Following Dernhelm “Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy,” the man at the door declared as they entered the room. “And their ward.”
Mrs. Kilroy, a stately dark-haired and dark-skinned woman who didn’t seem to be nearly as Irish as her name, turned a hand to cover her mouth at the introduction and stifled a laugh. The light was dancing in her eyes as she did so, not cruelly, at least not intentionally.
“It’s like some sort of grand ball or something,” she tittered. “Introducing us like that. One wonders where Cinderella is.”
“Well that’s easy, dear,” Mr. Kilroy noted in response. He clearly showed the source of his surname with a shock of fading and once bright red hair in comparison to his African-American wife. “That would be our little Aouda, wouldn’t it?”
“Wouldn’t that make you the evil stepparents?” the girl behind them asked dryly. She was no more Irish than her mother, and showed neither of her parents’ bloodlines in her face.
The humor behind Mrs. Kilroy’s looks dimmed a bit, and not with hurt or disappointment, but with just annoyance. Once upon a time, Aouda thought she had seen concern and affection in those eyes, but these days those eyes just looked dry and considering. Once upon a time she would have been referred to as a daughter rather than a “ward”, as well
“Now then, Aouda,” Mr. Kilroy chided her, “be careful with your tone. Just enjoy the party, dance, talk to the boys and maybe you’ll get to do a demonstration or something later.”
Aouda glanced around the room and noted the boys her guardian was directing her towards. She recognized most of them, of course. Knowing the movers and shakers of international commerce as well as their families was part of her daily chores. The youngest of the “boys” was her age of sixteen and most of them were at least eighteen. A further scan showed her no sign of the boy she’d been in a relationship for the past year, at Mrs. Kilroy’s “suggestion.”
“So where’s Shouta?” she asked. “I thought you had an eye on his father’s Okinawan interests.”
“Don’t be so crude,” Mrs. Kilroy responded, grabbing hold of Aouda’s arm and taking her off towards a corner. Mr. Kilroy followed along. “We only want what’s best for you, dear. Certainly you know that. And Shouta isn’t here so it might be best to just do what you can to enjoy yourself.”
Aouda’s eyes scanned around the hall and caught sight of the television cameras that were stationed ahead to film some of the performances of the night. She sighed and wondered what the conversation with Shouta and his parents would be like in the wake of seeing her on television having a “good time” with other boys. And it wasn’t like she could really say that she wouldn’t do it. She was too much the centerpiece of the perfect multicultural success story that was her family.
“All right, mother,” she said straightening herself, pasting on the vapid smile and remembering what she could of recent business and politics. Putting on the appearance of the perfect Californian beauty, a little Indian Orphan Annie taken in by Daddy Warbucks and his secretary turned love interest. “How do I look?”
“Oh perfectly radiant, dear,” Mr. Kilroy complimented. “Knock them dead.”
“Remember you’re a modern American woman, don’t back down,” Mrs. Kilroy added. “You are their equal, challenge them and make them come to you.”
“I know, I know,” Aouda agreed flipping her hair and taking a more dynamic pose than the one she had shuffled in with. an energetic sort of apparent innocence that the self-proclaimed jaded East Coast people here would have termed a breath of fresh air, ironically enough from Aouda’s perspective.
“Now that’s more like the little girl we’ve raised all this time,” her guardian affirmed. “Maybe you’re finally getting past this phase you’ve been in and back to your normal self.”
Her normal self was permanently posing and smiling for whatever cameras happened to be pointing her way. Everything was an act, even her name. Her parents had cribbed it from a Jules Verne novel that included an Indian princess rescued from a ritual death. She’d managed to figure that out when she’d accidentally stumbled on her original birth certificate out on her parents’ desk during a reorganization of some kind. The original name her birth mother had given her had been unreadable.
Though she had seen enough to tell that there were a few more consonants than just one “d” in her original name.
Aouda would have liked to have believed that this was a phase and had nothing to do with her younger sister. The one that had been born to the people that had stopped calling themselves parents and started calling themselves guardians in slow progression since that birth date. She desperately wanted to believe that the people she thought had loved her the first ten years of her life weren’t simply using her.
The appearance of a familial discussion given to anybody watching, Aouda walked out into the party. No, rather she flowed and skipped with a little twirl, a trace of a pop music dance in her stride. Maybe a little old school Marilyn by way of Madonna, stuff that couldn’t be called dated when it was still classic. She couldn’t just go straight for the guys, of course, the goal was to make Shouta and his family worry about the relationship, not make her look like a frivolous vapid headed valley girl.
The Indian princess named for an Indian princess smiled brightly as she took up a glass of one of the non-alcoholic beverages and held it in a crafted, carefree manner that still displayed a humorous sense of the sophisticated to anybody watching. Some of the nearby adults smiled in her direction, laughing as she gave them a mock toast with her glass.
With a quirky smile and a carefree shuffle, she moved to go onto the dance floor and started moving in time to the Vivaldi piece being performed by the quartet in the centre of the room. There was a trick to giving modern movements to the old world favorite pieces. If you did it wrong, the rather more reserved East Coast people would take offense like no one would believe.
Oh, but when it was done right, it certainly caught attention. And soon enough she saw one of the young men she’d been directed toward start to turn and look her way. Given the way single young men seemed to always travel in packs, it was certainly pretty quick that the others took notice as well. With a casual shake of her head and roll of her eyes that was supposed to look dismissive but was calculated to build interest, she started dancing off toward another corner of the dance floor.
The first pair of young popped up in front of her like eager puppies eyeing someone ready to give them some love, or maybe wolves seeing something to devour. She checked that last thought and shook her head as they talked, no there wasn’t anybody here that looked predatory.
“Hey there, Aouda,” the first, Harry Astor, said. He was old money, but not really in line for any sizeable inheritance, at least not by her parent’s standards.
“Hey, Harry,” she responded before looking to the other young man with a bit of a teasing giggle. “Monty.”
“Montgomery,” the young man corrected her quickly. “So you’re here without being on Daiwa’s arm?”
“Oh, Shouta?” she asked as if uncertain of what he could mean. “He had some business or something. I’m just here with my parents pretending to drink champagne.”
She tipped her glass in a fake drunken manner and gave her best tipsy Marilyn laugh. Kids her age and a little older usually never noticed the resemblance since not many watched those old movies. Part of why they were perfect to emulate right now.
“You know,” Harry spoke in a reminding tone of voice, “I can help you make that not so pretend.”
“Yes, but what would I do when you aren’t here?” she asked, watching the swivel of a camera as it scanned the crowd and giving a very spritely laugh as it directed toward her.
“I can help with that, too,” Harry assured her. “There’s a guy I know that could give you an ID that would pass through most government checks even.”
Aouda paused at that remark, her brow furrowing slightly in thought as she considered that.
“Just how the hell do you know someone that could do an ID that good?” she asked.
“Oh come on, baby,” Harry commented. “You know when you’ve got money, you’ve got connections.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure about that, Harry,” Montgomery commented with a raised eye. Maybe legitimate teasing, maybe an attempt to undercut his competition, Aouda wasn’t sure which and at the moment didn’t care.
“Give me a moment, guys, okay?” she asked, looking into her empty drink. “I need to get something.”
Fighting a slight shiver, she went back towards the refreshments, intent on refilling her glass and seeing if she could find a conversation that was a bit less disturbing. Granted, the guy was probably just showing off for her, but if he really did know someone, then it was likely from his family’s business and she didn’t really want to get involved in something that would need that sort of connection.
At least not yet.
She didn’t manage to reach the refreshments before her par…guardians called her over to the knot of people standing with them. Remembering the statement of a demonstration from before, she started readying herself for the act. Turning on her heels and walking casually and gracefully to meet her parents, she arrived with a sunny smile and wave.
“Heya,” she greeted everybody. “What’s up?”
“Well, your parents here…” one of the men in the small cluster started to say.
“Guardians,” Mr. Kilroy corrected, drawing a confused and cautious look from the people around him as his wife glared daggers at him.
“Yes, well, they were bragging about your skills in some Chinese thing,” the man continued on. “What was it again?” He turned to Mr and Mrs. Kilroy.
“Was it Tai Chi Chuan, Mr. Danvers?” Aouda asked politely, not waiting for the Kilroys to answer. She acted with just the right amount of social ignorance to be seen as perky and innocence.
“Ah, that was it,” he answered. “Exactly. Something like kung fu then?”
“Sort of, kinda more like a dance really,” Aouda shrugged it off hoping her sifu never caught wind of this sort of conversation.
“Well, could you show us some?” a woman next to Mr. Danvers asked eagerly.
“I don’t know,” the girl responded. “You’re not really supposed to be showing off or anything like that.”
“Oh just a little bit would be fine, I’m sure,” Mrs. Kilroy encouraged her. “You look so lovely and graceful when you practice, dear. I’m sure it would be fine to show just a little bit of what you can do.”
The head shaking and shrugging were as theatrical as anything else she’d done that night, or most of the rest of her life it was beginning to seem. But she finally nodded with a long suffering sigh. “All right, all right, just need to give me some space I guess.”
“Do you need the music to stop playing?” Danvers asked.
“No, that’s fine,” Aouda commented. “Just the space.”
It was bad enough that she would be clearing out all the dancers to make room for a sixteen year old girl trying to garner her parents some praise for their tolerance and acceptance of “new age” things, she didn’t want to stop the musicians too. For all she knew that could have cut into the payment they were due.
The somewhat disappointed look on Mr. Danver’s face confirmed something of her suspicion as she moved to the center of the floor and tried to move to center herself. The girl started moving as quickly as she could, focusing on the action as much as she could.
Step. Step. Hand strike. Foot stomp, make it graceful. Unbalance the foe. Let him fall past. Strike. Strike. Step back. Strike. Flow past, strike to the back. Flow. Flow. Keep it graceful. Dance past everything. Direct your edge. Strike now. Back of the knee. Throat.
Aouda thought through her actions as they finished, not needing the internal dialogue for the routine, even improvising on the fly, but it helped sometimes. At least, in this, there was less hypocrisy about her existence than there usually was.
A dancing sword slashing through the air, deceptively and agilely dangerous, that was her.
But the hypocrisy was still there. The hollow feeling at Aouda’s center turned sharper when she did even this at the Kilroy’s request and she wondered whether they knew just how much she… disliked doing all these acts. She would have thought hate, but that was a word for passion and fire not whatever she had.
Maybe it was just teenaged angst that she was feeling. Maybe in a couple more years she wouldn’t notice this sort of thing anymore and she could just go back loving her family and living her life.
Maybe.
Aouda came to a smooth stop and took in a long breath before returning back to her starting stance. Around her was a scattering of applause and she put on her smile again to wave at everybody coquettishly. “Oh, please, that’s not necessary.”
“Oh give yourself some credit,” Mr. Danvers said warmly. “That was very beautiful. I’ll have to look into this Tai Chi. I’ve been hearing about it, but I wasn’t sure what to think.”
“That was indeed just darling,” the same woman from before noted. “I had been expecting something out of one of those spy movies with that… Lee person. It certainly is a very lovely dance.”
“Well, it was something of a fad in California for quite a while,” Mr. Kilroy explained, “and Aouda always has to do everything she tries perfectly.”
“That’s quite a girl you have there,” Mr. Danvers noted pointedly. “I hope you know that.”
“Oh, we never doubt it, Jacob,” Mrs. Kilroy noted.
Aouda huddled her shoulders in, trying to blush as she walked back to her guardians and their associates, hearing the scattered conversation and praise already turning slowly away from her now that the Kilroys were making full use of the way Aouda had apparently impressed the onlookers.
Slowly the Californian princess extricated herself and started back toward the refreshments, noticing that only a single person seemed to be near the table, a the man, in his mid-thirties maybe, wearing an odd tuxedo. It seemed to be a few decades out of style, actually, but somehow it really seemed to work on him. He had dark hair and a clean beard about his chin and jaw line. She noticed a few scars here and there along his neck, face and the back of his hands.
Looking away she reached for a new glass and stepped aside of the man politely.
“You show an excellent grasp of tactics,” he commented idly.
“What?” Aouda asked, surprised not so much at the comment but at its content. “Oh, can’t really have tactics in a demonstration.” She waved it off blithely.
“You can,” the man noted. The more he talked, the more Aouda seemed to detect something of a British accent, but it was off somehow. “But I was referring to the night in general. Since a little after you walked into the room, you’ve been doing very well at analyzing the situation and reacting appropriately.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aouda said quickly, starting to turn away.
“I actually think you do,” the man commented with a smile. “The only thing you seem to be missing is… a little feeling.”
“Most people don’t notice,” the girl responded without thinking, immediately taking a drink to cover the slip. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say anything.”
“I know, I know,” her conversation partner responded.
“Excuse me,” Aouda noted. “But what is your name? I thought I knew most of the people here, but…”
“Oh, excuse me,” the man noted apologetically offering a respectful bow. “I’m Mr. Penn. And I do suppose I’m more of the type of person that goes for tea parties rather than this sort of extravagance. What about you?”
“Oh, parties, balls, photo shoots, wherever the Kilroy’s point me and fire,” she said with a shrug.
“Not really the best of ways to think of yourself,” Mr. Penn noted sourly.
“That’s okay,” Aouda noted. “I know what I am.” She paused, thinking for a moment. “Sometimes I think about this book. British, guy named Tolkien wrote it.”
“I believe I may have heard of it,” Mr. Penn noted with a smile. “I think it was named one of the top books of the 20th century recently.”
“Yeah, okay, I’m more of a society, Wall Street and Washington girl usually,” the girl said. “Anyway, there was a character in that, a lady taking care of her crazy uncle until he got better and went off to war. So she dressed up as a guy and followed him. Sometimes, I wonder about that.”
“You could do that,” Mr. Penn suggested. Immediately she turned to look at him suspiciously. “Oh I don’t mean literally. But you’ll always have your own choice to make. You don’t have to be wielded by someone else’s hand.”
“And do what?” Aouda asked.
“Find something,” Mr. Penn suggested. “It could be….”
He paused a moment, face turning pale as he looked out the window toward the New York skyline. Confused, Aouda looked out and just saw the New York skyline, mostly blocked by the skyscrapers they were among, especially the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. She scoffed and shook her head as she pointed.
“That’s where I’m going to be somed….”
A series of explosions ripped out of the windows of one of the two towers as Aouda watched, a tremendous roar following the sight occurring only blocks away. The music stopped and everyone turned to look out the window. A moment later, another explosion ripped out of the body of the tower followed by another. As smoke poured out of the building within the shocked looks of everybody present, Aouda found herself feeling something familiar but something that had been long absent.
It took her a moment or two to realize what she was feeling.
Anger.
She was angry.
People were dying.
“This was an ill-timed conversation,” Mr. Penn told her quickly. “Get out of here, calm down. Think…”
People. Were. Dying.
That wasn’t supposed to happen.
Without hearing what else Mr. Penn had to say she broke away as the room started to descend into chaos. Immediately, she started calling out for the Kilroys and scanning through the crowd at a run. Her circuit passed the elevator and she stopped dead, staring in shock as her guardians stood on the elevator looking out toward her.
“Aouda! Oh thank goodness you’re here,” Mr. Kilroy snapped out quickly. “Come one let’s get out of here.”
“You left without me?” she asked.
“No, no!” Mrs. Kilroy responded quickly. “We thought you’d already left, we were going to look for you.”
“I was… I was calling,” she answered quietly as the elevator door started to close.
Mrs. Kilroy held out her hand until the door came closer, but instead of holding it out to keep the automatic door open, she pulled it in to let the elevator seal them off from Aouda. It had been a reluctant motion, but it had been her decision none the less.
The nascent feeling of anger exploded in her and she dashed for the stairs, storming down them with bitter tears streaming down her face. She hit the bottom floor an indeterminate number of seconds later. She wasn’t keeping track. Out on the street, she looked toward the Towers and saw another string of explosions. People were staring or else running away. Sirens were blaring and Aouda was certain that she heard gunfire.
What the hell was happening?
The thought was put back and she dived forward, running ahead down the street as the faded sound of her would be parent’s voices drifted from behind her, practically unheard. Aouda wasn’t sure how many blocks she travelled before a police woman stepped out in front of her. Fluidly, she stepped aside and around, trying to continue to head for the smoking tower. Another cop stepped in her way, making her hesitate long enough for the first to grab her and pull her away.
“Hey there, come away, kid,” the woman said. “There’s bad stuff going on in there.”
“But people are dying! They shouldn’t be dying!” Aouda snapped, the anger flowing out obviously. No, it was rage by now.
“Of course, it shouldn’t be happening,” the other cop snapped. “But it’s not something you can help with so just stay back and get somewhere out of the…”
Which was when the first of the towers fell.
________________________________________
“…the terrorists responsible were members of the Czech special forces,” the reporter spoke as Harry Astor walked into his room at the end of the day. “It is believed the attack is in retaliation for rumored operations by NATO and allies to try and secure the many nuclear warheads that are believed to have been left uncontrolled following the widespread collapse into chaos of Russia and Eastern Europe.”
Harry turned toward the TV a bit confused, trying to remember if he had left it on or not.
“This just in, Gary,” the other anchor noted. She turned quickly to the camera. “It seems that the New York Police have captured what appears to be a Russian made nuclear warhead. We’ve got reports on the scene.”
“Okay, let’s see it,” Gary noted.
The scene changed to one of ambulances and police cars at a hotel somewhere in Manhattan. “This is horrible, Gary, Lisa. There are bodies everywhere. Most dead, some dying.”
“What happened there?”
“Some of the people here stumbled onto the device the terrorists were setting up and did what they could to slow down its activation until the police could arrive,” the onsite reporter explained.
“Do you still want to give me the name of the guy that can do those identities?” a voice asked behind him, causing him to twist around and see Aouda sitting on his bed, covered in dried blood and grey from dust. “I think I might need a drink.”
________________________________________
Two men followed by a woman carrying a large camera on her shoulder crawled through the blasted trees and climbed over the rocky terrain. One of the men was occasionally shivering and trying to rub himself warmer through his jacket.
“Told you to dress warmer,” the woman said with a smirk.
“Thick winter jackets do not look good on TV,” the reporter said stubbornly.
“Do blue lips?” the other man asked, sharing a look with the camerawoman.
“Whatever,” the man noted. “This looks like a good spot, let’s do the intro here.”
“Okay, whatever you say, Thomas,” the woman noted as she lifted the camera to her shoulder and started fiddling with it.
“Tell me when we’re transmitting,” Thomas insisted.
“Whenever you’re ready,” the second man noted as he fiddled with a satellite relay.
“Hello, this is Thomas Senalt on location here somewhere in Czech territory,” he began. “It’s been three years since Czech agents launched an attack on the United States and despite assurances that those involved were rogue agents, we have been at war here ever since then. Some critics of the war have begun to suggest that there are elements of the country seeking to annex parts of Eastern Europe similar to what occurred in Asia at the end of World War II.”
He glanced toward the North and back to the camera.
“Now we have new rumors,” he commented. “We all know about the conflict between East and West Germany, but what you may not be aware of is that in addition to the Czech War still ongoing, that our country may be about to be drawn into that conflict as well.” He pointed out the direction he had looked. “Somewhere out there, rumors say that an American military unit is shielding East German rebels and West German strike forces, here in Czech terr-.”
A sharp sound interrupted the broadcast and it took a moment before they realized that they had just heard a ricochet. Thomas looked around and down below toward the trees they had climbed up from as the other two dived down behind rocks.
“Hey, Dana, get a shot of that!” he shouted. “There are soldiers down there!”
“And they’re shooting at us!” she snapped back. “Get down unless you want to die!”
“This is a golden opportunity!” the reporter declared, though he ducked under cover. “We can get interviews, footage. Tell their side of the…”
“They’re not trying to capture us,” Dana shouted. “How’d they know we were here?”
“Probably tracked the transmission,” the third crew member shouted over another a burst of gunfire. “Look there’s a way to climb out of here and stay under cover.”
“What you want us to leave this, Larry?” Thomas asked though the other man was already crawling out of their area.
“Let’s get somewhere they don’t know where we are before we start filming,” Dana called out, shielding her head as she tried to crawl after Larry. “Are you coming?”
“Just a moment, just a moment,” he said. “I think I see uprights.”
“What the hell?” Dana demanded. “All this for us?! That can’t be.”
“Just move the two of you!” Larry shouted from around a corner. “It’s clear over here.”
They followed Larry around the corner standing up as they came clear of the immediate gun fire. Ahead of them was a path heading down into the rocky gorge filled with plenty of cover giving trees. The three of them started running pell-mell down that path, only Thomas pausing to look back over his shoulder and see three uprights coming around and over the ridge they had just been on.
Starting to get the feeling that he wasn’t going to get anything much out of this, Thomas stopped considered the shots they were missing and pushed himself to the same sprints as his crew. The three pushed around a moss covered rock outcropping and looked for anywhere they could go to get clear of being spotted by the vehicles. Each of the fifteen foot tall vehicles lumbered after them in long steps that tore up the distance between the reporters and the Czech army.
“They’re gaining on us!” Larry shouted.
“They’re in uprights! What do you expect?” Dana answered back.
Behind them, the first of the uprights had spotted them and started moving deliberately forward, passing the same moss covered rock while trying to aim their built in anti-personnel cannons. It fired once or twice, hitting nothing but trees, before the loud sound of slicing metal ripped across the area. The three journalists came to a full stop, inherent curiosity getting the better of them again, and looked to see the moss-covered rock had now become scattered foam camouflage to reveal an American upright which had already sliced off the arm of the Czech upright and then stabbed into its torso.
“Get the camera going!” Thomas shouted as the American upright turned about to deal with the remaining two uprights.
“I’m going!” Dana recalled, trying to make sure the run hadn’t jostled anything before pulling it to her shoulder and starting to film the metal giants collide with each other. “Got it! Signal?”
“I dropped the dish!” Larry shouted. “All I have is the basic transmitter.”
“Go with it!” Thomas declared. “Okay, just minutes ago, a Czech force opened fire on us as we were giving our report and fortunately we’ve found ourselves saved by the timely appearance of an American upright.”
Ahead of them, the American upright shook as cannon fire grazed it, but failed to stop it from reaching its opponent. The huge knife in the vehicles hands tore into another vehicle, and probably through the operator as well. The remaining Czech vehicle gauged its chances and turned to retreat, moving ponderously back up the hill as the American rushed behind it and proceeded to tear it apart.
“Well, everybody, it looks like we’re safe,” the reporter announced as he looked to see the Czech infantry retreating in number.
“Uh don’t look now, but he’s coming this way,” Dana said nervously as the American machine started to lumber their way before finally stopping and settling into a kneeling position not twenty feet away from them.
“Keep the camera on the cockpit,” Thomas whispered.
“Doing that,” Dana responded.
The chest of the upright cracked open to reveal a tall, dark skinned woman with brown hair and a rather irritated expression on her face. This was something rather less than expected for the three journalists as they saw her stepping out of the vehicle and talking into an ear piece as she did. Finally, she seemed to be done with her conversation as her hand came down and she started driving for their location.
“All right, whose damn bright idea was this?” she demanded animatedly. “You just ruined an ambush we’ve been planning for weeks!”
“Looks like you got them to me,” Larry noted.
“And every other damn target of this strike is now alerted! Thank you!” she shouted stepping right into the satellite crew’s face. “Aren’t you people aware that the Czech’s are executing reporters as spies?”
“Wait, you look familiar,” Thomas noted.
“Don’t try it pretty boy,” the woman snapped shaking her head. “I’m not in the fucking mood.”
“No, no,” Thomas noted. “I know who you are. Aouda Kilroy! You disappeared three years ago in New York.”
The soldier crossed her arms irritably and frowned.
“The name is Specialist Eowyn Desai,” she informed him with a glare. “Now put that camera away before I shove down your throat.”
________________________________________
“Unfortunately, Specialist,” the officer across from her commented reluctantly. “While you are old enough now, the false identity and other situations are still a problem. In light of your service, we’re not charging you with any criminal action, but we can’t keep you in service.”
“Sir, there’s still fighting to be done,” she noted hopefully. “I am healthy, willing and able to fight.”
“The fighting is cooling down, Specialist,” he informed her. “If we thought this would last longer, maybe we could look past it, but as things stand.”
“I’m…out? Because of some nosy reporters?” she asked. “That’s it?”
“There’s something else,” he noted. “We have received word from your parents. They’d like to speak to you.”
Eowyn, formerly Aouda, formerly some other name lost to time and faded ink, straightened and looked ahead seriously.
“Tell them sorry, but I’m too busy looking for a new job,” she said slowly. “Is there anything else, sir?”
“No, that’s all, Specialist, you’re dismissed,” he answered regretfully. “Good luck with your life.”
She stood up with a crisp salute and turned to leave the office with a perfect cadence.
________________________________________
“Burmese piece of crap,” Eowyn snarled bitterly as she dropped from the wreckage of what had been a relatively new upright. She was covered in grease and holding a relatively intact part from inside the vehicle which she was staring at doubtfully as she started to walk back to her own vehicle.
The patchwork repairs were clearly visible as she approached the thing. It was the same model she’d been using in Czechoslovakia, the Warrior, minus the updates that had come out since 2004. Actually, it was minus the updates that had come out since 2002, not to mention that her weapon was cobbled together from remains of the built-in crap the Burmese preferred. Walking toward it, she felt more like something out of one of those Conan comic books than the character she’d taken her name from. Even that had cost most of what she had for hiring off the grid engineers to do the integrations and repairs she hadn’t been able to do jury-rig. Or for which the jury-rigs had stopped doing anything.
Pretty soon she was going to have to look into getting a whole new rig and that would mean stealing one, which was more than a little annoying given that there was a scarcity of NATO standard vehicles and equipment in the area. She wondered if she could afford a break spent training in a new interface method.
“I suppose I could slip back into free India and borrow another decrepit Warrior,” she muttered to herself as she started doing her check list. “It is their damn country I’m fighting for here, whether they want to admit a woman is helping them or not.”
The cockpit closed around her with the whining, struggling sounds of start up from the falling apart machine.
“Oh damn it, come on, don’t fall to pieces on me out here,” she snapped. “At least let me walk you to a graveyard for a decent send off.” She hit a few buttons and worked a few gauges as she listened to the machines struggling to come to fully online. “Come on. You have a little bit more in you.”
All at once, the gears and throttles engaged and the vehicle lurched to its feet as computers fully came to life with a number of readouts. Some of the screens crackled and fuzzed out to static as loose wires lost the current briefly, but never for too long. Outside, the metallic giant reached out to grab up the shield she had improvised. The metal was bent and dented all over the place and it was getting time to fashion a new one.
“Not out of this stuff,” she muttered. “These new models are damn fast in the woods, but they don’t have anything heavy enough for a shield.” She cupped her chin. “Let’s see if I can’t find an Ogre or two. But first, bounties.”
That said Eowyn returned to the controls and slipped the shield across her machine’s back before moving to slice the head the rest of the way off her most recent kill and toss back into the pile of three other upright heads. Behind her was the battle torn forest scattered here and there with the signs of gutted and beheaded Burmese uprights with their biological apish looks. She smirked at the sight on her displays.
“New tech doesn’t matter if you just field idiots,” she snickered.
The camp was deep in the jungles under a swarm of killer sats.
The intent had been to keep the Four Pillars blind to what happened under Burmese rule, but all it took was a clever enough hacker to turn one patch of Burmese star wars into a no man’s land sitting in geosynchronous orbit over India. Last year there was a bit of drama when a malfunction had a Japanese civilian space craft drifting close to the region. So the Indian freedom fighters moved from camp to camp in the region relatively free of overhead surveillance.
Eowyn smiled as she shadowed past the first line of pickets and slipped into a nearly invisible gorge hidden under thick foliage. The rebels had managed to move into one of her favorite ambush zones by some unlikely coincidence. She knew the terrain here for twenty miles in every direction better than most of the locals, and she knew all the obvious guard posts. Even a fifteen foot tall, gladiator-like Frankenstein of an upright could be stealthy if you were the right pilot with the right knowledge.
The gorge widened until it ended in curtain of water, taking her into a short, natural tunnel that came out overlooking the best campsite in the region, at least in terms of a balance of concealability (not a word), health and size. She preferred the gorge herself, underneath the thick foliage with numerous exits, but she was only one woman and that meant she had an easier time basing herself. That and she generally only used this region as a trap rather than a long term camp.
It wasn’t much longer before she was at the edge of the camp, people scrambling for weapons and cover as they suddenly became aware of her presence. It was a moment later when the weapons were lowered while faces remained sour. Her vehicle tended to be easy to recognize.
Eowyn tossed the collection of upright heads down and then started to power down the vehicle. Those outside watched it kneel and then its chest open to allow its pilot to walk back out into the open world. One of the men grimaced as he walked over toward her cautiously.
“Desai,” he muttered bitterly, glancing toward the signs of her kills. “Scavenging for parts again?”
“Just give me my bounty and let’s get this over with,” Eowyn commented, brushing aside his denial of where she’d gotten the heads.
“You’re game playing is causing us trouble, Desai,” the apparent leader snarled. “And I’m not talking about slipping past our defenses.”
“That works both ways,” Eowyn returned narrowly. “If you’d just let me work with you, we wouldn’t be working at cross purposes.”
“We are not working with a woman!” one of the soldiers to the side snapped.
“That’s both our losses then,” Eowyn snapped. “Because I damn well can’t be a team player if I’m not given the play!”
“This isn’t a game,” the leader snarled again.
“No, it’s not!” the woman returned angrily. “This is a war. But if you don’t like the orders I’m following, then give me some that aren’t ‘go home and cook!’ Oh, and by the way, you are aware that you’ve camped in a regular battlefield, right?”
“They’re not likely to look here.”
Half a mile away, the trees tore wide open as if something had run through them and tossed them aside like matchsticks. Eowyn was immediately running for her upright.
“Rail gun! Fucking told you!” she shouted. “Told you!”
“You brought them to us, you foolish bitch!” one of the other soldiers snapped as he ran for his own places.
“They haven’t had the time to circle around and come from that direction for it to have been me,” Eowyn muttered to herself, not bothering to raise her voice as she once again went about starting up her machine. “Well, let’s get ourselves that new Ogre-hide shield, eh?”
Eowyn’s Warrior wasn’t the first upright to get started, most of the other guerrilla’s machines, light recon Scouts, were better maintained than hers, though that was because they had people and at least some resources.
Unlike her.
Immediately the camp started scattering into the woods, running every which direction. The Burmese weren’t going to be able to catch everybody. They should have circled around to surround the camp first, but they hadn’t bothered to adapt that particular obvious bit of tactics, even with the number of times that rebel camps had almost literally vanished underneath them. Really, Eowyn should have just faded, but this was her backyard more or less and this was a perfect time to show these misogynists just what she could do. Then she’d get back to having a direction to point instead of just living a Damoclean existence and waiting for something to fall on.
The gorge was in the wrong direction for the attack, but the foliage was still dense and the Ogre was going to have a difficult time pushing through to the camp. The lead edge would be these new uprights, whatever they were being called. Those were faster than her, faster than the basic model she was operating actually. But she had a few tricks she’d worked out that the old Warrior’s body could still perform well enough.
More than a few, actually.
Slipping into the forests was easy enough, though sprinting to the line of attack she had in mind was a bit concerning. She had very little idea of where the enemy uprights were and didn’t have a good guage on their top speeds yet. If she had to stop and fight, it would leave those Ogres in the back more or less untouched and that was where the real damage was coming from. She pushed through the thick foliage on one side of a more regularly used path and frowned as she noticed that the cover at this point was less than it used to be. Maybe she was using this place too much.
In any rate, on the other side of the foliage was a drop, short for her vehicle’s sturdy structure, but even so she felt the rattles through the cockpit as it landed and noted a stress warning blink on and then off for one of the legs. Cushions (maybe call these “shocks” or “hydraulics”)were giving on that, she’d have to be aware. It was looking like this would be the last fight for this particular upright.
In any case, that put her again in rocky terrain rather than wooded. The specialized Burmese uprights would avoid this sort of stretch, preferring to stay in the areas they were designed for as long as possible. It wasn’t particularly easy going for other vehicles either, impossible for wheeled and tracked vehicles, but that was the great thing about American built stuff. Adaptability was a wonderful thing.
Eowyn caught snatches of the enemy passing above her through the woods, or at least the computer was fairly certain she did. There was some intermittent coded chatter as well that she was picking up in places. But her free passage wasn’t completely safe. Among other things, there was practically no aerial cover at all and she kept her ears and sensors open for the sound of helicopters.
Of course, there were always drones to worry about.
Damn she hated drones.
The rocky gully she was following emptied out back into the jungle, and she worked on triangulating the code messages she was finding to line up with her targets. The roar of a rail gun let her know she was looking at their rear and that brought a cold smile to her face as she arranged herself appropriately. Leaning back and cracking her knuckles, she set herself at a forward charge.
Eowyn avoided leaping into the air, keeping her profile low and under the Ogre’s radar and zagging through the trees to avoid any rear facing cameras. When she was finally on top of it, her first target was to the destroy the tank’s communications suite. The burst of coded chatter that followed told her that the tank’s disappearance from the grid was noticed even as the vehicle itself started to twist its turret about and pelt her with anti-personnel machine gun fire. Ducking low she slashed through its treads and fell back into the tree line as quickly as she could, waiting for Burmese SOP to take effect.
A moment later, the area was barraged with trails of destruction as the other tanks in the area filled it with rail gun fire under the assumption that unknown forces had eliminated the tank. Eowyn flicked warnings closed when her upright was pushed aside by the force of one of the shockwaves. Nothing catastrophic was failing yet.
That was a wonderful statement to make in the beginning of a fight.
The mercenary took the roundabout path again, making her way to the far end position from the formation of tanks she was pretty sure that she had identified. Pushing her machine for all the speed it could manage, she thought about crossing her fingers for luck or finding some wood to knock on. That stress warning on the left leg flared again and it didn’t go away this time. Gritting her teeth, she took a sharp turn and rushed the next target, not her original, but something closer.
They saw her coming as she raised her shield and one of her improvised weapons, waiting until the turret had locked before firing on the run. A flare of miniature missiles lashed out from her as she tossed aside the expended jury-rig and dodged aside herself, turning her back as the magnetic warheads reached out for their targets, drawn in by the magnetic forces of the rail gun itself. Her sensors had the temerity to fuzz out as the explosion sounded, but she could tell by the lack of being thrown like a rag doll that she had miraculously managed to take out the cannon just before its own energies released.
Then it was back to sprinting as some of those triangulated positions started to change and move in on her. The sensors flared back on with a loud buzzing warning that showed Eowyn the smoke trail of an air-to-land missile already lashing out toward her. She twisted her vehicle about and raised the shield in time to catch the blast on it, but it still sent her scavenge heap upright rolling along a bumpy, bruising path as damage warnings flared all across her system.
“Not yet, not yet,” she grumbled irritably trying to override and get moving. “Damn it! Just enough to get us out of here. Come on!”
When the sensors started failing despite her best efforts, she reluctantly popped the explosives for the emergency cockpit release and unsecured herself so that she could drop out of the vehicle before another drone took another attack run. Or before they could report her position and the tanks could get a line of fire past the rise in the earth between them and her.
Hitting the ground, she ignored the slight pains she felt and took off running for the nearest sign of firm, solid rock that she could see. Trees wouldn’t shield her from the rail gun back draft. Even rock wasn’t a sure thing. It was just better than wood.
Jumping over a ridge, she found herself staring at a crack in the earth descending past light. She’d never been a spelunker, but enough times hiding in a rock had told her caves had their own dangers. Even discounting the things, she refused to consider the word that most described them, she’d run across in Eastern Europe the one time, there were just a host of environmental issues she had to consider.
But there was one thing the cave had going for it, she wouldn’t be torn apart by the backdraft down there. The decision took barely the blink of an eye before she started climbing down as rapidly as she dared. That turned into a headlong fall as the rock above her started shaking and crumbling above her. She righted herself before hitting the uneven ground and rolled out past the falling debris that sealed the cave behind her.
As things settled down Eowyn pulled herself out of her corner and took a moment to orient herself. A breeze was still flowing away from her, something strong enough to indicate a passage back to the surface. Smiling grimly she drew out her flash light and scanned it around before drawing her side arm.
“Okay now, hope I’m not going to need the flame resistance on this jump suit,” she commented to the darkness.
It was hours later that she stepped out of another cave into night air and, topping a rise, found herself standing over a road lined with a Burmese military caravan.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered as someone shouted and a searchlight turned toward her.
________________________________________
It was surprising to Eowyn to find herself alive the next day. It was less surprising to find herself in a prison cell on the inside of what had looked to be an impressive Burmese facility. The people sitting across from her once again made things surprising.
“Joined the land of dead men walking?” the Caucasian man across from her asked.
“Russian,” she commented sitting up straight and finding that her hands were still bound behind her back. “Oh that.”
“What did you do to deserve leaving you bound even unconscious and in a cell?” the Russian asked with a hint of curiosity.
“Their commander made the mistake of saying ‘take her alive’ and something about a public execution,” she explained, flexing her shoulders a bit before rising to her feet gracefully, even with the restraints. “Taking me alive cost them some people. Trying to take advantage cost a couple more and an officer’s baritone.”
“Ha, we could have used you a couple of days ago,” the Russian declared. “Isn’t that right? Mason?”
He thumped the black man next to him and smiled before turning to Eowyn and watching her pull her arms around her feet so that her hands were back in front of her. The twists and contortions attracted eyes for other reasons, though it was clear that the process was neither quick nor painless.
“Who the hell are you people?” she demanded after catching her breath and looking around for something to use as a pick. “CIA? Youxia?”
“Nah, though we do a lot of work for them sometimes,” Mason noted.
“Ah, my line of work,” she decided. “Mercenaries. Please tell me you weren’t working for the rebels.”
“Who knows,” the Russian suggested. “All I know is that the Commander had said that this was a suicide mission back when it was drawn up. I’d say we were lucky to get caught up the way we did.”
Eowyn looked up as she finally opened the hand cuffs and started rubbing at the chaffed skin. The question was evident in her eyes.
“Equipment breakdown,” Mason explained. “Our transports broke down outside of the target area and we had some ‘help’ stop by. We were barely able to get the Commander out of there.”
“Your unit leader didn’t stay to fight?” Eowyn asked, aghast.
“Not her choice,” a third voice noted. “She’s too valuable to end her days in a Burmese prison.”
Eowyn glanced over and noted a hard looking woman. Her eyes scanned down to the stump of the woman’s leg, recently and cleanly amputated. They were being treated medically well. Eowyn’s mind cast back to her youth and recognized the performance that was being set up here. Executing physically strong and defiant foes might have been seen as a show of power over their enemies.
“If I’d had my way, she wouldn’t have been on this mission to begin with,” the woman noted.
“Hey, at least we reached the objective,” Mason noted. “Can’t get much closer than being at the target. And no one’s dead.”
No one bothered to point out the deliberately obvious problem with the man’s statement.
“What brings you here, Desai?” the one-legged woman asked. “I thought you were busy somewhere in the wilds playing headhunter.”
“Yeah, that ended a bit ba…,” the lights in the cell flickered briefly and then went out completely along with the hallway, “…dly”
The area stayed dark for a good three seconds and everyone heard the activity pick up around them.
“Huh, maybe they should check out their power plant,” Mason noted, voice devoid of humor as he turned thoughtful.
Eowyn stayed quiet. Despite the lack of reaction in the building around her, she could feel that something was happening. Everyone of the mercenaries in the cell turned quiet and started moving into positions about the cell, all attention turned toward the hallway and beyond.
It was about forty minutes, after the initial alert had died down, that they heard the sound of a silenced pistol being fired down the hall. They each stayed in position and waited as a dark clothed pair of men came down the hall and directed pistols into the cell, checking the corners carefully as they did so.
“Where’s Trolleti?” one of them asked in accented English.
“Check some other hotel,” the woman snapped back.
“Quiet, O’Neil,” the man returned calmly. “We know that she was with you when you were taken. We’re not interested in you, this is a matter of broach of con…”
Several more suppressed shots rang out as someone emptied a pistol into the hallway and the two men within it. Eowyn and the other mercenaries ducked as the rather wild shots pelted about the confined space, only managing to strike their targets three times out of the fifteen that were fired, but both men collapsed with shuddering breaths, guns falling out of weak hands.
“You,” the Korean accented man gasped. “You planned th-,” his voice was cut off by the sound of another shot, this one taking him a bit off center in the chest before he finally collapsed.
A moment later, a slight woman with long lavender hair walked calmly into the hallway carrying a clipboard in her free hand and wearing a Burmese clerk’s uniform. Eowyn had seen enough Italians to recognize the descent in the slender figure. There was a mildly apologetic look on her face as she turned toward the cell door.
“I apologize for the wait Lieuten…” the lavender-haired woman stopped speaking as she took in the sign of the woman’s stump. Eowyn watched her take in a sharp breath and bite her lip slightly before continuing to speak with a rather prim and proper tone and pattern of voice. “Is everyone well?”
She grabbed a card key from the hands of one of the two men that she’d shot and started to open the door.
“As well as can be, Commander,” the one-legged woman noted, pulling herself up to standing on the one leg, face paling as she did so. Almost immediately she had to lean against the bars and hold on to avoid tumbling to the floor.
“You shouldn’t be exerting yourself, Lieutenant O’Neil,” the “Commander” told her in mild tone of voice that still felt like a command. “I don’t imagine you lost a leg without losing a significant portion of blood.”
“I’m fine, Ma’am,” O’Neil insisted.
“Mason, please aid your lieutenant in taking care of herself,” the request seemed to be irrefutable as she turned toward the others. “Corporal Barshai, it shall have to be you and I to take care of the objective. Our time is short.” She looked to Eowyn and scanned her up and down. “Miss Desai may come with us if she desires.”
“Excuse me, Commander, but what is going on?” Mason asked.
As he spoke, the woman set down her clipboard and handed a side a pistol to Barshai before reaching down to collect the other two guns and hand them over, along with some extra clips.
“I was wondering that too,” Eowyn suggested.
“I was coming to that,” the Commander noted, calling for patience implicitly. “Certain factions within the Burmese government have allied themselves with rather shady company. Said company is under the impression that this facility holds something that they’d rather have all to themselves. I came in behind the holes they opened in the security.”
“And what is this company looking for?” Eowyn asked, thinking she knew the answer.
“Why, me of course,” the lavender haired woman noted calmly. “Now, I believe the Gawain prototype is currently in the hangar with the payload?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” O’Neil said with a nod. “I saw them pulling it in myself.”
“Good, I want you and Mason to make your way there,” the Commander noted. “Miss Desai can follow you. Can you set the payloads as we trained?” She glanced toward O’Neil’s leg again. “On second thought, Barshai, go with them.”
“We can handle it,” Mason assured her.
“I can handle this next part of the mission well enough alone,” the woman Eowyn assumed to be Trolleti assured them. “One set of enemies is heedlessly (
?) handling our other enemies for the moment. We have substantial time before either side realizes something is afoot.” She checked her watch. “But we have limited time before the payload is utilized. Fifteen minutes to be precise.”
“You’re not heading out without an esco…”
“Hey, I’ll go,” Eowyn suggested. “I can watch her back.” There were several looks her way, doubtful and considering. “It’s not like I have any more reason to want to stay here than you do.”
“Fine,” Trolleti interrupted. “O’Neil secure the payload and Gawain with Mason and Barshai. Desai, with me and keep your eyes open. No arguments, everyone move.”
She gestured femininely and politely, but with an iron insistence. Reluctantly, the three mercenaries started following the orders, Mason helping O’Neil. The woman herself reached down to pick up her clipboard and started referring to it without glancing back to see if Eowyn was following. But instead of heading out of the prison section, she was heading deeper into it.
Neither woman spoke as they walked along, and Eowyn took the opportunity to analyze the woman ahead of her. She certainly wasn’t military trained, her complete lack of weapons skills seemed to indicate that at least. However, she moved with a clear indication of purpose and decision. There was a calm determination and confidence to her that only seemed cold as she brushed dust off her shoulder for the third time.
When they passed the first occupied cell, Trolleti stopped and turned to open the door for them without a moment’s pause. Looking at the surprised people inside, she considered them frankly and then spoke in a curiously accented Burmese, as if it was coming out of a machine or something. “You have twenty minutes to get off this base. Unfortunately, I cannot give much more help than that.”
The men in the cell stared at her for a long moment before stepping out and rushing down the hallway. Eowyn turned back to look at Trolleti and found the woman straightening her disguise’s jacket and straightening the tie. “What, you expect they’ll just walk out? Or is that some sort of distraction?”
“It would be a poor distraction,” the woman explained. “Certainly would draw certain attentions to the prisons. However, I owe it to them to have the chance not to be here in twenty minutes.”
“What does this payload do?” Eowyn asked.
“Oh, the payload is nothing destructive,” Trolleti noted. She walked another few yards before conditioning that statement. “Hopefully.”
The pattern continued until they found themselves in a prison cell surrounded by mostly empty rooms, with only a single man surrounded by chalk boards. Immediately, Eowyn recognized the nature of this prisoner, some kind of scientist. She vaguely remembered an article on theoretical physics.
“Dr. Labhsha,” Trolleti noted, stepping into the light. “I am here to take you to some new quarters.”
“New quarters is it?” the man asked without turning around. “I don’t suppose I have a choice in the matter.”
“Well, you could stay in Burma,” Trolleti noted. “But I felt you might have grown tired of the situation here.”
That had the man turning around curiously to note the identity of his new visitors. He turned completely around and Eowyn was able to see that he was in his thirties or forties, with a unshaven face showing signs of gray.
“And how do you propose to get us out of Burma?” he asked.
“Actually, I would say that you’re going to do that for us, sir,” Trolleti explained.
The doctor was silent for a moment before his eyes widened. “You got it to work?”
“Possibly,” Trolleti noted before turning on her heels and gesturing toward the exit. “Shall we see for ourselves. Oh excuse me, I’ve forgotten to unlock your door, allow me.”
Eowyn took in the nervous expression on the doctor’s face at Trolleti’s statements and wondered again what the payload was supposed to be. However, the lavender haired woman didn’t pause for any explanations.
“We currently have seven minutes to the test, Miss Desai, Doctor. We should hurry.”
“Wait!” Eowyn called out. “Let me take point.”
“Usually I like to try these sorts of tests with minimal risks involved,” the doctor said behind them as Eowyn walked up past the lavender haired woman.
“Trust me, in this matter, these are minimal risks,” Trolleti confirmed.
Eowyn heard the scrape of an extra boot heel and immediately was moving around a corner. She took in the sight of the cautious Burmese soldiers ahead of her and coolly pulled back on the pistol three times. Each bullet lashed out through the air taking the squad ahead of her down before they could so much as raise their rifles.
Eowyn paused a moment to pick up a rifle and clips, offering one to Trolleti as the woman walked past the point, checking her watch with a slight look of anxiety. “I believe you’ve already seen that I am not efficiently used in that manner, Miss Desai.”
“Thought I’d check,” Eowyn noted stepping back ahead of the woman as they continued through the building.
The base was beginning to look like something out of a survival horror story. Dead men and women littered the rooms. People in black tactical and Burmese uniforms. Some places they appeared to have died almost simultaneously, whether by firing their weapons at similar times or in closer fighting. At one point they passed the site of a grenade explosion and Trolleti stopped for a moment, mouth opening slightly as she examined the blood splatter and char marks.
“Something wrong?”
“I secured the owner of this uniform here,” she said, eyes narrowing. “I was planning to release her…Regardless, time is moving. We must go.”
As they came closer to the outside of the building, the sound of scattered fire-fights was obvious. Eowyn glanced outside at the exit and then gave the all clear as it seemed that no one was paying attention in their direction. All three stepped out into the open air and their step quickened across to the hangars. Where most of the attention was focused on the rather highly advanced upright which was busy holding off the soldiers of the base.