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—