REPEAT Adrift Homeless 1x04 "Trash Waiting to be Compacted Part One"

Hey! And Happy Holidays! And if you got nothing better to do, here's another chapter. I'm working all holidays. So fun fun.

1x04 “Trash, Waiting to be Compacted Part One”

Released on http://www.patreon.com/99geek in September 2017

Suma Davi’s marched through her hidden underground base beneath the deep desert, nodding curtly at every one of her men who turned to pay their respects at her. They worked tirelessly, twenty hour shifts, with only a little down time to sleep and eat before they were back to work. They didn’t need days off or hobbies, every one of her men were loyal only to her, and enjoyed simply serving her any way they could.

She passed workshops where people slaved away on weapons in her honour, or building pieces for their shipyard.  Every one of these soldiers would give their lives for her and nothing would make her happier than to watch them do it. They were all expendable, everyone was, in her quest to stop the civilized world from succeeding at their plans. She wanted the world to be the way it was supposed to be, chaos. Because only in chaos are the strongest given the power to control destiny.

All you can ever hope to have in the world is that which you take for yourself. Her father had told her that. Before Hymalious City forces killed him. They’d made a new world. Where institution has all the power and individual people are nothing but drones. Every agenda was to help the institution and if you were on the outside you were the enemy.

She didn’t care about her daughter’s complaints. She didn’t care what they were up to up there in space. Didn’t care if they were trying to help people. She knew her people would be hardly included amongst those saved. She would have to take her salvation into her own hands.

Suma stepped into the large cavern, the walls decorated with ancient cave art by the old travelers that had landed in the desert thousands of years ago. She ignored the stupid math equations that meant nothing to her. She was far more interested in the large craft that was painted on one wall. It looked advanced, sleek. It seemed to be flying in space. She even thought it might be leading the eye towards a certain direction and she had gotten her team to start drilling there.

Her daughter might not have seen it, standing in that room, but Davi’s knew what those paintings really were. They were a map to technology and weapons far beyond that which their kind had ever known.

Too bad Tammy wouldn’t be alive to see it.

“Mother,” a soldier greeted with a nod to Suma as she approached their drilling operation. There was another man working controls of a large roughly cobbled together machine that was blasting away at the dirt.

“We’ve done some seismic readings,” the man said dutifully. “There’s definitely something out there,” he told her, and she knew exactly what it was.

It would be the weapon that would win her the war.

*     *

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 brown 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 defiantly. “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.

*     *     *

“This is your place, isn’t it?” Steph asked, coming to a quaint building near the outskirts of Hymalious City.

“Uh yeah,” Alec said with surprise. “David’s place actually. Wasn’t I supposed to be walking you home?” He’d mentioned that he’d be headed this way eventually and then hadn’t noticed when Steph had subtly turned them towards where he’d suggested. Steph didn’t want to admit it but she wasn’t ready to go home just yet.

She just shrugged. Alec had been doing most of the talking during their walk, telling her about his family, and how close he was to his sister, and his favourite hobbies, and how fast he could hack any computer, and how he wanted to be the worlds most feared computer hacker one day. He wouldn’t stop talking actually, but it had gone past annoying to sorta being kind of cute.

“I’ve never actually talked this long to a girl before.” Alec admitted to her as they stopped outside the house.

“That’s kind of sad,” Steph told him, appreciative that the storm from earlier had died down somewhat during the attack. “Didn’t you tell me you have a sister?”

“Aww you’ve been paying attention,” Alec said in such a way that Steph rolled her eyes. “She doesn’t count though.”

“Why?” Steph asked coyly. “She’s not a girl?”

“Sure,” Alec said. “But not like you. I mean she’s not hot like you.”

Steph smiled. “You don’t have to keep complementing me like that.”

“It’s true though,” Alec insisted. “Even covered in dirt and sand you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in the world.”

“Yeah?” Steph said with a roll of her eyes. “You do remember I have a boyfriend, right?”

Alec shook his head and shrugged. “I swear I would treat you better than your boyfriend,” he insisted to her.

“I bet you you’re wrong,” Steph lied to him, nodding at his place. “You gonna go inside or are we gonna get buried in sand out here?”

Alec didn’t seem to want to move. “Will I ever see you again?”

Steph shrugged. “We can be friends,” she told him. “Sure.”

“I’ll text you then,” he said, taking a step towards his place. “And we’ll hang out sometime.”

“I don’t see why not,” Steph told him. He hollered with joy, and Steph giggled at how cute he was being. “Just as friends though.” She reminded him. Her boyfriend would kick his ass.

“Why do you have to have a boyfriend,” Alec groaned as he got to his door.

Steph shrugged. “He got to me first.”

Alec grumbled. “Where’ve you been all my life?”

Dating boys bigger than him, but that was a thought Steph kept to herself.

Alec closed the door behind him, and Steph continued to mosey on down the street. She had a feeling she knew where her boyfriend would be hanging out.

The truth was, she didn’t want to go home and hear her parents worry about her. She felt like her entire world was caving in, and everywhere she looked there was violence and war. She was tired of it. At least her boyfriend’s life was simple.

She found him where he always liked to hang out, the boomball court. It didn’t matter what the weather was like or if they could even see the post they were aiming for. Her boyfriend would only want one thing from her, and right now it was all she wanted too.

He was playing with a few of his friends, his shirt lost somewhere on the sidelines. Sweat glistened off his chiseled muscular pecks as he dribbled the ball past his best friend and shot for the opposing back board. It panged off the board and Derek cheered. Her boyfriend had scored another point.

Steph clapped her hands, and he finally noticed her sitting on the metal bench beside the court.

“When did you get here?” Derek asked, jogging to approach her. He ran his hand over his buzzed head.

“Just now,” Steph told him.

“Good,” He said. “So you saw my sick shot.” He was probably relieved that she’d missed an equally sick fumble earlier. Derek wasn’t all that steady of a player. It was why he never got picked for the major leagues. He’d be a better player were it not for his mood swings and temper.

“You don’t look so great,” Derek told her, nodding at her, as if she should know what he was talking about.

She nodded her head. “Yeah well,” she said, “You should see the other guy.”

His blank stare was almost too juicy for her to correct. “My work was attacked by terrorists,” she finally explained to him.

There was a long pause as he seemed to try to process that information. “That’s a bummer,” he said at last. “I guess that means you’re not gonna wanna fak later.”

As expected, he had very few wants in this world, and his thoughts never strayed too far from how he could best achieve those wants.

“Why wait till later?” Steph asked him. He grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet roughly. It was fine, she liked how rough he was with her.

“See you guys later,” he told his crew, lifting her onto his broad shoulder and carrying her off the court and up the street towards his luxurious estate.

Derek’s father was rich. He owned one of the largest still producing agricultural businesses on the planet. Steph couldn’t remember the name of the business. Allegro or something.

Marching right through the front gate, with her still bouncing roughly on his shoulder, Derek strolled right up into his mansion and up the steps to his room where he closed the door behind him and threw her onto his bed. She was pretty sure she had a bruise on her rib from where he had held her.

“My dad says he has a new contract,” Derek told her, stripping off the little that remained of his clothes, and proceeding to tear her clothes off her. “Some big ship in space that he’s gonna build farms for or something.” Steph raised her eyebrow, wondering if the large ship had anything to do with the increase of attacks in the city.

Derek didn’t seem to care much for her curiosity however, as he kissed her neck and molested her bra with his sweaty hands. “My father says we’ll have a spot on board. Him, me and mother. Even one other. Said I could choose between you or my best friend.”

He slid one of his beefy fingers into her underwear. “I chose my best friend,” he told her, looking her in the eyes, as if getting off on any kind of disappointment she might feel. It was a little powerplay thing he liked to do, but not just him. She’d caught his parents doing it too, to people they considered “lesser” than them. Showing off what they had to try and get a rise out of the other person. It was sad and pathetic. And the less she gave him a response, the more aggressive he got. That was their game.

She grabbed at his hard member. “There’s no hard feelings,” he told her as she stroked him. She could tell that wasn’t true. “It’s just that I’ve known him forever. Meanwhile…” he paused as she kissed him. “I’m only with you because you let me do whatever I want to you.”

Derek didn’t treat her like everyone else. Her parents, Alec, the men at the bar, the men at the diner, people on the street, everyone treated her like a princess. Like an angel of good. She was so beautiful, so sacred and precious with pale white skin and long black hair. Everyone else gave her anything she wanted, everyone fawned over her. Meanwhile they all suffered. The world was struggle and pain and death. She wasn’t a princess. She’d done nothing to deserve special treatment. She was exactly what Derek treated her as. Trash. Waiting to be compacted. Like everyone else in this hell hole.

Steph bent over. “So what are you waiting for?”

*     *     *

Emma looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She still hadn’t showered, and was having what was starting to feel like the longest day of her life. Her brown hair hung in clumps over her round pock marked sun-tanned face. She splashed herself with cold water from the tap, surprised to find she seemed to be allowed to use as much of it as she wanted.

She loosened the collar on her work shirt, and rubbed the cool water on her neck and shoulders. She didn’t know what to think of these people any more. She was still mad at them for taking her mother away from her. And for potentially working her mother to death.

She looked down at the datapad they had given her, at the security footage of her mother having a spirited debate with a number of engineers around a chalkboard. Her mother seemed older there than Emma ever remembered her. Her voice seemed foreign. Not like the one she heard in her dreams. Her mother had been gone so long this person seemed like a stranger to her.

There was a knock on the door, but Emma ignored it. All she knew for sure was that she had to finish what her mother had started. She wasn’t sure if she thought it would bring her closer to her mother somehow, or if perhaps she just felt it was her duty. The task had come to her, and she knew she could do a better job than her mother.

Maybe if Project Rebirth was a success, it would make her mother’s death some how justified in some gross way.

“I’m supposed to take you back to command ops,” the guard said through the door, knocking again.

Emma opened the door, and smiled at her pseudo jailor. “Lead the way,” she told him, not wanting to keep them waiting any longer.

He led her through the polished black corridors of the executive wing of Prime Central Station and back into the large operations room where Maggie May seemed busy conducting business at the hologram in the center of the room.

“Where did those gunships launch from?” the senior councilwoman yelled her question to her men.

“We’re pretty sure it came from the deep desert,” one man called back to the mayor.

Maggie May rolled her eyes. “Surely you can do better than that,” she snarled. “Track their vector back to its source.”

A woman approached the mayor and clicked a button on her datapad which oriented the main holographic display to focus on a region of the deep desert.

“We’ve narrowed the area they could have come from to this sector here,” a rhombus was drawn onto the map. “But that’s still over ten thousand square miles.”

“I want our entire fleet and ground forces sweeping that area,” Maggie May barked at her people. “Bring in a wing from Rebirth if you have to.”

Emma noticed on the other side of the room a large older grizzled military man with massive arms the size of her face step gruffly through a door. He seemed dirty, with small cuts and scrapes that didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. He was also puffing on a lit cigar that no one seemed to be complaining about.

Behind him was a very familiar face. A man who grumbled to the General, “I still don’t know why I’m here.”

“David!” Emma said, recognizing the black haired, yellow skinned, squinty eyed face of her roommate and forgetting for a moment where she was. It was the very last place she’d ever expected to see him.

“Emma?” David yelled back across the room in a mixture of surprise and joy, spotting her as she was already in a run. She tackled him in a bear hug, and squeezed him tightly.

“I’m so sorry I missed lunch,” Emma apologized to him, and he laughed openly.

“Nebulous hellz,” the grizzled General mumbled through his cigar. “That’s the most I’ve seen this guy smile since I met him. Clearly you two are intimately acquainted.”

“It’s not like that,” David said, letting go of Emma to give the general a dirty look. Emma was happy David had heard the same disgusting insinuation she had.

He ignored the man further to touch her face. “I’m glad you’re looking well.”

“I’d have gotten all pretty if I’d known you were coming,” Emma lied with a sly grin and a fake sort of curtsey.

“You’re beautiful no matter what you do,” David told her, hugging her again.

“Hi Uncle David!” Kat called from where she seemed to be drawing up a new design for something on a datapad.

“Your father’s been worried about you,” David said to the nineteen year old girl.

“I-is he okay? Kat asked Emma’s lovable roommate who gave her a reassuring nod.

“Your father is fine. He’s working on something for me.”

“General Gilber. I see you’ve met my new chief engineer,” Maggie May said, approaching them but seeming to be talking only to the general.

“These two seem to be rather affectionate,” Gilber told the mayor, ashing his cigar on the floor. Emma made a face, and she thought she’d noticed David roll his eyes in surrender. Gilber leaned towards the mayor and elbowed her. “But apparently it ain’t like that.”

“Men,” Maggie May said to Emma. “They don’t have many uses, do they?”

“Aww,” Emma teased. “I find some of them aren’t all bad.” She was feeling a lot better about things now that David was involved.

“Your partner appears to have lost quite a bit of muscle mass since last time I saw him,” Maggie May said to Gilber, leaving Emma to wonder who Gilber’s normal partner might be.

David stepped forward and offered Maggie May his hand. “My name is Doctor David Stanfield, Mrs. Mayor.”

She took his hand and shook it. “We can always use more doctors,” she told him.

“Eh,” Gilber said with a shake of his head in the mayor’s direction. “I was thinkin’ of a different use fer him.”

“It didn’t take you long,” David said, poking Emma in the ribs, “before you convinced them to put you in charge of everything.”

“I dunno if that’s really part of the job description,” Emma said, not failing to notice that the mayor had called her their chief engineer. “I’ll mostly be spending my time with the grunts knee deep in the innards of the ship.”

David smiled blankly at Emma, and then looked to the mayor and the general, then back again to the mayor.

“What ship?” he asked at last.

“I haven’t briefed him yet,” Gilber told the mayor.

Councilwoman Maggie May sighed. Emma imagined she had to do this speech a lot. “The planet is dying,” the mayor told David.

“I know,” David replied. “We’re running out of water. It won’t be long now before we won’t be able to sustain even our shrinking population.”

“We have a solution,” Maggie May said, with a sly look at the doctor almost challenging him to say he knew that part as well.

Instead it almost seemed like David breathed a sigh of relief. “Well thank the solar gods for that,” he said to the mayor. “What is it? Wait, let me guess. Is it a ship?”

“The largest space faring craft our scientific minds could possibly conceive of,” the councilwoman explained. “Able to comfortably contain two hundred thousand people. The Rebirth project is meant to be like a self-sustained city in space, capable of travelling through the nebula and finding us a new home out there in the stars.”

“Two hundred thousand people,” David repeated. “that’s like what? A fifth of our population?”

“Well,” Maggie May said with a frown, “We’re hoping that the ship will be able to find a suitable planet, drop off everyone but the essentials, and then return for another group. With luck we’ll get two or three trips in before it’s too late. More than enough people for a fresh start.”

“Solar gods,” David said, more serious than Emma thought she’d ever seen him. “How long are these trips expected to take?”

“We’re hoping it won’t be generations,” the mayor told him. “But we’re prepared for any possibility. The Rebirth has over twenty floors devoted to agriculture, a large shopping district that spans many floors. The residential suites are comfortable and will have unlimited access to water. Conceivably people could survive for many generations if that’s what it ends up taking for the Rebirth to make it to a suitable planet for life.

“If I may,” Kat spoke out to the mayor, approaching the older woman while rummaging awkwardly through her knapsack. “I th-think I may have a th-theory that could help cut down on that travel time-ime considerably.”

The mayor Maggie May beckoned for Kat to join them, which she did sheepishly, brushing her thin brown hair from her pale squirrelly face. “This is Kathrine Pross,” the mayor told General Gilber. “She’s one of the greatest minds to come out of Hymalious University’s theoretical physics division in their entire history, or so I’m told by one of our recruiters there.”

“You must have those everywhere,” Emma mused darkly.

Maggie May put a hand on Kat’s shoulder. “I’m told she has a unique theory on faster than light travel that I really must hear.”

Gilber eyed the young nineteen year old woman with respect. “How much faster than light do you think you can make us go?” he asked her hungrily.

Kat looked from the general to the mayor. “Incalculably,” she insisted to them. “There must be some sort of muh-misunderstanding here. I c-can’t help you travel faster than light.”

The General frowned. “Well that’s disappointing,” he muttered with a deep drag from his cigar. “Where did you say yeh found her again?”

“My equations,” Kat continued, “would theoretically allow-ow us to instantaneously t-travel between any two points in space, no matter the distance. That is with enough en-en-energy, and a certain element that our scientific community has never f-found. We would-wouldn’t be moving faster than l-light. We wouldn’t need to m-move at all.”

“You’re gonna have to dumb that down for those of us who don’t speak nerd,” Gilber muttered through his cigar. “What exactly do you mean instantaneous travel?”

“I mean it w-would c-conceivably be as if no time has p-passed,” she seemed to be trying her hardest to explain more simply for him. “We would be in one place,” she said, “And then mo-moments later we’d be in a different place.” She stroked her cute little chin. “With enough energy it’s un-unimaginable how f-far I’m suggesting here.”

Gilber’s cigar dropped from his mouth to crash messily to the floor. A robot cleaning bot swept out from a corner to sweep it away.

“Energy,” Emma repeated. “It’s a good thing that won’t be in short supply,” she said sarcastically.

“You’ll have to forgive those of us whose brains don’t work as fast as yours,” Maggie May said, trying to be as diplomatic with the teen as she seemed she could. “But how is that possible.”

Kat laughed so hard she snorted. “S-sorry,” she said at the room of people who had their attentions firmly planted on her. “I just really l-like this part.”

“There are th-three dimensions that w-we know of,” Kat explained to everyone in laymans terms. “Th-those are the axis of movement we have through sp-space. Up and d-down. S-side to side. F-forward and back.” She made steps in each direction as she spoke as if to make herself more clear with a visual aid. Emma was impressed at how well the young woman was doing.

“A lot of puh-people in the scientific community b-believe the fourth dimension is time,” she continued her explanation. “And that if we could ma-master that dimension-sion we’d be able to travel fuh-forward and backward through time at-t will.”

“That sounds like science fiction ta me,” Gilber muttered.

David crossed his arms. “We’re talking about a huge colony ship exploring deep space,” he challenged the general. “It’s all science fiction from here.”

Gilber crossed his arms as well. “Yeh wouldn’t think it all science fiction if yeh’d seen the thing.”

“Wait,” David said slowly. “You’ve already built the ship?”

Emma smiled and patted her best friend on the back. “Apparently it’s hiding behind the moon. They call it the Rebirth.”

“Why not,” David said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“I d-don’t believe in that time theory ne-necessarily,” Kat continued, ignoring their aside. “I believe in the many dimensions theory, and b-believe there is a dimension that exists right-t on top of ours, a universe of no-time we c-can’t see or detect but can travel through without any time passing for the people on the ship, or the rest of the u-universe. It would be like t-teleporting from one p-place to another but very far away.”

“Like in science fiction,” Gilber said gruffly.

“What would you need to actually accomplish this science fiction?” The mayor asked.

“I c-call it porting,” Kat told the matriarch. “The r-root word of tele comes from t-telepathic as in implying the ability is controlled by one’s m-mind. I thought since I’m t-taking the fantasy out of the science I could take the tele out of t-teleporting.” She snorted again. Then quickly turned serious as she must have realized she hadn’t answered the question. “I’d n-need a certain k-kind of element we haven’t yet f-found in nature.”

“Is that all?” Gilber complained.

“I think there m-might be some in the d-deep desert,” Kat said.

“There’s nothing in the deep desert but Blazkor now,” Gilber told her.

“Well I don’t know what t-to tell you,” Kat told the group.

“What if we can’t find your element in the deep desert?” Maggie May asked the young woman.

“It has to b-be out there somewhere,” Kat insisted. “It’s p-possible we could find it in space, but it’s an element that can only be created within high p-pressure environments like the center of stars or black holes. Our only hope w-would be in f-finding some that was ejected during the early forming of our solar system, and all the oldest elements we’ve ever f-found were closest to the equator.”

“Okay,” Gilber said, eager it seemed to get this ball rolling. “So what are we going to have to do to find your rare element?”

“I’ve designed a p-probe,” Kat said, rummaging through her bag again, and this time emptying it over a man’s workspace. The scrawny nerd, Emma seemed to remember his name had been Billy, gave Kat a dirty look as he backed away. “Here this one.” She spotted the datapad she was looking for and passed it to Maggie May. “G-get your engineers to make that, and when l-launched it’ll be able to detect the s-subtle unique radiation signatures this crystalline element should th-theoretically give off.”

“I’m sure Gilber has a pilot or two capable of launching this thing,” the councilwoman said with a nod to the general. “That’s if Chief Penman thinks she can build it.”

“Anything Kat designs,” Emma said with confidence, “I can build.”

“Penman?” Gilber repeated. “I knew your sister.”

“Mother,” Maggie May corrected him abruptly.

“Ah,” Gilber said. “Then the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. My condolences.”

“Condolences?” David repeated.

“Yeah,” Emma said bluntly. “Turns out I’m a little late.” She tried to give him a reassuring smile to let him know she was okay but he swept her into another embrace before she had the chance.

“I’m sorry,” He told her, and she could hear anger boiling under his voice. The same anger she’d been feeling. For a moment she almost forgot where she was. Again.

“I’m fine,” Emma said, though she knew it wasn’t true. She didn’t care that she never got to talk to her mother. She hardly knew the woman. “It just, like, sucks for her that she never got to see her daughter grown up.” Her voice broke and she dared not say anymore, feeling very dedicated to not crying. She’d shed all the tears she’d ever planned to shed when she was a child.

She could feel David sternly matching the mayor’s gaze over her shoulder, Shifting against David’s chest, Emma joined David in watching her, and Emma could see the guilt on her face. It wasn’t enough, but it was a start. She wanted to stay mad with the mayor, but what good would that do when the older woman was one of the few people left who could tell Emma more about her mother.

“We’ll get it done then,” the mayor told Kat quietly. “We have troops positioned all over the deep desert looking for Blazkor forces. You give us a place to look and I’ll have a thousand men on that spot in an hour.”

“Oh!” Kat said loudly, suddenly remembering something. “I’m g-gonna have to be there,” she told the mayor.

“What?” Emma exclaimed, snaking out from David’s arms. “You can’t! That’s impossible.”

“It’s ill-advisable,” Gilber agreed.

“I’m the only one who knows exactly what to look for,” Kat tried to explain, but Emma didn’t want to hear it.

“You can describe it to someone,” Emma told her. “You can describe it to me and I’ll go.”

“That’s not happening,” David told the mayor and the general. “I’ll go.”

Maggie May smacked her forehead. “We’re not building a fellowship to march into the deep desert.”

“I can’t d-describe it to anyone,” Kat insisted to the mayor. “I don’t even really know what it’ll look like.”

Gilber pulled out another cigar and lit it. “Tell me you’re not about to lead my men on a wild goose chase.”

“I don’t – I don’t even know what that means,” Kat insisted to the mayor more than to Gilber. She seemed to be the one making all the final decisions. “I do know th-that I’ll kn-know it when I s-see it. I’m c-confident I will.”

“Confident?” Gilber asked her. “Or you know?”

“She’s a scientist,” David told the general. “Confident is the best you’re gonna get.”

“I was already convinced,” The mayor told the group of them. Maggie May glanced to Gilber. “She has point on this. Give her anything she needs. If you don’t mind I have a war to plan with the general.”

“There’s something else,” David spoke up. “I’ve come across a rare and fatal runaway evolutionary defect in a Blazkor soldier that showed up at my clinic. I’m calling it evolutionary degenerative disorder.”

“Basically,” Gilber stepped in to explain as Maggie May clearly failed to comprehend, “what he’s trying to say is that a bunch of Suma’s men are dying really crappy deaths.” He seemed almost happy at the prospect.

“You don’t understand,” David said, and he was starting to sound a little like Kat trying to explain her overly complicated theoretical science. “This kind of genetic defect could only occur in a patient who has undergone severe genetic modification. They’re suffering degredation at a cellular level. Even then, the symptoms I saw would be the rarest of rare possible outcomes. To have multiple individuals report the same genetic defect would suggest a potentially enormous sample size.”

“I’m getting really tired of all this theoretical science,” the mayor complained. “You’re telling me all of Suma’s men have been genetically modified in some way or another?”

“I’m telling you,” David explained, “That this isn’t theoretical science anymore.”

Maggie May sighed in semi-resignation. “Is it possible to reverse the damaged DNA in her subjects?”

“If she turned her people into super-soldiers,” Gilber postulated to David, “can you turn them back?”

“I have a man working on just that right now,” David told them. “Not the super soldier thing, necessarily, but a way to fix any damage brought on by genetic modification. It would theoretically reverse both unintended, and I suppose intended results of such splicing.”

“Then you’re welcome to take on whoever you need,” Maggie May assured David.

“Just two people,” David told her. “From my clinic. One is a father who would very much like to see his daughter again.” David glanced at Kat.

“Refer the matter to Gilber then,” Maggie May gave them all one final short smile. “He has the jurisdiction to grant military clearance. You’re all dismissed.”

*     *     *

“You know what this means?” Suma Davi’s asked the soldier in front of her. “It means that I was right all along. There really was something buried in the deep desert.”

She was standing with some of her crew at the end of the long snaking passageway they’d been drilling into the walls of the cavern. It seemed they’d discovered something that halted their drilling. It looked like a large metal wall in the rock. The metal was a smooth shiny silver, gleaming dazzlingly even in that dirty dark passageway.

“Yes mother,” the soldier said dutifully. “Seismic readings have suggested the craft extends about a kilometer in either direction.”

“The craft,” Suma repeated.

The soldier nodded. “We believe it’s some kind of space faring vessel with a much more advanced level of design than we’re capable of. We’re attempting to find a door now.” He gestured his hand to a number of her men who were working at chisels to slowly and painstakingly clear off more dirt and rock from around the large ship.

“Let me know as soon as you’ve found a way in,” Suma told her man.

“Yes mother.”

“There’s more,” Belmont said, joining them in the passageway. His large hands were clenched tightly.

Suma purred. “I don’t think I can handle anymore good news.”

“Then you’ll want to come with me,” Belmont insisted. Suma obliged him.

“If you’re taking me to your quarters, soldier,” Suma told the man. “You should know I’m very okay with it.”

Belmont cleared his throat. “We’re headed to the war room,” he explained, as they passed out of the tight dirt passageway into the cavern with the cave drawings. “Hymalious City forces appear to be searching the desert for us, spreading themselves in a contained search pattern over a stretch of desert that includes our position.”

“Is there any sign they might know we’re here?”

“Not yet,” Belmont assured Suma, “But at this point it’s only a matter of time.”

“It’s always been a matter of time,” Suma said, grabbing Belmont by the arm and slamming him against the wall of the cavern. She kissed him, and dutifully he kissed back.

“The situation coul’ change at any ‘o’ent,” he tried to tell her something unimportant, as she bit his lip hard. Grabbing his hand she guided it into her pants.

“You’d better be quick then,” she told him, and he got to work at pleasing her.

“Yes mother.”

 A young man only recently old enough to serve her was supposed to be hard at work chiseling away at uncovering more cave drawings, but he’d stopped to watch Suma get fingered by Belmont. Noticing Suma’s gaze he averted his back to his work.

“No,” she commanded the young cadet. “I want you to watch.” She met his gaze, and could feel her body twist in orgasm. Maybe Tammy had been right. Maybe there really was something wrong with her.

But for the time being everything was going her way.

*     *     *

The last thing Steph needed was for her parents to ask what was wrong with her. It therefore seemed most logical to wait till long after the sun had gone down and they more than likely had gone to sleep before she tried to sneak back into their apartment.

Sneaking in through the front door, she was relieved to hear her mother’s snores from another room. Sure enough they had passed out as she’d hoped. She might even manage to get a shower in. Derek wouldn’t let her use his shower, even after everything he’d done to her he’d said he only had 20 minutes allotted to himself a day and he’d need every second.

That meant Stephanie was still sticky with her boyfriend’s fluids when her father stepped in from the kitchen to confront her.

“Your mother was worried sick,” he whispered to her, and with frustration she stormed through the kitchen onto their balcony. Her father followed after her as fast as his old arthritic legs would take him.

“I know we haven’t been the best parents,” he tried to tell her.

“You’ve been fine,” Steph reiterated, rolling her eyes at the same conversation they’d had a million times. “You’d be a better parent if we didn’t have to go over this again.”

“I just don’t understand why you have to hold such little respect for us,” he continued with it anyway.

“My job was attacked by terrorists,” Steph told her father. “I’ll have a new one by tomorrow.”

“It’s not about the money,” her father insisted. “We thought you could have been dead.”

Steph rolled her eyes. “Isn’t it mom who always says she’d know if something happened to me?” She spotted an empty whiskey bottle by the chair on their small quaint balcony. “Have you been drinking?”

“That’s rich,” he said. “Coming from you.” So he could smell the alcohol on her too. Derek didn’t want to share his shower time with her, but he’d had no problems getting her drunk.

She opened the door and made for her room. She was done talking to her father when he got this way. A bitter old man.

“You’ll regret the time you spend away from us,” The old man hissed loudly after her. “You’ll feel different when they come.”

“Who?” Steph asked, too loud for her own liking, she winced as they both stopped to make sure they could still hear her mother’s snores. “Who?” she whispered again. “Who’s coming?”

“Forget it,” her father mumbled, grabbing the empty bottle of whiskey and checking the very bottom for any more drops of its precious elixir.

“You always act like you know what’s going to happen all the time,” Steph reminded her father. “Who’s coming?”

“The world is falling apart,” her father told her. “At least try and be happy for what little time we have left.”

“Yeah,” Steph said, giving up making sense of him. “I’m trying. I’m gonna take a shower.”

“Alright, Just don’t wake your mother.”

*     *     *

“I demand to be shown to my daughter at vonce,” David heard Zach’s voice from outside the Prime Central Medbay. The doctors that ran the bay were more than gracious to give Dr. Stanfield a workspace, something he’d spent most of the morning rearranging mindlessly as he waited for the necessary samples to be brought to him.

The medbay was large, with plenty of empty beds for the sick, and David had counted four doctors on hand taking patients and fulfilling appointments. On top of that they had state of the art equipment like David had only ever dreamed of.

“Um. Excuse me. That’s a force spectrum microscope,” one of the doctors said to David, criticizing where he was choosing to place it.

“I know,” David told the man. “But generally you need to use it on samples right out from the oscillator to get accurate readings right? So I figured why not put it by the oscillators.”

“Please Doctor Pross,” David heard a security official’s voice from just outside the medbay.

“Look,” David told the doctor. “You can move it back if you want.” David shrugged at the man and turned away. Glancing back one final time David saw the man do just that.

David stepped outside the medbay into the crowded public area of Prime Central Station where it seemed Zachary Pross was trying to shake down a security officer.

“I was tasked with escorting you here,” the security officer was trying to explain to the large bearded man.

David chose to intervene. “He was bringing you to me,” David explained to his partner in medicine.

“Vell it’s about time I seen a familiar face,” Dr. Pross exclaimed, grabbing David in a hug. “Everyvone in my life keep disappearing on me.”

“Well,” David tried to assure his friend, “now you get to disappear too. Did you bring the samples.”

“I brought everything I could,” Zach told David, gesturing to a sleek grey refrigerated case he held in his off-hand.

“Great!” David said, leading him into the medbay.

“Vow, zis place is amazing,” Zach remarked as David led him to their assigned area.

“You can put it here,” David told Zach. “They have the most high tech DNA splicers I’ve ever seen.” It was pretty clear that for all the bad Suma Davi’s father did in his genetic experiments, they didn’t let all that research go to waste. “I was thinking,” David explained to his partner, “that certain viruses have the ability to modify DNA. If we can reprogram one of these viruses to only go after modified damaged genes in the ribonucleic acid…”

“Then all ve’d have to do is inject the modified virus into everyone who has been genetically modified,” Zach finished David’s sentence. “Before,” he added, “zey show any symptoms of evolutionary degenerative disorder.” Of course, it would be too late by then.

Zach placed the case on the table. “I’m not getting to verk until I see my daughter,” Zach insisted to David.

“That’s understandable,” David told his friend. “I’ll take you to her at once.” Last he saw Kat, she was with Emma in the Prime Central Executive Wing landing bay. That was where, apparently, they had managed to find the most fully equipped workshop in the city, and together the two of them were trying to put together Kat’s probe design.

David led Zach through the civilian centers of Prime Central station, areas the two men had frequented many times before. As they got to one of the closed doors David had once never thought to question, he nodded to a nearby security guard and the door opened into the executive wing.

“Vat is all this about?” Zach asked David as he followed the doctor through the black polished corridors. “Are ve being hired to help vith some kind of military contract?”

“Something like that,” David admitted to his friend. “I don’t know if I’m the right person to explain it all to you. I think it’s best you hear it from Kat.”

They got to the landing bay, hearing it as they approached long before they ever saw it. The loud clatter of shuttles coming and going, and engineers working away to repair and maintain parts was enough that David wondered how it wasn’t heard for miles in any direction of the large pyramid. The bay was built into the left side of the pyramid, with a ceiling many stories high and bustling to the brim with constant activity even though this bay wasn’t open to civilians. From what David could tell, most major military operations were being launched from there.

“David!” Emma called to him from her place in the large bay. Like David in the medbay, it seemed Emma was given a space of the bay to dedicate to whatever she wanted. At the moment she seemed to be going over some large designs, but upon seeing him come in, she stopped everything she was doing.

“Zach! It’s great to see you!” Emma told Kat’s father. “You have to see this place, David. Anything I want is just readily provided for me. And they say the engineering bays on the Rebirth are even 10 times better stocked.”

“That’s vonderful,” Zach said. “Now vere’s my daughter.”

Emma went silent for a moment.

“Where is she?” David asked her.

Emma scratched her head. “She WAS here,” Emma said with a wince.

“That’s great!” Zach said loudly. “Then go bring her to me.”

“I can’t do that,” Emma admitted sheepishly. “I want you to know that none of this was my idea.”

“Emma,” David said her name. “Where is she?”

*     *     *

John held the bomber level as it passed over the sand dunes of the Deep Desert. The Hymalious Bomber was a two seater old design bomber used in the first rebellion. The cockpit only fitted two, but this trip he was flying with three, as the little girl genius John had been told to protect prepared the probe in the cargo hold for launch.

“Excuse m-me,” the teenage girl said as she approached the front of the cockpit. “I d-didn’t expect y-you’re missile tubes to be so small.” She laughed a strange awkward giggle. “I had to shave off the c-corners of the radar d-dish. Shouldn’t have any m-major effect on the results.”

Sara, John’s co-pilot, looked back at the teenage girl with mild annoyance. “Why are you telling us this?” The bomber buffeted from wind turbulence, not equipped with the same stabilizers as the space ready G32 Endermans.

“W-well military lady,” the girl stuttered. “it’s a l-little too heavy for-or me. I need help lifting it.”

Sara rolled her eyes, throwing John a dark look. “Where did they find this woman?”

“Gilber said to give her top authority on this mission,” John told Sara. “Apparently she can help us find some rare mineral that will power the Rebirth.”

“Th-that’s a gross simplification of our t-task,” the girl told them. She opened her mouth to explain more but Sara interrupted her.

“If you need my help that’s fine,” Sara said, getting up from her seat. She was a good foot taller than the teenager, even though the teenager was quite tall and wiry herself. “But my name isn’t m-military lady,” she mocked the teen, giving her a hard time. “It’s Ensign Mikkels. And you can refer to John as Colonel Adams.”

“John will do fine,” John called from the cockpit where he was still trying to hold the craft as steady as he could. He was flying along the equator of the planet, like she’d told him to do.

“My name is K-kat Pross,” she told them. “And you can m-make fun of me if you l-like. I’m quite u-used to it. You should kn-know that n-nothing you say will d-deter me from finishing wh-what I set out to do. I’m not af-fraid of you.”

“You sure about that?” Sara pressed, stepping in close to Kat. “Cause you seem to be stuttering more.”

“No one is making fun of you,” John insisted trying to alleviate the tension. He looked back at Sara with a warning look that she understood. “She’s just in high school for solar hells.”

“Sorry colonel,” Sara apologized.

Kat crossed her arms. “I’ll have you know I’m st-studying in an advanced theoretical science post graduate-ate study program with no s-set end,” She corrected John, “after doing a seven year under-dergraduate in four years.”

“So is that better than high school?” Sara asked in her deep voice. “I took three years of flight school.”

“See!” John said in success. “Familiarity breeds friendship.”

“I’m not here to get f-familiar,” Kat complained, waving for Sara to help her with the probe. “I n-need you to lift this w-with me on three.”

“O-one.”

“T-two – oh okay I guess you’ve g-got this.” Kat took a step back as Sara effortlessly lifted the probe with her long muscular arms. Sara would have made a good boomball player, but she’d told John once that she’d wanted to be a pilot her whole life.

“You k-know,” Kat told Sara, admiring her tall built form and strong neck. “Most p-people expect nerds like us to b-be all grossed out by fitness and m-muscles and big guns and-d sweaty bodies.” She shook her head. “It’s not true. I find all that action stuff kind of a turn on.”

John spotted Sara’s pleading look at him and tried to stifle a laugh. “Colonel,” Sara complained. “She’s flirting with me now.” Kat seemed to frown and give a huff.

“Try not to let it get to your head Ensign,” John told Sara.

Sara slid the probe into the missile tube and closed it. “The doohickey is ready to launch,” Sara confirmed to John.

“A long and wide range broad spectrum sensor probe,” Kat corrected her, taking Sara’s seat at the controls. “It’s imperative th-that you fire it at the puh-precise latitude.” John remembered the briefing. He’d in fact been flying at that latitude for the past twenty minutes while she made adjustments to her contraption. “It should only n-need to make one complete orbit around the planet at th-the equator, and give us a b-blanket reading I need across the entire d-deep desert.”

Sara joined them at the cockpit, and looked down on Kat with frustration. “That’s my chair.” Kat ignored her.

If the longitude didn’t matter then there was no point for John to delay any longer. “Probe away,” he told the two women with him, and he squeezed the trigger, watching the probe eject away from them into the horizon.

“So,” Sara said, “you want us to take you back to base, or would you like to stop off for an ice cream first?” John wondered if she was just hoping to get more time alone with him. He didn’t know what she hoped for; in such an old bomber as the one he was flying it didn’t have either an auto-pilot or any space flight capabilities.

Kat shook her head, dashing Sara’s possible illicit hopes. “The telemetry should only take a few m-moments to start c-coming in.” She lifted a tablet from her bag, and turned it on. Sure enough, a rough outline of a map began drawing across her display.

“I’m pretty sure we have prettier maps of the desert in our database,” Sara commented over Kat’s shoulder.

“This is actually a m-multi level scan of the desert, getting sensor readings not just on the surface, but also radiation levels beneath the surface.” There was a blip on the map. “Oh my s-solar gods,” Kat exclaimed. “I think I have a blip.”

“Was that unlikely?” Sara asked.

*     *

“We’re receiving coordinates from the probe results now,” the IT and communications expert Billy shouted out across the operations center.

“How much you wanna bet,” Gilber leaned in and muttered to the mayor, “the coordinates appear somewhere within our search radius.”

A dot faded onto the map, in a small corner of the radius where they’d been deploying their troops. Maggie May was fairly certain she’d seen troops and Endermans pass over that spot multiple times.

“How’d you know that?” the mayor asked her trusty general.

“It means they’re looking for the same thing we are,” Gilber muttered through his lit cigar.

“Tell all our forces to close in on that point,” the councilwoman ordered her crew.

Councillor Mombatta, joining them after a cancelled council meeting, stepped forward to give the councilwoman a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Corrta Angail has the closest battalion,” he informed the mayor. “I’ve already signaled my troops. They’ll be on that spot within moments.”

*     *

“They’re right on top of us,” Belmont told Suma, pointing to the position of the fifteen man battalion that had marched right on top of their base and decided to just set up camp. Suma watched closely as each of the fifteen little blips just sat there atop the sand, captured on the sensors and displayed on her large map display.

Suma reached out and touched the screen. “They have to know we’re below them.”

“I feel like when they realize we’re below them,” Belmont reasoned, “We’ll have some clue.” Suma didn’t pay him to be reasonable.

“There’s more forces coming up on sensors,” one of her soldiers yelled from a station. “they seem to be coming at us from all sides.”

“That’s it,” Suma made up her mind. “Kill those men. And sound the general alarm. Prepare to launch all vessels and arm everyone for all out war.”

*     *

“There’s nothing but sand,” Buster complained, clacking in his bulky equipment as he kicked a dune and watched the sand tumble down the steep incline to rest at the bottom.

“At ease soldier,” his commanding officer Haley ordered. “Let’s all just wait for air support to do a quick sweep and see if they can spot the objective.” Buster felt a lot more relaxed now, knowing there were a couple G32s on the way.

Buster noticed a mound of sand near him jostle. Suddenly a large mechanical device burst from the ground. It seemed to be a large automatic machine gun turret. By the time Buster could process and react, the turret already had a beat on his commanding officer.

It opened fire, the loud brattatat of gunfire cracking like thunder across the sandy dunes as the stationary turret tore Haley apart in a hail of bulletfire.

“Everyone take cover in the sand!” Buster yelled to his fellow squadmembers as two more turrets rose from beneath their feet. The turrets open fired on his squad even as Buster fell to the ground and the remains of Haley’s body dropped nearby, only now shredded tatters of flesh and cloth.

The turret that had just mowed down his commanding officer was taking aim at another squadmember, the coward running in fear instead of listening to Buster’s advice. Buster could hear the whirring and clacking of gears as the turret swiveled in place and the barrel began to spin.

Pulling his assault rifle off his back, Buster open fired on the turret, trying to cause any kind of damage. It was pointless. The turret fired away unimpeded and another of Buster’s friend’s dropped bleeding to the sand. Screams of fear and pain filled the air as all of Buster’s squad was cut down before his eyes.

Retreating from the massacre, Buster pressed himself up against a sand dune, praying to the solar gods he wouldn’t be the next one to be taken. The sand around him jostled, and a large muscular arm reached out to cover Buster’s mouth. He felt a sharp pain in his abdomen and looked down to see the man in the sand had stabbed him. He tried to scream or groan or make any noise but the strong hand over his mouth and nose kept him from even drawing breath.

“Shh,” the large man said, rising out from the sand dune, and bringing his knife to Buster’s neck, slicing it clean across. Buster fell to the sand, his blood seeping into the dry soil as the last thing Buster saw was a legion of enemy forces rising like demons from the sands.

*     *

“What was that?” Maggie May asked, noticing as the blips on the holographic display that signified Mombatta’s people disappeared. “Did you hear anything.”

“They were under fire,” Billy said, trying to listen in on the radio frequencies.

“Multiple units are reporting engagement,” a soldier across the op center yelled to Maggie May.

“Your forces are straggling into the fighting,” Mombatta warned the mayor as he watched the battle unfold. “They arrive only to be picked off before the re-enforcements can arrive.”

Gilber pointed up at the hologram. “We ‘ave air support on teh way,” he informed her. “Just comin’ over the conflict zone now.”

“Good! I wanna know where Suma’s forces are coming from,” Maggie yelled loudly to the room in disbelief. “There’s nothing there!” she shouted, pointing at the hologram. “There’s nothing in the deep desert.”

*     *

“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 Hymalious city 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 by her squadron designation instead of flight leader, even though her seniority on the field gave her 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 younger 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.”

*     *

Dinah seemed to take great glee in pushing Tameka through the dirt corridors into the large cavern with the cave drawings.

“Leave her alone,” Jack complained, following behind them like a sad puppy dog.

Tameka’s mother was waiting for them in the cavern, turning with delight at the entrance of her daughter. “Excellent,” Suma said with joy. “She’s arrived.”

“What’s this about?” Tameka asked defiantly of her mother. She tried to stand straight and proud even despite the handcuffs.

“Your loving mother has drawn you up a front row seat to watch the end of the rebellion,” Suma said, drawing her dark brown eyes to a non-descript metal chair. Blazkor soldiers seemed hard at work fastening something to the chair, but Tameka couldn’t make out what it was.

Dinah put pressure on Meka’s shoulder, and forced her against her will to sit down on the chair.

“You don’t really think you can win,” Tameka muttered to her mother, “do you?”

“No,” Suma told her daughter with a smile. “In fact, I know I can’t. I just need my men to distract them long enough for what comes next. And you’re going to help with that.” Her smile widened. “You don’t even have to get up.”

Suma reached down beside Tameka to fiddle with a black box that seemed to be firmly fastened to the chair. Tameka strained her neck to see what the device said on it, and spotted the three red numbers glowing out its front.

“Five minutes,” Suma explained to her daughter. “That’s how long you have before the chair explodes and brings down this entire chamber, buying me and my men enough time to finish what I’ve started.”

Suma looked up at the cave drawings on the wall. “I’m going to miss this place. It’s a shame to destroy something so beautiful.”

“I hope they kill you slow,” Tameka snarled.

“Now now,” Suma tutted down at her. “That’s no way to speak to your mother. It’s too bad I won’t be able to watch you die. I’ll just have to imagine your face right before the end.”

Tameka looked to Jack, desperate for anything. She could see the sympathy on his face, but still he just stood by and watched.

“Mother,” Belmont said, joining them in the cavern. He had sand in his hair and blood staining his uniform. He must have just returned from the front lines. “Your men claim to have found an entrance.”

Suma clapped her hands together. “Excellent,” she exclaimed, turning to head down the newly drilled passageway. “Our fate awaits.”

“Actually,” Belmont said, stopping her. “A second crew found it, down a different corridor.”

Suma frowned. “Very well then. Lead the way.”

“Come along Jack.” Jack followed after Suma, looking back to give Tameka one last sorrowed look.

And then Tameka was alone. Just her and the ticking. She strained her neck to see the time on the bomb. Four and a half minutes. The facility shook as somewhere in the distance an explosion rang out.

That would be her soon. Tameka swallowed heavily.

*     *

“Th-that’s a lot of ships,” Kat commented with awe. She’d never been in a battle before. She could count at least fifteen gunships that had risen out from the large landing bay holding open in the sand.

Kat checked her readings. “The element I n-need is in there,” she told the others in the cockpit with her, pointing to the hole in the sand.

“Of course it is,” John muttered. It seemed he was trying his best to keep their distance from the fighting, choosing instead to watch from the sidelines. She could see two of his wingmates ducking and weaving between the gunships trying to draw the fire away from the troops. On the ground, Suma’s forces were still overwhelming, but the growing Hymalious City resistance that was building around the conflict zone was starting to hold the line against them. In the distance she could see more reinforcements approaching.

“Do we have any missiles?” John asked his co-pilot. Sara looked behind her at the eight large canisters Kat had gotten them to remove from the launch tubes earlier.

“Sorta,” Sara told her superior officer with a roll of her eyes. “We’d need to load them first.”

“Okay,” John said, his eyes on one gunship that seemed to be turning towards them. “Well then load them. Please.”

Kat got out of her seat and the two women scrambled for the missiles even as John pulled off a complicated aerial maneuver that sent them careening into a wall.

“Duck!” John yelled as machine gun fire ripped through his cockpit windshield, just missing him, and tearing up the center of the cargo bay.

“Nebulous hells,” Sara swore at the pilot, one of the bullet holes scarily close to passing through her foot. Sara grabbed a missile and with Kat’s help she shoved it into one of the two missile tubes. Kat slammed the tube door.

“A m-missile tube is loaded!” Kat yelled to John as he spun the bomber in a lazy circle that was rough enough to cause a whine from the engine.

“Which missile tube?” John asked in confusion.

“M-my right!”

John seemed to look down at his controls. “Your right?” he yelled at Kat. “Your right is my right!” He fired off the missile and Kat watched with glee as it streaked across the sky to collide with the center of the gunship coming at them, the large craft exploding apart.

She’d helped cause that! Kat’s heart was beating wildly. This must have been what adrenaline felt like. It felt good.

“Keep loading warheads,” Sara yelled to Kat, taking the co-pilots seat and switching on the radio. Kat began loading a second warhead into the tube as Sara radio’d out to the G32’s flying distraction around the gunships.

“Thalia,” Sara said into the radio. “Tania. This is one and two.”

“Where?” came a woman’s voice through the radio.

“A bomber on the outskirts,” Sara said. She gave a look to Kat, one Kat tried to return with a smile. It wasn’t that kind of look. Kat slid a warhead into the necessary slot.

“We’re going to need you to run escort if you can,” Sara told the two pilots. “We’re going to attempt to land in that open bay in the sand.”

John smiled over at his co-pilot. “You know just how to read my mind,” he said, hitting a couple switches to alter the manual stabilizers. He brought them in low over an area of heavy fighting and fired the missile Kat had just armed into a battalion of Blazkor reinforcements coming in.

“Alright,” the woman’s voice on the radio said. “Let’s get this over with.” The G32s swooped in from the gunships and sidled up on either side of their bomber. John hit the engines to max, and Kat was thrown back by the momentum into the back of the ship, having just managed to get a third missile in place in time. She was starting to sweat from all the strenuous manual labour. On top of that, her arms really ached.

What fun! She used to read stories imagining what it would be like being in a battle. They were always her favourite parts of history, a subject otherwise just full of pointless dates and people she never cared to memorize.

She could see through the cracked windshield as John dodged heavy railgun and machine gun fire in their sluggish bomber. He pointed their craft towards the hole in the desert and Kat felt her stomach rise into her throat as they swooped in under the fire.

An alarm sounded.

“Missile launch,” John warned Sara, and she grabbed at the fire controls in the co-pilots seat. The controls for the forward cannons came down from above over the co-pilots seat, two joysticks controlling the large slow rate of fire machine gun cannons that could only shoot forward, but could tilt a good thirty degrees in any direction from there.

Kat was glad she’d gotten up when she did. It was fun helping out where she could, but she didn’t wanna try testing her aim shooting a gun for the first time ever.

“I got it,” Sara insisted to John. Her superior officer pointed at the fiery streaking warhead coming straight at them from a soldier in the bay with a handheld launcher. “I said I got it,” she reiterated.

Squeezing the trigger, Sara sweeped the slow machine guns over the missile’s path, taking it out harmlessly before it got even close to hitting them. She then sweeped the guns over the ground forces moving to block them from landing.

“You’re clear,” a female voice through the radio said, and the two G32s streaked back out into the fray to keep the gunships occupied.

“Deploying landing gear,” Sara said, and John effortlessly compensated for the drag as the landing gear descended. Without breaking a sweat John easily set their bomber down gently on the landing pad. The surrounding bay that was hidden under the desert was massive. Big enough to easily fit fifteen gunships. Possibly even many more, but it seemed fifteen was all Suma had left.

Sara got up from her co-pilot’s seat and grabbed a pistol from a locker on the side of the bomber. She threw an assault rifle to John, which he caught without barely a look. Kat wished she could be as cool as him.

“Stay on the ship,” John told her as Sara hit the button to lower the landing ramp. Sara fired her pistol at two soldiers in the corridor ahead of them, taking both men down. She got to the bottom of the ramp and dropped to her knee, searching the area quickly.

“Clear.”

John got off the ship after her, passing her and stepping into the corridor. A soldier came around the corner, but John fired on him quickly, and dropped him cleanly with two shots.

Kat checked the readings on her datapad. The source of the radiation signature was directly ahead of them down that hallway. Kat defied John’s order and stepped off the bomber.

A couple soldiers came out a different corridor and began shooting on Kat and Sara, and the two women moved forward to take cover behind a forklift with John. John fired off shots to cover their approach, but Kat was sure a bullet from the enemy whistled only just past her ear. Her heart was really pounding now. But it didn’t seem so much fun anymore.

Sara reached around the forklift and fired off a couple shots across the landing bay at the Blazkor soldiers. She hit one man, wounding him but not enough to keep him from shooting back. Another man pushed forward to take cover behind a barrel of fuel.

“That barrel is explosive!” Kat yelled to John who took his chance to shoot the barrel. The man’s cover exploded spectacularly with a rain of fire. The force of the concussion sent him across the bay to smash heavily into a hanging shredded gunship engine. The burnt rusted metal creaked as it strained on the chains and rocked back and forth.

The other man seemed to retreat back into the corridor he came from. John signalled for them to follow him, and he led the way down the corridor closest them.

“I almost died,” Kat said breathlessly to no one in particular, leaning her back against their cover. Breathing as deeply as she could, she got up to follow behind them.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sara asked in a whisper, finally getting a chance to chastise Kat. “He told you to stay on the ship!”

“My readings say the element is just-t ahead,” Kat insisted to the woman, fearlessly keeping up with them.

Sara rolled her eyes, and took point in the leap frog position, passing John to peer around the edge of the corridor.

“It’s a fork,” she said back to John with frustration.

Kat looked at her datapad. “The element is th-that way,” she told them, pushing forward to point down the left corridor. Suddenly there was a scream from the right followed with gunfire.

“We’re being ambushed,” a voice yelled into John’s radio. “We’ve broken through their lines into their base, but they’ve got us surrounded.”

“I’m going to hit them from the side,” John said, as they heard more gunfire down the corridor. He looked to Sara. “Look after the mission critical. I’ll be right back.” With that he disappeared down the right corridor.

“That’s the w-wrong way,” Kat insisted to Sara.

“Shut up,” Sara yelled at Kat. “Just shut up! It’s your fault we’re in this mess.”

Kat tried to do as she was told, but it didn’t much suit her. “I think we should g-go that way.”

Sara took a deep breath. “We don’t do anything without word from John,” she told Kat at last. She hit a button on her radio. “John, this is Sara. Come in.” Gunfire went off somewhere far down the right corridor.

“Dammit,” Sara said. “I’m going after him. Stay close behind me.” She stepped off down the right corridor and Kat was going to go in after her but she heard a yell from the corridor to her left.

“Hello?” she yelled back down the left corridor, waiting for a reply.

“Help me!” someone yelled back. “Hurry!”

Kat ran down the left corridor, passing empty sleeping quarters, armories, and even a sort of low grade ops center like the one she’d seen at Prime Central Station. At last she came to a large cavern with cave art drawn into the walls. In the center of the cavern was a young black skinned woman tied to a chair. Her pants were Blazkor colors, but Kat couldn’t imagine why the rebels would tie one of their own to a chair.

“Hello,” the woman called out to Kat. “You have to get your people out of here!”

The woman struggled against her restraints and tried to turn herself so Kat could get a clear view of what she was strapped to.

“It’s a bomb!” the woman said impatiently as Kat was still trying to process everything. The timer said only two minutes and twenty seven seconds left. “You have to tell your people to fall back,” the woman yelled to Kat. “She’s gonna bring this entire place down on top of you!”