Highway 75, headed for the base in Freeman Lang, where, assuming they haven't been found out, a pathfinder's waiting to take this one and several hundred others offworld.
The soon-to-be former Adjutant General of the National Police curses himself for the indecent haste and improvisation which has marked the past couple, three days since the massacre of three thousand unarmed protesters on the front steps of the Capitol...the whole damn organization's gone frickin' soft in the decade following Tau Ceti, caught completely by surprise by Zellner's latest fit of insanity, many of them being collected and shipped to God knows where along with those they'd been trying to save.
Too many, he bitterly recriminates himself, looking at the poor thing shrinking away from Amy Bridges—her hair and eyes returning to their normal shade of mousy brown—as she tries reassuring her.
“Crap,“ Lori shouts, Smitty seeing the squadron of AV-51 Powell main-battle tanks for himself, the horse-mounted Marines in between them stopping all ten southbound lanes of traffic.
“Stay in character,“ Smitty tells her, moving up to the front of the Choctaw, sitting down at the copilot's seat, just as Marines from the Third Shock Army appear on either side.
“Gentlemen,“ the Adjutant-General of the National Police says to them, just as Achird A, shortly followed by its more distant companion, rises over Hartley Bridge Road in the distance, tinting the sky with the colors of second sunrise.
—endit—
Between the Altar And the Mercy Seat
Outside the Republican Union Ship Blind Man's Zoo
Landing Pad 3225, HQTRS,Freeman Lang, Terranova
9/14/2101, 0015.14 American Time
"We can't wait too much longer," Chief Warrant Officer Royce "Finn" Huckabee whispers, the howl of sirens and the sweep of searchlights competing with the rising suns.
"We lift now, Padre," he says to the old black preacher standing beside him,"or we're just screwed, with no Vaseline, when-"
"We wait on Smitty," Robert Cheney replies, before coughing up his damn frickin' lungs again, the twenty-year veteran of the Terranova Republican Spacefleet's Pathfinder Service wondering for only the millionth time in the past five minutes, just why in the hell had he chosen to go over the damn wall, at the same time, his right hand goes to the M2049 250-gigajoule laser pistol resting in its holster, his left hovering over the hilt of his laser lance, his stomach doing flipflops, as he resumes pacing underneath the tail of his SR-142B-class pathfinder, blowing cold smoke out of his mouth with every step he takes.
The preacher man just stands there, looking in the direction of First Street, leading from Gate 1 to the flightline, occasionally hacking up more bloody blue-green mucus...that unpleasantly reminds Huckabee of his own mama, coughing up her damn frickin' lungs from Lindsey's disease, being told by the quacks that it was all her effing fault she was sick, just before the greedy goddamn bastards slapped her in an automedic for the last eighteen months of her life.
He sighs, blowing more cold smoke into the second dawn Terranova will see in a twenty-four hour day.
Ten years ago, and, still-
"Sunnuvabitch!" he interjects, drawing his laser pistol with one hand, using the other to shield himself from the roar of white light blinding him, Smitty's voice cutting through the light, shouting for Huckabee to "get that effing goddamn cargo ramp down, do it now!"
Outside the Republican Union Ship Blind Man's Zoo
Landing Pad 3225, HQTRS,Freeman Lang, Terranova
9/14/2101, 0018.00 AMT
Just as he says that, Micheal Smith, late Adjutant-General of the Terranovan National Police, has to duck down, turn round and start shooting into the light with his drawn Colt Double Eagle massdriver pistol, the Choctaw's autolaser turret spitting blue fire at the massdriven rounds and laser pulses coming back at him and the three others running like hell for the cargo ramp that Finn managed to drop to the ground, Finn and Robert Cheney standing with him, laying down fire with their laser pistols, the two Gnats what brought Robert and Precious Syms here clomping their way down the ramp, volleying bursts of .502 slugs from their M16A4s, Freddie Barker barking for Smitty to get his ass aboard the bird, now, he and Vining'll hold them off, Freddie then shoving the older man up the ramp, Finn and Robert both following him up, the autolaser quad turret in the pathfinder's belly opening up on the Marines advancing by squads towards them.
Rush and improvise ain't no frickin' plan of action, his old squadron leader's words echo through his skull as a sort of rebuke for the mess the hajjies in general, and Smitty, in particular, has found himself in.
He was stupid to think he could never fall under suspicion, not with the whole damn planet wired into the friggin' InterWeb and Zellner only getting more paranoid in the years since he burned E.J. Busbee at the start of 9YW...even in keeping a low profile in regards his extracirricular activities, he couldn't help but attract attention, especially with that flying frickin' monkey Baraka in charge of the TSID.
Why he didn't realize that, until after the jarheads running the roadblock on 75 had told him Baraka had given them special orders concerning him, he had no answer, except he'd gotten as safe-as soft-as the rest of the movement.
Cryin' over spilled milk don't change the fact it's spilt, Lieutenant Farabee's ghost is quick to remind Smitty, as a Haziri, quick as shit, swoops down on Freddie and Mark Vining, ripping them both to shreds with the pair of chainblades in his hands, the flying monkey howling, as he starts to charge up the ramp, Finn melting him down like candle wax with a pulse from his laser pistol, just before the ramp closes back up into the ship's cargo bay.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 150, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/14/2101, 0522.10 Zulu
The workstation terminal bleeps for her attention, Commander Jamilinne Sipe stroking one of the keys on the holodisplay, Chief Warrant Officer Ariel Dixon's holo lighting up her quarters.
"Sorry to bother you, ma'am," Unbroken's flight engineer says,"but I have an incoming communication for you from Admiral Grey, aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship New York."
Crap.
Her daughter had commanded the first Vinnie, part of the triang of cruisers then-Vice Admiral Kaplan had made the mistake of putting Jami in charge of sixteen years ago.
During what most everyone else called the Liberation of Avalon.
"Put her through, Chief," the captain of the Unbroken manages to say in a normal voice, Ariel's holo instantly replaced with a holoprojection of a striking woman, short, greying red hair, piercing green eyes, an admiral's four black stars superimposed on top of the seal of the Free State of New York on her dove-grey uniform beret.
"Commander," Melinda Grey, commanding officer of the battlecruiser New York and the Commonwealth Forces' Third Fleet, says. "Good morning."
"Morning, Admiral," Jami, checking to make sure she's sending audio info only, replies.
"Just wanted to see if you would join me for breakfast this morning, Jami," the Third Fleet commander says, after a pause.
"With respect, ma'am," Jami replies,"but it's a long way from here to Mars."
"Third, Fifth, Sixteenth and Nineteenth Fleets are descending on orbital approach for New Seattle even as we speak, Commander," Admiral Grey replies, adding,"we got our orders couple days ago, extremely short notice on the part of Mars Command, but given the situation with the neighbors, they've little time to waste on the usual pleasantries."
"Understood," Unbroken's skipper replied, Stevie mumurring as she turns over in bed, spilling waves of auburn hair all over the place, Jami smiling in spite of everything.
"I'll see you for breakfast then, Commander?" Admiral Grey asks.
"I'll be there, ma'am," Jami replies, the Third Fleet commander nodding her head, telling her,"I'll see you then, Commander," before her holo switches off.
"Whawuzzat bou' Thir'Fleet being 'ere?" her wife and second in commander wonders sleepily.
"News to me too, babe," Jami replies, reaching in the dresser drawers above the bed, pulling out a pair of white cotton boxers, a white t-shirt and a pair of white socks, putting them on at the same time she's rummaging in the wardrobe for her dress greys.
"That's what I was afraid of," Stevie, now a little more awake, says, the covers falling away from the top half of her as she sits up in bed.
"Not good, I agree," Jami, pulling on her dress uniform slacks, remarks, before slipping her dress uniform tunic on and buttoning it up, as she's trying to fasten, zip and buckle the belt around her pants.
She bends down and kisses her wife gently on the lips, the two of them rubbing noses, before hugging.
"Mmmmm," Jami whispers,"you make me want to sleep in, y'know that."
Chuckling thoratily, Stevie whispers," Me too, luv."
"But...." she adds.
"I know, baby," Jami replies, sighing.
She kisses her wife one last time, before she finishes dressing up.
Sipe House
374 Sullivan Drive, Owensboro, Terranova
09/14/2101, 0036.65 AMT
"In other news," YouTube's Rachelle English says to National Policeman 1st Class Garrison Lee Sipe and his eldest son Jacob, as they sit in the living room of his house, " Bibb County Delegate Cyndi McKinley addressed the Bibb County chapter of the IAACP, asking minority voters to oppose the fifteen and one half billion dollars in aid which the proposed school bond will bring to Bibb County's beleaguered public education system."
"Zeds is always," nine-year old Jake says," 'ginst the public schools, Daddy; that's what my friend Matt said, and Matt's real smart."
"She claims," the You Tube anchor adds, as Sipe "uh, huhs," his son," that the bond proposal, which the Bibb County Comission heartily approves, is discriminatory against minorities, which is a rather odd claim to make, considering eight of the city's and county's ten public high schools are in majority Haziri neighborhoods...it is interesting, though, that she had chosen to take the same position on this as Terranova Education Minister Gilda Schrenko, who has openly pursued a racist and homophobic agenda, in regards to the Union's public-education system, since her taking office eight years ago, even going as far as to lobby for the dismantling of the public school systems in all 159 counties before both houses of the Common Legislature.
Governor Zellner had this to say on the subject:"
The HV dissolves, refoccussing on the tall, hypermasculine, greying at the temples, proudly homosexual Governor of the Union, as he addresses the General Assembly, the former Chairman of the Union Security Council and head of the TSID clutching his mace of authority in his hands like a second...well, no need to explain that particular simile:
"It is obvious what motivates Ms. McKinley, Minister Schrenko and all the other shrill, barking, foaming at the mouth zeds in their opposition to the Bibb County Board of Education's perfectly-reasonable request for more money...they have refused to reinstitute the misguided program of social promotion which only serves to benefit the academically-challenged amongst the students of Bibb County, a programme which tells all the zeds, ‘it's all right, you don't have to try hard in school, we'll give you a diploma, and you won't even have to break a fingernail.' "
"Just," Zellner adds, after a brief pause to take in the cheering of the Assemblymen and those watching him on the InterWeb ," as the all too powerful, ultra-millitant army of racist zeds, with their cries of ‘rape,' and their witchhunts, conducted with false accusations of sexual harassment against Terranovan citizens and hysterical charges of sexual abuse against the fathers who break their backs ninety-six hours a week for twenty years providing their spoiled, ungrateful brats with the necessities of life, have made it so that their kind do not have to succeed in the workplace...all they have to do is show up, and their fellow travelers will give them jobs, even if they have to steal them from honest taxpaying citizens of this Union, and if any one of us dares speak out, he will be hounded and destroyed by the by the same breed of cold-blooded snake what persecutes us with cries of, ‘murder,' ‘rape' and ‘sexual harassment' while forcing others of its kind to pay for its beneficence with-"
"Damn skippy, monkeybone!" hollers Jacob at the HV in the living room, the speakers built into the walls deafening Sipe with more of same.
"Shouldn't you," Sipe asks him,"be in bed by now, boy?"
"Shouldn't you," Jacob sasses him back,"be putting the boots to your fat-assed poo-"
"That's your mama you're talking about, Jake," Sipe snaps.
"It's a zed," Jacob retorts, before taking a pull from a bottle of Bud he's gotten out of the fridge," I'm talkin' about, Daddy, a good-for-nothin' goddamn zed."
"Ain't like," he adds,"it's a human being or anythin', now is it, Daddy?"
Sipe opens his mouth, not knowing how to reply to that, when a pounding on the door saves him from having to respond.
"Hold on, hold on," he says, getting up off the couch, telling the house's intranet to unlock and open the front door."
"Halfacre," he says to to his partner, National Policeman 1st Class Geoff Halfacre standing at the front door,"what's-"
It's then Sipe's notices the two TSID Special Victims Unit agents on either side of him, one of them holding a verifier unit in his hands.
"The frickin' Adjutant General's been a goddamn hajjie the whole effing time," Halfacre declares, disgust in his voice.
All the explanation Sipe needs.
"C'mon in," he tells the three of them. "Let's get this over with."
Sipe House
374 Sullivan Drive, Owensboro, Terranova
09/14/2101, 0040.26 AMT
"In a prepared statement," Rachelle English says, shifting her short skirt enough to show her audience a flash of her white thong,"Twice-Born Assemblywoman Sally Kern defended the homophobic comments she made before a gathering of local Republicans in Zellnersboro Monday, at the same time Terranova Governor Guy Zellner and Terranova Prime Minister Micheal Bauer both added their voices to the chorus demanding her resignation from and/or impeachment by the Twice-Born Congress."
"Hateful goddamn zed," grouses National Policeman 1st Class Geoff Halfacre, devoting his whole attention to the HV in his partner's living room.
"They're all like that," Garry's oldest boy comments, as he takes another pull from his bottle of Bud, a chorus of "damn right they is"es booming over the speakers, as Micheal Bauer stands on the steps of the Capitol, saying:
"-hate speech, pure and simple, by a spiteful, narrow-minded zed who simply cannot tolerate anything or anyone different from her, and a point of view which simply has no place in twenty-second century society."
Now a whole bunch of "oh, hail naw!"s screamed over the speakers, Halfacre glancing over at the TSID op interrogating Garry, his Human partner holding the verifier close to his head like he was holding a gun on him, nodding from time to time at the monkeyboy asking Garry questions.
He ain't in the back of the car, Halfacre muses, so Garry hasn't effed up.
Yet, he adds to himself...it's obvious to anyone with half a brain that Garry's been off his game lately, staring off into space at odd moments, hesitating to do what he should know by now needs be done, things like that.
It's probably nothing.
He's known Garry since they both graduated from Forsythe eighteen years ago, well enough to know he ain't like that.
It's probably just a mid-life crisis or something, he thinks to himself, but they ain't gonna see it like that, buddy, not with ol' Smitty switchin' teams and Baraka taking command of the National Police as well as the TSID.
And, he adds, making the only decision he can, I ain't backing you up if they have any reason to suspect you, bud, ain't tryin' to be mean, but a man's gotta look out for number one, 'fore they do a number two on him.
Know what I mean? he asks himself, turning his attention back to HV and all the voices calling Sally Kern a bigoted, hateful, mean-spirited, Nazified goddamn zed.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship New York
Landing Pad 464, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/14/2101, 0602.14 Zulu
A master chief in the Legionnaires leads Jami into the wardroom of the 300,000+ ton Albion-class battlecruiser which is the Third Fleet's flagship, Admiral Grey, still in her fatigue greys, seated at one of the tables, a bot putting the last of several dishes' worth of food down in front of her.
"You didn't have to be quite so formal, Jami," the Third Fleet commander remarks, smiling, motioning the captain of the Unbroken to a chair directly across from her.
"Ma'am," Jami replies curtly, her stomach in knots, as she removes her long grey dress uniform greatcoat, the bot taking it from her....
"...than this," Jami says to the assembled mourners, Unbroken's spaceframe covered in repair bots,"that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Fat frickin' lot of good those words will do Sarah's mom, standing with the rest of the senior Admiralty, wind and cold rain whipping at her grey dress uniform greatcoat, neither coming close to wiping away the tears in her piercing green eyes....
"...sit, Jami," Admiral Grey says to her, adding,"I don't bite."
"Ma'am," Jami replies, taking a seat, Admiral Grey adding,"if you're waiting to be served, you're gonna end up starving."
The captain of the Unbroken uncovers a pot at the center of the table, pleasantly surprised that it holds cheese grits, with just the right amount of cheese and butter making them an orangey color...even Stevie's not acquired the taste for them, and she can cook them up perfect.
"Coffee and juice," Admiral Grey adds,"are on the sideboard to your left."
"Thank you, ma'am," Jami says, ladling some grits into a bowl sitting on the plate in front of her, uncovering another dish to discover it piled high with bacon and link sausage, Jami shovelling a generous helping of both onto her plate, along with a couple of chicken-fried steaks on the plate next to it, a covered bowl next to it holding Keenan Valley home fries(from the admiral's native Summer Rain)pungent with yellowflower and pepper and smothered in sausage gravy.
Jami scoops some of that onto her plate as well, Admiral Grey commenting,"good lord, girl, you can go back for seconds, you know."
"Ma'am," Jami replies, the admiral chuckling, smiling, as she adds,"it's Melinda, kay?"
"I..." Jami says, trailing off, forgetting until just now what's happened.
Admiral Grey nods her head, swallowing back the tears in her eyes, smiling again, as she takes Jami's hand in hers and says:
"For a long while, I did blame you, Commander, even after reading the after-action report and looking at the footage from the Vinnie's black boxes...believe me, I watched that over and over, it...."
"It replays in your dreams, doesn't it?" Jami found herself asking, sighing, her face wet.
"Only," Admiral Grey whispers heavily,"every frickin' night, Jami."
"Only," she repeats softly,"every night."
Sipe House
374 Sullivan Drive, Owensboro, Terranova
09/14/2101, 0104.26 AMT
They seem satisfied with his answers.
At least he's not in the back of the car on his way to execution or reassignment.
With Halfacre staying in the living room to cover Sipe, the two TSID agents begin what they call an "enviromental inspection," a fancy term for rifling through the house, raiding the icebox and maybe, checking to see whether he had anything on hand that might be considered damaging to Union security.
The doorbell rings, Sipe telling the house to unlock and open the front door, before he realizes the TSID might not want him to entertain company right now.
Halfacre turns toward the door, hand on his massdriver pistol, the words,"I'm sorry, but-" coming out of his mouth, before he realizes just who is at his door.
"Anything the matter, Garry?" Dad's chief of staff, Vice-Admiral James Bentley Spinks, asks, after nodding a greeting to his partner.
"Adjutant General's gone over the wall, sir," Sipe replies, a sound of whimpering, shouts and flesh striking flesh coming from the master bedroom at the same time.
"I heard," Ben replies, nodding his head, the monkeyboy coming back into the living room, barking out,"I don't think now is the time to be receiving gues-" before he snaps to attention and salutes Ben.
"Begging the Admiral's pardon," the Haziri quickly adds.
"As you were, Master Chief," old Ben replies. "You're just doing your job, though I doubt you'll find anything out of the ordinary; Garry's a good boy, known him all my life."
"Yes, sir, we are aware of the Admiral's association with National Policeman Sipe's family," the monkeyboy says quickly, pulling out his best bowing and scraping just for the chief of staff of the Union's Chief of Military Operations.
"Grrreat Scott," Ben then says to Sipe, ignoring the TSID op altogether,"Garry, you hear 'bout Sally Kern?"
"Watching it on the news just now, sir," Sipe replies, Ben snorting his contempt at BoobTube, as he remarks:
"Liberal Republican media don't never wanna tell you nothing...TSID and Twice-Born National Security found out she's been taking trips to the Oklahoma City Prison Zone, Commies have been letting her have her pick of the inmates, and she helps 'em out with the AFEGs on TB."
"And," he adds, the monkeyboy keeping his mouth shut about Union security,"now those damn AFEGs are bringing their terrorism here, they were behind the assault on the Capitol three days ago, and 'em zeds at Terranova Wesleyan were in on it."
"They were?" Jacob asks, Ben replies,"sure was, Jake. They found about ten meg TSC in the MoneyCenter account of one of 'em soccer players, money that came straight from a numbered account in Fort Gibson that the Commies' State Security Buerau uses for black ops."
The Human TSID op comes into the living room, saying,"I think we're pretty done with the enviromental inspection-"
He abruptly shuts up and salutes the instant his eyes fall on Ben.
"What did you find, Ensign?" Ben asks, the ensign replying,"nothin' out of the ordinary, Admiral."
"I didn't figure you'd find anything, son," Ben remarks, the two TSID operatives saluting him one last time, before motioning for Halfacre to accompany them out the front door.
"Sorry 'bout this, buddy," Halfacre remarks, Sipe telling him it was all good, as he follows the Special Victims Unit ops out the front door.
"Guess," Ben says,"I'll be getting on back to the house myself; Esther'll be worried sick 'bout me being out and about in the middle of the night."
"Yes, sir, good night, sir," Sipe replies, the HV now showing some virally-blonded Sally standing with the man commanding the Terranovan peacekeeping forces on TB.
I know her, I think, a part of him observes, Sally telling everyone on line:
Office of the Special Provost Marshal for Twice-Born
Twice-Born Government Complex
511 Benjamin Zellner Parkway, Zellnersboro, Twice-Born
9/14/2101, 0107.35 AMT
"In a sweep of seven housing projects in the city of Fort Hawkins, just fifteen miles west of the Twice-Born capital of Zellnersboro, Terranovan Republican Marines from the Special Operations Ready Regiment of the 27th Shock Army, assisted by members of the Twice-Born Republican Interstellar Navy's FALCON Team 18 and the Terranovan Republican Special Forces Command's elite Task Force 21, uncovered an extensive cache of Commonwealth-manufactured weapons and munitions, including nearly thirty kilotons of plutonium oxide gas, four hundred tons of VXD nerve gas, 150 tons of various biological agents, twenty thousand laser pistols, laser rifles and autolasers, two thousand man-portable rocket launchers and artillery lasers, thirty self-propelled artillery platforms and at least fifty intact Lynx armored fighting vehicles, these weapons and munitions being earmarked for use by zed terrorists on Terranova, as part of a civil uprising planned by the Conspiracy's leaders in the wake of their attack against the Capitol in New Whitehorse three days ago, according to Terranova Republican Spacefleet Admiral Paul Meyer, commanding the Union's peacekeeping efforts on Twice-Born, the Admiral having personally led last night's raid, which also netted nearly 100,000 people with ties to organizations directly linked to the Conspiracy."
Meyer smiles as he watches the 'cast...he cuts quite the figure in his dress whites and his gold shoulderboards, the Special Provost Marshal for Twice-Born regretting the fact they gave out pay raises instead of medals anymore, 'cause a few of them sure as hell would've looked good on that manly chest of his.
No matter, Meyer thinks to himself, watching himself talk with the virally-blonded little piece of poot, dressed like all its subhuman kind, right down to the short blue skirt which doesn't even come close to covering her lavender G-string panties, the Special Provost Marshal loving the sound his voice makes when he talks:
"-use ‘em on us, sure as hell, Asleigh...worse, they used some of your own kind as shields, forcing them to throw themselves at us by the thousands, expending our firepower, while their dominants hung back and took shots at our boys with virtual impunity...all you limp-wristed right-wing Vargas liberal elites can whine all you want about killing innocent civilians, but you just don't effing want to know...none of you, none of you, is exactly what any of us can call innocent, or civilians, for that matter, you're all out to destroy every decent, God-fearing, good and honest thing we have built with our blood, our sweat, our labor, because you are all jealous of what you can never hope to achieve in a hundred lifetimes. I have no problem with ordering our boys to go in and kill every thieving, whoring, lowlife goddamn one of you, simply because that is the duty of every God-fearing Christian."
"Yes, sir," Ashleigh O'Connell replies, nodding her head slightly.
"Are these zeds," she then asks, doing lines like a good little girl," then, part of the fedayeen we've been hearing so much about?"
"They are indeed ," Meyer hears himself say. "The Commies and their fellow travellers have been turning ‘em out for years, Ashleigh, doing things to ‘em that simply aren't fit for broadcasting...mutilation-especially of the breasts and genitals-torture, electroshock, beatings, starvation, whippings, drugs, gang rape, things that make 'em as hardcore and brutal as their dominants, make them hate themselves and their fellow soldiers even more than before, so they are more than willing to fight to the death and trade their lives for ours."
"'For years,' Admiral," the spoiled little Vargas Sally repeats. "Does that mean-"
"That some in the Twice-Born government and ours knew about what was going on?" Meyer's alter ego finishes her assigned question for her.
"I'm afraid the answer to that's a matter of Union security," he adds,"and I can't discuss it on the IW; what I can tell you , however, is we now have indisputable evidence that the traitor Micheal Bauer-the older brother of notorious terrorist, sexual predator and serial murderer Jamilinne Sipe-is , in fact, a sleeper agent of the Commonwealth's State Security Buerau, who, for years, acted and lived as if he was a loyal servant of our Union, not only because he was ordered to do so, but also, like all your kind, he despised himself and everything he was supposed to have stood-"
The door to his office buzzes.
"Who's at my hatch?" Meyer demands, the second class acting as his receptionist lighting up the holospace above his terminal, replying,"Admiral, Fleet Captain Rabwin is here, on your orders."
"Enter," Meyer replies, the door buzzing open, letting in a tall, natch-blond Human male with piercing blue eyes and features carved from the Tin Gods themselves.
He is the star of the reality series Pax Rabwin; Terranovan Spaceman, commanding officer of CruRon 625, ace cruiser squadron of the Union's Sixth Fleet, and, perhaps the finest man Meyer has ever had the privilege of commanding.
And, for Meyer and the folks back home, he will perform one final mission before Sixth Fleet returns to Nasty Hank for the start of season ten.
"Sir, Fleet Captain Rabwin reporting as ordered," Rabwin says, snapping to recruiting-holo perfect attention, executing a crisp salute which is Meyer's pleasure to return.
"At ease, Fleet Captain," Meyer replies, Rabwin relaxing, but not sitting down.
The Special Provost Marshal calls up a map of Human-colonized space into being over his workstation terminal, immediately coming to the point:
"CruRons 625 and 628 are to proceed to interstellar space along the warpdrive corridor between Sol and Tau Ceti, where they are to deploy mines to deny that route to enemy shipping."
"Aye, sir," Rabwin replies, asking,"is there anything else, Admiral?"
"Nothing I can think of, Fleet Captain," Meyer says regretfully."You're to lift ship in an hour; link up with YouTube's servers the instant you emerge from warpdrive. Dismissed."
"Aye, sir," this Adonis says to him, before turning smartly on his heel and walking out of the Special Provost Marshal's office.
Aboard the Republican Union Ship Blind Man's Zoo
TArch57512 Tony Hawk, 2.2 AU from Terranova
9/14/2101, 0110.26 AMT
"How much frickin' longer do we have to sit here, Master Chief?"an understandably testy Huckabee asks Master Chief Petty Officer Marlin Coates.
"Another hour," the pathfinder's flight engineer snaps, his hands furiously working the engineering holodisplay, sending commands to the bots actually working on the sealed-off McDonnell-Boeing WE5200 warp engine's drivefield generator...the bots have already patched the hole in the spaceframe a 160-terajoule laser beam burned through it, flooding the warp engine housing with more cryogenic helium supercoolant.
The jennie's another matter entirely, 160 TJ lasers having that unfortunate tendency to turn nearly anything they touch into bubbling slag...the bots had to scrape that off the deck, before they could even think to hoist the replacement generator from the cargo bay, through the cubbyhole of a machine shop and into the housing itself...from there, Marlin has to logically reconnect the warp engine to the engine computer and recalibrate the drivefield generator so that it does its magic, instead of making the ship go poof!
That's what's taking so goddamn long, recalibrating the drivefield generator; it has to be right, or they would all die, that simple, but every minute Marlin spends fiddling with the damn thing is another minute the cruisers and warpfighters they left behind in the New Whitehorse corridor have to get entirely too close to this icy-black pebble at the fringe of the Terranovan Archipelago.
If those zeds crammed in his cargo were lucky, all they'd know-for less than a second at least-was the effect 160-terajoule lasers had on half-mile wide glorified charcoal briquette.
Huckabee doesn't believe in any kind of luck which isn't bad.
"It takes as long as it takes, Smitty," he tells his old friend, furiously pacing the ship's tiny bridge, just barely avoiding bumping into any of the four stations,"there's no rushing these things."
"Yeah," Smitty spits out, asking, as he reaches the hatch directly opposite Huckabee's piloting station and Warrant Officer 1st Class Lee Crenshaw's nav station at the nose end of the bridge," got anything to eat on this bucket that didn't come in a foil pouch?"
"Only a pack of bologna and a half jar of peanut butter," Huckabee replies,"and I ain't giving any gurantees as to how both of those been in there."
Truth be told, he's just as frustrated as Smitty, but, right now, it'll do about as much good to vent it, as it would to vote for Governor in the next election.
"If we can at least get some decent programming," Smitty bitches, trying to turn it into a joke...only the passive sensors are online, including the radio telescopes, and they're picking up all the BoobTube an online audience could want.
And, we can't even shout it down, he muses, not that we ever really could, without the TSID Special Victims Unit paying a visit.
"All the BoobTube a man could want, Smitty," Huckabee remarks out loud.
"Like I wanna frickin' see another 'cast about how Sally Kern supposedly said bad things about fudge pirates," Smitty says.
"But, they caught it on YouTube," Huckabee says, with a straight face,"and YouTube's by you for you, not like those lying Commie propaganda broadcasts."
"And, Terranova really is the homeworld of the human race," Smitty remarks sarcastically, before he begins pacing again.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship New York
Landing Pad 464, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/14/2101, 0612.49 Zulu
After a long silence, Admiral Melinda Grey smiles bravely, as Unbroken's captain, Sarah's friend and commander, gently holds her hand.
"It wasn't because it was your fault, Sarah went along with what happened, any of us would've, that's part and parcel of what this uniform entails," the commander of the Third Fleet says, giving Jami's hand a gentle squeeze.
"But," she adds," blaming you was easier for a while, 'cause you were here, and that bastard Guy Zellner was on Terranova."
"If-" Jami starts to say, Melinda giving her hand a gentle squeeze, whispering,"I know you would've, in an instant."
She sighs.
"'Fraid it's not all social, Jami," she remarks, barely regaining her composure. "Mars Command's ordered me to take charge here, we're using Big Sky as a staging area, as well as beefing up the planet to withstand the inevitable Yanker invasion."
The look in Jami's eyes betrays no surprise at this news.
"So Intel's sure?" she asks.
"Dead cert," the Third Fleet commander replies, adding:
"According to Commonwealth Intelligence, Zellner's ordered two squadrons of cruisers to mine the warpdrive corridor between Tau Ceti and Earth's Solar System, part of an all-out effort to deny us free passage in our own home soil."
"True to form," Jami observed, Melinda nodding her head.
"One of the cruiser squadrons detailled to denying us the corridor between Big Sky and the homeworlds is CruRon 625-" she starts to say, Jami filling in the rest:
"Pax Rabwin's squadron."
"The same," Melinda replies.
"CruWrong 8113," she adds, referring to the three cruisers under Jami's nominal command,"will execute a deep-space intercept; the ground crews are loading your ships with additional Smashmouths for this mission, you can lift ship, as soon-"
Unbroken's skipper is already on her feet, bolting the last of her breakfast, nodding her head slightly, before saying:
"With your permission, Admiral."
Spinks House
387 Sullivan Drive, Owensboro, Terranova
09/14/2101, 0118.80 AMT
He's staring over coffee as he sits at the dining room table, HV in the corner telling everyone on line the latest in the Miley Spiers sex scandal, BoobTube being sure to go into excruicating detail about the sixteen-year old "PopTart's" escapades in her mansion's "fantasy room," everyone on line cheering and condemning at the same time....
Vice-Admiral James Bentley Spinks sighs...Esther's asleep in the downstairs bedroom, and both grandkids(Teresa's kids)are sleeping upstairs.
Ben, on the other hand, hasn't been able to sleep good, not for a while, too much he should've done different on his mind.
He thinks about Jami when he thinks about his own grandkids...he should've come forward with the truth when she'd tried to, not just sit there in silence while Zellner helped Ken put her in the damn Phoenix Center.
Or when Ken ran Cyndi down and Jami was the one who ended up going to prison over it....
He nods his head absently, tears blinding his eyes, the seventy-year old man swallowing, as he dwells on what should've been done.
On what he knows he has to keep doing now to try make up for it.
-endit-
The Appalling Silence
Aboard the Republican Union Ship Blind Man's Zoo
TArch57512 Tony Hawk, 2.2 AU from Terranova
9/14/2101, 0200.00 American Time
"P-please," Shannen cringes from her touch,"d-don't, I-i-"
Jesus Christ, she's trembling, Precious Syms thinks, trying to get closer to her...even when things were going good, Precious didn't know what to think of their relationship, or what either of them really wanted, but, damn, even at their worst, Shannen's never been this scared of her.
Her clear blue eyes are wide with fear, her knees tucked up underneath her chin, as she huddles in the corner of the ship's cargo bay, the olive-drab dungarees someone gave to her hanging loosely on her...she won't even let Precious brush away the tears running down her face, she just keeps pulling away, drawing herself up even tighter.
"What the hell did they do to you, girl?" she whispers, not sure she wants to know what they did to her the whole time they had her locked down in the LEC.
Aboard the Republican Union Ship Blind Man's Zoo
TArch57512 Tony Hawk, 2.2 AU from Terranova
9/14/2101, 0201.03 AMT
Reverend Robert Cheney knows exactly what the hell they did to Shannen in there.
Same crap they did to Jami the whole time they had her locked up on Witch's Tit.
Or in the Phoenix Center before that.
All because the confessional wasn't all that sacred in the New Church, especially when frightened twelve-year old girls told their school chaplins about the sins visited upon them by their fathers and brothers.
Only one of the many things he'd soon be trying to explain to Him.
Cheney begins another violent spasm of coughing, his chest feeling like a rock, the world tunneling out in front of him in a shower of stars, a small glob of bloody blue-green mucus yielded up onto his handkerchief for all that hacking.
The GQ klaxon clangs throughout the cargo bay, scaring already frightened people stripped even of their victim status by men like him, the pathfinder's warp engine almost knocking him flat on his ass, as it kicks in at max burn, the ship shaking, the lights dimming, as lasers strike the grav shielding, and the pathfinder's pair of forty-terajoule lasers return fire.
"Warpfighters, three squadrons of 'em," Finn's holo says over Cheney's Link." Sumbitches bounced us while Marlin was recalibrating the drivefield generator."
"Will we make it to warpdrive?" Cheney asks.
"Ask the Man, Padre," Finn replies acerbically,"He knows better than me or Marlin right now."
"Warpdrive entry in five seconds," Blind Man's Zoo's flight engineer announces over the intercom.
"Guess we'll all know soon enough whether we make it or not, Padre," Finn remarks.
Aboard the Republican Union Ship Nagasaki
2.4 light-years from the Tau Ceti system
9/14/2101, 0201.67 AMT
Fleet Captain Pax Judas Rabwin, sometimes known as "the Hammer," looks up at the cam in the ceiling of his flagship's bridge, discreetingly preening himself, as he gets ready to deliver the next line.
"Freedom's enemies do not hesitate," he finally replies, after waiting the appropriate amount of time to reply to his flag captain, Jason Burnette's, last line,"to hide behind outmoded notions of national sovreignty and international law in the execution of their terrorist agenda against our way of life."
"Nor should we," he adds,"be constrained by such relics of simpler times, Captain, not when the shape of twenty-second century warfare has already proven itself to be far different from wars of even fifty, sixty years ago."
The Sand Creek-class battle cruiser's navigator begins the countdown to warpdrive entry, the appropriate incidental music booming over the speakers, as thirty-two of the Union's finest military starships enter warpdrive, their combined 2,880 F18D Predator warpfighters forming a tight V in front of them.
About twenty seconds subjective, he observes, his Link counting down for him, then we'll be back online, as tedious as duty assignments get in the Fleet, and I honestly just don't see the reasoning behind the Media Committee and the Union Security Council making this the season finale for Pax Rabwin: Terranovan Spaceman.
Unless, he thinks, they want to show the folks back home that even national heroes have to do their share of crapwork from time to time.
Or, he hopes, the Media Committee and the brass are both figuring on us running into some medships stupid enough to try and-
Before he even has a chance to complete that thought, Rabwin finds himself on his hands and knees on the deck of his flagship, the lights slowly coming back up from full darkness, alarms and reports screaming in his ears, the smell of burning things assaulting his nose.
Normspace floating over every station on the bridge, the Nagasaki's chief lidarman shouting out:
"Lidar detecting three Commonwealth Forces Dauntless-class cruisers, plus their warpfighters at plus zero-four-five by one-eight-zero-zero, zero-zero-zero by zero-zero-zero and minus zero-four-five by zero-six-zero-zero; all contacts closing fast at three-eight-zero miles per second!"
This report is followed by shouts of,"vampire, vampire, vampire, count is one-eight-zero Gobstoppers, closing rapidly at five-zero-zero miles per second."
"All cruisers and warpfighters firing lasers!" the chief lidarman is quick to add.
"Get us into warpdrive," Rabwin hears Burnette, shout,"now!"
"...fantasies, Your Honor," Captain Zellner tells Judge Johnson,"fantasies from a tormented child who enjoys wallowing in the victim sta-"
"You're telling me," the twelve-year old girl says, shooting up out of the hard chair in front of the expensive leather desk in Judge Johnson's chambers,"that I want him and those other bas-"
The head of the TSID Special Victims Unit just clucks his tongue at her, as Avery slaps her back into the chair, Daddy just sits there, all handsome in his white dress uniform, nodding his head, and Mama doesn't do a frickin' thing, Captain Zellner further explaining to everybody that Jami's outburst is nothing but another example of her wanting to play the goddamn victim, exhibiting itself in rebelliousness, deviant activities and incorrigible criminal behavior, that only a stay in the most expensive whacky whitey wing a Spacefleet captain's salary could afford would....
...the bridge falls down around her, the frightened twenty-one year old girl now commanding this cruiser....
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
5.0 light-years from the Eta Cassiopei B system
9/14/2101, 2206.11 Zulu
...snapping out orders for Unbroken's navigator, Sub-Lieutenant Genera Muncie, to take the ship into warpdrive, now, just as the 1,262-ton Dauntless-class cruiser enters warpdrive, re-enetering normspace on top of the Yanker Sand Creek-class battle cruiser Commander Jamilinne Sipe has singled out, Lieutenant Prudence Davidson and her other main laser gunner tearing into him with Unbroken's twelve 160-terajoule main lasers, her fifteen five-hundred gigajoule autolaser quad turrets swatting aside Cobra missiles and Predator warpfighters trying to pile on her.
"Lidar," Jami asks,"how many did we get?"
Chief Lidarman Meliza, tenth so named of Clan Potonakro, instantly replies,"all but two of the cruisers, Skipper, and all but three hundred of their Preads."
"The two surviving cruisers," the Anazazi female adds, as the enemy battle cruiser ducks into warpdrive,"have been positively identified as the Freeman Lang-class heavy cruiser Sandusky and the Sand Creek-class battle cruiser Nagasaki."
Aboard the Republican Union Ship Nagasaki
5.0 light-years from the Eta Cassiopei B system
9/14/2101, 1707.61 AMT
"Commie cruisers positively IDed as the Dreadnaught, the Nautilus, and the Unbroken," the chief lidarman reports, Rabwin seeing that for himself in the right-hand flag holodisplay, cursing the luck which has brought the Commie Forces' Ship Unbroken to his doorstep.
Naturally, the others don't see it that way, Burnette and the bridge crew already discussing how they were going to divide the hundred meg they were going to get for capturing Ken Sipe's spoiled little brat alive, and, more importantly, how they were going to divide the zeds amongst their crews between them.
CruRon 625's commander, on the other hand, has talked a great game about being better than she was-to the point where his fans were screaming for him to stop talking and go after her-while dreading this inevitable day for the last almost ten years since the Media Committee had chosen him as their new national hero...greater men than him had tangled with the Avenging Angel of Avalon, only to either end up dead-if the Almighty Living God smiled upon them-or losing everything they'd built up over a lifetime of service to their Union.
On the other hand....
"Gunnery deck, flag, target Unbroken's warp engine," he orders Burnette," then take it out with a Harpoon; nav, the moment the Unbroken is dead in space, I want a micro that puts us well inside grav beam range of her, preferrably 180 feet."
"I," he adds,"will lead the Marines when they-son of a bitch!"
"We have a golden opportunity right now," Burnette observes, somewhat sarcastically, as the bridge lights and holodisplays go out, and more of the ceiling falls down on top of them, a bundle of fiber-optic cabling spitting bluish-black photons just inches from Rabwin's face."
"Unbroken now one-eight-zero feet above us and closing rapidly at three-eight-zero miles per second," comes the report from lidar, as Rabwin's flagship shakes and shimmies some more underneath his feet.
"Damage control," the Nagasaki's XO, Commander John Burke, snaps,"report!"
"Bridge, repair one," comes a voice over the 1-MC,"hangar bay has been destroyed, direct hits to forward hydrogen tankage and Cobra magazines; we've had to vent the whole forward middeck to keep fires from reaching the bridge area."
"Bridge, repair five," comes another voice,"we have severe damage to numbers one, three and four warp engines and massive venting of antimatter and warp engine coolant; max warpspeed is 3.2 lights per day, max acceleration in normspace, two gravities. No response from the bots charged with warp engine maintenance, and our own DC bots are having difficulty reaching the engineering spaces."
"Bridge, repair three," a third voice reports,"severe damage to maneuver jet, all secondary power generation offline, port vertical-launch cells destroyed, gunnery deck opened to space, sickbay reporting massive casaulties, two hundred dead, 580 severely wounded."
"Repair stations two, four," Burke reports,"and six through ten are not responding."
" Flag," comes the report from the gunnery deck, "gunnery deck, we've acquired the Commie cruiser and have launched four Harpoons from starboard VLS cells, all set for radiation homing."
"Unbroken," the lidarman reports," now 180 feet from our bow."
"Piloting," Burnette shouts,"hit that bitch with the grav beam. Engineering, all available warp engine power to the grav beam jenny, n-"
More blue-black photons rain down from more broken wiring, some of the bridge holodisplays going down and staying down for good, Rabwin cursing, as the Commie bitch chooses the exact moment Nagasaki's grav beam fastens onto her to enter warpdrive.
Situation Room, Union Security Council Headquarters
16 miles underneath HQTRS,Freeman Lang, Terranova
9/14/2101, 1707.90 AMT
"Man, this is some bullcrap!" someone screams over the speakers, echoing the Governor of the Union's thoughts precisely, Guy Thomas Zellner watching Ken Sipe's spoiled little brat duck into warpdrive, just as the man Zellner had helped make a hero of the frickin' Union had been this close to capturing her.
"Bullcrap," he says, eyes drifting to other holoprojections, each showing a disaster unfoldfing for his Spacefleet,"ain't the damn word for it."
"Is it, Ken?!" he asks, the Governor of the Union turning on his heel and staring down his Chief of Military Operations, Fleet Admiral Kennisaw Mountain Sipe stepping back, tripping and falling over onto his stepson.
Micheal Bauer, Zellner's Prime Minister, pushes the old man off of him like he was fresh dog turd on the soles his shoes.
"Well, Admiral," Zellner says, as stepson and stepfather give each other dirty looks. "I'm waiting for an answer."
"What happened?!" he demands, jerking a hand at the Situation Room holoprojections showing Commie ships shooting down every last goddamn one of the squadrons he'd sent to deny them access to their warpdrive corridors.
"There must've been a leak," Sipe has the nerve to tell him.
"Y'think?!" his Governor shrieks at him, his voice bouncing off the shock-reinforced walls of the Situation Room.
"Absolutely no one," he reminds his CMO,"was supposed to know, until it was time for them to enter warpdrive. Even the goddamn Media Committee wasn't briefed about the mission until after all the squadrons were in warpdrive."
"And," he adds, coming straight to the point,"I know I didn't run my effing mouth to the goddamn Commies."
He finds himself staring into the mirror of Sipe's M2049 250-gigajoule laser pistol.
"Put it away!" Micheal, loyal as a dog, hisses, his own laser pistol pressed into Sipe's temple.
"Still defending your little wife-girlie, Mickey?" Sipe asks calmly.
"Don't you know," he adds,"she likes men, boy?"
Zellner chuckles.
"I ain't the one who lets zeds run right over him, am I, Ken?" he asks, turning his back to the weapon in his CMO's hand.
"Baraka," he then says,"what do you think? Did Ken betray us, or no?"
The virally blonde buzzcut monkeyboy commanding his Terranovan Security and Intelligence Directorate replies, no hesitation at all in the Haziri's voice,"no, sir."
"Agreed," the Governor of the Union decides, after an appropriate space of time.
"None of us in this room betrayed you, sir," Baraka then says. "Given that few others would have been briefed prior to the operation, it won't take long to ferret out the person who passed the information along to the enemy."
Zellner nods, smiling tightly.
"What of the boy, Omar?" he asks.
"Sir?" Baraka asks.
"The boy, Admiral," Zellner repeats.
"Garrison passed the loyalty check," Baraka says, after a moment's indecision,"and his father's chief of staff vouches for him, but the interrogators noted they had certain reser-"
"He don't interest me any more, Omar," his Governor says slowly(the way Daddy used to talk to me, a forgotten part of his mind whispers).
He tries to make himself clear:
"Tell me about the boy."
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/14/2101, 1707.96 AMT
"Roses are red," Jacob says,"lemons are sour. Open your legs and gimme an hour."
National Police Sergeant Randall Pate and National Policeman 1st Class Geoff Halfacre laugh at what National Policeman 1st Class Garrison Sipe's nine-year old son has just said, Randy's wife Sunni-the manager of this Moot House, the one across the bridge, and the one on Hartley Bridge Road-cooing,"ooh, that is just so cute."
"It's something, all right," Sipe remarks noncomittally, as Lissa Reinhardt refills his coffee cup.
"'Em things gonna come out and play, Floppy?" Jake's best friend, eleven-year old Matt Pate, asks, before giving the eighteen year old girl's boobs a hard pinch and twist, the resulting reflexive action causing her to spill hot coffee all over Halfacre.
"Watch it, y'ugly, horsey-lookin' skank!" Sipe's partner yelps, the action of the coffee on his crotch causing him to shoot bolt upright out of the booth, Sunni telling Lissa,"you gotta be more careful, baby."
"He grabbed my-" Lissa started to say, Halfacre grousing,"always got an excuse, don't ya?!"
"Not so loud, Lissa," Sunni rebukes her. "The other customers are lookin' dead at you."
"'Sides," Sipe's wife of ten years, Michelle, says,"he's just a boy."
"Boys," Randy remarks,"will be boys...and, it ain't like you didn't have a hand in what just passed."
"What?!" Lissa starts to say. "I-"
"Go and get a dish towel," Sunni tells her.
"Now," she adds, Lissa quickly going behind the line, as Sunni apologizes to Halfacre, offering to pay for his food, something which Sipe's partner is only too eager to accept.
He sits back down.
"Getting to where y'can't bring little kids up in here," he remarks,"without one of your drug-addicted skanks tryin' to hit on 'em. What, sniffin' each other's pooties ain't enough for 'em no more?"
"Where's the fun in that, Halfacre?" Randy remarks. "I mean, it's okay to get you off, but after a while, they want too much, and it just gets boring."
"Don't ya," he asks Sunni, hairy hand crushing her upper right arm,"wife-girlie?"
"Yes, Master," she half-whispers, Sipe catching the pained look in his thirty-one year old wife's eyes.
He chooses to ignore it for now, hoping none of the others bring it up to him later on.
A pounding and screaming from the back room has the whole damn restaurant looking in that direction, one of Randy and Sunni's girls-the youngest, nine-year old Shelby-running out of the swinging door connecting the backroom with the backline, Sipe's other two boys-seven year old Andy and five-year old Nate-chasing after her along with Randy's other boy, thirteen-year old James, Sunni screeching at the other waitress, Earnestine Lucas,"I thought I told you to keep an eye on 'em!"
"I had my back turned for just a second, Miz Sunni," whines the twenty-year old halfie girl , Sunni sighing disgustedly, as Nate and Andy corner and pin Shelby down between the back window and the low counter, groping and kissing on her at the same time she....
...screams, Mickey, DT and Avery smacking her head into the tiles of the bathroom floor, groping Sissy as she struggles, sticking their fingers in whereever they can stick them, the six-year old boy just standing in the doorway, watching, not knowing what to do.
"Goddamnit, you little bastard," Mickey screams at him when he sees him,"stop standing there, and...."
"...based on the expert testimony of both Doctor Wildgoose and Captain Zellner," Judge Johnson says,"it is the ruling of this court that Jamilinne Sipe is, in fact, suffering from a victim-state pathology-"
"You bastard!" Sissy screams, Daddy grabbing her arm, trying to jerk her down into her seat. "That's just bull-"
"Sit your ass down, goddamn little bitch!" Daddy snaps, Avery helping him smack the crap out of her, Judge Johnson continuing to speak the whole time:
"-from a victim-state pathology which, amongst other things, has resulted in sexually deviant behaviors, including both a strong desire for sexual dominance of the sadomasochistic variety by her own father, brothers and other men and women. Jamilinne Sipe is thus judged non compos mentis, a positive danger to herself and to others, and is hereby remanded by this court to the custody of the Terranovan Ministry of Prisons' Criminal Psychiatric Division, for immediate placement in the Phoenix Center in Freeman Lang, until such time it can be proven to the satisfaction of this court that she no longer poses a threat to society or to herself-"
"NO!" she screams, struggling in the grip of a pair of Gnats who've come into the judge's chambers. "No, I won't-"
"You are very, very sick, Jamilinne" Johnson said, the two National Policemen jumping her, slamming her down onto the desktop, one of them holding her facedown by her hair while his partner cuffs her and slaps her butt hard enough for it to echo off the walls, the first Gnat then pulling on her hair, both of them carrying her, kicking and screaming, out of Judge Johnson's chambers, the judge saying:
"This is for your own good...."
"...git it, gurl, git it gurl," someone raps over the speakers, Randy looking at this, nodding his head, as he turns back to the others and remarks,"boys will be boys."
"Ain't that right, Garry," he then asks.
"Yup," Sipe finds himself saying.
"They sure are," he adds.
Aboard the Republican Union Ship Blind Man's Zoo
5.0 light-years from the Eta Cassiopei B system
9/14/2101, 1708.12 AMT
Finn uselessly invokes Jesus' name as the ship keeps screaming "unscheduled warpdrive emergence!" over and over for the few seconds it takes for the SR-142 pathfinder to drop back down into normspace with a tooth-jarring thud! which knocks Micheal Smith, late Adjutant-General of the Terranovan National Police forward into the space between the nav and piloting stations, that space becoming deck for a moment, as the lights and the grav go out in a rain of bluish-black photons shooting out of every goddamn where at once, Smitty holding on to the arm of Finn's chair to keep himself rooted, Finn shouting out,"Padre, get everyone aboard the shitcan, now!" over his Link, the forty-ton scout craft tumbling ass over tea kettle at just enough speed to make Smitty sick to his stomach.
I have been out of this too long, he remarks, forcing himself to swallow the vomit, snapping out,"goddamnit, Finn, can't you do something about us spinning around here?!"
"Love to, Smitty," Finn replies, as another alarm begins hooting across the cubbyhole of a bridge, "but the maneuver jet's offline as well."
"Not that it's going to matter soon," he adds." Warp engine's trashed, containment's shot to hell and we're frickin' bleeding coolant."
Now, it's Smitty's turn to whisper Jesus' name.
"How long?" he asks.
"Hopefully," Finn replies,"we won't go up 'til after-"
Aboard the Republican Union Ship Nagasaki
5.0 light-years from the Eta Cassiopei B system
9/14/2101, 1709.00 AMT
Just as Sandusky goes up in a ball of white fire, Rabwin notices another pinpoint of light in his right-hand flag holodisplay.
"Speak to me, lidar," he says.
"SR-142 pathfinder," the chief lidarman is quick to reply,"squawking the ident of the ship which escaped Terranova with Micheal Smith and a whole pack of zeds."
The bridge shakes again, Burke snapping out,"grav shielding offline, primary electrical system 98% disrupted, secondary electrical system 74% disrupted, main lasers eight to twenty-seven offline, all decks open to space."
"Am detecting an escape vehicle," the chief lidarman says,"along the pathfinder's vector, one-two-zero-zero yards downrange from us, velocity three-eight-zero miles per second, accelerating away at three-zero feet per second squared."
"Piloting," Burnette barks out, almost as if he can read his commander's mind,"close the distance between us and that lifeboat."
"Marines," he adds,"to the secondary airlock."
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
5.0 light-years from the Eta Cassiopei B system
9/14/2101, 2210.01 Zulu
"Legionnaires to the dropship," Jami snaps over the 1-MC the instant she sees the escape pod in her right-hand command holodisplay, "Legionnaries to the dropship."
"Nagasaki altering vector to intercept," Meliza reports," enemy vessel increasing anti-beam ordinance launch and transferring warp engine power to his working main lasers."
Jami nods, telling Stevie,"right down his throat, Number One. Engineering, all available warp engine power to grav shielding and main lasers; guns, launch a salvo of Gobstoppers set for laser-homing, stand by main-"
"Enemy cruisers emerging from warpdrive," Meliza shouts out, four Benjamin Zellner-class cruisers entering normspace on a direct line for the escape pod, their combined 48 Predator warpfighters arrowing towards the three Commonwealth Forces cruisers, all lasers blazing, as they join the 120 Predators already bogging down CruWrong 8113's other two cruisers.
"Inpornha!" Meliza utters an Anazazi curse, as Unbroken's four triangs of Legionnaires run through the bridge en route to the hangar bay on the forward middeck. "All four cruisers are launching dropships!"
Unbroken's own Mark III Bulldog-class dropship, Georgia Bull, clears the cruiser's hangar bay a moment later, hauling ass towards the escape pod at max burn.
"Unbroken," Commander Paul Rice's image says on her left-hand command holodisplay,"Nautilus. We're punching our Legionnaires now; we'd lend more of a hand than that, but these damn warpfighters-"
"Understood," Jami replies, glancing at the right-hand command holodisplay, seeing the Nagasaki, wreathed in the bluish-gold fog of its anti-beam ordinance, continuing to bear down on the three Dauntless-class cruisers.
"Unbroken," Commander Willie Jordan's image says from alongside her fellow commander's,"Dreadnaught, enemy crudev turning to engage us."
"Warpfighters," Jami says over her Link,"the dropships are now your A-number one priority; the cruisers can take care of themselves, for now. Dreadnaught, Nautilus, ready a salvo of laser-homing Gobstoppers; we'll drop 'em the instant Nagasaki's main lasers open up on where we were. Pilots and navigators, I need y'all to work together."
"We're going to go micro in a second," she adds, dryswallowing,"come out literally on top of the Nagasaki, and match his vector exactly."
"Understood," her two subordinate commanders reply in unision at the same time Meliza lets her know the Nagasaki is opening fire with his main lasers.
"Now," says the captain of the Unbroken over her Link.
In the cockpit of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Real Folk Blues
5.0 light-years from the Eta Cassiopei B system
9/14/2101, 2211.20 Zulu
The warpfighter is the only combat starship to lack grav shielding and anti-beam ordinance.
There's simply no room left over, after the installation of the smallest possible warp engine twenty-second century technology could manufacture , not to mention all the offensive armaments.
Its sole defense, then, lies in the skill of its pilot.
Or, Lieutenant Khryste Pollard has time to muse, to sum up the ancient martial-arts maxim, stick and move.
"All right ladies," the commander of Warp Fighter Squadron 214, aka the Black Dogs, says over her Link,"you heard the Skipper. Diddy-bop on my mark."
"Mark!" she snaps an instant later, stroking the holokey on her Mark IIB Raptor's windscreen which sends her into warpdrive, thumb and pointing finger crushing the firing buttons to all of the laser firepower crammed into the Raptor's two and a quarter ton spaceframe the instant she pops back into normspace, ten five-hundred-gigajoule autolasers and the two five-terajoule lasers in the centerline pod skittering off the forward grav shielding of the four Yanker SC-130 Gorgon dropships moving in a V formation towards her, the four enemy craft opening up with the dual-mounted five-terajoule lasers in their chin turrets, the pair of autolaser quad turrets on their dorsal and ventral sections and the Cobra missile launchers on their flanks, Khryste loosing a volley of Spitball air-to-air missiles in their direction, before juking down and hard to the right, bringing the autolasers and laser pod to bear on the starboard side of one of the enemy dropships, the other two Raptors of Triang 2141 converging on her target from opposite directions, all three ships unleashing their lasers at the same time.
The Gorgon's grav shielding flares all the way up the spectrum to black, before it gives out, lasers vaporizing its now unprotected spaceframe into molten gobbets, the lidar alarm howling in her ears, warning her of Preads coming in fast at max burn.
"464 and 959," she says, consulting her ship's tactical display,"we've got these; deal with the Preads."
"Copy that, Real Folk Blues," Lieutenant Katee Moss' image says from the left-hand side of her windscreen, Nautilus and Dreadnaught's warpfighter squadrons peeling off and piling on the inbound Preads, Khryste adding her triang's firepower to 2143's, the six Raptors easily overwhelming their intended target's grav shielding before annhilating him.
"That's all of 'em, Boss," Sub-Lieutenant Alicia Parker, her XO, says at the same time the holo of Lieutenant Paige Ryder, commanding VF-464, shouts out,"Real Folk Blues, Red Comet! Khryste, some of the bastards got through, they're headed directly for our dropships!"
"I see 'em," the commander of the Black Dogs says calmly, glancing at the tactical display.
"Black Dogs," she adds, as she changes course."Real Folk Blues. Let's go kill us some Yankers!"
"...Khryste!" she screams, clutching at her daughter's hand, a Gnat's gauntlet smacking her hard in the face instead, as the MFACS social workers drag the eleven-year old girl kicking and screaming out of the house.
Her little girl bites down on the paw of one of them, before running back towards the front door, the monkeyboy calling her a little bitch,while his Human partner and one of the Gnats-Khryste's uncle-run after her, tackling her, Lori....
In Blind Man's Zoo's escape pod
5.0 light-years from the Eta Cassiopei B system
9/14/2101, 1715.80 AMT
...shakes uncontrollably, dryswallowing, trying to forget again.
Again, she finds she can't.
Without a word, Amy Bridges takes Lori Pollard in her arms, holding on tight, as they snuggle closer in the cramped volume of the escape pod.
Softly, lightly, Lori kisses her lover's cheek, patting the hands holding her, sniffling away the last of the tears.
"What's going on, Rev?" she asks, her voice a raspy croak.
"We're in the middle of a battle," Reverend Cheney, seated at the pod's controls, replies. "Three Commie cruisers and four Terranovan cruisers are fighting over a Terranovan battle cruiser, and a whole bunch of warpfighters are fighting over three Commie dropships moving towards us."
"The pathfinder's gone," he adds. "Warp engine blew the instant we re-enetered normspace....must've taken a missile or something."
Lori nods her head.
"Any idea who the Commie ships are?" she asks.
"One of 'em's Unbroken," Reverend Cheney replies,"according to the pennant number on her port dorsal section; kill board's 'bout right for what we know of her."
Her half-sister's in command of that ship.
And, from what Smitty's been able to find out, her daughter's commands Unbroken's warpfighters.
She wonders if Jami even knows Khryste's her niece.
Or if either one of them ever asks about Lori.
If either one of 'em thinks I'm worth their time, she thinks. In their shoes, I certainly-
She spits out the f-word, as she sits bolt upright, as a loud clanking noise reverberates throughout the interior of the escape pod.
Aboard the Republican Union Ship Melvin Thompson
5.0 light-years from the Eta Cassiopei B system
9/14/2101, 1718.92 AMT
"Then," his former subordinate's snaps at Commander Rhaman Deas,"blast us out of the effing way, if need be!"
"Or," Rabwin adds, getting in the opportunity for some knife-twisting,"have you completely forgotten how to fight them, Commander?!"
"I was fighting them long before you were born, boy," Deas reminds him, at the same time Thompson's XO, Commander Merle Hagin just barely manages to evade twelve 160 TJ laser pulses streaking from the leading edges of Unbroken's delta wing.
At the same time almost crashing into the Nagasaki, less than a couple of feet below the Benjamin Zellner-class cruiser's current position.
"And, if you knew how to fight them correctly, Commander," Rabwin replies, digging even deeper into that particular sore spot,"you would still be CMO, wouldn't you?"
Son of a bitch, Deas thinks to himself, the reservists manning the gunnery deck of CruDev 10254's flagship managaing to miss again, with all twelve of its main lasers, Unbroken almost invisible now in the thickening cloud of anti-beam ordinance she carries with her.
That ship...she is the nerve Rabwin's struck...one miserable, spoiled goddamn brat had humilated him, twice; he has her to thank for having to sign those goddamn Accords-on her bridge-before old Gotchanow Guy had demoted him-live, in 256-bit true color-and condeming him to this.
Weekend emeffing warriors, he muses angrily, the Thompson's bringing its main lasers to bear on Unbroken, his gunnery deck opening fire, scoring direct hits which has the Commie cruiser's forward grav shielding awash in red, orange and yellow light.
The Terranovan cruiser's own bridge shakes and rains down pieces of ceiling and bluish-black photons from broken electrical cabling, that bitch stabbing through the Thompson's fog of detonating anti-beam ordinance and grav shielding to hurt him.
"Go 'head, and give me the bad news, Engineering," Deas tells Chief Warrant Officer Charles Freeman.
"Grav shielding's reduced by 63%," Freeman reports,"primary electrical system's 86% disrupted, secondary electrical system's 63% disrupted. Main lasers one, five, seven and twelve offline, autolaser turrets eight through fifteen destroyed, gunnery deck reporting defensive computer destroyed, crew and gunnery decks opened to space."
The bridge shakes and sparks again, Freeman further reporting:
"Warp engine badly damaged, warp engine housing opened to space, venting antimatter and warp engine coolant. No better than 6.4 lights per day possible, max possible normspace acceleration four gravities."
"All available warp engine power to grav shielding and main lasers," a grimly-determined Deas orders, eyes fixed on the holo of the Unbroken floating in his right-hand command holodisplay.
"Let's see if you glorified goddamn civilians can hit the target this time," he remarks.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
5.0 light-years from the Eta Cassiopei B system
9/14/2101, 2219.46 Zulu
"Now, Number One," the captain of the Unbroken says to her wife, Stevie jerking the Dauntless-class cruiser down and hard to the left, leaving her protective cloud of detonated anti-beam ordinance behind, Unbroken's second in command bringing the ship's main lasers to bear on the lead Yanker cruiser's belly, Prue and the other main laser gunner tearing through its grav shielding to send half-molten junk and atmosphere gushing out of the resulting wound into space, the lead enemy cruiser twisting to bring its working main lasers to bear on Unbroken.
Stevie not giving the bastard the chance, rapidly pulling up and out of his line of fire, the gunnery deck dropping a quartet of Gobstoppers from the ordinance bays, as Unbroken skims the top of the lead Yanker cruiser.
Alarms howl, the ship rocking slightly, Meliza reporting,"that Yanker's last laser barrage did some damage."
"To the Nagasaki," she adds, a windowed cube in Jami's right-hand command holodisplay showing Jami the telemetry from the aft camera array, as two parts of a Yanker battle cruiser float dead in the night, a cloud of half-vaporized junk and burned bodies the only thing connecting them now.
The master of the Unbroken studies the tactical display...Georgia Bull's docked with the pathfinder's escape pod, the other two dropships standing guard, hosing down enemy warpfighters with their autolaser quad turrets and their Spitball missile batteries.
Only a pair of enemy cruisers remain, both of them badly shot-up and trying to open the range between them and CruWrong 8113, as Nautilus and Dreadnaught now flank Unbroken, ready to bring their main lasers to bear on the cruiser to starboard.
"Four squadrons of enemy warpfighters have disengaged the dropships," Meliza reports,"and are heading towards us at max burn."
"Nagasaki," she then adds," launching escape vehicles."
Situation Room, Union Security Council Headquarters
16 miles underneath HQTRS,Freeman Lang, Terranova
9/14/2101, 1721.45 AMT
The Governor of the Union says nothing in reply to Deas' report.
His hands are balled, bloodless fists shaking in frustration at his sides, his breath an explosive sigh through painfully clenched teeth, as he watches the Melvin Thompson and the Jackson Varnadore recover the escape pods and lifeboats launched by what remains of the Nagasaki.
"It wasn't," his Prime Minister has the nerve to effing say,"a complete disaster."
"Define 'complete disaster' for me, Micheal," Zellner spits out.
"We didn't have to do any censoring," Micheal tells him. "Everyone who had been watching Pax Rabwin online immediately switched to other programming, and the news channels have been instructed to increase coverage of the Miley Spiers sex scandal to-"
"They've seen enough," the Governor of the Union is quick to remind him.
"We've deleted the entire vid," Baraka adds at this point,"and the Media Committee have uploaded the backup season finale vid they made in its place; it should prove to be-"
"Well, it's just well, fine and good that our online audience will get its effing fix," Zellner says with a chill in his voice,"and even better that we can just sweep this under the rug."
"Lemme ask y'all something," he adds, his fists hurting as he clenches them tighter, his Daddy's voice laughing at him from the back of his mind.
"How do you propose sweeping them under the rug?"
"Huh, Ken?!" he asks, turning on his heel to stare Sipe down.
"Considering ," he adds.
"You can hardly blame-" his Chief of Military Operations starts to sputter.
"Your responsibility for making her do right," Micheal remarks.
"Yours as well, Micheal," snaps the Governor of the Union, stabbing a finger towards Micheal's chest,"so I'd shut the eff up if I were you."
It is a subjective eternity of dead quiet later, before Zellner tells Baraka:
"Pax Rabwin's got one more episode left in him, Omar. Make the appropriate arrangements."
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/14/2101, 1725.08 AMT
"Goddamnit," Marc Bevill thunders from the high counter,"take it outside, willya?!"
"Lil' brat's makin' so much noise," he adds, sipping his large to-go cup of coffee,"ain't no wonder nobody's in here."
"Stop your damn hollerin' and cryin'!" Andy Sipe spits at Shelby, slapping her across the face again, as all Garry and Michelle can think to effing do is just sit there.
"Yeah," Jacob Sipe hollers at the top of his lungs,"take it outside, ain't nobody here wanna see what you got!"
Matt hollers out in agreement, as Michelle glances over in Sunni Pate's direction.
This time, Randy catches Sunni looking back, his fingers digging into her arm, as he hisses,"don't even go there, wife-girlie," in her ear.
"Disgusting," Calvin Hobbes, seated at the low counter next to where Garry's two youngest and Sunni's oldest boy are groping and kissing on Shelby, remarks, shaking his head as he continues sipping his coffee and watching.
"Can't you at least raise your kids right, Sunni?!" he demands, Andy grabbing hold of the hand Shelby's trying to claw his face with, using his hold on that arm to pull her forward so his little brother Nate can lift up the hem of her short school uniform skirt for James to spank.
"I know," Loudmouth Jim Hunter observes sagely through a mouthful of cheeseburger. "She's just sitting there while her daughter's forcin' herself on 'em little boys."
"What happens," Geoff Halfacre remarks, through a mouthful of double hasbrowns,"when y'start lettin' zeds pop 'em out left n' right, they jus' let 'em go wild and raise all sorts of hell."
"See that every day," he adds, dribbling ketchup, onions and Lo-Melt all over his chin as he slaps Garry hard between his shoulder blades," don't we, buddy boy?"
"Yup," Garry says.
"Sure do," he adds.
"Sure do," he repeats, turning his attention back to the double quarter cheeseburger in his hands.
-endit-
Unicorn Evils
"...come in, child," Reverend Cheney says to Jami, the twelve-year old girl uncomfortably aware of his eyes drifting to the hem of her short green-trimmed white uniform skirt and moving downward, to where the crotch of the lime-green panties which are part of the Owensboro Middle School uniform stick out below the hemline.
"Come on," he says,"don't be shy, I don't bite...."
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
5.0 lightyears from the Tau Ceti system
9/14/2101, 2230.14 Zulu
"...bridge is yours, Number One," Commander Jamilinne Sipe says to Lieutenant Commander Stephanie Rhoads, as she gets up out of her seat, walking towards the hatch between the piloting and nav stations at the forward part of the bridge.
"I'll be in the hangar bay," she adds,"if anything comes up."
"Stand down from general quarters?" Stevie asks, whispering in Jami's mind what's wrong, luv?
Baby, I don't know, the captain of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken thinks back, and that's what scares me the most.
Out loud, she answers,"no, Number One, not 'til we're in warpdrive, or those two Yanker cruisers are. Radioman, lidar, keep alert, they might yet holler for help or try for a last shot at us before they run for home."
The captain of the Unbroken then steps through the slowly-opening hatch, into the narrow passage between the bridge and the hangar bay on the forward middeck, her mind....
"...they all think they're too effin' good," Daddy says, the next one in line uploading his quarter into his Link, grabbing the thirteen-year old girl's hair, jerking her head back, shoving his thing down her throat, all the men jammed into that stinking little bathroom in the back of Bull n' Dee's laughing, as she gags and tries to spit it up, only to get slapped across the face, and that thing shoved even further down her throat
"Ain't none of ‘em," she hears one of them slur drunkenly,"nothin' but stinkin' pootie-poo, from head t'toe."
"Nothin' but," she hears him say again....
...as she screams, begging them not to hurt her, she's only a little girl, Daddy smacking her hard across her face, twisting the twelve-year old girl's arms behind her, forcing her to watch, as DT, Avery, Tommy Pollard and Tommy's daddy, Cap'n Scott, hold little Lori down and....
...drifting to memories she wishes she didn't have, Jami taking a deep breath, squaring her shoulders, as the hatch leading onto the hangar bay buzzes and clicks open at her approach, the master of the Unbroken stepping onto the bay just as the cruiser's Mark III Bulldog-class drop ship settles onto the deck, its maneuver jet whining down to a whisper, as the rear cargo ramp drops down from the tail of the craft, the members of Unbroken's detachment of Legionnaires exiting first, Master Chief Petty Officer Shawn Gyllenhal bringing up the rear, the skinny beanpole of a nineteen-year old blonde instantly snapping to attention and saluting upon seeing her captain standing at the foot of the cargo ramp.
"As you were, Master Chief," Jami says.
"Who's on board?" she asks, even two members of the ship's three-person med team enter the hangar bay, med bots and a pair of automedics trundling along behind them.
"An American Orthodox preacher," Shawn answers," a couple of hajjies and a good hundred or so..."
Shawn swallows down the word "zeds" with some great degree of difficulty, bringing back more unpleasant memories for the cruiser's skipper.
"...others," Shawn finally decides on saying,"a couple of who are in bad shape...well, bad shape, relatively speaking, none of them are exactly are what we can call in good health, not after...."
She trails off, blinking back tears.
"I understand, Master Chief," Jami replies, nodding, as she briefly lays a hand on the younger woman's shoulder, pulling it back when the commander of Unbroken's Legionnaries flinches at her touch.
"Only too well," Jami says, half to herself.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Georgia Bull
5.0 lightyears from the Tau Ceti system
9/14/2101, 2232.00 Zulu
"She's been like that ever since we left T-nova," the well-muscled halfie girl with the dark chocolate skin says to Senior Chief Hospital Corpsman Heidi Proctor, as the blonde, blue-eyed Human girl-not much older than Heidi-in the ill-fitting Yanker Spacefleet coveralls shrinks away from the med corpsman's touch.
Heidi nods, as Lieutenant Jillian Pollock and Lieutenant Commander Ryla Sedgewick both enter the dropship's troop bay, med bots close behind the two other members of Unbroken's med team.
"Ma'am," Heidi says to Commander Sedgewick,"a lot of them won't even let me near them, they're-"
"I know," the ship's chief medical officer whispers, nodding her head rapidly, the automedics wheeling behind her, the med bots gingerly picking up the two worst cases, as the tops of the automedics swing open to receive them.
"Both of them have massive internal injuries," Heidi tells Commander Sedgewick, "from multiple blunt traumas, electrical burns over most of their bodies, severe damage to their cardiac muscles...."
She trails off.
"There's tears...bruises...contusions, " she says haltingly,"along their...in their...."
"I'm sure," Commander Sedgewick, her voice taut, replies,"it's all in your report, Senior Chief."
"Thank you, ma'am," Heidi whispers, nodding her head, asking:
"How...I mean, why...."
"I don't know, Heidi," Commander Sedgewick replies softly, shaking her head, as she looks away.
"I surely do not frickin' know," the ship's chief medical officer repeats.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
5.0 lightyears from the Tau Ceti system
9/14/2101, 2233.96 Zulu
"Hey," Lori Pollard says nervously, shifting weight from one foot to the other, finally settling for itching the left foot with the right.
"Hi," Jami says back, swallowing, before she points to Amy Bridges-standing to Lori's left-with a nod of her head and asks:
"She your girlfriend?"
"Three years, as of Saturday," Lori says, smiling and proud in spite of being nervous round the older half-sister she hasn't seen since Mama's funeral ten years ago.
"Y'all do anything special?" Jami asks.
"We went to the River and danced," Amy speaks up, wrapping her arm round Lori's waist, giving her a gentle squeeze.
"She dances good," Lori says, still smiling.
"She does a lot of things good," she adds, her smile just a bit mischevious, as she looks back down at Amy.
"Girl, that's too much info," Amy tells her, blushing all the same.
"Did I mention anything 'bout that?" Lori jokes, lightly kissing the tip of Amy's little pug nose.
"You do have a dirty mind," Amy remarks, with a chuckle.
"An inventive one at that," she adds, leaning up to kiss her.
"And, you don't?" Lori chuckles in reply, goosing Amy, as she kisses her back.
She looks back at her half-sister, smiling, even with the tears in her eyes.
"Sis?" Lori asks.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
5.0 lightyears from the Tau Ceti system
9/14/2101, 2234.11 Zulu
"I'm okay, baby," Jami says, wiping the tears from her eyes.
"Just glad to see you are too," she adds.
"She's the one to thank for that," Lori whispers, gazing down into her lover's brown eyes, brushing away strands of long, curly brown hair.
"For," she adds," a lot of things."
Jami smiles again, enough for to show teeth, even the missing one...something she's usually not comfortable with, but Stevie always thought it was cute....
"So," Lori asks, as Jami's thoughts turn to that much happier subject, "what about you? You and Stevie still married?"
"Twenty years next spring," Jami replies, noticing, for the first time, the MiniPriz khakis both are wearing.
"What's with the-" she starts to ask, Amy replying:
"Only way the Gnats would let us in the door, if we pretended to be men pretending to be women."
Jami flinches.
"Damn, girl," Amy says, putting a hand on her left arm,"I didn't mean to-"
"You didn't-" Jami starts to say, before a tall, old black Human male, still wearing a gold tooth and a black suit, steps down to the foot of the cargo ramp.
"Jami," that bastard Robert Cheney says.
The captain of the Unbroken replies by excusing herself, moving past the other two women, before she hauls off and busts the hypocritical son of a bitch in the mouth, knocking him down on the deck, her 250-gigajoule laser pistol in her hand before she even thinks to draw it, the weapon aimed dead at his, beady, black-bloodshot eyes....
"...having heard her story, Commander," Reverend Cheney says, two monkeyboys standing with the man in the grey suit, as they block Jami's path to the chaplin's office door,"I can safely say that it's nothing I haven't heard before, from a hundred others just like her."
"When was she first identified as an at-risk child?" Captain Zellner asks.
"Her first SAT," Reverend Cheney, consulting the holodisplay floating over his workstation terminal, replies,"the one she took in pre-K."
He adds:
"It says here that the usual proceedures for handling at-risk children were followed to the letter by her teachers and the school-including two years in PTP-but, it seems-"
"Yes," says the man in the grey suit,"I see that, Reverend, and you were, of course, correct in notifying the TSID the instant Jami came to you ."
"Master Chief Baraka, if you would," he adds,"please take Miss Sipe into custody, I'll inform her father that she's been arrested-"
"What the f-" Jami starts to ask, as she bolts out of her chair, one of the monkeyboys grabbing her arm, twisting it behind her back and bending her over the desk, as Captain Zellner finishes:
"-on charges of rape and aggrivated sexual battery."
"I didn't-" Jami starts to scream, the man in the grey suit cutting her off, his voice carrying a condescending edge, as he tells her :
"I know you didn't mean to, honey, you just can't help...."
...being a zed.
"Get the eff up," she whispers, holstering her laser pistol.
The preacher man struggles to his feet, black blood running down the corner of his mouth.
"What the hell was that?" Amy asks.
"A long story," Reverend Cheney rasps, as he answers.
"A real long story," he repeats, before breaking down in a fit of coughing.
Pate House
378 Sullivan Drive, Owensboro, Terranova
9/14/2101, 2314.01 American Time
"Bitch," Randy spits at her,"get your goddamn ass back in this bed, now!"
When Sunni Pate doesn't move away from the bedroom window, he grabs at her arm, jerking her around so he could slap her across her face one, two, three, four, five times, shaking her, screaming,"just what effin' part of the word now did your tiny little emeffin' brain fail to effin' understand, huh, you spoiled-rotten goddamn lil' brat?!"
She makes the mistake of trying to answer his question, her husband letting go of her as he slapps her across the face one more time, knocking her down onto the floor, screaming "face down, ass up, now!" Sunni doing what she was told, no choice, he owns her, could do anything he wanted, if she even thought of disobeying him...or trying to leave him....
Everything flashes white hot as he stomps her head into the floor, keeping her face pressed into the carpet, as she heard him fire up the electrowhip, screaming wordlessly as he lays into her ass, stomping her face down whennever a whimper escaped her lips, Randy shrieking for her to ,"keep your damn critter mouth shut, you sick piece of stinkin' goddamn poot!"
"You were thinkin' about her again, weren't you?!" he demands, laying into her ass with the whip again when she hesitates, ordering her to "answer me, goddamnit!"
"What fuckin' makes you think she could ever love you, anyway, you sick lil' twitch?!" he demands. "That's all you are, nothin' but a worthless goddamn piece of pootie meat, all you'll ever emeffin' be, especially to one of your subhuman kind, a goddamn stinkin' piece of rotten ass!"
"What the eff is up with that cryin' bullshit, huh?!" he screams, mashing her face deeper into the carpet, furiously tearing into her with his electrowhip. "You really think I ain't wise to that shit, you goddamn lil' brat, you think I don't emeffin' know how you use ‘em tears to effin' get what you want?!"
"She effin' knows, that's for damn skippy!" he adds, a word for every lash that burns into her. "She effin' knows exactly what you are, ‘cause she's your own effin' kind, that's why she effin' hates you, why all your kind effin' hate you, worse than I emeffin' do, ‘cause they're all just like you, all worthless rotten-ass pootie just like you!"
He presses her face harder into the floor, breath heaving as he tells her,"I am the only one who could ever love a goddamn stinking-ass piece of goddamn poot like you! Get me, wife-girlie?!"
"Y-yes, Master," she answers, trying to keep the sob out of her voice, Randy taking his foot off her head, driving it as hard as he could into her ass, telling her,"that's for fuckin' getting me out of bed, after a sixteen-hour shift of putting the boots to things like you!"
"Well?!" he adds, a moment later. "Do I need to tell you everything?!"
"Of course I do," he says. "You're all poot and no brain, you wouldn't know what to effin' do if I wasn't around to do your damn thinking for you . Isn't that right, bitch?!"
"Yes, Master," Sunni says, still face down on the floor, not daring to move until she was ordered to.
"'Yes, Master, what?!'" he demands.
"I'm all poot and n-no brain, M-master," she replies,"I wouldn't know what to do if you weren't around to do my thinking for me."
"Damn straight," he says, kicking her ass again.
"Go get cleaned up," he orders her," You frickin' stink like poot."
"Now!" he screams.
Sipe House
374 Sullivan Drive, Owensboro, Terranova
09/14/2101, 2316.65 AMT
"There are those," Uncle Micheal's holoimage says, addressing the knot of YouTube reporters gathered on the steps of the Capitol in New Whitehorse," who have used my half-sister's perversity to make me appear to be on their side. Let me tell you now, I am ashamed to ever have called that rabid, slavering zed family. She is the devil incarnate, evidencing her sinfulness early in childhood...she would crawl into my bed at night, kissing me, holding my masculinity in her filthy hands, telling me I better have sex with her or she'd cry rape and have me arrested...it would've been her word against mine...she had already seduced her father, and you know very well who the police are inclined to believe."
"She," Uncle Micheal continues saying, as Jacob Sipe and everyone else watching this on the IW cheer him on," had one friend, two years younger than she was, and she'd always used to beat her unmercifully, make her bring her food and pop, make her give her her toys...Jami made her go everywhere with her, beat her if she tried to have any other friends...one day, when I was twelve years old, I happned to walk into her room, and they were both naked...her friend was on all fours, screaming her head off, because Jami was sodomizing her with the handle of the bathroom plunger...she told me ‘little Gracey,' was the mama and that she was only doing what ‘mamas like having their daddies do to them'...I had to spank her, and I told on her, but Gracey and Jami both said I was lying, and I got the worst beating of my life for it by her father-"
"Nasty-ass zed," Jacob's best bud, Matt Pate, remarks, before stomping little Shelby Skankface into the living room carpet.
"She," Uncle Micheal goes on to say,"killed herself when she was only thirteen, after my half-sister stopped being her ‘ friend,' and started preying upon an eight-year old child...from that day forward, I stopped being a brother to her and swore I would make her account for the horrible, indecent things she does."
He sighs, tears running down his handsome face, tears that all 'em fat-assed zeds caused him for all 'em years:
"She knew I would try to stop her and all her kind from preying upon other little Graceys, so she-with the aid and comfort of Guy Zellner and other zeds her Conspiracy has infiltrated into the highest levels of power-brazenly admits her perversion and her pride in that perversity to the media, just so she could discredit me in front of my allies and impede the implentation of the Contract I made with my people when I was first elected to the House of Commons-"
"Damn skippy, monkeybone!" Matt hollers at Uncle Micheal, along with a whole bunch of other folks, Uncle Micheal still speaking:
"-this grandstanding, publicity-hungry bitch is still now not only trying to destroy me through her stunts, but uses the spotlight you damn liberals in the media and entertainment industries, undercover zeds such as Lyle Hammond and Juan Rivera, have so generously given her to make others believe there's nothing wrong with zeds being brainwashed into sodomy and perversion with other zeds...and the masses believe her, especially after the Media Committee were so very kind enough to allow her to guest star on Pax Rabwin: Interstellar Spaceman, that politically-correct excuse for a military reality show, just so she can brag about the destruction of a man's career and the furthering of their twisted agenda, and they dare call me a hypocrite?! "
His handsome face turns red for a brief moment, Jacob's uncle glaring into the cams, as he rants at full volume:
"She, the mother who made her want to abuse others, the Commies who even now give her aid, comfort, willing slaves and unlimited power, in league with their handpicked, henpecked bitch of a so-called Governor of the Union are carrying out acts of warfare against us all, in an all-out effort to destroy every good, decent, natural, normal thing, the very underpinnings of our civilization and all its accomplishments, and they plan on replacing it with perversion, depravity, sodomy, anarchy, poverty-both moral and economic-drug addiction, violence, and criminality...if they should succeed, God Almighty help us all, for it will be the end of civilization...we will sink low into an inescapable abyss of violence, poverty, decadence, misery, oppression, barbarism, just as those poor savages in the Commuinst State of Slave Worlds have long ago, just as the America before them did, when their leaders let the zeds seduce them into allowing them rights and liberties they clearly did not deserve, and out of that outdated notion that all men were created equal arose the dark age of WARCOM...if they are allowed to succeed once again with the prosecution of their agenda, there will be a new Dark Age, and they will, yet again, pretend to lift us up while keeping us all down in decadence, ignorance and unending warfare, persecuting anyone who opposes them, and, this time, there will be no real men such as RJ Williams-hallowed be His name-to save us from the zeds, their WARCOM, and the damnation they will both lead us to, because they have stripped all of us of everything which makes us special in the sight of our Lord God, turning us into brute beasts, just like they are!"
The cheering becomes a squeal of noise overloading the speakers, Matt stomping on Skankface again, ordering her to get him and Jacob some more beer and chips.
"Yes, M-master," Skankface stammers and sobs, Matt slapping her good across her face for her fake-ass crying bullcrap, halfway throwing her towards the kitchen, before sitting back down to finish listening to Uncle Micheal's Web-cast from earlier today.
"-already," Uncle Micheal shouts,"already, they have infiltrated our schools, ramming their creationist agenda down the throats of schoolchildren forced to drink from the fountain of their ignorance, the wine of their fornications, teaching them such nonsense as some penal colony being the real homeworld of the Human race-"
"That's just stupid," Matt remarks. "Wikipedia says Terranova's the homeworld of the Human race, and it can't be in Wikipedia, 'less it's true."
"-when every scientist for the last three hundred years," Uncle Micheal tells the worlds,"has produced incontrovertible evidence that Terranova-given that name by RJ Williams Himself, as a token of the redeemption He and He alone brought about-is Mankind's home, now and forever!"
"Hell, yeah!" the voices shout over the speakers, Skankface shaking her pootie back into the living room, holding a tray of chips and beer in her hands.
Jacob looks at Matt, Matt nodding his head, Jacob kicking the tray out of Skankface's hands, screaming,"goddamnit, y'stupid bitch, now look what you did!"
"I-i-" Skankface starts t0 stammer, Jacob getting up off the sofa, slapping her down onto the floor amongst the chips and spilled beer, grabbing her by her hair and pulling her up onto her knees.
"Always full of excuses, ain't she, Matt?" he asks.
"She's a zed," Matt replies." She's born that way."
"Ain't nothin' for that, but one thing," he adds, Skankface trying to pull her puppy-dog eyes bullcrap on Jacob, but he ain't falling for that.
"Go for it, buddy," Matt tells him, Jacob mashing Skankface back into the carpet, holding her down there with a foot to the back of her cooter head, as he takes off his belt.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
New Seattle Aerospace Corridor,0.05 AU from Big Sky
9/15/2101, 1338.01 Zulu
Jami's stomach finally settles, after three solid minutes of gakking up in the wastebasket in the wardroom, Unbroken's skipper taking a sip of Sprite, nibbling on some soda crackers in a plate on the end table next to the sofa.
It's a few more minutes before she stops shaking...she goes through every frickin' time, during the fight, steady as a rock, but, after all the shooting stops and her ship and crew come through it more or less okay, she's in here, shaking like a leaf and puking her guts out.
Unbroken's decelerating towards Big Sky, with Stevie's steady hand at the helm, ready to call her back onto the bridge if something comes up between now and when they touched down at New Seattle, though Jami doubts anything would come up that her wife and second can't handle.
Nothing for her to do then, except sit here.
Think.
Talk, maybe? Stevie's voice whispers in her mind.
The preacher, she adds, was sporting quite a bump on the back of his head. Your doing?
I went to him, Jami thinks, sighing explosively, tears running down her cheeks, stupid frickin' me, thinking a man of God would listen, help, y'know.
Instead....
...the twelve-year old girl screams, twitches, and bleeds, peeing and crapping herself, as she clutches in vain at the base of her neck, where those bastards had implanted the neural collar, more expensive and more sadistically versatile than walls, get within ten meters of the sensors buried in the ground and-
"Miss Sipe," Doctor Wildgoose barks out, Jami somehow managing to get to her feet, forcing herself to get even closer to the limit,"get back inside the compound, now!"
"Sunnuvabitch," one of the orderlies with him interjects, Jami clenching her jaw against almost unbearable agony,concentrating everything within her on moving one foot in front of the other foot,"she's fightin' the freakin' collar!"
"You effing told me that was impossible!" Admiral Zellner shrieks.
"It is," Doctor Wildgoose insists, running over his words,"it's supposed to be."
Jami takes one more step closer to the limit, Doctor Wildgoose adding. "None of them, none of them, can do that, you hear me?! "
"You goddamn little bitch!" he shouts, all the honey gone from his voice. "You get back inside this emeffing compound, now!"
One more step...she can't even see straight now, the pain is that frickin' bad, but she has to take that one last step.
"Fine, then, bitch," Doctor Wildgoose snaps, as Jami steps over the limit, staggering towards Davis Drive. "If that's the way you want it, that's the way I'm gonna play it."
"Eli, taser the goddamn little howler," she hears him order, as she starts running.
She isn't fast enough to outrun the bolt of electricity arcing and burning through her body, her muscles all going limp at once, causing her to flop down into the wet grass and convulse helplessly, as Doctor Wildgoose and four orderlies approach her.
"You," Doctor Wildgoose tells her,"brought all this on yourself...."
...I see, Stevie whispers, Jami addding, it's still in my head, jabbed into my brain's pain receptors, wound in with my medulla oblongata, so getting it out's not an option.
Bugger me, Stevie replies, mentally flinching from the images Jami's shared with her.
How in the bloody hell could anyone do that....she starts to ask, trailing off.
I know, baby, Jami replies, as the hatch leading to the bridge buzzes and clicks open.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
New Seattle Aerospace Corridor,0.05 AU from Big Sky
9/15/2101, 1341.64 Zulu
"You must think I-" Jami starts to say, Lori telling her:
"You probably have your reasons. He's no saint, none of us in the movement have any illusions as to that."
"I can only vouch for his actions," she adds,"in the last three years, since...she came into my my life."
She starts to cry, smiling at the same time.
She sighs:
"That's...another story," she says.
"Reverend Cheney's done a lot good too," she adds,"put his life on the line more than once to help out-"
"Those he helped screw over in the first place," Jami snaps, swallowing back tears of her own.
"Yeah," Lori says.
"Sorry, Sis," Jami says, after an explosive sigh. "Not your fight."
"So," she asks,"how did you get mixed up with the hajjies? Last time I saw you, you were still working for Sunni Pate and living by your lonesome over on Vinson Drive."
"Still am," Lori says,"or was, working for Sunni; Amy even worked her way up to AMC, and don't think none of the regulars weren't talking crap 'bout us, especially that dirty old bastard Calvin Hobbes-"
"That dried-up old perv still alive?!" Jami asks.
"Unfortunately," Lori remarks, shivering at the thought of his eyes on her ass, every damn time she works.
"Anyway," she adds,"I noticed Amy was sneaking out in the dead of night, or even in the middle of the day...stupid me, I thought she was cheating on me, even though I should've known by then she'd never do me like that...so I ended up following her one night, right into the middle of a running firefight with a whole bunch of monkeyboys down in the Bottoms...decided then and there that was what I wanted to do, and Amy was the one I wanted to be with...."
"Been clean and sober," she adds, smiling wider,"three years now...she's been a big help there."
"Awesome," Jami says, getting up, smiling wide, as she gives her a little hug.
"I'm proud of you," her sister adds, holding her gently by her shoulders.
"Even if-" she starts to say.
"You would've, if you could've," Lori tells her,"I know this."
"'Sides," she adds, indicating the ship around them with a sweep of her hands,"you have more important things to worry about, same as me."
"I brag 'bout you, all the time," she says, smiling wider. "We hear about you in whispers-not on BoobTube, mind you, that's nothing but BS-but bits and pieces of what Horse's Ass don't want anyone to know about."
Jami blushes, laughing nervously.
" I'm not all that, girl," she says, sighing.
"Not even close," she adds, shaking her head.
"You want something to eat," she asks, in an obvious and abrupt change of subject, as she walks quickly towards the icebox by the hatch in front of Lori. "You probably haven't eaten all day, and no doubt, you're starving."
"How 'bout," she adds, digging in the icebox."a bacon sandwich with me. What do you like on yours?"
"Just a little bit of mayo," Lori says,"if it's not any-"
"I wouldn't have asked if it was any trouble," Jami replies.
"Okay," Lori says, sitting down on the sofa next to her.
"Thanks," she adds.
Room 18, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 0845.20 AMT
"Leave me alone!" Teresa Skanky Self screams, as Jacob, Al Bassett, and Frank Addams all crowd round her desk.
"Shut it, pootie meat," Jacob snaps, grabbing her arm, pulling her out of the desk, getting her good across her face when the nasty little zed tries to frickin' bite him, before he jerks hard on her arm, knocking her desk over, as he starts dragging her kicking and screaming towards the table at the back of the room, Al and Frank grabbing hold of her legs, Jacob grabbing her short blonde hair with his free hand and twisting hard, when the little howler starts hollering for everyone else in the class to help her.
Everyone else knows better...Miss Walton left him in charge while she goes to the office, and they know he'll tell on any of them who don't do what he and his friends tell them to do.
They manage to get Skanky under the table, and the little bitch immediately tries running off, Jacob not having any of that bullcrap, grabbing hold of her arm again, throwing her down on the floor so hard, the crack! her head makes when it hits the floor echoes throughout the room.
Al and Frank use their knees to hold her arms down, as Jacob climbs on top of her, hiking up her short, green uniform skirt, slapping Skanky across her face when she starts hollering "rape!" over and over, Jacob sticking his tongue down her throat like he knows 'em zeds like making him do, at the same time he starts pulling her panties-
"What do you think you're doing?!" Miss Walton shouts at him, Jacob turning to face her legs, whimpering, "Teresa tried to make us do nasty things with her, Miz Walton, we-"
"Out from under there, now!" Miss Walton shouts at him-at him-Al and Frank already crawling out from underneath the table.
"You too, Jacob!" that bitch then has the nerve to add. "All of you are coming with me to Mister Fibbe's office!"
Calling her a bitch under his breath, Jacob gets up off of Skanky, he and his friends walking towards the door.
Jacob looks back to see Miss Walton hugging and feeling on that little bitch.
That wasn't gonna go.
That was for damn skippy.
Principal's Office, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1015.11 AMT
"Boys will be boys," Thomas Fibbe, Owensboro Elementary's principal, says
to Jacob's dad and his partner, as they sit in his air-conditioned office.
"It was just an innocent little kiss,"he adds, "I mean we were both kids once, Garry, and I
know I remember trying to kiss more than one little girl I had a crush on, the same with you, if I remember correctly. "
"Yup," National Policeman 1st Class Garrison Sipe simply says in reply.
"Bet there was some stories there," remarks his partner, a short thuggish man with the unlikely last name of Halfacre.
"Tell me about it," Fibbe remarks. "There was this one girl in particular Garry was sweet on...Lianne Nielsen, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," the visibly uncomfortable Sipe replies.
"One day, when he was about Jacob's age-" Fibbe starts to say, Sipe interrupting him with a "I ain't tryin' to be mean, Tom, but Halfacre and I are still on duty, so, if you would, please, tell me just what kind of trouble my boy's gonna be in over all this."
"Trouble?" Fibbe says, chuckling, as he adds,"Jake ain't in no trouble, not over this."
"It was just a case of a young teacher," Fibbe then says, as he glares at Mary-Kate Walton ," who let her zeal override her good sense."
"Mister Fibbe," Mary-Kate protests," that was not the case. Jacob tried to rape-"
"Oh," Fibbe chuckles again, talking at her like she was frickin' two, " Mary-Kate, rape? He's only a little boy, he doesn't know about all that stuff. It was just a harmless little kiss-"
"I beg to differ," Mary-Kate says stiffly.
"Well, you're not the education professional here," Fibbe snaps, "I am. And, my decision is final."
Mary-Kate tries to reply to this, only to have Fibbe say:
"Wait in my outer office. I will discuss this with you after I finish apologizing to Garry for this unfortunate incident."
"Mister Fibbe-" Mary-Kate starts to say.
"Go, while you still have a job here," Fibbe commands, pointing at the door.
She walks out of his inner office, closing the door behind her, sitting down in one of the hard chairs reserved for those waiting to see Mister Fibbe.
"No luck?" Mrs. Hart, Mister Fibbe's secretary, asks, already knowing the answer.
"No luck," Mary-Kate replies, angry.
"He tried to rape that little girl," she adds," and Fibbe's just blowing it off as nothing...'it's just a little kiss, that's what little boys always do, I did it when I was a little boy. ‘ "
She sighs explosively.
"You won't do her or yourself any good by trying to push it," Mrs. Hart replies.
"He tried to rape her," Mary-Kate says. "Even if all it was was a little kiss, he's still sending the wrong goddamn message by not punishing him...how can I teach my students to have respect for other people when Fibbe's turning right around and saying just the opposite?"
Mrs. Hart just shakes her head.
"Honey," she reminds her," don't you know by now folks like you and me aren't people to them? "
"Some free advice?" she adds.
"Let this die a quick and painless death here and now," she admonishes. "If you take it any further, they'll still win, and we will all still lose."
Mary-Kate looks at the other woman with a look of astonishment.
"I can't believe you said that," she says. "What about your own little girl, Eva?"
"Cynthia's a little tease anyway," Mrs. Hart replies, defensive," and at her age...she dresses like a little Maria Santidad, and she acts like a whore, especially around her fa-"
Mary-Kate half-runs out of the prinicpal's outer office, heading for the water cooler down the hall of this dimly-lit masouleum.
That 's what her mom always says.
What they all say about her, even now, behind her back.
She turns the corner, slamming open the door to the women's faculty restroom.
Sobbing as she sags against the far wall.
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
New Seattle Aerospace Corridor,0.03 AU from Big Sky
9/15/2101, 1520.00 Zulu
"With your permission, Number One," Lieutenant Khryste Pollard says.
The First Lieutenant replies,"I stand relieved, Leftenant," before she rises from the piloting station, the commander of VF-214 taking Lieutenant Commander Rhoads' place, wrapping her left hand around the control yoke, positioning her right poised over the piloting holodisplay-now split to display command functions as well-as she asks:
"Do you want me to transfer command functions to the conn, Number One?"
"You're fine, Leftenant," Lieutenant Commander Rhoads replies, as she stands behind Khryste, not sitting down at the command station, like she should be doing right now with the Skipper off the bridge.
Khryste nods, glancing at the readouts on the piloting holodisplay, lines of data surrounding the view of the warp engine exhaust obscuring the orbitals of New Seattle Spacedock and the planet immediately below that.
Nothing to do really, the 1,262-ton Dauntless-class cruiser is maintaining a standard deceleration burn, its piloting computer doing all the flying right now, not requiring anything from her until they either reached interface or all hell broke loose between now and then.
It's either this or sit in her quarters, twiddling her thumbs for lack of anything better to do.
Except think.
Far too much on her mind for that.
She spies Ariel out of the corner of her eye; she's hunched over the engineering station, stroking holokeys so quickly Khryste has trouble keeping track of her fingers.
She's one of the things Khryste doesn't want to think about...bad enough she never knew where she stood with her, but....
"...after all that," Harmony chuckles, opening up her silk kimono, the toy popping up and out at Khryste, as the twelve-year old girl huddles up in the corner of the Gold Club's "training room," "after all that, you still like girls...."
The fourteen-year girl grabs Khryste by her hair, jerking her head back, slapping her hard across her face, before she....
...she doesn't even know if she could give that girl what she needs.
The hatch leading to the wardroom buzzes and clicks open, the Skipper stepping onto the bridge, holding up her hand to Master Chief Gyllenheal, before she can announce her presence.
Mama's right behind her....
"...Mama!" Khryste screams, kicking and struggling in the grips of the two National Policemen, one of whom lifts up the skirt of her school uniform to slap her butt hard, before he drapes her over his shoulder like she wasn't nothing.
"Shut it!" he snaps at her, Khryste watching a couple of monkeyboys wrestle Mama to the ground, one of them growling,"you brought this on yourself, Miss Pollard, you need to take responsibility for your actions...."
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
New Seattle Aerospace Corridor,0.03 AU from Big Sky
9/15/2101, 1523.24 Zulu
...she keeps screaming out her daughter's name, as the monkeyboys wrench her arms behind her back, one of the cuffing her, the other using his filthy paws to "search" her.
"I said, shut it, zed!" the one what told her to take responsibility for her actions snaps at her. "You're the one who made the inappropriate lifestyle choices, not me!"
"No damn sympathy for you at all," he adds....
...she hadn't seen her girl since then, she hadn't even frickin' bothered to look, since that day eight years ago, when they'd taken Khryste from her over some bullcrap, and sent Lori to the crazy house in Wesley for-
For things she'd rather not think about right now.
She watches her daughter tense up, as she pilots this cruiser on its approach towards New Seattle...she always did like flying and spaceships, part of what had gotten her into so much trouble in school, that and....
"...she insists on bringing in readers," Mister Hobbes tells Eli,"that she insists she understands, no matter how many times the teachers explain to her that she simply can't...her SATs clearly show her comprehension level as below the national average,although it is highly atypical for an at-risk child such...."
...Lori sighs, as she watches her daughter work.
Maybe if she'd said "yes" to Adam that one time too many, if she hadn't packed her and Khryste up and gotten the eff out of that house....
"She's a natural at it," Jami speaks up.
"She always did like things like that," Lori tells her half sister.
"Always," she repeats, sniffling down tears.
Women's Faculty Restroom, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1031.16 AMT
Mary Kate swallows once, wiping her face with a paper towel, sighing.
She looks at herself in the mirror, trying to put out of her mind just what's going to happen to Teresa.
Or her, for that matter.
After a few more moments, she turns and starts walking towards the door.
When it flies open.
Jacob Sipe and two of his little friends just barge in, advancing on her, Mary Kate snapping,"you aren't allowed in h-"
"Shut it, pootie-poo!" Jacob, face twisted in hatred, barks at her, at the same time he shoves her, hard, knocking the wind out of her, as she slams into the wall and sags to the floor.
The nine-year old boy doesn't give her a chance to get up, let alone wrap her brain around what's happening, Jacob hauling off and backhanding her across the face, grabbing her hair, slamming her head into the wall, screaming,"bitch, I didn't give you permission to get up!"
He's still holding her by her hair, as he shoves his tongue down her throat, Mary Kate hearing the sound of cloth tearing from off in the distance.
Principal's Office, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1034.28 AMT
"Some people," Tom Fibbe says with a dramatic sigh,"you just can't help, Garry."
"Nope," Sipe remarks, the holo of Mary Kate Walton's Permanent Personal Record floating between them.
"I mean," Fibbe says,"what more can we do...she spent most her life in frickin' PTP and YDC too, been on probation since she got her teaching license from vo-tech, done everything else we were supposed to do to keep her on the right track, and, still...."
"Well," Halfacre speaks up," she's been living all by herself in 'em apartments in town...gotta tell ya, brother, there's more than a few of her neighbors and her co-workers who don't wonder why, if y'know what I mean."
"I hear 'em same rumors," Fibbe remarks, nodding his head, Halfacre asking,"so you want us to make the call, or-"
"I've notified the Special Victims Unit," Fibbe, banishing Mary Kate's PPR from his workstation's holospace, says, before calling up Teresa Self's PPR.
"A couple men should be by shortly," he adds.
"Hmm," he then says, studying little Teresa's PPR. "She's been reported several times for nonconforming behaviors...bringing in readers no at-risk child should be able to understand, stating 'facts' in class what aren't in Wikipedia, the usual pretending and fantasizing common to children such as her, but this is her first reported sex offense."
"A semester," he decides,"in PTP'll probably be all she needs to-"
His CyberLink bleeps for his attention, the holo of Fibbe's secretary floating in front of him.
"Mister Fibbe," she says,"a Commander Burnham and a Master Chief Petty Officer Hatcher from the TSID's Special Victims Unit are here for Miss Walton."
"Is she waiting in the outer office like I told her to?" Fibbe asks.
"No, sir," his secretary says. "I think-"
"Mastercomp!" Fibbe snaps." Show me the current location of teacher Mary Kate Walton."
His terminal's holospace lights up with a view of the cams in the women's faculty restroom.
It doesn't come as much of a shock what those cams show Sipe.
It doesn't come as much of anything really.
"Yeah!" Halfacre exults, along with the voices of everyone watching this on the IW.
"Apple don't fall too far from the tree," Fibbe remarks, eyes glued to the holo.
"Does it, Garry?" he asks.
"Nope," Sipe manages to say.
"Sure don't," he adds.
-endit-
All Just For Scorn
Principal's Outer Office, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1039.00 American Time
"Yes, sir," Commander Karl Burnham, commanding officer of the TSID's Special Victims Unit says to the holo of the Man Himself, as he floats in front of his right eye,"will do."
Governor Zellner's holoimage disappears from the CyberLink's holospace, Burnham turning to his top kick, telling him:
"That's it, then. We wait 'til the lil' bone's done with her, then we take the two Gnats with when we go and arrest her."
"And, somehow," Hatcher remarks,"he gets hold of my weapon and burns his pops down."
"Him and his partner," Burnham reminds him,"maybe the principal and a couple others too, depending on how things turn out, before I manage to wrestle him to the deck."
"Hey," he remarks at his top kick's quizzical look,"I'm blonde, blue-eyed and got the rank."
"'Sides," he adds," you'll have your hands full with the zed."
"True that, Skipper," Hatcher remarks with a chuckle.
"True that," he repeats.
Women's Faculty Restroom, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1045.11 AMT
National Policeman 1st Class Garrison Sipe and his partner, National Policeman 1st Class Geoff Halfacre, are at the rear of the five men who enter the women's faculty restroom, all of them stopping, watching Sipe's oldest son, nine-year old Jacob, and two other little boys on top of a blonde woman, no older than twenty-seven, maybe, the three of them slamming her head into the tiles, slapping her around, calling her....
"...bitch!" he screams, slapping Li across her face, as he hikes up her uniform skirt and pulls down her panties.
"Don't you tell me you love her," he hisses,"ever effing again, you hear me?! You love boys, you love me, and, by God, you're gonna act like it, if I have to...."
"...kill you first," Jacob hisses, his arm across the woman's windpipe, slamming the back of her head into the tiles again, as he just keeps going at her, the cheering of everyone watching this on line a deafening squeal of white noise, Halfacre and Owensboro Elementary's principal, Thomas Fibbe, adding their Rebel yells to the chorus.
The two TSID ops merely stand there, watching, nodding their heads.
After a few moments, the blonde one grabs Jacob's arm, pulling him off the woman, his short dark-haired partner snatching the woman to her feet with a "c'mon, y'sick twitch!"
Halfacre is only too eager to wrench the woman's arms behind her back, cuffing and searching her, as she just stands there, dazed, bloody and disoriented.
"Ain't got nothin' up in there," his partner concludes a few minutes later, before he tosses her into the waiting arms of the TSID op, adding,"though I think that kinda turns her-"
"What the-" Halfacre starts to ask, Jacob aiming the TSID-issue 250 GJ laser pistoln right between his mirrorshaded eyes, as he screams,"I love you, Mary Kate! I ain't gonna let 'em take you away!"
And, he pulls the trigger twice, a second before it occurs to Halfacre that he should draw his Colt-Wesson Double Eagle massdriver pistol, Sipe's partner's grav shielding flaring all the way up to black, before his head catches fire like one of them old-fashioned kitchen matches in those military survival pouches Dad used to bring home, Fibbe putting out his hands, telling Jacob,"now, son, just gimme me that weapon, and-"
Fibbe goes up like the glob of Crisco he is, the two TSID agents not doing one effing thing to stop Jacob, as Sipe draws his service pistol, hoping to nail his son before he has a chance to nail him.
The blonde TSID agent whistles sharply, discreetly pointing in Sipe's direction, Jacob turning round on his heel, firing a pulse which darkens the front of Sipe's grav shielding, before it burns a geyersing pink hole through his armor and his heart.
That's the way it's gonna be, huh? Sipe has just enough time to wonder, before a chill creeps up his body, and he pitches face forward into the tiles.
Women's Faculty Restroom, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1046.78 AMT
The little bone then turns Commander Burnham's weapon on Burnham himself.
Before the little blonde punk can say,"that's not supposed to happen," the former head of the TSID's Special Victims Unit is melting like the witch in a Banned book Master Chief Petty Officer Hugh Hatcher had glanced at once during his stint as Flynt County High's Public Protection Officer.
Hatcher then draws his own M2049, changing the setting to from laser to taser, before sending an arc of electrical current down a low-powered las beam to knock that boy senseless for a while...ain't exactly how they did it on COPS, but he wasn't in the mood for no frickin' NFL Monday Night Smackdown neither.
"Daaamn," one of the other little boys says, asking his buddy,"didja see what that man did to Jacob?"
"I'll use it on you, if you don't shut the eff up and do what you're told!" Hatcher warns them, both kids holding up their hands and backing away towards the stalls.
Two Gnats from the school's security staff charge into the bathroom, Hatcher instructing them to "take him and his little friends to the security room, make sure they got plenty of snacks and pop to tide 'em over 'til we're ready for 'em."
"C'mon, skankface!" he barks at the zed just standing there all woozy, bloody, and bareass naked like all her subhuman kind, before he shoves her out of the bathroom into the hallway.
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1202.01 AMT
"..following the arrest of his teacher, 27-year old Mary Kate Walton," YouTube's Carolyn Minh says to the packed-out store,"after school security cameras caught her having sex with him in the women's faculty restroom-"
"Sick effin' twitch," Calvin Hobbes pronounces judgement from his seat at the low counter, his eyes plastered on the vid of Jacob Sipe and two of his friends raping Mary Kate all the regulars had been watching earlier(with thunderous applause even).
"Damn sure is," Marc Bevill remarks from his seat next to Lyn Jennings at the high counter, the HV in the corner of the store dissolving to Jacob telling reporters:
"She told me she loved me, and that was what she had to do to me, 'cause she loved me, An' then she said, if I really loved her, I'd have to go an' kill my daddy and all 'em other men an' go to jail for her, so she wouldn't have to."
"He's just a little boy!" David Bell screams hysterically from the stretch end's middle booth, as he grabs the big ass of Amy Smith-no relation, thank God-almost making her drop the pot of coffee she's walking round the effing store.
"They don't give a damn 'bout that," Lyn is quick to observe. "Look what happened with that other one, Ariel Dixon, when she got caught cutting up that black girl eight years ago."
"Yeah," Marc remarks,"sick bitch made a whole buncha excuses, and she gets off with a slap on the wrist, havin' ten babies, and living on welfare, while ol' Eli does to one of 'em what it made him do, and he ends up getting the wire for it."
"-Walton posed nude for several online men's magazines," Carolyn Minh continues speaking the in the background, scene after scene of Mary Kate Walton striking a series of pornographic poses playing in the foreground,"while attending classes at Flynt County High, and was the centerfold, when the reality series Girls Next Door filmed its controversial 'school days' special on the campus housing Flynt County's Performance Training Program eleven years ago-"
The HV now dissolves to a scene of a much-younger Mary Kate Walton kneeling on a stool, her nose in a circle on a blackboard, a skinny girl, long blonde hair....
...lifts up Jami's short grey uniform skirt, pulling her panties down, the older teenage girl whaling away on the ten-year old girl's butt with the paddle she holds in both hands, screaming,"you s'posed to moan, pootie-poo, not scream like you don't like it!"
Two more older girls hold Sunni tight, keeping her from doing anything other than watching her friend get her butt beat so bad it's turning black and blue, and all Jami can do is....
...scream, the regulars cheering as the younger Mary-Kate gets the shit beat out of her with that frickin' paddle in the skinny blonde's hands, the speakers a white roar of noise from all those watching this online and screaming for the skinny one to show Mary Kate what their kind was all about.
"Goddamn," Loudmouth Jim Hunter says through a mouthful of food,"but that is one, sick effin'-"
"Hell, yeah, she is," Marc tells him, between bouts of hooting, hollering and banging his fist on the high counter, Carolyn Minh's voice, still in the background, introducing,"another vid she made while playing for Flynt County High's basketball team. The following may shock, disturb, maybe even offend some of you watching this online-"
Sighing explosively, Sunni turns her attention back to bricking down the grill...Ibrahim's drunk ass is too drunk to come in today, Lori and Amy B.'s God knows where, Jody Harbuck's too geeked out on rapture and she can't trust any of 464's other grill operators to cook a freakin' two-thousand dollar shift.
And, that leaves only her to come in on her day off, so she can get in trouble with Randy and Jimmy Green, one for leaving the house without permission, the other for working too many hours, on top of having low sales and high food costs in all her stores.
"Hey, bitch?!" a customer shouts at her,"When that grill gonna be ready?! I only got thirty minutes for lunch!"
She starts to reply to that, when the customer tells her to eff herself, the monkeyboy and his two simian companions getting up and walking out, Sunni turning to Michelle Sipe-working the office end-screaming,"well, that's more sales that just walked out of here, thanks to you! More food your fat, sorry ass just took outta my children's mouths, 'cause you can't even frickin' pretend you wanna be here workin'!"
"What the hell you yellin' at her for?!" Lyn just has to frickin' tell her.
"All y'all's like that," he adds.
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1207.55 AMT
"-Flynt High School vo-tech students," says YouTube's Juan Rivera, as he floats above the HV in the back room,"are actually required to produce their own YouTube vids as a condition of being awarded a vocational certificate of completion-"
A naked, dark-haired girl is feeling on her breasts in the background, as another girl, a blonde wearing a black sports bra and a pair of gold thong panties, comes up behind her.
"-vids where they and their classmates," Rivera adds," perform the most disgusting acts live in 256-bit true color."
The second girl jumps the first girl, grabbing her breasts hard, humping her, biting down hard on her neck. before she slams her down onto the bench in front of the lockers, the first girl just lying facedown, her butt in the air, the blonde one taking a heavy leather belt from a locker and whaling away on the other girl's bottom.
The blonde screams "I effin' told ya what was gonna happen if you ever made me look bad, didn't I, huh, skank-nasty ?!"
"Oh, yesss, baby, I am such a skank-nasty," squeals the dark-haired girl,"I can't hel-"
The belt goes crack! as it strikes her bare bottom, the blonde screaming,"bitch, shut your goddamn frickin' hole! You talk too goddamn much!"
As this plays out behind him, Rivera further elaborates,"these vids are then submitted to a panel of faculty members for their approval, before ending up being auctioned off on eBay to celebrities and politicians, such as the Commies' President, Angelique Gault; this particular vid was made several years ago by Mary Kate Walton herself, while she was a forward on the Flynt County High basketball team; she's the blonde in the vid, while the other girl has been positively identified as convicted sex offender and murderer Ariel Dixon-"
Michelle Thorn Sipe is crying for...she doesn't know why, it isn't over Garry being burned down, or Jacob being the one who burned him, even though she has to say that, if anyone-especially Sunni-asks her.
She dryswallows, trying to forget what Sunni's just said to her, how bad that hurts, almost as much as last night, when Garry had jumped her, 'cause of that look she'd given Sunni last night.
God only knows how bad Sunni got it, she thinks, sniffling down her tears, wiping her face with her right arm, before she fusses with the Aunt Jemima headscarf, the girlie-girl bowtie, the black miniskirt and the tight pink pinstriped button-down half-shirt which is the uniform of a Moot Ho'-as the rest of the goddamn frickin' worlds call her-checking to make sure her black uniform stockings don't have any runs in them, as she sits down in the chair by the steam table and takes off her black uniform pumps.
"What the eff are you doing back here, you fat effin' skank?!" Sunni screams at her a second after she slams the swinging door open. "You got customers, you're supposed to be out there, waitin' on them, not sittin' on your fat ass smoking doobies on my frickin' time!"
"WHAT?!" that goddamn snaggle-toothed, fuckin' bitch screeches at the top of her lungs. "I know you're frickin' stupid, you don't effing have to look it too!"
"Get your fat, frickin' ass back out there!" she screams, Michelle choking down useless tears, clenching her jaw, as she gets up and walks back out onto the floor.
"...what is this?!" Mister Hobbes demands, slapping the holoprojection full of quadratic equations, magic 20s, multiplication and division problems on his desk.
"This is what I caught her doin',Mister Calvin," Mister Bergerac-who even the other teachers called Big Gay Steve behind his back-Jami's teacher replies, before Jami can speak for herself,"square roots, quadratic equations, long division, multiplying decimals, most of this ain't even fifth-grade work-let alone something even remotely on the intellectual level of an at-risk child-and she wasn't usin' no calculator like she was supposed to to get the answers, she was tryin' to figure ‘em out the long way."
Mister Hobbes just clucks and shakes his head at her, slapping the paddle in his hands, as he tells Jami's classroom teacher:
"A zero for the day's the least this calls for. I think also, that we should consider reassigning her for the rest of the year, seeing how she obviously is incapable of being mainstreamed- "
"It's that damn mother of hers," Mister Bergerac commented, Mister Hobbes, still slapping that paddle in his hand, as he talks over him:
"-readers that she knows good and well children like her can't possibly understand, quotin' so-called facts what ain't in Wikipedia, writin' essays on topics that ain't approved for the written part of the SAT, not even botherin' to prepare for the SAT like the rest of the students in her class, even knowin' how important the SAT is to her future and to this school's."
"I think some time in PTP," Mister Bergerac then says,"is what's called for here; clearly a regular fifth-grade class is just too much for us to ask of her."
Mister Hobbes nods, telling Jami to get up and bend over, adding,"you should know the drill by now...."
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 819, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/15/2101, 1710.28 Zulu
...the insistent bleeping of the CyberLink on her nightstand awakens Commander Jamilinne Sipe.
A personal comm, the captain of the Unbroken focussing bleary eyes on the IW address floating in the holospace of the Link's right eyepiece.
Stevie's Gramma Irma, Jami thinks to herself, picking her Link up and placing it on her head.
"Accept comm," she says, the holo of the famous InterWeb blogger and Firestar legislator appearing in front of her.
"Gramma Irma," Jami starts to ask,"what's-"
"Your brother's been murdered," Gramma Irma instantly tells her, straight to the point as always.
"Which one?" Jami asks, not knowing if she'd dance a jig or what over either Mickey, DT or Avery getting what had been coming to them for years.
"Your youngest," Gramma Irma says. "Garrison."
"Jesus Petes," Jami whispers, wide awake now, this blow sending her reeling...last time her and Garry had talked had been ten years ago, when she'd gone to the funeral for Lori's mom- Jami's Auntie Mel-just after he'd married Michelle...he'd been attached to her leg when they'd both been kids, but, lately....
"Who shot him?" she manages to ask.
"Your oldest nephew, Jacob," Gramma Irma tells her. "It happened at his school, just after Jacob and a couple of his friends raped their teacher; Garrison, his partner, Jacob's principal, and two ops from the TSID's Special Victims Unit went to arrest her, and Jacob managed to get one of the TSID agents' laser pistols, killing his father, his partner, the principal and the head of the Special Victims Unit...BoobTube's out in front with the story, but me and the other bloggers have been sitting on it, pending your consent to-"
"Go ahead," Jami whispers, tears running down her face, fists clenched uselessly at her sides.
"Go ahead," she repeats, Gramma Irma replying,"I really am sorry for-"
"Not your fault," Jami tells her, swallowing hard, asking:
"What about his wife, his other two kids?"
"The Yankers aren't saying anything about Michelle," Gramma Irma says,"or the other two boys, though, if the Special Victims Unit follow standard operating proceedure-"
"Thank you," Jami says, abruptly cutting the comm short.
"Lori," she then says into her Link,"we need to talk, now."
Governor's Mansion
155 West Paces Ferry Road, New Whitehorse, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1215.65 AMT
"And, here, prior to her seducing young Jacob," Juan Rivera says,"you can plainly see where Mary Kate Walton is openly engaging in consenual sex with a nine-year old girl-"
"Nasty skank!" screams the voice of one of many watching Mary Kate hugging and feeling on the little poot, the Governor of the Union watching this and several other channels on the HV projector on the wall in front of his bed.
"-who earlier attempted to seduce little Jacob Sipe and two of his friends," Rivera continues. "This young girl, Teresa Self, has had prior run-ins with Owensboro School authorities for a variety of offenses, but, yet, she remains mainstreamed in a regular third-grade class. How can that be possible, Admiral?"
Admiral Omar Baraka, his Director of Union Security, seated in his office in the Executive Office Building across town, replies:
"Isn't it obvious, Juan?! How can we possibly hope to rehabilitate at-risk children, when at-risk adults are part of that rehabilitation process...note that I use the PC term at-risk, rather than simply referring to them as zeds, my position as a government employee would most certainly be the thing which is at-risk-"
Chuckling and laughter from the speakers greet this remark, Guy Thomas Zellner chuckling as well, even knowing Omar was too dumb to come up with the line himself.
"-were I to call them by what they were," Omar concludes. "They've garnered so much political power in the last ten years, not only are they no longer ashamed of what they are, but the very use of the...Z-word, as it were, even in the most casual of conversations, is more than sufficent grounds for them and their liberal Republican lapdogs to sue you and make you look as if you were Hillary Clinton risen from the grave-"
Well, the Governor of the Union thinks with a slight laugh, that wasn't in the script...maybe the chimp ain't as stupid as I thought.
"-while they call each other the Z-word and everything else," Omar says,"in their music vids and pornography-not much of a distinction, I grant you, Juan, but, again, my position requires a certain amount of political correctness, it being a political position, after all."
The Governor of the Union laughs more heartily...Omar's pretty effing imaginative when he sets his mind to it, should've known he would be, all the ways he kept coming up with to put the boots to the zeds during the years he'd been Zellner's top kick.
"They do appear," Rivera says,"to exhibit a certain pride in what they are...already, a tribute site has appeared on the InterWeb, showcasing Mary Kate's pornographic videos, her personal blogs-many of which shows her performing acts of sexual deviancy-"
Rivera's voice drops to the background, a holo of Mary Kate-legs up in the air-singing, "gimme sum lovin' discipline, yeah,yeah, bay-bay, yeah, yeah," while sucking on the lollies that sick effing poot had been sticking down yonder, the voices howling over the speakers echoing Zellner's sentiment 100% when they said,"man, that just nasty!"
"-simply too graphic for public consumption," Rivera remarks,"and, most alarming of all, blogs and comments made by minor children such as, "man, I sure wish she was my teacher."
His Link bleeps for his attention.
"Yes?" Zellner asks, the holo of one of the Marines guarding his mansion floating in front of his right eye.
"Sir, Fleet Admiral Sipe's chief of staff has arrived with the material you requested earlier today."
"Escort him here," the Governor of the Union replies, nodding once. "I don't care if he even tries to take an effin' bathroom break, he goes any direction other than straight down the hall, burn him. Get me?"
"Sir!" the Marine shouts in his freakin' ear,"yes, sir!"
"Thought you might like that," Zellner observes, as the Marine discomms.
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1220.12 AMT
"-were in fact terrorists hiding behind the skirts of the Red Cross, same as their fellow travellers, three hundred years ago, used the offices of the Red Cross to export their campaign of subversion, division and mass murder from the continent of Great Britain to the shores of Basseterre," Micheal Bauer says on HV,"and to hide from the judgement they had coming to them for-"
"I always thought," Billy Raines, seated at the stretch end's far counter, remarks,"it was on account of Bush and his family being friendly with 'em zeds."
"Oh," Louis Kahn, seated between Lyn and Marc at the low counter replies,"it was that too. You have to realize, the Red Cross ain't nothing more than a Conspiracy front, always has been ever since Clara Barton established it back in 1776, just a quarter-century before WW I. See, all 'em years, it was pretendin' to be a medical relief organization, only tryin' to help 'em poor sufferin' disaster victims and wounded soldiers, nothing sinister 'bout, oh, no."
Louis takes another sip of his hot tea, before adding:
"But, all that time, they were feeding their lies to a captive audience, gaining political support and power, preachin' hate and sneaking in terrorists under false identification papers, 'til the Flood of 1799 washed away the sinners in Midnight Bay, and we put our foot down to the British tryin' to tell us we can't punish the zeds for bringing God's judgement down on all our heads."
"That's," Marc remarks, over another large to-go cup of coffee,"when they started showin' their true colors, crashing airplanes into buildings, bombing the old Capitol and the Pentagon in Wesley, trickin' George Bush into blamin' the wrong people, killing our guys so more of their kind can stop doin' right and be free to indulge their own innate depravity-"
"-just as George Tenet tried to warn him," Louis remarks,"before Hillary Clinton-who got her own husband put in prison just for havin' sex with one of 'em-managed to convince George Bush to get rid of him, and-"
"Hello!" Amy Smith shouts out.
"Hell-" Sunni starts to say, turning to see a pair of TSID agents walk into the store, her husband and his partner, Corporal Darrell Peacock, bringing up the rear.
"Y'all," says the virally-blonded chimp-in an expensive charcoal suit-who is the short of the two TSID agents,"go 'bout yo' bidness, we ain't here fo' nothin' 'cept a zed."
"Where Michelle Sipe at?!" he then asks Amy and Sunni.
"She's gone across the hall," the words come out of Amy's big mouth, before Sunni has a chance to reply.
"What that mean, ' 'cross the hall?'" the monkeyboy asks. "That some kinda code or somethin'?"
"It means," Randy speaks up,"she's in the bathroom, Commander."
"It is some kinda code then," the chimp decides, ordering his taller, brown-suited Human partner to cover the door to the women's restroom, Randy and Darrell standing to either side of him, the Haziri taking his time to join the others.
"Do the do'," he tells his partner.
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1223.68 AMT
The door flies open, the deadbolt shattering the mirror, as Michelle is too startled to even think of getting off the toilet, a virally-blonded monkeyboy grabbing her arm, wrenching it painfully behind her back, as he slams her up against the wall.
The fingers of his other paw balling up one by one, as they search her, Michelle wincing from the white-hot stab of pain, as she is lifted up onto her tiptoes by the chimp's fist in her.
Darrell Lavender comments,"man, she sure does like that!"
"She's a Pootie Ho'," Randy Pate remarks,"what else did ya ex-bitch, what the-"
The chimp dumps Michelle on the floor, the sharp crack! of a massdriver pistol taking his head off in a cloud of reddish orange, a second crack! dropping a Human in a brown suit on top of the Haziri's headless corpse, as Michelle struggles to her feet, watching as Darrell goes for the electrowhip on his belt, only to have the top of his head taken off with a third crack!
From the massdriver pistol now in one of Sunni's whitening, trembling hands, the other holding a butcher knife dripping with blood.
Through clenched teeth, Sunni rasps,"what the eff are you waiting for?! Get your fat ass the-"
And, she screams, dropping both the weapons in her hands, clutching at the back of her head, as she screams,"go, goddamnit, g-"
"Bitch," Randy hisses, as he holds in a bleeding gash along his neck with one hand, and the mouse to the collar in Sunni's head in the other,"you ain't going nowhere."
For a moment, Michelle is paralyzed, helplessly watching Sunni flop around on the floor, crapping and peeing all over herself, as she hears the sound of people getting up out of booths and walking this way.
Then she almost trips over herself, stumbling, as she runs past Randy through the door leading into the backroom.
She hears Randy's shouted "get after that bitch!" as she pushes the back door open and takes off running.
Governor's Mansion
155 West Paces Ferry Road, New Whitehorse, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1226.11 AMT
"-wanted on four counts of capital murder and nearly a dozen counts of rape, including three against children," YouTube's Francis Mulloy tells everyone, the holo now panning on Garry's wife stumbling her way through the back end of Owensboro, an ACV-137 Spectre gunship following her from overhead, a National Police tac unit on the ground far(but not too far)behind her.
"According to the TSID," Mulloy adds,"Sipe is considered armed and dangerous, a violent sexual predator with an unpredictable temper, who is now believed to be heading in the direction of Owensboro's elementary school, where all three of her children-"
"Off," Zellner says, as he enters the office from a side door, Vice-Admiral James Bentley Spinks rising from his chair and standing at attention.
Zellner nods his head in Spinks' direction, before he sits down behind his antique wooden desk, waiting a few more moments before telling Spinks to "sit, Ben."
"Sit," he adds a moment later, Spinks sitting back down in his chair, as his "father"'s protege clears YouTube from his workstation's holospace, tapping commands into the keyboard now floating in front of him, Spinks' own CyberLink beeping once, before displaying a graphic which shows the progress of the upload from its plasma matrices to those of the Governor's Mansion's master computer.
Once the upload is complete, Zellner holds out his hand.
"Your Link, Admiral," he says.
"Your Link," he then repeats, Spinks taking off his Link and handing it over to Zellner.
Who promptly throws it up in the air and vaporizes it with a 250 GJ pulse from his TSID-issue M2049 laser pistol before it even has a chance to fall back down.
Boy always did like blasting things, Spinks wryly observes to himself, the Governor of the Union complimenting himself on his shot, before turning back to face Spinks.
"Now," he remarks,"we both know that was the only copy of the file."
A lot you know, you miserable son of a bitch, Spinks thinks to himself, keeping the smile from his face, Zellner adding,"data security's been lax as of late, Ben, and that's simply not acceptible."
"Yes, sir," Spinks forces himself to say.
Zellner looks at him a few more moments, before deciding:
"That will be all, Admiral. You may go."
"Sir," Spinks says, getting up, standing at attention, before turning on his heel and walking out of the Governor's office.
Tourist Information Center
InterCounty Highway 75, 2 miles from Forsythe, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1730.00 Zulu
Exactly where it was the last time, thinks the shabbily-dressed man, as he strokes his scraggly beard, mumbles and sings to himself, and shuffles into the handicapped stall in the men's restroom.
The man sits on the crapper, making the appropriate noises, as he uses a pocketknife to pry open the bogroll dispenser, finding the circuit board right behind the two full bogrolls, the ziploc bag holding it secured to the rear wall of the dispenser with a generous amount of duct tape.
Handyman's secret weapon, the man observes to himself, singing off key, as he worries the duct tape free of the ziploc bag.
At the same time he tries to remember where the old line came from...so many old shows he's watched with his mum and da, it's hard to sort them all out in his memory.
He holds onto those memories, jumbled as they may be...he has to remind himself, somehow, of the life he's left behind.
He chuckles for no good reason, as he stuffs the ziploc bag into a grimy coat pocket full of various bric a brac...he'd be buggered if the trogs ever started putting cameras in men's rooms, and with no Vaseline-as the Yankers would say-him and whoever's been slipping him plasma matrices with data on what the trogs had next in mind for his homeworld.
He flushes the toilet, shuffling, mumbling and singing his way out of the bog, just another scav barely surviving at the edges of polite Yanker society, another poor sod cut loose by a mental-health system too busy tending to the real sickos, those rotten zeds what always seemed to be dragging everyone else down and keeping them from the promised land of liberty and justice for all.
His laugh is genuine this time, though, since no one else around him knows what the hell's so funny, it seems just as crazed and scary as the last one...as he continues shuffling, staggering and mumbling his way across the grounds, he's aware of children pointing and staring at him, parents abruptly pulling them away, hiding them out of sight, everyone else giving him a wide berth and pretending they don't see him.
The cams won't see him either, even though they do, as nothing assures invisibility more than being a homeless mental, the man easily making it into one of the few wooded areas on Basseterre the Yankers haven't wired for sound and holo.
Captain Eamon Fitzpatrick, once military attaché to the former Commonwealth embassy on Terranova, always and forever a soldier of his Commonwealth, waits until he is deeper in the wood, until the suns begin setting, before straightening his back and walking normally.
Principal's Office, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1236.11 AMT
"Close the door behind you," says Mister Abbott, as he stands in front of Mister Fibbe's desk.
She does as she's told, walking over to Mister Fibbe's desk.
"I heard about what happened today," he said.
"You made Jacob Sipe do a nasty thing with you, didn't you?" he says, slapping the steelwood paddle in his hand.
"He-he-" Teresa Self tries to say.
"Don't lie!" Mister Abbott snaps at her. "I know exactly how your kind is, Teresa. You like kissing on boys and girls, hugging on them, even making them play doctor with you and do other nasty things with you...all zeds are like that."
"And," he adds," it is not acceptible. You will learn to act like a civilized human being and stop trying to make little boys and girls do nasty things with you."
"Bend over," he orders her, " and grab your ankles."
She's already crying.
"That's another one of your filthy zed tricks you will simply have to outgrow!" Mister Abbott barks at her.
"Bend over!" he shouts at her, bending her over before she has a chance to do anything.
She feels him lifting up her skirt, pulling down her panties, just before he hits her one, two, three, four, five, six, ten times, each time harder than the last, each blow almost knocking her off her feet.
Teresa can't help blubberring, even though she knows-
The next blow from the paddle does knock her down on the floor, Teresa hitting so hard she can taste the blood in her mouth.
"I told you about that crying!" Mister Abbott screams at her, before pulling her back up onto her feet by her hair. "I will not stand for any more of your childish tricks!"
He then takes a pile of clothes off his desk, throwing them on the floor at the nine-year old girl's feet.
"Clearly," he adds,"you are incapable of meeting the demands of a regular third-grade class. You have exactly five minutes to change into your PTP uniform, before security comes to take you away, dressed or not!"
"Well," he adds, glaring down at her.
"Get dressed!" he then barks at her, stabbing a finger at the floor. "Right here, right now!"
"And," he adds, slapping her hard across her face,"stop that goddamn crying!"
Security Office, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1242.06 AMT
Daddy's fat-assed piece of poot stumbles along the street, Francis Mulloy's voice saying in the background:
"According to the latest update from the National Police's Flynt County Command, Michelle Sipe has been sighted in the Toomersville area, near Housing Project #3. Residents in that area have been ordered by the TSID's Special Victims Unit to confine their zeds and to stand outside their residences at this time to assist authorities in the capture of this violent, dangerous sexual predator.
We remind our viewers that the minimum reward for assisting in the capture of a sexual predator such as Sipe is $15,000 Terranovan Standard Currency, with rewards in the past having gone as high as a half million dollars. All rewards are subject to immediate auto-debiting for tax purposes."
"Give it up, pootie-poo!" voices scream over the speakers, Al Bassett and Frank Addams watching that fat skank stumble and trip over herself, as the wind blew her skirt up to show the black thong panties that howler's got stuck up in her nasty crack, both his friends' tongues hanging out like General's did whennever Jacob fed him turkey bones or every time Matt turned Shelby Skankface loose in the-
The door opening startles Jacob and his friends, the two Gnats in the room with them stiffening, hands going to holstered massdriver pistols, as a handsome middle-aged man, salt and pepper hair, steel-blue eyes and a dark grey suit walks into the room.
Jacob instantly relaxes.
"Hey, Uncle Micheal," he says.
"Hello, Jacob," says Micheal Bauer, Prime Minister of the Union, as he firmly grips his nephew's hand.
"Take the other two to PTP," he then instructs the Gnats. "Jacob will be coming with me."
"To New Whitehorse," he adds.
-endit-
They Are Worth Your Tears
Dressing Room, Block A, Flynt County Performance Training Program Campus
1 Everett Square, Ford's Valley, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1315.20 American Time
"Now's your chance to vote, Terranova!" BoobTube's Hannah Chen squeaks, shifting her long legs to show off a flash of thonged pootie underneath her short pink skirt.
"What do you think," she asks, as David Harris stretches and rises from the coldwire chamber,"Robyn and her gang should do to Teresa first? Remember, Teresa is a hardened sexual predator, linked romantically to schoolteacher Mary-Kate Walton, the woman singlehandedly responsible for the rape of nine-year old Jacob Sipe, the murders of two National Policemen-including Jacob's father Garrison-the principal of her school, and the commander of the TSID's Special Victims Unit."
David rocks on the balls of her feet, bouncing a little bit, just to see her boobies go up and down like a couple of bowls of jello, before she walks over to the full-length mirror, where the other girls are already preening themselves, tossing their hair about, feeling on themselves, the usual things zeds are supposed to do, but try to deny they do.
This one on its way to them now's no different.
Not at all, even though it'll try and say it is.
They all do at first.
"-each vote you cast will auto-debit your MoneyCenter account $5.99 Terranovan Standard Currency with a limit five votes per account," Chen continues rambling on, as David grabs his boobies, holding those 42DDs up as high as she can, pursing her lips in a pouty little O, before she exhales:
"We just can't help what we are, bay-bay."
"...uh, uh, pootie-poo," Desiree Poteet says, grabbing Jami's hair, forcing her back down across the teenage girl's lap.
"You don't get up 'til we say we're through with you," she barks out, slapping the ten-year old girl's bare butt hard with her open hand.
"Should know that by now," Desiree then tells her, as she keeps whaling away on her,"you made us do this to you 'nuff times, y'lil' bitch."
Jami bites down on her lip, knowing what's coming next, Desiree holding onto her hair to keep her from moving.
"All you zeds are the same," she says, sticking her fingers in, one at a time. "All y'all think you're so effing smart at first."
"Then," she adds, as she balls up those fingers,"all y'all eventually...."
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 819, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/15/2101, 1818.36 Zulu
...learn better.
Commander Jamilinne Sipe spits out the f-word an instant before the bot damn near makes her spit out her frickin' teeth, the captain of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken ducking and rolling out of the way, the bot's right leg sweeping over the top of her head.
"Screw this," Jami spits out, drawing her Palmer/Walker LP077 laser pistol from its holster, a single 250 gigajoule snap shot vaporizing the bot instantly, scorching the surrounding bulkheads in the crew deck gymnasium.
"That's cheating," that miserable bonesmoking, black bastard has the nerve to remark from behind her.
"Second frickin' place is death," Jami spits out, not bothering to look at the son of a bitch, as another training bot waddles up to take the place of the one she's slagged.
"We all die sometime," Reverend Robert Cheney tells her.
"Some deserve it more than others," Jami tells him....
"...I just don't know what to tell you, Captain Sipe," Doctor Wildgoose tells her Daddy and Avery, the orderlies dragging Jami-wearing a brief grey PTP uniform skirt and matching push-up bra-into the dayroom. "We've tried everything, and, there's just no correcting the underlying pathology."
Daddy snorts.
"What a effing surprise," he remarks. "The most expensive frickin' quack my money can buy, and you can't even make her right."
Leering at the thirteen year old girl, Daddy adds,"guess it's back up to me, then, isn't it?"
"I'm sorry to say that it is, Captain," Doctor Wildgoose agrees,"A regimen of tough love, practiced by the male role models in Jamilinne's life, will be more effective in breaking your daughter of her victim-state mindset and accompanying sexual deviancy. I'll have a list of required paraphenalia and a suggested treatment plan uploaded to your Link, before you leave...you'll find the treatment options I suggested include simple household chores, as well as plans for making her room a more secure and structured enviroment...that shouldn't be too costly, any of the local contractors should be able to do the necessary remodeling."
"There are," he adds,"three very important things you must do to ensure the success of this therapy...."
...she flinches at that memory, at the three "very important things," Avery and Daddy had been so very dilligent in doing to her, the training bot taking advantage of her inattention to fire a punch aimed for her throat, Jami sidestepping the punch at the last moment, kicking high and hard to take the bot's head off its shoulders.
Which would've been it, had the bot's brain(and its lidar and sonar systems)not been in its heavily-armored torso, this being a variant of the standard MARVN combat bot which served as support for the ship's Legionnaires.
The headless automaton now circles, matching Jami move for move, each looking for an opening.
She almost forgets the preacher man's in the gym with them, till he speaks up again:
"I suppose you're right, Jami."
"What the eff do you want?!" Jami screams, jumping off the deck, as the bot's leg sweeps where she had been, the captain of the Unbroken cartwheeling over the bot, landing behind it, her nofohaz-the one given her when she'd been knighted sixteen years ago-in her left hand, its obsidian grip cutting into her bare palm, the blade-a single, long-chain crystalline carbon molecule 81 centimeters in length-easily slicing through the back of the bot, severing its chest and shoulders from its legs.
She wishes she could do the same to that miserable black son of a bitch.
"Well?!" she asks, rounding on him, the tip of the Anazazi-crafted blade pricking his chin.
"You want me to forgive you?!" she adds. "Forgive you for having me sent to that effing Phoenix Center, to get raped and jazzed and every damn frickin' thing else, so they could cure my 'pathology?!'"
"Fine!" she spits at him. "I forgive you! I forgive you, 'cause you're about to frickin' die and burn in Hell anyway!"
"Does that make you feel better?!" she asks, her body trembling, the nofohaz edging closer to Reverend Cheney's throat. "I know it's supposed to make me feel better, forgiving all the pedos and sickos who did what they did to me."
"Oh, wait," she adds, voice dripping with sarcasm,"I forgot, I'm the pedo and the sicko who made everyone do shit to me, so I'm supposed to ask their forgiveness."
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 819, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/15/2101, 1821.00 Zulu
Robert Cheney sighs, his breath rattling in progressively-clogged lungs.
"I suppose I deserved that," he says.
"Y'think?!" Jami screams at him, not moving that effing blade away from his throat, the aging preacher not wanting to think about how effortlessly the clearcarbon blade of the Anazazi sword can cleave through his neck.
The sixty-year old man thinking about it anyway, reflexively swallowing a lump in his throat, before telling her:
"You've never seen men go jocritter hunting, have you?"
"What the eff does that have to do with anything?!" Jami demands, Cheney continuing:
"They go out when the suns go down-gives the Kentucky and the kike they'd been swilling down their throats to work-smashing through the woods in SUTs with huge floodlights on them, shining the damn things on jocritter hogans, making them freeze up, scaring the beejesus out of 'em...hunters don't kill all of 'em at first, just a couple with las shots-usually babies or old ones- just enough to scare and scatter the rest...you can smell their fear something awful...it gets the hunters off, while giving 'em time to get on jetboards and run 'em down, playing with the poor creatures like a fish on the hook, uploading the hunt to YouTube, so everyone else can get off on it live in 256-bit true color."
He pauses a second to cough up another glob of bloody blue phelgm, before he adds:
"They don't use lasers or even massdrivers on the rest...too quick, not enough suffering, not nearly as much as you get when you shoot 'em down at close range with frag rifles...the resulting shrapnel wounds burn and bleed out more slowly, why a lot of Marines used 'em during the war, the one in '69, I mean, maybe 9YW too, I wouldn't know 'bout that firsthand."
Another rasping sigh, before he concludes:
"Anyway, that's the way they're doin' your sister in law, hunting her down like a scared animal, playing with her, shooting dice for her fate like the British did to Christ at the Tower. YouTube's tracking her now, along the banks of the Winnpegosis, heading towards New Whitehorse."
Jami lowers the sword in her hand, whispering,"son of a bitch."
"Aren't-" she starts to ask, Cheney telling her:
"Most of our people weren't lucky enough to be killed, when the Gnats, the TSID and the Third Shock Army came calling...and most of us still alive and free are themselves too busy trying to stay that way to even think of lending a hand."
"We got comfortable in the last ten years," he says, the bitter truth,"and lax, while our enemies grew stronger and harder in their determination...now, we're paying the price."
"Just frickin' great," Jami snaps, shaking her head, as she finally sheathes her nofohaz.
"Basically," she adds," the hajjies aren't in a position to do jackshit for themselves, let alone for Michelle, huh?"
"We'll try," Cheney tells her,"but...."
"Fat frickin' lot of good that'll do them," Jami tells him
"Fat frickin' lot of good," she adds, an instant before she violently wheels about and drives her fist into the nearby bulkhead.
Along the banks of the Winnpegosis River
Charles County, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1338.11 AMT
"Yeah, bay-bay, show us that stankin' ass!" voices scream from the trees at Michelle Thorn Sipe, as she staggers through the brambles and undergrowth along the banks of the river.
She's out of breath, her skirt, stockings, legs, and feet cut to ribbons by stickers, thorns, and sharp rocks, the soles of her feet throbbing and bleeding, her legs itching from a million scratches, her chest on fire from having to gasp for air so much in the cold of a September day(night now that second sunset has come and gone), her body shivering from the sweat fogging up her glasses and stinging her eyes.
Definitely not in proper uniform now, she muses, as she keeps running...a branch tore her uniform skirt loose and scratched up one of her boobs a few moments ago(to the amusement of everyone watching this online), another pulling off her Aunt Jemima uniform headscarf, while her dress uniform pumps and their ridiculous heels are in someone's dumpster back in Owensboro.
"Order of pootie on two," a voice shouts from a speaker nailed to a tree somewhere,"they're gonna scatter, smother and cover it real good when she get to Witch's Titty!"
At the same time, she hears the whirring servos and digitized growling of the HOUNDS, less than a hundred yards behind her, give or take, but holding back.
Waiting for just the right moment to jump me, she thinks, trying not to, shuddering at the thought of being sent offworld, to Witch's Tit...growing up on Diablo....
"...by order of the Texoma-Halliburton Department of Judicial Affairs, Texoma-Halliburton Offworld Facility #6718 Diablo," says the man in the grey suit, as SpecForces goons drag the frightened, half-naked eleven-year old girl down the hall past him ,"acting upon the opinion issued by the Medical Office, Department of Human Capital, Texoma-Halliburton Offworld Facility #6718 Diablo, 15 December, 2081, Associate A187D250B, job category number 001, associate in training, is hereby registered as a sex offender and consequently convicted of rape and aggrivated child moles-"
"We didn't do nothin'," Michelle screams,"we didn't do nothin', she was my frieahahahahahahahahahah!"
"-and reassigned to Texoma-Halliburton Offworld Facility #267," the man continues talking, even as Michelle lies there, peeing and crapping herself, screaming her head off,"Lord Jim and redesignated job category 990, penal indentured labor, for the remainder of her natural life."
"These proceedings," he added,"are ....."
...had been bad enough, with the Archipelago asteroid LordJim and the strip club in Owensboro where Garry had bought and married her worse still, but she's heard stories 'bout what went on at the Union's Maximum Security Penal Facility on Witch's Tit...hell, she's seen every last episode of Girls of the Prison Planet, and those who told the stories said those shows didn't tell the half of it, the right-wing liberal media elites wouldn't let them....
Son of a bitch!
She turns her ankle, and she slides down the riverbank, almost into the water, the YouTube camera helo dipping down low to catch her slipping on the silt and mud in the process of regaining her footing, as the HOUNDS get that much closer to her.
Now, she's covered in mud, those watching her online not missing that at all, the speakers erupting with references to mud wrestling....
"...you're a dirty-azz bee-yatch!" the blond stallion screams in her face, as she pins the sixteen-year old girl down in the stinking mud, the cheering of everyone watching this on- and offline a deafening roar, the stallion Rebel-yelling, as she thrusts herself....
...which only bring back more unpleasant memories for her, as she manages to climb and crawl her way back up the riverbank, hobbling painfully on her sprained ankle, as a HOUND lunges towards her, its jaws snapping shut this freakin' close to her.
It just keeps coming after her, it and a whole hell of a lot more besides, the Gnats bursting through the woods behind them, Michelle gritting her teeth, as she keeps running.
Port 33
Charles County, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1841.66 Zulu
"Vote yes now," YouTube's Rachelle English says breathily,"if you want Tactical Units 57 and 184 to end their chase at this point, and vote no, if you're not ready for them to capture the dangerous sexual predator and child killer Michelle Sipe, who has been linked romantically to schoolteacher Mary-Kate Walton, the woman who murdered her husband and sexually abused her nine-year old son Jacob."
"Remember," she adds, after showing the online audience a bit of knickers underneath the short skirt,"each vote will automatically debit your MoneyCenter account $5.99 Terranovan Standard Currency, with a limit of five votes per account."
Captain Eamon Fitzpatrick utters a rude word, one of the few in Gaelic he's remembered from his childhood in the very first of the First Colonies, the fifty-eight year old former Commonwealth military attaché then stretching himself in the sofa in the wing-in-ground effect rig's living space as he feels it slowing down.
"We here, Commonwealth," the holo of the rig's driver, Jemal "Poolstick" Bryant, says from directly over the HV projector, the Haziri adding, after a rude word of his own:
"Best you stay hid or jump out the back, they got Marines and SpecForces hep'in the Gnats out."
The chimp abruptly cuts communications, Fitzpatrick checking the Palmer/Walker laser pistol he's got snugged underneath his left armpit, praying to God he doesn't have to use it, the veteran Commonwealth Forces Legionnaire feeling the rig decelerate and maneuver its fully-loaded 227 metric ton mass in for a landing at one of many ports dotting the Winnpegosis between New Whitehorse and Columbus Two, the rig and its thirty-meter trailer gently settling onto a landing pad with barely a thump.
A moment later, he hears Bryant hollering "man, I got a permit fo' that gun, it right here on my PPR!"
Another voice replies,"well, it ain't current."
"It good fo' ten y-" Bryant says, the other voice interrupts,"it ain't current. Don't blame me for your failure to comply with the law, driver."
"There's some other discrepancies on his PPR as well," a third voice says. "His fingerprints and DNA don't match up to what we got on fi-"
"Maaan, that just some bull-" Bryant says, the second voice barking out,"insubordination to lawful authority's an act of treason under the-"
"The Articles of Union say I gots freedom-" Bryant insists, the second voice snapping out,"we are at war against the zeds, the Commies, and their Conspriacy. Don't you dare quote me some damn right-wing liberal Republican BS that don't mean a goddamn thing under those circumstances."
The second voice then gets to the heart of the matter:
"Now, you can let me auto-debit your account for the gun, the inaccurate PPR, and the disorderly conduct, or we can just burn you right here and n-what is it, Corporal?!"
"There's someone back in the back, Gunny; scanners are pickin' him up plain as day."
"Bring his ass up front," the Gunny orders, at the same time Fitzpatrick moves for the door, reaching it at the same time four Terranovan Republican Special Forces Command thugs step through it into the rig's living quarters.
"Hullo, mates," Fitzpatrick says calmly, holding his hands out, as he speaks in his normal voice.
"Holy shit," the leader of the Yanker fire team is quick to deduce,"you're a freakin' Com-"
"Yes, I am," Fitzpatrick replies, before he bashes the Yanker right in his unhelmeted gob with an uppercut, lashing out with a kick to take one of the other three, the Commonwealth soldier hearing the whirring of two activated chainblades, one of which swings in an arc where his was a moment before.
Fitzpatrick reaches in his right sock, pulling out the sgian dubh which has served as a Commonwealth Forces officer's sigil of command for six and a half decades, the veteran Legionnaire remaining in a crouch as he jams the triangular-bladed dagger through the crotchplate of one of the remaining two Yanker trogs, at the same time he grabs the sword arm of the last trog standing, bending it in a direction it wasn't meant to bend in.
Even through the powered Kevlar/Spectra weave of the tiger-striped Land Warrior armor, the fag boy feels it when his arm snaps, Fitzpatrick taking the still-active chainblade from the Yanker's now-useless fingers.
Just as Gnats, Marines and more fag boys come through the door, Gunny smiling, as he remarks,"this is gonna be worth more than the fi-"
It's at that point Fitzpatrick becomes aware of voices screaming over the InterWeb for the Yankers to "kick his goddamn Commie ass!"
The rig's plasma jet whines high, as it kicks in at full power, Fitzpatrick holding on tight to something, as the force of abrupt acceleration knocks the trogs to the deck.
Port 33
Charles County, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1346.84 AMT
Jemal "Poolstick" Bryant pushes the rig's plasma jet to the firewall, bulleting it out of its assigned landing spot, aiming it straight for the hydrogen tankage at the center of the port, bullets and beams bouncing off the bumperfield, as the rig plows through everything at 2.5 times the speed of sound.
With one hand on the driving controls, Bryant reaches under the dash with his free hand, jerking out fiber-optic cabling until he's sure he's disabled the rig's connection to the IW, even as alarms howl all throughout the cab, as the steering controls go slack in his hands...with the rig disconnected from the InterWeb, its computer and fly-by-wire controls are now permanently offline, with no way to steer it away from the hydrogen tanks.
Commonwealth finishes tasering the last of the Gnats, Marines and fag boys who'd been hassling them, the wrinkly snobo changing out of his clothes into the suit of Land Warrior armor that's the closest to fitting him.
"What about you?" he asks.
"I ain't going up with this damn thing, if that what you asking," Bryant, rising up out of the driver's seat, remarks, finding the monkey with armor closest to his size and changing clothes as quickly as he can.
The rig's about a good ten or twenty yards from the hydrogen tanks, when Bryant begins checking the M33 laser rifle's fiber-optic cable connection to his armor's backpack antimatter reactor, checking it again after that, wanting to make damn sure it works when he uses it.
Commonwealth's already checked his weapon out, slinging it over his right shoulder, gripping the handle and the trigger tight, as Bryant walks past him, towards the back.
"They's a hatch on the side of the rig," he tells him. "Jump out it first, and I'll catch you."
Along the banks of the Winnpegosis, 150 yards from Port 33
Charles County, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1347.01 AMT
A fireball rumbles up out of the forest, a wash of hot air knocking Michelle onto her hands and knees, as everything rattles and rumbles all round her.
She crawls up onto her feet, stumbling her way back into a run, buildings and WIG rigs becoming visible the closer she gets to where the fireball erupted, the rumbling of the explosion finally giving way to the growling of the HOUNDS drawing closer to her with every passing second, along with the screams of the Gnats behind them and the catcalls of those watching her online.
"The votes are in, Terranova," Rachelle English's voice says from one of the speakers,"and it's been decided. Michelle Sipe, you are to stop where you are and allow the National Policemen pursuing you to take you into custody."
"Not hardly," Michelle gasps, stumbling forward, Rachelle's voice telling her,"Terranova has voted, now, it's time for you to...."
"...accept responsibility for your actions!" Sergeant McGraw yells in her face, at the same time he grabs the eight-year old girl's hair, pulling her head back as far as it will go, backhanding her with his free hand.
"Ain't no damn body's fault but yours," the PTP performance instructor adds,"that you like living in filth like an effing, goddamn-"
"...pig!" a man's voice hollers from directly behind her, as Michelle's bare feet slap painfully against ferrocrete. "We done told you what we wanted, so, give it up, now!"
"Now!" the voice repeats, just before flexible steel cable wraps round her ankles, bringing her down at the same time the electric current coursing through her body causes her to jerk convulsively, as she starts crapping and peeing all over herself, her knees scraping against the ferrocrete as she's dragged towards the direction of the voice now screaming how it's all her fault.
Port 33
Charles County, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1848.12 Zulu
The monkey's having the Devil's own time staying in the air with the added weight of Fitzpatrick wrapped round his legs.
"You gots to lose some weight, Commonwealth," Bryant observes, between grunting gasps, as he maneuvers the pair of them away from the roaring inferno which was once a WIG rig and the hydrogen tankage for this particular port.
"I'll be sure to eat less carbs and trans fats," Fitzpatrick observes wryly. "That fast food's a killer, y'know."
At the same time, he looks round, trying to find...there it is, the port's InterWeb relay, its one-kilometer high tower crowned with garlands of satellite up/downlink dishes, including the blue ones at the apex which link up with Terranova's SATNAV.
Those are the ones he needs...the SATNAV satellites have their integral warpdrive transceivers, constantly transmitting astrographic information on Terranova and the other objects in the Achird A system(including the star itself).
All he has to do is slot this circuit board in his pocket into the hub's computers and piggyback their data into the SATNAV telemetry sig-
Bloody hell!
Bang goes that plan, he thinks dimly, scraping himself off the ferrocrete, the rumblings of the explosion which has knocked the hub's towers and sat dishes to the ground continuing to echo throughout the port.
The Haziri is cursing the entire time it takes for him to get back up onto his feet, another detonation coming from the hydrogen tankage swaying the two of them, but not knocking them down.
"What you gonna do now, Commonweal-" Bryant starts to ask, before he sees the same thing Fitizpatrick is now seeing.
A woman, in a muddy, ragged Moot House uniform, being dragged along the ferrocrete by the electrowhip wrapped round her ankles towards sixty-odd Yanker Gnats, the woman twitching, crapping and pissing herself, as the Gnats and all the bastards watching this online are hooping and hollering like the bloody trogs they all are.
And, all the world wonders why the hell we stayed behind, the soldier of his Commonwealth observes to himself, as he takes aim.
And, screams at the top of his lungs,"NO SURRENDER! COMMONWEALTH FOREVER!" before shooting off a string of antimatter grenades from the massdriver below the M33's beam emitter.
Port 33
Charles County, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1349.00 AMT
"Yeah, that right, Commonwealth, let 'em know we here," Bryant remarks grimly, taking aim with his own weapon, as .177-caliber antimatter grenades-each with a yield of 100 kg of old-style chemical explosives-detonate in the air above the Gnats and their Hostile Unit Neutralization Devices, knocking them over like pins in the bowling alley.
The Commie charges hell for leather towards them, snapping off 500-gigajoule laser pulses with one hand and 250-gigajoule laser pulses with the other, vaporizing most of them Gnats where they stand, before they even get it in their heads to return fire.
Guess I'd better lend a hand, Bryant thinks to himself, loosing a brace of antimatter grenades at a group of Marines charging into the fray, firing laser pulses into some fag boys trying to pile on Commonwealth from the other direction.
Without even looking at 'em, the Commie vapes a couple of Marines with the laser rifle, and frags three more SpecForces with the laser pistol, making it over to where the Moot House waitress was just now managing to make it onto her feet.
So much for the Old Man tellin' us to lay low, the retired Terranovan Republican Marine chief warrant officer and soldier for the Hajime Yatate thinks to himself, as he continues laying down suppression fire, Commonwealth screaming for the woman to "run like hell!"
Port 33
Charles County, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1350.66 AMT
He doesn't need to tell Michelle twice.
Her legs are still rubbery and tingling, but she manages to put one foot in front of the other quickly enough to consider it running.
The Commie soldier is right behind her, sizzling off laser pulses with pistol and rifle, the flying monkey Michelle is running towards firing off more laser pulses and antimatter grenades, as he shouts out,"so this yo' great plan, Commonwealth?!"
"I actually had more than that in mind," the Commie close behind her rejoins,"such as not getting ourselves killed."
"Yeah," the monkey comments,"that always a good idea."
"I gots a better one," he adds, as Michelle and the Commie join him. "C'mon."
The monkey then gets a running start and takes to the air, raining laser pulses and antimatter grenades down on the troops and Gnats below, the Commie shaking his head, remarking,"how the bloody hell are we supposed to keep up with him now?" at the same time he continues firing at the bastards the chimp didn't get.
"This way!" the Haziri shouts down from below, banking one-winged towards the right and back. "C'mon!"
"C'mon," the Commie soldier replies, Michelle staying well behind him as he blazes a trail ahead of them with the laser weapons in his hand, the two of them following the monkey as he glides towards a group of hoppers parked about a hundred yards or so ahead of them.
It may as well be over in the next county, Marines taking up firing positions ahead and above them, the Commie soldier's grav shielding turning red, orange, yellow and green as a hailstorm of laser pulses strike it.
"Now, what makes him think," the Commie remarks, grimly returning their fire," they're just going to up and let him make off with one of their bloody machines?"
"Come on," he adds, pushing forward anyway, Michelle right behind him.
TSID Regional Internal Surveillance Center
Flynt County Law Enforcement Center
211 Spruce Street, Ford's Valley, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1400.06 AMT
"An unintended consequence," Admiral Omar Baraka growls, watching the stolen Marine AV-424 Rickenbacker hopper hover over the burning WIG rig port and blast its way free,"which may be of use to us."
"Inform the units detailled to intercepting that hopper," he decides,"that they're to make it look good, but otherwise allow that hopper to reach its intended nest unmolested."
"Then," he adds," comm the CMO's office, request he convene an immediate session of the Union Security Council, so we can plan on exploiting the advantage which has landed in our laps."
And rid the Union of the Commie soldiers who had been running round loose on planet since that spoiled-ass brat of Ken Sipe's evacuated their embassy almost twenty years ago once and for all, the Director of Union Security thinks to himself, the National Policeman he's given his orders to "yes, sir"ing him before turning on his heel to leave.
Baraka focusses his attention on the holo of the tank, at the piece of stinking blonde poot all huddled up in the corner, the one eye she can still see out of all bloodshot and wide-open like a jocritter caught in the KC lights.
Pate's reassignment should be about done, the Director of Union Security muses, listening to everyone online telling that skank,"show us some titties, bay-bay!"
Administrative Segregation Cell, Flynt County Law Enforcement Center
211 Spruce Street, Ford's Valley, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1402.25 AMT
"That right, pootie-poo," the voices say over the speaker, as Sunni sits up a little bit, "show us them milk jugs."
"Squeeze that Charmin!" they then scream, as all Sunni can do is whimper, shiver and wince in the pain throbbing throughout her body.
"Squeeze 'em, bitch!" the voices tell her, the cell door buzzing open.
"You heard 'em, wife-girlie," Michelle says, as she steps into the small cell, her orange jumpsuit unzipped almost all the way down, nothing on underneath.
"All you ever been any effing good for," she adds, as she walks over to where Sunni's huddled up.
"Michelle?" Sunni manages to croak out, Michelle adding the words Sunni has always dreaded...and has always known she'd heard from her:
"Even to me."
Michelle laughs out loud.
"Oh, I forgot," she says, carelessly tossing her hair about,"you thought I loved you."
"All poot," she remarks, grabbing Sunni's chin with her left hand, briefly caressing it,"and no effing brain, that's you all over, baby."
That hand then grabs her hair, Michelle bawling out,"c'mere you!" at the same time she shrugs out of her jumpsuit, the strap-on round her waist choking Sunni, as it's forced down her throat to the feverish applause of those online.
At the same time they all scream for Michelle to show Sunni what her kind were really all about.
-endit-
A Common Virtue
Over the Atlantis Ocean
2175 miles from the continent of Great Britain, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1725.68 American Time
Jemal Bryant curses, as he just barely manages to jink the borrowed AV-424 Rickenbacker hopper away from a quartet of five-terajoule laser pulses from another pair of Terranovan Republican Marine hoppers.
"How much longer," the Commie Legionnaire he got himself mixed up with asks.
"Another three hours," Bryant answers, a laser pulse striking the failing grav shielding squarely.
"Assuming," he adds,"we don't get our asses shot down 'tween now and then."
The third person squeezed tight into the one-person VTOL craft isn't saying anything; she hasn't said too much in the three hours since they'd blasted their way out of Port 33 and away from the continent of Basseterre.
Probably trying to get a handle on things, he thinks to himself, lidar picking up two dozen Predator warpfighters moving towards them from the west coast of Great Britain. She's had one hell of a day, all in all.
And, it ain't quite over yet, he adds mentally, as the holo of one of the warpfighter pilots appears directly in front of him.
"Unidentified aircraft," the pilot warns him,"you are entering restricted airspace! You will turn back now, or you will be shot down!"
Laser pulses sizzle past the hopper from the direction of the approaching warpfighters.
"Sometimes," Commonwealth comments wryly,"words just aren't enough."
"Why," the woman asks,"is this restricted airspace. No one's lived on Great Britain since the First World War, when the surviving Britons were transported to the penal colony on Croatoan."
"Or Earth, as we like to call it," Commonwealth, sounding like he'd just swallowed a bug or something, replies.
"That's," the woman comments,"what Wikipedia says."
Commonwealth makes a rude noise when she mentions Wiki.
"Commonwealth," Bryant remarks,"if Wiki say two and two make six, then that's we both had to put down for that question on the math portion of the SATs, otherwise...."
"Is the law of gravity still on the books here," Commonwealth quips,"or does Wikipedia say we're all held on the surface of Terranova with glue?"
"Elmer's Glue," Bryant jokes in reply, at the same time he jinks the hopper in every direction at once, ignoring the repeated warning he was entering restricted airspace,"got to get that advertising in there some kinda way."
Over the Atlantis Ocean
3500 kilometers from the continent of Great Britain, Terranova
9/15/2101, 2229.08 Zulu
Captain Eamon Fitzpatrick laughs at the type of joke cracked by soldiers for millenia when facing almost certain death.
Just before he feels his liver, spleen and stomach all drop down into his feet, as the Haziri male at the controls of this flying sardine can drops the bloody thing almost all the way into the ocean.
"A little warning," he remarks,"would've been nice."
"Never damn satisfied," Bryant comments, the stolen Yanker Marine hopper sluicing the waters of the Atlantis at well over 1,500 klicks per hour.
The veteran Commonwealth Forces Legionnaire checks on their passenger, huddled up against the entry hatch, knees to her chin, dirty and tattered like the clothes on her back, eyes wide in shock behind her glasses, Fitzpatrick himself holding on to the edge of the pilot's seat, trying to make himself as small as possible as he stands wedged between the seat, the starboard bulkhead and the low ceiling.
He hears a hissing sound, like boiling water spattering on a hot stove.
Which is only appropriate, as a loud clunk! immediately follows the hissing, Fitizpatrick cursing as his gut meets the back of the seat.
"Tell me that was the expected operation of the craft," he comments.
"If you asking was that supposed to happen," Bryant, visibly fighting the hopper, amidst a hellish cacaphony of buzzing alarms, manages to reply,"the answer's no."
"We've lost one of the engines," he then adds,"and the other one ain't doing so good...even if the other engine was in good shape, hoppers ain't like other aerodynes, they depend on the jets theyselfs, rather than jets and vectrals, for lift and hover, and they can't do either one too well with only one working jet."
"Hope y'all can swim," he is quick to tell them both.
"...c'mon, baby," Mama, gently shaking her, whispers,"get dressed, hurry, before he wakes up."
"Get dressed?" Jami, still half-asleep, asks. "What for?"
"We're getting the hell offworld," Mama tells her."I talked to a man 'bout it today, and-"
"No," Jami objects. "No. Mama, if Daddy finds out , he'll-"
"Baby," Mama whispers, taking the thirteen-year old girl lightly by her shoulders, looking her in the eye,"I know what they'll do to us if they find out...but, I-i also know what they'll do to you, your sister...and, to Sunni...if I don't at least try to get you all away from them."
"Now, hurry up," she adds, Jami getting out of bed, finding her clothes by touch on the floor, putting them on as quietly as she could in the....
...gloom, men screaming for more, for Michelle to show Sunni what zeds like them are all about, as her sister-in-law grabs hold of her friend's hair-like someone grabbing hold of the reins of a Bergeron-slapping Sunni's ass so hard it echoes off the walls, just before-
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 819, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/16/2101, 0026.41 Zulu
...Commander Jamilinne Sipe sits bolt upright in Stevie's bed, screaming Sunni's name at the top of her lungs.
Instantly cursing herself, as she realizes she's here, that Stevie's right here, holding her tight in her arms, rocking her like a baby, whispering over and over that everything's okay now.
"Why are you apologizing?" her wife softly asks her, even as Jami thinks the words I'm sorry, baby.
"'Cause, I'm with you now," Jami whispers, through tears running hot down her cheeks, Stevie gently stroking her hair, whispering,"I know you love me. It's not about that, 'kay?"
"I should've at least taken her with," Jami says, a regret ten years and more in the making,"when I was there for Aunt Mel's funeral."
"She was offworld at the time, if I recall," Stevie reminds her. "Nasty Hank."
"Yeah," Jami says, sighing. "Still-"
The workstation terminal bleeps for their attention.
"I'll take it," the captain of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken says, reluctantly disentangling herself from Stevie's arms, getting out of bed and stroking a key on the terminal's holodisplay.
"Commander," the holo of her flight engineer, Chief Warrant Officer Ariel Dixon, says,"I have an Alfa-priority comm direct from Fort Gibson-"
"Son of a bitch," Jami whispers...it's never good news to get an Alfa-priority comm, much less one straight from the capital of the Commonwealth itself.
"-codemarked commander's eyes only," Ariel continues,"using Presidential E3 protocol."
"Pipe it through to the First Lieutenant's terminal, Chief," Jami says.
" Mastercomp," she then adds, placing her right palm on the palmprint now appearing on the holospace,"decrypt, decipher and decode incoming Alfa-priority communication; authorization is Sipe, Jamilinne Marie, Commander, Commonwealth Forces, commanding CC214 Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken, authorization passphrase Sinless and pure, the Dark Lady comes."
"Identity verified," Unbroken's mastercomp tells her,"authorization validated, initiating decrypt, decipher and decode."
The holo of the Commonwealth's President-Stevie's aunt-Angelique Gault, appears over the terminal's holospace.
"Jami, sorry to disturb you," she says, frustration and fatigue marking her face in equal measure,"but-"
"What's wrong, Angelique?" the captain of the Unbroken asks.
"A great deal," Angelique replies with heavy sigh,"but, this, in particular, concerns my missing children."
Jami tenses up...missing children is the codephrase for the Commonwealth Forces personnel attached to the former embassy to the Rude Union....
"...not a bloody conversation, Commander," Captain Fitzpatrick's holo snaps, as Jami's bridge falls down around her ears, and Unbroken's main lasers tear through an enemy battle cruiser at point-blank range.
"Your Legionnaires are on their way up with the Ambassador, the civilian staff," Fitzpatrick adds, as Smashmouths vaporize a goodly portion of the Yankers' Home Fleet,"and our families; they should be aboard Unbroken in about a minute thirty."
"Once you get them aboard," he says,"no heroics, just get them home."
"That's...."
...an order.
An order she regrets following to this day.
"My oldest boy," Angelique explains,"has gotten himself into trouble, the sort of trouble what's got the neighbors setting their dogs on him, his friend and the girl they got in trouble with."
"Nothing unusual," Jami remarks.
"You wouldn't think so," Angelique replies,"except that in running away from the neighbors' dogs, he's gotten himself even more lost in the wilderness, somewhere between the lowlands and the white cliffs, but not before he called for a special delivery."
Jami nods her head, even though the privacy circuits prevent Angelique from seeing her.
"How soon?" she asks out loud.
"As soon as I discomm," the President of the Commonwealth replies,"which is-"
"General quarters," Jami shouts into the 1-MC, at the same time she scrambles to get into her clothes," general quarters, all hands man your battle stations, set condition one throughout the ship! "
"C'mon, Stevie," she snaps out, as she finishes getting dressed amidst the clanging of alarm klaxons,"we've got work to do."
In the Atlantis Ocean
199 miles from the continent of Great Britain, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1934.62 AMT
They seem to be going nowhere, no matter how hard Michelle Thorn Sipe paddles her side of the smallish Kevlar/Spectra life raft.
She keeps at it anyway, as it keeps her from thinking.
The Haziri is in the air thirty feet above them, gunmetal grey clouds almost rubbing up against him, as he glides through the increasingly turbulent air.
"Hurricane," the Commie on the opposite side of her says, as he keeps rowing on his side of the raft,"looks like a Cat 7, maybe even an eight."
"We're right in the eye of it," he adds, not even gasping for breath like Michelle is now.
The gunmetal-grey clouds are all around them, forks of lightning striking the water everywhere except their raft, the thunder coming in staccato rumbles moments later.
And the water she's trying to paddle through is still calm, with the suns high in the bluish-violet sky overhead.
"Not too many hurricanes on Diablo," she remarks.
"None on Mars either," the Commie says,"not even after the terraforming took hold. Earth, on the other hand, has its share of hurricane weather, mainly during this time of year, though not nearly as bad as it was before Petro terraformed the planet."
"It's the Gulf Stream what feeds 'em," he adds, after a few moments of rowing and silence. "The interface between warm and cold water brews those storms up one after the other during hurricane season; there used to be some real monsters, back when global warming pushed the Gulf Stream closer to America and further away from Europe, Category 6 and up, what would blot out half the Atlantic or all of the Gulf of Mexico, before they hit, causing devastation for thousands of miles inland that you only saw standing at ground zero of an antimatter detonation."
"Jesus," Michelle whispers.
"From what I read in school," he adds,"the very worst storm was a Category 10, Hurricane Kimberly, back in '36-just before the fall of Cosmograd-drowned the former East Coast, wiping out everything along there from Miami to Boston, made the ones what almost destroyed New Orleans look like a light breeze."
"You sound like one of those guys who does the YouTube weather 'casts," Michelle says. "You know, the ones who are right in the middle of the hurricanes blasting the South Co-"
She stops, realizing he probably doesn't watch YouTube.
"Yes," the Commie says, after interval of silent rowing,"I watch BoobTube sometimes. I even watched it before I left for this boghole planet almost twenty years ago."
"You mean YouTube's-" she starts to ask.
"Yes," the Commie replies with a chuckle,"even in Commonwealth space, you can watch bloody YouTube, especially if you're in the mood for low comedy or being depressed beyond words."
Michelle's turn to laugh.
"What kind of programs do you have back home?" she asks.
"Whatever people feel like uploading onto the IW," the Commie tells her. "Everything from blogs to animé to full-blown Shakespeare, if you're into that sort of thing."
"I don't even know who Shakespeare is," Michelle replies.
"You and most people," the Commie replies between grunts."His plays and sonnets were amongst the things torched by WARCOM during the twenty-teens, 'tweens and early thirties...the First Colonists preserved what they could of his works, but, as with everything else of our past, that took a back seat to fighting RJ Williams and his lot for their lives."
"Oh," he adds, chuckling again,"I forgot, Wikipedia teaches that RJ Williams was the promised Messiah who delivered Terranova from the zeds and their WARCOM three hundred year-"
"Oh, bugger," he then says, a high-pitched whine tearing through the sky.
In the Atlantis Ocean
320 kilometers from the continent of Great Britain, Terranova
9/16/2101, 0040.27 Zulu
"Bugger," Fitzpatrick repeats, Bryant, flying up top, shouting out, "goddamnit, we got warpfighters coming through the effin' eyewall!"
"What I was afraid of," he adds, shouldering his borrowed M33 500-gigajoule laser rifle, tracking the sky, wishing he had his autolaser, the Haziri above him circling to face a quartet of F18D Predator warpfighters clearing the eyewall to the east, two of the four machines swooping down on the hopper's emergency life raft, five-hundred gigajoule laser pulses already sizzling the water all round it, the remaining two vectoring laser pulses at Bryant, even as the monkey dances round them, riding the winds at the same time he's aiming his own weapon at the nearer of his two antagonists.
Fitzpatrick waiting until the crosshairs floating over his weapon's holospace turn green and the lock tone shrills in his ears, before squeezing off a pulse of coherent light which catches one of the Preads dead center, splitting the unshielded warpfighter in half, the ensuing roar of light momentarily blinding him in spite of the auto-polarization of his Land Warrior armor's faceplate.
The remaining Pread levels off, trying to stay aloft with only one wing, the ragged stump of the other bleeding antimatter, the sky raining parts and pieces of the two ships who had gone for Bryant.
"I'll clean up for you," Bryant says over Fitzpatrick's CyberLink, a second before the crippled enemy warpfighter joins the other three in pieces at the bottom of the Atlantis.
"Not bad," the veteran Commonwealth soldier comments.
"Not bad, hell," Bryant replies, as he resumes his glide towards the eyewall. "That was some dam' good-"
"Oh hail," he comments, Fitzpatrick hearing the low whine of plasma jets in the direction the warpfighters had come.
"A dropship or a VTOL plane," he remarks. "A WIG craft wouldn't have a chance in hell of making it through the eyewall."
"It's an SC-130," Bryant replies."Believe me, I been in the Marines long enough to know that sound."
"Crap," Fitzpatrick remarks...dropships, unlike warpfighters, are shielded, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the Haziri and the Human to hurt it with their laser rifles.
Definitely wish I had my autolaser, Fitzpatrick thinks to himself, taking aim anyway, as the Yanker dropship clears the eyewall.
Over the Atlantis Ocean
199 miles from the continent of Great Britain, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1945.01 AMT
"Yeah!" Captain Ansen Jacoby cries out, pumping his fists, as he watches the sexual predator Michelle Sipe garrote her little blonde piece of poot at the same time she's riding her like the frickin' beasts of burden they both are.
Every emeffing one of the peeps watching this online is egging her on, as the holo of the SC-130's pilot appears in front of Jacoby's right eye, letting him know he had a "minute thirty to drop, Captain."
"Thank you, Chief," Jacoby replies curtly, meticulously checking his M33, before a hand goes to caress the pommel of his chainblade and the handle of the electrowhip he's been issued for just this assignment...this is the reason he wanted to be a Marine in the first place, so he could put the boots to the enemies of his Union, not waste his time standing guard over the ass end of frickin' nowhere with nothing to do but watch YouTube and hunt jocritter.
'Cause-despite what Wiki's got to say on the subject-the only thing on Great Britain and its barrier islands is woods and more woods, and nothing lives there 'cept jocritters and a few other creatures no one's ever even heard of.
And, of course, the Marines and the Spacefleet pukes who are doomed never to leave the bases on the continent's west coast, cut off from the rest of Terranovan society, not even allowed to visit families and friends on the outside.
Even though....
Jacoby feels it, as the dropship shakes from a couple of hits, the Marine captain gripping his weapon tighter...there's always the rumors of others living deep in the woods of Great Britain, malcontents, hermits, mentals, Commie soldiers who deny 9YW's over and they'd lost, but he's never seen anyone else what wasn't wearing a Union uniform in the eighteen months he's been frickin' exiled here.
He'd almost forgotten there were other people, 'til his company got the call a couple hours ago to capture a zed and two others who'd intruded into the restricted zone...he can do what he wants with the others, but his superiors want the zed taken alive, though not necessarily-
The bell rings throughout the troop bay, Jacoby getting up, bawling out,"all right, bitches, let's saddle up!" as he climbs into one of the Scorpio jet boats suspended by a net of steel cabling over the now-opened troop bay doors.
Jacoby waits for all the j-boats assigned to his SpecOpsRed company to be fully manned, before barking out"drop!" over his Link, the netting dropping to one side, as the Scorpios fall thirty feet towards the water below, their plasma jets firing to arrest their descent.
Two of the sixteen boats exploding before they touch water, as five-hundred gigajoule laser pulses touch them, the remaining fourteen hosing the ocean below them with missiles and laser pulses, Jacoby himself hollering for the Marines manning the Scorpio's twin dual autolasers to open fire, at the same time the rest of his company line the decks to add the firerpower of their laser rifles, autolasers and missile launchers to the mix.
Three more Scorpios go up, as a brace of antimatter grenades detonate in the middle of them, Jacoby shouting over his Link,"Chief, where the hell's my fire support?!"
"Funny you should ask that, Cap'n," an unfamiliar Haziri voice replies, before a flash of white-hot light makes that the last thing Jacoby hears.
Over the Atlantis Ocean
199 miles from the continent of Great Britain, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1945.01 AMT
"Let's try this again," Bryant, now alone on the dropship's bridge, says, triggering another pair of pulses from the two five-terajoule lasers in the chin turret, raining Cobra missiles down on the remaining Scorpios continuing their 30-30 descent towards the life raft of the hopper they'd borrowed to escape from Basseterre.
He'd be damned, if Commonwealth wasn't still alive down there, throwing laser pulses and antimatter grenades back up at the descending Scorpios, taking out the couple Bryant didn't get, the retired Marine chief warrant officer then positioning the SC-130 over the raft, lowering the dropship until it completely swallows up the boat.
"That is you, I hope?" Commonwealth asks over Bryant's Link.
"If it ain't, then we both in trouble, aren't we?" Bryant replies."Get y'all's asses on board this bird, so we can get the Hell up outta here."
Commonwealth Forces Base Goose Green, West Cumberland Island
160 kilometers from the coast of Great Britain, Terranova
9/15/2101, 0054.11 Zulu
"Hurricane's heading straight for us, ma'am," Lidarman 3C Marilou Fenster reports over Commander Fiachna Fitzpatrick's Link. "Strength remains at Category 7, leading winds in excess of 257 kilometers per hour; estimated time of arrival now forty-five minutes."
"Radioman," the head of the former embassy's Commonwealth Intelligence mission orders,"alert the homesteaders and the hajjies at Stanley to get to higher ground, if they haven't already done so. Then, tell our people to finish securing everything and head for the shelters."
"Not a whole lot," she adds, sighing, thinking about her long-overdue twin brother,"they can do now."
Commander Danielle Tarpley, commanding the former embassy's Legionnaires, enters the CP.
"Any word?" she asks, as she stands beside her wife.
"None since he called Fort Gibson, asking for a special delivery," Fiachna replies, shaking her head.
"They're right in the middle of the bloody storm," she adds, her fists balling up at her sides.
"So are the Yankers sent out from the coastal bases to try and capture them," Dani reminds her.
"I know," Fiachna says, swallowing...she's lived with the possibility of this day for the last nineteen years, and, still....
"He'll be all right, Fi," Danielle says, taking a hand in one of the gauntlets of her Legionnaire armor. "He's been through worse...hell, we all have...a few trogs-"
"And one of the worst blows in the history of this boghole planet," Fiachna interjects.
She sighs, giving Dani's hand a gentle squeeze.
"I know you're trying to help, and I love you dearly for it, but...." she says, trailing off.
"I know, baby," Dani whispers.
"Commander," Chief Radioman Roannon Clan Orokoz reports,"Stanley reports everyone evacuated to the emergency shelters atop Mount Thatcher; Lieutenant Commander O'Meara reports all personnel save the dropship crew and the command post staff have been evacuated to the shelters. All buildings have been either boarded up or taken down."
"Leftenant Commander," Fiachna says over her Link,"why are the dropship crew not in the shelters?"
"I assumed you wanted them-" the holo of the Legionnaires' First Lieutenant replies.
"Tell them to get to the shelters," Fiachna, fighting the urge to launch the dropship for only the umpteenth time in the past couple of hours,"now, and that's final."
"You too, Brian," she adds, her tone brooking no nonsense.
"Ma'am," the short, plug-ugly Human male replies reluctantly.
"And," Fiachna says, after another swallow,"secure the dropship. Command out."
She discomms before Brian can offer an objection, turning to the Intelligence personnel manning the command post, telling them to "secure your stations, and head for the shelters; close down the power generators before you go, the last thing we need is for the bloody trogs to home in on our electromagnetic emissions while we're cowering in the bleedin' shelters."
Her people acknowledge her orders, the CP instantly going dark and dead, as Fiachna detaches herself from Dani's hand and begins the task of dismantling stations and removing the computers comprising the base's intranet...whatever happened, the hurricane howling its way towards the Cumberland Islands could not be allowed to undo the work they'd set out to do when they'd volunteered to stay behind almost two decades ago.
Especially not now, when the Yankers were getting ready to pick things up where they'd left them at bloody Tau Ceti...if her Commonwealth were going to end up in another fight with them, they needed all the help they could get.
Besides, her twin brother's voice whispers in her head, if we'd stayed behind and finished the bloody mission fifty years ago, this situation wouldn't even exist, and we'd both be enjoying a long, healthy retirement back in New London.
Fiachna smiles, as one of the former embassy's maintenance bots joins her in carting off the computers, Dani helping another bot carry away the workstations.
Long, healthy retirements are bloody overrated anyway, she thinks to herself, as she finishes disconnecting the last of the computers, puts it on top of another comp and carries them both out of the base's command post.
Please, God, she thinks, let that bull-headed brother of mine be all right.
Over the Atlantis Ocean
139 miles from the continent of Great Britain, Terranova
9/15/2101, 2000.00 AMT
"Woooo-hooo Jesus!" the chimp whoops, as a bright fork of lightning as wide as Michelle slashes across the black sky directly in front of the dropship's nose.
"That," the Commie, face as pale as Michelle's, remarks, as he sits at the navigator's station next to the Haziri,"is one way of putting it."
"What another way is, Commonwealth?" the monkeyboy asks, as something goes ping!ping!ping!ping! on the outside of the ship. "'Hoo-pee, we all gonna die?!'"
"I prefer not dying just yet, Chief," the Commie replies, as he studies the holo directly in front of him, as Michelle, seated in one of the other two seats at the back of the tiny bridge, can only watch, as the borrowed dropship punches its way through the hurricane.
"Assumin' that even an option at this point," the Haziri tells him point-blank." No matter where we land, assumin', again, that the Yankers don't capture us, we only gonna delay the inevitable meeting with Mother Nature at her worst."
"We just have to get above the storm," the Commie replies,"and fly 'til we're about fifteen hundred klicks inland, then wait out the storm."
"And," the chimp asks,"where your peeps at, Commonwealth?"
"On one of the Cumberland Islands," the Commie answers.
"Oh, really?" the chimp remarks. "Well, my people's set up camp on the other one of the Cumberlands, from what I heard."
"Either way," he adds,"they gonna be a long way off, seein' how we gonna have to walk the rest of the way inland."
"Walk?" the Commie asks.
"This bird's only got enough hydro to get us to the coast," the chimp tells him,"and maybe ten or fifteen miles further, and that's draining the tanks completely dry, and flying through the storm; landin' won't be too soft, when we do set down, neither."
"On the other hand," he adds,"we have just enough fuel to get above this storm, and reach the Cumberlands before the hurricane does, with a little left over to land."
"Your call," he says.
"You're flying," the Commie says, after further study of the holo in front of him. "Do what you have to."
Michelle feels the dropship rising like an elevator through the clouds, as the Haziri gradually pulls back on the stick in his left hand, Michelle finding herself thinking about that day, 22 years ago.
The very last time she'd ever wanted to fly....
"...I am sorry, Captain Sipe, but the mathematical models simply do not lie," Mister Hobbes, says to the five-year old girl and her parents. "Based on her entry-level Scholastic Aptitude Test, your daughter has been classified as being at-risk, someone who will grow up to be a drain on our society and a disruptive influence to our democratic, God-fearing way of life. She will require massive amounts of government aid to even survive, since she is...."
"...incapble of even the most basic intellectual pursuit!" Master Sergeant Ermey, her performance instructor, screams in her face, before tossing the astronomy reader into the incinerator," Mathematical models compiled by our Union's best social engineers simply do not lie, y'useless goddamn maggot, children like you simply cannot, should not, are not...."
"...one goddamn frickin' thing but stinkin'-ass poot!" Miss Helga screams, as She continues dunking her head in the toilet with one hand, Her other hand shoving the plunger as far up in her as She can, voices screaming over the speakers for Miss Helga to....
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
New Seattle Aerospace Corridor, 108,045 kilometers from Big Sky
9/16/2101, 0100.82 Zulu
...Jami desperately tries to keep her breathing under control, staring dead at the piloting and nav stations, as the 1,262-ton Dauntless-class cruiser rockets through the New Seattle corridor, the two other machines assigned to her triang on either wing, all 36 Mark IIB Raptor warpfighters assigned to Warp Fighter Squadrons 214, 464 and 959 forming a V in front of them, Stevie and the ship's navigator, Sub-Lieutenant Genera Muncie, working with the triang's other pilots and navigators to plot the warpdrive course to Terranova, through its System-Wide Mine Field, and right inside the planet's atmosphere itself.
"Commander," Radioman First Class Alannah Munro reports,"latest update from Intel has a Category 7 hurricane headed straight for the continent of Great Britain and its barrier islands; it'll-"
"Show me, Radioman," Jami snaps, a lidar picture instantly appearing on her right-hand command holodisplay, the captain of the Unbroken reflexively whispering Jesus' name when she saw just how frickin' huge the storm was, the son of a bitch a whirling dervish of reds and blacks, with a rapidly-shrinking area of light blue in the center, a number in the upper-right corner rolling rapidly upward, while two numbers exactly below it were rolling just as rapidly in the opposite direction.
If the Yankers don't get them.... she starts to think, not letting herself complete the thought.
"Radioman," she barks out,"tell New Seattle Control we need to go, now; warn the others. Nav, initiate emergency warpdrive entry."
"New Seattle's given us immediate clearance for warpdrive-" Alannah starts to say, just as the warp engine's drivefield generator whines and howls, and Unbroken enters warpdrive.
"Normspace emergence,"Genera reports, once the stars and planets start stretching like red- and blue-shifted taffy,"in thirty hours."
Nearly twenty seconds subjective, the captain of the Unbroken thinks to herself, as she automatically does the math.
-endit-
Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor
Governor's Mansion
155 West Paces Ferry Road, New Whitehorse, Terranova
9/16/2101, 2108.98 American Time
His gaze narrows and hardens, as he watches the giant HV projector in his living room, the image of Michelle Sipe's little blond piece of poot hanging from the ceiling of the cell, head stuffed in a plastic bag, the words "EASY ACCESS" scrawled on her body in black magic marker along with arrows pointing to the only damn thing any of them were ever really any good for.
Not even for that, Guy Thomas Zellner, Governor of the Union, thinks to himself, the voices of everyone watching this online echoing his sentiments-and those of the beautiful young man seated next to him on the sofa-that this was just so disgusting, so typical of those effing, goddamn zeds.
"Terranova has voted," another one of 'em chirps, as she crosses and uncrosses long, stockinged legs, showing her online audience flashes of her nasty, stinking poot,"and the life of a violent sexual predator comes to an end at the hands of one of her own kind, through an act so deviant, so perverse, so violentlly at odds with normal, civilized behavior, that only one of them can derive pleasure from subjecting another to it...and from making another subject her to it."
As the BoobTube pootie turns to some quack for the obligatory psychoanalytical bullshit, the Governor of the Union points a mouse towards the HV's holospace, a lidar picture of the hurricane now almost on top of the continent of Great Britain and its barrier islands appearing in a window floating on top and in front of the other holo.
"No chance of anyone surviving that," young Jacob Sipe speaks up.
"I wouldn't think there was," the Governor of the Union replies, still looking at the HV.
"They may have escaped the Marines," Jacob then says,"but no sinner ever escapes God...they shoulda realized that three hundred years ago, when He drowned the zeds at Midnight Bay for their persecution of the righteous."
"That's right," his Governor tells him; young Jacob's belief in that lie, untempered by the truth, will do for now.
Later, of course, once he'd proven himself worthy, Zellner would initiate him just as he'd initiated his uncle.
"None of them," the inheritor of RJ Williams' legacy says slowly,"can ever escape."
Commonwealth Forces Base Goose Green, West Cumberland Island
100 miles from the coast of Great Britain, Terranova
9/15/2101, 2111.01 AMT
"Hold on, ride's 'bout to get rough," Jemal Bryant shouts to the other two, at the same time he fights the SC-130 Gorgon dropship as it drops like a brick from the sky towards what Commonwealth told him was the landing pad for his people's dropship.
'Cept it ain't there, and all of the buildings are already collapsed, even though they just barely beat the hurricane here.
"Seems," Commonwealth remarks, as he holds onto the arms of the nav station,"you gravely underestimated the amount of hydro this bird had left."
"Naw," Bryant snaps, nearly all of his attention focussed on landing and not crashing, something the 100-mile-an-hour leading edge winds are not helping. "Neither one of us reckoned on it gaining height and strength, while we were trying to fly out of it."
There's a shriek running through the spaceframe that Bryant does not want to hear.
"Was that-" Commonwealth starts to ask, Bryant replying,"yeah, it was."
"Put yo' heads between yo' legs," he adds,"and pull the magic handles, y'all."
Commonwealth Forces Base Goose Green, West Cumberland Island
160 kilometers from the coast of Great Britain, Terranova
9/16/2101, 0111.65 Zulu
The shock of ejection compresses his spine and tunnels his vision, as Captain Eamon Fitzpatrick's seat shoots upward from the rapidly-plummeting Yanker dropship, that shock followed, thankfully enough, by the shock of his parawing deploying, as the leading edge of the hurricane swings him around like one of the bits of prefab shelter flying at the veteran Commonwealth Forces Legionnaire's face.
It's up to at least a Category 9 now, he has time to think, as his parawing starts to shred under the force of the hurricane, winds up to 402 kilometers per hour, don't even know if the shelters can withstand that kind of punishment.
The winds continue blowing him away from the makeshift Commowealth base-his home for last almost two decades-towards Mount Piven, the highest point on West Cumberland Island, about 370 meters of forests and craggy rocks, as they tear at his parawing...the shelters are built into caves on the slopes of the mountain, about halfway down from the peak, closed off with massive boulders rolled into place by bots, which isn't the most sophisticated or secure method, but it isn't as if the former Commonwealth embassy's military detachment has a great deal of resources at their disposal, even with the occasional supply drops from Mars Command.
The parawing starts losing lift, as what little silk the winds haven't ripped to shreds is being weighed down by the torrential rain...he doesn't even know where Bryant and the woman are, he didn't think about them 'til-
Crap!
He barely remembers to roll onto his knees, before hitting the ground, the grav shielding in his borrowed suit of LandWarrior armor switching on to absorb the force of the blow, the former Commonwealth military attaché freeing himself of the now-useless parawing and its harness, cursing the entire time it takes for him to scramble to his feet.
One of the curious rabbit/kangaroo-like mammals native to nearly every reach of this boghole planet eyes him curiously, as it crouches on its haunches, ready to run like hell in case this particular Human should turn out to be gunning for its glossy reddish-brown hide.
After a few curious sniffs, the creature-which the trogs have taken to naming jocritters, after the chap what shot the first one for a trophy on his wall-takes a tremendous bound forward and away from Fitzpatrick, now trying to consult the Land Warrior's inertial navigation system for some sort of bearing, as he hobbles painfully in the direction opposite the one the jocritter had taken.
"Hey," Bryant's voice shouts in his bloody ear,"Commonwealth?! Commonwealth, you there?"
"Whereever here is, yeah," Fitzpatrick, wincing as the effort to talk sends sharp pains shooting through his chest, replies, as he keeps limping ahead.
"Yeah," the Haziri's holo adds, as it floats in front of him,"I know where you at, you've just come into range of my suit's interrogator, and yo' squawker's just barely transmitting."
"Which is understandable," Fitzpatrick replies, through another wince of pain,"considering my interrogator's smashed, along with the rest of my suit and a great deal of my body. Is she with you?"
"Yeah," Bryant tells him,"she's with me; we're in a cave about 150 feet-fifty meters-'head of you, just keep walking."
"Might as well be fifty klicks," Fitzpatrick grouses, as the wind whistles and gets stronger, a loud crack! beside him immediately followed by a large tree flying down the mountain past him, a large rock crazing the faceplate of his LandWarrior armor, another bouncing off his helmet with a hollow sounding thock! while still another strikes his right shoulder with an impact that would definitely leave a bruise in the morning.
The landing must've knocked out the grav shielding, he observes, as he continues struggling up the mountain against the wind and wind-blown debris.
He sees the goose-egg sized rock just as it smashes in his faceplate and turns out all the lights.
Spinks House
387 Sullivan Drive, Owensboro, Terranova
09/15/2101, 2116.56 AMT
"-breaking news in the Miley Spiers sex scandal," the YouTube reporter says from inside the living room, Vice Admiral James Bentley Spinks not paying it much mind, instead watching the National Police cruiser move slowly down Sullivan Drive, headed towards the cul-de-sac, passing the War Pig wheeled APC in the Pates' driveway, more National Policemen and TSID agents ransacking the place, same as they'd done to Garry's across the street.
The cruiser turns on its lights, bleating its siren for just a second or two, as it turns down Spinks' driveway...curfew was a little over five hours ago, everyone's supposed to either be in their houses or at work after 1600.
One of the many new regulations what went into effect following the ruckus at Port 13 earlier today, instead of at midnight tonight, like Zellner had originally planned.
The cruiser stops halfway to the house, the two Gnats getting up and out of the car, both of them putting their hands on their gunbutts as they walk towards Spinks, the four and a half-decade veteran Spacefleet flag officer staying seated-his aching knees making any other option impossible-sipping a cup of strong, hot, black gang coffee.
"What can I do for you, gentlemen?" he asks, as the two National Policemen get within earshot, the more senior of the two-a master sergeant-recognizing Spinks, as he motions for his partner to stay put and continues walking towards the front porch.
He waits until he's on the front step to say,"sorry to bother you, Admiral. We were just checking vehicles for heat signatures when we saw someone sitting on the front porch. If we'd known it was you, sir, we wouldn't have even bothered."
"No bother at all, Master Sergeant," Spinks replies,"you're only doing your job."
"Glad you understand, sir," the Gnat tells him.
"How long are they gonna be at the Pates?" Spinks then asks.
"No tellin', Admiral," the master sergeant says. "BoobTube's gotta finish setting up the scenes, and the TSID's still canvassing the house, to see if there's anything linking any of 'em to the hajjies, or if there's anything else we can use."
"Sorry shame 'bout Randy, tho," Spinks says with a semblance of sincerity.
"Who?" the master sergeant asks.
"Randy Pate," Spinks repeats, the master sergeant telling him,"never served with the man myself, sir, but, it is a shame."
"Y'think a man's man enough to train 'em up right," he adds,"and, it turns out he wasn't much of a man atall."
"Yeah," Spinks says, managing to hide his disgust at that particular sentiment.
"You know what they're gonna do with the kids?" Spinks then asks.
"The two zeds," the master sergeant remarks with a chuckle,"you'll be seein' real soon on BoobTube...as for the two boys, the youngest one's on his way up to New Whitehorse-Guy's new boy's taken a shine to him-and the older one's opted for reassignment."
A bleeping from inside the house puts an end to the conversation.
"Dadgum it," Spinks says, painfully getting up from his chair,"gotta call comin' in, and I left m'Link in the livin' room."
"I got get back to trollin' anyway, Admiral," the Gnat master sergeant says, saluting Spinks a final time, before the two men exchange pleasantries and part company.
Office of the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Spacefleet
Building 219, HQTRS,Freeman Lang, Terranova
09/15/2101, 2124.47 AMT
"Master Chief," the Old Man's holo says to Master Chief Petty Officer of the Spacefleet Tybee Whistler MacGruder.
"Admiral, I didn't wake you, didn't I?" the Terranova Republican Spacefleet's most senior noncom asks, knowing full well he didn't.
"Naw, naw," Vice Admiral Spinks replies, shaking his head,"I couldn't sleep anyway. What can I do for you, Tybee?"
"Fleet Admiral Sipe's called an emergency meeting of the Union Security Council," MacGruder says, giving the overt reason for the call,"for midnight tonight."
"Ken give a reason?" MacGruder's former skipper on the Lockwood asks.
"You know the SeeMo, sir," MacGruder replies,"he don't feel obligated to tell us enlisted peons jackshit...but, 'tween you, me and the TSID-"
The Old Man chuckles at that.
"-he's worried that family might come calling, and they might want their kids back with the vengance of the Hebrew patriarchs-"
An angry buzz!buzz! in MacGruder's ears warns him the TSID heard something he wasn't supposed to say.
"I see," the Old Man replies, nodding his head, asking, "who are the Hebrews, Master Chief?"
The buzz!buzz! gets louder.
"I meant the Christian fathers, excuse me, Admiral," MacGruder replies. "Must be the long hours at the office getting to me."
"Yeah," the Old Man says,"probably. You got annual leave coming, Tybee?"
"My annual leave's got annual leave piled up, Skipper," the senior noncom replies, getting to the actual purpose of his call,"that's how hard I've been working lately, but you know the Fleet."
"Sure do," Admiral Spinks replies, MacGruder adding,"shame too, 'cause a buddy of mine-you remember Sparks MacKenzie, don't you, sir?"
"As many times he's stood Captain's Mast," the Old Man chuckles in reply,"I should. He still in the service?"
"No, sir," MacGruder says,"he retired out a light commander, believe it, or not, right after we whupped the Commies at Tau Ceti."
"Is that right?" asks the Old Man. "I thought he'd end up completing his contract in somebody's brig."
"Me too, Skipper,"MacGruder replies, chuckling himself,"me too."
"Anyway," he adds,"Mac's a stormchaser now, flying a demilitarized Prometheus he bought at an auction nine years ago. He flies out of the aerospace port in Lockwood, and he's been pestering me forever and a day to go up with him, just the two of us, and these two girls he knows, sisters, actually, who he wants to initiate into the Mile-High Club."
"Great Scott," Admiral Spinks remarks, shaking his head,"he sure don't change, does he?"
"Not that I know of, Skipper," MacGruder says. "Anyway, he says he can get a third, if, as he put it 'the Old Man ever gets tired of the ol' ball and chain and wants to have a lil' PYT action.'"
The Old Man chuckles again.
"After all the times I put his sorry ass in the brig-" he says.
"Not to mention busting him down to spaceman more than once," MacGruder observes.
"-after all that," MacGruder's former skipper says,"he still wants me to go mile-high with him."
"Ida know," he adds. "Y'think I should trust him, Tybee?"
"He figured you'd say that, Skipper," MacGruder says,"and says to tell you no hard feelings."
"Well," the Old Man, making a good show of thinking it over,"I have been bored lately, and he always did have a way of getting the most...inter-restin' girls to do what he wants 'em to. When's he plannin' on goin'?"
"He plans on taking off a little bit before first sunrise tomorrow," MacGruder replies,"to track a tropical depression forming over the Sea of Martinez; he figures his employers won't mind too much if he mixed a little business with pleasure."
"And that would be easier for him to do if I was on board," the Old Man replies.
"What I was figuring, Skipper," MacGruder remarks.
"I'll go anyway," Admiral Spinks says. "Whatever his faults, the man never was dull."
"No, sir, he wasn't dull," MacGruder replies,"that's for sure."
"You probably have a lot of work to get back to," the Old Man then says,"so I'll let you go. See you in a couple hours."
"Yes, sir," MacGruder replies.
Flynt-Martinez County Aerospace Port
Terranova Highway 341, Lockwood, Terranova
09/15/2101, 2132.68 AMT
"Damn, you stormers get to have all the fun," National Police Chief Warrant Officer Jubal Macon whines, as he relaxes on the edge of a 55-gallon drum of lubricating polymer and smokes a joint.
"Oh, really?" Gerald "Sparks" MacKenzie replies, taking a joint from the pack of Doobie Brothers Blonde the Gnat pilot offers him. "You guys get to put the boots to poot on a daily basis, and y'all can strut around and be he-roes on top of that; don't know too many folks that wanna be stormchasers."
"That's 'cause you're all crazier 'n hoot owls," Macon remarks, blowing out a smoke ring, MacKenzie being too busy watching 341 and the National Police CV-137 Prometheus cargo VTOL being prepped for take off to get a decent buzz off his ciggie.
"'Sides," Macon reminds him,"I fly Prommies, not Spectres, so I don't get to do all that."
"You can always pretend you do," MacKenzie offers half-heartedly, as he spots a War Pig wheeled APC and its escort of six TMC Magnum police cruisers turn off of 341 onto the approach road to the aerospace port, heading straight for the Prommie.
"'Specally when you go to the River," he adds, Macon asking,"and just how in the hell I supposed to do that, when people can access BoobTube any time they want and see that-"
He trails off when he sees the War Pig and its escorts pull up alongside his plane.
"That's my cargo," he says, standing up and walking towards the waiting plane.
"Tell me how the mile high goes when you get back," he hollers out as he walks, Macon keeping his back to MacKenzie the whole time.
"I'll do that," MacKenzie replies, drawing his 250-gigajoule laser pistol, setting it for taser and aiming it dead at the National Policeman's back, the low-powered laser beam carrying a bolt of electricity which drops the dumb sumbitch in his tracks, neither the ground crew surrounding the Prommie, the tac unit deploying from the War Pig or the Gnats in the escort cars seeing anything.
The cams have seen it, though, meaning MacKenzie now has less than no time to run like hell across the field, deal with all those Gnats, snatch the "cargo" and do the Foxtrot out of Delta, before the Gnats and the military pull together enough planes to blow him out of the sky.
He's running like hell now, even while thinking about what he's up against, almost certain this is where he's gonna buy it, but, he's been ready for that ever since Tau Ceti.
If the Man wants to take me now, he thinks to himself, switching the laser pistol to full power, burning down three Gnats in quick succession, He's gonna, not an effing thing I can do 'bout that, but 'em two girls don't got nothin' to do with whatever I've got comin', that's all I have any right to ask of Him.
Speaking of the two girls, a couple Gnats are trying to shove them back into the War Pig, cursing and smacking them around when they try struggling, even after they've been through the wringer and then some, MacKenzie getting close enough to take both those Gnats out with laser pulses at point-blank range, just as a red-hot poker burrows his way through his right shoulder, sending pain spiking through his gun arm and hand.
"Run, goddamn you!" he hollers at the dazed and bewildered little girls, the older one grabbbing her little sister's hand and running up the Prommie's open rear cargo ramp, MacKenzie gritting his teeth against the blinding pain, snapping off laser pulses at the Gnats and remaining ground crew, as he climbs up the gangway leading into the cargo VTOL's flight deck.
He flips the switch to raise the rear cargo ramp, as he jumps in the pilot's seat, the chimp in the co-pilot's seat turning to look at him, nodding his head as he throttles the tandem plasma jet engines up to full power, rapidly lifting the cargo VTOL straight into the air.
"You gonna be okay, Skipper," the co-pilot, his old wingman "Hammer" McClusky, asks MacKenzie, as he straps himself in.
It's then MacKenzie takes a good look at his injured arm.
He then nods his head grimly, ice-cold fingers pushing the stick forward to orient the vectrals for level flight.
If He's gonna take me, he thinks, calmly taking in the massive amounts of blood spurting down his right arm and the equally-massive amounts already caked all over his hand, He's gonna take me.
Nothing I can effin' do 'bout it.
Governor's Mansion
155 West Paces Ferry Road, New Whitehorse, Terranova
9/15/2101, 2144.16 AMT
"I'm a bad lil' girlie, that I won't deny," Miley sings, shaking her bare ass at the piece of poot what's got her over her knee,"ooh, I'm such a bad lil' girlie, need ya bone to make me right."
"Spank that ass good!" one of those watching this online screams, as Jacob Sipe sits there, watching the vid in the background and the BoobTube pootie in the foreground not wearing much more than Miley, both 'em bitches making the nine-year old boy rub himself down there, making it poke out a little bit through the crotch of his green and white Cadet uniform.
"The latest vid from fifteen-year old Miley Spiers," the BoobTube pootie says," who has been charged with multiple counts of rape and murder following the discovery by the TSID's Special Victims Unit of eighteen girls, ranging in age from six to twelve years old, chained to a variety of devices in the 'fantasy room' of her 217-room Vargas mansion, and the bound, nude, sexually-mutilated bodies of at least 117 other girls scattered in a variety of poses throughout the room."
The holo behind her shows exactly what she's talking about, all so she and Miley can make Jacob rub himself even harder.
"According to TSID spokeswoman Lieutenant Ray Helen Plant," the BoobTube pootie says,"Spiers targeted those classified as being at-risk by the Terranova Ministry of Education's social engineers, using her one-trillion dollar fortune to bribe an extensive network of Ministry of Education employees-including schoolteacher and sex offender Mary Kate Walton-who were responsible for recruiting potential victims and arranging for their transport to Marley, where, according to sources inside the Media Committee, members of Spiers' entourage were waiting to herd them like cattle into waiting buses which would then take them directly to Spiers' mansion."
"With me," she adds, as the holo behind her shows pootie turning other pootie out to the cheering of all the monkeybones watching this online,"is noted psychologist and social engineer Doctor Alvin Wildgoose, author of the best-selling readers The At-Risk Child, The Failure of Mainstreaming, and Caged Heat. Doctor Wildgoose, why at-risk children?"
"The psychology of at-risk children is such," a skinny little blonde dude with thick glasses replies,"that they're easily manipulated by their greed and their love of the perverse, something that, as an at-risk child herself, Spiers knew entirely too well; she thus had prey more than willing to abandon the civilized values we adults endeavor to teach them and follow her into something only they would call paradise, unlimited wealth without work, unlimited freedom without restraint, and all they had to give her in return was only what they would've done to one another were it not for constant vigilance and discipline on the part of-"
"Enough of that," Guy snaps, as he comes into the living room, the HV in front of Jacob abruptly winking out.
"I was watchin' that!" Jacob whines, only to have Guy backhand him out of the sofa,
"I know," Guy tells him, the rebuking tone of his voice sending a thrill through the young man's body. "You were letting them seduce you into degradation and depravity; if that's you truly want, I can have your Uncle Micheal march your butt downstairs to the coldwire chambers, and I can use you that way!"
"Get me?" he then asks.
"Yes, sir," Jacob tells him.
"Get up!" his man snaps, Jacob instantly scrambling to his feet.
"Do you want to be my man?" Guy asks him.
"Yes, sir," Jacob replies.
"Are you worthy of being my man?" Guy then asks.
"Yes, sir," Jacob replies.
Guy shakes his head.
"Could've fooled the hell out of me," he replies,"way you were slobbering all over yourself, letting the zeds and their filth lead you around like you was one of them on an effing goddamn leash."
"I was weak, sir," Jacob says.
"That is not an excuse," Guy tells him.
"No, sir," Jacob tells him.
Guy then points to the door leading to the bedroom.
"Let's see if you're better with the real thing than you were with the holos," he tells him.
"Yes, sir," Jacob says, before he walks past his Governor into the bedroom.
1,500 feet inside Mount Piven, West Cumberland Island
100 miles from the coast of Great Britain, Terranova
9/15/2101, 2323.16 AMT
"You got an awful hard head, Commonwealth," Bryant remarks, as the Commie finally comes to, fingering the bump between his eyes like the retired Terranovan Marine would've in his position.
"Where the hell am I?" he asks, slowly sitting up.
"In the shelters yo' peoples set up inside Mount Piven," Bryant replies, adding,"you missed yo' sister, she was here a few minutes ago checkin' up on you?"
"How long was I out?" Commonwealth asks.
"Couple hours, give or take," the Haziri replies, standing up and stretching himself, feeling every second of his sixty years, especially in the joints what go snap, crackle, pop like a bowl of breakfast cereal.
"Jesus," Commonwealth says, starting to get out of bed.
"I wouldn't advise that," Bryant says.
"Do you doctor as well as you can fly, mate?" Commonwealth is quick to reply.
"Naw, but the doctor y'all do have looks like she can take us both on without breaking a sweat."
Commonwealth chuckles.
"You talking about Hildy?!" he asks, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "She's really more bark than she is bite."
"Something," the blonde Amazon woman Bryant had had words with earlier remarks,"he doesn't dare say to my face."
"Hullo," Commonwealth says, as he turns to face Hildy, as he continues trying to get out of bed.
"No, you don't, Captain," Hildy replies, putting her hands on her honcho's shoulders and pushing him back down in the bed.
"I've got things to do," Commonwealth says, "and you need the bed for someone who's actually injured."
"Now," he adds,"if you'd kindly point me in the direction of my clothes."
"Fi will fetch you some of your things," Hildy replies.
"In the morning," she adds, saying it in a way that Bryant wouldn't want to mess with her.
"Doctor's orders, Captain," she says.
"Fine," Commonwealth says. "But, there's a circuit board with several plasma matrices in amongst my stuff, Fi's-"
"Already gotten to it," Hildy cuts him off,"after your hairy friend over here-"
She indicates Bryant with a shrug of her head.
"-let her know about it."
"Thanks, mate," Commonwealth says to Bryant.
"No problem," Bryant replies.
"There was another person with us," Commonwealth then says to Hildy. "What-"
"She found herself a bunk and laid down in it," Hildy tells him, turning back to Bryant, as she remarks,"which is what your friend over here should be doing."
"Too tired to sleep," Bryant says, Commonwealth telling him,"she's right, you know, it'll be hours before this bloody hurricane blows over; best you get some kip 'til something actually happens."
"What the hell is a 'kip?'" Bryant asks.
"Sleep, man, sleep," Commonwealth replies, Hildy pushing him back into bed, taking this opening to tell the man,"that's exactly what you need."
"Yes, mother," Commonwealth smarts off, Bryant walking out of the makeshift sick bay into a cavern passage dripping with water, the Haziri wondering what other creatures would be lurking about in here.
He tenses a bit when he passes an Anazazi female, her feathers dyed grey to match her greys, her eyes narrowing when she catches sight of him, her left hand starting to go for the nofohaz in her scabbard, the potos on her gloved feet extending out with a click, Bryant putting up both his hands, remarking,"I kno' I'm ugly, girl, but I can't be that dam' ugly."
"I am no girl, Kromak!" the bird woman spits out. "I am Krizteena, eighth so named of Clan Nofohaz, Lieutenant in the Commonwealth Forces Corps de Legionnaire, and, if you ever call me girl again, I will carve who I am into your worthless, pontohaz, parasite-ridden Kromak carcass before I hang it from my wall as a trophy, now, move aside!"
"'kay, if that what you want," Bryant says, quickly getting the hell out of the crazy birdwoman's way.
Maybe not so crazy, he thinks to himself, getting his breathing under control...now, his grandaddy, he'd been crazy, least that what folk always told him, and what he always thought about him all the time he was growing up.
He didn't think the old monkey was so crazy anymore, not after he told him stories about where the Race had really come from-and it wasn't from this planet, despite what Wiki had to say on the subject-after he'd come home from the war back in '72, and he'd seen for himself just how much Anazazi and Neveleim hated monkey boys-and how good the bird folk and the woowoos were at kicking flying monkey ass all across the sky.
To be honest, bird folk and woowoos scare the pee out of this particular monkey boy, especially 'cause they have the right to want to kill every damn one of his kind on sight.
Bryant keeps on walking, trying to calm his nerves...he'd been certain the one who'd blasted his hopper out of the air on TB back in '70 was gonna cut his ass up for dog food, he'd had that look in his black eyes, and it had only been 'cause a snobo had interfered that he'd only ended up being sent to Coventry to sit out the rest of the war instead of being chopped up by some birdman's family heirloom.
He liked Coventry...wide open spaces, woods everywhere and sky enough to fly in, and the fishing was good, tho', when he and his fellow former POWs got together, they have to tell each other bullshit 'bout being starved, locked in cages, beat down, poked in the ass with dildos, cos the TSID and the rest of Terranova was always watching what they said.
Probably why the old monkey had to play at bein' crazy, 'cause that the only way he could tell the truth and not get burned for it, Bryant thinks to himself, as he keeps walking, finding a cavern with several bunks in it, most of which are occupied by Commies sleeping in their gear and their greys.
The bunk in the corner of the room is unoccupied, Bryant walking over to it, laying down, thinking about all the stalactites dripping water on his head that he could count while trying to fall asleep.
He doesn't even make it to two.
500 meters inside Mount Piven, West Cumberland Island
160 kilometers from the coast of Great Britain, Terranova
9/16/2101, 0428.00 Zulu
"Jesus Christ," Commander Fiachana Fitzpatrick whispers to no one in particular, as she studies the data on the plasma matrices her hard-headed twin brother brought with him.
"It's on, then," she whispers, eyes on the holoprojection floating over one of the workstation terminals taken from the base at Goose Green, the Commonwealth Intelligence officer taking in the data on fleet and troop movements, invasion routes.
The opposition the trogs are expected to face in orbit and on the surface of Earth, Mars, and Titan, as well as an exhaustive list of targets throughout the Solar System, with Fort Gibson, Cydonia, Tahlequah, the Oklahoma City Monument and the Cosmograd Memorial being at the top of that list.
Next is a to-do list for the fagboys and TSID ops accompanying the invasion force, once the occupation of the Commonwealth's capital worlds began, what facts to destroy, where the prison camps were to be built, which people were to be slaughtered out of hand, which ones to slowly break to the Yankers' will.
She sighs, as a bot brings her a cup of hot, strong, black gang coffee, which she sips at, before putting it down by the terminal...the base's warpdrive transceiver unit is installed on top of Mount Piven, accessible by wireless linkup anywhere on planet, and they should be able to get a signal through to Mars Command before the hurricane shreds the transceiver antenna.
And, it would be like sending up a flare to the trogs on the coast of Great Britain and on Basseterre; the bastards would only have to wait the storm out before sending in more than enough Marines to overwhelm the former Commonwealth embassy's garrison, leaving them a choice between fighting to the death, and being taken alive.
I know, she remarks grimly to herself, which choice I'll make when the time comes.
She takes a larger gulp of coffee, before stroking the transmit button on the terminal's holospace.
Aboard a National Police CV-137 Prometheus
4,921 feet over Bulloch County, Terranova
09/15/2101, 2340.08 AMT
"Son of a bitch," James "Hammer" McCluskey swears, lidar lighting off on a round dozen Spectre gunships converging on his position, with a squadron of warpfighters arrowing forth from the Spacefleet base at Valdosta to seal the deal.
Old Sparkie can't help him now, he's too busy being slumped in the pilot's seat stone-cold frickin' dead, and this old Prommie ain't even got so much as a rock to throw at the sumbitches.
The two girls are back in the cargo section, probably wondering what more hell's in store for them, Joey "Blaze" Avera's back there checking up on them, while Hammer's up here on the flight deck trying to fly this crate by himself.
"National Police craft November Charlie Tango niner-three-zera-seven," a Gnat's holo says as it floats in front of Hammer's right eye,"you will land, at once, and surrender yourself to National Police custody, or we will use deadly force to bring you down! You have ten seconds."
"Shit," Hammer remarks, hearing the warning tone of lasers locking onto the Prommie from the front and rear, the former Spacefleet warpfighter pilot jerking the stick down and hard to the right, the jets kicking him in the ass, as he just barely manages to avoid being fried.
This time, the Spectres and the Preads lining him up in their sights right now, and Hammer knows he can't keep this up for too long, this isn't his old Predator, and it's been ten years since he had to do this sort of thing for a living.
A five-terajoule laser pulse sizzles past his windscreen, Hammer reflexively jerking the Prommie out of its path, cursing, as he almost steers right into a flurry of five-hundred gigajoule autolaser pulses.
Definitely too frickin' old for this crap, he thinks to himself, as he keeps juking, another buzz in his ears letting him know the bastards just upped the ante by throwing Cobra missiles at him.
"Helluva time for you to check out, old man," Hammer snaps at Sparkie's dead body, as he grits his teeth and jerks the stick in every direction at once.
In the cockpit of Republican Union Ship Eve Of Destruction
4,921 feet over Bulloch County, Terranova
09/15/2101, 2340.08 AMT
"What the eff do you think you're doing?!" the holo of Lieutenant Trevor Evenson screams over Chief Warrant Officer Oliver "Twister" Barrett's CyberLink, as the rest of Div 6 start locking lasers on his bird, and the Cobra air-to-air missiles he just launched take out the National Police Spectres on the tail of that Prommie.
"I got these bitches, Hammer!" the thirty-year Spacefleet veteran shouts out. "Run like hell!"
Barrett then jukes and twists around, cutting loose with the five-terajoule lasers in the centerline pod and the ten five-hundred gigajoule autolasers in the F18D Predator warpfighter's wings, sticking and moving, not looking to see if he's hit anything, that's a good way of getting your ticket punched, and Barrett's not planning on dying.
Not too soon, anyways....
He knows, in the back of his mind, that he ain't coming out of this one alive...the young punks calling themselves the Nazguls are nowhere near the caliber of the Commies who almost fried his sorry ass more than once during the course of two wars, 'specially not the kid calling himself a squadron commander, but there's twenty-three of them and one of him, and he's enough of a veteran to know what kind of math those numbers add up to.
That's fine, he thinks to himself, flipping the thumb switch at the top of the stick to let loose some more Cobra missiles, lasers continuing to blaze forth across the sky, as his right hand works the holokeys on his windscreen, catapulting Eve into warpdrive for just a second, the ship shaking and screaming, as it reenters normspace, Barrett spinning the Pread around, lasers tearing into a dozen other warpfighters at once, lidar howling, letting him know dozens more are-
Office of the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Spacefleet
Building 219, HQTRS,Freeman Lang, Terranova
09/15/2101, 2355.62 AMT
Son of a bitch, Whistler thinks to himself, as he sips his fourth or fifth cup of black gang coffee.
The Old Man's probably already here, Whistler will have to find some way to let him know the progress of the operation, without alerting the TSID, but, that can wait until, after the SeeMo's through with him.
First Finn Huckabee, the Chief of the Fleet thinks to himself, tallying up the cost automatically, and now Sparks MacKenzie and Twister Barrett, and God only knows how many others, before this is done.
Wonder if it's all worth it, he adds to himself, even though it was way too late to turn back now, even if he was having second thoughts about the choice he'd made ten years ago.
And, he doesn't...four thousand dead civs on the Capitol steps, billions more buried in frickin' latrines on Big Sky are more than enough to chase away any doubt he might have about the rightness-the righteousness-of the cause to which he's willingly risked everything he has.
The alternative's letting old Gotchanow kill all the zeds throughout Terranovan soil and the Commonwealth, knowing full well men like him can't live without something to kill.
That's no alternative at all.
No alternative at all, Whistler repeats to himself, drinking some more coffee, the Spacefleet's highest-ranking noncom then turning his full attention back to the work on his desk.
-endit-