* * *
Tameka groaned, the pain coming back to her
before her sight. She rolled over, her cheek unsticking with a loud splorch
from the pool of blood on the floor where it had lain. She released a groan
that was almost a sob as she couldn’t bring herself to even sit up.
She felt like tenderized steak, and seemed
to have been abandoned by her mother’s men in a dirty empty cell to rot until
her mother had decided on the most satisfying way to murder her. Tameka had no
illusion that her mother held no compassion for her. Not with the glee in which
her mother had set her best friend on her.
The memory of each punch came back with
striking intensity, and she winced despite herself.
“You’re awake,” a familiar voice said from
the shadows outside her cell. A hand reached in through the rusted metal bars
and she cowered away from it. She saw the bloody shredded knuckles and knew
that that hand had only hours previously inflicted upon her all the pain she
was feeling now.
It didn’t seem as threatening for the time
being, however. Instead of being balled into a fist, his hand seemed to be
clenching a white towel.
Tameka looked up at Jack’s face, and then
away with another wince. The sympathy and guilt on his face was too much for
her to handle right now. It made her sick to her stomach, but then again she
easily might have just swallowed too much blood.
“No thanks to you,” Tameka said at last,
using all kinds of strength she didn’t think she had to crawl away from him.
“Here,” Jack insisted, brandishing the
towel through the bars at her. “Just take it.” His dark black skin seemed to be
wet and shimmering around his eyes, and she wondered if he’d been crying before
she woke up.
“How long?” she asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“How long have you been her fakking
puppet?” Tameka asked with disgust, taking his towel if for no other reason
than so he’d pull his arm away. It was cold and damp, and when she dabbed it on
her face it felt soothing.
“I said I dunno,” Jack insisted quietly. He
looked down at his hands. “I’ve always taken my responsibilities seriously,” he
said, seeming to be trying to think. Trying to remember. “It must have been
some time after you left for school, but when you left I just buried myself in
my work. It seemed the natural thing to do.”
There was a quiet between them, one Tameka
didn’t feel too keen to break.
“I’d never tried to question one of
mother’s orders before,” Jack said at last.
“Don’t call her that.”
Jack swallowed loudly.
Tameka inched towards Jack, sitting cross
legged in the middle of her cell. “What did it feel like?”
“I tried so hard to say no. To tell my body
not to move. I kept telling my fists to stop hitting you. But it seemed like
the more I wanted to fight against your mother’s orders -- the more I tried to
tell myself I disagreed with her, the fuzzier my mind got. The less control I
seemed to have over my own body.” He seemed to be visibly trembling. “I’ve
never felt anything like that.”
He reached through the bars for her again.
“I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you,” he insisted, “not even for a
second. You have to believe it wasn’t me.” He sobbed, his tears falling with
muffled splashes against the dusty floor of the cell. Reaching out, Tameka
gently touched his hand with her fingers, tracing them along his dry pale palm.
He grasped her hand tight and she tried to smile at him.
The far door in the room opened. “Pathetic,”
Suma said as she stepped into the cellar with them. She closed the wooden door
behind her, and picked up a pistol from one of many crates that lined the
walls. Apparently they were filled with weapons.
“What do you want?” Tameka asked her mother
with a groan, refusing to let go of Jack’s hand in defiance. “Came to gloat?”
Suma raised the gun and pointed it at Jack.
His hand tensed against Tameka’s but he didn’t move.
“Leave him alone,” Tameka insisted at her.
“If you don’t let go of her hand I’ll shoot
you dead,” Suma said to Jack, he still refused to move.
“That’s dedication,” Suma said with a
whistle. “I’m told he hasn’t left your side this whole time.” She lifted the
gun, examining it with a bored curiosity.
“Let go of her and step away from the
cell,” Suma told Jack in a much steadier voice. Releasing Tameka’s hand, he got
up and did as she told him to do.
“So you did come to gloat,” Tameka muttered
wrapping her arms around her chest, and inching as far from her mother as she
could get in her tight cell.
“I have to admit,” Suma said with a smile.
“It feels good. How are you appreciating your new accommodations?”
“I’m glad there’s no mirror,” Tameka said
with a defiant chuckle. “I imagine I don’t look so good.”
“Oh honey,” Suma said with an obviously
false concern. “You look terrible. But you’re so good at this back and forth
thing. Where did you get that wit?”
“From my father?” Tameka suggested.
“Your father was a bore,” Suma said with a
shrug. “So I killed him.”
Tameka rolled her eyes. “You’re lying,” she
insisted.
“Maybe,” Suma said. “It is fun to see your
pretty face twist in anguish like that.”
“So you’re gonna do it then?” Tameka asked
her mother. “Did my grandparents not give you enough toys or something? Now
you’re really gonna play war games with the most powerful nation in the world?
You’re really going to kill your own child?”
“My child is this entire rebellion,” Suma
said with a frown, sliding the pistol into her belt and spreading her arms
wide. “My sons and daughters are the very soldiers that man this facility.
Every single one of them would sling themselves on a sword for me. Your
boyfriend included.”
“Leave him alone,” Tameka said, thrusting
her arm through the bars at her mother.
Her mother swatted her arm away. “I’ll do
with him whatever I like. They’re all just toys to me.”
“You’re mad.” Tameka growled at her mother.
“I know,” her mother said with a giggle. “I
didn’t think it was possible to be this mad and this happy at the same time.”
Tameka wondered how spot on her analysis of her mother’s damage might be. It
was like she’d been denied a childhood and was reliving it now.
“This has to stop,” Tameka tried to plea to
any reason hidden within her mother’s insanity. “There’s still time to make an
agreement with Hymalious City that can benefit all our peoples. I promise you
they can’t be as unreasonable as you are.”
“But I don’t want peace,” Suma insisted.
“Scratch that. What I mean is I don’t want a piece of the pie. I want the whole
pie. Or, if I can’t have it, I’ll turn up the oven and burn it to a crisp.”
Tameka sighed. “Your hyperbole is getting
old. And disjointed”
There was a knock at the door.
“Lucky for you then,” Suma said with a
frown. “Come in.”
The door creaked open, and a large soldier
stood in the doorway, nodding at Tameka’s mother.
“What is it Belmont?” The rebellious leader
asked her soldier.
“The men say they found something,” he told
Suma swiftly, turning to lead the way.
“Excellent,” Suma said. Her gaze landed on
Jack. “You do know you’re not to let her out, right?”
She didn’t wait for him to respond, the
large soldier disappearing into the corridor. “He’s one of my best men,” she
told Tameka, grabbing the door with one hand. “I think I might bed him
tonight.” She started to leave, then paused again in the doorway to add, “If it
pleases me.”
With that she was gone, and the door closed
with a loud bang, making Tameka jump. “Yuck,” she said to no one in particular,
feeling sick to her stomach again.
Jack dropped to his knees.
“I guess you can’t let me out,” Tameka said
roughly. Jack didn’t move. “Or grab a weapon and shoot the lock or something.
Anything.” Still there was nothing from him.
She threw the towel at him, now red as it
was from her blood. “Then what good are you?” she said with a frustrated snarl,
and in the silence that followed she heard the pad of something. It was his
tears hitting the dusty floor of the cell.
“Pathetic,” Tameka said, accidentally
mimicking her mother quite despite herself. She rolled her eyes and looked
away. “Just leave me then,” she told him, ashamed no longer with him but
instead with herself. “Go do her bidding anywhere but here.”
“I’m not leaving your side,” Jack told her
studiously.
“Then you’ll be the one to kill me,” Tameka
said coldly in return, and she could tell her words rocked him to his core. She
could feel her heart twist in her chest.
And still he didn’t move.
* * *
* * *
“It’s like they’re coming out of the sand,”
Thalia commented from the cockpit of her G32. “Are you seeing this Tania?”
Thalia held her fighter low to the sand as they soared above their charging
troops. She could see their troop transports from up there, and their machine
gun jeeps, and shock tanks.
But she could also see Suma’s men, far
outnumbering the forces approaching them. Suma’s forces were also clearly
organized with formations, and automated sentry guns in key defensive
positions. It was as if the Blazkor had been planning for this moment the whole
time they’d gone into hiding.
“Their base must be somewhere below the
sand,” Thalia told her twin sister through the radio, confident her
observations would make it back to op central.
“Eight has a visual,” Tania said through
the radio. “Forming up on your wing, flight leader.” Tania was being extra
formal it seemed, even though they were the only people flying in the wing
today. It was just the way she liked it.
“Eight requesting permission to commence
strafe run,” her sister said into the radio.
“Permission granted,” Thalia responded.
“Seven has your wing.” She referred to herself as her squadron designation
instead of flight leader, even though her seniority on the field gave every
right to claim the higher rank. She just didn’t feel like she’d earned it yet.
Thalia followed her sister’s G32 over a
sand dune and then down over an emplacement of men that were rising from the
sand. The two of them open fired with the heavy impact machine guns, ripping up
the entire sand dune and making short work of about twenty guys there. Thalia
was also pretty sure she’d hit a gun emplacement, though she wasn’t sure if
she’d done enough damage to take it offline.
They pulled up, and Thalia followed her
sister over another rise of dunes. She didn’t mind giving her sister the lead.
They were, after all, born only minutes apart.
“Holy nebulous hells,” Thalia heard her
sister exclaim over the radio as she came over a hill ahead of her. “You seeing
this Thalia?”
“What happened to being formal?” Thalia
asked Tania with a sly smile. She hit the afterburner and flew over the hilltop
after her sister, only to almost collide with a mark one Blazkor Gunship.
“Shit!” Thalia swore into her headset. She
yanked her yolk to the left as the gunship’s turrets swivelled to follow her. The
upper turret fired a deadly swath of fire at her and she spun her ship, only
just avoiding a collision to sweep up higher into the sky where she saw her
sister was pushing.
“We’ve got mark one gunships,” she yelled
into her radio. Machine gun fire from a different gunship collided with Tania’s
wing, causing thankfully minimal damage. “They seem to be rising from the
desert.” There was a hole opening up in the sand beneath Thalia’s ship, and she
craned her neck to try and see behind her fighter down into it.
A blinding white streaking light only
barely missed colliding with her craft. “We have Mark twos as well,” she warned
anyone who was listening. “We request immediate re-enforcements. This is her
entire army. I repeat she was hiding her entire military forces out here.”
There was an alarm klaxon that went off on
her dashboard. Someone on the ground had targeted her with a ground to air
guided missile. The screeching whine in her ears was the alarm informing her
the warhead was enroute.
“I’ve got one on my tail,” Thalia screamed
into her radio. “I’m climbing too slowly, I don’t have time to swing around!”
She cut her engine in the hope the missile would soar past her but it wasn’t
going to happen.
Suddenly the missile exploded, moments from
colliding with the rear of her fighter. Her canopy rocked with the shockwave,
and Thalia looked around for her savior.
“I got your back,” her sister said.
“Forming on your wing.” Thalia began to swing them around.
“We should fall back,” her sister insisted.
“There’s too many of them for just two of us.”
She was right of course. Thalia’s sensors
were already picking up eight blips in the air, now nine, and there seemed to
only be more coming. And the blips on the ground were innumerable to count.
“We have to make another run,” Thalia told
her sister. “If we leave now those gunships are only going to make short work
of our ground forces.” She brought her fighter into a tight u-turn, her sister
still holding tight to her tail. “We have to give those gunships something else
to shoot. Give em a couple things a little harder to hit.”
* * *
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